Convicted terrorist Jose Padilla, an American citizen, is back in the news. Unhappy with the 17-year sentence that federal Judge Marcia Cooke originally meted out to Padilla, the Justice Department appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Agreeing that the sentence was too short, the Court of Appeals remanded the case to the District Court with instructions to increase the sentence. A few days ago, Cooke increased Padilla’s sentence to 21 years.
But the length of Padilla’s jail sentence is not what makes his case so important to the American people. What makes the case important is that Pentagon and the CIA now wield the legal authority to do to all Americans what they did to Padilla.
What did they do to Padilla? They tortured him. What type of torture did they use on Padilla? The technical name for what they did to him is called “sensory deprivation.” It’s also known as “touchless torture.” It’s done by isolating the person from all contact with other human beings. It is specifically designed to destroy a person’s mind without laying a finger on him. In that way, the torturers can say, “We didn’t do anything to him–we didn’t beat him, or run electricity through him, or stretch him out on the rack. We just kept him in isolation. No big deal.”
But it is a big deal, and U.S. officials know it. How do they know it? Because they acquired this torture technique from the North Korean communists, who employed it against U.S. soldiers taken captive during the Korean War. Yes, that’s right—U.S. officials used the same form of torture against Padilla that the communists used against American POWs.
And it works. According to Padilla’s family, who attended his resentencing a few days ago, the man’s mind has effectively turned to mush.
That’s not all that they did to him. According to Padilla, they also subjected him to sleep deprivation, shackling, stress positions, and psychotropic drugs.
This was all done by the U.S. military before Padilla was ever convicted or even indicted.
Take a close look at the Constitution. Does it delegate the power to take Americans into military custody and do to them what they did to Padilla? You will search in vain for the delegation of such power. If such power had been included in the Constitution, our American ancestors would never have approved the Constitution. That was the type of totalitarian government they had rebelled against. They certainly didn’t want it reproduced here.
In fact, to make sure that everyone got the message, that’s why our ancestors demanded the enactment of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments, including such procedural guarantees as the right to a speedy trial, right to counsel, right to a grand-jury indictment, right to a jury trial, right to confront witnesses, right to due process, right to be free of cruel and unusual punishments, and others.
What the federal courts have done, however, is carve out a zone of immunity for the national-security establishment. In essence, the federal courts have held that the procedural protections in the Bill of Rights simply do not apply to the military and the CIA. According to the courts, they only apply once the person is placed into the custody of the civilian authorities.
Now, take a close look at the Bill of Rights. Do you see an exception provided to the military and the CIA? No, you don’t. That’s because our ancestors intended that the Bill of Rights would apply to all parts of the federal government, not simply selected agencies and departments. After all, isn’t it obvious that if you exempt the CIA and the Pentagon from constitutional protections, you’ve effectively nullified the constitutional protections?
Consider the speedy trial requirement in the Bill of Rights. The federal courts said that those three years that Padilla was held without charges or trial just didn’t count with respect to that particular procedural protection.
Why have the federal courts carved out this zone of immunity for the military and the CIA? I think the answer is clear: Fully understanding the overwhelming and ever-growing power of the national-security state apparatus, federal judges know better than to push too much or too far. After all, every federal judge knows that a team of federal Marshalls trying to enforce a court order is no match for a brigade of well-armed soldiers or even a team of CIA sharpshooters refusing to comply with such an order. By deferring to the military and the CIA and permitting them to have their zone of immunity, including their power to detain and torture Americans, the federal courts are simply bowing to reality — the reality of how much the national-security apparatus that was been grafted onto our governmental system to wage the Cold War has fundamentally altered the balance of power within the federal government.
One irony in all this, of course, is that Padilla, given the mental damage they inflicted on him, probably has no idea of the important role he has played in bringing about a constitutional upheaval in our country, one in which the Pentagon and the CIA can now do to all Americans what they did to him.
Meanwhile, lots of Americans continue praising and thanking the troops for defending our “freedom.”
