Having Their Day in Court : How best to prosecute terrorists - a Military - reaction to military tribunals for suspected terrorists

National Review, Dec 17, 2001 by Robert H. Bork

The debate over the president's order creating military tribunals to try suspected terrorists consists largely of warring slogans and overripe rhetoric: "shredding our Constitution," "seizing dictatorial power," etc., on the one hand, and some version of "the bastards don't deserve any better" on the other. Analysis is in short supply. The issue of the balance between security and civil liberties will be with us, in various guises, for a long time to come. The reality we face means that no resolution of such issues will be wholly satisfactory.

When the issue is trying terrorists, there appear to be only four options: trial in a federal court; trial before an international tribunal; trial before a military tribunal; or setting the captives free. Nobody this side of a psychiatric ward will choose the last option. But the first and second don't win any prizes either.

Trials in federal courts have features that make them totally inappropriate for the trial of terrorists. Jurors often respond to emotional appeals, and, in any event, would have good reason to fear for their and their families' safety if they convicted. Criminal trials have been adorned by judges with a full panoply of procedural hurdles that guarantee a trial of many months. Appeals and petitions for habeas corpus can take years, and should the death sentence be given, the ACLU has shown how to delay execution for ten years or more through appeals followed by one habeas corpus petition after another. An open trial and proceedings of that length, covered by television, would be an ideal stage for an Osama bin Laden to spread his propaganda to all the Muslims in the world. Many Islamic governments would likely find that aroused mobs make it impossible to continue cooperating with the U.S.

The conclusive argument, however, is that in open trials our government would inevitably have to reveal much of our intelligence information, and about the means by which it is gathered. Charles Krauthammer notes that in the trial of the bombers of our embassies in Africa, the prosecution had to reveal that American intelligence intercepted bin Laden's satellite phone calls: "As soon as that testimony was published, Osama stopped using the satellite system and went silent. We lost him. Until Sept. 11." Disclosures in open court would inform not only Middle Eastern terrorists but all the intelligence services of the world of our methods and sources.

Trials before an international tribunal would have all of these defects and more. Picking the members of the court would itself be a diplomatic nightmare. It would be politically impossible to keep judges from Islamic countries off the court. In the past, moreover, international courts have often shown a pronounced anti-American bias. Our prosecutor would be helpless to avoid a propaganda circus and the disclosure of our intelligence capabilities and methods. In the end, convictions would be highly uncertain, but, if obtained, impassioned dissents and the martyrdom of the terrorists would be certain. We should be wary of international tribunals in any event since their establishment seems part of a more general move to erode U.S. sovereignty by subjecting our actions to control by other nations.

Military tribunals avoid or at least mitigate these problems. Propaganda by televised speeches would be impossible and any required disclosure of intelligence methods and successes would be secret. Since trials could move far more efficiently and appeals are cut off by the president's order, punishment of the guilty would be prompt. One of the prices we pay for an all-volunteer military is that for most Americans their armed forces are an unknown world about which it is possible to imagine all sorts of evils; but military tribunals are not, as they have been called, "kangaroo courts" or "drumhead tribunals." Much of the public is probably frightened by visions of defendants convicted out of hand and bustled off to firing squads.

During the Korean War, the officers in my battalion took turns prosecuting and defending. (I had a notable lack of success in both roles.) I sat on the court, and never saw an innocent man convicted but did see a guilty man acquitted. (I prosecuted that one and it still rankles.) Even then, before the widespread reform of the military justice system, military courts manned by officers, in my opinion and that of many others, were superior to the run of civilian courts, more scrupulous in examining the evidence and following the plain import of the law. If I were guilty, I would prefer a civilian jury; if innocent, a military court.

These virtues would be irrelevant if military tribunals were of dubious constitutionality. They are not. The constitutional issue reached the Supreme Court in Ex parte Quirin (1942). German saboteurs had entered the United States illegally to destroy war industries and facilities. Arrested by the FBI before they could act, they sought to file for writs of habeas corpus, contending they had a right to trial before regular courts rather than a military commission. The presidential proclamation establishing the commission denied them access to those courts.