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CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports

Interview with Charles Gittins, Juan Walker

Aired March 20, 2002 - 19:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight on WOLF BLITZER REPORTS, THE WAR ROOM: Detainees from Afghanistan are about to face U.S. military justice.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The ones in Guantanamo Bay are killers. They don't share the same values we share.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Will they get a fair trial?

Are Afghanistan's warlords ready for peace? Who's really running the country? We'll go live to the Pentagon and to Afghanistan, and I'll speak live with criminal defense lawyer Charles Gittins, a veteran of many military trials; former Air Force JAG lawyer Juan Walker and CNN military analyst, retired Air Force Major General Don Shepperd, as we go into THE WAR ROOM.

Good evening. I'm Wolf Blitzer reporting tonight from Washington. We'll get right to that top story on military tribunals in just a moment.

But first, we have a breaking news story. This just in, the jury has reached a partial verdict in the case of a California couple whose dogs mauled a neighbor to death. Four of the five counts have been decided. The verdict could be announced as early as tomorrow if that fifth count is decided. Deliberations will resume tomorrow. We'll have more on this case right at the bottom of the hour here on CNN on "CROSSFIRE."

But now back to our top story. Following months of oftentimes agonizing internal debate and under careful watch of the international community, the Bush administration is set tomorrow to unveil details of those controversial military tribunals. The defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, is expected to spell out procedures for dealing with al Qaeda and Taliban detainees. And sensitive to criticism the plans for military style justice, the Pentagon is treading carefully. Let's go live to our military affairs correspondent Jamie McIntyre. He's over at the Pentagon -- Jamie.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN MILITARY AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, the announcement is set for tomorrow, but the Pentagon today was already trying to blunt some of the criticism that these military tribunals, or as the Pentagon prefers to call them, military commissions, would be somehow unfair. The Pentagon today insisted that all of the rules it has come up with are consistent with the concept of U.S. justice.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice-over): Pentagon sources say it's possible only a small number of the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba will ever face a military commission. The Pentagon says the legal process it's fashioned takes into account the concerns of critics.

VICTORIA CLARKE, PENTAGON SPOKESWOMAN: I think when people see the whole thing and hear the questions get answered, I think they'll say, you know what? That's a pretty good product, and that is a fair and a balanced and a just system.

MCINTYRE: Sources say the process will be open, similar to a military court-martial. The accused will be presumed innocent. They must be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The defendants will have the right to an attorney and to see any evidence against them, although classified material may be reviewed in closed session. And a military panel will have to be unanimous to impose the death penalty.

There are also some differences. The panel can decide to admit hearsay and secondhand evidence. And while there will be a right to appeal, it will be to a military review board, not the federal courts. And the final review will fall to President Bush who seems to have already made up his mind.

BUSH: Remember, these are the ones in Guantanamo Bay are killers. They don't share the same values we share.

MCINTYRE: That doesn't sound like an impartial process to some members of Congress.

REP. JOHN CONYERS (D), MICHIGAN: They want to get easier convictions. When you have a military tribunal, there are very few people that don't get convicted in them, just as a matter of course.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCINTYRE (on camera): Critics like Conyers insist they are motivated not by sympathy for terrorists, but concern that the Pentagon could set a precedent under which U.S. troops captured in the future could face kangaroo courts -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Jamie, what happens to those detainees who won't be tried in these military commissions or tribunals?

MCINTYRE: As we said, Wolf, it looks like there may only be a small number tried. It is also possible that none will actually be brought before a tribunal. The Pentagon's main interest here is in getting intelligence out of these captured prisoners to find more al Qaeda cells and to prevent any attacks on the United States. After they get that information, they may send quite a few of them back to their country of origin where justice is also swift and sure -- Wolf.

BLITZER: To put it mildly. Jamie McIntyre over at the Pentagon. Thanks for that report.

And can the detainees from Afghanistan get fair hearings? Is the Pentagon up to the task? Joining me here in the CNN WAR ROOM: Charles Gittins; he's a former Marine Corps officer. He's now a defense attorney specializing in military justice cases. And from Sacramento, California, another former JAG officer. Juan Walker has been a prosecutor and a defense attorney in military courts. And I'm also joined here in the CNN WAR ROOM by our own military analyst, retired Air Force Major General Don Shepperd. Remember, you can e-mail your WAR ROOM questions to us. Simply go to my Web page, cnn.com/wolf. That's also, by the way, where you can read my daily column.

And, gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. First to you, Charles Gittins. Do you think this is a fair system that's being set up for these detainees?

CHARLES GITTINS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: To the extent that the secretary of defense follows the rules for court-martial and applies them in these cases, I believe they can be fair and impartial. My concern is that so far, the leaked information doesn't indicate that the tribunals or the commissions themselves will be presided over by a military judge. And I think that's a grave mistake.

BLITZER: What about that, Juan Walker? What's your reaction to what you've heard about these military tribunals?

JUAN WALKER, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, I think they've done a good job of balancing our concerns, our initial concerns. When the first word of these tribunals being used came out, there was concern that it would be secret, that the sentence would happen and no one would know anything about it. But I think they've done a good job. They're going to let reporters in, from what I understand, from the leaked information. They'll let reporters in to everything except the classified information. So I think they have done a good job of balancing those concerns.

BLITZER: General Shepperd, as you know, a lot of significant changes in these military tribunals since they were first announced way back at the end of last year, after September 11, because the military itself was concerned, right?

RETIRED MAJOR GENERAL DON SHEPPERD, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yes. We're sorting our way through this. This hasn't happened in a long time, although there have been military commissions after most wars out there established by executive order, and then generally carried out according to court-martials, but some significance differences in the due process. So the executive order establishes the commission, but then the department of defense decides how they're actually going to implement it. And the devil is in those details and all of us are watching and waiting. We need it to be fair for our own protection.

BLITZER: They were largely afraid of how this might affect potentially U.S. military detainees in other countries.

SHEPPERD: It will be used by us and against us as well, Wolf, for sure.

BLITZER: All right. Let's talk about the specific nature. Charles, I know that you've dealt with a lot of courts-martial over your years as an attorney representing military officers who have been court-martialed. This will be a totally different kind of scenario, these military tribunals.

GITTINS: That's true. It hasn't been used since basically World War II. Military justice has evolved substantially since World War II. And notions of fair play, due process, have changed in the military since then.

BLITZER: Juan Walker, are you at all concerned that when all is said and done, the appeal process that's being proposed for these military tribunals winds up with the president of the United States? You heard the president earlier today in Jamie McIntyre's piece basically saying those detainees at Guantanamo Bay, they're killers. He seems to have already made up his mind. Is that going to be a fair process?

WALKER: I think, again, the process is fair. I do have some concern, as I was reading, preparing for this, I did look and see that the president is the final appeal authority. That's the thing that gives me most concern. I think it would be better if we just left it in the court of appeals for the Armed Forces, some court to make that decision because, as you indicate, it will look bad -- not that I don't think the president can be fair. But after having said what he said, I think it will look bad for the whole process.

BLITZER: You agree with that, Charles?

GITTINS: I do. I believe that the appeals should be to either a military court or to the court of appeals for the Armed Forces, which really is an underutilized court, in terms of federal courts.

BLITZER: What's the justification, General, for letting the president be the ultimate appeal in these kinds of cases?

SHEPPERD: Well, again, I can't say until I've actually seen the thing written, what the emphasis behind that would be. But one difference between the civilian system and the military system, not getting into the legal area here of the JAGs, but all military cases are automatically reviewed for appeal. So they go through a very fair appeal process. And my tendency would be along with the JAGs here to say I would think that normal process would apply. Why we've set this up so far, this may be rhetoric and it may come out different when we hear it tomorrow.

BLITZER: What we're hearing, Charles, is that almost everyone in that military proceeding will be a military officer. The judges will be military officers. The prosecutors will be military officers. The defense attorneys will be military officers, although those detainees might be able to bring in a civilian attorney, but only under very specific circumstances, and that civilian attorney may have to turn out to be a reserve military officer, if you will. Doesn't that stack the deck against these detainees?

GITTINS: I don't think it does. Court-martials, if they're properly advised on the law by a military judge presiding, I think reach accurate results when they're provided with competent evidence.

I'm somewhat concerned about the order that indicates that evidence may be inadmissible in a court-martial may be admitted against these individuals. And one of the problems with hearsay or third-hand evidence is that it's largely unreliable, and that can lead to an unreliable result.

BLITZER: Juan, the other criticism that I've heard so far is that these military officers, the attorneys that -- well the lawyers, if you will, who will be representing these detainees, very few of them have had any experience whatsoever in dealing with death penalty kinds of cases. Presumably, these high level al Qaeda, Taliban detainees might be subjected to the death penalty. What do you say, is that a fair process?

WALKER: Well, it's true that we don't have a lot of experience as far as death penalty is concerned, at least not in the Air Force. We didn't have a lot of death penalty cases. But I understand some of the other services do have more experience in that. And that's always a concern. We want to get experienced death penalty counsel whenever you have the death penalty at issue. But my concern is a little bit allayed in the sense that I'll put up a military defense counsel against any civilian defense counsel any day. They're very highly trained, very professional individuals, who I have no doubt can do the job.

BLITZER: Charles, do you agree with that?

GITTINS: I generally agree with that.

BLITZER: And if you were asked to come in, you would be allowed to serve as a defense attorney in these cases, because what, you're still a reserve officer?

GITTINS: I'm able to have a security clearance. All it would take is a re-evaluation of my prior clearance, which is top secret, so I don't think it would take much effort in terms of getting me qualified to review classified information.

BLITZER: Do you have any desire to represent any of those detainees?

GITTINS: I haven't been asked, and I've got a full docket right now.

BLITZER: What about you, Juan? I know you could come in, and you've represented people before military court.

WALKER: Yes, I used to be basically a public defender on the military Air Force base. And I certainly could come in. If the concern is military clearance, I'd have to have my clearance, again, re-evaluated. But I see no problem with that. Now whether I personally would represent them, I think I would have difficulty doing that.

BLITZER: You probably wouldn't want to do that. General, we have a question from Valerie who e-mailed us this: "How do we know who these people are?" Referring to the detainees in Guantanamo Bay. "Some use aliases, and there are no available records to confirm their identities. And most of them have refused to say a word to U.S. authorities."

SHEPPERD: I think that was the case initially, but over time we've developed a lot of information, and the longer they're there, the more information based upon our experience they give. So I think we know a lot about these people. And some of the detainees will tell us more about other people. So I think we've been able to put together a dossier over them. It's not that we know nothing about any of them there at all. That's overstated.

BLITZER: Your bottom line: Is this going to be smooth or is this going to be rough, Charles?

GITTINS: I think it's going to be rough. I think the Pentagon released some of the procedures today to blunt some of the criticism.

BLITZER: You agree with that, Juan?

WALKER: I think so. I think they're floating it out there, just like they did before. They threw out the military tribunal idea, and then there was criticism, and they revamped the idea. OK, let's bring it more in line with what we normally see in a military court-martial. So I think that's what they're doing again. They'll throw this out there, see what the reaction is, and take it. But as I understand it, the public is all for this. So I think that they'll get good reaction in that regard.

BLITZER: Juan Walker, thanks for joining us. Charles Gittins, I want to thank you as well for joining us. General, you stand by, because we have some more business to do.

This note, by the way, tomorrow we'll hear more about military tribunals and other issues involving the U.S. war directly from the number two man at the Pentagon, the deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz. He'll join me here in the CNN WAR ROOM. That's tomorrow night, 7:00 p.m. Eastern, 4:00 p.m. on the West Coast.

And when we come back, Afghanistan after the Taliban. Sharing power carefully. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back. It's been a land of shifting allegiances, and in the post-Taliban Afghanistan, the balance of power remains extremely fragile. CNN's Nic Robertson once again joins us live. He's on the phone; he's in Mazar-e Sharif in northern Afghanistan. How fragile is the situation, Nic, from your vantage point?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, this town here is pretty much separated from the rest of Afghanistan by the high Hindu Kush mountains. It has developed a power balance all of its own. The former warlord here, Abdul Rasheed Dostum, pretty much holds sway in this area.

However, in the last month or so, he's had to temper his power here by sharing it with other ethnic leaders. Dostum is an ethnic Uzbek. He's had to share the power now with ethnic Tajiks, also from the north of Afghanistan, and ethnic Hazaras from the center of Afghanistan. This power sharing has meant that troops and fighters on the streets of Mazar have had to be disarmed. However, commanders here say that has not fully taken place here. Only about 40 percent of fighters in this city have been disarmed.

At the moment, the city and the region is relatively calm, but it was within the first few days of taking power that Hamid Karzai, the country's interim leader, was forced to give power to General Abdul Rasheed Dostum, who was not part of the interim government. He was given the position of deputy defense minister.

Now, yesterday, Afghan time, Wednesday, Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's interim -- the head of the interim government arrived in Mazar-e Sharif for the first time. This was his first visit since he's become interim head of the government, and it was an indication that perhaps things in this northerly city are beginning to settle down. He's arrived here for the Afghan new year celebrations -- Wolf.

BLITZER: And Nic, how different is it elsewhere outside of Kabul? We see the situation in Mazar-e Sharif, very fragile, very tense, but what about other parts of the country?

ROBERTSON: Other parts of the country depend on -- generally depend for their peace and stability on former warlords. In Herat is Ismael Khan (ph), in the south of the country; around Kandahar, it's Gul Aga Sharzai (ph). Perhaps eastern Afghanistan, where Operation Anaconda has been under way is one of the regions where there is less stability. The former warlords bring with them their old power structures and provide stability in those regions, something the interim government is taking advantage of, as long as those former warlords assure the interim government that they will work with the interim government.

But in the east, around the areas of Khowst and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) province, where Operation Anaconda was, there are no clear leaders emerging. There are pockets of al Qaeda, there are pockets of sympathizers toward the Taliban. This is an area that was in the past sympathetic to the Taliban, and it is perhaps these areas that provide for the greatest instability.

However, having said that, the warlords, the former warlords like Abdul Rasheed Dostum wield such considerable power, without their support the interim government could effectively lose control over certain areas, certain large areas of the country -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Nic Robertson reporting for us from Mazar-e Sharif.

And this important note, Nic will have much more at the top of the hour in his special report, "LIVE FROM AFGHANISTAN." That begins at 8:00 Eastern.

And let's get some more perspective now on the security situation in the post-Taliban Afghanistan. We turn once again to our military analyst, retired Air Force Major General Don Shepperd. It looks like a very, very dangerous situation for those thousands of U.S. troops still in Afghanistan.

SHEPPERD: Yeah, putting it mildly, Wolf. It's not only dangerous for them, it's dangerous for the Afghans in those areas, too. As you try to spread control out of Kabul, which seems to be fairly stable right now, clear the al Qaeda out of these other pockets, and then they're able to come back in and regroup and launch guerrilla attacks and will be able to for a long time.

So what you're trying to do is get the Afghans to spread the security blanket slowly out across the country so that we don't have to do it all with military forces, because it is difficult and dangerous.

BLITZER: You were with me on Sunday when we both heard the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Senator Bob Graham, say these battles are moving from the rural areas in the mountains to the urban areas right in the cities, and potentially that could be a lot bloodier, a lot more dangerous for U.S. personnel.

SHEPPERD: Yes, it can be. We experienced that in Vietnam where all the way through the war, people would lob grenades in markets and lob them into vehicles and this type of thing. It's difficult to keep that type of thing from happening. But what we are able to do is probably to keep them from massing in any significant numbers and making organized attacks. We seem to have them on the run. We seem to have broken their back from that standpoint. Doesn't mean that it won't happen here and there. Doesn't mean incidents won't happen, but it is going to be dangerous for a long time.

BLITZER: The overall assessment that I heard from the CIA director, George Tenet, yesterday when he testified before the Senate armed services committee was pretty gloomy. Yes, there have been some inroads, but this war is by no means over.

SHEPPERD: Afghanistan has been a gloomy place for many decades and perhaps centuries, depending on how you look at it. But finally, they've got a chance. And, basically, I think we've broken the back of al Qaeda, the al Qaeda conveyor belt and factory for terrorism within Afghanistan, taken over their big caches, bombed out their training areas. So that is all gone. Doesn't mean they can't put pieces back together, but they're reacting to us rather than us waiting all around the world to see what they're going to do next.

BLITZER: If you had to make a quick prediction, month, years, how long will those U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan? SHEPPERD: Certainly months, perhaps years. There will be troops from some nations there helping with security for I think several years as this government goes back together.

BLITZER: General Don Shepperd, our military analyst, thanks as usual. Doing double duty for us tonight.

And remember, I also would love to hear from you. You can go to my Web page, cnn.com/wolf. Click on the designation for comments. Send me your thoughts. I'll read them. My producers will read them. And we'll try to get back to as many of you as we possibly can.

And coming up, seven years of political wrangling over campaign finance reform reaches a critical vote. That and our other top stories just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back.

Topping this hour's "News Alert", sweeping new changes for political campaign finances. Just a few hours ago, the Senate passed a landmark reform bill that bans so-called soft money contributions to political parties at the national level. President Bush has just issued a statement saying he will sign the bill into law. Opponents are already threatening to fight it in court.

The former president, Bill Clinton, and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, won't be going to court over Whitewater. In a final report on the Whitewater investigation, the independent counsel, Robert Ray, concludes there was not enough evidence to prove the Clintons engaged in criminal wrongdoing. The five-volume report wrapped up a multi- year probe into the couple's controversial Whitewater land venture.

And a suicide bomber killed seven people on a bus in Israel today, just hours before Palestinian and Israeli officials met to try to broker a ceasefire. That meeting ended without an agreement. Officials would not elaborate on the stumbling block, but they did agree to meet again.

That's all the time we have tonight. Please join me again tomorrow twice at both 5:00 and 7:00 p.m. Eastern. Until then, thanks very much for watching. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. "CROSSFIRE" begins right now.

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