The Al-Qaeda 7
WaveCameCrashin
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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34050.html
A group that includes leading conservative lawyers and policy experts, former Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and several senior officials of the last Bush administration is denouncing as “shameful” Republican attacks on lawyers who came to the Obama Justice Department after representing suspected terrorists.
Senate Republicans have demanded details of the lawyers' past work and Liz Cheney’s group “Keep America Safe” has questioned their “values." A drumbeat of Republican criticism forced the Justice Department reluctantly to identify seven of them last week. But the harshness of the criticism – Keep America Safe labeled a group of them the “Al Qaeda Seven” — has provoked a backlash from across the legal establishment.
“We consider these attacks both unjust to the individuals in question and destructive of any attempt to build lasting mechanisms for counterterrorism adjudications,” wrote the 19 lawyers whose names were attached to the statement as of early Monday.
The statement cited John Adams’s defense of British soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre to argue that “zealous representation of unpopular clients” is an important American tradition.
The attacks on the lawyers “undermine the Justice system more broadly,” they wrote, by “delegitimizing” any system in which accused terrorists have lawyers, whether civilian courts of military tribunals.
The letter’s signers include some of the top officials of a Bush Justice Department that wrestled at length with the legal questions surrounding terrorist detentions.
The Bush officials clashed repeatedly with some of the detainee lawyers, such as the current deputy Solicitor General, Neal Katyal, whom they are now defending. The signers include former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, John Ashcroft’s No. 2, and Peter Keisler, who served as acting attorney general during President Bush’s second term. They also include several lawyers who dealt directly with detainee policy: Matthew Waxman and Charles “Cully” Stimson, who each served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs; Daniel Dell’Orto, who was acting general counsel for the Department of Defense; and Bradford Berenson, a prominent Washington lawyer who worked on the issues as an associate White House counsel during President Bush’s first term.
In 2007, Stimson resigned as the Bush administration’s top detainee affairs official after suggesting on a radio show that companies not hire law firms providing pro bono services to detainees. He later apologized.
The lawyers’ sharp support for the Democratic appointees reflects, in part, a rift that deepened late in President George W. Bush’s term, in which allies of Vice President Dick Cheney fought pitched battles over the treatment of detainees with lawyers throughout the government seeking to bring terror suspects into a more familiar legal framework.
The letter’s other signatories include Philip Zelikow and John Bellinger III, who were top advisers to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, .
Also signing were David Rivkin and Lee Casey, officials in the Justice Department in the first George W. Bush administration. Rivkin and Casey ‘s participation underscores the depth of discomfort with the attacks, as they have been among the most vocal defenders of Bush Administration detainee practices. Last April, for example, they wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the controversial Department of Justice memos widely viewed as justifying harsh treatment in fact “detail the actual techniques used and many measures taken to ensure that interrogations did not cause severe pain or degradation.”
Separately, former Bush administration Solicitor General Ted Olson rose to the defense of lawyers representing detainees. He noted, however, that some of those now defending current Justice Department lawyers were “completely silent” in the face of “vicious attacks” on Bush administration lawyers handling terrorism issues.
Apparently some of these lawyers don't know what happened at the boston massacre. I mean how in the hell do you compare The Boston Massacre to Terrorist that want to kill as many Americans as they can and over throw our soceity ?
I don't understand how we can have people in the highest position defending our country at the highest levels of the justice dept. Would anybody want Hugo Black defending a Black man in a civil rights case ?
Im not saying that these terrorist shouldn't have legal representation,particularly if the court gives them certain rights,but they shouldn't be in the highest levels of government. Not to mention some of these lawers sought out and wen't looking for these cases.
It's also intersting that the law firm that Eric holder used to work for the same law firm that represented some of these terrorist. And now how some of those same lawers work for the justice Dept.
http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdail ... burli.html
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/11/18/cu ... n-burling/
http://brighthall.aol.com/2009/01/26/ob ... ice-dept/2
http://www.bostonmassacre.net/index.html
A group that includes leading conservative lawyers and policy experts, former Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and several senior officials of the last Bush administration is denouncing as “shameful” Republican attacks on lawyers who came to the Obama Justice Department after representing suspected terrorists.
Senate Republicans have demanded details of the lawyers' past work and Liz Cheney’s group “Keep America Safe” has questioned their “values." A drumbeat of Republican criticism forced the Justice Department reluctantly to identify seven of them last week. But the harshness of the criticism – Keep America Safe labeled a group of them the “Al Qaeda Seven” — has provoked a backlash from across the legal establishment.
“We consider these attacks both unjust to the individuals in question and destructive of any attempt to build lasting mechanisms for counterterrorism adjudications,” wrote the 19 lawyers whose names were attached to the statement as of early Monday.
The statement cited John Adams’s defense of British soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre to argue that “zealous representation of unpopular clients” is an important American tradition.
The attacks on the lawyers “undermine the Justice system more broadly,” they wrote, by “delegitimizing” any system in which accused terrorists have lawyers, whether civilian courts of military tribunals.
The letter’s signers include some of the top officials of a Bush Justice Department that wrestled at length with the legal questions surrounding terrorist detentions.
The Bush officials clashed repeatedly with some of the detainee lawyers, such as the current deputy Solicitor General, Neal Katyal, whom they are now defending. The signers include former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, John Ashcroft’s No. 2, and Peter Keisler, who served as acting attorney general during President Bush’s second term. They also include several lawyers who dealt directly with detainee policy: Matthew Waxman and Charles “Cully” Stimson, who each served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs; Daniel Dell’Orto, who was acting general counsel for the Department of Defense; and Bradford Berenson, a prominent Washington lawyer who worked on the issues as an associate White House counsel during President Bush’s first term.
In 2007, Stimson resigned as the Bush administration’s top detainee affairs official after suggesting on a radio show that companies not hire law firms providing pro bono services to detainees. He later apologized.
The lawyers’ sharp support for the Democratic appointees reflects, in part, a rift that deepened late in President George W. Bush’s term, in which allies of Vice President Dick Cheney fought pitched battles over the treatment of detainees with lawyers throughout the government seeking to bring terror suspects into a more familiar legal framework.
The letter’s other signatories include Philip Zelikow and John Bellinger III, who were top advisers to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, .
Also signing were David Rivkin and Lee Casey, officials in the Justice Department in the first George W. Bush administration. Rivkin and Casey ‘s participation underscores the depth of discomfort with the attacks, as they have been among the most vocal defenders of Bush Administration detainee practices. Last April, for example, they wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the controversial Department of Justice memos widely viewed as justifying harsh treatment in fact “detail the actual techniques used and many measures taken to ensure that interrogations did not cause severe pain or degradation.”
Separately, former Bush administration Solicitor General Ted Olson rose to the defense of lawyers representing detainees. He noted, however, that some of those now defending current Justice Department lawyers were “completely silent” in the face of “vicious attacks” on Bush administration lawyers handling terrorism issues.
Apparently some of these lawyers don't know what happened at the boston massacre. I mean how in the hell do you compare The Boston Massacre to Terrorist that want to kill as many Americans as they can and over throw our soceity ?
I don't understand how we can have people in the highest position defending our country at the highest levels of the justice dept. Would anybody want Hugo Black defending a Black man in a civil rights case ?
Im not saying that these terrorist shouldn't have legal representation,particularly if the court gives them certain rights,but they shouldn't be in the highest levels of government. Not to mention some of these lawers sought out and wen't looking for these cases.
It's also intersting that the law firm that Eric holder used to work for the same law firm that represented some of these terrorist. And now how some of those same lawers work for the justice Dept.
http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdail ... burli.html
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/11/18/cu ... n-burling/
http://brighthall.aol.com/2009/01/26/ob ... ice-dept/2
http://www.bostonmassacre.net/index.html
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