The following blog post which I quote in full has been banned by the US government.

The Muzzle Is Off
By Candace Gorman

In June of this year I received a call from a foreign reporter who asked if I could give her a profile of my client Al-Ghizzawi as he was on a list of men whom the US was looking for a new home and her country was considering accepting him. This was the first I had learned that Al-Ghizzawi had been “cleared” by the Obama review team for release. I gave her information about my client and for all I know a story was published about the plight of Al-Ghizzawi at Guantánamo, his status as “cleared” and why he needed a country in Europe to take him.

A few days later an attorney from the justice department called to tell me that Al-Ghizzawi was cleared for release and we laughed about the fact that I already knew the information. However the laughing stopped when the attorney told me that the justice department had designated the information as “protected” and I could not tell anyone except my client and those people who had signed on to the protective order (a court document that outlines the procedures for the Guantánamo cases) about his status as “cleared for release.” I told the attorney that he could not declare something “protected” that was already in the public domain. To make a long story short we were not in agreement and the attorney filed an emergency motion with the judge to muzzle me. Despite the fact that the information was in the public domain I was muzzled by the good judge who apparently doesn’t believe that the Constitution applies to me. I couldn’t even tell Mr. Al-Ghizzawi’s brother what I thought was good news (I didn’t know then that this was just another stall tactic by the justice department).

Not only was I muzzled but Mr. Al-Ghizzawi’s case was put on hold. The habeas hearing that we had been fighting to obtain literally for years was stayed by the judge despite the fact that the US Supreme Court held in June of 2008 that the men were entitled to swift hearings … So much for the Supreme Court! The president asked the judges to stop the hearings for those men who were “cleared” for release and the judges have fallen into lockstep, shamefully abandoning their duties as judges.

A few months later when I visited Al-Ghizzawi (at the end of August) he had just received word from his wife that she could no longer wait for his release and she asked him if she would sign papers for a divorce. Bad news is an everyday occurrence for Al-Ghizzawi and he was holding up well despite this latest blow.

When I returned from the base I asked the justice department to allow me to contact Al-Ghizzawi’s wife and tell her that he had been cleared for release. I hoped that if she knew he was to be released she would hang in there and not go through with the divorce. I was told they would get back to me. When they didn’t I asked again but they still would not give me the OK. In Court papers I pleaded with the judge to let me tell Al-Ghizzawi’s brother and wife, telling the judge about the wife’s request for a divorce, but the judge, the same judge who has apparently decided to ignore the Supreme Court’s directive for quick habeas hearings, ignored this plea as well.

I seriously thought about disobeying the order and trying to get word to Al-Ghizzawi’s wife and then taking whatever lumps were thrown my way … however, despite the fact that the judicial system has failed Al-Ghizzawi and most of the men at Guantánamo I could not bring myself to blatantly disobey a court order. For five months I have kept this information confidential despite the injustice to both my client, Mr. Al-Ghizzawi, and to what was our rule of law … until yesterday, when the muzzle was lifted.

As far as I know this subsequent blog post quoted in full again, has not been banned by the US government.

On Tuesday I reported that the Government finally allowed me to discuss matters that had previously been “protected” in regards to my client Al-Ghizzawi. In fact the Government unclassified and allowed for public release a Petition for Original Habeas Corpus that I filed in the US Supreme Court. I released that Petition to the public in accordance with the Government’s designation of “unclassified.” On Friday the Department of Justice (DOJ) told me that it had made a mistake and that it had apparently violated the Protective Order (an Order that sets out the rules for the DOJ and Habeas counsel in regards to the Guantánamo cases) entered in the case when it “unclassified” and allowed for public release information in the Petition that it wanted to “protect” and that therefore I must remove my post of November 17 because of the DOJ’s mistake. I explained to the DOJ attorneys that the Petition and my Post of November 17 were widely distributed and are available at various sites on the web … they do not seem to care about that … they only care that I not report about what they are now trying to declare “protected information” … 5 days after they unclassified the material and made it available for public release.

This is of course outrageous conduct by the DOJ … in trying to declare something as “protected” after being clearly designated and distributed to the public, but what else is new? For those of you who either remember my November 17 post or have it available on your website, I originally learned of the so-called “protected” information from a public source and the judge in Al-Ghizzawi’s case still ruled that I could not discuss it. […]

This is not the end of this story. Under the Protective Order the Government must actually get the judge’s permission to retroactively keep me (and only me) from publishing and discussing the information that the Government now seeks to “protect.” The DOJ will have to file a document with the Court explaining why this now very public information should be “protected.” Ultimately it will be the judge’s decision. If you do not see my post back up that will mean that the judge agreed with the Government, that I alone cannot talk about those things that you are privy to discuss.

The banned post was retrieved from the google cache. Banning a blog post is not only an offense against the first amendment (with very serious consequences in this case) but also an act of technological idiocy as the post had already made it into the google cache (ahd the DOJ could check that and knew it couldn't make google remove it).

All via Andy Worthington who found and reposted the cached post.