More Bush Lawyers Join Attacks on Liz Cheney Ad
In recent days the Justice Department has been getting angry phone calls about the "Qaeda" lawyers supposedly hired by Attorney General Eric Holder. The reason? An unusually ferocious Web ad by Liz Cheney's advocacy group, Keep America Safe, targeting Justice lawyers who previously did pro bono work for Guantánamo detainees. The ad—in one frame, a headline refers to the DOJ as the "Department of Jihad"—has been denounced as McCarthyism by liberal critics. It's also being condemned by a growing number of former George W. Bush administration lawyers. Ted Olson, who served as Bush's solicitor general, says he has the "greatest respect" for lawyers who represented Gitmo clients; they were acting "consistent with the finest traditions of the legal profession," he says. He calls the attacks on one of the targets, Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, "outrageous." Four years ago, Katyal represented Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's former driver, in a landmark Supreme Court case that overturned the military tribunals that Bush created. (Katyal did a "marvelous job" on the case, says Olson.)
But two months ago, Katyal argued before a U.S. appeals court a controversial Obama administration position against giving accused terrorists at the American prison in Bagram, Afghanistan, the right to challenge their detention in federal court—a stand that has drawn stiff criticism from human-rights groups. Another top Justice lawyer Cheney's group is targeting, Tony West, who runs the civil division, once represented accused "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh. But since joining Justice, West has repeatedly signed off on legal briefs opposing the release of Gitmo detainees—and approved appeals when federal judges ordered the detainees released, according to court records. "To demonize [the Justice lawyers] on the basis of who they represented in the past is wrong," says Jack Goldsmith, another former top Justice lawyer under Bush.
Holder's aides may have initially mishandled the issue by refusing a request from Sen. Charles Grassley to identify all nine of the lawyers who previously represented Gitmo detainees (they named only Katyal and Jennifer Daskal, a former lawyer for Human Rights Watch). But one aide, who asked not to be named for political sensitivities, tells NEWSWEEK that Holder was trying to protect the mostly mid- and low-level lawyers involved. Liz Cheney has vigorously defended the ad on TV, and Aaron Harison, a spokesman for Cheney's group, says it's only interested in "transparency." The public "has a right to know," he says, if the lawyers are still working on detainee issues, and why they were hired in the first place. Whatever their validity, the attacks from Cheney's group have gained political traction: White House aides are now reportedly preparing to recommend that the president reverse Holder's decision to try the alleged 9/11 co-conspirators in federal court. On its Web site, Keep America Safe proclaimed at least partial victory, touting the news as evidence the administration is "folding."
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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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