One of the American legal profession's most venerable traditions is work performed "pro bono publico" -- free of charge to promote the public good.

But today's hottest pro bono gig is raising eyebrows. It's seeking freedom for suspected enemy combatants and terrorists detained by the U.S. government at Guantanamo Bay. The lawyers who represent these detainees are from America's most prestigious firms. They may contribute hundreds of hours and make five or more trips to Cuba, indirectly subsidized by fat fees from Fortune 500 clients.

Legal giant Mayer Brown is typical. Its website boasts that it considers its "social justice" efforts at Guantanamo to be among "our 'cutting edge' work." Powerhouse Twin Cities firms -- Fredrikson & Byron and the New York office of Minnesota megafirm Dorsey & Whitney -- have also grabbed a piece of the action.

The organization behind the Gitmo crusade is the Washington-based Center for Constitutional Rights. CCR has "been responsible for organizing and coordinating more than 500 pro bono lawyers across the country ... to represent the men at Guantanamo," according to its website.

Some Americans applaud the Guantanamo lawyers, insisting that they are acting in the best tradition of the bar by zealously representing "unpopular" clients. But if you peek behind the PR curtain, you'll see a different dynamic.

Consider, for example, that a substantial number -- one in five -- of former Gitmo detainees return or are suspected of returning to terrorism, according to the Pentagon. In Yemen, recently released Gitmo detainees are leading "Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" -- a menacing new terrorist network that claims to have orchestrated the abortive Christmas Day "underwear" bombing of Northwest Flight 253 and has promised bloody attacks in the future.

The Center for Constitutional Rights itself is hardly mainstream. Cofounded in 1966 by pro-Castro lawyer William Kunstler, it has championed extremists such as convicted Marxist cop-killer Assata Shakur -- one of the FBI's most-wanted domestic terrorists.

After 9/11, CCR switched from defending radical leftists to defending suspected terrorists. It has strongly supported attorney Lynne Stewart, who was convicted in 2005 of "providing material support" for terrorism after she helped client "Blind Sheik" Omar Abdel Rahman -- in prison for plotting to blow up New York landmarks -- to run his jihadist organization from his cell.

CCR director Michael Ratner exemplifies the center's politics. He has extolled Cuba as a "desirable model" for those "seeking to change" American society, and has named Che Guevara -- a designer of Cuba's notorious prison system -- as his "hero." Ratner is a former president of the National Lawyers Guild, which has extolled the glories of life in totalitarian North Korea.

Why would mainstream lawyers join forces with CCR to spring suspected terrorists from Gitmo? Obviously, motivations vary. But this reminds me of the dynamic at work in "Radical Chic" -- the New York glitterati's fascination with the Black Panthers in the 1960s -- or well-heeled Americans' 1980s romance with Central American Marxist guerillas.

Many Gitmo lawyers, I suspect, have a naïve and romantic tendency to mythologize the detainees as hapless victims. "You've been told, 'They chewed through chains to take down a 767,' but they're just kids," Allen & Overy attorney Sarah Havens gushed to the New York Law Journal about her firm's Yemeni clients. "They were all polite."

Gitmo lawyers are also likely predisposed to view the U.S. military as ruthless and unjust. So they may gullibly swallow some detainees' claims of innocence, when others would probe more skeptically.

Finally, for many, Gitmo advocacy may serve as a form of social and political criticism -- a way to flaunt their opposition to former president George W. Bush's antiterror policies and to publicly display their "social justice" credentials. Their adventure in Cuba provides a frisson of excitement as they leave their plush offices to rescue exotic victims of U.S. oppression at Guantanamo.

Last week, a Wall Street Journal article by Thomas Joscelyn of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and Debra Burlingame, a cofounder of Keep America Safe, revealed that some Guantanamo lawyers' zeal is leading them to grossly violate their conditions of access to enemy combatants. Among the violations uncovered in a Freedom of Information Act request: Gitmo attorneys have incited detainees to remove their feeding tubes during hunger strikes and have provided detainees with a propaganda brochure that could be used as a guide for manufacturing claims of torture.

It's heady stuff, being a member of the social-justice vanguard. But when lawyers' actions threaten to help put terrorists back in the air or on the ground, Americans may wish they'd get self-righteous kicks elsewhere.

Katherine Kersten is a Twin Cities writer and speaker. Reach her at kakersten@gmail.com.