Mayfield case spotlights
peril of detention measure
In 2002, Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon lawyer and adherent of Islam, was arrested by the FBI and held for two weeks on suspicion of being involved in the Madrid train bombings.

He objected to his detention under the Patriot Act, and once it emerged that an error had been made he eventually won a settlement and an apology from the federal government.

http://www.justiceflorida.com/tags/brandon-mayfield-fingerprint/

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2009/12/portland_attorney_brandon_mayf.html

http://www.salon.com/2007/10/03/brandon_mayfield/

Had Mayfield been picked up under the McCain-Levin preventive detention measure, it is highly probable that the lawyer would still be sitting in the Guantanamo Bay prison or some other federal internment center. That is because federal authorities would need not present a probable cause for the detention nor show anyone whatever evidence they claimed to have (basically a fingerprint that turned out to be a false positive). Mayfield would not have been permitted to confront his accusers and most of his legal venues would have been stifled.

That this is true is demonstrated by some persons held at Guantanamo for years against whom there is virtually no evidence. However, authorities fear to let anyone go because it's possible that their experience will have angered them so much that they will join al Qaeda, as one or two released captives have done after being tormented during years of custody.

In Mayfield's case, he would very likely have been held indefinitely. Examine the reasoning of hardline columnist Daniel Pipes, who defended the federal government's action in arresting Mayfield:

"Mr. Mayfield's political profile fits that of many disaffected, America-hating terrorists: he strongly opposes the Patriot Act, inveighs against American foreign policy related to Muslim countries, and is 'particularly angered,' according to his brother Kent, by close U.S. relations with Israel. Mr. Mayfield speculates that the Bush administration knew in advance about 9/11 but chose to let the attacks go ahead so as to justify going to war. And on his release from custody, he compared the U.S. federal government to Nazi Germany."

So, the thinking goes, an American who is convinced that the 9/11 attacks were a result of treachery at the federal level or that the U.S. government should not pamper Israel or that the Patriot Act is an assault on the foundations of American liberty [why label it the Patriot Act unless freedom was under assault?] fits the profile of a terrorist. Had Pipes been similarly detained, wouldn't he have been angry enough to invoke the specter of Nazi tyranny?

Also, wrote Pipes, "Someone in Mr. Mayfield's house was in telephone contact with Perouz Sedaghaty (a.k.a. Pete Seda), director of the U.S. office of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a number of whose foreign branches have been designated as terrorist organizations."

Is there something wrong with a man who is embattled being in touch with a lawyer? Or with Mayfield representing a man in a custody dispute who was eventually convicted of terrorism? But, said Pipes, not only was Mayfield a lawyer, he was a Muslim and identified with Muslim ideology.

By such logic, one could say that Pipes, by expressing a neoconservative ideology, by being too trusting of federal power and by being excessively protective of federal cover stories, is demonstrating a pattern consistent with being a flack for 9/11 conspirators and is a candidate for internment.

Even had Pipes made a good case for detaining the lawyer via the Patriot Act, under McCain-Levin, Mayfield's First Amendment rights of freedom of religion and freedom of speech would be held against him as indicating a "pattern" consistent with terrorism. It is unlikely that he, or anyone else, would have been told of the (false) fingerprint match.

Of course, one wonders why Mayfield wasn't quietly put under surveillance rather than seized in a grandstanding public relations ploy. Was the government attempting to intimidate lawyers for terror suspects?

And if lawyers willing to represent terror suspects could be treated in such a way, what is the likely fate of many an internet journalist, anti-Patriot Act blogger or skeptic of the U.S. narrative about the events of 9/11.