Eye On U.S.A

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Many Rights in U.S. Legal System Absent in New Bill

The military trials bill approved by Congress lends legislative support for the first time to broad rules for the detention, interrogation, prosecution and trials of terrorism suspects far different from those in the familiar American criminal justice system.

President Bush's argument that the government requires extraordinary power to respond to the unusual threat of terrorism helped him win final support for a system of military trials with highly truncated defendant's rights. The United States used similar trials on just four occasions: during the country's revolution, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and World War II.

Included in the bill, passed by Republican majorities in the Senate yesterday and the House on Wednesday, are unique rules that bar terrorism suspects from challenging their detention or treatment through traditional habeas corpus petitions. They allow prosecutors, under certain conditions, to use evidence collected through hearsay or coercion to seek criminal convictions.

The bill rejects the right to a speedy trial and limits the traditional right to self-representation by requiring that defendants accept military defense attorneys. Panels of military officers need not reach unanimous agreement to win convictions, except in death penalty cases, and appeals must go through a second military panel before reaching a federal civilian court.

By writing into law for the first time the definition of an "unlawful enemy combatant," the bill empowers the executive branch to detain indefinitely anyone it determines to have "purposefully and materially" supported anti-U.S. hostilities. Only foreign nationals among those detainees can be tried by the military commissions, as they are known, and sentenced to decades in jail or put to death.

At the same time, the bill immunizes U.S. officials from prosecution for cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees who the military and the CIA captured before the end of last year. It gives the president a dominant but not exclusive role in setting the rules for future interrogations of terrorism suspects.

Written largely, but not completely, on the administration's terms, with passages that give executive branch officials discretion to set details or divert from its protections, the bill is meant to provide what Bush said yesterday are "the tools" needed to handle terrorism suspects U.S. officials hope to capture.

For more than 57 months after the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush maintained that he did not need congressional authorization of such tools. But the Supreme Court decided otherwise in June, declaring the administration's detainee treatment and trial procedures illegal, and ruling that Bush must first seek Congress's approval.

Now Bush has received much of the authority he desired from party loyalists and a handful of Democrats on Capitol Hill. "The American people need to know we're working together," Bush told senators before yesterday's vote.

But Tom Malinowski, the Washington office director for Human Rights Watch, said Bush's motivation is partly to protect his reputation by gaining congressional endorsement of controversial actions already taken. "He's been accused of authorizing criminal torture in a way that has hurt America and could come back to haunt our troops. One of his purposes is to have Congress stand with him in the dock," Malinowski said.

The bill contains some protections unavailable to the eight Nazi saboteurs who came ashore in the United States in 1942 and were captured two weeks later. Six were executed that year after a closed military trial on the fifth floor of Justice Department headquarters. That proceeding was upheld by the Supreme Court in a decision it explained two months after the electrocutions.

Under the new procedures, trials are supposed to be open, but can be closed to protect the security of individuals or information expected to harm national security. Defendants have a right to be present, unless they are disruptive, and a right to examine and respond to the evidence against them. Proof of guilt must exceed a reasonable doubt.

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Many constitutional experts say, however, that the bill pushes at the edges of so much settled U.S. law that its passage will not be the last word on America's detainee policies. They predict it will shift the public debate to the federal courts, a forum where the administration has had less success getting its way on counterterrorism policies.

"This is a full-employment act for lawyers," said Deborah Perlstein, who directs the U.S. Law and Security Program at the New York-based nonprofit group Human Rights First.

Former White House associate counsel Bradford A. Berenson, a supporter of the bill and one of the authors of the rules struck down by the Supreme Court, agreed. "Some of the most creative legal minds are going to be devoted to poking holes in this," he said.

Anticipating court challenges, the administration attempted to make the bill bulletproof by including provisions that would sharply restrict judicial review and limit the application of international treaties -- signed by Washington -- that govern the rights of wartime detainees.

The bill also contains blunt assertions that it complies with U.S. treaty obligations.

University of Texas constitutional law professor Sanford V. Levinson described the bill in an Internet posting as the mark of a "banana republic." Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh said that "the image of Congress rushing to strip jurisdiction from the courts in response to a politically created emergency is really quite shocking, and it's not clear that most of the members understand what they've done."

In contrast, Douglas W. Kmiec, a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University, said Congress "did reasonably well in terms of fashioning a fair" set of procedures. But Kmiec and many others say they cannot predict how the Supreme Court will respond to the provision barring habeas corpus rights, which he said will leave "a large body of detainees with no conceivable basis to challenge their detentions."

There are other likely flashpoints. In the Supreme Court's June decision overturning previous administration policies, four members of the court who joined the majority opinion said conspiracy is not a war crime. The new bill says it is.

Georgetown University law professor Neal Katyal said the bill's creation of two systems of justice -- military commissions for foreign nationals and regular criminal trials for U.S. citizens -- may violate the Constitution's 14th Amendment, which requires equal protection of the laws to anyone under U.S. jurisdiction.

"If you're an American citizen, you get the Cadillac system of justice. If you're a foreigner or a green-card holder, you get this beat-up-Chevy version," he said.

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Congress Approves $70 Billion For Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan

Congress yesterday authorized an additional $70 billion in emergency funds to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through early next year, including nearly $24 billion for the Army and Marine Corps to repair and replace worn-out equipment.

The new funding provides more than $2 billion for the military's efforts to defeat the road bombs, or "improvised explosive devices," that are the leading cause of deaths among U.S. troops in Iraq.

Senate and House conferees also agreed yesterday on $463 billion in overall defense spending for fiscal 2007, a 3.6 percent increase over 2006. To ease the strain on U.S. ground forces, the conference report called for an increase of 30,000 soldiers and 5,000 Marines in 2007, with additional increases authorized through 2009.

The new funding brings to $507 billion the total amount authorized by Congress for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as for extra security for military bases and embassies, since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Rising sectarian and insurgent violence is delaying troop cuts until well into next year, and U.S. commanders are increasingly asserting that military power alone is not sufficient to stabilize Iraq.

Yesterday, one U.S. commander in Iraq's volatile Anbar province said the job of American forces in his region is not to defeat the insurgency but to drive the violence down to a point at which it can be handled by Iraqi forces.

"Who knows how long this [insurgency] is going to actually last?" said Army Col. Sean MacFarland, who oversees thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops fighting in Anbar's troubled capital, Ramadi. "But if we get the level of violence down to a point where the Iraqi security forces are more than capable of dealing with it, the insurgency's days will eventually come to an end. And they'll come to an end at the hands of the Iraqis," he said in a videoconference with reporters.

There are about 142,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and more than 20,000 in Afghanistan, and military officials say those levels will be necessary through next spring. Earlier this year, commanders had thought that those numbers would be lower by several thousand by now.

The higher-than-anticipated troop levels are further straining U.S. ground forces, as the Pentagon has had to keep thousands of soldiers in Iraq beyond the standard year-long tour. This week, the Pentagon extended for more than six weeks the tours of nearly 4,000 soldiers in MacFarland's unit, the 1st Brigade of the 1st Armored Division.

The extension will allow an incoming brigade from the Army's 3rd Infantry Division to have a full year at home before deploying back to Iraq for the third time.

MacFarland said attacks have decreased 25 percent in Ramadi recently, falling from about 20 to about 15 a day, as local tribes have thrown their support behind Iraqi police recruiting efforts. However, he declined to say what impact this decline in attacks was having on U.S. troop casualties in Ramadi, where dozens of soldiers and Marines have died since the beginning of summer.

Senior Pentagon officials have stated emphatically that the U.S. military alone cannot win the war in Iraq, and that political and economic progress is vital to success there. In Anbar province, for example, a Marine intelligence report concluded last month that U.S. forces there faced a military stalemate as insurgents took advantage of weaknesses in the local government and economy. MacFarland acknowledged such problems in Ramadi, where there is no mayor or effective municipal council.

Separately, a senior Pentagon official faulted the U.S. effort in Iraq yesterday, saying that authorities are "struggling" to coordinate various projects and operations there.

"We don't sufficiently have unity of effort yet," said Eric S. Edelman, the undersecretary of defense for policy. Speaking at a State Department conference on how the U.S. government should better conduct counterinsurgency campaigns, he added that he believes it would "take an ongoing adaptive effort" to do better. Specifically, he said, he would like to see more coordination of reconstruction work with military operations.

After Edelman spoke, Meghan O'Sullivan, the deputy national security adviser for Iraqi affairs, stood to say that "the White House sees this as a conference of consequence. We really are in need of new tools."

Some experts on counterinsurgency have criticized the U.S. effort in Iraq for violating the military principle of unity of command, which posits that one person should be in charge of any overall effort. The U.S. presence in Iraq has always been divided, with separate chains of command for the military and for civilians.

Officials from the Pentagon and the State Department said after the Edelman speech that they were not aware of any plans to restructure the U.S. presence in Iraq to create a unified chain of command for the military and civilians.

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Oliver Stone: 'I'm ashamed for my country'

SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain (AP) -- Filmmaker Oliver Stone blasted President George W. Bush Thursday, saying he has "set America back 10 years."

Stone added that he is "ashamed for my country" over the war in Iraq and the U.S. policies in response to the attacks of September 11.

"We have destroyed the world in the name of security," Stone told journalists at the San Sebastian International Film Festival prior to a screening of his latest movie, "World Trade Center." The film tells the true story of the survival and rescue of two policemen who were trapped in the rubble of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, after they went to help people escape.

"From September 12 on, the incident (the attacks) was politicized and it has polarized the entire world," said Stone. "It is a shame because it is a waste of energy to see that the entire world five years later is still convulsed in the grip of 9/11.

"It's a waste of energy away from things that do matter which is poverty, death, disease, the planet itself and fixing things in our own homes rather than fighting wars with others. Mr. Bush has set America back 10 years, maybe more."

The director of blockbusters such as "Platoon," and "JFK" said the U.S. reaction to the attacks was out of proportion.

"If there had been a better sense of preparation, if we had a leadership that was more mature," he said. "We did not fight back in the same way that the British fought the IRA or the Spanish government fought the Basques here. Terrorism is a manageable action. It can be lived with," said Stone.

Stone rejected allegations that U.S. authorities may have known about the attacks in advance and said the real conspiracy came after.

"I think that conspiracy-mongering on 9/11 is a waste of time," he said. "The far greater conspiracy occurred after 9/11 when basically a neo-cabal inside our government hijacked policy and went to war. That was as broad a conspiracy as we can get and it was about 20, 30 people. That's all, they took over and all these books are coming out and they are pointing it out," said Stone.

"This war on Iraq is a disaster. I'm disgraced. I'm ashamed for my country," he said. "I'm also ashamed that America has attacked itself with its constitutional breakdowns. I'm deeply ashamed."

In the United States' favor, Stone posited that it's not responsible for all the world's problems.

"You can't see that the United States is responsible for all the evil in the world because you can see so many dictators and so many bestial acts all over the world now. .... There is something in the human heart, the international human heart, that is evil," said Stone.

"That's the evil that turns its mind and ears on humanity and is able to say 'I can kill a person in the name of God or religion.' This is not a human being, this a fanatic. And I fear that fanaticism is the result of our overreaction to 9/11," said Stone.

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Foley Built Career as Protector of Children

The Republican congressman who resigned Friday following the discovery of sexually explicit Internet messages he sent to teenage boys was a gregarious and charismatic lawmaker who built his political career in large measure on legislative proposals meant to halt the sexual predation of children and others.

Beginning with his 1993 sponsorship of a measure in the Florida state legislature to seize the cars of men who solicited prostitutes, former restaurant owner and real estate agent Mark Foley repeatedly attracted a flattering political spotlight by inveighing against those involved in sexual crimes and presenting himself as a protector of exploited children.

A well-liked member of the class of conservatives elected to Congress in 1994, Foley was until two days ago a deputy whip for the House Republicans and a co-chairman of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus. A Web site for the bipartisan group states that it was formed to "create a voice within Congress" on that issue and to operate a hotline for tips about "online child sexual exploitation" that could be passed to law enforcement agencies.

At a White House Rose Garden ceremony on July 27, President Bush hailed Foley and some other House and Senate lawmakers as members of a "SWAT team for kids." Bush spoke while signing into law a broad child protection measure that included a Foley-sponsored provision requiring sex offenders to register in every state where they live, work or attend school.

Foley's abrupt exit from Capitol Hill on Friday, shortly after ABC News journalists confronted him with excerpts of his Internet messages to male youths, stunned his congressional staff. They had dismissed an ABC report earlier last week about e-mails Foley, 52, sent to an underage, male House page as an exaggerated report stemming from an innocent attempt to be friendly.

Foley was not the target of any official investigation before his resignation, and he said in a three-sentence letter on Friday that "I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida."

"No one saw the extent of this," said a former aide who said he has been in contact with Foley's congressional staff members since the resignation and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. "You do that kind of stuff in the shadows."

Born in Boston into a devout Catholic family, Foley moved to south-central Florida and dropped out of a community college at age 20 to open with his mother a restaurant called Lettuce Patch, according to the Almanac of American Politics and CQ's Politics in America. He entered politics three years later as a commissioner for Lake Worth, a coastal town south of wealthy Palm Beach, starting as Democrat but switching parties in the 1980s.

The political cause of exploited children has long been a Republican favorite, and several of his staff members had strong feelings about its importance, according to several sources familiar with Foley's work. They said he saw the topic as a platform for attracting national attention and winning frequent appearances on cable talk shows, where he described sex offenders as "animals" who will persist "unless stopped."

"He loved the attention," a former aide said.

Foley recalled earlier this month that "I was in my mid-twenties" when Adam Walsh, 10, was kidnapped from his home in a nearby Florida community, assaulted, and killed in 1981, a crime that attracted national attention. "I remember that the case startled me. . . . It described the end of innocence for South Florida."

In 1998, he sponsored legislation allowing the Boy Scouts and other volunteer groups to get access to an FBI criminal database so they could weed out child predators. In 2003, he pressed Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) to investigate a nudist camp for teenagers, noting that "I have been fighting for years to eliminate both child pornography and so-called exploitive child modeling Web sites."

During the congressional debate in 1998 over President Bill Clinton's affair with a White House intern, Foley called Clinton's actions vile and told the St. Petersburg Times that "it's more sad than anything else, to see someone with such potential throw it all down the drain because of a sexual addiction."

While campaigning for a Senate nomination in 2003, Foley, who is single, was asked whether he was gay, and deflected the question as a matter of personal privacy before dropping out of the race.

Legislating, he told National Public Radio on June 29, "is not necessarily just trying to brand people or create a scarlet letter or subject them to unnecessary ridicule, but it's really to set a bar and a standard by which they then decide, 'I better get help professionally,' 'I better go and see how I can deal with this problem,' or, 'I should absolutely avoid contact with young people in order to ensure I don't fall into this very serious problem.' "

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Report: Frist says Afghan war can't be won militarily

US Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R) of Tennessee said Monday that the war against the Taliban can "never" be won militarily and that it was time to include "people who call themselves Taliban" in the Afghan government.

The Associated Press reports that Mr. Frist said he had learned from military reports that the Taliban were "too numerous and had too much popular support" to be defeated in a military campaign.

"You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government," he said during a visit to a military base in the Taliban stronghold of Qalat. "And if that's accomplished, we'll be successful."

Afghanistan is suffering its heaviest insurgent attacks since US-led forces ousted the fundamentalist Taliban regime in late 2001 for harboring Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Sen. Mel Martinez (R) of Florida, who was traveling in Afghanistan with Frist, said that negotiations with the Taliban were not "out of the question." But he added that he thought Taliban fighters who did not want to be a part of the political process would have to be defeated militarily.

A few hours later, however, Frist released a statement on the Volunteer Political Action Committee website, saying that his comments had been taken out of context.

First of all, let me make something clear: The Taliban is a murderous band of terrorists who've oppressed the people of Afghanistan with their hateful ideology long enough. America's overthrow of the Taliban and support for responsible, democratic governance in Afghanistan is a great accomplishment that should not and will not be reversed.

Having discussed the situation with commanders on the ground, I believe that we cannot stabilize Afghanistan purely through military means. Our counter-insurgency strategy must win hearts and minds and persuade moderate Islamists potentially sympathetic to the Taliban to accept the legitimacy of the Afghan national government and democratic political processes.

National reconciliation is a necessary and an urgent priority ... but America will never negotiate with terrorists or support their entry into Afghanistan's government.

Ed Morrissey of the conservative blog Captain's Quarters writes that he feels someone confused "Taliban" with "Taliban supporters" and "whether that was Frist or the reporter will probably remain a point of contention between the two." But he also says that the Frist incident does bring up an important point about "the end game" in Afghanistan.

If we want a representative democracy in Afghanistan, it will probably be heavily influenced by the Pashtuns, who have a strong Islamist bent. They did, after all, push the Taliban into power. At some point, we have to find a way to convince these Islamists to buy into democracy, and we have to be willing to allow that democracy to develop its own laws and customs. Otherwise, we will have to prop up a strongman who can keep the Pashtuns oppressed, which will create an even greater Islamist impulse in Afghanistan.

Frist's comments about not being able to "stabilize Afghanistan through purely military means" echo recent ones made by Canadian officials. In early September, the Canadian Defense Minister Gordon O'Connor also said he felt it would be impossible to defeat the Taliban militarily. The Toronto Star reports that a recent poll of Canadians showed that a majority of those surveyed agreed with this sentiment, with 59 percent saying that Canadian soldiers were dying for "an unwinnable cause." And almost three-quarters of those polled said the Bush administration had made the world a more dangerous place because of its actions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Meanwhile, The Sunday Times of London reported that British troops have agreed to withdraw from one of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan after "agreeing [to] a secret deal with the local people."

Over the past two months British soldiers have come under sustained attack defending a remote mud-walled government outpost in the town of Musa Qala in southern Afghanistan. Eight have been killed there.

It has now been agreed the troops will quietly pull out of Musa Qala in return for the Taliban doing the same. The compound is one of four district government offices in the Helmand province that are being guarded by British troops. Although soldiers on the ground may welcome the agreement, it is likely to raise new questions about troop deployment. Last month Sir Richard Dannatt, the new head of the British Army, warned that soldiers in Afghanistan were fighting at the limit of their capacity and could only "just" cope with the demands.

The deal allows both sides to avoid losing face, which The Sunday Times reports is key to the Afghans' perception of how events are proceeding. Recent polls show that 70 percent of Afghans are waiting to see who will become "the dominant force" before deciding who to back.

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EU considers visa snub against US

The European Commission has suggested making US diplomats apply for visas, in retaliation for the US's refusal to waive visas for people of 10 EU states.
European interior ministers will debate the idea in Luxembourg on Thursday.

Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini has told US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff the US position is "no longer understandable and acceptable".

The US waives visas for a given country only when its people are rarely refused a visa, and rarely overstay in the US.
Greece and nine of the states which joined the EU in 2004 are still not included in the US visa waiver programme.

Some of them already require US diplomats to apply for visas.

Clear criteria

"Appropriate steps vis-a-vis the United States could be envisaged, for example temporarily restoring the visa requirement for US nationals holding diplomatic and duty/official passports," says a Commission report, which the interior ministers will consider.

It says Canada and Australia, which also require visitors from a number of EU states to apply for visas, have made some progress, and therefore do not yet deserve sanctions.

In particular, they have given a clearer picture of what EU states have to do to achieve waiver status.

"What we need is a country-by-country analysis of the criteria the United States considers unmet," said Friso Roscam Abbing, a spokesman for Mr Frattini.

"This is an extremely frustrating exercise for the citizens from those member states," he added.

Slovenia privileged

Mr Frattini wrote to Mr Chertoff urging him to recognise the "concrete and tangible progress" the states had made to improve the security of their borders.

In total, 27 countries are included in the US visa waiver programme, which allows their citizens to visit for three months without a visa.

Of the states that joined the EU in 2004, only Slovenia has been awarded this privilege.

Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary have led demands for retaliatory measures.

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E-mail row hits top US Republican

The most senior Republican in the US House of Representatives is facing new charges of covering up a scandal over a former congressman's lurid e-mails.
A former aide to disgraced Congressman Mark Foley says he warned Republican House leader Dennis Hastert about Mr Foley's conduct three years ago.

Mr Foley resigned after it emerged last week that he sent sexually suggestive e-mails to young men on his staff.

Mr Hastert denies early knowledge of the e-mails and says he will not quit.

President George W Bush has spoken of his disgust at Mr Foley's actions.

But Mr Bush has also defended Mr Hastert in a scandal correspondents say is dominating politics as next month's mid-term polls approach.

Any suggestion that Mark Foley is a paedophile is false, categorically false

David Roth, lawyer

The latest opinion poll shows the Democrats within reach of retaking the House of Representatives, leading in 11 of 15 vital Republican-held seats.

The new allegations were levelled by ***k Fordham, who was Mr Foley's chief of staff until early 2004.

He told the Associated Press news agency he had warned Mr Hastert's office of Mr Foley's behaviour more than three years ago.

'Resign, Mr Speaker'

Mr Fordham said he had had "more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene".

He also denied allegations that he covered up any misdeeds by Mr Foley.


Mark Foley was "abused as a teenager by a priest"

"At no point ever did I ask anyone to block any inquiries," he told the agency.


The BBC's James Westhead in Washington says Mr Fordham's claim further weakens Mr Hastert's position, as it suggests he knew of the Congressman's behaviour far earlier than he has admitted.

Mr Hastert has strongly defended his role, accusing the Democrats of political point-scoring.

Mr Bush has backed Mr Hastert, saying the Speaker "wants all the facts to come out".

Earlier on Wednesday, US media revealed a possible romantic link with a young congressional worker and that warnings about Mr Foley's conduct went as far back as 1995.

Mr Foley, a member of the House of Representatives caucus on missing and exploited children, resigned on Friday after revelations that he had sent sexual messages to young men on his staff.

Sexual contact denied

The youngest recipient of the suggestive e-mails is said to have been 16-years-old.

Mr Foley denied ever having sexual contact with a minor, his lawyer said - adding that his client had declared he was gay and had been abused in his early teens.

ABC Television has now published intimate e-mail exchanges showing Mr Foley and one congressional "page" worker planning an encounter and trading internet kisses.

Page workers are high school students appointed to help with administrative work at the House of Representatives.

It said in one April 2003 message Mr Foley invited a teenager to his home to drink alcohol, an invitation that was accepted.

The Washington Post reported that as far back as 1995, some pages were warned to be aware of the actions of Mr Foley.

One former page said Mr Foley had sent e-mails asking them to join him for ice-cream.

The Post said about a dozen former pages had talked of Mr Foley's behaviour, some of them expressing how it made them uncomfortable.

None has suggested any sexual activities ever took place.

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'American Al Qaeda' Charged With Treason

Adam Gadahn, a former resident of Orange County, Calif., turned propagandist for al Qaeda has been indicted by a federal grand jury for treason and for providing material support to al Qaeda.
Since 2004, Gadahn has appeared in a series of videos in which he praises the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers and claimed, "The streets of America shall run red with blood." The first video of Gadahn was initially aired by ABC News in October 2004. "Adam Gadahn is an American citizen who made a choice. He chose to join our enemy and to provide it with aid and comfort by acting as a propagandist for al Qaeda," U.S. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty said in announcing the indictment.

Gadahn, who has also called himself Azzam the American in Internet videos, is the first person to face treason charges in the United States since a l U.S.-Japanese citizen was charged in 1952 for abusing U.S. prisoners of war during World War II.

Other famous treason charges included the case of Iva Ikuko Toguri d'Aquino, aka Tokyo Rose, who broadcast propaganda during the war to demoralize U.S. soldiers. The indictment charging him with treason used his own words as the basis for the charge.

In a September 2005 video, he described the 9/11 attacks as "the blessed raids on New York and Washington." In the same video he threatened, "Yesterday, London and Madrid. Tomorrow, Los Angeles and Melbourne, Allah willing."

While many Americans reflected during the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Gadahn called the United States "enemy soil" in a video released that day.

The indictment does not include information on any specific terrorist plots or mention his relations with senior al Qaeda planners, and some legal scholars say the treason charge is an unusual one to pursue.

"While there appears to be ample basis for a material support charge, the treason charge could prove more difficult to sustain," George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley said. "First and foremost, there is the absence of any traditional definition of an enemy state."

But McNulty laid out the charges at the press conference today announcing the indictment.

"We have a U.S. citizen who has betrayed the country, according to the charges, the allegations, and joined up with this enemy to communicate that fear. It brings a lot of different factors together and makes it suitable for treason," McNulty said.

By placing him on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist list and the State Department offering a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to Gadahn's arrest, U.S. officials hope tips will start coming in. He was last known to be in the United States in 1999, according to an FBI official, and U.S. officials believe he is currently in Pakistan.

"It's time now to get the message out in order to get this person in our custody, perhaps to find the assistance that we need," McNulty said.

Gahdan's road to becoming an influential member of al Qaeda took a twisted road from his upbringing in California. He went from living on a goat farm, listening to heavy metal music as a teenager to joining al Qaeda.

In a 1995 Internet posting Gadahn wrote, " I had become obsessed with demonic heavy metal music. My entire life was focused on expanding my music collection. I eschewed personal cleanliness and let my room reach an unbelievable state of disarray."

According to his posting, Gadahn became intrigued with Islam while surfing the internet.

"I began to look for something else to hold on to. ... I begin [sic] to visit the religion folders on AOL and the Usenet newsgroups, where I found discussions on Islam to be the most intriguing," he wrote.

According to U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials, Gadahn traveled from California to Pakistan and became involved with Islamic extremists after meeting Khalil Deek in California in the late 1990s. According to the 9/11 Commission, Deek was involved in computer activities for terrorists and is "believed to be involved in millennium plot to destroy tourist landmarks in Jordan."

According to a U.S. official Gadhan's membership in al Qaeda was first disclosed to FBI and U.S. intelligence officials through several detainees captured in Afghanistan, including Abu Zubaydah, a high-ranking al Qaeda recruiter who was captured in 2001.

His role as an Arabic and English speaker has allowed him to perform translations for al Qaeda, and he has helped them prepare videos other than the five he has appeared in.

"He is being used heavily because he is someone that al Qaeda can throw up in our faces," one U.S. intelligence official said today. Gadahn's journey to the other side of the world eventually intersected with top al Qaeda members, allowing him to become one of the terror group's key spokesmen; his role as a propagandist grew. "It is no accident that many of the videos from Osama bin Ladin and Ayman Zawahiri are produced with English subtitles," Randall Blake, the al Qaeda unit chief for the National Counterterrorism Center, said last month in testimony before Congress.

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An Oil Habit America Cannot Break

On energy, we're disproving even this cynical axiom. Our main energy problem is our huge dependence on imported oil.

For years, some remedies have been obvious: Tax oil heavily to spur Americans to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles and to drive a bit less, raise sharply the government's fuel economy standards so those vehicles are available, and allow more oil and gas drilling. In recent years, we've done none of these things. It's doubtful we will anytime soon. "Other possibilities" seem inexhaustible.

Under present policies, U.S. oil demand will expand 34 percent by 2030, the Energy Department projects. There will be more people, cars, planes and travel. Imports would satisfy all of the increase. We should try to prevent or minimize that. With China and India's oil demand increasing, American restraint would relax pressure on prices and reduce oil's usefulness as a political weapon. Consuming 25 percent of world oil, we're hardly powerless. But instead of doing what we might, we're awash in delusions.

Item: As gasoline prices have receded from $3 a gallon, many Americans attribute the decline to politics. In one Gallup poll, 42 percent of respondents said the Bush administration had manipulated prices to improve Republican prospects in congressional elections. Gee, if the White House could fix prices so easily, why let them rise in the first place? (The drop reflects small shifts in supply and demand: an end to summer driving, high oil inventories and fading fears that Iran will cut supplies.) Item: We're still enthralled by energy "independence" even though -- as a new report from the Council on Foreign Relations makes clear -- it's impossible for "at least several decades." In 1973, President Richard Nixon announced Project Independence, which was to eliminate oil imports by 1980. In 1973, the United States had net oil imports of 6 million barrels a day, 35 percent of our consumption. In 2006, net imports average 12.4 million barrels a day, or 60 percent of use. Nixon's advisers warned him that his goal was unattainable. In the foreseeable future, it still is. Anyone suggesting otherwise is misinformed or dishonest.

No plausible combination of alternative fuels or "conservation" can soon substitute for all that imported oil. Even if that weren't true, many other countries -- most of the world economy to which we are tightly tied -- would remain dependent on oil imports. So we'd be hostage indirectly.

The problem is not that the world will soon run out of oil. Global oil use now totals 31 billion barrels annually. Proven oil reserves are about 1.3 trillion barrels, reports Oil & Gas Journal. That's 42 years of supply at present consumption rates. Yes, consumption is rising -- but more oil will be found. Even when it's all gone, other hydrocarbon deposits can be, at higher prices, converted into oil. John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil, claims that the oil shale in Colorado amounts to another 1 trillion barrels and that Canada's oil sands total 1.3 trillion barrels. Indeed, the oil sands are already producing.

The problem is not even imports. It is that most imports come from countries that are potentially insecure, unstable or hostile. More than 700 billion barrels of reserves, slightly more than half, lie in the Persian Gulf; 80 billion are in Venezuela, 76 billion in the former Soviet Union, 39 billion in Libya. New exploration in these countries is difficult; supply interruptions are an ever-present threat.

Unfortunately, the steps we should take involve immediate political costs -- they'd be unpopular -- while the benefits would emerge slowly and seem modest. Suppose, for example, we opened coastal areas and parts of Alaska, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to drilling. U.S. oil and natural gas production would rise. But the increases would occur only after five or 10 years, and they might merely offset declines in existing U.S. fields. To a casual observer, the benefit would be barely visible.

Or imagine we raised the government's fuel economy standards for new vehicles -- say, from 27.5 miles per gallon for cars to 40 mpg. Because factories can't be converted instantly, the shift would be spread over 10 to 20 years. Replacing today's more than 225 million cars and light trucks would also be gradual and hardly perceptible. We'd also need a tax on fuel of at least $1 to $2 a gallon. Without mandated higher fuel prices, many Americans wouldn't buy more efficient vehicles. They'd recondition bigger sport-utility vehicles and sedans to keep them running. Or more driving would offset potential fuel savings. With low fuel prices in the 1990s, average annual driving per car rose about 1,500 miles, to almost 12,000.

So we probably won't do much about our oil habit. Any realistic proposal would ignite a firestorm of protest. Environmentalists would denounce more drilling. Auto companies would protest new fuel economy standards. Most important, the public would denounce a steep energy tax, even if it were introduced gradually with most proceeds rebated by lowering other taxes (as is desirable). And these unpleasant steps would merely reduce our dependence from what it would otherwise be. It's a hard case to make.

Because Americans want painless salvation, our politicians proffer visions that promise just that: a shift to hydrogen fuel or a surge in ethanol. The first may be futuristic wishful thinking; the second is mainly a costly giveaway to farmers. Both are deceptions, new excuses not to do the "right thing."

[Rasputin]