Let's all welcome Lew to Firedoglake - he'll be covering the Padilla trial for us - and he'll be on the Thom Hartmann show on Air America tomorrow!
Seeing Jose Padilla for the first time in person -- after five years of studying the man and the Government accusations against him, after writing stories and reading hundreds newspaper stories and television stories –there he was in an actual open courtroom, accompanied, finally, with his own team of lawyers. I was struck by how much more light skinned and non-threatening Padilla was than any of the photos or drawings released to the media that made him appear dark- skinned, menacing, and always bound, chained, so dangerous he always had to be accompanied by huge armed guards. Here was the man known world-wide as “the dirty bomber.”
Yet in his opening remarks to the jury, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Frazier speaking on behalf of “the people of the United States of American” and the Bush Administration took more than hour and a half, and never once mentioned those two words the world knows Padilla by, the two words the Bush Administration had spent five years branding across this man’s forehead as clearly as the mark of Cain: Dirty Bomber.
Why Padilla wasn’t charged as originally announced as a so-called dirty bomber? For that we need to go back to the day of his arrest and the announcement of his arrest one full month later.
It was coming up on the one year anniversary of 9/11, and the U.S. had no single al Qaeda terrorist who could be perp-walked to the cameras. Cheney damn well knew the American public was demanding raw meat-payback and they wanted it yesterday. Turning into his office, Cheney made a mental note to tell Scooter to call Ashcroft and get the DOJ and FBI lined up. He had finally managed to get the CIA to cough up a six page memorandum about an American citizen turned-al Qaeda operative.
The real facts are pretty damn close to that scenario. On May 8, 2002, just one month shy of the first anniversary of searing tragedy of when terrorists brought down the World Trade Center, bombing the Pentagon and came damn close to striking the White House, 35-year-old Jose Padilla was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on his way back from Pakistan on charges that he “was exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device or 'dirty bomb’ in the United States.” Now, five years later, the Federal government had made all those nuke charges vanish in the wind and allowing the Department of Justice to come up with new and even vaguer charges: Padilla: conspiracy to “murder, kidnap and main” persons overseas as part of a radical Islamist movement.
Padilla and two other Muslim men –South Florida computer programmer Adham Amin Hassoun and Detroit school administrator Kifah Wael Jayyous – are also charged with conspiracy. If convicted, the three face life in prison. It’s taken weeks of tedious questioning to find jurors who hadn’t already made up their minds. The actual trial began this week.
I’ve been following this story ever since I heard Attorney General Ashcroft’s announcement about Padilla five years ago. From Moscow no less, Attorney General Ashcroft John Ashcroft, in mid August, 2002, uttered these preposterous words:
“I am pleased to announce today a significant step forward in the war on terrorism. We have captured a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or dirty bomb, in the United States. I commend the FBI, the CIA, the Defense Department, and other federal agencies whose cooperation made this possible.”
That’s when the alarm bells went off and my shit detector started to redline. I had met people like Padilla as a cub reporter for Chicago’s City News Bureau, hanging around police stations, watching gang members being locked up. None of them resembled Enrico Fermi or Edward Teller. Second when I was living in Hyde Park/University of Chicago area, I became acquainted with someone who worked at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists magazine. I met Leo Szilard and Hans Bethe and from what I could learn about Padilla, there didn’t seem to be all that much commonality of interests and intellectual capacity.
I started checking out Padilla -- his arrest, what the police knew, what the feds were claiming. I interviewed nuclear physicists – scientists with experience in both building and evaluating the dangers from radioactivity and nuclear weapons; I spoke with specialists in constitutional laws and law professors who taught the subject. And I wound up writing a 7500 word article (pdf) (cut from 18,000) for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists magazine, Jan/Feb 2004 issue. I examined in detail the true complexities necessary to build and ignite a dirty bomb. Every nuclear scientist questioned the government assertions about how much damage such a dirty bomb might do. Not much, as it turns out. Finally, I examined the dubious legal foundations upon which the government built and continued their case against Padilla. With very, very few exceptions, attorney and law school professors believed the government’s legal actions – denying him access to an attorney, refusal to present charges in an open court – were grossly unconstitutional.
Now that the case is finally coming to trial, I wondered how much has the five year pursuit of this relatively unremarkable thug Padilla cost the taxpayer so far? Adding up the fractional salary costs of the people and prisons we have two Attorney Generals, two, four Deputy Attorney Generals and several Assistant U.S. Attorneys, the Solicitor General, Deputy Solicitors General and Assistants to the Solicitor General, three U.S. District Court Judges, two Federal Courts of Appeals Judges, law clerks by the dozen, several baker’s dozens of FBI agents, intelligence community agents, U.S. Marshals, supervisory and support personnel for the law enforcement agents overt and covert., at least three full-time federal public defenders, many court reporters, plus personnel benefits for all federal employees and the salaried of the benefits managers, imprisoning for five years including solitary confinement for three and a half years, under close observation twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week in a Navy brig, and what appears to be a six month trial in Miami, Florida, the cost to the United States Government and its hapless taxpayers comes to more than $20 million. And counting. All to justify an absurd-on-the-face-of-it contention that Padilla– a misfit Chicago Latin King gang thug – was going to trigger a radioactive dispersal device --a “dirty bomb” when the more likely reality was that this former thug-dishwasher wanted to go down in history as a somebody.
The government could argue that the cost was worth it if Padilla was bent on “unleashing hell” on the United States.
But there’s another cost involved in this case – one that cannot be measured in dollars and cents, the costs to a citizen’s constitutional rights under law.
Padilla isn’t any kind of poster boy for civil liberties. But then again, neither was Ernesto Miranda when he was arrested in connection with a series of sexual assaults, taken to a police station questioned by police and agreeing to write out his confession. The cops needed that confession since there were no identifying witnesses, no physical evidence. Just his confession. Off to the penitentiary he went. His attorneys contested the conviction all the way to the Supreme Court, with the result being what one has heard a million times on television cop shows: the mandatory warning all arresting authorities must convey to anyone placed under arrest: You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.”
In Padilla’s case, authorities questioned him for five years without a single attorney being present, three and a half of those years in brutal, punishing solitary confinement.
Jose Padilla was born in Puerto Rico, moved with his mother to Brooklyn, and settled in Chicago. He quickly became a member of a nasty Southwest side Latino gang, the Latin Disciples. He was assigned the not very intimidating nick name of Pucho – Spanish for “Pudgy.” People began to take a different look at Pucho when, at age 15 he robbed and kicked a man to death. Back at the police station, when he asked why he continued to kick the man when he lay motionless on the pavement, Padilla coolly replied “I felt like it.” He served three years in juvenile prison for that murder conviction and was released, under the law, when he was 18 --an adult. There wasn’t much around for him. He took a job as a $420-a-month-dishwasher but prison didn’t seem to have lessened his temper because he punched a cop in a dispute over a donut. Padilla must have concluded that he would be better off in a fresh location, so a year later he moved to the Ft. Lauderdale, Florida region. Not surprisingly trouble followed. While driving his car, some motorist cut him off, disrespecting his sense of self. Padilla retaliated by firing off several pistol shots at the transgressor. Padilla had now “graduated” to an adult prison – 303 days – in the Broward County, Florida jail.
Attorney Mark Silverberg, author of “The Quartermasters of Terror” has written, “In our prison system, Islamist imams have demanded, and, for the most part, have been granted the exclusive franchise for Muslim proselytization to the forceful exclusion of moderates.” So it wasn’t all that unusual that while in jail Jose Padilla became a Muslim, a militant one. After his release Padilla changed his name and wanted to be called Ibrahim, and later Abdullah al Muhajir. He was befriended by Adham Hassoun, an outspoken and fanatical supporter of Palestinian causes including two charities – The Benevolence International Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation – both of which had been under investigation by the FBI for years. Padilla studied Arabic for a while at the Darul Uloom Institute in Pembroke, Florida. By becoming a disciple of Hassoun, Padilla couldn’t have been more obvious as a Radical Muslim Convert; he couldn’t have been more obvious if he had painted a Red Crescent moon on his forehead. It was post 9/11 and the FBI, CIA, NSA, DOD and everyone in the “community” was aware of Padilla.
The next twelve years took Jose Padilla on a convert’s trip through the Islamic world, traveling through the Middle East. The federal government, in an unsigned six page summary of Padilla’s travels and al Qaeda agent-training, he attended the haji in Saudi Arabia, toured Egypt and then on to Yemen, where, the document claims, Padilla met “the Recruiter” who accompanied him to “the Sponsor” who in turn escorted Padilla to Afghanistan, and then onto Pakistan, to meet with hard core al Qaeda members. They must have been much amused by this young American eager-to-please-eager-to learn, terrorist wanna-be who fervently, as the government alleges, signed for membership in al Qaeda on the dotted line, attended an al Qaeda training camp and became familiar and weapons-proficient with the Kalashnikov, AK-47, G-3, M-16, Uzi and submachine guns, as well as spy-sophisticated, absorbing new techniques in communications, camouflage, clandestine surveillance, explosives (C-4,) dynamite, mines. While traveling with “the Sponsor,” Padilla was meeting a whole range of people the United States Government had an interest in: Abu Zubaydah, al Qaeda military commander Abu Hafs al Masri, aka Mohammed Atef. There were discussions about dirty bombs and blowing up high rise apartment buildings by exploding stoves, according to the anonymous document, perhaps even a visit to a web site that described How to Build a Dirty Bomb. Google offers 1,350,000 links. According to the document even some of the al Qaeda honchos had trouble believing Padilla was capable of doing what he claimed he could. If their leaders of the terrorist movement had problems with believing Padilla, it seems to be the United States intelligence community buying into that story. They knew that it was just downright foolish to believe Padilla as a newly packaged Islamic combination of Rambo and Robert Oppenheimer.
Had they found such a serious terrorist’s threat, just in time to save thousands of Americans from annihilation? Or had they just grabbed the closest low hanging fruit that had already dropped to the ground and called it a dirty bomber?
(With Rachel M. Koch)
Lew can be reached at lew dot koch at gmail dot com.
(Still from Exhibit E, Docket No. 695, Filed December 1st, 2006 - USA et al vs. Hassoun et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida;)
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zed?
Welcome Lew! It’s great to have you on the FDL team!
superior work! please keep going! we’re all watching and keeping notes…
Welcome to FDL.
Once again, I’m more and more embarrassed by the actions of my government, purportedly in my name and for my protection. May Dog forgive them as I’m not sure I can.
Welcome, Lew.
Welcome to FDL, Lew! Thank you so much for doing this.
I am transfixed! I need more!
Wow, Lew, Great Work!!!!
He just sounds like a gang kid, but a muslim one. There’s a zillion gang kids who don’t get tortured and all that. He should have real rights from the constitution.
Hi Lew!
Lew, welcome to the Lake!
Thanks to you and Rachel for this work.
Hope y’all both stop by often.
9/11 helped to uncork a savage bloodlust in America that has only grown worse since then.
We witnessed, last night, the top tier Republican candidates cheered on as they advocated unrestrained torture and imprisonment without legal recourse.
The only two men who spoke of restraint and who repudiated torture were, on those points met with stony silence and were later ridiculed by most of the right wing spin machine.
We have repeatedly heard the far right claim that those who have opinions, beliefs and tactics for dealing with terrorism other than theirs are traitors and are complicit with Al Qaeda.
Seems to me they are saying that large numbers of Americans could and should be arrested and held without charge and without counsel until further notice.
Padilla was the test case.
There will be more to come unless America regains its’ collective sanity.
-GSD
Welcome to the lake, Lew and thank you.
Or had they just grabbed the closest low hanging fruit that had already dropped to the ground and called it a dirty bomber?
If this might be the case, who do you think “they” are??? Do you think it is a “policy” or people operating inside or outside of the legal system. How could this be legally justified. Someone must know if legalities are being bypassed in order to present someone as an “example”. Oh, yeah…I just heard about people bypassing legalities..
Quite a column, eh? lots to chew on there!
Lew, didn’t the ‘Dirty Bomb’ charges get thrown out, immediately, by the Prosecution, before the first Judge could even review the case!!! I mean it was awhile before Padilla, and/or his case, even saw a Judge!!! And those charges weren’t even among them, right???
Lew:
Nice post. If they can take Padilla’s liberties, they can take anyone’s. (That’s why I’m not for gun control.)
sonate @ 18
how would a gun help padilla? they would have just sent more cops and prob shot him then and there.
Is Lew here? If so I am curious about Padillas condition or demeanor? Did he say anything?
Is that a file photo or are guards actually wearing those masks in the courtroom?
Thanks Lew. Looking forward to the rest of your coverage of the trial.
SnarKassandra @ 19
Cassie, I believe Sonate was saying they wouldn’t take His/Her liberties without a fight/gunfight!!!
I don’t think this is OT. A british judge on a british terror trial has to halt proceedings because he doesn’t understand what a “web site” is. You can’t make this stuff up…
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/sec.....SqKdgjtBAF
Eureka Springs @ 20
I was going to ask the same thing, what did he seem like?
Alfred Kelgarries @ 23
Did someone inform him it is made up of a bunch of toooobz?
Thanks for all the background, Lew. I’m wondering how much of the “evidence” the government has is admissible? How much was obtained after denial of Miranda rights and use of “interrogation techniques?” Looks like a massive “fruit of the poison tree” case.
GSD @ 13
Hi GSD…yes, this was one of the little toxic bits I caught last night. Yeah! Let’s torture ‘em! Payback for 9/11! I really worry for the soul of the nation.
Lew Koch: thank you for sharing your trial and background notes at FDL. Every arrested suspect, creep or not, deserves a trial.
The little MSM notice that I see is simply the trial of Jose Padilla, suspected terrorist, starts this week. No mention of shredding the constitution along the way.
LS @ 25
Yeah, send Ted Stevens to explain the TOOBZ to him, that’s the ticket.
Elliott @ 24
Especially since the Defense tried to plea an Insanity plea, i.e. unfit to take the stand in his own defence!!!
This is such an unbelievable story. Padilla could never get justice, it’s too late.
I can’t believe there aren’t participants in this “fiasco” who have a guilty heart and need to heal that heart. confess.
Eureka - I know Lew is reading … and I think he’ll pop in to say hi. Probably catching up with the comments as we type.
Hey guys:
but yeah, how was Jose in person?
Has anyone read anything in depth on Padilla’s childhood?
I am Jose Padilla.
… and so are each of you.
do-si-do @ 32
Just to clarify: how was Jose’s demeanor & condition…I caught that he was paler than previous pics and had a pack of lawyers. I did read it :) was he curious about who was there, look around, hunkered down, unresponsive or what? just curious.
Thanks Lew. Excellent refresher on Padilla.
What about Mr Padillas family…are they able to attend the trial?
dear goddess, I know its the thirty seventh time today…but I am so ashamed…so so very ashamed
I’m still reeling a bit from the Bush ordered attempt to thrust a paper for the desperately ill attorney general Ashcroft to sign in a haze from his intensive care room. Not sure I can handle another bad new bogus stunt by these sociopaths that they seem to have in store for the Padilla trial.
Please can’t we just impeach these cretons and take our beleagured country back sooner than later?
no picture of the bush administration reveals that it is a functioning dictatorship
better than the picture of jose padilla -
in a prison jump suit
eyes and vision suppressed
ears and hearing suppressed.
this is an american citizen, folks.
his government, our government, treated him this way.
but, and most importantly,
this citizen has been, and is being, imprisoned under psychologically inhuman conditions,
conditions intended to drive him mad,
expressly to insure that, in the future,
he cannot, or will not out of fear,
recount the experiences he has been thru at the hands of the united states military.
though padilla is an american citizen,
both our president and the federal courts have denied him the right of habeas corpus.
why should any of us care about this young chicago hood?
because, dear fellow citizens,
padilla sets the precedent.
this time it was padilla the “dirty bomber”,
a citizen used to create an administration talking point intended to supplement the “uranium from niger” scam george bush put over on us to justify the iraq invasion.
the next time it won’t be padilla who’s designated an “enemy combatant”,
but one of us.
one of us foolish enough to openly express personal opposition to one of george bush’s dictatorial approaches to an american domestic, or foreign, policy issue.
Chubby boy who grew up to be a terrorist
TeddySanFran @ 34
Exactly. Now any US citizen can be picked up and throw in the hall of horrors and no one will know where you are. Very scary.
Except to debate-attending GOPers. Time for a gin fizz dahling. Here’s lookin’ at you, Gonzo!
To all who welcomed me, my deep thanks.
To Dakine01 #5 for methe emotion is anger.
To GSD #13 — This is the third time for me: McCarthy. the mid-60s through to Nixon land, and now, killing the Constitution slowly.
To LS #15 — “they” are the people elected to office who believe that the citizen only obligation is to “serve them at their pleasure.” Not on my watch!
TeddySanFran @ 34
Just have Shrub, Deadeye, and/or, AGAG declare you a threat, Poof… Sad state of affairs….
TeddySanFran @ 34
OK…I thought I was Spartacus…
I doesn’t sound like Padilla was the neighborhood tuff.
Hi Lew,
Thank you sooo much!
TeddySanFran @ 34
I was just sitting here thinking exactly that. He is the example. He is the one that in countries where tyrants rule, the one that gets hung out in the public square for all to see, in order to scare and control the population into submission. Now that they have graciously made his treatment legal…well, the whole country is at risk at the whim of POTUS’s moods.
Elliott @ 45
Probably not the neighborhood junior nuclear physicist, either.
neurophius @ 44
No I’M Spartacus AND I’m Jose Padilla.
HotFlash @ 48
Neighborhood fall guy/scape goat maybe?
Hi Elliott,
(I write this kindly!) I don’t think Padilla’s childhood, good or bad, is an issue. I often ruminate about these kinds of things when someone is picked up for domestic murder etc, but in this case, it’s a non-starter for me. All of his rights as a US citizen were denied.
Thank you, Mr. Koch, for this excellent summation of what has gone on the past few years with the Padilla case. Reading bits and pieces does not give a person the continuity or complete background of the story. The juxtaposition of the Ashcroft revealed in Comey’s testimony yesterday and the Ashcroft of the Padilla case is mind blowing.
Is FDL going to live blog the trial?
do-si-do @ 51
RIGHT!
HotFlash @ 48
perhaps not! ;)
I’m trying to understand how it came to be that he went from a quiet kid to chronoic jailbird. sullen, maybe? angry, perhaps? something inherited?
do-si-do @ 51
Amen, Lady Justice has a blindfold on for a reason… and no longer an exposed busom!!!
Welcome Mr and Ms Koch, and thanks to Siun for enabling this connection for us. Apparently TradMed is taking a pass on Padilla’s (our) trial.
I really appreciate FDL providing us with the real story.
stunning report
one blip- 12 months rather than years?
It was post 9/11 and the FBI, CIA, NSA, DOD and everyone in the “community” was aware of Padilla.
The next twelve years took Jose Padilla on a convert’s trip
Ctuttle #17 This is Padilla’s first appearance in a courtroom. He has never had the opportunity to confront the dirty bomb charges. Others have asked how he looks. In his suit and tie, he looks just like another assistant United States attorney.
A small number of his family attends.
Those photos you’ve seen of him eyes masked, ears muffled, shackled is just the tip of the iceberg. The 3 1/2 years in the brig amount to torture. There is no other word for it except that…torture.
Lew, Thank you for your work, however there are some immediate problems of chronology and I haven’t finished your summary.
I’ve done enough writing myself, hopefully this is just a mess of transposed paragraphs as you pulled together old pieces for your summary and rushing to get to us.
My first problem was this ” The real facts are pretty damn close to that scenario. On May 8, 2002, just one month shy of the first anniversary of searing tragedy of when terrorists brought down the World Trade Center, bombing the Pentagon and came damn close to striking the White House, 35-year-old Jose Padilla was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport …”
The announcement was August, just one month shy of the anniv., wasn’t it, as I think you reference further on? So why are we getting this with May?
But then later in your story we have Padilla in prison (or county jail?) in Broward for 303 days, with no year mentioned. Yet you say it’s post 9/11, and make a big deal of it to say that all intelligence agencies would be watching a recruit of this radical imam. And then all of a sudden you say “The next twelve years took Jose Padilla on a convert’s trip through the Islamic world, traveling through the Middle East. The federal government, in an unsigned six page summary of Padilla’s travels and al Qaeda agent-training, he attended the haji in Saudi Arabia, toured Egypt and then on to Yemen, where, the document claims, Padilla met “the Recruiter” who accompanied him to “the Sponsor” who in turn escorted Padilla to Afghanistan, and then onto Pakistan, to meet with hard core al Qaeda members.”
Maybe it was the next twelve months? If it was 12 years, that would take his recruitment long before 9/11 and every intelligence agency would not be watching. But it couldn’t even have been twelve months since according to what you’ve told us the arrest was 8 months after 9/11 and the announcement of arrest was 11 months after.
So I’m having real trouble with your goodness as a reporter and writer here. Mistakes do happen, I can’t proofread my own work because I know how it’s supposed to be and my eye goes over the mistake, but can we please get this straightened out?
It was a long time ago, but I did get Highest Honors in History from a branch of major state U., I did spend 10 years in business writing, and I still have hopes & high standards …
do-si-do @ 51
Oh of course, what matters so much, is the unAmerican criminal treatment of an American citizen.
I also want to understand the person, is all.
and you are kindly! :)
Hi everybody! Mr. Koch,it’s truly an honor to have you on the case, and if you wouldn’t mind speculating, what has to happen to establish a general understanding, politicians and people alike, that this type of behavior by the government CANNOT be allowed?
Lew Koch @ 58
Yes I heard about that. Solitide for weeks at a time.
(((Elliott)))
OK, will check in some more later on, everyone. Let’s be careful out there!
Lew Koch @ 58
I was referring to his case, IIRC, didn’t a Judge Jackson scold DoJ for inaction and habeus violations, etc…
Let’s call a spade a spade. Jose Padilla at 15 killed a man in a robbery attempt. Later, after he was released from juvenile prison, he got into a fight with a policeman over a donut. Yes, you read that right, a donut. And when a Florida driver cut him off, he fired shots at him — for which Padilla wound up in the Broward County (Florida) jail for 303 days. Nevertheless, this is not the record of a man who can build and detonate “a dirty bomb.”
Lew Koch @ 65
or someone you’d assign the task to!
Thanks Lew.
I love my country, but I sure don’t like it very much right now.
Lew Koch @ 65
And certainly not worth the wholesale shredding of the Constitution for.
Daily we get additional proof that the Bushies do not see themselves as servants of a Republic, but as feudal lords with all the priveleges thereof.
Padilla’s brother was being used as an asset. Little bro was originally being given high visibility status to provide plausible cover for developing a lead with others in custody and overseas.
More than likely the press scared AQ off and they used his bro for other purpose afterwards. Such information in and of itself can clue the best who stand vigil and watch to when ‘they’ are onto you, via change of modus operandi.
There’s something to learn, but it still remains a case that has morphed and grown out of control.
My contention is that Padilla turned already, was an asset, was becoming a plausible prop, and when the media latched onto his initial use the Rove machine ran away with it. His exemplary treatment, as a way to score points on the home front, provide justification for parallel programs and polling separation, became inseperable for his other possible uses in culturing leads abroad.
The Padilla treatment deals with a secuirty leak regarding AQ Khan and proliferate concerns of rogue states and nukes.
His bro was in Pakistan, the ISI probably jumped the shark when Tenet needed to provide a “slam dunk.” The Padilla case itself has so many hoples that a regular prosecution could not be followed on normal manner. It’s clear they needed people to shape a narrative and this was a high profile opportunity.
We let the word out on AQ Khan to use Padilla as a prop for the war play.In return for letting Pakistan accelerate its nuke program unabated, they helped us w/Padilla, and essentially did some internal damage control as a side effect.
Bush has fumbled more times over Padilla than any other court case aside from the Al Qaeida prosecutions in Germany. Those were based on the assumption of US attorney cooperation, when Ashcroft could not find legal justification here or there, on the more generous world standards, he basically shut that down like he withheld a signature.
It all comes back and touches the same base, regarding “The Base.”
Padilla once fired shots at a man and Dick Cheney once fired shots at a man.
Which one is more likely to explode a dirty bomb?
Lew Koch @ 65
Which makes him perfect for this administration. He can be the test case for US Citizens to lose rights since people will see his history and write him off.
Thanks, Lew!!! And welcome back to the Lake!
Bob in HI
I weep no tears for Jose Padilla, but for the “collateral damage” of the case-the Bill of Rights. Padilla doubtless deserves a cell, and also deserves to be sentenced to it by the time-honored process that all patriotic Americans hold dear. Next time it may not be a misguided gang-banger. Remember the Congressman who called the National Education Association a “terrorist organization?”
Eureka Springs @ 20
Don’t know if this has been answered, but the pic is from when they took him to the dentist
More
Thanks for your insight Lew.
What is the most compelling thing about this case to you?
In a vague way his story reminds me of La Femme Nikita, where a street junkie criminal is jailed, sentenced to death and then secretly taken away and re-programmed into an assassin. In Padilla’s case they knew he was a stupid low class criminal of poverty and if the analogy is correct they would’ve LET him be brain-washed in jail by an Imam, so they could send him out to the Al Qaeda world and somehow gather information for them (CIA), though how that information would’ve been collected isn’t at all clear. He certainly couldn’t have done that sort of mission knowing what it was about. He had to be unaware he was a walking microphone.
So, was he at any time unconscious or in surgery?
When did the radical Imams enter the prisons?
Who okayed this radical Islamic teaching?
How long was he out of US custody after he came back from his Al Qaeda training trip?
Could this very far-fetched theory be carried out by today’s goofy Bushie government?
When was Padilla in prison? Was it before Bush took office?
In these surreal times a person’s imagination tends to run wild. If only those fantasies weren’t all later proven to be true, then I could stop believing and just rest and let them be merely fantasies.
Bob Schacht @ 72
Hiya Bob! How is Hawaii today?
Wow, Lew. I look forward to more of your information. Thanks.
naschkatze - while we’d love to live blog the trial, we don’t have the resources for that esp since it’s expected to be a very long one.
But Lew will be covering and reporting to us several times a week - he’s got the connections and the in’s to get the story for us.
Pacific Coast Ron - since I did the copy edit on this, I may have missed something and will go back and double-check - but I also think you need to reread - the flow of the column seems quite clear to me. Let’s tone it down a bit, ok?
OT. - Via Drudge: “Former Israeli Ambassador says ‘Iran could be a year away from nukes.’” Can you hear the louder and louder drum roll?!
Jose Padilla is the second John Walker.
Mary McCurnin @ 80
Who is john walker?
The human semen-stain on George Bush’s mattress, otherwise known as Dean Broder, knows how to throw the chaff in the Bush/Rove war on democracy.
The biggest problem with the upcoming elections won’t be the gears of the Justice Dept. grinding against the electorate in the name of the falacious “voter fraud” problems manufactured by American Democracies’ enemy Karl Rove.
Nope, the big problem is the Democratic bill for voter verification that doesn’t stand up to the scrutiny of Dean Broder’s “independant” analyst….A man who’s credentials include heading the Republican Party in Kansas and being a poltical hack from Texas.
Broder is an enemy of democracy.
-GSD
Hi SnK-John Walker Lindh is the “American Taliban” an American captured fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan early in the war, brought back to the US, tried and sentenced to 20 years.
Siun @ 78
Hi Siun,
It read fine to me–I didn’t pick it apart since the gist was quite clear. Besides, thanks to lhp, we regulars are fluent in typonese. ;)
And thank you, Lew. This case is horrifying to me and I’m glad you’re here to help us get the facts as they play out in the trial.
Cassie - I think Mary is referring to John Walker Lindh
In terms of a time line, if I was unclear, I apologize. Padilla moves to Florida in 1989. In 1990, he winds up in jail for firing shots at a driver. He studies Islam converts in 1994. In the late 1990s he travels to the Middle East. Eight months after 9/11, on May 8, he is arrested at O’Hare. One month after his arrest (and no on knows what happened in those 30 days) Ashcroft makes his announcement from Moscow.If my timing is unclear that may be my error. He leaves for the Middle East on September 5, 1998 and arrested in My 8, 2002.
Thanks for pointing this out. Somewhere my typing and time slipped.
SnarKassandra @ 81
Okay, miss — I am gonna be the bad guy and say it: please use the google. There are so many opportunities to learn things here, on the interwebs and at the ‘lake, but if you want to run with the big dogs and not interrupt the thread, please take some responsibilty for looking things up yourself. Some of us are happy to spend time educating those who lack information, but there’s a minimum amount of information-gathering that’s required in order not to be the kid with silly questions.
I shouldn’t have to be the grownup to introduce you to the wikipedia and the google, because I know others have done so earlier, but here you are:
wiki
Slothrop @ 70
Brilliant!!
No need to be obnoxious about it. If I saw the Lindh part I would have known how to google or wiki. But there are a LOT of John Walkers, so GIVE ME A BREAK!
RonD #73 — What? Are you kidding –National Education Association isn’t a “terrorist organization? I…I was so…sure
SnarKassandra @ 89
FWIW, *I* thot he meant Johnny Walker Black Label Scotch……
John Walker Lindh was a young man who had left home and traveled Afganistan. He joined the Taliban and had the terrible bad luck of being there when 9-11 occurred. Our government took the political opportunity and put him in jail for fighting against our forces there. Only thing was he wasn’t really fighting anyone. He was just a twenty something screwed up kid who now has a truly messed up life. I believe there have been recent attempts to lighten his jail term.
Siun @ 85
More on the travesty here.
Lew Koch @ 65
They knew who to pick for their test case. A despicable human being who will be difficult to rally around. But, of course, you don’t choose a Keith Olberman or even a Michael Moore to call an enemy combatant. At least not yet.
Lew Koch @ 90
Lew, you are officially awarded an FDL Snark Point (TM). Use at your own risk. Your mileage may vary. Taxes Title and License extra. Side effect include drowsiness, dry mouth, and on rare occassions, a screaming horrible death. Use of said Snark Point (hereafter known as “the snark”) binds you to our SNark End User License Agreement, or SNEULA.