Padilla reflects Bush's overreach

WASHINGTON -- One might think that Jose Padilla was a master criminal of such evil dimension and intention as to be a major threat to the security of the nation. After all, the authorities apprehended him as he stepped off an airplane and his arrest was hailed as a monumental early achievement in the War on Terror.
We were told that Padilla was a main player in al-Qaida's plotting for the next big assault on America -- the detonation of an explosive salted with radioactive material -- a so-called "dirty" bomb. We did not ask, nor did the Justice Department volunteer, why Osama bin Laden would entrust such an incredibly important assignment to a former Chicago street punk and gang-banger with a petty criminal record. We were too caught up in breaking news to ask.
But it soon became evident that something was amiss. No charges were forthcoming against Padilla, who, although an American citizen arrested on U.S. soil, was being held incommunicado in a military brig. In fact, for more than three and a half years no charges were filed, and stories began to emerge about the sadistic nature of his treatment, which was so overbearing as to be normally reserved for the most fiendishly dangerous criminals. His cell windows were blackened. He communicated through a slit in the door. If he was moved even down the hall to a dentist's chair, he was shackled and blindfolded. During the shackling, guards stepped on his bare feet with boots -- and on and on.
Then a year ago, the government, after a storm of protest in the press and elsewhere, decided that Padilla was no longer an illegal combatant and transferred his case to the civilian courts under a conspiracy charge. But here's the rub. The charges against him suddenly had nothing to do with a dirty bomb, and federal prosecutors against all rationality have denied that he ever was tortured. Federal Judge Marcia Cook has ruled against Padilla's attorney's claims that he was so abused as to be mentally incapable now of helping in his own defense, but she did leave the door wide open as to the question of his torture. It's a ruling that ultimately could derail any trial.
Minor figure
How does this happen in America? How does a painfully minor figure in the scheme of things suddenly become the government's idea of a poster boy for evil? How does the Constitution permit the incarceration of a U.S. citizen for nearly four years without charging him with anything, including spitting on the sidewalk? Isn't this the kind of disgraceful example of despotic action that this nation is supposed to abhor? If not, are we no better than the cave-dwelling fanatics who would bury us all? Why should they have to actively destroy our experiment in democracy? We will do it ourselves if we're not careful.
The answer to all this may lie in the overreaction that takes place when one loses perspective in the heat of a crisis. In meeting the terrorist threat after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, George W. Bush and his advisers and administrators lost sight of the principles that have made the nation a bastion of freedom for 230 years. They took steps that, while necessary in some instances, went far beyond what most Americans believe is constitutionally acceptable in others. It was the same hysteria that led to the unconscionable incarceration of tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor.
We may never know whether Padilla was anything but a would-be terrorist, if even that. If the authorities thought he was a major player or even a small version, they should have long ago brought charges that afforded him the same kind of protection under the law any American citizen receives, even mass murderers. There was obviously little evidence to present and the best way to avoid the embarrassment was to stash him away as an "enemy combatant," making believe he was something more that needed the most extreme security measures. The only testimony that he wasn't abused came from a prison psychologist who saw him twice the entire time of his incarceration, once talking to him through the slit in his door.
There have been numerous similar incidents that attack the principles of civil liberty so vital to our leadership in the world and to our own national self-respect. The immediate years after 9/11 are likely to be regarded as among the most dangerous in our history, both from the standpoint of a faceless enemy and from our own excesses in dealing with that threat. Jose Padilla is an example.
Dan K. Thomasson is former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service.