The sound of freedom

Here is a most excellent NPR story from Nina Totenberg on the lawyers who won Hamdan:

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, got a letter appointing him as counsel for... Salim Ahmed Hamdan... There was just one hitch to Swift's appointment... The letter told Swift that his access to his client was conditioned on his negotiating a guilty plea. Swift thought that was an unethical condition.

He immediately called Georgetown law professor Neal Katyal... Katyal, 33, had volunteered his services and been embraced by the defense team... Katyal had been an early academic critic of the Bush military tribunals. He had written, thought about, and testified on the issue. So, he was the perfect point man for developing a legal strategy aimed ultimately at Supreme Court review...

(Hamdan) was a stunning rebuke to the president. But Katyal doesn't see it that way. He commends both the military and the administration for letting him and Swift do their jobs. "In some other country," Katyal observes, "we might have been shot."