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The military judge presiding at the USS Cole death-penalty trial ordered the Pentagon to replace the senior official and his staff overseeing the war-court process, ruling a since-revoked requirement for judges to live at Guantánamo until a trial is over appeared to be unlawful meddling.Air Force Col. Vance Spath, the judge, issued the ruling in court Monday following a week of hearings that showed behind-the-scenes planning at the Pentagon on how to perhaps replace military judges and speed along the pretrial process.Prosecutors defended the planning by the legal staff of the so-called convening authority for military commissions, retired Marine Maj. Gen. Vaughn Ary, as routine brainstorming on resourcing of the war court.Defense lawyers called the move-in order illegal, a crime in military justice called “unlawful command influence,” that was designed to unfairly rush the death-penalty trial of Saudi captive Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, 50, as the alleged mastermind the USS Cole bombing.

They wanted the judge to dismiss the case. But while Spath was still taking evidence, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert O. Work quickly revoked the controversial order — meaning judges hearing war-crimes cases now may keep their prestigious regular duties and simultaneously preside at Guantánamo military commissions cases.Spath, in court Monday, called dismissal “not appropriate” in this instance. Instead, he disqualified Ary and four lawyers who worked on the move-in requirement: retired Army Col. Mark Toole, Army Reserves Lt. Col. Alyssa Adams, Navy Reserve Cmdr. Raghav Kotval, and Army Capt. Matthew Rich.He ordered the Pentagon to replace them in the USS Cole case — meaning a new convening authority would fund and assign Nashiri’s legal-team resources and pick the pool of military officers for his eventual jury.

Spath also cut an upcoming two-week pretrial hearing at Guantánamo back to just one week, he said, to demonstrate “this detailed trial judge feels no pressure to accelerate the pace of this litigation.”

A USS Cole case defense attorney read aloud from just disclosed emails Tuesday in a ongoing bid to portray a recent order to war court judges to live permanently at Guantánamo as unlawful meddling meant to rush justice in the death-penalty case.Navy Cmdr. Brian Mizer, defending Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, said the documents he got through a court order overnight demonstrated that the Pentagon office knew that the rule change adopted last month would not just make waves but could constitute the U.S. military crime of unlawful influence.“In trying to speed up a trial, are we affecting its fairness?” wrote a legal adviser, Cmdr. Raghav Kotval, on the staff of the Convening Authority for Military Commissions. “If, for example, the judge is less inclined to grant a continuance because it means more time on Gitmo, is that adverse to the accused?”The Nov. 14 email circulated among U.S. military legal staff reviewing a proposed war-court regulation for the Convening Authority, retired Marine Maj. Gen. Vaughn Ary, the Pentagon–based overseer of military commissions. Less than a month later, on Dec. 9, Ary formally asked Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work for the change. Work did just that on Jan. 7, ordering judges assigned to Guantánamo cases to give up their prestigious day jobs.

Defense lawyers cast the open-ended relocation order to judges living with family in more comfortable settings in Italy and the East Coast of the United States as punishment that exiles them for not proceeding swiftly through a complicated pretrial phase to trials. The 9/11 and USS Cole case judges have spent years navigating thorny pretrial issues — such as torture and secrecy, CIA involvement in the court and evolving war court law.A case prosecutor, Navy Lt. Paul Morris, dismissed the documents as nothing more than routine “brainstorming of potential issues” among colleagues. Another prosecutor, Army Col. Robert Moscati, said there was no proof that their boss, Ary, knew of the reservations they raised.Ary was scheduled to testify Wednesday by video-teleconference from his headquarters outside Washington, D.C.

In a filing, prosecutors defend the judge’s move-in order as simply surging staff to the war court for “the increased operational tempo that’s expected.”The three war court judges hearing Guantánamo cases have not complied, in part, because the top lawyers in the Army, Navy and Air Force were taken by surprise by the decision that strips them of judges who handle the courts-martial of American service members, too. Mizer cast Kotval as a potential whistleblower, and asked the judge to order his testimony along with that of two other U.S. military officers serving as Ary’s legal advisers in the email chain that received this from Kotval:“Issue: Are we coercing or by unauthorized means influencing the action of a judge?” he wrote. “If not, why are we intruding on what is not typically or traditionally a convening authority’s role. What is the explanation for the action?”Defense attorneys call the order an example of unlawful command influence — a crime in the U.S. military — designed to rush the judges to trial so they can leave this remote base. They want the case dismissed.

The 9/11 trial judge on Wednesday froze pretrial hearings in a death-penalty case over a controversial Pentagon order requiring the judges to move permanently to this remote outpost until their cases are over.In a 10-page order, Army Col. James L. Pohl abated the prosecution of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four accused accomplices until the Pentagon rescinds its move-in order.He ruled that the circumstances surrounding the controversial Jan. 7 relocation order “raise the issue of Unlawful Influence by creating the appearance of improper pressure on the military judge to adjust the pace of the litigation.”Defense lawyers in both the Sept. 11 and USS Cole death-penalty cases have alleged the move is an attempt to illegally rush justice, describing it as a pressure play designed to exile the military judges to Cuba, cut short pretrial hearings and move straight to trial. Unlawful Command Influence, or commanders meddling in the judicial function, is a crime in the U.S. military.

Prosecutors have defended the order, designed by a retired Marine general functioning as a war court overseer, as part of an effort to improve resourcing at the crude compound here called Camp Justice.Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work signed it within a month of getting a recommendation from the overseer, retired Marine Maj. Gen. Vaughn A. Ary. It stripped military judges hearing Guantánamo cases of their other duties, including presiding at U.S. service members’ courts martial, without consultation with the top lawyers of the Army, Navy and Air Force.So far none of the judges has obeyed it pending clarifications from their overall commanders, called The Judge Advocates General.

One 9/11 defense attorney, Jay Connell, said that Pohl “was right to pull the plug on the case” — and recited what he saw as a pattern of government interference.“The FBI has infiltrated a defense team, a former CIA contractor became a defense interpreter, and the Deputy Secretary of Defense has unlawfully attempted to influence the military judge,” said Connell, the death-penalty defender of Mohammed’s nephew, Ammar al Baluchi.

The Pentagon’s top two leaders on Tuesday decried as “outrageous” an Army judge’s nine-month-old ban on female guards touching the five alleged 9/11 conspirators as they move them to and from court and legal meetings.Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, criticized the ban in response to a question from New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington, D.C. Ayotte and two other GOP senators visited the prison Friday, and said they met with female guards upset by the restriction.

“I think it is counter to the way we treat service members, including women service members, and outrage is a very good word for it,” Carter said, incorrectly attributing the ban to a federal judge — not the chief of the war court judiciary, Army Col. James L. Pohl.The five alleged Sept. 11 plotters complained through their lawyers last year that Islamic and traditional doctrine require they have no physical contact with women other than family members. They claimed that, until a year ago, prison commanders had provided the religious accommodation of not being touched by female soldiers.

Pentagon-paid U.S. defense attorneys got Pohl to issue an emergency, temporary restraining order against the use of female guards in January, pending testimony and legal arguments on the subject.As it happens, Pohl has listed the ban on this week’s docket for pretrial hearings in the case of the five men facing a joint death-penalty trial as the alleged plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Whether it would actually be heard, however, was unclear because the majority of the current session’s 40-item agenda has been sidelined by one alleged plotter’s interest in functioning as his own defense attorney.

In an abrupt retreat Friday, the Pentagon revoked an order to war court judges to drop their other military duties and take up residence at this remote base until their cases are over.The 9/11 case judge swiftly responded by lifting a freeze on preparations for the terror trial of alleged mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four accused accomplices; the judge had imposed the freeze 48 hours earlier with a ruling that found the move-in order appeared to be an illegal bid to rush justice.Defense lawyers in the Sept. 11 and USS Cole death-penalty cases described the Jan. 7 relocation order as “unlawful influence,” a pressure play designed to exile military judges to the remote base in Cuba, cut short pretrial hearings and move straight to trial. Commanders meddling in the judicial function is a crime in the U.S. military. The about-face also averted testimony in the USS Cole bombing case by three three-star officers, the top lawyers of the Navy, Army and Air Force, on how the Pentagon order to move the judges took them by surprise — and its impact.

But it did not settle the conflict. Defense lawyers for Saudi Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, 50, argued that the way the order was adopted and withdrawn was illegal.They asked the judge, Air Force Col. Vance Spath, to dismiss the death-penalty charges against Nashiri, who is accused of orchestrating al-Qaida’s Oct. 12, 2000 suicide bombing off the coast of Yemen. Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed and dozens more wounded in the warship attack.Alternatively, Nashiri’s lawyers asked the judge to exclude from the case the architect of the move-in order — retired Marine Maj. Gen. Vaughn A. Ary, as well as his legal staff, who oversee the war court in the so-called Office of the Convening Authority. The new Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter, should replace them with officials untainted by the relocation order, said Nashiri’s civilian lawyer, Rick Kammen.

Ary “can’t be trusted” to act impartially, said Kammen, noting Ary’s role includes funding the defense and choosing the jury pool of U.S. military officers — Kammen called it driving “the death train” by handpicking “the people that he wants to kill Nashiri.”Prosecutors said, with the move-in order gone, the issue was over. They urged Spath to drop it. “We get that there is an appearance issue,” said the chief war crimes prosecutor, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins. “We all are guardians. The independence of the judiciary is at the heart of this.” Spath disagreed. Testimony earlier this week by Ary, the judge said, demonstrated there was “some evidence of unlawful influence.” Spath never dropped his other duties and never moved to this base. But hearing evidence this week disclosed a behind-the-scenes plan to remove Spath from the USS Cole case rather than relieve him of his other job as chief of the Air Force judiciary.Ary undertook this change “knowing it could remove a sitting trial judge,” said Spath, adding he would rule Monday morning on the defense motion to dismiss the charge