Opinion ID: 185451
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Statutory Authority for the Alias Device

Text: 21 The Council's second argument is that the Secretary has made no statutory finding that the NCRI meets the three elements for designation as a foreign terrorist organization: That is, that the Council is (1) a foreign terrorist organization, (2) engaging in terrorist activities that (3) threatens the national security of the United States. People's Mojahedin, 182 F.3d at 19 (construing 8 U.S.C. 1189). Only in one sense is this true. That is, the Secretary did not expressly find that the NCRI is that sort of organization doing those sorts of things under its own name. The Secretary did, however, find that the PMOI is a foreign organization engaging in terrorist activities to threaten the national security of the United States, and that the NCRI and the PMOI are one and the same. This is tantamount to finding that the NCRI itself meets those criteria. Logically, indeed mathematically, if A equals B and B equals C, it follows that A equals C. If the NCRI is the PMOI, and if the PMOI is a foreign terrorist organization, then the NCRI is a foreign terrorist organization also. 22 The Council argues, without citation of authority, that because the statute does not expressly allow for an alias designation, the rationale followed by the Secretary in the present case is beyond her statutory power. Again, this argument fails. It is true that the Secretary, like any federal agency, has no power, no capacity to act except by delegation of authority ... from the legislature. Railway Labor Executives' Ass'n v. Nat'l Mediation Bd., 29 F.3d 665, 670 (D.C. Cir. 1994) (en banc). It is also true that Congress did not expressly empower the Secretary to use the alias rationale. It is further true, however, that the delegation from Congress may be either expressed or implied. Id. Here, the power to designate an organization as a foreign terrorist organization if it commits the necessary sort of terrorist acts under its own name implies the authority to so designate an entity that commits the necessary terrorist acts under some other name. 23 It would simply make no sense for us to hold that Congress empowered the Secretary to designate a terrorist organization--so as to block any funds which such organization has on deposit with any financial institution in the United States, to bar its representatives and many or most of its members from entry into the United States, and to prevent anyone in the United States from providing material resources or support the organization--only for such periods of time as it took such organization to give itself a new name, and then let it happily resume the same status it would have enjoyed had it never been designated. If the Secretary has the power to work those dire consequences on an entity calling itself Organization A, the Secretary must be able to work the same consequences on the same entity while it calls itself Organization B. We cannot presume that Congress intended so vain an act as the Council's argument would have us conclude. Cf. First National City Bank v. Banco Para el Comercio Exterior de Cuba, 462 U.S. 611 (1983) (Cuban bank established by Cuban government as separate judicial entity would not be so treated due to the relationship between the bank and the Cuban government). 24 As this is the last of the statutory arguments advanced by either petitioner, the designations before us must stand, unless they fail on constitutional grounds.