Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Morris Davis
Reflecting what critics have called a paranoid attitude, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) has fired its top expert on Afghanistan after he published an Op-Ed critical of the Obama administration’s plans for trying Guantánamo detainees in civilian and military courts. Morris Davis, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel who previously served as chief prosecutor for the Gitmo military commissions, wrote in The Wall Street Journal on November 10 that the administration’s decision to use federal courts and military tribunals was “a mistake.”
“It will establish a dangerous legal double standard that gives some detainees superior rights and protections, and relegates others to the inferior rights and protections of military commissions,” Davis wrote. “This will only perpetuate the perception that Guantánamo and justice are mutually exclusive.”
A CRS official privately told Newsweek that the agency’s top official, Daniel Mulhollan, has butted heads with some members of his staff over allowing CRS employees to express personal opinions in public. “The director has a paranoid fear that somebody somewhere is going to say something” that upsets members of Congress and get the office in trouble.
Davis is now suing CRS with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, claiming his firing represented a violation of his First Amendment rights to free speech.
Since resigning from his position in the military commissions in October 2007, Davis has been a vocal critic of the system in published articles and speeches. He joined CRS in December 2008 as the Assistant Director of the Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade Division.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Top Congressional Researcher on Afghanistan Fired (by Michael Isikoff, Newsweek)
Justice and Guantanamo Bay (by Morris Davis, Wall Street Journal)
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