Thom Hartmann Welcome back, Thom Hartmann here with you. The Constitution of the United States refers to the, to Habeas Corpus. This very, very simple and straightforward process that if you are arrested, you have the right to, well there’s a whole series of these rights that are articulated in the Bill of Rights, the 5th amendment, you have the right to not speak in your own defense, or to not speak against yourself if necessary and to compel testimony. You have, under the 6th amendment, you have the right to a fair trial, to be tried before a jury of your peers. Under the 7th amendment you have the right to a trial by a jury. And under the 8th amendment, no excessive bail can be, and no cruel or unusual punishments. Basically all that in aggregate means that you can’t be snatched off the streets and shipped off to some foreign country or to a jail here or someplace else, without some due process.
This was what the nobles were fighting against King John in 1215 when they forced him to sign the Magna Carta in the plain in Runnymede. And articles, as I recall, 37 and 38, or maybe its 38 and 39, basically lay out these rights. And then you had the British Revolution and, or a series of them actually, five knights were being busted in a tax case by the King and that led to one of the first British Revolutions in the 1600’s, and all the way up to today.
Now carrying this forward, Barack Obama, before he was elected, based on this 800 year history of western culture said, “To build a better, freer world, we first must behave in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people.” He wrote this in Foreign Affairs Magazine. He said, “This means ending the practice of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far off countries. Of detaining thousands without charge or trial, of maintaining a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law.” Brilliant. Exactly what you would expect from a constitutional scholar. Somebody who understands these principles. Well said.
Scott Horton is with us. Scott is an attorney, contributing editor to Harper’s Magazine. He writes the ‘No Comment’ column at Harpers' web site Harpers.org. Scott, welcome to the show.
Scott Horton Hey Thom, great to be with you.
Thom Hartmann Thank you. Where do we stand right now with extraordinary rendition under the Obama Administration?
Scott Horton Well, it may be that we’ve gotten rid of the word extraordinary and we just have renditions, but one thing is for sure, and that is that the practice of renditions has not stopped. In fact, I have a piece just out the day before yesterday at Huffington Post, in which I document in some detail the first renditions case that’s occurred on Barack Obama’s watch. It occurred between the 7th and 9th of April of this year when a Lebanese construction engineer was seized on the ground in Kabul, Afghanistan by eight FBI agents, he was stripped naked, given a body cavity search, shackled, hooded, had earphones put on. He was subjected to hypothermia treatment, sleep deprivation and then put on a Gulfstream jet, sent off, he didn’t know where, he thought he was going to Guantanamo to be disappeared. But it turned out he was going to Virginia where when he landed he was charged with contract fraud.
Thom Hartmann Contract fraud? We’re talking about Raymond Azar, right?
Scott Horton That’s exactly right, his name is Raymond Azar.
Thom Hartmann This wasn’t even a case of terrorism, this was economic fraud?
Scott Horton A minor case in fact. No allegations of terrorism, no terrorism issues surrounding him, he wasn’t even a drug kingpin. In the past, renditions have been reserved for terrorists and drug kingpins. It was a petty contract fraud case in which the total amount of corrupt payments was about $100,000.
Thom Hartmann You know, I want to make a joke about why don’t they uh, why don’t they, if they’re going to employ these practices, I can give them a list of companies they could go after the CEOs, right?
Scott Horton That’s, actually, that’s a very good question. I mean, a lot of people who heard this, said like they looked at the resources deployed. I mean we have a dozen FBI agents sent around the world, a Gulfstream jet, prosecutors, so on, a massive sting operation, and a petty case. The total amount of contracts is 13 million, the total amount of payments is 100,000 dollars and yet we look at these massive cases involving Halliburton and KBR and others, where the Department of Justice just doesn’t seem to have the resources to do investigations or do anything with them.
Thom Hartmann Right.
Scott Horton And this case was a sting operation in which we’re dealing with a Lebanese construction company operating in Lebanon and the U.S. sets up a sting to see if they will pay a government contract officer a bribe to get a contract. Well, Thom, you know, this is the way business is done in the entire Middle East.
Thom Hartmann Yeah, it’s called baksheesh.
Scott Horton Of course they’re going to do it! In fact, you could have done this with any construction company, anywhere in the Middle East and they would have done this.
Thom Hartmann I know, I have been solicited for bribes in the Middle East and on two other continents as well. Um, and you’re right. It is basically just the way business is done in large parts of the world. And they don’t think of it the way we do, because they think of it the same way that we think of leaving a tip in a restaurant. That’s how people who make very little money in government jobs for example, in many of these countries, you know, they, I remember, I was trying to get into Uganda in 1980, we were going in to do, to set up a relief program in that country during the war with Idi Amin, when Amin was being thrown out. And I flew into Nairobi and every day, you know, I was staying at this New Stanley Hotel, go down to the Ugandan Embassy and uh to submit my visa application. And every day this guy would go through this whole long thing for about an hour and then he’d say, “Ah I’m sorry, we can’t do it today, come back tomorrow."
And after three days of this, I was complaining about this to this like 60 or 70 year old British guy who lived in the New Stanley hotel where I was staying, and we would sit in the afternoon in this outdoor café and just talk. And he said, he’s waiting for you to give him some money. You know, he’s just waiting. So the next day I went back, and I, you know, I guess on the air I’m confessing to bribery here, but you know, I slipped the guy a couple of bills and boom. All of a sudden out comes the stamp and there’s my visa. And these guys, he didn’t think that he was committing a crime. He thought that he was basically taking a tip, just like now in a restaurant in the United States, you leave a tip. Anyway, I’m not trying to defend this, what I’m pointing out is that this is crazy.
Scott Horton Well the allocation of resources, in fact, even people I talked with at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul who had some advance knowledge of the whole thing all said they thought that the massive allocation of resources for this case just didn’t make any sense, they couldn’t understand what was going on.
Thom Hartmann So is this, Scott Horton, with Harper’s and with Huffington Post, is this an aberration? Or are we starting down a new and terrible road here?
Scott Horton Well that’s one thing. I think the judge handling the case asked some questions that sort of suggested that he was thinking you know, is there adult supervision at the Department of Justice right now. But I think it is showing us a new kind of rendition, which is what we call Rendition to Justice. That is, we’re not going to stick people in the black side anymore where they’re going to be tortured, or turn them over to the Egyptians or some other cooperating group of ??? state security thugs who will torture them. Instead, we’re going to bring them back to the United States and charge them with crimes. And I think most people view that, look that’s a positive. We want people brought into the justice system.
The negative here is that this process is still, has hanging over it, allegations of torture which are credible. And Mr. Azar describes all these things that were done to him, and says he was tortured, and the Department of Justice, in their response, rather amazingly, doesn’t dispute almost anything he says. They said, “Well that’s all true but calling that torture is hyperbole,” they say, "it’s not torture, it’s our standard operating procedure."
Thom Hartmann Well about half of it actually is in most American prisons. You know, the strip search, the body cavity search, all that kind of stuff.
Scott Horton After you’ve been convicted and sent to prison, yes. But here, of course, we’re dealing with someone, and they said these procedures are necessary for purposes of safe transportation. But of course there are other things they could do other than the body cavity search.
Thom Hartmann Well one of the things they could have done if he’s a Lebanese, and he’s in Lebanon, and he’s committing a crime in Lebanon, is they could have had the Lebanese Government go after them.
Scott Horton Or, instead of inviting him to go to Afghanistan, they could have invited him to go Washington DC and arrested him there. That’s a lot of people have looked at it and said this is one of the aspects of this case that just doesn’t make sense. They dragged this guy all the way around the world to Afghanistan, and then they do these things, which are common procedures in Afghanistan, dealing with terrorism in particular. But if the guy had come to Alexandria, Virginia, which was the center of the sting where he was doing the contracts, and had the meeting there, there’s no way they would have done any of these things to him. That makes you wonder why they set it up the way they did. But I think the big question the judge is going to deal with here is the confession. Because they extracted a confession from him, using all this. He says he was told he was never going to see his family again, he thought he was going to be disappeared. And that’s the big question for the judge. Is he going to allow this confession to stand? My bet is probably not.
Thom Hartmann Well I think it’s marvelous, Scott, that you are exposing this stuff, because that’s how an end gets put to it. And good on you for doing it. It’s Scott Horton’s new piece over at the Huffington Post, "Target Of Obama-Era Rendition Alleges Torture", and of course all his work over at Harpers.org and Harper’s Magazine. Scott, keep up the good work.
Scott Horton Thanks.
Thom Hartmann Thanks for dropping by.
Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.
