Lifestyles: Lacrosse People in Unique Places

Lacrosse Magazine's "Lifestyles" series features people of prominence and human interest who possess ties to the nation's fastest growing sport. These are their stories, as told to Clare Lochary.

Formerly a Union College defenseman and currently a Guantanamo detainee attorney, Jason Pinney knows a thing or two about security.

Having patrolled the opponents’ attack zone as an all-league defenseman at Union College, Jason Pinney knows a thing or two about security. As an attorney for Bingham McCutchen, it’s not a surprise that he’s working to secure a future for a group of Uighur refugees in Guantanamo and for MetroLacrosse, a Boston-based US Lacrosse BRIDGE program. Pinney brought LM into the court room for a debriefing.

How did you get involved with MetroLacrosse?
A guy named Zack Lehman started it in Charlestown, Mass. I lived there, and it had so much success in this one small part of town. Zack was able to get some funding and roll it out around town. So while I was at Boston College [Law School], I started volunteering with Metro and had a blast with it. I had my own team and everything. When I got out of school, I didn’t have time to volunteer that way any more, but what I could do was offer to be their pro bono legal counsel. The biggest thing we helped Metro with was that they had the great misfortune of having someone attend their camp and drown in a pool during an evening activity, so we really dove in there and spent some significant time to guide them through all the things they should be doing to get that resolved. It was such a horrible tragedy. It was a really tough year for them. We talked to the people that were there. It was a tough year for Metro, but we were able to help them. I grew a lot a closer to a lot of the staff through that case.

Is it a coincidence that you’ve ended up doing pro bono work or did you choose to?
It’s something I’ve consciously made a part of my legal career. The legal profession does have a strong history of giving back, Bingham in particular. There’s a difference between law firms. Those cases are a lot of fun to work on. My law firm has a very strong reputation for supporting that type of work. It’s really coming out of their pocket. The partners are giving back by letting their associates work on cases for free. I’ve really just done two things, Metro Lacrosse and the Guantanamo detainee cases.

Why did the Uighur detainee case interest you?
I knew that our government was holding people indefinitely without a trial and I knew that wasn’t right. Personally, our firm only has two detainees remaining in the prison and we started with 12. Some are out and some are still there the reasons for that aren’t all together clear. It’s very complicated.

A little background about the case?
Our clients all fled political and social persecution in China. Each one has an individual story, but when you’re fleeing China you can’t hang out in a country that has reciprocity with China because if you get a parking ticket you’re going right back. They ended up in Afghanistan just before 9/11. The village they were staying in got bombed, so they fled into the mountains and crossed over into Pakistan, and were tricked into gathering in a mosque and sold to the U.S. government for $5,000 a head by what were basically Pakistani bounty hunters in late 2001. When the Uighurs were first captured, they were thrilled. They looked to the U.S. for help because they thought that the U.S. was the only country with the power to stand up to China. When they in a U.S. military prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan for six months, they were happy. They thought this meant they were going to get to resettle in America. You couldn’t have sent them to a better place, they thought. Eight years later, some of them are still in prison. Wrong place, wrong time.

What is Guantanamo like?
There’s a part that’s very benign. There’s a McDonald’s in the middle of town. Then you get over to the military base part and that’s not benign. I remember being nervous about what I was going to see on the first plane ride down there.

What was the best part of working on such a high-profile case?
Probably the coolest thing is to see the whole machine in motion. You see the legislative piece of it — Congress acting with regard to the detainees. The courts reacting to that. That’s all mixed up with the president and the military and the press. I’ve gotten to see how that angle works. It’s almost like a storm of all these things bouncing off together, spinning in one particular director.

And then you walk in and spend time with these guys, and you leave Guantanamo with the firmest conviction imaginable that the country’s doing the wrong thing. It’s a joke. The only reason they’re still there are political reasons, not security reasons. That’s why so many law firms have chosen to donate their time to cases like this. When you hold people who are without the ability to challenge those decisions, you get abuse. Our country was founded on checks and balances, right? We’re a country that abides by rule of law. When you have one branch of government – in this case, the executive branch – saying I can pick up anyone and hold that person in this place and hold them forever, and no one can say anything? That type of unilateral decision-making violates that system of checks and balances and leads to abuse of power.

How did you get involved with the case about the Uighur detainees in Guantanamo?
I had not heard of a Uighur either before I agreed to sign on. There’s a process for getting involved in a pro bono case like this. A partner has to sponsor the project, and it’s going to be a significant cost outlay — translators, travel to Cuba and DC — a big cost. [Bingham McCutchen partner] Sabin Willett decided he was going to do it. He spearheaded the case and asked a group of associates to get involved and that was back in February 2005.

What was your role in the case?
This case involved a large team. It’s been as big as 10 or 12 attorneys and the core group has been about four attorneys. There’s only a certain number of people who get a certain kind of security clearance to travel to Guantanamo and meet with the individuals.

Why did the case interest you?
I knew that our government was holding people indefinitely without a trial and I knew that wasn’t right. There’s a group called the Center for Constitutional Rights and they coordinate w/ all the law firms and individual attorneys to match lawyers and clients. Personally, our firm only has two detainees remaining in the prison and we started with 12. Some are out and some are still there the reasons for that aren’t all together clear. It’s very complicated.

Can you give us a little background about the case?
Our clients all fled political and social persecution in China. There are two major minorities in China. One is the Tibetans. Everybody knows the Tibetans, rights? With the Dalai Lama? China thinks the Dalai Lama is a terrorist. The second group is the Uighurs. Just recently the Uighur and Chinese political tensions have gotten some media attention because there were riots over there. [In July, a Uigher protest in the city of Urumqi turned violent, resulting in 197 deaths and over 1700 injuries.]

Our clients fled that type of persecution. Each one has an individual story, but when you’re fleeing China you can’t hang out in a country that has reciprocity with China because if you get a parking ticket you’re going right back. They ended up in Afghanistan just before 9/11. Some were on their way to Turkey. Others were just trying to get out of China meet up with other Uighurs. The village they were staying in got bombed, so they fled into the mountains and crossed over into Pakistan, and were tricked into gathering in a mosque and sold to the US government for $5,000 a head by what were basically Pakistani bounty hunters in late 2001. At the time, our country was dropping leaflets in that area saying “Turn in a terrorist, get $5,000.”

When the Uighurs were first captured, they were thrilled. They looked to the US for help because they thought that the U.S. was the only country with the power to stand up to China. When they in a U.S. military prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan for six months, they were happy. They thought this meant they were going to get to resettle in America. You couldn’t have sent them to a better place, they thought. Eight years later, some of them are still in prison. Wrong place, wrong time.

The thing is, our clients were always acknowledged as a “mistake.” There are good guys at Guantanamo and some bad guys at Guantanamo and the problem is no one has ever put a reliable process in to determine which is which. Before 2003 when a Congressional act went into place, our government cleared our guys. They were set to go in 2003, the earliest of any prisoners. Of course, this didn’t stop our government from fighting us in court to stop their release. We filed our first court case in March 2005 and subsequent cases later that summer. Ultimately we were able to win every case we filed.

Were you one of the four guys with security clearance who traveled to Guantanamo?
Yes. The government limits the number of people on these cases that can get that security clearance and travel to Guantanamo but I was able to get mine. I’ve been to the base eight or nine times.

What is it like there? Is it scary, or just institutional-looking? Is it more like a prison or a military base?
It’s all of the above. There’s a part that’s very benign. There’s a McDonald’s in the middle of town. Then you get over to the military base part and that’s not benign. I remember being nervous about what I was going to see on the first plane ride down there. And then you walk in and spend time with these guys, and you leave Guantanamo with the firmest conviction imaginable that the country’s doing the wrong thing. It’s a joke. The only reason they’re still there are political reasons, not security reasons. That’s why so many law firms have chosen to donate their time to cases like this. When you hold people who are without the ability to challenge those decisions, you get abuse. Our country was founded on checks and balances, right? We’re a country that abides by rule of law. When you have one branch of government – in this case, the executive branch – saying I can pick up anyone and hold that person in this place and hold them forever, and no one can say anything? That type of unilateral decision-making violates that system of checks and balances and leads to abuse of power.

Was it always all business or did you talk to them on a personal level? By the time lawyers were involved, I imagine they weren’t still so enamored of Americans.
It takes a while. Our guys were there for so long that some of them learned English. They’d been there for so freaking long they learned the language. It allows you to talk more without the translator. Then you can talk about things. Like, “What do you want to do when you get out of here?”

Four clients were recently released to Bermuda and we visited with those guys. They’re doing absolutely great. They just joined a soccer team and the Bermudan government has just been fantastic.

Did it feel good when President Obama’s first act as president was to dismantle Guantanamo?
It did. It did, but I have to tell you our clients had been cleared for release for close to six years. So as far as getting out of Guantanamo, the Uighurs were always at the front of the line. What really complicates the situation is China. That’s the real reason there are still 13 U in Guantanamo. Lots of countries, including our own won’t stand up to China. It’s easier to sweep these guys under the rug. China does horrible things to the Uighur people. You could equate them to John Adams: all they want is to be free. There’s never been any evidence that they were planning to do anything to China. I think some of them were opposed to China and wanted to free their people from that type of oppression, but that’s all..  

What was it like to discover yourself in the midst of case that’s at the intersection of about 20 different important U.S. and global flash points?
That’s a hard question but being involved with these cases, there’s a really sense of pride. I’m really proud of the work we’ve done. I’ve gotten to do so many awesome things that I’m tremendously thankful for. I got to testify before Congress about our clients. There’s not a ton of people in my position that get to do that at a big law firm. I’ve always been tremendously grateful for that. The experience that you gain with working with those guys and these issue is really sort of invaluable.

What was it like to testify before Congress?
That was very cool. That’s one of the coolest things I’ve done. It got a lot of press attention. I got to testify before the subcommittee on foreign affairs on one part issue. Namely, our government let a Chinese contingent into Guantanamo in 2002 to question these guys. Knowing [China’s] history of human rights abuses, there were a lot of congresspeople upset about that. It was a privilege and an honor to be able to testify.

Did you get blowback from friends or acquaintances for defending people who are thought to be our most dangerous enemies?
The one thing that gets me is the politics that come into play. Sometimes all people hear is “You defend terrorists at Guantanamo Bay? You’re un-American or a bleeding-heart liberal.” That type of thing has been somewhat frustrating. They don’t really know the whole story about what’s going on down there, and I’m convinced – convinced! – that 90-plus percent of the people – conservative, liberal, whatever – would agree with our situation regarding the Uighurs. But you gotta try to explain. I definitely try in a subtle way to explain exactly what’s going on, know that if they knew what I knew, they’d agree. I mean, it’s not a tough issue! It’s people wrongfully imprisoned for years and years and years. We used to joke that we must be the worst lawyers in the world because the government admits our clients are innocent and they’ve still been in prison so long.

A massive case like this must take tons of teamwork. Does your lacrosse background come into play?
Absolutely. A lot of people on the team are former athletes and you definitely need people to jump in and work together and get excited or nothing’s going to work. You really have to go go go and some of the people ahead of me have really instill that in us. When you hit a roadblock—and we’ve hit so many roadblocks – you just have to keep trying. And that type of mentality definitely equates to the sports mentality and has definitely served us well.

I read recently that since the Uighur prisoners were released to Bermuda, they’ve been allowed to work on a PGA golf course. How does that strike you? Is that a happy ending for them? For you?
Absolutely. These guys were thrilled with the opportunity to be able to work. They love the ability to be outside and the people of Bermuda have been particularly welcoming to them. I see them doing a great job integrating into that society. They’re sort of celebrities over there. As people get to know them, all this sort of fear of “Somebody from Guantanamo” fades away and people begin to understand who these guys are. The mosque had a welcome breakfast for them. But it goes beyond that – it’s not just the Muslim community there, but all Bermudans. They had a string of job offers. People were writing to the newspaper and calling the radio with job offers. It’s a good sign that they’re going to be very happy there in the future.

Tell me about your lacrosse background. Position, where you played, how you started with the game?
I did play in college. I played in high school at a prep school called Loomis-Chaffee and then I went to Union College and played there as well. I did well – I was captain, MVP and first team all league and then after college I continued to play in club leagues. I’m from Glastonbury Conn. Defense. Long stick.

What is your legal specialty?
Securities litigation. I work for Bingham McCutchen, a big international firm with I think about 1200 attorneys overall with offices on both coasts, and in London and Far East. We have sort of a finance specialty so we do a lot of work for banking clients.

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