Suspicious Silence

The Bush administration wants to hold a secret trial using secret evidence to prosecute American citizens for the crime of talking to a newspaper reporter. You'd think that those holding themselves out as defenders of civil rights — the American Civil Liberties Union, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, the Center for Constitutional Rights — would be up in arms. Yet when our Josh Gerstein called around about the case earlier this week, he reported, "Several New York-based groups that have objected to the use of secret evidence against terrorism suspects were silent yesterday about the developments in the Aipac case. A spokeswoman for the Center for Constitutional Rights, Ateqah Khaki, said none of the center's attorneys were available to discuss the matter, in part due to foreign travel. A spokeswoman for the ACLU, Emily Whitfield, said none of its lawyers were following the case. Officials at the Brennan Center for Justice, which represents Guantanamo prisoners, did not respond to inquiries. These left-wing groups have spent hundreds of hours of legal time and tens of thousands of dollars pursuing the supposed rights of suspected terrorists, detained enemy combatants, and aliens who are being tried in deportation proceedings. Yet what would seem to be a banner case for those on the ramparts of civil liberties has somehow gone ignored. Could the reason possibly be that those on trial in the present instance are two former officials of a pro-Israel lobbying group, Keith Weissman and Steven Rosen, as opposed to terrorists who hate Israel and America? It makes one wonder whether the advocacy groups are really concerned with the Bill of Rights — or just with certain categories of victims.