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The outrages just keep on coming. Just when you think powerful figures can't be any worse, they are. They foster an institutional aversion to common sense and decency. This week, two of my favorite authority figures came through and did things that showed my previous assessments of their ruthless pursuit of power and control just couldn't do justice to their sublime arrogance.
I write, dear friends, of Attorney General John Ashcroft and Boston Archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Law, potentates of church and state whose passion is to trample on anyone who challenges their grip on things and protect the oh-so-moral high ground only they can self-righteously discern.
These two ego-driven bullies are willing to destroy that which they pretend to cherish in order to protect their positions at all costs. One a fundamentalist Protestant, the other America's most powerful Catholic, they both have no doubt God is clearly on their side. Just ask them.
First the state. The attorney general has his minions pursuing a course that is wrong, stupid and manifestly unconstitutional. Under the ruse of protecting the world from terrorism, Ashcroft is trying to protect himself and the Justice Department from serious embarrassment.
Here's what's happening. Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks and the start of the Ashcroft raids (see Palmer raids circa 1919, when a previous attorney general had the same flirtations with fascist tactics), the feds swooped down on a home in Ann Arbor, Mich. There they arrested Rabih Haddad and charged him with immigration violations -- overstaying his visa. The native of Lebanon was jailed and deportation proceedings began.
Our nation has detailed procedures for doing these things, but here's where Ashcroft decided to throw out the rules and prove once again he's the worst attorney general we've had since Richard Nixon's appointee, the felon John Mitchell, who plotted crimes in the attorney general's office and spent a stretch in prison for helping plan the Watergate break-in.
Ashcroft brought Rabih Haddad before an immigration judge in Detroit and had him whisked away to Chicago, where he was jailed and held incommunicado. No lawyer, no contact with his family and friends, no explanation from the government about what was going on. You see, Ashcroft decided Haddad's immigration hearings should be held in secret.
In moves that Stalin would admire, lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice declared, in effect, that Haddad was a suspected terrorist, and if the public learned anything about it, that information would help other terrorists and threaten national security. The government wants to keep every aspect of the case a secret and not explain to anyone, even a federal judge behind closed doors, why it should be kept secret.
Haddad's case and 700 similar ones flow from a memo the nation's Chief Immigration Judge Michael J. Creppy issued at John Ashcroft's behest. The memo calls for closure of all immigration hearings "for which the Justice Department is requiring special arrangements."
While the Justice Department never defines "special arrangements," we know the effect means the public, the media and the detainee's family are banned from the courtroom where fundamental issues of a person's life are decided. It also means all documents relating to the case are kept secret. These kinds of government proceedings come right out of old KGB handbooks which Kremlin thugs used before sending some poor soul off to the gulag.
The government lawyers who advocate them should be disbarred for their blatant disregard for the Constitution and their disgraceful disrespect for the principles upon which this nation was founded.
If they don't like the Bill of Rights, they can go practice in Cuba, China or Saudi Arabia, where their taste for authoritarianism is better suited.
It amazes me that so many people who pretend to be conservatives as so willing to accept sacrifices in civil liberties and give big government such a heavy hand in people's lives.
Suspicion of Haddad stems from his founding of the Global Relief Foundation. That's an Islamic charity based in Illinois that operated openly for years. The government shut down the charity and froze its assets claiming it is suspected of having links with terrorism. But the FBI and federal lawyers have never explained how Global Relief helped terrorists or how Rabih Haddad is personally linked to terrorism. Thus the real reason for the secrecy and closed hearings.
Let us suppose Haddad is perfectly innocent and the government's terrorism link claims are groundless -- a likely scenario. If the public hears that in open court, it will show that the government is targeting people because they fit a convenient profile: Arab-Muslim men. Ashcroft doesn't want people knowing that truth. But on the other hand, let's suppose Haddad is guilty as hell. He's using his charity as a front to funnel money to terrorists while posing as a regular guy, deer-hunting with his son and going to University of Michigan football games.
If that's the case, how could he get away with it when the Immigration and Naturalization Service knew his paper work was expired and did nothing about it until after the terrorist attacks? Where was the FBI then?
Again the Justice Department would face serious embarrassment. Either way, Ashcroft wants secrecy to protect himself from public scrutiny and the scorn sure to follow.
Last week, a federal judge ruled the deportation hearings must be open and the Justice Department must release all records of the Haddad hearings that were closed.
John Ashcroft's Justice Department is appealing that order. His obsession with secrecy comes from the fact that he really holds democracy in contempt, and believes we are safer following the dictates of his private prejudices than letting the public know what's really going on. In Boston, the newspapers are saying now what was suggested in this space weeks ago -- Cardinal Law should resign.
The wave that first smashes the ship gets most of the attention, but in the storm of scandal sweeping the Boston Archdiocese, the second wave is actually worse and more damaging.
The first wave was the revelations about John Geoghan, a now defrocked priest who molested dozens of boys as he bounced from parish to parish. The church and Cardinal Law knew of Geoghan's behavior as a sexual predator, but kept reassigning him.
The sick priest, now in prison, used those opportunities to prey on more children. Law tried to keep the sordid episodes secret, but failing in that, he finally admitted "mistakes" that resulted from inadequate medical information about the priest's "rehabilitation."
The second wave should shame Law from the see of Boston, but the pride-addicted prelate shows no signs of budging. Maybe he has to stay in order to cover up for more scums in Roman collars.
The case of Reverend Paul Shanley is so disgusting and egregious, it makes the Geoghan's exploits seem tame. Father Shanley raped boys in parishes where he served for three decades.
But unlike Geoghan, who expressed some remorse for his vile behavior, Shanley said he saw nothing wrong with man-boy sex, and according to court documents, once commented that "when adults have sex with children, the children seduced them."
But, incredibly, this pedophilia-praising priest was allowed to continue working with children and got letters of recommendation from Cardinal Law and others in the Boston archdiocese who knew he was an unrepentant child molester.
Law OKed shipping Shanley off, first to California and later to New York City. The Cardinal praised his priest in a letter for "years of generous and zealous care" and his "impressive record."
The unknowing dioceses that got Boston's bad seed were told Shanley was a "priest in good standing" and nothing was mentioned about his sexual brutality and threat to children.
That in spite of the fact the church's own psychiatric evaluation found Shanley to have "a great deal of psychological pathology" and one of Law's own priests told him, "It is clear to me Paul Shanley is a sick person."
Add to the sick list Bernard Law, who permitted this to happen and disgraced the church in the process. Last Friday, in a letter to Boston priests, Law insisted he will continue to serve "as long as God gives me the opportunity."
Then, referring to the Shanley case, Law said something that could only have been inspired by a rare South American opiate the cardinal isn't sharing.
The Prince of the Church said the case was "troubling" and stated, "For me personally, it brought home with painful clarity how inadequate our record keeping has been."
RECORD KEEPING!
Is he nuts?
He lets loose on innocent children an open advocate of man-boy sex and doesn't even bother telling his brother bishops they might want to keep an eye on him, and what's brought home for Law is the need for a better file clerk.
That kind of hopeless delusion shows how pitiful Law is and why he should spare us further pain and leave.
But, under the heading of "occasionally even a blind squirrel finds an acorn," Law did say something he should share with John Ashcroft.
"We now realize, both within the church and in society, secrecy often inhibits healing and places others at risk."
The cardinal and attorney general should be buddies and hang out together, so we can confine the risk.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 16 2002 |