Posted by
Defend America on Tuesday, March 16, 2010 9:50:42 PM
Gitmo's Indefensible Lawyers
Legal counsel to some of the detainees went
far beyond vigorous representation of their clients. Doesn't the public
have a right to know?
By Debra Burlingame and Thomas Joscelyn
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?
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.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704131404575117611125872740.html