A Missed Milestone; Admin Official Criticizes Gitmo Attorneys

Updated 5.35 pm Pacific
On the fifth anniversary of the US setting up a prison at its military facility at Guantánamo Bay, Charles "Cully" Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, criticized US law firms that are defending detainees.

On Thursday, Stimson told Federal News Radio (Washington, DC - 1050 AM) that it's "shocking" how many US law firms are representing detainees. (tip) In an earlier interview, he said the men held at Gitmo had been captured on the battlefield; this is not true, as DoD documents -- and the story of Adel Hamad -- attest.

As of 5 pm Monday, the deans of more than 57 law schools have signed onto a statement, dated Sunday 14 January, that is highly critical of Stimson's remarks.

We, the law deans undersigned below are appalled by the January 11, 2007 statement of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Charles “Cully” Stimson, criticizing law firms for their pro bono representation of suspected terrorist detainees and encouraging corporate executives to force these law firms to choose between their pro bono and paying clients.

As law deans and professors, we find Secretary Stimson’s statement to be contrary to basic tenets of American law. We teach our students that lawyers have a professional obligation to ensure that even the most despised and unpopular individuals and groups receive zealous and effective legal representation. Our American legal tradition has honored lawyers who, despite their personal beliefs, have zealously represented mass murderers, suspected terrorists, and Nazi marchers. At this moment in time, when our courts have endorsed the right of the Guantanamo detainees to be heard in courts of law, it is critical that qualified lawyers provide effective representation to these individuals. By doing so, these lawyers protect not only the rights of the detainees, but also our shared constitutional principles. In a free and democratic society, government officials should not encourage intimidation of or retaliation against lawyers who are fulfilling their pro bono obligations.

We urge the Administration promptly and unequivocally to repudiate Secretary Stimson’s remarks.

Naming Names
Without prompting from the radio hosts, Stimson said that a FOI request led to the list of law firms representing detainees. He then proceeded to recite names (no major media have published this part of the transcript), such as Pillsbury Winthrop; Jenner & Block; Wilmer Cutler Pickering; Covington and Burlington; Paul, Weiss, Rifkin; Pepper Hamilton; Perkins Coie; Fulbright & Jaworski.

"I think, quite honestly, when corporate CEOs ... see ... that those firms ... are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are gonna make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms. And I think that is going to have major play ... in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out."

Stimson (and the radio host) also thinks these firms should disclose who's paying the bills -- even though "[o]f the approximately 500 lawyers coordinated by the Center for Constitutional Rights, no one is being paid."

That well-reported fact didn't sway Stimson, who suggested that the firms were being paid by some "secret" source:

It’s not clear, is it [who is paying these firms]? Some will maintain that they are doing it out of the goodness of their heart, that they’re doing it pro bono, and I suspect they are; others are receiving moneys from who knows where, and I’d be curious to have them explain that.

Only the corporations are "reputable" clients in Stimson's world. He implies that corporate clients should pressure the law firms to drop their detainee clients. This is a totally inapprorpriate suggestion from a public official. And, to its credit, the Pentagon has "disavowed" the comments, despite the fact that he was speaking as a Pentagon official. But there has been no official comment from the Pentagon or the White House.

One has to wonder if Stimson (or maybe Monica Crowley, the MSNBC conservative talk show host who made the FOI request) isn't orchestrating this media coverage.

For example, Editor and Publisher notes that on Friday, a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board echoed Stimson's comments from Thursday and credited an unnamed Pentagon official with saying, "Corporate C.E.O.’s seeing this should ask firms to choose between lucrative retainers and representing terrorists."

So even the darling of the business world is calling for a boycott?

[Hypocrisy alert: Mr. Stimson, it appears you think it's ok to go on the record on a radio station with a geographically-small audience, but not with the Wall Street Journal? Wake up, Fourth Estate! It's long past time for American media to stop acting like enablers, granting government officials the luxury of being an "unnamed source." Nixon, Watergate and Deep Throat this is not.]

It is shameful that Stimson, an attorney, is suggesting that the accused do not have a right to high-profile counsel. This is especially shameful given that at least two analyses of Pentagon data suggest that most people held at Gitmo are not the "worst of the worst" as Bush has claimed.

For example, in February 2006, two academic studies analyzed the almost 500 detainees at Gitmo, using Court and Administration data. One deduces that as many as 80 percent of the detainees have nothing to do with terrorism. The second shows that "60 percent are detained merely because they are 'associated with' a group or groups the government asserts are terrorist organizations" and only eight percent "detained because they are deemed 'fighters for' [a terrorist organization]."

Lets look at the case of one of these 500.

The Story of Adel Hamad
Stimson's remarks (and veiled implication of guilt) stand in stark contrast to the story told by William Teesdale, an attorney in the District of Oregon’s Federal Public Defender office. Teesdale represents Guantanamo detainee Adel Hamad and has developed an 8.5 minute video documenting the story of Hamad, detainee 940. (It's a must-watch.) He says:

I first learned Adel’s story during the long night of March 3/4, 2006, when I stayed up all night searching through thousands of pages of military tribunal (CSRT) records released by the Department of Defense to find a reference to detainee 940. I read through those first public CSRT records with great excitement.

We had been told by the President and his administration that all these detainees are the “worst of the worst.” What I found was entirely different.

Adel was from Sudan but had lived with his wife and children in Pakistan and Afghanistan, working for various Muslim charity organizations since 1986. The Government suspected Adel because they didn’t like the groups he worked for, including, most recently, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth. WAMY is a major Muslim charity group with some 2,000 employees and a presence in many countries.

Adel was arrested at his home in Peshawar, Pakistan, at about 1:30 a.m., along with his downstairs neighbor, a United Nations refugee. Adel spent time in custody in Pakistan and at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan before being transferred to Guantanamo in early 2003.

Adel told the military tribunal that he had worked for WAMY since 2000, as a hospital administrator in Chamkani, Afghanistan and then later providing relief supplies to refugees in Peshawar, Pakistan, who were fleeing Afghanistan because of the war. Before that he had taught at an elementary school.

The military panel that labeled Hamad an "enemy combatant" was not unanimous. An army major voted against that ruling and called the finding "“unconscionable."

And almost 400 of these souls still remain behind bars with little legal recourse. Stimson says many may be there until they die.

So Who Is Cully Stimson?
The Pentagon created the Office of Detainee Affairs in July 2004:

An as-yet-unnamed deputy assistant secretary who will report to the undersecretary for policy will head the office. The new deputy will chair a joint committee composed of the undersecretary for intelligence and representatives from the Joint Staff, the Office of General Counsel, the Department of the Army, and others who might be involved in detainee affairs.

A Google search of the Pentagon website reveals no biography of Stimson and no announcement of appointment. Almost all references relate to the September 2006 introduction of DoD Directive 2310.01E, a new policy statement for the handling of all detainees.

Stimson says, in one interview, that he's a lawyer, but that's all we know. No official bio at the Pentagon; no web record of his appointment. Drudge says he was a Navy lawyer, gradudated from Kenyon College (Ohio) and George Mason University Law School (Virginia).

Do you know who he is, how he got this job?

Update:
Eric Umansky reports that "MSNBC's Monica Crowley, a conservative talk show host" filed the FOI request referenced by Stimson. He has a copy of the request. And he also references a Wall Street Journal columnist saying the "the pro bono work ... tilt[s] the playing field in favor of al Qaeda."

Don't these people read any analyses of who's been locked up down there? It appears that most of those we've jailed in Gitmo (600?) were not captured on a battlefield and have no ties to aQ!

Also, see: Full Stimson Interview (wma), Attorneys find little hope at Guantánamo, Project Hamad, John Adams and Charles "Cully" Stimson. Hear my podcast commentary.

Editorial comment: Washington Post (Friday) ; Op Ed News (Sunday) ; USA Today (Monday) ; New York Bar Association (Monday)

^{Originally posted at 4.15 am Eastern on Monday}

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