Reuters:
The Pentagon official who criticized law firms for defending detainees held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has resigned due to the backlash over his remarks, a Defense Department spokesman said on Friday.
Charles "Cully" Stimson, deputy assistant secretary for detainee affairs, last month called it "shocking" that major U.S. law firms represented Guantanamo detainees for free and said they would likely suffer financially after their corporate clients learned of the work.
"He made the decision based on the current controversy," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters. "He believed it hampered his ability to be effective in this position."
What did Stimson say?
New York Times:
In his radio interview, Mr. Stimson said: "I think the news story that you’re really going to start seeing in the next couple of weeks is this: As a result of a FOIA request through a major news organization, somebody asked, 'Who are the lawyers around this country representing detainees down there?' and you know what, it's shocking." The F.O.I.A. reference was to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by Monica Crowley, a conservative syndicated talk show host, asking for the names of all the lawyers and law firms representing Guantánamo detainees in federal court cases.
Mr. Stimson, who is himself a lawyer, then went on to name more than a dozen of the firms listed on the 14-page report provided to Ms. Crowley, describing them as "the major law firms in this country." He said, "I think, quite honestly, when corporate C.E.O.'s see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those C.E.O.'s are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out."
Not surprisingly, Stimson caught a lot of flak from the legal community. What he said was basically that using the american system of justice was unethical, exercising your rights is an abuse, people who operate in the legal system should be punished for representing clients against the government, and that an accusation of guilt by the government was the same as being found guilty in a court of law. In short, his remarks were profoundly unamerican. And, as a lawyer, he knows exactly what he said.
Like I said, good riddance.
Tags: news | politics | law | Military | Pentagon | Guantanamo | civil rights | Charles Stimson
