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<font size=3>
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington10032008.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington10032008.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">October 3 - 5,
2008<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>Who's Pulling
the Strings? <br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">The
Dark Heart of the Guantánamo Trials
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By ANDY
WORTHINGTON <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">O</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>n September 24, Col. Lawrence Morris, the
chief prosecutor of Guantánamo’s Military Commission trial system,
announced that Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, the prosecutor in the case of
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington10172007.html">Mohamed
Jawad</a> (an Afghan -- and a teenager at the time of his capture -- who
is accused of throwing a grenade at a jeep containing two US soldiers and
an Afghan translator), had asked to quit his assignment before his
one-year contract expired. <br><br>
Although Col. Morris attempted to explain that Lt. Col. Vandeveld was
leaving “for personal reasons,” the real reasons were spelled out in a
statement issued by Vandeveld
(<a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/docs/vandeveld_declaration_080922.pdf">
PDF</a>), in which he expressed his frustration and disappointment that
“potentially exculpatory evidence” had “not been provided” to Jawad’s
defense team:<br><br>
My ethical qualms about continuing to serve as a prosecutor relate
primarily to the procedures for affording defense counsel discovery. I am
highly concerned, to the point that I believe I can no longer serve as a
prosecutor at the Commissions, about the slipshod, uncertain “procedure”
for affording defense counsel discovery. One would have thought … six
years since the Commissions had their fitful start, that a functioning
law office would have been set up and procedures and policies not only
put into effect, but refined.<br><br>
Instead, what I found, and what I still find, is that discovery in even
the simplest of cases is incomplete or unreliable. To take the Jawad case
as only one example -- a case where no intelligence agency had any
significant involvement -- I discovered just yesterday that something as
basic as agents’ interrogation notes had been entered into a database, to
which I do not have personal access … These and other examples too legion
to list are not only appalling, they deprive the accused of basic due
process and subject the well-intentioned prosecutor to claims of ethical
misconduct.<br><br>
Vandeveld also stated, “My view of the case has evolved over time,” and
proceeded to explain how he had come to suspect that Jawad, who has
always denied throwing the grenade, was duped into joining a militant
group, and was drugged before the attack. Michael Berrigan, the
Commissions’ deputy chief defense counsel, added that prosecutors also
knew that the Afghan Interior Ministry said that two other men had
confessed to the same crime, although Vandeveld did not mention this in
his statement.<br><br>
Vandeveld added, “Based on my view of the case, I have advocated a
pre-trial agreement under which Mr. Jawad would serve some relatively
brief additional period in custody while he receives rehabilitation
services and skills that will allow him to reintegrate into either Afghan
or Pakistani society.” This, however, was turned down by his commanding
officers. He continued: “One of my motivations in seeking a reasonable
resolution of the case is that, as a juvenile at the time of capture,
Jawad should have been segregated from the adult detainees, and some
serious attempt made to rehabilitate him. I am bothered by the fact that
this was not done.”<br><br>
On October 26, as Jawad’s defense lawyer, Maj. David Frakt, sought to
have the case dismissed due to “gross government misconduct,” Lt. Col.
Vandeveld testified for the defense by video link from Washington D.C.,
explaining, as the Associated Press described it, that “the embattled
military tribunal system may not be capable of delivering justice for
Jawad or the victims.” “They are not served by having someone who may be
innocent be convicted of the crime,” Vandeveld said, reiterating that,
even after six years, “it is impossible for anyone in good conscience to
stand up and say he or she is provided all the discovery in a
case.”<br><br>
Explaining more of his reasons for quitting his job, Vandeveld told the
court that he “reached a turning point” when he chanced upon “key
evidence among material scattered throughout the prosecutors’ office.” In
another case file, he said he “saw for the first time a statement Jawad
made to a military investigator probing prisoner abuse in Afghanistan,”
and described it as “an episode that helped convert him from a ‘true
believer to someone who felt truly deceived.’” He added that he had “even
developed sympathy” for Jawad. “My views changed,” he said. “I am a
father, and it's not an exercise in self-pity to ask oneself how you
would feel if your own son was treated in this fashion.”<br><br>
Lt. Col. Vandeveld’s departure -- and his reasons for leaving -- are
another serious blow to the credibility of the Military Commissions,
which were established by
<a href="http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2007/06/26/dick-cheney-more-horrors-from-the-vice-president-for-torture/">
Dick Cheney</a> and his close advisers in November 2001. In June 2006,
they were ruled illegal by the US Supreme Court, and although they were
revived by Congress later that year in the much-criticized Military
Commissions Act, they have never escaped accusations that they are a
parody of justice, designed to secure convictions at all costs. Even so,
Lt. Col. Vandevelt’s profound criticisms of a system that imprisons
juveniles instead of rehabilitating them, and that suppresses evidence
relevant to the defense, is just part of a much darker narrative that has
been unfolding for the last 18 months.<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000"><b>The role of
Brig. Gen. Hartmann</b></font></h1><font face="Verdana" size=2>From this
perspective, an even more significant event was the Pentagon’s
announcement, on September 19, that Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann had been
removed from his post as legal adviser to the Convening Authority
overseeing the Commission process, which, as the <i>Washington Post</i>
recently explained, is “a Pentagon office that is required to exercise a
neutral role in the commissions, overseeing but not dictating the work of
prosecutors and allocating resources to both the prosecution and
defense.”<br><br>
Hartmann, a reservist whose civilian job is chief counsel to the
Connecticut-based Mxenergy Holdings Inc., became the legal adviser to the
Convening Authority in July 2007, and was also
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington09292007.html">
required</a> to “exercise a neutral role.” According to the rules set up
for the Commissions, he was “supposed to provide impartial advice” to the
Convening Authority (retired judge Susan Crawford), and was also supposed
to “make an independent and informed appraisal of the charges and
evidence,” to help Crawford “decide whether charges proposed by the
prosecutors are sufficient to go to trial.” <br><br>
However, complaints arose almost as soon as Hartmann was appointed. Just
two months after he took the job, the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> revealed
that Col. Morris Davis, the Commissions’ chief prosecutor, had filed a
formal complaint alleging that he had “overstepped his mandate by
interfering directly in cases.” In a letter, Davis suggested that both he
and Hartmann should resign “for the good of the process,” adding, “If he
believes in military commissions as strongly as I do, then let’s do the
right thing and both of us walk away before we do more harm.” <br><br>
Officials who spoke to the <i>Journal</i>’s Jess Bravin made it clear
that Col. Davis was not alone in his complaints. A lawyer close to the
process explained that, although Hartmann had complained that, after four
years, the prosecution was “still unready to try cases,” and was
frustrated with their “can’t do” approach, some of the prosecutors
regarded him as “‘micromanaging’ cases he doesn’t fully understand.”
<br><br>
Brig. Gen. Hartmann escaped unscathed from Col. Davis’ accusations -- and
in fact it was Davis, alone, who resigned on October 4 -- and he also
escaped censure the following month, when, during a pre-trial hearing for
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington11152007.html">Omar
Khadr</a> (the Canadian who was just 15 years old when he was captured in
July 2002), Khadr’s defense team announced that they had just been
informed of the existence of an eyewitness to the main crime for which
Omar was being charged -- the death of a US soldier in a grenade attack
-- whose testimony could exonerate their client. This was extraordinary
enough, in and of itself, but what made the story particularly shocking
was prosecutor Jeff Groharing’s admission that, as the <i>Los Angeles
Times</i> described it, “he had been prohibited from talking about the
case” by Brig. Gen. Hartmann. <br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000"><b>Hartmann is
barred from three
trials</b></font></h1><font face="Verdana" size=2>Hartmann’s luck finally
ran out in May, when, after Col. Davis reprised his complaints in
pre-trial hearings for
<a href="http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2008/08/06/a-critical-overview-of-salim-hamdans-guantanamo-trial-and-the-dubious-verdict/">
Salim Hamdan</a> (a driver for Osama bin Laden whose trial took place
this summer), the judge in Hamdan’s case, Capt. Keith Allred,
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington05172008.html">
disqualified</a> him from playing any role in Hamdan’s trial, ruling that
he was “too closely allied with the prosecution,” and that “national
attention focused on this dispute has seriously called into question the
legal adviser’s ability to continue to perform his duties in a neutral
and objective manner.” Allred added, “Telling the chief prosecutor (and
other prosecutors) that certain types of cases would be tried and that
others would not be tried, because of political factors such as whether
they would capture the imagination of the American people, be sexy, or
involve blood on the hands of the accused, suggests that factors other
than those pertaining to the merits of the case were at play.”<br><br>
In August, Hartmann was
<a href="http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2008/09/10/controversy-still-plagues-guantanamos-military-commissions/">
excluded</a> from Mohamed Jawad’s trial for the same reasons. Jawad’s
lawyer, Maj. David Frakt, told the judge, Col. Stephen Henley, that
Hartmann “usurped the role of a prosecutor -- rather than acting
dispassionately -- and pushed to get Jawad charged because the case
involved battlefield bloodshed.” Frakt also pointed out that Hartmann had
“failed to turn over defense documents” to Susan Crawford, even though
these documents “outlined mitigating circumstances that might have
altered her decision to endorse the charges.” He also secured testimony
from an unlikely ally, Brig. Gen. Zanetti, the deputy commander of
Guantánamo’s Joint Task Force, who declared that Hartmann’s demeanor was
“abusive, bullying and unprofessional … pretty much across the board,”
and described his approach to the Commissions as, “Spray and pray. Charge
everybody. Let’s go. Speed, speed, speed.”<br><br>
Three weeks ago, Hartman was barred for a third time, this time from any
post-trial review in Omar Khadr’s case. The judge, Col. Patrick Parrish,
had refused a request from Khadr’s lawyers to disqualify Hartmann from
involvement in Khadr’s trial, but he barred Hartmann from reviewing it,
in the case of a conviction, for the same reasons as those described
above. <br><br>
To add to the criticism, Lt. Col. Vandeveld also tore into Hartmann as he
announced his departure from the Commissions. The <i>Los Angeles
Times</i> spoke to a Pentagon official, who explained that “Vandeveld had
defended Hartmann against the undue-influence allegations in the Jawad
case in recent weeks but lost,” and Hartmann “had retaliated against him,
causing the prosecutor emotional distress and prompting him to quit and
go public with his concerns.”<br><br>
News of Brig. Gen. Hartmann’s departure was telegraphed three weeks ago,
in the wake of the Khadr ruling, when Charles “Cully” Stimson, a former
deputy assistant secretary for detainee affairs, stepped forward to
suggest that, under a “three strikes and you’re out” philosophy, Hartmann
should resign. Stimson explained that he was particularly concerned about
challenges and appeals frustrating the forthcoming trial of
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington02122008.html">Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed</a> and his co-conspirators in the 9/11 attacks, which
Hartmann “helped shepherd.”<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000"><b>Hartmann’s
extraordinary
promotion</b></font></h1><font face="Verdana" size=2>Instead of losing
his job, however, Brig. Gen. Hartmann was actually promoted to a new
post, as Director of Operations, Planning and Development for the
Commissions, responsible, as the Associated Press put it, for “such
activities as the hiring of dozens of lawyers and paralegals and ensuring
there are adequate resources for the massive legal undertaking.” His
deputy, retired Army Col. Michael Chapman, took over as legal adviser.
<br><br>
In the <i>Miami Herald</i>, Carol Rosenberg shrewdly realized that the
Pentagon had hoped to bury the news of Hartmann’s reassignment.
Explaining that the announcement “ended weeks of speculation on the fate
of Hartmann with little fanfare,” she noted that it was issued “on Friday
afternoon, a time considered in Washington circles to be when the Defense
Department disposes of uncomfortable business.” This was certainly true,
but it soon became clear that what was particularly “uncomfortable” about
the “business” was not Hartmann’s removal as legal adviser, but the
significance of his effective promotion to a new job.<br><br>
Although the Associated Press reported that the new job “takes Hartmann
away from direct supervision of the prosecution,” other observers were
not convinced. The <i>Washington Post</i> reported that Human Rights
Watch had stated that “instead of trying to clean up house, the Pentagon
has now moved a man accused of bullying prosecutors to bring cases to
trial and dismissing concerns about evidence being tainted by torture
into a position coordinating all matters relating to the commissions.”
<br><br>
In addition, Col. Davis compared the reassignment to that of Russia’s
former Premier and his newly promoted protégé, saying, “Elevating his
deputy and leaving him in the process, I'm afraid, will be like the
Vladimir Putin-Dmitry Medvedev relationship where there's some real doubt
over who pulls the strings.” Speaking to the AP, Davis was even blunter,
comparing Hartmann to a “cancer” that had infected the entire Commission
process. “The only way to ensure cancer can do no harm,” he said, “is to
get it out of the body.”<br><br>
Noticeably, Hartmann himself confirmed that his reassignment was anything
but a punishment. “I feel like it's an elevation, a promotion, because it
recognizes ... the exponential growth of the commissions,” the AP
reported him as saying, and in the <i>Washington Post</i> he claimed
that, although “the recent court rulings forced him and others at the
Pentagon to think about his role,” the reason for his new assignment was
that “he and his superiors thought that the ‘best way to run the system
was to take this more senior leadership position.”<br><br>
Hartmann continued crowing in comments to the <i>Miami Herald</i>.
Likening his new job to that of a “chief executive officer at a 250-staff
corporate headquarters,” and adding that he “had no fixed budget,” he
declared that his biggest challenge was “to keep the process moving,
really intensely.” He added, “Everybody needs to start seeing more
trials. I want those courtrooms to be as filled up as they can possibly
be -- six days a week.” <br><br>
While this is nothing short of despicable, given the condemnation of
Hartmann’s pro-prosecution bias by three government-appointed judges,
what no one has yet done in the last two weeks is to look behind the
scenes to see what Hartmann’s reassignment reveals about the whole
command structure of the Military Commissions. And when this is looked at
in detail, Hartmann appears, shockingly, to be little more than a puppet
(albeit a willing and hard-working one), whose reassignment is a reward
to prevent him from being a sacrifice, which was bestowed upon him by his
masters -- in the Pentagon, and in the Office of the Vice President --
who have no interest in establishing a fair or just process at
Guantánamo. <br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000"><b>Who’s pulling
the strings?</b></font></h1><font face="Verdana" size=2>To understand
this story we need to look back, beyond Hartmann’s appointment, to
February 2007, when Susan Crawford was appointed as the Commissions’
Convening Authority. In a revelatory article for
<a href="http://harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002460">Harper’s
Magazine</a> this February, Scott Horton examined the source of the
“cancer” referred to by Col. Davis, and traced it back to a plea bargain
struck, for political reasons, in the first trial by Military Commission
to go ahead: that of the Australian David Hicks, who admitted to
providing material support for terrorism in March 2007, in exchange for a
nine-month sentence to be served back in Australia.<br><br>
What happened, it was later
<a href="http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2007/10/23/the-politics-of-david-hicks-release-from-guantanamo-confirmed-plea-bargain-arranged-between-cheney-and-howard/">
revealed</a>, was that Australian Premier John Howard, who was seeking
re-election, had been struggling in the polls, partly because the
previously ignored plight of Hicks had become a political hot potato.
Anxious to help one of his few stout allies in the “War on Terror,” Vice
President Dick Cheney paid Howard a quick visit, and on returning home
appointed a new Convening Authority for the Military Commissions, retired
judge Susan J. Crawford, who, as Horton noted, was “a Cheney protégée,”
and was, moreover, “particularly close to Cheney’s chief of staff David
Addington,” the prime architect not only of the Commissions, but also of
the majority of the administration’s post-9/11 flight from the Geneva
Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture.<br><br>
With Crawford in place -- and assistance from William J. Haynes II, the
Pentagon’s General Counsel, who was “known for his tight connections with
the Vice President’s Office” -- a plea bargain was negotiated with Hicks’
lawyers, and the sidelining of Col. Davis began in earnest.<br><br>
As Hicks’ trial got underway, Col. Davis “confidently delivered a searing
opening promising to make Hicks out as a bloodthirsty figure who had
betrayed his homeland and turned to a path of ‘Islamic’ violence,” as
Scott Horton described it. He was both humiliated and dismayed when the
plea bargain was revealed, as neither he, nor any of the other
prosecutors, had been informed of the deal cut by Cheney, Addington,
Crawford and Haynes.<br><br>
This, of course, explains why, although Col. Davis maintained a dignified
silence at the time, his frayed patience began to unravel in July, when
Brig. Gen. Hartman assumed his new role as Susan Crawford’s legal
adviser. Hartmann took charge of the prosecution office while Davis was
away, recovering from surgery, and he proceeded to take advantage of
Davis’ absence to shake things up as he -- and his masters -- saw
fit.<br><br>
The most significant date, however, is October 3, the day before Col.
Davis’ resignation, as it was then, as Scott Horton described it, that
Haynes “crafted and secured Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England’s
signature on two documents,” which sealed a significant change in the
command structure of the Commissions. The
<a href="http://harpers.org/media/image/blogs/misc/mforlgladvoffconvauthreapptofhartmannt100307.pdf">
first</a> established that Hartmann would report to Paul Ney, the Defense
Department’s Deputy General Counsel (Legal Counsel), who in turn reported
to Haynes, and the
<a href="http://harpers.org/media/image/blogs/misc/depsecdefmemforchprosomcreapptofdavism100307.pdf">
second</a> placed Col. Davis in the chain of command under Hartmann. This
second memorandum, as Horton explained, “was particularly necessary as an
after-the-fact adjustment to cover Haynes’s manipulation of the Hicks
case, establishing a chain-of-command justification for his intervention
to direct the plea bargain resolution of the case.”<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000"><b>The former
chief prosecutor turns</b></font></h1><font face="Verdana" size=2>This,
then, was the specific reason why, in a blistering op-ed in the
<a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-oe-davis10dec10,1,743034.story?ctrack=1&cset=true">
<i>Los Angeles Times</a></i> two months after his resignation, Col. Davis
stated, “I was the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, until Oct. 4, the day I concluded that full, fair
and open trials were not possible under the current system. I resigned on
that day because I felt that the system had become deeply politicized and
that I could no longer do my job effectively or responsibly.”<br><br>
Although Col. Davis was critical of Brig. Gen. Hartmann, he explained
that the particular trigger for his decision was the memo described
above, informing him that he had been placed in a chain of command under
Haynes. Stating that he resigned “a few hours after” being informed of
this, he mentioned that “Haynes was a controversial nominee for a
lifetime appointment to the US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, but his
nomination died in January 2007, in part because of his role in
authorizing the use of the aggressive interrogation techniques some call
torture.” He added, “I had instructed the prosecutors in September 2005
[shortly after taking the job] that we would not offer any evidence
derived by
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington02072008.html">
waterboarding</a>, one of the aggressive interrogation techniques the
administration has sanctioned.”<br><br>
Haynes, of course, was not only involved in the approval of “enhanced
interrogation techniques” for use at Guantánamo; he also helped develop
the concept of holding prisoners as “enemy combatants” without charge or
trial, and without the protections of the Geneva Conventions, and played
a part in the process that led to holding an American citizen,
<a href="http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2008/01/22/why-jose-padillas-17-year-prison-sentence-should-shock-and-disgust-all-americans/">
Jose Padilla</a>, as an “enemy combatant” on the US mainland.<br><br>
Col. Davis was also critical of the role played not only by Hartmann and
Haynes, but also by Susan Crawford, and he was dismayed by what he
described as Hartmann and Crawford’s desire to conduct trials “behind
closed doors.” “Transparency is critical,” he wrote, adding that it was
“absolutely critical to the legitimacy of the military commissions that
they be conducted in an atmosphere of honesty and impartiality,” and
pointing out that “even the most perfect trial in history will be viewed
with scepticism if it is conducted behind closed doors.” <br><br>
Davis also directed a specific attack at Susan Crawford, explaining that
“the political appointee known as the ‘convening authority’ -- a title
with no counterpart in civilian courts -- was not living up to that
obligation.” As he described it, Crawford, unlike her predecessor Maj.
Gen. John Altenburg, whose staff had “kept its distance from the
prosecution to preserve its impartiality,” had overstepped her
administrative role, and “had her staff assessing evidence before the
filing of charges, directing the prosecution’s pre-trial preparation of
cases (which began while I was on medical leave), drafting charges
against those who were accused and assigning prosecutors to cases.” He
continued: “Intermingling convening authority and prosecutor roles
perpetuates the perception of a rigged process stacked against the
accused.”<br><br>
In this first, considered outburst, Col. Davis laid out, with admirable
clarity, a contaminated chain of command -- indifferent to the use of
torture by US forces, dedicated to using the poisoned fruit of that
torture in trials at Guantánamo, and committed, essentially, to
conducting “a rigged process stacked against the accused” -- that led
from Hartmann to Crawford and Haynes, and from there to Dick Cheney and
David Addington. <br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000"><b>“No
acquittals”</b></font></h1><font face="Verdana" size=2>And if further
proof were needed that Haynes was the link connecting the supposedly
impartial Convening Authority and her legal adviser from the ferociously
biased Vice President and his chief of staff, this came in February this
year, when Col. Davis told Ross Tuttle of the
<a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080303/tuttle"><i>Nation</a></i>
about a conversation he had with Haynes in August 2005. <br><br>
“[Haynes] said these trials will be the Nuremberg of our time,” recalled
Davis, referring to the Nazi tribunals in 1945, considered the model of
procedural rights in the prosecution of war crimes. In response, Davis
said he noted that at Nuremberg there had been some acquittals, which had
lent great credibility to the proceedings.<br><br>
“I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in
our cases, it will at least validate the process,” Davis continued. “At
which point, [Haynes's] eyes got wide and he said, ‘Wait a minute, we
can't have acquittals. If we've been holding these guys for so long, how
can we explain letting them get off? We can't have acquittals. We've got
to have convictions.’” <br><br>
Although Haynes announced his sudden retirement shortly after his
conversation with Col. Davis was revealed, his place as the intermediary
between the Office of Military Commissions and the Vice President’s
Office has been seamlessly filled by the Pentagon’s Acting General
Counsel, Daniel Dell’Orto. <br><br>
A “career official at the Pentagon,” as Philippe Sands described him in
<i>Vanity Fair</i>, Dell’Orto had accompanied Haynes and then-White House
Counsel Alberto Gonzales when they presented the media with a carefully
calibrated justification of the administration’s actions in the wake of
the Abu Ghraib scandal in June 2004, and in July 2006, after the Supreme
Court had struck down the Commissions’ first incarnation as illegal (in
<i>Hamdan v. Rumsfeld</i>), he told the Senate Committee on the Judiciary
that the Commissions were “an indispensable tool for the dispensation of
justice in the chaotic and irregular circumstances of armed conflict.”
Ignoring the fact that prisoners seized in wartime should be granted the
protections of the Geneva Conventions, he also claimed, “It would greatly
impede intelligence collection essential to the war effort to tell
detainees before interrogation that they are entitled to legal counsel,
that they need not answer questions, and that their answers may be used
against them in a criminal trial.”<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000"><b>The dark
heart</b></font></h1><font face="Verdana" size=2>What I find particularly
fascinating, however, is the way in which Susan Crawford has, to date,
been shielded from allegations of impropriety by the activities of Brig.
Gen. Hartmann. I’m grateful to Scott Horton not only for demolishing
notions of Crawford’s independence by pointing out her close ties with
Dick Cheney and David Addington, but also for including a specific
anecdote that demonstrates the strength of her relationship with the Vice
President’s chief of staff. “At an event held last year to mark
Crawford’s retirement as a military appeals judge,” Horton wrote, “she
went out of her way to note the presence of and thank just one person,
her friend David Addington.”<br><br>
In addition, one reporter, William Glaberson, raised pertinent questions
about Crawford’s role after Salim Hamdan’s trial this summer. “There were
unknowns,” Glaberson wrote in the <i>New York Times</i>. “A Pentagon
official, Susan J. Crawford, has broad power over the entire tribunal
process, including naming the military officers eligible to hear the
case. Her title, convening authority, has no civilian equivalent. Her
decisions to grant or deny financing for items like the defense’s expert
witness fees or defense lawyers’ transportation were not explained during
the trial. She has never granted an interview to a reporter.”<br><br>
Crawford’s mentor, David Addington, never grants interviews either, but
Brig. Gen. Hartmann’s cynical promotion, and Lt. Col. Vandeveld’s
resignation, will hopefully bring the crucial role in the Commission
process that is played by Susan Crawford, David Addington and Dick Cheney
into sharper relief. This is of critical importance, as the deliberate
suppression of evidence that is essential to the defense appears to be
endemic.<br><br>
In Mohamed Jawad’s case, this has been highlighted twice -- first in
August, when Col. Henley not only excluded Hartmann from involvement in
Jawad’s case, but also ordered “potentially exculpatory information” to
be sent to Susan Crawford, and on Wednesday by Lt. Col. Vandeveld, who,
as the <i>Los Angeles Times</i> reported, “said military prosecutors
routinely withhold exculpatory evidence from the defense in terrorism
cases.” <br><br>
In August, Henley refused to order the charges against Jawad to be
dropped entirely, and, instead, made a request for Crawford to review the
charges, indicating that it was up to her to decide whether to “drop or
reduce them,” but I believe that this analysis of the Commission’s chain
of command, and the exposure of Crawford’s spectral impartiality, casts
serious doubt on the trust that Henley placed in Crawford, and indicates
that, seven weeks after Henley made his ruling, the Convening Authority
either has not received the exculpatory information, or has chosen to
ignore it.<br><br>
We end, therefore, where we began, with Lt. Col. Vandeveld, and his
courageous refusal to play out his role in a rigged and one-sided process
that would imprison a young Afghan for life by suppressing inconvenient
evidence -- such as the fact that he may not have actually been
responsible for the alleged crime of which he is accused. What happens
next is unknown, but it’s certain that lawyers for other prisoners facing
trial by Military Commission -- Omar Khadr, for example, and British
resident
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington08302008.html">Binyam
Mohamed</a>, whose lawyers recently took his case to the British High
Court in an attempt to secure access to exculpatory evidence -- will be
doing their damnedest to ensure that they pursue those responsible for
rigging the system all the way up the chain of command.<br><br>
<b>Andy Worthington</b> is a British historian, and the author of
'<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745326641/counterpunchmaga">
The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's
Illegal Prison'</a> (published by Pluto Press). Visit his website at:
<a href="http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/">www.andyworthington.co.uk</a>
<br>
He can be reached at:
<a href="mailto:andy@andyworthington.co.uk">andy@andyworthington.co.uk</a>
<br><br>
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