IF you were hiring a lawyer to help pro tect Americans from terrorists, you likely wouldn’t choose a left-wing ac tivist who’s been a champion of the killers held at Guantanamo Bay.
Then again, you’re not President Obama. His Justice Department has raised eyebrows by tapping Jennifer Daskal, formerly “senior counterterrorism counsel” at Human Rights Watch, to work as counsel in its National Security Division and to serve on a task force deciding the future of Guantanamo and its detainees.
A former public defender, Daskal has no prosecutorial experience — let alone a background in national security. So how did she land an important job at Justice — one of only four political appointments at the National Security Division?
“Even when selecting political appointees, the administration must place qualifications above political views, especially in an office as important as the National Security Division,” says Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.
Others note that if Daskal’s Human Rights Watch activism counted as lobbying, the hire would be a direct conflict of interest: She’s now working for the government on the same policies she was recently paid to shape from the outside.
As a lawyer for the advocacy group, Daskal never missed a chance to give Gitmo detainees the benefit of the doubt while assuming the worst about US government intentions. She has called for a “truth commission” to investigate Bush anti-terror policies, and was even unhappy with Team Obama before joining it.
In February, Justice asserted the state-secrets privilege to avoid disclosing details of the CIA’s interrogation program; Daskal called it “a huge disappointment . . . inconsistent with the commitment to transparency and openness promised by the new administration.”
Back when five Gitmo terrorists, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, announced their intention to confess, Daskal refused to accept their guilt: “In light of the men’s severe mistreatment, the judge should require a full and thorough factual inquiry to determine whether or not these pleas are voluntary.”
Maybe she didn’t hear the outburst from one of the five at the end of his hearing: “I hope the jihad will continue and strike the heart of America with all kinds of weapons of mass destruction.”
Daskal thinks America is guilty of torture — but she has an odd understanding of it. In a 54-page report on Gitmo detainees’ allegedly deteriorating mental health, she laments how one detainee, “a self-styled poet,” “found it was nearly impossible to write poetry anymore because the prison guards would only allow him to keep a pen or pencil in his cell for short periods of time.” Quick, call the Red Cross!
Then there’s the attention Daskal lavished on Canadian-born Omar Khadr, a detainee she says is being denied “his rights as a child.” (Human Rights Watch has urged Defense Secretary Bob Gates to transfer Khadr to courts where he’d be treated as a juvenile.)
He’s an adult now, but Khadr was 15 when apprehended on an Afghan battlefield — where, US troops say, he launched the grenade that killed Sgt. First Class Christopher Speer.
Sgt. Layne Morris, who was wounded by the same grenade, calls claims that Khadr should be treated as a child “laughable.” And he says: “The fact that she took on that young man’s case — and has argued the ridiculous things that she has — and is now appointed to the Justice Department, where she brings in those same thought processes and prejudices — it doesn’t bode well for the security of our country.”
A spokesman for Justice’s National Security Division, Dean Boyd, responded to a request for comment by downplaying the hire’s significance, saying Daskal “is one of the 15 staff members supporting the Detention Policy Task Force from the member agencies . . . Any final decisions on the recommendations by the Task Force will be ultimately made by the president.”
But a president relies on his advisers — and the advice coming from Justice is what has some people worried.
Andrew McCarthy, who prosecuted several high-profile terror cases in New York, points out that, when it comes to the legal system, only the Justice Department looks out for the public’s interests. Defense attorneys protect their clients, and judges remain neutral — it’s Justice’s job to make the case for US national security. In the still evolving arena of war-on-terror laws, that role is especially important.
But Daskal doesn’t seem to think we need to worry much about security. After Obama ordered Guantanamo closed, she commented that the administration might have trouble prosecuting some detainees still in custody because evidence against them is tainted. Her solution? “The Department of Justice may have to adopt the Al Capone theory, where you get the guy on tax evasion.”
If the Obama Justice Department’s new approach to national security is to treat terrorism like bootlegging, it’s going to be a long — and dangerous — four years.
clyne.meghan@gmail.com