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The former lead prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay has alleged that “politically motivated officials at the Pentagon have pushed for convictions of high-profile detainees ahead of the 2008 elections…adding that the pressure played a part in his decision to resign earlier this month.” Air Force Col. Morris Davis felt “pressure to pursue cases that were deemed “sexy” over those that prosecutors believed were the most solid or were ready to go.”
Davis said his resignation was also prompted by newly appointed senior officials seeking to use classified evidence in what would be closed sessions of court, and by almost all elements of the military commissions process being put under the Defense Department general counsel’s command, something he believes could present serious conflicts of interest.
“There was a big concern that the election of 2008 is coming up,” Davis said. “People wanted to get the cases going. There was a rush to get high-interest cases into court at the expense of openness.”
Unfortunately this isn’t the first time the Bush administration has manipulated terrorism prosecutions to score political points. In September 2002, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh revealed that the prosecution of ‘the twentieth hijacker’ Zacarias Moussaoui, “has also contributed to discontent within the F.B.I. over what some see as a politicized Justice Department more eager to have splashy court victories than to protect intelligence resources.”
One senior F.B.I. official noted, with obvious disdain, that the Justice Department attorneys wanted to use raw intelligence from sensitive, ongoing investigations to bolster otherwise flagging counterintelligence or counterterrorism criminal cases. “You’d make one case but lose thirty others,” the official said.
The prosecution of Jose Padilla suffered a similar fate. According to Harpers Magazine’s Scott Horton, the administration orchestrated a show trial.
The Attorney General had gone way out on a limb in the accusations he made. In fact, Ashcroft had done this. It had happened while he was in Moscow—and I was there at the same time, working on a deal, and remembering my amazement over the spectacle of a U.S. Attorney General making these sorts of accusations at a hastily convened Moscow press conference. It was simply bizarre. […]
From the outset it was handled in a way that undermines the public’s confidence in the integrity and fairness of our law enforcement system, and was, in important ways, simply stupid.
The attorney general’s dramatic press conference in Moscow, for instance, is now regularly acknowledged by Justice Department officials (off-the-record) as a colossal mistake. They justify it by saying that it provided proof of the Department’s zealous work to protect the country from terrorism. That is a suspiciously political calculus. An attorney general should not be concerned about the monthly fluctuation of public opinion polls. He should be focused on justice. And that press conference and the relentless hype that followed it obstructed the pursuit of justice in the Padilla case. It showed a failure to adhere to basic rules of prosecutorial ethics. And beyond that, it was simply unwise.
Point well taken. Rather than using terrorist prosecutions to boost sagging poll numbers, the administration should, as Davis has asked, “leave prosecuting cases to prosecutors.”