Double Standard?

On Friday, April 17, an article appeared on the front page of the local Traverse City newspaper stating that “President Barack Obama absolved CIA officers from prosecution for harsh, painful interrogation of terror suspects,” which is to say, absolved them from prosecution for the acknowledged crime of committing torture. Contemporaneous with this announcement, the White House released four Bush-era legal memoranda graphically detailing — and authorizing — such tactics as slamming detainees against walls, slapping detainees, waterboarding them, and keeping them naked and cold for long periods. A couple of days later it was revealed that waterboarding, which now meets everyone’s definition of illegal torture, was used by the CIA 266 times on just two “key prisoners” alone. It goes without saying that where the tactics amount to torture, their use constitutes a war crime.

In issuing what in effect was a grant of immunity, the president said he wanted to move beyond “a dark and painful chapter in our history.” “Nothing will be gained,” he added, “by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past,” by which he meant the past seven years. Attorney General Eric Holder said, “It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department.” Holder, in fact, went a great deal further when he gave assurances that the CIA officials who were involved would be given free legal representation in any legal proceeding or congressional investigation related to the program and would repay any financial judgment reandered against them.

In legal parlance, the Obama Administration has, first, contrary to the precedents emanating from the Nuremberg Trials, recognized the defense of “following orders” as an absolute bar to criminal or civil legal action against those persons who committed torture. Second, it has undertaken not only to hold harmless those responsible for torturing detainees in our name, but will indemnify them for all judgments and costs, including attorneys fees, they may incur in the process of defending themselves for their criminal acts.

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Two days earlier, on Wednesday, April 15, the same Traverse City newspaper, this time on page 6A, reported that 89-year old John Demjanjuk, an accused Nazi death camp guard who now suffers from multiple serious health problems, had been removed in his suburban Cleveland home in his wheelchair by six immigration officers. Federal officials planned to place him on a stretcher, sedate him heavily, and, together with a physician, a nurse, and a guard, fly him to Germany. He was to be deported to Munich where he would stand trial for allegedly being an accessory to thousands of deaths committed during World War II at the Sobibor Prison Camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. As the van into which he was placed left his home, Vera, Demjanjuk’s wife, “sobbed and held her hand to her mouth. As the van moved down the street, Vera turned and waved, sobbing in the arms of a granddaughter.”

Later that day, a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay of the deportation order. Demjanjuk was returned to his home and, for the time being, that’s where he remains.

Ivan (John) Demjanjuk was born in 1920 in Kiev, Ukraine. In 1940, at the age of 20, he was recruited into the Soviet army and was captured by German troops in May 1942. While in a German prison camp Demjanjuk, allegedly in return for some measure of freedom and security, was either enticed or volunteered to become a German prison guard, for which he was trained in the Trawniki Concentration Camp in eastern Poland. It is alleged that he later spent time as a guard at Treblinka and Sobibor where the atrocities of which he was later charged were allegedly committed. Demjanjuk denied the charges, and asserted that he was imprisoned by the Germans until the end of the war when he was liberated by the Russian army.

After the war, Demjanjuk, his wife, and his daughter made their way to the United States, ultimately residing in Cleveland. He worked for the Ford Motor Company. The family obtained citizenship in the Untied States. But Demjanjuk’s alleged past caught up with him, and after much legal wrangling, he was deported to Israel to stand trial for war crimes. He was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to death by hanging. In 1993, however, his conviction was reversed by a unanimous Israeli tribunal largely on the basis of testimony of other prison guards and the conclusion that his identity as “Ivan the Terrible” had likely been mistaken. By then, Demjanjuk had spent six years on death row and eight years in solitary confinement. Israeli authorities decided not to retry him for the reason, among others, that to do so would constitute double jeopardy.

After his release, Demjanjuk returned to the United States where his citizenship was restored in 1998. However, the Justice Department again filed civil charges against him in 1999 and again in 2001, and, in 2004 the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals again ordered that he be stripped of his American citizenship. A year later, Demjanjuk was ordered deported to Ukraine, a decision which over a couple of years was upheld all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the summer of 2008, however, Germany’s top Holocaust crimes prosecutor filed extradition papers designed to bring Demjanjuk to Germany for trial, and in March of this year he was formally charged in Germany with being an accessory to the commission of 29,000 murders at the Sobibor extermination camp in eastern Poland in 1943. The United States was in the process of carrying out the German extradition order when the order staying Demjanjuk’s deportation was issued on April 14.

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One can only wonder why the United States has such an abiding interest in forcibly sending a seriously ill, 89-year old man, a citizen of the United States, 3,000 miles to another country for what must be about the tenth time he has faced trial for war crimes that were allegedly committed 67 years ago, and for which he has been tried and acquitted by the State of Israel, the nation of the people most affected.

One can only wonder why the United States has such an intense interest in granting immunity and indemnification to an unknown number of United States citizens, operatives of the CIA, for the acknowledged commission of war crimes, the details of which have been documented in detail, against at least 28 citizens of foreign countries, during a war that is still going on and which crimes were committed within the past seven years, for which the perpetrators have never even been charged.

This wouldn't amount to a double standard, now would it?

The Sermon at Mason Temple

On April 3, 1968, forty-one years ago this past Friday, a Baptist minister delivered a sermon at Mason Temple, the world headquarters of the Church of God in Christ. Mason Temple is located in Memphis, Tennessee. It was a rather long sermon. Here’s the last part of it —

“You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?" And I was looking down writing, and I said, "Yes." And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that's punctured, you drown in your own blood — that's the end of you.

“It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I've forgotten what those telegrams said. I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what that letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply,

“‘Dear Dr. King — I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School. . . . While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I'm a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze.’

“And I want to say tonight — I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn't sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. . . .

“If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in inter-state travel.

“If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent.

“If I had sneezed I wouldn't have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill.

“If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had.

“If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great Movement there.

“If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering.

“I'm so happy that I didn't sneeze.

“. . . . Now, it doesn't matter, now. It really doesn't matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us. The pilot said over the public address system, ‘We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with on the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we've had the plane protected and guarded all night.’

“And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

“Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.

“And I don't mind.

“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

“And so I'm happy tonight.

“I'm not worried about anything.

“I'm not fearing any man!

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”


At a minute past six the next evening, forty-one years ago yesterday, on the balcony in front of Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, a shot rang out. The bullet smashed into his face, shattered his jaw, drove to the back of his neck, down his spinal cord, and lodged in his shoulder.

Minutes later, Martin Luther King, Jr. was dead.