Potshot at Guantánamo Lawyers Backfires

Big firms laud free legal aid for detainees
By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff January 29, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Two weeks after a senior Pentagon official suggested that corporations should pressure their law firms to stop assisting detainees at Guantanamo Bay, major companies have turned the tables on the Pentagon and issued statements supporting the law firms' work on behalf of terrorism suspects.

The corporate support for the lawyers comes as law associations and members of Congress have expressed outrage at the remarks of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs Charles D. "Cully" Stimson on Jan. 11.

In a radio interview, Stimson stated the names of a dozen law firms that volunteer their services to represent detainees, and he suggested that the chief executives of the firms' corporate clients would make the lawyers "choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms."

He said he expected the newly public list of law firms that do work at Guantanamo Bay to spark a cycle of negative publicity for them. Instead, Stimson himself became the center of nationwide criticism and later apologized for the remarks.

The episode has become an embarrassing chapter in the Pentagon's long-running battle with the detainees' lawyers and appears to have spurred public support for the legal rights of the detainees, nearly 400 of whom just marked the start of their sixth year of incarceration at the base.

Charles Rudnick , a spokesman for Boston Scientific Corp., said the company supports the decision of its law firm, WilmerHale, to represent six men who were arrested in Bosnia in 2001 "because our legal system depends on vigorous advocacy for even the most unpopular causes."

Brackett Denniston, senior vice president and general counsel of General Electric, said the company strongly disagrees with the suggestion that it discriminate against law firms that do such work. "Justice is served when there is quality representation even for the unpopular," Denniston said in a statement.

Verizon issued a similar statement.

The lawyers have welcomed these expressions of solidarity from their paying clients.

"It would seem [the Pentagon] made a miscalculation," said Stephen Oleskey , an attorney at WilmerHale in Boston who has traveled to Guantanamo Bay seven times since he took up the case in 2004. "We haven't had any clients call up and say, 'We are really deeply disturbed that you are advocating for fair hearings.' The amount of support [we have gotten] has been heartening."

He said a committee at WilmerHale swiftly made the decision in 2004 to offer free help to the detainees when a request went out from the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based nonprofit legal organization, which had filed a petition in federal court on behalf of the detainees.

"As time has gone on, it has become plainer that it is an important issue for our justice system," Oleskey said. "People have been more and more interested in hearing about it. We have been asked to speak at universities, human rights groups, and churches."Continued...

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