The Padilla Videotape & The President’s Dog
I have blogged frequently about the mess that the Bush administration has made of prosecuting alleged terrorists, a mere handful of whom have come to trial while the rest rot . . . well, you know all about that.
But in a new low in the prosecution of the War on Terror, an important videotape of the final interrogation of Jose Padilla has gone missing.
I think that there is a good chance that Barney, President Bush’s dog, may have eaten this key piece of evidence, but all the Pentagon is saying is that it can’t find it and adds, with some finality, that it won’t be able to. (No reason to be suspicious, mind you.)
You may recall that Padilla was denounced as a dangerous terrorist when he was arrested, but as Slate legal affairs correspondent Dahlia Lithwick has aptly put it, turned out to just be the wrong Muslim at the wrong airport on the wrong day.
The Justice Department has reduced the charges against Padilla one by one and shuntled him from jurisdiction to jurisdiction each time it became obvious that their “case” would get blown out of court. But Padilla remains incarcerated and may have gone crazy.
More here.
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7 Responses to “The Padilla Videotape & The President’s Dog”
It should go without mentioning that this is just the guy they bothered to tell us about (when Ashcroft thought it was politically expedient.)
This is too awful to comment on.
I guess this is the plane to South America. Damn, why doesn’t Dubya listen to Barney? The dog had the right idea: Better stay home.
Domajot said: “This is too awful to comment on.”
What is too awful? Padilla? or the missing tape?
The Padilla story is pretty weird, I must say. Unsettling to say the least. It seems to largely have dropped off everyone’s radar, except for buried stories or when folks like Shaun remind us. Funny how people can effectively disappear like that – and lose their minds in custody by many accounts – in the United States.
The tape being missing, however, is no biggie. For example, it was just two weeks ago I was reading about NASA’s hunt for its high resolution tapes of Neil Armstrong’s first landing on the moon.
The blurry tapes that we have all seen were broadcast low-gain. Apparently, however, there was high resolution video of that same historic first step that was also sent on a delay. It was seen internally at NASA at the time and then forgotten…but someone remembered the tape a year or so ago and NASA started hunting…but it has totally vanished.
When the government can lose a tape of one of the most historic events in human history, it is no surprise that tapes of Padilla can get lost in the shuffle.
What America has become, that’s what’s so awful. Brutal and bumbling are not adjectives for us I would have used a few years ago.
Marlowecan, not quite the same thing. For starters, it’s many decades later and making security copies is fast, inexpensive and routine, and I’m guessing even obligatory in the case of legal evidence. Second, this isn’t some high-profile nice event, this is the government that just happens to “lose” (so much that they’re SURE they will never find it) something that could very well incriminate itself. If OJ Simpson had access to security tapes the night Nicole was murdered and just happened to “lose” them and then said that he was sure he’d never find it again, what would YOU think? Yeah, me too.
It’s this sort of news that makes defending the US such an uphill battle for anyone living in the EU. Yesterday’s headline “Secret trials without right to an attorney begin in Guantanamo bay”. Hearts and minds indeed.
Look in the book room of the personal residence at the White House. Missing documents magically appear there.
If that doesn’t work, check Sandy Berger’s pants.