Gitmo Chaplain Ordered to Keep Silent?

April 21, 2004 -- Capt. James Yee's bizarre journey through the military justice system — from suspected al Qaeda spy to accused adulterer to free man with a clean record — has taken a new confounding turn. Yee has apparently been commanded to keep silent about his ordeal.

Earlier this month, Yee received an order from his commander at Fort Lewis, Wash., Army Lt. Col. Marvin S. Whitaker, regarding Yee's "First Amendment rights to free speech."

The letter, received on April 6, informed Yee that as a soldier he is ordered — with threat of punishment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice — to refrain from any speech violating what sound like fairly vague and malleable criteria.

"Speech that undermines the effectiveness of loyalty, discipline, or unit morale is not constitutionally protected," Whitaker wrote. "Such speech includes, but is not limited to, disrespectful acts or language, however expressed, toward military authorities or other officials."

(Read the letter sent to Yee.)

Yee is also barred from any "(a)dverse criticism" of the Department of Defense "or Army policy that is disloyal or disruptive to good order and discipline."

Yee's attorney, Eugene Fidell, told ABCNEWS: "The punch line is, 'Pal — you're walking in a minefield and we're not going to tell you where the mines are, proceed at your own risk.' "

Fidell says the letter defines prohibited speech so broadly, Yee is effectively barred from saying anything about his ordeal since "adverse criticism" of the "Army policy" that resulted in his detention would certainly qualify in the list of forbidden topics.

A spokeswoman for Fort Lewis told ABCNEWS she couldn't discuss the letter. "This is a personal correspondence between a supervisor and a subordinate, so we can't talk about that," said spokeswoman Tonya Townsell.

Security Breaches at Guantanamo Bay?

A Chinese-American convert to Islam from New Jersey, Yee, 36, had studied in Syria and speaks Arabic fluently. During his 10 months as the Army chaplain at Guatanamo Bay, Cuba, Yee had daily interaction with many of the approximately 660 al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners being held there.

Then, last September, Yee was detained under suspicion of espionage.

He was one of four men who served at Guantanamo Bay who was arrested in 2003 as part of an investigation into possible security breaches at the miltary prison. The other three were:

Airman Ahmad Al Halabi, 25, detained in July and placed in custody for failing to report contacts with the Syrian Embassy and attempting to deliver more than 180 e-mails from Guantanamo detainees to recipients in Syria. Halabi now faces 17 criminal counts — including espionage and lying to Air Force Investigators. A naturalized American born in Syria, the Arabic-speaking Al Halabi, 25, temporarily served at Guantanamo as a translator. Though the most serious charges against Halabi have been dropped, his court martial is scheduled to begin on April 27.

Civilian linguist Ahmed F. Mehalba was arrested in September at Boston's Logan Airport for mishandling classified data and lying about it. Pleading not guilty, Mehalba was indicted by a federal grand jury in November.

Army Reserve Col. Jack Farr was similarly charged in November with transporting classified materials without proper containers on or around October 11, and lying about those materials when questioned;

Of the three military men, Farr alone has apparently been permitted to remain on duty.

In February, Yee's father — World War II veteran Joseph Yee, 76 — suggested that the differences between how Farr and his son were treated stemmed from "ethnic and religious profiling."

"How much have you heard about Col. Farr's case?" the senior Yee asked. "What's the story on him? Col. Jack Farr is Caucasian and not a Muslim. James is Chinese and a Muslim."

Yee’s Tale

Kept in solitary confinement in military brigs for 76 days, Yee made international news for being a Muslim cleric in the U.S. military suspected of spying, aiding the enemy, mutiny and sedition.

Press accounts said Yee was carrying a layout of the Gitmo detention center, as well as a list of prisoners. Unnamed military officials speculated in the media that Yee had become sympathetic with Guantanamo's prisoners and had possibly kept detailed notes about the interviews of prisoners.

But when it came for formal charges in October, Yee found himself facing far less incendiary formal charges of transporting classified information without a secure container. Then those charges were dropped, after which the military immediately charged Yee — a married father of two — with having pornography on his government-owned computer and having committed adultery.

Yee was reprimanded for those administrative offenses until last week, when the 1990 West Point graduate was cleared of all charges.

‘Value of the Evidence Materials’

Over the weekend, however, a Washington Post editorial charged that the Army continued to go "out of its way to continue smearing him, writing letters to newspapers — including this one — that implied that Mr. Yee was, in fact, dangerous, and argued that it was 'Yee, not the Army, who sullied his reputation as a Chaplain and a military officer.'"

Fidell, of the Washington, D.C., law firm Feldesman Tucker Leifer Fidell, accuses General James T. Hill, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, and his staff, of being the ones who continue to besmirch Yee's name.

But a spokesman for Southern Command, Lt. Col. Bill Costello, denies the charge. "As far as we are concerned, all charges have been dropped against Capt. Yee," Costello says.

Costello clearly implies that no one should confuse the charges being dropped against Yee with his being innocent of mishandling classified information.

"The military came to a point when we had to turn over evidence to the defense counsel and we decided the value of the evidence materials in his possession were not worth the risk of disclosure to the defense counsel," Costello says.

Costello also pleads ignorance as to who in the military told the media that Southern Command suspected Yee of espionage to begin with.

"We announced that he had been apprehended and been placed in pretrial containment," he says. "In not one document that cited what he was charged with did we include the words 'espionage' or 'treason.'"

Fidell says Yee was charged because of profiling against Muslims and the post-9/11 mood.

"When there's hysteria and people on hair trigger detaining a lot of Muslims, it's not the greatest thing to be the Muslim clergyman dealing with their spiritual welfare," he says.

But with the charges against Yee having been dropped, the question now, says Fidell, is "the issue of morality in government. … What is government's responsibility when it blunders?"