Thank you, Jesselyn Radack!

Jesselyn Radack, Thank you for standing up for our civil liberties!

Her story begins

"In 2001, I was a legal advisor in the Justice Department's Professional Responsibility Advisory Office. On December 7, I fielded a call from a criminal division attorney named John DePue. He wanted to know about the ethical propriety of interrogating "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh without a lawyer being present. DePue told me that Lindh's father had retained counsel for his son.

I advised him that Lindh should not be questionsed without his lawyer. That was on a Friday. Over the weekend, the FBI interviewed him anyway. DePue called back on Monday asking what to do now.

I advised that the interview may have to be sealed and used only for intelligence-gathering and national security purposes, not criminal prosecution."

For that, she was hounded out of her job, and worse.
Among the penalties

"Anonymous government officials branded me a "turncoat" in newspapers, placed me under criminal investigation, put me on the "no-fly" list and referred me to the state bars in which I am licensed. I got the "Guantánamo treatment lite": I was never told for what I was being criminally investigated, the bar complaint was based on a secret report to which I did not have access, and the government will neither confirm that I'm on the "no-fly" list, nor tell me how to be removed from it. The criminal case was dropped with no charges ever being brought. One of the bar complaints was dismissed, and the other is still pending after three years."


========

If our Bush administration officials devoted a tenth of the effort they spend on harassing Americans to catching al Qaida then there would not be a single terrorist left in the world.