The CIA Photos and the Gitmo Lawyers

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Last August, the Washington Post reported that the Justice Department had launched an inquiry—later headed by famed leak investigator Patrick Fitzgerald—after Guantanamo defense lawyers allegedly showed pictures of CIA personnel to their clients, a group of high value detainees that included the most notorious terrorism suspects in US custody. Along with their military lawyers, these detainees were represented by civilian defense lawyers affiliated with an ACLU-backed initiative called the John Adams Project. Anthony Romero, the ACLU’s executive director, later acknowledged that the ACLU had indeed retained private investigators to identify CIA officers involved with the so-called “enhanced interrogation” of accused terrorists. And he insisted the John Adams lawyers had violated no laws. But the ACLU refused to comment further on its apparent targeting of CIA personnel.

The controversy has simmered on for almost a year, and there remain a number of unknowns in the case. Today, in a piece that appears in July/August issue of Mother Jones, Daniel Schulman and I shed some light on one of them: The identity of the investigator the ACLU tapped to identify and obtain photographs the CIA personnel. You can read the whole piece here.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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