Who Stamps You as an Enemy?
Hentoff, Nat
Ashcroft Watch Nat Hentoff Who Stamps You as an Enemy? Before the end of this term of the Supreme Court, the justices will rule on the most radical-indeed, monarchical-authority George W. Bush has...
...But only the President, "making a quintessential military judgment," says Gonzales, can put the individual into a cell until the end of hostilities...
...In his speech, Gonzales also insisted that these citizens have no right to counsel...
...As Frank Dunham, Hamdi's lawyer, said, "my client had a meeting with counsel, but he did not have [as the Sixth Amendment mandates] access to counsel...
...Nat Hentoff is a columnist for The Vil-lage Voice, Editor & Publisher, and The Progressive...
...He is the author of the recently published book "The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance...
...Until a speech by Alberto Gonzales, counsel to the President, on February 24, the procedure by which Bush made this crucial decision- not only for these two citizens but for future "enemy combatants"-has been secret...
...An array of amicus briefs to the Supreme Court across the political spectrum wholly disagrees with Gonzales's conclusion...
...The Supreme Court surprised the Administration by agreeing to hold oral arguments on April 28 on this unprecedented assertion of presidential power...
...After Ashcroft reviews the documents from the Defense Department, he "forwards a letter with his legal advice and recommendations" to Rumsfeld, who recommends "that the President designate the individual as an enemy combatant...
...Ashcroft has publicly supported this startling Presidential power, adding that since American streets have become a "combat zone," citizens can be taken off those streets as "enemy combatants...
...Place your bets on whether the Supreme Court will uphold the Sixth Amendment and the rest of the Constitution or defer to the commander in chief...
...Through his solicitor general, Theodore Olson, Bush has insisted continually that the courts have no power to review his decisions to hold American citizens Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla in Navy brigs as "enemy combatants" without charges, incommunicado, and without guaranteed access to their lawyers...
...Rumsfeld then makes his recommendation to the President, but it is up to the Attorney General to determine whether "the individual may be lawfully taken into custody by the Department of Defense...
...That right, he concedes, "is a fundamental part of our criminal justice system [but] is undeniably foreign to the law of war...
...And when the lawyers saw their clients, the conversations, far from being private, were monitored by military officials-and videotaped...
...But otherwise, he was given a pass on the decision to lock up these American citizens...
...Accordingly, Attorney General John Ashcroft's critics, including this columnist, surmised that while Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was involved in the Presidential decision, Ashcroft was out of that loop...
...Before the end of this term of the Supreme Court, the justices will rule on the most radical-indeed, monarchical-authority George W. Bush has taken as commander in chief...
...In the war on terrorism, that could take generations...
...But Gonzales-widely predicted to be Bush's first nominee to the Supreme Court if he stays in office- told the American Bar Association that in view of the considerable unease among many constitutional lawyers, it was time to disclose, as he put it, "something that has not been made a public record...
...And that something was Bush's decisionmaking process, which includes input from the Attorney General...
...The counsel to the President also weighs in...
...Gonzales revealed that before Bush signs an order directing the Secretary of Defense to indefinitely imprison an American citizen as an "enemy combatant," he is briefed by intelligence sources in the Department of Defense, the CIA, and the Department of Justice (including the FBI...
...To make the Administration's position appear less forbidding to the Supreme Court, lawyers for Hamdi and Padilla were finally allowed to see them recently, but the Defense Department made clear that the Bush Administration was in no way setting a precedent...
Vol. 68 • May 2004 • No. 5
