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Debra Burlingame, a co-founder of Keep America Safe, said its goal is to make the Obama administration answer questions about how it is making decisions about Guantanamo Bay detainees. "This isn't an attack on lawyers for being lawyers," said Burlingame, a former lawyer whose brother Charles Burlingame was a pilot killed in the Sept. 11 attacks. "This is a question about who is setting policy, who is involved in advising the attorney general on policy," she said. "It is a legitimate question to ask." For the most high-profile attorney in that group, the answer is simple. Tony West, the head of the Justice Department's civil division, was once part of the legal team that represented John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban captured in Afghanistan. As a member of the Obama administration, West now oversees the government's response to lawsuits by detainees seeking their freedom. In that position, he has signed dozens of legal briefs on detainee matters, most arguing for continued detention of the suspects. The challenges directed at West and the other lawyers also strike at some core practices of U.S. lawyers
-- providing free representation for people who can't afford lawyers, or representing people so despised by the public it is difficult for them to hire a lawyer. Ron Kuby, a longtime criminal defense lawyer in New York who has represented numerous terror defendants, called the questions about the Justice Department lawyers "cheap politics and McCarthyism." The government can often benefit from hiring lawyers who worked for detainees in the past, Kuby argued, because someone who has worked on the other side of an issue often has important insights. "If I ever were to decide that I could best serve the Constitution of the United States by locking up the people that I used to represent, I would be darn good at it," said Kuby. "I know how they think, I know what other defense lawyers do, I know every trick that people like me play." "The right," joked Kuby, "has a problem with lawyers in general, until they need one." ___ On the Net: Wittes letter: Keep America Safe: http://www.keepamericasafe.com/
http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/
2010/0307_guantanamo_statement.aspx
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