Original Article Lawyers flock to Guantanamo Rising numbers arrive from U.S. to help detainees Neil A. Lewis New York Times Jun. 5, 2005 12:00 AM WASHINGTON - In the past few months, the small commercial air service to the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been carrying people military authorities had hoped would never be allowed there: American lawyers. And they have been arriving in increasing numbers, providing more than a third of the approximately 530 remaining detainees with representation in federal court. Despite considerable obstacles and expenses, other lawyers are eagerly lining up to challenge the government's detention of people the military has called enemy combatants and possible terrorists. A meeting last month at the Manhattan law firm Clifford Chance drew dozens of new volunteer lawyers who attended lectures from other lawyers who have been through the rigorous process of getting the government to allow them access to Guantanamo. The increase in lawyers for Guantanamo detainees was set in motion last June when the Supreme Court ruled against the Bush administration and said that the prisoners there were entitled to challenge their detentions in federal courts. The rate at which lawyers have stepped forward for the task may be a reflection of the changing public attitudes about Guantanamo and its mission. "In the beginning, just after 9/11, we couldn't get anybody," said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, the New York-based group that is coordinating the assigning of lawyers to prisoners. The earliest volunteers, Ratner said, were those who regularly handled death-penalty clients and were accustomed to representing the reviled in near-hopeless cases. But in recent months, some of the nation's largest and most prominent firms have enlisted in the effort and devoted considerable resources to it, including Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale & Dorr; Clifford Chance; Covington & Burling; Dorsey & Whitney; and Allen & Overy. "People are now eager to take this on," Ratner said. The law firms are bearing all the expenses, he said. The influx of defense lawyers at Guantanamo also seems to have had some effect on the character of the detention facility. Some of the lawyers contend, and one official agreed, that it was likely a factor in the authorities' decision to end most of the interrogations in recent months. In addition, some lawyers and human rights officials say that the lawyers' presence has reduced reports of abusive treatment by guards and interrogators, people who previously were the subject of complaints from the Red Cross and the FBI. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was base commander for nearly three years, until August 2003, said during his tenure that the system was designed to make the prisoners as compliant as possible to make them thoroughly dependent on their interrogators. An important ingredient in accomplishing that, he and other military officials at the base said, was isolation from the outside world. The arrival of defense lawyers at Guantanamo is an irreversible disruption of that isolation. The lawyers represent the detainees' access not only to federal courts but also to the international media; the only other authorized visitors, foreign officials and representatives of the Red Cross, do not generally speak publicly about the detainees. The lawyers' presence at Guantanamo has not resulted in any detainee gaining freedom while the legal issues move slowly through the courts. In March, James Dorsey and John Lundquist, partners at the Minneapolis firm of Fredrikson & Byron, along with Nicole Moen, an associate lawyer, traveled to Guantanamo to meet for the first time with their client, an Algerian named Achene Zemiri. After arriving at the base, they were put in drab quarters on the other side of Guantanamo Bay from the main base and prison camp. The next morning, they traveled by ferry and van to a small prison compound called Camp Echo, which was constructed specifically to handle attorney-client meetings and is outside the regular prison camp. Each brightly lighted cell is divided in two, with a table and chairs on one side of a heavy metal grate and the inmate's bed and toilet on the other. Dorsey said that Zemiri was at first wary and sat with his arms folded tightly around him. But by the end of two days of meetings, Dorsey said, Zemiri thanked them warmly and seemed to accept they were there to help him. He said that Zemiri's Canadian wife had given them some phrases to establish their credibility. "One was the name of a strange soft drink," he said. Dorsey, who practices civil law, said he was eager to help "the effort on the part of the Bar to see that there are meaningful and just processes." While the firm agreed to the initial representation, partners balked at taking on a second client, who was a reputed Taliban field commander.