Starting Points: Justice Department

Sep 20, 2009

Diplomatic Immunity at Issue in Domestic-Worker Abuse Cases - washingtonpost.com

By Sarah Fitzpatrick
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, September 20, 2009

When Lauro L. Baja Jr. returned to his native Philippines in 2007, he had just finished a four-year stint as ambassador to the United Nations that included two terms as president of the Security Council. A storied diplomatic career that began in 1967 culminated with the Philippine president conferring upon him the highest award for foreign service. Then a three-month episode from his U.N. days returned to haunt him.

He was sued by Marichu Suarez Baoanan, who had worked as a maid in New York City for Baja and his wife, Norma Castro Baja.

Baoanan, 40, said the Bajas brought her to the United States in 2006 promising to find her work as a nurse. Instead, Baoanan said, she was forced to endure 126-hour workweeks with no pay, performing household chores and caring for the couple's grandchild. Baja denied the charges, saying Baoanan was compensated. He also invoked diplomatic immunity -- a right that usually halts such cases in their tracks.

But in June, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled that the former U.N. ambassador could not claim immunity because Baoanan's "duties benefited the Baja family's personal household needs, and are unrelated to Baja's diplomatic functions."

Baoanan's attorney, Ivy Suriyopas, called the ruling "an important shift" in cases involving diplomatic immunity.

"Only one other case involving diplomatic immunity and domestic workers was able to progress this far," Suriyopas said. Baja's attorney, Salvador E. Tuy, called the charges "untrue." The trial is ongoing.

The case highlights what advocates call a longtime pattern of trafficking and exploitation of domestic workers by foreign diplomats in the United States.

"Unfortunately, cases involving diplomatic employers represent a disproportionate amount of the domestic-worker abuse cases we see," said Suzanne Tomatore, director of the Immigrant Women and Children Project at the New York City Bar Justice Center.

A July 2008 Government Accountability Office report identified 42 cases of abuse by diplomats over an eight-year period but emphasized that the actual number was probably higher. "Nobody expected a number this big," said Thomas Melito, GAO director of the section on international affairs and trade. Under the Vienna Conventions, diplomatic immunity provides a shield from prosecution that is "almost absolute," said George Washington University law professor Sean Murphy, who spent 11 years in the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser.

Workers have historically had little success with complaints of abuse against diplomats. For example, Mildrate Yancho Nchang said she toiled for three years without pay or a day off and then was hospitalized after being beaten by a Cameroonian diplomat's wife. She sued in federal court in Maryland, but the case was dismissed in 2006 when the diplomat asserted immunity.

Advocates and lawyers say that the U.S. government does little to protect workers or hold foreign diplomats accountable. Local law enforcement is often the first to learn of allegations. However, with a diplomat involved, local authorities must wait for guidance from the Justice Department.

"Federal law enforcement doesn't have the capacity to take on every abuse allegation, and local law enforcement isn't always equipped to do so. Victims of abuse and trafficking find themselves in the gap between," Tomatore said.

Justice Department officials must confer with the State Department, the gatekeeper for all complaints against diplomats. As State Department officials weigh the implications of criminal or civil proceedings, a case can take months to resolve, the GAO said.

Justice Department spokesman Alejandro Miyar said the GAO may have overstated the delays.

Although Justice declined to say how many probes it had undertaken, the GAO report cited 19 trafficking investigations involving foreign diplomats from 2005 to 2008. No case brought an indictment.

State Department officials say they must balance protocol and worker protections.

Recently, a draft copy of State's 2008 report on human trafficking cited high-profile cases involving diplomats from Kuwait and Tanzania. The reference to the two countries was cut from the final report, according to sources with knowledge of the draft report who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

Luis CdeBaca, the ambassador at large on trafficking issues, said that his office takes abuse reports seriously but that the issue presents unique challenges.

"Immunity should not mean impunity to enslave domestic servants on U.S. soil, and we will continue to work to ensure that these domestic workers are accorded full rights and human dignity in our country," CdeBaca said.

But State has yet to deny or revoke a diplomatic visa or implement sanctions as a result of an abuse allegation.

There are signs of progress. In February 2008, State sent pamphlets to all overseas posts to inform incoming A-3/G-5 visa holders of their rights. Consular officials must verify that each applicant has understood the information. The pamphlet is available only in English.

In December, Congress reauthorized the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, with safeguards for visa holders. The law now requires State to assume greater oversight of complaints and cooperate more closely with Justice.

But the State Department has been slow to implement the policy changes required under the law.

Aug 26, 2009

Probe of CIA Imperils Interagency Trust

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By SIOBHAN GORMAN and GARY FIELDS

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department's decision to investigate CIA interrogation practices increased tension between the agencies and prompted a sense of betrayal among some CIA officers, current and former officials said.

Rivalries had raged since the early days of the Central Intelligence Agency's World War II-era forerunner, the Office of Strategic Services, and the trust built in the wake of the 9/11 attacks could be shattered by the investigation, these people said.

Many CIA officers were stunned by Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to launch a probe. Some were deeply angered by what they consider a selective declassification of documents describing the acts at issue, former agency officials said Tuesday.

Of particular concern to some: their agency's decision not to release a rebuttal of a 2004 CIA inspector-general report criticizing the agency's conduct in interrogations along with the report, which was made public Monday in response to a lawsuit.

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"The employees that were involved wrote a joint rebuttal and they believe it was ignored deliberately by [Justice] for political reasons," said one former CIA official.

Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said her department doesn't have the authority to declassify CIA documents, and the CIA didn't identify any rebuttal as being responsive to the lawsuit.

An intelligence official said rebuttals are considered part of the draft rather than final version of an inspector general report, and sometimes affect the final language. Thus, the CIA didn't release the rebuttal "to keep confusion to a minimum." The official added that the "CIA made it clear that there were components of the agency that had serious heartburn with the inspector general report."

The CIA officers who feel slighted believe they handled matters properly by reporting misconduct and allowing the agency to discipline officers for transgressions, a former official said.

This official said all the officers he knows who were involved with the interrogation program have retained lawyers, despite administration assurances that the government would cover legal costs for those who acted within legal guidance they were given.

"Their view is, they policed themselves and they turned themselves in," he said. Now, "they have to fight al Qaeda and the U.S. government at the same time."

Some also worry that administration plans for greater oversight of the CIA renditions program, which transfers some detainees to other countries for interrogation, will make the program unworkable because governments won't cooperate if they feel too many U.S. officials are involved and won't keep activities discreet.

Justice spokesman Dean Boyd said the CIA concurred with recommendations for enhanced oversight. A counterterrorism official added that the goal is to "ensure that rendition, which out of necessity requires confidentiality, remain a tool that can help take terrorists off the street."

Others at the CIA are reserving judgment to see whether the preliminary investigation develops into prosecutions, current and former officials said. CIA Director Leon Panetta has built up goodwill with his troops, who believe he is aggressively protecting their interests, these people said.

They cited a memo Mr. Panetta wrote Monday calling the agency's conduct "an old story" and his statement that his responsibility is "to stand up for those officers who did what their country asked and who followed the legal guidance they were given."

Over at Justice, officials worried they may have picked the wrong fight. One Justice official said it is risky to take on the CIA because it is a powerful agency.

Another federal law-enforcement agent said he and his colleagues also fear the cooperation and information-sharing born of necessity after the 2001 attacks will dry up. The relationship could regress to the point when two of the hijackers were allowed to slip into the U.S. even though the CIA had spotted them at a terror summit in Malaysia in 2000, the agent said.

"We need the information-sharing to be successful to do our jobs," the law-enforcement agent said.

Regarding the potential for frayed relations, Ms. Schmaler said Justice officials "look forward to continuing to work side-by-side with our colleagues in the CIA to keep the American people safe" and that intelligence officers "deserve our respect and gratitude."

She also reiterated that "anyone who acted within the confines of [legal] guidance would not be prosecuted."

CIA spokesman George Little pointed to Mr. Panetta's statement that the issues being investigating have already been examined.

"He is also determined that nothing disrupt the agency's core mission, which is to protect the country today and into the future," he said. "The CIA is working closely with the Department of Justice to try to achieve that."

Write to Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com and Gary Fields at gary.fields@wsj.com