In The News

Diaz found guilty of four of five charges over secret documents

By KATE WILTROUT, The Virginian-Pilot
© May 17, 2007
Last updated: 11:38 PM

NORFOLK - He knew his bosses didn't want to release information about foreign terror suspects in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and he knew the risks of sending it to a civilian lawyer anyway.

Now Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz knows what it might cost him.

The Navy lawyer was found guilty Thursday in a court-martial of violating orders by passing classified information that could be used to harm the United States to someone outside the government. The charge carries up to 10 years in prison.

"He made a tough call, and in so doing he's going to stand tall and accept the consequences of his action," Diaz's attorney, Patrick McLain, said after the verdict.

Conviction on three lesser charges of conduct unbecoming an officer and violating a general order could stretch his sentence to 14 years.

The seven-member jury cleared Diaz of what arguably was the most serious charge - printing out secret information he had reason to believe would be used to injure the United States. That charge also carried a 10-year penalty.

After the verdict at Norfolk Naval Station, Diaz put his arms around three sobbing women: his 15-year-old daughter, his ex-wife and his wife. He kissed his daughter on the forehead.

For six months ending in January 2005, Diaz was a lawyer for the joint military task force at Guantanamo in charge of holding and interrogating "enemy combatants" on the remote base.

Testimony during the four-day court-martial showed that Diaz was aware of Barbara Olshansky's request for a list of all detainees at Guantanamo and had seen draft copies of the government's response denying her request.

McLain said Diaz supported the 2004 Supreme Court decision granting detainees the right of habeas corpus and thought they should be allowed lawyers to represent them.

On Jan. 15, he mailed - anonymously, inside a valentine card - a list containing the names of detainees, their nationalities and interrogation teams to Olshansky, who was then a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York.

She turned the list over to authorities, starting an investigation that led to Diaz.

"We'll be frank till the cows come up that this was imprudent, dumb, sneaky, if you want, in the way he sent it off," McLain said in his closing arguments Thursday, but he said the information did not compromise national security and Diaz intended no harm to the United States.

"It was really Matt's patriotism, more than anything else, that drove this. He believes in the law," McLain said after the verdict. "It's not that he thinks the detainees, to a man, are deserving of release."

He also argued before the jury that the information Diaz sent was not classified, something prosecutors disputed.

In closing arguments, Cmdr. Rex Guinn, the lead prosecutor, painted Diaz's action as deliberate and calculated.

"As a naval officer, he had a duty to protect classified information," Guinn said. "He had a duty to protect his client's information. He failed to do so. It wasn't by accident. It was deliberate, on purpose. It brings dishonor and disgrace on him."

McLain said he would argue to day in the sentencing hearing that Diaz should serve no time, that his felony conviction is punishment enough. The jury will recommend a sentence to the military judge, Navy Capt. Daniel O'Toole.

"I don't think he should go to jail, and I don't think he should be dismissed" from the Navy, McLain said.

McLain expects Diaz to testify in his own defense at the hearing. The defense attorney said Diaz may talk about how he first became interested in the law as a teenager, when his father was charged with murdering patients he cared for as a nurse.

Robert Rubane Diaz was convicted in 1984 of 12 counts of murder and is on death row in California.