Frank Dunham, 64, Lead Lawyer for Moussaoui
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Frank Dunham, who fought for Zacarias Moussaoui and other well-known terrorism suspects as the first federal public defender in Alexandria, Va., died Wednesday of brain cancer. He was 64.
After creating the office virtually single-handedly in 2001, one of his first clients was Moussaoui, the only person charged in a U.S. courtroom in connection with the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
In the difficult aftermath of September 11, Dunham zealously battled the government on behalf of an Al Qaeda member who despised his attorneys. Moussaoui eventually pleaded guilty, but only after Dunham and his team tied the case up in the courts for several years.
The Moussaoui case drew so much attention that it all but overshadowed Dunham’s work on behalf of “enemy combatant”Yaser Esam Hamdi.
Dunham personally argued before the U.S. Supreme Court the case of Hamdi, a U.S. citizen held as a combatant by the military. That produced an important decision that upheld the government’s power to detain Hamdi but said he could challenge that detention in U.S. courts. Hamdi was released and flown to Saudi Arabia.
The high-profile cases of the past few years capped a colorful legal career in which Dunham prosecuted espionage and fraud defendants and represented clients including W. Mark Felt, the confidential source known as Deep Throat in the Washington Post’s Watergate scandal coverage.
Felt, the FBI’s second-ranking official at the time of the 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate, went on trial in 1980 with another former FBI official. They were charged with illegally authorizing government agents to break into homes without warrants in search of anti-Vietnam War bombing suspects.
In one of history’s strange footnotes, Dunham called former president Nixon to testify on behalf of Felt, the man who helped force Nixon’s resignation.
Dunham, a gregarious man with a self-effacing sense of humor, was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Arlington. He was a lifelong fan of the Washington Redskins, sitting in the same upper-deck seat at all home games.
“That was his only vice, those Redskins games,” said his wife of 40 years, Elinor.
