Obama administration resorts to Bush path on detainees

News from Washington that the Obama administration is proposing exempting terrorism suspects from constitutional protections guaranteed to U.S. citizens raises troubling questions about the president's commitment to undoing the worst abuses of the last administration. There is nothing in the Bill of Rights to suggest that it is negotiable, or that it only was intended to apply to some of the people some of the time. Yet that is undeniably the basis of Attorney General Eric Holder's proposal that terrorism suspects -- in this case, the Pakistani immigrant who stands accused of trying to set off a bomb in New York's Times Square on May 1 -- no longer be allowed the protection of the so-called Miranda rule, according to the New York Times. The Miranda rule, which bars authorities from questioning suspects until they are advised of their right against self-incrimination -- comes from a landmark 1966 U.S. Supreme Court decision interpreting the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Fifth Amendment prohibits the government from forcing citizens to testify against themselves, and the Supreme Court held in Miranda that police must advise suspects of this right before questioning begins to give full effect to its protection. But the Fifth Amendment is not the government's protection to give: it was made part of the basic law of the United States to prevent the government from accumulating too much power. As we well recall, Obama was elected in 2008 because the Bush administration developed the nasty habit of selectively enforcing rights that the United States previously knew to apply to everybody. Yet there was Holder on the NBC-TV show Meet the Press on Sunday, touting "big news" and recommending new limits on people's constitutional rights. “We’re now dealing with international terrorists,” Holder said, “and I think that we have to think about perhaps modifying the rules that interrogators have and somehow coming up with something that is flexible and is more consistent with the threat that we now face.” Holder also indicated for the first time that the United States now believes that bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad, who was arrested as he boarded a plane to leave the United States, had been trained by the Pakistani Taliban. Anthony Romero of the American Civil Liberties Union told the Times that Congress did not have the authority to limit the Miranda ruling since it merely interprets the U.S. Constitution. “What’s troubling is that this is coming from the Obama administration,” Romero said. “The irony is that this administration supposedly stands for the rule of law and the restoration of America’s legal standing, and now they are trying to negotiate away fundamental Fifth Amendment rights that have been the cornerstone of our democracy.”

Memos say Republican leader did not object to destruction of interrogation tapes

So when was it, exactly, that the inmates took control of the asylum? News from Washington that newly released documents indicate that the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee did not object to CIA plans to destroy videotapes of "enhanced" interrogations of terror suspects in 2003 again raises the uncomfortable specter of a U.S. Congress abdicating its oversight responsibilities under pressure from the executive branch. The formerly secret documents were released Monday in response to freedom-of-information requests by three nonprofit organizations, according to the New York Times. The disclosures should add impetus to a criminal investigation into the destruction of the tapes started by the Justice Department in 2008. Attorney General Eric Holder, who took office last year after the inauguration of Barack Obama, a Democrat, also asked investigators to review the decision to use invasive interrogation techniques following the election of Barack Obama, a Democrat, to the presidency. The documents also show that the CIA refused to allow ranking members of Congress to see any of the covert prisons the agency used to house terror suspects captured overseas or to witness any of the "enhanced" interrogations approved by then-president George W. Bush in apparent violation of U.S. treaty obligations. The committee chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kansas), issued a statement Monday denying that he approved the destruction of the tapes. The tapes, reported to show the interrogations of top al-Qaida operatives Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, were destroyed by the CIA in 2005. But a CIA memo prepared after Roberts was briefed by the agency in February 2003 says "Senator Roberts listened carefully and gave his assent," the Times said. The nonprofit groups that requested the memos, Amnesty International USA, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University, said the 100 pages of documents, which were heavily blacked out, showed the need for a full public investigation of the interrogation program, the Times said.

Administration confirms commitment to democratic values

News out of Washington that the Obama administration had issued guidelines expanding the release of government records is a reassuring sign that the new American government is serious about reversing the damage of the Bush administration. The guidelines released Thursday by Attorney General Eric Holder are the practical application of President Barack Obama's Jan. 21 order expanding the reach of the Freedom of Information Act, which acknowledges the fundamental principle that the public owns what the government has and does. ''We are making a critical change that will restore the public's ability to access information in a timely manner,'' Holder said in a written statement, according to the Associated Press. The new rules basically restore the standard in effect under Attorney General Janet Reno when Bill Clinton was president, and reverse the Bush administration's presumption against releasing documents. Holder also said the administration would be reconsidering the Bush administration's refusal to turn over documents in civil lawsuits challenging the government's conduct in the war on terror, including jailing suspects indefinitely and domestic wiretapping, the AP said. Obama had given Holder until May to develop the guidelines but the government's quick release of them suggest that the change was under consideration well before Obama became president in January.