Source: CNS News
Neal Katyal (c). appointed as acting US Solicitor General, the person responsible for representing the United States before the SCOTUS, previously defended Osama bin Laden's driver and denied that the War on Terror actually existed.
Neal Katyal, who became the acting US solicitor general when Elena Kagan was nominated to serve on the US Supreme Court, previously served as the legal counsel of record for the man who worked as Osama bin Laden’s driver from February 1996 through November 2001.
Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who underwent training at an al Qaeda camp, was charged with transporting weapons to al Qaeda operatives.
The Hamden case culminated in the 2006 Supreme Court ruling that said the Bush administration’s military tribunals violated US law and international conventions.
In one brief in the Hamden case, Katyal argued that the war on terrorism is not really a war. “That ‘war’ manifestly is not a war in any sense of the term against any nation state or indeed against any well defined enemy,” the brief said.
Debra Burlingame, a co-founder of the national security advocacy group Keep America Safe, said Katyal’s comments on terrorism are significant because they show Katyal doesn’t believe we are really in a war. “That message is not lost on the people we are trying to fight,” Burlingame told CNSNews.com.
Burlingame is the sister of Charles F. Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001...
Katyal is one of nine attorneys in the Justice Department who previously represented a Guantanamo detainee. That’s the bigger problem, Burlingame said.
“With respect to attorneys representing Gitmo detainees, Katyal is probably the best of the bunch as far as bona fides. It is alarming that the Obama administration has installed so many lawyers that represented Gitmo detainees,” Burlingame said. “He wasn’t just advocating the law, but he tried to advance a narrative (that) Hamdan was just a driver. This guy was transporting weapons aimed at American troops.”
The military assigned Lt. Commander Charles Swift to serve as Hamden’s attorney. Katyal, then a Georgetown University law professor, volunteered his time to be the civilian counsel after Swift contacted him...
The role of the solicitor general is to represent the legal position of the United States government before the US Supreme Court.
