On the same day the McClatchy papers released the results of a devastating investigation into dozens of terrorism detainees wrongly imprisoned by the United States, Republican water carrier Bill Kristol reported that Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham are planning to double-down on Gitmo. In the wake of Friday's Supreme Court ruling McCain branded "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country," the Republican presidential nominee is planning to introduce legislation creating new "national security courts" designed to undermine the habeas corpus rights the Court just restored.
McCain's gambit may or may not be good politics (more on that below), but its timing couldn't be worse when it comes to the emerging picture of the failed Bush administration detention system at Guantanamo Bay. Far from rounding up the "worst of the worst," the McClatchy study found that the American sweep of terror suspects often netted small fries of no intelligence value, or worse, the innocent:

An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens of men - and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds - whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.
McClatchy interviewed 66 released detainees, more than a dozen local officials - primarily in Afghanistan - and U.S. officials with intimate knowledge of the detention program. The investigation also reviewed thousands of pages of U.S. military tribunal documents and other records.
This unprecedented compilation shows that most of the 66 were low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals. At least seven had been working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants, according to Afghan local officials. In effect, many of the detainees posed no danger to the United States or its allies.

Undeterred, McCain plans to build on his thundering criticism of the decision Friday and make the Court's ruling a centerpiece of his national security campaign. As Kristol announced this morning on Fox News Sunday, McCain and Graham will likely sponsor a bill calling for a new system of national security courts to take over processing detainees:

"And I think you will see Senator Graham, accompanied by Senator McCain, come to the floor of the Senate very soon, like next week, and say, We cannot let chaos obtain here. We can't let 200 different federal district judges on their own whim call this CIA agent here, say, 'I don't believe this soldier here who said this guy was doing this,' you have to release someone, or, 'Let's build up - let's compromise sources and methods with a bunch of trials.' I mean, it's ridiculous."

As the Wall Street Journal described in April, the national security courts would feature "sitting federal judges [who] would preside over proceedings in which prosecutors would make the case that a person should be detained." Under similar proposals:

Detainees would have lawyers, but they would have fewer rights than in a criminal case. Hearsay evidence may be admissible - so government agents could testify about what informants told them - and there would be no requirement for Miranda warnings before interrogations. Some proceedings would be closed to the public.

The political benefits to McCain are two-fold. First, the national security courts concept isn't merely the brainchild of hard right ideologues. Georgetown professor and lawyer Neal Katyal, who successfully argued the 2006 Hamdan case in which the Supreme Court struck down the Bush administration's previous regime of military tribunals, co-authored a July 2007 New York Times op-ed endorsing the idea. No doubt more important to John McCain, leadership on the issue lets the Republican play on Americans' fears of dangerous Al Qaeda operatives being unleashed upon them.
In his remarks on Friday, McCain made that second point in no uncertain terms:

"By the way, 30 of the people who have already been released from Guantanamo Bay have already tried to attack America again, one of them just a couple weeks ago, a suicide bomber in Iraq. Our first obligation is the safety and security of this nation, and the men and women who defend it. This decision will harm our ability to do that."

That figure of 30 recidivist terrorists, promoted so widely by the Pentagon last July, may be wildly off the mark. (That, at least, was the conclusion of Seton Hall law professor and Guantanamo defense lawyer Mark Denbeaux, who testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee in December that the numbers "do not comport with the Department of Defense's own data, neither do its claims that former detainees have 'returned to the fight.'") As the McClatchy findings more broadly suggest, the American detention system may be said to house as many "error detainees" as terror detainees.
But in the days ahead, the facts and figures will be put on the backburner. Instead, John McCain and his allies will no doubt frame the debate over the Court's Boumediene decision by echoing the blood-curdling words of Justice Antonin Scalia: "It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."
UPDATE: On Monday, McClatchy published a follow up story in its series, documenting extensive abuse of detainees by American forces in Afghanistan.