DP in the USA

July 27, 2008

EDITORIAL


We are, sadly, accustomed to hearing President Bush’s lawyers justify 
this administration’s ceaseless efforts to undermine the Constitution 
and the rule of law: intrusions on privacy, warrantless wiretapping, 
indefinite detention, torture.

It was bad enough when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales helped write 
and defend these policies; he always made clear his loyalties were to 
Mr. Bush, not the nation. But it was appalling to hear his successor, 
Michael Mukasey — who was supposed to be better — demanding that 
Congress further expand Mr. Bush’s power to detain foreigners without 
charges or reliable evidence, and further evade judicial oversight.

In a speech last Monday, Mr. Mukasey renewed the administration’s 
criticism of Supreme Court rulings on detainees. The court has ruled 
in several cases that Mr. Bush and then Congress, at his insistence, 
illegally denied the Guantánamo prisoners the basic human right to 
challenge their detention in court.

He demanded that Congress swiftly pass measures that would sharply 
reduce the possibility that any Guantánamo prisoner could have a fair 
hearing.

Mr. Mukasey offered six principles that should drive such legislation 
— including keeping secrets secret, limiting prisoners’ access to 
evidence, and not inconveniencing the military. The nation’s chief 
law enforcement officer never mentioned the rule of law or justice.

Mr. Mukasey said Congress should allow the government to introduce 
secret evidence at habeas corpus hearings and limit prisoners’ rights 
to introduce testimony or call witnesses. He derided the notion that 
detainees should get “a full dress trial.” He even expressed doubt 
that prisoners needed to attend their hearings.

All of this, as usual, was couched in apocalyptic terms. “We simply 
cannot afford to reveal to terrorists all that we know about them,” 
he said, as if anyone had ever suggested that. There are ample ways 
to protect secrets during a trial.

The fear-mongering did not stop there. Referring to the possibility 
that some of the few hundred men at Guantánamo might be found 
innocent and then seek asylum in the United States, Mr. Mukasey said 
“all of these people, every single one of them, are aliens captured 
abroad in essentially battlefield conditions who have absolutely no 
right to be here.” He said there was a risk that a court could 
“release into our communities people who could pose a significant 
danger.”

That is not true.

Many prisoners in Guantánamo have been proved to be no threat, and 
were not detained under anything like battlefield conditions. More 
than 20 are now languishing there after being cleared for release, 
including Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs. They cannot be returned 
to their home countries for fear of torture or worse, but the 
administration refuses to allow them into the United States. That has 
made it impossible to get European countries to accept them.

No one is arguing that terrorists should be set free. What the 
administration fears is that hearings for any prisoner will reveal 
how much abuse has been meted out by American interrogators and how 
thin and tainted the evidence is against most of the Guantánamo 
prisoners.

It would be catastrophically irresponsible for Congress to rewrite 
the rules of justice according to Mr. Mukasey’s cynical template. 
There has been too much injustice already.


Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company