AMY GOODMAN: After the verdict was read out, Lynne Stewart emerged from the courthouse with her husband and spoke to reporters gathered outside.

LYNNE STEWART: I’m still very shook up and surprised and disappointed that the jury didn’t see what we saw. But I think, as one my counsel put it, when you put Osama bin Laden in a courtroom and ask the jury to ignore it, that’s asking a lot. We are not giving up, obviously. We are going to fight on. This is the beginning of a longer struggle. I think everyone who has a sense that the United States needs to protect the Constitution at this time understands that struggle. And this case could be, I hope it will be, a wakeup call to all of the citizens of this country and all of the people who live here that you can’t lock up the lawyers. You can’t tell the lawyers how to do their job. You’ve got to let them operate. And I will fight on. I’m not giving up. I know I committed no crime. I know what I did was right. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Lynne Stewart speaking outside the courthouse yesterday. She joins us today in our firehouse studio just blocks away from where she was tried. We are also joined by her lawyer Mike Tigar, as well as former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who testified in the Lynne Stewart trial. He also was recently named as one of Saddam Hussein’s attorneys. And we welcome them all to Democracy Now! Juan?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Lynne, most — obviously everyone was stunned by the verdict, and most people figured that as the jury continued to deliberate for so many days, that there was a greater likelihood that they would find acquittal, at least on some of the charges. Your response now that you’ve had a full day to think about it, and what happened in the courtroom in terms of the jury’s deliberations?

LYNNE STEWART: Well, we definitely felt during the time that there were people that were asking the right questions, that were clearly setting out a perimeter, we thought, that would allow them to either bring in a not guilty or at least hang. In other words, be divided and not reach unanimity. But at the end, it just appeared that all that opposition that we saw just caved in, and in thinking about it, it just reminded me of, from my earlier studies politically, which talked about how in a democracy people sometimes are willing to just cave in to Big Brother, and in a time of fear, which this certainly is, to say I will believe whatever the government says, because that’s the safest way to be. The women — three of the women on the jury wept during the entire rendition of the verdict. Why were they weeping if they thought they had done justice? You only can say that somehow they knew they hadn’t but felt that they had to bring in this verdict which was asked of them by the government lawyers.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Mike Tigar, where does the case go from here? There’s a July 15 sentencing. Will you be appealing before then, or will you be waiting for the actual sentence and then begin an appeal sentence?

MICHAEL TIGAR: Three weeks from yesterday, we will file post-trial motions analyzing some of the legal issues and evidentiary issues for Judge Koeltl to rule on. If he denies those motions, then the sentencing will go forward on July 15 and after that an appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and on beyond. So we are less than halfway, let us say, through this very long struggle in the legal system.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to ask you about exactly what the charges are and the implications of this and, of course, bring in Attorney General Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, to talk about the significance of this. Also we’ll talk about the fact that you were both the lawyers for Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, and the difference or the similarities in how you dealt with him.

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AMY GOODMAN: We continue to talk about the verdict yesterday in a New York courtroom. The verdict against the three defendants charged with terror-related crimes. Our guests are Lynne Stewart, found guilty on all five counts of aiding terrorists and lying to the government in a case that has reverberated with, among others, defense attorneys around the country. Our guests are Lynne Stewart, her attorney, Michael Tigar and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. Juan?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Michael Tigar, for those who have not been following the case closely could you talk to us about specifically the charges that Lynne was found guilty of and also the other defendants?

MICHAEL TIGAR: Count one was a conspiracy to defraud the United States. Basically the allegation was that Lynn, Mr. Sattar and Mr. Yousry evaded so-called “Special Administrative Measures” (SAMs) which the Department of Justice, Bureau of Prisons imposes to restrict, shut off communication between prisoners and the outside world and that they did that in Lynn’s case by issuing one and only one statement to Reuters, a public press release and then clarifying it two days later. Well, as far as messages, plural, are concerned, there was one message and it was proven not to have any effect. But that’s the conspiracy to defraud. Because Lynne agreed to abide by the administrative measures it was said that those agreements constituted false promises or false statements. So that’s counts six and seven. Sattar was charged separately in count two with a conspiracy to kill or kidnap persons in a foreign country.

AMY GOODMAN: He’s the Staten Island postal worker?

MICHAEL TIGAR: He is a Staten Island postal worker. He had many, many conversations in Arabic with people in Egypt. In Mr. Sattar’s defense, it should be pointed out that we said, “Well what country was the kidnapping going to take place in?” The judge said that we don’t have to tell them. “Well who was going to get murdered?” “You don’t have to tell them.” So this is an unknown possible kidnapping in a possible foreign country done by weapons that were never produced in court. “There are weapons of destruction in Egypt,” said the Bush administration, but it never produced any. It’s getting to be a pattern. He was convicted of that. Then Sattar was convicted of his telephone solicitations with calls back and forth to Egypt and Afghanistan of crimes of violence. Lynne was convicted of conspiring to prepare to assist Sattar’s conspiracy and with actually preparing to assist Sattar’s conspiracy. The judge rejected the idea that so-called multiple inchoate crimes does pose some danger to freedom of expression as well as being unheard of in American law. And once again Lynne’s alleged participation in that consisted of this one and only one statement. I need to correct something. Terrorism is not an element of any of the offenses with which Lynne Stewart was charged. The terror label appears in the catch line of one of the statutes. It is not an element. And, yet, you can see how successful the Bush administration has been at pasting the terrorism label on these non-events so closely, so clearly that everybody kind of assumes it, and it becomes a part of discourse which is, of course, the difficulty in a trial like this. As Lynne said in one of your video clips, “If you mention Osama bin Laden’s name, you don’t have to present any evidence. You can tell the jury that he has nothing to do with the case, but there’s been this discourse, this drumbeat that makes it very difficult for our voice to be heard.”

AMY GOODMAN: Is it fair to say that Lynne was convicted on two counts of conspiring to commit murder in Egypt?

MICHAEL TIGAR: No. Sattar was convicted of conspiring to commit murder in Egypt. Lynne was charged with conspiring to prepare to assist him to commit the murders in Egypt and the only thing that she did in order to do that was to issue this one public statement which said, “I withdraw my support for the cease-fire. Oh, by the way, don’t cancel it. That just happens to be my opinion.”

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s talk about that statement, what you’re referring to. Explain exactly what this statement of Lynne Stewart, why don’t you explain of your client Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman that you are charged with taking out of the prison and letting the world know about?

LYNNE STEWART: It was no surprise to them. They didn’t learn about this by their secret surveillance tapes in the prison. This was publicly done, openly done, Reuters, of course, is a well known international news gathering agency. They were called, they were read a press release that had been dictated to the Arabic interpreter by the sheik. It basically said that his personal support of the cease-fire was being withdrawn. But he went on to say, “I want you to discuss it. You are the people on the ground. I am not there. I would like to escalate in the media” — because the group had also stopped talking critically about the Egyptian government. So it contained all those elements. When the news broke and it became “Sheikh Urges Withdrawal From the Cease-fire,” we issued a second press release, which we spoke to him on the phone and he gave us the authorization to do, which said basically, “I am not withdrawing my support of the cease-fire, I am merely questioning it and I am urging you, who are on the ground there to discuss it and to include everyone in your discussions as we always have done.”

JUAN GONZALEZ: What about these releases, the government has said that you signed certain agreements in taking the case that you would abide by the regulations that’s they established and to some degree they made a big deal in the trial itself about you openly flouting the agreements that’s you had agreed to, that you signed beforehand.

LYNNE STEWART: You see, we operated and my colleague Ramsey here and Abdin Jabara, we operated with an understanding that the government knew we had to do the legal work. And to do the legal work, that was permissible even though the SAMs on the face of them might seem to say we couldn’t do it. Because we had done it and this was not a first time. This was many years, we had been under the SAMs since 1997.

AMY GOODMAN: The SAMs standing for?

LYNNE STEWART: These prison regulations —

MICHAEL TIGAR: Special Administrative Measures

LYNNE STEWART: — that regulated the sheik’s ability to speak to the outside world. But it was understood that there were certain things legally that needed to be done and our entire goal at that point was to keep him alive on the world scene so that we could negotiate something, something that would be good for this country and also for him.

AMY GOODMAN: Ramsey Clark, you’re the former U.S. Attorney General. You were brought into this trial because you too had been one of the lawyers for Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. Can you first respond overall to the verdict?

RAMSEY CLARK: It is clear that Lynne Stewart and the truth and the Constitution of the United States are all victims of 9/11 and of a repressive government that is taking advantage of the fear that they have helped create arising from that that is destroying freedom in this country.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you elaborate on that?

RAMSEY CLARK: Sure. This case would never have been brought except for the fear generated and the advantage that the Bush administration was taking of it by the events on September 11, 2001. In ordinary times and circumstances, it would be recognized that everything that Lynne did was exactly what an effective attorney representing a client zealously would be obligated to do.

AMY GOODMAN: Now the prosecution used you in the trial to say you too represented the sheik, you signed off on the SAMs, the Special Administrative Measures, and you abided by them, you didn’t put out information that Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman was trying get out, they allege, though Michael Tigar is shaking his head. They used you to show a contrast. What do you think of that?

RAMSEY CLARK: I don’t know why you say that they used me. It was the defense that called me, not the prosecution. I would never have been in the courtroom at the prosecution’s request, because they didn’t want me there.

AMY GOODMAN: Right, but when they cross-examined you.

RAMSEY CLARK: It is simply not true. I don’t know of anything that Lynne did that I didn’t do. We did what we had to do to represent our clients. And if you don’t do that, then you don’t have truth before the jury or before the public and you don’t have the Constitutional right to the assistance of counsel.

MICHAEL TIGAR: I was shaking my head because in fact Ramsey did come as a defense witness and the defense put in public statement after public statement that Ramsey had issued in the Sheikh’s name over time that the government, in fact, in one letter acknowledged violated the SAMs and then later went back on it. They dwelt on it in summation and said, “Well, we said it did, but it didn’t.” And they never could defend the idea that they hadn’t gone after Ramsey. Not suggesting that they would, but Ramsey Clark set an example here because he didn’t have to come to court and stand up for Lynne, but he did it, and it shows that this case really is a threat to all the lawyers who are out there attempting to represent people that face these terrible consequences. You know, Ms. Goodman, you and I were talking before. The only way that we will ever get to the bottom of the American concentration camp abuses at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib is that if the lawyers for these prisoners are permitted to tell their stories to the world. If the government can shut off that communication, which they have attempted to do over and over and over again, these activities will continue in secret, blessed as they are by the highest officials of government in a country which has for the first time in its history given a cabinet job to a fellow who says that the Geneva Convention is obsolete and that the torture memo doesn’t mean anything.

AMY GOODMAN: So would you say —- sorry Juan -—

JUAN GONZALEZ: What about the impact then on other lawyers who take up these cases? In what particular ways will this verdict affect their ability to properly represent their clients?

MICHAEL TIGAR: Every lawyer who wants to represent somebody at Guantanamo, every lawyer who wants to represent somebody being held by the United States under these conditions of detention is now being asked to sign various agreements. I agree my meetings won’t be confidential, I agree I’ll do this, I agree I’ll do that, all of which limit the lawyer’s ability to function as a lawyer. Lawyers are battling against these restrictions. From time to time some of them may feel as matter of interpretation as Lynne did in good faith, this can’t possibly mean that I can’t do this. It’s that threat that they face. It is the chilling effect on a profession — only a minority of whose members are willing to shoulder the obligation to represent the oppressed that is at stake here.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What about this issue of the government being able to basically to eavesdrop on all conversations between a lawyer and a client? What does — I mean, has that been tested itself in the courts, just the fact that basically the government has total access to the strategy and the deliberations of a client and a lawyer?

MICHAEL TIGAR: It will be tested again in this case, of course, but the Patriot Act and Attorney General provision that the authorization can come from the Attorney General of the United States and not even by judicial warrant, that has yet to be tested in the courts of the United States. And this is not only a matter of the American Constitution. The European Court of Human Rights has long held that any interference with confidential client-lawyer communication violates principles of human rights that happen to be embodied in the European Convention that are principles of country and international law

LYNNE STEWART: And speaking on behalf of the defense, the fear, to me is, not the people who will say, “No, I won’t do those cases,” which may also be an outgrowth — but the people who will do the cases, but will now do them with an eye over their shoulder to make sure that they’re doing the way the government thinks that the case should be done. In other words, no challenge, no client-centered defense will take place if you’re thinking all the time, “What am I going to do if they indict me like they did Lynne Stewart.”

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Tigar, are you suggesting the SAMs themselves are unconstitutional? I mean, when you make that point for example about lawyers going to Guantanamo and they get word out about what’s happening to their clients, if the government says, “You can’t say this,” that’s, in effect, what they were saying here, that you could not send a message out, what your client had to say. Do you think that the SAMs should be challenged themselves?

MICHAEL TIGAR: We have challenged the SAMs as a part of this trial. Yes, these SAMs raise constitutional issues. But beyond that, Lynne Stewart recognized that these SAMs needed to be interpreted in a way that permitted the lawyers to do their job. That is, when you’re faced with a document as a lawyer, she needs to go in and see her client, she has got two choices: She can say, “This is unconstitutional, I will sue the United States of America, and four years from now, maybe I will be able to see my client,” or she can take the document in hand and say, “Let’s meet — let’s be a good lawyer, let’s see if we can read this document in a way that says we get to do our job, we will interpret it as being in conformity with the constitution and we’ll do it.” That way you can see your client right now, and that had been the modus vivendi. And in fact, when Pat Fitzgerald, the Assistant US attorney said, “Well, you are not interpreting it correctly,” he wrote her a letter, way back in 2000, and he said, “Do you know what we are going to do to you, you are not going to be able to see your client until we get this straightened out.” Nobody ever imagined until George Bush became President and John Ashcroft, Attorney General that these kinds of consequences would be poured down on a lawyer.

AMY GOODMAN: And now Pat Fitzgerald is the man now in Chicago, who is in charge of — chosen by John Ashcroft — in charge of investigating who outed Valerie Plame?

MICHAEL TIGAR: Yes, the fox has been placed in charge of a different hen house.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Ramsey Clark, again about the impact on other lawyers across the country, do you agree that this will have a chilling effect on their ability to continue to represent clients, especially in high-profile cases of this kind?

RAMSEY CLARK: Well, I think the good lawyers and courageous lawyers will be inspired by Lynn’s example and follow it. Our freedom in society depends on that type of courage and commitment. Lynne is an enormously courageous and brilliant lawyer. But more than that, she’s a loving person and she loves this country too. And she did what is best for it. And she’s right. And history and perhaps, we hope, the courts will vindicate her.

AMY GOODMAN: Alberto Gonzales, who has the position you once held, Attorney General, said right after the convictions they, quote, “send a clear, unmistakable message that this department will pursue both those who carry out acts of terrorism and those who assist them with their murderous goals. Your response?

RAMSEY CLARK: Well, it is what we’ve had for the last several years since 9/11, and if they pursue that and continue as they have, to succeed convicting many innocent people including Lynne Stewart, then the country will be in real danger. They’ve terrified Arab-Americans, Muslims throughout the United States, and they’ve terrified people who believe that you have to stand up and speak the truth when it is important to the survival of this country.

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Tigar, in three weeks, you go back to court. In this call for dismissal, are you asking the judge to set aside the verdict?

MICHAEL TIGAR: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: The judge?

MICHAEL TIGAR: The judge.

AMY GOODMAN: How does that work? I mean, a jury has spoken.

MICHAEL TIGAR: We have the right to ask for three things, first for a judgment of acquittal, notwithstanding the jury’s verdict. The judge — we moved for that at the end of the government’s evidence and again at the end of all the evidence, and the judge took the unusual step of reserving decision on that. The second thing is, we can ask for a new trial on the ground that the jointer of these three defendants together made it impossible to get a fair trial, that some of this inflammatory evidence should never have been received, and third, we can raise the constitutional issues, most of which we raised and were rejected or accepted to some extent before the trial. So those are the standard post-trial motions that are made in every federal government case. One of the great things about the Constitution is that you’re supposed to have this — this way of having independent review by an Article III Judge of the legal issues so that if by chance the jury verdict gets carried into the wrong territory by passion or prejudice, that something can be done about it.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Lynne, of course, one of the — aside from the conviction itself, certainly one thing that must sting the greatest is the fact that as a result of the conviction, you have been automatically disbarred and after years and decades of representing all kind of clients that the government obviously didn’t want you to represent, and I think back to the Larry Davis case and the Attica case and all of these other tremendous victories that you had against the government, so certainly, there are more than a few prosecutors in New York and across the country saying, “Finally, we were able to silence Lynne Stewart.” Your sense of — your reflection on that?

LYNNE STEWART: Well, that is my greatest sense of loss that I will be cut off from this profession that I love and that I feel that I have served, and I have served people who had no voice. I have cases pending now that will now have a new lawyer who will be undoubtedly my son who practices law with me and also has a sense of justice and is a brilliant lawyer, but to me personally, not to not be in the courts, not to be fighting these cases will be a tremendous loss. I can’t describe that. That is the most profound part of this for me.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to the question that you were asked yesterday outside the courthouse. Would you do this again? You say it all comes down to this piece of paper, this one press release that went out for the sheik announcing he wasn’t supporting the cease-fire anymore. What would you do now?

LYNNE STEWART: You know, it was not a decision that was just made off-the-cuff. We thought about this for awhile before we made the press release, and it was considered that it was important to him, considered important to our handling of the case, that this press release be made to keep him a figure on the world stage. If he had lost that, we would not have any bargaining power, we would not be able to do anything that would move him from this really torturous situation in which he was being held a blind, sick man who did not speak any English. And so the decision was made, and it was considered. Of course, I had no notion of this kind of consequence. Actually, these prison regulations, these SAMs said you know, “If you break these regulations, you may be cut off from your client.” That was our greatest concern, that we would be cut off from the client. The idea of prosecution never entered our minds. But the fact of the matter is, even with what has happened, it was the right decision. You can’t start saying, “Well, maybe I will do this, but I won’t do that.” It has to be that within the rules of ethics, what vigorously and zealously defending a client means you carry through on it and you do so wholeheartedly. I believe with my mind and heart that it was the right thing to do. I don’t like the consequences. I feel for the people who care so much about me personally and the terrible destruction that has brought. But I do feel that it was the right thing to do and that that is what we do. I think that Ramsey said it very well on the witness stand. It was the right thing to do for the client.

MICHAEL TIGAR: You know, we’re in New York now. Chambers Street is down the road there. And there is a Delancey street. Do you know where those come from? There was a lawyer named Chambers and a lawyer named Smith who were stripped from the rolls of the Bar in New York for courageously representing the colonial newspaper editor John Peter Zinger in 1735 in this town. Andrew Hamilton came to town and defended him, and he got him acquitted. The judge who did it was Judge Delancey, who also has a street named after him, but I understand that he mended his ways after he behaved so badly at the trial. So Lynne Stewart stands at a great tradition in this part of the state.

AMY GOODMAN: And of course, your trial took place in the courtroom of Julius and Ethyl Rosenberg.

LYNNE STEWART: Yes, and we, unlike the Rosenbergs, have gotten tremendous support. At least the movement itself recognizes the case as being part of a greater issue, bigger than just those two lawyers. It is part of the constitutional crisis that is really facing the country right now and yesterday afternoon when that verdict was rendered, that courtroom was packed. There was no place to sit down. It was not the empty courtroom that the Rosenbergs faced many times.

JUAN GONZALEZ: For those who would like to continue to support your efforts across the country who are watching and listening to your show, where can they contact?

LYNNE STEWART: The website will be up and running, Lynnestewart.org. We intend to keep on fighting, to speak out, to organize, to bring this to people and to ask people to come with us on this. Of course at this date, we have no concrete plan, but we know that that is what’s important, to speak out and not to be afraid and to stand up for what is right.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, in terms of the years you face in prison, if the judge doesn’t dismiss the charges in a few weeks, the numbers have been conflicting. Can you clarify? We hear 20, we hear 30, we hear up to 40.

LYNNE STEWART: Well, you know, Amy, I’m 65. I have just begun to collect my social security. It is probably a “mute point,” as some of my clients would say, that is, whatever the time is, it is probably going to be too much. But I think that the number is 45, would be a maximum. We have very little doubt that the government will continue its ways, ask for an extra enhancement based on the “terrorism connections.” All of these things, but we are going to fight that in due course and if I have to go to jail, I noticed that yesterday, the day I was convicted, was the same day that Nelson Mandela walked out of prison, and he did 27 years, and we can name so many people that had to do time before they came to the revolutionary moment. So for that reason, whatever it has to be, it has to be. We’re going to fight it all the way and we will organize as we go.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Also on the July 15 sentence date, once the judge sentences on that date and assuming that you appeal, would she have to serve the time then?

MICHAEL TIGAR: Certainly not automatically. The government agreed that she would remain out on bail pending the sentencing, and we have good reason to believe that we can continue that good argument for Lynne to be out pending appeal. But let’s not underestimate, the Supreme Court declared the sentencing guidelines unconstitutional. That’s one of the reasons we’re having the trouble, you know, about how many years, is it 35 or 45? That means that unlike the guideline situation, this judge has the power to give Lynne Stewart probation and one of the things the movement needs to organize around is to make this judge understand that this is somebody who does not belong in a federal prison. And if you — there will be a lot about that on the website because communications with the court are possible. They should be sent to an address that you’ll find there in a few days and then they can be forwarded to the court as a part of the sentencing hearing. This sentencing is not just going to be walk in, find out, and walk back out. We’re going to fill the courtroom again and we’re going to have a hearing and we’re going to have witnesses and we’ll see where it goes.

AMY GOODMAN: That website is?

LYNNE STEWART: Lynnestewart.org.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for joining us Lynne Stewart and Michael Tigar and Ramsey Clark, we would like you to stay on for another segment so we can talk about an Iraqi American doctor in upstate New York convicted of violating the sanctions imposed against Iraq before the U.S. invaded. I want to thank you both for being with us.