Lynne Stewart: "War on Terror" Casualty

From Consortium News

g a credible defense -- is everything a lawyer should be in an open society. But we no longer live in an open society. The persecution of Stewart is the persecution of us all."

Stewart upheld the tradition of the people's lawyer as embodied in the work of Clarence Darrow and William Kunstler. Like them, she deeply believed that all people deserved a vigorous defense.

I interviewed Stewart for the Flashpoints show on Pacifica Radio, along with her husband, Ralph Poynter, in 2014, right after her release from Maximum Security prison in New York.

Dennis Bernstein: Why do you think they put you in jail? Is it because for a zillion years you represented the poorest of the poor, the people who really had the right to be represented, but not the money?

Lynne Stewart: Well, I think it's a combination really of wanting to send a warning shot, as we say, to ice the zeal of lawyers who represent such people. I mean, the fact of the matter is that I was the stalking horse, and they wanted to let lawyers know they could represent controversial people but they had to do so within the bounds set by the government: "Do it our way." Don't do it the way, you and the client, I mean which is traditional thing. You sit with the client, you decide on a strategy and you do it. But, no, they wanted to make it, "You have to do it within the parameters we suggest." And that, of course, is a terrible incursion on the attorney/client privilege, and the relationship.

DB: How thoroughly were you and your clients bugged?

LS: Well, we didn't know it, at the time. But, it was visits, in a prison setting, and they recorded everything. They had audio and visual. And it was very funny because they couldn't put it like where we would be seeing a camera or anything, so they mounted it above our heads. So you see these hands moving across a table. The Sheikh's hands, my hands, my interpreter's... really showing nothing. But they liked that, they liked that, just everything they could get.

DB: And where are we? Here we are, 2014, where we're seeing endless revelations about the level of national security activities that undermine all the core aspects of free speech. How would you evaluate where we are now, in that world of first amendment free speech? Do we have any left?

LS: Well, I tell you, it was interesting. You know, of course, we raised that as an issue for the case, when I was indicted. That their intrusion in 6th amendment sacred precincts should preclude them from being able to prosecute. However, by that time, the Patriot Act had been passed, in the interim between the time they did it, and the time that we raised this. And it was more or less to say, well, under the Patriot Act they could do it, so what's the problem?

Even though it was not done under the Patriot Act. But it's the halo effect of the Patriot Act that allowed them to do it. And I think that that covers a lot of situations nowadays. Now they want to be able to take someone's cell phone, which is really a mini-computer. And if you're arrested they can get any information off there, including medical information, including any information that's private and confidential. So the fact of the matter is, I think we all have to say ourselves [...] "What would I say, freewheeling. They're out there, they can get anything they want, whenever they want it." And we act accordingly.

DB: Lynne Stewart in the studio, she's free, she's with us. What's the advice [for lawyers]? Should they take on these tough clients? Should they be afraid?

LS: Well, [...] I was being interviewed today by an AP reporter from New York, who was doing a thing on how people who represent difficult clients are punished personally and professionally. And so we were talking about this very point and he said, "Do you see anybody coming along that's going to take your place, that could do what you did?" And I said, "There are some folks, I count my own son as one of them, although he does it in a very low key way without publicity, etc."

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