My name is Jesselyn Radack and I'm the former Justice Department ethics advisor who blew the whistle in the case of the so-called "American Taliban," John Walker Lindh. For doing my job, I was forced from the Justice Department, placed under a pretextual criminal investigation, fired from my private job at the government's behest, referred to the state bars in which I'm licensed as an attorney, and put on the "no-fly" list. Articles verifying this can be found at http://www.cradl.info
Anonymous government officials branded me a "traitor," "turncoat," and "terrorist sympathizer," but I'm really a 36-year-old wife and mother of three; practicing attorney and member of the D.C. Bar Legal Ethics Committee; and active congregant at Temple Sinai.
The past five years have been the most difficult of my life, but they have also been a cataclysmic growth period that has cemented my commitment to civil rights and liberties. I realize that there are many stories like mine, and that I am just a footnote in a seismic shift that is occurring in our country. But I promised myself that if I could ever speak freely again, then I would use my voice to try to prevent this sort of political revenge from happening to anyone else.
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. Again, my advice was ignored.
Three weeks later, on January 15, then-Attorney General Ashcroft announced that a criminal complaint was being filed against Lindh. "The subject here is entitled to choose his own lawyer," he said, "and to our knowledge, has not chosen a lawyer at this time." I knew that wasn't true.
Three weeks later, Ashcroft announced Lindh's indictment, saying his rights "have been carefully, scrupulously honored." Again, I knew that wasn't true.
At about the same time, I was given an unscheduled, unprecedented and blistering performance evaluation, despite having received a performance award and a raise during the preceding year. I was told that the vitriolic review would be placed in my permanent personnel file unless I found another job.
I was shocked, but I didn't put two and two together until a few weeks had passed. On March 7, I inadvertently learned that the judge presiding over the Lindh case had ordered that all Justice Department correspondence related to Lindh's interrogation be submnitted to the court. Such orders routinely go to everyone with a connection to the case in question, but I heard about it only because the Lindh prosecutor contacted me directly.
There was more. The prosecutor said he had only two of my e-mails. I knew I had written more than a dozen. When I went to check the hard copy file, the e-mails containing my assessment that the FBI had committed an ethical violation in Lindh's interrogation were gone.
With the help of technical support, I resurrected the missing e-mails from my computer archives. I documented and included them in a memo to my boss and took home a copy for safekeeping in case they "disappeared" again. Then I resigned.
Months later, as the Justice Department continued to claim that it never believed at the time of his interrogatin Lindh had a lawyer, I disclosed the e-mails to Newsweek in accordance with the Whistleblower Protection Act.
Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, famed for its fact-checking department, later confirmed my story in her article, "Lost in the Jihad" at http://www.newyorker.com/...
An official list compiled by the prosecution confirms that the Justice Department did not hand over Radack's most critical e-mail, in which she questioned the viability of Lindh's confession, until after her confrontation with [her boss, Claudia] Flynn.
As we observe President's Day weekend, I wish I could celebrate the esteemed Office that the current holder has so denigrated. During one of my darker days over the past five years in the wilderness, Sy Hersh told me: "We may not have truth, but we will always have history." History will not be kind to George W. Bush.