Defense lawyers quit USS Cole case after finding microphone in meeting room: report

The lawyers defending the man allegedly behind the USS Cole bombing quit the case in October because they found a microphone in their special client meeting room at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, the Miami Herald reported on Wednesday.

The three civilian defense attorneys were not allowed to talk about or investigate the microphone, found in their meeting room in August, according to a 15-page prosecution filing obtained by the Herald.

The USS Cole bombing in October 2000 — allegedly led by Abd al Rahim al Nashiri — killed 17 U.S. sailors off the coast of Yemen. The case was set to be the first death-penalty trial held at Guantanamo since the war crimes trial system changed following 9/11.

{mosads}But attorney Rick Kammen, the lead defender of al Nashiri, as well as Rosa Eliades and Mary Spears, quit the case over what was described at the time as an ethical conflict involving attorney-client privilege.

The case can’t proceed without the attorneys.

In addition, Air Force Col. Vance Spath, the judge, unexpectedly abated the case in February because he wanted a higher court to clarify his authority as a judge in the war court. 

The prosecution argues that the microphone was from past interrogations and was not turned on over 50 days of supposedly confidential attorney-client meetings, the newspaper reported.

The declassified prosecution filing also said that after the three lawyers quit, Guantanamo prison workers “removed flooring, walls, and fixtures” in the special meeting room and confirmed that the microphones, “which were not connected to any audio listening/recording device nor in an operable condition, were removed.”

Prosecutors filed the document to get the USS Cole bombing case resumed.

Kammen told the Herald the prosecution’s filing was “outrageous” and “really grotesque selective declassification” meant to allow “some portion of the truth to seep out, but only in ways that the government feels will help it.”

“Our concerns were much greater than what they appear to admit was there,” Kammen said.

Spath in November ordered the chief defense counsel, Marine Brig. Gen. John Baker, to reinstate the three lawyers to the case. When Baker refused Spath found him in contempt of court.

The filing alleges that the defense lawyers quitting was part of a “strategy” to create a “triumphant stalemate” that “has proven destructive of the rule of law.”

The strategy frustrated Spath to the extent that “he has indefinitely abated the proceedings below and is contemplating retirement from active military service because of his shaken faith in the law and what it means to be a lawyer.”

Kammen, meanwhile, said “it’s good to see the truth beginning to come out. … But the reality is more than what they’ve declassified.”