Debra Burlingame

9/11, Abdulmutallab, al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Debra Burlingame, DOJ, Eric Holder, Gitmo, Guantanamo, Keep America Safe, Lawfare

Gitmo’s Indefensible Lawyers; Legal counsel to some of the detainees went far beyond vigorous representation of their clients

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In the Wall Street Journal, Debra Burlingame and Thomas Joscelyn ask the question “Doesn’t the public have a right to know?”

On the evening of Jan. 26, 2006, military guards at Guantanamo Bay made an alarming discovery during a routine cell check. Lying on the bed of a Saudi detainee was an 18-page color brochure. The cover consisted of the now famous photograph of newly-arrived detainees dressed in orange jumpsuits — masked, bound and kneeling on the ground at Camp X-Ray — just four months after 9/11. Written entirely in Arabic, it also included pictures of what appeared to be detainee operations in Iraq. Major General Jay W. Hood, then the commander of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, concurred with the guards that this represented a serious breach of security.

Maj. Gen. Hood asked his Islamic cultural adviser to translate. The cover read: “Cruel. Inhuman. Degrades Us All: Stop Torture and Ill-Treatment in the ‘War on Terror.'” It was published by Amnesty International in the United Kingdom and portrayed America and its allies as waging a campaign of torture against Muslims around the globe.

“One thread that runs through many of the testimonies from prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq, and from Guantanamo,” the brochure read, “is that of anti-Arab, anti-Islamic, and other racist abuse.”

How did the detainee get it? More importantly, who gave it to him?

Majeed Abdullah Al Joudi, the detainee in whose cell the brochure was first found, told guards he received the brochure from his lawyer. An investigation by JTF-GTMO personnel revealed that Julia Tarver Mason, a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, had sent it to Al Joudi and eight of the firm’s other detainee clients through “legal mail” — a designation for privileged lawyer-client communications that are exempt from screening by security personnel. Worse, the investigation showed that Ms. Mason’s clients passed it to other detainees not represented by Paul, Weiss lawyers. In all, more than a dozen detainees received a copy. … READ THE REST

Those lawyers who formerly worked for Republican administrations and that are criticizing Keep America Safe for calling al Qaeda’s lawyers what they are, i.e. al Qaeda’s lawyers, ought to read it two or three times. This is far from the first time Debra Burlingame has written or spoken out about the lawyers waging lawfare upon our Nation, the one al Qaeda continues to attack.

Many of the lawyers who freely took on the task of defending al Qaeda’s killers or advocating on their behalf not only undermined the legal underpinnings for detaining their clients, but also endangered our troops in combat against them abroad. Some call that indefensible; I call it treason.

ACLU, al Qaeda, Andy McCarthy, Barack Obama, Debra Burlingame, DOJ, Eric Holder, Keep America Safe, Mark Levin

Lawyers, damn lawyers, and Al Qaeda; Mark Levin stands with Keep America Safe

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Mark Levin stands with Keep America Safe and disputes “the group of leading conservative lawyers and policy experts denouncing as “shameful” Republican attacks on lawyers who came to the Obama Justice Department after representing suspected terrorists.”

“The isn’t the Boston Massacre. You have people in the position of defending this nation at the highest levels of the Justice Department who have represented the enemy, and their belief systems have clearly affected national security policy. … And in some cases, these lawyers were not just representing clients, they went out and found them, sought them out. They considered them some of the most important cases they ever had. “Due process rights for the enemy? Absolutely. Civilian justice for the enemy? Absolutely.” Now they’re in government making the same exact decisions except they are setting policy. … Ben Smith at Politico, why don’t you make a list of some lawyers like me, former Chief of Staff to Attorney General Meese; I side with Liz Cheney and Debra Burlingame and Keep America Safe.”

Here is the complete audio of Mark on this from last night:

On February 26, 2010, Mark Levin cited a factual account of the Boston Massacre and John Adams’ truly noble role in its aftermath. Mark added:

“[T]hese things get used to distort current events. … The Boston Massacre had nothing to do with overthrowing the United States — it was a tragedy and John Adams did not seek as his goal to confer special rights on people who were plotting to destroy American society through any means possible.”

I offer Mark’s commentary as further evidence that to cite John Adams as a comparable example to the allegedly altruistic work of the ‘Al Qaeda Seven‘ (among others) fractures American history. Worse, it unwittingly lends credibility to the ACLU’s vile use of that Founding Father and a great patriot’s name in their insidious attempt to undermine our national security and to criminalize America’s use of military force in the Nation’s defense.

“If lawyers choose to volunteer their services to the enemy in wartime, they are on the wrong side of that fault line, and no one should feel reluctant to say so.” — Andrew McCarthy

“If not for the vigilant work of Keep America Safe, the corruptocrat Attorney General Eric Holder’s national security stone wall on DOJ’s terror lawyers would still be standing. Asking politely, in respectful tones with bowed heads and stooped spines, did not get the DOJ to cough up the names.” — Michelle Malkin