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Comment by ferdo | Hacker News Reader

Miranda was offered a government lawyer at first, not one of his own choosing. He was smart to refuse their stupid offer.

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He was smart to refuse the lawyer, but Greenwald's assertion that Miranda was not allowed a lawyer present was not actually grounded in reality. This whole thing stinks.

I have no issue with the statement.

There's a big difference between being offered a lawyer and being offered to call your lawyer. If he was not allowed to call a lawyer of his choosing then he was not allowed to have a lawyer present. A lawyer provided by the government is just another agent of the government in the room.

Since many law enforcement agents at the federal level (in the US at least) happen to also be lawyers then, by your logic, there is already a lawyer present. No need to get another one involved.

There's no logic involved: Greenwald said something that wasn't true (whether that something came from him or the official who spoke with him is not yet clear). Then the closer you look, the more emerges: Miranda in his later interview said "I don't have a role" but then Rusbridger admitted this morning that he did have a role. Rusbridger then insisted that Miranda "was not a journalist" but assisted his partner in "journalistic work". If the NSA's position fell apart under such basic cross-examination, we'd be all over it, so why do these guys get a free pass?

If you don't know where the statement originated then you don't know enough to state that it is untrue. Either way, I still have no problem with the statement. We are essentially arguing over semantics at this point. You say any lawyer will do, I say it has to be a lawyer of his choosing.

I fail to see how several different people making a statement about the man's level of involvement in the reporting is relevant to anything. The man says he has no involvement so anybody else stating otherwise is mistaken. What's the relevance to what's being reported?

You're complaining about it; we're discussing it; I fail to see the free pass they have supposedly received.

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