Los Angeles Times staff writer Eric Lichtblau reports on the case of recently retired Navy petty officer Daniel M. King. Excerpt:
King’s supporters say the case raises core questions about the way the military uses polygraphs to detect spies and whether it maintains proper safeguards to protect a service member’s right to defense counsel, a speedy trial and due process.
“You have a real problem here when an individual can spend well over a year incarcerated in a case in which there is really very little evidence,” said Kevin Barry, a retired military judge who helped write a brief on King’s behalf. “There are a lot of shortcomings in the military justice system, and a case like King’s has hit pretty hard on a few key ones.”
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, one of King’s lawyers, said the Navy’s justice system should be put on trial for running roughshod over a 20-year veteran’s rights. The Navy was driven by a “blind pursuit” of a villain, he says.
The King case, Turley maintains, fits “a long-standing pattern of abusive and unprofessional conduct” by the naval investigative service. He cited the Navy’s handling of the Tailhook sex scandal in the early 1990s and its probe into a fatal 1989 explosion aboard the battleship Iowa, which prompted the Navy to apologize to the family of a sailor who it initially suspected of blowing up the ship.
The Navy Times, in an editorial last month, said the King case “didn’t rock just one sailor’s faith in military justice. It poses a challenge to anyone’s faith in the system.”
The newspaper said King deserves an apology. But King said in an interview that he is happy just to be out of lockup.
The matter began in September 1999, when King underwent a routine polygraph test as part of a reassignment from Guam to Ft. Meade in Maryland, where he had previously worked as a cryptographer for the National Security Agency.
The Navy says King “did not pass” the test and effectively admitted to security violations. King’s lawyers deny the claim and say the results were simply inconclusive–a fairly common result.