THE SMOKING GUN HAS THE DOJ SUMMARY OF JOSE PADILLA'S ACTIVITIES. It is required reading for those of us who have been critical of the administration's detention of Padilla and his fellow US citizen detainee, Yaser Hamdi. If you disagree with how the adminstration has handled this case, the summary will not necessarily make you change your mind. However, this press conference with James Comey, a deputy attorney general who has handled much of the Padilla procedings for the DOJ, is at least refreshing propaganda. Comey admits that because Padilla was denied counsel, criminal proceedings against him in the future are iffy. And he gives thoughtful, candid answers to questions, without vilifying people who have questioned the decisions made by the FBI and DOJ in this case:

"QUESTION: You said that if you had picked him up under criminal charges that he would have gotten a lawyer, would have clammed up and would have walked free. But couldn't you have done what the Justice Department does thousands of times every year and offered him a plea agreement to work with you?

"COMEY: All the time we offer plea agreements and people cooperate if we have a hammer over them. The challenge of the Padilla case, for me as the United States attorney, was the absence of a hammer. If I can't credibly threaten criminal charges, no lawyer in the world is going to tell their client to talk to me, because a good lawyer would know, what I'm sure Mr. Padilla's lawyers knew, that if you just clam up, they can't do anything with this.

"QUESTION: So does that suggest that possibly he was picked up too soon, because you didn't have enough on him to pick him up on charges where you could actually bring criminal charges?

"COMEY: I don't think he was picked up too soon. I think it would have been derelict to allow him to come into the country and to hope to follow him. We have a wonderful FBI and they follow people every day, and well. But only on TV do they do it 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without losing someone."
***
"QUESTION: Last week, the attorney general received some criticism for the announcement that he made regarding terror concerns. Is there a reason why it's you up there today and not him?

"COMEY: I asked for this assignment. With the support of the attorney general, this has been my mission, in part because I was the United States attorney who had Padilla two years ago and in part because of my frustrations of the questions -- good questions from good people about Padilla -- that I could not answer. And a speak a lot of public fora [sic in transcript] and speak privately to a lot of folks.

"I very much wanted to see if I couldn't push forward, with the attorney general's backing, an effort to get this information out to the public.

"People are right to question when the president of the United States orders the military detention of an American citizen in the United States. And I very much wanted to have some of the answers for folks. And now we do."

italics mine. This is a skillfully-done news conference. It gets the message out that the paramount objective is to save US lives, and that traditional law enforcement tools could not serve that goal adequately. Comey stresses both the good intentions of the administration and confesses the weakness of traditional approaches. If Bush could do a news conference like this, reelection would be a lock. Thankfully, he can't.


ADDENDUM 6/3/04: Many people, including Dahlia Lithwick, have pointed out that the Padilla information has been released in a cynical attempt to both draw attention from and downplay coverage of the abuses at Abu Ghraib and also to manipulate the Supreme Court's decision in Padilla's own case. True, true. I didn't mean by this post to endorse the DOJ's actions or signify belief in the content of the documents detailing the gov't's "case" against Padilla. However, I give props to extrememly effective spin, which this is, and I was also surprised at the relatively even-handed tone of Comey's remarks, in which he did not vilify those who disagree with or question the administration. This last part is a departure from the norm.
- posted by thegusdad @ 6/01/2004 12:34:00 PM