Pentagon official’s ethics questioned

MIAMI — The San Francisco Bar Association is asking its state bar to conduct a formal investigation of a senior Pentagon official who cast fellow lawyers as dishonorable for offering free legal services to U.S.-held captives at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

It is the latest twist in an uproar over a deputy assistant secretary of defense’s broadcast call Jan. 11 for corporate America to boycott law firms whose employees defend Guantánamo captives.

The Pentagon renounced the remarks of the deputy, attorney Charles “Cully” Stimson, who released a brief apology.

But the board of directors of the 8,000-attorney San Francisco bar voted Wednesday night to ask the California Bar to conduct an investigation into whether Stimson, an inactive member, acted unethically. It asks that, if conclusive, he “be disciplined appropriately, up to and including disbarment.”

A spokeswoman for the California Bar said all complaints are investigated; discipline is rare.

Stimson’s remarks and Guantánamo also will be the subjects of multiple resolutions at the Feb. 8-10 national meeting of the American Bar Association (ABA) in Miami, defense lawyer Neal Sonnett said.

“What Stimson has done, perhaps to his everlasting regret, is focus attention on all the problems surrounding the Guantánamo legal issues,” said Sonnett, who was an ABA observer at an earlier Guantánamo war court.

At issue is whether Stimson was unethical in using a radio interview aimed at federal employees to recite a list of leading law firms that let lawyers defend detainees and said corporate executives “are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms.”

Legal groups and some newspaper editorials condemned the comments as at odds with the bedrock U.S. principle of free, or pro-bono, representation.

Six days later, Stimson apologized in a letter to The Washington Post, renouncing his remarks as at odds with his “core values.”

Friday, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon said the Pentagon had nothing more to say on the episode and offered no response to the California Bar challenge.

San Francisco Bar President Nanci Clarence said Friday the board asked for the disciplinary investigation by “an overwhelming majority.”

The board includes attorneys whose firms offer pro-bono business at Guantánamo and were singled out by Stimson in his Federal News Radio broadcast.

Legal experts don’t agree on whether the remark constituted an ethical breach.

Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, for example, wrote to The New York Times after Stimson’s apology that, as a lawyer, Stimson was free to articulate an unpopular opinion “without fear of bar discipline.”

Yale law professor Judith Resnik countered that the issue had to be analyzed through a constellation that includes Stimson’s powerful position, overseeing detainee affairs; his remarks and his status as an attorney.

“I believe that in this context, it is fair to describe what he did as unethical,” she said.