By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 5, 2006

Frank W. Dunham Jr., 64, who fought for Zacarias Moussaoui and other well-known terrorism suspects as the first federal public defender in Alexandria, died Nov. 3 of brain cancer at his Alexandria home.

A longtime Northern Virginia lawyer and former prosecutor, Mr. Dunham created the public defender's office virtually by himself in 2001. One of his first clients was Moussaoui, the only person charged in a U.S. courtroom in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, Mr. Dunham zealously battled the government on behalf of an al-Qaeda member who despised his own attorneys. Moussaoui eventually pleaded guilty, but only after Mr. Dunham and his team tied the case up in the courts for several years.

Edward B. MacMahon Jr., one of Mr. Dunham's co-counsels, said, "His work on the Moussaoui case was outstanding" but was overshadowed by what he did for "enemy combatant" Yaser Esam Hamdi.

Mr. 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 Hamdi case was, in my judgment, one of the greatest accomplishments ever by an American attorney," said MacMahon, who recalled how Mr. Dunham learned from a newspaper that Hamdi had been detained without charge. "He said, 'That's just wrong -- you can't do that to an American citizen.' "

The high-profile cases of the past few years capped a colorful legal career in which Mr. Dunham prosecuted espionage and fraud defendants and represented clients including W. Mark Felt, the confidential source known as Deep Throat, who was key to The Washington Post's coverage of the Watergate scandal.

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, Mr. Dunham called former president Richard M. Nixon to testify on behalf of Felt, the man who helped force Nixon's resignation. "The story Frank always told is that the jury turned its back on Nixon," said Michael Nachmanoff, the acting federal public defender in Alexandria.

Nachmanoff was selected in August to be Mr. Dunham's replacement, pending security clearances. Mr. Dunham retired in November 2005, citing the effects of his illness and a desire to spend more time with his family.

It is his role as public defender that is perhaps Mr. Dunham's greatest legacy, lawyers said. The office, which also has divisions in Richmond and Norfolk, represents indigent defendants and now handles about 60 percent of the cases at the busy Alexandria federal courthouse, which serves Northern Virginia.

"He built it into what I would consider a highly respected office. It was all his doing," said J. Frederick Sinclair, an Alexandria lawyer who prosecuted cases with Mr. Dunham in the 1970s. Sinclair called him "a bulldog of an attorney, a true warrior. He would dig into a case and wouldn't let go."

In a 2004 interview, Mr. Dunham called his work as public defender some of "the most exciting years I've had practicing law."

Mr. 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 "Ellie" Dunham.

Mr. Dunham graduated from Virginia Tech in 1964 with a degree in naval architecture. He then attended law school at Catholic University, becoming the first law student to graduate first in his class while attending school at night.

After clerking for a federal judge, Mr. Dunham was an assistant U.S. attorney in Alexandria from 1971 to 1978, rising to the No. 2 position in the office. He then went into private practice as a white-collar defense lawyer in Arlington before taking the public defender's job.

Even as he worked long hours -- and then often labored into the night at his kitchen table, frequently listening to a Baltimore Orioles game -- Mr. Dunham never forgot his family.

"When I played baseball in college, he was at almost every game," said a son, John "Jody" Dunham. Only later did Jody Dunham learn that at the time, his father was representing former FBI agent Earl Edwin Pitts, who would later plead guilty to spying for Moscow. "You didn't even realize how busy he was in his professional life. You didn't feel it at all," Jody Dunham said.

In addition to his wife, of Alexandria, and his son, of Richmond, survivors include another son, Frank III "Chip" Dunham of Rockville; a brother; and a grandson.