Jesselyn Radack’s whistleblower story boils down to whether John Walker Lindh was represented, and whether the FBI committed an ethics violation by interviewing him. Despite what can only be characterized as a hyper bizarre obsession to inject herself into his case, her legal opinion on the matter was just that, an opinion. Federal prosecutors clearly disagreed with both her and the defense team, and contrary to her delusional self-belief, there’s nothing weird or conspiratorial about attorneys disagreeing with one another.
What’s weird is that for us to believe her story, we have to believe that her opinion was the only one that mattered at the Department of Justice out of dozens, if not hundreds, of federal attorneys that worked on the case. You also have to believe that her opinion was more important than that of Lindh’s criminal defense team, who never argued an ethics violation.
Radack’s statements in her first email to De Pue, along with statements she’s made in federal court, are crucial in terms of her whistleblower story, which rests upon a myriad of claims, allegations, and conspiracy theories, all of which are contingent on this profoundly false belief that her emails unequivocally proved Lindh was represented at the time of the FBI interview. Here’s what she initially wrote to De Pue:
The FBI wants to interview American Taliban member John Walker some time next week. The interview would occur in Afghanistan. Walker’s father retained counsel for him. The FBI wants to question Walker about taking up arms against the U.S…we don’t think you can have the FBI agent question Walker.
Here’s what she stated in court two years later in an affidavit:
The operative facts with which I was provided included that ‘Walker’s father retained counsel for him’…I advised that PRAO did not think that the FBI agent could question Lindh.
Here’s what she wrote in her December 2003 court document:
Ms. Radack was advised that ‘Walker’s father retained counsel for him,’ leading her and her superiors reasonably to conclude that the accused himself was represented by that attorney.
And here’s what she told the court in her 2005 Declaration:
I advised Mr. DePue via e-mail that PRAO believed that Lindh was represented by an attorney and that an FBI interrogation of Lindh bypassing his attorney would be a pre-indictment, custodial, overt interview not ‘authorized by law’ under Model Rule of Prof. C. 4.2 in a majority of Circuit Courts, including those in which Lindh might be eventually indicted.
She made it very clear in federal court that her issue was with the McDade Amendment and the American Bar Association’s Model Rule 4.2. She didn’t tell De Pue that an interview would violate his constitutional rights; she told him that it would be an ethics violation. Second, note what she said to him and two federal judges:
“We don’t think you can have the FBI agent question Walker.”
“…leading her and her superiors reasonably to conclude that the accused himself was represented by that attorney.”
“PRAO did not think…”
“PRAO believed that Lindh was represented by an attorney.”
These are all statements of opinion, which were formed based on the background information she received from De Pue (“Walker’s father retained counsel for him”).
De Pue never said Lindh was represented, nor was his inquiry, “Hey, Lindh is represented by counsel, would it be an ethics violation if the FBI interviewed him?” It was, “Hey, Lindh’s father hired an attorney on his behalf. Would it be an ethics violation if the FBI interviewed him?” The first obviously considers him represented; the second does not.
The bottom line is that prosecutors disagreed with both Radack and the defense team, and they seemed fully prepared to defend their argument had they been forced to do so, because ultimately it was up to a judge to decide. Again, there’s nothing sinister or conspiratorial about this.
What is sinister is Radack planting stories in the press that someone told her Lindh was “unambiguously” represented by counsel, despite admitting, under oath, no less, that this was categorically untrue. As usual, this hasn’t stopped her from reframing her legal opinion as an undisputed fact to shore up her whistleblower story, nor has it curtailed her from blaming someone else for it.
Until approximately 2011, and shortly before her client, former CIA agent John Kiriakou, arrived on the scene with his own outlandish and absurd whistleblower story, she was fairly honest about what De Pue told her. In 2007, she wrote in The National Law Journal, “I received a call from a Criminal Division attorney who wanted to know about the ethical propriety of interrogating Lindh without a lawyer being present. I was told unambiguously that Lindh’s father had retained counsel for his son.”
In June 2008, she told an audience at The Future of Freedom Foundation, “De Pue told me unambiguously that Lindh’s father had retained counsel for his son.” And at the 2011 John Adams Awards, she stated that “DePue told me unambiguously that Lindh’s father had retained counsel for his son.”
Two months after authorities arrested Kiriakou for doxxing CIA agents in what appeared to be a retaliatory strike against the agency for firing him (just kidding, he left because he wanted to “spend more time with his family”), two things happened.
First, Radack, along with Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, began pushing a very public disinformation campaign falsely characterizing him as a whistleblower. Second, her own story about the Lindh case changed. She was no longer told that Lindh’s father hired an attorney for his son; she was told that Lindh “had counsel.”
Radack and Kiriakou
The story continued to evolve when she told the audience at the Left Forum in NYC in June 2013, “When you have an American, no, you can’t interrogate him without a lawyer and [Lindh] already had a lawyer.”
No, what Lindh had was a father who hired an attorney without his knowledge or consent. And, if you ever find yourself arrested, do not under any circumstances call Radack for help because, of course, Americans can be interrogated without a lawyer. There are various and perfectly legal reasons as to why this might happen. She’s completely off her rocker making a statement like this.
During the April 2014 Whistleblower Tour, she stated:
I happened to be on duty the day that I got a call that we had captured our first prisoner in the Afghanistan War, John Walker Lindh, quickly dubbed the American Taliban. I was told unambiguously that he had a lawyer.
Again, what she was told was “Walker’s father retained counsel for him.” On October 22, 2015, she told Reason.com that she had been informed “unambiguously that [Lindh] had counsel, and on March 28, 2016, she told Professor Lawrence Lessig during Harvard’s Human Rights Journal’s Spring Symposium the same thing:
I was called one day and told that the FBI had captured an American fighting with the Taliban and I was told unambiguously that he had counsel.
On September 10, 2021, the charade continued when she told Detainee 001 documentarians that she was “unambiguously” told Lindh was “represented by counsel.” Even Julian Assange, the anointed king and savior of truth and transparency, tried to convince the masses that there was a story here:
Radack argued that John Walker Lindh…could not be interrogated without his lawyer present since he was represented by a lawyer.
After drawing this out for more than two decades, she’s never identified a single person who unambiguously told her that Lindh was represented. For example, she’s never explicitly stated that it was De Pue because she knows he didn’t. If she wants to continue down this decaying road of rot and lies, it would behoove her and her reputation to identify this unknown figure that she’s been blaming for more than two decades.
Even though she’s been more than willing to plant this story in a complacent media, she’s clearly never been amicable to stating it in court or under oath. It comes as no surprise that if we go back to her earliest court statements, she made it very clear that De Pue’s background information (“Walker’s father retained counsel for him”) led her to come to her own conclusions:
Ms. Radack was advised that ‘Walker’s father retained counsel for him,’ leading her…to reasonably conclude that the accused himself was represented by that attorney.
To be clear, De Pue didn’t say Lindh was represented. The Attorney General didn’t say it. The Deputy Attorney General didn’t say it. No FBI attorneys or official government spokespersons said it. Only Radack said it, making it fairly outrageous that a licensed attorney can get away with pushing so much disinformation in the press.
It would seem that when her own legal opinion became a problematic wrench in her storytelling, she simply changed the story. No longer was it her opinion that Lindh was unequivocally represented at the time of the FBI interview, but rather the fault of some unnamed, unidentified individual who “unambiguously” told her that he was.
In one of the earliest articles published about her by her alma mater, Brown University, Emily Gold Boutilier wrote:
On January 15, 2002, when Attorney General John Ashcroft held a press conference to announce the filing of criminal charges against Lindh, one reporter asked when Lindh would have access to the lawyer his family had hired. ‘The subject here is entitled to choose his own lawyer,’ Ashcroft replied, ‘and to our knowledge has not chosen a lawyer at this time.’ Ashcroft’s reasoning, [Radack] believed, was that because Lindh did not pick the lawyer himself, the lawyer did not represent him at the time of the interrogation and that therefore the questioning did not violate his rights.
Radack did not agree with Ashcroft’s reasoning, but says she could see his logic. ‘You can debate it one way or another,’ she says.
Radack did not agree with Ashcroft’s reasoning, but says she could see his logic. ‘You can debate it one way or another,’ she says. Of course, you can debate it one way or another! That’s the entire point! Whether Lindh was represented at the time of the FBI interview was a debatable legal issue in a case that never went to trial.
It had nothing to do with American Bar Association ethics rules, at least not in any way that Radack has explained to the public. She probably doesn’t even realize that she completely debunked her own whistleblower story during the Brown interview—and that’s in addition to her own incompetence when she failed to realize that an ethics violation made no difference in the case whatsoever.
Sources:
- https://www.law.com/article/almID/900005474571/ (https://archive.is/Y5yrO)
- https://www.fff.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Jesselyn-Radack-2008-Transcript.pdf (https://archive.is/uRO8B)
- https://consortiumnews.com/2011/11/28/upholding-justice-in-the-war-on-terror/ (https://archive.ph/Sfyab)
- https://harpers.org/2012/06/_traitor_-six-questions-for-jesselyn-radack/ (https://archive.ph/V2rrt)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wo7eS6JaEw
- https://www.c-span.org/video/?318762-1/challenges-facing-whistleblowers
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHOKUDP9n0g
- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10405532/
- https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Jesselyn_Radack
- https://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/articles/2007-06-14/the-woman-who-knew-too-much
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