How Dare They Defend the U.S. Constitution!

A Criminal Defense Attorney’s job when defending a client is to see that their client receives a fair trial that comports with the protections afforded under the U.S. Constitution.

So, it is horrifying that those who are sworn to uphold the Constitution are attacking those who try to uphold those protections.

Now, the WAPO Editorial Page under the direction of Fred Hiatt has generally been a lapdog for the Bush Administration’s war on the Constitution, but even they are upset by this latest development:

Unveiled Threats
A Bush appointee's crude gambit on detainees' legal rights

Friday, January 12, 2007; A18

MOST AMERICANS understand that legal representation for the accused is one of the core principles of the American way. Not, it seems, Cully Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs. In a repellent interview yesterday with Federal News Radio, Mr. Stimson brought up, unprompted, the number of major U.S. law firms that have helped represent detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

"Actually you know I think the news story that you're really going to start seeing in the next couple of weeks is this: As a result of a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request through a major news organization, somebody asked, 'Who are the lawyers around this country representing detainees down there,' and you know what, it's shocking," he said.

Mr. Stimson proceeded to reel off the names of these firms, adding, "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 going to 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."

Asked who was paying the firms, Mr. Stimson hinted of dark doings. "It's not clear, is it?" he said. "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 monies from who knows where, and I'd be curious to have them explain that."

It might be only laughable that Mr. Stimson, during the interview, called Guantanamo "certainly, probably, the most transparent and open location in the world."

But it's offensive -- shocking, to use his word -- that Mr. Stimson, a lawyer, would argue that law firms are doing anything other than upholding the highest ethical traditions of the bar by taking on the most unpopular of defendants. It's shocking that he would seemingly encourage the firms' corporate clients to pressure them to drop this work. And it's shocking -- though perhaps not surprising -- that this is the person the administration has chosen to oversee detainee policy at Guantanamo.

Now Mr. Stimson as a federal employee has sworn to uphold the U. S. Constitution. It is what all of those who are federal employees swear to. I speak as one who has made that pledge. So, he has disavowed that pledge and should be removed from his office. He is an embarrassment to the United States of America.

And finally the NYT’s Editors also chime in:

January 13, 2007

Editorial

Round Up the Usual Lawyers

No one who has followed President Bush’s policies on detainees should be surprised when a member of his team scorns American notions of justice. But even by that low standard, the administration’s new attack on lawyers who dare to give those prisoners the meager representation permitted them is contemptible.

Speaking this week on Federal News Radio, a Web site and AM radio station offering helpful hints for bureaucrats and helpful news for the administration, Cully Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, tried to rally American corporations to stop doing business with law firms that represent inmates of the Guantánamo internment camp.

It does not seem to matter to Mr. Stimson, who is a lawyer, that a great many of those detainees did not deserve imprisonment, let alone the indefinite detention to which they are subjected as “illegal enemy combatants.” And forget about the fundamental American right that everyone should have legal counsel, even the most heinous villain.

In his interview, reported yesterday by The Washington Post editorial page, Mr. Stimson rattled off some of the most respected law firms in the country that, after initial hesitation, have courageously respected that right. He called it “shocking” that they were “representing detainees down there” and suggested that when corporate America got word of this dastardly behavior, “those C.E.O.’s are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms.” He added: “We want to watch that play out.”

When his interviewer asked who was paying these firms for the work, Mr. Stimson said, “It’s not clear, is it?”

Actually, it is quite clear. Mr. Stimson surely knows that the vast majority of those cases are being handled for free by law firms that have not signed on to Mr. Bush’s post-9/11 revision of the American rules of justice. Still, he persisted, saying some lawyers were “receiving monies from who knows where.”

The interview was a greatest-hits remix of Bush administration nonsense about Guantánamo, including Mr. Stimson’s message to corporate executives that lawyers “are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line in 2001.” The only terrorists at Guantánamo associated with 9/11 were transferred there recently after being held for years in secret C.I.A. prisons where no lawyer could enter.

Not only do we find Mr. Stimson’s threats appalling, we differ with him about 9/11. The tragedy and crime of that day was that thousands of innocents were slaughtered — not that it hurt some companies’ profit margins.

Here is the article from the New York Times which documents the atrocities that are Mr. Stimson’s words.

The rule of law is just that, the rule of law, which is of course founded under the U.S. Constitution. Hard as that is for most folks to understand, and I speak to folks all the time who don’t get it, we are a country of laws, derived from the U. S. Constitution, and not of men.

George W. Bush and this Administration are not above the law, period the end. And Defense Attorneys in this country are doing their job by defending their client's due process under the U.S. Constitution and anything less would be Un-American.

Why does Mr. Stimson, and his ilk, hate America?