From chief prosecutor to critic at Guantanamo

The Defense Department's former chief prosecutor for terrorism cases appeared on Apr. 28 at the controversial US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay to argue on behalf of a terrorism suspect that the military justice system has been corrupted by politics and inappropriate influence from senior Pentagon officials. Sitting just feet from the courtroom table where he had once planned to make cases against military detainees, Air Force Col. Morris Davis instead took the witness stand to declare under oath that he felt undue pressure to hurry cases along so that the Bush administration could claim before political elections that the system was working. His testimony in a small, windowless room -- as a witness for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, an alleged driver for Osama bin Laden -- offered a harsh insider's critique of how senior political officials have allegedly influenced the system created to try suspected terrorists outside existing military and civilian courts. Davis said that top Pentagon officials, including Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England, made it clear to him that charging some of the highest-profile detainees before elections this year could have "strategic political value." "Once you got the victim families energized and the cases rolling, whoever won the White House would have difficulty stopping the proceeding," he said. Davis also said that Defense Department general counsel William J. Haynes II, who announced his retirement in February, once bristled at the suggestion that some defendants could be acquitted, an outcome that Davis said would give the process added legitimacy. "He said, 'We can't have acquittals,'" Davis said under questioning from Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, the military counsel who represents Hamdan. "'We've been holding these guys for years. How can we explain acquittals? We have to have convictions.'" Davis also decried as unethical a decision by top military officials to allow the use of evidence obtained by coercive interrogation techniques. He said Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, the legal adviser to the top military official overseeing the commissions process, was improperly willing to use evidence derived from waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning. "To allow or direct a prosecutor to come into the courtroom and offer evidence they felt was torture, it puts a prosecutor in an ethical bind," Davis testified. But he said Hartmann replied that "everything was fair game -- let the judge sort it out." He also said Hartmann took "micromanagement" of the prosecution effort to a new level and treated prosecutors with "cruelty and maltreatment." Hartmann, he said, was trying to take over the prosecutor's role, compromising the independence of the Office of Military Commissions, which decides which cases to bring and what evidence to use. Davis, who initially defended the commissions process, testified that he resigned his position as chief prosecutor late last year as senior officials increased pressure on him to make decisions he thought were inappropriate. He now heads the Air Force Judiciary and plans to retire.