[Infowarrior] - Indefinite miitary detentions snuck into DOD funding bill

[Richard Forno]

Detention without end, amen
By: Daphne Eviatar
October 4, 2011 09:48 PM EDT


http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=4214DC33-D7EE-450A-B530-B75F378C3484

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In addition, this defense authorization bill marks the first time since the McCarthy era that Congress has sought to create a system of military detention without charge or trial — including U.S. citizens arrested on U.S. soil.

The bill would do that by authorizing such military detention of anyone, captured anywhere, believed to be “part of or [who] substantially supported” Al Qaeda, the Taliban or undefined “associated forces.”

Not since 1950, when Congress passed the Internal Security Act, which allowed the government to indefinitely detain suspected Communists who the administration determined “would probably commit espionage or sabotage,” has Congress authorized such broadbased indefinite detention based on only suspicion.

Back in the 1950s, however, the threat of indefinite imprisonment without trial remained just that. No president ever actually invoked that draconian power. But with some 2,800 “war on terror” detainees now imprisoned indefinitely by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay and at the U.S.-run Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, the use of that power here at home is hardly far-fetched.

Congress has been careful not to call too much attention to this provision in its 666-page spending bill — likely aware that many Americans might well be outraged.

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John Brennan, the president’s chief counterterrorism adviser, has spoken out against this proposed new military policy. He called mandatory military custody for terrorism suspects a “departure from our values and the body of laws and principles that have always made this country a force for positive change in the world.”

It also undermines our national security. The law would “undermine the international cooperation that has been critical to the national security gains we have made,” as Brennan noted in a recent Harvard Law School speech. He emphasized it would place “unprecedented restrictions on the ability of experienced professionals to combat terrorism, injecting legal and operational uncertainty into what is already enormously complicated work.”

The FBI has some of the world’s best investigators of international terrorism. Yet this bill could shut FBI investigators out of critical counterterrorism investigations.

What’s more, suspects held in military custody may never be able to be prosecuted — and turned as witnesses against their terrorist associates — because the military won’t be required to follow the FBI’s rules. These are carefully crafted to support bringing suspected terrorists to justice.

A group of former senior military interrogators, FBI agents and other law enforcement professionals explained in a recent statement to Congress that the CIA and FBI, together with local law enforcement, have successfully apprehended, interrogated, prosecuted and incapacitated hundreds of suspected terrorists who threatened the U.S. This has yielded, they stated, critical information about “Al Qaeda communications methods and security protocols, Al Qaeda recruiting methods, the location of Al Qaeda training camps and safe houses and information about future plots to attack U.S. interest.”

If the proposed provisions in the pending bill become law, these experts write, “this process will be seriously disrupted in the vast majority of international terrorism cases.”

A group of former military generals and admirals also strongly oppose this provision. They warned it “would transform our armed forces into judge, jury and jailor for foreign terrorism suspects.” That goes well beyond the military’s expertise, they cautioned: “The military’s mission is to prosecute wars, not terrorists.”

Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson has similarly opposed the mandatory military custody requirement. “There is danger,” Johnson said in a speech to the American Constitution Society, “in over-militarizing our approach to the current terrorist threat.”

Yet the defense spending bill now pending in Congress would endanger the United States by doing just that.

Daphne Eviatar is a senior associate in the law and security program of Human Rights First.