The Death of Frank Dunham

A great lawyer and a wonderful man died last week but only the terror-law junkies among you will recognize or remember his name. It was Frank W. Dunham, Jr., the man who first represented Zacarias Moussaoui (back when the government was pretending he was the 20th hijacker of 9/11) and who later convinced the Supreme Court to side with a U.S.-born Yemeni man, Yaser Esam Hamdi, over the Bush Administration in the first case brought and fought by a so-called "enemy combatant." The Post also reports that Dunham also once called former President Richard Nixon as a witness for, ironically enough, W. Mark Felt, the man who has since become known as Watergate's "Deep Throat."

Another prominent and talented terror-law attorney, Edward B. McMahon, Jr., who also represented Moussaoui, said over the weekend that Dunahm's work on the Hamdi case was "one of the greatest accomplishments ever by an American attorney" and that is no great exaggeration. But Frank also was just a nice, regular guy. Once, after Moussaoui wrote about me in one of his particularly loony court filings, I called Frank to ask him if I needed to be concerned about the fact that an Al Qaeda operative had focused his attention upon me. He said, simply, "get in line. You're probably 50th on the list of people he wants to get, I'm in front of you, and if he gets all the way to you we're in bigger trouble than we think. " The legal profession needs more people like Frank Dunham. An intense fighter with a good heart.

By Andrew Cohen |  November 6, 2006; 9:00 AM ET
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