Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Increased Privacy, and National Security: The Guantanamo Bay Spectacle

Update (below):

I wonder what goes through the minds of the prosecutors and Army Judges involved in the 9-11 staged spectacles surrounding various “terrorism-related” activities.  Yesterday, in Guantanamo Bay, at the show pre-trial for death-penalty proceedings for Khalid Sheik Mohammed and several others, Edward Ryan, the US Justice Department prosecutor asked for more restrictions on the release of “hundreds of thousands” documents having to do with the September 11 attacks. As the LA Times reported, Ryan

asked the military commission judge to bar the public release of much of that material to protect secret law enforcement investigative techniques and information about clandestine terrorist activities.

I reread those words in light of the numerous actions of the part of the US, and wonder if anyone of the participating parties—the US Army Judge who oversees the trial, or the prosecutors understand that they are dispelling any doubt about whether they are running a kangaroo court.  Apparently, Ed Ryan and his colleagues are under the impression that we haven’t heard about their “secret” law enforcement techniques.

Edward Ryan continues with his argument:

“That material, he said, includes ‘911 calls from individuals trapped inside the burning towers to people who may have rented rooms or mail boxes to Mohamed Atta or one of the other hijackers.” Atta, one of the engineers of the hijackings, piloted one of the passenger jets into the World Trade Center.”

The United States government has records of calls made by people from inside the WTC to Mohammed Atta or other hijackers? The Department of Justice has other–clear, primary, damning information from secret law enforcement techniques? And it’s taken 12 years to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to trial?

Let’s just keep going. This is better than reading Kafka.  Ryan points to the fact that similar restrictions were imposed Timothy McVeigh and Zacarious Moussaui. But McVeigh was charged, tried, and sentenced to death by 1997, within 2 years his attempts to bomb the Oklahoma City building.  Moussaui was found guilty in 2006—less than 5 years after September 11—of planning attacks in concert with the group of 19.

“Other materials, Ryan said, deal with “military operations that are sensitive” and the “names of suspected terrorists and the strategies they used to communicate with one another, their operational nicknames and code words.”

Apparently, the US Department of Justice is concerned that some part of the gazillions of people who populate the 7 continents might learn about the counterterrorism techniques deployed by FBI, CIA, the US Army, Military, and Navy in the 12 years since 9-11. I’m here to tell you about some of the secret—effective–law enforcement techniques that the US has used over the last decade. With this, I join the ranks of Bradley Manning and Julian Assange in releasing top-secret information:

–the decades long renditions-program maintained by the CIA, which scooped up Syrian-Canadian engineers like Maher Arar and sent him back to Syria to be tortured and put in solitary confinement for 10 months.

-the entrapment and targeting of hundreds of Muslims in the United States.

-the federal (and state) governments’ relentless zeal in passing successive laws and policies that expand the scope of policing powers (NDAA, H.R. 347, SB1070, S.Comm, renewal of the Military Commissions Act, FISA).

-The highly touted extra-legal assassinations of Osama Bin Ladin (marveled, boasted about by POTUS himself, and rehashed in excruciating detail on 60 Minutes, a book by one of the Navy Seals involved in the killing (somehow not banned as giving “highly classified information”), and gleefully reviewed from multiple angles in Vanity Fair, including the Leon Panetta’s and POTUS’s own deep thoughts on the matter of extra-legal assassination, and multiple rags professing to be part of the critical watchdogs called the media.

-the much announced extra-legal assassination of “Al-Qaeda’s #2” Anwar Al-Aulaqi, a US citizen and

-extra-legal assassination of his U.S. citizen, 16 year old son Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi.

–the subsequent drone attacks that have supposedly killed multiple Al-Qaeda terrorists in Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

–the killings of multiple other potential #2’s in line to Osama Bin Ladin.

I wonder if Ed Ryan finds the repeated bombing and drone attacks and complete abrogation of human rights on the part of the US—do those endanger national security? Does the NYU/Stanford Drone Report on the murders of more than 2000 civilians (and countless “militants”—defined as those who come to take care of their injured and dead in the immediate aftermath of attacks by drones)—endanger national security? How about the Columbia Report, “Civilian Impact of Drones: Unexamined Costs, Unanswered Questions,” which points to the broad range of executive and legal measures that enable any future president to kill broadly, vastly, and with ease? Are these also endangering national security?

Back to Ryan’s argument before U.S. Army Judge James L. Pohl:

“Ryan said that once the materials are handed over to the defense in the discovery phase of the case, the government does not want many of them made public in court filings or testimony, or released to the public in other ways.”

‘Discovery,” he said, “is not a public process. It’s not a source of open public access.’”

I can accept that. It’s not a public process. Got it. It needs to be secret from the “public.” Apparently, the “public” include the defendants and their lawyers, too.

“Defense attorneys asked for some modifications, especially the government’s request that the five defendants not be allowed to see any of the sensitive or classified material.” (my emphasis)

Apparently release of documents would reveal the incredible plethora of information about terrorists and their activities and contacts. It would prove irrefutably that KSM and Walid Atta and others are terrorists who want to hurt America. That in turn would endanger national security?

I wonder how the abrogation of the due process and violation of the human rights of 800 prisoners in GTMO over the course of the decade enhance national security. I wonder how national security concerns were protected by holding a number of children among them, like Omar Khadr, and clear innocents like Adnan Latif, whose repeated exoneration was ignored, until finally, he killed himself. Especially in light of the fact that the families of these prisoners and their communities are probably pretty pissed off if they weren’t before.

Clearly, national security isn’t the issue here. The drive to increase “privacy” is correspondingly a drive to increased immunity from the charge of lawlessness in the name of law. As Yemeni –based lawyer Haykal Bafana tweeted to me this morning:

What is at issue is US ability to plausibly deny that that they have initiated, perpetrated, and engaged in the most focused, expansive, and the unqualified campaign to target an international and domestic population of Muslims—merely because they could. And where they couldn’t engage in those processes, the state—under the aegis of GW Bush and the Republicans—with the unabashed help of Democrats from 2001 until today—has passed laws that would allow for the unapologetic harassment, torture, and persecution of Muslims.  There isn’t enough time in all of our years put together to lay out every instance of persecution on this site, although many lawyers, activists, human rights organizations, and pundits are on the case.  Again, Bafana states the profound truth:

Despite the still persistent charges from outraged domestic and international dissenters, US Department of Justice and US Army Judges appear to think that their actions can withstand scrutiny from international observers. As bizarre, they appear to believe that their actions are not already transparent. One doesn’t need access to classified materials to understand that the spectacle in Guantanamo is a parody of justice.

If we turn our attention to the show-trial at Fort Hood of former US Army Psychiatrist Malid Nidal Hassan, the same impression arises: Nidal Hassan’s trial for the killing of multiple people on Fort Hood Army Base has been repeatedly delayed as the trial judge Col. Gregory Gross has ordered that Nidal Hasan must shave his beard because it shows disrespect for the Army proceedings. Nidal Hasan—arguing that he is close to death and that it would be a sin to shave at this point, has refused to shave. Gross’ response has been repeatedly to fine and place Nidal Hasan in contempt multiple times. He rejects Nidal Hasan’s explanation because the sign “of his religious faith hasn’t been sincere enough.”

Which part of this ridiculous battle between a US Army judge and a suspect suggests that this engagement is anything other than act of pure unadultered, unaccountable, power—an act designed to humiliate and squelch Nidal Hasan as part of a public spectacle designed to send a message to millions of religious Muslism? Since when are American non-Muslim Army judges able to distinguish sincere religious belief from falsehoods? What exactly in their careers has equipped them to make this distinguished judgment?

Does the US Army or the Department of Justice—or even the present Administration wonder about how their actions are received by the international arena and international press?  Do they think that news of their rulings will somehow increase the trust of international observers as the US makes claims about caring about human rights violations in…well…anywhere else in the world? Except for Palestine of course. No human rights violations there.

Do they wonder about how US citizens fare when traveling abroad in the light of all of these “measures” to protect national security? Unimpeded acts of torture, lawlessness, incarceration, confinement, and kangaroo trials—in case it isn’t obvious—can only increase the national insecurity at home and threaten Americans travel abroad—even and especially for those who wish only to live in peace with Muslims around the world.
Update:

Haykal Bafana reminds me that his second tweet is in fact a quote from Shakespeare. Precisely, it’s from Act III, Scene I of the History of King John (1596).