There is no way for cases like this not to be highly politicized from the beginning, and the FBI should have known that.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - A federal court threw out the case Monday against an American lawyer arrested in connection with the Madrid train bombings, lifting a a cloud of suspicion that has surrounded the attorney since his arrest earlier this month.Robert Jordan, the FBI agent in charge of Oregon, said the agency "regretted" any hardship caused by the arrest, and said the agency would be reviewing its practices on fingerprint analyses.
ADDENDUM: If this case had really been a witch hunt, of course, Mayfield would never have been released. But greater care is needed, as I called for in this article about the case: "No Margin for Error in Terror War." It appeared in Human Events on May 13:
An American lawyer named Brandon Mayfield was arrested last Thursday. Reports indicated that his fingerprints were found on one of the bags holding the explosives that blew up in Madrid on March 11. Adding to the suspicion was that he was a convert to Islam — and therefore possibly, like John Walker Lindh, a convert to jihad ideology. Among Mayfield’s clients had been another Muslim convert, Jeffrey Battle, who was convicted some time ago of participating in a conspiracy to aid Al-Qaeda. (Mayfield didn’t represent him on that case, but on an earlier one involving child custody.)But a significant question arose almost immediately. Not long after the FBI took Mayfield into custody, Spanish officials expressed grave reservations about the incriminating fingerprint (it turned out to be just one). It was, they contended, not similar enough to fingerprints known to be Mayfield’s.
Now, I’m not saying that Mayfield is innocent. Nor am I saying he’s guilty. What I am saying is the FBI better have more than a single fingerprint on which to base their case, and that they need to make their case as convincing in the court of public opinion as in a court of law. They need to assure Americans that they do have other evidence — even if they’re not able to say what it is at this point. This is because there is no way for cases like this not to be highly politicized from the beginning. The doubts about the fingerprint just feed suspicions such as those expressed by Mayfield’s brother: “I think the reason they are holding him is because he is of the Muslim faith and because he is not super happy with the Bush administration.”
The idea that the FBI is now rounding up random Muslims and critics of the Bush Administration is a cherished fantasy of the loony Left, but cases like this only feed the paranoia. If the fingerprint turns out definitively to be not Mayfield’s, his case will form a nice companion, in the hysterical annals of Bushitler’s reign of terror, to that of Muslim Army Chaplain James Yee. Yee was arrested last September and suspected of mishandling classified documents at Guantanamo; officials intimated that a treason charge could be in the offing. But then it all got curiouser and curiouser: prosecutors asked for more time so that they could determine whether the documents Yee had were really classified at all. The charges were reduced, revised, and finally dropped altogether.
American Muslim advocacy groups and their allies have tried to make Yee’s case into a cause celebre, clamoring for an official apology and comparing Yee to Alfred Dreyfus, the Army Captain who was convicted of treason on charges trumped-up by anti-Semites in France a hundred years ago. Just last Saturday the Chicago Tribune huffed: “No apologies by the military would fully restore Yee’s reputation or compensate his family for the suffering they endured. Yet a formal apology would be a good place to start. The military ought to consider, too, how this witch hunt has damaged its image, its plans to recruit Muslims and Arabs into its intelligence services — an urgent task — and its reputation among Muslims at home and abroad.”
Maybe Yee hasn’t received an apology because of the unanswered questions that linger about his case. When the charges were dropped, Major General Geoffrey D. Miller, commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo spoke cryptically of “national security concerns that would arise from the release of the evidence” if the government continued to prosecute Yee.
What on earth did Miller mean? That the documents Yee was carrying were so sensitive that a trial would bring to light information that must not come out? If that was so, then why was he sent back to work? But if he didn’t have classified documents, why not dispel all remaining suspicions and allow this innocent man to get on with his life without any clouds hanging over him?The stakes are too high in the war on terror to allow for the kind of bungling that marked, or seemed to mark, the Yee case, and which now threatens to turn another high-profile terror prosecution into a fiasco. The problem is not that all this makes Bush look bad. It is that there are plenty of real terrorists still at large. Whether Justice is trumping up charges against innocent people or mishandling the prosecution of real jihadists is equally damaging. Abu Ghraib is just one example: there is today simply no margin for error.
i think three things
should come out of this event:
1) an apology to mr mayfield and his family.
brief to the point. sincere.
2) a review of finger-printing analysis procedures
3) a televised national panel of US muslims
(no imported *designated-hitters*...mr hooper can come on and bloviate in person)representing the current "major" US muslim associations
being questioned (strenuously and vigorously)about:
a) the historical role of terror in islam
(questions to be based on Quran quotations,
and the life of the prophet...not on modern re-writes of history...from the *roots*)
b) the meaning of "taqiyya" in modern US islamic communities...and how that relates to
"honesty" in everyday affairs...INCULDING
muslim desires for increase political powers in US Institutions.
c)the Quran the verses "take no Christians or Jews for friends"...and how this relates to tolerance,peace and multi-culturalism...
and if this view currently held and practiced...why should muslims be welcomed into the US?
d)how can muslims be members of law enforcement,
intelligence agencies and the military,
when their religion dis-allows them from "acting against fellow muslims"...EVEN IF THEY'RE PARTICIPATING in illegal or seditious activities!
e)what does the phrase "American Muslim Patriotism" mean?
is it a non-starter?...if not,why not?
f)an honest accounting of which replies and answers to the panel's questions
in the previous 45 min of the show....had been tainted by notions of *taqiyya*...either thru *distrust* on the part of the interviewers
or *evasion/dissimulation* on the part of the responders.
Dialogue ...NOT Rhetoric
(funded and pumped out by Wahabbi petro-dollars,
revised public school history books with native americans named "Abdul",Wash DC PR firms, and battteries of lawyers)
is what the muslim community needs
with the US population at large.
i'm still not certain that's what they want.
-doc
Once Again who did he give up? Saw on Cspan today the Arabs trying to spin the body lang. showed this is not working anymore there is nothing like a beheading to show the evil that [these people have not said any thing about] that people can understand. President did a great job tonight with the American people and that is what counts.
We can not hear you the slience is defining"Colan Powell"
we have no simthy for killers of thir own Chldren much less our Children!!!
Part of the American Tribe
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and all who Fight with her give them Strenght and Courage to stay the course to Victory Amen
Olara
from the AP news post...it would seem
items one and two have been and are being addressed by the FBI.
item three should be revised
to make the panel dialogue
something that occurs over a period of
5 to 7 one hour programs.
Bill Moyers is NOT a candidate for moderator.
-doc
Doc
You forgot the one in the que-ran that says kill the jews first because the Christians are stupid Oh My!!!
Part of the American Tribe
God bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and all who fight wiht her give them Strength and Courage to stay the Course to Victory Amen
I think this skunk is clean ....... on this one.
Catherine:
Graffitti reported as commonly daubed on walls in the disputed territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip ("Palestine"):
"First the 'Saturday people' [Jews], then the 'Sunday people' [Christians]"....
I love you piggy.
doc:
Great idea! Now make it happen ... :-)
Actually, I'm partways serious ... at some point as a group we have to figure out how (besides writing our Congressional representatives) to start networking and make some inroads with the "big boys" (loathesome as some elements of the media might be, if we can make use of them, that lessens their negative impact as a whole) to get some of these issues before the American public instead of just ranting here. I do believe that we (as a group, although I hardly dare to speak for others here) are in the embryonic stages of developing a productive alliance that could be beneficial in the fight against Islam. Maybe it's just wishful-thinking.
I hope this isn't another "Richard Jewell" incident, where an innocent guy gets blamed by the feds for absolutely nothing.
For those of you who don't remember, Richard Jewell was a security guard at the Atlanta Oympics that saved a lot of lives by evacuating the area around the bomb before it went off. To the best of my knowledge, becuase of Mr. Jewell's efforts the was only one fatality, and that was a fat cameraman having a heart attack while covering the story, if my memory serves me correctly.
The FBI wrongly accused him as a suspect, made him a pariah and ruined his life and his career. All for the sin of being a hero.
I doubt Mayfield will come out as clean as Jewell, but hate to see anyone wrongly convicted in the court of public opinion before all the evidence is aired.
Bob Owens:
I doubt Mayfield will come out as clean as Jewell, but hate to see anyone wrongly convicted in the court of public opinion before all the evidence is aired.
He's a lawyer, AND a Muslim.
How clean could he be?
See? He's innocent! All those anti-Muslim bigots who ignored the Western standard of "innocent until proven guilty" and rushed to post their condemnations owe some apologies to the Mayfield family.
Yeah well Bin Laden owes the American people an apology but you don't see that happening either do you? Get real!
Karl,
"Not proven guilty" is a long walk from "innocent." Don't assume they are the same thing.