All right, folks, one topic we like to pay close attention to here on anti-war radio is the bogus nature of the domestic terrorism prosecutions that have taken place in this country since 2001.
By my recollection, I don't know of any legitimate terrorism prosecutions in this country since 9-11, other than that of Zacharias Moussaoui, who actually knew the hijackers and knew Ramsey bin al-Shib and was actually one of those guys.
The rest of it has all been a bunch of bull, as best I can tell.
Our focus today will be the case of Brandon Mayfield, who you may remember was accused in the bombing of the trains in Madrid, Spain in 2004.
Welcome to the show, Brandon.
Hi, good morning.
How are you doing, Scott?
I'm doing great.
How are you, sir?
Good.
I really appreciate you coming on the show to share your story with us today.
And really, I'd like to start with congratulations.
In your lawsuit, you got part of the Patriot Act struck down just a few weeks ago.
Tell us about it.
I was super excited.
As you said, I was arrested May 6, 2004 in connection with the Madrid-Spain bombing.
It was a wrongful arrest, so after two weeks in lockdown and detention here in Portland, Oregon, I was released when the Spanish police had said that they had identified the owner of the true print on the bag of detonators in Spain, a gentleman by the name of Unanny Diude.
At that point, we filed a lawsuit against the government, and we settled the underlying damages portion of that case last November with the condition that we were able to continue a challenge against the Patriot Act.
Even though I was arrested on May 6 as a material witness, the government had applied for a secret FISA warrant earlier, maybe three or four weeks before my arrest and were secretly, covertly surveilling my house, my office, my vehicles, and that was the basis for the constitutional challenge of the Patriot Act.
You bring the delay up there.
That's an interesting point.
If I remember right, it was toward the beginning of March 2004 that the bombing took place, and it was about six weeks or so before they ended up detaining you as a material witness.
Is that it?
Exactly.
You've got the date, I think, for the Madrid bombing, March.
I was arrested in May, so that was maybe six or seven weeks later, but we did have telltale signs of the government's break-in burglary in our home in Loa, Oregon.
For example, my wife would take one of our three children to school, and on returning home, I would be at work and she would come home and find that the doors that were left unbolted, a bolt on the door was bolted, or we don't typically use the bolt on our house, and that happened on more than one occasion.
The second time it happened, she called me, both times she called me and said, did you leave the bolt, and I said I didn't.
The second time it happened, I told her to look around because I was suspicious for any signs of a break-in.
We found footprints on carpets that we typically don't wear shoes in the house.
We found blinds, open, cracked and open, overlooking the driveway that we left closed.
And no warrant on the kitchen table explaining that while you were out, we've been here.
What happened is, in 1978, the government passed the FISA Act in response to Nixon's executive spying, even on political opponents, and that spawned the Church Commission.
Congress did this and they passed the FISA Act in an effort to rein in the executive branch's unchecked power to use the FBI government officials to spy on American citizens.
So it outlined carefully in what circumstances they could get secret warrants and outline that procedure whereby they could do that.
You could get these secret warrants so long as the primary purpose was to gather foreign intelligence.
It had to be an agent of a foreign power that was the target and it had to be not used in any kind of criminal prosecution because in that case you'd have the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule, right?
Exactly.
You're right on target, Scott.
You've done your homework, you've done your research.
The Patriot Act of 2001, it amended that section of the FISA Act and said it even further lowered that threshold, that exception to the Fourth Amendment probable cause rule, and it said a government official could get these secret warrants as long as a significant purpose was to gather foreign intelligence.
And now, you were being held as a material witness, and that's another part of the Patriot Act, that it extended the length of time that someone could be held as a material witness.
If I understand right, did it change the language somehow that made it easier, I guess, to hold someone who really they wanted to charge but didn't want to have to deal with the rights that come with being charged, like when they made up the phrase person of interest or whatever?
Is it one of those?
I'm not sure on the specifics of that.
The material witness statute was passed back in 1984.
That was another exception to the Fourth Amendment probable cause requirement.
In other words, the government, since 1984, has been able to arrest somebody who they want.
Traditionally, it was enacted to protect, like, mafioso types, to protect them because they might want to testify against somebody else.
So, historically, it's been used to protect the witness against those other potential criminal defendants the government is bringing criminal cases against.
But since 2001, and particularly under Ashcroft, I think something like 70 individuals were arrested under the material witness statute.
All but one were Muslim, including myself.
And it was an effort to further criminal investigation that has been misused by the administration, the current administration, for that purpose.
It's not part of the Patriot Act itself, it's just a change in policy under Ashcroft.
Exactly.
You're exactly right.
And by the way, in a system where there's supposed to be a rule of law, if a material witness provision is created to protect witnesses, does that law not forbid the abuse of this power to hold suspects under this?
That's a good question.
Human Rights Watch, an organization on the East Coast, did a study to what extent the material witness statute has been abused, and it was naturally a big pet peeve of mine.
But that wasn't the focus of my lawsuit.
And it would be difficult to overturn the material witness statute, but I think there needs to be more debate in Congress as to how it's been abused under this administration.
I'm sorry for asking you about unrelated stuff there, or partially related.
No, it's related because I was arrested under the material witness statute, just as Jose Padilla was, I think his gentleman's name is Sammy L. Kidd, he was a witness in the Sammy L. Hussein case.
That's the gentleman who was arrested in Idaho for allegedly having a terrorist website.
He was tried by an Idaho jury about the same time that I was arrested, and he was acquitted of the charges against him in June.
One of the witnesses, Sammy L.
Kidd, he was also arrested as a material witness as well.
It's being misused by the government currently to do a criminal investigation.
So they're using all these tools to do an end run around probable cause, and historically there was a wall between intelligence gathering and criminal prosecution.
And that's why this case that I had taken on, and the judge's recent ruling is so sweet, because it's putting back a balance between criminal investigation and privacy, whereas before it was tipped to our detriment in favor of national security.
And the judge, in her opinion, even wrote that the defendant, in this case the government, was asking her to amend the Bill of Rights to say that it doesn't say anything anymore, and I think the way she put it was, this court will decline the opportunity to do so.
Absolutely.
I like that.
Okay, now, specifics of your case here.
How is it that, I know I have you for a very short time.
There was a bombing in Spain on the trains, 191 people were killed, March 11, 2004, and they had some fingerprints from a bag of explosive components and so forth.
They ran it against the FBI database and they came up with some similar fingerprints, including yours.
That's basically how we got started here, right?
I just want to understand, Interpol, that's the police agency in Europe, and in Spain sent the prints to probably the FBI in Virginia, Quantico to be exact, and they did a search in their database, it's called the AFIS system, and it spit out 20 most likely matches, and from what I understand, I was number 4 on that list.
However, I don't know for a fact, but I'm guessing I might have been one of the only four that were Muslim unless it was a Muslim database.
I'm a Muslim, I'm a Caucasian American, but I think for that reason, I mean primarily, it was primarily for that reason that the government had focused on me.
And you've been to Spain years and years before, right?
What, 1994 I think I read?
No, I've never been to Spain.
I wasn't even out of the country for ten years prior to this arrest.
Oh, interesting.
I'm sorry, maybe I read that wrong.
I thought they had said you'd been to Spain, but it would have been a long, long time ago.
My religion was a factor in the arrest, even though the government denied this, but subsequently there's been an IG, Department of Justice, Inspector General's report, and even an Inspector General comes to the conclusion that it was a factor, you know, it played a factor in the targeting of me and my arrest and subsequent detention.
And even if they don't admit it, all one has to do is look at the affidavit in support of my search and arrest on May 6th, and it specifically cites, other than the fingerprint, the 100% fingerprint match, which it's hard to say how this could be 100% when I'm number four on a list of 20.
So what were they, 110%?
You know, the one, two, three?
So it's hard for me to understand how they could say that was a 100% match, but they misrepresented to the judge that it was a 100% match.
They also had said that the Spanish police were in agreement that the FBI's ID requirements were met and authentic.
It's not true.
They had, from the beginning, saying it's negativial, it's a negative match.
So misrepresented these facts to our local federal district court judge.
And they emphasized your conversion to Islam as well.
Yeah, but other than that, they had mentioned things such as Mr. Mayfield was married to an Egyptian.
Mr. Mayfield has represented Muslim clients.
Mr. Mayfield lists, advertises his business in a Muslim yellow pages, which GE, by the way, happens to advertise in as well.
Oh, General Electric, you said?
Yeah, exactly.
And also, I've been followed to the local mosque, which is the equivalent of a church, on more than one occasion.
Well, I like too, they said they found Spanish documents at your house that turned out to be your son's homework from Spanish class.
Yeah, my daughter's homework.
Oh, your daughter's homework.
Very proficient in the Spanish language.
Yes, they came across some homework assignment.
Documents.
Yeah, these were secret documents.
Now, if I remember right, and it's been a few years, I'm just going from memory here with the TV coverage, I believe the Spanish had been saying, nah, we don't think this guy has anything to do with it for a little while.
And then, at one point, they finally came out and said, no, we have disproven the idea that it's Brandon Mayfield.
We know for a fact now that this fingerprint belongs to someone else, and this guy is exonerated.
And only after the Spanish just absolutely proved your innocence on TV, only then did they finally let you go, even though the Spanish, if I remember right, had been hinting along those lines for weeks.
Yeah, that's right.
We didn't know it at the time.
It came out afterwards that there was, and I think it was from investigative journalism, somebody from the New York Times had interviewed some individuals from Spain and had come across a memo, a mid-April, late-April memo from the Spanish, I believe it was the Spanish police.
There's some officials there saying that they had doubts about the fingerprint identification, even when FBI agents or agents had gone to Spain to try to get them to agree, that is with the FBI's identification procedures.
And the Spanish police said, no, they weren't convinced.
And yet, in the affidavit in support of my arrest, that's what they asserted, that the Spanish police were convinced.
But there's evidence to the contrary.
And now you had defended one of the Portland 7 who was later convicted.
And so I wonder whether you think that this was a vendetta against you, that this was a deliberate frame-up, or are these just a bunch of Keystone cops who made up a conspiracy theory and decided they were sticking to it?
I think it's both.
I think the FBI does not.
They want the public to believe that fingerprint identification is an infallible science, which is not number one and two.
And the climate at that time, and it's still there to some extent, although less or so, I think they were sending a strong message that nobody would give safe harbor to Muslims.
And I don't know if you're familiar with the Lynn Stewart case, but she represented the blind Sheikh who was allegedly involved in the first World Trade Center attack.
And she was prosecuted by the government for what I call overzealously representing her Muslim client.
And I think she was sentenced to two years.
I don't know if she appealed it.
I don't know if she did that time.
But I've met her since that time.
And that has a chilling effect when the government goes after attorneys, criminal defense attorneys, who represent Muslim criminal defendants.
I think that that's not a mistake.
It's intentional.
I must say that sounds like something that we've really got to be concerned about.
And in fact, I know part of Lynn Stewart's conviction was that she spoke to her client and I guess had one of the interpreters make some noise or something to try to prevent them from being overheard.
Here she is being spied on while talking to her client, which is a violation just from the outset.
And then she gets convicted for trying to interfere with their spying on her attorney-client privilege.
Yeah, of course, it's been sacred saying this idea of, I'm an attorney, of this protecting the attorney-client privilege just like a priest-penitent privilege, like a doctor-patient privilege.
It's been time honored.
And yet under the current administration, Attorney General Ashcroft, when he was the attorney general, had sent a directive saying it was okay to listen in to those attorney-client conversations in jail, like when you're behind glass, when those are typically supposed to be not surveilled or listened to, monitored.
I think there was monitoring.
So it always creates a problem for me because I never know if my client can speak freely or I can't.
And that's the idea of having the attorney-client privilege.
And even when I was arrested, the government went through my government files and not only did they invade my privacy, but one could argue that they seriously undermined again the attorney-client privilege because it was in part of a fishing expedition, you know, to widen the circle and get more information.
The government does have a responsibility to keep us safe, Americans, but they have to do it within the bounds of due process and the limits that are set forth in the Fourth Amendment, probable cause, respect for privacy, the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, due process, the Sixth Amendment, the right for the accused to enjoy a speedy and public trial, to confront witnesses against them, not secret evidence.
And now, when you talk about the surveillance in terms of you having to worry when you're talking to one of your clients, whether you may be surveilled, was it not part of your lawsuit that you and your family had to worry about this in your house?
You had to sue the government to get them to even tell you whether or not there were mics and cameras in your house and or where they might be.
So as you're, you know, having Sunday dinner with the family, you don't know whether you're being surveilled or not, but you have plenty of good reason to think you probably are.
Right.
We did, like I said, once we once we there was these break-ins.
At one point, I thought it maybe it was burglars, but when we realized nothing was taken, it seemed odd that burglars would come in the house repeatedly and yet take nothing.
And yet there were signs that they were in the house.
VCRs were left blinking.
Somebody had tripped the electricity.
And yet there was nothing of value taken other than our our dignity and respect and love of privacy.
Yeah.
Well, you know, that is the kind of thing that only paranoid should have to deal with.
Wow, is there a bug in my own house?
That's regular.
People should not ever have to fear that only if you're the victim of your own problems.
You know, if you question some people, I think public opinion is changing about warrantless wiretapping and so forth.
Most people say, well, yeah, I don't care if it if it makes it safer.
And beside, I have nothing to hide.
But it doesn't it doesn't impact people until it touches home.
And even though Muslims, for the most part, are being targeted now, in the wake of 9-11, it wasn't always so and it won't always be so.
I mean, we've we've had numerous victims.
It's been African Americans here at one point, then it was the communist in the way even before that it was the Japanese Americans and the internment in the wake of World War Two.
Then it was the red scare and the communist McCarthyism.
It looks like the military industrial complex is always looking for a new bad guy.
And it just happens to be the Muslims at this point.
But that doesn't mean it can't be you tomorrow.
I'm talking with Brandon Mayfield.
He's a lawyer from Oregon who was falsely accused by the FBI of participation in the bombing of the trains in Madrid, Spain in March of 2004.
Do you have an opinion as to why they didn't just turn you over to Don Rumsfeld as an enemy combatant?
Is it just because the Spanish police were going on TV and talking about how innocent you were?
Yeah, I'd have to say it has a lot to do with God and the Spanish police.
Yeah, thank God and the Spanish police for their due diligence and their top-notch investigation in criminal forensics.
I read that the national government, when you sued them, petitioned the courts over and over again to throw your lawsuits out because it violates secrecy and national security and state secrets and all kinds of things like that.
Today, it seems like October 16th, where in some ways we're living in 1984 with a lot of doublespeak and 24-hour surveillance and secret indictments.
I don't know if you've read Kafka, the trial, but this idea of having charges with indefinite detention and secret evidence.
The problem with secret government, which has grown exponentially with FBI, CIA, NSA, now Homeland Security, is by the nature of the secrecy.
Generally, you don't know when you've been subject to their provisions.
And that's why, in my case, it's a rare opportunity that you get a chance to catch government officials with their hands in the cookie jar, so to speak, because it's so secret.
Yeah, the secrecy and the impunity go hand in hand.
Right, when these cases are brought, the government always asserts national security or secret evidence.
And some of this is written into the statutes itself.
The Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995 expanded secret evidence, and particularly it was to be used in immigration matters, but it's since been expanded, and it's just continuously expanding.
So, bureaucracies, just by the nature of their permanence, have a tendency to grow ever larger and over-regulating and over-policing the people.
And that's why we have a Bill of Rights and a Constitution, to keep a check and balance on the government.
Yeah, and I hate to think, if it hadn't been for the Spanish police proving your innocence, I guess the lesson here, I would be sitting here reading a story about Brandon Mayfield languishing in prison, and I'd be ending with, well, if they can do it to him, they can do it to you.
And I guess the point still stands, because they almost got away with doing it to you.
Yeah, if you look at Padilla, I think he was kept in jail for, I could be wrong, it was over three weeks, I believe, but at some point, he was labeled an enemy combatant.
And there's a certain shelf life for material witnesses.
And after that, either you release them or you, what else can you do?
If you recall the Padilla case, there were all these wild accusations of he was going to set off a radiological bomb or dirty bomb.
And later, as he was being shifted around in this shell game of denying criminal justice by the Department of Justice or the Attorney General's office, those most serious charges and allegations were finally dropped.
That's not what he was ultimately tried and convicted on.
All right, you heard it, everybody.
It's Brandon Mayfield.
I'm sorry, I guess we could continue on Padilla, but I've got to go through Hillary Clinton's foreign affairs article here.
Brandon Mayfield, exonerated, falsely accused of participation in the Madrid train bombing that he had absolutely nothing to do with and hadn't been within thousands of miles of there, and successful in getting a judge to strike down portions of the Patriot Act.
I hope, Mr. Mayfield, that you and I can stay in contact as the court's recent ruling goes through the appeals process and so forth, and keep us informed about how well you're doing there.
Yes, thanks for having me on.
I just want to say one thing to your listeners.
Even though we did have this successful challenge, which I was pleased with, the government did last week just announce that they were going to appeal, which wasn't surprising.
But I would make a recommendation to your listeners to not just rely on the courts, whose job it is to keep a check on the legislative and executive branch for extra constitutional legislation, but I would strongly recommend you call your local representative congressmen and let them know that you are concerned about your right, and in this case particularly, your right to privacy, to be secure in your person's house's paper in effect against unreasonable searches and seizures.
And please call them and tell them to restore habeas corpus and to respect the rule of law and due process in this country.
Thank you very much, everybody.
Brandon Mayfield.
Thank you, Scott, for having me.
