Denbeaux & Denbeaux: Defending an American Value

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Processes for the Denbeaux team and approximately 300 other Guantanamo Bay defense lawyers are highly secretive. After achieving security clearance and signing a statement promising not to reveal classified information, the attorneys are allowed to visit their clients. They must turn their notes over to authorities, who in turn send them to a secret facility outside of Washington, D.C., where they are classified or declassified. If the information is classified, Mark and Josh are required to go to Washington to review their own paperwork.

In order to communicate with each other about any classified information, the two men are required to move from room to room. "They won't let you open the blinds, because they're afraid someone could use a telescope to see your computer screen," says Mark. "The process is designed to be burdensome and intimidating—and it is."

But as scary as the processes are, they fall short of making their clients appear threatening, say Mark and Josh. The two broken men whom the lawyers found chained to the floor at Guantanamo Bay are Tunisians in their 30s. The two were picked up five years ago by Iranian and Afghanistan officials, who were paid a bounty for turning them in to the Americans. One is a honey merchant, the other an unemployed wanderer. One has congestive heart failure, the other is five feet tall and weighs approximately 120 pounds. Both have missing and mangled fingers and toes. Like the other 515 prisoners, they have had no trial; allegations against them have never been proven.

The Denbeauxs' first task at their initial August 2005 visit was to convince the two men to accept their services. Many interrogators, posing as lawyers, had preceded them. "But it only took about 30 minutes," remembers Josh. "They are so desperate to trust. One said (through a translator), 'OK, you can be my lawyer; just get me out of here.'"

The emotional shock of the visit so sickened Josh that he was unable to return for six months. "The stench of human despair…I couldn't take it."

Throughout the process, specific client facts—including allegations— were withheld from the Guantanamo Bay lawyers. Although a 2004 Supreme Court ruling—a response to litigation from the Associated Press—had forced executive branch officials to release information on the detainees, the data was presented it in a way that made it impossible to link specific facts with specific detainees.

"It was released as findings against all 517 people. No names, no security numbers, just 517 different sets of findings," explains Mark. "It was done in a way that would make it impossible for someone to say, ‘My client shouldn't be there.'"

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