You Can't Make This Shit Up! Leading the Fight for the Rule of Law in the Guantanamo Bay Military Commissions - Paperback

by Michael Berrigan (Author)

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!