Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live Saturday

Barry Pollack Discusses Military Tribunals

Aired November 17, 2001 - 17:14   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: On Capitol Hill, opposition has cropped up to President Bush's order allowing military tribunals for suspected terrorists instead of jury trials.

At a briefing yesterday, several lawmakers criticized the order, saying that tribunals threaten the civil liberties the nation has been fighting for.

There were also several calls for congressional hearings. Barry Pollack, a partner from the law firm of Nixon Peabody, with us live in Washington. Sir, good afternoon to you. Nice to see you.

BARRY POLLACK, PARTNER, NIXON PEABODY: Good afternoon.

HEMMER: So I understand it's quicker and confidential material stays just that, confidential and private. Why is that a bad thing given the certain climate in this country?

POLLACK: It's not a bad thing to keep classified information confidential. What we have here is a system that is set up to take place entirely in secret, and I think if the world is to have confidence in these proceedings, and if we're to have confidence that we are not convicting and possibly executing innocent people, we need to every extent possible have an open proceeding.

HEMMER: Knowing the legal system, sometimes you can get extremely lethargic and verbose and a few other words I know a lot of people would like to use in this case. Knowing that also, isn't that a way to circumvent that though?

POLLACK: It's certainly going to be a quicker process, but I don't think that means it's going to be a better process. If you look at when we employ the regular process in our country and all of the protections that you have for a defendant, we've gotten it wrong a number of times.

Here you have a system where you could have less than a unanimous verdict and find somebody guilty. You could have less than a unanimous verdict and execute somebody and you have almost no right to appeal.

That is a system that to me has a very large potential to convict and possibly execute innocent people.

HEMMER: Let's go back 50 or 60 years, the last time this was used, second World War, correct to the end of there?

POLLACK: That's correct.

HEMMER: What was bad about it? What was wrong about it? What did not work legally?

POLLACK: Well, what you had there was a very different system than what has been proposed by President Bush.

In that case, you had a situation where the United States had declared war, which meant the Congress had declared war as the Constitution gives them the power to do, not the President. And as part of the declaration of war, Congress specifically authorized the President to set up a military tribunal for war crimes, for war criminals.

The President invoked that power only once in one particular case. There was certainly a speedy resolution of that case. Whether or not it was a just resolution, we'll probably never know because nobody will ever know what the evidence really was in that case.

HEMMER: But again, was it bad? Did anything go wrong?

POLLACK: I think the answer has to be, we don't know because we never saw the evidence that was used in the case.

HEMMER: You trust the legal system right?

POLLACK: I do trust the legal system and I'm somewhat disappointed in what I think is a remarkable lack of faith in our legal system that this order seems to suggest.

HEMMER: Barry Pollack, we will see as things unwind and unfold, an interesting issue here. We'll see where it goes. Thank you for talking.

POLLACK: Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com