Terror cases should not even be in the courts. Bruce
In Zeal to Foil Terror Plots, Cases May Be Missing Something Important, Lawyers Say By ERIC <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/eric_lipton/in dex.html?inline=nyt-per> LIPTON http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/us/09plot.html?pagewanted=print WASHINGTON, July 8 - In Miami last month and now in New York, terror cases have unfolded in which suspects have been apprehended before they lined up the intended weapons and the necessary financing or figured out other central details necessary to carry out their plots. For officials in Washington, it is a demonstration of the much-needed emphasis in this post-Sept. 11 era for pre-emptive arrests. "We don't wait until someone has lit the fuse to step in," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Friday at a news conference about the New York plot. But the Miami and New York cases are inspiring a new round of skepticism from some lawyers who are openly questioning whether the government, in its zeal to stop terrorism, is forgetting an element central to any case: the actual intent to commit a crime. "Talk without any kind of an action means nothing," said Martin R. Stolar, a New York defense lawyer. "You start to criminalize people who are not really criminals." In the two most recent plots, the authorities have simultaneously warned that the suspects were contemplating horrific attacks - blowing up the Sears Tower in Chicago and setting off a bomb in a tunnel between New York and New Jersey - but then added that as far as they knew, no one was close to actually making such a strike. In the Miami case, an F.B.I. <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/federal _bureau_of_investigation/index.html?inline=nyt-org> official said at a recent hearing that the suspects apparently did not have written information on how to make explosives, details on the layout of the Sears Tower or any known link to a terrorist group. In New York, officials said Friday that none of the eight suspects believed to be planning the tunnel attack were in the United States, and that they apparently did not have bomb materials and had not completed reconnaissance work on their supposed target. The arrest on April 27 in Beirut of Assem Hammoud, 31, a Lebanese man who is accused of being the mastermind of the tunnel plot, came after the authorities monitored Internet chat rooms used by Islamic extremists who had used coded language to discuss a possible attack. One American official said the members of the group had never met one another. In announcing the case, federal officials, including Mr. Chertoff, said the government could not waste time trying to determine whether the suspects were smart enough or serious enough to turn their threats into destructive action. "It is a mistake to assume that the only terrorist that's a serious terrorist is the kind of guy you see on television, that's a kind of James Bond type," Mr. Chertoff said Friday. "The fact of the matter is, mixing a bomb in a bathtub does not take rocket science." Representative Peter T. King, a New York Republican and the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said the cases also demonstrated that the authorities cannot always delay charges until they have built airtight criminal cases. "It was essential that the F.B.I. get rid of its pre-9/11 mentality of not making an arrest until they have enough evidence to convict," Mr. King said Friday in an interview. "You can't be locking everyone up. But so long as there are reasonable grounds to make the arrest, they should do that." Mark J. Mershon, an F.B.I. assistant director, said the apprehensions related to the New York case - so far no one has been arrested in the United States - began after the authorities were convinced that the talk was close to turning into action. "Plotting for this attack had matured to a point where it appeared that the individuals were about to move forward," Mr. Mershon said Friday in New York. "They were about to go to a phase where they would attempt to surveil targets, establish a regimen of attack and acquire the resources necessary to effectuate the attacks." Carl W. Tobias, a law professor at University of Richmond in Virginia who tracks terrorism cases, said the modest evidence disclosed so far in some recent cases related to the ability of the suspects to deliver on their threats has caused him to wonder if politics might be a factor. "There is some kind of public relations gained by making Americans on the one hand feel concerned that the Sears Tower in Chicago or some tunnel in Manhattan is targeted yet on the other hand feel comforted that the government is on top of it," he said. The questions posed about some of the terror-related arrests echo doubts raised when Tom <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/tom_ridge/inde x.html?inline=nyt-per> Ridge was secretary of Homeland Security and the Bush administration half a dozen times raised the color-coded alert warning to orange, signaling a high risk of a terrorist attack, leading skeptics to suggest the up-and-down warning levels may have been driven in part by politics. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a Justice Department tally, 261 defendants have been convicted or have pleaded guilty in terrorism or terrorism-related cases. But many of those cases have only remote connections to actual terrorism plots, such as the case involving six men from Lackawanna, N.Y., who pleaded guilty to attending a terrorist training camp, but never actually taking part in a terror plot. But Pasquale J. D'Amuro, former assistant director in charge of the F.B.I. office in New York, said law enforcement officials had no choice but to act pre-emptively, even if planning has not yet turn into an active plot. "When they go operational, they run silent," Mr. D'Amuro said. "It becomes very difficult to follow them and try to trail them." Mr. Chertoff acknowledged the debate on Friday, saying he had heard criticism by some that "the people you are arresting are not really serious or they don't really have the capacity of actually carrying something out." But he said the lesson not only of Sept. 11, but of terrorist attacks since then, including bombings last year in London, is that the government had no other choice. That means, he said, acting sooner rather than later, even if it might result in skeptics suggesting the plots were more imaginary than real. "We are dangerously putting people at risk if somehow we believe that only criminal masterminds or terrorist masterminds are a threat," he said. FAIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with "Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The Copyright Act of 1976. "Fair Use" legally eliminates the need to obtain permission or pay royalties for the use of previously copyrighted materials if the purposes of display include "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research." 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