AMY GOODMAN: Now, this statement, exactly what Davis said Haynes said—Davis said, “at which point, [Haynes’s] eyes got wide and he said, ‘Wait a minute, we can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can’t have acquittals, we’ve got to have convictions.‘"

SCOTT HORTON: A devastating statement. It destroys the reputation for fairness of these proceedings. You have to remember that Jim Haynes is not just anybody. As the general counsel of the Department of Defense, he’s the person who stands near the apex of this process.

AMY GOODMAN: He’s not the prosecutor.

SCOTT HORTON: He’s not the prosecutor. The prosecutors report to him. The defense counsel report to him. The judges report to him. The convening authority reports to him. He stands over this entire process. And he already has an established track record of intervening in these cases for political purposes, for political manipulation. The Wall Street Journal broke that story the third week of September when they showed how he had intervened to mastermind the plea bargain in the Hicks case, in which the prosecutors were excluded. Haynes was involved doing this, and he was involved doing it basically to make good on pledges that Vice President Cheney had made to the Australian prime minister, to help out his friend in Australia in connection with an election. So that already set the tone here.

AMY GOODMAN: David Hicks was an Australian prisoner at Guantanamo—

SCOTT HORTON: Exactly right.

AMY GOODMAN: —who was ultimately sent back to Australia.

SCOTT HORTON: And is now free. He was sent back. He was given the minimum possible sentence that would allow his repatriation, his return to Australia.

AMY GOODMAN: Ross Tuttle, response to this explosive piece, “Gitmo Trials Rigged,” to what Davis—what Colonel Davis is saying Haynes told him?

ROSS TUTTLE: Well, I was—I mean, I guess—I don’t know if I was that surprised. I mean, I was surprised that somebody would say it or say it for attribution or say it to somebody who then say it for attribution, but, you know, in talking to a lot of people, I don’t know that that many people were surprised. You know, that sort of registers with “Uh-huh,” sort of “Yeah, I thought so.”

But I feel like this is the first time, and why it struck me and why I thought it was important to get out there, which was later confirmed by a lot of the people that I spoke to when reporting, that this really seems to be the first time that somebody at such a high level has made such a statement that appears to be, you know, what a lot of people have believed all along, that this process cannot result in fair, open—you know, fair, open trials. And so, that’s a concern.

And it, you know, hopefully—and I think what Davis is trying to do, being out front on this issue, is trying to get people to recognize that and get people to reevaluate the system and fix it, because I think everybody—everybody involved—the detainees, the people in the JAG Corps—I think, you know, most people involved, most people who pay attention to this issue, they want to see justice done, but this process seems deeply flawed.

AMY GOODMAN: Scott Horton, does conviction automatically mean death?

SCOTT HORTON: No, it doesn’t automatically mean death. There’s still a discretionary process here. The United States—the prosecutors have announced that they will seek the death penalty for at least some of these detainees if they secure a conviction. But in our military justice system, we haven’t had an execution since 1961. Our system—our military justice system very much—very strongly disfavors the death penalty.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the role of the JAGs. Talk about the role of the military lawyers and where they’ve stood over the years. Now, of course, Davis has resigned.

SCOTT HORTON: Well, I think one thing we should stress up front is that even the most severe critics of this process, for the most part, stand in awe of the JAG Corps and the way they’ve handled things. I mean, we’ve got a bunch of dedicated professionals who want to play their jobs, want to play their roles competently and professionally. And, in fact, professionalism has been the top note of the JAG Corps since the beginning of this process.

And the concerns that are being articulated are about political meddling with the work of the JAG Corps, intervention by political appointees—and Haynes, I think, has been the most aggressive of them—that stop the JAG officers from doing their proper roles and stop them from functioning independently. And we’ve seen them stand up and exercise independent judgment repeatedly. In fact, the first conflict that they had with Haynes was over the torture memoranda. And that memorandum that was described resulted in an order issued December 2nd, 2002 by Donald Rumsfeld that authorized torture techniques.