Indefensible ………… Subversion or Treason?

Further advancing Andrew McCarthy's argument against the limp-wristed and rather hollow arguments of the wrong on the right comes today's editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

The article today details the shocking extent to which white-shoe law firms have aided and abetted terrorists detained at Guantanamo. Some of these shysters have, of course, been hired by Eric Holder to
staff the Department of Justice. One of the authors of the piece is
Debra Burlingame, whose brother (a pilot) was murdered on 9/11. (hat tip Paul)

Gitmo's Indefensible Lawyers

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On the evening of Jan. 26, 2006, military guards at Guantanamo Bay
made an alarming discovery during a routine cell check. Lying on the bed
of a Saudi detainee was an 18-page color brochure. The cover consisted
of the now famous photograph of newly-arrived detainees dressed in
orange jumpsuits—masked, bound and kneeling on the ground at Camp
X-Ray—just four months after 9/11. Written entirely in Arabic, it also
included pictures of what appeared to be detainee operations in Iraq.
Major General Jay W. Hood, then the commander of Joint Task
Force-Guantanamo, concurred with the guards that this represented a
serious breach of security.

Maj. Gen. Hood asked his Islamic cultural adviser to translate. The
cover read: "Cruel. Inhuman. Degrades Us All: Stop Torture and
Ill-Treatment in the 'War on Terror.'" It was published by Amnesty
International in the United Kingdom and portrayed America and its allies
as waging a campaign of torture against Muslims around the globe.

"One thread that runs through many of the testimonies from prisons in
Afghanistan and Iraq, and from Guantanamo," the brochure read, "is that
of anti-Arab, anti-Islamic, and other racist abuse."

How did the detainee get it? More importantly, who gave it to him?

Legal counsel to some of the detainees went far beyond vigorous representation of their clients. Doesn't the public have a right to know?

Majeed Abdullah Al Joudi, the detainee in whose cell the brochure was
first found, told guards he received the brochure from his lawyer. An
investigation by JTF-GTMO personnel revealed that Julia Tarver Mason, a
partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, had sent it to
Al Joudi and eight of the firm's other detainee clients through "legal
mail"—a designation for privileged lawyer-client communications that are
exempt from screening by security personnel. Worse, the investigation
showed that Ms. Mason's clients passed it to other detainees not
represented by Paul, Weiss lawyers. In all, more than a dozen detainees
received a copy.

At Guantanamo, "legal mail" is strictly limited to correspondence
between counsel and a detainee that is related to representation of the
detainee, privileged documents and publicly filed legal documents. But
even "legal mail," according to the rules mandated by Judge Joyce Hens
Green in a 2004 protective order, prohibits lawyers from giving
detainees information relating to military operations, intelligence,
arrests, political news and current events, and the names of U.S.
government personnel. Lawyers are forbidden from discussing other
detainee cases not directly related to the representation of their own
client.

The Amnesty International brochure, handed out at a human rights
conference in London, was a political advocacy screed in clear violation
of that order, which was formulated to protect force security. Maj.
Gen. Hood made a command decision. He banned the Paul, Weiss lawyers
from access to Guantanamo. The DOJ notified the firm.

Paul, Weiss immediately went on the
offensive, backed by what one former Defense Department official, who
requested anonymity, called "an armada of habeas attorneys." They sued
the government, demanding that it defend the decision to eject lawyers
from Gitmo, making the straight-faced claim that the Amnesty
International brochure was a legitimate "report" that was "directly
related" to their clients' defense. But their bottom line argument
amounted to this: A military commander at a secure overseas military
facility in a time of war couldn't remove disruptive lawyers who were
inciting captured enemy detainees and endangering the safety and
security of military personnel unless he first got permission from a
federal judge.

In a sworn affidavit submitted to the D.C. District Court and
obtained by the writers of this article in a Freedom of Information Act
request, Maj. Gen. Hood did not equivocate when it came to the Amnesty
International pamphlet. "The very nature of this document gives
tremendous moral support to those who would strike out against our
country," he stated. "It is not a factual report. Instead it is filled
with second and third hand accounts, photos of protests that were
staged, inflammatory photos from Iraq and provocative story captions."

Read it all.

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