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CNN Live At Daybreak
Military Tribunal Debate Centers on Civil Liberties, Constitution, and Precedent
Aired November 29, 2001 - 05:32 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.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's look at some of the latest numbers that show what Americans think about America's new war, starting with a CNN "USA Today" Gallup Poll. It's a new poll, and it's finding that 9 out of 10 Americans support the current military action in Afghanistan.
About two-thirds of those polled say the U.S. should mount a long-term war to defeat terrorist networks around the world. Looking at the home front, only 1 in 10 say the Bush administration has gone too far in restricting civil liberties to fight terrorism. Six out of 10 say the administration's record on this is just about right, and 1 in 4 say the government has not gone far enough.
Also if Osama bin Laden is captured alive, two-thirds of those polled would prefer to have him put on trial. Most of those prefer an international court rather than a secret U.S. military tribunal or a civilian court. Not a single respondent in the poll believes that Osama bin Laden is an innocent man.
Another poll out there says that nearly 60 percent of Americans support secret military tribunals to try suspected non-citizen terrorists. That issue has critics on both sides of the aisle in the Senate among other legal experts as well.
Our Aaron Brown looks at that.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ARI FLEISCHER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Well the president and his authority as commander in chief has wide powers to act as he thinks is appropriate for the nation.
AARON BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The question may be less about the power to act, than whether that power is being widely used. One side points to history and necessity.
DEAN DOUGLAS KMIEC, CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. SCHOOL OF LAW: And they were extensively used in the Civil War. There's evidence that they were used within our founding period in the Revolutionary War. They're part of military strategy.
BROWN: A strategy used in 1780 against a British spy named John Andre, used again after the assassination of President Lincoln, and exactly the right remedy today, uncommon trials for uncommon criminals.
KMIEC: These are not ordinary criminal defendants in the sense that even someone who commits as grievous crime as an isolated murder or rape or kidnapping does not have as their fundamental purpose, bringing down an entire society. As a result, these people are what common lawyers -- common law lawyers, the famous one being Sir Edward Crook, called "the enemies of mankind." They make themselves, by their actions, outlaws of all civilized people.
BROWN: President Bush issued his executive order authorizing the tribunals only two weeks ago, but the legal research behind it has been quietly in the works for some time. These two attorneys from Denver began promoting the use of tribunals five years ago.
SPENCER CRONA, DENVER ATTORNEY: There will be fair adjudications by professional military jurists. We won't have trials where, when verdicts are read, if they're are guilty verdicts, those who are found guilty will be threatening the lives and families of civilian jurors.
BROWN: And further supporters argue even successful, but public trials, like the one recently completed in New York, where those responsible for the American embassy bombings in Africa were sentenced to life, damaged the country's intelligence community.
KMIEC: We achieved it a very significant cost. Once you disclose the identity of an intelligence informant; once you disclose their methods of gaining intelligence; once you disclose their location, or their previous locations, you place them at risk and you certainly make their utility for future work, in terms of intelligence gathering, virtually impossible.
BROWN: That is one argument. Here is another.
CHARLES LEVENDOSKY, CASPER STAR-TRIBUNE: I think the military tribunal's are a violation of the Constitution and a violation of our basic thrust toward liberty.
BROWN: Levendosky is a conservative editor of a conservative editorial page in Casper, Wyoming. Other conservatives like William Sapphire in "The New York Times" agree, calling the president's tribunal idea -- quote -- "his own dismaying departure from due process". The argument can be reduced to something both simple and important. Who are we as a country?
LEVENDOSKY: Are we trying to find the guilty party or are we just trying to execute people? Because we're not going to find the guilty party when we're using tribunals.
BROWN: And then there is a third argument, that the tribunals, however troublesome, may be the best short-term solution to a complicated international problem of terrorism.
PROFESSOR PAUL WILLIAMS, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW: It is only a stop-gap mechanism, because we can articulate what we believe is a justifiable standard of due process. But at the end of the day, if we want to win this terror war, we have to create some type of international tribunal and apply international standards -- not American Constitutional standards, but international standards.
BROWN: Aaron Brown, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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