In a Wall Street Journal column titled "Gitmo Lawyers are the Latest in Radical Chic," William McGurn, laments the fact that so many private lawyers have stepped up to represent detainees while the Department of Justice lawyers are so overworked.
I am sorry, but anyone who claims that representing detainees is "chic" should read Jesselyn Radack's article "A Blacklist real face" published in The National Law Journal, February 19, 2007, in which se recounts her experience as a Gitmo lawyer and in which she concludes:
"I was blacklisted for years. Navy judge advocate general lawyer Charles Swift won a favorable ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of a Guantánamo detainee he was appointed to represent, then was denied a promotion that ended his military career. The government threatened to investigate civilian attorney Clive Stafford Smith, making the wild accusation that he suggested that his Guantánamo client commit suicide. And DOJ is forcing out several U.S. attorneys from their jobs for political reasons. I am Exhibit 1 as to what can happen when the government paints the 500 volunteer Guantánamo lawyers, and the firms that employ them, as somehow supporting terrorism."
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