Sources: Muslim chaplain's arrest prompts U.S. probe

[mkregel]

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A military and intelligence investigation into possible security breaches at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is under way following the arrest of a U.S. Army Islamic chaplain, Bush administration sources said.

Capt. James Yee, who has not been charged, is being held in the brig in Charleston, South Carolina, on suspicion of espionage and treason.


http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/09/22/chaplain.arrest/index.html


FYI: CNN is the only source reporting this one. I heard this exact chaplain being interviewed a while back on NPR.

[liberalnurse]

1. This sure makes Homeland Security look

"Top Notch." I bet this has deep cracks. Unbelievable, right under their noses. I guess it was more prudent to go after Texas Dems....

[mkregel]

2. If he was a threat

I'm not sure "diagrams of the cells and the facilities at Guantanamo" is such a strange thing for a Muslim chaplain to have.

Time will tell...

[damnraddem]

4. Will time tell?

Or will this be another one who disappears into Ashcroft's Gulag? Will we hear?

[TreasonousBastard]

14. Or a list of the detainees.

[beria]

21. read between the lines

According to the Washington Times, Yee was arrested on orders 'from the highest levels of government'.

Yee had a list of US citizens being detained without charges at Guantinamo. His information contradicts what we have been told by our government. He is therefore a danger to the White House and needs to be held incommunicado, hence the guest suite at the Charleston Naval Brig.

[DarkPhenyx]

23. Or, just as a possibility....

...he actually could be working for a terrorist organization, or even as a "freelance terrorist".

[newyawker99]

24. Hi beria!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[DCDemo]

3. I bet he was chronicling abuses, torture, etc. for human rights interests

After all, he is a Chaplain, and as such is supposed to be "doing the Lord/Allah's work."

Don't forget - with these war criminals in office, questioning, not obeying, or otherwise not being 100% on board is disloyalty, thus working to show our human rights abuses and illegal/un-Constitutional behavior is being a traitor.

Welcome to the new America, where we don't fear the bad guys as much because we are much more like them.

[hlthe2b]

5. That's my hunch, too DCDEMO....

Something REALLY REALLY REALLY smells on this one....

If this guy is being taken down because he planned to expose what the Bushistas are doing, I don't hold out much hope or him....

We may never know, if they get their way.

[DarkPhenyx]

8. Is it entirely impossible that the chaplin...

...was in fact working agaisnt the best interest of the US and the war on terrorism?

We already know we have had terrorists in the US Military. One of which fought alonside OBL during the Russia/Afganistan conflict. During the invasion of Iraq we had a Muslim soldier throw a grenade into the tent of his fellow soldiers. I doubt seriously that these are the only two.

Am I saying that the chaplain was? No. Is it possible that he was? absolutely. Is it also possible that he was arrested to silence him? Yup.

[ScotTissue]

11. Exactly right: we don't know

i don't know what's scarier, this guy being guilty or innocent! Either way, it is troubling.

[DarkPhenyx]

16. They are both equally scary...

...for their own reasons. As much as I hate to say it though, I'm hoping he's guilty. The alternative is just way too "intimidating" to contemplate. His being innocent and detained for trying to do the right thing places us way too far down a road to despotism. Much further down it than all but the most paranoid of us thought we were.

[mkregel]

12. I agree

but whats really sad is that the current WH administration is so corrupt, and we are so used to them lying to us - that they have ABSOLUTELY no credibilty whatsoever.

[DarkPhenyx]

15. No arguement there.

It's sad that we have reached the point where, even if they were to tell us the complete truth, we are not going to believe them. This is why I made the point I did. We are so used to assuming that if their mouths are moving they are lying, and that is just as bad as the opposition assuming that if their mouths are moving they are telling the truth. We have to work actively to repress that instinct, no matter how grounded in experience, and view each new "revelation" on it's own merits.

[reprobate]

25. "if their mouths are moving they are lying"

Knowing their past and what they have done, from election theft to 9/11, there is literally NOTHING that I would put past this bunch. In my opinion they are the most corrupt, MOST EVIL, group that has occupied any level of gov't, from local town council, to the white house which they occupy without benefit of election.

Knowing their past, I CHOOSE to believe they lie about everything. There is no other choice if we are ever to rid ourselves of them. To believe one of their lies just prepares us for the rest.

[mojowork_n]

9. The report on CNN (or MSNBC?, can't remember) said:

Mullah/Imam/Sheikh Yee (or whatever his title is), was discovered to have "classified information" in his possesion. That included a detailed map of the Guantanamo base, and a list (by name and rank) of the interrogators. Something else, too. (Can't recall.) From the subtext of the report, I think I inferred that the adjective "hand-drawn" might have been applied to the map, and "hand-written" could have described the list. The military's biggest concern was that he may not have been working alone. There was no way he should have been in possession of some of that information.

...I'm holding off on any kind of judgement until more detailed information or evidence is presented. The kind of strange part is that this was a guy who graduated from West Point, served in the first gulf massacre, then spent four years learning about Islam in Syria, after he became a convert. It's a bias based on experience, but I'd guess no one is more likely to be more gung-ho, or possibly overboard or extreme, than a recent convert. <Like the marine who threw grenades at his fellow G.I.'s, in the first days of the second Iraq massacre, for instance. Or (wonder whatever happened to him), that poor hip-hop kid from Oakland with the family issues that turned up in Mazaar el-sharif, in Afghanistan, Johnny "Taliban" Walker. Or, let's not forget that other overgrown child, the Brixton shoe-bomber.>

Hopefully, unless he's charged with treason, this guy will get a chance to tell somebody his side of the story. You have to imagine, no matter where his political allegiances may prove to belong, that he was in an incredibly difficult position, making rock-and-hard place moral choices every day he was there, just from the nature of his work.

[Scaramouche]

10. Your hip-hop "kid" is not from Oakland...

He is from Marin. I grew up ther and now live in Oakland. There are probably no 2 places in the SF Bay Area that are more unlike each other.

Just want to clarify that...

[mojowork_n]

27. Ooops, My Bad

Let me correct myself, the troubled young man who quite possibly wished he'd been born in Oakland, instead.

[Nottingham]

20. Its his connections to Syria thats important

More notches for Syria invasion

[ScrewyRabbit]

6. He's been moved to the same facility as Jose Padilla

This means his constitutional rights have been stripped away -- he's just another "enemy combatant" in the "war" on terror.

[larryepke]

7. Washington Times reports...

he's being charged with sedition, aiding the enemy, spying, espionage and failure to obey a general order.

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030919-105619-9614r.htm

These are apparently military charges, not civilian criminal ones. A treason charge may yet be coming. It's serious!

[TreasonousBastard]

13. Here's the Guardian's take on it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1047076,00.html

They say Yee is suspected of organizing a jailbreak.

huh?

Chinese-American Lutheran West Point grad converts to Islam, moves to Syria for radical indoctrination, and returns to Army to break out 600 detainees and walk them over to Cuba????

If I could make up stuff like this I'd be the richest screenwriter in Hollywood.

When the story first broke, local fearless newsies went over to Springfield, Yee's hometown, and found someone who cried, "What! You mean I was living down the street from al Qaeda?"

Is there no end to the madness?

Are we all really living in a Vonnegut novel?

[DarkPhenyx]

17. Is that plot as crazy as....

...10 planes being crashed into civilian targets on both coasts? 4 planes actually getting used? Our government knowing about it and doing nothing to prevent it? Maybe even actively helping it to occur?

More outlandish plans have been executed, and successfully so, in world history.

Hell...during the Crusades someone marched 100's of children into the "Holy Lands" in an attempt to convert the Muslims.

[The Stranger]

18. Is disclosure of methods of torture illegal under U.S. and international

law treason?

These are strange days, indeed.

[mkregel]

19. I do have one question

To have gone to Camp XRay (Guatanamo) would have required a security clearance, and not just any kind of clearance. Criminy, If I remember correctly many journalists were denied access to the camp based on failing the clearance.

So here is a Chaplain who passes a very tight government clearance at at a time when security is very tense - and he's a double agent? (That's what they're accusing, essentially)

So how did he pass that high clearance level if he were a double agent? He studied in Syria after the first Gulf War - he would have had to explain EVERY SINGLE DAY of his time over there to have been granted access. Trust me - I know people who have gone through the process to join the DEA and FBI. When you leave the country, you will have to account for pretty much all your time over there. And if you can't remember something, they get suspicious. They also want documents, proof, passport stamps, etc.

So how did he pass?

One of two things is happening here: Either the man WAS in fact a double agent, and our Higest level security clearances are worthless, which would lead me to believe Al-Queda has already infiltrated NORAD, the Pentagon and the underground facility at Denver International Aiport (tinfoil hatters will get my joke) OR

This man is in the process of being framed. Most likely for trying to document atrocities at Camp X Ray.

[mainer]

22. They won't let us hear the rest

They say that he had the names of detainees and a diagram of which cells they're in. If he's supposed to be the prisoners' chaplain, then doesn't he need to know their names and where they are? I've said this before -- this is as suspicious as a teacher in possession of a seating chart for her classroom.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

26. Good Piece From Charleston on Yee

http://www.charleston.net/stories/092303/ter_23yee.shtml

Muslim chaplain reportedly had prisoner list, detention center map
BY TERRY JOYCE
Of The Post and Courier Staff
HANAHAN--Considered one of the most prominent of the military's few Muslim chaplains, Army Capt. Yousef Yee seems an unlikely candidate for a bunk in the brig here.

Yee, 35, the son of Chinese immigrants, was raised as a Lutheran in a middle-class suburban neighborhood in Springfield, N.J. A stocky man with thick glasses, he graduated from the U.S. military academy at West Point in 1990 and reportedly converted to Islam the following year. Yee served with a Patriot missile unit in Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War, but then left the Army and moved to Syria, where he studied Arabic and Islam for four years. While there, he reportedly married a Syrian woman and changed his first name from James to Yousef.

Now the man who ministered to suspected al-Qaida terrorists at a U.S. detention center in Cuba is the newest inmate at the Charleston Naval Weapons Station brig.

<snip>

[MaineDem]

28. How did he get out of the Army so quickly?

I always thought one had to serve at least 4 years after graduating from a military academy. In an earlier article I read he got out of the Army after serving in the Gulf War. I wonder how long he actually served?

It's so sad that it's come to the point where I question absolutely EVERYTHING that the government does now.