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January 12, 2007

White House tries to strong-arm firms that defend Gitmo detainees

Fearing a loss in court, the White House is using financial pressure against lawyers who defend Gitmo detainees.

In an interview on Federal News Radio, Assistant Secretary of Defense Cully Stimson announced an official program to pressure the clients of major law firms to urge the firms to drop pro bono Gitmo work. Through a FOIA request, the DOD found out which firms were doing pro bono work for Gitmo detainees. The Assistant Secretary gleefully reeled off the names of the big name law firms who have lawyers representing Gitmo prisoners:

"Actually you know I think the news story that you're really going to start seeing in the next couple of weeks is this: As a result of a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request through a major news organization, somebody asked, 'Who are the lawyers around this country representing detainees down there,' and you know what, it's shocking," he said.

Mr. Stimson proceeded to reel off the names of these firms, adding, "I think, quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out." [WaPo]

The Washington Post's editorial called the interview repellant, which is exactly right.

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Comments

That's silly. This makes the law firms look good, not bad. It's complex, difficult litigation in an unclear, developing areas of law. No sane client will make an issue of this, and any client who does has some serious corporate decisionmaking problems.

By the way, a firm that repped the NRCC in 2006 is on that list.

Loyalty!

Hopefully, many Bush administration officials will soon personally need defense attorneys, and their view of the profession will brighten.

If the CEOs are smart, they'll realize that the decline of the rule of law through the violation of Constitutional rights will have a much bigger impact on their bottom line than a few terrorists.

So, as we have long known but seldom hear spoke so blatantly direct, morality and justice are (for this White House) democracy benefits earned in direct proportion to greed and profits.
Presumably, logic dictates, those now engorged with profits ala amoral Halliburton and the Military Industial Complex will embrace these miscreant (snark) law firms.

Posted by: Eric Jaffa:
"Hopefully, many Bush administration officials will soon personally need defense attorneys, and their view of the profession will brighten."

Oh, h*ll yes! Of course, then they'll whine like, well, the whiners that they are about being held accountable, but let them.


Well, I know that the avalanche of tut-tutting about "the law" will now commence, but I personally would never do business directly or indirectly with a law firm that sought to defend the cutthroats down in Club Gitmo.

Am not sure that it is the role of the Executive Branch to be pressuring any slimebag law firm that is trafficking down there, but yes I want to know which firms are part of this slimy enterprise and I want to never do business with them or to do business with companies that do business with them.

Alright, pick up your law tablets, and get up on Mount Olympus, all of yiz. Let the moralizing begin!

This is an unbelievable outrage. I am more sickened by this than I am by Abu Ghraib. Unless I am mistaken, Stimson is an attorney, took oaths to uphold codes of professional conduct including, inter alia, not contacting a represented party regarding legal issues germane to that party's interest and not interfering in the attorney-client relationship. Bill Clinton got suspended for 5 years for false statements under oath but this is far, far more damaging to the efficient administration of justice.

I work in Washington, D.C. as an attorney. The D.C. Bar is very large, very wealthy and under severe pressure to provide pro bono services from the local courts of appeals. If the defense department can do this to 1000-lawyer megafirms, it can tell every client I have - as a modest, part-time solo practitioner, for pay or pro bono - to drop me.

The wildest, seemingly LSD-laden fears of my most radical and paranoid friends are coming to pass.

Decorum and the dignity of my profession restrain me from further candid comment.

Alright, pick up your law tablets, and get up on Mount Olympus, all of yiz. Let the moralizing begin!

So it's moralizing to oppose the idea that it's okay to detain people indefinitely without trial and then institute ad hoc military tribunals that admit evidence extracted under torture and only have one possible verdict, likely all because you lack confidence in your ability to get a conviction otherwise?

I like moralizing.

Tyler

These cutthroats deserve the same treatment that the Nazi and Japanese prisoners received- detention until the war is over. When Al Queda et al wave the white flag, I'll send a $100 contribution for a slow boat to Karachi for these no good sons of bitches.

I personally would never do business directly or indirectly with a law firm that sought to defend the cutthroats down in Club Gitmo.

Since you do not know for a fact that all the people in Gitmo are guilty (and in fact the administration has admitted that some are innocent), this implies that you oppose provision of counsel to accused terrorists, regardless of guilt or innocence. Why limit yourself to terrorists? Why not boycott lawyers who defend other types of accused thugs like rapists? I assume you'll be boycotting the law firms that represented the accused Duke Lacrosse team members, after all, it's the accusation that matters, not the trial or the verdict.

No, togolosh, there was and has been a system for freeing those who were proven innocent. The system worked. Well.

Don't go there about Duke lacrosse. Some of my
friends were wrong from the start on that issue, just as your friendly Phantom was right ( as in correct ) from the start on it. I do so await the next post on the "Duke Rape Case" !!

These cutthroats deserve the same treatment that the Nazi and Japanese prisoners received- detention until the war is over. When Al Queda et al wave the white flag, I'll send a $100 contribution for a slow boat to Karachi for these no good sons of bitches.

I'm presuming you mean the "war on terror". In which case, you're conflating a formally declared war against a sovereign nation state to a war against a nebulous enemy that the current mob in charge says will last at least a generation. So the current detainees are going to have to wait at least a generation to receive a fair hearing? And in any case, not even the current administration is holding to such a beliefs. They want ad hoc tribunals that will allow to escape the typical requirements of transparency and public scrutiny, as well as convict with evidence extracted under torture.

So it's "war on terror". As if it's some exaggerated thing, something the "neocons" made up. I don't see things that way. There is such a thing as terrorism and there is a war against it.

"not even the current administration is holding to such a belief"

Well, I do. If this administration is a little too liberal on that issue for my taste, I guess I will have to support "the current mob in charge"

So it's "war on terror". As if it's some exaggerated thing, something the "neocons" made up. I don't see things that way. There is such a thing as terrorism and there is a war against it.

No, there is no such thing. It's hyperbolic language used as a form of sleek advertising. You can't have a "war on terror", or even "terrorism", anymore than you can have a war on anger. We're certainly not fighting the Army of God, the Jewish Defense League, or the Irish Republican Army. At the very best we have a war against a series of terrorist splinter groups that focus attacks on the United States (this would not include Hezbollah or Hamas, just for perspective). That is something in which a declared surrender is virtually logistically impossible.

It is more than a few splinter groups. The support for these groups is deeper than you think and it does include support from governments.

This is not a conventional war, as all have realized, and stated, but it is war, and if you do not see this it is simply because you choose not to see it, for reasons that are your own.

There is the real possiblity that in the next couple of decades these people will learn how to and will use a nuclear device in New York or London or Tokyo or Tel Aviv. Maybe after we lose a million people or more they'll graduate from being a splinter group? We can call it a war then?

Sorry, as a resident of NYC and as a citizen of the world, I choose to face this reality today. It is war, and has been war, and I hope for all of our sakes that we prevail.

Phantom, "It's war and if you say otherwise you're delusional" isn't a good argument.

Bruce, I don't really see how this is a lapse in legal ethics, so much as just a slimeball thing to do. How did he interfere in the attorney-client relationship? He just stated some publicly available information about what firms were repping people. That's obnoxious and silly, but I don't immediately see how it was impermissible.

Also, Phantom:

Would you use a law firm that had represented a murderer, or a mass murderer, or a child murderer? What about a law firm that represented a company that had negligently caused a hundred or a thousand deaths?

The only thing that those lawyers are doing is trying to make sure that the clients receive whatever legal rights or benefits they're provided under our democratically-enacted laws and constitution. If you have a problem with the outcome, take it up with the political actors who determine the content of those laws, not the lawyers.

"Well, I know that the avalanche of tut-tutting about "the law" will now commence" says Phantom.

My god you are truly a pompous ass.

1) All of these public officials took oaths to "uphold the Constitution".

2) The Constitution provides for the right of counsel for everyone.

3) The same public officials are trying their damndest to make sure people are denied counsel.

These statement together imply the conclusion that these people are, in fact, oathbreakers, not to mention lawbreakers.

Glad to see you're happy having lawbreakers in charge of enforcing the law.

"Tut tut" indeed a$$hole.

Phantom's idea of what constitutes a "war" seems to require less in the way of an actual declaration of war (which would have its own legal implications, and therefore has been purposefully avoided) and to require more in the way of taking a Magic Eye approach to law. Just keep staring at the text until it says what you want it to say.

aeroman-

Would you use a law firm that had represented a murderer, or a mass murderer, or a child murderer?

The answer is an unequivocal NO--unless it was a case where there was legitimate doubt...as defined by me. A lawyer who pretends that a murderer who is innocent because he ate Twinkies that morning, or someone who prosecutes a rape victim on the stand in order to defend a rapist, those people to me are the filth of human society. They may be members in good standing of the Bar Association, but I do not have to respect them as individuals. I don't. I do not have to respect the firms that hire them. I don't.

--The only thing that those lawyers are doing is trying to make sure that the clients receive whatever legal rights or benefits they're provided under our democratically-enacted laws and constitution--
My ass. For every one attorney who has zeal for the Constitution, there are a thousand motivated for personal fame and riches, or in the case of the slip and fall lawyers on the Gitmo Express, they have a wish to tie down the US Goliath in a series of tens of thousands of motions and proceedings without end. They oppose the War on Terror, from a perspective that anyone who fights the US can't be all bad.

RickD

Oh, a little name-caller. Well, maybe you should take a history class someday. Someone of your limited intellect would doubtless regard FDR and Lincoln as, ahem, "lawbreakers" as they did not give the Nazi, Japanese, or Rebel prisoners individual OJ trials of their own, with Johnny Cochrans prancing around spouting doggerel to illiterate juries.

You're smarter than Lincoln or Roosevelt, and more of a humanitarian. Yeah.

War is as war does. The Izlamic Supremicists say very openly that they're at war with YOU. Stop blathering and start reading, and maybe in a few years you'll begin to have an understanding of the situation that the world faces.

The Financial Times reported yesterday that the detainees at Guantanamo have begun to go insane. The toll of the prolonged imprisonment, and the freezing temperatures and noise and other sleep-deprivation techniques, along with the prospect of a never-ending detainment, have begun to drive them insane.

Phantom, let me rephrase that: The only thing those lawyers can do is try to make sure that the clients receive whatever legal rights or benefits they're provided under our democratically-enacted laws and constitution.

I can't read minds, so I can't tell you anyone's individual motivations. My guess is that most of the lawyers are motivated by a mixture of ambition, curiosity, desire for a challenge, desire to be in the middle of an important issue, and some ethical dedication to making sure that all existing rights are vindicated. But regardless of what their motivations are, the only thing they can do is pursue the rights provided by the Constitution and government of the United States. So I don't see why you should have such a problem with the lawyers - they didn't give the detainees those rights. Why not just hate the responsible party - the United States. American bastards, giving rights all willy-nilly to people Phantom wants to imprison in communist Cuba. Boo America!

You didn't answer my question about lawyers who represent companies who negligently kill thousands. Hire or no?

There really is no pit in hell deep enough for these bastards. Nor is there enough schaudenfraude in the world to satsify me after 6 years of these pigs shredding the Constitution and turning what was an already fucked up Democracy into somthing uncomfortably close to monarchy.

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