Letters to the Editor
The Post & Courier
Charleston, SC
Dear Editor
Marc A. Thiessen’s column (Nov 6) criticizing President Trump for treating terrorists like former President Obama, is truly off the mark and implies the United States would do better to treat these terrorists as “enemy combatants” and send them to Guantanamo, rather than read them their Miranda rights and try them in civilian courts He wrote this would assist intelligence agencies in gathering data.
The organization Human Rights First provides reliable information more likely to make Americans sleep better at night. For example, consider just these four points they make:
(1) Federal civilian criminal courts have convicted more than 620 individuals on terrorism-related charges since 9/11. Military commissions have convicted only eight, three of which have been overturned completely and one partially.
(2) Federal prisons hold hundreds of individuals convicted of terrorism-related offenses. None have ever escaped.
(3) Prosecuting terror suspects before military commissions makes them look like warriors rather than the criminals that they are. As Judge William Young said when sentencing Shoe Bomber Richard Reid, “You’re no warrior….You are a terrorist. A species of criminal guilty of multiple attempted murders.”
(4) Miranda is an effective law enforcement tool that provides valuable information. Phil Mudd, former deputy director of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center and a senior intelligence adviser to the FBI, wrote that he “sat at hundreds of briefing tables for nine years after Sept. 11, 2001, and I can't remember a time when Miranda impeded a decision on whether to pursue an intelligence interview.”
