THE LONG REACH OF UNCLE SAM
By Bob Djurdjevic

If government agents break the law in pursuit of justice, are they committing a crime? Should they be prosecuted?

In theory, yes! In practice, it seems, no... At least not in the Clinton/Reno Justice Department.

Consider the international kidnapping of the suspect in the murder of CIA employees, for example, which the FBI committed in Pakistan.

Just before 4 a.m. on Sunday, June 15, five FBI agents sneaked into a hostel in Afghanistan, where Afghan informants had told them they would find Mir Amal Kansi, the New York Times reported on June 19. Mr. Kansi is the suspect in a deadly 1993 shooting outside CIA headquarters.

Later, after a grueling overland trip through Pakistan to an air base at an undisclosed location, the agents and their captive boarded an American military aircraft, painted in camouflage markings, with an American flag on the tail.

On Wednesday, June 18, the 33-year-old Pakistani with a graduate degree in English was brought before a judge in Fairfax County. He was ordered held without bond by a judge in the shooting deaths of Lansing Bennett, a doctor, and Frank Darling, a communications engineer, both CIA employees, on the morning of Jan. 25, 1993.

That's the story. And now, consider some ramifications.

The "F" in the FBI stands for "Federal," meaning U.S. domestic law enforcement. What were the U.S. Federal agents doing in a foreign country? Did the Pakistani government invite them there? Furthermore, even in the U.S., the law enforcement officers are supposed to have a court order before barging through someone's doors. Did they have it? Did they have a Pakistani court order?

Based on the angry reactions in Pakistan, which New York Times reported, it seems that the answers to all of the above questions is "no."

If so, what distinguishes these Federal agents from the criminals they are pursuing?

Several of Pakistan's leading newspapers picked up on this type of reasoning. Their editorials over the past weekend demanded that the government explain why it waived Pakistani law to allow Kansi to be flown out of the country hurriedly on an American military plane, according to the New York Times.

"Terrorism and those who perpetrate acts of terror are anathema to all countries," The News, an English-language daily published in Lahore, said on June 22. But "any person sought by a foreign power, no matter what his crime, must have the right to expect normal extradition proceedings before being whisked away from his homeland."

In Washington, U.S. officials have refused to give details of the operation that captured Kansi to the media, saying President Clinton had ordered the silence so as not to break faith with the foreign governments that had assisted.

This left unclear where exactly Kansi was captured. But accounts in Pakistan have confirmed that he was picked up at a hotel in Dera Ghazi Khan, a city in the interior of Pakistan. Local residents have said the raiding party arrived aboard Pakistani military helicopters and used four-wheel-drive vehicles belonging to the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, the New York Times reported June 23.

The American military plane that carried Kansi to Washington remained at Islamabad airport for 48 hours longer. But Pakistani officials have acknowledged that no attempt was made to bring Kansi before a court or to give him legal counsel.

The pattern was similar to that followed on several other occasions in recent years. In this case and others involving Pakistanis wanted for drug smuggling and in the case of Ramzi Yousef, who was flown to the United States to face charges of having masterminded the World Trade Center bombing, some Pakistani officials have pointed to ambiguities in the country's extradition laws.

In other words, the U.S. Federal government is setting itself up above the law!

No wonder that one prominent Pakistani, Hamid Gul, a retired army general who is a former director of Pakistan's military intelligence agency, has said he will challenge the government's action in the Supreme Court in Pakistan.

Sometimes, the abuse takes place in reverse from the Pakistani example. Sometimes, the U.S. Federal government uses foreign laws to circumvent restrictions which the U.S. legislation places upon it.

The FBI shares information on the international travels of American citizens with the police in foreign countries, for example. So American citizens who have done nothing illegal under the laws of the United States; who have, in fact, done nothing except exercise their right to free speech in this country, can be arrested in other countries

And then there is Pol Pot in Cambodia. The man responsible for the Khmer Rouge killings in Cambodia certainly deserves to be put on trial - by his own people, the victims of his crimes.

Yet, the United States has asked Canada to be the key partner in an extraordinary effort to take Pol Pot out of Cambodia, the New York Times reported June 23.

Why Canada?

Because only Canada and Denmark have laws that would permit them to request such an extradition, the U.S. officials said. So on Saturday (June 21), Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, asked the Canadian foreign minister, Lloyd Axworthy, to request the extradition of Pol Pot under Canada's law against genocide, according to government officials.

But so what if Canada or Denmark have such laws? What business is it of Canada's or Denmark's to meddle in an internal affair of another country?

More importantly, what business is it of the U.S. government to act as the world's policeman?

Let us give you some clues about that. Pol Pot is "to face an international tribunal for crimes against humanity," the New York Times also reported on June 23. On the ABC News program "This Week," Albright said on Sunday, June 22, that "we will be seeking to make sure that there is international justice carried out against this major war criminal."

In other words, the Clinton administration globalists want to use the Cambodian case as yet another excuse to elevate the U.N.-sponsored Kangaroo courts above the judicial systems of sovereign nations. Their Cambodian fig leaf is a supposed risk of violence if Pol Pot were to be tried in his home country. The first post World War II instance in which the U.N. established a supra-national court was the Hague Tribunal set up to prosecute alleged war crimes in Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

The plan being worked out now for Cambodia would include extraditing Pol Pot to Canada as a temporary measure until an international tribunal is convened that could try him under the international Genocide Convention.

Of chief concern to the U.S. officials is China, however, the primary backer of the Khmer Rouge since the 1960s. Beijing could block any U.N. tribunal against Pol Pot in the U.N. Security Council.

So stand by for more concessions to China, as the Clinton government tries to buy its acquiescence? Just what we needed, right, as Congress gets set to vote on China's MFN status...

Meanwhile, the picture which emerges from the above examples of the long reach of the American "justice" is frightening. The Clinton government is becoming an international judicial pariah; a legal juggernaut on the loose, brazenly usurping the authority of national judicial systems. In the old days, that would be called piracy at high seas. Now, this march toward a One World authoritarian rule is being hailed by the Clinton globalists as "progressive."

It is not. It is George Orwell's Big Brother arriving on the scene a decade or so later than the famous British author had predicted in his book "1984." And that is the reason the American people must stop this juggernaut before it consumes them, too.