10/25 Motions Session #2: Translator Procurement

A video hookup beams the testimony of our next witness, Principal Deputy Chief Defense Counsel Bryan Broyles, from Rosslyn, Virginia, to Guantanamo’s Expeditionary Legal Complex---and thus also to the Fort Meade CCTV projector.  His subject will be CDR Ruiz’s client, Mustafa Al-Hawsawi, and the provision (or not) of needed translation services for Al-Hawsawi during the case’s pre-referral phase.

Among other things, Broyles liaises with the Convening Authority.  The latter manages all outside contracts for the commissions---including those regarding translators and defense consultants.  One contractor provides each team with a cleared, Arabic-fluent translator; that person works a 40-hour workweek.  Additionally, Broyles says, the defense has a few in-house translators, who work on written documents---but that’s a recent addition, and there were no appropriately cleared, in-house personnel in 2011.

Broyles recalls Ruiz coming to him, in March of that year, and asking for a cleared, Arabic translator.  The witness couldn’t help Ruiz with that immediately; he had to go back to the contractor to requisition additional people.  It turns out Ruiz didn’t get a translator, testifies the witness, until July 2012.  And in the interim, Broyles had spoke to Ruiz frequently, about the urgency of his need; and to the Convening Authority’s office. During this time the defense, in consultation with the contractor, had nominated a possible linguist in late March or April of 2011.  But this person withdrew his candidacy unilaterally, for reasons unknown to Broyles.  A raft of substitute translator nominees followed, Broyles says, and those could have stepped in immediately.  But as before, the person the defense selected also ultimately withdrew, because the selectee couldn’t clearance papers processed.  Oddly enough, the translator held a TS/SCI clearance already; he needed only an SCI briefing.  But, Broyles answers Ruiz, the Convening Authority had precluded SCI read-ons at the Office of the Military Commissions.  No read-on, no clearance, no translator.  Another person, Broyles tell Ruiz, couldn’t jump in, either, as that would-be translator didn’t hail from the right government contracting company.

Ruiz asks about the former Convening Authority’s claim, that Ruiz and company rejected qualified translators.  Broyles disagrees: we did not reject the translator candidates, he says.  In fact, regarding each group of possibles, the defense selected at least one.  The witness also agrees with Ruiz’s suggestion, that a key criterion for translator candidates---that the linguist not be female---originated with the defense.  One more time, Ruiz: were all the would-be translation folks presented to the defense by the contractor as TS/SCI cleared, and ready to rip?  Yep, agrees the witness. Ruiz concludes after a question or three more.

At same point, did Broyles represent detainees in the 9/11 case?  Prosecutor Clay Trivett asks, and Broyles tells him yes, he represented Mohammed Al-Qatani for a period. (The court allows the back-and-forth for bias purposes, but then pushes the prosecutor to a new topic.)  Did anyone from the Convening Authority tell Broyles and company about alternative translators, during the holdup on its nominee?  The witness doesn’t recall that.  But, he says, Ruiz did explore other possibilities.  Broyles was not aware, at the time, that the government was required to use only one translator for defense teams, he tells Trivett.  He learned about the exclusivity issue eventually, though.

Ruiz with a quick reply: isn’t it true that one 9/11 team was permitted to use a translator from one company, SAIC, even though the exclusive defense translator contract---to which Trivett referred—was with another company?  Right, answers the witness.

Nothing further here; Broyles is excused.