Dear Mr. Johnson:

First, let me congratulate you on your appointment to the esteemed and critically important position of General Counsel of the United States Department of Defense. As you know, an unfortunate legacy of the last Administration is that the Defense Department is charged with running the notorious detention...

All those many years ago, in my last semester at the University of Wisconsin, I finally took that science class that I needed to graduate. I opted for Plants and Man. In addition to learning such fine things as how to make wine and beer we learned about the importance...

This week Judge John B. Bates of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled once again that Guantanamo prisoner Abdul Hamid Al-Ghizzawi was not entitled to any medical care beyond what the government decides he needs, assuming that it is any at all, and that neither...

During the week of September 24th I went to visit my client Mr. Al-Ghizzawi at Guantanamo again. It is clear to me that our visits are nearing the end... Mr. Al-Ghizzawi won't be with the living much longer. Mr. Al-Ghizzawi knows his days are limited, not only can he barely...

I am going to miss Col. Moe he was like the gift that kept on giving... Moe was in charge of the military prosecutions for the Guantanamo kangaroo tribunals... he also saw himself as the military's spin master for Guantanamo .... But trouble started to brew in the...

When people ask me about Guantanamo I try to describe the surreal experience of having a Starbucks a few short miles from a soviet style gulag. I talk about my client Mr. Al-Ghizzawi, who has never been charged with anything and never will be, dying of hepatitis B and not...

I was delighted last month when I read that one of the lawyers in the trenches of the Combat Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) process decided to come forward and expose that severely flawed and brazenly manipulated process. Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham is the latest hero to blow the whistle on...

Colonel Moe is at it again. Perhaps you remember when Moe wanted Major Mori, the military attorney that was appointed to represent the Guantánamo detainee from Australia, brought up on charges for doing too good of a job for his client? Aside from the fact that Moe apparently prefers...

Today is another in a long string of very sad days. I feel certain that the fear I felt when I saw the news of today' death is shared by all of the families of the detainees, as well as by the attorneys representing these men. All of us involved...

At the beginning of the year Cully Stimson gleefully announced on a government radio station the first attack against the Guantánamo attorneys that was in the works. Attorney Cully (who was the assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs until he began his unfounded attack on the lawyers)...

The heat, like everything else at Guantanamo, is oppressive. As I was waiting to see Mr. Al-Ghizzawi at camp six I was thinking about the men who were having "rec" time at that moment. The detainees at Camp 6 get two hours outside, but there is no shade in the...

Oh my. Seems one of the big news stories Saturday morning is the fact that some of our Guantánamo clients get frustrated at the lack of progress as we try to get them out of that hell hole. Can you blame them? Of course not. These men have sat at...

OK, a show of hands please, how many of you thought about me when you saw the article about how the military wants to keep the lawyers out of Guantánamo? It seems the military thinks that we attorneys are acting as a conduit for the media! (If only it...

I received a letter this week from Mr. Al-Ghizzawi (my client at Guantánamo). If you have not been keeping up, Mr. Al-Ghizzawi is a prisoner at the base who is dying of hepatitis B, and he is not being treated. Seems our government does not think Mr. Al-Ghizzawi...

I have been an attorney for almost twenty-five years. I have filed thousands of documents in the various courts, many have been short routine documents others complex and lengthy, but the procedures have been pretty much the same no matter which court.... And then came the Guantanamo cases. In keeping...

We now know that the worst of the worst of the worst was sentenced to nine months in prison for his "terrorists' acts". David Hicks, the so-called "Australian Taliban," has been held at Guantánamo for more than five years and since the military previously announced that none of...

David Hicks, the Australian man that has been held in Guantánamo for five years, (the last year or so in solitary confinement) agreed to plead guilty yesterday. There are a few things you should know about his plea. First, and most importantly, Hicks is pleading guilty to a crime...

So yesterday we learned that the new secretary of defense wanted to close Guantánamo, but Cheney and his side kick Gonzales said "no." To anyone paying attention it is no surprise they do not want Guantánamo closed. I mean, look at Gonzales' best terrorist cases that were tried...

I only learned of the phrase "caveat auditor" this past week; it was used in the context of discussing the concept of irony in a different administration. Sadly there is nothing ironic (yet?) about our current administration, everything is just too predictable. So although my first thought was that...

Why bother to do fact checking when it is so much easier to just write down whatever you are told? Every time I read or hear about the ever-changing number of Guantánamo prisoners that have "returned to the battlefield" I try to research this issue yet again. The Pentagon,...