Here's an excerpt from an article about the wonderful job the Attorney General has been doing in prosecuting terrorists…and then I have a couple of questions.
On September 2 a federal judge in Detroit threw out the only jury conviction the Justice Department has obtained on a terrorism charge since 9/11.
[snip…]
Until that reversal, the Detroit case had marked the only terrorist conviction obtained from the Justice Department's detention of more than 5,000 foreign nationals in antiterrorism sweeps since 9/11. So Ashcroft's record is 0 for 5,000. When the Attorney General was locking these men up in the immediate wake of the attacks, he held almost daily press conferences to announce how many "suspected terrorists" had been detained. No press conference has been forthcoming to announce that exactly none of them have turned out to be actual terrorists.
Okay, so here's my first question: How could John Ashcroft be doing a worse job on this? I mean, if they'd given me the job, I could have arrested 5,000 suspicious-looking swarthy men and obtained zero convictions. Hell, by dumb luck, I might have been able to convict one of them of something.
Second question: It's always possible that someone can be guilty but even a competent prosecutor is unable to get a conviction. Does anyone think that most of those 5,000+ detainees fall into that category? Or any significant number? Or is it more likely the case that people were being arrested on very little evidence?
It bothers me greatly that so many apparently-innocent people could be jailed, prosecuted, terrified, etc. but since they were mostly foreigners and it was done with the intent of fighting terrorism, I doubt most Americans will care. You'd think though that some of them might wonder if all that erroneous prosecution might have made us less safe, if only because it devoted so much of our resources towards apparent dead ends and wild goose pursuits.
But they probably won't. Years ago, I had a couple of long conversations with a screenwriter, Al Levitt, who'd been blacklisted back in the Commie-hunting days. Levitt made the comment that the people who cheered on the blacklisting were oblivious to how ineptly it had been done. Even if you bought the notion that Communist-sympathizers in Hollywood threatened the American way of life, those trying to eliminate such people were ignoring real threats and destroying the lives of a lot of innocent folks based on fourth-hand rumors. But, he said, that didn't seem to matter. He suggested — and this is me paraphrasing — that it was like "You go to a doctor because your teeth hurt and he amputates your foot…and then you don't object because, after all, he was making a bold effort to wipe out the problem." I think a lot of folks today don't really care if we catch or stop terrorists, just so long as we look like we're doing something.