ACLU taps top legal talent to defend accused 9-11 plotters
By Carol Rosenberg | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008

The American Civil Liberties Union, which for years has scorned Pentagon military commissions as "kangaroo courts,'' announced Friday that it will try to provide top civilian defense attorneys for alleged terrorists facing trial at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — including the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Former Attorney General Janet Reno is among top lawyers who've endorsed the $8.5 million effort, which will help coordinate and defray the expenses of civilian defense attorneys working on the terrorism cases. Under the military commissions scheme, the Pentagon won't reimburse volunteer civilian attorneys for their expenses.

ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said a major thrust of the effort will be to defend Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who military officials say has confessed to masterminding the 9-11 attacks and several other terrorist acts, including the beheading in Pakistan of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl.

This is about a month late, but I found myself giving the speech for Mike Gravel at my precinct caucaus today, since everyone else was Obama or Hillary. After a bit about how I don't like the corporate media deciding who is a viable candidate, and remarking on how on how there was more competition at the 2004 caucus, I mentioned Gravel's opposition to racist and genocidal wars in the Middle East. I then said that Obama is saying he is going to get bin Laden, and that anyone who looks carefully at 9/11knows it a basically a fraud being perpetuated on the American people, that is resulting in much killing in the Middle East. I responded to the speaker for Obama who compared him to Martin Luther King, saying that with all due respect, they cannot be compared. I had a nice chat with the Obama speaker afterwards, who was an African-American woman. She said she basically agrees but he has to say that stuff to get elected. I had nice chats about politics with a couple of other people too. Met my neighbors, and mentioned 9/11. That's about it.

More evidence of no evidence.
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C.I.A. Destroyed Tapes as Judge Sought Interrogation Data

By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE
Published: February 7, 2008

WASHINGTON — At the time that the Central Intelligence Agency destroyed videotapes of the interrogations of operatives of Al Qaeda, a federal judge was still seeking information from Bush administration lawyers about the interrogation of one of those operatives, Abu Zubaydah, according to court documents made public on Wednesday.
Times Topics: C.I.A. Interrogation Tapes

The court documents, filed in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, appear to contradict a statement last December by Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, that when the tapes were destroyed in November 2005 they had no relevance to any court proceeding, including Mr. Moussaoui’s criminal trial.

Below are two messages I sent to a listserv of the American Society of International Law in which I participate, which is read by academics, students, and private, government,and military lawyers in the United States and abroad. More accurately, it's a report to that listserv, which is not limited to ASIL members, and to one New York Times reporter who has been writing about the CIA tapes.

Like my prior messages questioning the official story about 9/11, these messages have been met with polite silence. I brought Scott Shane of the New York Times into the discussion by the third message below, dated December 21, which was well-received by the list.

I've argued several times on the list that the deeper implication of the below article on the alleged KSM confessions is that there is no reliable evidence for the official story of 9/11. None of the professors or lawyers on the list, including the author, have acknowledged that deeper implication.

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2007/03/true-confessions-tale-of-khalid-shaikh.php

Kean and Hamilton conceded the same in their January 2, 2008 article in the New York Times.

This fascinating article in the Nation shows that U.S. reporters know how to report on criminal allegations with potential geopolitical motives. The author doesn't offer a counter-theory or ask "why would the Argentine government do this?" Properly, he only questions whether the allegation has been proven so as to justify military intervention or other action against a country. This is how 9/11 should have been, and still should be, handled.

"In fact, the Bush Administration's manipulation of the Argentine bombing case is perfectly in line with its long practice of using distorting and manufactured evidence to build a case against its geopolitical enemies."

"A senior White House official just called the AMIA case a "very clear definition of what Iranian state sponsorship of terrorism means." In fact, the US insistence on pinning that crime on Iran in order to isolate the Tehran regime, even though it had no evidence to support that accusation, is a perfect definition of cynical creation of an accusation in the service of power interests."

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The Nation

article | posted January 18, 2008 (web only)