A special report -- January 9-16, 2005

SUSPICION IN THE RANKS
By Ray Rivera

** Inside the Spy Investigation of Capt. James Yee -- The story of how Army chaplain James Yee went from soft-spoken defender of Islam to accused spy, and how the case against him unraveled. **

Seattle Times
January 9-16, 2005

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002144988_yeeintroduction.html

[PHOTO]

INTRODUCTION

In December 2002, a Muslim U.S. Army chaplain stood before a room full of American soldiers freshly arrived at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. His assignment: to brief the soldiers on Islam, the religion he shared with nearly all of the prisoners who had been detained there since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

It was a lesson no one seemed better suited to teach. Educated at West Point and steeped in the teachings of Islam, the chaplain would give this same briefing dozens of times, to thousands of soldiers. His commanders would call it "instrumental" to the success of the prison camp, helping guards and interrogators better understand their captives.

But on this day, at least one person heard something different.

"Some of the things he said sounded extremely sympathetic to the detainees," said Army Reserve Capt. Jason Orlich, a newly arrived intelligence officer. "I mean, it made the hair on the back of your neck stand up at attention."

That simply, Capt. James Yee became a suspect.

For the next two years -- 76 days of it in solitary confinement -- Yee would live under the cloud of treason. On Friday, he walked away from the Army with an honorable discharge but forever scarred by the treatment he received from his colleagues in arms.

This week, the Seattle Times will give the first detailed account of how this highly praised officer went from soft-spoken defender of Islam to accused spy.

It is a story of officers so eager to root out traitors that they let small suspicions and misunderstandings escalate into an international investigation, then zealously tried to salvage the case as it unraveled.

At the same time, it is a story of the enormous challenges of a war in which "the enemy" is defined not by national borders but by ideology, in which a nation burned by overlooking a villainous plot is determined not to miss another.

It is a story of post-9/11 America.

--

Chapter One

A RISING STAR
By Ray Rivera

** A graduate of West Point and a student of Islam, James Yee realized his goal of becoming a Muslim military chaplain shortly before the 9/11 attacks. Overnight, his knowledge of Islam became a sought-after commodity in the military. **

Seattle Times January 9, 2005

Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia -- August 1991

[PHOTO CAPTION: Fong and Joseph Yee look at a collection of newspaper articles detailing the travails of their son, Army Capt. James Yee, at their Springfield, N.J., home last year. The arrest generated so much coverage that the articles filled three binders.]

The flame of Islam already was flickering in James Yee when the 23-year-old Army lieutenant arrived here in the aftermath of the Gulf War.

A Patriot-missile officer just 18 months out of West Point, Yee was assigned to King Abdul Aziz Air Base near the shores of the Persian Gulf.

He arrived as a surge of interest in Islam was taking root inside the U.S. military. Eager to be a part of it, Yee became a regular at a Muslim center on the base. Thousands of American soldiers rotating through the region came to the center, set up by the Saudi government as a place where soldiers could socialize, learn about Islamic customs and, perhaps, become believers.

The Saudis who ran it showed Yee a 3-inch binder filled with short biographies of new converts. But the U.S. military had no Muslim chaplains to serve them.

An idea began to burn in Yee: He could be the first.

Years later, that simple idea -- and virtually every step he would take to pursue it -- would become the raw material of suspicion.

Jimmy, as his parents called him, grew up Lutheran in the small New Jersey town of Springfield. His parents were second-generation Chinese Americans. The middle-class family lived in a white, two-story home with red shutters. His father, Joseph, was an engineer with Bell Laboratories. His mother, Fong, was an energetic and feisty homemaker who carefully chronicled her five children's accomplishments in scrapbooks.

The parents packed the kids into the family station wagon every Sunday and shuttled them to nearby Holy Cross Lutheran Church. James' father drove but seldom stayed, preferring to work around the house and read the Sunday newspaper.

James was their middle child. He was easygoing and funny, small and athletic -- becoming a star wrestler in high school. His wrestling coach, whom Yee considered a mentor, urged him to apply to West Point.

The U.S. Military Academy rests along the wooded banks of the Hudson River, an hour north of New York City. Adorned with parade fields, hilly pastures and stately granite buildings, the campus was an impressive sight for the Jersey teenager when he arrived in the fall of 1986.

Of the nearly 13,000 high-school seniors who apply each year to West Point, 1,200 are accepted. They're among the top in their classes academically, physically fit and have already displayed some aspect of the leadership the academy tries to develop. Bronze statues of Douglas MacArthur, George Patton and other military luminaries dotting the campus are a testament to the academy's success.

Yee fit easily into the measured cadence of cadet life. He made friends and envisioned a military career. But along with his burgeoning love of a life in uniform, a new passion was taking hold: Islam.

Yee had begun learning about the religion at the academy in "interfaith dialogues" with other students. He delved deeper after his 1990 graduation, visiting local mosques near his posts in Kentucky and Germany.

"What attracted me was the simpleness of its doctrine," he later said. "At the same time, it didn't throw out what I believed of Jesus Christ. We believe Jesus was sinless, that he performed miracles, was born of Mary, and that he will come again. So my beliefs in Christianity didn't go away; Islam held these beliefs."

In Saudi Arabia, his new faith flourished, as did his vision for a new career. As a chaplain, he could bring together everything he admired about the Army -- the order, the discipline -- with his newfound religion.

To become a chaplain, though, he needed a doctorate in divinity, and there were no Islamic U.S. seminaries at the time. The only alternative was a university, but Yee longed to study the traditional way, from Muslim clerics. To do that, he would have to leave active duty.

He got his chance in 1993. The Army was downsizing and giving soldiers the option to leave active duty for the Reserves. Yee jumped at the opportunity.

He made a pilgrimage to Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, a journey every able Muslim is expected to make at least once in a lifetime. When he returned to the United States, he took a job as a pharmaceutical sales representative for Pfizer. The drug company placed him in Jackson, Tenn., where he began saving for his studies.

His mind was set on studying in Syria. The choice worried his father: Syria was seen as a politically radical state. James thought the country was more socially and religiously liberal than Saudi Arabia. Women could even drive.

Yee chose Abu Nour Islamic Foundation, located at the foot of Kaasyoun mountain in the capital city of Damascus. The school rose nine stories with two ornate spires that towered over a sea of brown, flat-terraced roofs.

When Yee arrived in 1995, the school was run by Syria's supreme religious leader, Sheik Ahmad Kuftaro, a moderate Sunni Muslim whose sermons and calls for peace drew thousands to his mosque. If Yee's love for the military was born at West Point, the Islamic values he would carry into the future were cultivated at Abu Nour.

Yee settled in, and though he struggled with the language, he immersed himself in studies. He soon spoke Arabic and taught English on the side. And he met a young woman.

Huda Suboh was 22, a Palestinian with dark eyes and a gentle face who dressed modestly. Her family had moved to Syria decades earlier.

She called him Yousef, Arabic for Joseph, Yee's middle name. The couple's dates started at her home with family members always present to chaperone. Nine months later, in October 1998, they wed. They had a baby daughter the following year.

Yee and his young family returned to the United States in 2000. By then, there were at least six Muslim military chaplains. Yee had missed his goal of becoming the first, but his ambition remained.

He wanted to return to active duty and become a chaplain but still lacked the minimum credits required by the military. Qaseem Uqdah, a friend and former Marine who ran the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veteran Affairs Council, helped ease the way. Uqdah's agency had been approved by the Pentagon to endorse Muslim chaplains.

He introduced Yee to the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences in Leesburg, Va, which sent a letter to the Pentagon certifying his Syrian studies.

Finally, the goal born a decade earlier had been reached: James Yee was a chaplain, and his life was about to change.

In the spring of 2001, Yee was sent to Fort Lewis, south of Tacoma in Washington state. Now a captain, his duties were the same as those of any battalion chaplain: counseling soldiers of any denomination, helping families in times of loss. Yee and his young family settled into an apartment in Olympia, where they joined a mosque. Life became a comfortable routine -- until Sept. 11, 2001.

In the moment it took a 767 jetliner to make contact with a New York skyscraper, James Yee's two worlds collided. Grieving Americans were asking questions: What kind of religion, and what kind of people, could condone such a thing?

The questions filtered through the ranks of the military. Muslim soldiers suddenly were the targets of suspicion.

Yee found himself at a pivotal moment: A Muslim devoted to his faith, an Army officer forged at the country's most respected military academy. He could answer the questions, he could plead for tolerance. People would listen. He realized he had a new mission.

And it was about to get its first test. Days after the attacks, his commander, Lt. Col. Orlando Goodwin, asked him for a briefing on Islam, for the soldiers. They deserved answers, he said.

They rounded up the 730-member battalion in a gym. The briefing lasted 30 minutes. Yee opened the floor to questions.

How do Muslims treat women? How could some justify the attacks?

"Yee told them that that's not really Islam. That it's like the Ku Klux Klan using Christianity to justify bigotry," Goodwin recalled.

Other commanders heard about the briefing, and soon Yee was in demand. And not just from officers. Muslims on the base came to him, worried that they might be ordered overseas to fight fellow Muslims.

"Whether Muslim or non-Muslim, criminals must be brought to justice," he told them.

Yee began fielding interview requests from local newspapers and television stations. Soon, national networks were calling.

The military's newest Muslim chaplain was a rising star.

--Ray Rivera: 206-464-2926 or rayrivera@seattletimes.com

--

Chapter Two

MISSION: GUANTÁNAMO
By Ray Rivera

** Assigned to Guantánamo Bay, Yee gets high marks for advising camp leaders about the ways of Islam and helping cool tensions between detainees and guards. **

Seattle Times
January 9, 2005

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002145880_yeechapter2.html

Guantánamo Bay -- November 2002

[PHOTO CAPTION: More than 600 prisoners from at least 40 countries were being held at Camp Delta at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in late 2002 when Yee was assigned there. Tensions were running high.]

Tropical heat bore down on Camp Delta as James Yee stepped through the chain-link gate, past a pair of guards, and saw the terrorist prison camp for the first time.

Inside cells cocooned by barbed wire were more than 600 prisoners from at least 40 countries, being held and interrogated with little hope of going home. There were acne-scarred teenagers and white-bearded patriarchs; hardened Taliban fighters and seasoned al-Qaida insiders. "The worst of the worst," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called them.

But among them, too, officials learned, were bewildered taxi drivers, merchants and others sold to U.S. forces by unscrupulous tribal leaders.

The first 20 prisoners had arrived at Guantánamo 11 months earlier after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

By the time Yee arrived, there had been at least one major hunger strike and seven suicide attempts. Tensions were high. Prisoners complained of prolonged sessions in frigid, air-conditioned interrogation rooms, music blaring, forced by chains to squat on the floor. Even some FBI agents assigned here were growing squeamish, writing secret memos questioning the military's tactics.

For their part, guards complained of being pelted by urine, spit and feces as they patrolled the cellblocks.

It was an uneasy place for a Muslim chaplain, or any service member who shared the faith of the "enemy combatants." Inmates viewed them as traitors to the faith. Guards, made up almost entirely of Army reservists and National Guardsmen, looked on them as sympathizers of the fanatics who had spawned the 9/11 attacks.

[GRAPHIC CAPTION: Guantánamo at a glance -- CAMP DELTA: Terrorist prison camp -- GUANTÁNAMO NAVAL BASE: * Set up by U.S. Marines in 1898 during the Spanish-American War * U.S. has leased land from Cuba since 1903 * Area: 45 square miles. Surrounded by ocean, cactus, land mines set up by Fidel Castro to keep Cubans out * Military nickname: Gitmo -- CAMP DELTA: * First 20 prisoners arrived Jan. 11, 2002; placed in Camp X-Ray. * Camp Delta replaces X-Ray in April 2002. Delta is made up of six subcamps, including a medium-security ward. * Prison population about 660 at its height, about 550 today. More than 200 have been released. * Prisoners come from 40 countries and speak dozens of languages including Arabic, Pashto, Urdu, French and English. * Cells about 8 feet deep, 7 feet wide and 8 feet tall. * About 2,800 U.S. service members and civilians representing all five military branches serve at the camp. Most are Reserves or National Guard members. -- Sources: Miami Herald, CIA, the Associated Press, Guantanamo Bay Public Affairs]

Each of the three Muslim chaplains who had served at the base before Yee had run afoul of the guards to some degree, and one had been investigated on the false suspicion that he had helped prisoners send messages home.

But Yee seemed to have something his predecessors did not. He was a chaplain who had studied in Syria, spoke Arabic, yet had the military bearing of a West Point graduate.

In the year since the 9/11 attacks, he had become the military's most prominent chaplain while stationed at Fort Lewis, briefing soldiers, generals and the media on the tenets of Islam and calling for tolerance within the ranks.

In the fall of 2002, he received orders to report to Guantánamo.

Camp officials quickly realized they had an asset. As the world's eyes increasingly turned to the prison, public-affairs officers called on him to greet visiting media. Who better to show that the U.S. military was treating its captives humanely, and that its fight was against terrorists, not Islam?

Yee's duties included ministering to the dozens of Muslim soldiers and civilian linguists who served at the camp; giving cultural-awareness briefings to incoming soldiers; and providing for the religious needs of the detainees, giving them Qurans, prayer beads and Islamic literature from the prison library.

But his job, first and foremost, was to advise camp leaders when they had questions about their captives' religion or culture.

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, Joint Task Force Guantánamo's new commander, appreciated the young chaplain, according to officers who served with them. Miller had arrived the same month as Yee, armed with a mission to improve intelligence collection.

Camp officials say that was accomplished by instituting a system of rewards. Compliant prisoners might receive prayer oil, board games or bottled water, a relief from the yellowish desalinated water that flowed from cell faucets. Noncompliant prisoners might find themselves in isolation.

Miller drew a strict line for Yee: He was not to be involved in intelligence work or interrogations. The prisoners would never trust him if he were.

Catering to their spiritual needs had an added benefit.

"The main mission was to collect intelligence," the camp's former superintendent, Command Sgt. Maj. John VanNatta recalled. "Rather than alienate someone to where they're more hostile, we tried to appease them, and also to be more supportive to their religion."

If Yee had concern over how the prisoners were treated, VanNatta doesn't recall him sharing it with camp leaders, nor do friends or family members remember him mentioning it in e-mails and phone calls home.

A visiting Australian Broadcasting Corp. television crew asked Yee if his Islamic beliefs and compassion for the prisoners interfered with his military mission.

"Professionals never allow personal things to affect the way they perform a job," he told them. "If they do, then they're not professional."

Though some military officials would later insist it was never Yee's job to minister to the detainees, it was clear at the time that it was.

Guards remember Yee spending long hours walking through the faded-green cellblocks, handing out religious literature and conversing with the prisoners, usually in Arabic, sometimes in English with the few who understood it.

[PHOTO CAPTION: Military police escort a detainee at Camp Delta last summer. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called the Guantánamo detainees "the worst of the worst," but not all of them fit that description.]

What crimes they had committed before their capture was unimportant to him, he told another visiting news crew. His duty, he believed, was to assist the detainees in their worship and in the performance of Islamic rites, prayers and fasts. "Whatever they need to help them get through a difficult time," he said.

Yee settled into Guantánamo life, making friends among his Muslim co-workers. He pushed to have a classroom in the base chapel converted into a mosque for the dozens of Islamic translators and service members deployed there. And he continued the mission he had begun back at Fort Lewis in the days after 9/11 -- to educate troops that Islam was a religion of peace.

"Why has it been so difficult for most in our society to distinguish these millions [of peaceful Islamic worshippers] from the extreme fanatical minority?" he wrote in the prison camp's newspaper.

"Why are we still afraid of Islam, the religion?"

His cultural-awareness briefings, required of all incoming U.S. soldiers at the camp, had a similar theme and also stressed that the prisoners were human and should be treated as such.

Forgetting that, he told the newcomers, "becomes very unpleasant for both guards and detainees."

VanNatta, who in civilian life ran the largest prison in Indiana, saw Yee's efforts as more than a personal quest. They had strategic value.

"There's always this mind-set that some people are the enemy," VanNatta later said. "We were from the very beginning trying to change that mind-set, because we had to maintain a more professional standing in order to get intelligence."

VanNatta said he frequently called on Yee to help ease tensions during prisoner uprisings or standoffs with guards. Detainees would bang on their steel-mesh doors with anything handy. One of their biggest complaints was of guards kicking their Qurans, flushing them down the toilets and disrespecting their religion.

After a number of disturbances, Yee was called on to develop culturally sensitive ways of searching cells, particularly when dealing with the prisoners' Qurans. Under the new guidelines, only Muslims were allowed to touch the holy books, except in extreme circumstances.

The rule drew the wrath of some guards. Even VanNatta said it was something he would never offer prisoners at a civilian prison. But Guantánamo was different, and the uprisings subsided once the rules were adopted.

VanNatta wasn't the only camp leader to appreciate Yee's efforts. His performance evaluations were awash with praise, making specific mention of his new guidelines and the calm, deliberate approach to defusing tense situations.

Col. Adolph McQueen, the detention operations commander, stated that Yee should "be promoted at the first opportunity."

But while Yee was winning praise from camp leaders, others were growing suspicious.

--Ray Rivera: 206-464-2926 or rayrivera@seattletimes.com

TIMELINE

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002142937_yeetimeline.html

1990

May: Yee graduates from U.S. Military Academy at West Point, already interested in Islam.

1993

Yee leaves active duty for Reserve status. Works to save money for Islamic studies.

1995

Yee travels to Syria, spends next four years studying Arabic and Islam. Marries Huda Suboh in 1998.

2000

Yee returns to the Army as a Muslim chaplain.

2001

Spring: Assigned to Fort Lewis, Wash.
Sept. 11: Terrorist attacks mean new mission for Yee.

2002

November: Yee assigned to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Falls under suspicion from new camp security officer, Jason Orlich.

2003

May: Army counterintelligence opens preliminary inquiry into Yee after a civilian linguist reports overhearing him make subversive statements to a bed-ridden prisoner. Camera found in translators' work area inside Camp Delta. Investigation launched into camera's owner, Air Force linguist Ahmad Al Halabi.
July 23: Al Halabi arrested passing through Jacksonville Naval Air Station on his way to Syria to get married.
Sept. 10: Yee arrested at Jacksonville Naval Air Station.
Sept. 20: First story detailing the arrest and espionage charges appears in the Washington Times. Launches frenzy in media and Congress.
Sept. 29: Ahmed Mehalba, a civilian translator at Guantánamo, arrested at Boston's Logan Airport after returning from a family visit to Cairo.
Oct. 10: Military authorities formally charge Yee with less serious offenses of mishandling classified information.
Oct. 11: Col. Jack Farr, an Army Reservist and chief of prisoner interrogations at Guantánamo, is arrested for illegally transporting classified documents.
Nov. 25: Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller orders Yee released from pre-trial confinement; tacks on three new charges of lying to investigators, adultery and downloading pornography on government computer.
Dec. 8: Article 32 hearing begins at Fort Benning, Ga. After two days of testimony, hearing is postponed until Jan. 19 to sort through classified- document issues.

2004

March 19: Maj. Gen. Miller drops charges of mishandling classified information against Yee.
March 22: Miller reprimands Yee for adultery and downloading pornography at a noncriminal hearing at Fort Meade, Md. He is reassigned to Fort Lewis.
April 14: Gen. James Hill, commander of U.S. Southern Command, dismisses the written reprimand, clears Yee's record.
Aug. 27: Farr receives nonjudicial punishment for mishandling classified documents and lying to investigators.
Sept. 22: Ahmed Al Halabi pleads guilty to four lesser offenses of mishandling a classified document, taking unauthorized photographs and lying to investigators. He is sentenced to the 10 months in prison he had already served and given a bad-conduct discharge. He appeals the discharge.

2005

Jan. 7: Yee receives honorable discharge.

[STILL TO BE PUBLISHED: Chapter Three: Fear of Betrayal -- Chapter Four: A Witness Comes Forward -- Chapter Five: The Arrests -- Chapter Six: Espionage Fever -- Chapter Seven: Painful Secrets -- Chapter Eight: A Case Crumbles -- Chapter Nine: The Final Collapse -- Epilogue]