We have recently been reminded that the War On Terror continues and has gotten closer to home with the arrest of American citizens who chose to join terrorist groups. But have we forgotten the lessons learned in the years before we realized there was a war?
Yesterday's Wall Street Journal posted an editorial by Debra Burlingame, a former attorney and a director of the National September 11 Memorial Foundation. Debra is the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
Ms. Burlingame relates the saga of Richard Reid, currently an inmate in a prison in Colorado:
"On June 17, at the Administrative Maximum (ADX) penitentiary in Florence, Colo., one of those albatrosses, inmate number 24079-038, began his day with a whole new range of possibilities. Eight days earlier, the U.S.
Attorney 's office in Denver filed notice in federal court that the Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) which applied to that prisoner--Richard C. Reid, a.k.a. the "Shoe Bomber"--were being allowed to expire. SAMs are security directives, renewable yearly, issued by the attorney general when "there is a substantial risk that a prisoner's communications, correspondence or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury" to others."
Please follow the link to the article. It relates how Ahmed Ajaj who had been put in prison in 1992 for passport fraud assisted in planning the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. He made phone calls to Ramzi Yousef, speaking in code so that he would not alert monitors as to what was being discussed.
Ms. Burlingame ends her article with this thought:
"Meanwhile, in order to appease political constituencies both here and abroad, the Obama administration is moving full steam ahead, operating on the false premise that giving more civil liberties to religious fanatics bent on destroying Western civilization will make a difference in the Muslim world. In a letter sent to his father as he began his hunger strike, Reid provided a preview of how he will exercise his newly enlarged free speech rights, calling Mr. Obama a "hypocrite" who is "no better than George Bush." His lawsuit remains active while the Department of Justice works out a settlement that satisfies the man who declared, "I am at war with America.""
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