The Justice Department today, amidst much fanfare, released a report on cases in which it has used the Patriot Act. Not surprisngly, the spin is on:

The report says that in the period starting with the Sept. 11 attacks and ending May 5, Justice Department terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against 310 people, with 179 convictions or guilty pleas. The Patriot Act, it says, was instrumental in these cases. "Since the act was passed over two years ago, the Department of Justice has deployed its new authorities urgently in an effort to incapacitate terrorists before they can launch another attack ... the act's successes are already evident," the report says.

Attorney General John Ashcroft appeared at a news conference with some new soundbites. "The Patriot Act is al-Qaeda's worst nightmare." He said a "mountain of evidence" shows that the "Patriot Act continues to save lives."

Question for Mr. Ashcroft: In how many of those 179 guilty pleas were the defendants threatened that their cases would be removed from federal courts and they would be sent to Guantanamo or military prisons, held as enemy combatants and tried, if at all, by tribunal? Some of the defense lawyers for the Lackawanna (Buffalo) Six said this was the reason their clients pleaded guilty. How about the convictions in the Detroit terror trial in which the Judge has a motion under consideration to toss the verdicts because of prosecutorial misconduct? How about the Portland case which DOJ settled so it wouldn't have to litigate the motion to have the FISA searches and wiretaps declared unconstitutional--and where the defendants pleaded to avoid possible life sentences?

The full report is available here at the Wall Street Journal (paid subscription required). If you find a free link to it, please post it in the comments (in html format). And about those library records searches....

You have to go watch this. It takes just a few minutes and is very creative and well done. When will Bush announce Osama's been captured? How did we get him, how long has he been held and what's the most opportune time to announce it? Go play Osama bin Lotto.

Congress has bowed to Bush. His threat of withholding funding worked. In a 210-210 vote in the House, extended by Republicans for 23 minutes so they could get a few vote-switchers, the bill to eliminate the Patriot Act provision authorizing the feds to obtain our library records was defeated.

The Republican-led House bowed to a White House veto threat Thursday and stood by the USA Patriot Act, defeating an effort to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that helps the government investigate people's reading habits. The effort to defy Bush and bridle the law's powers lost by 210-210, with a majority needed to prevail. The amendment appeared on its way to victory as the roll call's normal 15-minute time limit expired, but GOP leaders kept the vote open for 23 more minutes as they persuaded about 10 Republicans who initially supported the provision to change their votes.

"You win some, and some get stolen," Rep. C.L. Butch Otter, R-Idaho, a sponsor of the defeated provision and one of Congress' more conservative members, told a reporter.

Remember when Ashcroft told us they weren't using the library records provision of the Patriot Act? And libraries contradicted him? Seems Ashcroft is now singing a different tune:

Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., said he switched his initial "yes" vote to "no" after being shown Justice Department documents asserting that terrorists have communicated over the Internet via public library computers.

Law Professor Michael Froomkin, at Discourse.net is not joining the New York Times editorial board in its praise for the Senate vote to "to require the administration to account for all the prisoners it has captured abroad, and to turn over information about US military prisons to the Red Cross, and to comply with the Geneva conventions." He makes several good points, here's just a few.

First, the Senate’s action comes just a little late. The administration was able to invade Iraq because Congress didn’t do its job in asking questions and holding it to account. And news about problems in the prisons is hardly new. There were rumors of trouble long before the infamous photos. One can argue about whether the legislature was on notice before they emerged. But there’s no question that they have been on notice for weeks, yet this vote comes only in the shadow of the Supreme Court’s reassertion of long-standing verities of separation of powers.

It shouldn’t require legislative action to compel the President to take care that the “supreme Law of the Land” be observed, and indeed I wonder if it could be a bad precedent to even suggest in any way that but for legislative action the President ought to feel any freedom of action to unilaterally disregard fundamental norms of international law such as the Geneva conventions.

I’ll cheer when the legislature starts investigating the CIA’s network of interrogation camps. Does anyone ever get out alive?

He's a CIA employee named Michael Scheuer and you can get the whole story here. [link fixed]

by TChris

For the crime of videotaping a public building, Purna Raj Bajracharya spent three months in solitary confinement before being deported to Katmandu.

What's that? It's not a crime to videotape something that's plainly visible to the public? Tell it to the FBI.

Bajracharya was planning to return to Nepal. He'd overstayed his tourist visa, working odd jobs and enjoying the freedom and wonders to be found in the United States. He taped some street scenes to show to his friends and family, including some buildings in Queens (where Bajracharya had worked for a pizzeria). One of the buildings happened to house an office of the FBI. And so, of course, he was arrested.

Except for the videotape — "a tourist kind of thing," in [FBI agent] Wynne's estimation — no shred of suspicion attached to the man .... His one offense — staying to work on a long-expired tourist visa — was an immigration violation punishable by deportation, not jail.

Bajracharya "was swallowed up in the government's new maximum security system of secret detention and secret hearings." Fortunately, one of the FBI agents who arrested him called Legal Aid on his behalf -- but only after the agent tried unsuccessfully to obtain his release using the "byzantine" process of clearing him as a security threat, a process that "required signatures from top antiterrorism officials in Washington."

Read the linked article for the rest of the story.

Now, for the first time, the F.B.I. agent and the Legal Aid lawyer, Olivia Cassin, have agreed to talk about the case and their unlikely alliance. Their documented accounts offer a rare, first-hand window into the workings of a secret world.

by TChris

Even as the Pentagon claims to have been "caught off guard" by the Supreme Court's reminder that the executive branch of government does not possess limitless, unchecked power, Prof. Jonathan Turley points out that "we dodged this bullet by a hair's breadth — and the system seemed to triumph only by default."

The notion that the President and those he commands can do anything they please to anyone they label an "enemy" should seem alien to those who believe in the values embodied in the Constitution. Most Americans didn't think Kafka was writing about the United States when he imagined a faceless state that provided men with no opportunity to answer the unstated charges against them. Turley sounds a warning: we have "a system at risk," evidenced by the administration's attempt to defend the indefinite detention of persons without charges or access to courts, and by the failure of Congress to act as a check against that abuse of authority.

This left the Supreme Court. Although the court ruled against the president, it may have proved to be the most dysfunctional of all the branches in its reasoning and results.

Find out why.

by TChris

The latest book for the tirelessly well-informed reader to peruse is Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror. Written by a counterterrorism official still working for the CIA, the book argues that the Bush administration has unnecessarily left the United States with a choice in Iraq and Afghanistan "between war and endless war."

The book charges that Saddam Hussein posed no immediate threat to the United States; that the war in Iraq undermined the overall war against terror and actually played into bin Laden's hands; and that the United States is losing that war on terror.

Here are selections from a Newsweek interview with the anonymous author.

In the July 15 issue of The New York Review of Books, Anthony Lewis has a long, devastating article called,
"Making Torture Legal" . It includes this line:

The memos read like the advice of a mob lawyer to a mafia don on how to skirt the law and stay out of prison.

In other words, our government is in the hands of criminals. [hat tip Theologicus]

Update: The U.S. confirms a marine of Lebanese descent has been missing since June 21.

Family confirms Marine is held hostage and pleads for his release.
***********
Original Post:

If true, it was only a matter of time. Al Jazeera reports that an Islamic group is claiming to be holding hostage an American marine.

An Arab satellite TV network broadcast a videotape Sunday showing a blindfolded man in military fatigues and said he was a U.S. Marine taken hostage in Iraq. There was no immediate comment from the U.S. military, but the video showed a card identifying the man by a Pakistani name and as an "active duty" Marine. The man had a trimmed moustache and his eyes were covered with a white blindfold.

The Al-Jazeera network said the group claimed it infiltrated a Marine outpost, lured the man outside and abducted him. The station said the group demanded the release of all Iraqis "in occupation jails" or the man would be killed. The group identified itself as "Islamic Response," the security wing of the "1920 Revolution Brigades" referring to the uprising against the British after World War I.

On a related note, Turkey has refused to give into terrorist demands for the release of three Turkish hostages. Here's a picture of the hostages, taken from a video aired on Al Jazeera, with this caption:

Did President Bush lie when he told America we haven't authorized the use of torture on prisoners? You decide. This new report says "enhanced interrogation techniques will be stopped.

Citing unnamed intelligence officials, the [Washington Post] newspaper reported in Sunday's editions that what the CIA calls "enhanced interrogation techniques" were put on hold pending a review by Justice Department and other lawyers.The techniques include such things as feigned drowning and refusal of pain medication for injuries. (our emphasis.)

Withholding pain medication to the injured isn't torture? What planet is Bush on? If the techniques are being stopped, that means they had been authorized and in use. And that means this Administration authorized and engaged in torture. Period.

Here's the Washington Post report. Here's Froomkin.

Law Prof Michael Froomkin of Discourse.Net has some more analysis of the Bybee torture memo sent to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales. He says it reads like a one-sided brief.

We'd like to point out that after writing that memo, the Bush team worked hard to get Jay Bybee appointed to the federal court. Bush nominated him for a seat on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2002, and he was confirmed and sworn in last year.

Update: The New York Times has more on the Bybee memo .

Update: More from Professor Froomkin here.