USATODAY.com - The ordeal of Chaplain Yee
Last fall, he was the Muslim chaplain who had betrayed America.
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Accused of espionage, Army Capt. James Yee saw his notoriety bloom overnight. He was vilified on the airwaves and on the Internet as an operative in a supposed spy ring that aimed to pass secrets to al-Qaeda from suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where Yee ministered to them. After his arrest, Yee was blindfolded, placed in manacles and taken to a Navy brig, where he spent 76 days in solitary confinement.
Eight months later, all the criminal charges against the 36-year-old West Point graduate have melted away. A subsequent reprimand has been removed from his record. And while many legal analysts are questioning whether a security-conscious military over-reached in its investigation, Yee is back home at Fort Lewis, Wash., pondering what remains of his military career.
Military officials involved in the case won't say what they thought they had on Yee, or why they pursued him with such zeal. Prosecutions are proceeding against three other men — two Arabic translators and an Army Reserve colonel — who worked at Guantanamo, where the military is holding nearly 600 suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The decision to jail Yee was made by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, then commander of Guantanamo's detention camp. He oversaw the espionage investigations of all four men. He has since been transferred to Iraq, where he is now engulfed in the controversy involving prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.
When the Army dropped six criminal counts against Yee in March, military officials said they did so to avoid making sensitive information public — not because he was innocent. An Army general stressed that again in April, when he took the unusual step of removing the case from Yee's permanent military record.
But a growing number of critics say the Yee case demands further examination. The critics, who include former military judges and prosecutors well-versed in military law, say the case offers a chilling glimpse into military anxiety at a time of heightened concern about terrorism.
"This is a case that's so obviously wrong that (even) people who don't know military law are, if not outraged, then very concerned about what happened," says Kevin Barry, a retired Coast Guard judge. "There apparently was no evidence. If they had the goods, they would have prosecuted."
Like Barry, many of the critics suggest that the case collapsed not because of national security concerns, but because the evidence against Yee, whatever it was, didn't hold up. They wonder whether the military's threshold for suspicion at Guantanamo was such that benign behavior too easily could have been mistaken as sinister.
No espionage charges
They say that the military compounded its errors by leaking to the media, before the Yee probe was complete, that the chaplain could face multiple death-penalty charges tied to espionage. Those charges never materialized. The six counts against Yee that were dropped later were significantly less serious and included mishandling classified materials, adultery, storing pornography on his Army laptop and lying to investigators.
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Ahmad al-Halabi, an Air Force translator, was arrested July 25. The Syrian-born U.S. citizen initially was charged with 30 counts that ranged from sneaking baklava to the prisoners to espionage and aiding the enemy. Last fall, 13 of the charges were dropped; the remaining 17 charges include mishandling classified materials and espionage. He awaits a court-martial, now set for June. "They let him languish in solitary confinement for 76 days. That's outrageous," says John Fugh, a retired Army judge advocate general. "When he saw his legal counsel, he was in leg irons. We don't treat commissioned officers that way. I don't care what he did."
Bob Barr, a Republican and former Georgia congressman, sees the Yee case as part of a disturbing trend in the handling of terrorism-related cases. He cites some cases brought by U.S. prosecutors against groups accused of laundering funds for terrorists. The cases got headlines but collapsed, Barr says.
"What we're seeing in Guantanamo, and perhaps in this case, is what happens when you've removed any judicial oversight over what the government is doing," says Barr, who has criticized the administration's policy of detaining some terrorism suspects indefinitely without charging them.
Two Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Carl Levin of Michigan, have asked the Pentagon to investigate the Army's treatment of Yee.
Gen. James Hill, chief of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees military operations at Guantanamo, declined to be interviewed. In cleansing Yee's military record last month, Hill called Yee's incarceration necessary, "given the circumstances at the time."
Col. William Costello, a Southern Command spokesman, added: "There's really nothing more that we're going to share on the case. We've dropped the charges. ... I'm not at liberty to talk about what the investigation entailed."
Yee, meanwhile, is under a new Army order not to talk about his ordeal in any way that might be seen as critical of the military. If he does, he could face further prosecution or discipline. He declined to be interviewed by USA TODAY.
Without an explanation from the military, the attorneys for Yee and the three others arrested in the Guantanamo espionage probe can only theorize about what might have triggered it. Was Yee too outspoken in his requests to superiors that the prisoners receive better treatment? Did authorities suspect a "Syrian connection" between Yee and a Syrian-born translator who worked for him? Did cultural misunderstandings raise suspicions about Muslims at the base?
"We know basically nothing about what got this all started," says Eugene Fidell, a lawyer in Washington, D.C., who worked with Yee's Army defense lawyers.
Yee arrived at Guantanamo on Nov. 5, 2002, and was assigned to minister to Muslim prisoners. He and Muslim workers used a vacant office for their own prayer sessions; sometimes they had a meal. The lawyers think the get-togethers might have raised suspicions.
Yee was arrested Sept. 10 at the start of a one-week leave. Customs agents at the Jacksonville (Fla.) Naval Air Station, tipped by an investigator at Guantanamo that Yee could be carrying classified materials, confiscated drawings and documents containing information about the prisoners and their interrogators. A Customs agent later testified at a preliminary hearing that the items were "of interest to national security."
Yee also had ties to Syria that apparently drew investigators' attention: His wife, Huda, is Syrian. He met her while studying Islam in Damascus in the late 1990s, as he prepared to become one of the Army's first Muslim chaplains. (Born in New Jersey and raised a Lutheran, he converted to Islam in 1991.)
Yee was baffled by his arrest, his attorneys say. But what came next was even more surprising. At a confinement hearing two days later, a Navy prosecutor argued that Yee was a flight risk and that he should be held in the maximum-security Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. Court papers said he would be charged with espionage, spying, aiding the enemy, mutiny or sedition, and disobeying an order. His attorneys were told that he could face execution.
On Sept. 16, Yee was driven to Charleston and was given the sensory-deprivation treatment the military had used on Guantanamo prisoners when they were flown to Cuba. He was blindfolded and placed in shackles, and his ears were covered to block his hearing. He spent the next 76 days in solitary confinement.
On Sept. 20, details of Yee's arrest appeared in a story in The Washington Times, which quoted unidentified government sources. A gush of publicity followed and took root on the Internet, where it flourishes today.
Yee was held in maximum security until Oct. 24. He wore hand and leg irons when he left his cell. Brig guards refused to recognize him as an officer and required him to identify himself as an E-1, the lowest enlisted rank. He wasn't allowed to send or receive mail, watch TV or read anything except the Koran. Only his attorneys could visit. After Oct. 25, he could make two 15-minute calls a day.
The case goes nowhere
Yee's defense team believes the case against him ran off the rails less than 48 hours after his arrest. At Yee's confinement hearing, they noted a disparity between the severity of the charges listed against Yee and the vague arguments the government made to justify his arrest. The prosecutor didn't have to tip his hand then, but the defense team found it unusual that so little evidence was presented.
"When you see a gulf between the shrill charges and this anthill of evidence ... you have to wonder," Fidell says.
Many military law specialists say they became increasingly skeptical about the quality of the government's case — especially after Oct. 10, when the criminal charges filed against Yee turned out not to be espionage and spying, but two lesser counts of mishandling classified materials. Yet Yee remained in solitary confinement.
On Nov. 24, Fidell wrote to President Bush, pleading for Yee's release. The next day, Yee was released — and was hit with four new charges. The new counts — adultery, lying to investigators and two counts of downloading porn — were another sign to many observers that the evidence didn't support the original allegations.
Fugh calls the added charges "Mickey Mouse stuff."
The crux of the case was the charges that Yee had mishandled classified information. But prosecutors did not show the defense any evidence that Yee had such materials. A hearing to determine whether he should be court-martialed was delayed over the issue.
"The government has never produced the evidence that it believes was classified, so I am somewhat at a loss," Fidell says. "We were playing Hamlet without Hamlet here."
When the hearing began Dec. 8 at Fort Benning, Ga., prosecutors led off not with their most serious charges, but with adultery. As Yee's parents, wife and 4-year-old daughter watched, Navy Lt. Karyn Wallace testified under immunity about her affair with Yee.
Under military rules, adultery rarely is prosecuted. It is a crime only if it is "prejudicial to good order and discipline," meaning that it has to be disruptive or be so widely known that it damages the service. Yee's affair apparently had been secret. "It is arguable that there was no crime," Barry says.
On the second day of the hearing, prosecutors asked for a 41-day delay to examine the classified issues. The hearing never resumed. The criminal charges were dropped on March 19.
"This would have been a logical place to back off," says Gary Solis, a former Marine prosecutor and staff judge advocate who teaches military law at Georgetown University in Washington. But the military "kept going. They already had enough egg on their face to make an omelet or two. But no, they wanted to serve a table of 10."
On March 22, Yee was called to a non-criminal hearing where he received a reprimand on the adultery and pornography charges.
Yee appealed the reprimand. Appeals of disciplinary actions rarely are granted, but on April 14, Hill did just that. Hill said later, "While I believe that Chaplain Yee's misconduct was wrong, I do not believe, given the extreme notoriety of his case ... that further stigmatizing Chaplain Yee would serve a just and fair purpose."
Yee returned to his chaplain duties at Fort Lewis two weeks ago. His tour of duty expires next year. Fidell says Yee has made no decisions about his future.
How Canada failed citizen Maher Ararjeff sallotOTTAWA — From Tuesday's Globe and MailPublishedLast updated Maher Arar is an innocent victim of inaccurate RCMP intelligence reports and deliberate smears by Canadian officials, a commission of inquiry says in a report that also recommends the federal government pay him compensation. Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen who was deported from the United States to Syria -- where he was tortured as a terrorist suspect -- has suffered "devastating" mental and economic consequences as a result of his ordeal, Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor says in a report released yesterday. "I am able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offence or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada," the judge says. Mr. Arar, 36, said he had tears in his eyes when he first saw those words jumping out from the report. The judge, he said, "has cleared my name and restored my reputation." The report says there is no doubt Mr. Arar was tortured in a Syrian military intelligence prison soon after his deportation from the United States in 2002. Judge O'Connor said he wants to personally thank Mr. Arar for his patience and co-operation during the long inquiry process. "I take my hat off to him." The 822-page report, which has been censored because of government concerns about national security, also calls for the further independent investigation of the cases of three other Canadian Muslim men -- Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muyyed Nurredin -- who were imprisoned in the Middle East under similar circumstances. They also say they were tortured. The RCMP should never share intelligence reports with other countries without written conditions about how that information is used, Judge O'Connor writes. He also says Canadian government information should never be provided to a foreign country if there is a risk of it being used to torture people. The report, the result of more than two years of hearings, some of them secret, clears federal officials of any direct involvement in the U.S. government's decision to deport Mr. Arar to the Middle East. Mr. Arar was arrested at Kennedy Airport in New York while travelling on his Canadian passport. Judge O'Connor blasts the RCMP for providing U.S. authorities with inaccurate intelligence that resulted in Mr. Arar, and his wife Monia Mazigh, being put on a border watch list as dangerous al-Qaeda terrorist suspects. RCMP antiterrorism investigators violated the force's existing policy when they gave U.S. officials three CD-ROM discs with raw intelligence that had not been analyzed for accuracy. The Mounties, the report continues, should have flagged the material as being from unproven sources and should have taken precautions to make sure it was not used in U.S. deportation proceedings. Senior RCMP officers failed to properly supervise the newly created antiterrorism unit to make sure policies were being enforced. Even after Mr. Arar's return to Canada, the RCMP was causing problems for Mr. Arar. The Mounties, the report says, misled the Privy Council Office at an important meeting, by failing to disclose "certain key facts that could have reflected adversely on the force." The details of the meeting and who specifically from the RCMP was responsible are not included in the public version of the O'Connor report. Paul Cavalluzzo, the commission's chief lawyer, declined to say how much material was cut from the public version of the report. But, he said, the commission disagrees with the government on some of its national-security claims and may have to fight it out in the federal courts for the eventual release of evidence that Judge O'Connor believes should be known by the public. Some of that censored information could be relevant to the cases of the three other Muslim men. Mr. Cavalluzzo said the commission is not recommending another full-blown inquiry. But the other cases should be examined by an independent fact-finder. The minority Conservative government, which inherited the Arar file from the Liberals, was cautious and non-committal in its first reaction to Judge O'Connor's report. What happened to Mr. Arar was "very regrettable," Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said. |
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