I was an active-duty Army JAG for 20 years. When I retired in 2006, I was approached
to work as Principal Deputy Chief Defense Counsel for the Military Commissions Defense
Organization (MCDO): the team defending people held at Guantánamo Bay in the Bush
administration's "War on Terror". In many senses, the military commissions, created in the
aftermath of 9/11, were the antithesis of good national and international law, designed to allow the
use of evidence obtained from torture to prosecute and convict "detainees".
At MCDO, truth was (and is) stranger than fiction; we would often invoke the mantra "You
can't make this shit up!"
There is another meaning to this phrase: when the Bush administration
decided to create ("make up") the GTMO military commissions and not to use established systems
of justice, they were asking for trouble. It is impossible to create a new system of "justice" on the
fly, particularly one created to hide illegal practices (redactions on 20 pages of the memoir were
required by CIA and DOD censors.) Innumerable problems and obstacles were bound to occur.
This insider account of the work of MCDO through the Hicks, Hamdan, Khadr, al Bahlul, and
Jawad trials, among others, and the al Nashiri and "9/11" death penalty cases, offers unique
insights into the often dark world MCDO attorneys were forced to navigate-including being
investigated by the FBI (led by Special Counsel Pat Fitzgerald) for alleged misuse of classified
materials. There was so much at stake: nothing less than the rule of law. Dark humor helped us not
only survive, but thrive-while scarred. Think a legal M*A*S*H. You really can't make this shit up!
Review :
Kirkus Reviews:
"A gripping behind-the-scenes story of the embattled lawyers trying to defend the Gitmo prisoners". . .
"As the title of the book indicates, he manages to infuse much of his account with a kind of grim humor despite the dark scenarios he describes--largely a series of kangaroo-court trials involving parties whose names have long since faded from the headlines and the popular consciousness."
"Throughout the text, Berrigan includes color photos and sections of actual trial transcripts to lend further grounding to his wild, outrageous tales of government lawyers scrambling on behalf of their clients to combat the Bush administration, which was making up new laws when it wasn't ignoring existing ones."
"The author approaches this material with a thoroughly appealing, darkly comedic tone, relating incident after incident in which "the Prosecution was trying to peddle a lot of bullshit."
"Berrigan is refreshingly even-handed in his political criticisms. . . ."
