Leading legal defense groups Tuesday accused the Pentagon of foot-dragging on security clearances that would let civilian lawyers help their military counterparts defend the alleged plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks at Guantánamo.
On Friday, a Bush administration official overseeing military commissions approved death penalty charges against five alleged al Qaeda terrorists, setting the stage for arraignment in June.
Chief among them is Khalid Sheik Mohammed, known as KSM, the alleged al Qaeda mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed 2,973 people.
He has been assigned a Pentagon defense lawyer, Navy Reserves Capt. Prescott Prince of Richmond, Va.
But two experienced Boise, Idaho, attorneys with federal terrorism trial experience -- David Nevin and Scott McKay -- have yet to receive the necessary Pentagon permits clearances to work with Prince at Guantánamo.
In fact, not one of eight lawyers who had applied for clearances in recent months had been pre-approved and briefed on the security program, said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
A week ago, Romero wrote to Defense Secretary Robert Gates in protest. He noted that, as the cases progressed, it appeared that Nevin and McKay might not even meet KSM before arraignment.
''We can both imagine that some critics would say that the backlog of pending paperwork at the Department of Defense was yet another way to ensure an unfair proceeding,'' Romero wrote.
Gates had not replied as of Tuesday evening.
But Joseph DellaVedova, a spokesman at the Pentagon's Office of Military Commissions, said work was moving apace so that lawyers might get clearances.
''We have been notified by the defense of various counsel wishing to represent certain high-value detainees,'' he said. ``Their requests for clearances are at various stages of the approval process and we track the process carefully.''
He said three civilian lawyers had been pre-approved to work with high-value detainees at the Sept. 11 conspiracy trials. But he declined to identify them.
