9/11 trial could become a parable of right and wrong
Before worldwide audience, both prosecution, defense to seek control of narrative
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 15, 2009
 NEW YORK -- If it happens, the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed will make for riveting drama amid the dry routines of procedure in federal court. Of all the many risks in the contest, the greatest may be the drama itself. In the narrowest of legal terms, the case against Mohammed -- self-proclaimed author of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- and four co-defendants is about particulars of fact and law: deliberation and intent, deed and consequence, guilt and innocence. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said on PBS's "NewsHour" that "this is not a show trial," but both sides hope to use the case to define Sept. 11 as a parable of right and wrong. Prosecution and defense will fight for control of a narrative that is sure to reach hundreds of millions of people. The verdicts drawn across the world may inspire or dismay potential allies, provoke or deter action, and in the end advance or impede the starkly opposing interests of the United States and its radical Islamist foes. Part of the Obama administration's message is a symbolic break with the most controversial policies of President George W. Bush. Where Bush used the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a fortress against domestic and international law, President Obama is bringing the Sept. 11 defendants into independent constitutional courts. But Friday's announcement that the cases of Mohammed and four other accused Sept. 11 plotters would be tried in civilian court brought no broad departure from Bush's legal bequest. Holder and Obama have only gradually shifted course from "never" to "hardly ever" in granting Guantanamo Bay detainees access to what the attorney general described as a 200-year-old tradition of "faithful adherence to the rule of law" in the judicial branch. Bush allowed more than 800 terrorism indictments to be handed up by federal grand juries, resisting constitutional protections only for those he declared to be "unlawful enemy combatants." The current administration has granted such rights to six of the 241 detainees who were at Guantanamo Bay when Obama took office, and senior government lawyers have said there is next to no prospect of bringing more than 20 more to trial in any tribunal, civilian or military. Obama is acknowledging explicitly, as Bush never did, that some defendants will enjoy more legal protection than others, that their rights in military commissions will be inferior to those enjoyed by the few who reach federal court. Though the anniversary went unmarked, Holder's news conference Friday came eight years to the day after Bush issued the foundational order on Nov. 13, 2001, for military commissions and unlimited detention without charge. In many respects, including the presumption that the president is the decider, that order lives on under Obama. Administration officials acknowledge in interviews that considerations of…

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 Forget Bond, MI5 wanted its spies short and static By Cahal MilmoMonday, 5 April 2010
PADaniel Craig as Bond; archives show he wouldn't have made a good 'watcher'Wanted: nondescript individual, 5ft7in to 5ft8in in height, with good hearing and the ability to stand still for long periods in extreme heat and cold. The ideal candidate must also have a fondness for hiding behind trees in parks and a strong aversion to false beards and moustaches. It might sound like the job description for an eccentric ornithologist but these are the attributes that MI5 was looking for when it sought to recruit a “watcher” or surveillance officer to its ranks with the purpose of tracking foreign spies and suspected traitors around Britain’s towns and cities. A secret file detailing the activities of Section B6, the outpost of MI5 used to tail threats to national security, details how senior spooks struggled to find sufficiently unobtrusive operatives to carry out the vital work of pursuing Nazi agents. Communist agitators and high-level ne’er-do-wells during the Second World War. The document, released at the National Archives in Kew, west London, reveals that the Security Service despaired when it received a flood of applications to join its ranks from wannabe spies who had spent too long watching detective films and expected a glamourous clandestine existence. One moustachioed applicant accompanied his CV with a picture of himself dressed in a trilby while peering around a street corner. Instead, MI5 felt obliged to underline the drudgery of the task of spending long hours in shadowy doorways watching a single window. The report, which includes a history of B6 written by an anonymous veteran surveillance officer, said: “This is an onerous and exacting profession. Screen sleuths of the secret service thriller or detective novel appeal to the uninitiated, but in actual practice there is little glamour and much monotony in such a calling as ‘observation’. “A successful watcher is a rarety. After many years of watching and following, the writer is forced to the conclusion that the ideal watcher is born and not made, and unless he has a natural flair for the work he will never rise above mediocre. Observation cannot be mastered from textbooks or lectures. Hard practical training in the street is the only way to bring out a man’s aptitude for the job.” The file sets out the profile for the perfect “shadower”, specifying the ideal height (5ft7-8), with acute senses and “hardy enough to withstand cold, heat, and wet during the long hours of immobility in the street”. Also important was an appearance “as unlike a policeman as possible” and the ability to dress in “old clothes, cap, muffler” when in…

 "Fifty-nine percent (59%) of voters still favor legislation like Arizona's that authorizes local police to stop and verify the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being an illegal immigrant."Read Article

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