{"id":1115,"date":"2009-07-29T14:53:42","date_gmt":"2009-07-29T19:53:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=1115"},"modified":"2009-07-29T14:53:42","modified_gmt":"2009-07-29T19:53:42","slug":"other-outrageous-terrorism-prosecutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/29\/other-outrageous-terrorism-prosecutions\/","title":{"rendered":"Other Outrageous Terrorism Prosecutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

I appreciate the thoughtful emails on the Lackawanna Six article<\/a>. Unfortunately, the proseuction in that case was par for the Bush-era domestic war on terrorism. Here’s a piece from the American Conservative <\/a>during Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign…..<\/p>\n

Undue Process<\/strong>
\nAmerican Conservative <\/em> October 11, 2004<\/p>\n

Innocents have been entangled in the Justice Department’s anti-terror dragnet. <\/p>\n

By James Bovard <\/p>\n

The train wrecks of the Justice Department\u2019s domestic War on Terror continue to pile up<\/strong>. Despite the perennial victory claims by Attorney General John Ashcroft and other high officials, three recent cases vivify how federal prosecutors and FBI agents continue tripping over the evidence\u2014or worse.<\/p>\n

On May 7, the FBI arrested Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon lawyer, for his alleged involvement in the Madrid train bombings of March 11 that killed 191 and left 2,000 wounded. A U.S. counterterrorism official (almost certainly an FBI or Justice Department official) told Newsweek that Mayfield\u2019s fingerprint was an \u201cabsolutely incontrovertible match\u201d to a copy of the fingerprint found on a bag of bomb detonators near the scene of the Madrid attack. News of Mayfield\u2019s arrest provided alarming evidence that Americans were involved in international conspiracies to slaughter civilians around the globe, and he was informed that he could face the death penalty for his crimes. <\/p>\n

Employing Patriot Act powers, the feds, prior to the arrest, conducted secret searches of Mayfield\u2019s home and tapped his phone and e-mail. After the arrest, they froze his bank accounts. The FBI\u2019s arrest affidavit revealed that its agents had \u201cobserved Mayfield drive to the Bilal Mosque located at 415 160th Ave., Beaverton, Oregon, on several different occasions.\u201d Another incriminating detail in the arrest warrant: Mayfield advertised his legal service in the Muslim Yellow Pages. (Mayfield, a former Army lieutenant, converted to Islam and has an Egyptian wife.) In early April, the Spanish police described Mayfield \u201cas a U.S. military veteran who was already under investigation by U.S. authorities for alleged ties to Islamic terrorism,\u201d according to the Los Angeles Times. <\/p>\n

Yet the key to the case\u2014the fingerprint\u2014was shakier than a George W. Bush press conference. The FBI quickly claimed to have achieved a match on the partial print, but, on April 13, Spanish government officials warned the FBI that their experts were \u201cconclusively negative\u201d that Mayfield\u2019s print matched the print on the bomb detonator bag. The FBI responded by flying one of its fingerprint analysts to Madrid to explain to the Spaniards why they were wrong. But during the Madrid visit, the FBI expert never requested to see the bag or to get a better copy of the print. The arrest warrant in early May wrongly informed a federal judge that the Spaniards were \u201csatisfied\u201d with the FBI\u2019s match. <\/p>\n

Mayfield was arrested as a \u201cmaterial witness,\u201d thereby permitting the feds to hold him as long as they pleased without charging him with a specific crime. The Justice Department refuses to disclose how many people have been or are being held as \u201cmaterial witnesses\u201d in prisons around the country. <\/p>\n

After Mayfield was arrested, FBI agents raided his home and office and carted off boxes of his papers and his family\u2019s belongings. Among the items seized were \u201cmiscellaneous Spanish documents,\u201d according to an FBI statement to the federal court. These supposedly incriminating papers turned out to be the Spanish homework of Mayfield\u2019s son. Perhaps elite FBI investigators suspected that \u201cHola, Paco. Como Estas?\u201d was a secret code.<\/p>\n

Though the FBI never possessed anything on Mayfield aside from a misidentified fingerprint, it did not hesitate to cast him in sinister colors. The FBI informed a federal judge: \u201cIt is believed that Mayfield may have traveled under a false or fictitious name.\u201d But Mayfield, whose passport expired the previous year, insisted he had not left the country. The FBI apparently never bothered to check whether Mayfield had been absent from the U.S. before making one of the most high-profile terrorism arrests of the year. <\/p>\n

On May 20, after Spanish authorities announced that they had found a clean match with the fingerprint, the Justice Department acquiesced to Mayfield\u2019s release. A few weeks later, Attorney General Ashcroft informed the Senate Judiciary Committee that his case vindicated the American system of justice: \u201cAs a matter of fact, the pride of our system is that people are found innocent because we adjudicate these things.\u201d But there was effectively no adjudication in this case because Mayfield was classified as a \u201cmaterial witness\u201d\u2014 which meant that the feds could hold him as long as they chose, or at least until his detention became too embarrassing. Ashcroft also testified, \u201cWhen we learned that the reservations of the Spanish were so substantial, we went to the court, asked for the release of Mr. Mayfield.\u201d In reality, the Justice Department did not acquiesce until the Spanish government announced that they had arrested the Algerian whose fingerprint matched that on the bag. <\/p>\n

FBI director Robert Mueller visited Portland a month after Mayfield\u2019s release and announced that FBI agents had acted appropriately. Yet, as a Portland Oregonian editorial noted, \u201cIf not for the Spanish authorities doing their own investigation, Mayfield likely would still be in jail today.\u201d And sadly, the unfortunate Mr. Mayfield is not an isolated case.<\/p>\n

On Aug. 5, federal agents carried out middle-of-the-night raids to nab a pizzeria owner and an ambulette driver. Deputy Attorney General James Comey announced at a Washington news conference: \u201cAnyone engaging in terrorist planning would be very wise to consider whether their accomplice is not really one of our guys. We are working very, very hard to infiltrate the enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossain were arrested for allegedly taking part in a plot to launder money from a government informant who claimed to be involved with a plan to use a shoulder-fired missile to kill a Pakistani diplomat in New York. The feds used the Patriot Act to sweep up Aref\u2019s phone calls and e-mail messages. Perhaps the most decisive item they unveiled at the initial court hearing was the fact that Aref\u2019s name was discovered in a notebook at an alleged terrorist camp in Iraq (after a night attack in which U.S. soldiers killed 80 of 82 people at the camp). Federal prosecutors brandished the fact that he was identified as \u201cthe Commander\u201d and declared that the obliterated group was part of Ansar al-Islam, an al-Qaeda affiliate. The feds\u2019 charges persuaded a federal court to lock up both defendants without bail. <\/p>\n

A few weeks later, however, at another court hearing, the Justice Department admitted that the key word was mistranslated. Instead of Arabic, the writing was actually Kurdish; instead of \u201ccommander,\u201d it merely said \u201cbrother.\u201d Aref, a Kurdish refugee who was the leader of an Albany storefront mosque, had relatives back in the homeland. Even though the feds had been in possession of the notebook for more than a year, they had not bothered to verify the Defense Department\u2019s translation before creating an elaborate sting. <\/p>\n

The Justice Department also misrepresented where the notebook was discovered. The Defense Department did not identify the targeted group as terrorist-connected. Instead, at the time of the attack, Lt. Gen. David McKiernan declared, \u201cI will simply tell you that it was a camp area that was confirmed with bad guys.\u201d According to Federal Magistrate David Homer, \u201cThere is no evidence … to support the claim that Mr. Aref has any contact with any terrorist organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Federal prosecutors responded quickly to the translation debacle, seeking to invoke the Classified Information Procedures Act. A statement from the Justice Department\u2019s Counterterrorism Section warned, \u201cThe United States believes that disclosure of this material would raise issues of national security \u2026\u201dIt was curious how a case about a phony plot, an inoperable missile (which the informant purportedly showed the defendants), and phony claims by the government suddenly raised national security concerns. The Justice Department unsuccessfully sought to avoid turning over the transcripts of discussions between the defendants and its agent provocateur. After some of the information was released, \u201ctranscripts of the undercover tapes show how much prodding by the informant was needed to lure Hossain into the fictitious terrorist plot,\u201d the Albany Times-Union noted.<\/p>\n

The defendants were released on $250,000 bail each, after spending 20 days in custody. Another court hearing is scheduled in Albany for Sept. 15 on whether the Justice Department will be permitted to use the Classified Information Procedures Act to shield its case. <\/p>\n

DOJ could use a win, for earlier this month, federal prosecutors were forced to admit that their biggest victory over a terrorist cell was in fact a sham. A week after the 9\/11 attacks, federal agents nabbed three Arabs living in an apartment in Detroit. (A fourth suspect was snared in North Carolina.) Federal prosecutors described the men\u2014arrested during a raid in which the FBI was looking for another Arab on a terrorist watch list\u2014as a \u201csleeper operational combat cell.\u201d Two of the alleged cell members were convicted in June 2003 on charges of providing material aid and support to terrorism. A third was convicted on fraud, and a fourth was acquitted. Ashcroft hailed the verdict: \u201cToday\u2019s convictions send a clear message: The Department of Justice will work diligently to detect, disrupt and dismantle the activities of terrorist cells in the United States and abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Detroit bust was the only case in which the feds appeared to have nailed a group that may have actually been planning attacks. But after the courtroom victory, the case began to crumble. Federal Judge Gerald Rosen ordered the Justice Department to investigate possible misconduct by lead prosecutor Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino and others in the case. The controversy mushroomed when Convertino sued Ashcroft, charging him with \u201cgross mismanagement\u201d in the War on Terror. <\/p>\n

Perhaps the most decisive physical evidence in the trial was a day planner with a couple of pages of sketches. Federal prosecutors assured the jury that one drawing was an aircraft hanger at a U.S. military base in Turkey and another represented a military hospital in Jordan. <\/p>\n

Justice Department prosecutors knew that government experts did not agree with those claims. Instead, most who analyzed one of the simple sketches concluded that it was a rough outline map of the Middle East, not an air-base target in Turkey. At the trial, defense lawyers requested photographs of the alleged Jordanian hospital. Prosecutors falsely denied possessing such photos. The Justice Department\u2019s formal investigation, released in early September, concluded, \u201cIt is difficult, if not impossible, to compare the day planner sketches with the photos and see a correlation,\u201d The most important witness to testify against the alleged terrorist cell was Youssef Hmimssa, who co-operated in part because he faced credit-card and other fraud charges. The Detroit News noted that Hmimssa was \u201ca self-described scam artist and crook.\u201d Yet, on the day after Hmimssa finished testifying, Ashcroft publicly declared his co-operation had been \u201ca critical tool\u201d in fighting terrorism and that \u201chis testimony has been of value, substantial value.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Justice Department inquiry found that prosecutors failed to turn over more than 100 documents to defense attorneys during the trial, including a letter written by a convict who served time with Hmimissa that stated that the star witness had bragged about \u201chow he lied to the FBI\u201d on the terror-cell case. <\/p>\n

Moreover, Convertino ordered FBI agents who interviewed Hmimssa for more than 20 hours to take no notes during the interview. Instead, he briefed the agents after the sessions with Hmimssa and made his own notes, which he repeatedly altered. The Justice Department report observed that there were \u201cdiscrepancies between these [Convertino\u2019s notes] versions, supporting defense counsel\u2019s claims that Hmimssa\u2019s testimony evolved over time.\u201d The report noted that \u201cConvertino\u2019s approach caused significant controversy\u201d and that one FBI agent was \u201cadamantly opposed\u201d to such a method. <\/p>\n

Judge Rosen overturned the convictions declaring, \u201cthe prosecution materially misled the court, the jury and the defense as to the nature, character and complexion of critical evidence that provided important foundations for the prosecution\u2019s case.\u201d <\/p>\n

These three instances may be only the tip of the iceberg as the government can usually rely on acquiescent federal judges or coerced plea bargains to keep most of its dirty laundry out of view. The public soundbites seek to reassure us that the Justice Department\u2019s domestic War on Terror is going well by invoking largely meaningless numbers. In a July report on the Patriot Act, DOJ bragged, \u201cthe Department has charged 310 defendants with criminal offenses as a result of terrorism investigations since the attacks of September 11, 2001, and 179 of those defendants have already been convicted.\u201d But the vast majority of the convictions have had nothing to do with terrorism. Instead, they are a litany of credit-card fraud, visa violations, and other offenses whose prosecution does nothing to protect America against deadly foreign threats\u2014while the pursuit of PR victories over bogus plots diverts resources from real terrorist dangers.<\/p>\n

As the election draws closer, the Bush administration may unveil new arrests on terrorism charges. If so, it would be wise to wait until long after the triumphant press conferences to gauge whether the government has finally got the goods\u2014or whether the busts are simply another effort simultaneously to frighten and comfort voters. <\/p>\n

_________________________________________________<\/p>\n

James Bovard is the author of the just-published The Bush Betrayal (Palgrave Macmillan) and seven other books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I appreciate the thoughtful emails on the Lackawanna Six article. Unfortunately, the proseuction in that case was par for the Bush-era domestic war on terrorism. Here’s a piece from the American Conservative during Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign….. Undue Process American Conservative October 11, 2004 Innocents have been entangled in the Justice Department’s anti-terror dragnet. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1115"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1117,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115\/revisions\/1117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}