New AG Mukasey Avoids Torture Question
Michael Mukasey could be considered one of the co-founders of the modern era of terrorism. He served as the Judge (Chertoff was the D.A.) on the 1993 WCT bombing case. In that case Mukasey prevented the defense from gaining access to a key government witness, Ali Mohammed, an army Special Forces trained FBI operative who was a key figure in the operation. It was another FBI confidential informer and prosecution witness, Emad Salem, tapes reveal, who actually supplied both the bomb materials and bomb making expertise for the operation. It is no exaggeration to say that the 1993 bombing was largely an FBI run operation.
To protect the government case, and send a chilling message to the civil rights community, prosecutors had the lead defense attorney, Lynn Stewart, arrested and charged with terrorism for making public statements about the case.
Mukasey has also been complicit in the Bush administration’s dismemberment of the Bill of Rights. In the wake of 9/11 as the chief federal trial judge in Manhattan, Mukasey approved secret warrants that authorized the detention, without charge, of thousands of Muslim immigrants on flimsy “material witness” warrants.
As a key official in the Jose Padilla case, Mukasey allowed the government to imprison Padilla, a US citizen, without charge for nearly 4 years. All the while, Padilla was subjected to the harshest forms of psychological torture to the point where his mental faculties are now completely destroyed. Padilla is incapable of aiding in his own defense because he is unable even to distinguish between his defense council and his interrogators. Mukasey made sure that information regarding the conditions of Padilla’s detention, the sleep deprivation, mind altering drugs, isolation, and sensory deprivation, was never heard by the jury.
Mukasey’s resumé of covering up state sponsored false-flag terrorism, his disdain for constitutional rights of the accused, his demonstrated willingness to bend due process to suit the government prosecutors, all make him the perfect pick, from the administrations point of view, for the new Attorney General.
Mukasey must now confront the question, “is waterboarding torture?” Torture is, of course, illegal under domestic and international law and treaty. If Mukasey admits, as any honest lawyer must, that waterboarding is torture and therefore illegal, as the next Attorney General, he could be forced to pursue the prosecution of very serious criminal charges against a large number of low-level and high-level U.S. officials, including cabinet members and potentially even the President and Vice President. But that would require a moral integrity on Mukasey’s part which has not been evident in his career to date.
Bush administration torturers appear to be safe, for now. But as Pinochet discovered, there is no statute of limitations on war crimes, torture and murder, and the victims of such atrocities tend to have long memories.