A Clear Voice

In this interview

SD: Let’s say you were part of a government that you actually trusted and supported, and your country held political prisoners. At what point would you think monitoring and controlling these people was acceptable?
LS: I’m such a strange amalgam of old-line things and new-line things. I don’t have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel locking up people they see as dangerous. Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people’s revolution. The CIA pays a thousand people and cuts them loose, and they will undermine any revolution in the name of freedom of speech.

So apparently it's ok for Castro (whom, I note, she intimately refers to as "Fidel") to lock up people for disagreeing with the government, but the US is evil for locking up terrorists.

In 1995 she told the New York Times

I don't believe in anarchistic violence but in directed violence," she said. "That would be violence directed at the institutions which perpetuate capitalism, racism and sexism, and at the people who are the appointed guardians of those institutions, and accompanied by popular support.

In another interview:

WW3R: The press release did not concern legal matters. So why was it protected by attorney-client privilege?
LS: The Sheikh, as the person I'm representing, has the right to communicate outside the SAMs.
…
WW3R: So what is the crux of your defense strategy?
LS: The crux of my defense strategy is that I'm a lawyer, and I did what the kind of lawyer who vigorously defends clients always does--and that is not adhering to a narrow little stage of action.
…
WW3R: Apart from the legal consequences, just speaking in terms of its appropriateness or ethics, how do you feel about what you did? How do you feel about handing on the press release?
LS: Oh, I would do it again in a minute. You know, when I was interviewed in another media [60 Minutes, May 5], I used the words "Well, maybe it was a mistake, but it wasn't a crime." What I meant is, nobody likes to go back on their word. I signed a piece of paper that said I wouldn't do this, right? Just like when you get married you say, "I do," and you're gonna love, honor and et cetera, et cetera. And five years down the road something comes up and you find out you can no longer love and honor, and that oath you took to this other person has to be broken for many reasons. So when I signed that SAM, I was perfectly willing to obey it. But when something came up that made it impossible for me to balance my duties as a lawyer with what the government was requiring of me, I chose my duties as a lawyer.
…
WW3R: What if the Sheikh's advice was taken, and the cease-fire was broken in Egypt? The terrorist attack at Luxor in 1997 left over 50 Egyptians and tourists dead, and the Islamic Group claimed responsibility. Do you think it would be a good thing if these sort of attacks were to resume?
LS: Americans are very two-faced about violence, aren't they? I mean, we came out of the Boston Tea Party and throwing rocks at soldiers on the Boston Commons and finally taking up arms and going against the British army. War has changed since 1776, but the basic desire of people to be free hasn't changed. And I'm not sure that I want to second-guess what methods other people use. I'm not saying that if I had been told to carry the message "There are a hundred rifles hidden at the battery and they should be taken up to the Egyptian embassy and everybody murdered up there," that I would carry such a message. But a political message, a message which is aimed at a group which is deciding things politically, although they have a military wing--I don't think I would draw the line there. I think somebody like the Sheikh, just like Joe Doherty [IRA militant extradited from New York to Northern Ireland in 1992] and the Irish prisoners, has a right to be heard. And its not up to me to decide what action should be taken after that.

I don't even know what to say to all of that. Apparently it was ok for her to violate the SAM she signed, because to do otherwise would be violating her client's right to send out press releases calling off a cease fire.

And for Pete's sake, why does no one on the left understand the difference between a civil war in which soldiers openly attack other soldiers and terrorist actions that are primarily directed at civilians?