Bob Herbert: "The Truth Puts You In Jail

With no hyperbole required, one of the worst offenses anyone can commit in Bush's America is to tell the truth; never before in history has the truth been seen in the U.S. as a grave, even traitorous act. Bob Herbert of The New York Times spells out one such example in his August 21st column, "The Truth Puts You in Jail":

The problem with the way the United States government dealt with Abdallah Higazy had nothing to do with the fact that he was investigated as a possible participant in the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center.

He was caught in a set of circumstances that was highly suspicious, to say the least. It would have been criminal not to have investigated him.

On the morning of the attack, Mr. Higazy, the son of a former Egyptian diplomat, was in his room on the 51st floor of the Millenium Hilton Hotel, which was across the street from the twin towers. He fled the hotel, along with all the other guests, after the attack. But a Hilton security guard said he found an aviation radio, which could be used to communicate with airborne pilots, in the safe in Mr. Higazy's room.

When Mr. Higazy returned to the hotel three months later to pick up his belongings, he was arrested by the F.B.I. as a material witness and thrown into solitary confinement. Federal investigators were understandably suspicious, but they had no evidence at all that Mr. Higazy was involved in the terror attack.

And that's where the government went wrong. In the United States, a free and open society committed to the rule of law, you are not supposed to lock people up — deprive them of their liberty — on mere suspicion.

The government could not link Mr. Higazy to the attack, and yet there he was, trembling in a jail cell, with no reasonable chance of proving that he was innocent.

This was cruel. It was unusual. And it was a blatant abuse of the material witness statute. People arrested as material witnesses are supposed to be just that — witnesses — not criminal suspects. (The witnesses are taken into custody when there is some doubt as to whether their testimony can otherwise be secured.)

When a person is actually arrested for a crime, the government has certain important obligations, including the obligation to provide a prompt arraignment and to demonstrate that there is probable cause that the suspect had committed the offense.

Mr. Higazy was held as a material witness while investigators searched for something to pin on him.

How many more Higazy's are out there? Or rather, IN some place like Gitmo or Abu Ghraib or disappeared into one of the secret CIA facilities? More and more, this is happening not just to immigrants or visitors to our shores but to U.S. born American citizens whose only real guilt is failure to agree with the Bushies.