A senior Defense Department official who broke with Pentagon policy on whether it's honorable for private lawyers to provide no-charge services to Guantánamo captives drew new condemnation Tuesday and even calls for his dismissal.
Charles ''Cully'' Stimson, deputy assistant secretary for defense for detainee affairs, has sparked a firestorm of anger, from Capitol Hill to America's law schools to even conservative quarters.
He told a Washington, D.C., Beltway radio station last week that American corporations should boycott leading U.S. law firms that provide pro-bono service at the prison camps in the remote U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.
On Tuesday, Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania condemned Stimson's remarks on the floor of the Senate, where he until recently served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
''When lawyers undertake the representation of individuals in unpopular causes, they are entitled to praise, not criticism,'' said Specter, echoing an earlier condemnation by the new committee chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
Stimson had used the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the offshore detention center to offer up -- live, on the radio -- a list of prestigious law firms whose attorneys are providing pro-bono legal representation to captives at the U.S. Navy Base.
He called it ''shocking'' and said corporate leaders should choose between those firms and others whose attorneys do not offer free-of-charge services to some of the 395 men and teens held in Cuba as so-called enemy combatants.
As of Tuesday, nearly 140 law school deans had signed an Internet petition -- which can be found at http://www.law.yale.edu/news/4055.htm -- declaring themselves ''appalled'' by the remarks of a fellow lawyer.
''In a free and democratic society, government officials should not encourage intimidation of or retaliation against lawyers who are fulfilling their pro bono obligations,'' the petition said.
Those who signed included Harold Hongju Koh of Yale Law School, Elena Kagen of Harvard Law School and Dennis O. Lynch of the University of Miami's School of Law. ...
And that ain't all...
The Pentagon's senior spokesman, Bryan Whitman, on Friday night distanced the Defense Department from Stimson's remarks, saying they ``do not represent the views of the Defense Department or the thinking of its leadership.''
Now some critics are calling for the dismissal of Stimson, 43, a former federal prosecutor who is the second Bush administration appointee to run a specially created division known as Detainee Affairs.
''I believe the man should be fired,'' wrote David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union lobby, in a guest column in The Hill newspaper in Washington.
He called Stimson's remarks ``a blatant attempt to threaten the law firms providing the representation to back off and urging their corporate clients to seek representation elsewhere if the firms fail to do so.''
Keene also said he believed most Guantánamo captives were guilty of something.
Yet, he wrote, ``Without lawyers, the innocent as well as the guilty might end up behind bars and our jails and prisons might come to resemble the hellholes depicted in some old movies showing Southern prisons of the '40s and '50s.''...
And that's just the conservatives... More approbrium of the bloggy sort here.
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dim done
done = request.form("done")
if done = "" then
done = "No"
%>
Tell a friend
<%
Else
if request.form("done") = "Yes" then
'sets variables
dim email, sendmail
email = request.form("email")
Set sendmail = Server.CreateObject("CDONTS.NewMail")
'put the webmaster address here
sendmail.From = "webmaster@aspbasics.com"
'The mail is sent to the address entered in the previous page.
sendmail.To = email
'Enter the subject of your mail here
sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
'url = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
'This is the content of the message.
sendmail.Body = "Site recommendation from a friend!" & _
vbCrlf & vbCrlf & "A friend has sent you this email and thought you would should check out this site." & _
vbCrlf & url & vbCrlf
'this sets mail priority.... 0=low 1=normal 2=high
sendmail.Importance = 1
sendmail.Send 'Send the email!
response.redirect Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
'Response.write ("Sent to ") & email
End if
End if
%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
