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... if only because those on the inside see everyone on the outside as suspect. This administration has created a kind of paranoia in law enforcement and wants, of course, paranoia-inspired legislation to legitimize the aberrant attitudes.
One of the things of which legislators should be very mindful is that the FBI, and Justice in general, have pursued cases in which their imagination ran rampant and prosecuted cases where no terrorism-related crime existed. To date, they've not convicted a single person for a planned or executed act of terrorism in the three and a half years since 9/11 and had that conviction stick on appeal.
Those remaining shaky cases have depended upon confessions from suspects who, like those in the Lackawanna case, pleaded guilty to lesser charges after being threatened with being taken out of the criminal justice system, declared enemy combatants and effectively disappeared.
Most of new anti-terrorism law now in effect depends heavily on the truthfulness and veracity of law enforcement itself, which cannot be established in a paranoia-driven environment.
At the same time, Justice and FBI are doing everything possible to hide their own shortcomings--witness the use of state secrets privilege in cases such as that of Sibel Edmonds, along with the quiet and arbitrary disposal of the charges of other whistleblowers.
If Congress doesn't shut this down, it's going to get progressively worse, to the detriment of us all.
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