U.S. Political Trials Becoming Increasingly Kafkaesque in Age of Obama

We've already seen the sick charades staged in the U.S. military gulag in Guantanamo Bay, occupied Cuba, the so-called "military commissions," where the defense lawyers are bugged and tapped and even the courtroom is surreptitiously controlled by the CIA, as a military "judge" there learned to his surprise when the CIA suddenly cut off the transmission line from the room. "Evidence" obtained through torture is liberally used- in fact is most of what they have to "incriminate" those on "trial."

Then we had the military court martial of Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning, for exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq to Wikileaks, most notoriously the murder of two Reuters journalists and over a half dozen other unarmed civilians in Baghdad, attacked in broad daylight by a bloodthirsty U.S. helicopter crew as the victims were walking casually on the street, and the attack on a van with children in it which stopped to try and help the wounded victims. (The crew sadistically chortled that that's what they get "for bringing children to a battle" (sic!). "That's right," seconds another crewman. [1] In Manning's legal crucifixion, evidence was tightly controlled, and reporters had severe, repressive restrictions placed on them and were subjected to intimidation. (I mean real reporters. The power establishment media was mostly AWOL from the trial. They saw their role as minimizing public sympathy for Manning, and thus mostly confined themselves to reporting prosecutorial hysteria and government propaganda as fact.) [2] 

Now we have the spectacle, in a domestic entrapment-and-frame-up case, being the latest episode of FBI Political Terror Theater, of defense lawyers being openly barred from seeing evidence. In the past, prosecutors would have to secretly violate their obligation to disclose evidence to the defense. This sort of prosecutorial misconduct was routine in America, in both Federal and state proceedings. But just as the secret police and military have new "authorities" to do "legally" what was formerly illegal, such as warrantless searches and seizures and mass surveillance (and torture and assassinations, let's not forget, even though the establishment prefers we remain unconscious of this New Normal most of the time and act like everything's fine- how prescient the movie "Brazil" has proven to be!) so too do prosecutors and courts now "normalize" what once was done more or less covertly and denied. [3]

The prosecutors in the case of Adel Daoud have gotten the judge to agree that the defense cannot know what "evidence" was in the affidavits the government used to obtain various warrants. (Such affidavits are routinely filled with lies, distortions, and gross exaggerations. Since they are filed in secret, without challenge, generally before an arrest during the "investigative" stage of a case, the government can get away with this. So they do.) This even though the defense lawyers had to get so-called "security" clearances from the government itself. In other words, the government had right of approval over who would even be allowed to defend the defendant. (The defendant in this case, as in most productions of FBI Terror Theater, is a hapless and helpless puppet. He's the puppet that gets beaten repeatedly over the head by a character wielding a baseball bat, to extend the metaphor.) [4]

 For example, for at least a decade, the Drug Enforcement Administration has had a entire secret unit devoted to laundering illegally obtained evidence by fabricating how they got the information. They call this "parallel construction," and has been standard practice by Federal "law enforcement" agencies for years. Even though these are known facts, no Federal judge has ordered the disbandment of this unit, sanctioned any Federal agents or prosecutors for them, dismissed any cases or barred testimony from the agencies doing this systematically. Often the information comes from the National Security Agency, the supersurveillance Pentagon arm. The military is barred by law, the posse comitatus act, from law enforcement functions. As usual, those in power pick and choose which laws they feel like obeying. Another dead letter law is the law that created the CIA, which barred it from domestic operations, something it ignored from the day it came into existence.
In the Daoud case, apparently the prosecutors aren't satisfied by how drastically the playing field is already tilted in their favor. Besides refusing to allow the defense access to critical information and documents, they are also insisting that the judge virtually gag the defense lawyers during the trial. There is a list of issues and items that the prosecution is demanding the defense be prohibited from mentioning during the trial. [5]

Of course, precluding a viable defense in political trials is a hoary American tradition. It goes back many decades. During the repression of the 1960s and '70s, a favorite shout of judges at defendants who tried to defend themselves by bringing some reality into the proceedings would be "the government isn't on trial here, YOU are!" Meaning, Don't mention what the government is doing or has done, don't mention their lawbreaking, don't mention their crimes that led to your resistances and protest. More recently, John Kiriakou, the former CIA officer persecuted for publicly criticizing torture, has explained that he had no choice but to take a plea deal after the judge in his case ruled in pre-trial hearings against any viable defenses and Kiriakou's lawyer told him they had no defense left.

This framework of frame-up has been institutionalized. Daniel Ellsberg points out that he couldn't have defended himself if his case had gone to trial. (What happened was that the fact that the Nixon regime offered the judge a bribe in the form of a promised appointment as FBI director, and when this fact became public, the judge felt compelled, reluctantly, to dismiss the charges because of government misconduct. And he had discounted the burglarizing of Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office by Nixon's plumbers to get dirt on Ellsberg, the siccing of Cuban fascist exiles on Ellsberg, who beat him up, the plot by Nixon's henchmen G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt to assassinate Ellsberg, etc. It is understood that Edward Snowden would be precluded from offering any viable defenses should he ever be dragooned into a U.S. court for a show trial.

We can expect things to get worse and worse during the never-ending War on Terror. The "trials" are sick farces, show trials, where no real defense is permitted.

1] Search for "collateral murder video" on youtube, Wikileaks, etc. The longest version is about 17 minutes. The military, AFTER the video forced them to "investigate," declared that the murderous helicopter crew thought their victims were armed. Why that gave them the right to kill them on the spot, or to shoot up a civilian van that stopped to help, is not explained. Of course it's not true anyway, as the video shows us what the killers were seeing, and clearly these men aren't carrying assault weapons- most are carrying nothing at all. The journalists had camera. The crew chose to falsely report to the remote flight controller at base that their victims were armed.

2] For a discussion of the repression of reporters by the military in the Manning trial, see for example "Bradley Manning Awaits Verdict After Trial Ends with Prosecution 'Smears' & Harsh Gov’t Secrecy," Democracy Now, July 23, 2013.

For the use of "secret evidence" the defense and the rest of us weren't allowed to see, read "'He Wanted To Help America': Manning Attorney in First Extended Interview After 35-Year Sentence," Democracy Now, August 22, 2013.

3] Of course, torture by the U.S. is nothing new. They've done it for centuries. They trained foreign fascists in torture techniques for decades during the so-called "Cold War." (Which was their cover and alibi for waging global class warfare.) Domestically many police have tortured, as in Chicago where it was institutionalized, and apparently still exists in milder (?) forms at the police semi-black site uncovered by the Guardian (UK; U.S. media doesn't have much taste for uncovering the crimes of their own police) but brushed aside for years  as just guilty defendants lying. Nowadays torture isn't denied outright but defined away as "enhanced interrogation techniques," or maybe "harsh" ones. Once in awhile some U.S. media outfit will even say "brutal." (The Guardian has a whole series on the Chicago PD black site where "off the books" prisoners are taken for abuse and interrogation, held incommunicado. Start with "The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden 'black site', " February 24, 2015.

4] "Very Mention of Snowden’s Name Makes Prosecutors Tremble," The Intercept, June 4, 2015.

5] Details of what the defense is barred from mentioning at ibid.

An example of the cynical political uses of "terror plots" to justify increased state power, surveillance, control, and inevitably repression is illustrated in the article "How Dianne Feinstein Misled Congress About How 'Useful' NSA Spying Authorities Were In Stopping Plots," techdirt, August 1, 2014.

In fact, hardly a day goes by without more evidence piling up to prove my points. It has recently emerged that two government agents in the Silk Road website case are themselves under indictment for serious crimes. The defense was kept in the dark about this, and the judge then barred them from mentioning it in court, thus denying them the right to impeach the credibility of the accuser, the government. This is considered a "fair" trial in the U.S. The judge imposed a draconian sentence of two life terms, plus additional years, without parole, on the Silk Road defendant, Ross Ulbricht.
The establishment likes to pretend that its judges are impartial, favoring neither the defense nor prosecution. In fact, the overwhelming majority of American judges, on every judicial level, are effectively part of the prosecution. They bend over backwards to ensure that jurors won't waver or be swayed by defense arguments and will "do their duty" and duly convict. This is why well over 90% of criminal trials result in convictions here.

For good measure, the indicted agents also tricked Ulbricht into "hiring" them to kill someone they duped him into thinking had stolen $820,000 from his site which the agents themselves had stolen. The "murder" wasn't carried out, but Ulbricht is facing trial for being lured into the agents' plot. The agents were DEA and Secret Service men. It appears there are other corrupt agents involved, at DHS. [See "The Silk Road founder's life sentence appeal may rely on an alleged $800,000 theft by federal agents," Business Insider, June 4, 2015, and "Criminal Charges Against Agents Reveal Staggering Corruption in the Silk Road Investigation," Forbes, March 31, 2015.] The theft occurred the very same day a Silk Road employee was forced by the Federal government to turn over his administrative account to them, which they then used to steal the bitcoins without a moment's delay. Like you'd expect to happen in Mexico or Afghanistan. This of course in no way derailed the "investigation." Silk Road, contrary to lurid media depiction, was basically a site for buying and selling outlawed drugs people use for pleasure. This is considered a monstrous crime by our rulers. (Even though many of them have used such substances, including presidents Clinton, Bush II, and Obama, and vice president Gore and many, many others. Hey, I'm not going to call them hypocrites. That's shooting fish in a barrel. Anyway I think cynics is more on the mark.)