Press Release
June 4, 2008

Former Partner Bruce Swartz in the News!

Former partner, Bruce C. Swartz, was recently featured prominently in an article entitled Interrogation Tactics Were Challenged at White House, which appeared in the Washington Post on May 22, 2008.

The article credits Swartz, a criminal division deputy in charge of international issues at the Justice Department, with alerting top Bush administration officials to a strategy he considered “wrongheaded” that concerned the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Five years ago, Swartz began to repeatedly question the effectiveness of harsh interrogation tactics used on Guantanamo detainees during White House meetings of a special, high-level group formed to decide detainee matters. In an investigative audit released by the Justice Department’s inspector general in May 2008, Swartz, joined by a handful of other top Justice and FBI officials, warned that the abuse of Guantanamo inmates would damage the country's reputation and its law enforcement record, and would almost certainly taint any legal proceedings against the detainees.

These predictions now appear to be coming true. In May 2008, a top Pentagon official chose to drop charges against a detainee who was roughly interrogated at Guantanamo. U.S. officials believe it may now be difficult to charge him at all. Defense lawyers for a group of alleged Sept. 11 conspirators in U.S. custody have also said they plan to raise concerns about harsh techniques used by the CIA and will seek to keep evidence obtained by such tactics out of court.