Defense attorney for 9/11 hijacker to have documentary screening at Milwaukee Bar Association on Juneteenth

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By Steve Schuster

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A criminal defense attorney for one of the men charged with the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks will have his documentary screened at Milwaukee Bar Association on Juneteenth (Monday, June 19).

Monday’s documentary public screening will be of the film ‘Who We Are’ by Jeffrey Robinson.

Robinson was an original member of the John Adams Project and worked on the behalf of one of five men held at Guantanamo Bay charged with carrying out the 9/11 attacks.

The John Adams Project was established by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers to “support military counsel at Guantanamo Bay.” The federal government detained men at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp following the September 11 attacks and the war in Afghanistan.

According to the now declassified 2014 Senate Select Commitee on Intelligence study obtained by The Wisconsin Law Journal,  a resulting assessment reported that the “CIA Detainee Program is a success, providing unique and valuable intelligence at the tactual level for the benefit of policymakers, war fighters, and the CIA’s covert action operators.”

The assessment also reported that regulations and procedures for handling detainees were “adequate and clear,” and that the program had responded swiftly, fairly, and completely to deviations from the structured program.

The public screening will be held at MBA’s office located at 747 N. Broadway Street from 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. Monday.

Until April 2021, Robinson was an ACLU deputy legal director and the director of the ACLU Trone Center for Justice and Equality, which houses the organization’s work on criminal justice, racial justice, and reform issues, according to the ACLU.

Robinson graduated from Harvard Law School in 1981 and has three decades of experience working civil rights matters.  He has also worked at the Federal Public Defender’s Office and in private practice, trying more than 200 criminal cases to verdict.