It is not often I would quote the whole post from another blog. And, in doing so, I am going to commit the cardinal sin of newsgoups. I am not sure how it goes over with blogging. Fritz Schranck had this to say (and I am inferring all the words are those of Fritz himself*, except those bits which seem to be quoting code):
You assassinate a few leaders, fire off a couple mortar attacks at some others, and all of a sudden somebody thinks you’re a terrorist organization. What’s up with that?Sometimes you can only marvel at how some folks can be so morally obtuse.
Reading between the lines of a DC Circuit Court of Appeals decision [Fritz supplied the link] issued last Friday, it looks like the appellate panel shares this sense of wonder.
The Secretary of State has the power to declare certain qualifying entities as “foreign terrorist organizations.” This declaration carries with it some serious consequences, such as blocking access to U.S. financial institutions, criminalizing any support given to the organization, and denying entrance into the United States to any of the organization’s representatives.
On at least three occasions, 1997, 1999, and 2001, the Secretary made just such a determination about The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI). In so doing the Secretary relied upon both classified and non-classified information, as permitted under the statutory and administrative scheme that applied to this process.
PMOI appealed these designations to the DC Circuit. The primary basis for the appeal centered on the fact that classified information was part of the decisional mix used by the Secretary, and that the Iranians had no ability to access the information and no right to respond to it.
If the terrorist designations were based solely upon the classified record, perhaps the courts would have been faced with some interesting separation of powers issues.
In this case, however, PMOI had been given access to the unclassified record, and in fact contributed to it with its own submissions to the Secretary. As the Circuit Court found, there was more than enough damning information in the unclassified record to convert any legal quibbles about the classified documents into harmless error at best:
By statutory definition, "terrorist activity" ... involves any of the following: ...
(III) A violent attack upon an internationally protected person (as defined in section 1116(b)(4) of Title 18) or upon the liberty of such a person.
(IV) An assassination.
(V) The use of any … explosive or firearm (other than for mere personal monetary gain), with intent to endanger, directly or indirectly, the safety of one or more individuals or to cause substantial damage to property…[citation omitted].
By its own admission, the PMOI has
(1) attacked with mortars the Islamic Revolutionary Prosecutor's Office; (2) assassinated a former Iranian prosecutor and killed his security guards; (3) killed the Deputy Chief of the Iranian Joint Staff Command, who was the personal military adviser to Supreme Leader Khamenei; (4) attacked with mortars the Iranian Central Command Headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Defense Industries Organization in Tehran; (5) attacked and targeted with mortars the offices of the Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei, and of the head of the State Exigencies Council; (6) attacked with mortars the central headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards; (7) attacked with mortars two Revolutionary Guards Corps headquarters; and (8) attacked the headquarters of the Iranian State Security Forces in Tehran.
Were there no classified information in the file, we could hardly find that the Secretary's determination that the Petitioner engaged in terrorist activities is "lacking substantial support in the administrative record taken as a whole," even without repairing to the "classified information submitted to the court." 8 U.S.C. § 1189(b)(3)(D).
The civil appeal by these unambiguously uncivil litigants was therefore dismissed.
To be blunt, on this record it’s a mystery to me how the Iranians thought they could win this appeal in the first place.
I guess what was so remarkable to me, was not that the Court did not give the PMOI any relief, but that it was assumed it was a waste of time to challenge an ignorant law. Although the record of the activities by the PMOI is terrible and extensive, all the acts described therein were internal Iranian affairs. They sound more like revolutionaries than terrorists. Is this not a step beyond attacking a country to dethrone a dictator? Are we now dictating who can even attempt to gain power in a foreign country, or how they go about it, by the use of the word "terrorist?" Maybe we are becoming a very imperialistic country while we are looking the other way?**
Oh, Hell, if that is the way it should be, then Semper Fi!
*I do not know Fritz, or whether Fritz is truly named Fritz, therefore the gender assignment, I admit is an assumption due to the name. I could be or possibly might be wrong. There, I can say that!
**Max Boot says we are imperialists, but what does he know, he is a Canadian? Chris at The Nobel Pundit has a different opinion.