The Jesselyn Radack Case

Ed Brayton points out Jesselyn Radack's account of the Bush administration's dishonest and sleazy retaliation against her whistleblowing about the Justice Department's deception in the so-called "American Taliban" case of John Walker Lindh. Radack was an ethics advisor for the Department of Justice who was called about whether Lindh could be interrogated without an attorney present. She pointed out that Lindh's father had already retained counsel, and that counsel needed to be present. The FBI interrogated him without counsel anyway, so she advised that that interview would need to be sealed and used only for national security purposes, not for criminal prosecution. She was ignored, Attorney General John Ashcroft lied about Lindh's rights being respected, and the DOJ tried to destroy evidence of Radack's correspondence. She recovered her emails and submitted them in a memo with her resignation. As the DOJ continued to lie, Radack went public.

The DOJ responded by applying pressure on Radack's law firm to fire her; they put her on an unpaid leave which turned into a constructive discharge, which the DOJ assisted her law firm in contesting. The government placed her under a bogus criminal investigation (later dropped with no charges), brought multiple state bar complaints against her (one of which she's still fighting), and put her on the no-fly list (she's still on it). She finally managed to find a law firm willing to hire her, after three years.

Her story is a horrifying tale of an out-of-control government. Now that the Democratic Party runs Congress, will they take some action with respect to this case?