The Good, The Bad and The Prosecuted
The Feds Swarm In On A Navy Lawyer Who Held Them Accountable by Leaking The Identities of Gitmo Detainees.
Last week, in a news cycle dominated by Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales’ latest woes, the conviction and sentencing of Lt. Cmdr. Matthew M. Diaz made hardly a ripple. On May 17, Diaz was found guilty of leaking secret information about Guantanamo detainees. According to prosecutors, Diaz was intent on aiding enemies of the United States and endangering U.S. troops.
His crime? Diaz, a career Navy lawyer, made the foolish mistake of believing that the U.S. government should respect the basic rights of the Guantanamo detainees.
In 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court held (in Rasul vs. Bush) that the hundreds of anonymous Guantanamo detainees who had been held incommunicado for years were entitled to seek judicial review of their detentions, with the assistance of lawyers. But when attorneys for the Center for Constitutional Rights — the group that had successfully brought the Rasul case to the high court — requested a list of detainees, the Defense Department refused to provide it.
Appalled by what he saw as an effort to circumvent the court’s ruling, Diaz, who was then the deputy director of Guantanamo’s legal office, printed out a list of detainees and sent it — anonymously — to the rights group.
What Diaz did was foolish and wrong. He should have gone up the chain of command to protest the Defense Department’s decision, or resigned. But in the poisonous atmosphere of Guantanamo — where cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners was authorized, where showing simple humanity was considered suspicious and where minor dissent from administration policy could lead to severe career consequences — Diaz felt he had no choice.
In 2005, when investigators discovered it was Diaz who had released the list of detainees, military prosecutors came down hard on him. They piled on multiple charges, enough to put him in prison for decades.
Ironically, in 2006 a federal court declared that the list of names of Guantanamo detainees was public information and the government released it to the Associated Press. But this came too late to help Diaz, whose rash gesture was still prosecuted as aggressively as if he’d sold nuclear secrets to Iran.
When Diaz sent the list of detainee names to the rights group, he already knew what human rights advocates suspected but couldn’t prove: that many Guantanamo detainees were merely Taliban foot soldiers or, in some cases, innocent men who had been wrongly detained, and that the detainees had been subjected to illegal interrogation techniques.
As Diaz put it in an interview with the Dallas Morning News, the administration’s claim that the Guantanamo detainees were “the worst of the worst” was one of “two misstatements or false statements that occurred about Guantanamo…. The other statement was ‘we do not torture.’ ”
A 2006 Seton Hall study of declassified records indicates that fewer than half of the Guantanamo detainees were determined by the military to have committed “hostile acts against the United States,” and only 8% were considered to be Al Qaeda fighters. Some of the detainees have been determined by the military to be noncombatants, but they remain detained for the simple reason that our government can’t figure out what else to do with them.
The aggressive prosecution of Diaz stands in depressing contrast to lackadaisical government efforts to prosecute U.S. personnel implicated in detainee abuse cases.
Last year, a study by New York University’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice found that fewer than 15% of the 600-plus U.S. personnel implicated in detainee abuse had been court-martialed and fewer than 10% received any prison time. In several notorious cases, even brutal killings of detainees led only to nonjudicial “administrative” punishments.
The prosecution of Diaz highlights the degree to which U.S. interrogation and detention policies have become unjustifiably arbitrary. Our detention policies scoop up the innocent and the guilty alike — and Diaz, who broke the law in an effort to prevent abuses, found himself aggressively prosecuted, while others who committed abuses remain wholly unaccountable. That’s no way to promote the rule of law.
Fortunately for Diaz, the seven Navy officers who made up the jury in his case were more humane than the higher-ups who spearheaded his prosecution. The jury rejected the most serious charge against Diaz and sentenced him to only six months in prison.
The jury understood that the persistence of deep injustice may lead some to break the letter of the law in an effort to uphold the law’s spirit. When Diaz mailed the list of detainees to human rights lawyers, he did the wrong thing — but he did so for all the right reasons.
Rosa Brooks is a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, currently taking a leave of absence to work on a book and serve as special counsel at the Open Society Institute.
© 2007 The Los Angeles Times
Funny how years after the leak of Valerie Plame’s cover, no one’s spent a day in prison.
When the Top Cop for the US compared to a consigliore for the Mafia makes the mob lawyer look like a choir boy, the law itself is broken.
Impeach Gonzales and if there are any in the legal profession, disbar him. And Harriet Meiers. They have no respect for democratic law and therefore are in contempt not only of Congress (DUH!) in front of which they’ve testified during hearings, they are contemptuous of the courts and the Constitution.
Where are the 21st Century versions of Sam Ervin and The Honorable Judge Maximum John Sirica?
Harriet Miers! LMAO Just the thought of that ugly, old crow, standing beside bush when he announced her nomination as a Supremem Court Justice, cracks me up… at least now we know why he was trying to reward her.
W stands for World court. Try, convict, execute!
The perversion of the military justice system and the Department of Justice is the final crack to the spine of America. We are now a people separated from our Constitution by a corrupt and treacherous government with no loyal opposition to represent our case. Someone once said that God smiled when he made America. He smiles no more.
What Diaz did was right!
“What Diaz did was foolish and wrong. He should have gone up the chain of command to protest the Defense Department’s decision, or resigned.”
Except the chain of command is corrupted by loyal Bushies and resigning only means being ignored. The more Diazs who choose “foolish and wrong” action in their opposition to this regime the better. In case y’all just showed up to this movie, so far, NOTHING WE DO HAS HAD ANY EFFECT WHATSOEVER! Actually, things are clearing heading in the wrong direction altogether.
So, definitely, let’s all stay between the lines and play by THEIR rules and watch our country burn. At least we can say “we followed proper channels.”
I apologize to those who read all the articles on commondreams, but I want to reach as many people as I can. This information has me completely freaked out.
A Presidential Directive was signed by President Bush on May 9th giving him unconstrained powers in case of a national emergency. In the case of a national emergency (terrorist attack), I don’t want that psychopath in charge of anything. How can he get away with this? It’s terrifying!!!
worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55825
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
President Bush has signed a directive granting extraordinary powers to the office of the president in the event of a declared national emergency, apparently without congressional approval or oversight.
The “National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive
” was
signed May 9, notes Jerome R. Corsi in a WND column
.
It was issued with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, as a Homeland Security Presidential Directive.
The directive establishes under the office of the president a new national continuity coordinator whose job is to make plans for “National Essential Functions” of all federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments,
as well as private sector organizations to continue functioning under the president’s directives in the event of a national emergency.
“Catastrophic emergency” is loosely defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage,
or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.”
It says the president can assume the power to direct any and all government and business activities until the emergency is declared over.
The directive says the assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, currently Frances Fragos Townsend
, would be designated as the national continuity coordinator.
Corsi says the directive makes no attempt to reconcile the powers created for the national continuity coordinator with the National Emergency Act
,
which requires that such proclamation “shall immediately be transmitted to the Congress and published in the Federal Register.”
A Congressional Research Service study notes the National Emergency Act sets up Congress as a balance empowered to “modify, rescind, or render dormant” such emergency authority if Congress believes the president has acted
inappropriately.
But the new directive appears to supersede the National Emergency Act by creating the new position of national continuity coordinator without any specific act of Congress authorizing the position, Corsi says.
The directive also makes no reference to Congress and its language appears to negate any requirement that the president submit to Congress a determination that a national emergency exists.
It suggests instead that the powers of the directive can be implemented without any congressional approval or oversight.
Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke affirmed to Corsi the Homeland Security Department would implement the requirements of the order under
Townsend’s direction.
The White House declined to comment on the directive.
Where are the Sam Ervin’s ? they are no more. You saw the slime version one named Monica lie to the committee investigating Gonzales this week.In the name of God these rightwing nuts are destroying our constitution all of our laws and our way of life. Monica,Gonzie and the other crooks should be in prison.
Somebody needs to award this guy some prize for being willing to go to jail for the sake of the rights and freedoms of the rest of us.
He needs to be booked on a speaking circuit all over the US wher honeraria are paid to help support someone whose official record will be tarnished with a conviction and prison term. Just a way the rest of us can tell all those brown-nosing suck-ups who prosecuted him what we think of their version of “justice”.
The President, and many others (who are subject to The Law) have not been caught yet, or prosecuted. The President has broken the law.
Where are the handcuffs.
Cosmos -
That is completely frightening! What can we do? Who do we tell? Holy shit!
The chain of command in the military is completly corrupt, Lynch, Tillman, Willy Pete at Fallujah, Zero for hundreds when bombing “high value” human targets in residential neighborhoods, busting 9 of the lowest ranking troops for implementing orders from the White House for torture at Abu Ghraib while the brass goes free, weapons systems that end up costing 5 times the origional price then don’t work, the list is endless.
I had not heard a word about this case till now, the seven officers on this jury no doubt ended their careers with this verdict, the few honest officers are forced out so the corrupt gain even more power.
It can aptly be called MARS rules… the warriors make up the rules, and it’s a lot like the sci-fi “outer Limits” in that they demand “the right” to control the vertical and horizontals of our world. JUSTICE is the antithesis of warrior mentality; they invented the whole “my way or the high way” protocol; but of course, just imprisoning people and silencing their voices, while extinguishing any HOPE of justice makes perfect sense to those who live from pure vengeance coupled with ego and are CERTAIN that they are on the side/team of “right.” I’m glad I believe in karma, the final arbiters on these matters of implausibility!