Guess who supports military tribunals
Aaron Kline
Jan. 20, 2010
 Cass Sunstein |
The Obama administration plans to prosecute 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other accused terrorists in civilian court in New York City while the president has signed a memorandum formally closing the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.
Sunstein is known for his far-left views on such issues as the economy, the environment, abortion and the U.S. Constitution.
However, the Obama czar actually is a defender of special tribunals and of several measures the Bush administration took to fight terrorism. Although, in his capacity as administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, he is not tasked with overseeing U.S. policy regarding military tribunals.
In early 2002, while commentators debated the legality of Bush's decision to establish military tribunals for the perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Sunstein affirmed the president "stood on firm legal grounds."
"Under existing law, President George W. Bush has the legal authority to use military commissions to try certain suspected terrorists for violations of the law of war," wrote Sunstein in a 2002 letter to the American Prospect.
Sunstein even minimized concerns from human rights groups that military prosecutors may submit evidence the defendant might not see.
"I wouldn't get all religious myself about that," Sunstein told Chicago Magazine in 2002.
Sunstein told the magazine the important constitutional issue is whether the defendant receives overall a "full and fair" trial, with a vigorous defense and an independent tribunal. With that standard, secret evidence alone probably is not enough to secure a conviction, he maintained.
"The prosecution, if they're going to be doing their job, had better come up with more," said Sunstein.
Also, in a 2002 Harvard paper obtained and reviewed by WND, Sunstein explained the need for tribunals comes amid a rapidly evolving enemy as well as a "legal culture [that] is fundamentally different from what it was before."
Wrote Sunstein: "The ameliorative trend in civil liberties is a testament to our extraordinary constitutional traditions and legal culture--and perhaps above all to the post-World War II shift in legal understandings. It is customary, and sensible, to fear that an overestimation of the current threat will lead us to abridge civil liberties in unjustifiable ways. But it is not senseless to fear as well that the gravitational pull of this trend might, in this or other circumstances, lead some to underestimate the threat we actually face."
With research by Brenda J. Elliott.