Over at Psychsound, Steve Bergstein has posted an extraordinary piece entitled A tale of two decisions (or, how the FBI gets you to confess). It’s about how an Egyptian national was arrested after 9/11 and was coerced into making a “confession”. Then a witness appeared who undermined the FBI’s coerced story; the Egyptian was released, and sued the FBI. The Court of Appeals published an opinion in his favour, then withdrew it and re-issued it with some material redacted:
“This opinion has been redacted because portions of the record are under seal. For the purposes of the summary judgment motion, Templeton did not contest that Higazy’s statements were coerced.”
But it was too late: the original opinion was loose on the Internet. And so we can read the redacted material, which turns out to be a detailed account of how the FBI coerced the confession.
The chilling thing is that we have no idea how many of these coercions the FBI got away with.
And why was this story not front page news everywhere? A commenter over at Washington Monthly nailed it depressingly well:
Ho hum. Rendition, old story. Torture, old story. Imprisonment without due process, old story. Shredding of Constitution, old story.
MSM sez “We’ve been there. Done that.”
Dumbledore gay? Now THAT’s news.
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(HT to Terry.)