This year more than ever, it meant remembering that freedom isn’t free and that we owe a great debt to those who fight for it, and who spend their nights sleepless so we can rest peacefully. My friend Tommy Corrigan, a great New York City Police Detective and one of the case agents on the Blind Sheik prosecution, died on the Fourth of July after a terrible — and, typical of Tommy, a gutsy — battle with leukemia.
Tommy was a longtime member of New York’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, and he was everything a good cop ought to be: A guy who knew almost everything but was always mindful that there was so much he wanted to learn; a guy who loved his country and zealously protected her; a guy never without a smile and a wink in his eye, a constant reminder of why we should be proud of our mission; a guy who made witnesses want to help us — at great risk to themselves — because in Tommy they saw the America that put the lie to everything the bad guys were selling.
In our country, we have a strategic counterterrorism dispute over how best to approach and defeat America’s enemies. A lot of it centers on whether they ought to be regarded as military enemies or criminal defendants. In the back-and-forth of our public debate, especially on my side — the side that is pained by the innate limitations of the justice system against foreign national security threats — we sometimes fail to make clear that whether the courts are the best place to confront foreign enemies is a separate matter from the heroism of the law-enforcement agents who labor to save American lives while honoring the restrictions imposed by American principles. I’m especially grieved today because, knowing Tommy, and having been privileged to work with him and many men and women like him, it’s a mistake I should never allow myself to make.
Requiescat in pace.