Ex-Chaplain, Once Jailed by Army, Defends His Patriotism

He was a West Point graduate from a proud military family, a third-generation American of Chinese descent who joined the Boy Scouts, played snare drum in his school band and passionately collected baseball cards like any other kid in his New Jersey suburban neighborhood.

Along the way, James Yee converted to Islam. He became one of the U.S. Army’s first Muslim chaplains and was assigned three years ago to minister to inmates at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba.

Taking to heart American values of religious freedom and tolerance, Yee reported to superiors what he said was systematic abuse by his fellow soldiers against the mostly Muslim detainees: degrading treatment, routine desecration of their Korans, interference with their Islamic prayers.

Those actions, Yee asserted in a Los Angeles talk Saturday, explain in part why he found himself accused of espionage by his military superiors in September 2003.

In a case that quickly set off a national debate, the chaplain was held in solitary confinement for 76 days on suspicion of espionage, mutiny, aiding the enemy and other charges that, he was told, carried the death penalty.

Critics alleged he was part of a “spy ring” of American Muslim soldiers at Guantanamo; supporters, including his own battalion commander, said Yee was targeted because of his race and faith.

In the end, the military formally charged him only with mishandling classified documents, making a false official statement, adultery and downloading pornography, and it dropped those charges six months after Yee’s arrest. An Army spokesman last week declined to comment on Yee’s case, except to release a prepared statement saying that all of his claims had been “thoroughly investigated.”

Results from the Defense Department’s internal investigation, initially requested by Rep. Mike Honda (D-San Jose) and other U.S. congressional members, is expected by January.

But the furor effectively destroyed his career, Yee said. In January, Yee reluctantly left the service, receiving an honorable discharge and service award.

“How could this happen in America?” Yee asked, citing his all-American upbringing and stellar military credentials in his talk at the Southern California Library on Vermont Avenue. “I hope my story ... will prevent what happened to me from ever happening again.”

Yee has detailed his experiences in a newly published book, “For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire” (PublicAffairs 2005).

The book offers a rare glimpse at conditions at Guantanamo, where hundreds of terrorism suspects are being detained. It portrays many soldiers as brutally violent toward detainees and hostile to Islam and recounts the devastating effect of the charges on Yee’s professional and personal life.

Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have also alleged widespread abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo. But U.S. Army commanders said this summer that an internal investigation concluded that contested interrogation techniques, such as prolonged questioning and sexual humiliation of prisoners, did not rise to the level of inhumane treatment. Military officials have also denied widespread desecration of the Koran.

During a week of appearances at Southern California universities, community centers, churches and mosques, however, Yee repeatedly sounded a passionate alarm.

“My story is a warning to all people here in the country that the current approach to waging war on terrorism from within our own borders is truly a threat to civil liberties,” Yee said in an interview at UCLA last week.

The former chaplain has his detractors. At Yee’s talk Saturday, David McAlexander, a former U.S. Navy officer who flew combat missions in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, said the former chaplain’s actions on behalf of Muslim prisoners “helped embolden the resistance of prisoners at Guantanamo and made them less likely to reveal information about Al Qaeda.”

He cited as an example Yee’s recommendations that, to quell complaints of desecration, non-Muslims not handle Korans during searches.

But Yee’s warnings have found a wide audience. Newspapers across the country have editorialized on his behalf. His case has touched deep chords, particularly in the Muslim and Asian American communities. On Thursday, the UCLA Muslim Student Assn. and Asian Pacific Coalition co-sponsored Yee’s lecture, delivered to a standing-room-only group of about 75.

Aliya Hussaini, an officer with the Muslim student group, said Yee’s experiences highlight her community’s fears that “the war on terror is a war on Muslims.”

Many Asian Americans see parallels between Yee’s case and other instances in which claims of national security were used to curtail civil rights: the Japanese American internment during World War II, for instance, and the arrest and subsequent release of Wen Ho Lee, the Chinese American nuclear scientist once accused of spying for China before pleading guilty in 2000 to one count of mishandling government secrets. As a result, many Asian Americans have rallied behind Muslims during the war on terrorism.

“It is in times of crisis when civil rights need to be most zealously guarded,” said Mike Masaoka of Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress, the largely Japanese American organization that organized Yee’s Southern California tour.

Yee, 37, a compact man with the slight shadow of a beard, says he has poured all of his anger, frustration and outrage into his memoir. After graduating from West Point in 1990, he says, he was drawn to Islam from his Lutheran faith because of its monotheistic message and idea of Jesus as a prophet rather than God’s divine son.

Yee served in Germany and Saudi Arabia before leaving active duty in 1993. Two years later, he moved to Damascus, Syria, to study Islam and Arabic.

In 2000, Yee returned to the Army as one of its first Muslim chaplains and was sent to Guantanamo in 2002. There, his commanders called on him to ease tensions between the Muslim detainees and their non-Muslim guards, give briefings on Islam and even speak to reporters. Yee carries his letters of commendation and service awards in a canvas bag, pulling them out for inspection.

In September 2003, Yee received the most glowing performance review of his career. Two days later, he was arrested in Florida on his return from Guantanamo.

The government never disclosed what evidence supported the charges, and Yee flatly said there was none.

“How was it that I landed in jail? What happened was the government, the U.S. military, made a huge mistake,” Yee said last week. “It was a gross miscarriage of justice in the worst way.”

Yee faults overzealousness and ethnic and religious bigotry among military investigators for his ordeal.

He said his battalion commander, in a letter of support to his superiors, disclosed that detractors had said of Yee: “Who ... does this Chinese Taliban think he is, telling us how to treat our prisoners?”

Yee said he plans to continue criticizing government practices he finds antithetical to the American values of tolerance and diversity.

“Today we see that anyone who criticizes or voices dissent is immediately branded as unpatriotic, and that is wrong,” he said.