Legal News

Did ?Department of Jihad? Language Go Too Far?

By Ashby Jones

Some critics of the Obama administration’s policies on War on Terror prosecutions have found a new bugaboo: Justice Department lawyers who, before arriving at the department, represented Guantanamo detainees while in private practice.

But have the critics gone a bit too far with their rhetoric?

According to this Washington Post story from Thursday, a group called Keep America Safe, which is affiliated with Dick Cheney’s daughter, Elizabeth (pictured) and pundit William Kristol, raised the bar this week when it released a video featuring the headline “DOJ: Department of Jihad?” and asked “Who are these government officials? . . . Whose values do they share?”

For months, Senate Republicans have been asking for the the names of nine appointees who previously represented detainees, and voicing concerns about whether the nine can be trusted with carrying out prosecutions of suspected terrorists. Earlier in the week, Fox News identified the lawyers.

Some think the video went too far. Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, GW professor Orin Kerr compared the video to something that “former Senator Joseph McCarthy would have used . . . if he were alive today.” Former solicitor general Walter Dellinger weighed in on Friday with this op-ed in the WaPo in which he outlined the type of work he and others performed on behalf of a Guantanamo detainee while at O’Melveny & Myers. Wrote Dellinger: “The only word that can do justice to the personal attacks on these fine lawyers — and on the integrity of our legal system — is shameful.”

Former Bush White House lawyer Reginald Brown called the video “beyond offensive.”

Last month, according to the Post, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich sent a letter to Grassley in which he said that none of the nine Justice attorneys are involved in individual prosecution decisions about terrorism suspects, and each of them “understands that their client is the United States.”

Nonetheless, some members of Congress are still voicing suspicions. According to the WaPo, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA.) sent a letter to AG Holder earlier this week saying “the decision to allow attorneys who advocated for terrorists held at Guantanamo to craft detainee policy during the war on terror would be akin to allowing attorneys for the Mafia to draft organized crime policy during the 1960s.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 05, 2010 (boomark / email).