'I sat in that place for three days, man': Chicagoans detail abusive confinement inside police 'black site'

The Guardian
February 27, 2015

That’s not true,’ Mayor Rahm Emanuel said on Thursday night when pressed on allegations of police abuse at Homan Square on Chicago’s west side. ‘We follow all the rules.’ Photograph: Philipp Batta/Guardian

A Chicago man says he was confined for three days – shackled, interrogated and fed only twice, his whereabouts unknown – inside the police “black site” at the epicentre of public outcry over allegations of abuse said to focus on minority citizens.

Four black Chicagoans have now come forward to the Guardian detailing off-the-books ordeals at the facility, including another who describes being detained in “a big cage” with his wrists cuffed to a bench so he couldn’t move.

'Gestapo' tactics at US police 'black site' ring alarm from Chicago to Washington

 

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The Guardian has now interviewed six people about their detention at the Homan Square police warehouse. With striking consistency, all have described extensive detentions without benefit of legal counsel or public notice of where they were.

The first-hand accounts of two white protesters who “disappeared” at the police warehouse in 2012 set off political and civil-rights outrage this week, and multiple protests have now been scheduled by organizers including the Black Lives Matter movement.

Brock Terry, 31, says police took him to Homan Square in 2011, after finding him with five and a half pounds of marijuana, and describes being held for three entire days without public notice, booking or a lawyer.

“I sat in that place for three days, man – with no talking, no calls to nobody,” Terry told the Guardian on Friday. His friends and family could not find him: “They call police stations, I’m not there, I’m not there.”

“I was kept there. I didn’t speak to a lawyer or anything,” he continued. “I didn’t interact with nobody for three days. And then when I do see the light of day, I go straight to another police station, go straight there to county and be processed.”

Terry detailed being handcuffed in one room at Homan Square by one wrist to a “little circular thing behind the bench”, echoing the accounts of the two Nato protesters interviewed by the Guardian, though Terry said he did not have his ankles cuffed together.

Three other men, Kory Wright, Deandre Hutcherson and David Smith, have also told the Guardian they were held in 2006 inside Homan Square, where they say they were handcuffed by both wrists with their arms spread. Hutcherson says he was punched in the face while in this position, before an officer stepped on his groin “like he was putting a cigarette out”.

Another lawyer has told the Guardian that in early 2014, police told him that his client – another young black man – was not at Homan Square, even though he was.

“What they did that night, by denying my 19-year-old client access to his attorney was unconstitutional, clearly,” said Cliff Nellis, an attorney with the Lawndale Christian Legal Center, located near Homan Square on Chicago’s west side.

The Chicago police did not respond to questions for this story. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, currently facing a heated runoff for re-election, said on Thursday night it was “not true” that the police maintain a facility lawyers have compared to a CIA “black site”.

Activists are planning a “Shut Down Homan Square” protest on Saturday and a demonstration for reparations for longstanding victims of Chicago police tortureon Monday. Representatives from Black Lives Matter Chicago said they were helping to organize and promote the Monday action. Several Chicago local and national politicians are calling for investigations, including from the US justice department, into allegations of police misconduct at the warehouse.

While Terry said that he did not see anyone else while confined at Homan in 2011, he said he heard people yelling “no, no, no” and “stop”. He remembered seeing chain-link “cages”, of the sort previously described to the Guardian by attorneys and former police superintendent Richard Brzeczek. They reminded him of dog kennels, he said.

“They got kennels – like, for people,” Terry told the Guardian. “I didn’t really want to believe that, but it is the truth.”

He continued: “I never saw anyone, but I know something else is going on. You don’t want to be in that kind of situation, so you gotta be quiet about it, so you don’t go down that route.”

While shackled and interrogated over the next three days, police fed Terry only twice, he said, with baloney sandwiches and juice. He got to use the bathroom “hardly ever, but I did use it.”

“Every day they came to ask some questions. Am I in a gang? Who am I with? Who run this? Who run that? Give them a gun and they’ll let me go,” Terry said. “That was pretty much the main thing: give them a gun and they’ll let me go. But I didn’t produce a gun.”

Had Terry found them a gun, he said, his ordeal with police might never end: “The thing about it is, when they say give them a gun, they let you go, but it’s like long invisible string tied to your ass. They definitely gonna come back to interrogate you to get another gun, or ask you about this crime, give them some information about this crime.”

‘It’s gonna get a little hot up in here’: three friends, from video games to handcuffs

Wright, Hutcherson and Smith were also taken to Homan Square. Their ordeal,first reported by Juan Thompson of the Intercept, took place five years earlier. Wright recalled agreeing to break a $50 bill for a woman in North Lawndale who said she wanted to buy drugs but turned out to be an undercover police officer.

Read the entire article

US Releases Redacted "Due Process Need Not Blink" Memo Justifying Drone Strikes On US Citizens

Zero Hedge
June 23, 2014

With the number of drone failures rising domestically and the likelihood of an exponential rise in drone strikes in Iraq imminent; the US federal court has decided now is the time to release the redacted memo justifying the use of unmanned drone strikes on US citizens. ...also recognized that "the realities of combat" render certain uses of force "necessary and appropriate," including against U.S. citizens who have become part of enemy forces-and that "due process analysis need not blink at those realities."

As WaPo reports,

Accident investigation documents show that 47 military drones crashed in the United States between 2001 and 2013 in what the military categorized as Class A accidents — the most severe category.

The Pentagon is planning to expand drone operations to at least 110 bases in 39 states by 2017.

The number of accidents has jumped as the military has brought back drones from overseas and operated them more frequently in airspace shared with civilian planes. The military has almost tripled the number of hours its drones have flown annually in shared U.S. airspace since 2011, according to federal data.

The US federal court releases the excuses for droning Us citizens...

Although in the "circumstances of war," as the Hamdi plurality observed, "the risk of erroneous deprivation of a citizen's liberty in the absence of sufficient process ... is very real,"

...also recognized that "the realities of combat" render certain uses of force "necessary and appropriate," including against U.S. citizens who have become part of enemy forces-and that "due process analysis need not blink at those realities."

Full modestly redacted 'excuse for drone use' memo below:

Drone Memo

Drone Memo

House Passes 2014 NDAA; NSA Surveillance Will Lead to Indefinite Detention

The New American
June 27, 2013

The annual renewal of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is underway on Capitol Hill.

On June 14, by a vote of 315-108, the House of Representatives passed the Fiscal Year 2014 version of the NDAA (HR 1960). Several amendments to the defense spending legislation were proposed, many of which were approved either by voice vote or en bloc. The first method of voting requires no report on how individual members voted, while the second method aggregates amendments, allowing them to be voted on in groups.

A few of the amendments represent significant improvements to the NDAA of 2012 and 2013. The acts passed for those years infamously permitted the president to deploy U.S. military troops to apprehend and indefinitely detain any American he alone believed to be aiding enemies of the state.

While the 2014 iteration doesn’t go far enough in pushing the federal beast back inside its constitutional cage, there are at least a few congressmen willing to try to crack the whip and restore constitutional separation of powers and shore up a few of the fundamental liberties suspended by the NDAA of the past two years.

First, there is the amendment offered by Representative Trey Radel (R-Fla.). Radel’s amendment requires the Department of Defense to submit to the Congress a report every year containing: (1) the names of any U.S. citizens subject to military detention, (2) the legal justification for their continued detention, and (3) the steps the Executive Branch is taking to either provide them some judicial process, or release them. Requires that an unclassified version of the report be made available, and in addition, that the report must be made available to all members of Congress.

Radel’s amendment was passed by voice vote.

Next, an amendment offered by Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) would require the federal government, in habeas proceedings for U.S. citizens apprehended in the United States pursuant to the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), to prove by “clear and convincing evidence” that the citizen is an unprivileged enemy combatant and there is not presumption that the government's evidence is accurate and authentic.

The House approved the Goodlatte amendment by a vote of 214-211.

Finally, an amendment by Representative Paul Broun (R-Ga.) forbids the Department of Defense from killing a citizen of the United States by a drone attack unless that person is actively engaged in combat against the United States.

Read the entire article

“Disposition Matrix”: President’s 10-Year Plan for the Kill List

Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.New American
Oct 25, 2012

There will be no end to the War on Terror and the targeting of “suspected militants” will continue and become more sophisticated, according to an article published in the Washington Post on October 23.

In the piece, Greg Miller describes a project the Obama administration has been developing for a couple of years called — in true Orwellian fashion — the “disposition matrix.”

Glen Greenwald at the Guardian (U.K.) describes the matrix’s chain of command:

The “disposition matrix” has been developed and will be overseen by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). One of its purposes is “to augment” the “separate but overlapping kill lists” maintained by the CIA and the Pentagon: to serve, in other words, as the centralized clearinghouse for determining who will be executed without due process based upon how one fits into the executive branch’s “matrix”.

According to reports, the plans for perpetuating and perfecting the death-by-drone program “contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources being marshaled to track them down, including sealed indictments and clandestine operations.”

The article quotes “U.S. officials” saying that the matrix will improve the existing pair of kill lists (one maintained by the President, the other kept by the CIA) by “mapping plans for the ‘disposition’ of suspects beyond the reach of American drones.”

Readers unfamiliar with the argot of the White House and the intelligence community should understand that the phrase “plans for the disposition” of someone means plans for summarily executing a person who has never been accused of a crime and who has never been proven to have any plan to attack the United States or its interests.

Read the entire article

Federal Court Rules In Favour Of Indefinite Detention Of US Citizens

Obama’s emergency stay on NDAA block extended

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
Oct 3, 2012

A federal appeals court has ruled that the US government can still indefinitely detain citizens should it wish to do so, under the Obama Administration’s National Defense Authorization Act.

The ruling came in the form of an extension of an “emergency” stay of a district court judge’s order that had previously struck down the defence bill’s provisions altogether.

Last month District Judge Katherine Forrest permanently blocked the NDAA provision, saying that “First Amendment rights have already been harmed and will be harmed by the prospect of (the law) being enforced.”

However, the very next day the Obama administration moved to appeal the decision in an attempt to reinstate the indefinite detention provisions. The administration characterized the ruling by Forrest as unconstitutional.

Federal judge in New York, Raymond Lohier, then granted the Obama administration an “emergency” stay that temporarily blocks Forrest’s ruling.

Late yesterday, a three-judge motions panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit extended that stay, supporting the administration’s appeal and intimating that Forrest’s ruling is flawed.

“We conclude that the public interest weighs in favor of granting the government’s motion for a stay,” Appeals Court Judges Denny Chin, Raymond Lohier and Christopher Droney wrote in athree-page order that also expedited the appeal.

All three judges on the panel were appointed to the appeals court by Obama.

The order continues:

First, in its memorandum of law in support of its motion, the government clarifies unequivocally that, ‘based on their stated activities,’ plaintiffs, ‘journalists and activists[,] . . . are in no danger whatsoever of ever being captured and detained by the U.S. military.’

Second, on its face, the statute does not affect the existing rights of United States citizens or other individuals arrested in the United States. See NDAA § 1021(e) (‘Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.’).

Third, the language of the district court’s injunction appears to go beyond NDAA § 1021 itself and to limit the government’s authority under the Authorization for Use of Military Force…

Concerned Americans have argued that the NDAA provision could see American citizens kidnapped and held indefinitely without charge.

Read the entire article

Update: Michigan Counties Continue the Fight Against NDAA

The New American

October 1, 2012

Soon Michigan may join the list of other states who have passed legislation checking the president’s power under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to indefinitely detain American citizens.

On Monday, September 24, constitutionalists and friends of liberty gathered at the Oakland County (Michigan) General Government Committee Meeting to support Commissioner Jim Runestad’s Liberty Preservation Resolution. Blake Filippi of the Tenth Amendment Center (TAC) originally drafted this measure with the assistance of the Rhode Island Liberty Coalition. 

Reports to The New American from those attending the meeting indicate that many residents attended the meeting, as well, and passionately defended the right of Americans to live without the specter of an all-powerful police state looming over their every action.

One citizen, Anna Janek, stood at the meeting and recounted a childhood living in fear of government and police in communist Czechoslovakia.

A follow-up meeting to consider the anti-NDAA proposal is scheduled for Monday, October 8 and 9:30 A.M.

Apart from the noble work being done in Oakland County, State Representative Tom McMillin (R-Rochester Hills, pictured above, at left) has introduced a bill in the state legislature that would prevent the president’s power to indefinitely detain Americans from crossing the Wolverine state borders.

McMillin’s measure, HB 5768, would prevent the arrest and indefinite detention of citizens of his state under the authority of relevant provisions of the NDAA. According to the text of the legislation: 

No agency of this state, no political subdivision of this state, no employee of an agency of this state or a political subdivision of this state acting in his or her official capacity, and no member of the Michigan national guard on official state duty shall aid an agency of the armed forces of the United States in any investigation, prosecution, or detention of any person pursuant to 50 USC 1541, as provided by the federal national defense authorization act for fiscal year 2012.

The day after citizens turned out to support the cause of freedom in Oakland County, over 40 concerned Michiganders attended the Michigan State House Oversight, Reform and Ethics Committee chaired by Representative McMillin.

Led by TAC state coordinator Shane Trejo, representatives from a coalition of groups devoted to the protection of individual liberty testified in favor of McMillin’s bill and the principle of due process. The organizations present at the hearing included People Against NDAA, Campaign for Liberty, Downsize D.C., the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, and the ACLU among others.

Notably, consistent defender of the Constitution Congressman Justin Amash (R-Mich.) appeared before the committee and spoke in support of HB 5768.

Read the entire article

US Totalitarianism Loses Major Battle As Judge Permanently Blocks NDAA's Military Detention Provision

Zero Hedge
September 12, 2012

Back in January, Pulitzer winning journalist Chris Hedges sued President Obama and the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act, specifically challenging the legality of the Authorization for Use of Military Force or, the provision that authorizes military detention for people deemed to have "substantially supported" al Qaeda, the Taliban or "associated forces." Hedges called the president's action allowing indefinite detention, which was signed into law with little opposition from either party "unforgivable, unconstitutional and exceedingly dangerous." He attacked point blank the civil rights farce that is the neverending "war on terror" conducted by both parties, targetting whom exactly is unclear, but certainly attaining ever more intense retaliation from foreigners such as the furious attacks against the US consulates in Egypt and Libya. He asked  "why do U.S. citizens now need to be specifically singled out for military detention and denial of due process when under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force the president can apparently find the legal cover to serve as judge, jury and executioner to assassinate U.S. citizens." A few months later, in May, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest ruled in favor of a temporary injunction blocking the enforcement of the authorization for military detention. Today, the war againt the true totalitarian terror won a decisive battle, when in a 112-opinion, Judge Forrest turned the temporary injunction, following an appeal by the totalitarian government from August 6, into a permanent one.

From Reuters:

The permanent injunction prevents the U.S. government from enforcing a portion of Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act's "Homeland Battlefield" provisions.

The opinion stems from a January lawsuit filed by former New York Times war correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges and others. The plaintiffs said they had no assurance that their writing and advocacy activities would not fall under the scope of the provision.

Government attorneys argued that the executive branch is entitled to latitude when it comes to cases of national security and that the law is neither too broad nor overly vague.

"This court does not disagree with the principle that the president has primacy in foreign affairs," the judge said, but that she was not convinced by government arguments.

"The government has not stated that such conduct - which, by analogy, covers any writing, journalistic and associational activities that involve al Qaeda, the Taliban or whomever is deemed "associated forces" - does not fall within § 1021(b)(2)."

What is ironic, is that in the ongoing absolute farce that is the theatrical presidential debate, there hasn't been one word uttered discussing precisely the kind of creeping totalitarian control, and Orwellian loss of constitutional rights, that the biparty-supported NDAA would have demanded out of the US republic. Why? Chris Hedges said it best:

The oddest part of this legislation is that the FBI, the CIA, the director of national intelligence, the Pentagon and the attorney general didn’t support it. FBI Director Robert Mueller said he feared the bill would actually impede the bureau’s ability to investigate terrorism because it would be harder to win cooperation from suspects held by the military. “The possibility looms that we will lose opportunities to obtain cooperation from the persons in the past that we’ve been fairly successful in gaining,” he told Congress.

But it passed anyway. And I suspect it passed because the corporations, seeing the unrest in the streets, knowing that things are about to get much worse, worrying that the Occupy movement will expand, do not trust the police to protect them. They want to be able to call in the Army. And now they can.

He is 100% correct, and today, if it weren't for his lawsuit, the saying that someone, somewhere in the world might possibly "hate America for its liberties" would have been the biggest lie conceivable.

Also, the total fascist takeover of America would now have been a fact.

Read the entire article

Former Marine Indefinitely Detained In Psychiatric Ward Over 9/11 Facebook Posts

Washington’s Blog
Aug 21, 2012

Former marine Brandon Raub was carted off by the Feds and locked in a psychiatric ward for his Facebook posts questioning the government’s version of 9/11.

Raub isn’t the first person who has suffered this fate.  Claire Swinney was also held in a psychiatric ward and called “delusional” for claiming government liability for 9/11.   Others have been committed for the same reason over the last decade.

Surely the Feds are right … that kind of talk is crazy, right?

Maybe.  But many of the 9/11 Commissioners themselves don’t buy what the government says about 9/11, they say that the government has covered up the state sponsorshipof the 9/11 hijackers, and Al Qaeda flying planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon was entirely foreseeable .

Indeed, while they obviously haven’t said that the government was involved, 9/11 Commissioners have said we need further investigation and that the American people should question 9/11.  Does that mean they should they be committed to the same psych ward which Mr. Raub and Ms. Swinney enjoyed?  Of course not.

Some people believe that 9/11 was wholly unforeseeable.  Others believe that government personnel were criminally negligent in letting 9/11 happen, and then obstructed justice to cover it up.  See this, this,this, this, and this.   Still others believe that rogue government personnel allowed 9/11 to happen, or even played a role in the attacks themselves.

Whatever one believes about 9/11, isn’t our society built on freedom of speech? And if someone has kooky theories, won’t the scientific method and free debate defeat the baseless theories? Isn’t that what modern society is all about?

Raub’s attorney – the head of the non-partisan civil rights law firm The Rutherford Institute – points outthat Raub is being indefinitely detained, and says:

For government officials to not only arrest Brandon Raub for doing nothing more than exercising his First Amendment rights but to actually force him to undergo psychological evaluations and detain him against his will goes against every constitutional principle this country was founded upon. This should be a wake-up call to Americans that the police state is here.”

 Read the entire article

Reality Check: Obama Administration Refuses To Tell Judge If NDAA is Being Illegally Enforced?

 BenSwannRealityCheck

August 14, 2012

Ben Swann Reality Check takes a look at the fight between a federal judge and the Obama Administration over the NDAA's indefinite detention clause

Flashback 2009: Obama Promises to Close Gitmo – Today: $40 Million for Gitmo Upgrades

America First
July 6, 2012

[Flash back : January, 2009].  Obama promises to close Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility within a year.

2009

Now the government is spending $40 million more for upgrades at Gitmo.  Looks like Obama has no intention of actually shutting it down.  Another broken promise by a lying politician.  But more importantly, what does the presence of an indefinite detention center mean for America?  Can we really cling to a moral high ground when we don’t give people a trial or follow due process of law?  Obama (and Reagan before him) is willing to give your American rights to illegal aliens who are known to have broken the law by  crossing our borders, but he’s not willing to give accused terrorists a trial to establish their guilt before condemning them to decades in a prison camp?

2012
Gitmo sets a dangerous precedence: that people can be indefinitely detained without a trial.  It’s conditioning all of us to accept this type of “justice” as normal and moral.  Now with the approval of the NDAA, Obama has claimed the right to indefinitely detain YOU without a trial.  And he’ll even use the military to do it.  All he, or one of his “czars” (the Marxist connotations of that term are spine tingling!), has to do is accuse you of terrorism.  No evidence need be presented.  No trial required.   Is that the America we want?

Give the GITMO prisoners trials.  Punish the guilty, and let the innocent go free.

NDAA Military Detention Law Blocked by New York Judge

Bloomberg

May 17, 2012

Opponents of a U.S. law they claim may subject them to indefinite military detention for activities including news reporting and political activism persuaded a federal judge to temporarily block the measure.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan yesterday ruled in favor of a group of writers and activists who sued President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the Defense Department, claiming a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law Dec. 31, puts them in fear that they could be arrested and held by U.S. armed forces.

The complaint was filed Jan. 13 by a group including former New York Times reporter Christopher Hedges. The plaintiffs contend a section of the law allows for detention of citizens and permanent residents taken into custody in the U.S. on “suspicion of providing substantial support” to people engaged in hostilities against the U.S., such as al-Qaeda.

“The statute at issue places the public at undue risk of having their speech chilled for the purported protection from al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and ‘associated forces’ - i.e., ‘foreign terrorist organizations,’” Forrest said in an opinion yesterday. “The vagueness of Section 1021 does not allow the average citizen, or even the government itself, to understand with the type of definiteness to which our citizens are entitled, or what conduct comes within its scope.”

Enforcement Blocked

Forrest’s order prevents enforcement of the provision of the statute pending further order of the court or an amendment to the statute by Congress.

Ellen Davis, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan, declined to comment on the ruling.

The plaintiffs claim Section 1021 is vague and can be read to authorize their detention based on speech and associations that are protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Hedges and two other plaintiffs testified in a hearing before Forrest in March, the judge said. A fourth plaintiff submitted a sworn declaration. The government put on no evidence, Forrest said.

Forrest, an Obama appointee who has served on the Manhattan federal court since October, rejected the government’s arguments that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue over the law and that it merely reaffirmed provisions in an earlier law, the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which was passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Read the entire article

NDAA 2013 Passes out of Committee; Indefinite Detention Provisions Remain Intact

The New American
May 11, 2012

Photo: Congressman Howard "Buck" McKeon (in dark blue striped shirt) touring the Guantanamo Bay detention facility

As opposition to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 continues to grow, along comes the 2013 version, which promises to perpetuate the attack on liberty begun by its predecessor.

In the pre-dawn hours on Thursday, by a vote of 56-5, the House Armed Services Committee passed a slate of changes to the NDAA for the next fiscal year. Committee Chairman Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (R-Calif.) released a statement announcing the goals of the bill’s latest mark-up:

I am proud of the bi-partisan way the Committee has worked together to build this bill. It rebuilds a force strained by ten years of war while restoring both fiscal and strategic sanity to the defense budget. It keeps faith with our troops and their families while keeping America ready to face the threats of the future.

In his statement, Representative McKeon declares that “every American must have his day in court." Further, he “reaffirms the fundamental right to Habeas Corpus of any person detained in the United States pursuant to the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force.”

Section 1033 of the mark-up version passed by the committee is offered as the codification of that protection. Here is the current text of that updated provision:

This section would state that nothing in the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) or the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (Public Law 112-81) shall be construed to deny the availability of the writ of habeas corpus in a court ordained or established by or under Article III of the Constitution for any person who is detained in the United States pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40).

The double-speak contained in that paragraph is impressive even for a Capitol Hill lawyer.

Read it very closely: The new bill does nothing to prevent the indefinite detention of Americans under the 2013 NDAA; furthermore, it only reiterates that habeas corpus is a right in courts established under Article III of the Constitution. That such a right exists in the courts of the United States has never been the issue. The concern of millions of Americans from every band in the political spectrum is that Americans detained as “belligerents” under the terms of the NDAA will not be tried in Article III courts, but will be subject to military tribunals such as the one currently considering the case of the so-called “Gitmo Five.” There is not a single syllable of the 2013 NDAA that passed out of the House Armed Service Committee on Thursday that will guarantee Americans will be tried in a constitutional court and not a military commission.

Curiously, furthermore, McKeon’s mark-up ties the fundamental right of habeas corpus not to the Constitution (or the nearly 900 years of Anglo-American law), but to the Authorization for the Use of Military Force where the protection of that right is severely diminished. Such sleight of hand should not go unnoticed, particularly when it is performed by one who flies under the “Republican” banner.

On the subject of partisanship, it is almost axiomatic that Republicans and Democrats do not agree and that “reaching across the aisle” is an unattainable goal. While such conflict is not only anticipated but is encouraged in the government established by the Constitution, the frighteningly indefinite detention provisions of the NDAA seem to be an area where bipartisanship is becoming more common.

Prior to the Armed Services Committee’s hammering out of the new NDAA, Representative Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the ranking member of that committee, announced that he will propose an amendment to the 2013 NDAA that would explicitly forbid the indefinite detention within the United States and repeal the provision of law from this year’s version that permits the transfer of some suspected of terrorism into the custody of the military.

Currently, the Smith Amendment (officially styled the “Due Process and Military Detention Amendments Act”) has 60 sponsors from both major political parties. Given the noble aim of the Smith proposal, all constitutionalists should be de facto co-sponsors of the bill, as well.

The purpose of the measure, as set forth in the text, is:

To amend the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 to provide for the trial of covered persons detained in the United States pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force and to repeal the requirement for military custody.

Smith’s bill accomplishes this goal in two steps: First, it repeals the infamous Section 1022 of the 2012 NDAA. Section 1022 is the provision that empowers the President to order the military to take custody of certain “covered persons” (those branded by the President as threats to national security); next, the Due Process and Military Detention Amendments Act would revise Section 1021 of the existing act (the section authorizing the indefinite detention of American citizens classified as “belligerents”) by amending the current language to read:

Disposition of Covered Persons Detained in the United States — In the case of a covered person who is detained in the United States pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force, disposition under the law of war shall only mean the transfer of the person for trial and proceedings by a court established under Article III of the Constitution of the United States or by an appropriate State court. Such trial and proceedings shall have all the due process as provided for under the Constitution of the United States.

While the broad strokes of the NDAA are by now likely familiar to readers, a brief overview is in order.

Most of what is contained in the over-500-page 2012 version of the NDAA is inimical to liberty. For example, under the provisions of the aforementioned Section 1021, the President is afforded the absolute power to arrest and detain citizens of the United States without their being informed of any criminal charges, without a trial on the merits of those charges, and without a scintilla of the due process safeguards protected by the Constitution of the United States.

In order to execute this immense power, the NDAA unlawfully grants the President the absolute and unquestionable authority to deploy the armed forces of the United States to apprehend and to indefinitely detain those suspected of threatening the security of the “homeland.” In the language of this legislation, these people are called “covered persons.”

Regardless of promises to the contrary, the language of the NDAA places every citizen of the United States within the universe of potential “covered persons.” Any American could one day find himself or herself branded a “belligerent” and thus subject to the complete confiscation of his or her constitutional civil liberties and nearly never-ending incarceration in a military prison.

The NDAA for Fiscal Year 2013 will now soon come before the full body of the House of Representatives for a vote. No doubt the deliberations will feature speeches decrying the revocation of habeas corpus and the legalization of the indefinite detention of Americans in military prisons based on nothing more than presidential suspicion.

So as to prevent these denouncements from being nothing more than sound and fury signifying nothing, Americans must be actively engaged in the fight to prevent such precedents from being set. We must remember that these deviations from the strait and narrow constitutional path have placed our Republic on a trajectory toward tyranny.