Why I defend "terrorists" (open letter to Cully Stimson, dep. Sec of Defense)

Salon ^ | Anant Raut

[Stone Mountain]

Why I defend "terrorists"

An open letter to Cully Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, from a lawyer representing five men at Guantánamo.

By Anant Raut

Jan. 17, 2007

Cully Stimson
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Detainee Affairs
Department of Defense
Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. Stimson,

I am an associate in the Washington office of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, a New York-based, international firm with 1,100 lawyers. I practice general corporate litigation. I also represent, on a pro bono basis, five men who are being held as "enemy combatants" at the U.S. detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. "How can you defend terrorists?" is a question I'm sometimes asked when people learn about my pro bono work. On Jan. 11, in your capacity as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, you asked the same question of every lawyer representing detainees in Guantánamo.

During the course of an interview on Federal News Radio, you named my law firm and 13 others whose attorneys have clients in Guantánamo and urged our corporate clients to take their business elsewhere. "You know what, it's shocking," you told your audience. "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." You then said our efforts might be funded by "monies from who knows where."

Mr. Stimson, I don't defend "terrorists." I'm representing five guys who were held or are being held in Guantánamo without ever being charged with a crime, some of them for nearly five years. Two have been quietly sent home to Saudi Arabia without an explanation or an admission of error. The only justification the U.S. government has provided for keeping the other three is the moniker "enemy combatant," a term that has been made up solely for the purpose of denying them prisoner-of-war protection and civilian protection under the Geneva Conventions. It's a term that was attached to them in a tribunal proceeding so inherently bogus that even the tribunal president is compelled to state on the record, in hundreds of these proceedings, that a combatant status review tribunal "is NOT a court of law, but a non-judicial administrative hearing."

And, lest there be any doubt, Mr. Stimson, we are not receiving any money for this. My firm's work is pro bono. At the end of the year, the partners set aside a substantial portion of the firm's profits to pay for my trips to Guantánamo and my translation costs, just as they pay for my colleagues' fight for clean drinking water in the lower-income neighborhoods of D.C., as well as hundreds of other projects I would be happy to discuss with you directly.

I also get asked other questions about my pro bono work, Mr. Stimson. "How can you defend terrorists?" is only the third most common. The second most common question is, "Why do you do it?" In law school, I would feel outrage whenever I read about a case in which our courts had the opportunity to take a stand -- against slavery, against the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II -- and didn't. But I would also feel self-doubt. It's easy to feel righteous anger now. But, I wondered, would I have felt it then? Or, in the name of security, of easing the anxiety of the public, would I have been able to swallow these affronts to the freedoms I see as the cornerstone of our national identity? The people I'm defending were caught up in the adrenaline and paranoia of our nation's darkest hour. All we're asking for is a fair hearing. Why does this frighten you so?

Mr. Stimson, you should also know that I am frequently mistaken as being Middle Eastern or Latino (no and no; the correct answer is "Indian"). In November 2001, I was walking to dinner in the trendy Dupont Circle area of Washington, D.C. Just as the sun was going down, I heard a car slow to a halt behind me. "Hey, you, dumb blonde," yelled the driver to my date, "can't you see he's a terrorist?" He then sped off.

Dehumanizing people makes it easy to believe the worst about them. When they look different from you, when they sound different, it becomes easier, and when you dress them in identical uniforms and lock them in cages, it becomes easier still. All I've been trying to do for the past two years is give my clients a chance to challenge the assumptions that have been made about them.

And finally, Mr. Stimson, the question I get asked more than any other is, "How can a place like Guantánamo continue to exist?" I think it is because we as a nation are afraid to admit we've done something wrong.

There is a widespread belief, as well as a need to believe, that the men we're holding in Guantánamo must be bad people. They must have done something to end up there. They couldn't just be, in large part, victims of circumstance, or of the fact the U.S. government was paying large bounties in poor countries for the identification and capture of people with alleged ties to terror. If the bulk of the detainees are guilty of nothing but being in the wrong place at the wrong time, if there's no evidence that some of them did the things of which the government has accused them, then it would mean that we locked innocent people in a hole for five years. It would mean not only that our government wrongfully imprisoned these men but that the rest of us stood idly by as they did it. It would mean that we have learned nothing from Korematsu v. United States, that we have learned nothing from the McCarthy-era witch hunts, and that when we wake up from this national nightmare, once again we will marvel at the extremism we tolerated in defense of liberty. It would mean that even as we extol the virtues of fairness and due process abroad, we take away those very rights from people on our own soil.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." It is my belief that the true test of a nation's commitment to liberty occurs not when it is most readily given, but rather when it is most easily taken away.

Mr. Stimson, that is why I do what I do.

Anant Raut is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. He spent two years at the Federal Trade Commission litigating antitrust cases, and is now a litigator for the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP. The firm has provided habeas representation for five detainees in Guantanamo Bay on a pro bono basis since January 2005.

[Rick.Donaldson]

Yeah? So?

[Past Your Eyes]

Great. A proud lawyer. What a frikkin snake in the grass.

[Yo-Yo]

Hey, every terrorist is entitled to a first class defense, followed by a first class hanging.

[MPJackal]

"the partners set aside a substantial portion of the firm's profits to pay for my trips to Guantánamo and my translation costs, just as they pay for my colleagues' fight for clean drinking water in the lower-income neighborhoods of D.C."

The difference is in the DC case the plaintiffs sought help. In this case you are an ambulance chasing POS in search of publicity. But I will agree with the idea that we should not take prisoners, NONE.

[MrB]

"Enemy/Illegal Combatant" status is not a conjuration by the Bush admin to "avoid" anything.

It's the consequence these bastards face for not putting on a uniform and complying with the basis of the Geneva convention requiring the separation of combatants from civilians.

[RacerX1128]

what a slithering, side-stepping POS

[jbwbubba]

Why don't you tell us what Corporations you deal with Big shot?

[Lunatic Fringe]

He makes a couple of good points... two of his clients were released, no explanation or apology. I have often suspected that a few of these guys were probably in the wrong place at the wrong time and were being held for no reason. That sucks.

As for the terrorists down there, put them on trial. I doubt after being held for 5 years they have any significant intel to give us.

[weegee]

Are you required to read a terrorists his rights in the battlefield before you pull the trigger?

[weegee]

At least a couple guys went back to the battlefield after they were released.

[the_devils_advocate_666]

"The evil was of a deeper, subtler sort; so elusive, so intangible, as to defy clear, definite analysis in words. We all experience such things at some period in our lives. For the first time we see a certain individual, one who the very instant before we did not dream existed; and yet, at the first moment of meeting, we say: "I do not like that man." Why do we not like him? Ah, we do not know why; we know only that we do not. We have taken a dislike, that is all."
-- Jack London, "White Fang"

[VeniVidiVici]

Yup. Just honest, hard working, foreign citizens we pulled off the beaches of Greece to go serve time in Gitmo.

[Lunatic Fringe]

All the more reason to start putting them on trial. The adversarial process would greatly help in determining who are the real bad guys and who got picked up by mistake.

[encm(ss)]

Citizens of the United States have rights.
Our enemies do not. End of trial. Now hang 'em high.

[Gritty]

There is a widespread belief, as well as a need to believe, that the men we're holding in Guantánamo must be bad people.

This lawyer ought to be in jail along with the inmates. He's just as dangerous, maybe more so.

He is capable of more serious damage to us than if he wore a suicide belt and carried an AK-47. He's a terrorist with a law degree instead of a gun.

[Gritty]

[LSUfan]

Interesting that this guy feels so strongly about defending the enemy but can't be bothered with the Haditha Marines...

[Stone Mountain]

Apparently, Curly apologized for his remarks:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1769597/posts

[slapshot]

We should have a couple of old time Chicago or NYC constables and detectives on the Gitmo Staff. Problems with a "guests" behavior? Send our Chicago consultants to investigate and problem solved. Also they would have our "residents" singing like girl scouts at a campout in record time.