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Is it the guy who asks you after the meeting about how the antiwar movement needs to get "serious" and asks you lots of questions about terrorism and "fighting back"? Jennifer Van Bergen reports, first-hand. Part 2 of our series on what really happened on 9/11/2001: the physics of collapse, and how not to make a "pancake" by Manuel Garcia, PLUS Engineer Pierre Sprey on why "controlled demolition" theories are off target. What you just missed, but can still get, in our last newsletter: Paul Craig Roberts on the Collapse of America. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation towards the cost of this online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! |
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Today's Stories October 19, 2006 John Weisheit October 18, 2006 Joshua Frank Dr. Curran
Warf, MD Saul Landau Tom Barry Bruce Jackson Dave Lindorff Frederico Fuentes Michael Simmons Daryll E. Ray Kate Doyle Website of
the Day
Michael Neumann Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Stephen S.
Pearcy Sharon Smith Al Krebs David Underhill Daniel Wolff James Brooks Website of the Day
October 16, 2006 Gary Leupp Patrick Cockburn David Wilson Robert Fisk Robert Jensen Ingmar Lee
/ Krista Roessingh Mike Whitney Jake Whitney Sanho Tree Website of
the Day
Uri Avnery John Walsh Jean Bricmont Jennifer Van Bergen Ralph Nader Floyd Rudmin Mark Weisbrot Laura Carlsen Hani Shukrallah Dr. Susan Block John Chuckman Lucinda Marshall Don Monkerud Missy Comley
Beattie Ron Jacobs Website of
the Weekend
October 13, 2006 Jorge Mariscal Stephen Philion John Blair Col. Dan Smith Alastair Crooke / Mark Perry Stephen Fleischman Charles Perroud Anne E. Brodsky Website of the Day
October 12, 2006 Jonathan Cook Norman Solomon M. Shahid Alam Paul Craig
Roberts Meredith Schafer / Chris Kutalik Carl Gelderloos Alastair Crooke / Mark Perry Charles Sullivan William S. Lind CP News Service Website of
the Day
October 11, 2006 John Feffer Dave Lindorff Jackson Katz April Howard / Ben Dangl Michael Carmichael Ken Couesbouc Gregory Afghani Alexander Cockburn Website of
the Day
October 10, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Robert Robideau Joshua Frank Dave Lindorff Dave Zirin Heather Gray James Knotwell Missy Beattie Mike Whitney David Rosen Website of the Day
Robert Fisk Norman Solomon Ron Jacobs Gideon Levy Walter Brasch Mickey Z. John Holt Lucinda Marshall Saul Landau Website of the Day
October 7 /
8, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Peter Kwong Ralph Nader Mark Donham Dave Lindorff Peter Bosshard Ron Jacobs Lawrence R.
Velvel Fred Gardner David Green Jim B. Missy Beattie Michael Donnelly Jackson Thoreau Jon Hung CounterPunch
News Service Tom D'Antoni Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
Alison Weir Tiffany Ten
Eyck / Mark Brenner Corporate Crime Reporter Juan Antonio
Montecino Walden Bello Christopher
Brauchli Brynne Keith-Jennings Jonathan Cook Website of the Day
John Walsh Carol Norris Paul Craig Roberts Ricardo Alarcón James Abourezk Nicola Nasser Kirkpatrick Sale Uri Avnery Website of the Day
Elizabeth Terzakis Paul Wolf Sean Penn Dave Lindorff Diane Farsetta Sharon Smith Felice Pace Sara Roy Website of
the Day
Jennifer Van
Bergen Greg Moses Stan Cox Niranjan Ramakrishnan Evelyn Pringle Fred Wilhelms Michael Abelman Gary Leupp Website of the Day
October 2, 2006 Eric Hazan Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Assaf Kfoury Missy Beattie Arthur Neslen Paula J. Caplan Website of the Day
Sept. 30 /
0ct. 1, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Marjorie Cohn Ben Tripp Ron Jacobs Ralph Nader Mike Whitney Christopher Reed Seth Sandronsky Fred Gardner Mokhiber /
Weissman Michael Dickinson Alan Gregory Poets' Basement
September 29, 2006 Bruce Jackson Michael J.
Smith Emira Woods William S.
Lind David Swanson Jonathan Cook Website of the Day
Sen. Russ Feingold Ron Jacobs Mokhiber /
Weissman Lee Sustar Robert Jensen John Chuckman Evelyn Pringle Nicola Nasser Uri Avnery Website of the Day
Patrick Cockburn Camilo Mejia Ben Terrall Ridgeway /
Ng Joe Allen Andrew Wimmer Franklin C. Spinney Website of
the Day
Hani Shukrallah William Blum Niranjan Ramakrishnan Barbara Becnel Paul Rockwell Dave Lindorff Rich Gibson Anthony Papa Nate Mezmer Uri Avnery Website of the Day
Patrick Cockburn Jonathan Cook Joshua Frank Paul Craig
Roberts Robert Jensen Dave Lindorff Norman Solomon Dr. Charles
Jonkel Michael Dickinson Alexander Cockburn Website of
the Day
September 23
/ 24, 2006 Jonathan Cook Jeffrey St.
Clair Dr. Anon Tom Barry Carl G. Estabrook Laura Carlsen Todd Chretien Dr. Charles
Jonkel Debbie Nathan Fred Gardner Fred Wilhelms Seth Sandronsky Ralph Nader Rev. William
Alberts Jon Van Camp Heather Gray David Vest Jeffrey St.
Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend Video of the Weekend
September 22, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Michael Donnelly Ramzy Baroud Evo Morales Stanley Howard Sarah Leah
Whitson JoAnn Wypijewski Website of the Day
Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad Justin E. H.
Smith Mike Roselle Amira Hass Deborah Rich Mickey Z. Saul Landau Website of
the Day
Sharon Smith Christopher
Reed John Ross Joshua Frank Arthur Neslen Norman Solomon Michael Carmichael Evelyn Pringle Hugo Chavez Website of the Day
Patrick Cockburn Jeff Leys Brian M. Downing Col. Dan Smith Liaquat Ali
Khan Ron Jacobs Nik Barry-Shaw
/ Yves Engler Lucinda Marshall Saul Landau Photo of the Day Website of
the Day
Carl Boggs Uri Avnery Mike Stark / Jim Bullington Joshua Frank John Murphy Ramzy Baroud Dave Lindorff Bill Quigley Website of the Day
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October 19, 2006 The Cases of Lynne Stewart, Clive Stafford Smith, and Navy JAG Lawyer Charles SwiftThe Bush Administration's Assault on Defense LawyersBy ELAINE CASSEL In February 2005, attorney Lynne Stewart was convicted of providing material support to a terrorist conspiracy. The charges arose from her representation of Sheik Abdel-Rahman, convicted in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. The government wanted her to serve 30 years in prison. But this Monday, October 16, Stewart was sentenced to 28 months. The translator who was her codefendant, Mohamed Yousry, was sentenced to 20 months. Stewart is free on bail, pending her appeal. U.S. District Court Judge John G. Koeltl, of the Southern District of New York, did the right thing. Stewart is sixty-five, and battling cancer and diabetes. As Koeltl noted, she has devoted her career to representing court-appointed criminal clients in the state and federal courts of New York. Moreover, as I will explain below, the government did not show that anyone was harmed by her actions. (In contrast, this has not prevented harsh sentences in other cases--such as those of a set of defendants in the Virginia "paintball" case.) Upon conviction, Stewart commented, "I hope [this case] will be a wake-up call to all the citizens of this country and all the people who live here that you can't lock up the lawyers, you can't tell the lawyers how to do the job, you've got to let them operate." But Stewart was wrong. Her case, the treatment of Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, a career Navy JAG lawyer; and a possible pending investigation of a civilian attorney (Clive Stafford Swift) for a Guantanamo Bay prisoner, evidence the government's modus operandi to try to control attorneys for terrorism suspects or convicts and, if it cannot control them, to punish them--perhaps even charging them as terrorists themselves, as occurred with Stewart.
The Basis for Stewart's Conviction: Violation of Ashcroft's SAMs After Stewart's client, Sheik Abdel-Rahman, was convicted, he was sentenced to life in prison. Stewart's visits to him (he is now in a federal prison hospital in Minnesota) were governed by Special Administrative Measures (SAMs)--restrictions that Attorney General John Ashcroft instituted in October 2001, to govern visits by lawyers to clients charged with, or convicted of, terrorist crimes. The SAMs ordered Stewart not to discuss anything with Rahman except post-conviction representation, and not to disclose to the press the content of any meetings. In addition, Stewart was warned that her visits would be subject to surveillance and recording. (However, it turned out that the most damaging evidence against Stewart came, instead, from surveillance of the Sheik in accordance with a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant that had been in effect since at least 2000.) Stewart was charged --- along with her translator, Yousry, and Ahmed Abdel Sattar, a man associated with the Sheik's terrorist organization, the Islamic Group -- with using her visits with her client to smuggle messages out of prison to the Sheik's supporters in the Arab world. The Islamic Group has been implicated in several terrorist incidents, including the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in 2000. Stewart claimed that her visits to Rahman were connected with conditions of his confinement and sentence, including working for his release to Egypt. On some visits to Rahman, Stewart spoke gibberish so that the recording devices could not easily capture the conversations between Yousry and Rahman. She was also heard commenting on her efforts to evade surveillance. At times, Yousry took down messages from Rahman, which he then passed on to Sattar (a New York city postal worker), who allegedly disseminated them to the Sheik's followers. (Stewart denied knowing that this was what Yousry was doing, and inasmuch as Stewart does not understand Arabic, the denial is plausible). In sentencing Stewart, Judge Koeltl said the smuggled messages could have had "potentially lethal consequences." Also, Stewart issued a press release to Reuters in 2000 saying that the Sheik did not agree that there should be a cessation of terrorist violence with which the Islamic Group was associated. The government argued that Stewart intended the press release to be a hidden message to the Sheik's followers to continue acts of terror. Stewart's Defense, the Charges Against Her, and the Evidence at Trial Ultimately, Stewart admitted that she intentionally violated the SAMs. But she argued they placed an unconstitutional prior restraint on her First Amendment right to speak to her client and to speak to the press, and on her client's right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment. Judge Koeltl rejected this defense. She should have sought an injunction against the enforcement of the SAMs, he said, on the ground that they were unconstitutional, rather than simply violating them. For these actions, Stewart was charged with effectuating a virtual "jail-break" for the Sheik. The government deemed the messages "instruments of terror," and the jury agreed. Stewart appears to have good grounds for an appeal. The government succeeded in getting in evidence that tried to connect Stewart and the Sheik to al-Qaeda and 9/11. Indeed, the trial, which took place at a courthouse in the vicinity of the former World Trade Center, closed with videotape of Osama bin Laden. This evidence was arguably highly prejudicial--and Judge Koeltl may well have been wrong to deem it admissible--for the government was not able credibly to connect Stewart and her co-defendants' actions to 9/11. In the end, Stewart was wrong to violate the SAMs, rather than challenging them in court as Judge Koeltl suggested, and wrong perhaps not to question what Rahman and Yousry were up to. After all, Yousry was allowed to accompany Stewart as an interpreter, not as a scribe to Rahman. And for these violations, she should surely have been punished--though not as a terrorist. Nor should she have lost her right to practice law; though her conduct was wrong, and serious, when viewed in the context of her long and honorable career, it does not justify disbarment. In a pre-9/11 world, Stewart might simply have been sanctioned (but not disbarred) by the New York State Bar, rather than facing criminal charges carrying a potential decades-long sentence. Surely 9/11 provides an argument for increasing punishment of bona fide terrorists. But not for surveilling and punishing their lawyers, too. Stewart Is Not Alone In Facing Government Reprisals For Representing A Terrorist Even as SAMs are applied in some federal court cases in the U.S., at Guantanamo Bay both military and civilian attorneys representing prisoners have also been subject to highly restrictive measures. Though the rules change frequently, they have, at times, restricted attorneys from taking papers into and out of the visitation cells without government examination or confiscation, and forced attorneys to allow the government to videotape all client meetings. Meanwhile, attorneys who call overseas to interview witnesses who might be able to give exculpatory testimony can surely count on having the phone calls tapped, either via the Presidentially-authorized NSA surveillance or through FISA warrants. Given the Administration's belief in guilt-by-association when it comes to terrorism suspects, suspects' family members and friends--and perhaps even their lawyers-- are likely to be on the surveillance list. (Some of these attorneys have joined in ACLU suits challenging the NSA surveillance program.) Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees also are restricted in what they can say about the prison and their clients' cases. The government may even be considering a case against a Guantanamo detainee's attorney. This June, three Guantanamo prisoners committed suicide. After the suicides, the prison commander charged that rather than being acts of desperation, they were a form of organized "asymmetric warfare." Now attorney Clive Stafford Smith, who represents a fourth Guantanamo prisoner, may be the target of the investigation. Smith's client, Mohammed el Gharani, has faced weekly government interrogations. And Smith told the Associated Press in an email that "[Gharani's] interrogators have repeatedly questioned him about my purported role in the suicides." Stafford also stated in the email that "The interrogator said I told my clients to kill themselves, and word was passed to the three men who did commit suicide." Smith says flatly that he has no connection at all to the suicides, and he say the Defense Department, in charge of Guantanamo, may be trying to shift blame to him. It's not only Smith's ability to represent Gharani that has been destroyed: In the course of the investigation, the Navy has seized more than a thousand pages of documents from detainees, including attorney-client materials and exculpatory evidence to be used in military tribunals, such as affidavits obtained at great effort from family members. Lt. Cmdr. Charles Smith: Yet Another Attorney Who Suffered Government Retaliation This year, as readers may recall, the Supreme Court invalidated the Bush Administration's use of military tribunals to try Guantanamo prisoners in its decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. The attorneys who worked on that case--including Neal Katyal of Georgetown, who argued it before the Court--helped establish the crucial principle that, under our Constitution, such proceedings must be authorized, if at all, by Congress, and the principle, too, that the Geneva Conventions are fully a part of United States law. Yet one of those attorneys may have faced retaliation for his role in the case. Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift is a career Navy JAG lawyer. He was ordered to represent Salim Hamdan, who at one time was Osama bin Laden's driver. But his success in vigorously representing his client came with a price. Initially, Swift was told that he could only see Hamdan in order to negotiate a plea agreement that would be entered before formal charges were even filed. Rather than violate that order, Swift refused to see the client. Ultimately, the government relented--and Hamdan not only did not execute a plea agreement, but, with Swift's counsel, he took on the Bush Administration and won. Two weeks after the Supreme Court ruling, Swift's status in the Navy came up for review. Pursuant to an "up or out" policy, Swift either would be promoted or have to leave the Navy. Although Swift was hailed by his direct supervisor as being among the finest lawyers in uniform, he was denied promotion, and now must leave the Navy. Swift says that even had he known he would be passed over, he still would have represented Hamdan in the same way--for he says, he had a duty to protect and defend the Constitution, and he did. The Navy denies that the lack of promotion was retaliatory. Swift will continue to represent Hamdan as a civilian attorney, working with the Seattle law firm of Perkins & Coie. They will be filing a challenge to constitutionality of the new Military Commissions Act (MCA). Under the Military Commission Act, Lawyers Too May Face Military Commissions Swift testified before Congress in opposition to the MCA, proposed in the wake of Hamdan. He explained, persuasively, why he opposed the Act: He so respected the Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs military trials, that he felt duty-bound to try to preserve the military from the slippery slope of "tribunals," which sidestep the guarantees of all these laws. Of course, the MCA became law on this Tuesday, October 17, when President Bush, with much fanfare, signed the bill in a jubilant White House ceremony. And its broad sweep, in an ugly irony, may force military commissions not only of terrorism suspects, but also of lawyers, as well. The MCA is purportedly limited to "unlawful combatants," but the definition is extremely broad. The definition includes those who "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents." Mariner also notes that the MCA, by its language, seems to allow the President or Secretary of Defense unrestricted power to deem literally anyone an unlawful enemy combatant. Recall that "material support" charges were the charges brought against Lynne Stewart--and there, the "support" came down simply to bearing messages. With precedents like this, it is not inconceivable that we could see a military commissions proceeding against supposed "enemy combatant" Clive Stafford Smith, if the government indeed claims he was somehow behind the three Guantanamo detainees' suicides. If this sounds far-fetched, consider that the government deems the three Guantanamo suicides themselves an act of terrorism ("asymmetric warfare"), and that it seems to be trying to establish--through interrogation of Smith's own client--that Smith was behind these supposed terrorist acts. Stewart says her sentence is a victory over an overreaching government. It is victory for her, no doubt, considering that the government wanted what would have been a life sentence. But neither the verdict nor the sentence is a victory for the rest of us. The meta-message in the Stewart verdict and sentence, taken in the context of the government's tendency to frame the most far-fetched set of facts as terrorism and the sweeping powers given the President under the Military Commissions Act, is that people who stand up for their own rights and the rights of others face not open and transparent prosecution in federal court--like Stewart--but arrest, trial, and imprisonment by the President of the United States. Elaine Cassel practices law in Virginia and the
District of Columbia and teaches law and psychology. She doesn't
like being lied to. Her new book The
War on Civil Liberties: How Bush and Ashcroft Have Dismantled
the Bill of Rights, is published by Lawrence Hill. She can
be reached at: ecassel1@cox.net
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair          Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.  The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn                        |
