NYT Editorial: Gitmo - After The Lawyers ("Outrageous" Justice Department Proposals)

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/opinion/27fri1.html?hp

Editorial
After the Lawyers

Published: April 27, 2007
It can be hard to tell whom the Bush administration considers more of an enemy at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp: the prisoners or the lawyers.

William Glaberson reported in The Times yesterday that the Justice Department had asked a federal appeals court to remove some of the last shreds of legal representation available to the prisoners. The government wants the court to allow intelligence and military officers to read the mail sent by lawyers to their clients at Guantánamo Bay.

Lawyers would also be limited to three visits with each client, and an inmate would be allowed only a single visit to decide whether to authorize an attorney to handle his case. Interrogators at Guantánamo Bay have a history of masking their identities, so the rule would make it much harder than it already is to gain the trust of a prisoner.

Perhaps the most outrageous of the Justice Department’s proposals would allow government officials — on their own authority — to deny lawyers access to the evidence used to decide whether an inmate is an illegal enemy combatant. Not even the appalling Military Commissions Act of 2006, rammed through in the last days of the Republican-controlled Congress, goes that far.

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