By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 24, 2004; Page A02

Attorneys for an Air Force translator at the Guantanamo Bay prison who faces a variety of criminal charges said military officials have offered contradictory explanations about whether they consider information found in his possession to be classified. The continually changing reasons make it difficult to determine the basis for many of the criminal charges against him, the lawyers contend.

The complaint came in 40 pages of legal papers filed last week in the court-martial of Airman Ahmad I. Halabi. His attorneys said investigators have repeatedly changed their reasoning about why the translations of letters from detainees to their families that Halabi possessed were considered classified.

"Halabi remains in jail and has been in pre-trial confinement for nine months, and still the government does not have a consolidated, consistent or intelligible position on the classification of information" in the case, Halabi's attorneys wrote. "Each time the defense points out the flaws in the classification logic, a different reason for classification of information is created or invented."

The legal documents were filed one month after the U.S. military dropped all criminal charges against Army Capt. James Yee, a Muslim chaplain who also worked at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba for al Qaeda and Taliban suspects. Yee's case was racked with disputes about whether the documents he possessed were properly deemed classified. Yesterday, two Democratic senators on the Armed Services Committee, Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.) and Carl M. Levin (Mich.), asked the Pentagon to investigate the military's treatment of Yee.

Halabi, who has been held in solitary confinement on a California military base, is charged with mishandling classified material and attempted espionage, among other charges. The latter charge stems from an alleged plan, apparently never carried out, to pass information to someone in his native Syria.

A military spokesman, Air Force Lt. Col. Jennifer L. Cassidy, declined to comment on the attorney's assertions, saying they are "matters properly resolved by the military judge."

Military officials dropped the charges against Yee for the alleged mishandling of classified material on March 19, saying that holding a trial risked exposing secrets. Yee's attorneys disputed that assertion, noting that officials failed for months to agree on which of the documents found in Yee's possession were classified, and why. The hearings in the Yee case were delayed five times because of this security review.

According to Halabi's court papers, last July, soon after Halabi was arrested in Florida following eight months in Guantanamo Bay, officials said the copies of detainee letters that he had on his laptop computer were classified because the letters contained inmate identification numbers. The combinations of names and numbers made them a secret, they added.

But, in September, officials said having the names alone was a violation.

At a hearing last month, officials said neither the names nor the numbers, nor any combinations, were classified. Air Force Office of Special Investigations agent Lance Wega said, though, that the "family names and addresses of detainees" in the letters remained classified.

In addition, officials said, a CD-ROM that Halabi had with information identical to that on the laptop was classified. Defense attorneys said that, earlier this month, an official at the Southern Command, the military unit that oversees the Guantanamo Bay prison, told them why the CD-ROM was secret, but that he added that the reason was itself classified. Halabi's attorneys wrote that the official's reason was "completely inconsistent" with all the other explanations given previously.

Halabi's military lawyers, Air Force Majors James Key and Kim London, wrote that the letters cannot be classified because they were created not by the government but by detainees -- and that, in any case, the letters are "old mail long ago released to detainees or their families." Guantanamo Bay translators such as Halabi translated the letters on non-secure computers and were not warned to treat the letters or inmate numbers as secret, the lawyers wrote.

The government also asserts that a sketch in Halabi's possession, which depicts the layout of some prison buildings, is classified.

"How can it be classified?" asked Donald Rehkopf, a civilian attorney for Halabi. "They've shown reporters through there, and any of them could have drawn it."

In September, officials also alleged that Halabi committed wrongdoing when, during a break in a hearing, he used a computer in his attorney's office to add some photos of his fiancee to his personal Web site and to remove others. Officials theorized that he might have been trying to destroy evidence or communicate with outsiders using coded messages, and cited the episode as a reason to keep him in jail. Armed with a search warrant, the government seized documents from the lawyer's computer.

But, Halabi's lawyers wrote, a military computer expert retained by them to examine the Web site concluded within minutes that no one, including Halabi, had altered the site since last May.

Rehkopf said military investigators got the impression that the Web site was changing over time because they were inadvertently varying the placement of capital letters in calling up some pages from the site. Some pages on the site require capital letters in specific positions.

An Air Force investigator stated that he spent 800 hours examining the Halabi Web site for evidence, and officials said last month they still suspected that there are hidden features in the site that allow outsiders to gather information secreted there. Last fall, the government dropped some charges that Halabi used the Internet to send secrets to unauthorized people.

Halabi's family says investigators mistakenly concluded he was sending secrets to Syria because he periodically communicated with the Syrian Embassy to arrange a trip there to be married.