The courier?

Attorney General John Ashcroft on June 10, 2005:

I am pleased to announce today a significant step forward in the war on terrorism. We have captured a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or "dirty bomb," in the United States.

I commend the FBI, the CIA, the Defense Department and other federal agencies whose cooperation made this possible.

[Sunday], after consultation with the acting secretary of defense [Donald Rumsfeld] and other senior officials, both the acting secretary of defense and I recommended that the president of the United States, in his capacity as commander in chief, determined that Abdullah Al Muhajir, born Jose Padilla, determined that Muhajir is an enemy combatant who poses a serious and continuing threat to the American people and our national security.

Um, not so much.

The indictment, announced Tuesday by the Justice Department, portrays Mr. Padilla as a distinctly minor though thoroughly willing player in a scheme run by others to support radical Islamic fighters in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and elsewhere.

The four other defendants charged in the 30-page indictment are pictured as active conspirators setting up bogus charities and businesses to raise money to support those combatants. Mr. Padilla, a 34-year-old former Chicago gang member, is accused of being a kind of courier for the four others, someone eager to play a role somewhere on the battlefront.

Look, if the guy is convicted of conspiracy he should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but this is yet another example of the Cheney administration's outrageous abuse of power which when threatened with exposure to the light of the courts, reacts with vampire-like reticence.

And, more importantly, what if he wasn't in fact a minor figure? What if there was evidence he was an active participant in a larger, more deadly plot, but the government couldn't use that evidence in court because of the illegal way in which suspects in the conspiracy have been detained and interrogated?

The two senior members were the main sources linking Mr. Padilla to a plot to bomb targets in the United States, the officials said.

The Qaeda members were Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, believed to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and Abu Zubaydah, a top recruiter, who gave their accounts to American questioners in 2002 and 2003. The two continue to be held in secret prisons by the Central Intelligence Agency, whose internal reviews have raised questions about their treatment and credibility, the officials said.

One review, completed in spring 2004 by the C.I.A. inspector general, found that Mr. Mohammed had been subjected to excessive use of a technique involving near drowning in the first months after his capture, American intelligence officials said.

Another review, completed in April 2003 by American intelligence agencies shortly after Mr. Mohammed's capture, assessed the quality of his information from initial questioning as "Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies."

Accusations about plots to set off a "dirty bomb" and use natural gas lines to bomb American apartment buildings had featured prominently in past administration statements about Mr. Padilla, an American who had been held in military custody for more than three years after his arrest in May 2002.

But they were not mentioned in his criminal indictment on lesser charges of support to terrorism that were made public on Tuesday. The decision not to charge him criminally in connection with the more far-ranging bomb plots was prompted by the conclusion that Mr. Mohammed and Mr. Zubaydah could almost certainly not be used as witnesses, because that could expose classified information and could open up charges from defense lawyers that their earlier statements were a result of torture, officials said.

Without that testimony, officials said, it would be nearly impossible for the United States to prove the charges. Moreover, part of the bombing accusations hinged on incriminating statements that officials say Mr. Padilla made after he was in military custody - and had been denied access to a lawyer.

"There's no way you could use what he said in military custody against him," a former senior government official said.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!