Two former Illinois U.S. Attorneys today encouraged the state’s congressional delegation and public officials to house Guantanamo Bay detainees in federal and state prisons.

Thomas P. Sullivan (Jenner & Block)

Dan K. Webb (Winston & Strawn)

Ex-Northern District of Illinois U.S. Attorneys Thomas P. Sullivan and Dan K. Webb wrote in a letter that they support placing Guantanamo Bay detainees in a Thomson, Ill., state prison. The prison in Northern Illinois is being discussed as a possible facility to house some of the roughly 200 terrorism suspects still held in the Guantanamo Bay military prison, which President Barack Obama ordered closed by January 2010.

“We support trials for the detainees in our federal courts, which means that they must be brought to the U.S. to stand trial and thus must be housed in appropriate prisons in this country,” they wrote in the letter, which was also signed by former Rep. Abner Mikva (D-Ill.)

The three Illinoisans also endorsed a letter in support of Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to to try 9/11 “mastermindâ€� Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other suspected terrorists in a New York City federal court. Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) submitted the letter into the record at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing of the Justice Department earlier this month. The letter was signed by more than 130 people, including 25 former U.S. Attorneys.

Northern District of Illinois U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald participated in a panel discussion about reporter privilege at the American Bar Association annual meeting in Chicago on Saturday. He said he agreed to speak to provide “context” to proposals in Congress for a federal law to prevent courts from ordering reporters to divulge their sources. 

But unsurprisingly, the former special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame leak case had nothing good to say about the measures. 

From the ABA Journal newsletter:

“No one is against the right to know,” said Fitzgerald at the program sponsored by the Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, “but we both have strong views about the best way to get to the truth in a particular case.” He emphasized that his comments were not intended to reflect policy positions of the Obama administration.

If a court orders a journalist to give up his or her source: ”I don’t see how reporters can be different from the president of the United States or any other citizen and refuse to comply,” Fitzgerald said, according to the ABA Journal. (Except that Fitzgerald’s own kid-glove treatment of Dick Cheney undermines his argument.)

America’s Prosecutor is even more hard line against reporters than U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who ordered then-New York Times reporter Judy Miller jailed for refusing to say who told her Plame was a covert CIA agent. Walton also tried to impose personal financial ruin on a former USA Today reporter who reported on the FBI’s investigation of former Army scientist Steven Hatfill, whom none other than then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft had identified as a “person of interest” in the anthrax case.  ”I do believe reporters should have some level of protection,” Walton said at the conference, according to The Associated Press.

Look, we don’t hesitate to concede that Judy Miller going to jail to protect Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, from being exposed in a campaign to smear Plame and her Iraq war-critic husband, doesn’t make the best argument for a reporter shield law. Moreover, Fitzgerald had other reasons to be plenty mad at Miller. She got a tip in the fall of 2001 that the government planned to raid an Islamic charity called Global Relief in the Chicago area for its suspected role in terrorism financing.

Miller’s New York Times colleague, Philip Shenon, phoned the charity seeking its response, thus alerting the charity that it was about to be raided. Awaiting a search warrant, FBI agents conducting surveillance outside the charity’s offices stood by helplessly as officials shredded documents, I’ve heard.

So, the fact is: Judy Miller didn’t act responsibly, and that fueled efforts to curb reporter protections. But Fitzgerald’s actions haven’t been above reproach, either, as retired federal judge Abner Mikva pointed out last week in another panel at the ABA annual meeting. Mikva said Fitzgerald’s high-profile press conference last December accusing then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D-Ill.) of going on a “political crime spree” unfairly prejudiced the case.

With Fitzgerald blasting the governor in remarks televised internationally, “Where in the world can you find a neutral jury to hear the Blagojevich trial?â€� Mikva said. Read the ABA Journal story about Mikva’s remarks here.

Asked about Mikva’s remarks, Fitzgerald said he couldn’t comment on a pending case, the ABA Journal reported, and added, “Besides, I’m leaving on vacation.”