The Russian president is a product of the 20th century KGB. He knows that subversion is much cheaper than invasion. "There is a battle for Ukraine, but it's not going to be on a military battlefield," Hill told me. "It's going to be a game of wits. The question is: Can we outsmart Putin?" And, even more difficult, outsmart him on his own turf?
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It was tempting to look at last week's diplomatic agreement to pull Ukraine back from the brink of war and see the beginning of a grand compromise between Russia and the West.
Tempting, but mistaken.
Vladimir Putin is still winning most of what he wants in Ukraine, and he's winning it more cheaply and more elegantly than he would by launching a full-scale military invasion.
Last week's agreement, which called on pro-Russia militias to end their occupation of government buildings, was probably only a speed bump on the way toward bringing all of Ukraine under Moscow's influence.
That's not only the view of seasoned Russia watchers; it's also the fear of many officials inside the Obama administration.
President Obama could use a diplomatic win, but there wasn't a shred of triumphalism — or even optimism — in his description of last week's accord. "I don't think we can be sure of anything," Obama told reporters. "There is the possibility, the prospect, that diplomacy may de-escalate the situation.... But I don't think, given past performance, that we can count on that."
Or even given present performance. While Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was in Geneva drafting the joint agreement on Ukraine, Putin was speaking at a news conference in Moscow, and he wasn't sounding like a man in the mood for concessions. "It's New Russia," he trumpeted. "Kharkiv, Lugansk, Donetsk, Odessa were not part of Ukraine in czarist times; they were transferred in 1920. Why? God knows."
Actually, every Russian historian knows: Lenin drew those borders to make sure Ukraine's population included plenty of reliable Russians.
Putin said reports that Russian troops were among the insurgents in those cities were "rubbish." He called the Ukrainian government illegitimate. And he said he had a duty to protect the people of what he called "the Russian southeast."
He added that the upper house of Russia's parliament had already authorized him to use military force — although, he added generously, he hoped it wouldn't come to that.
"He's not compromising," warned Fiona Hill, the Brookings Institution's ace Putinologist. "He's looking for what the market will bear. He's trying to see how much of Ukraine he can take, and he'll settle for what he can get."
Does that mean additional military action? Not if Putin can get what he wants without it. In the short run, Hill and others say, Russia will continue to press for Ukrainian constitutional reforms that would give pro-Russia areas more autonomy and, if Moscow has its way, the right to secede. And Russia wants a delay in Ukraine's presidential election scheduled for May 25, because the vote would make Kiev's current provisional government much more legitimate in the eyes of the world.
"He may not need to invade to get what he wants," Hill told me. "He knows that if he doesn't take military action, we'll all say, 'Thank God.'"
In that sense, Secretary of State John F. Kerry was mistaken a few weeks ago when he denounced Putin for behaving like a 19th century autocrat. Instead, the Russian president is a product of the 20th century KGB, where his career began. He knows that subversion is much cheaper than invasion.
That may also be why Putin took a cautious step back from military action last week: The cost-benefit analysis was pretty clear.
In Russia, the 2-month-old crisis has already taken an economic toll: a 12% drop in the Moscow stock index since February and an estimated $51 billon in capital flight in the first quarter. Last week, Russia's finance minister announced that he had trimmed his projection for this year's economic growth from 2.5% to 0.5%.
The United States and the European Union have agreed that direct Russian military action would force them to respond with new economic sanctions, but without military action, that consensus fell apart. Putin "thinks the EU will back off, and he's probably right," Hill said.
And one more factor, Hill noted: "The prospect of Ukrainians and Russians fighting each other didn't make Russians very happy. A war could have played very badly at home."
The best form of victory for Putin would be to have his cake and eat it too: to have a Ukraine that gives Moscow a veto over its foreign policy and keeps its economy tied to the east, without all the costs of a full-scale invasion.
He's on track toward that goal. The United States and its European allies can still push back through long and patient support for the government in Kiev and a costly effort to rescue Ukraine's staggering economy. But it's an asymmetrical contest. Putin's interest in Ukraine is immediate and visceral; the outcome is central to his agenda as president. For Obama and other Western leaders, Ukraine is important but peripheral.
"There is a battle for Ukraine, but it's not going to be on a military battlefield," Hill told me. "It's going to be a game of wits. The question is: Can we outsmart Putin?"
And, even more difficult, outsmart him on his own turf?
Twitter: @DoyleMcManus
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Though it feels absurd to say this — like a bad joke at a lame 80′s themed party — the Canadian government has announced that this country is sending reinforcements to our NATO allies in Europe. Six CF-18 fighter jets and necessary support personnel will soon deploy to an Eastern European location (expected, but not confirmed, to be Poland), to join other NATO forces in a “patrol” mission. Roughly 20 staff officers will join their alliance peers at NATO headquarters in Belgium, to assist in contingency planning. HMCS Regina, currently deployed in the Arabian Sea on anti-terror duties, may join allied warships assembling in European waters.
Whatever bland bureaucratic euphemisms these efforts will be saddled with, this is a military buildup in response to recent Russian moves against Crimea and its military mobilization across the border from the rest of Ukraine, as well as some posturing off the frontier of Estonia, a NATO member. NATO’s Eastern European members, for whom Soviet domination is a not-too-distant memory, called for reinforcements, and after typical delays, the allies are responding.
At the risk of stating the obvious, any armed conflict between Russia and the West would be a very bad thing. Putin would have to be a mad man to provoke such a clash, with its literally apocalyptic risks. But, alas, NATO doesn’t really have a choice. Yes, Putin would need to be a mad man to pick a fight with the allies. But our defence posture must accept the possibility that Putin is indeed a mad man. He may not be — indeed, he probably isn’t. But the alliance would not be acting in a responsible manner if it adopted as its official response to this crisis a policy of, “Meh, we’ve probably seen the worst of it.” So, yes. Reinforcements must be sent, and Canada is right to do its part.
But, gosh, that part sure is awful tiny.
We are a G8 nation, an economic giant. We have the second largest landmass in the world. Our population of 35 million may not be huge, but we’re not exactly Andorra. And yet, the military commitment that has been announced or even hinted at — six jets, a few dozen officers and, maybe, a warship — constitutes a frighteningly large percentage of our total available military assets. The six CF-18s, in particular, represent a shockingly tiny contribution, and a major effort, at the same time.
Currently, Canada’s air fleet includes 80 relatively recently modernized CF-18 jets. These aircraft are more than three decades old, but remain capable. Should it be necessary to fight the Russians, the CF-18s and their pilots would acquit themselves well. But there’s still only 80 of them, and not all of those are actually assigned to combat squadrons. Some aircraft are needed for training and scientific purposes, and aircraft are always being rotated in and out of service for maintenance. Indeed, as of 2012, barely half of our 80 jets — 48 total — were actually assigned to combat squadrons.
Canada fields four squadrons of 12 jets each, two squadrons each to Alberta and Quebec. As if that wasn’t bleak enough, those squadrons only maintain a “readiness rate” of 70%, at best (readiness rate meaning how many of the aircraft are actually immediately available for service at any given moment). Do the math on that — 48 x .7 — and you get 34 planes, rounded up to the nearest jet. Again, that’s the best-case scenario, assuming that every squadron meets its readiness goal.
That’s not enough to protect a country of this size. Even if you write off the vast swathes of Canadian territory that are only populated by moose and black flies, 34 jets still isn’t enough to cover all of our population centres, and our military knows it. According to sensitive information publicized by WikiLeaks in 2012, Royal Canadian Air Force contingency planning assigns the available jets to cover four defence zones 24/7 — Vancouver, Calgary-Edmonton, Toronto, and Montreal-Ottawa. Saskatchewan, Winnipeg, Quebec City, all of Atlantic Canada and the entire Arctic — sorry, fellas. No jets for you.
Think of that for a minute. Thirty five million people — 34 jets. You need a city the size of Edmonton or Ottawa to keep one CF-18 in the air? Really?
The Air Force is too small. There’s no way around that. We don’t have enough jets to cover our own territory, even when we are using all of them at home. And that’s almost never the case. Our jets often take part in important training exercises with allied nations. We assist the U.S. in patrolling the vast air approaches to North America — several years ago, after an accident grounded the U.S. jet fleet in Alaska, Canadian jets assumed temporary responsibility for the defence of that entire state. And now, of course, we’re sending half a dozen of our precious few planes on an important mission abroad to support our allies and maintain international stability. This is what I mean when I said that our contribution is both tiny and a major commitment. As bleak as it is to admit this, our paltry six jets is probably more than we can really spare.
I’ve focused on the Air Force here, but the other service branches aren’t much better off. The Army, which benefitted from new equipment and relatively lavish funding during the Afghan War, isn’t in bad shape, and could probably put together a modest land battlegroup with a decent mixture of infantry, armoured vehicles and artillery if it was asked to. It would be light on helicopters, drones and would be using elderly supply trucks, but it could do it. But the Navy is a disaster. Michael Byers, a frequent contributor to the commentary pages of the National Post, recently wrote an oped for us where he took a close look at the state of our maritime readiness, with particular attention paid to tensions in Ukraine. Space constraints do not permit me to recap his findings in full, but suffice it to say, if the Russian Army decided to make a break for Paris tomorrow, Canada could probably send … a ship.Maybe two, but probably not.
Canada is never going to be a major global military power, and when compared to many of our allies, a disproportionate percentage of our military power will always be needed here at home, looking after our gigantic landmass and the air and sea approaches that surround it. But even with only 35 million souls, a country this rich ought to be able to patrol its own coastline and vital ocean trade routes, provide adequate search-and-rescue services throughout its territory and provide minimal air cover to all of its major populated areas, while still possessing enough strength to contribute modestly, but meaningfully, to international operations. Right now, we fail, miserably, in each and every one of those categories.
The typically progressive Canadian response to talk of this nature is to scoff, and demand to know what Canada needs a military for. The absence of apparent international threats is held up as proof that Canada doesn’t need a military, beyond what’s required for domestic security. But make no mistake — first of all, Canada does not currently meet even the modest military thresholds required to provided said domestic security, and on the international scene, threats materialize faster than we can muster the strength to respond to them. On the morning of Sept. 10, 2001, the idea of Canada waging war in southern Afghanistan would have seemed ridiculous. In 2010, sending an air and naval group to Libya would have been science fiction. Mounting a major humanitarian intervention in Haiti after a devastating earthquake wasn’t on anyone’s radar until after the earthquake struck. And reinforcing NATO against Russian adventurism? As if.
And yet all of these things have happened, in recent memory, and with little or no warning. The world is not as nice or stable a place as millions of Canadians continue to pretend it is. We need a military capable of securing our home and helping out abroad. We don’t have it. This should embarrass us all — but especially our “troop supporting” Tory government. It’s great that the troops are so valued. Too bad there’s so few of them.
National Post
• Email: mgurney@nationalpost.com | Twitter: mattgurney
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Christians in Slavyansk hold Easter celebrations while separatists arrive from Donetsk to help occupy public buildings in defiance over an international deal. The Geneva agreement, signed by the United States, Russia, Ukraine and the EU, requires all illegal armed groups to disarm and end the illegal occupation of public buildings. However, separatists say they will not budge until the Kiev government steps down
Russia says it is "outraged" by a deadly shootout in eastern Ukraine that breached an Easter truce. However, Ukrainian officials say details of the incident are not clear.
Officials say a shootout at a checkpoint manned by pro-Russian separatists has killed at least one person. Some reports say four people died, including separatists.
Russia said in a statement it is "outraged by this provocation by the fighters," and the attack proves there is a "lack of desire by the Kyiv authorities to rein in and disarm nationalists and extremists." Moscow urged Kyiv to rein in its armed extremists.
However, a Ukrainian group blamed for the attack denies any involvement, and accuses Russian special forces for being behind the incident.
The assault happened near the town of Slavyansk, which is under the control of pro-Russian militants.
The attack came just hours after the Ukrainian government announced a pause in security operations to oust pro-Russian militants from buildings they have seized in recent days.
Foreign Minister Andrii Deshchytsia linked the suspension to the Easter holiday, and said the pause would give European monitors more time to organize a special mission aimed at de-escalating tensions in eastern Ukraine.
A VOA correspondent in Kyiv says the diplomat's comments came after concluding a meeting with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and ambassadors from Russia, the United States and the European Union.
Pro-Russian gunmen have seized Ukrainian government buildings in nearly a dozen eastern cities and say they will not surrender until the interim Ukraine government in Kyiv steps down.
In Moscow Saturday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted that Russia had deployed additional security forces to the Ukrainian border in response to the instability in Ukraine. Russia has previously said its troops were on the border for routine exercises.
U.S. President Barack Obama has warned Russia that it could face additional sanctions if it fails to adhere to a new international deal on Ukraine reached Thursday in Geneva. That agreement, which followed talks between Ukraine, Russia, the United States and the European Union, calls for all government buildings to be evacuated and for the militants to be disarmed. But it includes few concrete measures for ending the crisis, and many Western leaders are skeptical about Russia holding up its end of the bargain.
Officials say a shootout at a checkpoint manned by pro-Russian separatists has killed at least one person. Some reports say four people died, including separatists.
Russia said in a statement it is "outraged by this provocation by the fighters," and the attack proves there is a "lack of desire by the Kyiv authorities to rein in and disarm nationalists and extremists." Moscow urged Kyiv to rein in its armed extremists.
However, a Ukrainian group blamed for the attack denies any involvement, and accuses Russian special forces for being behind the incident.
The assault happened near the town of Slavyansk, which is under the control of pro-Russian militants.
The attack came just hours after the Ukrainian government announced a pause in security operations to oust pro-Russian militants from buildings they have seized in recent days.
Foreign Minister Andrii Deshchytsia linked the suspension to the Easter holiday, and said the pause would give European monitors more time to organize a special mission aimed at de-escalating tensions in eastern Ukraine.
A VOA correspondent in Kyiv says the diplomat's comments came after concluding a meeting with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and ambassadors from Russia, the United States and the European Union.
Pro-Russian gunmen have seized Ukrainian government buildings in nearly a dozen eastern cities and say they will not surrender until the interim Ukraine government in Kyiv steps down.
In Moscow Saturday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted that Russia had deployed additional security forces to the Ukrainian border in response to the instability in Ukraine. Russia has previously said its troops were on the border for routine exercises.
U.S. President Barack Obama has warned Russia that it could face additional sanctions if it fails to adhere to a new international deal on Ukraine reached Thursday in Geneva. That agreement, which followed talks between Ukraine, Russia, the United States and the European Union, calls for all government buildings to be evacuated and for the militants to be disarmed. But it includes few concrete measures for ending the crisis, and many Western leaders are skeptical about Russia holding up its end of the bargain.
Ukraine's interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of trying to "restore the Soviet Union", in an interview on US television.
Speaking on NBC's Meet the Press, Mr Yatsenyuk says that if Mr Putin is successful, it will be "the biggest disaster of this century".
Addressing disputed claims of anti-Semitism by pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk, the prime minister said he had urged Ukraine's security forces to bring the perpetrators to justice.
The full interview airs later on Sunday.
- Sir Cliff admits that he has used Botox 'but it didn't really work' for him
- The singer said his continuing good looks are down to 'extreme good luck
- The music legend has sold more than 250 million records worldwide
Published: 19:19 EST, 19 April 2014 | Updated: 03:57 EST, 20 April 2014
Sir Cliff Richard has addressed long-running rumours about his sexuality, asking a television interviewer: ‘If I was gay would it make any difference?’
The veteran singer, who has never married, said speculation about his possible homosexuality was painful when he was younger but that it had ceased to concern him.
The 73-year-old, best known for hits such as Bachelor Boy and Summer Holiday, tackled rumours about his private life in a candid interview for the Australian television programme A Current Affair, which was broadcast on Friday night.
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Sir Cliff Richard told an Australian television presenter 'If I was gay would it make any difference?'
Asked if the gossip about his sexual orientation hurt him, he replied: ‘No. It did when I was young. It hurt my family a lot, of course. But who cares?
‘It doesn’t really matter to me any more. I have got gay friends. Most people have gay friends. If I was gay would it make any difference? Would you not come to my concerts because I was gay? I hope not.’
Rumours about Sir Cliff’s private life have dogged him for decades. A relationship he has with John McElynn, a former Catholic priest who looks after his homes in Britain, Barbados and Portugal, has only served to fuel the speculation.
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Sir Cliff was photographed with many glamorous women during his career such as Vivienne Ventura on the set of film 'Finders Keepers'
Sir Cliff, who first hit the charts in 1958 with the song Move It and who has now sold more than 250 million records around the world, said he had never wanted the responsibility of having a wife and family.
He said: ‘I just didn’t get married. I never felt that it was the right time. I can do the things I want to do. I can go and meet my fans all over the world.
‘I don’t have a responsibility because I always felt that marriage would be the major responsibility of your life, and if a child came along, a multi-major responsibility. No getting out of that one.’
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Sir Cliff said he never 'trashed a hotel room' and admitted he has tried botox
Asked whether his friendship with Olivia Newton-John, the Australian singer and star of the film Grease, could ever have led to marriage, Sir Cliff replied: ‘Let’s face it, we all loved Olivia. She had that effect.
‘When she came on to do my TV show, we invited her [to appear] for one week, but she was there for about eight.’
Sir Cliff, whose continued youthful looks have earned him the title the Peter Pan of pop, insists he has never undergone plastic surgery but would not rule it out.
He said: ‘Plastic? Well, I think it’s due. When people say to me, have you had anything done, I say yes, I had these lines put in because I wanted to look older.
‘I did try Botox but that didn’t really work for me. I’ve seen people with Botox – they look fantastic.
‘If it works for you, I don’t see what’s wrong with doing it. Why not? Women wear make-up.’
Sir Cliff says his continued youthful appearance may be down to ‘extreme good luck’ and the fact that his mother remained young-looking.
He also says he is proud that he never adopted the hedonistic lifestyle of a typical rock ’n’ roll star.
The star said: ‘I’ve never wanted to trash a hotel room. My band always used to say, Cliff never trashes a hotel room.
The star said: ‘I’ve never wanted to trash a hotel room. My band always used to say, Cliff never trashes a hotel room.
‘When he goes in, he usually cleans up, hoovers, checks the curtains are straight. I can’t imagine anything more childish than trashing things, which is what a lot of rockers did.’
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The salsa singer Cheo Feliciano | EFE
The singer returned at the time of the accident to your home in a Jaguar crashed hard against a cement post
EFE April 17, 2014 - 7:11 a.m.
The salsa singer Cheo Feliciano in Puerto Rico died today in a car accident With the vehicle I was driving in and not wearing a seatbelt Which, Efe coordinator Transit Police Told Puerto Rico, Jorge Hernández Peña in the scene. singer "Beloved" or "Anacaona ", 78, returned at the time of the accident, at 04.13 hours (08.13 GMT) at his home in the town of Cupey (to the outskirts of San Juan) in a Jaguar crashed hard against a cement post, que Caused his death on the spot. 's body José Luis Feliciano Vega, his actual name was removed from the place of accident past 0630 hours (10:30 GMT) while the vehicle Remained for hours outside the highway 176, near Ponderosa restaurant, a few meters from his residence. The former singer of the band Joe Cuba in New York, born in the city of Ponce on July 3, 1935, driving his vehicle without seatbelt, so the strong impact Caused her immediate death, said Hernández Peña. A son of the singer , who Remained active recording and traveling DESPITE suffering from cancer, went to the scene and Told reporters I did not know why his father came home so late, but Explained That These Days was preparing a performance for this weekend in Acapulco. "We went next door neighbors for 40 years and never had a problem. I was always Wrestling with the garden, "still impressed remembered today Herminio Nieves, Cupey neighbor, Told Efe.
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Cheo Feliciano, a leading salsa singer renowned for both his love songs and his upbeat improvisations, died in an automobile accident on Thursday in San Juan, P.R. He was 78.
He was killed when the car in which he was driving alone ran into a light post, the police told The Associated Press. He was not wearing a seatbelt, they said.
A handsome and debonair baritone, Mr. Feliciano overcame drug addiction and became a celebrity in Puerto Rico and in the larger community of Latin music. He was equally impressive as a sonero — a singer who can improvise rhymes and melodies over Afro-Caribbean dance rhythms — and a romantic crooner, delivering suave, smoldering boleros.
During the 1970s he became a major star of salsa (the name was used by American marketers as a catchall for various Latin rhythms) when he recorded for the New York label Fania. His first solo album, “Cheo,” included songs that became his signatures: “Anacaona” and “Mi Triste Problema.”
“He was an icon, beloved by the females,” Joe Conzo Sr., a music historian and a longtime friend of Mr. Feliciano, said in an interview on Thursday. “His boleros, they had the women swooning.”
Mr. Feliciano spent several years in the late ’50s and early ’60s singing, in both Spanish and English, with the Joe Cuba Sextet, a popular ensemble that helped introduce Latin music to a mainstream American audience. He also recorded with top Latin bandleaders including Eddie Palmieri and Tito Puente, and he was a longtime member of the Fania All-Stars, the group organized by Fania Records that included virtually all the major figures of salsa’s ’70s heyday.
In 1973, Mr. Feliciano was with the Fania All-Stars when they performed at Yankee Stadium. A 1975 album of that concert, “Live at Yankee Stadium,” was inducted into the Library of Congress’s national registry of recordings that are “culturally, historically or aesthetically important.”
In 2008, at the Latin Grammy Awards, Mr. Feliciano was honored for lifetime achievement. The same year, he celebrated 50 years in music with a concert at Madison Square Garden, a performance reviewed by Jon Pareles, the chief pop music critic for The Times.
“Mr. Feliciano, who turns 73 on July 3, is still a formidable singer at any speed,” Mr. Pareles wrote. “His baritone voice sounds richly assured, even when he sings, as he often does, about the pains of love. Backed with the rumbas and guaguancós of salsa dura (hard salsa), he is a sonero who volleys percussive syllables and improvised rhymes over the beat. Easing the tempo back to bolero, he is an equally skillful romantic crooner steeped in Latin ballads, with a touch of Sinatra, who’s suave yet still rhythmically unpredictable. Guests joined Mr. Feliciano for duets, some improvising their own rhymes of praise for him. None outsang him.”
Cheo Feliciano was born José Luis Feliciano Vega in Ponce, P.R., on July 3, 1935. His father was a carpenter, and the family was poor but musical. Young Cheo (a common nickname for José), who received some rudimentary musical education in a government-sponsored school, was initially a percussionist and established his first group before he was 10, calling it El Combo Las Latas — the Can Combo — because they made their instruments out of tin cans.
“Everything happening around us had to do in some way with music,” Mr. Feliciano said in an interview in 2000 with the website descarga.com. El Combo Las Latas, he added, “was all kids, but at that very early age we understood about percussion, melody and singing.”
When Cheo was a teenager his family moved to New York City, where he played congas and would sing when a group needed a vocalist. He met well-known musicians after he registered as a percussionist at the musician’s union, and he served as a band boy — a kind of errand boy and valet — to several of them, including the bandleader Tito Rodríguez, who gave young Cheo his first chance to perform in public.
Mr. Feliciano became addicted to heroin in the ’60s and by the end of the decade was forced to suspend his singing career. He returned to Puerto Rico, where he entered a program, known asHogar CREA, to treat his drug dependency.
He spent three years in self-imposed retirement, and when he felt he was ready he initiated his comeback, signing with Fania. Over the next decades he made dozens of recordings, for Fania and other companies, and toured throughout Latin America and Europe.
Mr. Feliciano is survived by his wife, Socorro Prieto De Feliciano, known as Coco, whom he married on Oct. 5, 1957, the same day he made his debut with the Joe Cuba Sextet. The Associated Press reported that he is also survived by four sons.
In the 2000 interview, Mr. Feliciano remembered the youthful hubris that led him to take the stage as a singer for the first time. Someone, he said, had told Tito Rodríguez that a young man named Cheo could sing a little bit.
“Tito knew me as Cheo but he didn’t know they were talking about me,” Mr. Feliciano recalled. “ ‘What Cheo?’ ‘Cheo, Cheo, your valet, your band boy.’ He said, ‘Cheo, you sing?’ And I had the nerve to say, ‘I’m the world’s greatest singer.’ And he laughed. He said, ‘Well, you’re going to have to prove it now.’ ”
One night shortly thereafter, onstage with his big band at the Palladium in New York, Mr. Rodríguez introduced him to the crowd.
“He gave me the maracas and said: ‘Sing. Show me you’re the greatest,’ ” Mr. Feliciano said. “And I sang.”
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WASHINGTON — Two weeks ago, a pair of F.B.I. agents appeared unannounced at the door of a member of the defense team for one of the men accused of plotting the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As a contractor working with the defense team at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the man was bound by the same confidentiality rules as a lawyer. But the agents wanted to talk.
They asked questions, lawyers say, about the legal teams for Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other accused terrorists who will eventually stand trial before a military tribunal at Guantánamo. Before they left, the agents asked the contractor to sign an agreement promising not to tell anyone about the conversation.
With that signature, Mr. bin al-Shibh’s lawyers say, the government turned a member of their team into an F.B.I. informant.
The F.B.I.’s inquiry became the focus of the pretrial hearings at Guantánamo this week, after the contractor disclosed it to the defense team. It was a reminder that, no matter how much the proceedings at the island military prison resemble a familiar American trial, the invisible hand of the United States government is at work there in ways unlike anything seen in typical courtrooms.
“It’s a courtroom with three benches,” said Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School. “There’s one person pretending to be the judge, and two other agencies behind the scenes exerting at least as much influence.”
Thirteen years after 9/11, nobody has been convicted in connection with the attacks and, because of the F.B.I. visit, a trial could be delayed even longer. But it was only the latest in a string of strange events at Guantánamo Bay that, coupled with the decade-long delay, have undermined a process that was supposed to move swiftly, without the encumbrances of the civilian legal system and its traditional rules of evidence.
Last year, as a lawyer for Mr. Mohammed was speaking during another hearing, a red light began flashing. Then the videofeed from the courtroom abruptly cut out. The emergency censorship system had been activated. But why? And by whom? The defense lawyer had said nothing classified. And the court officer responsible for protecting state secrets had not triggered the system. Days later, the military judge, Col. James L. Pohl, announced that he had been told that an “original classification authority” — meaning the C.I.A. — was secretly monitoring the proceedings. Unknown to everyone else, the agency had its own button, which the judge swiftly and angrily disconnected.
Last year, the government acknowledged that microphones were hidden inside what looked like smoke detectors in the rooms where detainees met with their lawyers. Those microphones gave officials the ability to eavesdrop on confidential conversations, but the military said it never did so.
“At some point, it just becomes silly,” said Glenn Sulmasy, a military law professor at the Coast Guard Academy who supports military trials for terrorism but said problems at Guantánamo Bay have undermined confidence in the system. “I don’t think we’re at that point yet, but at some point it just becomes surreal. It’s like there’s a shadow trial going on and we’re only finding out about it in bits and pieces.”
The court has also been troubled by computer problems. A botched computer update gave prosecutors and defense lawyers access to the other side’s confidential work. And the Pentagon acknowledged inadvertently searching and copying defense lawyers’ emails but said nobody read them.
“These things keep happening,” a defense lawyer, James Harrington, said this week as he asked for an investigation into the F.B.I.’s activities. The other instances seemed like government intrusion, Mr. Harrington said, but lawyers could not prove it. “Here it really happened.”
The F.B.I. would not comment and military prosecutors said they knew nothing about the investigation. But the F.B.I. appears to be investigating how The Huffington Post got ahold of a 36-page manifesto that Mr. Mohammed had written in prison.
The government hopes to start the trial early next year, but it is not clear whether this issue will result in another delay. Mr. Harrington said he wanted Colonel Pohl to question F.B.I. officials and determine whether anyone else on the defense team had been approached by or gave information to the government.
“It’s just a horrible atmosphere to operate in,” Mr. Harrington said Friday. “It’s built on a shaky foundation, and one thing after another happens. I don’t see how anyone can have confidence in this process.”
Christopher Jenks, a Southern Methodist University law professor and a former military prosecutor, said he sympathized with the Guantánamo prosecutors, who appeared to have been just as surprised as defense lawyers by the appearance of the F.B.I. and C.I.A. in their cases.
“You have these military prosecutors who are normally empowered to own their cases. And they don’t here,” Mr. Jenks said. If this were any other country’s system, Mr. Jenks said, “The reaction would be, ‘Oh my gosh. What a kangaroo process.’ ”
President George W. Bush created the military tribunal system for suspected terrorists in 2001. Years of court challenges followed and after the Supreme Court struck down the tribunal’s rules in 2006, Congress hurriedly wrote new rules giving prisoners more rights. More changes followed in 2009 and the government says the process is far better and fairer now.
The 9/11 trial, if it occurs, will be the biggest test of that system. Six detainees in other cases have pleaded guilty before military commissions. Two others have gone to trial and been found guilty, only to have their convictions thrown out by an appeals court.
Greg McNeal, a former adviser to the top Guantánamo prosecutor, said the military tribunal system was ripe for episodes like the one with the F.B.I. because it is so new. The civilian system and the traditional military judicial system have well-established rules and precedents for handling issues that arise. “Because it’s new and different, they may have a sense that they can get away with things,” Mr. McNeal said. He added, “There are interagency fights happening behind the scenes that have been going on for the past decade.”
The Obama administration had hoped to prosecute the 9/11 case in a New York criminal court. But it reversed course in the face of security fears and criticism that the government would grant constitutional rights to terrorists.
While the military tribunals have been plagued by delays, the department has successfully prosecuted several terrorism cases in civilian courts. Most recently, prosecutors in Manhattan won a conviction against Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, the most senior adviser to Osama bin Laden to be tried in civilian court in the United States since 9/11.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. noted that the New York case had proceeded from capture to conviction in about a year. “It is hard to imagine this case being presented with greater efficiency or greater speed,” he said.
Correction: April 19, 2014
An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of a Southern Methodist University law professor who is a former military prosecutor. He is Christopher Jenks, not Christopher Jencks.
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