ElNono
04-19-2014, 04:06 AM
WASHINGTON — Two weeks ago, a pair of F.B.I. agents appeared unannounced at the door of a member of the defense team for one of the men accused of plotting the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As a contractor working with the defense team at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the man was bound by the same confidentiality rules as a lawyer. But the agents wanted to talk.
They asked questions, lawyers say, about the legal teams for Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other accused terrorists who will eventually stand trial before a military tribunal at Guantánamo. Before they left, the agents asked the contractor to sign an agreement promising not to tell anyone about the conversation.
With that signature, Mr. bin al-Shibh’s lawyers say, the government turned a member of their team into an F.B.I. informant.
The F.B.I.’s inquiry became the focus of the pretrial hearings at Guantánamo this week, after the contractor disclosed it to the defense team. It was a reminder that, no matter how much the proceedings at the island military prison resemble a familiar American trial, the invisible hand of the United States government is at work there in ways unlike anything seen in typical courtrooms.
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Last year, as a lawyer for Mr. Mohammed was speaking during another hearing, a red light began flashing. Then the videofeed from the courtroom abruptly cut out. The emergency censorship system had been activated. But why? And by whom? The defense lawyer had said nothing classified. And the court officer responsible for protecting state secrets had not triggered the system. Days later, the military judge, Col. James L. Pohl, announced that he had been told that an “original classification authority” — meaning the C.I.A. — was secretly monitoring the proceedings. Unknown to everyone else, the agency had its own button, which the judge swiftly and angrily disconnected.
Last year, the government acknowledged that microphones were hidden inside what looked like smoke detectors in the rooms where detainees met with their lawyers. Those microphones gave officials the ability to eavesdrop on confidential conversations, but the military said it never did so.
“At some point, it just becomes silly,” said Glenn Sulmasy, a military law professor at the Coast Guard Academy who supports military trials for terrorism but said problems at Guantánamo Bay have undermined confidence in the system. “I don’t think we’re at that point yet, but at some point it just becomes surreal. It’s like there’s a shadow trial going on and we’re only finding out about it in bits and pieces.”
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Christopher Jencks, a Southern Methodist University law professor and a former military prosecutor, said he sympathized with the Guantánamo prosecutors, who appeared to have been just as surprised as defense lawyers by the appearance of the F.B.I. and C.I.A. in their cases.
“You have these military prosecutors who are normally empowered to own their cases. And they don’t here,” Mr. Jencks said. If this were any other country’s system, Mr. Jencks said, “The reaction would be, ‘Oh my gosh. What a kangaroo process.’ ”
Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/us/politics/covert-inquiry-by-fbi-rattles-9-11-tribunals.html
They asked questions, lawyers say, about the legal teams for Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other accused terrorists who will eventually stand trial before a military tribunal at Guantánamo. Before they left, the agents asked the contractor to sign an agreement promising not to tell anyone about the conversation.
With that signature, Mr. bin al-Shibh’s lawyers say, the government turned a member of their team into an F.B.I. informant.
The F.B.I.’s inquiry became the focus of the pretrial hearings at Guantánamo this week, after the contractor disclosed it to the defense team. It was a reminder that, no matter how much the proceedings at the island military prison resemble a familiar American trial, the invisible hand of the United States government is at work there in ways unlike anything seen in typical courtrooms.
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Last year, as a lawyer for Mr. Mohammed was speaking during another hearing, a red light began flashing. Then the videofeed from the courtroom abruptly cut out. The emergency censorship system had been activated. But why? And by whom? The defense lawyer had said nothing classified. And the court officer responsible for protecting state secrets had not triggered the system. Days later, the military judge, Col. James L. Pohl, announced that he had been told that an “original classification authority” — meaning the C.I.A. — was secretly monitoring the proceedings. Unknown to everyone else, the agency had its own button, which the judge swiftly and angrily disconnected.
Last year, the government acknowledged that microphones were hidden inside what looked like smoke detectors in the rooms where detainees met with their lawyers. Those microphones gave officials the ability to eavesdrop on confidential conversations, but the military said it never did so.
“At some point, it just becomes silly,” said Glenn Sulmasy, a military law professor at the Coast Guard Academy who supports military trials for terrorism but said problems at Guantánamo Bay have undermined confidence in the system. “I don’t think we’re at that point yet, but at some point it just becomes surreal. It’s like there’s a shadow trial going on and we’re only finding out about it in bits and pieces.”
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Christopher Jencks, a Southern Methodist University law professor and a former military prosecutor, said he sympathized with the Guantánamo prosecutors, who appeared to have been just as surprised as defense lawyers by the appearance of the F.B.I. and C.I.A. in their cases.
“You have these military prosecutors who are normally empowered to own their cases. And they don’t here,” Mr. Jencks said. If this were any other country’s system, Mr. Jencks said, “The reaction would be, ‘Oh my gosh. What a kangaroo process.’ ”
Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/us/politics/covert-inquiry-by-fbi-rattles-9-11-tribunals.html