Out of Context

Your Dec. 7 article “Conservative Lawyer Takes Aim at Liberals” by Tom Gorman includes errors and several misstatements regarding the foundation and, further, attributes quotes to me which were taken totally and completely out of context.

First, the United States Justice Foundation (USJF) does not operate out of my law office. The foundation is in a separate suite of offices next to my law office.

With regard to certain comments attributed to me, I point directly to the claimed quote, that “I can’t point to a case that says, ‘See here? We’ve made a difference.’ ” This quote was taken totally and completely out of context. In response to a question by your staff writer as to whether the foundation has ever set a legal precedent similar to that of the Miranda case, I responded that we had not.

In fact, however, the foundation has “made a difference” in a number of cases. To be brief, I would refer you to two of the cases which your staff writer was given information on. In one, the foundation forced the State Department to de facto repeal an executive order issued by President Carter, which effectively barred the deportation of Iranian terrorists during the hostage crisis. Closer to home, the foundation successfully sued the San Diego city clerk on behalf of a group of city residents.

With regard to the quote attributed to me that “and we haven’t represented one side in a case where the other side was represented by the ACLU,” I stated to your reporter that although the ACLU and USJF have been on opposite sides of several cases wherein each organization filed legal briefs, we have not directly faced the ACLU in a case where we were the only attorneys representing the other side. That is because both organizations usually are suing government entities of one form or another and rarely are on the side of government entities, although for vastly different reasons.

GARY G. KREEP, Executive director

United States Justice Foundation

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