A disdain for justice.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The Bush administration should not need to be reminded that lawyers have a sworn duty to represent people in legal trouble - whether it's someone such as former White House staffer Scooter Libby or a terrorist suspect held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba.

That's the way this nation's justice system is supposed to work: All people treated equally before the law. It's a core American value that has prompted 500 U.S. lawyers, including many from the nation's top law firms, to voluntarily provide high-quality legal representation to the prisoners held at Guantamamo.

The administration hasn't always shared this expansive view of justice and the rule of law. It created Guantanamo five years ago as a dumping ground for suspected terrorists that it deemed "the worst of the worst," even though it's since become clear that few actually fit that description.

For years, the detainees were held in legal limbo, denied contact with families, legal counsel and any semblance of due process. They were interrogated and subjected to abuses such as waterboarding, which international human rights organizations have rightly denounced as equivalent to torture.

When the U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled that Guantanamo detainees must be given an opportunity to challenge their detention in court, the administration responded by creating an entirely new, ad hoc system of military justice, one that gave new meaning to the term ``kangaroo court.''

After the high court tossed out the new military tribunals, the administration persuaded a compliant Republican Congress to pass the Military Commissions Act. The law authorized the same sham tribunals rejected by the court and audaciously stripped federal courts of any future role in reviewing Guantanamo detentions.

So it was hardly surprising last week when a senior Pentagon official publicly attacked the lawyers who represent the detainees and urged U.S. corporations to stop doing business with their law firms.

In an on-air interview with a Washington, D.C., radio station, Charles Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, listed more than a dozen of the law firms. Then he added: "I think, quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, these CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms."

Despite his obvious awareness that nearly all of these cases are being handled on a pro bono basis by the law firms, Stimson hinted darkly that some lawyers were "receiving monies from who knows where."

Stimson's comments, including his crass reference to the "bottom line" toll of 9/11, were so outrageous that even some administration hardliners scurried to distance themselves. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said "good lawyers representing the detainees is the best way to ensure that justice is done in these cases." A Pentagon spokesman swiftly declared that Stimson wasn't speaking for the Defense Department.

Perhaps not. But Stimson's comments reflect the same disdain for justice and the rule of law that the Bush administration has demonstrated since it dumped the first planeload of detainees into the black hole known as Guantanamo.