John McCain advisors James Woolsey, Kori Schake, John Lehman, and Randy Scheunemann held a conference call regarding Barack Obama’s comments, praising the 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial as a model for fighting terrorists.
Woolsey said that processing terrorists as criminals through the judicial system is “precisely what failed” throughout the 1990’s, labeling it a “miserable failure.” Lehman echoed these sentiments explaining that the requirement to seal certain evidence in the 1993 trial prevented the CIA and the president from accessing critical information which could have “helped connect the dots” to 9/11. He pointed out that it cost $100 million for just seven defendants’ prosecution. He declared that this shows a “very deep ignorance of the facts.” Scheunemann contended that Obama is the “perfect manifestation of the September 10 mindset.”
In response to a question about McCain’s approach, Scheunemann said that he never favored habeas corpus rights and instead has tried to come up with a process to deal with “very dangerous people.” He said that the Obama campaign would accuse them of a policy built on “fear,” but that Obama’s outlook was a “policy built on delusion.” Asked about Obama’s comment that our conduct had made us less popular with Muslims and helped terrorist recruitment Woolsey responded that we had a large number of Germans prisoners held during World War II whom did not have full blown trials and were were not accused of being “anti-Teutonic,” rather we “were fighting a war.”
Asked if they were claiming that Obama’s policy would lead to a terror attack, Lehman responded that the idea was so ridiculous (putting all terrorists through civilian courts) that Obama “couldn’t go forward” with that approach.
In response to a question whether Osama bin Laden would get habeas corpus rights, Scheunemann said the reporter should ask Obama and that it was this concern about affording dangerous terrorist full access to civilian courts that made Obama’s statment so absurd.
(Further thoughts and excerpts from the call are here, here and here.)
Bottom line: The McCain camp clearly sees this as an opening to argue that Obama is out of touch and dangerously naive about how to deal with terrorists. It will need some simple and easily understandable way to explain the dangers to the American people if this will truly be an effective issue for them. And if Obama really intends to make the 1993 trial the model for handling terror detainees, he should be prepared for some tough questioning about the consequences of that option.
