A lawyer, who tells the full story on his blog
was reading a somewhat long, but interesting, case that was posted on the web site of the U.S. courts. He took a break for lunch, and when he came back, the court decision had vanished. As he says:The next day, the Court of Appeals reissued the Higazy opinion. With a redaction. The court simply omitted from the revised decision facts about how the FBI agent extracted the false confession from Higazy. For some reason, this information is classified. Just as the opinion gets interesting, when we are about to learn how an FBI agent named Templeton squeezed the "truth" out of Higazy, the opinion reads at page 7: "This opinion has been redacted because portions of the record are under seal. For the purposes of the summary judgment motion, Templeton did not contest that Higazy's statements were coerced."Another legal blogger (look for 2007 October 19 entry) says:
So what the court did was to omit facts about the coerced confession having to do with how the FBI defendant got the plaintiff to confess to the crime that he didn't commit. I have never seen an explicit redaction in a court decision before. But if, as they say, 9/11 changed everything, then it creates this new procedure of explicitly advising the reader that parts of the decision cannot be read by anyone.A Slashdot reader says:
Well that was fascinating. Extracted the text from both PDFs and ran diff on the resulting text files. The big thing that was removed seemed to be the following passage. Seems pretty unpleasant.Another says:Nevertheless, on December 27, Templeton--who up until this point was not involved in the investigation--conducted a polygraph examination of Higazy. Templeton began the test by asking Higazy background questions on subjects such as Higazy's scholarship, homeland, family in Egypt, brother in upstate New York, and girlfriend. He also asked Higazy whether he had anything to do with the attacks of September 11, 2001. The first round of testing allegedly suggested that Higazy's answers to the questions relating to the September 11 attacks were deceptive. As the second series of questioning was ending, Higazy requested that Templeton stop. He testified that he began "feeling intense pain in my arm. I remember hearing my heartbeat in my head and I just couldn't breathe. I said, 'Sir, sir, please, stop. It hurts. Please stop. Please take it off.'" Templeton unhooked the polygraph, and according to Higazy, called Higazy a baby and told him that a nine-year-old could tolerate this pain. Templeton left the room to get Higazy water, and upon his return, Higazy asked whether anybody else had ever suffered physical pain during the polygraph, to which Templeton replied: "[i]t never happened to anyone who told the truth."There are other changes in there, though much smaller. I haven't gone through it exhaustively. The above seemed to be the big thing. Threats against the suspects family...Higazy alleges that during the polygraph, Templeton told him that he should cooperate, and explained that if Higazy did not cooperate, the FBI would make his brother "live in scrutiny" and would "make sure that Egyptian security gives [his] family hell." Templeton later admitted that he knew how the Egyptian security forces operated: "that they had a security service, that their laws are different than ours, that they are probably allowed to do things in that country where they don't advise people of their rights, they don't - yeah, probably about torture, sure."
Higazy later said, "I knew that I couldn't prove my innocence, and I knew that my family was in danger." He explained that "[t]he only thing that went through my head was oh, my God, I am screwed and my family's in danger. If I say this device is mine, I'm screwed and my family is going to be safe. If I say this device is not mine, I'm screwed and my family's in danger. And Agent Templeton made it quite clear that cooperate had to mean saying something else other than this device is not mine." Higazy explained why he feared for his family:
The Egyptian government has very little tolerance for anybody who is --they're suspicious of being a terrorist. To give you an idea, Saddam's security force--as they later on were called his henchmen--a lot of them learned their methods and techniques in Egypt; torture, rape, some stuff would be even too sick to . . . . My father is 67. My mother is 61. I have a brother who developed arthritis at 19. He still has it today. When the word 'torture' comes at least for my brother, I mean, all they have to do is really just press on one of these knuckles. I couldn't imagine them doing anything to my sister.And Higazy added:[L]et's just say a lot of people in Egypt would stay away from a family that they know or they believe or even rumored to have anything to do with terrorists and by the same token, some people who actually could be --might try to get to them and somebody might actually make a connection. I wasn't going to risk that. I wasn't going to risk that, so I thought to myself what could I say that he would believe. What could I say that's convincing? And I said okay.The only other thing that leapt out at me from a brief skim was the comment that they didn't believe a polygraph would be useful because "if he was a member of Al Quaeda, he could pass it." I find that comment fascinating, too.
Speaking of sitcom writers, this CNN transcript of a news story aired January 12, 2002 is interesting. The transcript begins:"Dude, you can't take something off the Internet.. that's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool." - Joe, NewsRadioThat's right, folks: you're being protected from the terrorists by people whose understanding of the modern world has yet to surpass that of 1990s sitcom writers.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.Bless their hearts, those CNN transcript artists have been rushing aroung like mad for the last five years, all to bring you the very latest provisional news. Here are copies of the full documents:KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: An Egyptian man held as a material witness in the World Trade Center attacks has now been charged. Abdallah Higazy is charged with lying to the FBI about a handheld aviation radio. Investigators say the radio was found in Higazy's room in a hotel across from the Trade Towers after the attacks.