A federal court slaps down a novel claim from a Sudanese business bombed by the U.S. in 1998.

By: David B. Rivkin Jr. and Bruce D. Brown |  Published in The Wall Street Journal  | June 24, 2010

America's war on terror is being fought on some unlikely fronts. This month, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a first-of-its-kind ruling, threw out a libel claim brought by El-Shifa pharmaceutical plant, the Sudanese factory bombed by the Clinton administration in 1998 in response to al Qaeda attacks on the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The U.S. claimed that the plant was connected to Osama bin Laden and involved in chemical weapons production.

Insisting they are medicine makers and not terrorists, the plant owners initially sued the U.S. government for millions of dollars in damages for destroyed property. With these claims rejected, they advanced a novel legal theory—alleging that U.S. military action, predicated upon the government's portrayal of them as terrorist supporters, ruined their reputation. Aware that money damages are not available against the federal government for defamation, the plaintiffs asked the courts to declare the statements about them false and force a retraction from the U.S. government.

In the post-9/11 era—where lawfare has become an integral part of warfare—El-Shifa's defamation suit ought to be taken seriously. The plaintiffs sought to pull the judiciary even more deeply into reviewing government decisions about the use of force that lie at the very core of the president's constitutional authority.

Sitting as a full court, the D.C. Circuit properly ruled that the case presented a non-justiciable "political question." Under this venerable doctrine, the courts have no authority to review discretionary policy choices assigned by the Constitution to the government's political branches. Determining whether the Clinton administration's statements about the Sudanese factory were true is such an issue, the court ruled, because it would require judges to assess the wisdom of military action, a responsibility vested exclusively with the president. Though the plaintiffs argued that a libel judgment could not impair the president's national security-related powers, the judges understood that, were they to rule in El-Shifa's favor, they would violate the separation of powers by contradicting the president's justification for the attack.

The court could have stopped here. However, recognizing that future libel suits against the federal government might not present "political questions," a block of concurring judges suggested another compelling way to reject El-Shifa's suit and other cases like it. The federal government is immune from most tort liability, including defamation, ensuring that individuals cannot sue the government for damages based on alleged libel. Nor can government officials be sued personally for statements made on the job, preventing fear of large judgments from deterring officials from speaking freely about controversial subjects. The concurring judges concluded that because Congress has not authorized defamation lawsuits against the government, El-Shifa owners could not obtain any kind of relief.

The El-Shifa case posed a provocative question: Whether, when damages are off the table, a claim seeking only to correct the record should be permitted in the future. The answer is emphatically no. Turning the courts into mini "truth commissions" would both force the judiciary into conflict with its co-equal branches and hurt free speech.

American libel law, which operates in the context of constitutional protection for free speech that is unique even among the world's democracies, is built around the sound premise that only those plaintiffs who can prove all the elements of a defamation claim should be compensated. Falsity is but one of those required elements. We have never had a tradition of skipping the other necessary elements of the claim—with the extent of "actual malice" of defendants being the key—even if plaintiffs are only chasing a retraction.

The rules of evidence are designed to produce fairness in court, not "truth" in any abstract sense. In libel cases, particularly where national security is at issue, significant amounts of testimony will not be available because of privileges and claims of state secrets. The El-Shifa suit should be the first and last of its kind. War is no place for libel law.

Messrs. Rivkin and Brown are partners in the Washington, D.C., office of Baker Hostetler. Mr. Rivkin served in the Justice Department under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush

By David B. Rivkin, Jr. and Lee A. Casey [Posted from The Wall Street Journal May 26, 2010]

Sixty-eight senators have sent a letter to President Obama urging U.S. ratification of the Ottawa Convention. The 10-year-old treaty, banning the production and use of land mines, has been accepted by over 150 countries, including most of our allies.

The U.S., however, should not join this august club. Land mines remain a critical part of America's 21st century security architecture.

The demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea contains massive minefields. They guard against surprise attacks by numerically superior North Korean infantry who are poised 20 miles from the outskirts of Seoul.

Deterring nuclear-armed and consistently erratic North Korea (its most recent provocation was sinking a South Korean warship) is a challenge requiring all the tools in the U.S. military arsenal. Ratifying the Ottawa Convention means dismantling the DMZ minefields. That means an American president might face the unpalatable choice of watching South Korea (and the U.S. forces stationed there) overrun—or using nuclear weapons.

Although the U.S. has chosen not to deploy land mines in post 9/11 wars, they can save the lives of American soldiers. Our bases in Iraq and Afghanistan have regularly come under insurgent attacks, including on the morning of Oct. 3, 2009, when hundreds of Taliban penetrated the defense perimeter of Combat Outpost Keating, an isolated U.S. camp in northeastern Afghanistan. Outnumbered six to one, the G.I.s fought a desperate action with small arms. U.S. aircraft arrived, but only after eight Americans (of 53) were killed. Had the camp been surrounded with a minefield, the results would have been very different.

Outside Korea, land mines on a grand scale may no longer be an essential part of the U.S. arsenal. But ratifying the Ottawa Convention transforms a policy choice into a legal obligation that, notably, neither Russia nor China (or Iran, North Korea and several other rogue states) have accepted. Unilateral disarmament here is neither smart arms control nor good foreign policy.

Land mines do present important humanitarian concerns. Once deployed, they can remain active for decades, and civilians are regularly injured or killed by these weapons long after a conflict has ended. This is a particularly acute problem in the developing world, where many belligerents never bothered to mark or clear the affected areas.

But the newest generation of American "smart" mines can be remotely armed and disarmed, or programmed to blow themselves up after a given time. These weapons are no more or less inhumane than other types of military hardware.

While some smart mines can be expected to malfunction and remain armed, the same is true of all unexploded ordinance, including aircraft-delivered bombs and artillery rounds. Properly used, land mines are not only an effective weapons system, but their limited range can produce far less unintended damage to civilians than, for example, a heavy artillery barrage or aerial bombing.

The treaty, however, would ban all land mines, stupid or smart. In truth, most of its proponents are more interested in reworking the entire legal regime governing warfare than they are in making any particular type of weapon more humane.

Traditionally, the laws of war accommodated military imperatives, imposing only the most basic of restraints. This was in recognition that a more restrictive code would not likely check nations engaged in a life or death struggle. As the realities of war have receded for most developed countries, progressives have worked to transform the norms applicable to armed conflict into something akin to a code governing domestic police functions.

The Ottawa Convention is part and parcel of this process, and the only real justification for U.S. accession to this treaty is a bow to international political correctness. That is what the Senate letter meant by urging the president to reconsider the U.S. position as consistent with his "commitment to reaffirm U.S. leadership in solving global problems."

That type of symbolism is just not a good enough reason to give up a weapon that can protect American forces and assist them in accomplishing their missions.

Messrs. Rivkin and Casey, Washington, D.C.-based attorneys, served in the Department of Justice during the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

By DAVID B. RIVKIN JR. AND LEE A. CASEY

Members of Congress generally give one of two reasons for quitting. Those evacuating the capital because of scandal invariably want to "spend more time" with their families. Those leaving to become a lobbyist or head home to seek election to even higher office complain about "gridlock" and how badly the system is "broken."

Sen. Evan Bayh (D., Ind.), for example, cited the difficulty of achieving "legislative accomplishments" as reason for his decision not to seek re-election this year. Gridlock, however, is part of the Constitution's design and is consonant with our underlying political traditions.

When they gathered in Philadelphia in 1787, the Constitution's framers had three goals: Establish a strong national government that nevertheless respected states' lawful prerogatives; impose limits on the exercise of government power so as to protect the citizenry's life, liberty and property; and create a stable and enduring political system. These men had lived through a revolution and war, and they understood the importance of regulating "by a system cautiously formed and steadily pursued," as noted by John Jay in the Federalist Papers.

The Framers achieved this stability by generally requiring a high level of consensus in support of governmental action. Accordingly, the Constitution deliberately makes achieving "legislative accomplishments" difficult.

As every school child once was taught, all federal laws must be first agreed to by both houses of Congress, which are themselves fundamentally different institutions with different constituencies, powers and interests. In addition, federal legislation must be acceptable to the president, or both houses must vote to override his veto by a two-thirds majority. As a result of these stringent requirements, the vast majority of legislative proposals never become law for the very reason that the necessary consensus is so often elusive.

Changes to the Constitution itself require an even higher consensus. Such amendments must not only command super majorities of two-thirds in both houses of Congress, they must also garner the support of three-fourths of the state legislatures (or of special ratifying conventions). In 220 years there have been only 27 amendments because that level of national agreement is profoundly difficult to obtain.

In addition, the Senate was itself designed to serve as a brake on change. As explained by James Madison, also in the Federalist Papers, the Senate would be a "temperate and respectable body of citizens" able to check the citizenry when "stimulated by some irregular passion."

Taking this role seriously, the Senate did the framers one better by adopting the much abused filibuster rule. Today it requires that 60 senators agree to end debate on any particular measure before a vote can even be taken.

In short, the government established by the U.S. Constitution, as well as the document itself, is "conservative." Its default is the status quo, unless and until the advocates of change can secure a sufficient consensus to support their idea.

In a republic of vast space and an even vaster diversity of interest and opinion, in most instances this means that anyone who wants to get "something done" in Washington will have a tough row to hoe and must be prepared to compromise. Such compromise is the bane of ideologues and idealists alike. But that is how consensus is reached.

When the country is fundamentally divided over an important issue—such as health-care reform—the necessary consensus may not be achieved. Moreover, disputes about one issue may well pour over into another, making compromise and consensus even more difficult. But that is simply human nature.

All of this may well mean that change, even necessary change, is postponed or permanently thwarted. But that is the price of the remarkable stability of government we have.

Despite the perpetual griping about Washington's political gridlock, the American people appear instinctively to understand and accept the Constitution's consensus-based architecture and support the very sort of compromises the system is designed to secure.

Messrs. Rivkin and Casey, Washington, D.C.-based attorneys, served in the Department of Justice during the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations

Former Justice Department official cites secret legal filing that contradicts Obama approach to charging terrorists

Published on February 08, 2010 by Brent Baldwin (OfficialWire) WASHINGTON, D.C.

Attorney and former Justice Department official David Rivkin recently broke a story in his Wall Street Journal Op-Ed (“Tale of Two Terrorists”) regarding a secret filing made by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. The filing, made Dec. 18, basically argued that interrogating terrorists must come before criminal prosecution.

On Feb. 6, Rivkin appeared live on Fox and Friends alongside Matthew Alexander, a former senior interrogator in Iraq and author, to discuss the use of Miranda rights for accused terrorists. They specifically discussed Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk Abdumuttalab, who promptly stopped talking after being read his rights. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs previously stated that the FBI obtained sufficient intelligence from a 50-minute interrogation of Abdumuttalab on Christmas Day before reading him his rights. Rivkin strongly disagrees with this approach.

“This was a huge mistake,” Rivkin said. “The Justice Department senior official, U.S. attorney Preet Bharara on Dec. 18 argues in a filing that its essential to treat a person like Abdumuttalab as an intelligence asset, with protracted interrogations to illicit every bit of intelligence information back and forth—and not just for 15  [or 50] minutes.”

Alexander countered that he would rather “deligitimize” terrorists by showing that our government upholds the word of the law; and also by treating terrorists as common criminals which would make them less effective as recruitment figures.

Rivkin said the most important means of self-defense involved timing and the overall intelligence information gathered from suspects at hand. “We didn’t get this information in a timely fashion. So intelligence got stale. And just because we’re getting some intelligence stream out of this guy doesn’t mean we couldn’t have gotten more,” Rivkin said, noting that he was still for humane treatment of prisoners.

“We could’ve treated him as an enemy combatant, interrogated him humanely for several months, got everything out of him and then made a decision about whether we want to put him in a criminal justice system,” Rivkin said. “We got some information out of him, but we could’ve gotten more. There’s no doubt about that.”

About David Rivkin
David Rivkin is an attorney in private practice and partner at Baker & Hostetler in Washington, D.C., who has had a lengthy career distinguished by service in the White House during two presidents’ terms, in the U.S. Department of Justice and in the U.S. Department of Energy. He is a well-known writer and media commentator on matters of constitutional and international law, as well as foreign and defense policy. He is a visiting fellow at the Nixon Center, contributing editor at the National Review, and a member of the Advisory Council at National Interest magazine. He currently serves as co-chairman of the Center for Law and Counterterrorism at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He also represents foreign governments and corporate entities on legal, political, defense, economy and public relations matters.  For more information, visit www.davidrivkin.com or contact:

 

Thursday, February 4, 2010

defenddemocracy.com
Escape from Guantanamo Bay

LEE A. CASEY & DAVID B. RIVKIN JR.

In truth, it will be far more difficult for the president to accept that his decision to close Guantanamo was wrong than it will be for him to explain a reversal of the policy. Here, the spin is easy - it has the unusual virtue of being true.

Obama has consistently maintained that he would not endanger American security in implementing his policies vis-à-vis al-Qaeda and its allies - he could hardly have done otherwise. That being the case, he need only acknowledge that one of the fundamental aspects of his Guantanamo closure policy - the ability to transfer most of the detainees either to their own countries or to third countries for "rehabilitation" - has not worked out as he had hoped and expected. The only way of closing Guantanamo and ensuring U.S. security interests would be to bring the entire detainee population into the United States, which he never planned to do. Therefore, Guantanamo will have to remain open pending further review of detainee repatriation opportunities and policies.

The problem, of course, is that Mr. Obama's base spent nearly eight years claiming that Guantanamo was inherently evil and that it was a stain on the nation's reputation attributable to George W. Bush's insatiable desire to concentrate power in his own hands regardless of individual rights.

The Bush policy was, of course, neither evil nor unlawful, and any "stain" has always been more imaginary than real. But too many of Bush's critics came to believe their own propaganda, and changing these beliefs will be hard. Nevertheless, the presidency is a hard job - so Mr. Obama had best get to it.

From Thoughtbasket.com:
The Christmas Bomber and Miranda
February 4, 2010 · 1 Comment

Bad timing for David Rivkin, who used Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal for one of his monthly attacks on some Obama policy. This time it was about the Christmas Day bomber, with Rivkin saying that not immediately sending the bomber into military detention was “an intelligence failure of massive proportions.” Too bad that the very next day, today, the exact same newspaper reported that the Christmas bomber is again talking to the FBI, providing “valuable intelligence.” This also damages the arguments of this guy and this woman. Look, there are valid reasons to say that terrorists should be viewed as wartime combatants rather than criminals. But claiming that we won’t get good information from terrorists held in the civilian legal system is clearly not a valid reason. And there is at least one good reason not to throw them in military brigs: it creates an appearance of the US being at war with Islam, which appearance seems to generate more terrorists. Finally, I would like to note, again, that George W. Bush also tried terrorists in civilian courts. For Republicans to now claim that this approach is terribly weak is to be hypocrites of the worst sort. Which is, I supposed, to be expected from politicians.
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