Michael Chertoff is Bad for Homeland Security

One of the guiding principles of the Department of Homeland Security is that its strategies and actions will be consistent with the individual rights and liberties enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and guided by the Rule of Law. Michael Chertoff’s record in John Ashcroft’s Justice Department clearly illustrates Mr. Chertoff’s cavalier treatment of both.

While serving as the head of the criminal division in the U.S. Department of Justice, Mr. Chertoff was responsible for: (1) misconduct by Justice Department lawyers in a failed prosecution of an alleged sleeper terrorist cell in Detroit, Michigan, (2) an overzealous, and ultimately failed, prosecution alleging the creation of internet terror networks against an innocent college student in Boise, Idaho, and (3) the stalled prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui.

Post 9/11, Mr. Chertoff played a key role limiting or eliminating civil rights and liberties protections by promoting actions such as: using “material witness” warrants to incarcerate people of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent, interviewing thousands of Middle Eastern and South Asian men who entered the U.S. lawfully before and after the 9/11 attacks, denying a defendant facing the death penalty the fundamental right to face and question his accusers, and holding suspects indefinitely without counsel as “enemy combatants.” Some have described Mr. Chertoff as “the driving force behind the Justice Department’s most controversial initiatives in the war on terrorism.”

The Department of Homeland Security has three primary missions: prevent terrorist attacks within the United States, reduce America’s vulnerability to terrorism, and minimize the damage from potential attacks. The concern is not whether Michael Chertoff will sincerely pursue these missions, but rather, the manner in which he will do so.

The use of overbroad measures such as the ones Mr. Chertoff supports makes us more vulnerable to terrorism. Draconian measures such as “material witness” incarcerations and racial and religious profiling alienate entire communities. Members of these communities lose faith in law enforcement agents, and a critical resource in preventing terrorist attacks, information, is lost.

Ultimately, terrorism is a crime, and President George W. Bush is correct in seeking a crime fighter to fill the job of Homeland security chief. There are plenty of worthy prosecutors and law enforcement agents in the U.S. who are able to diligently pursue terrorists but who, at the same time, also value civil rights and liberties. Mr. Chertoff is not one of them.

http://www.masnet.org/views.asp?id=2067