FROM:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/655112.asp
U.S.
will monitor calls to lawyers
Civil libertarians decry new rules on detainees
as ‘terrifying’
By George Lardner Jr.
THE WASHINGTON POST
9 Nov 2001— The
Justice Department has decided to listen in on the conversations of
lawyers with clients in federal custody, including people who have been
detained but not charged with any crime, whenever that is deemed necessary
to prevent violence or terrorism.
ATTORNEY
GENERAL John D. Ashcroft approved the eavesdropping rule on an emergency
basis last week, without the usual waiting period for public comment.
It
went into effect immediately, permitting the government to monitor conversations
and intercept mail between people in custody and their attorneys for
up to a year at a time.
The
move, which the Justice Department said was necessary “in view
of the immediacy of the dangers to the public,” stunned defense
lawyers and civil libertarians. They assailed
it as an unconstitutional attack on the right to counsel and, in the
words of American Civil Liberties Union official Laura W. Murphy, “a
terrifying precedent.”
The
monitoring of attorney-client conversations is the latest in a series
of extraordinary law enforcement measures the government has taken in
response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
President
Bush last week signed the USA Patriot Act, a bill that gives the government
a freer hand to conduct searches, detain or deport suspects, eavesdrop
on Internet communications, monitor financial transactions and obtain
electronic records on individuals. The administration also has promised
to crack down on immigration violations, Congress is considering legislation
to tighten airport security, and Ashcroft announced yesterday that he
is reorganizing the Justice Department and FBI to concentrate on terrorism.
NO COURT ORDER
Until now, communications between inmates and their attorneys have been
exempt from the usual monitoring of social phone calls and visits at
the 100 federal prisons around the country.
According
to a summary published in the Federal Register Oct. 31, the monitoring
will be conducted without a court order whenever the attorney general
certifies “that reasonable suspicion exists to believe that an
inmate may use communications with attorneys or their agents to facilitate
acts of terrorism.”
The
definition of “inmate” previously covered only people in custody
of the federal Bureau of Prisons, but it was changed to cover anyone
“held as witnesses, detainees or otherwise” by INS agents,
U.S. marshals or other federal authorities.
Since
Sept. 11, the government has detained nearly 1,200 people, many on immigration
violations. The Bush administration has declined to say how many have
been released.
Explaining the new rule, the Justice Department said authorities “may
have substantial reason to believe that certain inmates who have been
involved in terrorist activities will pass messages through their attorneys
(or the attorney’s legal assistant or an interpreter) to individuals
on the outside for the purpose of continuing terrorist activities.”
The
president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Irwin
Schwartz of Seattle, denounced the eavesdropping as “an
abomination” and said it would be challenged in court
at the first opportunity.
“The
Code of Professional Responsibility is quite clear: a lawyer must maintain
confidentiality,” Schwartz said. “If
we can’t speak with a client confidentially, we may not speak with
him at all. And if we can’t do that, the client is stripped of
his Sixth Amendment right to have a lawyer.”
‘PROCEDURAL SAFEGUARDS’
The
Justice Department said it will set up “procedural safeguards”
to protect the right to counsel. Inmates and their attorneys will be
notified “of the government’s listening activities,”
and the monitoring will be done by a special “taint team”
that will not disclose what it hears to federal prosecutors or investigators
without approval by a federal judge, officials said.
Records
of clearly privileged information, such as a discussion about a client’s
defense, will not be retained by the monitors, the department said.
“Apart from disclosures necessary to thwart an imminent act of
violence or terrorism, any disclosures to investigators or prosecutors
must be approved by a federal judge,” it added.
The
critics were not mollified. “Who’s going to be on the taint
team?” asked Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security
Studies, a nonprofit group in Washington. “The government says
it’s building a mosaic, processing thousands of bits and pieces
of information that may seem innocuous at first glance. How is the ‘taint
team’ going to know if something a person says to a lawyer is part
of the mosaic or not without sharing it with others? This seems to be
a useless safeguard. What if they think what they overhear is in code?”
Martin
said monitoring of witnesses and others who have not been convicted
would be “particularly outrageous.” Murphy, who is director
of the ACLU’s Washington national office, agreed, saying, “the
idea that this could be happening to innocent people is really disturbing.”
A
lawyer’s effectiveness, she added, can be dramatically diminished
if the government is listening in, making a client fearful of disclosing
all that the attorney needs to know to mount a forceful defense.
The
attorney-client eavesdropping authority is an addition to the “special
administrative measures” the government has imposed on certain
inmates since the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and the bombing
of a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
They
include solitary confinement, interception of mail and restrictions
on visitors and telephone calls. But until Ashcroft signed the new regulation,
they were limited to 120-day periods. Now, all such steps can be ordered
for a year at a time and renewed indefinitely at one-year intervals.
Those
under “special measure” regimes include Omar Abdul Rahman,
the blind sheik convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; Abdul
Hakim Murad and Wali Khan Amin Shah, convicted of conspiracy to blow
up 12 civilian jumbo jets; Eyad Ismail and Ramzi Yousef, two others
convicted in the WTC bombing; Wadih Hage, convicted of conspiring to
kill Americans around the world; and Mohammed Saddiq Odeh and Mohamed
Rashed Daoud Owhali, who were convicted in the 1998 bombings of the
U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
At
a trial last June, an Algerian witness said Rahman issued a “fatwa”
or religious ruling from prison, telling followers to “fight Americans
and hit their interests everywhere.”
FROM:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/655112.asp
Take
Me To A Related Article.
