At 02:34 PM 12/4/2001 +0100, Jeroen wrote: > > -----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- > > Van: Reggie Bautista [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > > Verzonden: Monday, December 03, 2001 21:14 > > Aan: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Onderwerp: Re: Secret Military Tribunals > > > Again, the tribunals are NOT SECRET! They allow for a procedure to > > present secret evidence without the general public finding out about > > it, but they do not allow for the entire trial to be held in secret. > >That procedure is exactly the problem. The idea behind a public trial is >that everyone can see the evidence, and can see that the accused is given a >fair trial. If you tell the public "you may see this piece or evidence, but >not that piece of evidence", you might as well keep the entire trial secret, >since the public will not be able to see for themselves that the accused is >given a fair trial.
Good point, but probably irrelevant. At this point in time, many Americans are inclined to believe their government when it says that it has good evidence, but can not make it public because of national security, so the American public probably does not have to be convinced that accused terrorists are receiving a fair trial (many if not most would feel that the accused are receiving something that they would not get in their homelands.) Many Europeans would probably not believe the American government, and would like to see all the evidence made public so that they can be convinced the accused received a fair trial (although what an American calls a fair trial and say what a Frenchman calls a fair trial are two different things.) And finally, our adversaries will not believe anything we say, and will more than likely consider any evidence, secret or otherwise, to be fake. Having said all that, I'm disturbed by what the President promulgated and how he did it (a military order, rather than an executive order.) I'm not terribly impressed by the administration's citing of FDR's military tribunal for German saboteurs during WWII, simply because the only secret that needed to be kept was the fact that the day after the saboteurs landed on Long Island, one of them called the FBI to turn himself in (and inform on the others) and was turned away as a crank call. After he called a second time, the FBI got its act together and arrested the entire group. I'm not wedded to the idea of bringing any captured terrorists before civil courts, military courts-martial would do just fine IMHO. >OK, so the government will have to make secret information public. So what? >That is the price you pay for having a modern western society. OK, releasing >that information may be dangerous for people involved in obtaining that >information (such as intelligence operatives). So what? They knew the risks >when they signed up for the job. While intelligence operatives do undoubtedly understand that they are subject to mortal danger in the course of their duties, I'm quite certain that not one of them signed up to have his/her cover blown by revealing secrets in open court. The government has a responsibility to not throw the lives of its military and civilian operatives away, while at the same time trying to preserve our system of justice. No one said it would be easy. john
