Wednesday November 14 09:20 PM EST
NEW YORK POST
EXTRAORDINARY TIMES: SECRET GOVERNMENT (PART I)
By Richard Reeves
(Editor's note: This is the first of two columns on the impact of
unilateral presidential action involving government secrecy.)
WASHINGTON -- So it has come to this: The United States is under such
threat that the courts of the country can no longer be trusted.
Justice in this troubled time must be dispensed by secret military
panels operating in any part of the world. There will be no appeals.
This is the land of the free? Are we in this much trouble? These are
checks and balances? The executive branch, in this case the
president, will have the sole power to take any suspect from any
state or court and turn that suspect over to another part of the
executive branch, the Army, for a secret trial under secret rules.
I must have missed something in American history. These words, from
the military order the commander in chief signed last Tuesday, read
like the manifesto of a police state or, to be more polite, a
national security state:
"With respect to any individual subject to this order -- (1) military
tribunals shall have exclusive jurisdiction with respect to offenses
by the individual; and (2) the individual shall not be privileged to
seek any remedy or maintain any proceeding, directly or indirectly,
or to have any such remedy or proceeding sought on the individual's
behalf, in (i) any court of the United States, or any state thereof,
(ii) any court of any foreign nation, or (iii) any international
tribunal."
The order also states that all decisions about which individuals
shall be subject to this treatment will be made by the commander in
chief alone. The definition of who will be subject will be whether
there "is reason to believe" the individual is or was a member of al-
Qaida, or committed or conspired to commit acts of international
terrorism or knowingly harbored other individuals linked to
terrorism. "Reason to believe" is in the eye of the beholder, the
single, all-powerful commander in chief.
The commander made his own declaration, saying this: "I find ... it
is not practicable to apply in military commissions under this order
the principles of law and the rules of evidence generally recognized
in the trial of criminal cases in the United States district
courts. ... Issuance of this order is necessary to meet this
emergency."
The short phrase he used to justify such measures was "an
extraordinary emergency." I would offer another short phrase to
describe this: "military government."
This is, to be sure, not the first time that the United States has
forgotten what it is about and resorted to military justice to punish
suspects. But the White House was able to come up with only two
precedents: the Army trial of suspects in the assassination of
President Lincoln, which came up with a verdict and sentences not
universally accepted; and the trial of six Germans landed on Long
Island by a submarine during World War II.
This is the White House equivalent of "thinking outside the box." Dan
Bartlett, the White House communications director, seemed quite proud
of that, saying: "We have looked at this war very unconventionally
and the conventional way of bringing people to justice doesn't apply
to these times."
These times. Dangerous times.
And dangerous words. Among the things left in the box are the
Constitution of the United States and the right to open trial.
Whatever the threat of these times -- and it is both great and
mysterious -- the Bush administration, with significant help from
Congress, is using it to rewrite American law and tradition. The new
rules make it easier to conduct wiretaps and searches of homes,
detain and deport people accused of nothing, and monitor
conversations between suspects and their lawyers. Such things merit
debate.
The president also, on Nov. 1, signed an executive order giving
himself the power to prevent historians and others from ever
inspecting any of the records of recent presidents, including
himself. He now has complete control over what we will officially
know or not know about what the U.S. government is doing in our name
in this extraordinary time.
|