A look at the Hamdan case from defenders' perspectives
The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight Over Presidential Power
By Jonathan Mahler, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 334 pages, $26
During the final month of 2001, with the repercussions of 9/11 altering lives around the globe, a 31-year-old man from the isolated nation of Yemen became an unwilling player in America's war on terror.
The man, Salim Hamdan, had departed Yemen at age 26, hoping to find a job that would support a family and perhaps give meaning to the tenets of his Muslim faith. The job pipeline led Hamdan to a then not particularly famous employer named Osama bin Laden, who needed help to direct his organization, Al Qaeda. While employed by bin Laden, Hamdan married a Yemeni woman and fathered two children. At times, Hamdan served as bin Laden's driver.
No evidence existed linking Hamdan to violence in general, or to the 9/11 attacks in particular. But his name understandably appeared on lists of suspects. Northern Alliance soldiers in Afghanistan found him, bound him with electrical wire, and delivered him to the US military in exchange for a $5,000 bounty. Hamdan resided temporarily at a US Air Force base, then at a Middle Eastern prison camp operated by the United States.
In May 2002, Hamdan found himself shuttled to the US detention facility on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, imprisoned with supposedly some of the most deadly terrorists in the world. Of all those detainees, Hamdan won the unwanted designation from President Bush as the first Arab defendant in the post-9/11 war crimes trials.
As journalist Jonathan Mahler, a
Mahler decided to build the narrative around Hamdan's military lawyer, Charles Swift, a Navy lieutenant commander, plus Neal Katyal, a precocious law professor at Georgetown University. Mahler's decision can fairly be termed brilliant. Lawyers from any quarter are rarely portrayed as heroes in American culture (with Jan Schlichtmann of "A Civil Action" qualifying as a notable exception). For readers who treasure dissenters willing to place their careers at risk, Swift and Katyal are satisfying protagonists.
The book is extremely detailed, as Mahler shares almost every twist of a complicated and in many ways unprecedented proceeding by the US government against an alleged terrorist enemy combatant. As many readers will already know, the challenge to the Bush administration military tribunals mounted by Swift, Katyal, and companion lawyers surprisingly reached the US Supreme Court during 2006. Even more surprising, five of the eight justices participating ruled against the Bush plan. The appellate victory, however, did not free Hamdan from Guantanamo. Rather, the court ruling gave him a slightly better chance at a fair trial by a military judge and jury.
Mahler skillfully portrays the increasingly depressed mental state of Hamdan, as he is interrogated roughly, perhaps tortured physically, separated from his loved ones who have no visitation rights, plus kept in solitary confinement for long stretches. Hamdan becomes an unforgettable character in the narrative, but pales compared to the quirky, flawed heroes Swift and Katyal. They granted Mahler untrammeled access to their work and home routines, making them seem, unexpectedly, larger than life amidst the details of their existence.
Because the legal maneuvering involves lots of arcane concepts, not every page of the book is easygoing. Mahler is skilled, however, at explaining arcane concepts by using anecdotes, metaphors, analogies, and detailed explanations. Readers might feel as if they deserve law degrees by page 300. They might - should - also feel grateful that Mahler has enlightened them about one of the most important law cases in the news. In an epilogue too late for the book, a military jury last month sentenced Hamdan to a light sentence of 5 1/2 years, far less than the government sought, making him eligible for release in January.
Steve Weinberg's most recent book is "Taking on the Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller." 