Fred Thompson Defends Terrorists

Posted by Cliff Schecter at 12:00 PM on September 11, 2007.

This post, written by Cliff Schecter, originally appeared on Cliff Schecter's Blog

Sure, everyone deserves a lawyer in our system (except for those who Lobbyist Thompson and his friends would now throw into Guantanamo, of course).

But does everyone have to choose to defend those who blew up Pan Am Flight 103 and accept their blood money? Well, no.

But Fred Thompson did:

Add another interesting entry to the list of Fred Thompson's legal/lobbying clientele: Libyan terrorists.

The New York Times reports that billing records from the early 1990's show that Thompson gave advice to a colleague who was working on behalf of two Libyan intelligence officials implicated in the infamous Pan Am Flight 103 bombing in 1988, which killed 270 people.

At the time, Thompson worked for the Washington firm Arent Fox Kintner Plotkin & Kahn, and logged 3.3 billable hours giving advice to Arent Fox attorney John Culver, a former Democratic senator from Iowa, on jurisdictional issues surrounding the case.

One of the two suspects, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, was later convicted and sentenced to 27 years in prison in Scotland.

Will the news that Thompson provided legal counsel in a terrorist bombing case hinder him among conservative activists? On top of news that he lobbied for an abortion-rights group around the same period, it certainly can't help.

Tagged as: terrorism, justice system, thompson, libya

Cliff Schecter blogs at cliffschecter.com.