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JOHN YOO, DAVID ADDINGTON STONEWALL CONGRESS; NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD URGES SPECIAL PROSECUTOR, CONGRESSIONAL WAR CRIMES COMMISSION
JOHN YOO, DAVID ADDINGTON STONEWALL CONGRESS; NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD URGES SPECIAL PROSECUTOR, CONGRESSIONAL WAR CRIMES COMMISSIONFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, June 26, 2008
Contacts:
Marjorie Cohn, NLG president, marjorie@tjsl.edu, 619-374-6923
Jeanne Mirer, NLG International Committee, mirerfam@earthlink.net, 313-515-2046
Dan Mayfield, NLG Military Law Task Force, dan@carpenterandmayfield.com, 408-287-1916
Today the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties continued its investigation into the role played by key administration lawyers in the development of aggressive interrogation techniques. This was the third hearing of this subcommittee on this topic. The witnesses who testified were former Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo; Cheney's former legal counsel and now chief of staff, David Addington; and Christopher Schroeder, professor at Duke Law School.
NLG President Marjorie Cohn had testified at the first subcommittee hearing on May 6, articulating the law of torture, and stating that torture is never allowed under U.S. law. Today’s hearing was attended by Jeanne Mirer, co-chair of the NLG’s International Committee.
Yoo's testimony revealed that the guiding principle of his work at the Justice Department was his belief in the overriding power of the President to order anything he thinks necessary in the "war on terror." When specifically asked, "Is there anything that the President cannot order?" Yoo answered "I believe there are things an American President WOULD not order." He was asked again, "Are there things the President COULD not order?" Yoo replied that he would "have to know the context." Dan Mayfield from the NLG Military Law Task Force stated, "This is consistent with Yoo's previous statement that the President could order torture of a person up to and including the crushing of the testicles of a person's son in order to make the person talk." When asked whether a President could order that someone be buried alive, Yoo's answer was non-responsive: "No American president would ever have to order that," he said.
While Yoo claimed there was little in the law which helped to define torture, Shroeder pointed out the wealth of guidance that exists in the areas of asylum and immigration law. Yoo admitted that the Convention Against Torture and the U.S. Torture Statute both define torture. Yet he wrote his memos to re-define torture so that those following his re-definition could state, "We do not torture." Marjorie Cohn said, "Yoo's memos so vastly narrowed the definition of torture, the interrogator would nearly have to kill someone for it to constitute torture."
Yoo and Addington were evasive, repeatedly stonewalling members of the subcommittee. The Justice Department evidently placed limitations on what Yoo was allowed to discuss, but he invoked privileges where it did not appear privilege was authorized. This led to Yoo's refusal to answer several direct questions. Jeanne Mirer stated, “The evasiveness of Yoo and Addington did not earn them credibility with the subcommittee, and frustrated many of the questioners. These tactics prevented the subcommittee from getting answers to the many important questions about the source of legal authority for the positions espoused in the 'torture memos' regarding aggressive interrogation techniques.”
The NLG has decried the use of torture techniques as well as efforts by lawyers to try to justify them. The NLG has called for holding accountable those who violated the law. While these hearings have helped to establish the record, there is a need for a full blown investigation which could lead to a call for criminal prosecution. The NLG calls for the appointment of an independent special prosecutor, and the establishment of a congressionally appointed commission to investigate potential wrongdoing, including the commission of war crimes, by high officials and lawyers of the Bush administration.
Founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association, which did not admit people of color, the National Lawyers Guild is the oldest and largest public interest/human rights bar organization in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York and it has chapters in every state.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 24, 2008
Contact: Contact: Marjorie Cohn, NLG President, marjorie@tjsl.edu; 619-374-6923
Heidi Boghosian, NLG Executive Director, director@nlg.org; 212-679-5100,
NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD CALLS ON SENATE TO VOTE “NO” ON ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE BILL, H.R. 6304
New York. The National Lawyers Guild condemns the passage by the House of Representatives of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”) bill, H.R. 6304, and calls upon the Senate to stand up for the Fourth Amendment and vote “No” when the measure comes before that body for approval this week.
“Senator Feingold has said it well,” said Marjorie Cohn, President of the National Lawyers Guild. “This is not a compromise measure; this is a total capitulation to the White House.”
The FISA bill passed by the House last week authorizes sweeping, untargeted surveillance of all electronic communications to and from this country. It also gives virtually complete immunity to the telephone companies who cooperate with the government and turn over personal telephone records for their customers without any notice to the consumer.
Under the House proposal, any member of Congress who is not on the Judiciary or Intelligence Committees will not have access to reports on the FISA surveillance. At the same time, the House bill wipes out any meaningful judicial review of the warrants issued to conduct the surveillance, creating an “exigent” circumstances exception that guts the Fourth Amendment. The special FISA court, which approves these warrants, will officially now be nothing but a rubber-stamp for the White House under the proposed measure.
Just two weeks ago, the Supreme Court ruled against the administration for the third time in the Guantanamo detainee cases, reminding the nation that the so-called “War on Terror” is not a blank check for the President to eviscerate the Fourth Amendment. With this bill, the House of Representatives has handed the White House another blank check.
“The nation wants change. That is the message of this election. Let’s start meaningful change by ending secret government spying on Americans,” said Cohn.
Founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association, which did not admit people of color, the National Lawyers Guild is the oldest and largest public interest/human rights bar organization in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York and it has chapters in every state.
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Society of American Law Teachers—SALT—and National Lawyers Guild—NLG—Joint Statement on ICE Immigration Raids and Criminal Immigration Enforcement
Society of American Law Teachers—SALT—and National Lawyers Guild—NLG—Joint Statement on ICE Immigration Raids and Criminal Immigration EnforcementJune 6, 2008
Contact: Hazel Weiser, SALT Executive Director, 631 650 2310, hweiser@saltlaw.org
Marjorie Cohn, NLG President, 619 374 6923, marjorie@tjsl.edu
On May 12, 2008, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), now a part of the Department of Homeland Security, conducted the largest single-site immigration raid in U.S. history at Agriprocessors, a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. Postville is the latest in a pattern of raids that has intensified in the past three years. With the help of state and local law enforcement, ICE arrested 389 workers, most of them from Guatemala and Mexico, nearly a third of all residents living in the town. The ICE raids came coincidentally after Agriprocessors had been issued 39 citations for alleged violations of state workplace safety and health standards, and after efforts to organize plant workers by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, according to Iowa newspapers.
In an unprecedented move, ICE criminally charged 302 of the workers with aggravated ID theft and/or for using false social security numbers. In a matter of days, with the workers held at various detention centers, ICE resolved the fate of most of these workers: 297 of these men and women pled guilty and were sentenced to prison and subsequent deportation. The uncharacteristic speed and efficiency of these proceedings left workers without adequate opportunity to consult with lawyers as they faced hard bargains from prosecutors. Hundreds of children were left not knowing about their parents’ fate. Only 44 workers were released to care for their children. As in past raids, these children are likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress. In contrast to the fate of the workers, so far no one in Agriprocessors’ management has been charged, despite evidence that the company helped workers procure false documents, paid substandard wages, failed to pay overtime, and engaged in other types of grave worker mistreatment.
SALT and NLG deplore these raids that are creating a moral, legal, and humanitarian crisis in our nation. ICE’s heavy handed enforcement against undocumented workers in the wake of failed immigration reform is shameful. Immigration laws remain completely out of touch with reality, and the absence of labor protection for these workers leaves them vulnerable to exploitation. Under current immigration laws, no more than 10,000 backlogged permanent visas for unskilled workers and 66,000 temporary visas for seasonal workers are available per year, while an estimated 2,000 men, women, and children cross the Southwest border into the U.S. daily. An estimated 12 million undocumented persons live in the U.S. These workers come to the U.S. because of global economic realities that drive them out of their nations where they have no means for even subsistence living, and into low wage jobs in the U.S. While U.S. employers and consumers benefit from this source of cheap labor, undocumented workers and their children bear the brunt of a broken immigration system. The last immigration reform sought to stem the flow of illegal immigrants by sanctioning employers who knowingly hired undocumented workers. Enforcement has been sporadic and arbitrary. The financial incentives to employ workers who will be afraid to complain about substandard working conditions and violations of labor codes governing hours and wages are compelling. Few employers face civil or criminal sanctions for taking advantage of these laborers.
SALT and NLG also condemn ICE’s decision to criminally charge almost all of the arrested workers when few constitutional guarantees are available to them. Ordinarily, use of false Social Security numbers to engage in otherwise lawful conduct, such as to apply for jobs, is not pursued criminally. This unprecedented shift to criminalize workers for the use or possession of false work documents has not been accompanied by a comparable infusion of constitutional guarantees in the handling of these cases. ICE conducted the investigation leading to the Postville raid with easy-access to immigration databases and employee documents, by relying on informants, and then executed the raid with easily-procured administrative, not criminal, warrants. Thus, the protection of stricter Fourth Amendment search and seizure, Fifth Amendment due process, and Sixth Amendment right to counsel constitutional guarantees that apply to criminal investigations and arrests in judicial proceedings were unavailable to these workers. Moreover, the suppression remedy for illegally seized evidence or coerced confessions is quite limited in immigration proceedings. Overwhelmingly, most workers pled guilty in their criminal cases, and thus, relinquished any possibility of raising a Fourth Amendment challenge in court. These workers waived their Fourth Amendment and other due process guarantees under extreme prosecutorial pressure and with little opportunity for adequate legal representation.
SALT and NLG are also concerned about the consequences to communities of the involvement of local law enforcement in these raids. Already distrust of police keeps many immigrants from reporting crime, which increases their vulnerability as crime victims and as employees of unscrupulous employers. Moreover, these additional responsibilities drain limited resources and take local police away from their primary duties as community caretakers. Federal immigration enforcement by local police is constitutionally suspect, particularly in the absence of Congressional authorization.
SALT and NLG, therefore, urge the Department of Homeland Security to halt such raids immediately and to treat those still in detention humanely and in accordance with all due process guarantees available to criminal defendants. If ICE plans to charge workers as criminals, then ICE should procure lawful warrants based on probable cause for future workplace raids. SALT and NLG also call on courts to be vigilant in protecting the constitutional rights of workers and their families affected by the raids, and apply stricter constitutional guarantees when criminal charges are implicated. Congress should also seriously consider the implications of its trade and agricultural subsidies on developing nations and future migration flows. It is irresponsible to ignore the intersections of these policies. SALT and NLG call on Congress to adopt comprehensive immigration reform that offers a path to legalization to workers and their families. Such legislation must include strong labor protections while ensuring family unification.
Since 1973, the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) has been an independent organization of law teachers, deans, law librarians, and legal education professionals working to make the profession more inclusive, to enhance the quality of legal education, and to extend the power of legal representation to under-served individuals and communities. www.saltlaw.org
Founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association, which did not admit people of color, the National Lawyers Guild is the oldest and largest public interest/human rights bar organization in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York and it has chapters in every state. www.nlg.org
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, June 5, 2008
Contact: Marjorie Cohn, NLG President, marjorie@tjsl.edu; 619-374-6923 Heidi Boghosian, NLG Executive Director, director@nlg.org; 212-679-5100, x11
NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD SAYS POLITICS MOTIVATED DECISION IN CUBAN FIVE CASE
Two Judges on Three-Judge Panel Uphold Conspiracy to Commit Murder Conviction Despite Government’s Lack of Evidence
New York. The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) believes that politics influenced yesterday’s federal appeals court decision upholding the convictions of five Cuban patriots accused of spying in the United States. The so-called Cuban Five were gathering information on U.S.-based exile groups planning terrorist actions against their island nation.
The court did, however, vacate the sentences of three of the Five, including two serving life terms. A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals returned the three cases to a federal judge in Miami for re-sentencing based on findings that the three men had gathered no classified information.
The full 11th Circuit court in August 2006 upheld the convictions of the Five: Gerardo Hernández , Fernando González , René González , Ramon Labañino, and Antonio Guerrero. It rejected claims that their federal trial should have been moved out of Miami because widespread opposition to the Cuban government among Cuban-Americans would make it impossible to get a fair and impartial jury.
In the appeal ruled on yesterday, the Five challenged rulings on the suppression of evidence from searches conducted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, sovereign immunity, discovery procedures, jury selection, prosecutorial and witness misconduct, jury instructions, sufficiency of the evidence to support their convictions, and sentencing.
In this latest decision, the panel voted 2-1 to affirm the life sentence for Gerardo Hernández, who was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of four Miami-based pilots shot down by Cuban jets in 1996. In her 16-page dissent, Judge Phyllis Kravich wrote that the government failed to present evidence sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hernández agreed to participate in a conspiracy to shoot down planes over international airspace, resulting in the deaths of four pilots from an anti-Castro organization, Brothers to the Rescue. The panel also affirmed Rene González's 15-year sentence for acting as a non-registered foreign agent and conspiracy to act as a non- registered foreign agent.
The panel vacated the life terms of Labañino and Guerrero, agreeing with their contentions that their sentences were improperly configured because no "top secret information was gathered or transmitted." The judges also vacated Fernando González's 19-year sentence because he was not a manager or supervisor of the network. The panel remanded these cases to the district court for re-sentencing.
After a trial that lasted six months, the Five were convicted in 2001 of acting as unregistered Cuban agents in the United States and of conspiracy to commit espionage for attempting to penetrate U.S. military bases. A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit overturned the convictions in 2005, saying there should have been a change of venue. But the full court reversed that decision, 10-2.
"Conspiracy has always been the charge used by the prosecution in political cases," said NLG attorney Leonard Weinglass, who represents Guerrero. "In the case of the Five, the Miami jury was asked to find that there was an agreement to commit espionage. The government never had to prove that espionage actually happened. It could not have proven that espionage occurred. None of the Five sought or possessed any top secret information or US national defense secrets," Weinglass added. "The sentence for the conspiracy charge is the same as if espionage were actually committed and proven. That is how three got life sentences. The major charges in this case were all conspiracy related, the most serious being conspiracy to commit murder levied against Gerardo Hernández."
"Anti-Cuba sentiment has tainted all possibility of a fair trial for the Five since their original arrest and confinement, which the UN Rapporteur on Torture described as violating the Convention Against Torture and Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment," said NLG Executive Director Heidi Boghosian. "During the original trial, the Bush administration paid journalists to write unfavorable stories about Cuba. Anti-Cuban extremists tried to intimidate the jurors, and even prospective jurors admitted that they would be afraid to return not-guilty verdicts against the Five."
"For nearly 50 years, anti-Cuba terrorist organizations based in Miami have engaged in countless terrorist activities against Cuba," said NLG President Marjorie Cohn. "In the face of this terrorism, the Cuban Five were gathering intelligence in Miami in order to prevent future terrorist acts against Cuba."
Founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association, which did not admit people of color, the National Lawyers Guild is the oldest and largest public interest/human rights bar organization in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York and it has chapters in every state.
For a list of national protests on behalf of the Cuban Five, please visit nlg.org/news or see below:
New York Emergency Protest
Friday, June 6, 5pm
26 Federal Plaza
Take the N/R to City Hall, 4/5/6 to Brooklyn Bridge, J/M to Chambers, A/C to Chambers, or 2/3 to Park Place
Los Angeles Emergency Protest to Free the Cuban Five Friday, June 6, 5pm Outside the CNN Building 6430 W. Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles (Corner Sunset & Cahuenga) For more info call 213-251-1025 or answerla@answerla.org .
San Francisco Demonstration
5 pm Friday, June 6
Protest: Powell and Market St.
NY/Tri-State Area Working Conference on the Cuban Five Hostos Community College 149th St. and Grand Concourse in the Bronx Take the 4,5,or 2 train to 149th and Grand Concourse Saturday, June 14 8am-REGISTRATION 9:30am-5:00pm-Conference
Speakers: Leonard Weinglass, Cuban 5 Legal Team A Representative of the Cuban Mission to the United Nations Gloria La Riva, Coordinator, National Committee to Free the Cuban Five
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NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD (NLG) URGES UNITED STATES TO SIGN AND RATIFY TREATY BANNING USE OF CLUSTER BOMBS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, June 2, 2008Contact: Marjorie Cohn, NLG President, marjorie@tjsl.edu; 619-374-6923
Heidi Boghosian, NLG Executive Director, director@nlg.org; 212-679-5100, x11
NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD (NLG) URGES UNITED STATES TO SIGN AND RATIFY TREATY BANNING USE OF CLUSTER BOMBS
NLG Also Renews Its Call for the U.S. to Ratify Land Mine Treaty
New York. The National Lawyers Guild is disturbed to see that, once again, the rhetoric of the United States government about building peace and security is directly contradicted by its actions. While more than 100 countries met in Dublin and signed a treaty banning the use of cluster bombs, the United States, along with Russia, China and Israel, refused to participate in the conference that led to the treaty and have refused to sign it. The Guild calls on the United States to immediately sign and ratify the treaty, and also renews its call for the United States to ratify the land mine treaty as well.
Cluster bombs are particularly insidious munitions. First, they litter an area with hundreds of submunitions, known as "bomblets," which both kill and maim. Many of the bomblets do not explode on impact and, like land mines, lurk undetected until unfortunate civilians, often children, stumble on them or pick them up. While the State Department’s Stephen D. Mull had said that removing unexploded ordnance from a battlefield is “an absolute moral obligation,” he did not explain how that was to be accomplished. He also maintained that, for some unexplained reason, the United States needed to utilize cluster bombs as part of its national defense, as inconceivable as it may be to imagine the use of such bombs on U.S. soil. If countries that do not have enormous stockpiles of nuclear weapons, massive land, sea and air power, laser-guided smart bombs and missiles, drone planes and countless other weapons of death and destruction can agree to give up their cluster bombs, there is no reason the United States cannot also agree to cease using them.
In the interest of world peace, and as a means of gaining back a measure of its lost credibility in the international community, the National Lawyers Guild calls on the United States to sign and ratify the treaty banning the use of cluster bombs, and renews its call for the United States to ratify the land mine treaty.
Founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association, which did not admit people of color, the National Lawyers Guild is the oldest and largest public interest/human rights bar organization in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York and it has chapters in every state.
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