Terror Watch: Distorted Intelligence?

But court records in the case show that Marri's new lawyers, Larry Lustberg and Mark Berman of Newark, N. J., had filed a motion last month seeking to suppress key evidence in the case. They argued that federal agents had failed to read their client his Miranda rights and obtained his computer files through a warrantless- search of his apartment.

Standard defense lawyers tactics, perhaps, but in this case effective. In an apparent setback for the Justice Department, the federal judge overseeing the case on Friday ordered a hearing on the motion, giving Marri's lawyers the right to call their own witnesses and cross-examine federal agents.

It was only after that ruling that Justice Department officials, in consultation with White House lawyers, hastily pulled the plug on the entire proceeding and had Marri declared an enemy combatant on Monday. Was the Justice Department worried that much of the evidence against Marri might get tossed? Officials insist not. But Marri defense lawyer Berman insisted it's hard to draw any other conclusion that the looming evidentiary hearing ordered by the judge was "their true incentive."

Berman is less talkative about how he and his co-counsel, Lustberg, came to be brought into the case in the first place. Both are prominent defense lawyers in New Jersey who had previously been retained by the Saudi Embassy to represent Saudi students in New Jersey accused of hiring imposters to take English language proficiency tests needed to get into college or graduate schools.

The widespread practice of the Saudi Government, and now the Qatari government--another purported ally of the U.S. in the war on terror--of retaining U.S. lawyers for their own citizens being prosecuted by the Justice Department on terrorism-related charges has angered some Justice officials. It has led, sources tell NEWSWEEK, to recent talks between Justice and State Department officials about possibly requesting these allied governments to put a stop to the practice.

But that prospect drew sharp criticism from Berman, who said the very idea of such talks shows the Justice Department's hostility to having "people who assert their innocence being represented by defense counsel."