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October, 2004
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LA Times
Attorney-general Shows Himself As A Menace To
By Jonathan Turley
Atty.-Gen. John
Ashcroft's announced desire for camps for
Ashcroft's plan, disclosed last week
but little publicized, would allow him to order the
indefinite incarceration of
The proposed camp plan should trigger
immediate congressional hearings and reconsideration of Ashcroft's fitness for
this important office. Whereas Al Qaeda is a threat to the lives of our
citizens, Ashcroft has become a clear and present threat to our liberties.
The camp plan was forged at an
optimistic time for Ashcroft's small inner circle, which has been carefully
watching two test cases to see whether this vision could become a reality. The
cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi will determine whether
Hamdi has been held without charge
even though the facts of his case are virtually identical to those in the case
of John Walker Lindh. Both Hamdi and Lindh were captured in
This week, the government refused to
comply with a federal judge who ordered that he be given the underlying
evidence justifying Hamdi's treatment. The Justice Department has insisted that
the judge must simply accept its declaration and cannot interfere with the
president's absolute authority in "a time of war."
In Padilla's case, Ashcroft initially
claimed that the arrest stopped a plan to detonate a radioactive bomb in
Ashcroft hopes to use his self-made
"enemy combatant" stamp for any citizen whom he deems to be part of a
wider terrorist conspiracy.
Perhaps because of his discredited
claims of preventing radiological terrorism, aides have indicated that a
"high-level committee" will recommend which citizens are to be
stripped of their constitutional rights and sent to Ashcroft's new camps.
Few would have imagined any
attorney-general seeking to reestablish such camps for citizens. Of course,
Ashcroft is not considering camps on the order of the internment camps used to
incarcerate Japanese-American citizens in World War II. But he can be credited
only with thinking smaller; we have learned from painful experience that
unchecked authority, once tasted, easily becomes insatiable.
We are only now getting a full vision
of Ashcroft's
For more than 200 years, security and
liberty have been viewed as coexistent values. Ashcroft and his aides appear to
view this relationship as lineal, where security must precede liberty.
Since the nation will never be
entirely safe from terrorism, liberty has become a mere rhetorical
justification for increased security.
Ashcroft is a catalyst for
constitutional devolution, encouraging citizens to accept autocratic rule as
their only way of avoiding massive terrorist attacks.
His greatest problem has been preserving
a level of panic and fear that would induce a free people to surrender the
rights so dearly won by their ancestors.
In "A Man for All Seasons,"
Sir Thomas More was confronted by a young lawyer, Will Roper, who sought his
daughter's hand. Roper proclaimed that he would cut down every law in
More's response seems almost tailored
for Ashcroft:
"And when the last law was down
and the devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all
being flat? ... This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast ...
and if you cut them down--and you are just the man to do it--do you really
think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?"
Every generation has had Ropers and
Ashcrofts who view our laws and traditions as mere obstructions rather than
protections in times of peril. But before we allow Ashcroft to denude our own
constitutional landscape, we must take a stand and have the courage to say,
"Enough."
Every generation has its test of
principle in which people of good faith can no longer remain silent in the face
of authoritarian ambition. If we cannot join together to fight the abomination
of American camps, we have already lost what we are defending.
Jonathan Turley is professor of constitutional law at
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