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The FBI's Right to Threaten Torture: Breaking Down an Innocent Man
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
Counterpunch - Oct 27, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/bovard10272007.html
Breaking Down an Innocent Man
The FBI's Right to Threaten Torture
By JAMES BOVARD
A federal appeals court has concluded that an FBI agent must go to
trial on charges he coerced a false confession out of a prime suspect
in the 9/11 attacks. But the FBI still insists that its agent did
nothing wrong. And the feds swayed the court to suppress that ****tion
of a recent decision detailing how the FBI agent used the threat of
torture to break an innocent man.
Abdallah Higazy, a 30-year-old Egyptian student, arrived in New York
City to study engineering at the Polytechnic University in Brooklyn on
August 27, 2001. A U.S. foreign-aid program reserved and paid for his
room at the Millennium Hilton Hotel, next to the World Trade Center.
After the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center, Higazy
hot-footed it out of the hotel. After the terrorist attack, the hotel
was sealed.
Three months later, guests were allowed to retrieve their belongings.
When Higazy went to the hotel on December 17, he was arrested and
accused of possessing an aviation radio. (A hotel security guard
re****ted finding the radio in a safe in his room.) Higazy denied owning
the radio. He was arrested as a material witness and locked up in
solitary confinement.
Higazy wanted to clear his name so he agreed to take a polygraph test.
FBI agent Michael Templeton wired him up for the test but then
proceeded to browbeat him for three hours until he finally admitted to
owning the radio. Higazy said the FBI agent warned him, "If you don't
cooperate with us, the FBI will ... make sure Egyptian security gives
your family hell." The FBI refused to permit Higazy's attorney, Robert
Dunn, to be in the room while he was given the polygraph. After the
interrogation, Higazy was "trembling and sobbing uncontrollably,"
according to Dunn.
On January 11, 2002, Higazy was indicted for lying to a federal agent.
U.S. Attorney Dan Himmelfarb declaimed that "the crime that was being
investigated when the false statements [about the radio] were made is
perhaps the most serious in the country's history. A radio that can be
used for air-to-air and air-to-ground communication is a significant
part of that investigation." The Wa****ngton Post noted that "federal
officials paraded [Higazy] before the media as a terrorist." The feds
never bothered checking with the U.S. foreign-aid program to find out
whether Higazy's story about why he was staying at the hotel next to
the World Trade Center was true.
The prosecutorial celebration flopped three days later when an American
pilot showed up at the Millennium Hilton Hotel and asked for the
aviation radio he had left in his room when the hotel was evacuated on
9/11. It soon became apparent that the hotel security guard (a former
cop who had been fired by the Newark Police Department) had lied about
finding the radio in Higazy's room. The case collapsed and, a few days
later, Higazy was awarded $3 for subway fare and released from jail.
The FBI conducted an internal investigation and absolved Templeton of
any wrongdoing.
In late 2002 Higazy sued, asserting that the FBI's coercive
interrogation violated his Fifth Amendment rights against
self-incrimination. Federal judge Naomi Buchwald dismissed his case,
declaring, "[Agent] Templeton's conduct and threats as a matter of law
cannot be classified as conscience-shocking or constitutionally
oppressive." Perhaps Buchwald believed that as long as Higazy's mother
and sister were not brutalized in front of him during the
interrogation, the FBI had done nothing wrong.
A federal appeals court overturned this decision on October 19,
declaring that Higazy's case deserved to go to trial. The original
version of the decision detailed the tactics Templeton pur****tedly used
to get Higazy's confession. Two hours later, the court removed that
****tion of the decision from the Internet. The redacted ****tion of the
decision (captured by bloggers before it was taken down) noted that the
FBI agent admitted to knowing that Egyptian "laws are different than
ours, that they are probably allowed to do things in that country ...
yeah, probably about torture, sure." Thus, Templeton was aware that his
threat would terrify Higazy.
The revised court decision replaced such key details with the following
mundane notice: "For the purposes of the summary judgment motion,
Templeton did not contest that Higazy's statements were coerced."
The FBI has long taught its agents that subjects of their investigation
have "forfeited their right to the truth," according to the ethics
study guide at the FBI Academy. Perhaps, according to federal lawmen,
it is a small step from lying to suspects to threatening to have their
kinfolk tortured. The agency has done nothing in the nearly six years
since this case began to indicate that the methods used in the Higazy
case did not receive the full approval of FBI headquarters.
The initial Higazy arrest and release were landmarks showing how far
feds would go to gin up evidence and headlines for the war on terror.
The fact that the FBI approved of its agent's methods -- and the fact
that a federal judge saw no problem with the interrogation -- are
further warning signs of constitutional decay. Keep your eyes on this
case, because it could help determine how far feds can go to destroy
innocent people.
[James Bovard serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom
Foundation and is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush
Betrayal, Terrorism and Tyranny, and other books.]
*
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