February 22, 2006

Miscarriage of Justice
Chaplain James Yee was arrested for treason and espionage. Wrongly detained, he still awaits an Army apology.

By ROBIN LINDLEY
Contributing Writer

U.S. Army Capt. James Yee served with distinction as the Muslim chaplain at the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detention center for over 600 “enemy combatants.” Despite awards for his work, he was secretly arrested for treason and espionage in September 2003. He was held in solitary confinement like an “enemy combatant” for 76 days after a military inquiry sparked by bigotry, not by evidence of wrongdoing. The Army leaked the arrest to the media, and Chaplain Yee was vilified as a traitor.

A third-generation Chinese-American, Yee was raised Lutheran in a New Jersey suburb. His family has a strong military tradition: his father served in World War II, a brother graduated from West Point, and another brother is as an Army doctor. Converting to Islam shortly after his graduation from West Point in 1990, he then studied Islam and returned to the Army in early 2001 as a chaplain, and then trained soldiers on Islam and religious tolerance after the September 11th attacks.

He was assigned to Guantánamo in 2002 to serve as the base’s third Muslim chaplain in six months — a controversial role requiring him to lead prayer services, minister to detainees, and teach soldiers that Islam is not terrorism. Overzealous intelligence officers wrongly believed he was part of a spy ring of Muslim personnel.

Chaplain Yee recognized that his fellow Westerners held distorted views of Muslims, but he was shocked by his arrest. The case against him disintegrated. The government reduced, then dropped all charges, but Chaplain Yee’s military career was ruined. He was honorably discharged in January 2005, but he has not yet received an apology from the military.

Chaplain Yee recently talked with Real Change in Seattle about his timely and engaging book, For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism under Fire, and his service, his arrest, his healing and his hopes.

Real Change: You haven’t received an apology from the military for your wrongful prosecution?

Chaplain James Yee: No. Never. I haven’t received an apology, [nor have] my family and my supporters, I’m fighting for one. We hope the Department of Defense Inspector General Investigation will show that the military made mistakes, that I was targeted because of my faith and ethnicity, that I wasn’t treated properly, that rules were broken. That would help in our recovery, but also it would help the American people regain trust in military leadership that has made a mess in Iraq.

RC: What has happened with this investigation of your ordeal?

Yee: I have no idea. It’s important for the American people to know that this gross miscarriage of justice has severely damaged the reputation of U.S. military justice when the Administration is using military justice to hold accountable terror suspects in Guantánamo.

RC: What are you doing now to heal, to move on from this Kafkaesque nightmare?

Yee: I produced a chronicle of my experience, toward something I hope will be positive and inspire others to struggle for the values that I struggle for.

RC: And you hope for military reforms?

Yee: There’s much more work to be done in the military [for] diversity and tolerance and religious freedom. I also see, one, a leadership failure, as well as two, an intelligence failure. My case has undermined senior military leaders. You have Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller connected with the abuses at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and taking responsibility for the decisions to arrest me, imprison me, bring charges against me. As the case collapsed like a house built on matchsticks, it undermined our senior military leadership. When they make gross errors in judgment, how can these leaders be trusted to lead our young men and women in battle?

There’s also an intelligence failure. Many who investigated me were military and federal intelligence officers. If we have another intelligence failure like my case, who’s to say it won’t lead to another 9/11?

RC: You grew up Lutheran, graduated from West Point, and converted to Islam?

Yee: I converted to Islam before being deployed in the first Gulf War, not long after I graduated West Point. Initially I rejected the Islamic doctrine because I was raised a Christian, [but] I learned that what I believed as a Christian was found right in Islam. Muslims are awaiting the second coming of Christ…. And you find the biblical prophets — Abraham, Moses, David, and Noah and his ark, Solomon and others — within Islam. All of them taught the simple message that God is one, as Jesus and Mohamed taught. I became Islamic based on the simple belief of one.

RC: Did you sense anti-Muslim attitudes in the military before 9/11?

Yee: In general, before 9/11, not many people knew much about Islam. You had the severe ignorance experienced by all Muslims. During the chaplain basic course, a Unitarian and I were earmarked for hellfire by the other chaplains. Even among these Army chaplains, where pluralism is supposedly ingrained, you find those who are very close-minded: their way is the only way.

RC: Did you immediately find hostility to Muslims at Guantánamo?

Yee: I had been warned by previous chaplains that it was a very hostile environment, as emphasized strongly by my predecessor.

RC: And you were concerned about abuse of detainees at Guantánamo?

Yee: I had an open mind initially, but I had read media reports before going to Guantánamo. For example, the first prisoners resisted medical examinations [because] the doctors sent were women. These prisoners came from a more conservative Islamic countries [and] forcing them to strip down in front of women physicians caused tensions. In another incident, the prisoners made turbans with towels so they could pray with a prayer cap, a tradition in Islam. The guards knocked these turbans off with the butts of their rifles, clearly [violating] religious practice of prisoners. How does this help the mission of holding prisoners and gleaning information from them?

RC: Did that pattern of abuse continue once you were at Guantánamo?

Yee: It increased. There were a growing number of [incidents]: the most infamous was the desecration of the Koran reported in Newsweek, [and] an investigation confirmed several incidents where the holy Koran was desecrated, abused, and mistreated.

RC: And this led to the prisoner protests and disturbances?

Yee: Protests, disturbances, riots, hunger strikes, [plots] to commit suicide in protest of how the holy Koran was treated and how prisoners were treated as Muslims.

RC: The hospital was considered a showplace at Guantánamo, but you describe disturbing conditions there.

Yee: Right, The detainees at the hospital who were despondent had to be force-fed with tubes that were forcefully inserted through the nose and into their stomachs so they could be kept alive. Recent reports say that up to 30 [detainees] are currently being force-fed. There were two [when I was there, so] conditions have worsened, contrary to what the military says.

RC: And juveniles were also detained at Guantánamo?

Yee: It’s common knowledge that youngsters as young as 12 years old were held there.

RC: Did you report your concerns about abuse of detainees to your superiors?

Yee: I had an ongoing role as the Muslim chaplain to provide my observations and recommendations, so I was making these issues known to the command. My input helped resolve problems, and I was recognized with awards. Two days before my arrest, I received the best officer evaluation report [of my] 14 years as a commissioned officer.

RC: Were you the subject of suspicion before your arrest?

Yee: I had heard rumors, but my commanders assured me that I was doing more than [expected]. When I was arrested, I thought it was absurd and ridiculous, that it would be cleared up in a matter of hours.

RC: And then you ended up in solitary confinement for 76 days.

Yee: Seventy-six days of being accused of espionage, spying, aiding the enemy, and mutiny and sedition. Capital crimes. I was threatened with the death penalty. I was treated like an “enemy combatant,” transferred to the Consolidated Naval Brig in Charleston, South Carolina, where the U.S. citizen “enemy combatants” — as declared by our President — were being held. I was chained and transferred under sensory deprivation: [placed in] blackened goggles so I could not see, and in heavy industrial earmuffs so I could not hear.

RC: And you were held incommunicado?

Yee: Yes. I wasn’t allowed to contact my family. I had disappeared off the face of this earth. They actually found out where I was from media reports.

RC: Then the government case collapsed because there was no evidence against you.

Yee: Zero. It’s the most disturbing part. I was accused of having classified documents and a review was not initiated on classified information. They dropped the case.

RC: Do you think the arrest was to silence your concerns about abuse at Guantánamo?

Yee: It was the result of the inexperience of the intelligence officers — their overzealousness — as well as bigotry towards my ethnicity and my religion. Someone asked, “Who the hell does this Chinese Taliban think he is, telling us how to treat prisoners?”

RC: Your book has a strong message on injustice and civil liberties.

Yee: The first message is that the current approach to fighting this war on terrorism within our own borders is a threat to the civil liberties of ordinary Americans. If this could happen to me — a West Point graduate, a third-generation Chinese-American, an individual whose family is deeply rooted in the military, who’s been recognized at the highest levels by the U.S. government — it could happen to anyone.

Second, [I hope] my book will inspire others to invest their time and resources in struggling for diversity, tolerance, religious freedom, humane treatment of prisoners.

Third, my book [illuminates] the Islamic culture which would help those who are fighting this war on terrorism. By reading my book, they’ll be better able to analyze information correctly. I saw gross misanalysis of information — a huge waste of time and money. They’re getting the wrong people, like me, and that only hurts the U.S. and puts our own soldiers and civilians in danger.

RC: It’s appalling that the government completely contrived a case against a person with your distinguished record of service without any evidence to support it.

Yee: Yes. We see a pattern in this post-9/11 era of people who dissent being cast off by many as unpatriotic, when this is completely against what America stands for. Thomas Jefferson, I believe, said, “Dissent is the best form of patriotism.” n