Government Executive - Authors - Elisabeth Frater

Camp al Qaeda

Elisabeth Frater — Tue, 07 May 2002 00:00:00 -0400

But on January 6, just three months after the first American air strikes in Afghanistan, the Pentagon began assembling a new anti-terror nerve center here and started an extraordinary makeover of the base. What the military calls its "Anti-Terrorism Detainee Operations Mission" is now the paramount assignment at Guantanamo. The changes, equivalent to an ambitious urban renewal plan, include a new hospital, interrogation center, and detention facility, and they signal that the base will be an active part of the war on terrorism for years to come.

At heart, however, Gitmo remains a remote Caribbean outpost. The increasing numbers of troops stationed here quickly learn the limits of the base's diversions--a McDonald's and a sandy bar called the Clipper Club. The troops also learn they are as susceptible to isolation as the detainees, and that they are not immune from the occasional visits from scorpions and tarantulas.

The 45-square-mile Guantanamo base in eastern Cuba is actually two bases separated by a 21/2-mile-wide bay. The base's sole airstrip is on the "Leeward Point" side, as is the Clipper Club, the newest place for beer and local variations on chicken wings and fried clams. Everything else--housing, places of worship, the bowling center, and the fenced-in encampment for the
detainees--is on the "windward" side.

Soldiers, sailors, and Marines, along with civilians and contract workers, take a 30-minute ferry ride to cross from one half of the base to the other. Land transportation ranges from Humvees to the so-called Gitmo bay rapid transit fleet, which is essentially a convoy of converted old school buses.

Assimilating the new terrorism fighting operation and its personnel so rapidly into the existing base framework is a remarkable challenge for the Pentagon. For starters, the number of inhabitants at Guantanamo has risen dramatically since January. The population has swelled from about 2,400 sailors and Marines and their family members last year to 6,000 people today, including the approximately 1,600 members of Joint Task Force 160, which was deployed to oversee the detainee mission; the 300 captured Taliban and Al Qaeda members; and the hundreds of additional permanent military personnel, foreign workers, private contractors, and civilians.

There are indications that Guantanamo is sagging under this weight. Since February 6, 1964, when Fidel Castro cut off water and electricity to the base, the base has been proudly self-sufficient, but at a high cost. A desalination plant produces 3.4 million gallons of water per month, and a power station churns out more than 800,000-kilowatt hours of electricity daily.

Apparently, this output is not enough. Water consumption rose so high in March that commanders had to dip into emergency water reserves. During the week of March 24, the base consumed 1,035,000 gallons of water--up from the 700,000 gallons a week used before January 6. Fresh fruits and vegetables used to arrive once a month on a barge from Florida in quantities sufficient for all. Now residents complain that if they don't grab the items they need at the Navy exchange as they arrive, they are likely to be unavailable until the next shipment.

In the stupefying heat and relentless sun, no one and nothing moves very quickly here. Until this week, the detainees were confined in Camp X-Ray. Locked in individual 6-by-8 open-air chain-link cells, the prisoners shifted only occasionally and lethargically on their concrete slabs. The plaintive sounds of the Al-Azan, a recorded Muslim call for prayer, filtered through a loudspeaker five times a day. A green and white "Quibla" sign written in Arabic was nailed to a post and points in the direction of Mecca, an ocean and continent away.

The name Camp X-Ray dates from the 1990s, when the holding facility was built for the tens of thousands of Haitian and Cuban migrants who were plucked from rickety boats at sea and held at the base before being processed for asylum in the United States or returned to their native countries. The name is fitting, because the compound is stark and skeletal and has a makeshift quality: the nine watchtowers on the perimeter of Camp X-Ray are constructed from plywood, as are the Joint Interrogation Facility's five windowless huts. All the buildings seem ready to wilt in the muggy Caribbean heat.

A few miles away from Camp X-Ray, in the base's "Radio Range" section, is Camp Delta, the new two-acre permanent prison that the detainees were transferred to on April 28. It is composed of 75 air-conditioned, 16-by-32 foot "Seahuts," which house 408 cells, estimated to cost $16 million in all. The huts were built by Brown & Root Services, a construction subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton. Conditions at Camp Delta are much improved over Camp X-Ray, with each detainee getting a bed, a hand basin with running water, and what the military calls an "Asian-style" toilet whose hole is flush with the floor. The new cell walls are made from a rigid steel mesh.

The detainees get regular medical care. When a trip to the hospital is warranted, prisoners are chained backwards in the back of a golf cart and driven to Navy Fleet Hospital 20--a collection of yellow air-conditioned tents erected over dry, loose dirt. The hospital--used for detainees only--was assembled in a few days. The well-organized and clean facility can handle almost all medical emergencies. It has a surgical suite, a casualty receiving area, an intensive care unit, a lab, and a pharmacy.

Navy Capt. Samuel "Pat" Alford, the hospital's commanding officer, boasts that the hospital "is exactly the same thing we would deploy for our own personnel." Most of the hospital staff members, including its nine physicians, hail from the fleet hospital at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

Alford, who has served in or commanded naval hospitals for more than three decades, notes the different challenges this hospital faces. Normally the role of a fleet hospital is to stabilize patients before sending them to bigger hospitals in the United States for further treatment. But in Guantanamo Bay, the detainees' stay is indefinite, and many of them have arrived with extensive injuries, including lost limbs. "We are rehabilitating the detainees to regain strength and range of motion and [giving them] prosthetics," Alford says.

Joint Task Force 160 and Joint Task Force 170--the two multiservice task forces made up of men and women from the Marine Corps, Army, Navy, and Coast Guard--support the new mission of guarding and interrogating the detainees. On a typical day, the guards might escort a detainee, wearing orange scrubs and wrist and ankle chains, to the interrogation huts. They also escort detainees, naked but for a towel around their waist, to the bathing facilities.

When asked about how they feel about guarding suspected terrorists, the deeply tanned troops emphasize that they check their emotions at the front gate. But it is clear that they feel some compassion for their charges, as a soldier from Illinois describes one detainee's "bad week." The troops assisted the same man twice within a couple of days after hearing his shrieks and seeing him climb the chain link of his enclosure. As it turns out, the detainee had discovered a tarantula sharing his cell. Later, it was a scorpion. Troops delicately removed both creatures from the man's cell. The Illinois reservist was stoic, however, when he found a scorpion in his own tent a few yards away at Camp Alpha, the tent city where the military guards live.

The occasional humorous touch pops up at the base, such as the handmade wooden sign reading "Motel 6" that hangs on the fence of Camp Alpha. The sailors who keep the hospital stocked with supplies and equipment jokingly refer to themselves as the "dirt people." They keep a pet iguana that they call "Dusty," so named because she is frequently covered by dust from the cloud kicked up by her belly that drags low on the ground as she hunts all the scraps of human food left for her. These whimsies help offset some of the crude conditions that the troops face: the male troops, for example, shave in basins made from old car tires, and the 130 female troops shower in what amounts to an open-air wooden box.

Many of the new military personnel at the base are reservists from very diverse backgrounds and occupations. Sandra Orlandella, a New York City police officer, was poised to retire from crime fighting to care for her infant son before she was called up by the Army to be a public affairs captain here. Before arriving at Guantanamo in the first week of April, the beginning of baseball season, Army Reserve Maj. Lee Reynolds, was one of two men hired to alternate as "Mr. Met"--the mascot for the New York Mets. Reserve Navy Lt. j.g. Matthew Miller normally spends his days on Capitol Hill as the administrative assistant to Rep. Kenny Hulshof, R-Mo.

Although Camp Delta and the war on terror are new, the pace of life at Gitmo is not, and it's sometimes a challenge for military leaders to keep up morale. T. Michael Toole, who supervised a Navy Seabee construction battalion detachment in Guantanamo Bay in 1985, understands what these troops are going through: "There is not much going on, and the goal is keeping the enlisted guys motivated. It was a neat, tight community. You either had the right attitude and made the most of it, or were hanging around with nothing to do."

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Agencies urged to study, share data on previous terror attacks

Elisabeth Frater — Mon, 03 Dec 2001 00:00:00 -0500

To Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, much of the answer is to round up and detain hundreds of suspects without even releasing their names. Asked on November 27 to justify his actions, he declared: "We're removing suspected terrorists ... from our streets to prevent further terrorist attacks."

Yet many anti-terrorism experts argue that the Justice Department could be taking other, less controversial steps that might actually do as much or more to thwart terrorist plots. Many scholars, former government officials, and lawyers who've prosecuted terrorist suspects contend that Justice ought to be disseminating credible information it possesses about the Al Qaeda terrorists' mind-set and modus operandi to intelligence agencies and to so-called first responders--state and local law enforcement agencies.

Ashcroft, however, maintains that divulging very much information about terrorism and terrorists would be foolish. "When the United States is at war," he said, "I will not share valuable intelligence with our enemies."

But much of the information readily available about Osama bin Laden's terrorism network is neither new nor classified. Before Sept. 11, the government possessed a substantial amount of information about the meticulously organized Al Qaeda network and its elaborate plans for unleashing weapons of mass destruction in this country.

Since 1998, the government has had in its possession a 180-page terrorist training manual, Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants, which was discovered in the London apartment of an Al Qaeda member. And since September 11, there have been reports in the London press that a 7,000-page how-to manual on chemical and biological terrorism, titled Encyclopedia of Jihad, has been found in CD-ROM form.

Michael Chertoff, the head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, twice referred to the Al Qaeda training manual when he testified on November 28 before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He called attention to the lesson on "Prisons and Detention Centers," which advises terrorists how to act when facing a trial.

Al Qaeda members are instructed to accuse government investigators of torture, remain in contact with "brothers outside prison," hide messages, and "make arrangements for the brother's defense with the attorney whether he was retained by the brother's family or court-appointed." Chertoff said, "Woe unto us if we don't learn from these lessons."

Additional facts about the jihad--the terrorists' so-called holy war against the West--publicly came to light from February to July of this year during the trials of terrorists responsible for the 1998 truck bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and of a would-be terrorist who had planned to use explosives to cause massive destruction during the millennium celebration.

If valuable information from those trials has been forwarded to federal counterterrorism officials, knowledgeable sources think that it may never have been put to enough use. "My worry," says a former federal terrorism prosecutor, "is that you have thousands of federal agents heaping sand on the sand heap. And no one is sitting down to really integrate it."

This year's trial testimony detailed how Al Qaeda members study intended targets. In Africa, terrorists posed as food-cart vendors in front of the targeted embassies in order to photograph them without arousing suspicions and to ascertain weaknesses in the buildings' security. According to University of Oklahoma professor Stephen Sloan, who has helped formulate counterterrorism policies for the military, terrorists in Northern Ireland have also used this method of surveillance.

But a former high-ranking New York police official says that his department was never warned that terrorists might use food carts to case a target. "The FBI, as far as I knew, did not do a post-mortem on the [embassy bombing] trial and what came out," he said. "And if they did, they certainly did not get the analysis out to the person on patrol who should have had it."

At trial, prosecutors presented a terrorist-drawn diagram demonstrating how to build truck bombs that aren't easily detected during a cursory search. The truck that was used to destroy the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania had a wood-and-iron false back that hid the explosives when its doors were open. A dashboard button was pushed to detonate the bomb.

Law enforcement authorities refuse to comment on whether this truck-bomb design is well-known among investigators. But Robert Heibel, a former FBI counter-terrorism chief, would say that, in general, "once the trial is over, the information is forgotten unless you have that intelligence continuity that picks up on this information and makes it part of the institutionalized memory."

Ahmed Ressam, the thwarted millennium bomber, testified this year that Al Qaeda trains its members to sabotage gas and electric plants, airports, railroads, large corporations, and conference hotels. It also tells them how to block the roads leading away from an explosion site. Ressam said he had planned to detonate explosives in a truck loaded with gasoline and that other Al Qaeda cells were plotting similar attacks.

The information gleaned from the terrorism trials dovetails with that contained in the 180-page terrorism manual. "What the manuals show you is a snapshot of how [Al Qaeda members] are training and preparing," says Richard Schultz, the director of international security studies at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Chapters reveal gruesome details about what the manual calls "creative, innovative methods aimed at planting anti-personnel and anti-vehicle explosive charges" inside planes, radio equipment, televisions, radios, alarm clocks, shoes, or even within a bed. It adds: "Explosives are believed to be the safest weapon for the [terrorists].... It doesn't leave any evidence or traces at the operation site. In addition, explosives strike at the enemy with sheer terror and fright."

The manual also instructs Al Qaeda members on how to produce poisons from readily available materials. For example, dimethyl sulfoxide, which is used as a topical analgesic by veterinarians, can be mixed with herbal poisons such as ricin, which is obtained from castor beans. And terrorists are told how to target intelligence agents and VIPs, and even how to place poisons on doorknobs.

"It's quite sophisticated on its instruction of counter-surveillance," says Ruth Wedgwood, a leading national security expert who reviewed the jihad manual at the request of National Journal. For example, the manual exhaustively describes methods to avoid detection. It advises renting ground-floor apartments--ones easy to flee--in new communities, and mailing letters from a post office far from the sender's usual location. The letters should be sent, the manual instructs, not to the intended recipient but to a third party who will forward it.

Most dramatically, the manual gives insight into the ideal Al Qaeda recruit. The 10th chapter, "Special Tactical Operations," says that the operative should possess an emotional makeup "that allows coping with psychological traumas such as ... bloodshed, mass murder, [and] traumas, such as killing one or all members of his group ... and proceed with the work."

On a practical level, Schultz sees a need for investigators to analyze the terrorism manuals and trial data before interrogating the suspected terrorists now being held by the Justice Department. "That frames how you debrief them, how you start to build a database on the operational approaches of the networks," Schultz says.

Brian Michael Jenkins, a senior adviser at the Rand Corp. who was an adviser to the National Commission on Terrorism, says that the government has synthesized the information from the trials and manuals. He says it has used this information to make a persuasive case to NATO allies that the September 11 attacks were the work of Al Qaeda and that NATO countries should arrest cell members in their countries. The information about Al Qaeda "did not provide a predictive capability, but provided a very powerful diplomatic tool," Jenkins said.

David R. Andrews, who was a high-ranking legal adviser to the State Department, agrees. He says that the government is constantly on the lookout for testimony that sheds light on terrorism activities. "I recall myself going over testimony of individuals in a potential terrorism situation," he said. "The problem there is that there hasn't always been a central location for all this kind of information."

At least one group is trying to systematically collect and analyze information from terrorist trials. A team led by Brent L. Smith of the University of Alabama (Birmingham) has put together a database of 420 people who were indicted on domestic or international terrorism charges between 1980 and 1999. He hopes to make the raw data and his analysis available to prosecutors on a secure Web site within the next year or two.

But no such project seems to be in the works for information contained in the terrorism manuals. Many former government officials said they appreciate Ashcroft's anti-disclosure position and investigators' reluctance to more widely disseminate details about terrorists' methods.

"You always have to take care that you don't make terrorists out of non-terrorists and that the documents stay in [law enforcement] custody and aren't leaked to nonprofessionals," Heibel says.

If anyone needs a reminder in the wake of Sept. 11 of the importance of being vigilant, Wedgwood offers one: Violence is Al Qaeda's first option--not the last one after exhausting all others.

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FBI must switch gears to prevent terrorism, experts say

Elisabeth Frater — Tue, 09 Oct 2001 00:00:00 -0400

Newsweek article, top Justice Department and FBI officials in Washington turned down an August request by FBI agents in Minneapolis for a special counterintelligence surveillance warrant against Moussaoui, even though there reportedly was evidence linking him to an Algerian terrorist group. The Minneapolis agents had seized Moussaoui's computer in mid-August after receiving a tip that he had sought flight training only in making turns--not take-offs and landings--and had asked about flying over New York City. After September 11, the FBI's Minneapolis office finally got approval to inspect the computer's hard drive. Agents allegedly say they found that it contained information on crop-dusting aircraft and wind patterns. Moussaoui, 33, was arrested on August 17 on immigration charges. According to critics of the FBI's methods, one of the agency's most glaring problems is that it lacks a coordinated threat-assessment system--that is, a systematic way of ferreting out, weighing, and appropriately responding to possible terrorist threats. The FBI had no way, for example, of connecting the bits and pieces of suspicious information that field agents were receiving about the suicidal terrorists before September 11. Robert J. Heibel, a former FBI counter-terrorism chief who now teaches at Mercyhurst College in Pennsylvania, says that the FBI does a "tremendous" job with tactical intelligence--amassing and using information after a crime has been committed. In other words, the FBI is great at crime-solving. "They are like hounds after the hare," Heibel says. Indeed, according to the State Department, since September 11, the FBI has analyzed more than 241 serious or credible threats related to the attacks, conducted more than 540 interviews and 383 searches, and arrested or detained at least 439 people. But the FBI routinely falls short on strategic intelligence--identifying threats as they develop and alerting appropriate officials in time to avert a crisis. Heibel contends that in recent years, the FBI has made the mistake of promoting people who lack the "intellectual horsepower" to do such intelligence work and who aren't properly trained for it. "Analysis is a cerebral exercise, and I think that is where the bureau has fallen down," Heibel says. According to him, FBI agents refuse to use information readily available to the public-- in scholarly journals, on the Internet, or in foreign newspapers or magazines, for example--because of an attitude that if the FBI didn't uncover the information, it must be worthless. Also, as has been widely reported, there are too few language specialists at the FBI to translate the information it does take seriously. Juliette N. Kayyem, a Harvard professor who served on the National Commission on Terrorism, notes that piecing together and disseminating intelligence has not traditionally been an important part of the FBI's mission. Larry M. Wortzel, a security and military intelligence expert at the Heritage Foundation, recently investigated the lack of data-sharing among the FBI's field offices. He says that case files are intentionally kept from other field offices in order to try to prevent sullying suspects' names, or endangering future prosecutions. In the agency's "need to know" culture, there is a reluctance to pass information up the chain of command unless it pertains to an existing investigation. And the FBI is not in the habit of sharing its findings with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Customs Service, the Federal Aviation Administration, or the CIA. Likewise, the 1996 report "Preparing for the 21st Century: An Appraisal of U.S. Intelligence" found that agencies such as the CIA strictly interpret their legal authority to be limited to "foreign intelligence." Therefore, they often decline FBI requests for intelligence information. The FBI's intelligence-gathering capabilities also suffer every time the government takes a suspected terrorist to trial. Ruth Wedgwood, a former federal prosecutor and a leading national security expert, says, "The due-process culture of a courtroom tilts toward full disclosure of all matters in the government's files." Thus, Wedgwood explains, an ongoing terrorist enterprise such as Osama bin Laden's can use once-secret information that is publicly disclosed in court to get savvier at avoiding surveillance. In Wedgwood's view, the American legal system is an important anti-terrorism tool, but its value must be weighed against the potential harm that trials can do to terrorism- prevention efforts. Criminal convictions after the fact are cold comfort for the nation, she notes. Moreover, it is hard to persuade informers to cooperate when they know their identities might be exposed in a federal trial. When the CIA faced a similar problem with the information it was collecting abroad, it came up with ways to, in effect, sanitize the information so that crucial findings could be distributed as needed without compromising secret sources. Many of the FBI's critics hope that Tom Ridge, head of the new Office of Homeland Security, will find ways to take some of the handcuffs off the FBI so that its terrorism- prevention efforts are more productive. Revell says: "We really need to look at a consolidation of law enforcement and its mission consistent with the threat of the 21st century. [Ridge] can help in this process … so we don't have so many people running around at cross-purposes." However, Revell concludes: "Whether the psyche of the nation is sufficiently traumatized to take a realistic look at changing [the FBI's] old habits and existing patterns, I don't know. I certainly hope it doesn't take many more of these attacks." ]]>

Top federal lawyers build case against terrorists

Shawn Zeller and Elisabeth Frater — Fri, 28 Sep 2001 00:00:00 -0400

So when President Bush quickly labeled the Sept. 11 attacks on New York City and Washington as "acts of war," it seemed that his Administration had embraced a new and decisive approach to fighting terrorism.

It now appears, however, that Bush and his national security team are also pursuing a deliberate legal strategy based on advice they are receiving from an elite cadre of government lawyers. According to legal scholars and Administration officials, legal authority is needed for two reasons: to justify U.S. military action against terrorist networks, and to bring to trial terrorist suspects being rounded up in America and abroad.

Experts say that one of the first and thorniest issues that Bush and his attorneys will face is determining what constitutes a legitimate target for a military strike. "The difficulty is that people want to maintain a bright-line rule," says Ruth Wedgwood, a leading expert on international law. "The old assumption had been that military objects are those that wear khaki or camouflage." But the fight against terrorists isn't so clear-cut.

Recent international engagements have blurred the distinction between civilian and military objects. For example, is it permissible to strike an automobile factory normally staffed by civilians that had the mere potential to produce military vehicles? The United States has been criticized in the past for destroying ostensible civilian targets that it claimed were actually being used for military purposes.

The seasoned lawyers that President Bush is depending upon to develop the legal case for action include John B. Bellinger III, senior legal adviser to the National Security Council; Timothy E. Flanigan, deputy White House counsel; William H. Taft IV, the top lawyer at the State Department; and William James Haynes II, general counsel to the Defense Department.

Bush is well served by this group of advisers, says Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, former general counsel to the CIA and the National Security Agency. "They have all been through this before, and they can think things through," she says.

It's understandable that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice tapped Bellinger to be her legal adviser. His credentials include advising the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, overseeing criminal cases at the Justice Department involving national security, and serving as a special assistant to William H. Webster, who was CIA director.

Bellinger is included in meetings on intelligence matters, including covert operations, that are held in the West Wing Situation Room and attended by Bush; Rice; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the director of the CIA; the Attorney General; the Secretaries of Defense, State, Treasury, and Transportation; and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Haynes's role underscores the importance of having legal expertise in military law. Douglas A. Dworkin, the general counsel to the Defense Department in the Clinton Administration, says that Haynes advises on laws and international conventions that govern armed conflict, on the concepts of necessity and proportionality in using force, and on whether armed force is appropriate in a particular situation.

Taft, the great-grandson of President William Howard Taft and a former counsel to President Reagan's Defense Department, chairs a group that includes general counsels from the Defense Department, the CIA, and the national security adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The group analyzes international law issues and conventions.

Flanigan, the senior legal adviser to the President, is an unusual addition to this coalition of lawyers. He worked in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in the early 1990s and brings experience in domestic-security law. Traditionally, the White House counsel's office has relied on the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department to advise the President on the domestic laws related to security and defense. Sources say, however, that Flanigan is plugging the hole left by the unfilled legal counsel position at Justice. Flanigan did not return calls asking for comment.

Meanwhile, U.S. allies are talking about the need for evidence and are urging some restraint. And earlier this week, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said that government lawyers were preparing evidence against suspected terrorist ringleader Osama bin Laden, and would soon present the information to allies. The move came after news reports of disagreements between Powell and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, with Powell stressing the need for diplomacy and a strong legal brief and Wolfowitz pushing for an immediate military response.

"The U.S. government has to be prepared to go to the Pakistanis, the Egyptians, and the Saudis and say, 'We have evidence,' and convince them that we are right," says Jeffrey H. Smith, a partner at the Washington law firm of Arnold & Porter and a former general counsel to the CIA.

And what of the suspects that law enforcement officials have already arrested? "We would be obliged to try them," says Jordan Paust, director of the University of Houston's International Law Institute. "We would be obliged also to try any prisoners of war."

Those trials might be held in U.S. courts. But the Bush administration might also establish military courts, consistent with the administration's "acts of war" assessment. Such military trials were held during World War II, when German saboteurs caught in the United States were tried and hanged within a month. Some administration officials reportedly see such tribunals as a means to shield sensitive sources and classified information. It's an idea that rankles civil libertarians, and the United States has vehemently opposed such trials abroad, most recently condemning the trial of American Lori Berenson, who was convicted by a Peruvian military court of aiding the Tupac Amaru guerrillas in the early 1990s.

FBI Director Robert Mueller III, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, and the head of the Justice criminal division, Michael Chertoff, are already working on the criminal investigation against bin Laden.

Still, in public comments at least, the administration has rejected Taliban efforts to frame the terrorist attacks as law enforcement matters. The Taliban has offered to try bin Laden on its own or to extradite him for trial before an Islamic court in a third country if the United States provides evidence of his guilt. If the United States accepted the offer, such trials would not be without precedent.

After the 1995 bombing of a U.S.-run military installation in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the United States allowed local authorities to investigate and try the alleged terrorists, who were executed.

In that case, as well as the later bombings of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and the USS Cole in Yemen, the United States never alleged that Saudi Arabia or Yemen had aided the terrorists, as President Bush has accused the Taliban of doing in the Sept. 11 attacks. In the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, the United States suspected Libyan government involvement but assented to a trial in a third country. Under international pressure, Libya ultimately extradited two men for trial in the Netherlands, where they were tried under Scottish law. One was convicted and sentenced to a life term, the other was found not guilty and freed.

Although it seems unlikely that the Bush administration would accept a similar offer now, it might reconsider if the Taliban begins to cooperate with U.S. authorities or if suspects are captured alive.

If trials were to occur, U.S. prosecutors would likely turn to precedents from the Lockerbie case, in which the Scottish court relied on a 1971 international treaty, the Montreal Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Civil Aviation. Legal scholars say that a 1970 Hague treaty establishing international rules for prosecuting airline hijackings could also aid U.S. prosecutors.

M. Cherif Bassiouni, former chairman of the U.N. commission that investigated war crimes in Yugoslavia, says the important thing "is to achieve our goals, not the means we use to get there." At some time, Bassiouni added, "the United States has to prove its case."

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Justice Department

Kirk Victor and Elisabeth Frater — Thu, 28 Jun 2001 00:00:00 -0400

Established: 1870
Address: 950 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20530
Phone: 202-514-2000
2001 Budget:: $21.5 billion
Employment:: 125,732
Web Site: www.usdoj.gov
Functions: The Justice Department provides the means for enforcing federal laws and furnishes legal counsel in federal cases. The department provides legal advice to the President, investigates federal crimes, and represents the executive branch in court. The department also operates federal prisons; oversees the Drug Enforcement Agency, the FBI, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service; and coordinates the work of the U.S. attorneys.

John Ashcroft
Attorney General
202-514-2001
None of President Bush's nominations has provoked more controversy than his choice of former Sen. Ashcroft of Missouri to be Attorney General. Blasted for what critics see as his smear campaign against the confirmation of Missouri Supreme Court Judge Ronnie White, an African-American, to be a federal district judge, as well as for his hostility toward abortion rights and for his opposition to desegregation plans in St. Louis and Kansas City in the 1980s, Ashcroft was confirmed by only a 58-42 vote. The 59-year-old Springfield native was Missouri's attorney general from 1976-84 and was governor for two terms before his election to the Senate in 1994. Ashcroft's far-right views were reflected in his voting record in 1997 and 1998, when he was tied as the most conservative Senator in National Journal's rankings. He lost his re-election bid against Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan, whose name remained on the ballot even after his death in an airplane crash. Early on as Attorney General, Ashcroft surprised some critics by naming minorities to several high-level Justice posts, advocating legislation against racial profiling, and dispatching attorneys to Cincinnati to investigate white-on-black police shootings. "There's no question that Ashcroft has not moved as far to the right and as fast as many people feared," said Elliot Mincberg, legal director of the liberal People for the American Way. Ashcroft, who is a graduate of Yale University and of the University of Chicago Law School, will have plenty of opportunity in the days ahead to show his hand more clearly on hot-button issues from affirmative action to abortion. He will likely find that the attorney general's post continues to be a lightning rod for controversy.

Larry D. Thompson
Deputy Attorney General
202-514-2101
Thompson may bring new clout to the No. 2 post because, unlike Ashcroft, he has plenty of trial experience. He'll undoubtedly be called upon to advise on litigation strategy in sensitive cases. A partner in the Atlanta law firm of King & Spaulding, the 55-year-old Thompson is no stranger to highly visible litigation, having served as U.S. Attorney in Atlanta from 1982-86. During his confirmation hearing, Thompson, an African-American, was warmly praised. He told the Senate panel that growing up as the son of a railroad laborer in Hannibal, Mo., he "could not have imagined 40 years ago" that he would one day appear before the Senate to be confirmed for a top government job. As he takes charge of the daily management of the department's bureaucracy, Thompson is not unfamiliar with Washington's ways. He provided behind-the-scenes advice to Clarence Thomas during the contentious battle over Thomas's nomination to the Supreme Court. A graduate of Culver-Stockton College, Thompson received his law degree from the University of Michigan.

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Focusing on bias

Elisabeth Frater — Mon, 05 Mar 2001 00:00:00 -0500

Chairman, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Civil rights activists and affirmative action opponents may be riveted on who will lead the high-profile Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, but there is another pivotal anti-discrimination slot ready for President Bush to fill -- the chairmanship of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Currently, the five-member commission has two vacancies, which leaves Bush free to appoint two people and install them as chairman and vice chairman. The EEOC is "a very potent agency," says Clint Bolick, vice president and director of litigation at the libertarian Institute for Justice.

Unlike the Justice Department, which monitors government malfeasance, the commission focuses on private employers, ranging from automakers to retailers. Its mandate is to enforce federal statutes prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, or disability.

The commission can set policy through its interpretations of these job discrimination laws, as well as through litigation. "The EEOC sets the tenor for discrimination law, even to an extent greater than the Justice Department," Bolick says. And most of EEOC's policy initiatives on employment discrimination originate with its chairman, notes Donald R. Livingston, former general counsel of the EEOC and a partner at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld in Washington.

Will Bush's chairman try to advance policies revered in conservative legal circles -- those that, for example, seek to limit the reach of affirmative action and sex discrimination laws?

"A lot of those cases are going to be handled the same way, no matter who the President is," says Roger Clegg, general counsel for the Center for Equal Opportunity. "But there are areas where there are differences of opinion of how to interpret the law, and one of those is affirmative action.… [ Another is] how to interpret the Americans With Disabilities Act." He adds that he hopes the Bush Administration's approach to hiring preferences based on race, ethnicity, and sex will be very different from its predecessor's. "The Clinton Administration has been very aggressive and unforgiving to private employers in the way that it has been interpreting [these statutes]," he said.

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