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

by Michael Berrigan

Overview

At the Military Commissions Defense Organization (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 17 pages of the memoir were required by CIA and DOD censors.) Innumerable problems and obstacles were bound to occur. This memoir covers the period 2007-2010 when I led MCDO after the Military Commissions Act was enacted. It shows how I played a central role in setting MCDO on a path where it could successfully defend the Rule of Law for years to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798331457327
Publisher:	Barnes & Noble Press
Publication date:	08/14/2024
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.13(d)

About the Author

Michael J. Berrigan is an attorney who has had an active law license since 1987. He served 20 years on active duty in the Army JAG Corps as a prosecutor, appellate defense counsel, environmental litigation attorney, senior trial defense counsel, professor of environmental and military personnel law, trial attorney at DOJ’s Environmental Defense Section and founder of the Army’s Affirmative Environmental Claims Program. During his years on active duty he pursued innovative strategies to prosecute international drug traffickers while stationed in Panama; represented a soldier on death row for three years during the appeal of his court-martial conviction and sentence; developed novel approaches for defending the Army in environmental litigation and pursuing corporate polluters of Army lands; and led a large trial defense office that had the highest court-martial complete acquittal rate in the Army. After his time at the Military Commissions Defense Organization he was a Senior Executive Service (SES) attorney/manager in The Solicitor’s Office at The Department of the Interior where he supervised litigation involving Indian tribes and individual Indians valued in the billions of dollars and then oversaw most all of the administrative and civil law areas that allowed the diverse constituent Bureaus and Agencies of Interior to function. Since retiring from the Federal Government in 2017 he has done some pro bono legal work, taken and taught some classes, written—and enjoyed being a Grandpa.