Former Federal Judge and U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey was interviewed by James Taranto recently, and Saturday's Wall Street Journal had Taranto's writeup titled Two Decades of Pursuing al Qaeda. It is an interesting article.
In the 90s Judge Mukasey believed that terrorists were basically criminals, and federal court was the appropriate venue for trying them. But ... here's a quote from the article:
He ultimately changed his view, in part because al Qaeda acquired valuable intelligence from the trial over which he presided. In a conspiracy case, Mr. Mukasey explains, "the government is required to name all the unindicted co-conspirators that it knows about, and it serves a list. It was later found that that list had found its way to Khartoum within 10 days after it was served." The Sudanese capital was then home to one of those unindicted co-conspirators, Osama bin Laden. "So bin Laden knew not only that they knew about him but also who else they knew about." ...
Even the far lower-profile 1995 trial was burdensome for members of the jury, who were kept anonymous to protect their safety: "The jurors had to be picked up every morning at a different pickup point and then dropped off in the evening by the marshals, who were careful to make sure nobody followed them. And in spite of that, we found that two of them had reporters sitting on their doorsteps the day the verdict was delivered. They were terrified."
One might conclude that Mr. Mukasey believes the Obama administration was seriously misguided when they considered trying KSM, one of the most famous terrorists in captivity, in a civilian court in New York City.
"Think about the lesson: If you follow the rules of war—which is to say, you wear a uniform, you follow a recognized chain of command, you carry your arms openly, and you don't target civilians—then you can be held until the termination of hostilities. If you violate all of those rules, we've got a better deal for you. We'll give you a trial, and a platform in open court, and the possibility of an acquittal. That's a perverse kind of logic."
Of course, most of us who have observed Barack Obama for the past three years have come to believe that a perverse kind of logic is the norm with him.
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