I hope that you'll use your position on the Judiciary Committee to ensure
speedy report and passage of S. 1739, a bill to amend the material witness
statute so as to prevent the Bush government's habit of using it to evade the
Fifth Amendment's guarantee of due process.  S. 1739 would restrict application
of the material witness statute to its declared purpose, that of short-term
detention of persons who have information relevant to a possible crime and
whose cooperation with a grand jury investigation or trial cannot otherwise
be secured.  S. 1739 would place strict limits on detention without charge,
ten days for grand jury investigations and thirty days for trials, with
judicial review every five days.

It's appropriate that the material witness statute was passed by Congress in
the year 1984, because its provisions are indeed Orwellian.  Congress ought
to have foreseen that it would be only a matter of time before the White
House was occupied by an executive willing to abuse the material witness
statute as written.  The United States now has such an abusive executive,
in the form of the Bush government.  Today's New York Times reports on the
case of Abdullah al Kidd, whose life was destroyed by his arrest under the
material witness statute in 2003.  Mr al Kidd is only one of a large number
of persons detained ostensibly as material witnesses who were never actually
called to provide evidence in any grand jury investigation or trial.

A similar debate on indefinite detention has played out recently in the
United Kingdom, a staunch ally of the United States in matters connected
to terrorism.  The Blair government's effort for huge extensions on the
time limits on detention without charge met with stiff opposition in the
House of Commons, and was eventually scuppered by the House of Lords.
The British people, through their legislative representatives, declared
that the right to due process cannot be traded for a bit of expediency in
combating possible terrorism.  Will the United States have the courage to
make the same stand for individual freedoms?