The New attack on the constitution

You will be locked up!

Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org

?A Total Rollback Of Everything This Country Has Stood For?: Sen.

Patrick Leahy Blasts Congressional Approval of Detainee Bill

Friday, September 29th, 2006

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/29/150254

The Senate has agreed to give President Bush extraordinary power to

detain and try prisoners in the so-called war on terror. The legislation

strips detainees of the right to challenge their own detention and gives

the President the power to detain them indefinitely. The bill also

immunizes U.S. officials from prosecution for torturing detainees who

the military and the CIA captured before the end of last year. We get

reaction from Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Michael Ratner of the

Center for Constitutional Rights. [includes rush transcript]

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On Capitol Hill, the Senate has agreed to give President Bush

extraordinary power to detain and try prisoners in the so-called war on

terror. The editors of the New York Times described the law as

tyrannical. They said its passage marks a low point in American

democracy and that it is our generation?s version of the Alien and

Sedition Acts. The legislation strips detainees of the right to file

habeas corpus petitions to challenge their own detention or treatment.

It gives the president the power to indefinitely detain anyone it deems

to have provided material support to anti-U.S. hostilities. Secret and

coerced evidence could be used to try detainees held in U.S. military

prisons. The bill also immunizes U.S. officials from prosecution for

torturing detainees who the military and the CIA captured before the end

of last year.

The Senate passed the measure sixty five to thirty four. Twelve

Democrats joined the Republican majority. The House passed virtually the

same legislation on Wednesday. Legal groups, including the Center for

Constitutional Rights, are already preparing to challenge the

constitutionality of the law in court.

* * Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)*. Ranking member on the Senate

Judiciary Committee. See Senator Leahy?s statement on the detainee

bill here .

* * Michael Ratner*. President of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

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RUSH TRANSCRIPT

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*AMY GOODMAN: *On Thursday, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont

condemned the legislation from the floor of the Senate.

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *It grieves me to think that three decades in

this body that I stand here in the Senate, knowing that we?re

thinking of doing this. It is so wrong. It is unconstitutional. It

is un-American. It is designed to ensure the Bush-Cheney

administration will never again be embarrassed by a United States

Supreme Court decision reviewing its unlawful abuses of power. The

Supreme Court said, ?You abused your power.? He said, ?Ha, we?ll

fix that. We have a rubber stamp, a rubber stamp, Congress, that

will just set that aside and give us power that nobody, no king or

anybody else set foot in this land, ever thought of having.?

*AMY GOODMAN: *Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy speaking Thursday prior

to the vote. He joins us now on the telephone. Welcome to /Democracy Now!/

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *Thank you. It?s good to be with you.

*AMY GOODMAN: *It?s good to have you with us, Senator. Now, if you could

explain exactly what this bill that the Senate has just approved with a

number of Democrats joining with the Republicans, what exactly it does.

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *First off, as you probably gathered from what I

was saying on the floor, it?s a terrible bill. It removes as many checks

and balances as possible so that any president can basically set the

law, determine what laws they?ll follow and what laws they?ll break and

not have anybody be able to question them on it.

In this case, the particular section I was speaking about at that point

was the so-called /habeas/ protection. Now, /habeas corpus/ was first

brought in the Magna Carta in the 1200s. It?s been a tenet of our rights

as Americans. And what they're saying is that if you?re an alien, even

if you?re in the United States legally, a legal alien, may have been

here ten years, fifteen years, twenty years legally, if a determination

is made by anybody in the executive that you may be a threat, they can

hold you indefinitely, they could put you in Guantanamo, not bring any

charges, not allow you to have a lawyer, not allow you to ever question

what they?ve done, even in cases, as they now acknowledge, where they

have large numbers of people in Guantanamo who are there by mistake,

that they put you -- say you?re a college professor who has written on

Islam or for whatever reason, and they lock you up. You?re not even

allowed to question it. You?re not allowed to have a lawyer, not allowed

to say, ?Wait a minute, you?ve got the wrong person. Or you?ve got --

the one you?re looking for, their name is spelled similar to mine, but

it?s not me.? It makes no difference. You have no recourse whatsoever.

This goes so much against everything we've ever done. Now, we?ve had

some on the other side say, ?Well, they're trying to give rights to

terrorists.? No, we?re just saying that the United States will follow

the rules it has before and will protect rights of people. We?re not

giving any new rights. We?re just saying that if, for example, if you

picked up the wrong person, you at least have a chance to get somebody

independent to make that judgment.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Senator Leahy, on this issue of /habeas corpus/, I want

to play a clip from yesterday?s Senate debate and have you respond. This

is Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama.

*SEN. JEFF SESSIONS: *It was never, ever, ever, ever intended or

imagined that during the War of 1812, that it British soldiers

were captured burning of the Capitol of the United States, as they

did, that they would have been given /habeas corpus/ rights. It

was never thought to be. /habeas corpus/ was applied to citizens,

really, at that time, and I believe that that?s so plain as to be

without dispute.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Republican Senator Jeff Sessions. Senator Leahy, your

response.

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *Well, I wish it was as plain as he says. Of

course, in the /Hamdan/ decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has made it

very clear that it is available in somebody captured. In a case like

what he was talking about, if somebody had been captured there and held

in prison, and they said, ?You have the wrong person,? they could at

least raise it. And you also have, of course, under the Constitution,

that /habeas/ can be suspended if there is an invasion, if there is an

insurrection. We have neither case here. Even the most conservative

Republican legal thinkers have said this is not a case to suspend

/habeas corpus/.

You know, they can set up all the straw men they want, but the fact is

this allows the Bush administration to act totally arbitrarily with no

court or anybody else to raise any questions about it. It allows them to

cover up any mistakes they make. And this goes beyond just marking

everything ?secret,? as they do now. Every mistake they make, they just

mark it ?secret.? But this is even worse. This means somebody could be

locked up for five years, ten years, fifteen years, twenty years. They

have the wrong person, and they have no rights to be able to say, ?Hey

guys, you?ve got the wrong person.? It goes against everything that

we?ve done as Americans.

You know, when things like this were done during the Cold War in some of

the Iron Curtain countries, I remember all the speeches on the Senate

floor, Democrats and Republicans alike saying, ?How horrible this is!

Thank God we don?t do things like this in America.? I wish they?d go

back and listen to some of their speeches at that time.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Senator Leahy, this was not a close vote: 65 to 34. The

twelve Democrats who joined with the Republicans, except for Senator

Chafee of Rhode Island, the twelve Democrats are Tom Carper of Delaware,

Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Frank

Lautenberg of New Jersey, as well as Senator Menendez of New Jersey,

Bill Nelson of Florida, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Senator Pryor of

Arkansas, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, Ken Salazar of Colorado,

Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. They

joined with the Republicans. You are working very hard to get a

Democratic majority in the Senate in these next elections and in

Congress overall. What difference would it make?

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *In their defense, all but one of them voted with

me when we moved to strike the /habeas/ provisions out. That was the

Specter-Leahy amendment, and we had, I think it was, 51-48, I think, was

the final vote on that. All but one of the Democrats joined with me on

that. If we had gotten three or four more Republicans, we would have at

least struck out the /habeas/ provision. There are -- you know, I --

*AMY GOODMAN: *But they voted for this bill without that, with the

/habeas/ provision being stripped out.

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *I?ll let each one speak for themselves. The fact

that the Republicans were virtually lockstep in it, though, should be

what I would look at. And maybe we?re blessed in Vermont --

*AMY GOODMAN: *But that larger question, that larger question of, what

would be any different if Democrats were in power?

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *For one thing, we would have been asking the

questions about what?s been going on for six years. We?ve had a

rubberstamp congress that automatically has given the President anything

he wants, because nobody?s asked questions. Nobody?s asked the questions

that are in the Woodward book that?s coming out this weekend, where you

find all the mistakes were made because they will acknowledge no

mistakes. The Republicans control both the House and the Senate. They

will not call hearings. They won?t try to find out how did Halliburton

walk off with billions of dollars in cost overruns in Iraq. Why did the

Bush administration refuse to send the body armor our troops needed in

Iraq? Why did they send inferior material?

And, of course, the two questions that the Congress would not ask,

because the Republicans won?t allow it, is, why did 9/11 happen on

George Bush's watch when he had clear warnings that it was going to

happen? Why did they allow it to happen? And secondly, when they had

Osama bin Laden cornered, why didn?t they get him? Had there been an

independent congress, one that could ask questions, these questions

would have been asked years ago. We?d be much better off. We would have

had the answers to that. I think with those answers, we would not have

the fiasco we have in Iraq today, we would have caught Osama bin Laden,

Afghanistan would be a more stable place, and the world would be safer.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Was President Bush on Capitol Hill yesterday?

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *Oh, yes, indeed. You can always tell, because

virtually the whole city comes to a screeching halt with the motorcades,

although it?s sort of like that when Dick Cheney comes up to give orders

to the Republican Caucus. He comes up with a 15 to 25 vehicle caravan.

It?s amazing to watch.

*AMY GOODMAN: *And what was Bush doing yesterday on Capitol Hill?

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *Oh, he was just telling them they had to vote this

way. They had to vote. They couldn?t hand him a defeat. They had to go

with him They had to trust him. It?ll get us past the election. We had

offered a -- you know, five years ago, I and others had suggested there

is a way to have military tribunals for the detainees, where it would

meet all our standards and basic international standards. They rejected

that. And now, five weeks before the elections, they say, ?Oh, yes, we

need something like that.? No, basically what he was saying to them,

don?t ask questions, get us past the elections, because if you ask

questions, the answers are going to be embarrassing, and it could hurt

you in the elections.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Senator Leahy, we have to break for one minute. We ask

you to stay with us. We?ll also be joined by CCR president, Center for

Constitutional Rights president, Michael Ratner.

[break]

*AMY GOODMAN: *Our guests are Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy

and Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He is

president there. Michael Ratner, your response, as we speak with the

senator about this groundbreaking legislation?

*MICHAEL RATNER: *Well, I think Senator Leahy really got it right. I

mean, what this bill authorizes is really the authority of an

authoritarian despot to the president. I mean, what it gives him is the

power, as the senator said, to detain any person anywhere in the world,

citizen or non-citizen, whether living in the United States or anywhere

else. I mean, what kind of authority is that? No checks and balances.

Nothing. Now, if you?re a citizen, you still get your right of /habeas

corpus/. If you?re a non-citizen, as the senator pointed out, you?re

completely finished. Picked up, legal permanent resident in the United

States, detained forever, no writ of /habeas corpus/.

It was incredibly shocking. I watched that vote yesterday. I had been in

Washington for two or three days trying to line up the votes for Senator

Leahy?s amendment that would have restored /habeas/. We thought we had

them. We lost at 51 to 48. I have to tell you, Amy, I just -- I

basically broke down at that point. I had been working like a dog on

this thing. And there I saw the President come to Capitol Hill and

persuade two or three or four of the Republicans who we thought we had

to vote to strip /habeas corpus/ from this legislation. It was a shock.

I mean, an utter shock.

So you have this ability to detain anyone anywhere in the world. You

deny them the writ of /habeas corpus/. And when they're in detention,

you have a right to do all kinds of coercive techniques on them:

hooding, stripping, anything really the president says goes, short of

what he defines as torture. And then, if you are lucky enough to be

tried, and I say ?lucky enough,? because, for example, the 460 people

the Center represents at Guantanamo may never get trials. In fact, only

ten have even been charged. Those people, they?ve been stripped of their

right to go to court and test their detention by /habeas corpus/.

They?re just -- they?ve been there five years. Right now, under this

legislation, they could be there forever.

Let me tell you, this bill will be struck down and struck down badly.

But meanwhile, for two more years or whatever it?s going to take us to

litigate it, we?re going to be litigating what was a basic right, as the

senator said, since the Magna Carta of 1215, the right of any human

being to test their detention in court. It?s one of the saddest days

I?ve seen. You?ve called it ?groundbreaking,? Amy. It?s really

Constitution-breaking. It?s Constitution-shattering. It shatters really

basic rights that we've had for a very long time.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Senator Leahy, how long have you been a senator?

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *I?ve been there 32 years. I have to absolutely

agree with what I just heard. I mean, this is -- it?s Kafka. But it?s

more than that. It?s just a total rollback of everything this country

has stood for. I mean, you have 100 people, very privileged, members of

the Senate voting this way and with no realization of what it would be

like if you were the one who was picked up. Maybe you?re guilty, but

quite often, as we?ve seen, purely by accident and then held for years.

You know, I was a prosecutor for eight years. I prosecuted an awful lot

of people, sent a lot of people to prison. But I did it arguing that

everybody's rights had to be protected, because mistakes are often made.

You want to make sure that if you?re prosecuting somebody, you?re

prosecuting the right person. Here, they don't care whether mistakes are

made or not.

And you have to stand up. I mean, it was a Vermonter -- you go way back

in history -- it was a Vermonter who stood up against the Alien and

Sedition Act, Matthew Lyon. He was prosecuted on that, put in jail, as a

congressman, put in jail. And Vermont showed what they thought of these

unconstitutional laws. We in Vermont reelected him, and eventually the

laws fell down. There was another Vermonter, Ralph Flanders, who stood

up to Joseph McCarthy and his reign of fear and stopped that. I mean,

you have to stand. What has happened, here we are, a great powerful good

nation, and we?re running scared. We?re willing to set aside all our

values and running scared. What an example that is to the rest of the

world.

*AMY GOODMAN: *You gave an example, Senator Leahy, when you talked about

what would happen here. And, I mean, even the fact that ?/habeas

corpus/? is in Latin, I think, distances people. They don?t quite

understand what this is about.

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *?Bring the body.?

*AMY GOODMAN: *You gave a very -- sorry?

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *?Bring the body.?

*AMY GOODMAN: *You gave a very graphic example. You said, ?Imagine

you?re a law-abiding lawful permanent resident. In your spare time you

do charitable fundraising for international relief agencies that lend a

hand in disasters.? Take that story from there, the example you used.

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *You send money. You don?t care which particular

religious group or civic group it is. They?re doing humanitarian work.

You send the money. It turns out that one of them is giving money to

various Islamic causes that the United States is concerned about. They

come to your house. Maybe somebody has called into one of these

anonymous tipster lines, saying, ?You know, this Amy Goodman. I?m

somewhat worried about her, simply because she?s going -- and I think

I?ve seen some Muslim-looking people coming to her house.? They come in

there, and they say, ?We want to talk to you.? They bring you downtown.

You?re a legal alien, legal resident here. And you say, ?Well, look,

I?ve got my rights. I?d like to talk to a lawyer.? They say, ?No, no.

You don?t have any rights.? ?Well, then I?m not going to talk to you.?

?Well, then now we?re twice as concerned about you. We?re going to

spirit you down to Guantanamo, and we?ll get back to in a few years.?

And, I mean, that could actually happen under this. And these are not

far-fetched ideas, as the professor knows. He?s seen similar things.

And with that, and I would love to continue this conversation,

unfortunately I?ve got to go back to my day job, back to the judiciary.

I think this is going to go down as one of those black marks in the

Congress. You know, I wasn?t there at the time, but virtually everybody

voted for the Tonkin Gulf resolution. When I came to the Senate, you

couldn?t find anybody there who thought that was a good idea. They knew

it was a terrible mistake. You had members of congress supported the

internment of the Japanese Americans during World War II. Everybody

knows that was a terrible mistake now. That day will come when everybody

will look at this and say, ?What were we thinking??

*AMY GOODMAN: *Patrick Leahy, thanks very much for joining us. We only

have about 30 seconds. Michael Ratner, president of Center for

Constitutional Rights, your final comment on this.

*MICHAEL RATNER: *This was really, as the senator said, probably the

worst piece of legislation I?ve seen in my 40-year career as a lawyer.

The idea, and even the example Senator Leahy gave, of someone being

picked up, you don?t need anything. The President can decide tomorrow

that you, Amy, or me, or particularly a non-citizen, can be picked up,

put in jail forever, essentially, and if you're a non-citizen in

Guantanamo or anywhere else in the world, you never get a chance to go

to court to test your detention. It?s an incredible thing, and any

senator who voted for this, in my view, is essentially guilty, guilty,

guilty of undermining basic fundamental rights and may well be guilty of

war crimes, as well.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Michael Ratner, thanks very much for joining us,

president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

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