By Charlie Meyer:
“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!”
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
“Round up the usual suspects.”
Claude Raines, “Casablanca”, 1942
•••
The far Right and their favorite mouthpieces are again at their fear mongering worst. Now they’re blogging about INTERPOL, the international police organization, being given immunity to operate with impunity in these United States. We have enough “nutters,” as our British cousins would say disparagingly, in our own hemisphere: Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, to cite an example. Take a deep breath, folks, the sky is not falling. The New York Times reported the insinuations as they were: in passing, as they were really without merit for investigation. ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper took the bloggers insinuations apart, disproving them item by item. The so-called “liberal bias” of the press, outside of conservative “watchdogs” and that F-word News Channel, isn’t ignoring the news. “Much ado about nothing,” as Shakespeare would put it. Chinese and Cuban cops won’t be knocking at your door in the middle of the night, lookin! g to snatch your prized hunting rifle.
I lent my hand to investigative journalism this week, but without the whining melodrama of Geraldo Rivera, who, by the way, is on Rupert from OZ’s payroll at Fox, right along with Tina Fey’s Stunt Double: Sarah Palin. The economy must still be really tough up there in the Land of Nanook and the yellow snow; even instant millionaires are getting part-time jobs. The next thing she’ll say is that we need more tax cuts for the rich, particularly now that she’s one of them. After enough circling of the streets of the Airport Addition to arouse the neighborhood watch to critical mass, I still can’t find the “airport.” Airports tend to be too big and noisy to be that well hidden. Even the Central Intelligence Agency must find it hard to have a secret airfield. A dozen or more years ago, the Right-wing conspiracy theorists warned us about secret black helicopters from the United Nations lurking over these United States. None were found. Perhaps I should ! have asked the Jack Daniels’ Distillery (“Same as our fathers made it...”) for consumption figures from that era to seek a correlation? Now, right-wing bloggers are screaming in their best rendition of Yellow Journalism simply because the President extended diplomatic protections to INTERPOL, just as we do for the International Red Cross, and other international bodies. Yawn....
I’ll safely assume most of us support law enforcement. We are fortunate enough to have solid, effective, and responsive law enforcement professionals here. Even Piglet the Basset Hound has been after me to get a 8 x 10 “paw”-tographed glossy of Buffy the police dog. Policing in a free society isn’t easy, but most of us wouldn’t want to pay the price of a “police state.” Effective coordination of law enforcement information and resources is vital to keep our communities, states, nation, and world safer. Crime is international in scope; crooks just don’t stop at the city limits sign.
INTERPOL is the international organization of police, a public international organization. It provides a mechanism to leverage information and cooperation between member nations’ law enforcement agencies. INTERPOL was founded in Austria in 1922. After the Anschluss, it would be taken over by the Nazis until 1945, led by guys who pursued the “Final Solution” and all sharing a table in the “well done” section of the Hades Restaurant. We don’t punish children for their father’s crimes; nor do we throw out the baby with the bath water. Reborn after the Second World War, INTERPOL discarded its’ blemished adolescence. Crime, particularly the international scope of crime, couldn’t be fought by stopping at national borders. The INTERPOL constitution proscribes involvement in military and political activities, and recognizes differing political and judicial systems in its’ member states. Since 2000, INTERPOL’s Secretary General has been an American ! law enforcement professional, headquartered in Lyons, France (France: home of pommes frites, aka ‘Freedom Fries’ to the paranoid.) Child pornography, trafficking in human beings, art theft, and international terrorism are among INTERPOL’s stock in trade. Simpleton nationalist paranoia is no reason to deny law enforcement worldwide information and coordination tools.
Executive Order 12425, at the heart of this controversy, was originally enacted by Ronald Reagan, the guy who taught us that even a mediocre actor could be President, in 1983. As INTERPOL had no office in the United States then, certain tax and privacy immunities and courtesies afforded public international organizations were excluded. September 11th added importance to antiterrorism in law enforcement. INTERPOL has had an office in New York City since 2004, given the importance of the global war on terror and the nearby headquarters of the United Nations. The technical change to Executive Order 12425 was unfinished business from the last Bush Administration. Was Dubya was spending too much time during his terms at his Texas ranch so that Barney the Scottish Terrier couldn’t bite another journalist? The amended Executive Order simply gives INTERPOL the same diplomatic protections other public international organizations receive. Yawn...
INTERPOL provides critical information and coordination to law enforcement agencies worldwide. Crime knows no borders. We can’t expect other nations to respect our appeals for international cooperation and support against al Queda while treating INTERPOL as if it were a tow-headed, illegitimate stepchild. We aren’t and can’t be the “world’s policeman.” We shouldn’t impede effective exchange of law enforcement information and coordination of effort. It’s an imperfect world, replete with lousy neighborhoods without our commitment to liberty and the rule of law. My America has constitutional safeguards that no Executive Order could take away.
By Stephen Smoot:
You probably have not heard of this story unless you were really paying attention. Barack Obama by executive order reversed a decision made by Ronald Reagan in 1983. No longer will the international police agency Interpol be subject to Freedom of Information Act laws, nor can their facilities here be searched by American law enforcement. In the offices of the Department of Justice, Interpol has files on criminal investigations and its own activities that no one inside or outside of our government may now access without their permission. Why? What is the point of this new need for Interpol secrecy, even from officials in the United States government itself?
The Obama White House, willing to speak at length about almost anything (provided no one ask tough questions or get the president too far off his teleprompter based replies) had zilch to say about this far reaching order. Their response when asked? They did not think it was interesting enough to warrant comment. Not only is Interpol shielded from the prying questions of journalists, Obama will not answer questions on this either. The "San Francisco Examiner" and others hit a stone wall when they fired inquiries at the administration over the purpose of this policy change.
I know my worthy adversary of the pen has a deep interest in civil liberties, so I will be very curious to see where he stands on this issue. Administration defenders claim that this executive order merely gives Interpol some of the same privileges and immunities as the Red Cross or the International Pacific Halibut Commission. Without asking the obvious question of why the International Pacific Halibut Commission so desperately needs immunity from United States law enforcement and journalists, we should admit that an international criminal police force has a much different role than the fish people.
Interpol does do a lot of good work in bringing law enforcement agencies from different nations together to work on drug, terror, and other cases. It has apprehended a large number of fugitives from American justice over the years and has helped find wanted men from other nations in this country. Ronald Reagan refused twenty-seven years ago to give Interpol “privileges and immunities” beyond what we allow the FBI or any other domestic law enforcement agency and somehow they muddled through.
What is the issue with expanding their capabilities here? They do work with the International Criminal Court and war crimes tribunals. The United States has steadfastly refused to sign on to the treaties sanctioning these institutions because we want no foreigners to have judicial or law enforcement powers within our country. Even if Obama did sign a treaty, it would not pass the Senate. No matter, he made an end run around the Constitution through executive order. Many fear that Interpol has the power to extradite American political and military figures accused by Yankee haters of war crimes in foreign lands. Will they try it? Perhaps not, but why open this door? Like so many decisions made by Obama, one can find no truly positive reason for him to do this.
A deeper issue needs addressed here, the power of the president to issue executive orders. Obama could do this without consulting anyone and it has the force of law unless Congress acts otherwise. According to the University of California at Santa Barbara’s American Presidency Project, the first two executive orders came from President John Quincy Adams and referred to deaths of prominent men. Andrew Jackson issued the first order that had a policy aim. Abraham Lincoln issued seventeen in the first year of the Civil War, the most dangerous point in the history of the Union. Obama issued that many in his first two months of office!
The constitutionality of executive orders itself (as well as far reaching federal agency regulatory powers) rests on very shaky legal ground. After the Preamble of the Constitution, the next phrase is “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States . . .” Nothing in the article describing the presidency mentions any power of creating law either for himself or other parts of the executive branch. Over the decades, presidents have grown more and more dependent upon these orders as expedient ways of implementing policy. It also allows them to bypass the constitutional process of law creation. Nothing in Alexander Hamilton’s essays on the constitutional powers of the president (considered definitive my most experts) makes any reference to his or her ability to manufacture laws from their pen. Even Nazi Germany felt the need to pass enabling legislation before giving Hitler such powers. Obama‚Äôs Interpol order rais! es a lot of questions that his administration has so far tried to avoid answering. The heart of this problem is the fact that presidents can make law on their own with little restriction and no constitutional sanction. We need to create and pass an amendment defining executive orders and limiting them to four years unless Congress affirms them. That way the president can deal with immediate emergencies quickly, but not bind the nation in the long term. Any orders dealing with land should only be valid if the affected state or district legislature affirms them. Until we see executive orders put into the Constitution, I really see no legal obstacle to a state legislature nullifying them within the bounds of that state.
