Peter Keisler, Bush Administration Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights:
Just read a post on the National Review website, basically saying, “how do we know if these lawyers haven’t done anything unethical if we don’t know who they are?”
I’m having difficulty bending my mind around this argument. Then again, it seems it’s one their writers have made repeatedly against the past, being in opposition to terrorists being anywhere near a civilian court.
I say that it is unpatriotic for our American Lawyers to do anything of this nature.
It goes against everything the Founding Fathers stood for.
Oh. Wait. No.
Considering that Ted Olson lost his wife on 9/11 when her plane hit the Pentagon, this speaks volumes about how deep the American rule of law runs.
He was also part of the legal team which argued against Prop 8. I disagree with a lot of his politics, but I’m beginning to suspect that he is a principled person.
My understanding is that these lawyers were mostly JAG officers appointed by the military to represent these guys. Hardly anybody likely to be terrorist sympathizers, and if they are, then so is the military, and so are Bush and Cheney for giving them lawyers at all.
This is a kind of McCarthyism. The music for that video is hilariously ominous, and the epithet of “Al Qaeda 7” borders on self-parody.
Kind of appropriate that this comes right on the heels of the RNC PowerPoint presentation talking about how to use “fear” to shake down the “reactionary” marks in their party for campaign donations.
Slate article on this by Dahlia Lithwick:
Liz Cheney says terrorists have no rights. Also, you’re a terrorist.
This same logic is behind all the hate directed at the ACLU. How dare they defend unpopular positions.
Remember GHW Bush smearing Dukakis because he was a card-carrying member of the ACLU?
It’s always the same old same old for Republicans.
No, they are not. The list has now been released. IIRC, all seven are successful graduates of top law schools who went to white shoe law firms and did detainee work pro bono alongside their corporate appellate practices.
I don’t think that changes your underlying point, though.
ETA: here’s the list:
Tony West, assistant attorney general for the department’s civil division, who helped represent John Walker Lindh as an attorney with the firm of Morrison and Foerster.
Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Joseph Guerra, who worked with the firm of Sidney Austin on behalf of the case of Jose Padilla.
Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department’s Civil Division Beth Brinkmann. She previously worked for Morrison & Foerster, a firm that advocated for Gitmo detainee rights.
Office of Legal Counsel attorney Jonathan Cedarbaum, who worked for WimlerHale representing six Bosnian-Algerian detainees that led to the Supreme Court case Boumediene v. Bush.
Eric Columbus, a senior counsel in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, who is also a former WilmerHale attorney who worked on the Boumediene v. Bush case.
Tali Farhadin, who works in the Office of the Attorney General and was an attorney with Debevoise & Plimpton and worked on the case of Ali al-Marri.
Karl Thompson, in the Office of Legal Counsel, was on a team of attorneys that represented Omar Khadr.
The article that Larry Borgia linked to in post #14 gives more detail on this. The person in question was an attorney at a law firm whose assistance was sought by the JAG and DoD lawyers on certain matters they weren’t familiar with.
How many of the 7 actually met with any of the detainees? Or defended them orally in hearings as opposed to doing stuff like research for the case?
Not that it should make a difference, but it’s doubly ridiculous when it’s just someone doing some legal gruntwork on behalf of the main defense attorney.
Still, with all the anti-terrorism laws they’ve been passing, it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s one making it illegal to talk to someone suspected of terrorism, without any exceptions for their lawyer, prison staff, etc.
Maybe someday, somebody will be the Americans, stand up for American values. Doesn’t look like its going to be us, though. Maybe Denmark.
This is absurd. Lawyers are clearly allowed (and required) to vigorously defend their clients no matter what they are accused of.
I do wonder though how this is different from the calls for prosecution of, e.g., Jay Bybee and John Yoo.
Let me explain it. Even if what Jay Bybee and John Yoo did was entirely legal under U.S. law and not controversial, what they did was arguable illegal under international law and treaties to which the U.S. must abide because we are signatory to the treaties. There is ample probable cause for an international inquiry to begin. And I should point out that probable cause is a low threshold. One of the basic principles of the American/European tradition of justice is that the law applies to everyone equally, not just the victors can demand justice. The papering over that this seems to have received in the U.S. under both the Bush and Obama justice departments is never going to satisfy people arguing for the upholding of international treaties prohibiting torture of any human being anywhere in the world by a signatory, and allowing prosecution even against a non-signatory.
Assuming that there was enough evidence for an indictment, violating any given treaty is not a crime in and of itself unless the treaty explicitly stipulates criminal sanctions for its violation. Particularly since most treaties are concerned primarily with states themselves and not individuals within states. Just like Jessica’s Law, the California law that prohibits sex offenders from living within a certain distance from a school or other structure, if there is no punitive sanction for violating a law, then violating the law itself is not a criminal act.
Under your analysis Messers Yoo and Bybee should feel free to take vacations in Spain where they are currently under criminal investigation.
No, John Adams was defending British soldiers who shot and killed patriotic Americans. So he was a British sympathiser, totally unfit to share in American liberties, including the right to run for President (at least by the logic of the Keep America Safe folks). Doubtless that great patriot George Washington would refuse to have anything to do with such an un-American person.
What international law were they in violation of that permits lawyers to be prosecuted for giving legal advice to their clients?
Presumably any prosecutor would have to make the argument that these lawyers were not just giving legal advice, but were part of a conspiracy to commit war crimes. It might be a difficult case to make. In any case, if I were involved in the prosecution, I think I’d be going for the organ-grinder rather than for the monkey: those guys were just doing what they thought their political masters wanted done.