There were two things that renewed my interest in the Moussaoui case today. One had to do with the
testimony given by Harry Samit, the The FBI agent who arrested and interrogated Moussaoui a month before the September 11, 2001, attacks.
[Samit] blamed FBI headquarters for having "obstructed" the Moussaoui probe, which the government now portrays as the lost opportunity to unlock clues to the 9/11 attacks.
The other thing that turned a light on in my head was the comment made during an interview tonight on the News Hour that this would be the first time someone would be sentenced to death for technically "not saying something". It occurred to me that this may be true, but we once sentenced five men to die only for saying something. In fact, the similarities between this prosecution and that of the Haymarket anarchists is one that is worth reflecting on...
I read about the Haymarket affair of 1886 last week in a wonderful
essay in the New Yorker, "THE TERROR LAST TIME: What happened at Haymarket" by CALEB CRAIN. The entire essay is up right now on the link. Please read it. It is incredibly pertinent to the trial we are watching unravel before our eyes today. Basically, five men were sentenced to death for crimes that they did not themselves commit (three others were given to lesser sentences). They were judged responsible for the murder of seven Chicago police officers (victims of a bomb set off at a workers' protest) since they had written and given speeches on the subject of armed rebellion in the past, the words of which it was believed influenced the actual perpetrator of the crime, who was never arrested. Four of the men judged guilty were hanged and one committed suicide in jail.
During the appeals process, public opinion had begun to shift, and after the anarchists died they became martyrs in some circles. More Chicagoans watched their funeral procession than had Lincoln's. Nonetheless, when a later governor of Illinois, John Peter Altgeld, pardoned the three defendants still alive, in 1893, he jeopardized his political career. What Altgeld had read in the two-million-word transcript of the trial enraged him, and his pardoning statement is strong and fine-edged. He argues that if you want to claim that a violent speech has made a person guilty of someone else's violent act, you must at least prove that the actor heard the speech or read it. "Until the State proves from whose hands the bomb came, it is impossible to show any connection between the man who threw it and these defendants."
What I wonder is this: if Moussaoui is sentenced to death now and is put to death, will cooler heads of public sentiment ever prevail and see this as a travesty of justice? Don't get me wrong; I think the man is guilty of something and he should probably be locked up or placed in a mental institution for life, but to sentence a man to die for NOT saying something? Haven't we come any distance since 1886 to know that the death penalty is wrong enough for cold blooded killers with stains on their hands, but for someone who MAY have had information that COULD have prevented something? How can we live with ourselves, really?
So anyway, to get back to the testimony of Harry Samit. I just watched the Loose Change video again last night. So all I ask is, how much "obstruction" was there and on who's authority? On the News Hour, Laura Sullivan said that the words "criminal neglect" were used by Samit in describing his superior's actions. Can you say, "we report, you decide"?