Senators urge inquiry into Army chaplain's case

WASHINGTON -- Senator Edward M. Kennedy yesterday asked Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld for a formal investigation into the case of Army Captain James "Yousef" Yee, demanding to know whether the former Muslim chaplain at the Guantanamo Bay Navy base ever had classified materials that would have justified his detention.

Kennedy, joined by fellow Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan sent a letter to Rumsfeld saying the treatment of Yee, who was locked up for 76 days in a brig while the military investigated suspicions of espionage, "raises serious questions about the fair and effective administration of military justice."

"We ask you to conduct an investigation into the Army's handling of this case, including whether the extensive pretrial confinement and the charges against Chaplain Yee were supported by the evidence," the senators wrote. "The investigation should also address how and why information on this case was released to the press."

A spokesman for the Office of the Secretary of Defense said he had not yet seen the letter but was "sure that we will be happy to review whatever the request is from the senators."

Yee's civilian lawyer, Eugene Fidell, said he welcomed the congressional interest in his client's case.

"Senators Levin and Kennedy are to be commended for saying in public what a lot of Americans have been saying privately, which is that this is a baffling case that requires some explanation," Fidell said.

Yee, who is now on leave, has not spoken publicly about his experience and did not respond to a request to be interviewed by the Globe. His current commander has ordered him not to make any speech that would be "disrespectful" toward military authorities or other officials or to criticize military policy in a "disloyal" manner -- restrictions Fidell says amount to a gag order.

The case against Yee began on Sept. 10, when he flew to Jacksonville, Fla., from the base in Cuba where he ministered to Muslim soldiers and to roughly 650 accused Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners being held there.

A customs agent, tipped off by waiting FBI and military counterintelligence officials, searched Yee's bag and discovered that the chaplain had some kind of papers with information apparently related to the military's detention and interrogation of the prisoners. The military has never explained why they grew suspicious of Yee.

Yee was detained in a brig in South Carolina -- much of that time in maximum-security conditions during which he was allowed outside his cell in shackles for one hour a day, Fidell said. Yasser Hamdi and Jose Padilla, the two US citizen "enemy combatants" whose cases will be heard by the Supreme Court on Wednesday, are also being held there.

At one point, a military prosecutor told the military defense lawyer to add someone with death penalty qualifications to his team.

News of Yee's arrest was first reported Sept. 20 in a front-page article in The Washington Times. Citing a "law enforcement source," the newspaper reported that Yee had been charged with "sedition, aiding the enemy, spying, espionage, and failure to obey a general order."

Other news outlets, following that report, amplified the negative publicity. Speculation that Yee was part of a spy ring at Guantanamo echoed across 24-hour cable news television as two translators at the base were also arrested.

In fact, Yee was never charged with any of those crimes. The Army eventually accused him of mishandling classified information by taking papers home and transporting them without the proper covers, along with adultery and downloading pornography onto his government computer -- offenses alleged during the investigation. He still faced up to 13 years in prison.

But in a single day of a pre-court-martial hearing in December, prosecutors spent most of the day talking about sex, not security. That hearing was then suspended because prosecutors acknowledged that they had not completed a classification review on the papers taken from Yee.

Earlier this year, the then-Guantanamo commander, General Geoffrey Miller, downgraded the case to administrative proceedings and dropped the charges relating to classified materials. That meant the military never had to say exactly what the evidence taken from Yee at the time of his arrest showed.

Last month, Miller found Yee guilty of adultery and accessing porn on his government computer and ordered him punished by placing a letter of reprimand in his permanent file. Last week, General James Hill of the US Southern Command decided on appeal to set aside Yee's reprimand and withhold mention of the entire matter from his military file.

Hill cited Yee's confinement and the "extreme notoriety of his case in the news media" to support his decision to set aside the punishment, saying he did not believe "that further stigmatizing Chaplain Yee would serve a just and fair purpose."

Fidell said he hoped Rumsfeld would give the case his attention because the secretary of defense "can do that which the uniformed Army has thus far failed to do, which is provide an apology."