Those outraged because Zacarias Moussaoui got off easy with a life sentence can take comfort that he faces a fate worse than death. Dan Eggan writes in today’s Washington Post about the Administrative Maximum United States Penitentiary, or Admax, in Florence, Colorado:
Dubbed the “Alcatraz of the Rockies” by prison experts — and “The Tombs” by many prisoners and their lawyers — the 12-year-old “supermax” facility houses about 400 of the most dangerous and infamous prisoners in the federal system, from “Unabomber” Theodore J. Kaczynski to Ramzi Yousef, architect of the 1993 World Trade center bombing. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons transferred most, if not all, of its terrorism-related inmates to the prison.
But Moussaoui is unlikely to meet, or even glimpse, Yousef or any other fellow jihadists at the Florence facility anytime soon, according to federal officials, lawyers and others familiar with operations there.
In the most tightly monitored part of the facility, known as the “control unit,” inmates are kept in segregation at all times — living, sleeping and eating in individual cells poured from concrete that measure approximately 7 feet by 11 feet. They are designed to ensure that inmates cannot speak to or make eye contact with each other, according to defense lawyers, human rights advocates and others who have had access to the facility. Some prisoners are monitored 24 hours a day by surveillance cameras in their cells, as Moussaoui has been during his years in the Alexandria jail. …
… Some inmates are allowed a handful of visitors and phone calls each month, but many of those incarcerated for terrorism-related crimes have no visitors other than their attorneys and the guards who shackle them whenever they are removed from their cells, according to defense attorneys and court testimony.
Ramzi Yousef, for example, often spends days at a time not leaving his cell, because using his daily one-hour exercise time requires submitting to body cavity searches. The only person allowed to visit him is his lawyer, whose offices and practice are in New York.
Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian adds the detail that “Religious services of numerous denominations are piped in from a small chapel.”
I keep thinking of a calf confined in a veal crate. They usually go mad.
Richard Serrano at the Los Angeles Times says that prisoners at Admax experience a slow rot.
They exist alone in soundproof cells as small as 7 feet by 12 feet, with a concrete-poured desk, bed and stool, a small shower and sink, and a TV that offers religious and anger-management programs.
They are locked down 23 hours a day.
Larry Homenick, a former U.S. marshal who has taken prisoners to Supermax, said that there was a small triangular recreation area, known as “the dog run,” where solitary Supermax prisoners could occasionally get a glimpse of sky.
He said it was chilling to walk down the cellblocks and glance through the plexiglass “sally port” chambers into the cells and see the faces inside.
Life there is harsh. Food is delivered through a slit in the cell door. Prisoners don’t leave their cells to see a lawyer, a doctor or a prison official; those visitors must go to the cell.
Prison expert James E. Aiken told the jury what Moussaoui’s life would be like at Admax.
In his trial testimony, Aiken said the whole point of Supermax was not just punishment, but “incapacitation.”
There is no pretense that the prison is preparing the inmate for a return to society. Like the cellmate of the count of Monte Cristo who died an old, tired convict, Aiken said, “Moussaoui will deteriorate.” …
… Christopher Boyce, a convicted spy who was incarcerated at Supermax, left the prison about 100 miles south of Denver with no regret. “You’re slowly hung,” he once told The Times. “You’re ground down. You can barely keep your sanity.” …
… Ron Kuby, another New York defense lawyer, has handled several East Coast “revolutionaries” who went on a killing spree, and a radical fundamentalist who killed a rabbi in 1990. All were brought to Supermax.
He thought Aiken’s description that prisoners rot inside its walls was too kind.
“It’s beyond rotting,” he said. “Rotting at least implies a slow, gradual disintegration.”
He said there were a lot of prisons where inmates rot, where the staff “plants you in front of your TV in your cell and you just grow there like a mushroom.”
“But Supermax is worse,” he said. “It’s not just the hothouse for the mushrooms. It’s designed in the end to break you down.”
I’ll leave it to others to decide if this is justice. I’m more concerned about what David Cole says in today’s WaPo. Cole calls Moussaoui’s prosecution an “object lesson in how the government’s overreaching has undermined our security.”
Four years ago Moussaoui was on the verge of pleading guilty to offenses that would have resulted in a life sentence. But he was unwilling to accept the government’s insistence that he admit to being the 20th hijacker of Sept. 11, 2001 — an allegation the government has long since dropped.
For almost two years, the case was stalled as the government sought Moussaoui’s execution while denying him access to witnesses in its control who had testimony establishing that he was not involved in the Sept. 11 plot at all. Due process has long required the government to turn over such “exculpatory” evidence, but the government, citing national security, refused to afford Moussaoui access to this evidence. In October 2003 the trial court offered a reasonable solution: Allow the trial to proceed but eliminate the death penalty, because that’s what the government’s exculpatory evidence related to. The government refused that solution and spent several more years trying Moussaoui. The case ended where it began — with Moussaoui facing life in prison.
Your tax dollars at work.
Meanwhile, at a secret CIA “black site” prison, the United States is holding the alleged mastermind of Sept. 11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed. And at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, it has Mohamed al-Qahtani, who the government now claims is the real would-be 20th hijacker. But the administration can’t try either of these men, because any such proceeding would turn into a trial of the United States’ own tactics in the war on terrorism. The CIA has reportedly water-boarded Khalid Sheik Mohammed — a practice in which the suspect is made to fear that he is drowning in order to encourage him to talk. And Army logs report that interrogators threatened Qahtani with dogs, made him strip naked and wear women’s underwear, put him on a leash and made him bark like a dog, injected him with intravenous fluids and barred him from the bathroom so that he urinated on himself. With these shortsighted and inhumane tactics, the administration essentially immunized the real culprits, so it was left seeking the execution of a man who was not involved in Sept. 11.
As a PR tactic it seems to have worked pretty well with Bush’s Bitter Ender base, who don’t seem to have noticed that Moussaoui was a bit player, if that, in the 9/11 atrocity. They enjoyed a two-day virtual rampage over the verdict. You’d have thought Moussaoui was Osama bin Laden’s best bud and piloted one of the hijacked planes himself. I’m sure they’d still be at it except for the allegations that Patrick Kennedy was caught driving drunk and got special treatment from DC cops. No rightie will pass up an opportunity to wallow in the depravity of the Kennedys; they dropped Moussaoui and went after ol’ Patrick like hounds catching scent of a raccoon.
(I know hounds chase foxes in civilized places, but it’s raccoons where I come from.)
The Moussaoui case is emblematic of the administration’s approach to fighting terrorism. It has repeatedly overreached and sought symbolic victories, adopting tactics that have undermined its ability to achieve real security while disregarding less flashy but more effective means of protecting us. In the early days after Sept. 11, Attorney General John Ashcroft sought to reassure us with repeated announcements of the detention of large numbers of “terror suspects” — ultimately the government admitted to detaining 5,000 foreign nationals in the first two years after Sept. 11. Yet to this day not one of them stands convicted of a terrorist offense. Similarly, the administration launched a nationwide ethnic profiling campaign, calling in 8,000 young men for FBI interviews and 80,000 more for registration, fingerprinting and photographing by immigration authorities, simply because they came from Arab and Muslim countries. Not one of those 88,000 has been convicted of terrorism.
Come to think of it, some good ol’, coon dogs might do a better job.
Cole goes on to note that only 8 percent of the Guantanamo detainees are even accused of being fighters for al Qaeda. “The majority are not accused of engaging in any hostile acts against the United States.” Jose Padilla was stripped of his rights as a citizen and held in military custody for being “a marginal player in a hazy conspiracy to support terrorism. His indictment cites no terrorist acts or terrorist groups that were actually supported.”
While the government rounded up Arabs and Muslims with no ties to terrorism and authorized torture and disappearances, several of its highest-profile cases fell short, and it failed to carry out the more mundane work that might actually make us safer. In December the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission gave the administration a disastrous report card on its progress in implementing a series of practical security recommendations — such as better screening of cargo on airlines and containers coming into ports, securing of nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union to keep them out of terrorists’ hands, and protection of vulnerable targets such as chemical plants.
Tough talk in news conferences, overheated charges that evaporate under scrutiny and executions for symbolic purposes will not make us safer. The administration needs to turn away from symbolism and toward substance if it is to have any hope of protecting us from the next attack.
One of the many peculiarities of righties is that for them, symbolism is as good as substance. For them, image is character and rhetoric is accomplishment. Boasting is victory. Ideology is the only reality. Truly, the Bushies could just snatch random Muslims off the streets (which of course they’ve alrady done) and hang them publicly without evidence or trial, and a large part of the righties would accept this without question. They’d probably find a way to defend it as a bold antiterrorist initiative.
Finally, from the site Homeland Security Watch, we find a list of the people in U.S. custody that played a much larger role than Moussaoui in the 9/11 attacks. They are:
Strangely, the Bitter Enders seem unconcerned about prosecuting these guys. It seems they’re too busy blogswarming Patrick Kennedy. Gotta keep those priorities straight.
The jury rejected the government’s case to have Moussaoui executed, deciding instead he should spend life in prison.
And rightwing bloggers and pundits are greatly offended by the court’s alleged leniency: the Neocons and their “conservative†friends feel cheated of the proverbial “pound of flesh†President Bush had promised to give them.
“The death penalty has a meaning, and it isn’t vengeance†writes Peggy Noonan in the columns of the pro-Israeli Wall Street Journal:
“Excuse me, I’m sorry, and I beg your pardon, but the jury’s decision on Moussaoui gives me a very bad feeling. What we witnessed here was not the higher compassion but a dizzy failure of nerve. […]
How removed from our base passions we’ve become. Or hope to seem.
It is as if we’ve become sophisticated beyond our intelligence, savvy beyond wisdom. Some might say we are showing a great and careful generosity, as befits a great nation. But maybe we’re just, or also, rolling in our high-mindedness like a puppy in the grass. Maybe we are losing some crude old grit. Maybe it’s not good we lose itâ€
Hmm…Peggy the swine and her Neocon Kermit friends will always like a little bestiality…
And their “deer†enemy Zach Moose was the perfect scapegoat: I mean the animal is both French AND Mohammedan- too bad he isn’t also black, gay and communist!
How an inoffensive (except maybe for himself) unstable fool eager to get his proverbial 5 minutes of glory through the grandiloquent use of outlandish statements and other “jihadist verbiage†can attract the attention of so many “conservative†minds shows the extent to which conservatism, once the ideological home of our nation’s virile and rational minds, has become of sub-ideology of sensationalist pussies and other Neocon carpetbaggers…
I’ve always wondered how so many sane citizen were easily fooled into believing that a half-demented Moroccan prole from the eastern suburbs of Paris was indeed a “global terrorist mastermind†ready to play kamikaze with the WTC.
But then again, millions of our fellow Americans were brainwashed into believing that Saddam Hussein, by far the Arab world’s most secular and Westernized politician, was kind of a later days bloodthirsty Saracen on the verge of conquering the infidel pastures of Wyoming!
Well written, Dr. Victorino de la Vega.
Poor Peggy Noonan is out of step, as usual.
How long ago was she a writer a former President?
Was it Ronald R?
“One of the many peculiarities of the righties is for them, symbolism is as good as substance.For them image is character and rhetoric is accomplishment.Boasting is victory.Ideology is the only reality”
Boy lady, you said a mouthful of truth there…talk about hitting the nail on the head.
The thing is, righties don’t seem to notice who or what they have become…..I once read a comment on a blog(I can’t recall where) that said: “If george bush and his under-aged gay lover robbed a bank , then went on a shooting spree 30% of Americans would still support him “…What struck me about that comment is that it was probably correct….. as long as they killed one arab on the shooting spree the righties could spin it as bush being tough on terrorists.
Will righties look back the way I look back at photos of myself from the 70’s : in shame? Will they say”I can’t believe I bought the bush lines” the same way I think “was I keeping a small man under those bell bottoms”?….This is far more serious then bell bottoms…I know,,I just can’t think of another time I fell for something so stupid…
Bell bottoms were harmless enough..but this new rightie fashion … wow our nation will pay for generations,, in so many ways,, ways we can’t even see yet.Damage has been done that can never be undone.
Forget for just a minute about the guys we can never try because if we did the whole world would know we are torturing scumbags.Righ now in Iraq a small child watches as his mother cries…the child is watching the suffering all around his country.The child has been seeing 911 in his country every damn day for the past 3 years….us folks with hearts can’t get over the pain of ONE day, many years ago…but folks there see it everyday only worse.(Am I allowed to say anyone could suffer more than an American?).Those kids are going to grow up suffering because of us, do you think they will ever forget?Do you think they are even able to forget?Long after righties move on to the next group to hate,, people in Iraq will still feel the suffering and the effects of war…long long after we all forget, Iraqis won’t forget.They can’t.
I recall saddam and now the Iranian nut case being compared to hitler, often on rightie blogs…It creates a mini frenzy of “let’s get em’s” among the base.I have also heard bush compared to hitler and watched the same rightie blogs AMP out ….the thing I think we should keep in mind is that hitler was set on taking over the world…he was not content just to run his own little section of the world…(does that sound like anyone we know?..hmmmm).. Saddam , since the 90’s seemed fine with his little piece of the pie.. and even the figurehead/nutjob from Iran, who has said some flat out silly shit,, has never talked about wanting world domination…..then there’s America….
We can’t finish a war before we are already picking the next one..(like the others have gone so well) …maybe after Iran, bush will let loyal bloggers pick the next war by blog poll for fun!(I vote for china so we don’t have to repay all the money we borrowed from them)…..
The beacon of hope has “black” locations , what does that tell you? Who is sounding more and more like a little hitler all the time?Meanwhile a little dictator in high heels is building more nukes by the day, but instead we need to go to Iran so they don’t get nukes in 5 or 10 years???Talk about symbolism over substance.
Kinda takes my breath away to compare Patrick Fitzgerald’s cautious, methodical, patient, careful-to-follow-the-law, competent prosecutorial behavior with that of the stuck-on-symbols, image-dependent, rhetoric-focused, ideology-cramped, empty-boasting, torture-derived prosecutorial failures of the Bush mentality government.
Yes, Britwit, Peggy Noonan was a Reagan(a)ut.
Those of us who are sane know there isn’t one single aspect of the 9/11 aftermath that our federal government has not fucked up. The Moussaoui case will become a textbook example of how not to prosecute, if sane people ever return to the DoJ.
As for conditions at Admax, whoa, I kept waiting for the paragraph about the Dementors’ Kiss.
Maha says, “I’ll leave it to others to decide if this is justice”—referring to the Admax prison conditions for inmates.
In the old Testament, life is about ‘an eye for an eye’….in the new Testament, life is about ‘turning the other cheek’.
My understanding of the difference is that being Christian [Christ-like] means I should have grown beyond the ‘eye for an eye’ mentality, and strive ‘to do unto others as I would have them do unto me.’ Those teachings allow locking someone up who is dangerous, but do not allow cruel treatment that destroys a person’s mind and soul.
Here is my personal take on whether that prison system is just: It is a sin against God to hold anyone, including oneself, in a position of irredeemable hell.
Justme, your writing touches me again. “The thing is, righties don’t seem to know who or what they have become..” I feel a deep compassion about the lostness of diehard righties, just as I feel a deep compassion about the craziness of Moussaoui. Feeling that compassion, I also know that I would like to stop them all from doing more harm in the world.
One of the many peculiarities of righties is that for them, symbolism is as good as substance. For them, image is character and rhetoric is accomplishment. Boasting is victory. Ideology is the only reality.
So true! At least for a great many righties. It’s sort of like a self image psychology polluted by ideology. I’m a believer in self image psychology and positive reinforcement in it’s purest form..like that expressed by Saturday Night Live’s, Stuart Smalley..”.I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and by golly, people like me”
I think it’s amusing how the righties are frustrated by the constraints of reality in exacting thier entitlement of vengence against Moussaoui..How far into hell can you cast someone? I guess that after they destroy his physical being, they can always burn his bones to gain some extra yardage.
joanr16
Comment 5-
Thanks for answering my question.
I thought that it was R. Reagan but wasn’t 100% sure. I did know that she has been around for a long time, on and off.
HMMMMM Goss quit??? He wanted to spend more time with his hookers?
Britwit…Peggy Noonan was the one who wrote the famous,—” They slipped the surly bonds of earth, to touch the face of God”— line that Reagan used in his speech of the Challenger disaster. Peggy Noonan does have an ability with words,but her head is screwed up.. she should get a job working for Hallmark cards peddling sentiment and stay out of the political arena.
One of the many peculiarities of righties is that for them, symbolism is as good as substance. For them, image is character and rhetoric is accomplishment. Boasting is victory. Ideology is the only reality.
This is brilliant, and is because these people are both so immature and at the same time so out of touch with, and blind to reality.
As time goes on, many succinct encapsulations of rightie psychology, such as this are appearing in the blogosphere. Digby knocked me over with this pearl the other day, gleaned from Michael Shaw’s BagNewsNotes:
When you look at relationships — be they marriages, or the working kind — you tend to find people with generally equivalent degrees of moral and emotional development. (To understand “delayed” moral development, you need only look at the way this country has been governed over the past five years. For example, you find a lot of black-and-white thinking, such as “good” versus “bad” and “us” versus “them”; a preoccupation with authority and obedience; and dramatic, self-centered acts mostly rationalized after the fact.)
Delayed moral advancement tends to go hand-in-hand with the lower rungs of emotional maturity. In kids trapped in adult bodies, you tend to see silliness substituting for wit; awkwardness in the place of poise; passion masquerading as love; aggression covering for strength; and rituals standing in for originality.
The world is waiting for the definitive book on American right wing psychology. I could see part 1 sketching it out, using descriptions such as these, followed by part 2, how normal people can cope or reach the afflicted. How to deprogram your neighbor in other words.
One frightening outcome of the Moussaui verdict is the number of BushCo supporters saying this proves the justice system does not work for terrorism suspects and therefore they must be judged by military tribunals without public access to the proceedings.
Which is were BushCo wanted to go in the first place.
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