The Bush administration considered using the military to arrest the Lackawanna Six

[tangaroa]

Mark Mazzetti and David Johnston of the New York Times report that members of the Bush administration in 2002 proposed sending the military to arrest a few people in the state of New York who were accused (and later convicted) of giving material support to al-Qaeda. The article makes it sound like they wanted to do this just to show the power of the Executive branch, and perhaps the biggest surprise is that the man who said no and who refused to allow it was George W. Bush.

The use of the military for policing within the United States was strictly restricted at the time by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, as the record of history contains many warnings that a state's own military is among the greatest threats to its freedom. This restriction was quietly repealed by Section 1076 of 2007's main military spending bill, known as the John Warner Defense Authorization Act in honour of the retiring Senator. Fortunately, the restriction was reinstated even more quietly by Section 1068 of the following year's military spending bill.

Points of interest in the Times article:

• The opposition to domestic use of the military is described as a political "turf war" by an anonymous former administration official who still doesn't understand that the plan was extremely illegal and a threat to the very rule of law.
• The plan was opposed by Robert Mueller and Michael Chertoff of the FBI. I first learned of them through the Dmitry Sklyarov and Robert Wright affairs respectively and these are the first good words I've had to say about either of them. They were on the right side of this one and deserve recognition for that. Condoleezza Rice also opposed the plan.
• The plan was authorized in October 2001 by John Yoo, the same lawyer responsible for giving legal approval to warrantless searches and arrests in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment, torture in direct violation of the Constitution's Eighth Amendment, indefinite detention in direct violation of Article 1 Section 9 of the Constitution, the use of "military tribunals" with intentionally weak standards of evidence in violation of the Constitution's Sixth Amendment, and the warrantless electronic eavesdropping that some reports suggest includes the wiretapping and recording of all U.S. telephone and internet traffic, among other notable opinions. Robert J. Delahunty contributed to Yoo's memo.
• Except for Yoo and Dick Cheney, Cheney's advisor David Addington, and "some senior Defense Department officials", the article does not say who was in favour of the plan.

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Side note: John Yoo has hired Miguel Estrada as his personal defense lawyer. That is a familiar name; Ann Coulter was heavily lobbying for Estrada to be nominated to the Supreme Court seat that went to John Roberts.