<p>Army Capt. James Yee, the Muslim chaplain originally suspected of espionage at the prison for terrorism suspects at the Navy base in Cuba, has seen the case against him wither, but he still faces criminal charges.</p><p>Yee has never been charged with spying, even though military prosecutors first predicted he would be prosecuted for espionage and aiding the enemy _ both capital offenses.</p><p>His often-delayed preliminary hearing is set to resume this week, but the Army has already postponed it three times and another delay is always a possibility.</p><p>Originally scheduled for Dec. 2, the hearing was postponed for five days when prosecutors discovered the legal staff at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base had mistakenly included a classified document in investigation packets delivered to Yees attorney and to the hearing officer at Fort Benning.</p><p>The chaplains attorney, Eugene Fidell, said the mistake showed that even Army officials were confused about the security classification of evidence and should drop the case.</p><p>After two days of testimony Dec. 8-9, the case was postponed a second time for 40 days while Army officials conducted a review of documents taken from the chaplains laptop, his quarters at Guantanamo and from his backpack at the Jacksonville (Fla.) Naval Air Station, upon his return from Guantanamo on Sept. 10.</p><p>Security and intelligence experts have been reviewing thousands of documents, said Lt. Col. Bill Costello, a spokesman for the U.S. Southern Command, which is responsible for Guantanamo.</p><p>Its a complicated process, he said. When you have a lot of documents to go through, it takes a long time.</p><p>As an example, a document that lists 40 countries from Albania to Zambia might not be classified, but if the countries were linked to other information, such as names, dates and numbers, it could be classified, he said.</p><p>The review process was still continuing last week, Costello said.</p><p>As of last week, the defense had received no classified documents, Fidell said.</p><p>As documents make it through the process, they (officials) are making it available to the defense, Costello said.</p><p>Yees lawyers say they have to see the evidence to properly defend the chaplain.</p><p>Weve received a lot of unclassified documents, Fidell said in a telephone interview from his Washington office. To hold a hearing without affording the defense an opportunity to review the documents upon which the charges rest would violate Chaplain Yees rights.</p><p>Yees attorneys have said the documents from the backpack consist of two small notebooks, a typewritten page and a term paper on Syria that Yee wrote for a college course on international affairs.</p><p>Yee, a 1990 West Point graduate who left the military for four years to study Arabic and Islam in Syria, returned as a chaplain and counseled some of the prison camps detainees from more than 40 countries.</p><p>Initially, there were reports that Yee was being investigated as part of an espionage probe at Guantanamo and he was held for 76 days in a Navy brig at Charleston, S.C., much of the time in leg irons and manacles.</p><p>Instead, he faces charges of mishandling classified material, failing to obey an order, making a false official statement, conduct unbecoming an officer for allegedly downloading porn on his government laptop and adultery. The Army added the pornography and adultery charges when he was released from the brig.</p><p>A Navy lieutenant testified last month that she had an affair with Yee, who is married, and an Army computer specialist testified that she found pornography on Yees computer. Adultery is a crime under military law.</p><p>If his hearing resumes Wednesday as planned, it will be in the same Fort Benning courtroom where Lt. William Calley was court-martialed for the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War.</p><p>When the hearing ends, Col. Dan Trimble, a military judge, will make a recommendation to Brig. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, commander of the task force that runs the prison holding 660 suspected terrorists, most of them captured during fighting in Afghanistan.</p><p>Trimble could recommend a court-martial, the dismissal of some or all charges, or an administrative penalty such as a reprimand. If court-martialed and convicted on all charges, the 35-year-old Yee could face up to 13 years in prison.</p><p>Yee is one of four Guantanamo workers arrested as part of an investigation into possible security breaches at the prison camp.</p>
