David Sarasohn: Rights policy spreads doubts

How far over the line do you have to be on human rights issues before you upset even the Germans?

The Bush administration just found out.

And, of course, the Germans aren’t the only people upset.

A Munich court has issued arrest warrants for 13 people involved in a CIA seizure of a German citizen. Khaled al-Masri was taken off the streets of Macedonia, sent to Afghanistan to be interrogated (and, he says, beaten) for five months and then released without charges.

The U.S. government calls this “extraordinary rendition.” The Germans now call it “abduction.”

The Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee made their own extraordinary rendition to the Bush administration, insisting that the details of the warrantless wiretapping program it conducted be provided to the entire committee, not just Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich. Under pressure from the new Congress, the administration had already agreed that skipping past judges to listen to conversations – once called vital to national existence – wasn’t really necessary, and it could actually obey the law.

Now it just wants to keep it all very quiet, especially from most of the elected officials charged with overseeing the Justice Department.

On the other side of the Capitol, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and ranking minority member Arlen Specter, R-Pa., are equally suspicious of the administration’s assurances that now everything is fine with the program. They also joined in an assertion that since Congress has the power to declare war, it must also have the authority to end one.

It’s part of a wave of resistance against the Bush administration’s insistence that it can make everything up as it goes along, unrestrained by any limits national or international. The claim has stirred opposition from the Senate to the Seine – especially as it doesn’t seem to be working out too well.

Douglass Cassel, director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights at the University of Notre Dame law school, doesn’t expect the United States to turn over its agents to stand trial in Germany. But he says the court’s actions, along with a similar criminal investigation in Italy, demonstrate how unhappy Europeans are with U.S. policy and attitudes.

“The Europeans, last year, were outraged by the Washington Post story on clandestine (CIA) prisons in Europe,” he says. “Politicians were very embarrassed. This could be playing to the domestic political crowd.”

Of course, it’s not a good thing when the leaders of the United States’ closest allies have to show their voters that they’re not too close to the United States.

The Bush administration says that the secret prisons – if they existed – have now been closed, and the prisoners sent to Guantanamo, so the Europeans should consider the issue over. Similarly, it claims that its new promise to have electronic surveillance approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court – although it’s not entirely clear what that means – should resolve that dispute.

But Cassel points out that the new policy raises another question.

“When they just collapse as soon as Congress changes hands,” says Cassel, “the inference is very strong that they were lying when they told us that (going to the court) would somehow jeopardize the national security.”

Or, as 21 members of the House Judiciary Committee wrote the attorney general Thursday, “Important questions regarding the FISA program remain unanswered and responses to our requests are critical in order for the Judiciary Committee to properly evaluate the efficacy and legitimacy of the warrantless surveillance program.”

The administration is at a point where even its promises that it has fixed problems are rejected, because its past record leaves a long trail of suspicion. In fact, it’s reached a point where doubts about its policies and its willingness to follow either U.S. law or the Geneva Conventions, extend even beyond Germans.

On some issues, the doubts extend to Republicans.