http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-guantanamo-tribunaloc...

"Last month, Vandeveld resigned from active duty, becoming at least the fourth prosecutor to quit under protest."

Tribunal misgivings drive Gitmo prosecutor to quit

By Josh Meyer |Tribune Newspapers
2:18 AM CDT, October 12, 2008

WASHINGTON — Darrel Vandeveld was in despair. The hard-nosed lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve had lost faith in the Guantanamo Bay war crimes tribunals in which he was one of the prosecutors.

His work was top secret, making it impossible to talk to family or friends. So the devout Catholic — working away from home—contacted a priest via the Internet.

"I am beginning to have grave misgivings about what I am doing, and what we are doing as a country," Vandeveld wrote in an August e-mail. "I no longer want to participate in the system, but I lack the courage to quit. I am married, with children, and not only will they suffer, I'll lose a lot of friends."

He even reached out for advice from his opposing counsel, a military defense lawyer.

"How do I get myself out of this office?" Vandeveld asked Air Force Maj. David Frakt, who was representing the young Afghan Vandeveld had been ordered to prosecute for an attack on U.S. soldiers — despite his doubts about whether Mohammed Jawad would get a fair trial.

Last month, Vandeveld resigned from active duty, becoming at least the fourth prosecutor to quit under protest. Their assertions raise fundamental questions about the fairness of the war crimes tribunals from the very people charged with implementing them, according to legal experts, human-rights observers and some current and former military officials.

In a declaration and subsequent testimony, Vandeveld said the U.S. government is not providing defense lawyers with the evidence that it has against their clients, including exculpatory information—material that is considered helpful to the defense.

Vandeveld testified that he went from being a "true believer to someone who felt truly deceived [by the tribunals]."

Army Col. Lawrence Morris, the chief prosecutor and Vandeveld's boss, said the Office of Military Commissions provides the defense "every scrap of paper and information." Vandeveld, he said, simply was disgruntled because his commanding officers disagreed with some of his legal tactics.

"I care not for myself; our enemies deserve nothing less than what we would expect from them were the situations reversed," Vandeveld said. "More than anything, I hope we can rediscover some of our American values." Some tribunal defense lawyers are preparing to call Vandeveld as a witness, saying his claims of systemic problems at Guantanamo, if true, could alter the outcome of every pending case there.

Vandeveld, now 48, once lived a relatively placid life outside Erie, Pa., with his wife and four children. He worked as a senior deputy state attorney general in charge of consumer protection in the region.

Called to active duty after the Sept. 11 attacks, Vandeveld received outstanding evaluations as a Pentagon legal adviser and judge advocate in Bosnia, the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq.

"One of the Corps' best and brightest," his commanding officer, Gen. Charles Barr, wrote in Vandeveld's June 2006 evaluation. "Save the very toughest jobs in the Corps for him."

From his Iraq assignment, Vandeveld went to Guantanamo, where he began locking horns over the Jawad case with Frakt.

Frakt believed that his client was, at worst, a confused Afghan teen of about 16 who had been brainwashed and drugged by militant extremists who coerced him into participating in a grenade-throwing incident with other older — and guiltier —men.

Vandeveld told the L.A. Times he kept finding information that appeared to bolster Frakt's claims that evidence was being withheld — including some favorable to the defense, such as information suggesting that Jawad was underage, that he was drugged before the incident and abused by U.S. forces afterward.

With Frakt pressing for the charges to be dismissed due to "outrageous government misconduct," Vandeveld proposed a plea agreement in which Jawad, now thought to be 22, could return to Afghanistan and get rehabilitation. But his superiors rejected it, Vandeveld said.

By late August, he had told Frakt that there were other "disquieting" things about Guantanamo and that his superiors were refusing to address them or to let him quietly transfer out, Frakt said.

"Now might be a good time to take a courageous stand and expose some of the 'disquieting' things that you have alluded to, whatever they may be," Frakt replied in a Sept. 2 e-mail.

Morris and other Pentagon officials say Vandeveld is not qualified to speak to systemwide problems at Guantanamo. But Frakt says he is, and that Vandeveld's declaration only scratches the surface of his concerns, according to their extensive conversations and hundreds of e-mail exchanges.

"There is a lot more that he knows," Frakt said.

Los Angeles Times