Gitmo Lawyer Julia Tarver Mason: Aiding, Abetting … and Not Talking
http://frontpagemag.com/2010/03/17/gitmo-lawyer-julia-tarver-mason-aiding-abetting-%E2%80%A6-and-not-talking/
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Yesterday morning, I had an encounter on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. with Julia Tarver Mason — a lawyer who represents several accused terrorists.
I found that Ms. Mason is more willing to speak with terrorists then reporters.
My interest in Ms. Mason began two nights ago, when I read the investigative piece by Debra Burlingame and Thomas Joscelyn in the Wall Street Journal regarding 400 American lawyers from high priced law firms who have “volunteered” their time to personally wage “lawfare” on behalf of enemy combatants held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. One of the premier firms involved is Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, which boasted in 2007: “Paul, Weiss achieves more victories for Guantanamo detainees.” Ms. Julia Tarver Mason is a partner in the firm.
In 2006, Mason was banned from Guantanamo Bay by the base commander and the U.S. Department of Justice for secretly passing on anti-American propaganda and operational detention details to her “client.”
This client was Majeed Abdullah Al Joudi. Al Joudi, a Saudi member of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, was captured in Afghanistan in 2001. In 2004, it was disclosed at his combat status review tribunal that he was “was captured with al-Qaeda surveillance evasion reports and after-action reports.”
The anti-American propaganda Mason secretly passed on to Mr. Al Joudi was a slick, inflammatory 18-page color brochure — written entirely in Arabic — that slammed American detention policy as “that of anti-Arab, anti-Islamic, and other racist abuse.” It was filled with pictures of masked, bound, and kneeling prisoners, and according to the Wall Street Journal, “included pictures of what appeared to be detainee operations in Iraq.”
Ms. Mason had been secretly sending incendiary materials to her client through a system called “legal mail,” which is supposed to be strictly legal correspondence between a lawyer and the enemy combatant. According to Burlingame and Joscelyn, a 2004 protective order by federal Judge Joyce Hens Green forbids the lawyers to give out any information on political news, current events, or the names of U.S. government personnel.
Ms. Mason and her other Paul, Weiss lawyers were banned by Major General Jay W. Hood, then commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo. General Hood said — in a sworn affidavit submitted to the D.C. District Court, obtained by Burlingame and Joscelyn under the Freedom of Information Act — that the pamphlet aided and abetted the terrorists there:
The very nature of this document gives tremendous moral support to those who would strike out against our country.
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It is not a factual report.
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[Photos] were staged, inflammatory photos from Iraq [with] provocative story captions.
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