[IP] Covert Legal System Sought in US

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Richard Forno <rforno@infowarrior.org>
Date: Sun, 01 Dec 2002 03:34:21 -0500
To: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>
Subject: FW: Covert Legal System Sought in US

Dave, a scary article submitted for IP. Hope y'all had a good Turkey
Day......cheers, rf

In Terror War, 2nd Track for Suspects
Those Designated 'Combatants' Lose Legal Protections

By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 1, 2002; Page A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58308-2002Nov30.html

The Bush administration is developing a parallel legal system in which
terrorism suspects -- U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike -- may be
investigated, jailed, interrogated, tried and punished without legal
protections guaranteed by the ordinary system, lawyers inside and outside
the government say.

The elements of this new system are already familiar from President Bush's
orders and his aides' policy statements and legal briefs: indefinite
military detention for those designated "enemy combatants," liberal use of
"material witness" warrants, counterintelligence-style wiretaps and searches
led by law enforcement officials and, for noncitizens, trial by military
commissions or deportation after strictly closed hearings.

Only now, however, is it becoming clear how these elements could ultimately
interact.

For example, under authority it already has or is asserting in court cases,
the administration, with approval of the special Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court, could order a clandestine search of a U.S. citizen's
home and, based on the information gathered, secretly declare the citizen an
enemy combatant, to be held indefinitely at a U.S. military base. Courts
would have very limited authority to second-guess the detention, to the
extent that they were aware of it.

< snip >

"I wouldn't call it an alternative system," said an administration official
who has helped devise the legal response to the terrorist attacks of Sept.
11, 2001. "But it is different than the criminal procedure system we all
know and love. It's a separate track for people we catch in the war."

< - snip - >

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58308-2002Nov30.html


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