I wouldn't want to interrupt anyone in the middle of a war, but given the attention drawn earlier to the spying charges against Army Chaplain James Yee, including here at Winds of Change, perhaps without sufficient concern raised about the potential for abuse of government power, particularly in a time of war, it only seems fitting to note that the military has dropped all charges against Yee in what is widely thought to be an example of just such an abuse. I guess on some level the system worked.
Now, back to the war...
Subsequent Winds of War entries did in fact note that the military was backing off of these charges.
Best I can figure, Yee wasn't a good choice for an chaplain, especially at Gitmo. Shows that you have to supervise people, particularly the weak ones. My question is, at Gitmo, what is the chance that adultery would not be caught? But then, after the first incident, Yee should have been shown a General Discharge for conduct unbecoming before it came to this situation.
I was one who initially questioned the rush to judgement on Chaplain Yee on this blog. It does WoC credit that it is willing to highlight a mistake. This is a rare trait indeed among war blogs. I had recommended this site to others in the past, and now I'll do so again.
The Army did drop all court martial charges citing fear of evidence being released. But it did reprimand him for the adultery and pornography charges for which he will face "nonjudicial punishment".
This is not in the Martha Stewart class of outrage, but only barely. If they had the goods on the guy they should go after him. If they are afraid to see clasified evidence introduced into the public domain, then they should drop the whole thing, not jerk the guy around with reprimands as a consolation prize. They ultimately did something similar to Lee at Los Alamos.
However, if the government has a case and is legitimately worried about a prosecution making information public that should continue to be clasified, as apparently here, with Lee and with the German, we are going to have a lot of difficulty bringing anyone to justice through the law enforcement model.
It is frustrating that there is not enough evidence to tell which case is "the truth" if there even is a "truth" in these cases. But the track record being built is not impresive.
The fact pattern at Los Alamos was a bit different. For instance, WH Lee at LANL was under investigation for security violations. When the dicks got something solid on him, they caused his computer account to be cancelled, which would have prevented Lee from downloading any more nuclear data.
Lee simply called the LANL helpdesk and said that he was locked out and please, turn back on his account. The Helpdesk complied within the hour and Lee continuing processing nuclear data.
The question wasn't whether Lee had violated security regulations, he had. The question was whether LANL fostered an environment contemptuous of basic security concerns. This pervasive issue at the DoE labs was the determining mitigating fact in Judge Parker's findings.
No such mitigation exists in the Gitmo case.
Tom,
I don't disagree about the security environment at LANL but that is tangential to the fact that Lee was never prosecuted for anything after being smeared by the government in the national media. That's not right.
I'm not arguing the guy is innocent, I'm just saying if the government doesn't have a case it is willing to make in public, it shouldn't smear people instead. Slippery slope does apply here.
Lee got convicted, but the sentance was time served.
Its not like he works for LANL now.
Lee was not convicted by a jury or a judge. He coped a plea for time served. The point still holds that the government could not present a case against him in public. The government smeared him and then failed to produce a case. Shameful behaviour.
Unless I am mistaken, a guilty plea = conviction.
You may be semanticly correct but in my mind a guilty plea = a deal. The state proved nothing except that it can extort a guilty plea by throwing someone in jail until they, in essence, promise not to sue the government for false imprisonment. Lee would not be the first or last to cop a false guilty plea with no penalty attached to get it all over with.
My point is this is not vbery impressive and does not bode well for the law enforcement model of fighting terrorism.
Richard-
The point Judge Parker was making on the Lee deal/verdict/sentance/plea (and it was a legal mess) was that the result was mixed due to overwhelming mitigation due to LANL's incompetence. Lee's professional life was destroyed and he spent more than a year in close confinement. But the final plea was for misuse of classified documents, which is similar to what you might get if you negligently lost some critical documents. Due to LANL's investigation and FBI errors, the government couldn't prove anything more. There was serious thought that Parker would dismiss the case entirely if the plea hadn't gone through.