Ronald L. Kuby: I’m a civil-rights lawyer. I was asked to represent two of the defendants on the embassy bombing case, and I declined. At this point, now that I am in my 40s and have amassed a modest degree of competence in this area, I want to be able to select those for whom I work. I think some of the Islamist defendants in some of the cases have been ill-treated and unfairly tried, but I don’t think that has been the general situation, nor was it the situation here. I’m not a bus. I don’t have to stop at every corner simply because there’s someone waiting. These guys didn’t fit the bill because I thought they were guilty. They were guilty people who represent right-wing religious fundamentalism that I find utterly abhorrent, and there was little evidence of government misconduct.
No, for the same reason. Historically very unpopular defendants had a difficult time getting lawyers, [but] that was all pre-O. J. Simpson. [Now] unpopular defendants with high-profile cases have no trouble finding lawyers, like crows to bright shiny objects the lawyers descend volunteering, waving their hands, saying “pick me, pick me, so I can be on TV.”
I do, so I get all that out, so I recognize this. Unpopular defendants with low-profile cases still can’t find lawyers. These days I’m spending most of my time going through cases of innocent people who have been wrongfully convicted and trying to get them out of prison.
I don’t think that there are that many. Based on my experience with the FBI in 1993–and it’s true the ‘93 plots were done in a very different way than these–when the FBI makes a mistake in this area it’s usually because they have swept up too many innocent people, rather than overlooked too many guilty ones. And I think the fact that, after a month and a half of the most intensive investigation in the history of the United States, not one person has yet been charged with knowingly aiding the terrorist plot, is probably a positive thing. It suggests that there is no vast network of Arab and Islamic radicals living among us.
I really don’t. It was easy to miss the planning for the Sept. 11 attacks, but once the attacks took place, you have paper and electronic trails that can be followed to other conspirators, if they exist. For example, in the 1993 bombing there was vague information about a possible bombing plot by Islamists. The FBI had some suspicions that Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman might be involved, because they got a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act tap for his phone just about 20 days before the trade center blew up. But after the bombing took place, the FBI very quickly followed the paper and electronic trail, and arrested everybody involved. [Rahman was subsequently convicted and is serving a life sentence without parole.]
The notion of Islamists in suburban Indiana robbing banks to raise money for terrorism–if you’re trying to keep a low profile that doesn’t strike me that that’s the way to do it.
I’m sure that Osama bin Laden studies the strengths and weaknesses of past operations, whether or not they were his operations. If you looked at what happened in the ‘93 Trade Center plot and the subsequent Landmarks case [the alleged plot to blow up the prominent public buildings in New York], there were fairly obvious lessons to be learned. From a terrorist perspective, what errors were committed in 1993? No. 1, [they] relied on local Muslims who talked a lot and lived very publicly as fundamentalists, so [they] were infiltrated. No. 2, all the plotters were left alive at the end of the operation so they got arrested and became government witnesses.
Everything that was done on Sept. 11 was done with an eye toward rectifying the mistakes terrorists had made in the past … You avoid the first problem by instructing your folks to separate themselves from the Islamic community and live in places where people don’t know each other, and to stay together in very small groups. That way you reinforce the small-group dynamic, of these guys living together in isolation from the community, with no moderating influences. And you avoid the second problem [of turncoats] by making sure that the operation culminates in the death of the operatives.
Probably it is harder, but if there was an infrastructure of substantial size in the United States that helped to support the Sept. 11 hijackers, you would have suspected to find some evidence of it by now–either people who are still here, or electronic and paper trials of people who were here and fled. And there’s just not that much there. Of course, you can always go down the path of the paranoid and say the surest evidence that they’re out there is that there’s no evidence, because they’re that clever. But frankly, that reasoning is insane. It’s the same people who say [Israel’s] Mossad did it.
I think that’s right.
That’s beyond the realm of what I can intelligently opine about … I can speak fairly knowledgeably about the bombing plots here in the United States because I was fairly close to the people and evidence involved, but not the overseas evidence.
Wadih El Hage is the question mark. I don’t know that he necessarily fits into any category. In the 1993 Landmarks plot you had two members of the group who were actually American-born Muslim converts: an African-American born in Brooklyn and a man born in Puerto Rico. They were clearly people who embraced Islam as a matter of religious conversion and became radicalized after that. But with El Hage I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone knows. Theories about El Hage abound–whether he became radicalized later, whether he was always a radical, whether he was a sleeper….
But I do know this, if law enforcement had drawn a profile of potential terrorists based on the individuals who participated in the 1993 plots, they would have missed the 19 hijackers of Sept. 11. My fear is if you draw a profile based on the Sept. 11 hijackers you’re going to miss the next group–because tactics and profiles can change.
Generally speaking, I think all four received an excruciatingly fair trial. The best proof of which is two different defendants faced death and were given life without parole instead by the jury.
I thought then and I believe to this day, based on the evidence, that Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman [who was represented by Kuby and his late partner, William M. Kunstler] was innocent of involvement, I really do. Most people familiar with the case would agree that the evidence against Sheik Omar was utterly ambiguous, tentative and sketchy. With respect to a number of the other defendants, it was my feeling then that the glue that held them together was the government informant who had organized them, equipped them, financed them all with the view toward ultimately turning them in and reaping a huge award. He was a provocateur. It was my feeling then that but for the government informant these folks would have remained street-corner agitants. In hindsight, especially given the events of Sept. 11 and the embassy bombings, I’m not so sure they would have remained just street-corner agitators. I’m not nearly as convinced now as I was then.
