That this story has not received more prominent play is both shocking and disappointing. Not quite interchangeable with the lawyer’s revolt in Pakistan, but definitely carries a faint echo of the same heightened tension between the judiciary and a heavy-handed, militarily-enamored, despotically inclined executive (in this case the woebegone G. Walker administration).

The American Bar Association said this week that it was backing out of an agreement to find lawyers for Guantanamo detainees because it did not want to “lend support and credibility” to what it called inadequate legal protections for the 340 men held there.

The bar association, the largest lawyers group in the United States, said it had agreed to help find volunteer lawyers before Congress stripped the courts of the power to hear habeas corpus cases, which are attacks by prisoners on the government’s authority to hold them.

The move was the latest chapter in a broad legal debate over what rights Guantanamo detainees may have in contesting findings that they are enemy combatants who can be held indefinitely.

“It would be inconsistent with the ABA’s strong position” against limits on detainees’ filing habeas cases, the bar association president, William Neukom, said in a letter to the Justice Department on Thursday. He added that participating in finding lawyers for less expansive cases would “lend support and credibility to such an inadequate review scheme.”

[snip]

Neukom noted in his letter that the bar group, which has more than 400,000 members, recently filed a brief supporting detainees in a Supreme Court case. The case is expected to test the Bush administration’s argument that foreigners who are held as enemy combatants outside the United States do not have the right to file habeas suits.

The current dispute centers on notices that military officials gave in recent weeks to 14 “high value” detainees at Guantanamo who were previously held in secret CIA prisons. Those detainees include Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has said he was the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The notices were given to detainees after military panels - combatant status review tribunals - found that all 14 were properly held. Critics have attacked the fairness of the military panel system because detainees were not permitted lawyers for the hearings and cannot see much of the evidence against them.

The forms included a request a detainee could sign seeking representation for an appeals court challenge of a tribunal finding. “I request the American Bar Association find a lawyer who will represent my best interests, without charge,” it said. Article