Editorial: Bucking president’s secrecy

Saturday, Dec. 2, 2006 | 7:06 a.m.

The inanity of the Bush administration's zealous and secretive anti-terrorism tactics were on display in two federal courts this week.

On Monday a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that two provisions of an executive order that Bush signed in 2001 were unconstitutional. The judge said that the provisions, which were designed to block financial assistance to terrorist groups, were vaguely worded and had "no apparent limit" on the president's ability to label groups or people as terrorists or associates of terrorists.

And on Tuesday, attorneys for Khaled el-Masri, a Kuwaiti-born German citizen, told a federal appeals court that the CIA kidnapped their client while he was on vacation in 2003 and spirited him off to a secret prison in Afghanistan where he was beaten, tortured and interrogated for five months. El-Masri was later released after CIA officials determined that he was not, after all, a terrorist.

The two cases are unrelated, but both strike at the core of Bush's anti-terrorism approach, which is built on a foundation of secrecy, warrantless searches and seizures, arrests that border on kidnapping, torture and a general lack of proper legal processes and recourse for those accused of being associated with terrorist activities.

It was in the name of national security that el-Masri was allegedly detained by the CIA as he attempted to enter Macedonia on vacation in December 2003. A federal judge dismissed el-Masri's lawsuit against former CIA director George Tenet and others, saying that such a court proceeding could damage national security. News of el-Masri's detention made international headlines, which makes it difficult to believe that airing the details in court would cause any real damage.

El-Masri wants an explanation and an apology from the United States. He deserves both, and such accommodations are not unprecedented. On Wednesday the federal government issued a written apology and agreed to pay $2 million to an Oregon lawyer who was wrongly jailed for two weeks in connection with the 2004 terrorist bombings in Madrid. Certainly, a man such as el-Masri can expect some sort of recompense for being jailed and tortured by U.S. officials in a foreign country.

Above all, the American people deserve to know why and how the U.S. government can detain people in foreign prisons - places where torture and mistreatment are allowed - without due process of law.

The United States has a long-standing tradition of opposing the violation of human rights and civil liberties in other nations. We should not tolerate such violations by our own country.