9/11 lawyers trade barbs over CIA 'black site' translator turned Guantánamo d... - 0 views
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The Sept. 11 trial judge and prosecutors struggled Wednesday to find a way forward out of the startling discovery that a former CIA linguist tasked to translate for an alleged 9/11 plotter earlier worked at a secret CIA prison.Defense lawyers, who say their clients were tortured in the agency’s secret prison network, asked to take sworn testimony from the man. They also asked the judge to halt the intended two-week pretrial hearing, the first since August, to conduct an inquiry and perhaps new background checks on defense team staff in the complex, five-man death-penalty prosecution. About 130 people, both military and civilian, work at the Office of the Chief Defense Counsel.“This has so decimated any trust on this team,” said defense attorney Cheryl Bormann, her voice cracking, “we can't go forward.”
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Army Col. James L. Pohl, the judge, said he’d hear from prosecutors Thursday on the request to question the former CIA linguist who had been working temporarily for the team representing accused terrorist Ramzi Bin al Shibh since August. A new translator, who just got his security clearance on Friday, was flown in Tuesday from Miami. Meantime, defense and prosecution attorneys traded accusations over how the contract linguist came to sit beside Bin al Shibh on Monday in a courtroom where four of the five accused 9/11 conspirators said they recognized him from their years of secret detention.
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War court Arabic language linguists come from a pool of names provided by approved Pentagon contractors. They require special security clearances that allow them to work with secret intelligence. Bin al Shibh’s lead counsel, Jim Harrington, said after court that he and a co-counsel vetted the linguist in August, and he had no idea of the translator’s previous CIA work before the alleged terrorist disclosed it in court Monday.“The problem is I cannot trust him because he was working at the black site with the CIA, and we know him from there,” said Bin al Shibh, a Yemeni accused of functioning as a 9/11 plot deputy.
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Bormann wants to investigate “every defense team member” past and present for undisclosed previous work, and told the judge the prosecution filing on the CIA linguist episode was an “out and out falsehood.” Nevin asked the judge to suspend proceedings “until we can get to the bottom of this issue.”The issue is the latest to beleaguer preparation for the trial of the five men accused of conspiring in the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, and, as defense lawyers see it, fodder for an eventual motion to dismiss the case for outrageous government conduct.It had already been sidelined by what defense lawyers called an FBI infiltration of their privilege by agents secretly questioning team members then having them sign non-disclosure agreements.
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It was the FBI snooping episode that set up this week’s CIA linguist scandal. Little is known about what the FBI was investigating in secret approaches and questioning of defense teams. But as a result, Bin al Shibh’s earlier translator lost his security clearance and his job.They settled on a new permanent linguist, who didn’t arrive on this remote base until Tuesday.In between, the temporary translator who worked at a CIA black site had been filling in since August, off and on, according to Harrington — and had met Bin al Shibh earlier.
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But Bin al Shibh only disclosed in court Monday that he recognized the linguist from a secret prison where Bin al Shibh had been held captive before his arrival at Guantánamo in 2006. Accused accomplices Ammar al Baluchi and Walid bin Attash recognized him, too, as did Mohammed. The three were apparently seeing the translator for the first time at Guantánamo in court Monday.