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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzalez, as we continue to look at this 20th anniversary of the opening of the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo. It opened 20 years ago today.

We’re joined now by former Army chaplain Captain James Yee. He was one of the first Muslim chaplains commissioned to the prison in 2002 by the U.S. Army. But less than a year after serving there, he was accused of espionage by the military and faced charges so severe that he was threatened with the death penalty. He was arrested and imprisoned for 76 days in solitary confinement. The military leaked information about the case to the press, and the media went on a feeding frenzy. Chaplain Yee was vilified on the airwaves as a traitor and accused of being a mole inside the Army. Then the military’s case began to unravel. The charges were eventually reduced and, eight months later, dropped altogether. He ultimately received an honorable discharge. Chaplain Yee wrote about his experiences in a book titled For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire. James Yee has long called for the closure of Guantánamo, joins us now from his home in Bloomfield, New Jersey.

James Yee, welcome back to Democracy Now! We covered your case from the beginning. Why don’t you start off by telling your own story, how you came to be at Guantánamo, being a chaplain for the Muslim men who were held there, and then what happened to you?

JAMES YEE: Great, great. Yeah, first of all, Amy, Juan, and also to Mansoor and Moazzam, thanks for having me join you today on the program.

But I converted to Islam back in the early ’90s, and I was already in the military as a graduate of West Point, serving in the Air Defense Artillery as a young lieutenant, and then, after converting to Islam, thought I could fulfill a pretty unique role in becoming a chaplain in the U.S. military, because at that time there were no Muslim chaplains in the U.S. military. And I entered — I reentered active duty in early 2001 as a Muslim chaplain. And in the immediate post-9/11 aftermath, I was someone who the U.S. Army Public Affairs looked to to handle media requests that dealt with anything that had to do with Muslims who were serving in the U.S. military, especially following the tragic attacks on 9/11 where many of these Muslim servicemembers were experiencing backlash.

So, my name was out there not only in U.S. Army Public Affairs but in the Department of Defense, also the State Department. And so, when we started bombarding Afghanistan and opened the prison camp at Guantánamo, I was earmarked for that assignment down in Guantánamo. And I would arrive to the prison camp in early November, almost exactly at the same time that the now-infamous Major General Geoffrey Miller took command of the Joint Task Force. And like you said in your intro, I was there for 10 months. I was supposed to have been there six months, involuntary extended another six months. But at the 10-month mark, then I was secretly arrested.

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