Jesselyn Radack: A blacklist's real face

[reprehensor]

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1171620175651

TARGETING LAWYERS
A blacklist's real face

Jesselyn Radack/Special to The National Law Journal
February 19, 2007

I was not surprised to read that the Pentagon's former deputy assistant secretary, Charles D. Stimson, attacked law firms for representing Guantánamo Bay detainees. (The furor over his remarks resulted in his resignation on Feb. 2.) For years, the government has been trying to control attorneys acting on behalf of terrorism suspects and, if it cannot control them, then to punish them. I speak from experience.

I am the very real face of what the Pentagon's admonition looks like in practice, and I did not even represent an alleged terrorist-I merely gave the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) advice seen as favorable to one. I was the DOJ ethics adviser in the case of the so-called "American Taliban," John Walker Lindh. On Dec. 7, 2001, I received a call from a Criminal Division attorney who wanted to know about the ethical propriety of interrogating Lindh without a lawyer being present. I was told unambiguously that Lindh's father had retained counsel for his son.

I advised that, under the anti-contact rule, Lindh should not be questioned without his lawyer. That was on a Friday. Over the weekend, the FBI interviewed him anyway. At that point, I advised that the interview may need to be sealed and used only for intelligence-gathering or national security purposes, not criminal prosecution. Again, my advice was ignored.

Three weeks later, former Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that a criminal complaint had been filed against Lindh. "The subject here is entitled to choose his own lawyer," he said, "and to our knowledge, has not chosen a lawyer at this time." I knew that wasn't true. Three weeks later, Ashcroft announced Lindh's indictment, saying his rights "have been carefully, scrupulously honored." Again, I knew that wasn't true...

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http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1171620175651

Jesselyn Radack is the author of The Canary in the Coalmine: Blowing the Whistle in the Case of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh (2006), available at http://patriotictruthteller.net