Obama Grants Interpol Immunity
[Guest post by DRJ]
Just before Christmas, President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order that immunizes Interpol’s acts in America:
“Last Thursday, December 17, 2009, The White House released an Executive Order “Amending Executive Order 12425.” It grants INTERPOL (International Criminal Police Organization) a new level of full diplomatic immunity afforded to foreign embassies and select other “International Organizations” as set forth in the United States International Organizations Immunities Act of 1945.
By removing language from President Reagan’s 1983 Executive Order 12425, this international law enforcement body now operates – now operates – on American soil beyond the reach of our own top law enforcement arm, the FBI, and is immune from Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests.”
I haven’t posted on this before because I’m having a difficult time thinking of all the reasons this is a bad thing. Is this about subjecting the United States to international laws? Exposing American leaders and military to international war crime proceedings? Exempting a police organization on American soil from FOIA and other traditional oversight provisions?
Andy McCarthy has a succinct explanation, and Phineas Fahrquar at PubSecrets makes two points that make sense to me. The first is a continuation of Andy McCarthy’s concerns:
“The author, former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy, asks some very good questions, among them why we need to elevate a foreign police service above our own legal protections and why does Interpol need an untouchable repository for documents? Essentially this means that someone arrested under an Interpol warrant in the US can be denied the right to see the evidence used to swear out the warrant against him (presumably at an extradition hearing), a discovery process that’s considered a fundamental protection against tyranny under our Anglo-American system.”
Fahrquar describes the second as a quasi-conspiracy theory, but it’s a reasonable one in my view:
“I do find it more than a bit disturbing that a foreign law-enforcement agency would be allowed to operate on American soil and not be subject to the same constitutional restraints as the FBI or DEA. That’s an unacceptable slight to American sovereignty. And, to give my inner-conspiracy theorist full sway, isn’t it convenient that there’s now an archive within the Justice Department that’s protected by diplomatic immunity, so that no documents in it are available to Congress or a US court? What a perfect place to lose embarrassing documents Obama and Attorney General Holder would rather never see the light of day.”
— DRJ