http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/iraq6.html
Thanks for Nothing
The MoJo Wire
Six Iraqi separatists who helped the CIA in its attempts to overthrow Saddam
Hussein were flown to the U.S. for asylum by the Department of Defense. But the
FBI and the INS, desperately trying to cover up their blunders on the case, have
been trying to get them deported.
By Robert Ito, July 19, 1999
For for all Profiteers those who believe
that the term "military intelligence" is an oxymoron, here's your proof. From
1996 until late last month, six Iraqis languished in prison, on the brink of
deportation -- and almost certain execution by the Iraqi government -- by the
very country for which they risked their lives. The six had been coopted by the
CIA in the early 1990s for the agency's unsuccessful plot to overthrow Saddam
Hussein. Last month, after nearly three years in California detention
facilities, five of the refugees agreed to be deported to a neutral third
country. Part of the deal required the five men to "admit" they had entered the
country illegally, although, in fact, they were escorted to the United States on
airplanes chartered by the Department of Defense.
The lone holdout, a Kurdish doctor named Ali Yassin Mohammed-Karim, plans to
stay in prison to fight allegations that he's an Iraqi double agent. His lead
attorney, Niels Frenzen, has a bigger goal: to expose the dirty dealings of FBI,
CIA, and U.S. immigration officials that have turned the case of the Iraqi Six
into an international bureaucratic nightmare.
The case has been mired in controversy from the beginning. Much of the evidence
against Ali and his five compatriots was based on secret evidence withheld by
the FBI. Furthermore, recently declassified files reveal U.S. intelligence and
immigration communities as prone to outrageous errors, overt anti-Arab
stereotyping and prejudice, and doing downright sloppy work. This autumn, armed
with these newly declassified documents, Ali's attorney will finally come face
to face with his client's accusers, a host of FBI agents and immigration
officials who up until now have hidden behind a wall of secrecy.
Welcome to America. Now Go Home
When Ali Yassin Mohammed-Karim was airlifted
out of Iraq in 1996 by U.S. forces, he
breathed a sigh of relief. The Kurdish
physician had by then survived two
assassination attempts stemming from his
implication in CIA-backed plots to overthrow
Saddam Hussein. After a short stint in Guam
undergoing interviews to establish his
eligibility for political asylum, Ali was
transported aboard a jet chartered by the
Department of Defense to Edwards Air Force
Base in Southern California, where the young
doctor would, he assumed, be processed by the
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)
and free to begin his new life in the United
States.
But Ali's relief was short-lived. The INS,
claiming that Ali was a threat to national
security, blocked his legal entrance, jailed
him, and sought to have him deported.
Deportation would be a virtual death sentence
for a man who had served as the private
physician to one of Saddam's most hated
enemies. The official charge lodged by the
INS: entering the country without a proper
visa. Ali was, in effect, being accused of
sneaking across the border onto U.S. soil,
via Guam, aboard a Defense
department-chartered jet.
Because it classified Ali as an alien
"stopped at the border," the INS was not
obliged by U.S. law to offer him any rights
to due process. To make matters worse, all of
the information implicating Ali as a national
security risk was deemed classified evidence
by the FBI. The names of his accusers, the
number of accusers, and even the crimes with
which he was charged were strictly off limits
to Ali and his legal counsel.
Thus began a three-year legal nightmare for
Ali and five other Iraqis, a twisted series
of events that former CIA director James
Woolsey termed "a stain upon the honor of the
United States." Because of FBI bungling and
an overzealous climate of secrecy, the six
Iraqi refugees faced trumped-up charges which
could have resulted in their deportation and
certain death at the hands of an
unsympathetic regime.
Ali's case probably would have languished in
the backrooms of the INS if a few senators
hadn't questioned the INS's use of such
secret evidence in deportation hearings. When
the INS and FBI started to feel the heat from
Congress, the organizations made a startling
admission: Much of the information in Ali's
files, as well as the files of the five other
detainees, had been deemed classified by the
FBI by mistake.
In July 1998, after a year and a half in
prison, Ali and the other detainees got their
first look at some of the charges levied
against them when the documents were
declassified.
File under D for D'oh!
The information in the newly declassified
documents was surprising, but not for the
reasons one might suspect. There were no
accusations of past terrorist activities, no
allegations of plans to smuggle chemical
weapons into the United States or to engage
in acts of espionage against any of the six
detainees. Instead, the list of allegations
within the declassified FBI documents was
surprisingly short, consisting of mostly
unsubstantiated hearsay and conflicting
testimony from unnamed "walk-in sources,"
many of them refugees also seeking asylum who
were willing to lie about fellow refugees to
secure their own passage into the United
States.
Racial and cultural biases may also have
played a role in the botched FBI case.
Special Agent Mark Merfalen said of one Iraqi
suspect at his immigration hearing, "I didn't
like [his] whole demeanor when I was talking
to him. He had this kind of smug look." At
the same hearing, Merfalen added that people
from the Middle East tend to "lie an awful
lot." Another agent said, "[W]e were told --
and this I actually learned through mistakes
in dealing with Arabs -- there is no guilt in
the Arab world." He added that, to Arabs,
"there is no guilt associated [with lying].
In other words, if I lied to you, I'd feel
bad that I didn't do what I knew I should do.
But ... that's part of doing business."
After the FBI investigation concluded, the
information the agency had gathered was
somehow erroneously classified as secret by
the FBI. Some of the material was
declassified only a year later, when Senators
Trent Lott, Orrin Hatch, and Jesse Helms
(presumably guided more by a sense of loyalty
to backers of U.S. policy in Iraq than by a
concern over immigrant rights) began
questioning its use by the INS. The FBI
claims that the second look at the documents
was not the result of any political or media
pressure, but simply due to a random audit.
How the documents came to be erroneously
classified in the first place, however,
remains a mystery. According to Niels
Frenzen, lead attorney for the Iraqi Six, "We
sought clarification from the INS informally
and have asked the senators to talk about it,
and we've just never gotten a good answer.
It's not that we haven't gotten a good
answer; we haven't gotten any answer."
Today, the attorneys for the Iraqi Six have
many of the declassified documents, but the
FBI still maintains that it has more
information (legitimately classified this
time) that implicates the Iraqis.
The deal signed by five of the six detainees
-- deportation to a neutral country -- allows
the INS to avoid a huge political and public
relations nightmare in which it would have to
answer for the near deportation of men who --
at their own peril -- had assisted the United
States in its highly visible campaign against
Iraq.
But the deal came with a big catch for the
Iraqis: The five have to "admit" that they
entered the United States illegally and
forfeit all rights to an appeal. Some thanks.
While attention from the case has prompted a
full review by the U.S. Attorney General's
office of all cases involving secret
evidence, the FBI has, to this date, refused
to release any information about the rest of
the still-classified documents on the Iraqi
Six. These documents may still come back to
haunt Dr. Ali Yassin Mohammed-Karim, the one
holdout who has refused the INS deal and is
insisting on a retrial.
Because of the complex nature of the case,
the immigration judge has said the retrial
could possibly take nearly a year, which
means that Ali will probably remain in prison
well into the year 2000. In the meantime, the
other five refugees will remain under house
arrest in Lincoln, Neb., subject to wiretaps,
curfews, and random searches and surveillance
of their homes and vehicles, until neutral
countries can be found to accept them.
While Frenzen sees his clients' current
situation as "tragic," he hopes that this
case will have a major impact on the use of
secret evidence in future immigration
hearings. "There's definitely enough blame to
be shared with the FBI, the CIA and the
Justice Department, but the INS is the agency
that took this secret evidence knowing that
it was a bunch of worthless rumors and
innuendoes and ran with it," he says. "They
shot themselves in the foot, and have
increased the likelihood that there are going
to be some significant legislative changes."
