Pruning Shears

Originally posted by H. Candace Gorman here.  It has since gone missing.  What follows is from her but I will not blockquote it:

Fortunately for all of you….the muzzle only applies to me.

On Tuesday I reported that the Government finally allowed me to discuss matters that had previously been “protected” in regards to my client Al-Ghizzawi. In fact the Government unclassified and allowed for public release a Petition for Original Habeas Corpus that I filed in the U.S. Supreme Court. I released that Petition to the Public in accordance with the Government’s designation of “unclassified.” On Friday the Department of Justice (DOJ) told me that it had made a mistake and that it had apparently violated the Protective Order (an Order that sets out the rules for the DOJ and Habeas counsel in regards to the Guantanamo cases) entered in the case when it “unclassified” and allowed for public release information in the Petition that it wanted to “protect” and that therefore I must remove my post of November 17 because of the DOJ’s mistake. I explained to the DOJ attorneys that the Petition and my Post of November 17th were widely distributed and are available at various sites on the web…they do not seem to care about that ….they only care that I not report about what they are now trying to declare “protected information”…. 5 days after they unclassified the material and made it available for public release.

This is of course outrageous conduct by the DOJ….in trying to declare something as “protected” after being clearly designated and distributed to the public but what else is new? For those of you who either remember my November 17th post or have it available on your website….I originally learned of the so called “Protected” information from a public source and the Judge in Al-Ghizzawi’s case still ruled that I could not discuss it. Anyway, later this weekend I will try to provide all of the links that I can find from other sources who properly reported on the petition and my saga regarding it…. for now I am leaving you with these two links….here and here as I happen to have these easily available.

I also expect several websites and other media outlets to be reporting on this and making the petition available at their websites because they received it from me back when I was allowed to distribute it or otherwise obtained it on the internet. I also provided interviews earlier this week and I expect that those will soon be available too. If any of you have time out there to find some of the websites where this story and petition are published please feel free to provide a link…or if you see it pop up on websites in the coming weeks please provide those links as well.

This is not the end of this story. Under the Protective Order the Government must actually get the Judge’s permission to retroactively keep me (and only me) from publishing and discussion the information that the Government now seeks to “Protect.” The DOJ will have to file a document with the Court explaining why this now very public information should be “protected.” Ultimately it will be the Judge’s decision. If you do not see my post back up that will mean that the Judge agreed with the Government, that I alone cannot talk about those things that you are privy to discuss.
I will just add….this is just another day in the life of being a habeas counsel.