NPR has what is actually a rather good comparison of the military commissions to civilian courts, noting that the Obama version offers better protections than the Bush-era military commissions but still allowed coerced evidence and hearsay.
When NPR moves on to the Classified Information Procedures Act however, they let Andy McCarthy go off the rails:
Lawyers who conducted the review concluded that while CIPA is "subject to being improved," they were "unable to identify a single instance in which CIPA was invoked and there was a substantial leak of sensitive information as a result of terrorism prosecution in federal court."
Opponents of federal trials disagree.
That includes Andrew McCarthy, the lead prosecutor in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case. McCarthy has been a leading voice in arguing that federal judges do not have the leeway that military commission judges do when it comes to deciding whether the government can shield certain information from defendants.
OK, McCarthy apparently "disagrees" with the idea that there has yet to be a substantial leak of sensitive information resulting from a terrorism prosecution, but he actually can't offer a single instance of that happening. So a more accurate description of what is happening here is that "opponents of federal trials sometimes deny reality even in the face of incontrovertible fact," since the substance of actual disagreement on this point is nonexistent.
The one instance McCarthy and company are fond of citing, as I've written before, is Osama bin Laden being "warned" that we were "on to him" about three years after he had already declared war on the United States. Surprise!
McCarthy is theoretically someone who is an expert in his field. He has actually convicted terrorists in federal court as a prosecutor. He should be someone reporters could go to to shed light on how this stuff works. But his expertise is marred by his casual dishonesty, his willingness to cling to sheer fantasy if it reinforces his partisan inclinations. This isn't about mere policy disagreement. This is a guy wondering about Obama's birth certificate and the provenance of Dreams From My Father. How could anyone possibly expect for him to suddenly shoot it straight when it comes to terrorism?
-- A. Serwer
