http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/04-18-2004/0002153605&EDATE=
http://tinyurl.com/ys3st n September 2002, a group of senior Bush administration officials convened for a secret videoconference to make a difficult decision: what to do with six Americans suspected of conspiring with Al Qaeda. The Yemeni-born men from Lackawanna, N.Y., were accused of training at a camp in Afghanistan, where some had met Osama bin Laden. For Vice President Dick Cheney and his ally, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the answer was simple: the accused men should be locked up indefinitely as "enemy combatants," and thrown into a military brig with no right to trial or even to see a lawyer, Newsweek reports in the current issue. That's what authorities had done with two other Americans, Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla. "They are the enemy, and they're right here in the country," Cheney argued, according to a participant. (Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20040418/NYSU003 ) But others were hesitant to take the extraordinary step of stripping the men of their rights, especially because there was no evidence that they had actually carried out any terrorist acts. Instead, Attorney General John Ashcroft insisted he could bring a tough criminal case against them for providing "material support" to Al Qaeda, report Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff and Washington Bureau Chief Daniel Klaidman in the April 26 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, April 19). In the months after 9/11 there were fierce debates -- and even shouting matches -- inside the White House over the treatment of Americans with suspected Qaeda ties. On one side, Ashcroft, perhaps in part protecting his turf, argued in favor of letting the criminal-justice system work, and warned that the White House had to be mindful of public opinion and a potentially wary Supreme Court. On the other, Cheney and Rumsfeld argued that in time of war, there are few limits on what a president can do to protect the country. "There have been some very intense disagreements," says a senior law- enforcement official. "It has been a hard-fought war." Hamdi and Padilla have challenged their enemy-combatant status. Next week the Supreme Court will hear their arguments, in what could be the most profound legal issue in the terror war: whether the president can lock up American citizens suspected of terrorist links indefinitely, without charges. This week the court will also hear a case to decide if foreign detainees at Guantanamo have any legal rights. Hamdi, a Louisiana-born, Saudi-raised U.S. citizen discovered in the spring of 2002 among the hundreds of ragtag Taliban fighters sent to Guantanamo, was flown to a Naval brig in Norfolk, Virginia, while administration lawyers tried to figure out what to do with him. When a local public defender who read about Hamdi in the newspaper petitioned to meet with him, an assistant U.S. attorney made a novel argument in court: Hamdi was an "unlawful enemy combatant," and had no right to counsel. Administration lawyers concede that there was a seat-of-the-pants quality to the way events unfolded. "There is a sense in which we were making this up as we went along," says one top government attorney. "You have to remember we were dealing with a completely new paradigm: an open ended conflict, a stateless enemy, and a borderless battlefield." Padilla, the Muslim convert who was arrested while returning home from Pakistan, where he allegedly met with a top Qaeda operative and planned to set off a dirty bomb in the U.S., has been held in a military brig in South Carolina. He was also decreed an enemy combatant. As months wore on, Justice lawyers became increasingly uneasy about holding Padilla indefinitely without counsel. Solicitor General Ted Olson warned the tough stand would probably be rejected by the courts. Administration lawyers went so far as to predict which Supreme Court justices would ultimately side for and against them. But the White House, backed strongly by Cheney, refused to budge. Instead, Newsweek has learned, officials privately debated whether to name more Americans as enemy combatants -- including a truck driver from Ohio and a group of men from Portland. xponent Con Or Constitution? Maru rob
_______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
