An Unlikely Hero

Egads! There is actually someone more naive than I am, or at least was. One of the Gitmo prosecutors, a self-admitted conformist and true believer, resigned from his job with the military tribunals because he finally had to confront the fact that the so-called "trials" were set up only for convictions. From the Los Angeles Times:

Darrel J. Vandeveld was in despair. The hard-nosed lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, a self-described conformist praised by his superiors for his bravery in Iraq, had lost faith in the Guantanamo Bay war crimes tribunals in which he was a prosecutor. ...

Vandeveld is at least the fourth prosecutor to resign under protest. Questions about the fairness of the tribunals have been raised by the very people charged with conducting them, according to legal experts, human rights observers and current and former military officials.

Vandeveld's claims are particularly explosive.

In a declaration and subsequent testimony, he said the U.S. government was not providing defense lawyers with the evidence it had against their clients, including exculpatory information -- material considered helpful to the defense.

Saying that the accused enemy combatants were more likely to be wrongly convicted without that evidence, Vandeveld testified that he went from being a "true believer to someone who felt truly deceived" by the tribunals. The system in place at the U.S. military facility in Cuba, he wrote in his declaration, was so dysfunctional that it deprived "the accused of basic due process and subject[ed] the well-intentioned prosecutor to claims of ethical misconduct."

Here's the interesting part. Apparently Vandeveld's integrity and moral compass is so respected that he will be called as a defense witness in some of the Gitmo cases for testimony regarding the hiding of exculpatory evidence. That might be just enough to blow the whole military commission system out of the water. It might also show the limits that our government will go to deprive people of the constitutional right to a fair trial, whether the defendants are alleged to be unlawful enemy combatants or citizens who question American foreign and domestic policy.

As a result of his actions, Mr. Vandeveld's military career is effectively over and he has exposed himself and his family to the usual vilification from the military and the government. He knew this would be the result and yet he decided to act honorably. In my book, that makes him a hero, one who deserves our respect and our gratitude.