We all know lawyers are a fraternity, but in this case the lawyers denouncing Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol seem to think being a member of the bar in good standing puts you above criticism or even inquiry. Don’t they believe the American people have the right to know whether lawyers who represented terrorists are now working on detainee issues inside the Department of Justice? Or why these lawyers voluntarily flocked to Guantanamo Bay to take up the cause of the detained terror suspects when they did not and do not have a right to legal representation?
The Supreme Court found that they have a right to bring habeas challenges to their detention. That does not confer a right to representation, and in fact, the vast majority of criminals who bring habeas challenges do so without counsel. The John Adams analogy that Ken Starr and the other lawyers cite in their statement is ludicrous: At the time of the Boston Massacre we were not at war and the British soldiers he defended were in court facing a criminal charge of murder. Adams was not representing prisoners of war, enemies of the nation, trying to get them released in the middle of a war. And Adams wasn’t embarrassed about what he did — if what the terrorists’ lawyers did was so noble, why is the DOJ refusing to tell us what they work on now?
Finally, the lawyers’ statement denounces Keep America Safe’s efforts to find out more about lawyers who defended terrorists as “shameful,” yet most of the letter’s signatories stayed silent when the Left was conducting a witch hunt of Bush administration lawyers and CIA interrogators who helped defend America. Keep America Safe is not calling for a witch hunt. They are calling for oversight.