General stripped of legal authority at Gitmo

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department on Friday stripped a controversial general of legal authority over Guantánamo military commissions but created for him a job as war-court czar in charge of logistics from the Pentagon to the outpost in southeast Cuba.

Within hours, Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann said his biggest challenge in his new job is "to keep the process moving, really intensely." He pledged a brisk pace for war-on-terrorism prosecutions.

"Everybody needs to start seeing more trials," he said. "I want those courtrooms to be as filled up as they can possibly be, six days a week."

Three military judges had three times this year disqualified the Air Force brigadier from his role as impartial legal adviser at war-court trials. Each found a perception of pro-prosecution bias that was at odds with his supposed role as objective legal adviser.

The Defense Department notice did not mention the controversy. Instead, it named Hartmann's deputy, retired Army Col. Michael Chapman, the new legal adviser for military commissions. The job supervises the Pentagon's chief war-crimes prosecutor and, separately, offers independent legal advice on the cases.

Hartmann became director of operations, planning and development for military commissions.

At Guantánamo, fellow officers testified at the tribunals that Hartmann bullied attorneys and junior officers in his zeal to push forward with trials at the first U.S. war-crimes trials since World War II.

In August, a deputy prison-camp commander, Army Brig. Gen. Gregory Zanetti, testified that Hartmann was "abusive, bullying and unprofessional" and employed a "spray-and-pray" strategy to stage the tribunals in a crude compound called Camp Justice.

The Pentagon announced Hartmann's reassignment days before renewed hearings in the case he has championed, the complex capital-conspiracy prosecutions of five suspected architects of the Sept. 11, attacks that killed 2,973 people.

Confessed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his suspected four conspirators are due back at the war court in southeast Cuba for pretrial motions Monday and Tuesday.

Defense lawyers said they want the charges dismissed on grounds that Hartmann pushed the prosecution's timing for political purposes. Hartmann said his zeal was apolitical and meant to jump-start a sluggish legal system.

Under the current timetable, the big Sept. 11 death-penalty trial is unlikely to start during the Bush presidency.