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Ex-attorneys general differ on tribunals

(CNN) -- Some critics on the left and right have expressed concern about President Bush's plan to allow secret military tribunals to try suspected terrorists who aren't American citizens. Supporters believe there's precedent for the tribunals, and recent opinion polls suggest popular support for the approach.

CNN's Paula Zahn discussed the tribunals with two former attorneys general: Ramsey Clark, who served in the Johnson administration, and Edwin Meese of the Reagan administration.

ZAHN: Mr. Clark … if you were attorney general, would you back this idea?

CLARK: Absolutely not. I think it's a terrible mistake. You know, we're right at the anniversaries of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and our American Bill of Rights, December 15 and December 10, and this action clearly violates those. We spend a great deal of time -- the United States government -- in condemning other governments for the use of secret and military trials.

The U.N. Human Rights Commission condemns them universally. The Inter-American Human Rights Commission condemns them in the Western Hemisphere. And here the United States, with all its power and all of its commitment to freedom, is saying we don't have confidence in our civilian courts. We don't trust them. We don't think they're capable of doing it.

We've got to go to Guam and take people out there and place them where we'll never know what happened except what we're told. It's just unthinkable that we would do it, and the image around the country and around the world, particularly, would be extremely damaging to the United States.

ZAHN: Mr. Meese, your reaction to what your colleague Mr. Clark just had to say, specifically the issue, perhaps the suggestion that this means that (Attorney General) John Ashcroft has a loss of faith in civilian courts.

MEESE: Mr. Clark is unfortunately totally wrong, both as to the legal aspects and also as to the practical matters. What we're talking about is a very limited use of military tribunals, something that is totally constitutional, something that has been recognized as legitimate by the Congress, and which is going to be used and has been used in the past in wartime situations in extraordinary circumstances.

We have really three types of people that are involved here. We have citizens of the United States who, if they are accused of violations relating to terrorism, will of course be tried in the normal United States courts. We have on the far other side prisoners of war who are merely captured and held without any kind of trial. And then we have others who are classified as illegal combatants or combatants -- those who are not part of military units, but who are waging war against the United States -- and those are the people that would be tried by military tribunals just as Franklin Roosevelt ordered in World War II.

ZAHN: Mr. Clark, what would be a better way to do that?

CLARK: First it is as simple as Mr. Meese says, we don't really need a Constitution or a Universal Declaration of Human Rights or an international covenant on civil and political rights. We can just do what we want to do. What we ought to do is have faith in freedom. To be afraid of freedom is a bad mistake …

Here for no reason whatsoever, with no need and with nobody in custody, we announce that we're going to set up military tribunals out in Guam or Wake … and we don't identify the people. We say each trial is going to be different, which is not equal justice under law to put it mildly, and there is no way the world will know whether we don't have any evidence. …

The civilian courts have been capable of trying these matters. At this time, they are perfectly capable of trying them. If you want the world to believe what we're doing, let's have the civilian courts try them, and if you believe -- American people ought to believe in the civil courts -- let's have the civil courts try. … This is the United States after all.

ZAHN: But Mr. Clark, I hear what you're saying. What does it suggest to you that polls show that Americans by and large -- a majority of them -- support the policies of Mr. Ashcroft right now? What does that mean?

CLARK: It means they've been a little bit emotionalized. They've been told four times since September that there are terrorists about to strike and they've been told that there are -- there may be thousands of letters out there with anthrax in them. They've been terribly emotionalized by the continuance showing of pictures since September the 11th.

But you know we rounded up the Japanese at the beginning of World War II, which everybody concedes was a terrible mistake. … It made no sense. It was a political point, and this is basically a political point, to make it appear we're doing everything, but at high cost to human rights. We're supposed to defend human rights around the world, and here we're engaging in a fundamental violation that Peru and 25 other countries do constantly, and we criticize them constantly. The Congress of the United States in its annual reports criticizes those countries for their use of secret military trials, and now we do it. … Outrageous.

ZAHN: Mr. Meese, do you see any hypocrisy here on the United States' part?

MEESE: No, none whatsoever.

ZAHN: Why not?

MEESE: None whatsoever. Mr. Clark is totally misstating the situation. We're not rounding up thousands of people. We're not taking people out to Guam or Wake. This is simply a process that can be used where people are arrested overseas, for example, where they can be tried in that particular location. It is not any violation of human rights ….

ZAHN: I think maybe Mr. Clark -- I don't want to speak for him, but I think he was referring specifically, perhaps, to the questioning of these 5,000 Arab men in the United States.

CLARK: And to the Japanese ...

MEESE: We're not rounding up those 5,000. People are going out -- officers are going out to find out what kind of information they might have. There's no rounding up. Nobody's being incarcerated and the military tribunals are a standby situation lawfully convened under the Constitution, under the laws of the country, to take care of those situations where we have illegal combatants and belligerence from other countries that are waging war on the United States. There's nothing unusual about this, and it's certainly is not a threat to civil liberties and it is not a threat -- violation -- of any human rights.

ZAHN: Mr. Clark, you get the final word.

CLARK: I just hope the American people will watch what's happening. If they believe in the Constitution of the United States … they don't sacrifice our freedom in war. We are prepared to defend our freedom as well as our security.

MEESE: I would agree with that entirely.

ZAHN: All right. You agreed on something there at the end.