Scum

Outrageous!

We've pronounced this guy guilty before we really have the faintest idea what he might have done. Is this rush to condemn based on his exercising his free speech rights on the loyalty of Muslims? I'll get the rope, you find the tree. The guy hasn't even been charged yet. He's being held in military confinement and will probably rot there until convicted or released on somebody's whim.

Can we really blindly trust big government to throw American citizens in the brig without respect for their basic constitutional rights and come out with the right decision, on innocence or guilt, on life or death. Or is that just the libertarian way in our free liberal democracy? Oh right. We're at war, anything goes.

I apologize for my lack of enthusiasm.

Gabriel,

Get a life. Past is prolog and we are at war, whether you want to believe it or not. They caught this man with secret documents on Gitmo and the M.P. routines no chaplain should have.

The first time is happenstance, the second time is coincidence....

First, we had one Islamic convert in the US Army go on a killing spree in the Iraq-Kuwait theater.

Now we have a US Army Islamic chaplain who has gone Jihadi and possibly as an agent of Syrian intelligence.

Given the zeal and success of the Wahabi missionaries here in the states, this will happen again and, P.C. policies or no P.C. policies, there are going to be political and security repercussions in US national security services and agencies.

A friend sent the following to me on how deeply in trouble this chaplain is in:

"Aiding the enemy, spying, espionage are all capital Articles under the UCMJ.

In fact, the Article on spying specifies no other penalty but death."

Here are some relevant sections from a Wash. Times article related to my comments above. There is enough there in the way of a pattern to keep Army Counter Intelligence busy for a long time.

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030921-124441-4011r.htm

Military confirms Muslim chaplain had secret papers

By Steve Miller
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

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.

and

Fort Lewis is also the base where D.C. sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad served during his military service.

and

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.

Trent,

Your personal conviction of Yee's guilt is highly reassuring. Otherwise, I thought the guy might actually be entitled to a presumption of innocence or that, at a bare minimum, we ought to be a bit more suspicious about what our government tells us and the appropriate limits of state powers. I also now understand that he is a repeat offender since an entirely different convert to Islam fragged a group of American soldiers earlier this year. I also hadn't realized that there was any reasonable doubt - given the early stage of our "investigation" - that he was a jihadi bent on our destruction and working for Syrian intelligence to boot. I had also overlooked the fact that his guilt is further proved beyond doubt by the guilt and success of Wahabi missionaries. I'd better start getting used to this and a set aside all of my concern about due process, excesses of government power, etc. From now on, I promise to blindly trust my government: Ignorance is Strength.

Jeez, why are they even holding this guy? Just kill him. We're at war after all.

The last time I raised a question that challenged statements on this blog, I was charged with being a "troll." In the hope that this kind of hysterical reflex does not represent the management of this site. I’ll venture into risky territory again and ask, in all sincerity:

Is it possible that a chaplain charged with ministry to nearly 600 prisoners, and who has been on site less than one year, might find a map of where these prisoners’ cells are to be a useful navigational tool? Similarly, might not such a chaplain find a list of prisoners and their interrogators also to be useful in keeping abreast of each prisoner’s name and interrogation status? What is the evidence that these documents were used for nefarious purposes? Why can’t we wait for more information before passing judgement?

Please spare me the ad hominem attacks and tedious sarcasm. Just answer the questions, preferably with data.

Joel,

I'm going to have to chime in again. Anything is possible. In fact, it is entirely possible that this guy is guilty as hell. Whether Yee is guilty or innocent is not the point, it's the apparent rush to judgment, with no skepticism regarding the government's allegations. I for one see no irony whatsoever in the fact that an Muslim Chaplain would defend the great majority of his co-religionists from the kind of suppositions apparently expressed here.

With due respect to Trent, the concerns and circumstantial evidence he cites is far from constituting a case for conviction, unless being Muslim creates a presumption of guilt or unless the acts of three individuals - random shootings in Washington, a fragging incident in Kuweit, and a guy (purportedly) carrying documents from Gitmo - are supposed to constitute a pattern.

My experience is that, war or no war, abuse of insufficiently checked government powers - and most especially powers of prosecution - is not only dangerous, but virtually inevitable. In my experience (as a lawyer often involved in international criminal cases), most of what is printed in the press or charged by prosecution sources about people fingered in high profile scandals is false. If Steven Hatfill or Wen Ho Lee had converted to Islam in the past, rather than suing the government for abuse of process they would likely have been classified as enemy combatants and we might know nothing whatsoever about them. Isn't that of some concern?

(And no, Winds of Change encompasses a broad spectrum of views and does not label people as trolls for mere disagreement. Right Joe?)

He studied Islam at West Point and converted to Islam...

I knew that USMA had watered down the curriculum since I attend, but this is ridiculous.

People will rush to judgement, it's one of our faults. I, for one, will wait until the end of his trial, though it doesn't sound good for him right now.

I'm sure this chaplain will receive all the rights that are given to him in the UCMJ and relevant military regulations.

48-hour rule for things like this. At least.

Is it possible that a chaplain charged with ministry to nearly 600 prisoners, and who has been on site less than one year, might find a map of where these prisoners’ cells are to be a useful navigational tool?

My understanding is that he had escort service, so he wouldn't have needed to make or take a map of the facility.

And making a map of such a place is not something you do casually - such documents as he is said to have had are very sensitive, intelligence-wise, and being military he would know this very well. Carrying the information around in paper form, well... that looks very bad to me. You don't reduce such information to a document that can be stolen (or given to someone else) without being aware of the ramifications. Nor bring such documents on the trip to Florida - I can't think of ANY legitimate reason to carry a map of Gitmo on such a trip.

I'm sure he will, as I'm sure the case for conviction will be laid before a military tribunal - not us. When dealing with intelligence and military matters, this is simple prudence. Any U.S. trooper charged with an offence in Iraq would face the same.

Apparently, Yee had been under surveillance for quite a while now. We'll see what happens, but when the military moves in on a person after watching them for a long time, odds of the whole thing being some kind of big misunderstanding are pretty low.

Indeed, I'm almost wondering if he was given this post BECAUSE the Army suspected disloyalty. I mean, his background after returning from Syria was highly suspicious at best. It would certainly make good sense as an Intelligence op, allowing careful surveillance to trace back to his contacts on the outside (if any) and then go from there. That part, however, is not something we'd be told.

If that is the scenario, and they rolled him up now, it means one of two things:

[1] Watching him has told them all they believe they'll learn; and/or

[2] There's something they wanted to keep him away from - either something inside Gitmo, or something anticipated on the outside that they wanted to disrupt.

Joel, the New York Times said Yee had diagrams of the prisoner facilities. The CBC quotes CNN as saying he also had lists of interrogators and prisoners. It is the list of interrogators that sticks out. With that information, confederates on the outside can kidnap a guard's child and force cooperation. The diagrams of the prison would come in handy, too. Whatever Yee intended, that information, had it reached the Syrians, would have meant the death of many Americans, including children. No one is prejudging Lee. He will have his day in court. But the charges are serious.

The charges are incredibly serious.

This isn't some episode of The Practice we're talking about here. This is a charge of treasonous behaviour that includes spying for the enemy in wartime, and attempting to place a terrorist bullseye on the families of military interrogators. By a member of the military, no less.

This is not some O.J. circus civilian trial.

You guys are all assuming that the espionage charge means that this stuff was going to the Syrians. You forget that at least two mid-ranking al-Qaeda leaders (Mullah Fuad and Abderazzak) were in Damascus earlier this year but that the Syrians didn't detain them. I'm gonna do some blog work on this a little bit later, but the Syrians let one go back to Algeria unmolested and the other just vanished into the sunset.

Of the two, Abderazzak is a top commander within the Algerian GSPC on his own right and is probably $5,000,000 richer thanks to the tourists his group abducted earlier this year. He and Mokhtar Belmokhtar (who runs the GSPC's faux "government-in-exile" from Niger) worked with Zarqawi to pull off those ricin plots in Europe earlier this year. They're every bit as essential to al-Qaeda (especially in Europe, where there is a robust population of Algerian expatriates) as the other commanders who have been rounded up to date.

So figure that Yee may have been in some kind of contact with the GSPC in Syria (and by extension, al-Qaeda's leadership in Iran, which has close ties with Syria) either via the Internet or those anonymous Swiss calling cards to keep them up to date on who had been captured, how they were holding up, and possibly some details as to what they've told the US. Rohan Gunaratna speculated in his book that there may have been as many as a dozen "serving sympathizers" in various Western militaries and governments, let alone in the Arab world.

I would advise anyone shocked by this to remember Ali Mohammed.

The constitutional "presumption of innocence" is a statement regarding the relative burdens of proof at trial. It isn't a prohibition from forming an opinion as a non-participant in said trial such as we are.

"Rush to judgement" is meaningless rhetoric. As a spectator with no duty to apply any particular standards of proof or pursuasion. I may "rush" to form any judgement that entertains me.

Generally, I suspect all religious converts.

Not of spying, but of some imbalance in their psyche. They abandon the beliefs and rituals of their childhood, for what? Some belief foreign to their kith and kin, to fulfill some need to be "saved."

So many are zealots of some type.

Thanks, Joe, for your initial reply to my query. While not exactly data-laden, it conceded the main point, which is that "time will tell." In contrast to some of the patronizing crap that followed, viz:

"'Rush to judgement' is meaningless rhetoric. As a spectator with no duty to apply any particular standards of proof or pursuasion. I may "rush" to form any judgement that entertains me."

Indeed you may. Treason charges as entertainment. Pathetic.

Thank you Joel for confirming that you don't get my point.

Why a map? Why names of prisoners, when I understand we do not know the names of ALL, as SOME refuse to give names? Why names of interagators associated with names of prisoners? Was he intending to minister to family of prisoners or family of interagators? What type of a ministry would that be?

In case anyone missed it, a second servicemen at Gitmo, a USAF translator, was arrested and charged withh espionage for the Syrian government.

Yes. The bastard was caught giving prisoners baklava. Dammit. I want some baklava too.

Gitmo has existed for quite some time now. They are only just discovering espionage?

This is from best of the web:

The Road to Damascus

The Washington Post reports that Ahmad Halabi, the Air Force Arabic translator whose arrest we noted yesterday, is charged with spying for his native Syria. Military authorities allege Halabi "attempted to deliver sensitive information to Syria, including more than 180 notes from prisoners, a map of the installation, the movement of military aircraft to and from the base, intelligence documents and the names and cellblock numbers of captives at the prison in Cuba."

James Yee, the Muslim chaplain whose arrest became public earlier, also has Syria ties; he traveled there to study religion after converting to Islam. Meanwhile, the New York Post says unnamed Pentagon sources say "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."

This casts in a new light Janet Reno's invidious comparison of purported wartime civil-liberties violations to FDR's internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Add these allegations to the cases of Marin mujahid John Walker Lindh and enemy combatant Jose Padilla, and it becomes clear that there actually is a fifth column among Arab- and Muslim Americans, as there was not among Japanese-Americans.

This is from best of the web:

The Road to Damascus

The Washington Post reports that Ahmad Halabi, the Air Force Arabic translator whose arrest we noted yesterday, is charged with spying for his native Syria. Military authorities allege Halabi "attempted to deliver sensitive information to Syria, including more than 180 notes from prisoners, a map of the installation, the movement of military aircraft to and from the base, intelligence documents and the names and cellblock numbers of captives at the prison in Cuba."

James Yee, the Muslim chaplain whose arrest became public earlier, also has Syria ties; he traveled there to study religion after converting to Islam. Meanwhile, the New York Post says unnamed Pentagon sources say "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."

This casts in a new light Janet Reno's invidious comparison of purported wartime civil-liberties violations to FDR's internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Add these allegations to the cases of Marin mujahid John Walker Lindh and enemy combatant Jose Padilla, and it becomes clear that there actually is a fifth column among Arab- and Muslim Americans, as there was not among Japanese-Americans.

Trent,

Your argument holds only if you assume the guilt of all purported members of the supposed Fifth Column and display a virtual blind faith in accusations brought by the government. I am not sure if the handful of cases you cite properly constitute a "column" anyway.

While these cases obviously raise national security concerns and there are suspicious tidbits of information that have come out about the charges, there are other aspects that, in my opinion, are being spun out of bounds. Fox news characterizes their interviews with Yee as suspicious before they even air them and there is absolutely NOTHING unusual about anything he says or does in the course of those interviews. We are programmed to condemn him. Press accounts of CAIR's statement about transparency and disclosure of the whole truth is ridiculed, yet that statement is entirely reasonable.

What happened to skepticism about insufficiently constrained state power? Do the current due process procedures in place (or lack thereof) inspire confidence, especially where certain detainees have not been allowed to speak to their legal counsel for over a year? Is the right balance really struck?

I'm not just concerned about the presumption of innocence as a legal matter, but also the public presumption that, at a minimum, the government at times can be mistaken or overzealous. Like the true conservative I am, I remain wary.

What, no mention on the blog of the update in this case? Entertaining, eh?

Prosecutors Say It's Unclear Papers Chaplain Carried Were Classified
By NEIL A. LEWIS

Published: December 10, 2003

FORT BENNING, Ga., Dec. 9 — The criminal proceedings against Capt. James J. Yee, the former Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, fell into confusion on Tuesday and stalled as the military prosecutors asked for extra time to determine whether documents that were found in Captain Yee's luggage when he was leaving the base were, in fact, classified.

The hearing was postponed until Jan. 19 to give the prosecutors time to review the documents that set off a major investigation into whether Captain Yee was a spy, a contention from which the government has since emphatically distanced itself.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/10/national/10YEE.html?ex=1386478800&en=253cd6db09d468aa&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND