The case also is important because of the threat it represents to the attorney-client privilege and attorney-client relationship. It is being watched closely by defense lawyers around the country because it will be a litmus test of the extent to which the Government will go in hampering efforts of defense lawyers who represent accused terrorists. That's today. Tomorrow the Government might to decide to hamper our defense of you.

This isn't about the Left or some holdover '60's radical. It's about you and me and the American system of justice and respect for our Constitution. For more on the Stewart case, read civil liberties expert Elaine Cassel .

If you are not familiar with the case, it's about New York criminal defense attorney Lynne Stewart, who represented an imprisoned jailed sheikh who had been found guilty in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case. In a nutshell, there was a gag order imposed by the Bureau of Prisons. She may have violated it when she held a press conference at which she announced her client was calling for the end of a ceasefire between his Islamic fundamentalist faction and the Egyptian Government. As a result of her statement about the Sheik calling for the end to the ceasefire, she was charged with aiding a terrorist organization.

Much of the evidence against her comes from taped conversations she had with her client at the jail.

More than 85,000 audio recordings of voice calls, faxes and computer transmissions were made by the government during its seven-year investigation as it worked to build a case that Stewart and the three men were conduits for the sheikh to his terrorist followers, and helped him, among other things, to communicate to them his desire for a resumption of terror attacks.

That kind of taping is more likely to happen now, since Ashcroft, in May, 2002, issued these guidelines to allow attorney-client monitoring of conversations.

Some of our prior posts on the case are here and here. More case details and news analysis are here and here.