Debbie Schlussel: Nadir of Slippery Slope?: Terrorist Padilla to See U.S. Secrets
Even though President BILL CLINTON, not George W. Bush, signed into law counterterrorism measures that made secret evidence against terrorists secret, the law is being nullified with no legal basis.
U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke--the latest addition to our new novella "Stupid Judges & The Terrorists Who Love Them"--ruled that top-ranking Al-Qaeda official Abdullah Al-Muhajir a/k/a Jose Padilla (of dirty bomb fame) will get to see U.S. government secrets and secret evidence before his September trial on terrorism charges. Like Stephen Murphy, Cooke is another disastrous GEORGE W. BUSH nominee.
As we've written, Al-Muhajir/Padilla's co-defendant, Kifah Wael Jayyousi--who will also get to see this classified info--was a superintendent of Detroit and Washington, DC schools, in charge of water and air ducts--both of which he could have poisoned. Do we really want these kind of people ever getting their hands on our sources and methods? No, we don't. But a stupid judge does. And decisions like these will be the death of our country.
One of the reasons cited is for the terror defendants' lawyers to "refresh their memories" about what they told government interrogators. You know--so that they don't change their story, lie, and get caught in front of a jury. We would never want to allow that to happen to Islamic terrorists, would we?
This is the latest slide down the slippery slope of what happens when you try terrorists in a justice system not designed for national security problems. Although the Supreme Court ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld did not require that Al-Muhajir/Padilla and Jayyousi be allowed to see the secret evidence--nor did any other court ruling of note--this judge is obviously affected by it, in her ill-advised decision.
With judges and decisions like this, good luck winning the domestic war on terror.
Posted by Debbie on July 14, 2006 03:31 PM to Debbie Schlussel