What You Didn't See on C-SPAN: My Written Testimony to Sen. Judiciary Comm. on "Handling" Detainees
by Jesselyn Radack
Thu Jun 05, 2008 at 04:35:44 AM PDT
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I have direct, personal expertise on this topic because I was the Justice Department ethics advisor in the case of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh. In 2001, I told the Criminal Division, which was advising the FBI in Afghanistan, that Lindh could not be interrogated without his counsel. That was on a Friday. The Criminal Division called back on Monday and said that the FBI had interrogated him anyway. They wanted to know what to do. I advised that the interview would have to be sealed and used only for national security purposes or intelligence-gathering, not criminal prosecution. Again, my advice was ignored.
Three months later, I inadvertently learned of a discovery order, which had been deliberately concealed from me, for all justice Department correspondence related to Lindh's interrogation.
When I went to comply, my e-mails had been purged from the file. With the help of technical support, I recovered them from my computer, turned them over to my boss, took home a copy in case they "disappeared" again, and resigned.........................
The reason that the case against Lindh imploded was because, although the Justice Department was eager to prosecute him in the criminal courts, both of these tenets were disregarded. As an initial matter, Lindh was blindfolded, duct-taped naked to a board, and held in an unlit shipping container for days. The Department of Defense knew that this evidence would come out a Lindh's suppression hearing, and leaned on the Justice Department to offer an eleventh-hour plea deal in order to prevent early exposure of its new policy on the torture of captives in the war on terrorism. As part of the plea, Lindh had to swear that he had "not been intentionally mistreated" and waive any future claim to torture. Abusive interrogation techniques and torture will likely taint any legal proceedings against suscpected terrorists.
The second reason the Lindh case collapsed was due to flouting the rule of law. Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Eric Lichtblau's book, Bush's Law, recently documented a clash that had never before become public.
Alberto Gonzales, who was then White House counsel, made it clear that the White House was calling the shots and that he, as White House counsel, had decided not to turn anything over to Lindh's defense lawyers in the way of documents...................................
more at:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/6/5/72459/18259/879/530013
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