Ashcroft's murky motives

Instead of tailing "dirty bomb" suspect Abdullah al Muhajir and following him to other suspects, the federal government arrested him, but then waited a month to announce the bust. Now critics wonder what the Justice Department is really up to.

By Dave Lindorff

Jun 12, 2002 | In the weeks following the Sept. 11 attack, when U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft sent agents off on a high-profile effort to interrogate thousands of Muslim green card holders and began having the Immigration Service lock up hundreds of Muslim men on visa and other minor violations, he came under heavy criticism from a surprising direction: former FBI officials.

They claimed his dragnet was ruining the government's best chance to find out what terrorists were up to in the U.S. by arresting everyone who seemed remotely suspicious and by scaring any real terrorists deeper underground. As one former G-man said at the time, the way to catch a conspiracy is to patiently watch it develop, and then swoop in and nab everyone.

Now the arrest of alleged "dirty bomb" conspirator Abdullah al Muhajir -- often referred to by his birth name, Jose Padilla -- on apparently thin evidence, has renewed criticism that the government is mishandling the campaign against terrorism.

First, the government arrests al Muhajir, an American citizen, on a material witness warrant as he steps off a plane in Chicago's O'Hare airport. The FBI already had two undercover agents fly in to O'Hare on the same plane with him, without his knowledge. Then, after questioning him in federal detention in New York City, they bustle him off to secret detention in a military brig on a secure Navy base in South Carolina, where they bar him from contact with other inmates, his family and an attorney.

Finally, in a dramatic live television hookup from Moscow, Ashcroft on Monday announced the al Muhajir bust.

"It does seem very stupid that they arrested him, if he wasn't ready to do anything," Michael Ratner, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in an interview Monday.

In a CBS interview Tuesday morning, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz appeared to say that the government knew remarkably little about this alleged plot when it nabbed al Muhajir. "He clearly had associates," Wolfowitz said, "and one of the things we want to ask him about is who those associates were and how we can track them down."

And suppose he doesn't want to oblige? So far, it's been five weeks that al Muhajir has been in federal custody, and government sources are saying that he hasn't said anything.

A big question is whether the government has anything substantial at all on the 31-year-old al Muhajir.

It may be that he has almost nothing to tell them.

"In the cases I've handled where the government squeezes people in an organization for information, those people very quickly talk about someone they can afford to give up," says veteran defense attorney Leonard Weinglass. "And who's Padilla to the al-Qaida organization? He's nobody.

"There was no bomb," Weinglass continues. "There are no co-conspirators, at least that the government is telling us about. In his baggage there was no map, no plans, no battery, nothing. At his press conference Tuesday, [FBI Director Robert] Mueller said the allegations against Padilla are based not on a planned attack, not on the preparation for an attack, but on 'discussions' about an attack. That's pretty thin. You can't go to court with a case like this."

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