Sunday, January 04, 2004

Missteps Seen in Muslim Chaplain's Spy Case:
"As the Muslim chaplain at the military base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, Capt. James J. Yee often invited some of the Islamic members of the garrison to his quarters for dinner on Friday after he conducted weekly services.

On at least two occasions, his guest was Senior Airman Ahmad I. al- Halabi, an Air Force translator at the camp, where hundreds of captives from the Afghan war have been held and interrogated for the last two years.

Airman al-Halabi was later arrested on several charges, including suspicion of trying to pass secrets to Syria or some other foreign government, a charge that has since been dropped."

First held on suspicion of being part of an espionage ring, Captain Yee, 35, was in the end charged with the far less serious crime of mishandling classified information. He was also eventually charged with adultery and keeping pornography on his government computer, both violations of military law.

As arguments over the merits of those charges play out at a preliminary hearing in Fort Benning, Ga., some military officials continue to defend the prosecution, saying that even technical violations of regulations that fall short of espionage should not be ignored. Senior commanders in charge of the case have declined to discuss it, saying that doing so might jeopardize the prosecution.

But others have come to shake their heads over the case.…

General Fugh said the case ought to be brought to a speedy end when a preliminary hearing resumes on Jan. 19. At the hearing's conclusion, Col. Dan Trimble, the presiding officer, is supposed to make a recommendation to Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the commander of the Joint Task Force that runs the Guantánamo camp, on whether to convene a court-martial, dismiss the case or impose some administrative penalty like a reprimand or discharge.

"It certainly seems like they couldn't get him on what they first thought they had," General Fugh said, "so they said, `Let's get the son of a gun on something.' "

General Fugh, who has played no role in the prosecution or the defense of Captain Yee, said, "Adding these Mickey Mouse charges just makes them look dumb, in my mind."

According to a senior Justice Department official, even the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which was involved in reviewing the documents that were seized from Captain Yee, never thought much of the evidence against him.

A series of interviews over the last few weeks suggests a number of factors that led the military ever deeper into its prosecution:

¶Reservists serving as counterintelligence officers at the camp were apprehensive that they might miss some sign of infiltration of the base but were relatively inexperienced in how to handle such matters.

¶There was confusion over which documents might be classified and which were not. For example, defense lawyers have questioned whether documents in the chaplain's baggage were truly classified, and that is now being formally reviewed.

¶Some senior officers at Guantánamo were skeptical about the wisdom of having Muslims and Arab-Americans involved in the interrogations of prisoners and other camp operations, and there was smoldering suspicion over what they were doing when they met with one another, according to military officials.

¶An investigation intended to strengthen the initial charges led instead into unrelated areas, and to the new charges of adultery and of keeping pornography on government computers.…

It became evident that his arrest was part of a broader crackdown at Guantánamo when the military announced that it had previously arrested Airman al-Halabi, also on suspicion of espionage. Airman al- Halabi had not only dined with Captain Yee, once alone, but was a volunteer aide in the chapel, a spare wooden building outside the prison facility. The airman is from Syria.

On Sept. 29, the military arrested another translator, Ahmed F. Mehalba, on similar charges of possessing classified information about Guantánamo. Mr. Mehalba, a civilian who had also dined at Captain Yee's quarters at least once, was indicted in November on charges of improperly gathering military information and lying to the F.B.I.

Unnamed officials were quoted in news accounts suggesting that they might have broken up an espionage ring trying to infiltrate the base on behalf of hostile foreign powers.

But that theory has not borne out so far, most notably in the Yee case. The military also recently dropped the most serious charges against Airman al-Halabi, including aiding the enemy, which carried a possible death sentence. Of the original 30 charges, he still faces 17, including some of attempted espionage. But his lawyer, Donald G. Rehkopf, said the "guts of the case" were gone — the charges of aiding the enemy and of using computers to transmit information abroad.…

An officer who served at Guantánamo at the same time as Captain Yee said in an interview that one likely cause of his troubles was the relative inexperience of the officers in charge of security at the base.

"They were all reservists and were completely afraid of missing something and were quite jumpy," said this officer, who is still in the service.

Indeed, one of these reservists ended up himself being charged with the same offenses that were initially lodged against Captain Yee, specifically "wrongfully transporting classified material without the proper security container." But the officer, Col. Jack Farr, a reservist in Army intelligence, was not arrested or detained like Captain Yee.

Colonel Farr was also charged with making a false statement about his handling of classified documents when the matter was being investigated.

A military spokesman would say only that each case is different.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/national/04YEE.html?pagewanted=all&position=

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