11-14-06, 1:27 pm

Detroit (11-13-06) – 'Since 9/11 we have betrayed our values; we've betrayed our Constitution,' Michael J. Steinberg, legal director of the ACLU of Michigan, told a gathering at the University of Detroit-Mercy Monday. Speaking on the subject of 'Civil Liberties in the Post-9/11 Era,' Steinberg criticized the Bush administration's policy of scaling back Constitutional protections since the terrorist attacks five years ago.

Describing the government's response to 9/11 as 'knee-jerk,' Steinberg stated that 'we started saying that either you have civil liberties or you have security, and there's nothing in between.'

That faulty mindset allowed the Bush administration to adopt policies like racial profiling, enhanced government secrecy, domestic surveillance, and disregard for international human rights conventions that have undermined the US reputation as 'a beacon of freedom.' Now much of the world regards the US as an international terrorist, Steinberg stated.

Steinberg recalled that, by contrast, after 9/11 most of the world expressed sympathy with the US and even looked to it as moral leader in the struggle against terrorism and for democracy. The French newspaper Le Monde, reflected much of that opinion when it carried the headline 'We are All Americans' a day after the 9/11 attacks.

According to Steinberg, that positive global sentiment presented the US with a unique and powerful opportunity. But since then, because of the turn against freedoms and human rights, the US has 'flushed that opportunity down the toilet,' he added.

The values we say we stand for simply aren't reflected in our actions, Steinberg argued.

He pointed to the issue of racial profiling as an example. After the terrorist attacks, federal law enforcement agencies immediately launched a number of programs that racially and culturally profiled people of Arab or Muslim backgrounds as potential terror suspects.

Steinberg mentioned the hundreds of thousands of Arab and Muslim people who were approached by the FBI following 9/11 for 'voluntary interviews.' This sweep of Arab and Muslim people was less a measure to gain intelligence about terrorist activity than a means for the FBI to let Arab and Muslim people know that they were being scrutinized because of their ethnic or religious backgrounds.

Racial profiling, Steinberg said, has become 'a stain on the reputation of the country.'

Steinberg's clients often compared the actions and attitudes of US federal law enforcement officials with that of many of their countries of origin in which repressive state measures are commonplace.

Racial profiling, Steinberg added, isn't a useful investigative tool. 'It doesn't help you solve crimes. It just alienates the group of people that may be in the best position to help you.'

Steinberg also criticized heightened government secrecy as an attack on Constitutional protections. He alluded to the Bush administration policy implemented by former Attorney General John Ashcroft to refuse to comply with or even respond to Freedom of Information Act requests and to apply arbitrarily an overly broad scope of national security to allow it to operate behind closed doors.

Steinberg cited the case of Ann Arbor, Michigan Muslim cleric Rabih Haddad who was detained for relatively minor immigration issues in late 2001. According to Steinberg, Haddad had been an instrumental figure in the Ann Arbor community, uniting various religious groups and community leaders on issues of tolerance, peace, and civil liberties after the terrorist attacks.

Subsequently, Ashcroft shrouded Haddad’s case in secrecy using the claim of national security. Ashcroft ordered that the press and even attorneys and family not be allowed at Haddad's immigration hearing. No terrorism charges were ever filed, and Haddad was deported to Lebanon.

A federal judge sided with the ACLU in its lawsuit stemming from the case against the Department of Justice on the issue of secrecy. The judge stated that 'democracy dies behind closed doors.'

Steinberg also discussed the implementation of warrantless domestic surveillance programs. The Bush administration, Steinberg stated, has openly violated the Fourth Amendment using the un-Constitutional claim that the executive branch has the right do so when it states that national security is the issue. Legal precedent, however, has firmly established that no security threat warrants dismantling Constitutional protections.

Steinberg mentioned the ACLU's lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA), in which a Detroit federal judge rejected the administration's claim to 'inherent authority' to violate the Fourth Amendment injunction against warrantless invasion of privacy.

Lawyers for the Bush administration are appealing the decision in the NSA lawsuit, and Steinberg expects it to go ultimately to the US Supreme Court.

Steinberg also cited incidents in which federal and state authorities have used expanded powers to spy on organizations in the US with no ties to terrorist groups or activities, including the antiwar Merton Center in Pennsylvania and a Colorado based religious group that happens to oppose the war also.

In 2005 in Michigan, the ACLU discovered that state law enforcement authorities and the FBI have used anti-terrorism powers to spy on a non-violent group known as BAMN that opposed efforts to ban affirmative action here and a Lansing-based peace group called Direct Action.

According to the ACLU, the FBI also admits that it has collected thousands of pages of documents nationwide on peace groups, environmental activists, and civil rights organizations, including United for Peace and Justice, Code Pink, Greenpeace, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Steinberg concluded his talk by severely criticizing the Bush administration’s blatant rejection of international and US law that prohibits and criminalizes torture or prisoner abuse and mistreatment.

'The Bush administration has thumbed its nose, with the complicity of the US Congress, at the concepts of decency embodied in international law,' Steinberg said.

Noting that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has characterized the Geneva Convention as a 'quaint document' and oversaw the authorship of policy papers legitimizing torture and abuse, Steinberg suggested that the administration’s policies on these matters have not aided in the struggle to stop terrorism. 'It has helped to create more terrorists,' he pointed out.

Steinberg added the recently passed Military Commissions Act (MCA) to this list of attacks on civil liberties and human rights. According to him, MCA allows President Bush to define any US citizen as an 'enemy combatant' without having to give probable cause for doing so in a court and can then detain that person indefinitely without having to produce evidence or even real charges against that person. MCA also authorizes President Bush to define torture arbitrarily.

Additionally, non-citizen residents no longer have habeas corpus rights under the law to have charges leveled against them heard or disputed in a court of law.

Steinberg noted that these violations of Constitutional protections were rejected by the US Supreme Court last summer in a case known as Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Subsequently, the Bush administration and congressional Republicans pushed the MCA, and, with the complicity of a number of congressional Democrats, passed it.

Steinberg invited the audience to join a campaign led by the ACLU and other civil liberties organizations to repeal the MCA, targeting the new Democratic-led Congress and demanding it uphold the basic values of the US Constitution. Readers can find out more about the ACLU’s campaign by clicking here.

Steinberg spoke at an event sponsored by both the University of Detroit-Mercy and the Detroit Area Peace and Justice Network.

--Joel Wendland can be reached at