Tom Langston?

That's the name used by the CIA agent who testified in disguise during yesterday's proceedings in Jose Padilla's trial. Jay Weaver reports:

The man who appeared in Miami federal court on Tuesday hid his identity as a CIA officer by using the alias ''Tom Langston'' and wearing a discreet disguise -- black-rimmed glasses along with a closely cropped beard.
Testifying as a witness in Jose Padilla's terror trial, he told jurors that only three months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, an unnamed man in Afghanistan gave him a blue binder with dozens of documents.
Among them: a five-page form written in Arabic that would eventually lead federal investigators to conclude that Padilla had applied to join the al Qaeda terror network.

Here's the AP and the Sun-Sentinel report on the bizarre beginning to the trial.

They let this guy testify in disguise and I can't even bring my phone into the courtroom (it has a camera and is allowed in the building and in every other courtroom) or my briefcase (because it had a newspaper in it). I understand we need security but the lawyers are officers of the court.

My prior coverage of the disguise ruling can be read here. Judge Cooke has had another run-in with a witness wanting to wear an odd item to court. I loved how she handled that one!

The "light disguise" trend

After asking for its witnesses to testify in "light disguise" in the Ze'ev Rosenstein case(coverage here, here and here), the feds are now asking for the same thing in the Jose Padilla case for an instructor for the CIA. (Judge Dimitrouleas had ruled that the Israeli agents could testify in light disguise but required them to use their real names. Rosenstein ended up pleading guilty, so this issue never came to light at trial and appeal).

In the Padilla case, the Government isn't asking for for the disguise because the agent is currently assigned overseas, but instead because he could be assigned overseas, according to a statement filed by Suzanne M. Fleischauer, information review officer for the CIA's clandestine service. "For CIA officers to effectively and clandestinely collect intelligence and conduct operations around the world, they cannot openly admit that they work for the CIA," Fleischauer said. "The safety of this covert CIA officer is of paramount concern because of the high-threat areas of the world in which he has worked."

Here is the AP coverage and the Herald coverage.

Terrorism cases make bad law

In U.S. v. Said, covered by the Herald, the government is again asking to disguise a witness in an upcoming trial:

Prosecutors have taken the rare step of asking a federal judge to shut out the public during the testimony of two FBI undercover employees at an upcoming Miami trial of a Kenyan man accused of funneling money to al-Qaida splinter groups.The public, including the media, would be allowed to watch their testimony on closed circuit TV in a separate room in the downtown courthouse — but their images would be obscured in some manner during the terrorism trial.Prosecutors also want to allow the witnesses to be lightly disguised, such as wearing a closely cropped beard and black-rimmed glasses. One CIA officer did that during the 2007 Miami trial of al-Qaida recruit Jose Padilla. And they want the witnesses to use undercover pseudonyms to protect their true identities.The goal, sought by the FBI, is to safeguard the bureau’s counterterrorism operatives and investigations.“The defense shall be prohibited from asking any questions seeking personal identifying information from or about the [undercover employees],” the U.S. attorney’s office requested in a motion filed in February.The defense attorney for Mohamed Hussein Said, arrested in his native country after being targeted by an Internet sting operation based in Miami, views the government's demands as a violation of her client’s constitutional right to a fair trial — akin to a star chamber.Miami attorney Silvia Piñera-Vazquez countered in a court response that the “government’s actions in this case are eerily similar” to the prosecution described in Franz Kafka’s The Trial.In the classic 1937 novel, the attorney noted last week, “a bank teller was arrested and prosecuted by a remote, unidentified authority, of an unidentified crime, by unidentified witnesses, and eventually executed.”Piñera-Vazquez argues that expelling the public from the courtroom during the testimony of the “secret” witnesses and prohibiting any questions about their true identity “insulates” them from “any meaningful cross-examination, thus creating a unilateral, secret prosecution.”Last year, at a federal terrorism trial in Tampa, a judge fashioned a compromise after the Tampa Tribune objected to the prosecution’s efforts to bar the public during the testimony of an undercover employee. The arrangement allowed for an open courtroom, but with the employee testifying behind a screen so that no one in the gallery could see the witness.