Home » Context of 'December 20, 2004: Second Guantanamo Detainee Determined Not to be Enemy Combatant'
Context of 'December 20, 2004: Second Guantanamo Detainee Determined Not to be Enemy Combatant'
This is a scalable context timeline. It contains events related to the event December 20, 2004: Second Guantanamo Detainee Determined Not to be Enemy Combatant. You can narrow or broaden the context of this timeline by adjusting the zoom level. The lower the scale, the more relevant the items on average will be, while the higher the scale, the less relevant the items, on average, will be.
(After 9:26 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Navy Secretary England Is Unable to Contact His Colleagues While Flying Back to Washington
Gordon England. [Source: US Department of Defense]Secretary of the Navy Gordon England is unable to communicate with colleagues on the ground while he is being flown from Texas to Washington, DC. England, the Navy's top civilian official, traveled to Fort Worth, Texas, the previous evening to give a speech to the Navy League. When the terrorist attacks began this morning, he was getting ready to fly back to Washington. Initially, however, the Navy plane he was going to travel on was grounded. [CNN, 10/16/2001; American Forces Press Service, 9/7/2006] (The FAA ordered a ground stop to prevent any aircraft taking off across the US at around 9:26 a.m. (see (9:26 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [US Congress. House. Committee On Transportation And Infrastructure, 9/21/2001; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 25] ) But after a "short period," England will later recall, the Navy secretary and his companions "got clearance to come back to Washington." While they are flying to the capital, however, they are unable to communicate with their colleagues on the ground. When he is asked about the flight, England will recall, "Well, of course, we didn't have any communications." England and his companions consequently have little knowledge of what the attacks involved. "We didn't know what was happening," England will say. "Literally just knew some of the things that happened, knew that something had been hit in Washington, but didn't know until we were airborne that it had been the Pentagon." England only learns more about what has happened when his plane lands. "I really didn't hear much until we got on the ground," he will say. Why England and those with him have these communication problems is unknown. After arriving in Washington, England joins colleagues of his at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service headquarters, where the Navy has set up a temporary headquarters (see After 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001). [CNN, 10/16/2001; Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 133] Other senior US government officials also have trouble making and receiving communications while the attacks are taking place this morning, and in the following hours (see (After 8:55 a.m.) September 11, 2001). These officials include President Bush (see (9:34 a.m.-9:43 a.m.) September 11, 2001), Secretary of State Colin Powell (see (12:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m.) September 11, 2001), CIA Director George Tenet (see (8:55 a.m.-9:15 a.m.) September 11, 2001), and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (see (9:04 a.m.-9:45 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Telecom News, 2002 ; Hastert, 2004, pp. 6; Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 9/10/2006; Tenet, 2007, pp. 162]
Entity Tags: Gordon England
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline
December 20, 2004: Second Guantanamo Detainee Determined Not to be Enemy Combatant
Navy Secretary Gordon England says that a second detainee reviewed by the Combatant Status Review Tribunal in Guantanamo has been determined not to be an enemy combatant. England does not reveal the man's name, nationality, information on when or where he was captured, when he was transferred to Guantanamo, or why the tribunal decided to reverse his status. So far, the tribunal has reviewed the statuses of 507 prisoners and made decisions in 230 of the cases. Two hundred fifteen detainees have refused to cooperate. [Reuters, 12/20/2004]
March 28, 2008: Naval Lawyer Charges Bush Administration Using Guantanamo Prosecutions to Influence Presidential Election
Navy Lieutenant Commander Brian Mizer, the lawyer for Guantanamo detainee Salim Hamdan, says that senior Pentagon officials are orchestrating war crimes prosecutions for the 2008 presidential campaign. In a court brief filed on this day, Mizer describes a September 29, 2006 meeting at the Pentagon where Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England asked lawyers to consider 9/11-related prosecutions in light of the upcoming presidential campaign. "We need to think about charging some of the high-value detainees because there could be strategic political value to charging some of these detainees before the election," England is quoted as saying (see September 29, 2006). Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman refuses to discuss specifics of the case, but says that the Pentagon "has always been extraordinarily careful to guard against any unlawful command influence" in upcoming military commissions trials. Mizer says that because of England's instructions, and other examples of alleged political interference, his client cannot get a fair trial. Three weeks before England's observation about the "strategic political value" of the trials, President Bush disclosed that he had ordered the CIA to transfer "high-value detainees" from years of secret custody to Guantanamo for trial.
Issues 'Scrambled' - Attorney Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, says the Hamdan motion exposes the problem of Pentagon appointees' supervisory relationship to the war court. "It scrambles relationships that ought to be kept clear," he says. England's statement, says Fidell, is "enough that you'd want to hold an evidentiary hearing about it, with live witnesses. It does strike me as disturbing for there to be even a whiff of political considerations in what should be a quasi-judicial determination." Susan Crawford is the White House-appointed supervisor for the court proceedings; England is a two-term White House appointee who has supervised the prison camps' administrative processes. Crawford, England, and other White House officials have crossed the legal barriers that separate various functions of a military court, Mizer argues. Mizer plans to call the former chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo trials, Morris Davis (see October 4, 2007), who first brought the England remark to light. Davis resigned his position after contending that political influence was interfering with the proper legal procedures surrounding the prosecution of accused war criminals.
Motion for Dismissal - Mizer's motion asks the judge, Navy Captain Keith Allred, to dismiss the case against Hamdan as an alleged 9/11 co-conspirator on the grounds that Bush administration officials have exerted "unlawful command influence." Hamdan is a former driver for Osama bin Laden whose lawyers successfully challenged an earlier war court format (see June 30, 2006). Hamdan's case is on track to be the first full-scale US war crimes tribunal since World War II. [Miami Herald, 3/28/2008]
Entity Tags: Michael Hayden, Eugene R. Fidell, Central Intelligence Agency, Bryan Whitman, Brian Mizer, George W. Bush, Gordon England, Keith Allred, US Department of Defense, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Susan Crawford, Morris Davis, Osama bin Laden
Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Civil Liberties, 2008 Elections