Demetrius Crocker and the War on Terror: Bait and Switch at Salon
One of These Things Is Not Like The Other
By Dan McLaughlin Posted in National Security — Comments (16) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Salon's Alex Koppelman has a silly article contrasting the Jose Padilla case with that of Demetrius Crocker, a right-wing Timothy McVeigh-style nutjob who was criminally prosecuted for plotting to bomb a courthouse in Tennessee and to use lethal gas against the local black population. (Via Bashman). What is silly about the article is Koppelman's thesis that the successful prosecution of Crocker through the traditional criminal justice system shows that no alternative procedures are needed to deal with Al Qaeda and other foreign-based jihadist groups.
The differences between the Crocker case and cases involving international terror organizations are so obvious that it is astounding that Koppelman never even tries to explain why they don't matter:
Read On...
According to court documents, the investigation of Demetrius Crocker began in early 2004, around the time he told a man named Lynn Adams that Timothy McVeigh "[did] things right." Adams, who had met the Mississippi-born farmhand through a mutual acquaintance, began to hear from Crocker about his plans for mass murder. A resident of rural Carroll County, Tenn., an hour northeast of Memphis, Crocker told Adams he wanted to kill the black population of nearby Jackson, Tenn., with mustard gas and explode a bomb outside a courthouse.
By then, Adams had learned a lot about Crocker's background: his previous membership in the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement, his anti-government beliefs, his fascination with Adolf Hitler and idolization of Oklahoma City bomber McVeigh. . . .
[snip]
[T]he Carroll County Sheriff's Department passed the case on to the FBI. Steve Burroughs, an FBI agent, began working undercover. Posing as an employee at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas, where some of the country's remaining chemical weapons are stored to await destruction, Burroughs offered to help Crocker obtain explosive materials. Without Burroughs' prompting, Crocker became more ambitious. He began talking about blowing up a radioactive bomb outside the U.S. Capitol.
Unquestionably, Crocker was a serious danger and a would-be terrorist by any definition. But note what is missing from the case: no ties to a foreign organization, no logistical support or terrorist training, no indoctrination in the methods of secrecy. Regardless of the merits of the Padilla case - a subject for another day* in itself - the fact that Crocker was prosecuted does not show that similar methods would be successful against a radically more organized threat, nor does it disprove the Bush Administration's claim that different methods would be more effective in doing so.
In fact, recall that Koppelman's own account makes clear that catching Crocker was a stroke of blind luck, precisely because Crocker - unlike foreign jihadists with the support of a foreign organization - trusted the wrong guy:
Crocker . . . hadn't learned nearly as much about Adams. He didn't know, for example, that Adams was a former sheriff's deputy and a confidential informant for the Carroll County drug task force.
You want to take a chance that the next Mohammed Atta will be that stupid? The last one wasn't.
On the other hand, Koppelman does concede a point that undercuts much of Salon's ongoing theory that Padilla and other terror suspects were no danger because they were not all that bright:
There was an element of the fantastic in Crocker's plan; he hoped, he told Burroughs, to obtain the necessary plutonium for the dirty bomb he wanted to explode outside Congress by communicating with mail-order brides from Russia, one of whom would presumably put him in touch with a former KGB agent with access to nuclear material. His lawyers claimed he had an IQ of just 85.
But tapes of the conversations between Crocker and Burroughs reveal that Crocker knew what he was doing. He had made a version of Zyklon B, the gas used in the gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps, and he accurately described its manufacture. He had made nitroglycerin. He had the ingredients for a rudimentary bomb in his home, where he also kept several guns he told Burroughs he would use to kill any government agent sent to capture him.
I'm glad the government was able to take Demetrius Crocker out of circulation. But we were lucky, very lucky, just to get him - and that's one man working largely alone. Organized and well-funded terrorism is a greater threat, and we can't afford to wait to be lucky.
*I will note here that Koppelman takes everything Padilla's lawyer says at face value, including the fantastical claim that he was given a hallucinogen while being interrogated. Really.
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Demetrius Crocker and the War on Terror: Bait and Switch at Salon 16 Comments (0 topical, 16 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
I have no qualms about trying foreigners in military tribunals who are not even legal aliens and who are captured in warfare, but American citizens should always receive the protections guaranteed in the Constitution. If found guilty of high treason, let them indeed hang for it, but let it be done properly according to the law.
I voted for Reagan in 80 and 84, for Bush in 88 and 92, for Dole in 96, and for Bush in 2000, but when they picked up an American citizen in the Chicago airport and decided to hold him without access to a court or an attorney, I got off the boat. Now, for whatever reason, the guy has clearly become non compos mentis, which he was not before he was arrested. Whether that is the result of hallucinogens, torture, solitary confinement, sensory deprivation or whatever, I don't know, and you don't know either. But I do know this, if we let the government do this to an American citizen, and in fact if we cheer them on, we do not deserve to be called Americans.
So let me get this straight. You voted for a traitor because you were upset about Padilla. Good riddance.
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
I assume that you think a) that I voted for Kerry (though I didn't say I did that); and b) that Kerry is a traitor. The U.S. Constitution defines treason as levying war against the United States, or adhering to their enemies, or giving them aid and comfort. Which of these things did Kerry do? When did he do them? And if he did them, why hasn't he been prosecuted for them?
the VC and NVA. He was a commissioned officer in the US Naval Reserve.
He hasn't been prosecuted because no administration had the cajones to indict a sitting US Senator. Before he was in the Senate, Nixon and Ford had bigger fish to fry although a good case can be made that Kerry received a LTO discharge that was "fixed" by Jimmy Carter. Probably the main reason why Kerry's never released his military records.
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
1) He was not a sitting U.S. Senator when he made the trip, or when he reported on the trip in an open session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His report about his trip, the fact that he met with the VC and NVA, etc. was in the newspapers a few weeks after he made it, when he was still with the Vietnam Vets against the War.
2) The reason he was not prosecuted for treason is that talking with the enemy during wartime is not treason. It may or may not violate the federal statute that prohibits private persons from conducting foreign policy negotiations - that depends on what is said. But it clearly does not meet the statutory or constitutional definitions of treason. The framers of the Constitution had a very clear idea of what treason should and should not be, and this very clearly isn't it.
Go re-read my post. I didn't say Kerry was a US Senator when he went to Paris. I said he was a Naval Reserve Officer.
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
Which everyone knew at the time. If there had been some legal problem with his conversations, then the DOJ under either Johnson or Nixon would have prosecuted. The fact that they didn't prosecute, even though what he had done was well known at the time and he had no particular political standing indicates that what he did wasn't treasonable (nor did it violate any other law).
But then again we were still a country of laws back then. It seems to me that you think we should not be.
250 word essay on the Johnson and Nixon administrations, with an emphasis on their respective terms of office; and a 750 word essay examining the difference between physically possible and politically possible in the American governmental system. Send them in via the Contact Us button and we'll turn your account back on.
But, please? On your own time.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
Most of our existence, in fact. And, while I don't know what the topics of conversation were in Sen. Kerry's meetings, I have a hard time imagining them being anything that *didn't* violate Logan.
Just because he wasn't prosecuted for violation of the Logan Act doesn't necessarily mean he didn't violate it. He almost certainly did -- which would fly in the face of your "nation of laws" thingy.
Of course, a violation of the Logan Act is a far cry from treason. Jane Fonda, he ain't. I'll agree with you there.
But I can't imagine why we'd want such a person in our legislature, or much less presidency.
that I am sincere in my doubts that anyone who voted twice for Reagan and twice against Bill Clinton would be such a vociferous defender of Senator Kerry's talking points. I would recommend that you give us a nice clear explanation - before proceeding further - of why Reagan was a great president and Clinton was a bad one.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill
Lane:
Lets keep the fibs to a minimum.
Kerry went to Paris for his honeymoon and just happened to end up meeting with the North Vietnamese. Kerry denied he had done this for a long time.
Kerry's appearance before the Ccongress was notable, not just because of what he said about American servicemen but, because he used exactly the North Vietnamese talking points as a basis for a peace agreement.
For a serving officer, and a reservist is a serving officer, to meet with the enemy in time of war would certainly be considered grounds for a charge of treason.
Of course, we could also look at his meetings with the North Bietnamese in a different light. What if, as a gesture of good faith, he provided operational information regarding the Swift Boats?
I wonder if anyone has looked into Swift Boat operations after the time he spoke with the North Vietnamese.
We paid $8,000 for those tickets to the Mother Ship and can't understand why it hasn't shown up. /sarcasm>
2006 is done, 2008 is another day and another fight
;)
Judge Richard Posner -- who's a great legal mind, BTW -- wrote a fantastic book earlier this year called "Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency" that you really ought to read. I think it provides a lucid and sober counterpoint from somebody who is decidedly non-fanatic to what I imagine some of your objections to recent domestic security policy.
Like you, things have happened since 9/11 that have taken me aback -- starting with that creepy, Orwellian, Poindexter run "Total Information Awareness" program and going from there.
I've never been one to knee-jerk to things like this -- taking comfort in the historical reality that most extraordinary measures taken during wartime (aside from some tax levies, of course) have proven to be temporary.
But I think it behooves all of us to take a deep breath about these matters, at least. Most of us are too young to remember WWII -- when our government did all sorts of things that would normally be considered unseemly (opening and reading mail, internment of American citizens, etc.).
Posner attacks these kinds of things from a legal POV, which is of course important. But, aside from that, I think we have to be a little careful that we don't "principle" our way into extinction.
Our enemies know these things about us and they consider a weakness to be exploited. And I'm not so sure they're wrong about that.
Padilla is also a US citizen, and IMO should be tried in a court of law.