More Reasons to Investigate Mr. Cheney

I, and many others, have written about the willingness of the Bush-Cheney administration to expand the authority of the president to beyond the imagination and fears ever before imagined. We witnessed torture, extraordinary rendition whereunder a person would be secretly transported to foreign countries with even fewer scruples against brutality than Mr. Cheney possessed and warrantless wiretaps of conversations of United States citizens, warrantless because there was nothing to present to a Court that would justify them. We have witnessed the willingness -- no, the eagerness - to break the law regarding reports to Congress, the sanctity of covert intelligence operatives' identity and the flouting of the ancient writ of habeas corpus all for purely political ends and, more important, the elimination of the "checks and balances" constitutional concept, one that has preserved our republic for over 200 years.

But the disclosures of Mr. Cheney's attempt to use the United States military to arrest and detain six men living outside of Buffalo, New York are more frightening. The men, all United States citizens of Yemeni descent, had been under investigation by the F.B.I. for over a year. The six men had traveled to Afghanistan in early 2001 and had received al Qaeda training in that country. In the summer of 2002, a suspicious email sent by one of the men triggered concern by the C.I.A. and that individual was arrested in Bahrain. He in turn implicated the other five men who were arrested by the F.B.I., brought to trial in an American court, found guilty and imprisoned.

The arrest, trial, sentence and punishment were all accomplished in accordance with American law, affording the accused all of the rights due citizens of this country.

In other words, the system worked perfectly, just as it was supposed to do.

If the former Vice President had had his way, however, the arrests of the five suspected terrorists would have been accomplished by U. S. Army troops, the arrested men detained in a military facility and tried by a court martial, but without any of the rights due American citizens. This would have been first time since the Civil War that active-duty troops were used without statutory authority in a law enforcement capacity on American soil. The Vice President was trying to establish a dangerous precedent: That the president has the authority to unleash the military on American towns whenever he determines national security warrants it.

In this case, President Bush listened to and heeded the advice of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and FBI director Robert Mueller. The president's restraint kept Cheney from turning a U.S. city into a war zone and declaring the rights of American citizens null and void.

United States law, for over 100 years has forbidden the use of the military in law enforcement activities with the United States - and for good reason. Ironically, one of the rationales for the prohibition is the concern that a despotic Federal government could use the power of the military to overwhelm civilian authority and the individual states. Conservatives support individuals' right to have guns on the basis, inter alia, that a strong Federal government constitutes a danger. Yet Mr. Cheney had no hesitation.

In another terrorist case, that of Jose Padilla, President Bush over-reached. Mr. Padilla, a United States citizen, was arrested by the F.B.I. and detained as a "material witness" under the Federal statute, 18 USC §3144. The following month, President Bush declared him an "illegal enemy combatant" and transferred him to a military prison taking the position that he was not entitled to a trial in a civilian court nor was he entitles to any rights afforded defendants in those courts. After several years the charge that Padilla had plotted the planting of a radioactive bomb had collapsed and he was he was transferred to a Miami, Florida, jail to face criminal conspiracy charges. On August 16, 2007, José Padilla was found guilty, by a federal jury, of charges against him that he conspired to kill people in an overseas jihad and to fund and support overseas terrorism.

Again, the regular American justice system worked perfectly. There was no need for a wholesale violation of civil liberties.

Mr. Cheney's actions while Vice-President demand full disclosure and investigation. It appears that, at least in the case of the "Lackawanna Six", his overreaching was stopped by a usually disinterested or inattentive George W. Bush.

We must never get that close to losing our rights again.