The following article is based on a talk Sam Marcy, chairperson of Workers World Party, gave at a public forum March 6 in New York.
With their public statements on the World Trade Center bombing and the arrest of Mohammed Salameh, the president, the governor of New York, the mayor of New York City, the attorney general, the FBI and local police chief, and the judge have swept aside all protection of civil rights not only of the defendant but of the Muslim and Arab communities in the U.S.
These officials acted as if civil rights don't exist. They pulled out all stops. Had they carried on without alleviation they could have set off a pogrom. They did it with the collusion of the media, which are servants of the right wing and of the repressive forces.
New York's Gov. Mario Cuomo spoke on television for three-quarters of an hour attacking the movement of the Arab people. He accused Salameh of all sorts of crimes. The governor should wait for the authorized agencies to make a report. He should analyze the report. He didn't wait. Instead, he pronounced Salameh guilty.
Half of Cuomo's talk was praise for the repressive forces--not for those who are working in the area of the explosion. Not for the men and women who are endangering their lives. Instead, he praised the police.
New York's Mayor David Dinkins was out of town in Japan getting orders for the capitalist companies and multinational corporations. Dinkins came back, put on a hardhat--like the ones used in construction--and praised the police.
Now the judge at the arraignment of the alleged suspect is supposed to make it clear in the courtroom to whoever gets arrested that they are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The judge learned that in high school. But when the right time came to say it, he didn't.
Instead, the judge read from the indictment, which alleges the defendant Salameh killed five people and that's what he's being arrested for. But the indictment couldn't say he actually killed anybody. The most it could do is connect him with the van found at the site.
Salameh denied opportunity to speak
Nevertheless, Salameh was put away without even an opportunity to talk to the capitalist news media. For the most important 36 hours there's nothing in the capitalist media that quotes Salameh where he says, "I am innocent" or, "I am guilty." They don't quote what he says in court, or if he said anything. What kind of situation is this? Even a Nazi court would permit him to say something. Salameh was held incommunicado without a chance to say anything, even that he is guilty.
The president of the United States was worst of all. He could have stayed aloof and said: "There are police to handle this, there are federal agents to handle this, why should I suddenly get into it? I don't know anything more than they know." Instead, he got on TV and first thing praised the authorities--above all the repressive forces. He hadn't seen a report. He hadn't been down to the World Trade Center.
Clinton's job is supposed to be to guard the rights of the people. Instead he joined the campaign vilifying the Muslim people living in the United States.
Then there is the role of the various police--the repressive forces. FBI Director William Sessions is accused of corruption. Shouldn't he, in decency, not appear at all? Instead he and the local FBI director made their statements taking credit for Salameh's arrest and wiping out his right to a fair trial. Even the acting attorney general joined in this attack, as did the local police.
The authorities say they can reconstruct the entire damaged area of the World Trade Center. Yet with all the hundreds of thousands of scientific personnel they have, they have not been able to analyze the destruction at the World Trade Center scientifically.
Partisan class interests divide them
They're held back because of rivalries between the different repressive agencies. The FBI is battling the local police over who has the right to go where. One gets in the way of the other. One does not tell the other what is happening. They are as secretive with each other as they are with the public as a whole, because partisan class interests divide them.
This crisis reveals how unnerved the ruling class got, and how its own capitalist government got in the way of what they wanted. If you read the capitalist press back again, from day to day, you will see that they fumbled. You will see that they got confused.
But despite all their confusion they went ahead with the witch hunt against the Arab and Muslim community.
By luck they found something in the World Trade Center they say identifies who left the bomb. But whether it has any significance nobody is really saying. Nor is anybody saying that they're going to appoint an independent agency to analyze it scientifically right away.
And they have no real suspect. Salameh would have been foolish to bring the van with his own name and identification on such a mission, and then to go back to where he rented the car and start an argument with them about getting his money back. He says his car was stolen. Maybe that's the whole truth. Maybe someone else took his van and brought it in and did all the destruction, and he is unaware of it.
But the authorities wouldn't say: "Maybe this guy is for real--he wouldn't bring his van in. Maybe it was brought in by somebody else. We have no proof. For proof we only have his rented van over there. That's secondary evidence and that's not good enough to tie him to the disaster."
They could have easily made a case for dismissal. That would have been something for the judge to do. But under the circumstances they found that impossible.
Lesson of history
The lesson of history is that the movement must avoid being late in getting involved in cases where the ruling class uses a frame-up to carry out a general political attack.
The death by electrocution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg was one example of such a case. The Sacco and Vanzetti case was another. Also the Scottsboro defendants, and many others. Early recognition of the political importance of the case would have improved the chance for stopping the frame-up.
We have to be vigilant--indeed, distrustful of the capitalist state apparatus, especially in cases that involve such high stakes as a struggle of U.S. imperialism against a colonial or former colonial country like Iraq or Iran.
For the U.S. ruling class, an effort to frame individuals, groups, or perhaps countries is an everyday phenomenon. This is doubly so for a ruling class deeply concerned with the Third World and especially the billions of oppressed in Asia and the Middle East.