Conservative legal minds, including officials who served in the Bush administration, are also condemning the ad, which suggests U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder hired terrorist sympathizers to work for the Justice Department.
The ad targets Holder's hiring of nine lawyers who performed past legal work for suspected terrorists detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Despite a request from congressional Republicans, Holder declined to reveal the identities of seven lawyers in the group whose detainee work had not been previously reported.
"Eric Holder will only name 2. Why the secrecy behind the other 7? Whose values do they share?" the ad asks, after flashing a tear-out of an Investor's Business Daily headline that reads, "DOJ: Department of Jihad."
The ad concludes with a message and a suggestion to call Holder: "Tell Eric Holder: The American people have a right to know the identity of 'the Al-Qaeda 7.'"
The attorneys' identities became public knowledge this week after the Justice Department confirmed a Fox News report revealing their names. But the story has taken a new turn with high-profile conservatives attacking the ad.
John Bellinger III, who served as a legal adviser to former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, expressed his disapproval in a statement to The American Prospect.
"I think it's unfortunate that these individuals are being criticized for their past representation. It reflects the politicization and the polarization of terrorism issues," he said. "Neither Republicans nor Democrats should be attacking officials in each other's administrations based solely on the clients they have represented in the past," Bellinger added. "We've had a long-standing tradition in our country for lawyers to represent unpopular causes, and they shouldn't be attacked for doing so."
Bellinger's statement was echoed by another Bush-era Justice Department official, former assistant attorney general for the civil division, Peter D. Keisler, who told The New York Times it was simply "wrong" for Cheney's group to judge lawyers for their past detainee work.
"There is a longstanding and very honorable tradition of lawyers representing unpopular or controversial clients," Keisler said. "The fact that someone has acted within that tradition, as many lawyers, civilian and military, have done with respect to people who are accused of terrorism -- that should never be a basis for suggesting that they are unfit in any way to serve in the Department of Justice."
In a post titled "An Attack That Goes Too Far," Paul Mirengoff, a lawyer and writer for Power Line, a conservative blog, said it was appropriate for Cheney's group and Republicans like Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to press for the release of the attorneys' identities, but "false" to refer to them as "The Al-Qaeda 7" or imply they share the values of terrorists.
"I would rather give up my law license than represent Osama bin Laden's driver," Mirengoff wrote. "However, I would not deserve to have a law license if my personal views on this matter caused me to launch vicious, unfounded attacks on lawyers who exercise their right to represent despicable clients."
Mirengoff told The Huffington Post: "It could be worse than some of the assertions made by McCarthy, depending on some of the validity of those assertions."
In its report revealing the identities of the officials, Fox News said "many of the seven lawyers in question played only minor or short-lived roles in advocating for detainees." The legal work ranged from helping civil liberties groups file detainee-related briefs, including one urging the Supreme Court to hear the case of Jose Padilla, the U.S. citizen held as an "enemy combatant" by the Bush administration, to serving on legal teams that defended detainees like "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, Osama bin Laden's one-time driver.
Cheney's group said that work calls into question the attorneys' ability to work objectively on detainee-related issues in the Justice Department.
"The American people have a right to know whether those same lawyers who used to represent and advocate on behalf of terrorists, some of whom have killed Americans, whether those same lawyers are working inside the Justice Department on terror issues," she told Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor."
The Justice Department declined to comment on the nature of the attorney's work.
"Department of Justice attorneys work around the clock to keep this country safe, and it is offensive that their patriotism is being questioned," Justice Department Spokesman Matt Miller said.