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Terrorizing Those Who Investigated Terrorism: Laugh, Terrorist, Laugh!
Guest Column | By Marion Edwyn Harrison, ESQ. | September 16, 2009
An attorney or lay investigator seeking information to protect innocent Americans from some replay of those dramatic and tragic events which common parlance and history have termed "9/11" has a difficult, largely unprecedented and certainly unenviable task. After-the-fact second-guessers hardly are helpful. Potentially absolutely hurtful are those who would prosecute individuals who upon occasion may have been unduly abusive in questioning well-identified suspects interrogated upon foreign shores.
Almost two centuries ago the remarkably perceptive Alexis de Toqueville remarked upon the extent to which Americans litigate causes or alleged causes which in no other country would trigger litigation. No way de Toqueville could have visualized the currently developing prosecutorial scenario.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder had an excellent record as a local trial-court judge and as a lawyer in private practice, as well as a very dubious record as to the President William J. (Bill) Clinton pardon of international fugitive Marc Rich. He now appears to have embarked upon a course of dangerous retribution against some Central Intelligence Agency ("CIA") personnel and possibly others who, some idealists contend, unduly tortured, or at least intimidated, suspected foreign terrorists while interrogating them abroad. Nota bene: The alleged victims were terrorists or highly suspected terrorists, were interrogated abroad and were not American citizens.
Attorney General Holder's procedural machinations within the Department of Justice involving both this and an unrelated subject, while very questionable, have drawn some media attention and are a substantively unrelated issue.
The pertinent issue is the approach of the Barack Hussein Obama Administration to the protection of Americans from future terrorist attacks and the growing incidence of litigation against, and second-guessing of, career CIA and other personnel who attempted to learn of future terrorism so as to protect us from its recurrence. The President wisely spoke of the need to look to the future. That wisdom needs implementation, difficult and at most borderline-realistic the task of evolving and teaching interrogatory criteria may be.
The quest for reality, be there one, would not be aided by a recent decision of a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which allows a personal lawsuit against former Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, for conduct of subordinates, perhaps not even fully known to him. The facts are distinguishable in that the plaintiff is an American citizen, converted to Islam, and the case involves more than arguably excessively vigorous questioning. The 9th Circuit is the most reversed by the Supreme Court of the United States. However, regardless of the result in that case, the undeniable need in the ongoing effort to protect Americans from terrorists is to learn enough to minimize - ideally, to foreclose - future terrorist activity.
Criminal and/or civil prosecution of Americans for past - often long past - alleged interrogation excesses is, to express it gently, counterproductive. Let the terrorists get their laughs elsewhere.
Marion Edwyn Harrison is President of, and Counsel for, the Free Congress Foundation.
This column is the property of the Free Congress Foundation and may not be reproduced without their permission. For comments and inquiries, contact Phyllis E. Hughes at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Visit our website at www.FreeCongress.org
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