The Show Trials

by emptywheel

I'm not really surprised by the reason the lead prosecutor for Gitmo detainees quit--as reported by the WaPo. The Administration wanted show trials in time for the 2008 election, and they were willing to use classified information to do so.

Politically motivated officials at the Pentagon have pushed for convictions of high-profile detainees ahead of the 2008 elections, the former lead prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay said last night, adding that the pressure played a part in his decision to resign earlier this month.

I'm just a little curious about the timing. The guy the Administration  put in to "nano-manage" the prosecutions, General Thomas Hartmann, only came on this summer.

Hartmann arrived as legal adviser to the convening authority last summer, and suddenly, Davis said during a lengthy interview, his office was inundated with what he called "nano-management," including requests to oversee cases that had previously been left solely to prosecutors.

Part of the new focus, Davis said, was to speed up cases that would show the public the system was working. Davis said he wanted to focus on cases that had declassified evidence, so the public could see the entire trial through news coverage. That would defuse possible allegations that the trials were stacked against defendants.

But Hartmann said he was satisfied with putting on cases that included closed sessions, because the law allows it.

"He said, the way we were going to validate the system was by getting convictions and good sentences," Davis said. "I felt I was being pressured to do something less than full, fair and open."

Hatmann came in, interfered in prosecutors' jobs, demanded to conduct pre-trial discussions with defendants' lawyers himself, and gave the team a prioritized list of prosecutions to carry out. This summer. After the Administration had spent 6 months getting flogged for doing the same thing with our civilian judicial system.

Which is why it's not enough to let the Alberto Gonzales inquiry just take its course. Because in the absence of any real punishment for the politicization of the civilian judiciary, they're going to keep on politicizing justice.

Comments

[Davis X. Machina]

The utilitarian answer is that the best option is to give them their damned show trials.

They're going to do anything -- anything -- to keep power, because the alternative is to spend the rest of their lives in front of juries grand and petit, congressional committees, deposing attorneys, and if we're lucky, the good folks in the Hague.

Appropriate election outcomes, and that includes re-electing Democrats who place 'comity' before their sworn duty to the Constitution, is the only way to avert this.

They will get the press they need to get the polls. The only question is how.

At least show-trials won't kill thousands. A revival of Operations Northwoods would.

[orionATL]

this stuff is has got to be coming straight from the office of vice-pres.

part of the spoor of this wolverine is

never to give up and never to give in,

whatever the opposition.

in american folk terms,

this guy's a mule

you have to hit upside the head with a 2x4

to first get his attention.

cheney needs to be attacked persistently by democrats and the media for his extraordinary bad judgment and harmful (to the nation) conduct,

but this has never happened.

it needs to happen and soon.

[tekel]

I'd volunteer for the job of hitting the vice president with a 2x4. Could I do it every day?

[bmaz]

You young guns get all the fun.....

[Jodi]

bmaz,

the young guns should be reminded of the old gun's (Dick Cheney) capabilities with a shotgun.

[bmaz]

If there are no 4th branch Jackboots interloping in the encounter, and it is simply tekel v. the growling bowl of lard, my money is on tekel. There is a reason the Big Dick usually only hunts in places where they let you shoot the wildlife the second they release it from a cage; he is a piece of shit hunter just like he is a piece of shit human. Put out in a regular hunting situation on a southwest ranch setting; the only thing the asswipe could hit is an 80 year old man. I think the young gun will tekel him out.

[prostratedragon]

The utilitarian answer is that the best option is to give them their damned show trials.

Whether this kind of thing is true, as always, depends on the objective function or structure of the underlying preferences.

[prostratedragon]

(signed, a weary wolverine economist)

[John Lopresti]

The Guardian, according to a mention in that hint of a story, seems to chronicle a robust discovery process ongoing in UK, as independent of the more consensus character of Continental public opinion; however, it seems from the report that the beginnings with the EU investigation a long time ago, while Rice was passing thru averring there was no network of US prisons and there were no overflights, may have some continuity still, given popular support for clarifying UK's interests in the matter.

[MarkH]

Bush certainly shouldn't be allowed to suddenly spring these show trials on the public, as though this was the normal course of things. Like the selective USAtty prosecutions they should be brought to light quickly and exposed for the political machinations they are.

But, in the end, there will have to be some kind of trials, and I fear there's no alternative but to let the Bushies do their worst (which they usually do).