| FootnoteTV® : 24
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| <-- Season Four -->
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6 am to 7 am: Jack gets Mandy a pardon
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2 am to 3 am: abduction from the Chinese consulate
12 am to 1 am: torture of a US citizen
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- 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. After capturing "Mandy," Jack gets her a presidential pardon and then finds out what Marwan is. Jack fails to capture Marwan alive but a device is found identifying the target city as Los Angeles. Victory is short-lived, as President Logan's chief of security decides to have Jack killed in order to avoid an incident with the Chinese government over Jack's raid on the Chinese consulate. Jack fakes his death and goes on the run. Season finale! New!
- 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. A terrorist attack derails a commuter train (1), allowing a terrorist to take a briefcase. Chloe gets word from a former classmate, Andrew Page, of a possible attack on the Internet, which gets forwarded to the FBI and gets intercepted by the terrorists, who kill Andrew's co-workers. Jack, who has been fired from CTU and is now working for Secretary of Defense James Heller, goes back to CTU for a budget meeting. While there, Jack helps CTU capture a terrorist identified on the FBI watchlist. Jack suspects that another attack is looming and shoots the terrorist in the leg (2). The terrorist then admits that the real attack will be on Secretary Heller; Heller and his daughter, Audrey, who is involved with Jack, are captured.
- 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. Jack gets reinstated with CTU in order to help bring in Andrew, but a terrorist intercepts the call and gets to Andrew at the train station first. Jack and the new CTU chief of field operations disagree on whether Andrew's captor should be allowed to go. Heller and his daughter are brought to a secret facility. Behrooz Araz, the son of two sleeper terrorists, brings the briefcase from the train attack to the facility. The terrorists take to the Internet, planning to try and execute Heller in a way reminiscent of hostage situations in Iraq (1).
- 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. Jack follows Andrew and his captor from the train station. Jack shoots the men torturing Andrew for information, continues to follow Andrew's captor, and decides to rob a gas station in order to keep the captor there long enough for Chloe to set up satellite surveillance. Behrooz's girlfriend, who followed Behrooz to the facility where Heller is being held hostage, is invited to the Araz family home by Behrooz's mother. CTU agents torture Richard Heller (1), suspecting that he is involved in the hostage-taking. CTU recruits another agent, Maryann Taylor.
- 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. Jack continues to pretend robbing a gas station in order to delay the man he has been following, Khalil Asad, while Chloe sets up satellite surveillance. Dina Araz poisons Behrooz's girlfriend after interrogating her. Jack and Chloe get arrested.
- 11 a.m. to Noon Jack continues to trail Khalil Asad, who realizes he is being followed and kills himself. Chloe gets fired. CTU manages to locate where the terrorists are holding Secretary Heller. Secretary Heller and his daughter Audrey unsuccessfully try to kill themselves before the terrorists kill them during their broadcast, and the president authorizes a preemptive strike on the facility. Audrey recognizes someone who is helping the terrorists.
- Noon to 1 p.m. Jack rescues Secretary Heller and his daughter. In the aftermath, CTU learns more about the device that was stolen from the train crash earlier in the day and suspects that the hostage-taking was a ruse designed to allow another plan targeting U.S. nuclear reactors to go into effect. CTU continues to torture Richard Heller with his father's approval. Maryann Taylor appears to be in on the plot.
- 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Jack and Audrey try to identify the man Audrey saw helping her father's kidnappers, but get caught in a firefight. Tony returns to help save them. Edgar manages to regain control of most of the nuclear reactors from the terrorists using their override device, but not all of them.
- 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. Jack and Audrey identify the man who helped the kidnappers, and Jack and Tony catch him only to have a sniper shoot him. Maryann Taylor frames another CTU member as the leak, and CTU tortures yet another person until Edgar gets enough evidence to show Maryann actually is the traitor. Evacuation procedures begin near the still active nuclear reactors.
- Time not yet footnoted
- 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. Jack provides the information he gained from torturing a suspect (1) to plan a raid against Habib Marwan's location, but the raid fails after Secret Service agents arrive to arrest Jack on President Logan's orders. Logan calls in the assistance of former President Palmer.
- 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. Jack raids the Chinese consulate in order to abduct a Chinese citizen (1) who had gone there to seek refuge from U.S. prosecution.
- 3 a.m. to 4 a.m. As CTU's raid on the Chinese consulate threatens to become an international incident, former President Palmer and CTU conspire to blame the incident on the People's Freedom Coalition, a (fictional) anti-China group that has been attributed with other acts in the past.
Presidential Pardons (last updated May 24, 2005) (back to top)
President Logan does have the power under Article 2 of the US Constitution to "grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States," though pardons generally follow a more careful procedure. Pardons are considered an official statement of forgiveness for the commission of a federal crime and restore basic civil rights, and do not officially connote innocence. Commutations of sentence are the reduction of a sentence.
Most Presidents give hundreds of pardons or commutations of sentences while in office. According to Department of Justice statistics (on-line here), study conducted by Professor P.S. Ruckman (available here), Bill Clinton did 459 clemency actions, George H.W. Bush did 77 actions, and Ronald Reagan did 406. According to a study by Professor P.S. Ruckman of the University of Pittsburgh (available here), Franklin D. Roosevelt did the most of any president, with 3,687 clemency actions, and Bush did the least with his 77. The following chart is based on Professor Ruckman's data.
President George W. Bush did not issue any pardons until the end of his second year in office, issuing only seven pardons in December 2002 quietly to people convicted of relatively minor crimes. He has issued some more pardons since then.
Most pardon applications are filed with the Office of the Pardon Attorney in the Department of Justice. The Pardon Attorney begins its review by contacting the United States Probation Office for the petitioner's compliance with court supervision. The FBI provides factual information about the petitioner, and the Pardon Attorney contacts the United States Attorney for the district where the petitioner was convicted or the Department of Justice for more information. The Pardon Attorney's Office makes a report and recommendation, which is then reviewed by the Deputy Attorney General before going to the President for a final decision.
Just before leaving office, Clinton sparked widespread controversy by pardoning two fugitives wanted on charges of insider trading, Marc Rich and Pincus Green. These pardons were sent directly to Clinton and were not reviewed by the Pardon Attorney's Office until Clinton's second-to-last day in office. These pardons only covered federal crimes, and Rich has remained outside the United States apparently due to concern over prosecution for state offenses.
Many grants of pardon have been controversial. On Christmas Eve 1992, just weeks before leaving office, George Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and six other former Reagan administration officials for their involvement with the Iran-contra scandal mere days before Weinberger was to stand trial on perjury charges. In 1974, Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon who had resigned from the Presidency due to the Watergate scandal. In 1977, Jimmy Carter proclaimed amnesty for those who had evaded the draft during the Vietnam War, extending a more limited amnesty offered by Ford. In September 1979, Carter also commuted the sentences of Oscar Collazo, a Puerto Rican nationalist who had tried to kill Truman in 1950, and others who had fired on the House of Representatives in 1954, apparently to get Cuba to release U.S. nationals held prisoner at the time.
Sources: The Pardon Attorney is on-line here.
The Jurist's section on presidential pardons and Professor Ruckman's list, available here.
"People's Freedom Coalition" (last updated May 10, 2005) (back to top)
As CTU's raid on the Chinese consulate threatens to become an international incident, former President Palmer and CTU conspire to blame the incident on the People's Freedom Coalition, an anti-China group that has been attributed with other acts in the past.
In real life, the United States has recognized one terrorist organization that has acted against the Chinese government: the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM. In a 2005 report (on-line as a PDF here), the U.S. State Department described ETIM as the "most militant of the ethnic Uighur separatist groups pursuing an 'Eastern Turkistan'" encompassing an area including Pakistan, Afghanistan, and parts of western China. According to the State Department, ETIM is linked to al-Qaida and members fought with al-Qaida forces in Afghanistan.
The United States has expressed some criticism about China's efforts against the Uighur separatist movement. In a report issued in February 2005 (on-line here), the State Department said that China had "used the international war on terror as a pretext for cracking down harshly on suspected Uighur separatists expressing peaceful political dissent" and that a December 2003 list published by the Chinese government labeled some independence organizations as terrorist groups without any evidence that such groups actually advocated violence.
Abductions (last updated May 3, 2005) (back to top)
Jack raids the Chinese consulate in order to abduct a Chinese citizen who had gone there to seek refuge from U.S. prosecution.
While the situation gets out of hand and results in the death of a high-level Chinese official, it is not without precedent. The United States has at times been involved in controversial actions to get possession of an individual in another country and bring that individual to the United States for possible prosecution.
Perhaps the most similar and well-known example to what happened in this episode occurred in 1990, when a Mexican citizen and doctor, Humberto Alvarez-Machain, who was believed to have participated in the torture and murder of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent by prolonging his life, was reportedly forcibly kidnapped from his office in Mexico, flown by private plane to Texas, and then arrested by officials of the DEA. According to court findings, the DEA had asked the Mexican government for help, but had approved a plan using Mexican nationals to carry it out.
Mexico did protest the abduction through diplomatic means, though the United States did not return Alvarez immediately. The United States Supreme Court did acknowledge in a 1992 opinion (on-line here) that the case may have violated international law principles, but it still concluded that such an abduction did not violate an extradition treaty between the United States and Mexico and that Alvarez could still be tried in the United States.
Alvarez ultimately stood trial in the United States and was acquitted. He then returned to Mexico and began a civil suit against members of the United States government and others.
The episode also evokes to some degree the United States' efforts to seize Panama leader Manuel Antonio Noriega in 1989-90. In December 1989, the United States sent military forces into Panama in part to seize Noriega, who had taken power in a coup in the 1980s and had annulled an unfavorable election earlier that year. Noriega took refuge in the Papal Nunciature in Panama City, apparently hoping to be granted political asylum; U.S. troops then surrounded the building and, among other things, played loud music to drive Noriega into surrendering. Noriega surrendered to U.S. officials on January 3, 1990, and was then brought to the United States to stand trial on drug charges. Noriega challenged his arrest as violating a U.S.-Panama treaty, but this argument was rejected (opinion on-line here); he was ultimately convicted.
Torture within the United States (last updated April 26, 2005) (back to top)
In the course of this day, Jack Bauer has shot a terrorist suspect in the leg to get information about the initial kidnapping plot and, most recently, has tortured a U.S. citizen for information about Habib Marwan's location despite instructions from President Charles Logan specifically not to do so. CTU agents also have tortured at least two U.S. citizens (first Richard Heller, son of the Secretary of Defense, and then a CTU analyst who had been framed by an actual traitor inside CTU) on the suspicion that those two people might have useful information, which they did not.
Torturing a suspect
Perhaps the most surprising thing to realize about what Jack and CTU agents have done is that they might not have violated federal law, though they probably have violated their victims' constitutional rights, whether or not they are U.S. citizens.
Federal law (18 USC 2340A) actually makes torture a criminal offense only if it is committed "outside" the United States (on-line here. Some in Congress have sought to amend this law and make it applicable within the United States, but such legislation has not been enacted as of early 2005.
Still, Jack and CTU agents probably have violated the U.S. Constitution through their actions. While no law specifically bans torture within the United States, prohibitions on torture can be seen as embedded in the Constitution, specifically the Fifth Amendment, which specifically provides that "no person," whether or not he or she is a citizen, shall "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Any government agent or official who violates due process risks civil or criminal liability for such actions, though they could defend themselves by arguing that their actions were justified by necessity or were immunized because of their performance in the course of official duties.
The casual use of such techniques seems particularly striking given the current climate.
In April 2004, details and photographs of the abuses perpetrated by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq first came to light, leading to public scandal and several investigations. President George W. Bush said on April 30, 2004 that "that's not the way we do things in America" (transcript on-line here) and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on May 7, 2004 accepted responsibility for what had happened (on-line here).
More recently, in January 2005, Attorney General nominee Albert Gonzales was grilled in a Senate confirmation hearing about an August 2002 memo he received from a Justice Department lawyer (on-line as a PDF here). This memo defines torture narrowly in order to allow interrogation techniques that might be "cruel" or "inhuman" so long as they did not provide pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." Gonzales renounced the use of torture in this hearing.
Notably, the definition in the memo received by Gonzales arguably is narrower than that used in federal law, which defines torture (on-line here) as an act "specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering … upon another person within his custody or physical control." Federal law would thus encompass a broader range of acts and would encompass the "mental" torture inflicted by CTU agents on Richard Heller. Such torture is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and by death if the victim dies.
Terrorist Threats against Trains (last updated January 9, 2005) (back to top)
While terrorist attacks against railroads and subways have been most successful in other countries, law-enforcement officials have warned of attacks in the U.S. rail system as well.
On Oct. 23, 2002, the FBI issued a warning (on-line here) that al-Qaeda had considered "directly targeting U.S. passenger trains, possibly using operatives who have a Western appearance" and that al-Qaeda might also try "destroying key rail bridges and sections of track to cause derailments or targeting hazardous material containers."
Terrorist threats against public transportation systems such as railroads and subways have become a greater concern in recent years. Most recently, al-Qaeda has been blamed for the March 11, 2004 bombings in Madrid, Spain that resulted in about 200 deaths. Other major attacks include the March 1995 sarin nerve gas attack in Tokyo that resulted in 12 deaths and a February 2004 suicide bombing in Moscow that resulted in at least 39 deaths.
Given such attacks, various aspects of the U.S. government and private sector have been working to improve rail security.
For example, federal agencies have conducted vulnerability assessments of rail and transit networks in high-density urban areas, resulting in new measures to improve security, such as perimeter barriers, intrusion-detection equipment, increased number of undercover patrols, and increased video surveillance. Amtrak, the national commuter railroad, has increased patrolling of facilities and trains, and it has also implemented a ticket verification policy by which about 10 percent of passengers are randomly selected to confirm their identities on board. The Association of American Railroads (on-line here), which represents the freight rail industry, developed a security plan and tightened security after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Still, experts recognize that the rail and transit systems cannot be made safe to the same degree that commercial aviation arguably can be.
"Nearly 60,000 screeners are needed to check the 2 million passengers who fly from U.S. airports daily. An equivalent nationwide screening system for the approximately 26 million passengers traveling on trains, subways, and buses on an average day would require hundreds of thousands of screeners and would cost tens of billions of dollars," National Transportation Security Center director Brian Michael Jenkins testified in April 2004 (on-line here).
"Trains, subways, and buses must remain readily accessible, convenient, and inexpensive. The deployment of metal detectors, X-ray machines, explosive sniffers, and armed guards, which have become features of the landscape at airports, cannot be transferred easily to subway stations or bus stops. The delays would be enormous and the costs prohibitive--public transportation would effectively be shut down."
One potential area of concern remains luggage and carry-on baggage, which currently are not screened, unlike the luggage and carry-on baggage used in air travel.
Some research has been done as to whether passengers and luggage can be screened more effectively. In 2004, the Transportation Security Administration conducted an experimental program in 2004, the Transit and Rail Inspection Pilot program, using train stations in Maryland and Washington D.C. and a moving commuter-rail train in Connecticut. According to the DHS (on-line here), "the lessons learned from the pilot could allow transit operators to deploy targeted screening in high threat areas or in response to specific intelligence."
Hostage Situations (last updated January 9, 2005) (back to top)
The kidnapping of Secretary of Defense James Heller is reminiscent of how insurgents in Iraq have taken several hostages in attempts to pressure coalition forces into withdrawing from Iraq. While some hostages have managed to survive their captivities, others have been killed in sometimes brutal manners, sometimes in manners videotaped and broadcast on the Internet.
As of October 2004, Jama’at al-Tawhid wa’al-Jihad, a group led by Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi, had publicly admitted responsibility for the abductions and videotaped executions of seven civilians - Americans Nicholas Berg, who was beheaded in a video posted on-line on May 11, 2004, Eugene Armstrong, and Jack Hensley; Briton Kenneth Bigley; South Korean Kim Sun-Il; Bulgarian Georgi Lazov; and Turk Murat Yuce. The U.S. State Department designated Jama’at al-Tawhid wa’al-Jihad a foreign terrorist organization on Oct. 15 (statement on-line here). al-Zarqawi and Jama’at al-Tawhid wa’al-Jihad have been linked to al-Qaeda.
President George W. Bush said in response to Berg's murder that "the actions of the terrorists who executed this man remind us of the nature of the few people who want to stop the advance of freedom in Iraq. Their intention is to shake our will. Their intention is to shake our confidence. Yet, by their actions, they remind us of how desperately parts of the world need free societies and peaceful societies" (transcript on-line here).
Such abductions have had some limited success.
In July 2004, Philippines President Gloria Arroyo agreed to recall about 50 troops from Iraq early in order to secure the release of Angelo de la Cruz, a truck driver who was captured and then released. Many criticized Arroyo's decision, including White House spokesman Scott McClellan, who said on July 15 that "it does send the wrong signal to the terrorists. There is no negotiation with terrorists. There is no separate peace with terrorists" (transcript on-line here).
Some hostages have been more fortunate.
Thomas Hamil of Mississippi, a Halliburton employee, was taken hostage during a convoy ambush on April 9, 2004 that resulted in several Halliburton employees' deaths. Hamil then escaped and returned home safely, although two other Halliburton employees (Tim Bell and William Bradley) remained missing at the time. About 40 Halliburton employees had been killed in Iraq as of August 2004, based on Halliburton press releases.
Three Japanese hostages (Nahoko Takato, Soichiro Koriyama, and Noriaki Imai) were abducted on April 7, 2004 and were held hostage for about a week.
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