Stephen Abraham, a Newport Beach lawyer and lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves, hardly seemed like whistle-blower material.
A decorated intelligence officer, he served after 9/11 as lead counter-terrorism analyst at the Joint Intelligence Center at Pearl Harbor. He was a longtime Republican, a patriot devoted to protecting national security.
When he began a six-month tour of duty with the military tribunals reviewing the status of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he saw it as a "fantastic opportunity" to participate in a historic effort to help his country.
Instead, his account of the experience has become powerful ammunition for lawyers fighting for detainees' rights. In June, Abraham became the first insider to publicly criticize the tribunals created by the Bush administration as fundamentally unfair. His criticism, contained in an affidavit filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, figured in a rare decision by the court to reverse itself and hear arguments about whether detainees had been given an adequate chance to plead their innocence. Arguments were held in December, and a ruling is pending.
"We give rights to the most reviled of accused criminals," Abraham said in an interview last month. It is "beyond the power that we give to government to say to anybody, 'Whatever notion of fair play we have, it won't apply to you.' "
Abraham's stand has made him a hero in the eyes of human rights groups and detainees' lawyers. And it has put him publicly at odds with the military.
"Lt. Col. Abraham was not in a position to have a complete view of the . . . process," said Navy Capt. Lana D. Hampton, a Pentagon spokeswoman. Tribunal procedures "afford greater protection for wartime detainees than any nation has ever before provided," she said.
Abraham's six-month tour began in September 2004. Among other duties, he served as a liaison between tribunals and defense and intelligence agencies with information on the captives. He said he was struck immediately by the general nature of the allegations against detainees. And he was concerned that information potentially favorable to detainees was not being submitted to the tribunals. When he requested written statements that no such evidence existed, "the requests were summarily denied," he said in his affidavit.
With two other officers, Abraham sat on the tribunal of a detainee held since early 2002. According to his affidavit, the case "lacked even the most fundamental earmarks of objectively credible evidence." His panel determined that the detainee should not be classified as an enemy combatant.
