This article’s pretty freaky. More on this as it develops.
If you’ve been following this story on my blog the last few months, you might want to start here.

Portland Man Strikes Plea Deal on Terror Charges
By the Associated Press.

Hawash pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide services to the Taliban. Prosecutors agreed to drop charges of conspiring to levy war against the United States and conspiring to provide material support for terrorism.
“You and the others in the group were prepared to take up arms, and die as martyrs if necessary, to defend the Taliban. Is this true?” U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones asked Hawash during the hearing.
“Yes, your honor,” Hawash replied.
Hawash’s attorney Steven Houze said his client had decided to cooperate fully with the government, but declined to comment on details of the plea negotiations. Houze said Hawash had faced more than 20 years in prison if convicted on all three counts.

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Hawash agrees to plea bargain
By the Associated Press.
Here’s another article with more details.
Wow. I am quite shocked, I must say. But I would like to reiterate that the point of this protest has always been the unfairness of holding Mike for five weeks without charging him — not whether or not he had knowingly or unknowingly taken place in whatever kind of activity he was being charged with, once he was charged.
The point is that holding people for months without charging them isn’t cool, and theoretically we don’t do that in this country, except that it turns out under a certain material witness statute, we do do that in this country — and that’s kinda scary. That’s the point. Just to clarify…
I still get the feeling that he may have taken the deal because he felt it would be the best deal he would get at a jury trial (when it is the best idea to take a plea bargain, because things could also end up even worse at trial). But Steven McGaedy (the “FreeMikeHawash.org” guy), stopped returning my phone calls some time ago (Presumably because things got to heavy with the case.) — so I took the hint and moved on, and don’t really have any kind of inside scoop on this anymore…
Anyway there’s an update on that. Okay gotta go. Lots to do today!

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Free Mike Hawash

His detention, like so many others, appears to be an abuse of a 1984 law that the Bush administration has used with a vengeance to hold people it may (or may not) suspect of being in league with bad folks. Unlike many other such jailings, all shrouded in the kind of secrecy the Bush people love so much, this one has attracted some powerful attention…
On Monday, a federal judge did what the government wouldn’t do: acknowledge that Hawash was being held. But he let the government keep holding its prisoner for at least the next three weeks.
If Intel, the company, is doing anything to help Hawash, the assistance isn’t apparent. But as I said last week, I hope a prominent immigrant, whose name is almost synonymous with the company, will take note of this situation. His name is Andy Grove.

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Pictures of April 7, 2003 gathering outside the Federal Courthouse.

Intel Coder Not Going Anywhere
By Leander Kahney for Wired News.

About 100 supporters gathered outside Portland’s Federal Courthouse to protest Monday’s secret hearing for Mike Hawash. The 38-year-old American citizen of Arab descent, was arrested by the FBI’s Terrorist Task Force on the morning of March 20 as he appeared for work at Intel.Hawash will be held until at least the end of April, according to a court order released on Monday afternoon. The Oregon branch of the American Civil Liberties Union condemned Hawash’s arrest, which it characterized as an abuse of the material witness statute. The 1984 statute was designed to prevent nervous or hostile witnesses from fleeing before a trial.

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I’ll be finding out more details about this later today.
For now, here are the docs on what happened yesterday.
I have to update my mirror of this site…

At about 4pm on Monday April 7, Federal Judge George Jones released the following document, ordering Mike Hawash’s detention for a further 3 weeks. Needless to say, we are very disappointed, confused, and angry. We hope to post an analysis and explanation of the order soon, for those of you who find the legal language too arcane. For now we post simply the document.

I think the Freemikehawash.org web site is having technical difficulties for some reason, because many of you have not been able to access it. (Although I am still able to access it without any problems.)
I’ve set up a
mirror of it here, so as not to hold up distribution of the information.

For journalists and researchers trying to read everything you can on this case in a hurry, here is a quick list of links to every article available so far — that I know of, at the time of this writing, of course.
Free Mike Hawash Website
http://www.freemikehawash.org
FAQ On Free Mike Hawash Website
http://www.freemikehawash.org/press/genfaq.html
Mike Hawash’s Bio
http://www.freemikehawash.org/press/fullbio.htm
Steven McGaedy’s Bio
http://www.mcgeady.com/mcg/prof/mcgbio.htm
Free Mike Hawash Mailing List Info
http://www.freemikehawash.org/hostmaster.htm
March 20, 2003 FBI Press Release
http://portland.fbi.gov/pressrel/2003/searches.htm
ACLU CRITICIZES USE OF MATERIAL WITNESS
LAW TO DETAIN HILLSBORO MAN
http://www.aclu-or.org/issues/terrorism/Hawashcase.html
FBI jails ex-Intel worker
By Matthew Yi for the SF Chronicle.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/04/02/BU291043.DTL
Ex-Intel VP Fights for Detainee
By Leander Kahney for Wired News.
http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,58326,00.html

Joint Terrorism agents search home in Hillsboro
By Mark Larabee and Les Zaitz for the Oregonian
http://www.oregonlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news/104825159914540.xml?oregonian?lcps
Terrorism Task Force
Detains an American Without Charges
By Timothy Egan for the NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/04/international/worldspecial/04DETA.html
Senator Ron Wyden
(Said he’d bring up Mike’s case with the FBI)
http://wyden.senate.gov/contact.html
Background on the Material Witness Law (November 2002 – Not specifically abot Hawash’s case)
Material Witness Law Has Many In Limbo
Nearly Half Held in War On Terror Haven’t Testified
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31438-2002Nov23

Terrorism Task Force Detains an American Without Charges
By Timothy Egan for the NY Times.

The case has drawn the attention of civil liberties groups nationwide, who say Mr. Hawash’s case is an example of how the Bush administration is holding a handful of American citizens without offering them normal legal protection.
Although at least two American citizens are being held without normal legal rights as “enemy combatants,” Mr. Hawash has not been categorized as such. As a material witness, he is being held to compel testimony. But supporters say he has not been told anything about what the government may want from him…
Civil liberties groups say material witness statutes are being abused by the Bush administration to hold people like Mr. Hawash indefinitely. “The government doesn’t have and should not have the power to arrest and detain someone without charging them,” said Lucas Guttentag, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants Rights Project. “If this kind of thing is permitted, then any United States citizen can be swept off the street and locked up without being charged.”
Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the courts have made conflicting rulings on the legality of holding material witnesses without charging them. A federal judge in Manhattan, Shira A. Scheindlin, said such detentions were “an illegitimate use of the statute,” but another ruling in the same court, by Chief Judge Michael B. Mukasey, said detaining witnesses to compel testimony was a legitimate investigative tool.

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Ex-Intel VP Fights for Detainee
By Leander Kahney for Wired News.

Hawash, a U.S. citizen, was arrested last month by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. For nearly two weeks, he has been held as a so-called “material witness” in solitary confinement in a federal lockup in Sheridan, Oregon. The designation allows authorities to hold him indefinitely without charging him with a crime.
The Department of Justice has required a federal court to seal Hawash’s case. He has only limited access to his family and lawyer.
A friend and former colleague at Intel, Steven McGeady, is championing Hawash’s case. McGeady, a former vice president at the chipmaker who hired Hawash as a programmer in 1992, was a high-profile witness in the Microsoft antitrust trial.
“People say this doesn’t happen in this country,” McGeady said, “but one of my neighbors has been disappeared. It’s not what he might have done that matters to me — they disappeared him. They need to question him and let him go, or charge him. It’s like Alice in Wonderland meets Franz Kafka.”
…”I’m completely puzzled,” he said. “He has family in the West Bank, but he’s not political. He worked at Intel Israel for two years, for heck’s sake. His most political act was setting up an ISP on the West Bank, and in my opinion that’s not political. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a case of mistaken identity. Maybe it’s something beyond my comprehension.”
Hawash, 38, was born in the West Bank but became a U.S. citizen in 1988. His wife, two of his children and his stepchild are all American-born.
Hawash co-authored a book on multimedia programming. He was laid off from Intel in 2001, but was later rehired as a contract programmer.

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