“I am a Roman citizen” was a proud boast in the first century A.D.
It implied the obligations of citizenship but also guaranteed
privileges and rights that would be observed and protected by the Roman
government. Among those rights was the ability to demand one’s day in
court to produce evidence if accused of a crime. No citizen could be
tortured and the death penalty was reserved for cases of treason. Some
might recall that the Roman citizen Apostle Paul of Tarsus, placed
under arrest in Jerusalem, successfully claimed his right to appeal to
the Emperor and ask for trial in Rome. He was duly transported to the
capital city to be tried.
It was not so long ago that “I am an American citizen” might have
had a similar resonance. Embattled farmers at Lexington and Concord
fired the shot heard round the world, the start of the first successful
revolution staged by a colony against a European monarch. The founders
of the United States sealed the victory with a Constitution which was
intended to guarantee in perpetuity the rights and freedoms that their
fellow Americans had fought and died for. Those freedoms were
enshrined in the Bill of Rights. The Fifth Amendment states that no
American can be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due
process of law.” And then there is the Sixth Amendment: “In all
criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy
and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State,…and to be informed
of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the
witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining
witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his
defense.”
Fast-forward two centuries to find that the United States Congress
and a President, now defined by some as a unitary executive, have done
much to dismantle the rights and privileges that once defined American
citizenship.
The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing
Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of
2001 might well be described as one of history’s more spectacular
euphemisms employed to gut a constitution. It is better known as the
Patriot Act I. Patriot Act I became law six weeks after the fall of
the twin towers and was followed by the the Patriot Act II of 2006, the
two laws together diminishing constitutional rights to free speech,
freedom of association, freedom from illegal search, the right to
habeas corpus, prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, and freedom
from the illegal seizure of private property. The First, Fourth, Fifth,
Sixth, and Eighth Amendments in the Bill of Rights have all been
discarded or abridged in the rush to make it easier to investigate,
torture, and jail both foreigners and American citizens. The also
incorporates the Financial Anti-Terrorism Act of October 17th, 2001,
which permits the freezing of assets and investigation of individuals
suspected of being financial supporters of terrorism. "Suspected" is
the key word, as there is no oversight or appeal to the process.
The Military Commission Act of 2006 followed the Patriot Acts,
creating military tribunals for the trying of "unlawful enemy
combatants," including American citizens. Unlike a civil or criminal
court, the accused needs only a two-thirds vote by the commission
members to be convicted. The act permits the indefinite jailing of
suspects in a military prison without providing access to a lawyer or
charging with a crime. The government is not required to produce any
normally admissible evidence at a commission hearing and can rely on
hearsay or even on information obtained overseas during torture to make
its case. Detainees do not have access to any classified information
being used against them and cannot cross examine or even know the
identity of witnesses. The MCA suspends habeas corpus for anyone
charged and forbids the application of the Geneva Conventions to
mitigate conditions of confinement or to challenge the judicial process
or verdict. The Geneva Conventions also cannot be invoked if the
accused subsequently claims he was tortured or otherwise abused,
protecting overly zealous interrogators from later charges of "war
crimes." The act was also designed to cover all cases that were
pending, meaning that it was retroactive.
Those concerned about civil liberties could have predicted that
worse might be coming and it has, it seems, finally arrived. On
February 3rd Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told
members of the House Intelligence Committee that the United States
government can kill American citizens overseas who are “taking action
that threatens Americans.” Blair reportedly was revealing a secret
policy that has been in place since the Bush Administration. It is the
ultimate irony that Blair is representing the new Administration in
Washington headed by President Barack Obama, who had, during his
campaign, opposed the infringements on liberties inherent in the
Patriot and Military Commissions Acts. Instead of confining those Acts
to the dustbin, Obama has continued them and has also strengthened his
Administration’s ability to use the state secrets privilege to silence
criticism and dissent.
Blair’s remarks ought to mortify every American citizen but instead
have attracted very little critical commentary. They should be
examined in some detail. He told the congressmen that the intelligence
agencies and Department of Defense would “follow a set of defined
policy and legal procedures that are very carefully observed.” That,
in all probability, means that if actionable intelligence indicating
that an American citizen who is suspected of ties to a sanctioned group
is developed a US government lawyer and senior bureaucrat can get
together and decide that he should be killed. As the criteria for that
decision are secret there is no way to know if there is any kind of
rational due process involved.
There are reported to be three American citizens who are on the
current hit list, including US-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi, who
has been connected to the US Army Major Malik Nadal Hasan, responsible
for the November 2009 Fort Hood Texas shooting incident, and also to
Christmas underwear bomber Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
Al-Aulaqi denies any connection to any terrorist conspiracy and the
evidence that he or any other individual is actually planning to kill
fellow Americans is subject to the usual problem, i.e. that
intelligence can be and frequently is wrong or inadequate while
divining the intentions of any individual is most often sheer
speculation. It all comes down to an official deciding that someone is
a terrorist without the government having to prove its case with the
penalty for the unfortunate suspect being death.
Blair then went on to explain in more detail, saying “We’re not
careless about endangering American lives as we try to carry out the
policies to protect most of the country” adding "We don’t target people
for free speech. We target them for taking action that threatens
Americans." A question from Representative Peter Hoekstra revealed the
mindset behind the policy in asking what to “do when it comes to
Americans who have joined the enemy.” Blair responded that the
intelligence community will take “direct action” against terrorist
citizens when “that American is involved in a group that is trying to
attack us, whether that American is a threat to other Americans.”
It doesn’t take a genius to see the flaws in the policy, beyond the
semantic problems with an assassination program that protects “most of
the country” and presumably leaves everyone else vulnerable. Few would
dispute the US government’s right to kill someone who is acting in
flagrante, either planting a bomb or participating with a group of
armed insurgents to kill American soldiers or civilians. But that is
not what we are talking about here. We are talking about a US citizen
who is living overseas being accused of a capital crime based on secret
evidence and being assassinated under orders of the President of the
United States. He is not necessarily killed while engaged in an act
that directly threatens American citizens but rather can be
assassinated when he is asleep with his family, traveling in a car with
associates, or having dinner in a restaurant. Anyone unfortunate enough
to be near him will quite likely also die. And the suspect has no
appeal in the process and no ability to have his day in court to
demonstrate that the evidence against him might be wrong.
Anyone who has followed the intelligence narratives linked to the
so-called global war on terror now-called overseas contingency
operations realizes that intelligence is often flawed or deliberately
faked. Most of those arrested on terrorism charges in the US are never
charged as terrorists. Overseas, note how many civilians have been
killed by drone strikes in AfPak. By one estimate in the Pakistani
media, 700 civilians have
been killed in Pakistan by drones in attacks that have killed only five
militants while the Brookings Institute believes the ratio is more like ten to one.
So to my mind, Anwar al-Awlaki and the others on the government hit
list are innocent until proven guilty and all are entitled to their day
in court, the same rights that I would like to enjoy if I were accused
of a crime.
Blair also opens the door wide to extending the practice of killing
Americans. He says that the US government can target anyone “involved”
with a group that threatens to attack American targets. Well,
involvement can mean anything from contributing to a charity that is
tied to an organization that the US calls terrorist to sending a letter
to the local newspaper defending a group’s actions. Where does it
stop? And Blair’s claim that the US government is not interested in
targeting free speech is essentially hollow because his own elastic
definition of his authority permits him pretty much to go wherever he
wants to when it comes to killing whomever he presumes to be a
terrorist.
Obama’s decision to assassinate Americans overseas without any due
process might well be viewed as an inevitable development from the
established practice of killing foreigners using hellfire missiles
fired from unmanned drones in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen,
and Somalia. The United States has not declared war on any of those
countries yet it reserves to itself the right to attack and kill local
residents based on information that it does not subsequently have to
reveal. This process is given a legal fig leaf by the US assertion
that anyone connected to a terrorist group can be killed anywhere in
the world and at any time. It assumes that in such matters the United
States has extraterritorial jurisdiction, a claim that no other nation
makes and which might reasonably be contested by those on the receiving
end. It also does not require the President of the United States to
prove his case that someone actually was a terrorist.
The role of the Washington as the Lord High Executioner for the
world is tough to reconcile with the high idealism of the Founders as
expressed in the Bill of Rights. It also begs the question of where it
might go from here. Now that the government is not being challenged in
its belief that it can assassinate American citizens anywhere overseas
it is perhaps not too much to suggest that killing Americans at home
will also become more acceptable to a public that has been properly
prepped through fear of terrorism. Indeed, some might argue that Waco
and Ruby Ridge demonstrate that that process is already far advanced.
Dennis Blair’s comments should serve as a wakeup call for all Americans
who care about their liberties, but it is possibly too late. The tepid
reaction in the media and from congress reveals that just another few
deaths, even if they are American citizens, really don’t matter very
much anymore.
by Philip Giraldi
Source > AntiWar | feb 13