Lawyers: When the client is a terrorist

Is it treason for American lawyers to represent accused al Qaida terrorists in court? In the world of Liz Cheney, it sure is, said Brad Knickerbocker in The Christian Science Monitor Online. The 43-year-old daughter of the former vice president has been “hammering away” at lawyers who represented Guantánamo detainees before joining the Obama administration’s Justice Department. In a Web ad launched by Cheney’s national security group, Keep America Safe, “creepy background music” accompanies silhouettes of the “al Qaida Seven,” alongside a photo of Osama bin Laden. The implication couldn’t be clearer: The lawyers (there are actually nine of them) at Obama’s “Department of Jihad” are terrorist sympathizers who should be exposed and driven out of the government.

Perhaps they should be, said William Kristol, a board member of Cheney’s Keep America Safe, in TheWeeklyStandard.com. But we won’t know until the Obama administration explains what exactly these people are doing in the Justice Department. It’s certainly legitimate to question whether “former pro bono lawyers for terrorists should be working on detainee policy.” The key term is pro bono, said Byron York in the WashingtonExaminer.com. Those lawyers volunteered “to represent people who are making war on the United States.” Mafia dons have a right to counsel, too. But that doesn’t mean the Justice Department should hire them “to staff the department’s organized-crime section.”

The term “McCarthyism” is overused, said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post, but in this case that epithet seems “mild.” Even a group of esteemed Republican lawyers is appalled, calling Cheney’s assault on the patriotism of these lawyers “shameful” and reminding us that our system of justice requires “zealous representation of unpopular clients.” Founding Father John Adams, after all, volunteered to defend British soldiers accused of killing civilians in the Boston Massacre. That argument might impress other lawyers, said Andrew McCarthy in National Review Online, but it doesn’t impress most of us. “We are at war with savages,’’ and winning that war is critical. If the law requires providing an attorney, or compliance with the Geneva Conventions, fine—we’ll comply grudgingly. But if you volunteer to represent foreign enemies in court, and fight to give them the rights of American citizens, you deserve “your countrymen’s scorn.”

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