8/21 Motions Session #5: Zipping Through Motions to Compel

Ruiz remains at the podium to argue another compulsion motion, AE031F (which also is styled 032H and 133E, given its relevance not merely to AE031, but to other motions, too).

This, the lawyer says, arose in connection with testimony by CAPT Thomas Welsh, formerly JTF GTMO’s Staff Judge Advocate.  This demonstrated, among other things, that JTF staff manage detention operations as well as intelligence operations---but that the Joint Intelligence Group Task Force was dissolved.  Ruiz had no time or opportunity test Welsh’s claims in this respect, and thus seeks further information about the issue, and about Welsh’s credibility.

Clay Trivett, a prosecutor, stands.  CDR Ruiz’s sole purpose is to impeach Welsh’s testimony, he says.  But Welsh certainly didn’t say there’s no JTF intelligence operations these days, only that a certain intelligence activity was discontinued. That’s what our documents show, at any rate.  Okay, well if that is true, asks Judge Pohl, then why not give Ruiz the documents?  Common sense: if there’s no harm in doing so, then maybe you ought to hand over the material.  Trivett thinks that the court could review the materials first, before authorizing any production.  And that’s how we’ll proceed, evidently.

That was easy.  On to AE031M ,which seeks to compel testimony from guards who conducted a search of Al-Hawsawi’s legal bins.  Ruiz wants to learn why they did so, and under what authority---hence the link to the underlying motion regarding unlawful influence.  He touches on the requests only so briefly.

Maj. Robert McGovern wants AE031M to be denied, as the guards’ testimony is neither relevant or necessary to the larger motion’s resolution.  The searches in question postdate the filing of the latter, to begin with.  In any event, defense counsel already know the “whys” and the “hows” behind the search: all this is detailed in the Commander’s report on the search episode---and the defense and court already have the report in hand.  There’s no reason to go beyond that, even if the defense can show relevance.