David Cole
9/11 and the LA 8 + Forging a Case for War
Sat Oct 11 16:44:23 2003
64.140.158.154

Posted October 9, 2003
9/11 and the LA 8
by David Cole
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20031027&s=cole

David Cole represents the LA 8.

The next time you hear Attorney General Ashcroft dismiss complaints about civil liberties abuses under the USA Patriot Act as "built on misrepresentation, supported by unfounded fear [and] held aloft by hysteria," consider the plight of Khader Hamide and Michel Shehadeh. Born in the West Bank, both men came to the United States in their college years and have now lived here thirty-two and twenty-four years, respectively. They are lawful permanent residents and hard-working fathers--Hamide supplies luxury coffee shops; Shehadeh runs an Italian restaurant. They have never been charged with even the most minor criminal offense. Yet in September they learned that the government will seek their deportation under the Patriot Act for distributing Palestinian magazines and raising humanitarian aid in Los Angeles more than twenty years ago.

Such activity was legal at that time, and it is plainly protected by the First Amendment. Yet the Bush Administration claims that the Patriot Act authorizes the government to deport the two men.

To be sure, Hamide and Shehadeh's troubles did not begin with the Patriot Act, or even with this Administration. Immigration authorities arrested them sixteen years ago with five other young Palestinians and a Kenyan woman--dubbed the "LA 8" by the media--on charges of being affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, then the second-largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The government claimed that the PFLP advocated world communism, making affiliation with it a deportable offense under the McCarran-Walter Act. At the time FBI Director William Webster testified before Congress that none of the eight had engaged in any criminal activity, and that had they been US citizens there would have been no basis for their arrest.

In 1989, in a case I litigated with the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild and the ACLU, a federal judge declared the McCarran-Walter Act charges unconstitutional. The following year Congress repealed that McCarthy-era law. The government nonetheless pursued deportation under new charges. The federal courts next barred the deportations on the grounds that the government, in violation of the First Amendment, had selectively targeted the group for constitutionally protected political activities. In 1996, however, Congress stripped federal courts of authority to hear selective-enforcement challenges to deportation, and in 1999 the Supreme Court ruled that the cases could go forward.

The Administration's Patriot Act charges render foreign nationals deportable for providing "material support" to any group of two or more that has threatened to use or has used a weapon with intent to endanger person or property. The government need not show that the support has any connection to terrorist activity. In the Orwellian land of the Patriot Act, distributing magazines becomes "material support." And it gets worse. At the same time, the Administration also announced that it would seek Hamide and Shehadeh's deportation under the original McCarran-Walter Act charges. The statute still technically applies, because its repeal did not affect pending cases.

But what interest does the government have in enforcing a statute that punishes speech and association, was declared unconstitutional fourteen years ago and was repealed by Congress thirteen years ago?

It's all in the name of the "war on terrorism," the government will say. But the LA 8 case, seen in Arab-American communities as the prime example of US hostility toward Arab immigrants, has probably done more to undermine that effort than any case in the past twenty years. Immigrants from all over the world have come here, distributed magazines discussing the conflicts back home and sent charitable donations there as well. But the only immigrants in deportation proceedings for doing so for at least a quarter-century have been pro-Palestinian activists.

The vendetta against the LA 8 was a critical reason for the Arab community's deep distrust of the government even before 9/11. The cost of that distrust became clear in the aftermath of the attacks, as the government, evidently with no idea where the terrorist threats might lie, rounded up several thousand Arab and Muslim foreign nationals who had nothing to do with terrorism--further alienating the communities it most needs to cultivate. The latest chapter in the LA 8 case, courtesy of the Patriot Act, will do nothing to make us more secure--and much to make us less free.
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about
David Cole
Legal Affairs Correspondent

David Cole (cole@law.georgetown.edu ), The Nation's legal affairs correspondent and a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, is the author of No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System (New Press), co-author, with James X. Dempsey, of Terrorism and the Constitution: Sacrificing Civil Liberties for National Security (New Press) and author of Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism (New Press).
more...
http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/bio.mhtml?id=32

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'Knowing All That We Know Now'
07/08/2003 @ 6:42pm
GO HERE FOR LINKS:
http://www.thenation.com/outrage/index.mhtml?pid=803

It isn't honesty, and sure isn't contrition. But the White House has finally, grudgingly conceded it was wrong of the President to assert in his State of the Union address -- on the basis of a ludicrous, childlike forgery -- that Iraq had been attempting to acquire uranium from Niger for a nuclear bombs program. In a statement given to The Washington Post, the Administration says: "Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech."

Skip over the "knowing all that we know now" -- that's some weaselly window-dressing, a throw-away phrase designed to suggest the Administration accidentally came to make this accusation. The reality -- according to the man Dick Cheney sent to get to the bottom of the Iraq-Niger-uranium fairy tale, career diplomat Joseph C. Wilson -- is that this was no accident. In an op-ed article in The New York Times, Wilson writes: "Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Interestingly, Wilson also says he was asked to check out a memorandum making this accusation -- but was not given a copy of it. Perhaps that's because it was a transparent joke: According to Reuters, UN investigators found it a jaw-droppingly crude fake debunked by a "simple Internet search" -- which revealed this document got the name of the foreign minister and of the government itself entirely wrong. (Let's hope our savvy MBA President doesn't get one of those chain letters from the "chairman of Niger" offering to deposit $20 million in his bank account.)

As Congressman Henry Waxman has pointed out on his web page about the Niger forgery scandal, the White House answer is not really an answer. (An answer would get into how and why a joke-forgery came to be cited as justification for the eventual combat deaths of 200 American citizens.) And the Republicans in Congress are fighting mightily to stuff this "we lied about everything" genie back into the bottle.

But we're closing in on an answer. As diplomat Wilson writes: "The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.

"The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses."
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Forging a Case for War
07/11/2003 @ 7:12pm [permalink]
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Here's a fun game: Imagine the Chinese government announces itself threatened by a secret American plot, and declares it is preparing preemptive military action against us. Making Beijing's case before the UN, President Hu Jintao waves around a set of documents laying out a complicated conspiracy. One of the documents purports to be from "Prime Minister Richard Cheney of the Unionized States of America." Another, dated October 2000, is signed by "Secretary of State James Baker." The Chinese would look absolutely deranged, relying on such obvious forgeries; the world would recoil in confusion and fear. Yet this is what our President did in his State of the Union address, when he cited similarly ludicrous forgeries as evidence Saddam was uranium-shopping in Niger.
GO HERE FOR FULL STORY AND LINKS:
http://www.thenation.com/outrage/index.mhtml?bid=6&page=6 

• Attacking Iraq: Coalition faked it, says UN — Louis Charbonneau, Sat Oct 11 17:19