Update: Gitmo Official Resigns

Charles "Cully" Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, created a firestorm last month on the fifth anniversary of Guantanemo Bay's status as a holding pen for the war on terror when he criticized law firms that are defending Gitmo detainees. Last week, he resigned.

"Stimson, 43, is a Navy Reserves JAG officer and former federal prosecutor." As reported here last month, on a DC-area talk radio program, without prompting from the radio hosts, Stimson said that a FOI request caused the agency to create a list of the law firms representing detainees. He then proceeded to recite names, 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."

Editorial boards and legal groups -- including the San Francisco Bar Association, where he was an inactive member -- criticized his comments as "being at odds with the bedrock American principle of free or pro-bono representation."

Defense: They're Not Entitled to Counsel
Some of those who have defended Stimson's remarks have done so on the grounds that these men are war criminals -- captured on the battlefield -- and entitled not to a day in court but a military review. The civilian lawyers are just making it more costly for the military lawyers to do their jobs.

One more time - I'll debunk this myth.

At least two analyses of Pentagon data suggest that most people held at Gitmo are not the "worst of the worst" as President Bush, Stimson and his defenders have 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]."

Technorati Profile