The Justice Department is investigating a group of lawyers working for the American Civil Liberties Union (AACLU) for taking pictures of covert CIA agents at Guantanamo Bay and handing them over to known al Qaida operatives. The lawyers, representing several detainees charged with organizing the September 11, 2001, attacks, have been accused of participating in an elaborate scheme to “out” as many as forty covert CIA agents, by tracking them to their homes and photographing them.
The ACLU lawyers are accused of conspiring in what is being called the "John Adams Project," along with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), and using lists and data from "human rights groups," European researchers and news organizations that were involved in tracking international CIA-chartered flights and monitoring hotel phone records. The John Adams Project allegedly developed a list of 45 CIA employees, which the ACLU team tailed and photographed surreptitiously; often as they were leaving their homes.
Peter Finn, writing in The Washington Post, contacted the ACLU and got this response: "We are confident that no laws or regulations have been broken as we investigated the circumstances of the torture of our clients and as we have vigorously defended our clients' interests," said Anthony D. Romero, the group's executive director. "Rather than investigate the CIA officials who undertook the torture, they are now investigating the military lawyers who have courageously stepped up to defend these clients in these sham proceedings."
Finn further reports that The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers declined to address the specifics of the inquiry but “questioned its timing.” He quotes Joshua L. Dratel, counsel for the John Adams Project and a former board member of the NACDL, as saying: "The lawyers have a duty to find out what happened to their clients, and to the extent that the government and certain agencies are resistant to that to protect themselves and to insulate themselves from accountability, there is a tension there, and to the extent that this investigation is part of that tension, it's most unfortunate. But the lawyers will not shirk their duty."
Quoting unnamed sources, Finn adds: “Tracking international CIA-chartered flights, researchers have identified hotels in Europe where CIA personnel or contractors stayed. In some cases, through hotel phone records, they have been able to identify agency employees who jeopardized their cover by dialing numbers in the United States. Working from these lists, some of which include up to 45 names, researchers photographed agency workers and obtained other photos from public records, the sources said.”
What’s that you say? You haven’t read this story of treason in the mainstream media, or seen it reported on the evening news? We find this unusual, since it was almost exactly six years ago that the MSM went absolutely apoplectic over the imagined “crime” of Karl Rove revealing to Robert Novak that Joseph Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was an employee of the CIA. This was such an egregious violation of the official secrecy laws that the MSM (a/k/a the liberal press) demanded the appointment of a special prosecutor.
Leftie David Korn, over at The Nation, quoted former ambassador Wilson as wanting to “…see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs." Problem was, of course, that dear Valerie was not a covert agent of the CIA (she worked in an office), and the guy who spilled the beans to Novak was Richard Armitage, assistant to Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Facts to the contrary notwithstanding, the left and the MSM beat this dead horse for months; lamenting for the endangered safety of our brave CIA agents, and condemning the Bush administration for being too lax on secrecy.
Now, of course, the shoe is on the other foot, a different ox is being gored, the horse is of a different color, and the metaphors are mixed beyond all recognition. Don’t expect the liberal press to criticize the sainted ACLU lawyers. “Treason doth never prosper, and here’s the reason: For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
ACLU founder Roger BaldwinOver at out sister publication, Robert Moon, Macon County Conservative Examiner, found an interesting quotation from ACLU founder, Roger Baldwin, that pretty much sums it all up:
I am for socialism, disarmament, and, ultimately, for abolishing the state itself... I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and the sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.
