Infrastructure of Tyranny--Secret Detention

In the first part of this survey of what Conor Friedersdorf has called the "infrastructure of tyranny,"  we looked at the practice of extraordinary rendition, which is basically the art of making people disappear.  In the second part of this survey, we looked at black site prisons, or where people have been disappeared to.  In this third part of the series, we'll look at secret detention, or simply not acknowledging that a person is in your hands.

Secret detention, according to the Rendition Project, is as follows:

Whereas most detainees in the ‘War on Terror’ have been formally registered by the US authorities, and granted access to the International Committee of the Red Cross (and through them to their families), many have been held in secret. Secret detentions occur when detainees are held incommunicado (i.e., when they are not permitted any contact with the outside world, including their families, lawyers, or the ICRC), and when the detaining authorities refuse to acknowledge either the fact of the detention, or the fate and whereabouts of the detainee.

Those held in secret by the US include detainees which the US Government denies it holds, or about which it refuses to discuss. They also include those which the US Government admits to holding, where it then refuses to disclose their exact whereabouts and their current status of well-being. All of these detainees have been fully cut off from the outside world (held incommunicado), with no third party granted access to monitor the detention or speak to the detainee.

It is important to note that the detention site itself does not have to be secret for the detention to be secret. Whether the detention is secret or not is determined by its incommunicado character and by the fact that the state authorities do not disclose the place of detention or details about the fate of the detainee. This means that officially recognised detention facilities, and even secret wings within officially recognised detention facilities, can be used for secret detentions. Many also take place in facilities which are themselves unacknowledged by the authorities (i.e., are themselves secret).

This practice is also known as "forced disappearance."  Amnesty International defines forced disappearance as follows:

Enforced disappearances persist in many countries all over the world, having been a continuing feature of the second half of the twentieth century since they were committed on a gross scale in Nazi-occupied Europe.

An enforced disappearance takes place when a person is arrested, detained or abducted by the state or agents acting for the state, who then deny that the person is being held or conceal their whereabouts, placing them outside the protection of the law.

Very often, people who have disappeared are never released and their fate remains unknown. Their families and friends may never find out what has happened to them.

But the person has not just vanished.  Someone, somewhere, knows what has happened to them.  Someone is responsible.  Enforced disappearance is a crime under international law but all too often the perpetrators are never bought to justice.

Every enforced disappearance violates a range of human rights including:

• the right to security and dignity of person
• the right not to be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment
• the right to humane conditions of detention
• the right to a legal personality
• right to a fair trial
• right to a family life
• when the disappeared person is killed, the right to life

Enforced disappearance is a particularly cruel human rights violation; a violation of the person who has disappeared and a violation of those who love them...

A good place to start looking through the US's use of the practice is Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition. Al Jazeera editorializes.  Excerpts:

...Behind by the grandiose, Orwellian disguise of "extraordinary rendition", the United States and many of its allies have been engaged in executing or colluding in a practice that is nothing other than forced disappearance.

The reason, it seems clear, for the practice of "extraordinary renditions" is to allow those disappeared to be subjected to treatment that would be plainly illegal in the US. Morally it is indefensible. Strategically it is nonsensical: what could be more self-defeating in a battle to defend values than to subvert them so completely in the face of attack.

While the Obama administration has taken steps to limit the practice, some forms of it continue and there has been no attempt to reckon with past practices...

The Organization of American States has an "Inter-American Convention on the Forced Disappearance of Persons." It opens thusly:

The Member States of the Organization of American States signatory to the present Convention,

DISTURBED by the persistence of the forced disappearance of persons;

REAFFIRMING that the true meaning of American solidarity and good neighborliness can be none other than that of consolidating in this Hemisphere, in the framework of democratic institutions, a system of individual freedom and social justice based on respect for essential human rights;

CONSIDERING that the forced disappearance of persons in an affront to the conscience of the Hemisphere and a grave and abominable offense against the inherent dignity of the human being, and one that contradicts the principles and purposes enshrined in the Charter of the Organization of American States;

CONSIDERING that the forced disappearance of persons of persons violates numerous non-derogable and essential human rights enshrined in the American Convention on Human Rights, in the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;

RECALLING that the international protection of human rights is in the form of a convention reinforcing or complementing the protection provided by domestic law and is based upon the attributes of the human personality;

REAFFIRMING that the systematic practice of the forced disappearance of persons constitutes a crime against humanity;

HOPING that this Convention may help to prevent, punish, and eliminate the forced disappearance of persons in the Hemisphere and make a decisive contribution to the protection of human rights and the rule of law,

RESOLVE to adopt the following Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons...

Article II

For the purposes of this Convention, forced disappearance is considered to be the act of depriving a person or persons of his or their freedom, in whatever way, perpetrated by agents of the state or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of the state, followed by an absence of information or a refusal to acknowledge that deprivation of freedom or to give information on the whereabouts of that person, thereby impeding his or her recourse to the applicable legal remedies and procedural guarantees...

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights has a Working Group dedicated to "examin[ing] questions relevant to enforced or involuntary disappearances of persons." Such tactics have been used in the past by Argentina during the Dirty War (and a great many other Latin American countries), Bangladesh, the USSR, and many others.  Apparently Mexico is having great problems with forced disappearances for a variety of reasons.  Excerpts:

When people are forcibly disappeared in Mexico, it does not necessarily mean that the victims are immediately killed. In this country of entrenched violence, forced disappearance is also a method used to feed the markets for sexual exploitation and slave labour.

Mexico has regressed “to the barbarism of Roman gladiators,” lawyer Juan López, a legal adviser to Fuerzas Unidas por Nuestros Desparecidos en México (FUNDEM), a support group for families searching for their loved ones, initially in the northern state of Coahuila and now nationwide, told IPS.

In today’s Mexico, where organised crime is rampant and public security has been militarised, forced disappearances do not follow the pattern seen in past decades in this country and others in Latin America, marked by dictatorships, “dirty wars” against opponents and armed conflicts.

These days “just about anyone” is vulnerable, López said. An unknown proportion of the victims fall prey to “illegal businesses that produce lucrative profits from an unpaid slave labour force,” he said...

It's not just the US committing "forced disappearances" in the course of the global war on terror, either.  Excerpts:

On Wednesday, UK Defense Minister Philip Hammond confirmed that 80 or 90 Afghan men are being detained without charges at the UK-run Camp Bastion—a revelation that many are calling "illegal" with obvious parallels to the United States' Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility.

According to lawyers representing eight of the detainees, a number of the men have been held for up to 14 months without charge or any indication of a trial date, and many others have not yet been allowed to consult a lawyer after months spent in prison.

"Our client has been held at Camp Bastion since August 2012. He has not been charged with any crime and has had no access to a lawyer so he can receive legal advice about his ongoing detention," said Rosa Curling, a lawyer with the firm Leigh Day, which is representing one 20-year-old detainee...

Other reports suggest these detainees have not been held secretly, but that their attorneys have been petitioning the government on various matters for some time.  With lawyers, getting anything done is difficult in the detention system.  So what happens to those who don't have lawyers--indeed, have nobody on the outside who's aware that they've been taken at all?  How can anyone try to protect your legal rights when nobody knows you've been arrested or "rendered" in the first place?

For Further Research:

• Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition
• The Rendition Project
• Amnesty International, Unlock the Truth: Poland's Involvement in CIA Secret Detention

Infrastructure of Tyranny--Extraordinary Rendition

Black helicopter theory, according to the Urban Dictionary, is as follows:

Black helicopters are part of a conspiracy theory that claims that special silent running "black" helicopters are used by secret agents of the New World Order, United Nations troops preparing to invade the United States of America, and/or the Men in Black. Parapsychologist John Keel has argued that this theory has similar origins to those regarding UFO's, ghosts and fairies; that they are part of modern mythology; in this case, representing a fear of the government and its technology.

Black helicopters without FAA-required running lights are regularly used by the drug interdiction office DEA. In addition, most US Army helicopters (such as the Black Hawk) are finished in a very dark chocolate or olive matt paint. With the progressive development of night vision goggles, the need for helicopters to be lit when moving as a planned formation has been reduced.

See also: TACMAR

in short, any farfetched theory concerning any government or other conspiracy, can be espoused by either those of right or left wing persuasions.
Noam Chomsky's theory about Soap operas being geared to lure women from politics sure is a black helicopter theory.

What follows would once have been firmly in the realm of black helicopter theory. But it is real.

Extraordinary rendition, according to the ACLU in a document from 2005, is as follows:

Beginning in the early 1990s and continuing to this day, the Central Intelligence Agency, together with other U.S. government agencies, has utilized an intelligence-gathering program involving the transfer of foreign nationals suspected of involvement in terrorism to detention and interrogation in countries where -- in the CIA's view -- federal and international legal safeguards do not apply. Suspects are detained and interrogated either by U.S. personnel at U.S.-run detention facilities outside U.S. sovereign territory or, alternatively, are handed over to the custody of foreign agents for interrogation. In both instances, interrogation methods are employed that do not comport with federal and internationally recognized standards. This program is commonly known as "extraordinary rendition."

The current policy traces its roots to the administration of former President Bill Clinton. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, however, what had been a limited program expanded dramatically, with some experts estimating that 150 foreign nationals have been victims of rendition in the last few years alone. Foreign nationals suspected of terrorism have been transported to detention and interrogation facilities in Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Diego Garcia, Afghanistan, Guantánamo, and elsewhere. In the words of former CIA agent Robert Baer: "If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear -- never to see them again -- you send them to Egypt..."

The Washington Post dates the first renditions even further back than the Clinton administration.  Excerpts:

...George W. Bush was still struggling to coax oil out of the ground when the United States "rendered to justice" its first suspect from abroad. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan authorized an operation that lured Lebanese hijacker Fawaz Younis to a boat off the coast of Cyprus, where FBI agents arrested him. (Younis had participated in the 1985 hijacking of a Jordanian plane and was implicated in the hijacking of TWA Flight 847, which left a U.S. Navy diver dead.) President George H.W. Bush approved the kidnapping in 1990 of Mexican physician Humberto Alvarez Machain, who was believed to be involved in the torture and killing of a Drug Enforcement Administration official. Nothing says that renditions can involve only suspected terrorists; Israel's abduction of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960 could be called a rendition, though the term was not yet in use.

Beginning in 1995, the Clinton administration turned up the speed with a full-fledged program to use rendition to disrupt terrorist plotting abroad. According to former director of central intelligence George J. Tenet, about 70 renditions were carried out before Sept. 11, 2001, most of them during the Clinton years...

The program received a new impetus and direction after 9/11.  Excerpts:

The Key Events timeline begins less than one week after the attacks of 11 September 2001. On 17 September 2001, President Bush sent a 14-page memorandum to the Director of the CIA. While the exact contents of this memo are still classified, a summary has been declassified by the CIA: it pertains to the approval of ‘clandestine intelligence activity’, and it specifically contains an authorisation for the CIA’s ‘terrorist detention and interrogation program’.

Less than two months later, on 13 November 2001, President Bush issued an Executive Order on the Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism. This Order provided the Pentagon with the authority to detain indefinitely any non-American in the world, in any place in the world, as long as they were determined by the US Government to pose a terrorist threat to US interests. Together with the September 2001 memo to the CIA, this Order laid the foundations for the development of a global system of rendition and secret detention, as well as the official military detentions in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Key Events timeline traces the significant events that have shaped this system in the years following these two directives...

You can track the flights and locate the known prison sites here.  The program has been used throughout the course of the war on terror with the collaboration of many US allies around the world.  Excerpts:

Police in Scotland will look into allegations that CIA “extraordinary rendition” flights passed through airports in the country, they said Thursday.

Police will examine new research into the flights, in which people suspected of being terrorists by the United States were held covertly at undisclosed locations around the world without recourse to legal process.

According to a report published February by the Open Society Justice Initiative, a human rights advocacy group, as many as 54 nations aided the CIA's rendition and detention operations. It said more than 130 people were detained and detailed allegations of harsh treatment of some of the suspects...

That report may be downloaded here. Key findings include:

...8. After being extraordinarily rendered by the United States to Egypt in 2002, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under threat of torture at the hands of Egyptian officials, fabricated information relating to Iraq’s provision of chemical and biological weapons training to Al Qaeda. In 2003, then Secretary of State Colin Powell relied on this fabricated information in his speech to the United Nations that made the case for war against Iraq.

9. Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times by the CIA. FBI interrogator Ali Soufan testified before Congress that he elicited “actionable intelligence” from Zubaydah using rapport-building techniques but that Zubaydah “shut down” after he was waterboarded.

10. Torture is prohibited in all circumstances under international law and allegations of torture must be investigated and criminally punished. The United States prosecuted Japanese interrogators for “waterboarding” U.S. prisoners during World War II.

11. On November 20, 2002, Gul Rahman froze to death in a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan called the “Salt Pit,” after a CIA case officer ordered guards to strip him naked, chain him to the concrete floor, and leave him there overnight without blankets.

12. Fatima Bouchar was abused by the CIA, and by persons believed to be Thai authorities, for several days in the Bangkok airport. Bouchar reported she was chained to a wall and not fed for five days, at a time when she was four-and-a-half months pregnant. After that she was extraordinarily rendered to Libya.

13. Syria was one of the “most common destinations for rendered suspects,” as were Egypt and Jordan. One Syrian prison facility contained individual cells that were roughly the size of coffins. Detainees report incidents of torture involving a chair frame used to stretch the spine (the “German chair”) and beatings.

14. Muhammed al-Zery and Ahmed Agiza, while seeking asylum in Sweden, were extraordinarily rendered to Egypt where they were tortured with shocks to their genitals. Al-Zery was also forced to lie on an electrified bed frame.

15. Abu Omar, an Italian resident, was abducted from the streets of Milan, extraordinarily rendered to Egypt, and secretly detained for fourteen months while Egyptian agents interrogated and tortured him by subjecting him to electric shocks. An Italian court convicted in absentia 22 CIA agents and one Air Force pilot for their roles in the extraordinary rendition of Abu Omar.

16. Known black sites—secret prisons run by the CIA on foreign soil—existed in Afghanistan, Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Romania, and Thailand.

17. Abd al Rahim al Nashiri was secretly detained in various black sites. While secretly detained in Poland, U.S. interrogators subjected al Nashiri to a mock execution with a power drill as he stood naked and hooded; racked a semi-automatic handgun close to his head as he sat shackled before them; held him in “standing stress positions;” and threatened to bring in his mother and sexually abuse her in front of him.

18.  President Obama’s 2009 Executive Order repudiating torture does not repudiate the CIA extraordinary rendition program.  It was specifically crafted to preserve the CIA’s authority to detain terrorist suspects on a short-term, transitory basis prior to rendering them to another country for interrogation or trial...

It's a program deep in the world of national security and the spy versus spy realm of secrets, so of course, speaking precisely about what's currently going on is difficult.  But when people try, the results are not reassuring.  Excerpts:

...The use of renditions appears to have reached its apogee after the September 11 attacks, when President Bush expanded the program to include indefinite periods of detention in third-party countries, according to the report. While the Obama administration has taken measures to impose more oversight on the process, renditions appear to continue, according to the report.

President Obama issued an executive order 2009 that directed that the CIA close its secret detention facilities in order to “promote the safe, lawful, and humane treatment of individuals” held by the United States. But the order specified that the closures did not apply to facilities used to hold terror suspects “on a short-term, transitory basis.” A task force established by the order produced recommendations in 2009 that would allow rendition to continue, but with measures to prevent “the transfer of individuals to face torture.”

Due to continued secrecy over the CIA’s extraction and detention of suspects, estimates on the total number of detainees have been imprecise.  The catalog of 136 people identified in the new report as detained or transferred by the CIA is the largest such list to be compiled to date. The report notes that the total number of people subject to rendition, detention, or interrogation will not be known until the countries involved release that information.

Countries assisting the United States included Afghanistan, Germany, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the United Kingdom. Some of the countries hosted facilities used by the CIA on their soil, according to the report, while others provided intelligence or aided in the capture, transport, or detention of individuals.

“The 54 governments basically enabled these operations,” Singh said. “Without the participation of these governments, the programs would not have been possible...”

PBS's Frontline did a show on extraordinary rendition.  Sometimes, the people who do the rendering are brought before a court.  Sometimes.  Excerpts:

On the crisp morning of Feb. 17, 2003, Abu Omar, a Muslim cleric in Milan, was walking near his mosque when a group of men suddenly grabbed him, tossed him in the back of a van, drove him to NATO's Aviano Air Base and flew him to Cairo, where he claims he was tortured for seven months.

On Friday, a Milan appeals court sentenced a former CIA station chief to seven years in jail, convicting him in the cleric's kidnapping, which was part of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program. Two six-year sentences were also handed out to two American officials for the same crime.

Jeff Castelli, a former CIA station chief in Rome, along with Betnie Medero and Ralph Russomando, had been acquitted due to their dimplomatic immunity in the 2009 trial, while 23 other U.S. citizens were sentenced to prison in absentia...

Oh, to be sure, many of those being taken are Al Qaeda folk, terrorists intent upon warfare with the rest of the world until all submit to their religion's supremacy. One might even call them enemies of humanity. And yet, what does it mean when that which was once unthinkable now is both done and rarely thought about?  And with such a covert operation, what sort of guarantee do we have that all those who are made to disappear into prisons for indefinite detention are guilty of a crime, or aren't being vanished because of political motives?  Such a system is probably unjust even in the hands of the good and honorable.  Such a system in the hands of the venal, the evil, the power-hungry?  It is not to be considered--yet consider it we must.  The system exists.  It is real.

Further leads for research:

• The Rendition Project
• Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition
• Torture, Rendition, and other Abuses against Captives in US Custody
  

Part One of the Infrastructure of Tyranny Series.

Infrastructure of Tyranny--Introduction

Inspired by Conor Friedersdorf's list in The Atlantic, I thought I'd do a series of posts giving a run down of the different elements of the infrastructure of tyranny operating under the aegis of the United States today.

The series will include

• Infrastructure of Tyranny--Extraordinary Rendition
• Infrastructure of Tyranny--Black Site Prisons
• Infrastructure of Tyranny--Secret Detention
• Infrastructure of Tyranny--Indefinite Detention without Trial
• Infrastructure of Tyranny--Assassination without Trial
• Infrastructure of Tyranny--Total Information Awareness
• Infrastructure of Tyranny--Secret Laws without Public Review
• Infrastructure of Tyranny--Political Correctness
• Infrastructure of Tyranny--A Citizenry That Excuses or Ignores These Things

The list is subject to change.   And, in order to not merely be a nattering nabob of negativism, one more entry:

• Infrastructure of Tyranny--Solutions

President Obama Signed the Indefinite Detention Bill

Well, fun.  Excerpts:

President Barack Obama on Saturday reluctantly signed a defense authorization bill, saying he was concerned about some in Congress who want to restrict options used by counterterrorism officials.

"I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists," he said of the $662 billion legislation.

The White House had lifted a veto threat against the bill after legislators made changes in language involving detainees.

In particular, the legislators added language to make clear that nothing in the bill requiring military custody of al Qaeda suspects would interfere with the ability of civilian law enforcement to carry out terrorism investigations and interrogations in the United States...

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the legislation includes a "national security waiver" that allows the president to transfer a suspect from military to civilian custody if he chooses.

"I want to clarify that my administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens," Obama said in a statement Saturday. "Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation."

Obama said a section of the bill provides the "executive branch" with broad authority on military custody for non-citizen detainees...

Hm. He said "my administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens." He did not say his administration could not do this--merely that they would not.

Hm.

41 Senators Need to Lose the Next Election

Let Jon Stewart introduce the issue:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

And then, of course, there's wonderful moments like this from C-SPAN and the Senate floor:

At which point, I think there might be some valid concerns.  Because the administration asked that the language excluding US citizens from the bill be removed.  Also, they expressed concern that the bill unduly restricts Executive power.

And the bill, apparently (according to Senator Lindsey Graham), declares the whole world, "including the homeland," part of the battlefield.

The above refers to the portions of the bill which were passed.  When it comes to what might have been...well, the Senate has officially lost it.  Evidence:

"Offered to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal 2012 (S.1867), amendment No. 1274 would have allowed the U.S. government to detain an American citizen indefinitely, even after they had been tried and found not guilty, until Congress declares an end to the war on terror."

Sponsored by Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. Voted for by 41 members of the US Senate, including two Democrats, one Independent, and the rest Republicans.

Let us review the Constitution...I was sure...ah, yes. Here it is.

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Methinks the constituents of 41 US Senators need to make known, loudly and clearly, exactly what will happen next election.  They all need to lose reelection--every one of the 41 Senators who voted for this amendment.  If some evidence comes forward to show that Sen. Paul grossly mischaracterized the nature of the amendment, I'll take a different position.

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal makes that really unlikely:

...the fight was closer over an amendment proposed by Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee. The amendment focused on a scenario where an al Qaeda suspect is acquitted in a court—whether military or civil—but is still judged a terrorist threat...

"Like any other captured combatant, he can be held as long as hostilities continue...."

Mr. Paul didn’t think so, and he focused particularly on the case where the accused terrorist was an American citizen. “If the evidence does not support conviction, it would be against everything we believe in and fight for in America to still allow the government to imprison you at their whim,” he said last night in a statement.

Earlier in the week, he told the Senate, “There is one thing and one thing only protecting innocent Americans from being detained at will at the hands of a too-powerful state – our Constitution, and the checks we put on government power"...

The Sessions amendment failed on a 41-59 vote. Even so, under some interpretations of current law, the president could order the kind of preventive detention Mr. Sessions advocated.

But otherwise, this is gross misconduct.  These people are unfit for the office they hold.

Now, some claim there's nothing to be concerned about with Senate Bill 1867, otherwise known as the National Defense Authorization Act:

...Section 1031, which relates to the use of the armed forces to detain covered people “pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force,” has a very narrow purpose of describing detention “under the law of war” of people who either participated in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, or is a member or “substantial supporter” of al-Qaida, the Taliban, or “associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.”

This DOES apply to U.S. citizens, but it has already been established in plentiful detail that traitors who join forces with the enemy are subject to military law, including detention and worse.

This concern about protecting Americans who might be judged by the government to be at war with the United States seems to be misplaced, at best, and mischievous at worst. There is a virtually nil chance that you or your neighbors will be swept up off the street and locked up in “indefinite detention” unless you are indeed engaged in war against the United States.

At that point, sorry, you lose most of your civil liberties...

Hang on. Wait a minute. Isn't there some crucial middle step in this process between "war with the United States" and "indefinite detention?" Something...oh, what's the phrase...due to people? Some sort of process? Involving law?

Article 3, Section. 3.

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

So the people who argue there's nothing to be afraid of end up giving me cause to be, frankly, rather afraid.

More Information:

Bill Number S.1867 for the 112th Congress 

Authorization for Use of Military Force
Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget on the bill.
The Washington Post
Mark Shea
The Anchoress

Senators Voting Yea on Sen. Sessions' Amendment

1. Alexander (R-TN)
2. Ayotte (R-NH)
3. Barrasso (R-WY)
4. Blunt (R-MO)
5. Boozman (R-AR)
6. Burr (R-NC)
7. Chambliss (R-GA)
8. Coats (R-IN)
9. Coburn (R-OK)
10. Cochran (R-MS)
11. Cornyn (R-TX)
12. Crapo (R-ID)
13. DeMint (R-SC)
14. Enzi (R-WY)
15. Graham (R-SC)
16. Grassley (R-IA)
17. Hatch (R-UT)
18. Hoeven (R-ND)
19. Hutchison (R-TX)
20. Inhofe (R-OK)
21. Isakson (R-GA)
22. Johanns (R-NE)
23. Johnson (R-WI)
24. Kyl (R-AZ)
25. Lieberman (ID-CT)
26. Lugar (R-IN)
27. Manchin (D-WV)
28. McConnell (R-KY)
29. Moran (R-KS)
30. Murkowski (R-AK)
31. Portman (R-OH)
32. Pryor (D-AR)
33. Risch (R-ID)
34. Roberts (R-KS)
35. Rubio (R-FL)
36. Sessions (R-AL)
37. Shelby (R-AL)
38. Thune (R-SD)
39. Toomey (R-PA)
40. Vitter (R-LA)
41. Wicker (R-MS)

Here's the OMB's commentary on the bill.  Egregious excerpts:

“The Administration supports Senate passage of S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year (FY) 2012. The Administration appreciates the Senate Armed Services Committee’s continued support of our national defense…

While there are many areas of agreement with the Committee, the Administration would have serious concerns with provisions that would: (1) constrain the ability of the Armed Forces to carry out their missions;…

Detainee Matters: The Administration objects to and has serious legal and policy concerns about many of the detainee provisions in the bill. In their current form, some of these provisions disrupt the Executive branch’s ability to enforce the law and impose unwise and unwarranted restrictions on the U.S. Government’s ability to aggressively combat international terrorism; other provisions inject legal uncertainty and ambiguity that may only complicate the military’s operations and detention practices.

Section 1031 attempts to expressly codify the detention authority that exists under the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) (the “AUMF”). The authorities granted by the AUMF, including the detention authority, are essential to our ability to protect the American people from the threat posed by al-Qa’ida and its associated forces, and have enabled us to confront the full range of threats this country faces from those organizations and individuals. Because the authorities codified in this section already exist, the Administration does not believe codification is necessary and poses some risk. After a decade of settled jurisprudence on detention authority, Congress must be careful not to open a whole new series of legal questions that will distract from our efforts to protect the country. While the current language minimizes many of those risks, future legislative action must ensure that the codification in statute of express military detention authority does not carry unintended consequences that could compromise our ability to protect the American people.

The Administration strongly objects to the military custody provision of section 1032, which would appear to mandate military custody for a certain class of terrorism suspects. This unnecessary, untested, and legally controversial restriction of the President’s authority to defend the Nation from terrorist threats would tie the hands of our intelligence and law enforcement professionals. Moreover, applying this military custody requirement to individuals inside the United States, as some Members of Congress have suggested is their intention, would raise serious and unsettled legal questions and would be inconsistent with the fundamental American principle that our military does not patrol our streets. We have spent ten years since September 11, 2001, breaking down the walls between intelligence, military, and law enforcement professionals; Congress should not now rebuild those walls and unnecessarily make the job of preventing terrorist attacks more difficult. Specifically, the provision would limit the flexibility of our national security professionals to choose, based on the evidence and the facts and circumstances of each case, which tool for incapacitating dangerous terrorists best serves our national security interests...

Section 1034′s ban on the use of funds to construct or modify a detention facility in the United States is an unwise intrusion on the military’s ability to transfer its detainees as operational needs dictate...In short, the matters addressed in these provisions are already well regulated by existing procedures and have traditionally been left to the discretion of the Executive branch...

Broadly speaking, the detention provisions in this bill micromanage the work of our experienced counterterrorism professionals, including our military commanders, intelligence professionals, seasoned counterterrorism prosecutors, or other operatives in the field. These professionals have successfully led a Government-wide effort to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qa’ida and its affiliates and adherents over two consecutive Administrations. The Administration believes strongly that it would be a mistake for Congress to overrule or limit the tactical flexibility of our Nation’s counterterrorism professionals.

Any bill that challenges or constrains the President’s critical authorities to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, and protect the Nation would prompt the President’s senior advisers to recommend a veto…

Constitutional concerns: A number of the bill’s provisions raise additional constitutional concerns, such as sections 233 and 1241, which could intrude on the President’s constitutional authority to maintain the confidentiality of sensitive diplomatic communications. The Administration looks forward to working with the Congress to address these and other concerns.”