The Lindh Case E-Mails
When John Ashcroft announced the indictment of John Walker Lindh, the attorney general said the rights of the 20-year-old "American Taliban" had been "carefully, scrupulously honored." But inside the Justice Department, not everybody was convinced. Even as prosecutors began preparing criminal charges against Lindh last December, the department's own ethics advisers were raising red flags. Internal e-mails, obtained by NEWSWEEK, show that two Justice ethics lawyers concluded FBI plans to interrogate Lindh without the presence of a lawyer would violate the department's ethical guidelines and are "not authorized by law." When Justice lawyers later learned the interview had taken place anyway, they worried that it might not be usable in court.
The e-mails also show that some Justice lawyers viewed the evidence against Lindh as less serious than public portrayals of him as a devotee of Osama bin Laden. "At present we have no knowledge that he did anything other than join the Taliban," one wrote. The e-mails were turned over under seal by prosecutors in March to the judge overseeing Lindh's case. But the judge, T. S. Ellis, ruled the e-mails didn't have to be shared with the defense. Still, lawyers say the e-mails cut to one of the central issues in the case: interrogations of Lindh by FBI agent Christopher Reimann on Dec. 9 and 10 at a Marine base in Afghanistan. Prosecutors have acknowledged that Lindh's confessions to Reimann, along with earlier ones to military interrogators, are the basis for their 10-count indictment charging Lindh with conspiring to kill U.S. nationals and aid the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The e-mails shed new light on these interviews. On Dec. 7 a Justice counterterrorism prosecutor, John De Pue, queried an internal ethics unit called the Professional Responsibility Advisory Office on whether Lindh could be questioned by the FBI, given that Lindh's father had retained a defense lawyer, James Brosnahan. (Brosnahan had been sending repeated faxes seeking access to Lindh.) "I consulted with a Senior Legal Advisor here... and we don't think you can have the FBI agent question Walker," lawyer Jesselyn A. Radack wrote back that day. But the following Monday the lawyers learned that an FBI agent "went and interviewed Walker over the weekend." Radack noted: "The interview may have to be sealed or only used for national security purposes"--not for a criminal case. "Ugh," replied De Pue.
The concerns of the Justice lawyers abated 10 days later when they got back an FBI report that Lindh was read his Miranda warnings and had waived his rights. But Radack warned there might still be a "residual issue" as to whether there was a "coerced confession." Lindh's lawyers have now raised the same issue, arguing in new court papers that Lindh was "sleep deprived," "in pain"--and was never told his family had retained a lawyer. A Justice official said the FBI didn't have to tell him because the lawyer was hired by Lindh's father, not Lindh. "Our position is that John Walker Lindh did not have representation at the time," the official said.
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Michael Isikoff has been an award-winning investigative correspondent for Newsweek since 2004. He has written extensively on the U.S. government's war on terrorism, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, presidential politics and other national issues. His book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," co-written with David Corn, was an instant New York Times best-seller when it was published in September, 2006. The book was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "fascinating reading" and "the most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations" in the run up to the war in Iraq. Since January 2009, Isikoff has been an MSNBC contributor, making regular appearances on the Rachel Maddow Show and Hardball w/ Chris Matthews.
Ever since the events of September 11, Isikoff has broken repeated stories about the U.S. government's war on terror and won numerous journalism awards. His blog "DeClassified: Investigative Reporting in Real Time," which appears regularly on Newsweek's Web site and is written with MarkHosenball, has become a must-read for senior U.S. intelligence officials. Isikoff and Hosenball won the 2005 award from the Society of Professional Journalists for best investigative reporting online.
Isikoff's June 2002 Newsweek cover story on U.S. intelligence failures that preceded the 9-11 terror attacks, along with a series of related articles, was honored with the Investigative Reporters and Editors top prize for investigative reporting in magazine journalism. He was honored, along with a team of Newsweek reporters, by the Society of Professional Journalists for coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal. For that coverage, Isikoff obtained exclusive internal White House, Justice Department and State Department memos showing how decisions made at the highest levels of the Bush administration led to abuses in the interrogation of terror suspects. Isikoff was also part of a reporting team that earned Newsweek the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2002, the highest award in magazine journalism, for their coverage of the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.
Isikoff's exclusive reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal gained him national attention in 1998, including profiles in The New York Times and The Washington Post and a guest appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman." His coverage of the events that lead to President Bill Clinton's impeachment earned Newsweek the prestigious National Magazine Award in the Reporting category in 1999. Isikoff's reporting also won the National Headliner Award, the Edgar A. Poe Award presented by the White House Correspondents Association and the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency. In 2001, Isikoff was named on a list of "most influential journalists" in the nation's capital by Washingtonian magazine.
Isikoff is the author of "Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story," a book that chronicled his own reporting of the Lewinsky story and was hailed by a critic for The Washington Post-Los Angeles Times news service as "the absolutely essential narrative of the scandal with revelations that no one would have thought possible." The book, also a New York Times bestseller, was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Book of the Month Club.
Isikoff came to Newsweek from The Washington Post, where he had been a reporter since September 1981. There he covered the Justice Department and the Persian Gulf War, reported on international drug operations in Latin America and worked on the Post's financial news desk. Isikoff graduated from Washington University with a B.A. in 1974 and received a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 1976.
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