{"id":185503,"date":"2014-11-01T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-02T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/11\/01\/eric-arthur-blair-would-be-appalled\/"},"modified":"2014-11-01T22:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-11-02T03:00:00","slug":"eric-arthur-blair-would-be-appalled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/11\/01\/eric-arthur-blair-would-be-appalled\/","title":{"rendered":"Eric Arthur Blair* Would be Appalled"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At the Guantanamo show trials, <a href=\"http:\/\/justsecurity.org\/16926\/secrecy-trials-undermine-guantanamo-defense-lawyers\/\">defense attorneys are being asked to respond to motions that they are not allowed to read<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Despite enormous logistical and legal hurdles, defense attorneys for high value detainees at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military prison, say they press on for the judgment of history, if not for a fair turn before the embattled military commissions that substitute for trials in federal court.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Attorneys for alleged 9\/11 attack planners Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) and Ramzi Bin al-Shibh and alleged USS Cole bombing plotter Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri described their challenges to an audience gathered by the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School in Manhattan on Wednesday night.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Even though all the defense attorneys are vetted and cleared to access Top Secret documents, they agree that secrecy remains the root of most delays and dysfunction.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cIf you sat down to design a system and said, \u2018I want to create a legal system where everything will move slowly, glacially,\u2019 you would design this,\u201d said Richard Kammen, who represents al-Nashiri. For example, if Kammen, who is based in Indianapolis, wants to read a classified court document, he must travel to a secure facility in Washington, D.C. to do so. Once, Kammen said, <b><span style=\"font-size: 100%; font-variant: small-caps;\">he was ordered to respond to motions he was not allowed to read<\/span><\/b>.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Even when the attorneys are at Guantanamo to meet in person with their clients, a detainee\u2019s own words are considered secret.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cWe were told that anything that came out of client\u2019s mouths were considered to be \u2018presumptively classified,\u2019\u201d said Jason Wright, who represented KSM until this August.  \u201cThis phrase \u2018presumptive classification\u2019 is something that has never existed before in the laws of the United States.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">To make sure he understood, Wright, a former Army JAG, received a power point presentation at Guantanamo.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cI had a briefer who told me, when you meet with your high value detainee, you have to treat everything that he says as presumptively classified \u2013 every word, every utterance, every gesture,\u201d Wright recalled.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cI said, \u2018Hypothetically, what if he told me he liked peanut butter sandwiches?  Is that classified?\u2019\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cYes,\u201d he was told.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(<i>emphasis mine<\/i>)<\/p>\n<p>This is a blot on American jurisprudence and the rule of law.<\/p>\n<p>It is lawless, uncivilized, and cowardly. <\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">George Orwell&#8217;s real name.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the Guantanamo show trials, defense attorneys are being asked to respond to motions that they are not allowed to read: Despite enormous logistical and legal hurdles, defense attorneys for high value detainees at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military prison, say they press on for the judgment of history, if not for a fair turn &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,969,972,1006,1076],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-evil","category-justice","category-military","category-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185503"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}