Democrats may push to shutter war prisons

WASHINGTON -- House Democratic leaders yesterday outlined plans to try to force the Bush administration to close the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, taking aim at two sites that have sparked an international furor over the Bush administration's war policy.

Representative John P. Murtha, the chairman of the powerful Defense Appropriations subcommittee and a close ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said he wants to close both prisons by cutting their funding, "to restore our credibility worldwide." If he succeeds, it would force the administration to find a new location for high-value terrorism suspects.

"We have the role, as elected officials, to exert our influence through the power of the purse -- that's what it's all about," said Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat whose committee will hold hearings on Iraq next week. "We try not to micromanage the Defense Department, but I tell you, they need micromanagement. They're out of control."

The effort to close the prisons, which Murtha said Pelosi supports, illustrates how congressional Democrats are confronting the president over his war policies. The aggressive push to change the war's course has intensified after the president's address Wednesday night in which he announced plans to send an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq.

Democratic leaders will try to include the measure to close the prisons in a spending bill designed to pay for war operations, Murtha said. He acknowledged that closing Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo would be more symbolic than substantive. Abu Ghraib gained international infamy in 2004 after pictures emerged of US soldiers torturing and sexually abusing Iraqi prisoners there. The Guantanamo facility, which has housed Al Qaeda members and other terror suspects for more than five years, has emerged as a lightning rod for criticism of US policies in combating terrorism.

Numerous human rights groups and a United Nations commission have called for it to be shuttered, citing widespread reports of prisoner mistreatment. Starting last fall, Bush has used the prison as a holding place for suspects who were previously held in secret CIA prisons.

"My action is trying to restore credibility in the Middle East," Murtha said.

Bush has defended the detention center as a "necessary" part of the war on terror.

"I'd like to close Guantanamo, but I also recognize that we're holding some people that are darn dangerous and that we better have a plan to deal with them in our courts," Bush said in June.

A Pelosi spokesman, Brendan Daly, said the speaker isn't going to make a final judgment on whether the prisons should be closed until after Murtha's committee has hearings on the issue.

"She has encouraged him to look into it," Daly said.

Murtha's plan emerged as a new series of volleys over the president's war plans played out on Capitol Hill.

House and Senate Democratic leaders say they still hope to change the president's mind about the troop "surge" by passing a non binding resolution of disapproval in the coming weeks. But a growing number of Democrats say that -- because Bush is almost certain to ignore such a resolution -- more must be done to hasten the end of the war.

The most likely step, many Democrats say, would involve spending restrictions on the war budget.

"The non binding resolution is symbolic, and that's nice to do if you've got the time to do it," said Representative John F. Tierney, a Salem Democrat. But lawmakers have to use their power over the budget to stop the war, he said.

"That's where we're going to find out which Democrats and which Republicans are going to take a stand on this," Tierney said.

Though some Republicans are also skeptical of Bush's plan, they indicated they will resist Murtha's attempts to close prisons and control war policy.

"You can't conduct a war or a battle from the House chamber or a committee room," said Representative C.W. Bill Young of Florida, the ranking Republican on the Defense Appropriations subcommittee.

Still, in an indication of the president's waning support in Congress, House Republican leaders held a "listening session" yesterday morning to hear out GOP members' concerns, and Republican leaders have been invited to join the president at Camp David for further talks this weekend.

Bush yesterday made calls to King Abdullah II of Jordan and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to rally support in the Middle East. And for a second straight day, lawmakers grilled top administration officials about the plan on Capitol Hill.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates insisted that the White House has no plans to attack targets in Iran. He also said he believes that having more US troops in Iraq will succeed because Iraqi leaders say they are committed to reaching political settlements to pacify the nation.

"If they fail to do those things, then I think it's incumbent upon the administration and incumbent upon me to recommend looking at whether this is the right strategy," Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The White House got some support from Senator John McCain of Arizona, the committee's top Republican and a 2008 Republican presidential prospect. McCain said the troop increase will give Iraqis "the best possible chances to succeed."

But Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, said the US mission has changed substantially since Congress gave the president the authority to destroy weapons of mass destruction and depose Saddam Hussein.

"Why not come back to the Congress? Why not come back and permit us to have a vote on this surge?" Kennedy asked.

Gates said he would pass that message on to the president, but "I think he feels that he has the authority that he needs to proceed."

That is driving much of Democrats' interest in forcing the president's hand. Kennedy and other Democrats have proposed keeping the president from sending more troops to Iraq by blocking the money he would need to do it.

Representative James P. McGovern, a Worcester Democrat, said he is preparing a bill that would go even further, cutting off funds for nearly all troops after six months and allocating only enough resources to provide for the "safe and orderly withdrawal" of US forces.

© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

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Official Attacks Top Law Firms Over Detainees

By NEIL A. LEWIS

Published: January 13, 2007
The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 — The senior Pentagon official in charge of military detainees suspected of terrorism said in an interview this week that he was dismayed that lawyers at many of the nation’s top firms were representing prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and that the firms’ corporate clients should consider ending their business ties.

The comments by Charles D. Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, produced an instant torrent of anger from lawyers, legal ethics specialists and bar association officials, who said Friday that his comments were repellent and displayed an ignorance of the duties of lawyers to represent people in legal trouble.

“This is prejudicial to the administration of justice,” said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University and an authority on legal ethics. “It’s possible that lawyers willing to undertake what has been long viewed as an admirable chore will decline to do so for fear of antagonizing important clients.

“We have a senior government official suggesting that representing these people somehow compromises American interests, and he even names the firms, giving a target to corporate America.”

Mr. Stimson made his remarks in an interview on Thursday with Federal News Radio, a local Washington-based station that is aimed at an audience of government employees.

The same point appeared Friday on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, where Robert L. Pollock, a member of the newspaper’s editorial board, cited the list of law firms and quoted an unnamed “senior U.S. official” as saying, “Corporate C.E.O.’s seeing this should ask firms to choose between lucrative retainers and representing terrorists.”

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.”

Karen J. Mathis, a Denver lawyer who is president of the American Bar Association, said: “Lawyers represent people in criminal cases to fulfill a core American value: the treatment of all people equally before the law. To impugn those who are doing this critical work — and doing it on a volunteer basis — is deeply offensive to members of the legal profession, and we hope to all Americans.”

In an interview on Friday, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said he had no problem with the current system of representation. “Good lawyers representing the detainees is the best way to ensure that justice is done in these cases,” he said.

Neither the White House nor the Pentagon had any official comment, but officials sought to distance themselves from Mr. Stimson’s view. His comments “do not represent the views of the Defense Department or the thinking of its leadership,” a senior Pentagon official said. He would not allow his name to be used, seemingly to lessen the force of his rebuke. Mr. Stimson did not return a call on Friday seeking comment.

The role of major law firms agreeing to take on the cases of Guantánamo prisoners challenging their detentions in federal courts has hardly been a secret and has been the subject of many news articles that have generally cast their efforts in a favorable light. Michael Ratner, who heads the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based human rights group that is coordinating the legal representation for the Guantánamo detainees, said about 500 lawyers from about 120 law firms had volunteered their services to represent Guantánamo prisoners.

When asked in the radio interview who was paying for the legal representation, Mr. Stimson replied: “It’s not clear, is it? Some will maintain that they are doing it out of the goodness of their heart, that they’re doing it pro bono, and I suspect they are; others are receiving moneys from who knows where, and I’d be curious to have them explain that.”

Lawyers expressed outrage at that, asserting that they are not being paid and that Mr. Stimson had tried to suggest they were by innuendo. Of the approximately 500 lawyers coordinated by the Center for Constitutional Rights, no one is being paid, Mr. Ratner said. One Washington law firm, Shearman & Sterling, which has represented Kuwaiti detainees, has received money from the families of the prisoners, but Thomas Wilner, a lawyer there, said they had donated all of it to charities related to the September 2001 terrorist attacks. Mr. Ratner said that there were two other defense lawyers not under his group’s umbrella and that he did not know whether they were paid.

Christopher Moore, a lawyer at the New York firm Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton who represented an Uzbeki detainee who has since been released, said: “We believe in the concept of justice and that every person is entitled to counsel. Any suggestion that our representation was anything other than a pro bono basis is untrue and unprofessional.” Mr. Moore said he had made four trips to Guantánamo and one to Albania at the firm’s expense, to see his client freed.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, wrote to President Bush on Friday asking him to disavow Mr. Stimson’s remarks.

Mr. Stimson, who was a Navy lawyer, graduated from George Mason University Law School. In a 2006 interview with the magazine of Kenyon College, his alma mater, Mr. Stimson said that he was learning “to choose my words carefully because I am a public figure on a very, very controversial topic.”

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