More Civil Liberties Erosion
by David Atkins
I often find myself caught between the Obama Administration’s critics and its defenders, labeled an Obamabot by one group and an Emoprog by the other–often for the exact same post. This one is likely to be no different.
One of the cases where I have defended the Administration most vigorously is the Guantanamo prison issue. Critics have disparaged Obama for breaking his promise to close Guantanamo, while ignoring the fact that the Administration did try to do it, but ran up against a Congress that overwhelmingly refused to try detainees in the United States. That left the Administration with three options: 1) maintain Gitmo as is; 2) free everyone at Gitmo; or 3) make a political show of closing Gitmo, while finding a different prison in the same legal no-man’s land. The Administration wisely chose against the cop-out the third option would have been. The second option, while pleasing to those most concerned with civil liberties, is not at all satisfactory in that while many at Gitmo were and doubtless are innocent and should never have been there in the first place, a great many of them are very dangerous people who should receive a fair trial for their alleged jihadist crimes, but should under no circumstances be released to rejoin the global jihad movement. None of which highlights the political problem for the Administration in simply releasing the prisoners, which would guarantee the President’s electoral defeat in 2012. The blame for the current situation lies not with the President, but with the gutless Congress and a right-wing media willing to fearmonger regardless the cost.
But it’s very, very hard for me to continue defending the Administration when I read stories like this:
Lawyers representing detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, say authorities at the military base have begun reading privileged attorney-client communication — in a sharp break with past practice.
Legal mail is the principal means of communication between detainees charged in military commissions and their military defense attorneys,who are based in the Washington area.
In a letter Tuesday, nine of the attorneys wrote to William K. Lietzau, deputy assistant secretary of defense for rule of law and detainee policy, to object to authorities reading their mail to clients at the detention center. They asked that the commander at Guantanamo Bay be ordered to “cease and desist the seizure, opening, translating, reading and reviewing of attorney-client privileged communications.”
A military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly, said that privileged mail between attorneys and their clients has always been clearly marked as such.
Previously, military personnel at Guantanamo Bay opened the mail in the presence of detainees — thus ensuring there was no contraband in the envelopes — and handed it to them without reading the contents.
Last month, the official said, Rear Adm. David B. Woods, the new commander at the prison, changed the policy and insisted on checking that the communication was relevant to commission cases.
These men have been held captive without a trial or the decent treatment we give even our worst serial killers, for many years now without end. Al Qaeda is in worldwide retreat. It is madness to be abusing what few human rights remain to these prisoners by essentially revoking attorney-client privilege, if for no other reason than the fact that if these people ever do get the fair trial they deserve, abusing their Constitutional rights will make it harder to secure a conviction.
If the Administration truly wants us to believe that it wishes to close Guantanamo and see justice done at long last in the case of these detainees, it could start by not violating the few Constitutional rights they have left.
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