Who was in favor? The usual neocons, Cheney, David Addington and Defense Department officials. Who opposed?
Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser; John B. Bellinger III, the top lawyer at the National Security Council; Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Michael Chertoff, then the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division.
How unusual was the suggestion?
Scott L. Silliman, a Duke University law professor specializing in national security law, said an American president had not deployed the active-duty military on domestic soil in a law enforcement capacity, without specific statutory authority, since the Civil War.
Why was it even being discussed? The evidence against the Lackawanna Six was believed too weak to survive a federal court proceeding.
Former officials said the 2002 debate arose partly from Justice Department concerns that there might not be enough evidence to arrest and successfully prosecute the suspects in Lackawanna. Mr. Cheney, the officials said, had argued that the administration would need a lower threshold of evidence to declare them enemy combatants and keep them in military custody.
In a sense, Cheney prevailed anyway. According to more than one defense counsel for the Lackawanna defendants, the reason they ended up pleading guilty is they were threatened with dismissing the federal charges, declaring them enemy combatants and shuttling them off to Guantanamo.
The first defendant to plead guilty, Mukhtar al-Bakri, got ten years. What were the facts?
[He] went to Afganistan and attended a training camp. He heard Osama bin Laden speak there. Then he got married. The day after his wedding, while in Bahrain, he got arrested. Then charged with providing material support to a terrorist organization.
The Government acknowledged it had no evidence that al-Bakri or his confederates planned a terrorist act. What it had was a theory dependent upon guilt by association and perceived thought.
Reaction at the time:
"It's the first time in American history where people are going to prison for going to a training camp," said David D. Cole, a Georgetown University law professor ..... "It's wrong. . . . It's unconstitutional." Cole said he believes that the section of law used to convict the six men is unconstitutional and will be struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court within the next couple of years.
Elaine Cassel, a Virginia lawyer and civil rights advocate, calls the Lackawanna case "one of the worst examples of the vengeful Bush and Ashcroft battle against terrorism." "It's like the movie "Minority Report,' " Cassel said. "The idea is, "Let's go out and arrest people before they actually commit a crime, or even think of a crime.' "
More background on the Lackawanna case here. In 2003, the New York Times published this 13 page account of the case.
