{"id":407074,"date":"2010-03-09T09:23:37","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T14:23:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com\/?p=13542"},"modified":"2010-03-09T09:23:37","modified_gmt":"2010-03-09T14:23:37","slug":"doj-critics-come-to-defense-of-doj-lawyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/407074","title":{"rendered":"DOJ Critics Come To Defense Of DOJ Lawyers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Justice<\/p>\n

Justice Department logo<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Some of the Obama Administration\u2019s most outspoken critics have come to the defense of nine Justice Department lawyers criticized for previously representing or advocating on behalf of terrorism detainees.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe past several days have seen a shameful series of attacks on attorneys in the Department of Justice,\u201d said a statement signed by several conservative lawyers and former officials who worked under Republican administrations. \u201cWe consider these attacks both unjust to the individuals in question and destructive of any attempt to build lasting mechanisms for counterterrorism adjudications.\u201d<\/p>\n

This comes a week after Fox News identified all nine politically-appointed Justice Department attorneys who previously represented or advocated for terror suspects.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department had been refusing to identify seven of the nine lawyers, prompting a conservative group led by Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, to release a video condemning the Justice Department.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo who did President Obama\u2019s Attorney General, Eric Holder, hire?\u201d the group, Keep America Safe, said in the video. \u201cWhose values do they share?\u201d<\/p>\n

The video dubbed the seven previously unknown lawyers \u201cThe Al Qaeda 7.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the 20 attorneys, former officials and \u201cpolicy specialists\u201d who signed the statement defending the Justice Department lawyers were at least three people who have strongly criticized the Obama Administration\u2019s handling of terrorism issues.<\/p>\n

David Rivkin, a former Justice Department official in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations, recently called the handling of the attempted Christmas Day bombing \u201cutterly incompetent,\u201d \u201cappalling,\u201d and \u201cvery depressing\u201d since \u201cthe security of American people\u201d is at stake.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s even worse in my perspective is they\u2019re defending it,\u201d he said on Fox News in January. \u201cThey\u2019ve learned nothing from this experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

In November, Rivkin authored an op-ed with Lee Casey, another former Justice Department official who signed onto the latest statement, blasting Holder\u2019s now-withering decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other alleged 9\/11 conspirators in civilian court.<\/p>\n

The op-ed, published in The Washington Examiner, called the decision \u201ca mistake\u201d and \u201ca very bad deal for the country\u201d that carries \u201cprofound implications for the United States’ ability to defend itself in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rivkin and Casey are now partners in the Washington office of the firm Baker & Hostetler.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Charles \u201cCully\u201d Stimson, a former Defense Department official who now works at The Heritage Foundation, was a strong critic of Holder\u2019s decision, telling Fox News recently that the decision was made out of \u201cnaivete\u201d and \u201cirrational exuberance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Months before that, he said the Obama Administration\u2019s approach to fighting terrorism amounts to \u201claying down our arms.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he and the others took a different tone in the statement issued Monday\u00a0defending Justice Department lawyers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients is at least as old as John Adams\u2019s representation of the British soldiers charged in the Boston massacre,\u201d said the statement, which was released by the Brookings Institution. \u201cPeople come to serve in the Justice Department with a diverse array of prior private clients. That is one of the department\u2019s strengths.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, the statement said, suggesting that the\u00a0Justice Department \u201cshould not employ talented lawyers who have advocated on behalf of detainees maligns the patriotism of people who have taken honorable positions\u201d on legal questions in the fight against terrorism, some of which have reached the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Responding to the statement,\u00a0a spokesman for Keep America Safe said it’s “absurd” for lawyers “to go out in public and argue that voluntarily representing detainees is somehow good for America.”<\/p>\n

“They are trying to shift this debate away from the issues raised by the ad onto grounds they feel comfortable arguing, namely the nobility of the entire legal profession,” said the spokesman for Keep America Safe, which in addition to Cheney is run by\u00a0Debra Burlingame, whose brother was killed in the 9\/11 attacks, and Bill Kristol, a Fox News contributor.<\/p>\n

The attorneys and former officials defending the Justice Department lawyers are not all critics of the Obama Administration. In fact, at least two of the former officials have publicly supported the effort to close detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay.<\/p>\n

Some of the more notable names who signed the statement on Monday are Philip Zelikow, the former State Department lawyer who has strongly criticized the George W. Bush Administration, Ken Starr, the former Solicitor General who investigated the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and former White House official Brad Berenson, who was once an official with The Federalist Society.<\/p>\n

“Their ridiculous assertions I’m sure will only remind Americans of why they hold lawyers and Washington in such high regard,” said the Keep America Safe spokesman, Aaron Harison.<\/p>\n

For several months, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) had been trying to uncover politically-appointed lawyers within the Justice Department who advocated for Guantanamo Bay detainees or other terror suspects.<\/p>\n

In a recent letter to Grassley, Assistant Attorney General Ron Weich declined to identify seven of nine such lawyers, insisting that no political appointee at the Justice Department “would permit or has permitted any prior affiliation to interfere with the vital task of protecting national security, and any suggestion to the contrary is absolutely false.”<\/p>\n

He also said that any suggestions of a “conflict of interest” are “an apparent misapprehension” of legal standards, adding that all political appointees have taken pledges to meet ethical standards.<\/p>\n

An extensive review of court documents and media reports by Fox News suggests many of the seven previously unidentified lawyers played only minor or short-lived roles in advocating for detainees.<\/p>\n

Asked last week whether any of the seven lawyers now work on detainee-related issues, a Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.<\/p>\n

The Obama Administration is not the first to hire lawyers who represented or advocated for terror suspects. Three such lawyers were hired by the Bush Administration and now work in the Solicitor General\u2019s office, the Office of Legal Counsel and the Civil Rights Division.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Justice Department logo Some of the Obama Administration\u2019s most outspoken critics have come to the defense of nine Justice Department lawyers criticized for previously representing or advocating on behalf of terrorism detainees. \u201cThe past several days have seen a shameful series of attacks on attorneys in the Department of Justice,\u201d said a statement signed by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4536,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-407074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4536"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407074\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}