WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 (UPI) -- More than a dozen organizations banded together Monday to demand the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service release the names of those being held in the post-Sept. 11 investigation.
United Press International and other news organizations have outlined several cases of possible due-process violations and other misconduct during the probe into the terrorist attacks. Worried about these reports, and even the possibility of serious injury to some detainees, 21 groups -- including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Lawyers Committee on Human Rights -- sent a formal Freedom of Information Act request to DOJ headquarters.
The request asks for several types of information, including:
-- the name and citizenship status of every detainee;
-- the particular criminal or immigration charges against each individual, including material witness warrants;
-- the names and addresses of any lawyers representing a detainee, and;
-- the legal reasoning behind any gag orders concerning the detainees, as well as the identities of the courts that issued the orders.
Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said these kinds of facts are the bare minimum needed for the public to hold officials accountable for their actions.
"We do not live in a country where the government can keep secret who they arrest, where they are being held or the charges against them," Martin said. "The secret detention of more than 800 people over the past few weeks is frighteningly close to the practice of 'disappearing' people in Latin America."
Martin said Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., will also be asking DOJ for the kinds of information contained in the FOIA action. Feingold's staff told UPI the senator's request should come later this week.
Gregory Nojeim, associate director of the ACLU's Washington office, said the organization has requested the information twice, once in an Oct. 17 letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft and again last Friday in a meeting with FBI Director Robert Mueller. The government failed to respond in either case and provided no reason for withholding the data, he said, although such basic facts have always been available.
"It's information that's made available because Congress recognized, when it enacted FOIA, that sunshine is sometimes the best disinfectant," Nojeim said. "We intend to use (FOIA) and other tools to ensure that, in connection with this investigation, the government acts within the law and the Constitution."
While FOIA includes disclosure exemptions for law enforcement and national security reasons, Martin said the government has no precedent or authority for using those exemptions to cover the information requested. Some provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act also allow the government to withhold information, but Martin said that law only deals with wiretaps and cannot be applied to the detainees.
Morton Halperin, a member of the CNSS advisory board, said the government has to prove to a court a FOIA request would harm national security before an exemption would be granted. Civil liberties groups understand the threat facing the country, Halperin said, and they have held off making these requests.
"We're here six weeks later, and I think it's time to say that the normal procedures of the Constitution need to apply," Halperin said. "What's at stake here is not only the individual due process rights of these people; what's fundamentally at stake, in my view, is the right of all Americans to know what their government is doing, to have a chance to criticize what the government is doing, and to have the chance to insist the basic principles of due process are followed."
