Smith, Clive Stafford 1959- (Clive Stafford Smith)

PERSONAL:

Born 1959. Education: Columbia Law School, received degree.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Reprieve, P.O. Box 52742, London EC4P 4WS, England.

CAREER:

Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center, New Orleans, founder, beginning 1993; Reprieve, London, England, lawyer, 1999—. Attorney for prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, 2004—. Southern Center for Human Rights, lawyer.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Rowntree Visionary and Echoing Green Fellow, 2005; Soros Senior Fellow.

WRITINGS:

Bad Men: Guantánamo Bay and the Secret Prisons, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 2007, published as Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Seeking Justice in Guantánamo Bay, Nation Books (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith is the founder of the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center, a group that represents inmates on death row in the state of Louisiana. He is perhaps better known, though, for his role with the organization Reprieve in defending prisoners accused of being terrorists against the United States and interned at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. His book, Bad Men: Guantánamo Bay and the Secret Prisons (published in the United States as Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Seeking Justice in Guantánamo Bay), details his experiences seeking justice for the individuals who are detained there. "If you step back for a second and you compare what's happening in Guantánamo to the best job we ever did as Americans," at the Nuremberg trials following World War II, Smith told Amy Goodman in an interview for Democracy Now!, one can see how different the situations are. "The first three people … charged [at Guantánamo Bay] were not Hermann Göring and the people who were the worst in the Nazis in World War II," he said to Goodman. "Instead, the first three people we charged were Salim Hamdan, who is allegedly a chauffeur for [Osama] bin Laden, and then two juveniles, Omar Khadr and Mohamed Jawad…. And I think that puts it a little bit in context of how carried away the military process has" become in Guantánamo Bay.

Smith sees a direct relationship between the work he performed when representing inmates scheduled to receive the death penalty in Louisiana and the work he currently does for Reprieve on behalf of the Guantánamo Bay detainees. With "mistakes in the death penalty arena, various [issues] contribute," he told Emma Schwartz in an interview for U.S. News & World Report. "There are informants doing it for their own benefit. There are aggressive police officers, incompetent defense lawyers, zealous prosecutors.

There is unreliable evidence. And occasionally, there are biased jurors. Now look at Guantánamo." The same conditions apply, Smith stated, which create situations where similar abuses of authority can occur. Issues of human rights can be pushed aside in the name of national security. In order to protect its role as defender of human dignity around the world, though, the United States must respect those rights. "It's not to say everyone at Guantánamo is innocent," Smith concluded in his interview with Schwartz, "but the odds of making a mistake in Guantánamo are vastly greater than in Mississippi. That's very worrying."

One of the most serious questions raised by the treatment of the Guantánamo Bay detainees is this: If the United States, which has represented itself as a bastion of individual freedoms for more than two centuries, can condone human rights abuses and torture, what does that say about the future of human rights in the twenty-first century? In Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side, declared Peter J.M. Wayne in a review for the Spectator, Smith "paints a vivid and disturbing picture of what's been going on under our noses, in the name of these ambiguous, continually challenged laws. His is an important, deeply penetrating book (for … Smith is the last person likely to be hoodwinked by ‘overwrought hyperbole’) that should be read and taken in by every right-thinking individual." Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side describes how the U.S. government "betrayed all America's best traditions of the rule of law, and instituted a regime of torture not far from those, past and present, it rightly condemns," said London Independent reviewer Carole Angier. "One colonel, baffled by his own children's accusations, says ‘We're Americans and we do what's right.’" "If the prospects of the US abandoning its fundamental constitutional values were not so serious," stated Philippe Sands in a review for the Guardian, Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side "would just make us laugh…. Smith never allows us to forget that the detainees are real people, with real families and real stories. The greatest danger we face, the US diplomat George Kennan once wrote, is that we shall become like those who seek to destroy us."

Critics in general celebrated Smith's work. "His is a laconic and sardonic first-person account, acutely observed and at times blackly humorous," Geoffrey Robinson declared in a review for New Statesman, "of what Guantánamo Bay is actually like." "The stories that Smith tells in this book are horrifying and infuriating, and ultimately compelling," stated Thom Hartmann, BuzzFlash.com Book of the Month Review contributor. Hartmann added: "Brilliantly written and nearly impossible to put down, Eight O'Clock Ferry [to the Windward Side] lays out with clarity both the tragedy of our behaviors as well as their banality." New York Times Book Review contributor Dahlia Lithwick stated: "What the author does offer is a bracing opening statement from the defense team at Guantánamo, years overdue. We don't have to believe every last claim he makes. It's enough to be incensed that we are hearing some of it for the first time." Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side is "a well-wrought, timely work of personal and political commitment," said a Kirkus Reviews contributor, "that should garner a great deal of deserved attention." Library Journal contributor Gilles Renaud concluded that the book is a "fascinating and detailed account of interest to all concerned with liberty, human rights, and constitutional checks and balances."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Bookseller, July 14, 2006, "Samson Gets Bad Men," review of Bad Men: Guantánamo Bay and the Secret Prisons, p. 13.

Guardian (London, England), June 16, 2007, Philippe Sands, "The Dangerous Distraction of Guantánamo: Philippe Sands Discovers ‘the Legal Equivalent of Outer Space’ in Clive Stafford Smith's Survey of Guantánamo, Bad Men."

Independent (London, England), June 29, 2007, Carole Angier, "A Season in Hell," review of Bad Men.

Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2007, review of Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Seeking Justice in Guantánamo Bay.

Library Journal, December 1, 2007, Gilles Renaud, review of Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side, p. 137.

London Review of Books, August 2, 2007, "The Least Worst Place," review of Bad Men, p. 26.

Mother Jones, February 23, 2005, Onnesha Roychoudhuri, "Do Non-Americans Have Human Rights?," author interview.

New Statesman, May 21, 2007, Geoffrey Robinson, "Freedom, Soldier," review of Bad Men, p. 55.

New York Times Book Review, December 16 2007, Dahlia Lithwick, "Inside Gitmo," review of Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side.

Spectator, June 9, 2007, Peter J.M. Wayne, "The Charnel House of Liberty," review of Bad Men.

Times Literary Supplement (London, England), July 13, 2007, Jeremy Putley, review of Bad Men, p. 28.

U.S. News & World Report, November 16, 2007, Emma Schwartz, "Q&A: Clive Stafford Smith," author interview; November 26, 2007, "One Man's Outrage over Guantánamo," p. 20.

ONLINE

BuzzFlash.com Book of the Month Review,http://www.buzzflash.com/ (July 24, 2008), Thom Hartmann, review of Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side.

Culture Wars,http://www.culturewars.co.uk/ (July 24, 2008), Alistair John, review of Bad Men.

Democracy Now!,http://www.democracynow.org/ (July 24, 2008), Amy Goodman, "Clive Stafford Smith: U.S. Holding 27,000 in Secret Overseas Prisons; Transporting Prisoners to Iraqi Jails to Avoid Media & Legal Scrutiny," author interview.

Reprieve,http://www.reprieve.org.uk/ (July 24, 2008), "Clive Stafford Smith, Director," author profile.