MISCELLANEOUS NEWS REPORTS * 2003.09.01 - 2003.09.30 misc_digest_2003_4.txt * Associated Press (AP): http://www.ap.org/ * Inter Press Service (IPS): http://ipsnews.net/ * Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/ * BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/ * CBS: http://www.cbsnews.com/ * CNN: http://www.cnn.com/ * The Age (Melbourne): http://www.theage.com.au/ * Baltimore Sun: http://www.sunspot.net/ * Chicago Tribune: http://www.chicagotribune.com/ * Dawn (Islamabad): http://www.dawn.com/ * The Guardian (UK): http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/ * The Globe and Mail (Toronto): http://www.theglobeandmail.com/ * The Independent (UK): http://www.independent.co.uk/ * Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/ * The Mirror (UK): http://www.mirror.co.uk/ * The Observer (UK): http://www.observer.co.uk/ * Newsweek: http://www.msnbc.com/news/NW-front_Front.asp * San Francisco Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/news/ * Sydney Morning Herald: http://www.smh.com.au/ * The Telegraph (UK): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ * The Times (UK): http://www.timesonline.co.uk/ ================================================================================ Reuters: September 30, 2003 - 10:26 AM ET U.S. ARRESTS ANOTHER GUANTANAMO BASE TRANSLATOR WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A civilian translator at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp for al Qaeda and Taliban suspects has been arrested in Boston after arriving from Egypt with documents about the U.S. camp, federal law enforcement officials said on Tuesday. The arrest brings to three the number of people detained after being assigned to work at the prison camp in Cuba where nearly 680 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban members are held. In the most recent arrest, Ahmed Mehalba was taken into custody at Boston's Logan International Airport late on Monday, after customs officials found what appeared to be classified documents in his possession, federal officials said. One official said the classified documents appeared to be from Guantanamo Bay. Mehalba denied having any classified documents in his possession and authorities planned to charge him with making false statements, the official said. The U.S. Attorney's office in Boston was also seeking a search warrant to seize the computer Mehalba brought into the country, the official said. Mehalba had flown into the United States from Cairo, one official said. He is the second translator at the base at Guantanamo Bay to be arrested. Senior U.S. Airman Ahmad al Halabi of Detroit, Michigan, who worked as an Arabic translator at the base, previously had been arrested and charged with spying for Syria and with aiding the enemy, according to Pentagon officials. Halabi, a 24-year-old Muslim who was born in Syria and became a U.S. citizen, was found to have classified information on a computer in violation of security rules, they said. The Pentagon also is investigating possible espionage charges against Army Islamic chaplain James Yee, who ministered many of the 660 prisoners at the Guantanamo base. He has been held in a military jail in South Carolina since Sept. 10, but has not yet been charged, the officials said. Another law enforcement official declined to make any connection between Mehalba and Halabi or Yee. "It's too early to make any conclusions at this point," the official said. * * * LA Times: September 30, 2003 JUSTICE OPENS PROBE INTO CIA LEAK Leak Accusation Stirs White House By Greg Miller and James Gerstenzang, LA Times Staff Writers WASHINGTON -- The White House counsel's office instructed President Bush's aides today to cooperate with a Justice Department investigation seeking to determine whether administration officials deliberately, and illegally, identified an undercover CIA agent in retribution for her husband's criticism of the president's prewar claims about Iraqi munitions. The official, Alberto R. Gonzalez, said Bush "has directed full cooperation with this investigation." Bush's White House counsel, sent a message to all White House employees this morning under the heading: "PLEASE READ: Important Message from Counsel's Office." Gonzalez told the other officials that the White House had been informed Monday evening that the Department of Justice had opened an investigation "into possible unauthorized disclosures concerning the identity of an undercover CIA employee." He said that the department had said it would instruct the White House to preserve all materials "that might be relevant to its investigation." Specific instructions were to follow, but such material would likely include telephone logs, e-mail messages and notes of meetings and conversations, among other documents. Instructing White House officials to take such steps to preserve potential pieces of evidence even before the official letter arrives from the Justice Department, Gonzalez wrote: "In the meantime, you must preserve all materials that might in any way be related to the department's investigation." Gonzalez' memorandum was distributed this morning by the White House press office. The disclosure of the memo came as the White House sought to fend off pressure for an external probe into whether administration officials had intentionally leaked the information. Top administration officials, including political advisor Karl Rove, issued denials Monday that they were behind the disclosure of the woman's identity, even while the Justice Department said it had launched a preliminary investigation and senior Democrats on Capitol Hill demanded the appointment of a special counsel. The issue has metastasized into a mini-scandal with such speed that many in Washington, including the White House, appear to have been caught off-guard. The allegations suddenly threatened to pose a major problem for an administration that prides itself on avoiding the culture of leaks and swirling criminal probes that waylaid its predecessor on Pennsylvania Avenue. It is a classic Washington whodunit, with speculation swirling around the Beltway on Monday over the identities of the "two senior administration officials" who passed the CIA officer's name to conservative columnist Robert Novak. But the time-honored game of guessing reporters' sources has higher stakes in this case because it centers on the White House's prewar claims about Iraq's nuclear program, appears to have cost a CIA operative her clandestine career, and the culprits, if caught, could face up to 10 years in prison. "My sense is this was not casually done, this was retaliation," said Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which has jurisdiction over the matter. Though most investigations of leaks fizzle like " 'Casablanca' with a rounding- up of the usual suspects," Harman said, "I think this one is not going to die. I think there's enormous interest. If what's alleged here actually happened, it was wrong, it was a violation of law, and an example has to be set." What actually happened is still emerging, but it was triggered by an opinion piece written in early July by former U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. The article, printed July 6 in the New York Times, questioned President Bush's assertion that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa. Wilson disclosed that a year earlier he had traveled to Niger on an assignment for the CIA to investigate those uranium allegations and found them baseless. The piece prompted questions that still persist about why the administration made such claims amid evidence that they were unfounded. Eight days later, syndicated columnist Novak wrote a piece defending the White House and arguing that Wilson's trip to Niger was done not at the behest of the administration but was arranged by his wife, Valerie Plame, "an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." The disclosure of her name and job attracted little attention at the time. The CIA, as obligated by law, referred the leak to the Justice Department later in July. But it didn't complete the paperwork until mid-September. It was the disclosure of the completed referral over the weekend that triggered the uproar. By some accounts, the administration approached a number of news organizations in July, dangling details on Wilson's wife's position at the agency. The Washington Post on Sunday quoted "an administration aide" as saying that six reporters received cold calls from administration officials. The Post quoted Wilson as saying that NBC's Andrea Mitchell got one of the calls. "I would not discuss sources," Mitchell said when asked about that Monday. But speaking on condition of anonymity, one top political and communications strategist close to the White House expressed skepticism that any senior White House officials leaked the information. "It's not how anybody leaks," the strategist said. "You know us. We're pros. If you want to leak, you call one reporter." On CNN, where Novak serves as a commentator, he said Monday, "Nobody in the White House called me to leak me this." Instead, Novak said he was interviewing a "senior administration official" who told him of Wilson's wife's identity, and that he confirmed it with another administration source. Observers in Washington have expressed bafflement that administration officials would play such high-risk politics for such dubious payback: gambling that identifying the wife of a retired diplomat would somehow taint the diplomat's report throwing cold water on the uranium allegations. But Wilson remains convinced that the leak was designed to punish him. "That's just purely reprehensible," he said in an interview Monday. He said he believes the Bush White House was "intimately involved in this." "At the minimum, Karl Rove condoned it after the fact, because he continued to speak about it for days afterward as if my wife were fair game," he said. Rove curtly denied any role in leaking Wilson's wife's name. Asked by an ABC News reporter Monday outside his home in Washington whether he was Novak's source, the top White House aide replied, "No." At his daily briefing, White House spokesman Scott McClellan also came to Rove's defense, describing as "ridiculous" any suggestions that Rove may have been involved. "There is simply no truth to that suggestion," the spokesman said. "And I have spoken with Karl about it." Aside from Rove, McClellan said the White House had no plans to "go down the White House directory of every single staff member and play that game" of asking them if they were the source of the news leak. The president studiously avoided the controversy Monday. After an afternoon bill-signing ceremony in the Roosevelt Room, Bush ignored one reporter who asked in a booming voice whether the president had identified the source of the information. Democrats jumped on the story. At least two presidential candidates, retired Gen. Wesley Clark and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, called for independent investigations. Leading Senate Democrats, including Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman John D. "Jay" Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, sent a letter to President Bush and Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft on Monday calling for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the leaks. The letter said the lawmakers "do not believe" that the investigation could be handled by the Justice Department because of the "obvious and inherent conflicts of interest involved." But McClellan brushed aside such calls, arguing there was no information -- beyond "media reports" based on anonymous sources -- that links the White House to the leak. Thus, he indicated, the president had no intention of launching an internal inquiry into the matter. McClellan said that the Justice Department was the proper agency and that the White House would cooperate fully with any such investigation. McClellan added that Bush regarded the leaking of classified information as "a very serious matter, and it should be pursued to the fullest extent by the appropriate agency. And the appropriate agency is the Department of Justice." And if a senior administration official were involved, McClellan added, "they would no longer be in this administration ... at a minimum -- at a minimum." A Justice Department spokesman, Mark Corallo, said the department is conducting a "preliminary investigation" into the alleged leak to determine whether a full- blown investigation is warranted. Corallo said the probe was being jointly handled by the FBI and career attorneys in the counterespionage section of the department's criminal division. Novak said the CIA asked him not to disclose Plame's name, "but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else," and that he was led to believe that she was "an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative, and not in charge of undercover operatives." Novak was wrong on those accounts, according to the CIA. "We wouldn't file a crimes report" if the case didn't involve an agent undercover, a U.S. official said. A 1982 federal law specifically prohibits the unauthorized disclosure of the identity of a clandestine intelligence officer. Nobody has been prosecuted under the law, said Steven Aftergood, director of the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. U.S. intelligence officials declined to discuss details of the case, but said exposing an operative's identity is a serious breach with unpredictable consequences. It not only deprives the operative of being able to work undercover in the future, but threatens to expose her sources, some of whom may be risking their lives to share secrets with the CIA. Outing an officer also places in jeopardy any CIA operative who replaces her in her overseas "cover," often a diplomatic post at a U.S. embassy. The official said the agency is obligated under federal law to refer leaks of classified information to the Justice Department. The agency refers about 50 such leaks a year, the official said. Congress passed the 1982 law after a former CIA operative, Philip Agee, launched a campaign in the 1970s to expose sensitive CIA operations and to identify CIA officers around the world. Some intelligence experts believe Agee's high-profile campaign helped create the climate that led to the 1975 assassination of Richard Welch, the CIA station chief in Athens, Greece, by an ultra-leftist group. Agee was stripped of his U.S. citizenship in 1979, and he was last known to be running a travel agency in Havana, Cuba. But he stopped publicly identifying U.S. intelligence operatives after the law was passed, Aftergood said. "People leak things day in and day out about government officials, their spouses and their pets," Aftergood said. But he said the Wilson case "is a unique circumstance ... and the proposed motivation is unusually sordid." "The idea is, as far as I can understand it, that Wilson would be discomfited somehow by the exposure of his wife," Aftergood said. "It's a particularly nasty attempt to silence a critic, if that is what happened here." Only one person has been convicted of leaking classified information to the media, which is also illegal but falls under a different statute than the law protecting identities of intelligence agents. Navy intelligence analyst Samuel L. Morison provided satellite photographs of Soviet installations to Jane's Defence Weekly in 1984. He was pardoned by President Clinton in 2001. Times staff writers Bob Drogin, Edwin Chen, Richard Schmitt and Johanna Neuman contributed to this report. * * * CNN: September 29, 2003 - 2223 GMT WHITE HOUSE VOWS HELP IN CIA LEAK PROBE But administration won't seek independent investigation WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House will cooperate with the Justice Department in its initial inquiry into who leaked the classified identity of a CIA operative, but will not launch an internal probe and will not ask for an independent investigation, a spokesman said Monday. The CIA operative in question, Valerie Plame, is the wife of a former U.S. ambassador who had been critical of the Bush's administration's handling of intelligence on Iraq. "The president believes leaking classified information is a very serious matter and it should be pursued to the fullest extent by the appropriate agency and the appropriate agency is the Department of Justice," White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters. He said the White House would cooperate with any probe, but said the Justice Department has not made any requests for information. The Justice Department would not comment on whether it is looking into the case. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice confirmed Sunday the Justice Department was asked to look into the matter. Former Ambassador Joe Wilson has said he believes the White House was behind the leak of the identity of his wife to newspaper columnist and CNN contributor Robert Novak as retribution for Wilson revealing flaws in prewar intelligence that said Iraq was trying to buy "yellowcake" uranium ore in Africa. In an interview Monday with CNN, he described the administration as "acting like schoolyard bullies, pulling the hair of a little girl." Plame was described as a CIA employee in a July column by Novak in the Chicago Sun-Times. CNN has been unable to reach Plame. "Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this," Novak said Monday CNN's "Crossfire," which he co-hosts. "There is no great crime here." The leak could constitute a felony. According to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, a federal employee with access to classified information who is convicted of making an unauthorized disclosure about a covert agent faces up to 10 years in prison and as much as $50,000 in fines. 'A dastardly act' "The leaking of the name of a CIA [operative] is a dastardly act," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, told CNN Monday. "It not only endangers the name of an agent who has put his or her life on the line for America, [but also] all their operatives and security ... It's a despicable thing to do. And some newspapers report that it was the White House that did it." McClellan said that if anyone at the White House leaked Plame's identity, he should be fired, and pursued to the "fullest extent." "No one was authorized to do this. That is simply not the way this White House operates and if someone leaked classified information it is a very serious matter," he said. McClellan said the White House has no firsthand knowledge of a Justice Department investigation of the matter. No one at the White House, he said, has been contacted or asked to be questioned, or sought counsel for defense on the matter. He rejected a call from some Democrats for an independent investigation, perhaps a special prosecutor, to avoid conflict of interest with Bush political appointees at the Justice Department. "Of course in any matter like this we will cooperate with the Department of Justice," said McClellan. "There has been no information brought to us or that has come to our attention beyond the media reports to suggest there was White House involvement." Wilson said at one point that he believes the person who broke his wife's cover was Karl Rove, Bush's senior adviser and political strategist. But Wilson on Monday backed away somewhat from specifically naming Rove. He told CNN there was "excess of exuberance" on his part in naming Rove as the source, but he said he believed Rove condoned the leak and did nothing to stop it. Wilson also stood by his claim that the leak came from the administration. "I think it comes out of the White House political office," Wilson said, adding that the publication of his wife's identity came one week after he had written a critical article in The New York Times about the administration's handling of intelligence on Iraq. McClellan said he discussed the matter with Rove, and feels confident that accusation of Rove's involvement is "simply not true." "Only a limited number of people would even have access to classified information of this nature," added McClellan. Wilson visited Niger in early 2002 on behalf of the CIA to investigate a British intelligence report alleging Iraq had tried to buy significant quantities of "yellowcake" there and in other African countries for possible use in nuclear weapons. Wilson, a former U.S. diplomat with expertise in African affairs, reported finding no evidence to support the claim. Earlier this year, Wilson criticized Bush for including in his 2003 State of the Union speech the notorious "16 words" citing the British report. "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," Bush said in the address. It was later revealed the British report was based in part on forged documents, and Bush backed away from the statement. Punitive move? Wilson told CNN last month the leak about his wife was directly connected to his public criticism of the administration for including the uranium report in the speech after he had already discredited it. "The idea, it seemed to me, in going after me and then later making these allegations about my wife, was clearly designed to keep others from stepping forward," said Wilson, who was acting ambassador to Iraq in the months before the 1991 Persian Gulf War. "I don't know if that's true or not, but you can be sure that a GS-14 or 15 with a couple of kids in college, when he sees the allegations that came from senior administration officials about my family ... in the public domain, you can be sure that he's going to be worried about what might happen if he were to come forward," Wilson said. GS-14 or GS-15 refers to the federal General Schedule pay scale. GS-15 is the highest level, with annual salaries generally ranging from $95,000 to $125,000. [ CNN's Dana Bash and David Ensor contributed to this report. ] * * * September 27, 2003 PRISON CAMP INTERPRETER HAD TICKETS TO SYRIA · Lawyers say airman accused of spying at Guantanamo was only planning a family trip. By Richard A. Serrano, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON -- Military lawyers for Ahmad I. Al-Halabi, an Air Force interpreter accused of spying on behalf of terrorist detainees at the Guantanamo Bay naval base, acknowledged Friday that he was about to go to Syria when he was arrested this summer. But they insisted the trip was a family outing and not an attempt to sabotage interrogation efforts at the prison in Cuba. In their first detailed account previewing Al-Halabi's defense, the lawyers also lashed out at the Air Force for subjecting him to secret military hearings at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and for refusing to let the 24-year-old senior airman speak in Arabic to members of his family. Air Force officials have expressed fear he might be passing on classified information. The highly unusual defense statement comes as an Air Force general at Al-Halabi's home station, Travis Air Force Base in Northern California, prepares to make a decision on whether to send the young enlistee to a general court- martial. If convicted on charges of espionage and aiding the enemy, he could receive the death penalty. The case has sharpened concerns about security breaches at Camp Delta, the military prison holding some 660 detainees in Cuba. Along with Al-Halabi, an Army chaplain who ministered to Muslim detainees there is also being held for questioning. Military investigators said they are widening their probe to determine whether other U.S. personnel at the prison may have compromised security. The chaplain, Army Capt. James Y. Yee, is being held without charge at the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. Al-Halabi was arrested in July after leaving the Guantanamo base, and the Air Force subsequently charged him with 30 criminal counts. It said he had "made contact" with the Syrian embassy and that he was trying to pass on to that country more than 180 written notes from detainees, as well as a map of the fortress and flight paths in and out of Guantanamo Bay. A subsequent military court hearing, convened mostly in secret, was held last week at Vandenberg, and an examiner's report is being prepared for Brig. Gen. Bradley S. Baker on whether the case should go to court-martial. Until that decision is reached, the Air Force has released only the charges against Al-Halabi and has declined to discuss other details of the case, citing concerns over classified material at Guantanamo Bay. But the Syrian government has protested that Al-Halabi was not working on its behalf, and his military defense team -- Maj. James Key III and Maj. Kim E. London, both at Travis Air Force Base -- suggested in a joint statement Friday that their client is not being treated fairly. "Al-Halabi deserves a fair and public hearing and trial, just like every American is entitled to," they said. They said his service record describes him as a "star performer for the Air Force," and they noted that he was quickly promoted to senior airman and recognized as "the 60th Supply Squadron Outstanding Airman of the Year for 2001." "Senior Airman Al-Halabi had just finished a nine-month tour at Guantanamo Bay," they said. "He was on his way back to his home base [Travis] in July 2003 when he was arrested by agents from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations during a layover in Jacksonville, Fla. "He did have tickets to fly to Syria a few days later out of California, where he was going to meet with his family for a wedding ceremony in Damascus. The wedding had already been postponed because his tour in Cuba had been extended two or three times," the attorneys said. The Al-Halabi family originally was from Syria, where Ahmad was born. His father told the lawyers that he himself first came to this country 15 years ago "to work as a cook in a restaurant to support his nine children in Syria." The son followed as the family settled in Detroit, "in search of a good job and an education," the lawyers said. "After completing high school, Senior Airman Al-Halabi joined the Air Force and became a U.S. citizen." His arrest and incarceration at the brig at Vandenberg has taken a harsh toll on the family, the lawyers said. "Al-Halabi is doing his best to stay positive ... " they said. "He is under a military order not to communicate in any way in Arabic, which essentially means he cannot talk or write much directly to his father, mother, fiance, or other family members, who speak and write primarily in Arabic. "It is understandably frustrating for him, but he is following the military order." * * * September 27, 2003 Melbourne Herald-Sun: MAN WHO DARED TO DISAGREE US Muslim chaplain James Yee was the first arrested of five servicemen who are under investigation for espionage at the terrorist prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. MICHAEL McKENNA interviewed him in April and found he was not a true believer in the military line that all detainees were terrorists. US Army Captain James J. Yee was a man on a mission within the barbed wire fence of the US prison camp for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A career army officer, Capt Yee became the first Muslim chaplain at Camp Delta -- a self-described spiritual counsel and conduit of complaint for any of the 660 or so detainees who sought his help. It was a job the West Point graduate and Islam convert took to with an unwavering determination. He organised the Muslim call to prayer to be played five times a day, placated detainees' concerns about the halal preparation of food and ensured everyone had a Koran. But it was more than just the job that made Capt Yee, arrested two weeks ago on suspicion of espionage at Guantanamo, different from his 1500 military comrades at Camp Delta. It was also the fact he believed some of the detainees were innocent. In an interview in April at Guantanamo Bay with the Herald Sun, Capt Lee exploded when asked how he felt as a US serviceman ministering to people suspected, by his own superiors, of being among the world's worst terrorists. Capt Yee responded: "How can you say that? You are just stereotyping." The 35-year-old even suggested some prisoners, who he described as being entirely Muslim, may be in detention because their enemies made wrongful allegations to collect US reward money. "How they came to be here I have no part," he said. "How they were captured, how they were bought and sold and how they came to Guantanamo Bay is before I got here. My role is to help people . . . and to tend to their religious needs." Capt Yee dismissed any suggestion he was treated with suspicion by the prisoners because he wore US uniform. "What you are saying is that because they are Muslim they are going to hate or have suspicions because I wear an American flag," he said. Capt Yee's attitude was in stark contrast to that of his commanding officer, Major General Geoffrey Miller, who said he was "confident that every single detainee in Camp Delta is in his proper place". "They have all been involved in the war of terrorism in some fashion, obviously at different levels," he said. Capt Yee's outspoken defence of the prisoners may have played a role in his arrest. There are few details about Capt Yee's alleged offences, other than leaked reports he had diagrams of prison cells and lists of prisoners and interrogators in his luggage. But the other Guantanamo serviceman arrested, Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi, is being held for allegedly spying. Unlike Capt Yee, airman al-Halabi has been charged with espionage for allegedly e-mailing classified information about the prison camp to an unspecified enemy and planning to give other secrets about the prison to someone travelling to Syria. The most serious of the 32 charges against al-Halabi carry a possible death sentence. It is unclear when or if Capt Yee, who is being held in a navy brig in South Carolina, will be charged. The military has 120 days to charge or release him. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Capt Yee gave frequent speeches and sermons about Islam in the Washington DC area. He also gave a class on Islam at the post, telling his students he feared a growing prejudice in the US and an increase in profiling of Islamics. But he also told them he felt fortunate to be in the US military, because of a lack of prejudice. "Here, I know I am trusted," Capt Yee said. * * * September 26, 2003 CIA SEEKS PROBE OF WHITE HOUSE Agency asks Justice to investigate leak of employee’s identity MSNBC AND NBC NEWS WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 -- The CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations that the White House broke federal laws by revealing the identity of one of its undercover employees in retaliation against the woman’s husband, a former ambassador who publicly criticized President Bush’s since-discredited claim that Iraq had sought weapons-grade uranium from Africa, NBC News has learned. The former envoy, Joseph Wilson, who was acting ambassador to Iraq before the first Gulf War, was dispatched to Niger in 2002 to investigate a British intelligence report that Iraq sought to buy uranium there. Although Wilson discredited the report, Bush cited it in his State of the Union address in January among the evidence he said justified military action in Iraq. The administration has since had to repudiate the claim. CIA Director George Tenet said the 16-word sentence should not have been included in Bush’s Jan. 28 speech and publicly accepted responsibility for allowing it to remain in the president’s text. Wilson published an article in July alleging, however, that the White House recklessly made the charge knowing it was false. "We spend billions of dollars on intelligence," Wilson wrote. "But we end up putting something in the State of the Union address, something we got from another intelligence agency, something we cannot independently verify, in an area of Africa where the British have no on-the-ground presence." WHITE HOUSE DENIALS The next week, columnist Robert Novak published an article in which he revealed that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a covert CIA operative specializing in weapons of mass destruction. "Two senior administration officials told me Wilson’s wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate," Novak wrote. The White House has denied being Novak’s source, whom he has refused to identify. But Wilson has said other reporters have told him White House officials leaked Plame’s identity. NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell reported Friday night that the CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate whether White House officials blew Plame’s cover in retaliation against Wilson. Revealing the identities of covert officials is a violation of two laws, the National Agents’ Identity Act and the Unauthorized Release of Classified Information Act. ATTEMPTS TO REMOVE CLAIM When the Niger claim first arose, in February 2002, the CIA sent Wilson to Africa to investigate. He reported finding no credible evidence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. The CIA’s doubts about the uranium claim were reported through routine intelligence traffic throughout the government, U.S. intelligence officials said. Those doubts were also reported to the British. The Niger report included a notation that it was unconfirmed when it was published in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, the classified summary of intelligence on Iraq’s weapons programs. The CIA had the Niger claim removed from at least two speeches before they were given: Bush’s October address on the Iraqi threat, and a speech by U.N. Ambassador John Negroponte. As the State of the Union address was being written, CIA officials protested over how the alleged uranium connection was being portrayed, so the administration changed it to attribute it to the British, who had made the assertion in a Sept. 24 dossier. By MSNBC.com’s Alex Johnson with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell. * * * KRCG-TV 13, Jefferson City, MO: September 26, 2003 UNNAMED COLONEL TO EXAMINE DOLAN CASE Jefferson City (AP), 9/26/2003 A high-ranking Army officer will look into whether state Senator Jon Dolan violated any military regulations. The issue concerns Dolan's leave to return to Missouri, where he cast the deciding vote enacting a concealed guns law. Giving the job to a full-colonel shows increased interest in Dolan's case. But the Army stopped short of launching a formal investigation. A spokesman for the Army's Southern Command, Raul Duany, says the unnamed colonel was sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Monday. Dolan is assigned at Guantanamo as a public affairs major through the Missouri Army National Guard. The Lake St. Louis Republican says he was interviewed on Tuesday as part of the informal investigation. Duany says similar inquiries usually are wrapped up in three weeks. (Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) * * * September 26, 2003 - 1739 GMT AFFIDAVIT: SPY SUSPECT UNDER SCRUTINY BEFORE GITMO ARREST Affidavit indicates Air Force sent al Halabi to Gitmo despite doubts From Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An affidavit that sought a search warrant indicates the U.S. Air Force was scrutinizing the activities of accused spy Ahmad al Halabi while he was still stationed in California and before he was deployed to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Al Halabi has been charged with espionage and aiding the enemy by sending classified information about the camp by e-mail and conspiring to give classified information to someone in Syria. The affidavit does not explain why the military allowed him to be deployed to Guantanamo even though he was under investigation at Travis Air Force Base. In the affidavit, Special Agent Lance Wega of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations said the investigation of al Halabi was "initiated based on reports of suspicious activity while he was stationed at Travis AFB and also while deployed to Kuwait and Guantanamo Bay (GTMO) Naval Base, Cuba." The affidavit, filed September 5, sought a search warrant, subsequently granted, to examine a package al Halabi sent to his own address at the base in California while serving at Guantanamo Bay. The affidavit also reveals al Halabi's possessions were searched at Guantanamo and investigators found "several originals and copies of mail belonging to suspected al Qaeda and Taliban detainees." Attorney denies allegations Al Halabi's attorney denied the charges against his client Wednesday. "Airman al Halabi is not a spy," Air Force Maj. James E. Key told CNN. "He is not a terrorist, and he and his family are shocked that he is accused of taking actions that would be contrary to the United States' interest." Al Halabi's arrest was made public after the arrest of Army Muslim chaplain Capt. James Yee, who ministered to some of the Guantanamo detainees. Yee is being held on suspicion of espionage and treason in a stockade in Charleston, South Carolina. He has not been charged. On Thursday, several Pentagon sources confirmed that a member of the U.S. Air Force and a U.S. Navy sailor are under investigation for "suspicious activities" related to the detainees held by the United States. The men have not been arrested but remain under surveillance, the sources said. It is not clear when or if they will be detained. At least one of the security cases has apparently involved suspicious e-mails that were discovered as part of a routine monitoring process, one source said. The cases have come to light as part of widening security probe at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay where more than 600 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban detainees are being held. It has not been learned yet if there is any direct relationship between Yee and al Halabi. According to al Halabi's charge sheet, he is also accused of failing to report unauthorized communications between U.S. troops and detainees, who are designated as enemy combatants. Al Halabi was arrested July 23 because he allegedly had classified information on his laptop computer about detainees and facilities at the Guantanamo Bay base, Pentagon officials said. He is being held at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. An American of Syrian descent, al Halabi allegedly e-mailed information to people in Syria that included details about the base's flight schedule, officials said. The affidavit for the search warrant noted that investigators found 186 "sensitive, classified Defense documents related to Camp Delta detainees." Camp Delta is at Guantanamo. While in Cuba, the affidavit said, "al Halabi made statements criticizing United States policy with regard to the detainees and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. He has also expressed sympathy for and has had unauthorized contact with the detainees, including providing unauthorized items of comfort to the detainees." When he was arrested, the documents show, the airman had commercial airline tickets for a flight to Syria. Prior to his arrest, he had said he would be going to Syria to get married, the affidavit said. Al Halabi was charged with 11 counts of failing to obey a lawful general order or regulation; three counts of aiding the enemy; four counts of espionage; nine counts of making a false statement; bank fraud and violations of the Federal Espionage Act. Al Halabi served nine months at Guantanamo Bay as a translator and was arrested about seven weeks before Yee was taken into custody. Military authorities took Yee into custody September 10 at the naval air station in Jacksonville, Florida, while he possessed classified documents "that a chaplain shouldn't have," said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The official said the documents included "diagrams of the cells and the facilities at Guantanamo." In addition, Yee is suspected of having ties to radical Muslims in the United States who are under investigation, the official said. CNN Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre contributed to this story. * * * US Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) Member, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, Sub-Committee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 25, 2003 CONTACT: Matthew Latimer or Andrew Wilder, (202) 224-4521 SENATOR EXPRESSES CONCERN OVER SUSPECTED ESPIONAGE IN U.S. MILITARY Kyl to Hold Hearing on Terrorist Infiltration in Military, U.S. Prisons WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security, today announced that his panel will investigate the scope of the threat posed by terrorist recruitment in U.S. prisons and the U.S. military. At a press conference today on Capitol Hill, Kyl expressed concern over reports that at least two service members may have breached security at the U.S. military prison on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and provided information to terrorists. "I’m gratified that military authorities have taken action to investigate what may be an alarming breach of security in our armed services and I strongly recommend that the Pentagon review its policies in regard to the recruitment of clerics," said Senator Kyl. "My subcommittee is continuing to examine what is clearly an ongoing and systematic effort by the radical Wahhabi sect to infiltrate and recruit terrorists within the United States, focusing primarily on chaplains in the prison systems and in the U.S. military. "No one has yet been tried in these cases and we need to let these investigations see themselves through. But there are many reasons for a potential security breach at Guantanamo Bay, and many of those problems long preceded the current administration. One major problem is the continued financial support of terrorist-connected activities in the U.S. by foreign governments such as Saudi Arabia. "As was outlined in a previous subcommittee hearing, Saudi Arabia is at the ‘epicenter’ of terrorist funding. We now need to conduct a thorough examination of groups such as the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Council (AMAFVC) and the Graduate School for Islamic Social Studies (GSISS), which provide Muslim clerics to the U.S. military and are also funded generously by the Saudi government." CONTACT: Matthew Latimer or Andrew Wilder, (202) 224-4521 * * * St. Louis Post-Dispatch: September 25, 2003 PENTAGON INVESTIGATING DOLAN LEAVE By Phil Dine, Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau WASHINGTON -- Military authorities have launched a formal investigation of the case of Missouri State Sen. Jon Dolan, who was granted a leave from his duty at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and cast a key vote as the Missouri Legislature overrode Gov. Bob Holden's veto of a concealed weapons bill. The investigation will examine whether Dolan, R-Lake Saint Louis, or anyone else in the military chain of command acted improperly, and what if any punishment -- up to court martial -- is appropriate. The decision to move from an informal inquiry to a full-blown investigation was made because of the importance of the issues involved and the controversy the case has sparked in Missouri and in military circles, authorities said in interviews Thursday. Dolan, a major in the Missouri National Guard, has been on active duty in Cuba since Aug 26, involved in public affairs work. He got a personal leave earlier this month and flew back to Missouri to vote in a special session of the legislature. He provided the critical 23rd vote to overturn Holden's veto; the votes of 23 senators are required to override a governor's veto. * * * CNN: September 25, 2003 SOURCES: 2 IN U.S. MILITARY INVESTIGATED AT CUBA BASE From Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A member of the U.S. Air Force and a U.S. Navy sailor are under investigation for "suspicious activities" related to detainees the U.S. holds at its base in Cuba, several Pentagon sources said Thursday. The men have not been arrested but remain under surveillance, the sources said. It is not clear when or if they will be detained. At least one of the security cases has apparently involved suspicious e-mails that were discovered as part of a routine monitoring process, one source said. The cases have come to light as part of widening security probe at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay where more than 600 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban detainees are being held. It could not immediately be learned if there is any direct relationship between the two people under surveillance and the arrests of two other members of the military, Army Islamic chaplain Capt. James Yee and Air Force Airman Ahmad al Halabi. Al Halabi -- who worked at Guantanamo -- has been charged with espionage and aiding the enemy. Al Halabi's attorney denied the charges against his client Wednesday. "Airman al Halabi is not a spy," Air Force Maj. James E. Key told CNN. "He is not a terrorist, and he and his family are shocked that he is accused of taking actions that would be contrary to the United States' interest." Yee -- who ministered some of the Guantanamo detainees -- is being held on suspicion of espionage and treason in at a stockade in Charleston, South Carolina. Yee has not been charged. According to al Halabi's charge sheet, he is also accused of failing to report unauthorized communications between U.S. troops and detainees, who are designated as enemy combatants. Al Halabi was arrested July 23 because he allegedly had classified information on his laptop computer about detainees and facilities at the Guantanamo Bay base, Pentagon officials said. He is being held at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. An American of Syrian descent, al Halabi allegedly e-mailed information to people in Syria that included details about the base's flight schedule, officials said. Al Halabi was charged with 11 counts of failing to obey a lawful general order or regulation; three counts of aiding the enemy, four counts of espionage; nine counts of making a false statement; bank fraud and violations of the Federal Espionage Act. Al Halabi served nine months at Guantanamo Bay as a translator and was arrested about seven weeks before Yee was taken into custody. Military authorities took Yee into custody September 10 at the naval air station in Jacksonville, Florida, while he was in possession of classified documents "that a chaplain shouldn't have," said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The official said the documents included "diagrams of the cells and the facilities at Guantanamo." In addition, Yee is suspected of having ties to radical Muslims in the United States who are under investigation, the official said. CNN Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre contributed to this story. * * * September 25, 2003 MORE SECURITY BREACHES SUSPECTED AT GUANTANAMO By Greg Miller, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military is expanding its probe of possible security breaches at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp following disclosures that two servicemen who worked at the maximum-security compound have been arrested on suspicion of espionage. Senior Pentagon officials expressed alarm that the prison for Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives on the eastern edge of Cuba might have been penetrated, and indicated that the investigation already points to the possibility of other attempted breaches and additional suspects. "We don't presume that the two we know about is all there is to it," Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Wednesday. Military officials said investigators are scrutinizing at least two other individuals, including an outside contractor, in their widening security probe. The officials declined to elaborate and stressed that there had been no new arrests. "I do get the sense from our law enforcement guys that other arrests are imminent," a Navy official said. The matter threatens to become a new source of friction between the United States and Syria because the two suspects in custody -- an Air Force translator and an Army chaplain -- have Syrian connections. Senior Airman Ahmad I. Al-Halabi, 24, is being held at Vandenberg Air Force Base, northwest of Santa Barbara, on multiple espionage charges, including allegations that he sought to pass military secrets to Syria, his native country. Al-Halabi's military attorney, Air Force Maj. James E. Key III, did not return calls seeking comment but has publicly denied the charges. The other suspect, Army Capt. James Y. Yee, was detained Sept. 10 at a naval air station in Jacksonville, Fla., after he allegedly was found carrying classified documents from Guantanamo, including notes on prisoners and diagrams of the detention facility. Yee, 35, spent several years in Syria in the mid-1990s learning Arabic and studying Islam before returning to the Army to serve as a chaplain. As of late Wednesday, he had not been charged with any crime. Military officials said the two men served at Guantanamo at the same time and might have known one another, but they cautioned that there is no evidence suggesting their cases are related. The Syrian government denied any connection to the men or involvement in any effort to spy at Guantanamo. "Syria has no relationship with this individual," said Faisal Mekdad, the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, speaking of Al-Halabi. "He is from Syrian origin. But from the viewpoint of intelligence, Syria has no relationship in this connection." Mekdad also said the U.S. government had contacted Syria on the matter. In Damascus, Syrian Information Minister Ahmed Hassan scoffed at the allegations. "Any allegations that Halabi has any kind of connection with Syria are baseless," he said, according to a report by Associated Press. "How could Syria have a spy in Guantanamo?" That question and others continued to puzzle U.S. military and intelligence officials Wednesday. Several officials who spoke on condition of anonymity struggled to account for the apparent security breaches and voiced skepticism that Syria would risk its already tenuous relationship with the United States in an effort to collect intelligence at Guantanamo. "Syria is clearly not connected to Al Qaeda, sees Al Qaeda as an enormous threat, so it's hard to imagine what this is about," said a former U.S. intelligence official and Middle East expert. "It's highly unlikely that they might be interested in knowing what's going on at Guantanamo." Syria has a "decent" intelligence service, Syrian General Intelligence, the former official said, but it is smaller and less aggressive than that of other nations and has never been known to recruit informants or spies in North America. "They just don't have the wealth or inclination to be a worldwide intelligence service," the ex-official said. "They are a regional intelligence service." It is not known whether any Syrian nationals are held at Guantanamo. The prison has about 660 detainees from more than 40 nations, but the Pentagon has never identified them or listed their nationalities. Though Syria is credited with being helpful in the war on terrorism, it also has been criticized, particularly by officials at the Pentagon, during and after the war in Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has chastised Syria for allowing enemy fighters and terrorists to cross its border into Iraq and harass U.S. forces. Several Pentagon officials speculated Wednesday that Al-Halabi was acting on his own and might have sought to sell secrets to the Syrian government. There are often simple motives in spying cases, noted one Pentagon official. "Maybe he needed money and thought he could sell information," the official said. "Or perhaps it was ideological. He was sympathetic toward [the prisoners'] plight and was trying to help them." Al-Halabi, who was taken into custody in July after serving eight months at Guantanamo, is accused of trying to deliver more than 180 notes from prisoners, cellblock numbers, a map of the compound and the flight patterns of military aircraft to Syrian contacts that were not specified in court papers filed by military authorities. One charge accuses Al-Halabi of delivering baklava, a Middle Eastern pastry, to prisoners. In all, Al-Halabi faces 30 counts, including spying charges that could bring the death penalty. Sources who have worked at Guantanamo Bay said it would not have been difficult for a translator such as Al-Halabi to be in unsupervised contact with prisoners and smuggle out classified and sensitive information. Though there are inspection points and checks, the base operates on trust to a significant degree because those working there have security clearances. "When I was there, they didn't check your pockets and there was no metal detector," said William Tierney, a former Army intelligence officer who served as a civilian translator at Guantanamo in 2002 before being forced to leave after being accused of interfering with interrogations. A former interrogator at Guantanamo Bay said that translators also had access to classified computer networks, and that documents such as flight schedules and cell configurations were widely available. "Any one of us could walk out of there with security documents," the former interrogator said. [ Times staff writers Richard A. Serrano and Robin Wright contributed to this report. ] * * * September 25, 2003 Washington Times: Editorial MUSLIMS IN THE MILITARY The arrest of two Muslim-American servicemen based at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, (a developing story originally broken by this newspaper), raises some complex questions about the conflicting loyalties of Muslim-American soldiers in the war against radical Islamic terror. Dueling it out are two policy imperatives dear to our tradition of government: equal treatment of all regardless of race and religion, and the need to guarantee national security. The threshold must be high for a policy to curtail one of these fundamental values in favor of defending the other -- but it is a threshold that can be met in extreme cases. The ancient imperative of self-defense is such a case, but it remains to be seen whether we have reached that situation. The complex connections between terrorist organizations, Islamic charities and some mainstream Muslim groups bring up the uncomfortable issue of whether Muslim chaplains and men in the ranks should be treated differently than recruits of other faiths. The military is confident in checking with the Vatican to confirm the character of a Catholic priest, but relying on the judgment of Muslim groups has proven to be less reliable. Trouble was bound to happen eventually, as the military has sought assistance to approve chaplains from Muslim groups that are themselves questionable. According to Robert Spencer, author of the new book "Onward Muslim Soldiers," the Air Force "in July 2002 asked for help recruiting Muslim chaplains from the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). ISNA is subsidized by high-placed Saudi Wahhabis. Many Muslim military chaplains have been trained by the American Muslim Foundation's American Muslim Armed Forces and Veteran Affairs Council; the AMF has been investigated for suspicions of funding terrorism." Because of this system, many Muslim chaplains in the U.S. military have strong Wahhabi beliefs. The risk of conflicting loyalties is not limited to the chaplain corps. Considering that there are only approximately 4,500 Muslims in uniform, their record of religious-based crimes is significant. The most notorious case of conflicting loyalties was that of Sgt. Hasan Akbar, who killed two of his commanding officers in a grenade attack in Kuwait last winter and shouted, "You guys are coming into our countries, and you're going to rape our women and kill our children." As Mr. Spencer pointed out to us yesterday, "He explicitly identified himself as a Muslim, and not an American." The author provides other serious examples of enemies within the ranks. Naval Reservist Semi Osman was charged last May with illegally trying to become a U.S. citizen (he had altered birth certificates and other related papers) and possession of a handgun whose serial number was altered. Maj. Ali A. Mohamed, an Egyptian, joined the Army as a resident alien in the late 1980s even though he was on a State Department terrorist watch list. After leaving the Army in 1989, he joined Egyptian Islamic Jihad, worked directly with Osama bin Laden and was charged with involvement in the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1998. Army reservist Jeffrey Leon Battle was indicted last year for conspiring to wage war against the United States, and according to the Justice Department, "enlisting in the Reserves to receive military training to use against America." He plannedtogoto Afghanistan to join up with the Taliban. It has always been common for soldiers to consider it their duty to defend God and country. In most cases, it was taken for granted that men in uniform believed the two were on the same side. The question now is what to do when some in the military think God and country are opposed. The recent arrests of Muslims serving in the U.S. military in Guantanamo Bay mean the Pentagon will have to tackle the problem of conflicting loyalties. There is no sense of national security if our soldiers cannot even be sure that their brothers with them in the foxhole are on the same side. While some conservatives have criticized the White House for being too politically correct in its treatment of Islam, the Bush administration was staying true to the fundamental American value of freedom of faith. Before deciding whether it is necessary to compromise the principle of equal protection in the interest of national security, we should first give the Pentagon a chance to quickly -- but materially and realistically -- upgrade its clearance processes. * * * CBS: September 24, 2003 60 MINUTES II: CAMP DELTA: GUANTANAMO BAY http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/16/60II/main573616.shtml (CBS) The arrest this week of the Army Muslim chaplain and another American serviceman on charges of passing military secrets to Syria adds another twist to the mystery surrounding a secret, high-security prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. 60 Minutes II visited there recently, before the arrests, and even met that Army chaplain. We went to Guantanamo in order to see how the military is holding 660 suspected terrorists, in secret and without trial. We were the first journalists allowed to take cameras inside the prison, known as Camp Delta. The Pentagon imposed some rules: We were forbidden to take pictures of, or talk to, the prisoners and could not photograph some parts of the camp. But we were able to see the conditions under which the prisoners are held, and talk to the Americans who guard them. Correspondent Vicki Mabrey reports. The prison is on a bluff overlooking the Caribbean, an isolated corner of the remote U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. It’s America’s little corner of Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Security is tight - razor wire, guard towers and searchlights control the perimeter while gunboats patrol the waters below. The prisoners, from 42 different countries, were captured in Afghanistan. They live behind a green mesh fence, their every move watched by Army MPs. And ever since they were flown -- in hoods and shackles -- to Cuba in January 2002, they’ve been kept incommunicado and out of sight. Sgt. Maj. John Van Natta, an Army reservist, showed 60 Minutes II around. He’s the warden at Camp Delta. In civilian life, he runs a large state penitentiary in Indiana. We were allowed into an empty high-security cellblock. It was empty, Van Natta says, because the cells were just repainted. There are 48 cells per block, about 1000 cells in all, and plans to build more. Van Natta says a typical 8x6 cell is similar to prison cells in the U.S. He displayed the standard-issue clothing and toiletries given to each detainee - plus the checkers, cards and even the cups that are earned by good behavior. At first, Van Natta said, prisoners used cups to throw urine, sewage or other concoctions at the guards. But he says that doesn't happen much anymore: "It's minimal, and the control is, in fact, in place here." Control is exerted through religion, too. Each cell comes equipped with a Koran, prayer beads, and an arrow pointing towards Mecca - 12,793 kilometers from Guantanamo Bay, a reminder of just how far the prisoners are from home. Their day begins with the Muslim call to prayer over the camp’s PA system. Capt. James Yee, the Muslim chaplain who was arrested, downloaded the precise times of the five daily prayers from an Islamic Web site. He also counseled the prisoners. "I do have access to the detainees, to be able to speak and talk with them," says Yee. "I can hold conversations with them." And those conversations have apparently gotten Capt. Yee in trouble. Just a few days ago, the Pentagon disclosed that Yee and another American serviceman at Camp Delta were arrested on suspicion of espionage and aiding the enemy. Details have not been made public, but sources tell CBS News the investigation could lead to other arrests. That's a bizarre development for a secret military prison that prides itself on tight security. But the Army also prides itself on how it treats and even feeds the prisoners. Camp administrators say the detainees have gained an average of 13 pounds since coming here, because, they boast, the food is good. And Navy Capt. Al Shimkus, who’s in charge of health care, says prisoners get the same level of treatment as soldiers. But there is concern over the large number of suicide attempts -- 32 so far, none successful. "We take every attempt to commit suicide very seriously," says Shimkus. "Despair in general can be a factor, and lots of other things." Other things, he says, like battlefield stress. In fact, Shimkus estimates that up to 15 percent of the detainees were mentally ill when they arrived. Doctors are treating about 90 detainees for depression, even prescribing anti- depressants for some. And they’ve set up a special psychiatric ward for serious cases. Camp Iguana, named after the reptiles that run loose all over the base, is where the three youngest prisoners - between the ages of 13 and 15 - are kept. How dangerous can they be? "Well, juveniles can kill," says Shimkus, who refused to tell us if they have killed before. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who runs Camp Delta, says he thinks the three juveniles should be sent home. But only, he emphasizes, because they no longer pose a serious threat to Americans. So far, 64 adult prisoners have been sent home. But Miller insists neither they, nor any of the 660 who remain, are innocent: "Every detainee who is at Camp Delta has gone through a very thorough, careful screening process. They are all here for the right reasons. Either they were involved in terrorist activity, or they supported terrorism." Miller contends that all the prisoners were captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan. In Guantanamo, they were first held in a makeshift detention center. Outsiders could get a view only through a telephoto lens. Today, Camp Delta is unlike any other American prison, civilian or military, because prisoners haven’t been charged, tried or convicted of anything. But they are all presumed guilty of something. "It’s not humane to incarcerate somebody indefinitely, without a hearing, and to keep them there with no chance of proving his innocence," says Tom Wilner, a prominent Washington attorney, hired by the families of 12 Kuwaitis being held at Camp Delta. "How would any of us feel if our husband, our brother, our father, our son, were picked up in another country and was just held there with no opportunity to go before anybody impartial to say, ‘Hey, you’ve got the wrong guy. I didn’t do anything.’" The Bush Administration says the detainees are not entitled to fundamental American legal rights, like due process, because Camp Delta is on Cuban soil. Federal courts have upheld that position, but the case has been appealed to the Supreme Court. The Administration also argues that even though they were captured in a war, they’re not prisoners of war, at least as defined by the Geneva Conventions, which regulates treatment of POWs. "These are enemy combatants, as you know, picked up on the battlefield. They were not fighting for a country as is covered by the Geneva Convention," says Miller. "If I was in the same condition, then I would want to be detained in the same manner that we are detaining these enemy combatants." "My reaction to that is one of real anger," says Wilner. "The attempt by the American government to say that these people are lucky because we’re giving them good medical treatment, a lot of calories, so they’re lucky to be there, and they’re held in a nice way is absolutely wrong." The Geneva Conventions say POWs in World War II didn’t have to tell their captors anything but name, rank and serial number. But from the first day Camp Delta opened, the main goal has been to get prisoners to talk - and to tell everything they know about terrorists and their organizations. "We interrogate seven days a week, 24 hours a day," says Miller. "We don’t talk about the operational measures that we use, but I will tell you, everything we do, our nation can be proud of." Although he wouldn’t be more specific, Miller did claim interrogators don’t use physical coercion. And, he said, Pentagon rules limit the length of interrogations to no more than 16 straight hours. And those are the rules for adults. The three juveniles at Camp Iguana, Miller says, are "de-briefed," not interrogated. Detainees who provide useful information are rewarded with a move to a special camp, where they live communally, but under constant surveillance. But some have no information to give. In fact, a senior American military interrogator at Camp Delta told 60 Minutes II that as many as 20 percent of the Guantanamo prisoners were sent there by mistake - and that they were innocent bystanders, or very small fish. This may be one reason why: U.S. forces dropped millions of leaflets during the Afghan war offering $20,000 to Afghans who turned in an alleged terrorist. "Many of these people were turned over in a bounty hunt, swept up in a bounty hunt, nothing more than that," says Wilner. "A lot of these people down there are innocent. They were picked up by mistake. There’s no question about that." That’s what Pakistani government officials found. They sent a security team to Camp Delta to interview 58 Pakistani nationals being held there -- and reported they were all low-level cannon fodder. Since 60 Minutes II couldn’t to talk to prisoners at Guantanamo, it tracked down some who’ve been released in recent weeks. Shah Mohammed is back home in a remote province of Pakistan, where CBS News producer Homaira Usman found him. He admits working for the Taliban as a cook. But he insists he wasn’t a soldier, and had no contact with al Qaeda. He says he was captured by pro-American Afghan fighters in the Northern Alliance. "Then we were sold to the Americans, who interrogated us and took us to Kandahar," says Mohammed, speaking through a translator. "I thought they would release us because I am innocent, but instead they took us to Cuba." There, he says, he was interrogated often. Fearing he would never see his family again, Mohammed says he tried to hang himself several times. Then, after 16 months, officers said he would be released because he was innocent. But Gen. Miller insists that none of the 64 who’ve been released were innocent. Rather, he says, they had given up all the useful information they had. However, Wilner says it’s wrong to sacrifice basic fairness because of the threat of terrorism: "This is a different war, and we’ve got to do everything necessary to protect ourselves. All we’re asking for is a process. We simply can’t say,'Throw everyone in jail because some of them might be bad guys.'" What does Miller say to people who believe that this is "un-American" because prisoners are not given due process? "We’re still at war, winning the global war on terror," he says. "We are very careful to give the nation the best opportunity to win this war." And the Pentagon says it will keep prisoners in Guantanamo until that war is won. Inside Camp Delta, both prisoners and guards know that could be a long, long time. When asked if this could be a life sentence for some detainees, Sgt. Maj. John Van Natta answered, "It very likely could be." © MMIII, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved. * * * September 24, 2003 The Independent (UK): FATHER APPEALS FOR US TO RETURN SON HELD IN CAMP DELTA By Ben Russell, Political Correspondent The father of one of the British detainees at Guantanamo Bay broke down yesterday when making an emotional appeal for his son to be returned home for trial. Azmet Begg, whose son Moazzam, 35, has been held at Camp Delta since February, told the Liberal Democrat conference: "I just want my son back. I do not say set him free, what I say is let him come back to this country he belongs to, where he was born, where he was brought up. Keep him there behind bars, let him feel that he is back." A tearful Mr Begg told delegates that his son had been "treated like an animal in a zoo" since he was captured by American forces in Pakistan in February 2002. He said: "I don't understand under what law, under what human rights he has been kept there. If he is fit, then justice should be done to him. If he is guilty, he should be punished. "If he isn't found guilty he should not be there for a second. Why is this not happening? What is wrong with our laws?" He spoke as delegates unanimously backed a motion condemning treatment of the detainees in Cuba and calling on the Government to ensure that the nine Britons being held without trial were returned to the UK to face the courts. They passed an emergency motion reiterating calls for a full judicial inquiry into events during the run-up to the war in Iraq. Party leaders also demanded that the Government publish the full legal advice submitted in the weeks before military action was authorised. Mr Begg said that his son had travelled to Afghanistan with his wife and three children to set up a school. But when the American-led forces started their bombardment, the family fled to Pakistan. He said his son telephoned and told him: "Daddy, I have been arrested and kidnapped, I'm speaking from the boot of a car." Days later his son rang to say that he was an American prisoner of war. Mr Begg, whose father and grandfather served in the British Army, said that he was not initially concerned to hear that his son had been transferred to Guantanamo Bay. But he was alarmed to receive a letter from Moazzam claiming: "I am being treated like an animal in a zoo. I have been chained and they do not give me food at times." Mr Begg said: "They were possibly badly beating him, pulling his nails, keeping him under sharp light that might have burnt his skin." He added: "His children, who are here, are crying for their father day and night, his wife doesn't get to sleep, I'm also losing my health." Simon Hughes, the party's home affairs spokesman, led condemnation of the American government for failing to give full legal representation and a fair trial to the detainees. He said: "The US cannot hope to win hearts and minds in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere if it continues to deny fundamental rights to the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay." Menzies Campbell, the party's foreign affairs spokesman, also condemned the treatment of detainees. He said: "No matter how heinous the charge, everyone is entitled to due process." Mr Campbell attacked the Government's handling of intelligence in the run-up to war in Iraq and urged Tony Blair to published the Attorney General's full advice on the legality of war. He added: "War against Iraq was the first time that British troops were committed on the basis of intelligence alone and piece after piece of that intelligence has proved to be unreliable." * * * September 24, 2003 - 11:29 AM ET U.S. TIGHTENS SECURITY AT GUANTANAMO IN SPY PROBE By Charles Aldinger WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has tightened security at its military base in Cuba, where 680 al Qaeda and Taliban suspects are held, after a U.S. military chaplain and translator were arrested in a possible spy plot involving Syria, a top American general said on Wednesday. Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace said U.S. intelligence was digging into the background of the two arrested men -- one charged with espionage and passing secrets to Syria -- but he declined to accuse Damascus of wrongdoing until the probe was complete. "We will chase these rabbits as far as we need to to find out where they lead," Pace, vice chairman of the Pentagon Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in an interview. "We are very early in the stages of understanding what we've got," said Pace. "But just by virtue of the fact that we have a potential spy problem, it makes you go back and re-look at the way you do business and make modifications. And that's a healthy thing." Pace spoke a day after the Pentagon announced that senior U.S. Airman Ahmad al Halabi, 24, of Detroit, Michigan, was charged with 32 criminal counts, including espionage and aiding the enemy while working as a translator at the base. In addition to al Halabi, a native of Syria who moved to the United States as a teen-ager, the military is holding U.S. Army Islamic Chaplain James Yee, who also worked at Guantanamo, at a military brig in Charleston, South Carolina, on suspicion of espionage. No charges have been filed against him at this time. CAUTIOUS ON INVESTIGATION "If it turns out that this guy (al Halabi) is guilty and it turns out that he was hooked to Syria in some light, then that's an issue that our government will deal with in time," Pace said. "But it's premature for anybody, certainly me, to presume that he is guilty or that the charges against him lead to a particular country, or a particular group of individuals." Al Halabi and Yee were arrested at the Jacksonville, Florida, naval air station as they arrived back in the United States from Guantanamo. Al Halabi, who worked as an Arabic translator, was arrested on July 23 and is being held in jail at the U.S. Air Force Base in Vandenberg, California. Yee, 35, was arrested on Sept. 10. He is a 1990 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Raised a Lutheran in New Jersey, the Chinese American converted to Islam while in the Army at roughly the same time he served in Saudi Arabia following the 1991 Gulf War. Yee resigned his commission and spent four years studying Islam in the Syrian capital Damascus, then rejoined the American military as a Muslim cleric. He has ministered to many of the prisoners at Guantanamo this year. Air Force officials said al Halabi was charged with attempting to deliver sensitive information to Syria including a map of the Guantanamo jail, the movement of military aircraft to and from the base and the names and cellblock numbers of captives at the prison. Air Force officials said al Halabi was carrying a laptop computer with 180 electronic notes and two handwritten notes from detainees to be delivered to Syria. Halabi's military attorney, Air Force Maj. James Key, denied the charges, which could carry a death penalty. "Airman Halabi is not a spy and he is not a terrorist," Key told the Washington Post. Air Force Maj. Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman, said al Halabi knew Yee, but it was not clear whether the two arrests were linked. Al Halabi is charged with three counts of aiding the enemy as well as disobeying orders and making false official statements, according to Shavers. He served as an interpreter at Guantanamo for nine months before he was arrested. Any decision on whether or not to try al Halabi at a military court martial would be made based on the results of an Article 32 Hearing -- the equivalent of a civilian grand jury -- into the charges. * * * KIRO-TV (Seattle): September 24, 2003 - 5:34 AM PDT ISLAMIC CHAPLAIN'S APARTMENT RAIDED, CLERIC SAYS OLYMPIA, Wash. -- The apartment of jailed Army Chaplain Yousef Yee was raided last week by federal agents, a local Islamic cleric says. Yee's wife, Huda, and 4-year-old daughter, Sara, still live in the apartment at the northern end of Olympia, The Olympian reported Tuesday. The complex is a few miles from the Army's Fort Lewis, where the Islamic chaplain was stationed before he was sent to minister to inmates at the U.S. prison camp for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Imam Mohammad Joban of the Islamic Center of Olympia said Mrs. Yee told him federal agents retrieved a computer and a list of phone numbers from the apartment. Yee was arrested Sept. 10 in Jacksonville, Fla., after getting off a flight from Guantanamo Bay. He has not been charged with any crime. A senior law enforcement official has said authorities confiscated classified documents Yee was carrying. Yee, 35, was being held at a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. A military magistrate ruled on Sept. 15 there was enough evidence to hold Yee for up to two months while the Army Criminal Investigative Division looks at the case. On Tuesday, the Air Force announced that a translator who worked with Yee at Guantanamo has been charged with espionage and aiding the enemy. Senior Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi, 24, of Detroit, was arrested in July. He had worked for about nine months as an Arabic language translator at Guantanamo Bay, said Air Force Maj. Michael Shavers. Al-Halabi is charged with eight counts related to espionage, three counts of aiding the enemy, 11 counts of disobeying a lawful order, nine counts of making a false official statement and one count of bank fraud. Pentagon officials said a broader investigation into possible security breaches at Guantanamo Bay continues. Meanwhile, friends and family of Yee have jumped to his defense. "I don't think this man had feelings to hurt the security of this country," Joban said. When contacted by reporters at Yee's apartment, his wife refused to comment at length, saying she'd been advised to keep quiet by a Virginia-based attorney. "The attorney said to wait until it's a good time," she told The Olympian. In a telephone interview with the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., Mrs. Yee defended her husband. "I don't believe this," Mrs. Yee said. "Because I know my husband and he never does stuff like this." She told the paper she has not spoken to her husband of five years since his arrest. Neither Mrs. Yee nor Joban returned telephone calls from The Associated Press on Tuesday. Ray Lauer, a spokesman for the FBI's Seattle office, would not confirm that a raid even occurred. Raised a Lutheran in the New Jersey town of Springfield, Yee became interested in Islam when he was a cadet at West Point. Two years ago, less than two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he told The Seattle Times he was attracted to Islam by the simplicity of its doctrine. "At the same time, it didn't throw out what I believed of Jesus Christ. We believe Jesus was sinless, that he performed miracles, was born of Mary, and that he will come again. So my beliefs in Christianity didn't go away; Islam held these beliefs," Yee said in that previously unpublished Times interview. The newspaper included quotes from the interview in a Tuesday story about Yee. After graduating as a second lieutenant in 1990, Yee was sent to Fort Bliss, Texas, where he studied air-defense systems. During the first Gulf War, he was assigned to a Patriot missile battery in Germany, he told The Times. In late 1991, Yee's unit was sent to Saudi Arabia to protect King Abdul Aziz Air Base. By that time, he had converted to Islam. At the time, there were no Muslim chaplains in the military. To become one, Yee needed a doctorate in divinity, but back then, the Army didn't recognize any Islamic seminaries. So he left active duty for reserve status in 1993 and began his studies, taking a pilgrimage to Mecca and enrolling in a program in Damascus, Syria, where he studied at a school called Abu Nour. He stayed in Syria from 1995 to 1999, immersing himself in Islamic studies and the Arabic language. He met his wife there and changed his first name from James to Yousef. When Yee returned home after completing his studies, he got the certification needed to become a chaplain and was assigned to the 29th Signal Battalion at Fort Lewis. Since then, the Leesburg, Va.-based Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, the school that certified him, has come under scrutiny. Earlier this year, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., asked the Pentagon to investigate the school for possible connections to terrorism. On Monday, Schumer, citing Yee's arrest in a letter to the Pentagon, asked for an update on any investigation. Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. * * * Fox News: September 24, 2003 MILITARY PROBES SYRIAN CONNECTION TO GUANTANAMO ARRESTS WASHINGTON -- Military investigators were looking Wednesday for links between a Syrian-born U.S. Air Force airman accused of espionage and a U.S. Army Muslim chaplain who has personal ties to Syria and is being held in detention. The U.S. military was also searching for other service members who may be part of a suspected espionage ring operating at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, where about 660 suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban members are currently imprisoned. Senior Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi, an Arabic-language translator at Guantanamo, has been accused of trying to send information about detainees to Syria. He has been charged with espionage and aiding the enemy and could face execution. Al-Halabi knew Yousef Yee, the Muslim chaplain whose arrest earlier this month was announced Saturday, and who studied in Syria and married a Syrian woman. A military magistrate ruled on Sept. 15 that there was enough evidence to hold Yee for up to two months on suspicion of espionage while the military investigates him, but no charges have been filed. Yee was carrying sketches of the prison and documents about detainees and interrogators at the time of his arrest. The arrests of al-Halabi and Yee raise new questions about Syria's motives and actions in the U.S. campaign against Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. Syria is on the State Department's list of countries sponsoring terrorism, but Washington and Damascus have long had normal diplomatic relations and Syria was forthcoming with intelligence about Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other administration officials have accused Syria of possessing chemical weapons -- unlike Iraq, it never signed anti-chemical weapon agreements -- and of helping Saddam Hussein's regime before and during the recent Iraq war. Rumsfeld has also said Syrian nationals make up the largest number of foreign fighters captured in Iraq since the end of major combat. Damascus has denied both accusations. On Tuesday, senior military officials told Fox News that a member of the Navy was also in custody under suspicion of espionage and possible improper communications with the camp's detainees. Pentagon sources also told The New York Post that three other members of the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay - including an Army soldier, a member of the Navy and a Marine Corps contractor - are under investigation for possessing classified information and improper contact with prisoners. More arrests could come soon, the sources said. While The Post's sources confirmed al-Halabi allegedly spied for Syria, they did not say for whom the other suspects worked. THE CASE AGAINST AL-HALABI The military charges al-Halabi with sending e-mails with classified information "to unauthorized person or persons whom he, the accused, knew to be the enemy." That enemy is not specified. A military attorney representing al-Halabi, Air Force Maj. James E. Key III, told The Washington Post: "Airman al-Halabi is not a spy and he is not a terrorist." Al-Halabi, 24, who joined the Air Force in January 2000, is also accused of lying to the Air Force by falsely claiming to have become a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2001. He has applied for citizenship, but it has not yet been granted. He grew up in Detroit and is being held at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. In total, Al-Halabi is charged with eight counts related to espionage, three counts of aiding the enemy, 11 counts of disobeying a lawful order, nine counts of making a false official statement and one count of bank fraud. The charges include an allegation that al-Halabi failed to report unauthorized contacts between prisoners and other military members. He is accused of trying to pass to Syria details of flights to and from Guantanamo Bay, names, serial numbers and cell numbers of prisoners, a map of the base and other military documents. Al-Halabi worked for nine months at Guantanamo, and was rotating back to the U.S. mainland when he was arrested July 23 in Jacksonville, Fla., after getting off a flight from the Cuban base. He was carrying two handwritten notes from detainees that he intended to turn over to someone traveling to Syria, the charging documents say. He was also carrying his personal laptop computer, which contained classified information about detainees and 180 messages from detainees al-Halabi intended to send to Syria or Qatar, they said. A Pentagon official told Fox News that slip-ups such as the laptop containing classified information -- which he described as "sloppy computer security" -- are somewhat common. Al-Halabi is also accused of taking pictures of the prison camp and having unauthorized contact with the inmates, including giving them baklava desserts. The documents allege he had contacts with the Syrian Embassy to the United States, which he failed to report. THE PENALTY Espionage and aiding the enemy are military charges that can carry the death penalty, said Eugene Fidell, a civilian lawyer in Washington and president of the National Institute of Military Justice. The commanding general in charge of al-Halabi's case would have to decide whether military prosecutors could seek the death penalty in this case, Fidell said. That decision had not been made, Air Force Maj. Michael Shavers said. Air Force officials also had not decided yet whether al-Halabi's case will be handled by a court-martial. The last military execution was in 1961, Fidell said. Al-Halabi was based at Travis Air Force Base in California and assigned to a logistics unit there, Shavers said. An item in that base's newspaper from July 2002 said he was assigned to the 60th Support Squadron and was selected for an early promotion last year. "He loved being in the U.S.," a family friend told The Washington Post. "He said, 'I have a dream life here,'" and told his father, Ibrahim Halabi, that he had no interest in returning to live in Syria. The friend also said the Halabi family, like most Syrian-Americans, keeps its distance from the Syrian government, currently headed by Bashar al-Assad, son of longtime dictator Hafez al-Assad. "Definitely, Ahmad has no political interest whatsoever," the friend said, adding that it is inconceivable al-Halabi could have chosen to help his native land out of support for its government. INVESTIGATING THE CHAPLAIN Yee, a West Point graduate, was arrested Sept. 10 and is being held at a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. Authorities apparently confiscated classified documents Yee was carrying. Last week, federal agents raided Yee's apartment in Olympia, Wash., according to a local Islamic cleric, Mohammad Joban. He quoted Yee's wife as saying agents retrieved a computer and a list of phone numbers from the apartment. Determining what Yee’s intentions were may be difficult. One senior official told Fox News he was having a hard time assessing the meaning of the articles said to be in the chaplain's possession when he was arrested. Yee was detained in part because he carried classified information without having something called a "courier card" in his possession. Such mistakes are not uncommon, the official said. Yee also possessed a laptop equipped with a modem, which are strictly forbidden at the base. The official pointed out that nearly every laptop now sold is equipped with a dial-up modem. Meanwhile, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., criticized the Pentagon for not investigating the Muslim organization that certified Yee as an appropriate military chaplain candidate. Schumer said the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veteran Affairs Council is a subgroup of the American Muslim Foundation, which has been investigated by Customs agents for possible financial ties to terrorism. The groups have denied any terrorist ties. Schumer said he requested a Defense Department investigation of the group in March, but the Pentagon had not started one. "I fully support the teaching and worship of Islam in the military, but I think it's common sense to ensure the groups in charge of vetting people don't have links to terrorism," Schumer said. Fox News' Bret Baier, Ian McCaleb and the Associated Press contributed to this report. * * * USA TODAY: September 24, 2003 FATES UNSURE AT U.S. BASE IN CUBA By Toni Locy, USA TODAY GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- Staff Sgt. William Angelo recalled no clue that day, no warning that the detainee -- a prisoner in the war on terrorism -- planned to hang himself with a bed sheet. Such incidents have become common in the last 14 months here at the U.S. military's Camp Delta, a high-security prison housing alleged al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 and elsewhere during the war on terrorism. (Related gallery: On guard at Guantanamo) "Right or wrong, innocent or guilty," says Angelo, 26, a military police officer from Fort Wayne, Ind., "I think two years in a cell would make you frustrated." During the past 14 months, there have been 32 suicide attempts by 21 detainees. Only one detainee has been seriously injured. In January, that detainee -- who also tried to hang himself -- lapsed into a coma for 21/2 months. But he is recovering; he is walking, talking and receiving physical therapy. Interviews this month with Angelo and other military police officers (MPs) revealed that the suicide attempts are emblematic of the stressful conditions that U.S. soldiers and the 660 detainees deal with daily inside Camp Delta, the centerpiece of one of the Bush administration's most controversial policies in the war on terrorism. A key part of the military's strategy here is fostering uncertainty about the fate of the camp's detainees at home, abroad and especially "inside the wire," as the MPs call it. The U.S. government refuses to say when the detainees might be released, and it will not elaborate on its justification for continuing to hold men who have been locked up so long that whatever information they have about terrorist plots likely has grown stale. The detainees frequently ask when they can go home. The MPs say they cannot reply because they do not know. Interrogators want it that way. They haven't told the soldiers because they want to keep the detainees off-balance. But the answer is all around them here at the U.S. Naval Base: No one is going anywhere any time soon. The military's 2,200-member Joint Task Force, which is in charge of detaining and questioning the captives, is digging in, building and renovating housing for hundreds of soldiers. For the MPs, the nearly yearlong tour of duty is intense. They spend hours pacing cellblocks of 48 detainees, passing each one every 30 seconds or so to try to ensure that no one hurts himself or a soldier. The young MPs find themselves under a microscope, watched by the world as they carry out a mission that they say is "to treat the detainees humanely and fairly." For the detainees, the ambiguity of their situations has led to excessive yelling, complaints of abdominal pain and occasional refusals to shower. They spend their days inside metal mesh cells that are 8 feet deep, 7 feet wide and 8 feet tall. Throughout the day -- and night -- they are interrogated by U.S. officials who are piecing together information about potential threats to Americans at home or overseas. Bush administration officials say the detainees are "enemy combatants," not "prisoners of war." By labeling them enemy combatants, U.S. officials say the detainees are not entitled to legal rights and can be held as long as the war on terrorism lasts -- or, indefinitely. And by keeping the detainees outside the continental USA, the officials are trying to block legal challenges in U.S. civilian courts to their detentions. So far, the courts agree. Critics say the administration's position is antithetical to American principles of fairness and the Third Geneva Convention's mandate that impartial tribunals review the status of prisoners of war. In a filing at the U.S. Supreme Court, lawyers for two British and two Australian citizens say Camp Delta is "a law-free zone," where men are held "without charges, without recourse to any legal process and with no opportunity to establish their innocence." Military officials at Camp Delta say they realize that some detainees were forced to fight in Afghanistan by the Taliban. They say they have separated "conscripted" detainees from hard-core Muslim jihadists. Human-rights activists argue those men should be released. But only 68 detainees have been released, 64 of whom were transferred for continued custody in their home countries. The other four were freed. In November 2001, President Bush authorized the use of military tribunals, or commissions as the Defense Department calls them, for trials of suspected terrorists. The tribunals are controversial because defendants will receive fewer rights than in civilian courts. It is unclear how many of the 660 detainees will face trial by a tribunal. In July, Bush declared six detainees as eligible for such trials. But no one has been charged. The Pentagon also has resisted saying where trials will be held, even though the base is preparing to host tribunals. This month, workers applied a primer coat of paint to a World War II-era structure that everyone here calls "the Commissions Building." It is on a hill above the bay and has a new courtroom with cherry wood and red carpet. The rise of Camp Delta When the first detainees arrived here in January 2002, the images on television of Camp X-Ray, a temporary facility that held 300 captives, were jarring. Human-rights activists protested the sight of U.S. soldiers placing shackled, blindfolded captives in the cage-like camp. The military quickly built Camp Delta, a permanent structure with cellblocks that can hold up to 1,000 detainees. The Army-led task force is now focusing on improving housing for the soldiers needed to run Camp Delta. There is so much construction that the sounds of heavy equipment drown out conversations. And tractor-trailers with wide loads of supplies jockey for position on the base's roads. Military officials say their purpose here is to develop intelligence and detain terrorist operatives who could threaten the USA. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, commander of the detention operation, concedes that detainees who have been in custody for 18 months or more are unlikely to provide leads on imminent threats. But, he says, the detainees' information remains valuable. He says they provide "operational and strategic intelligence," dealing with "how they were recruited, how they were organized, where the money is and other elements." Miller says interrogators -- who operate out of trailers at Camp Delta -- also run names of terrorists by detainees to help U.S. law enforcement agencies try to figure out alliances among terrorism groups. "We developed five times as much intelligence last month as we did in January," says Miller, who estimates that 80% of the detainees are cooperating. Brig. Gen. James Payne, deputy commander of the detention operation, says cooperation increased dramatically this year when a detainee reward system was put in place. The opening in April of a medium-security unit also helped ease tensions in the camp, he says. The 100 most cooperative detainees live in "Camp 4" in a communal setting, where they read, eat and pray together. The reward system involves the giving and taking away of personal items, such as board games, canvas sneakers and less-restricted reading materials. No matter how badly detainees behave, they never lose access to food, water, clothes or the Koran. Payne says a mental health unit's opening in March also helped. But, as recently as Aug. 22, a detainee attempted suicide. Three juveniles are held here, kept apart from adults in cinder-block building called Camp Iguana, which overlooks the sea. When they arrived, they could not read or write in their own languages. Now, they can. The boys spend about eight hours a day on schoolwork. In a large yard, they can play soccer or look at the ocean. Miller has recommended that the juveniles be sent home but kept in custody. Inside the wire Spc. Jim Henderson, 29, of Fort Wayne, Ind., says the motto is "expect the unexpected" inside Camp Delta's fence, which is topped with concertina wire. Henderson and other MPs say the detainees can be calm one minute, but can turn on the soldiers the next by calling them "donkeys," throwing water on them or cursing at them in English. "You have to learn to put a lot of emotions, especially with 9/11, behind you," Angelo says. No detainee has tried to escape. Nor has any MP been removed for health or behavior reasons. To cope with the stress, the MPs take one another out for beers or a meal after work, says Staff Sgt. Molly Jaffe, 25, of Indianapolis. Military brass also recognize the stress and are making improvements at the base, adding cybercafes, TV rooms and gyms. The MPs are told not to learn personal information about the detainees. But they say the detainees talk, and they cannot help but learn about the men they guard. Henderson says many detainees would be a danger to U.S. troops and citizens if they were released. "These are guys who have killed U.S. soldiers," he says. "These are guys who have killed innocent Muslims in different Arab nations." The MPs say they believe many detainees trained in al-Qaeda's camps in Afghanistan. They say detainees discuss the pros and cons of the AK-47s that they like versus the M-16s that U.S. soldiers carry. At first, Jaffe says, the detainees would not look at her. Radical Islamists believe women should be subservient to men. But, she says, the detainees realize that "this is the way it is." Some detainees claim they are teachers or farmers who were taken into custody by accident, the MPs say. One detainee says his ex-wife sold information on his whereabouts to U.S. soldiers so they could capture him. But the MPs believe the U.S. government is doing the right thing here. "You may not know for sure what part you played for 15 years or 20 years from now," Angelo says. "But we have to believe that being here is making a difference." [ inset ] CAMP DELTA At Camp Delta, which opened in April 2002 and now houses about 660 detainees from the war on terrorism, each cell has: · A floor-style toilet, consistent with Middle Eastern culture. · A sink that is low to the ground to allow feet washing before Muslim prayers. · An arrow stenciled into cot frames, pointing way to Mecca. Key facts about Camp Delta: · The military plays the Muslim call to prayer five times a day over loudspeakers. The detainees receive mats to use for prayers. In Camp 4, the medium-security facility within Camp Delta that houses cooperative detainees, the captives receive authentic prayer mats. · Most detainees wear orange uniforms. In Camp 4, they wear white uniforms, the color signifying purity in Muslim culture. · Cells at Camp Delta are cooled by large fans. Camp Iguana, which houses three juvenile detainees, is air-conditioned. · The detainees are from 42 countries and speak a total of 17 languages. · A mental-health unit opened in March to provide care for an estimated 5% of the detainees who suffer from acute mental problems, including post-traumatic stress and schizophrenia. · There is only one patient at the detention hospital: a detainee who, after trying to kill himself in January, lapsed into a coma. He is making a surprising recovery and now is walking, talking and receiving physical therapy. There also are 12 amputees in the camp, men who lost limbs in the war in Afghanistan. Source: Defense Department [ end inset ] * * * September 23, 2003 TRANSLATOR AT GUANTANAMO BAY CHARGED WITH SPYING By Richard A. Serrano, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON -- A U.S. military translator assigned to interpret for al-Qaida and Taliban captives at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been charged with spying for Syria by attempting to provide crucial information about the island prison, home to hundreds of prisoners seized in the war on terrorism, the Pentagon disclosed Tuesday. Senior Airman Ahmad I. Al-Halabi, a 24-year-old enlistee from California, allegedly tried to pass on to Syria more than 180 written notes from the detainees at Camp Delta, a map of the highly restricted prison camp and the flight paths of military aircraft in and out of the island enclave. In addition, the Pentagon said, he also attempted to provide intelligence documents and the names and cell block numbers of captives, many of whom he had met when they were being interrogated this year. Al-Halabi pleaded not guilty during a closed military court proceeding last week, officials said, added that he was neither a spy nor a terrorist. His arrest on 30 criminal charges -- including espionage and aiding the enemy, which carry a possible death sentence -- marks the second disclosure in four days that a member of the U.S. military was suspected of providing information about the heavily fortified Guantanamo Bay prison. Last weekend, the Pentagon revealed that it is holding and investigating Army Capt. James Y. Yee, a Muslim military chaplain, after he allegedly was found to be carrying classified documents from the highly restricted detention facilty at Guantanamo Bay. Both men were arrested at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Fla., after leaving the Cuba base -- Al-Halabi on July 23 and Lee on Sept. 10. No direct links have been announced between the two cases, and authorities suggested that the evidence is much stronger at this point against Al-Halabi, whose home assignment is the 60th Logistical Readiness Squardron at Travis Air Force Base near Sacramento. Al-Halabi is now being held at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Central California. Air Force Maj. Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman, said he knew of no evidence that Al-Halabi and Lee were collaborating. But, he added, it was possible they knew one another. "Al-Halabi and Yee were at Guantanamo Bay at approximately the same time," Shavers said. "As a translator, [Al-Halabi] would have worked with just about anybody down there. And Guantanamo is a small area. Everybody knows everybody down there." Details of Al-Halabi's background remained unclear Tuesday night. Shavers said Al-Halabi had lived in Detroit before joining the Air Force. Other Air Force officials said the enlistee was born in Syria and lived there as a teenager before immigrating to the United States. He joined the Air Force in January 2000. According to the criminal charge sheets released Tuesday night, Al-Halabi told Air Force officials in September 2002, "I became a U.S. citizen on Nov. 14, 2001, in Sacramento." Shavers said Al-Halabi spent nine months working as an Arabic-language translator at the Cuba base, helping U.S. interrogators learn as much as they could from interviews with the prisoners. Some 660 prisoners are housed there from the war on terror in Afghanistan, many of them suspected members of the al-Qaida terrorist organization and the Taliban army. The work being done there is highly secretive, with U.S. military officials refusing to allow cameras inside the facility or to even acknowledge the names or home countries of the prisoners. Repeatedly, the Pentagon has warned that the interrogations must be conducted in the utmost secrecy, and has said that any breach of security at the Cuba prison could seriously jeopardize the ongoing attempts to learn more about terrorists and, more important, any future attacks. How or why Al-Halabi allegedly decided to work for the Syrian government remained unclear. But at some point, according to Air Force documents, he had "contact" with "the Embassy of the Syrian Arab Republic," and began spying "with intent or reason to believe [his information] would be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of Syria." The most serious charges -- espionage and aiding the enemy -- center on allegations that he attempted to carry "en route to Syria" specific written records of detainees from the camp. The Air Force alleges, for instance, that he attempted to deliver two written notes from detainees concerning "intelligence-gathering and planning for the United States' war against terrorists." He also is accused of trying to deliver more than "180 electronic versions of written notes from detainees held at Camp Delta," and "three e-mails containing classified information of detainees." He further is charged with taking prohibited photographs of the prison fortress, holding unauthorized "contacts" with detainees and even "furnishing and delivering unauthorized food, to wit: baklava pastries" to some captives. He also is charged with taking classified information to his housing unit at Guantanamo Bay, transporting classified material without the "proper locking containers or covers," and "wrongfully discussing classified matters with persons without the appropriate clearance or the need to know." A military preliminary hearing was held over four days last week at Vandenberg Air Force Base. But it was closed to the public because, Air Force officials said, they wanted "to protect ongoing investigations, none of which Air Force officials are at liberty to discuss." Brigadier Gen. Bradley S. Baker, who is Al-Halabi's supervisor in California, now is to rule on whether Al-Halabi should be ordered to stand trial at a general court-martial. Pentagon officials said that even as the Al-Halabi case moves forward, their investigation is widening, and attempts are underway to determine whether other military personnel or civilians might have been working with Al-Halabi in the alleged scheme. In the other case, Yee, 35, became a chaplain for Guantanamo Bay prisoners beginning last November. Also known as Yousef Yee, the West Point graduate was allegedly carrying diagrams of the military detention facility and other materials when he was arrested. Now held at a Navy brig in South Carolina, Yee is awaiting word from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, commander of the task force that runs the Cuba prison, on whether he will be court-martialed. * * * September 23, 2003 (0218 GMT) AIRMAN CHARGED WITH ESPIONAGE AT GUANTANAMO Possible link to detained Muslim chaplain sought WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An Air Force enlisted man who was a translator at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been charged with espionage and aiding the enemy, Pentagon officials told CNN on Tuesday. Officials said Senior Airman Ahmad al Halabi was arrested July 23 because he allegedly had classified information about suspected al Qaeda detainees and facilities at the Guantanamo Bay base on his laptop computer. Al Halabi, an American of Syrian descent, allegedly e-mailed information that included details about the base's flight schedule to contacts in Syria, officials said. He also is believed to have smuggled notes of interviews with detainees and laptop computer files from Camp Delta -- the prison camp at the base. He is being held at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Al Halabi was charged with 11 counts of failing to obey a lawful general order or regulation, three counts of aiding the enemy, four counts of espionage, nine counts of making a false statement and five counts that include violations of the Federal Espionage Act. He also was charged with a single count of bank fraud. Al Halabi's home base was Travis Air Force Base in California, but he served nine months at Guantanamo Bay as a translator between the detainees and investigators. His arrest took place about seven weeks before Army Islamic chaplain Capt. James Yee was taken into custody on similar suspicions arising from his duty at Guantanamo Bay. Officials said that when Al Halabi was questioned he had no reasonable explanation for possessing the classified material. The investigation now centers on whether there was a connection between the two detained men. Officials said they have no proof of a connection. Officials also told CNN that additional arrests of other members of the U.S. military are possible shortly. Yee, who has not been charged, is being held in the stockade in Charleston, South Carolina, on suspicion of espionage and treason. Military authorities took him into custody September 10 at the naval air station in Jacksonville, Florida, while he was in possession of classified documents "that a chaplain shouldn't have," said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The official said the documents included "diagrams of the cells and the facilities at Guantanamo," where the military is holding about 600 suspected al Qaeda members and others termed enemy combatants. Yee also allegedly was carrying lists of the detainees as well as their interrogators, the official said. In addition, Yee is suspected of having ties to radical Muslims in the United States who are under investigation, the official said, adding that he couldn't elaborate. SCHUMER: CHAPLAIN-TRAINING GROUP IN TERRORISM PROBE Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York told reporters Tuesday that the group the military relies on to train Muslim chaplains such as Yee is under investigation by the Justice Department for allegations of supporting terrorism. He said Yee was trained by the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council, a subgroup of the American Muslim Foundation, which is under investigation, along with the Graduate School for Islamic Social Sciences. The Pentagon uses the two groups to certify and train Muslim chaplains for the military, Schumer said. A government official confirmed to CNN that the two groups are under investigation as part of a probe into whether they and other groups supported terrorism. "I fully support the teaching and worship of Islam in the military, but I think it is common sense that the groups in charge of vetting people don't have links to terrorism and are fundamentally pluralistic," Schumer told reporters. The government official confirmed a relationship between Yee and the group, but he did not know its nature. Schumer said the Justice and Defense departments opened a probe into the two groups six months ago at his urging. But he said their inspectors general have dragged their feet. He said Yee's arrest underscored the need to pick up the pace. "You would think that a chaplain who was detained for supposedly stealing classified documents and was also trained by a group under investigation for terrorism would set off alarms at the highest levels," the senator said. "But it is business as usual and we are going to pay a price for it." Schumer said he would like to see the Pentagon use a broader range of groups to certify clerics than just the two under investigation. Yee, who has been assigned a military defense lawyer, appeared September 15 before a military magistrate, who ruled there was sufficient reason to hold him in pretrial confinement. Army officials with the U.S. Southern Command, which controls the Guantanamo Bay facility, said that they could not comment on the status of the investigation. The U.S. military began sending suspected al Qaeda and Taliban members detained in Afghanistan to the Guantanamo Bay base in January 2002. A number have since been released after interrogation cleared them, and several have arrived from other locations. The naval base at Guantanamo Bay on the southwest coast, called "Gitmo" by sailors, was established by treaty with Cuba in 1903, following the Spanish- American War in 1898 that liberated the country from Spain. CNN correspondents Barbara Starr and Jamie McIntyre contributed to this story. * * * CBS: September 23, 2003 U.S. AIRMAN CHARGED WITH SPYING WASHINGTON (CBS/AP) An Air Force translator at the U.S. prison camp for suspected terrorists has been charged with espionage and aiding the enemy, a military spokesman said Tuesday. Senior Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi is being held at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, facing 32 criminal charges, spokesman Maj. Michael Shavers said. Al-Halabi worked as an Arabic language translator at the prison camp for al Qaeda and Taliban suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Shavers said. The Air Force enlisted man knew the Muslim chaplain at the prison arrested earlier this month, but it's unclear if the two arrests are linked, Shavers said. The translator was arrested on July 23, more than six weeks before the chaplain. Both men were apprehended in Jacksonville, Fla., after getting off flights from the base in Cuba, Shavers said. Al-Halabi is charged with nine counts related to espionage, three counts of aiding the enemy, 11 counts of disobeying a lawful order, and nine counts of making a false official statement. Al-Halabi was based at Travis Air Force Base in California and assigned to a logistics unit there, Shavers said. Pentagon officials said an investigation into possible security breaches at Guantanamo Bay continues. About 660 suspected al Qaeda or Taliban members are imprisoned at the U.S. Navy base there. American officials are interrogating them for information on the terrorist network. The military has classified many details about the prison camp and the detainees and has not identified any of the men being held there. Military officials have said the fight against terrorism could be hampered if terrorist groups got such information. The Muslim military chaplain who ministered to the inmates at the camp, Army Capt. Yousef Yee, was arrested Sept. 10 in Jacksonville, Fla., after getting off a flight from Guantanamo Bay. Officials say Yee, a Chinese-American Christian who converted to Islam, has acknowledged that he passed messages back and forth between the prisoners, a violation of the maximum-security prison's rules. They also seized the captain's laptop computer and modem that he used to check Islamic websites, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart. Yee, 35, is being held at a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. A military magistrate ruled on Sept. 15 there was enough evidence to hold Yee for up to two months while the Army Criminal Investigative Division investigates. Yee was one of the public faces of the Bush administration's effort to reassure Muslims that the war on terrorism was not targeting them. According to the Los Angeles Times, Yee was mentioned in a U.S. Embassy news release after the Sept. 11 attacks. He was also the subject of a Voice of America profile. Before his arrest, Yee was interviewed by 60 Minutes II Correspondent Vicki Mabrey for a report on Guantanamo prisoners that will air 8 p.m. ET/PT Wednesday. "In general, I would say the American public has a lot to learn about Islam," he told Mabrey. ©MMIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. * * * [ Second Version ] Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,98082,00.html Wednesday, September 24, 2003 AIRMAN AT GUANTANAMO BAY CHARGED WITH ESPIONAGE WASHINGTON -- An Air Force airman who had worked at the U.S. prison camp for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base has been charged with espionage and aiding the enemy -- charges that could carry the death penalty -- a military spokesman said Tuesday. Senior Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi, an Arabic-language translator at the prison camp, is accused of trying to send information about detainees to Syria. Al-Halabi knew Yousef Yee, the Muslim chaplain at the prison arrested earlier this month, but it was unclear if there had been any conspiracy to breach security at the prison camp. The charges against al-Halabi, however, include an allegation that he failed to report unauthorized contacts between prisoners and other military members. Those other military members were not identified. Al-Halabi, 24, of Detroit, is being held at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, Air Force Maj. Michael Shavers said Tuesday. A military attorney representing al-Halabi, Air Force Maj. James E. Key III, denied the charges, telling The Washington Post: "Airman al-Halabi is not a spy and he is not a terrorist." Al-Halabi worked for nine months as an Arabic language translator at Guantanamo Bay, a job that ended shortly before his July 23 arrest as he arrived in Jacksonville, Fla., on a flight from the prison camp. When he was arrested, al-Halabi was carrying two handwritten notes from detainees that he intended to turn over to someone traveling to Syria, the charging documents say. He was also carrying his personal laptop computer, which contained classified information about detainees and 180 messages from detainees al-Halabi intended to send to Syria or Qatar, the documents allege. Al-Halabi is accused of taking pictures of the prison camp and having unauthorized contact with the inmates, including giving them baklava desserts. He also is alleged to have had contacts with the Syrian Embassy to the United States, which he failed to report as required. Al-Halabi, who joined the Air Force in January 2000, is Syrian. He also is accused of lying to the Air Force by falsely claiming to have become a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2001. The charges accuse al-Halabi of sending e-mails with classified information "to unauthorized person or persons whom he, the accused, knew to be the enemy." The Air Force documents do not say who the enemy is. Syria and the United States have normal diplomatic relations, although Syria is on the list of countries the U.S. says are state sponsors of terrorism. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other administration officials accuse Syria of having a chemical weapons program and of helping Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime before and during the war. Syrians have made up the largest number of foreign fighters captured in Iraq since the war ended, Rumsfeld said during a visit there earlier this month. Syria has denied helping Saddam's regime or having a chemical weapons program. Secret documents al-Halabi is accused of trying to pass to Syria include details of flights to and from the Guantanamo Bay base, names, serial numbers and cell numbers of prisoners, a map of the base and other military documents. Al-Halabi is charged with eight counts related to espionage, three counts of aiding the enemy, 11 counts of disobeying a lawful order, nine counts of making a false official statement and one count of bank fraud. The bank fraud charge involves allegations al-Halabi used false information in credit card applications for several prominent banks. It's unclear whether those allegations are related to the espionage charges. Pentagon officials said a broader investigation into possible security breaches at Guantanamo Bay continues. About 660 suspected Al Qaeda or Taliban members are imprisoned at the U.S. Navy base. American officials are interrogating them for information on the terrorist network. The military has classified many details about the prison camp and the detainees and has not identified any of the men being held there. Espionage and aiding the enemy are military charges that can carry the death penalty, said Eugene Fidell, a civilian lawyer in Washington and president of the National Institute of Military Justice. The commanding general in charge of al-Halabi's case would have to decide whether military prosecutors could seek the death penalty in this case, Fidell said. That decision has not been made, Shavers said. Air Force officials also have not decided yet whether al-Halabi's case will be handled by a court-martial. The last military execution was in 1961, Fidell said. Al-Halabi was based at Travis Air Force Base in California and assigned to a logistics unit there, Shavers said. An item in that base's newspaper from July 2002 said he was assigned to the 60th Support Squadron and was selected for an early promotion last year. Yee was arrested Sept. 10 and is being held without charge at a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. A senior law enforcement official has said authorities confiscated classified documents Yee was carrying. Last week, federal agents raided Yee's apartment in Olympia, Wash., according to a local Islamic cleric, Mohammad Joban. He quoted Yee's wife as saying agents retrieved a computer and a list of phone numbers from the apartment. Al-Halabi was arrested July 23 at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, also after getting off a flight from the base in Cuba. The next day, military authorities flew him to Travis Air Force Base. At some point later, he was transferred to Vandenberg, Shavers said. Meanwhile, a senator criticized the Pentagon for not investigating the Muslim organization that certified Yee as an appropriate military chaplain candidate. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veteran Affairs Council is a subgroup of the American Muslim Foundation, which has been investigated by Customs agents for possible financial ties to terrorism. Officials of the groups have denied any terrorist ties. An e-mail to the council seeking comment was not immediately returned Tuesday. Schumer said he requested a Defense Department investigation of the group in March but the Pentagon had not started one. "I fully support the teaching and worship of Islam in the military but I think it's common sense to ensure the groups in charge of vetting people don't have links to terrorism," Schumer said. Earlier Tuesday, senior military officials told Fox News that a member of the Navy was also in custody, under suspicion of espionage and possible improper communications with the camp's detainees. The Navy member's role at the camp has not been disclosed. Fox News has learned al-Halabi and the Navy member both were detained roughly two weeks before Yee was arrested. Officials said the two were being surveyed for some time before Yee came to their attention. Determining what Yee’s intentions were may be difficult, according to one senior official. The official told Fox News he was having a difficult time assessing the meaning of the articles said to be in the chaplain's possession when he was arrested. Yee was detained in part because he carried classified information without having something called a "courier card" in his possession. Such mistakes are not uncommon, the official said. Yee also possessed a laptop equipped with a modem, which are strictly forbidden at the base. The official pointed out that nearly every laptop now sold is equipped with a dial-up modem. A Pentagon official told Fox News that classified information was also found on the laptop of the Air Force member now in custody. But the official said slip- ups such as this -- which he described as "sloppy computer security" -- are somewhat common. A military magistrate ruled on Sept. 15 there was enough evidence to hold Yee for up to two months while the military investigates. Fox News' Bret Baier, Ian McCaleb and the Associated Press contributed to this report. [ First Version ] September 23, 2003 AIRMAN AT GUANTANAMO BAY CHARGED WITH ESPIONAGE WASHINGTON -- An Air Force airman who had worked at the U.S. prison camp for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base has been charged with espionage and aiding the enemy -- charges that could carry the death penalty -- a military spokesman said Tuesday. Senior Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi worked as an Arabic-language translator at the prison camp, spokesman Maj. Michael Shavers said. Al-Halabi knew Yousef Yee, the Muslim chaplain at the prison arrested earlier this month, but it was unclear if the two arrests were linked, Shavers said. The enlisted airman has been charged with nine counts related to espionage, three counts of aiding the enemy, 11 counts of disobeying a lawful order, and nine counts of making a false official statement. Espionage and aiding the enemy are military charges that can carry the death penalty, said Eugene Fidell, a civilian lawyer in Washington and president of the National Institute of Military Justice. The commanding general in charge of al-Halabi's case would have to decide whether military prosecutors could seek the death penalty in his case, Fidell said. If the death penalty is an option, the 12-member military jury that hears the case would have to vote unanimously to impose it, Fidell said. Al-Halabi, who was based at Travis Air Force Base in California and assigned to a logistics unit there, is being held at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, Shavers said. Earlier Tuesday, senior military officials told Fox News that a member of the Navy was also in custody, under suspicion of espionage and possible improper communications with the camp's detainees. The Navy member's role at the camp has not been disclosed. Fox News has learned al-Halabi and the Navy member both were detained roughly two weeks before Yee was arrested. Officials said the two were being surveyed for some time before Yee came to their attention. About 660 suspected Al Qaeda or Taliban members are imprisoned at the U.S. Navy base. American officials have been interrogating them for information. Yee, 35, was arrested Sept. 10 in Jacksonville, Fla., after getting off a flight from Guantanamo Bay and is being held at the consolidated Naval Brig in Charleston, S.C. A senior law enforcement official said authorities confiscated classified documents Yee was carrying. Determining what Yee’s intentions were may be difficult, according to one senior official. The official told Fox News he was having a difficult time assessing the meaning of the articles said to be in the chaplain's possession when he was arrested. Yee was detained in part because he carried classified information without having something called a "courier card" in his possession. Such mistakes are not uncommon, the official said. Yee also possessed a laptop equipped with a modem, which are strictly forbidden at the base. The official pointed out that nearly every laptop now sold is equipped with a dial-up modem. A Pentagon official told Fox News that classified information was also found on the laptop of the Air Force member now in custody. But the official said slip- ups such as this -- which he described as "sloppy computer security" -- are somewhat common. A military magistrate ruled on Sept. 15 there was enough evidence to hold Yee for up to two months while the military investigates. Fox News' Bret Baier, Ian McCaleb and the Associated Press contributed to this report. * * * CNN: September 23, 2003 - 2051 GMT AIRMAN CHARGED WITH ESPIONAGE AT GUANTANAMO Possible link to detained Muslim chaplain sought From Barbara Starr, CNN Washington Bureau WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An Air Force enlisted man who was a translator at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been charged with espionage and aiding the enemy, Pentagon officials told CNN on Tuesday. Officials said Senior Airman Ahmad al Halabi was arrested July 23 because he allegedly had classified information about suspected al Qaeda detainees and facilities at the Guantanamo Bay base on his laptop computer. He is being held at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Al Halabi was charged with 11 counts of failing to obey a lawful general order or regulation, three counts of aiding the enemy, four counts of espionage, nine counts of making a false statement and five counts that include violations of the Federal Espionage Act. He is also being charged with a single count of bank fraud. Al Halabi's home base was Travis Air Force Base in California, but he had served nine months at Guantanamo Bay as a translator between the detainees and investigators. His arrest occurred about six weeks before Army Islamic chaplain Capt. James Yee was taken into custody on similar suspicions. Officials said that when Al Halabi was questioned he had no reasonable explanation for possessing the classified material. The investigation now centers on whether there was a connection between the two detained men. Officials said they have no proof of a connection. Officials also told CNN that additional arrests of other members of the U.S. military are possible shortly. Yee, who has not been charged, is being held in the brig in Charleston, South Carolina, on suspicion of espionage and treason. Military authorities took him into custody September 10 at the naval air station in Jacksonville, Florida, while he was in possession of classified documents "that a chaplain shouldn't have," said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The official said the documents included "diagrams of the cells and the facilities at Guantanamo," where the military is holding about 600 suspected al Qaeda members and others termed enemy combatants. Yee also allegedly was carrying lists of the detainees as well as their interrogators, the official said. In addition, Yee is suspected of having ties to radical Muslims in the United States who are under investigation, the official said, adding that he couldn't elaborate. He appeared September 15 before a military magistrate, who ruled there was sufficient reason to hold him in pretrial confinement. Army officials with the U.S. Southern Command, which controls the Guantanamo Bay facility, said that they could not comment on the status of the investigation. The U.S. military began sending suspected al Qaeda and Taliban members detained in Afghanistan to the Guantanamo Bay base in January 2002. A number have since been released after interrogation cleared them, and several have arrived from other locations. The naval base at Guantanamo Bay on the southwest coast, known to sailors as "Gitmo," was established by treaty with Cuba in 1903, following the Spanish- American War in 1898 that liberated the country from Spain. * * * BBC: September 23, 2003 - 20:09 GMT SPY CHARGE FOR GUANTANAMO OFFICIAL A US airman who worked at the detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been charged with espionage and aiding the enemy, the Pentagon has said. Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi, who is in jail at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, was charged after recently serving as an interpreter at the base, said Pentagon spokesman Major Michael Shavers. He is the second member of the US military at the base to be held on matters of security. A Muslim US Army chaplain Yousef Yee was detained in Florida on 10 September on his return from Guantanamo Bay. Mr Yee, formerly known as James Lee, worked as a spiritual adviser to the hundreds of captured al-Qaeda and Taleban suspects at the base. Unofficial reports said the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had taken classified documents from Mr Yee, as well as a map detailing the location of individual prisoners. INVESTIGATIONS CONTINUE Officials would not say whether Mr Halabi's arrest was linked to that of Mr Yee. Mr Halabi faces more than 30 charges relating to espionage, aiding the enemy, disobeying orders, and making false official statements. Mr Halabi was arrested on 23 July but news of his detention only emerged this week. The BBC's David Bamford, in Washington, said defence officials would not say why they had kept the two arrests quiet, but they said investigations into security breaches at the base were continuing and there could be further arrests. * * * September 23, 2003 GUANTANAMO WORKER CHARGED WITH ESPIONAGE Air Force Airman Who Worked at Cuba Prison for Terror Suspects Is Charged With Espionage The Associated Press WASHINGTON Sept. 23 -- An Air Force airman who worked as a translator at the U.S. prison camp for suspected terrorists has been charged with espionage and aiding the enemy, a military spokesman said Tuesday. Senior Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi is being held at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, spokesman Maj. Michael Shavers said. Al-Halabi worked as an Arabic language translator at the prison camp for al-Qaida and Taliban suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Shavers said. The Air Force enlisted man knew the Muslim chaplain at the prison arrested earlier this month, but it's unclear if the two arrests are linked, Shavers said. Al-Halabi is charged with nine counts related to espionage, three counts of aiding the enemy, 11 counts of disobeying a lawful order, and nine counts of making a false official statement. The charges were brought against him at Vandenberg, Shavers said. Al-Halabi was based at Travis Air Force Base in California and assigned to a logistics unit there, Shavers said. Pentagon officials said an investigation into possible security breaches at Guantanamo Bay continues. * * * Reuters: September 23, 2003 - 02:37 PM ET SECOND U.S. SUSPECT HELD IN GUANTANAMO PROBE By Charles Aldinger WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An Air Force enlisted man has been arrested on suspicion of violating security rules at the U.S. naval base in Cuba where suspected al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners are held, defense officials said on Tuesday. The arrest was the second in a security investigation involving the base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in recent weeks. But officials said there was no immediate evidence that the Air Force man was connected with Army Islamic chaplain James Yee, held since Sept. 10 on suspicion of espionage after tending to 660 prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. An Air Force official, who asked not to be identified, said the airman was being held in California. But he had no information on when the arrest was made. Air Force and other defense officials declined to confirm or deny a CNN report that the airman may have had forbidden information on a personal computer about prisoners held at the maximum security facility in Guantanamo, most of whom were captured in the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. The Pentagon is also holding Yee, also known as Youssef Yee, at a military brig in Charleston, South Carolina. Yee, a graduate of the Army's West Point military academy, was arrested on Sept. 10 when he flew from Guantanamo to the U.S. naval air station at Jacksonville, Florida. Media reports have said that what appeared to be sketches or diagrams of the jail facilities in Guantanamo were found when Yee was searched at Jacksonville. Yee was assigned to the task force holding the Guantanamo prisoners since November 2002, and was the only Muslim chaplain tending to the religious needs of the 660 detainees. Military officials declined to discuss any details of the case, saying that would violate Yee's rights. Steve Lucas, a spokesman at the U.S. military's Southern Command headquarters in Miami, told Reuters on Tuesday that the military had 120 days to complete an investigation and determine whether Yee might face formal charges and a possible military court martial. Lucas declined to discuss details of the Yee case or to confirm the arrest of the airman. But he said that nobody was being held at Guantanamo in connection with any investigation at the base. * * * CBS: September 22, 2003 GITMO CHAPLAIN TIED TO TERROR? (CBS/AP) The military chaplain now held on suspicion of trying to pass secrets to terrorist detainees was once a public face of the Bush administration's effort to assure Muslims that they were not the targets of the war on terrorism. At first, the Army said it arrested Army Capt. Yousef Yee, one of only 12 Muslim chaplains in all the U.S. military, because of "suspicious behavior" at a customs checkpoint and the discovery of unauthorized files in his bags, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart. Now, officials say they actually began focusing on Yee earlier as part of a larger espionage investigation at the maximum security prison for suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. According to the Los Angeles Times, Yee was mentioned in a U.S. Embassy news release after the Sept. 11 attacks. He was also the subject of a Voice of America profile. Now, Yee, 35, is in a military brig in South Carolina, where he can be confined under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for up to two months without being charged. Before his arrest on returning to the states two weeks ago, Yee was interviewed by 60 Minutes II Correspondent Vicki Mabrey for a report on Guantanamo prisoners that will air 8 p.m. ET/PT Wednesday. "In general, I would say the American public has a lot to learn about Islam," he told Mabrey. Yee, who ministered to suspected al Qaeda terrorists at a U.S. detention center in Cuba, was arrested Sept. 10 in Jacksonville, Fla. What landed him in custody is what the FBI found in his baggage, namely several classified documents he was not authorized to carry plus diagrams indicating which Guantanamo officials had interrogated individual prisoners and what questions they had asked, reports CBS' Stewart. They also seized Yee's laptop computer and modem, which he used to check Islamic websites for daily prayer times. Col. David McWilliams, spokesman for U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said Sunday in a telephone interview from command headquarters in Miami that military authorities are awaiting the investigation's outcome. McWilliams refused to characterize in any way what Yee is suspected of having done. He said the chaplain raised the suspicions of U.S. Customs officials when he arrived in Jacksonville on a flight from Guantanamo Bay. On Sept. 15 a military magistrate determined that there was sufficient reason to hold Yee in confinement, McWilliams said, pending outcome of the investigation. Yee is being held in a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. -- the same place where officials are holding Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American-born Saudi who allegedly fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member charged with plotting to detonate a bomb. McWilliams said a military lawyer has been assigned Yee, but the spokesman would not identify the lawyer. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, commander of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, the military organization that runs the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, will decide on the next step in the Yee case after he receives results of the Pentagon investigation, McWilliams said. If charges are brought, Miller could decide to proceed to a court-martial, recommend administrative action or opt not to pursue any charges. Born in Springfield, N.J., to Chinese immigrants, Yee was raised a Lutheran. He graduated West Point in 1990, attended airborne school and helped operate Patriot missile batteries in the Gulf War. Then he left the Army. He apparently converted to Islam in 1991, according to The Times. After leaving the service, he traveled to Syria, married a local woman and changed his first name James to Yousef, reports The Times. Yee subsequently returned to the military as one of the 17 Muslims among its 3,150 chaplains. He told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "Most people want to know how Sept. 11 fits into Islam. What happened is un-Islamic and categorically denied by a great majority of Muslim scholars around the world." He was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in November. Once at Guantanamo, Yee made his presence known right away. He made sure every Muslim prisoner had a copy of the Koran, held Friday prayer services, shifted the meal schedule to allow fasting during Ramadan, and played the call to prayer five times a day over prison loudspeakers. He also explained Muslim practices to non-Muslim soldiers through the base newspaper, reports The Times. Muslim groups have shown concern over the arrest and detention. One suggested the documents may have had an innocent purpose. Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations told The Times he hoped "that the case is not enveloped in a shroud of secrecy in terms of secret tribunals and secret evidence." ©MMIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. * * * CNN: September 22, 2003 (1735 GMT) SOURCES: MUSLIM CHAPLAIN'S ARREST PROMPTS U.S. PROBE U.S. official: Captain had classified Guantanamo Bay documents WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A military and intelligence investigation into possible security breaches at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is under way following the arrest of a U.S. Army Islamic chaplain, Bush administration sources said. Capt. James Yee, who has not been charged, is being held in the brig in Charleston, South Carolina, on suspicion of espionage and treason. Sources said the investigation is looking at whether other U.S. military personnel may have been involved. U.S. military authorities took Yee into custody September 10 at the Jacksonville, Florida, Naval Air Station while in possession of classified documents "that a chaplain shouldn't have," said an official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The official said the documents included "diagrams of the cells and the facilities at Guantanamo," where the military is holding about 600 suspected al Qaeda and other so-called enemy combatants. Yee also allegedly was carrying lists of the detainees as well as their interrogators, the official said. In addition, Yee is suspected of having ties to radical Muslims in the United States that are now under investigation, the official said, adding that he couldn't elaborate. Yee, who was assigned a military defense lawyer, can be held for 120 days before the military charges him with any offense, officials said. He appeared September 15 before a military magistrate, who ruled there was sufficient reason to hold him in pretrial confinement. Army officials with the U.S. Southern Command, which controls the Guantanamo Bay facility, said that they could not comment on the status of the investigation. However, they confirmed Yee is a 1990 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. They said he became an air-defense artillery officer and left the Army some time later. Yee also served in the Persian Gulf War. Yee then moved to Syria, where he lived for four years studying Islam and was married, apparently to a Syrian woman, according to U.S. government sources. A U.S. State Department document available on the Internet confirms Yee's time in Syria, saying he "spent four years studying Arabic and Islam in Damascus." The same document quotes Yee as saying, "An act of terrorism, the taking of innocent civilian lives, is prohibited by Islam, and whoever has done this needs to be brought to justice, whether he is Muslim or not." A Southern Command official said Yee returned to the Army as a Muslim chaplain after his conversion to Islam and was assigned in November to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Yee is one of about a dozen Muslim chaplains in the U.S. military, according to officials. [CNN correspondents Barbara Starr and Chris Plante contributed to this report.] * * * Los Angeles Times: September 22, 2003 MUSLIM ARMY CHAPLAIN IS FOCUS OF MILITARY INQUIRY · The cleric is under investigation for potentially aiding detainees in Cuba. By Bob Drogin, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON -- On Nov. 15, the Guantanamo Bay Gazette, a newspaper for American troops at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, published what it billed as "A few words from the Chaplain." In it, chaplain James Y. Yee sought to explain the significance of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting. Among other restrictions, the Army captain wrote, is a ban on "wrong behavior of any sort." Today, Yee -- one of the most prominent of the military's few Muslim chaplains -- sits in a Navy brig in South Carolina under investigation for potentially aiding the enemy, specifically the 660 Al Qaeda suspects, Taliban fighters and alleged terrorists detained at Guantanamo Bay. Military investigators confiscated diagrams of the military detention facility and other documents from Yee after the 35-year-old West Point graduate got off a military charter plane on Sept. 10 in Jacksonville, Fla., officials said. FBI agents and military teams then interviewed Yee, also known as Yousef Yee, for several hours before he was arrested. "The Army knew of his travel plans," said Jeff Westcott, an FBI spokesman in Jacksonville. "They were already looking at him. So, when they knew he was coming here, they contacted us. We participated in the interview Based on that, the Army decided to put him under arrest." Yee has not been charged with any crime, said Tom Crosson, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Southern Command in Miami that oversees the Guantanamo base. "We're waiting to see the outcome of the investigation." On Sept. 15, a military magistrate determined there was sufficient reason to detain Yee. Under military law, he can be held for up to two months without being charged. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, commander of the task force that runs the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, ultimately will decide whether Yee will face a military court-martial. Yee's case already has raised concerns among Muslim groups and civil rights advocates. The leader of one Muslim organization said Sunday that he had received angry calls suggesting that Yee might have been trying to "document abuses" at Guantanamo Bay. "Maybe he was documenting the size of the cells or had a list of who was under age," said the official, who asked not to be identified. "We just hope that the case is not enveloped in a shroud of secrecy in terms of secret tribunals and secret evidence," said Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based civil rights advocacy group. "Let all the facts come out in the public." In a statement, the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council, a Virginia-based group that helps pick and train Muslim chaplains for the military, sent "prayers and concerns" to Yee's family and said it planned a news conference when it knew more about the case. Yee, the son of Chinese immigrants, was raised as a Lutheran in a middle-class suburban neighborhood in Springfield, N.J. He attended the U.S. Military Academy and graduated in 1990. He reportedly converted to Islam the following year. After finishing airborne school at Fort Knox, Ky., Yee was a fire control officer for Patriot missiles during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. He then left the Army and moved to Damascus, Syria, to study Arabic and Islam. While there, he reportedly married a Syrian woman and changed his name to Yousef. Although Muslims have served in the U.S. armed forces since the Civil War, the first Muslim chaplain was accredited in 1993, and the military opened its first permanent Islamic prayer center in 1997 in Norfolk, Va. Today, there are 17 Muslim chaplains among the 3,150 chaplains in the U.S. military. All chaplains provide spiritual guidance to followers of all faiths. Still, Yee's reentry into the military as a Muslim chaplain was so noteworthy that it was later included in a news release put out by the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo after the Sept. 11 attacks. Voice of America, the official voice of the U.S. government overseas, similarly profiled Yee after Sept. 11 as the Bush administration sought to counter charges that U.S. policy was anti-Muslim. Yee, then the Army's only Muslim chaplain on the West Coast, was assigned to the 700 men and women in the 29th Signal Battalion at Ft. Lewis, near Tacoma, Wash. He was quoted as saying that he tried to provide spiritual guidance to Muslim troops in the U.S. military, as well as to educate non-Muslims about the tenets of Islam. "The root word of Islam means peace," he said. "So, in that sense, Islam is peace in the sense that when you submit yourself to God, this brings peace. And when you follow the laws of Islam, this brings about peace." In an interview with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Yee said: "Most people want to know how Sept. 11 fits into Islam. What happened is un-Islamic and categorically denied by a great majority of Muslim scholars around the world." Yee was posted to Guantanamo in November and quickly had an effect -- especially in Camp Delta, a 20-acre high-security prison area for terrorism suspects from about 40 countries who have been detained since the war in Afghanistan. Although the International Committee of the Red Cross regularly visits the camp to check on conditions, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other groups have campaigned for improved conditions and to change the detainees' legal status to that of prisoners of war, from their current status as "unlawful combatants." Several prisoners have tried to commit suicide. Crosson, the military spokesman, said Yee had daily access to the detainees. Yee offered Muslim prayer services each Friday and ensured that each Muslim had a copy of the Koran. Yee also helped rearrange the meal schedule so detainees could observe the daylight fast during Ramadan, and he showed skeptical detainees a certificate in Arabic declaring that the meat they ate was prepared under Islamic strictures. Five times a day, Yee played a recorded version of the Muslim call to prayer on camp loudspeakers. "What they hear is the actual call as it's heard in either Mecca or Medina [Islam's two holiest cities], depending on the CD I choose to play that day," Yee told reporters in April. Yee also attended to American troops of Muslim faith. "The information he provided has led to many improvements for the Muslim troops of the Joint Task Force Guantanamo as well as an increased awareness of detainees' religious needs," chaplain Herbert Heavner told another base paper in March. * * * September 22, 2003 US HOLDS MUSLIM CHAPLAIN 'CAUGHT WITH JAIL PLANS' By David Rennie in Washington The United States military has arrested one of its own Muslim chaplains on suspicion of espionage and secretly assisting detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp where he works. Captain Yousef Yee, a 34-year-old former artillery officer who converted to Islam and became a military chaplain after spending four years in Syria, was arrested in Florida as he stepped off a military flight from the maximum security prison camp. Military sources told CNN television that Capt Yee was found in possession of classified documents "that a chaplain shouldn't have", including "diagrams of the cells and the facilities at Guantanamo" and lists of detainees' and interrogators' names. Capt Yee's work with the 660 detainees at Guantanamo had been actively publicised by Pentagon officials, who frequently arranged for him to meet reporters visiting the prison, housed at the US naval base on the far south- eastern tip of Cuba. Commanders praised the Arabic-speaking chaplain for ensuring that prisoners knew they were eating an approved halal diet, and for arranging broadcasts of calls to prayer across the camp. Capt Yee, in interviews, stressed a moderate image of Islam, saying the attacks of September 11 broke Islamic laws and adding: "Whoever has done this needs to be brought to justice, whether he is Muslim or not." He is now being investigated for ties to radical Muslims based in America and is being questioned on suspicion of espionage, and even treason. In public, officials with the US southern command, which is in overall control of the Guantanamo camp, would confirm only that Capt Yee was in custody, and that he was a 1990 graduate of the West Point military academy. Capt Yee was trained as an air defence artillery officer, commanding a Patriot missile battery in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf war. He comes from a Lutheran Chinese-American family but converted to Islam in the mid-1990s, changing his name to Yousef from James, after four years in Damascus, Syria, studying Islam and Arabic. He is married to a Syrian. In the late 1990s, Capt Yee rejoined the US military as one of about a dozen Muslim chaplains. The chaplaincy programmes in the US military and federal prison system are under formal investigation by the Pentagon and Justice Department following complaints that Muslim chaplains were referring their spiritual charges to radical clerics, some of whom advocate jihad against America. Capt Yee is now being held at the naval brig in Charleston, South Carolina - withtwo American-born terrorist suspects, Yaser Esam Hamdi, a Saudi accused of fighting for the Taliban, and Jose Padilla, a Chicago street thug accused of plotting to attack America with a radioactive "dirty bomb". The arrest of Capt Yee is a further blow to the several thousand Muslims serving in the US military, most of whom are thought to be converts. They were already under a cloud of suspicion following incidents involving Islamic soldiers. In March, Sgt Hasan Akbar, a Muslim convert, was charged with murder after a hand grenade was thrown into a tent at an American base in Kuwait, killing two officers and injuring 14 other soldiers. * * * The Independent (UK): September 22, 2003 GUANTANAMO CHAPLAIN HELD FOR 'AIDING PRISONERS' By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles The American Army's Muslim chaplain who ministered to so-called enemy combatants at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba has been arrested and detained, apparently on suspicion that he provided aid and comfort to potential terrorists. James Yee, 35, an Army captain, has been held since 10 September at a Navy brig in South Carolina. Whether he had been charged was not clear from reports, but a spokesman at the US Southern Command, responsible for overseeing the Guantanamo Bay base, said he had been granted access to military lawyers. Under US military law - assuming he is to be prosecuted - a prisoner must be granted trial within 120 days of being arrested. Although details were still sketchy, Mr Yee's arrest prompted an outcry among American Muslims who immediately seized on the Catch-22 circular logic of a chaplain being arrested for doing, on the face of it, precisely what his job required: providing encouragement and spiritual comfort to the prisoners in his charge. Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American Islamic Relations said: "There are those in our society who love to question the patriotism of American Islamics and this, unfortunately, will give them ammunition to do that, no matter what the facts of the case are." Officially, members of the military and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which contributed to the case, refused to disclose any details about Captain Yee. One law enforcement source, however, told The New York Times that the investigation began before his latest trip to Guantanamo. Captain Yee was searched when he arrived back at the naval air station in Jacksonville, Florida, and was found to have sketches of the prisoners' facilities in his luggage. That, various US newspapers reported yesterday, might form the basis of a charge of espionage. Lawyers familiar with previous cases involving the violation of secrecy or espionage laws - notably the aggressive, but baseless, prosecution of the Los Alamos nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee - say the FBI and other government agencies often fail to distinguish between non-malicious handling of classified documents and actual espionage. Thus, they said, prisoner locations at Guantanamo might well be classified, but that does not mean Captain Yee had them mapped for any reason other than to help to find his way around. The arrest is part of a pattern since 11 September 2001 of official hostility towards anyone in direct contact with suspected members of al-Qa'ida, enemy fighters or other detainees. The Justice Department now reserves the right to eavesdrop on conversations between terrorism suspects and their lawyers, in apparent violation of the constitutional guarantee of lawyer-client privilege. Lynne Stewart, a US lawyer, is herself soon to stand trial on terrorism charges. She was arrested shortly after 11 September on the basis that she may have passed on dangerous messages from her client, the blind Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman, who is in prison for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre. Captain Yee is a West Point graduate who converted to Islam shortly after the Gulf War in 1991. Changing his first name to Yousef, he left the military to study his new religion in Syria and returned after four years as an imam. He rejoined the Army in the late 1990s as a chaplain, serving first at the Fort Lewis base in Washington state and then, as of 10 months ago, at Guantanamo Bay. He kept a flat in Miami, which was searched by the FBI after his arrest. He was interviewed frequently on Muslim issues within the armed forces and beyond, and issued many unequivocal condemnations of violence. "An act of terrorism, the taking of innocent civilian lives, is prohibited by Islam, and whoever has done this needs to be brought to justice, whether he is Muslim or not," he said in late 2001. His work at Guantanamo has presumably included an interest in several dozen suicide attempts among the prisoners. Earlier this year, he told the BBC: "I like to think that whatever I can do, whether in their personal situation or help with them being here in any way, that I have a positive effect on their life." * * * The Washington Times: September 22, 2003 CHAPLAIN ARRESTED TO PROTECT LIVES By Rowan Scarborough The Bush administration decided to arrest Army Capt. James J. Yee because it feared he would reveal information that could aid terrorists and endanger the lives of military guards at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba, a law-enforcement source said. Capt. Yee, a Muslim chaplain who counseled al Qaeda and Taliban detainees at a specially constructed prison at the base, was arrested Sept. 10 by the FBI upon arriving in Jacksonville, Fla., on a military charter flight from Guantanamo. The Washington Times reported Saturday that agents confiscated classified documents in the West Point graduate's possession and that Capt. Yee was suspected of espionage. A law-enforcement source said yesterday those papers included a list of detainees and the names of U.S. prison personnel at Guantanamo. If al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's terror network, were to learn the detainees' identities, it would provide valuable information on the whereabouts of operators who are missing. This information could then allow al Qaeda to change operating methods for fear the detainee provided such information to his American captors, the law- enforcement official said. The Pentagon has refused news media requests to release the names of the 660 detainees for that very reason. A list of American personnel at the base in the hands of terrorists could put them and their families in danger, the source told The Times. The source said there was a debate within the administration on whether to arrest Capt. Yee or keep him under surveillance. The source declined to say which agency advocated the Sept. 10 arrest, but said the order came from "the highest levels." "If the list of detainees got out, then you have a whole lot of al Qaeda cells go to ground," a senior Bush administration official said yesterday. This source said the Pentagon pushed to make the arrest and said the White House was involved in the decision. The official said one document in Capt. Yee's possession was a drawing showing where certain prisoners and American personnel were located. The official said the case was "extremely sensitive. Nobody wants to create the impression we listen to clergy while administering to the flock. But this guy warranted attention." Capt. Yee, 35, graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1990 and attended artillery school to became a Patriot missile battery officer. Raised as a Lutheran in New Jersey, he converted to Islam while in the Army. He resigned his commission and traveled to Damascus, Syria, where he enrolled in traditional Islamic classes and learned Arabic. Also known as Yousef, he returned to the United States and rejoined the Army as a chaplain, assigned to the 1st Corps at Fort Lewis, Wash. In November, the Army sent him to Guantanamo to counsel Muslim inmates. The Bush official disputed statements from some outside intelligence analysts that the United States put Capt. Yee under surveillance from the moment he returned to the Army. Camp Delta, the Guantanamo prison, is one of the government's most secure locations. Every conversation and document inside the compound is classified. The Bush official said the government would never put a suspected "mole" in the facility for fear he might be under orders to kill some of the high-value al Qaeda prisoners. The detainee population as a whole has turned out to be a huge intelligence windfall on how al Qaeda operates and where some of its leaders are located, this official said. The FBI interrogated Capt. Yee before he was imprisoned in the Naval Consolidated Brig at Charleston, S.C. He has been assigned two Army lawyers. The convening authority, the person in military law who would decide on whether to seek a court-martial, is the commander of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, which oversees the Guantanamo prison. A command spokesman said Saturday that no formal charges had been brought. According to the law-enforcement source, a military officer listed five charges against Capt. Yee: sedition; aiding the enemy; spying; espionage; and failure to obey a general order. The source likened those charges to what a police officer would level before a district attorney filed a formal complaint. This official said there was no doubt the Army would seek a court-martial. The source said Capt. Yee had been under surveillance for "some time." In criminal proceedings under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Army prosecutors would bring charges and then conduct an Article 32 hearing to see if sufficient evidence existed to order a trial. At Guantanamo, the Pentagon provides religious counseling, which includes traditional Friday services and daily calls to prayer, as part of a pledge to treat suspected terrorists humanely. As a prison chaplain, Capt. Yee had extensive -- and private -- contacts with detainees, who are regularly interrogated by a U.S.-led task force that includes the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the FBI and foreign intelligence officers. The State Department two years ago hailed Capt. Yee's appointment. "The newest Muslim chaplain is James Yee, a Chinese-American and a graduate of the West Point military academy, who was born into a Lutheran family," the State Department said. One month after the September 11 attacks, Capt. Yee said, "An act of terrorism, the taking of innocent civilian lives is prohibited by Islam, and whoever has done this needs to be brought to justice, whether he is Muslim or not." * * * Tacoma News Tribune: September 21, 2003 EX-FORT LEWIS CHAPLAIN DETAINED News Tribune Staff And Wire Services; A Muslim chaplain who was stationed at Fort Lewis in 2001 and 2002 is the first known U.S. soldier to be detained in the U.S.-led war on terror. Army Capt. Yousef Yee, 34, was detained Sept. 10 in Jacksonville, Fla., after returning from Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba, where he was stationed. He has not been charged, but a senior law enforcement source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Saturday that FBI agents confiscated classified documents Yee was carrying and questioned him before he was handed over to the military. The New York Times reported in a story published today that he had drawings or diagrams of the prison. CNN suggested he had lists of the detainees and their interrogators. The FBI also executed a search warrant in Miami at an apartment apparently used by Yee, officials said. Military officers refused to discuss the reasons for Yee's arrest, saying that would violate his rights. But a civilian law enforcement official said the investigation was aimed at suspicions of espionage, improperly assisting the prisoners or some other breach of military duties. Investigators are looking into the possibility that Yee was sympathetic to prisoners and was preparing to aid them in some undetermined way. Bill Hurlburt, a spokesman with the FBI in Jacksonville, confirmed that agents were at the scene, but declined further comment. Yee, who is married, was being held at a military brig in Charleston, S.C. Yee's job at Guantanamo was to teach fellow troops about Islam and counsel detainees suspected of links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime or the al- Qaida terror network. Before that, Yee served as imam at the Fort Lewis Islamic Chapel Center, where he counseled Muslim soldiers. He arrived in Fort Lewis in April 2001 and remained there until at least September 2002, when he told The News Tribune in an interview that the Sept. 11 attacks were evil and inconsistent with the basic tenets of Islam. At the time, he was one of only eight Muslim chaplains in the Army. Born James Yee and raised Lutheran, he is a 1990 graduate of West Point. He took the Muslim name of Yousef when he converted to Islam in 1991. At a Friday prayer service in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he warned Muslim soldiers "do not become angry" about assaults and hate directed at American Muslims. During other interviews with The News Tribune, Yee said some Muslims were conflicted between their faith and going to war, whether against Muslims or non- Muslims. He said when Muslim soldiers asked him what to do when their units were deploying, "I encourage them to go." While stationed at Fort Lewis, he lectured extensively to various battalions and the chapel youth group about the basic beliefs of Islam: "What happened on Sept. 11 helped us to be able to inform others about Islam," Yee said. "It caused an enormous interest in the American public to want to know more about this religion called Islam." Staff Sgt. Mohammad Tabassum, a Pakistani American stationed at Fort Lewis and who attended services Yee conducted, said Saturday he was surprised when he heard of the detainment. "This is not how I thought that he was. ... But he has not been charged. If the person is not charged and the investigation is still ongoing, it is not proper for us to comment on it," said Tabassum, declining further comment and directing all calls to Fort Lewis. Fort Lewis spokeswoman Laura Davis referred calls to U.S. Southern Command in Miami. Capt. Tom Crosson, a spokesman for U.S. Southern Command, told the Associated Press that Yee "had daily access to the detainees." He said Yee "is the first U.S. soldier that I know of to be detained and held since the war on terror began." In an interview conducted with the Associated Press in January, Yee refused to answer questions about the depth of his involvement with the detainees at Guantanamo. At the time there were about 650 of them, and now there are about 660 from 43 countries. Most are men, but at least three are teenagers. When asked if he were sympathetic to the prisoners - some of whom have been held in Guantanamo for nearly two years without charges - Yee was silent and showed no emotion. When asked how his faith affected how he viewed the detention mission, he gave only a cursory answer. "I'm here to provide spiritual services to the detainees and to the troops," Yee said, speaking of his teachings on Islam to U.S. troops at the base. He also offered Friday prayer services at the base. As an Arabic speaker, Yee counseled the detainees, advised them on religious matters and made sure all of their dietary needs were met at the base in eastern Cuba. In the sprawling Camp Delta - the high-security prison where the men are held - Yee was seldom out of earshot from armed guards or interpreters contracted to help with interrogations. But sometimes he had one-on-one access to detainees, officials said. Yee's parents still live in the house where he was raised in Springfield, N.J., neighbor Matteo Apicella said. Yee's father and sister declined comment on the case. Yee left the Army in the mid-1990s for Syria, where he received religious training. He returned to the U.S. military soon after. When asked during the January interview why he converted to Islam, Yee spoke of Islam's diversity and how it was a strength of the culture. "A lot of people don't know Jesus is part of Islam but Muslims believe he was a prophet," Yee said. "Surely people can be more open-minded." Yee arrived at the camp at a critical time, when officials were trying to jolt the interrogation process into high gear. He was also there during a time when U.S. officials came under increasing pressure to either charge the men or release them. Yee was always vague about whether he was involved in interrogations. Since the detention mission began, Guantanamo has had at least three Muslim chaplains, the first being Navy Lt. Abuhena Saif-ul-Islam, who in 1999 became the Marines' first Muslim chaplain. Fort Lewis was in the national news last year when John Allen Muhammad, who was stationed at the base in 1994, was arrested as a suspect in the Washington, D.C., area sniper shootings. Muhammad is a member of the Nation of Islam and took on the name of Islam's prophet. Imam Mohamad Joban, Washington state's senior Muslim official and spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Olympia, told The News Tribune last year that Yee did not know of Muhammad. The Associated Press and The New York Times contributed to this report. (Published 12:01AM, September 21st, 2003) * * * Washington Times: September 21, 2003 MILITARY CONFIRMS MUSLIM CHAPLAIN HAD SECRET PAPERS By Steve Miller Military officials yesterday confirmed that a Muslim chaplain who was counseling al Qaeda prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval base has been detained since Sept. 10 after being found in possession of classified documents. The Washington Times first reported yesterday that Army Capt. James. J. Yee is being held at the Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C., charged with sedition, espionage, aiding the enemy, spying and failing to obey a general order. Capt. Yee served as "Muslim adviser to the commander of the joint task force at Guantanamo" since reporting there in November, said Capt. Thomas Crosson of the Southern Command in Miami, which oversees the mission at Guantanamo. As a soldier, the suspect specialized in air artillery defense and was a Patriot missile fire-control officer. Capt. Yee, of Chinese descent, was taken into custody by FBI agents as he deplaned from a military charter flight out of Guantanamo. Sources say agents confiscated "several" documents he was carrying. The Pentagon could not be reached yesterday and the CIA refused to comment on the detention of Capt. Yee. Guantanamo, the lone U.S. presence in communist Cuba, serves as the holding site for 650 men from more than three dozen countries who are accused of being linked to the Muslim al Qaeda or Afghanistan's former Taliban regime. As a chaplain, Capt. Yee had unfettered access to the accused members of terrorist groups held at the base. He grew up in New Jersey as a Lutheran but learned enough about Islam while attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., that he decided to convert. He later became one of the 17 Muslim chaplains in the U.S. armed forces. The military has prided itself on its promotion of Muslim chaplains, and now claims to have 17 on active duty. Capt. Yee has been among the many noted in revered tones by both reporters and the government. "The newest Muslim chaplain is James Yee, a Chinese American and a graduate of the West Point military academy, who was born into a Lutheran family," reads a release on the Department of State Web site from two years ago. He became interested in Islam while a student and later spent four years studying Arabic and Islam in Damascus, Syria. He serves with the 29th Signal Battalion at Fort Lewis, Wash. Capt. Yee said that Muslims on his base have come to him with worries about being ordered to fight Muslims overseas. "An act of terrorism, the taking of innocent civilian lives is prohibited by Islam, and whoever has done this needs to be brought to justice, whether he is Muslim or not," Capt. Yee is quoted as saying on the federal Web site. In 2001, Capt. Yee wrote a piece for the Fort Lewis newspaper titled "Islam, what is there to fear?" Fort Lewis is also the base where D.C. sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad served during his military service. Capt. Yee, 35, a 1990 graduate of West Point, converted to Islam in 1991 and left the Army after completing airborne school at Fort Knox, Ky. The suspect then went to Damascus to teach English and study Islam. After becoming a Muslim clergyman, he rejoined the army as a chaplain. In an October 2001 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Capt. Yee is quoted as saying, "When I go into the field, I have a copy of the Koran and next to it a copy of the U.S. Constitution." The U.S. military named the first Muslim chaplain in 1993 after the Army said there were enough Islamic soldiers to warrant the appointment. The Pentagon today estimates there are about 4,000 practicing Muslims in uniform. The American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council, which did not return several e-mails yesterday, places the number around 10,000. Several Muslims in the military have been accused in the past of putting their religion before their duty. Army Sgt. Asan Akbar is accused in the March 23 attack on his fellow soldiers in Kuwait. Fifteen soldiers were wounded, two of them fatally. He is awaiting a general court-martial trial. Ali A. Mohamed, a former U.S. Army sergeant who served from 1986 to 1989, was described as a "mid-level player" in the 1998 terrorist bombings of U.S. embassies in African. He pleaded guilty in 2000 and was sentenced to prison. Mohamed also admitted being a follower of Osama bin Laden. * * * Toronto Sun: September 21, 2003 BUSH'S TAME U.S. MEDIA MAY YET HAVE TEETH By Eric Margolis -- Contributing Foreign Editor MIAMI -- I've long considered CNN's Christiane Amanpour an outstanding journalist. Last week, my opinion of her rose further when she ignited a storm of controversy when asked by a TV interviewer about the U.S. media's coverage of the Iraq war. Breaking a taboo of silence in the mainstream media, Amanpour courageously replied, "I think the press was muzzled and I think the press self-muzzled. Television ... was intimidated by the (Bush) administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News." Right on cue, faithful to Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering's advice to attack all dissenting views as treason, Fox accused Amanpour of being a "spokeswoman for al-Qaida." I felt for Amanpour, having myself been slandered by the U.S. neo- conservative media as "a friend of Saddam" for disputing White House claims about Iraq - whose secret police had threatened to hang me on my last visit to Baghdad. The warlike momma's boys at the neo-con National Review actually had the chutzpah to call me "unpatriotic." Columnists at my own paper pilloried me for opposing the Iraq misadventure. Now, as White House lies and distortions are being exposed daily, these critics are not man enough to admit that their parroting of administration war propaganda - Amanpour politely calls it "high level disinformation" - was foolish and unprofessional. Christiane Amanpour is absolutely right. The U.S. media was muzzled and censored itself. I experienced this firsthand on U.S. TV, radio and in print. Never in my 20 years in media have I seen such unconscionable pressure exerted on journalists to conform to the government's party line. Criticism of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, photos of dead American soldiers or civilians killed by bombing, were forbidden or downplayed. The tone of reporting had to be strongly positive, filled with uplifting stories about liberation and women freed from repression. Criticism, sharp questions and doubt were verboten. The bloated corporations dominating the U.S. media feared antagonizing the White House, which was pushing for the bill - just rejected by the Senate - to allow them to grow even larger. Reporters who failed to toe the line were barred or had their access to military and government officials limited, virtually ending some careers. Many "embedded" reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan became little more than public relations auxiliaries. Critics of administration policies in Iraq and Afghanistan were systematically excluded from media commentary, particularly on national TV. Experts' fabrications Night after night, networks featured "experts" who droned on about Iraq's fearsome weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat to the U.S., about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the urgency to invade Iraq before it could strike at America and a raft of other fabrications. Such "experts" echoed the White House party line and all were dead wrong. Yet, amazingly, many are still on the air, continuing to misinform the public, using convoluted arguments to explain why they were not really wrong even when they were. I do not exaggerate when I say that much of the U.S. media from 9/11 to the present closely resembled the old Soviet media I knew and disrespected during my stays in the USSR during the 1980s. The American media, notably the sycophantic White House press corps and flagwavers at Fox, treated President George Bush and his entourage with adulation and fawning servility similar to what the Soviet state media once lavished on Communist Party Chairman Leonid Brezhnev. When dimwitted Brezhnev made the calamitous blunder of invading Afghanistan, the Moscow media rapturously described the brazen aggression as "liberation" that recalled the glories of World War II. The U.S. media indulged in the same frenzied foot-kissing, and the same silly WW II comparisons over Bush's foolhardy invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. President Bush and his neo-conservative handlers led America into these twin disasters precisely because two of the key organs of democracy - an independent, inquiring media, and assertive Congress - failed miserably to perform their duty. They allowed themselves to be cowed into subservience. They failed to expose and vigorously oppose the sinister, pro-totalitarian Patriot Act that so endangers America's basic liberties. Or, like Fox, a reincarnation of William Randolph Hearst's jingoistic yellow press, they served as White House mouthpieces, eagerly stoking war fever and national hysteria, retailing to the public all the administration's wholesale disinformation about Iraq. In a shocking attempt to silence dissenting voices, U.S. forces bombed the news offices of al-Jazeera TV in Baghdad, Basra and Kabul, killing and wounding some of its staff. "The CNN of the Arab World" had been contradicting too many White House claims. Al-Jazeera's senior correspondent, Tayseer Alouni, has been arrested in Spain and charged with aiding terrorism by interviewing Osama bin Laden. The U.S. previously accused Alouni of being pro-Iraqi; Iraq expelled him for being "anti-Iraqi." In my books, that makes him an honest, courageous journalist, just like Amanpour. So long as Bush was riding high in the polls, the media fawned on him. But now that many Americans are beginning to sense they were lied to or misled by the White House, Bush's popularity is dropping, and the media's mood is becoming edgy and more aggressive. The muzzles may soon be coming off. * * * CNN: September 20, 2003 - 2243 GMT U.S. ARMY MUSLIM CHAPLAIN ARRESTED OFFICIAL: CAPTAIN HAD CLASSIFIED GUANTANAMO DOCUMENTS From Chris Plante, CNN WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Muslim chaplain in the U.S. Army has been arrested and is being investigated on suspicion of espionage and possibly treason, officials familiar with the case told CNN. Army Capt. James Yee was taken into custody by U.S. military authorities September 10 at the naval air station in Jacksonville, Florida, while in possession of classified documents "that a chaplain shouldn't have," an official told CNN, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The official said the documents included "diagrams of the cells and the facilities at Guantanamo [Bay, Cuba]" where about 600 al Qaeda and other "enemy combatants" are being held by the military. Yee also was carrying lists of detainees being held there as well as lists of their interrogators, the source said. In addition to the classified documents, Yee is "believed to have ties to [radical Muslims in the U.S.] that are now under investigation," the source said. He said he could not elaborate on the basis for that belief. Although no charges have been filed, the U.S. military is "investigating whether [Yee] may have [been involved in] espionage or treason," the official said. "There are a series of things that would lead a reasonable person to believe that something" was out of line, the official said. Army officials with the U.S. Southern Command, which controls the Guantanamo facility, told CNN that they could not comment on the status of the investigation but acknowledged that Yee had been taken into custody and said he is a 1990 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. They said he became an air-defense artillery officer and left the Army some time later. The Southern Command official said Yee then converted to Islam and returned to the Army as a Muslim chaplain and had been assigned to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in November 2002. Yee is one of about a dozen Muslim chaplains in the U.S. military, according to officials. U.S. government sources contacted by CNN said that after leaving the Army, Yee moved to Syria, where he lived for four years studying Islam and was married, apparently to a Syrian woman. A State Department document available on the Internet confirms Yee's time in Syria, saying he "spent four years studying Arabic and Islam in Damascus, Syria." In the same document, Yee is quoted as saying, "An act of terrorism, the taking of innocent civilian lives, is prohibited by Islam, and whoever has done this needs to be brought to justice, whether he is Muslim or not." According to the AP, Yee is being held at a military brig in Charleston, South Carolina -- the same place officials are holding Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American- born Saudi accused of fighting with the Taliban, and Jose Padilla, a former Chicago, Illinois, gang member charged with plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb." Yee has been interrogated by Army and Navy law enforcement officials, and by the FBI. Justice Department officials contacted by CNN confirmed that they had participated in some of the interrogations but said the lead agencies in the investigation are military. There are between 4,000 and 10,000 practicing Muslims serving in the U.S. armed forces. * * * The Gaurdian (UK): September 20, 2003 11:09 PM MUSLIM CHAPLAIN AT GUANTANAMO IS DETAINED By Paisley Dodds, Associated Press Writer SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - A Muslim chaplain at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo who counseled suspected terrorists and taught fellow troops about Islam has become the first known U.S. soldier to become a detainee in the U.S.- led war on terror. Army Capt. Yousef Yee, a 34-year-old with a thinning buzz-cut who converted to Islam after being raised as a Christian, arrived at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba last November. His job was to teach fellow troops about Islam and counsel detainees suspected of links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terror network. Military officials said Saturday that Yee - who was born James Yee but later took the Muslim name of Yousef - was detained on Sept. 10 in Jacksonville after returning from Guantanamo. He has not been charged. In an interview conducted with The Associated Press in January, Yee refused to answer questions about the depth of his involvement with the detainees, who then numbered 650, and now stand at about 660 - mostly men but at least three teenagers from 43 countries. When asked if he was sympathetic to the prisoners - some of whom have been held in Guantanamo for nearly two years without charges - Yee was silent and showed no emotion. When asked how his faith affected how he viewed the detention mission, he gave only a cursory answer. "I'm here to provide spiritual services to the detainees and to the troops," Yee said, speaking of his teachings on Islam to U.S. troops at the base. He also offered Friday prayer services at the base. Yee is being held at a military brig in Charleston, S.C. - the same place where officials are holding Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American-born Saudi who allegedly fought with the Taliban, and Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member charged with plotting to detonate a bomb. "He had daily access to the detainees," said Capt. Tom Crosson, a spokesman for U.S. Southern Command in Miami, who confirmed the military was holding Yee in South Carolina. "He is the first U.S. soldier that I know of to be detained and held since the war on terror began." This year, Army Sgt. Hasan K. Akbar, a 32-year-old Muslim, was charged in a March grenade attack in Kuwait that killed Air Force Maj. Gregory Stone, 40, and Army Capt. Christopher Scott Seifert, 27, and injured 14 others. Akbar, however, was not accused of terrorism. He was instead charged with premeditated murder and attempted murder. As an Arabic-speaker, Yee counseled the detainees, advised them on religious matters and made sure all of their dietary needs were met at the base in eastern Cuba. In the sprawling Camp Delta - the high-security prison where the men are held - Yee was seldom out of earshot from armed guards or interpreters contracted to help with interrogations. But sometimes, he had one-on-one access to the detainees, officials said. Yee, of Chinese descent and reportedly from New Jersey, converted to Islam from Christianity in 1991 after his military studies at West Point. He left the army for Syria where he received religious training. He returned to the U.S. military soon after. When asked why he converted to Islam during the interview in January, Yee instead spoke of Islam's diversity. "One of the strengths of our culture is diversity," Yee said, shifting his focus on misunderstandings about Islam. "A lot of people don't know Jesus is part of Islam but Muslims believe he was a prophet," Yee said. "Surely people can be more open-minded." Yee arrived at the camp at a critical time, when officials were trying to jolt the interrogation process into high-gear. He was always vague about whether he was involved in interrogations and refused to be photographed during news conferences. Since the detention mission began, Guantanamo has had at least three Muslim chaplains, the first being Navy Lt. Abuhena Saif-ul-Islam, who in 1999 became the Marines' first Muslim chaplain. Yee is married. Prior to Guantanamo he was stationed in Fort Lewis, Wash. * * * Lakeland Ledger (Florida): September 20, 2003 ARMY ISLAMIC CHAPLAIN TO GUANTANAMO PRISONERS DETAINED By Coralie Carlson, Associated Press Writer MIAMI -- An Army Islamic chaplain who counseled al-Qaida prisoners at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba has been detained as part of a military investigation, Southern Command officials said Saturday. Capt. Yousef Yee has been confined since Sept. 10, but has not been charged with any crimes, Southern Command spokesman Capt. Thomas Crosfon said. Crosfon said he does not know the nature of the investigation: "If charges were formally filed, then we'd be able to tell you." Yee was taken into custody at a Naval station in Jacksonville, Crosfon said, but he did not know where Yee is being held now. A senior law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said FBI agents confiscated classified documents Yee was carrying and questioned him before he was handed over to the military. The FBI in Jacksonville did not immediately return a page Saturday. Yee is a Muslim chaplain who was assigned to the Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in November, Crosfon said. Yee served as the Islamic adviser to the Joint Taskforce Commander. The base in eastern Cuba is overseen by the Miami-based Southern Command. It is also where about 650 men from 43 countries are held, all accused of having links to the al-Qaida terrorist network or Afghanistan's fallen Taliban regime. A Chinese-American and 1990 West Point graduate, Yee converted to Islam in college and became a chaplain after spending several years in the Army. Crosfon said he did not know whether Yee had an attorney. * * * Washington Times: September 20, 2003 ISLAMIC CHAPLAIN CHARGED WITH SPYING WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 (UPI) -- An Islamic U.S. Army chaplain, who counseled al Qaida prisoners at Guantanamo Bay naval base, has been charged with espionage, aiding the enemy and spying. A law-enforcement source told the Washington Times that Capt. James Yee, a 1990 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, was arrested earlier this month by the FBI in Jacksonville, Fla., as he arrived on a military charter flight from Guantanamo. Agents confiscated classified documents in his possession and interrogated him for two days in Jacksonville. Yee was transferred to a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., where two Army lawyers were assigned to his defense, the Times reported. The U.S. Army has charged Yee with sedition, aiding the enemy, spying, espionage and failure to obey a general order. The more serious charge of treason, which under the Uniform Code of Military Justice could be punished by a maximum life sentence, is being considered. It was not known what country or organization is suspected of receiving information from Yee. Sources said the "highest levels" of government made the decision to arrest Yee, who had been under surveillance for some time. * * * Washington Times: ISLAMIC CHAPLAIN IS CHARGED AS SPY By Rowan Scarborough An Army Islamic chaplain, who counseled al Qaeda prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval base, has been charged with espionage, aiding the enemy and spying, The Washington Times has learned. Capt. James J. Yee, a 1990 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., was arrested earlier this month by the FBI in Jacksonville, Fla., as he arrived on a military charter flight from Guantanamo, according to a law- enforcement source. Agents confiscated several classified documents in his possession and interrogated him. He was held for two days in Jacksonville and transferred to a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., where two Army lawyers have been assigned to his defense. The Army has charged Capt. Yee with five offenses: sedition, aiding the enemy, spying, espionage and failure to obey a general order. The Army may also charge him later with the more serious charge of treason, which under the Uniform Code of Military Justice could be punished by a maximum sentence of life. It could not be immediately learned what country or organization is suspected of receiving information from Capt. Yee. He had counseled suspected al Qaeda terrorists at Guantanamo for a lengthy period. Capt. Yee, 35, was a command chaplain for I Corps at Fort Lewis, Wash. The Army dispatched him to Cuba to attend to the spiritual needs of a growing number of captured al Qaeda and members of the Taliban, a hard-line Islamic group ousted from power in Afghanistan. Capt. Yee, of Chinese-American descent, was raised in New Jersey as a Christian. He studied Islam at West Point and converted to Islam and left the Army in the mid-1990s. He moved to Syria, where he underwent further religious training in traditional Islamic beliefs. He returned to the United States and re-entered the Army as an Islamic chaplain. He is said to be married to a Syrian woman. Capt. Yee had almost unlimited private access to detainees as part of the Defense Department's program to provide the prisoners with religious counseling, as well as clothing and Islamic-approved meals. The law-enforcement source declined to say how much damage Capt. Yee may have inflicted on the U.S. war against Osama bin Laden's global terror network. The source said the "highest levels" of government made the decision to arrest Capt. Yee, who had been kept under surveillance for some time. The military's "convening authority" -- the officer who would authorize criminal proceedings -- is the commander of U.S. Southern Command in Miami, which oversees the prison at Guantanamo. After the September 11 attacks, Capt. Yee, one of 17 Muslim chaplains, was the subject of a number of press articles on Islam. A month after the attack on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, he was quoted in an account by Scripps Howard News Service as saying that "an act of terrorism, the taking of innocent lives is prohibited by Islam and whoever has done this needs to be brought to justice, whether he is Muslim or not." In another account, the Voice of America News Service paraphrased Capt. Yee as saying Islam is a religion of peace and the concept of "jihad," or holy war, simply means "to struggle." "The basics, you always begin with the basics when dealing with anything," Capt. Yee was quoted as saying. "I discuss the articles of faith, what Muslims believe. The five pillars of Islam and then of course, I relate it to the events of September 11 to include some of the concepts found in Islam and how it deals with matters of war." At the Charleston brig, he joins three other notable detainees in the war on terrorism: Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American-born Saudi who fought with the Taliban; Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member who is charged with plotting to detonate a radioactive bomb; and Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, accused of being an al Qaeda sleeper agent. The United States classifies the detainees at Guantanamo as "enemy combatants," not prisoners of war. The Pentagon will likely hold most of them until the war on terrorism is over. * * * Reuters: September 15, 2003 PRISONERS EARN PERKS IN GUANTANAMO REWARD PLAN By Jane Sutton U.S. NAVAL BASE, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (Reuters) - Military officials at the U.S. Naval base in Cuba have introduced a reward program that lets Afghanistan war prisoners earn perks and more comfortable quarters by dishing out intelligence and following camp rules. Behave and they get checkerboards, decks of cards or the right to choose a book from a carefully screened library cart. Throw water on a guard or ignore orders to leave the exercise yard on schedule and prisoners forfeit a game or book. Establish a consistent record of good behavior and a select few prisoners -- up to 40 -- can move from the isolation of the single-celled maximum-security units into medium-security units where they live, read and pray in groups. "What this has done is dramatically increased our cooperation," said Brig. Gen. Jim Payne, deputy commander for the prison operation. During a recent visit to the base, military officials led reporters on a limited tour inside Camp Delta, where the 660 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners are held. Reporters were not allowed to speak to prisoners, seen only in shadow through small screened windows, but toured empty cellblocks. Prisoners in the maximum-security blocks live alone in small metal-mesh cells with shelf-style beds, floor toilets and low basins for washing. They get the basic package of "comfort items" -- a thin mattress, blanket, sheet, gray foam prayer mat, towel, washcloth, prayer cap, prayer beads, toiletries, orange uniforms, rubber flip-flop shoes and a Koran. Meals are delivered in foam containers by guards wearing rubber gloves. Prisoners are shackled at the hands and legs when they are taken two at a time to the showers or to the exercise yard for 30-minute recreation periods twice a week. Every 30 days, camp officials review detailed computerized records on each prisoner and decide who has earned a spot in the medium-security blocks completed in March. Detainees there live in four dormitory-style rooms with 10 beds. They get white uniforms, thicker mattresses and dine together at an outdoor picnic table under a concrete shade. Exercise increases to an hour a day, in groups big enough for team sports like soccer and volleyball. They get red Oriental rugs for prayer mats, an extra pair of canvas shoes, and more puzzles, books and games. "We never take away the Koran. We never take away anything that would be a health item -- blankets or food," Payne said. REWARD FOR INFORMATION The reward system also recognizes cooperation during interrogations. Camp officials won't discuss specifics. But they said that although some prisoners have been at Guantanamo for 20 months and have no current information about pending attacks, they provide information about terrorist organizations, financing and recruiting. "Tactical intelligence decays very rapidly but operational and strategic intelligence is viable, valid and enormously useful," Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who commands the prisoner operation, told Reuters. "We knit together golden threads as we come to be able to understand what terrorism is all about." The ultimate reward is release from Guantanamo and 68 prisoners have been returned to their home countries since the prison operation began in January 2002. To earn that, prisoners must convince military officials that they have no more useful information to give and that they are not a threat to the United States. Miller recommends which prisoners should be released, recognizing those who "understand the consequences of their actions, this unspeakable action that they have taken." "Many of them were duped into terrorism or sometimes kidnapped into being, supporting terrorism. So when taken out of these despicable people then they are cooperative." * * * Reuters: September 13, 2003 GERMAN MINISTER CRITICIZES U.S. GUANTANAMO POLICY BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's interior minister has criticized the United States for holding Afghan war captives without trial in an interview released shortly before the U.S. and German leaders meet for the first time in over a year. Otto Schily told Der Spiegel magazine that captives held at the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba should be tried to establish if they did indeed pose a threat and they should be allowed access to legal advisers. "Otherwise basic principles are lost," Schily said in the interview released on Saturday. His comments come 10 days before President Bush's planned meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, their first since Germany's opposition to the American build-up to the Iraq war damaged relations a year ago. Schily said he understood U.S. concerns that some of the 660 Guantanamo prisoners might carry out attacks if let free, but that did not mean they should be held without any objective process or legal representation. "We are bringing up the matter, but the Americans do not see any other option at the moment. But I hope that thinking in the United States leads to conclusions that are reasonable and legally sound," Schily said. Human rights groups have heavily criticized America over the camp and even U.S. allies Britain and Australia have expressed concern. No charges have been brought against any prisoner, but the United States has identified six it considers eligible for military tribunals. U.S. officials said on Friday Bush and Schroeder plan to meet during Bush's September 23-24 visit to New York for U.N. General Assembly, a sign of a further thawing of previously icy relations even if differences over Iraq persist. Germany, along with France, has said that a draft U.S. proposal to create a multinational force in Iraq does not cede enough control to the United Nations. Bush has said he is open to suggestions to fine-tune it. * * * San Francisco Chronicle: Friday, September 12, 2003 MILITARY TO INVESTIGATE LEAVE GRANTED TO MISSOURI LAWMAKER WHO CAST DECIDING VOTE ON GUNS Paul Sloca, Associated Press Writer (09-12) 16:28 PDT JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- The U.S. military will investigate whether regulations were violated when a Missouri state senator was granted leave from duty in Cuba so he could return home to cast the deciding vote to override a veto of concealed guns legislation. State Sen. Jon Dolan, a Republican and a major in the Army National Guard, had been serving at Guantanamo Bay for only two weeks, and military regulations say a newly deployed soldier must be on duty at least two months before getting a leave. Lt. Cmdr. Barbara Burfeind, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said Friday that the matter will be investigated by the U.S. Southern Command in Florida, which oversees Guantanamo Bay, where Dolan is stationed as a public affairs officer. U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., sent a letter Friday to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld seeking an investigation into why Dolan was granted a six-day leave to cast his vote Thursday. The override of Democratic Gov. Bob Holden's veto gave most Missourians the right to carry concealed guns. "I am most concerned about whether Senator Dolan's case establishes a precedent that allows members of the National Guard who have certain political affiliations to be permitted privileges that other members of the National Guard are routinely denied," Clay wrote. Dolan said Friday the push for the investigation was politically motivated. "I did my duty and I would do it again," Dolan said. "If my career ends, that's fine. This is simply political retribution." Dolan received approval for leave from his boss, Lt. Col. Pamela Hart. Burfeind said his leave was granted on a special exception, which is not uncommon. Burfeind referred other questions about Dolan to Southern Command, which said the issue was being handled by public affairs officials in Guantanamo Bay, who did not immediately return a phone call from The Associated Press. Also at issue is whether Dolan violated federal law and military regulations by performing duties of his political office while on active military duty. The rules apply to a reserve officer serving on active duty under a call to active duty of more than 270 days. Dolan said military lawyers told him before he left Cuba that because he hadn't served 270 days of his tour, the rule didn't apply to him. "My position in that issue remains clear," Dolan said. "I knew about the directive before hand and did not feel it applied in my case." [ Associated Press Military Writer Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report. ] * * * Reuters: September 11, 2003 - 03:26 PM ET U.S. PRISON AT GUANTANAMO TAKES ON PERMANENT AIR By Jane Sutton U.S. NAVAL BASE, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (Reuters) - Twenty months after the first Afghanistan war captives arrived at the U.S. Naval base in eastern Cuba, the steady pace of building and renovation gives every indication the remote Caribbean outpost is becoming a permanent prison. Military police held a brief ceremony on Thursday to mark the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 hijacked plane attacks on New York and Washington that prompted the U.S. war on terror and led to the setting up of the camp. Much criticized by human rights groups and a focus for concern among some U.S. allies, including Britain, the camp started out makeshift. It now has a more permanent air. "We will be here as long as we need to be here to exploit intelligence. The terrorists have a 30-year head start on us," Brig. Gen. Jim Payne, deputy commander of the prisoner operation, said on Wednesday. He added that how long the detention operation lasted was a policy question to be decided in Washington, not Guantanamo. The first detainees, seized during the U.S. campaign against Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and its Taliban protectors, arrived on Jan. 11, 2002, at the chain-link Camp X-Ray. Al Qaeda has been blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks. That gave way in the spring of 2002 to Camp Delta, a seaside prison camp that now houses 660 prisoners from 42 nations in aluminum mesh, concrete-floored cellblocks. Camp Delta is only two-thirds full, but building began two weeks ago on a more permanent concrete prison and interrogation building that could house 100 detainees indefinitely. "These are aluminum. With the salt air, they wear out," Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, a spokeswoman for the prisoner operation, said of the cellblocks. Military police who guard the prisoners started out in tents and are now in town houses and renovated barracks. The base population has nearly doubled to 5,000 since January last year. "There is something being built, renovated, replaced on a daily basis," Payne said. ENEMY COMBATANTS Sixty-eight prisoners have been returned to their home countries since the operation began. No Iraq war prisoners have been brought to Guantanamo, but there is no time frame for repatriating the rest of the Afghan war prisoners. The United States has identified six prisoners eligible for military tribunals, and building contractors are refurbishing a World War II-era air tower building that could house trials if they are held at Guantanamo. No charges have been brought against them yet and the chief focus at the prison camp is still holding and interrogating prisoners who might have information that could avert future attacks. The United States considers the prisoners enemy combatants, not prisoners of war, and the U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over them because they are not in the United States. Camp officials said the prisoners were treated humanely and far better than captured U.S. soldiers had been treated. But there have been 32 suicide attempts by 21 Guantanamo prisoners. The uncertain future probably contributed to attempts that seemed largely aimed at expressing frustration, said the chief medical officer at the prison hospital, Navy Capt. Steve Edmondson. The open-ended detention rankles rights activists who have long urged the United States to charge and try the Guantanamo prisoners or let them go. The International Committee of the Red Cross, now on its seventh six-week mission to interview the prisoners privately, has sent an urgent request to U.S. authorities to establish "some sort of legal framework put around Guantanamo so that each and every internee has the possibility to know what their fate is," spokeswoman Amanda Williamson said. London-based rights group Amnesty International was also determined to keep the pressure up, spokesman Alistair Hodgett said. "It certainly is taking on an air of permanence," he said. "We're prepared for a long campaign." * * * The Guardian (UK): Monday September 8, 2003 TORTURE BROKE ME, SAYS BRITON Men accused of Saudi bombings tell of jail ordeal Kirsty Scott, The Guardian One of the Britons released last month from a Saudi jail has said he was tortured "beyond endurance" during his imprisonment. Sandy Mitchell said he was chained, beaten and denied sleep until he confessed to a crime he did not commit. Mr Mitchell, 44, from Kirkintilloch, was one of six men from the UK arrested three years ago after a series of bomb attacks in Riyadh that left one Briton dead and several other westerners injured. The Saudi authorities claimed that the blasts were part of a feud between illegal alcohol smugglers and not the work of Saudi dissidents. After intervention by the British government and the Prince of Wales, the men were granted clemency by King Fahd last month and set free. Details of their ordeal began to emerge at the weekend. In one of his first interviews since returning to Britain Mr Mitchell, who spent 15 months in solitary confinement, told BBC Scotland's Frontline programme that he was tortured into making a false confession, which was later shown on television. "I was kept awake for nine days chained to the door of my cell so I could not sleep or sit down," he said. "In the evening times I was hooded, taken upstairs in chains to one of the interrogation rooms where the beatings then progressed to torture. "The beatings started with punching, kicking, spitting, and eventually progressed to hitting me with sticks. They had this axe handle and I was beaten on the soles of my feet." Mr Mitchell told the Sunday Times that he had been told his death sentence was to have been a crucifixion, which involves the victim's head being partially severed and their body fixed to an x-shaped cross and hung in public for three days. Back home with his wife and son in Halifax, where the family are currently living, Mr Mitchell said he still wakes at night screaming. He added that his weight had plummeted, he had a heart condition and he had suffered damage to his ankles. He said he was still considering his next move in the fight to clear his name. The released men have been considering suing the Saudi authorities over their ordeal. "The people who abused us knew they abused us," said Mr Mitchell. "They knew we were innocent. They not just abused me but they abused the trust placed on them by the Saudi government and I think there are responsible people in the Saudi government who will want to redress this." Details have also been given of the alleged maltreatment of those imprisoned with Mr Mitchell. James Cottle, from Manchester, said his resolve was broken by incessant beatings and interrogations. Peter Brandon, from Lincolnshire, allegedly had a blindfold stuffed into his mouth to stifle his screams. Les Walker, from the Wirral, said his experiences in prison had "messed with" his brain. "I didn't think people treated people like this any more," he said. The Saudi authorities, meanwhile, have insisted that the case against the men was sound, and denied that they were abused in prison. No one was available for comment at the Saudi embassy in London yesterday but last month Adel al-Jubeir, foreign affairs adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah, said: "We have the evidence, we have the proof, and we stand by it. I don't expect that the men who were pardoned would come out and say 'Oh gee, the Saudis were really right, we were alcohol smugglers and we tried to shoot each other'. "But for people to think that Saudi Arabia tried to pin charges on foreigners in order to hide a terrorism problem is preposterous." * * * Baltimore Sun: September 7, 2003 CAMP DELTA INMATES WILL TALK FOR BURGERS Prison: The incentive program to gain information from terrorism suspects is just part of life at the Guantanamo camp. By Dan Fesperman, Sun Foreign Staff GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - American interrogators here have come up with a few new weapons as they try to pry loose the secrets of prisoners captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan. "It could be cupcakes, it could be Twinkies, it could even be a McDonald's hamburger," says Warrant Officer James Kluck, who, as the ranking food service officer, helps supply some of the unlikely ammunition. "Sometimes, they go up on the base and get [the prisoner] a Happy Meal." A McDonald's Happy Meal? "Oh, yes, from what I'm told. It's got a toy and everything." Yet, somehow it doesn't seem surprising at the strange and surreal Camp Delta, the seaside prison complex built by the Pentagon nearly a year and a half ago in this fenced-off corner of Cuba. It is a penal colony unlike any other ever created by the American government, nestled in cactus-spiked hills and visited by giant iguanas, but, by careful design, well beyond reach of defense lawyers and the U.S. Constitution. With a captor-to-captive ratio of greater than 4-to-1, it may be the world's most securely staffed prison, yet not a single detainee has been charged with a crime, or told how long he'll be staying. The detainee population is 660 men and three teen-age boys. Although the detainees are popularly held to be united in anti-American fanaticism, they are also a quarrelsome Babel, riven by religious schisms, 19 languages, the rivalries of 42 nations, and a high incidence of mental instability. Camp Delta, as well as neighboring Camp America where the military guards live, faces the wide open blue-green of the Caribbean, but captives and captors alike find the location claustrophobic, an isolated bunion on Cuba's rocky heel. And the camp's most important role is not as a prison but as an intelligence clearinghouse - for names of operatives, details of attack plans, and insights on recruitment tactics and organizational strategies. "We do approximately 300 interrogations a week, and we get better every week," says Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, commander of the task force of 2,800 soldiers and civilians who run the place. "Last month, we developed five times as much intelligence as we did in January. ... A lot of that is actionable intelligence." The evidence to back up such claims is classified, meaning it's impossible to independently verify. Around Camp Delta, that is known as "op-sec," or operational security, a watchword that is frequently posted and repeated. But Miller maintains that all of this secret information is increasingly being offered voluntarily, with prisoners asking for a chat in hopes of earning more exercise time, better living conditions, or more and better food. Which is where those Happy Meals and Twinkies come into play. "The incentive program has been in place since February," says Kluck, the food service officer. That was a month after he met with interrogation officials to discuss the sorts of foods that might elicit information. Inmates had expressed a particular desire for sweets, sometimes relaying their wishes through the military's Muslim chaplain. About the same time, Camp Delta officials were planning another inducement - a new medium-security wing that would offer communal living instead of solitary cells, larger portions of food, a larger exercise area and more time to use it. There were a few glitches. It took the food vendor two months to round up a supply of fresh dates, for example. But in April, the new medium-security Camp Four opened, and about 125 prisoners have earned their way inside, partly through good behavior, partly by virtually emptying themselves of useful information. A quick tour of the place on a recent afternoon found five detainees lounging with their lunches in a shaded portion of the exercise yard. All five were bearded, and one had shaved his head. They watched with interest as their visitors passed a volleyball court toward an empty cellblock. One nodded in acknowledgment, although none called out. That would be behavior subject to punishment. The predominant language of Camp Delta is Arabic, but most who have made it to medium-security status speak Pashto or Urdu, indicating that Afghans and Pakistanis have been more yielding than their counterparts from Arab states. Prison officials say that in the maximum-security wings are still plenty of inmates who clam up or act up. Some throw food, toothpaste or urine onto the guards, according to Col. Adolph McQueen, the joint detention group commander. Yet, for all the talk of the sweet tooth and exercise time as behavior modifiers, Camp Delta's most powerful incentive to detainees is the prospect of freedom. Guantanamo's basic message is clear: If you never talk, you might never get out, even if you're never charged with a crime. "One of the things [interrogators] have going for them is time," says William Tierney, a former Army intelligence officer who was an Arabic interpreter for some of the early rounds of interrogation at Guantanamo. "They just keep wearing these guys down. ... And I'm sure that is always subtly stressed - 'We have no idea when you're going to leave.' " Other consequences But the motivation that makes some prisoners talk seems to drive others to more desperate measures, including 31 suicide attempts by 20 prisoners to date, none successful. Those figures help explain why the idea of indefinite detention angers some human rights advocates, who criticize Camp Delta as a legal netherworld. The detainees aren't charged with crimes, so they are said not to be entitled to lawyers. They're not prisoners of war - "enemy combatant" is the preferred term here - so they don't receive the protection of the Geneva Convention. They're not on U.S. soil, so they have no constitutional protections. "[The Pentagon's] concept of the legal black hole is completely contrary to what the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] has interpreted the Geneva Convention to say," says Ken Hurwitz, a senior associate of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, based in New York. "They've been very clear on the subject that no [detainee] can be without a legal status." Such interpretations cut no ice here. Or, as Sgt. Maj. John R. VanNatta, Camp Delta's superintendent, says, "I don't have to worry much about lawsuits and things like that." As an Army reservist, VanNatta offers an interesting perspective on these matters. Back home in Indiana he is warden of a state prison with more than 3,000 inmates. The prisoners outnumber the staff about 4-to-1. Here the ratio is inverted. In Indiana, he worries about an inmate's well-being the most right after incarceration, when guilt and shame tend to be the sharpest. Nonetheless, he says, "Back home, in my experience, we've basically had no suicide attempts." He plays down many of the suicide attempts made here, saying, "A lot of it that I've seen is more of an attention-getter. 'I'll kill myself if you don't give me that,' and he proceeds to take a towel and attempt to string himself up. With a few of them, I think it has to do with being harassed by the other detainees, and there are some with mental health problems. But some of it is in fact the despair." The Pentagon would appear to have little incentive to alleviate this underlying despair, given its motivational powers. More prisoners are said to be choosing to cooperate every week. Miller says that about 80 percent have earned some sort of more lenient treatment. Nor are the inmates the only ones made more malleable by the specter of spending the rest of their days at Guantanamo. Word filtering back from officers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan says that the mere threat of transport to Guantanamo is enough to get recent captives talking. Early last year, detainees were housed at Camp X-Ray, a warren of chain-link cages that now sit empty, looking like an abandoned kennel. Those days also were a time of great dissatisfaction among the guarding forces, who were living in sweltering tents and complaining that they were being fed worse food than the prisoners. Improvements But most such talk has disappeared, thanks mostly to a new mess hall with a five-week rotating menu, not to mention a salad bar and soft ice-cream dispenser. There is also an open-air bar. There are occasional concerts (Jimmy Buffett flew in on his floatplane). The barracks are air-conditioned. Some officers have moved into rehabbed homes on the naval base next door. The naval base is complete with families, schools, Little Leagues, an outdoor movie theater, a diving shop, a sailing center and subdivisions that would look at home in the suburbs of Baltimore, which only adds to the surreal atmosphere. All these amenities are available to the Camp America forces. There is a nine- hole golf course, although the brown fairways are so parched that players carry swatches of fake turf as a portable hitting surface. Further spicing this mix are the Cuban watchtowers dotting the hilly horizon. "They can see 80 percent of what happens on this base," says Capt. Les McCoy, commander of the naval base. The main portion of the base is also home to a two-story building in which the Pentagon has built a courtroom, in readiness for military tribunals that will be used to try any detainees charged with crimes. New signs inside the building indicate locations for "Defense," "Prosecution," "Jury" and "Courtroom," but the courtroom remains closed to reporters. Miller insists that no decision has yet been made on the site of the tribunals, and he chooses his words carefully when asked whether an execution chamber has been built: "Joint Task Force Guantanamo has no approved plans for execution chambers." If and when tribunals begin here, Pentagon officials have indicated that no more than about 20 detainees are expected to be charged. That would leave about 640 detainees who would be wondering how long they will be imprisoned. Increased anxieties Such anxieties only intensify after detainees begin cooperating. "In [medium- security] Camp Four, they see the light at the end of the tunnel, and they tend to ask that question more," VanNatta says. "There is a little bit more anxiety about being released." As supervisor of Camp Four, Sgt. 1st Class James Harmon is often the one who fields those questions. His answers aren't encouraging. "I tell them I don't get into that subject of when they're going home, and that just because they're here doesn't mean it will be soon," he says. "I tell them to ask their interrogators." Sixty-eight detainees have been returned to their home countries, some to further detention. More bad news for prisoners is that, by all indications, Camp Delta is going to be around for some time to come. "The joint task force will be here as long as it takes to win the war on terror," General Miller says, declining to estimate how many years that might be. Copyright © 2003, The Baltimore Sun * * * September 3, 2003 - 05:22 AM ET NEW LEGAL BID MADE FOR AUSTRALIA AL QAEDA SUSPECTS CANBERRA (Reuters) - Lawyers for two Australian al Qaeda suspects locked in a U.S. naval base in Cuba launched a final bid on Wednesday to seek a ruling on the legality of their detention. David Hicks, an Islamic convert from Adelaide, has been held at Guantanamo Bay since his capture in Afghanistan in December 2001. Sydney man Mamdouh Habib has been held since his arrest in Pakistan in October 2001. No charges have been laid. But repeated attempts by Hicks's family and their lawyer, Stephen Kenny, to get access to the detainees or to bring them back to Australia for trial have failed. Kenny filed an application on Wednesday for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal against an earlier appeals court ruling that the military prison the pair are held in is outside the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. "This is the last court in the United States that we can appeal to," Kenny told Reuters. "If the court knocks back this petition it really is saying that the politicians and military have the final say on what happens at Guantanamo Bay and the courts will not interfere." Kenny argued that this would be a serious violation of the principles of international law as it would mean men held at Guantanamo Bay were beyond the reach of the law. The United States, which does not recognize the detainees as prisoners of war but as "enemy combatants," has been widely condemned overseas for holding some 660 men at the U.S. military base without allowing them to challenge their detention in court. The detainees were seized after the United States launched strikes on Afghanistan to flush out the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, its prime suspect in the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington and to punish bin Laden's Taliban protectors. Kenny said the U.S. government had about a month to file a response to this new application seeking leave to appeal, with a final decision expected some months after that. * * * * * * * * *