Word: yee
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...Jimmy Yee, 35, sitting in a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., facing possible espionage charges? Yee, arrested on Sept. 10, is being held in connection with a widening investigation of spying at Guantanamo Bay, where some 660 detainees from 40 foreign countries have been held for 18 months. Yee may be guilty of nothing more than providing succor to prisoners, but the military wants to know why he had, as is alleged, hand-drawn sketches of the prison quarters, the names of interrogators and inmates, and notes on what was said during interviews...
Officials also want to know if he is linked to Ahmad al-Halabi, an Air Force senior airman and translator who was stationed at the base at the same time as Yee. The Pentagon disclosed last week that al-Halabi, who was arrested on July 23, faces 32 criminal charges, including four counts of violating the Federal Espionage Act. The military says al-Halabi, 24, tried to funnel classified information on Guantanamo prisoners to a Syrian government agent. Al-Halabi says he is innocent, and Syria's Information Minister calls the notion that al-Halabi or anyone else was spying...
Pentagon officials say it is likely that Yee and al-Halabi knew each other, given that they shared a faith and cramped quarters at Guantanamo. Officials don't know if the two conspired with each other or if they're the only ones to have allegedly spied. As many as four other military personnel, among them a Navy sailor who served there, are also being investigated. How is it that in a place this physically impenetrable, security may have been compromised by "an enemy within," as one Air Force officer put it? Were these alleged spies simply not vetted properly...
...part, Yee converted to Islam only when he was sent by the Army to Saudi Arabia in 1991. Two years later, with funding from the Saudi government, he made a pilgrimage to Mecca. After a brief stint in the U.S. as a pharmaceuticals salesman, Yee enrolled in a prestigious theological school in Damascus, where he studied for four years. It was in Syria that he met his fiance. His defenders say Yee returned from Syria with a deep devotion to Islam, though he remained a staunch American patriot. "He always said the world should condemn 9/11, and he was unambiguous...
There are various theories about what Yee and al-Halabi might have been up to. One explanation is that they wanted to help inmates feed interrogators false or misleading intelligence. Another theory is that they were trying to relay the names of the inmates, though to whom remains unclear. The Pentagon is particularly concerned about that because the names of the detainees have never been released, and al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups cannot be sure who is being held...