A closer look at the Center for Constitutional Rights

This group is organizing lawyers to represent the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Blogger Rocco DiPippo takes a closer look at this organization and what he finds is not good:

Michael Ratner and CCR: Fighting Against the War on Terror
On May 30, 2005 the NY Times reported on an increasingly successful effort by the Center for Constitutional Rights,(CCR) which it described only as "a group based in New York," to enlist lawyers to represent detainees being held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The story focused on CCR's success in recruiting prominent law firms to the effort including Clifford Chance, Dorsey & Whitney; Allen & Overy; Covington & Burling and Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering Hale & Dorr a firm that, oddly enough, also does business with companies involved in the U.S. defense, national security and government contracts sectors.

Now those prisoners, who Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld calls 'the worst of the worst,' will be allowed access to U.S. legal representation, setting the stage for what will be a major propaganda nightmare for those in charge of protecting the U.S. from the totalitarian Islamist fanatics who seek to destroy it.

Among those prisoners is Osama bin Laden's close personal aide and driver.

On July 23, 2003, U.S. Major General Geoffrey Miller said that three-quarters of the roughly 660 prisoners that were at that time housed at Guantanamo had confessed to at least some involvement in terrorism. And it is known that some of the prisoners released from the original 660 initially held there have since been recaptured in combat against U.S. forces. Nevertheless, the violent Islamists who end up being incarcerated at Guantanamo are treated better than any combat prisoners have been in the history of warfare.

Enough background -- lets get to the origin of this organization:

The CCR was founded in 1966 by attorneys Morton Stavis, William Kunstler, Ben Smith and Arthur Kinoy--all members of either the Communist Party or the radical left. Before forming CCR, Kunstler and Kinoy drafted and circulated a detailed memo calling for the creation of a 'new Communist Party.' That never materialized. Instead, Kunstler and the other lawyers, some of whom were also members of the National Lawyers Guild, a communist front group, focused their energies on building the CCR and formulating and fulfilling its main mission of clearing legal roadblocks for leftist revolutionaries and enemies of the U.S. and capitalist economic system.

In candidly describing his life's work of representing and advocating for violent radicals, CCR founding member William Kunstler once said, "I stay in this profession only because I want to be a double agent, to destroy the whole f*cking [U.S.] system." Throughout his life, Kunstler made clear that CCR's main mission was to keep violent leftist revolutionaries and other enemies of the U.S. out of jail and on the streets where they could toil away at destroying the institutions of American democracy.

Beginning in the 1960s, the CCR worked closely with two other "civil liberties" groups with communist and far-left pedigrees; the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), which, as stated earlier, shared membership with the CCR, and the ACLU.

There is a lot more here to read -- very well researched and documented with links you can check out for yourself. Obviously, there is a need for all sorts of checks and balances but this group seems to be pushing the envelope a bit much. The irony of this is that the United States of America is one of the few places in the world where they could get away with this behavior -- even thrive -- without disappearing. Hat tip to Charles at LGF