Pentagon Targets Military Lawyer Who Released Detainee Data

Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish writes today on how the Pentagon has gone after its own military lawyers "who have stood up to the illegal and sometimes criminal detainee policies of the Bush administration" in the war on terror. He suggests reading Scott Horton's piece Monday in Harper's Magazine on the government's prosecution of Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz, currently underway in Norfolk, Va.

Diaz, Horton writes, is being prosecuted for sending a list of the detainees at Guantanamo -- inside a Valentine -- to the New York Center for Constitutional Rights in January 2005. The Pentagon under the leadership of Donald Rumsfeld wanted to keep the list secret. But as Horton points out, the administration had responsibilities under U.S. and international law to disclose the list.

So the names of the detainees were required to be disclosed. Their non-disclosure was a criminal act. A federal court compelled their disclosure. And now a Guantanamo JAG is being prosecuted for disclosing the names, with a claim that his action was "with intent to benefit a foreign nation." What is the matter with this picture?

In February, Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift wrote a piece for Esquire magazine in which he explained why he "sued my commander in chief and the secretary of defense on behalf of a Guantanamo Bay detainee named Salim Hamdan." Swift's action successfully challenged the Bush administration's use of military tribunals.

NPR reported last October that Swift was forced to resign under Navy rules of "up or out" after he was passed over for promotion. Swift said at the time that he didn't think he was being forced to retire in retribution for suing the Bush administration.

Finally, the Blog of Legal Times reports the Department of Justice today argued in front of a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for even more restriction on lawyers' ability to talk to their clients at Guantanamo: "The government's proposed rules would mean the search of legal mail, limits on attorneys' initial meeting with detainees and prohibitions on what these lawyers could say to their clients."

4:37 PM ET | 05-15-2007 | permalink