Another Brave Man

Lt. Colonel Darrel J. Vandeveld resigned as a prosecutor in the military tribunals at Guantamano Bay. He's the fourth prosecutor to resign. His Army career is finished.

Vandeveld's claims are particularly explosive.

In a declaration and subsequent testimony, he said the U.S. government was not providing defense lawyers with the evidence it had against their clients, including exculpatory information -- material considered helpful to the defense.

Saying that the accused enemy combatants were more likely to be wrongly convicted without that evidence, Vandeveld testified that he went from being a "true believer to someone who felt truly deceived" by the tribunals. The system in place at the U.S. military facility in Cuba, he wrote in his declaration, was so dysfunctional that it deprived "the accused of basic due process and subject[ed] the well-intentioned prosecutor to claims of ethical misconduct."

Vandeveld was warned by his superiors not to speak out until he is formally released from the military, but before the warning by his superiors, he said in an email to the LA Times:

"I don't know how else the creeping rot of the commissions and the politics that fostered and continued to surround them could be exposed to the curative powers of the sunlight," he said. "I care not for myself; our enemies deserve nothing less than what we would expect from them were the situations reversed. More than anything, I hope we can rediscover some of our American values."

Vandeveld corresponded with Fr. John Dear, a Roman Catholic priest and peace activist, who advised him to do the right thing. Vendeveld describes himself as a conformist. Up until now, he always received glowing evaluations from his superiors. Read the article. He's a man of faith, a Roman Catholic, who, in the end, followed his conscience.