|
 here
is a brand of turmoil out there that one can reasonably call "op-ed
turmoil." By this is meant that the people who are upset are
the critical class of Americans. This class has a lower threshold
of pain than just plain Americans. If there is a civil-rights whiff
in the air, the leaves of civil rectitude will rustle. There is
reason to be grateful for the sensibilities of those who object
to any government enlargement (except through higher taxes), but
there comes a point when the non-clamorous public has to be given
a voice, so to speak, by a public defender.
A public defender is what President Bush et al. need right now in
the matter of the national effort to heighten the national security,
post September 11.
The general rule — the paradigm — says that all people
are to be treated the same under the law, that all are to be informed
of their (alleged) transgression, given habeas corpus and the right
to counsel, to confront their accusers, to a speedy trial, and to
exoneration unless unanimously found guilty.
The approach under the direction of President Bush does everything
from sweeping away the protocols to holding some of them equivocally
and putting some in abeyance. But an effort to judge reasonably
what the administration is trying to do requires that we face the
question before the people, which is, Have we sufficiently looked
after internal security in an age of warfare the curtain raiser
of which was the events of September 11? It pays to remind ourselves
that it was only by chance heroism that Airliner #3 landed in one
corner of the Pentagon, and Airliner #4 in Pennsylvania, the probable
targets of both having been the White House, and the Capitol.
President Nixon, we know, liked to write down, on the yellow legal
pad, sitting in his lonely office in the west wing of the White
House, the postulates of policy questions he faced and their deductions.
Here is how he might have put it down:
1. We don't
know who they are.
a. No, but they are probably Middle Eastern. And you can
tell Middle Easterners when you look at them.
2. They don't abide by rules. We abide by rules.
a. The question is, What rules should we change?
b. Some of the rules we change are, like, obvious. We don't want
buggers coming into the country if we can find out they've had
any connection with al Qaeda or other outfits doing terror
or advocating it. So: more interrogation of people seeking visas
from that part of the world.
3. Rules.
We must act on suspicion, not proof. If we suspect a guy, we detain
him. Toss him out of the country.
a. Might have to go to Congress on this. Perhaps executive authority
is sufficient. Check with the A.G.
4. The FBI and the CIA have to pool their knowledge and that means
high-intensity security for their work.
a. It also means we don't float our sources at any trials...
— Trials will be different from the kind of thing I did after
law school. If this is war, and I say it is war, then we'll
have different tribunals. Courts martial, something like that.
Get our legal people to work that out.
...No. No way we can let information out at one hearing
or "trial" that could expose a unique source in Baghdad
or Islamabad or wherever.
5. Special difficulties. In trials, like the one against the 1993
World Trade Center terrorists, we were able to show publicly that
they did it or were accomplices. It's going to be tougher with
the new process. The carpers will keep wanting to know whether
Joe Mohammed was really guilty, and we can't — prove that
he was. Or even that he might have been. Tough situation.
New York
Times, Nov. 25:
At the FBI's
prodding, in mid-October, the immigration service refused entry
at Kennedy International Airport in New York to a Jordanian who
is an official of the Palestine Liberation Organization, law enforcement
officials said. They said the man was on his way from Cairo to
Los Angeles to do something that suddenly seemed a little worrisome:
he was planning to attend flight school. He was put back on a
plane to Cairo.
|
