Ugh. The Executive is not just incompetent, he hires thugs.

[elfs]

Cully Stimson, 44, a former member of the Navy Judge Advocate General and a member of the bar in the District of Columbia, is currently the man in charge of overseeing the legal representation for detainees in Guantanamo Bay. His official title is "Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs." You would think that a man with such serious responsibility and so much experience behind him, with so much education in the meaning of the law, both military and civilian, would approach the legal tradition with gravitas and moral authority.

You would think. But! But, he has his current appointment as a member of the Bush team. I don't want to imply that being a Bush appointee automatically implies that you are a man of compromised morals and values, but...

In an interview yesterday with Federal News Radio and completely unprovoked by the host, Stimson rattled off the names of a dozen high-profile corporate law firms who are

...representing the detainees down there [in Guantanamo Bay] ... 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. ... Some [of the firms] 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.

Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings points out that an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, in which Robert L. Packard, a member of the WSJ editorial board, writes

This information might cause something of scandal, since so much of the pro bono work being done to tilt the playing field in favor of al Qaeda appears to be subsidized by legal fees from the Fortune 500. "Corporate CEOs seeing this should ask firms to choose between lucrative retainers and representing terrorists" who deliberately target the U.S. economy, he opined."

The stupidity! The arrogance! The evil! It burns, it burns!

Comments

[mousewrites.livejournal.com]

:: is speachless::

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

I may not be using it in my current job, but I am a paralegal. And being an officer of the court it really chaps my hide that folks in power would attack one of the very foundations of the legal system we're sworn to uphold; the fact that *everybody* has the right to counsel.

[hydrolagus.livejournal.com]

Gah. My cousin is a JAG. He just went over to Iraq to work on detainee's rights there (his mom's comment: It had to be someone's son). He'd be safer in his hometown (D.C), but if that guy is running the show, it sounds like it would be hard to do his job there. Frankly, this bothers me more than additional troops being sent to Iraq: we don't get to scrap due process of law. It doesn't go anywhere good from there.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Why is it wrong for Stimson to publicize just which law firms are representing the accused terrorists, so that other corporations and individuals can make up their mind whether or not they want to patronize law firms that do this? He's basically trying to organize a "boycott" -- I assume that you and I would both approve of this if, say, it was against seafood producers who fail to make their catching methods dolphin-safe, right? Why is this situation different?

[jenk]

If he believed that detainees might not be terrorists or that detainees having good, competent counsel was a good thing, then he probably would have trouble doing his job the way he (apparently) believes it should be done.

Consistent worldview isn't bad. It's the disconnect between his worldview and the reality of law ("Innocent until proven guilty") that I find disturbing.

[norincraft.livejournal.com]

Here is an interesting update in the NYT:

In a 2006 interview with the magazine of Kenyon College, his alma mater, Mr. Stimson said that he was learning “to choose my words carefully because I am a public figure on a very, very controversial topic.”

Well, all I can say is a hearty "Mission Accomplished!"