Ex-Navy SEAL sues lawyer, says bad advice about best-selling Osama bin Laden book cost him millions
Recently profiled on 60 Minutes, a former Navy SEAL who wrote a best-selling book about the U.S. government raid that killed Osama Bin Laden wound up being federally investigated, his lawyer says.
The issue: Whether Matt Bissonnette, writing under the pen name “Mark Owen,” revealed government secrets in violation of the Espionage Act in his book, No Easy Day, attorney Bob Luskin told CBS News.
Now Bissonnette, again using the Mark Owen moniker, has sued his former lawyer for malpractice. He says he was given bad advice about publishing the book without first allowing the feds to review it. That not only cost him his security clearance and millions in profits and movie rights he forfeited, in order to settle with the U.S. government, but damaged his reputation and hence his future earning potential through speaking engagements and the like, he alleges in the suit.
It was filed Monday in federal court in Manhattan and seeks $8 million in damages. The Associated Press and the New York Daily News have stories.
Named as defendants are attorney Kevin Podlaski and an Indiana law firm, Carson Boxberger. Indiana Bar Association records show that Podlaski now chairs the litigation department at another Fort Wayne, Indiana, law firm in which he is a partner. He also is a retired member of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps.
The defendants did not respond to requests for comment, the articles say, and the Department of Justice was not immediately available to confirm the information provided in the lawsuit about the settlement.
The suit says Podlaski told the plaintiff that he had a government clearance and could review documents for classified information, but that wasn’t what the law required, the Daily News reports. Hence, the review by the attorney “doomed to failure from the start,” the complaint contends.
See also:
ABAJournal.com: “Disclosure that Bin Laden Was Unarmed Has Critics Claiming a Violation of International Law”
Esquire/Center for Investigative Reporting: “The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden … Is Screwed”
Houston Chronicle: “Report: SEAL who killed bin Laden identified”