Treating the lawyers as terrorists

In what appears to be a planned campaign to prevent prisoners at Guantánamo, held without trial for over five years, from receiving legal counsel, Defense Department official Cully Stimson has called on major corporations to boycott the legal firms that are doing pro bono work for the detainees in order to guarantee them their constitutional right to due process.

Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, rattled off a prepared list of some of the most prestigious law firms in the nation, slandering them by suggesting that some were “receiving monies from who knows where.” Nudge nudge, wink wink.

“I think quite honestly when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists that hit their bottom line in 2001,” he said, “those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms.”

Note the reasoning. Those held at Guantanamo are “the very terrorists” who hit the “bottom line” in 2001. This claim is belied by the fact that only a handful of prisoners at Guantánamo — recently transferred their from secret CIA prisons abroad — have any connection with 9/11. And note that the concern is not with the almost 3,000 Americans who died that day, but with the profit margins of corporations.

Mr. Stimson, concerned neither with truth nor apparently with the human lives lost on 9/11, also has no regard for the United States Constitution. As the Contra Costa Times points out, “Pro bono representation of someone who can’t afford a lawyer is a bedrock principle of American legal practice.”

Is this man fit to be in charge of detainee policy at Guantánamo?

380 detainees have already been freed from Guantánamo. Despite years or captivity without trial there was not enough evidence to charge them with any crime, or to put it in terms more in accord with legal process they were innocent. Some were imprisoned there because their captors were paid bounties for rounding up “terrorists.” Some who have been released say they were tortured.

Any person held in prison should have — does have — the right to due process, including the right to be charged with a crime, the right to know what those charges are, the right to legal representation, and the right to challenge the evidence against them. This is a moral issue, and it’s a defining moral issue. Are we governed by laws? Are we prepared to sacrifice our freedoms in order to “protect” them?

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