Brandt Goldstein: Clinton's Guantanamo
[Brandt Goldstein is the author of Storming the Court (Scribner 2005), the story of Yale law students and human rights lawyers who shut down the first Guantanamo detention camp.]
... We sometimes forget that during the Clinton presidency, the United States ran an extralegal detention camp on Guantanamo—and went to federal court to defend its right to do so. The camp during the Clinton years was by no means the nightmarish operation it is now; certainly, there weren't allegations of torture. But Guantanamo under Clinton produced its own share of suffering and abuses—and perhaps most important for today, the court decision that shut it down was eventually wiped off the books, thanks to legal maneuvers by the Clinton Justice Department.
A smidgen of history: Our first Guantanamo detention camp was established in the late stages of the George H.W. Bush presidency. The detainees there weren't terror suspects, but 300 innocent Haitian refugees seeking safe haven from the military regime that ousted Haiti's democratically elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in September 1991. These refugees—brought to Guantanamo after the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted their vessels on the high seas between Haiti and Cuba—faced a terrible predicament. In interviews with U.S. immigration officials, they'd all proved a legitimate fear of political persecution were they to be returned to Haiti. Under U.S. policy, they should have been promptly flown to the American mainland (as were a number of other Haitians). But then this small group of men, women, and children also tested positive for HIV. Fear of AIDS was still extreme at that time, and the Bush administration refused to let these hapless refugees into the country. So, instead they were detained in a remote corner of Guantanamo with no prospect of release.
All this would only seem to give Democrats more ammunition to criticize the president today: like father, like son. But of course, the Bush dynasty was interrupted by Bill Clinton in 1992—and his record on Guantanamo was an ugly one. Despite signals on the campaign trail that he intended to shut down the camp, Clinton changed his mind. As a result, the refugees remained, even after he assumed office, in leaky barracks with poor sanitation, surrounded by razor wire and guard towers. They responded with a hunger strike, and after raucous protests against their confinement, a number were thrown in the naval brig as if they were criminals. (Here's a videotape of a crackdown against the Haitians while Bush I was still running the camp.) Worse still, federal authorities refused to release the sickest Haitians, even though military physicians on Guantanamo lacked the means to treat them.
The Clinton White House justified this atrocious conduct in terms that sound strikingly familiar today. Justice Department attorneys maintained that foreigners held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay have absolutely no legal rights, whether under the Constitution, federal statutes, or international law. According to this logic, the Clinton White House was free to treat the detainees however it pleased. (There was some plagiarism here. The Clinton folks took this argument from the Bush administration lawyers who'd first defended the camp.)
The Haitians were luckier than today's detainees; American law students and human rights lawyers took up their cause, and more than a year after the camp was established, the case finally came to trial in a federal district court in Brooklyn, N.Y. The judge ultimately rejected Clinton's position and issued what now seems, with the benefit of hindsight, like a critically important decision. The Haitians on Guantanamo, he ruled, were entitled to constitutional due process, including the right to a lawyer, the right to proper medical care, and the right not to be held indefinitely without charge. The judge reasoned that because Guantanamo Bay is under the "complete jurisdiction and control" of the United States, prisoners there had to be accorded certain fundamental constitutional rights.
In response, the Clinton administration finally shut down the camp and allowed the Haitians to come to the United States. At the same time, though, the administration managed to undo the new precedent recognizing due process rights for foreigners on Guantanamo. In negotiations with attorneys for the refugees, the Justice Department agreed that it would not appeal the ruling, but only if the lower court decision was vacated—that is, erased from the books. The refugees' lawyers agreed to the deal because they feared they would lose if the case went to the Supreme Court, which had already intervened in favor of the government at earlier stages of the litigation. As a result, the judge's landmark decision that due process applies on Guantanamo doesn't exist anymore, technically speaking.
Why did the Clinton Justice Department insist on snuffing out the precedential value of the Guantanamo ruling? In later interviews, Clinton national security officials explained that they feared future refugee crises in the Caribbean and couldn't afford a court precedent that might limit their options for handling the situation. Using words that have a prophetic ring today, one official commented that White House advisers wanted "maximum flexibility" on Guantanamo, "confident that they would do the right thing but not wanting to be forced by the law to have to do so." ...
Read entire article at Slate
... We sometimes forget that during the Clinton presidency, the United States ran an extralegal detention camp on Guantanamo—and went to federal court to defend its right to do so. The camp during the Clinton years was by no means the nightmarish operation it is now; certainly, there weren't allegations of torture. But Guantanamo under Clinton produced its own share of suffering and abuses—and perhaps most important for today, the court decision that shut it down was eventually wiped off the books, thanks to legal maneuvers by the Clinton Justice Department.
A smidgen of history: Our first Guantanamo detention camp was established in the late stages of the George H.W. Bush presidency. The detainees there weren't terror suspects, but 300 innocent Haitian refugees seeking safe haven from the military regime that ousted Haiti's democratically elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in September 1991. These refugees—brought to Guantanamo after the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted their vessels on the high seas between Haiti and Cuba—faced a terrible predicament. In interviews with U.S. immigration officials, they'd all proved a legitimate fear of political persecution were they to be returned to Haiti. Under U.S. policy, they should have been promptly flown to the American mainland (as were a number of other Haitians). But then this small group of men, women, and children also tested positive for HIV. Fear of AIDS was still extreme at that time, and the Bush administration refused to let these hapless refugees into the country. So, instead they were detained in a remote corner of Guantanamo with no prospect of release.
All this would only seem to give Democrats more ammunition to criticize the president today: like father, like son. But of course, the Bush dynasty was interrupted by Bill Clinton in 1992—and his record on Guantanamo was an ugly one. Despite signals on the campaign trail that he intended to shut down the camp, Clinton changed his mind. As a result, the refugees remained, even after he assumed office, in leaky barracks with poor sanitation, surrounded by razor wire and guard towers. They responded with a hunger strike, and after raucous protests against their confinement, a number were thrown in the naval brig as if they were criminals. (Here's a videotape of a crackdown against the Haitians while Bush I was still running the camp.) Worse still, federal authorities refused to release the sickest Haitians, even though military physicians on Guantanamo lacked the means to treat them.
The Clinton White House justified this atrocious conduct in terms that sound strikingly familiar today. Justice Department attorneys maintained that foreigners held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay have absolutely no legal rights, whether under the Constitution, federal statutes, or international law. According to this logic, the Clinton White House was free to treat the detainees however it pleased. (There was some plagiarism here. The Clinton folks took this argument from the Bush administration lawyers who'd first defended the camp.)
The Haitians were luckier than today's detainees; American law students and human rights lawyers took up their cause, and more than a year after the camp was established, the case finally came to trial in a federal district court in Brooklyn, N.Y. The judge ultimately rejected Clinton's position and issued what now seems, with the benefit of hindsight, like a critically important decision. The Haitians on Guantanamo, he ruled, were entitled to constitutional due process, including the right to a lawyer, the right to proper medical care, and the right not to be held indefinitely without charge. The judge reasoned that because Guantanamo Bay is under the "complete jurisdiction and control" of the United States, prisoners there had to be accorded certain fundamental constitutional rights.
In response, the Clinton administration finally shut down the camp and allowed the Haitians to come to the United States. At the same time, though, the administration managed to undo the new precedent recognizing due process rights for foreigners on Guantanamo. In negotiations with attorneys for the refugees, the Justice Department agreed that it would not appeal the ruling, but only if the lower court decision was vacated—that is, erased from the books. The refugees' lawyers agreed to the deal because they feared they would lose if the case went to the Supreme Court, which had already intervened in favor of the government at earlier stages of the litigation. As a result, the judge's landmark decision that due process applies on Guantanamo doesn't exist anymore, technically speaking.
Why did the Clinton Justice Department insist on snuffing out the precedential value of the Guantanamo ruling? In later interviews, Clinton national security officials explained that they feared future refugee crises in the Caribbean and couldn't afford a court precedent that might limit their options for handling the situation. Using words that have a prophetic ring today, one official commented that White House advisers wanted "maximum flexibility" on Guantanamo, "confident that they would do the right thing but not wanting to be forced by the law to have to do so." ...