Page 133 - Encyclopedia Of Terrorism

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Department of Justice, U.S.———107

up under appeal. This means minimizing the possi-
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, U.S. bility of terrorists going free because of poorly
executed procedures, for example, illegal search and
seizure or failure to read Miranda rights. Meanwhile,
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is intelligence agencies, such as the CIA, are unlikely to
the country’s primary law enforcement agency that offer evidence that might jeopardize sources or intel-
addresses domestic terrorism and terrorist threats. ligence strategies; what is uncovered in a trial is a
Through the office of the attorney general, the DOJ matter of public record. Once arrests are made, prose-
is responsible for bringing terrorists to trial. cution becomes the highest priority for the DOJ.
In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson signed Trials of terrorists have brought to light significant
Executive Order No. 11396; this order directed and information about the inner workings of terrorist orga-
authorized the U.S. attorney general to coordinate the nizations. A recent example is the trial of Ahmed
law enforcement and crime prevention activities of Ressam, who was found guilty of the Y2K plot to
all federal agencies. Thus, the DOJ is significantly bomb Los Angeles International Airport on New
involved in the domestic surveillance, arrest, deten- Year’s Eve 1999. Ressam’s testimony, offered in
tion, and trial of suspected terrorists. The prosecution exchange for a reduced sentence, gave an inside view
of terrorists who have committed acts within the of bin Laden’s terrorist training camps in Afghanistan
United States has, for the most part, been successful. and will be used to help try other suspected terrorists,
In fact, prosecution is considered one of the most including Abu Zubaydah, bin Laden’s alleged chief of
important and exercised tools to counter terrorism and operations, who was captured in Pakistan in March
has long played a vital role in U.S. counterterrorism 2002. Similarly, the trial of the terrorists who bombed
policy. the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania made the
Much like prosecutions for other crimes, the prose- Al Qaeda terrorist training manual public. That trial,
cution of terrorists has several goals. Conviction the trials for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing,
means the terrorist remains imprisoned and is thus and the related conspiracy trial involving Sheik Omar
unable to commit further attacks. Conviction can Abdel Rahman were held in the New York Southern
also have a deterrent effect—the threat of imprison- District. The prosecutor was U.S. Attorney Mary Jo
ment keeps others from committing terrorist acts. White, the preeminent prosecutor of international
Indictments alert terrorists at large that they are terrorists. Before her resignation at the end of 2001,
wanted; thus, they may go into hiding and curtail she had prosecuted 30 terrorists in six trials. The
future terrorist activities. The general publicity information brought out at these trials has provided a
surrounding a trial can also stir public support for substantial part of our information about bin Laden
counterterrorism initiatives and influence other and Al Qaeda.
governments to follow suit. In the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks on
In many cases, however, these supposed deterrents the World Trade Center in New York City and the
and checks on action do not work. For the suicide Pentagon near Washington, D.C., Attorney General
bombers of the most recent era of terrorism, issues John Ashcroft stated that the DOJ “must shift its
of conviction and deterrence are irrelevant. In many primary focus from investigating and prosecuting past
cases, the prosecutions of the “underlings” who crimes to identifying threats of future terrorist attacks,
commit terrorist acts leave the masterminds, such preventing them from happening and punishing
as Osama bin Laden, at large. For acts committed would-be perpetrators for their plans of terror.” Within
against U.S. citizens by foreign groups on foreign weeks, Ashcroft launched a law enforcement cam-
soil, an entirely different set of problems, most often paign that targeted potential suspects for as little as
related to arrest and surveillance procedures, presents “spitting on the sidewalk,” modeled after former
itself. One of the primary difficulties in bringing Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s tactic in defeat-
terrorists to justice, however, lies in the tensions ing organized crime in the 1960s. This campaign led
between law enforcement and national security. The to more than 1,200 secret arrests and detentions of
FBI, under the auspices of the DOJ, is expected to noncitizens, often on minor immigration violations.
conduct investigations and make arrests that will hold By December 2001, the DOJ had levied criminal