Part One: The prosecution assembles its case, and Hamdan is assigned idiosyncratic counsel.

The Prosecution was confident that the charges of conspiracy and material support for terrorism against Bin Laden’s driver, Salim Hamdan, would stick. He had been as near to Bin Laden as any of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay had been. For seven years Hamdan had driven Al Qaeda’s chief around and had even been caught red handed on an Al Qaeda film carrying an AK-47 as bodyguard for Bin Laden.

If this were not enough, the Prosecution had other ‘smoking gun’ evidence that would later emerge. They were sure the evidence would place the final nail in the coffin and convict this high profile Al Qaeda operative. His conviction and sentencing in the first Guantanamo Bay court case would be a historic litmus test of the whole system.

Everyone knew that the President himself was following the first Military Tribunal since the Nuremburg and Japanese Tribunals after World War II. Bush himself was clearly expecting a conviction on all counts. For its part, the Prosecution was confident it could give the President what he wanted, followed by a sentence of from 30 years to life.

But when the jury made of six members from four braches of the military service (hardly an unbiased panel in the eyes of many critics) issued its verdict and sentence in early August, it was a crushing defeat for a prosecution team that had seemingly been handed a ‘slam dunk.’ The jury rejected the Prosecution’s contention that Hamdan had been involved in the conspiracy to carry out the 9/11 attacks and dismissed the most serious charge of conspiracy against him. If this were not enough, the jury also dismissed several of the specifics of the lesser charge, i.e. the charge of providing material support for terrorism. In addition to being cleared on the more serious charge of conspiracy, Hamdan was ultimately convicted on just five counts of the lesser charge (these were mainly to do with driving and providing bodyguard services to Bin Laden).

There was more bad news to come for the Prosecution. In a final blow, the jury recommended a ‘light’ sentence of just five and a half years for Hamdan. It got worse. As events transpired, the presiding judge in the case, Keith Allred, had already agreed to credit Hamdan with time served, which meant he could potentially be freed in as little as five months – a far cry from the 30 years-plus demanded by the Prosecution. The stunning verdict and sentence in this showcase trial left both critics and supporters of the Guantanamo Bay Tribunals alike wondering: what had gone wrong with the prosecution, and what had gone right with the defense?

An Improbable Defense

From the time he was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 until the time he had his day in court in August of 2008, it was obvious that Salim Hamdan was no typical Al Qaeda prisoner. He readily admitted to being one of Bin Laden’s seven drivers and even showed his US Special Forces captors where Bin Laden’s various hideout and escape routes were located. Clearly he was a ‘big fish’ and as such was transported from the deserts of Afghanistan to the green hills of the ‘Pearl of the Antilles’: Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Once in Gitmo, the 37 year old Yemeni father of two girls was given a military lawyer known as a JAG (Judge Advocate General) named Charlie Swift. Lieutenant Commander Swift, a former frigate commander, had been given a bad case and everyone knew it. In the post-9/11 environment anyone even remotely associate with the killing of almost 3,000 people on September 11th (and some who were not even remotely tied to 9/11, such as Saddam Hussein) were seen as terrorists. Hamdan’s sheer proximity to Bin Laden alone was enough to make him a lightning rod for those wanting retribution. Most critics of Guantanamo Bay felt there was very little chance of him receiving a fair trial, much less beating the charges of conspiracy and material support for terrorism.

But Swift did something no one expected. He began to believe in his client’s innocence of involvement in Al Qaeda’s terrorism. When Swift heard that Hamdan had freely divulged information without coercion (when other skilled Al Qaeda captives had kept silent throughout various ‘enhanced interrogations’), Swift grew intrigued. It turned out that Hamdan would gladly share information if he was given such small favors as the chance to talk to his wife on the phone or given access to car and mechanic magazines. This affable driver did not seem to have the modus operandi of a hard core Al Qaeda operative.

As Hamdan shared his story with Swift, it became increasingly obvious that he was not the brightest of terrorists. With only a fourth grade education and an aptitude for driving that came from his experience as a cab driver in his native Yemen, he didn’t seem to have much to offer an organization like Al Qaeda. When Swift heard that Hamdan had joined Bin Laden after being offered a job as a driver for $200 a month, he became convinced his client was a scapegoat for the real Al Qaeda terrorists.

If Hamdan had been a terrorist mastermind, Bin Laden would never have abandoned him along with his other flunkies and low-level employees when he fled over the mountains into Pakistan. Was it fair to blame the driver for Bin Laden’s attacks? Had Hitler’s chauffer been tried at Nuremburg?

And with that the battle began that would eventually see Swift’s marriage crumble and himself denied promotion by the US military (tantamount to being fired). Far from offering up a pro forma ‘defense’ of the sort many at Gitmo expected from the various defense lawyers, Swift promised Hamdan that he would fight his case to the president himself. When a skeptical Hamdan asked him if his uphill defense would make him rich, Swift replied, “no, but it just might make me famous.”

Part Two: Defense lawyer Swift begins to make waves in the establishment, and begins his search for an expert witness.

Defense lawyer Charlie Swift was described to me by one of the members of his defense team as “the only bull in the world who brings his own china shop with him” and he proved true to his word in fighting the charges. He was soon making waves that eventually reached the White House. As he began a tenacious battle to systematically undermine the charges against his client, he decided to take on Guantanamo Bay itself.

Swift increasingly came to see Gitmo as an offshore ‘Alcatraz’ designed to circumvent the US Constitution, not to mention America’s legal system (including the right to Habeas Corpus ), and other foundations of American democracy and legality. As such, he began a lone battle against the legality of the Military Commissions that eventually made its way to the Supreme Court. There Swift achieved a stunning victory in 2006’s Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld , which overturned the Military Commissions set up by President Bush. It declared them to be in contravention of the Geneva Conventions which offer protections to captured prisoners of war.

Judge Keith Allred, presiding over the case, subsequently congratulated a stunned Hamdan on beating the U.S. President in one of the most important decisions curtailing US presidential power ever. However, Congress soon restored the Military Commissions and Hamdan and his team of lawyers prepared again to challenge a system stacked against them. In Gitmo, a place neither fully American nor Cuban, evidence that would never have been allowed in a US court could be used against prisoners living in physical and legal limbo. In Hamdan’s case this included secret evidence kept hidden from the defense until the last moment, and which had been obtained by sleep deprivation (known as Operation Sandman ) and threats. Also admitted was material that would be considered hearsay on the American mainland.

To make matters worse, the Prosecution had ‘smoking gun’ evidence undermining Swift’s defense that Hamdan was just a driver. As it transpired, when Hamdan was captured in November 2001 he was driving towards an area where US Special Forces were engaged in combat with the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies. When he was stopped and apprehended, a terrified Hamdan had two SA-7 surface-to-air missiles in his car. Hardly the usual accoutrement for an innocent chauffeur!

The Prosecution was sure this evidence would help them convict Hamdan on the charges of both conspiracy to commit terrorism and material support for terrorism. Simply put, surface-to-air missiles equalled terrorism.

The Defense had to acknowledge that the evidence was damning. But Charlie Swift and his team, which included Brian Mizer, Andrea Prasow, Joe McMillan and Harry Schneider, had not fought the case this far to have it sabotaged by a pair of missiles. There had to be some other explanation for the SA-7s in Hamdan’s vehicle.


The Search for an Expert Witness

As Hamdan’s December 2007 pre-trial hearing approached, Charlie Swift sent out feelers to members of the CIA who had experience with Al Qaeda to see if they could help shed light on Hamdan’s role in the organization, and on his reasons for possessing SA-7s. Swift’s inquiries led him to a former CIA field operative called Marc Sageman. Sageman had worked with the famous Charlie Wilson to arm and equip the mujahideen freedom fighters with Stinger ground-to-air missiles in the anti-Soviet Afghan jihad of the 1980s. As someone who had spent years in Pakistan working with Islamic militants and shoulder-fired missiles, he would be an invaluable consultant to the defense team.

Sageman would also be able to supply insight into the internal workings of the Al Qaeda organization. After retiring from the CIA, Sageman had gone on to earn a PhD in Criminal Psychology and had written perhaps the most important book on profiling Al Qaeda operatives, Understanding Terrorist Networks (University of Pennsylvania Press 2004). If there was anyone who could put Hamdan’s activities in their proper context, it was Sageman.

Swift was not disappointed. When Sageman compared Hamdan’s profile with that of the Al Qaeda operatives he had tracked across the globe, he found that he did not match the usual criteria. Sageman’s work showed that Al Qaeda terrorists were not poor, brainwashed, uneducated dupes that many had once thought them to be.

On the contrary, they were multi-lingual, well educated, wealthy, self-aware and highly motivated actors. They were men like 9/11 hijack team commander Muhammad Atta who spoke German and English in addition to his native Arabic and had a Masters degree in architecture from an elite German university. Atta was able to freely live and operate in the West. Men like Bin Laden, a Saudi millionaire, and Ayman al Zawaheri, Al Qaeda’s number two who had a medical doctorate, were the elite of global terrorism; they were not like impoverished, uneducated Palestinian suicide bombers. When Khaled Sheikh Muhammad planned and executed the attacks of 9/11, he did so based on years of having infiltrated America as a university student. Like Atta, he exploited his knowledge of our society and used it against us.

Hamdan hardly seemed to fit what became known as the ‘Sageman profile.’ He had been an orphan, had dropped out of school in fourth grade, and had lived on the streets in his native Yemen before landing a job as a taxi driver. Hamdan had no real talents to offer the Al Qaeda leadership in carrying out global terrorist operations like the 9/11 attacks or the simultaneous strikes on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. While he might have been an Al Qaeda flunky, he had never waged jihad, nor had he been linked by the US intelligence community to any terrorist operations.

With no first hand knowledge of the West, mastery of English, or skills needed to fly a plane, Hamdan would have been incapable of joining an elite sleeper cell like the Hamburg team that infiltrated the US and hijacked our planes on 9/11. Nor was he a weapons or explosive expert, internet guru, Islamic scholar, or recruiter. In Sageman’s opinion he was probably what he appeared to be, a lowly mechanic and a driver, not a globe-trotting super-terrorist.

Swift and his team were thrilled with Sageman’s findings and were eager to have him testify as an expert witness. But here they ran into a hurdle. Sageman was employed as the New York Police Department’s in-house expert on terrorism. His employers felt that his testimony might send the wrong signal and Sageman declined to participate in the Gitmo hearing.

But Sageman offered someone else who had both carried out research on the ground in Afghanistan for the CIA and was an analyst on the Taliban and Al Qaeda’s order of battle for West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center: myself.

Part Three: Brian Williams considers the evidence and the bigger picture, and reaches his own conclusions about Salim Hamdan
In October of 2007, I received a phone call from Charlie Swift. He introduced himself and asked me if I was familiar with the Hamdan case. When I replied that I had followed it from afar, he asked me what I thought about Sageman’s findings on Hamdan. Did they dovetail with my own work on Al Qaeda sleeper cells in Turkey and jihadi fighting forces in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Kashmir and elsewhere?

I was not sure where Swift was going but told him I would need to have access to more of his information in order to make a judgment. As much as I respected Sageman, with whom I had worked over the years at the US military’s Joint Information Operations Warfare Center, I was not sure if I wanted to offer my support unless I knew all the facts.

Swift was, however, confident I would come around to Sageman’s perspective if I was given access to the same information with which he had been provided. Would I be interested in flying down to Washington DC to meet with his team and see the files on Hamdan? Intrigued by Swift’s enthusiasm and interested in meeting the tenacious JAG who had been such a thorn in the side of the Bush administration, I took him up on his offer.

In November of 2007 I flew down to DC to meet with Sageman, Swift, and another old CIA legend, Milt Bearden, to discuss the case. As Swift and his team walked me through the circumstances of Hamdan’s capture, showed me photographs of his car and weapons, and used maps and declassified information to bring to life his movements in November of 2001, I began to see him in a new light.

It became increasingly obvious that I might have information that could be crucial in providing the context to Hamdan’s activities in Afghanistan prior to his capture. From a purely legalistic perspective I was sure this information would help the defense beat the ‘smoking gun’ charge of carrying SA-7s to engage in terrorism. In essence, my own research in Afghanistan gave me an explanation for the missiles and led me to the conclusion that Hamdan was not an ‘illegal combatant’: he was a legal combatant and worthy of Geneva Convention protections.

Expert Witness Testimony

As I mulled the case over, I decided to do what Swift had suggested and try to see it not in the immediate context of the post-9/11 rules for the war on terror, but to look at the big picture. Swift wanted me to see Hamdan’s case in the context of over two hundred years of jurisprudence and democracy that had made America a model for other nations. As a historian I decided I would try to consider how we would be judged by future generations for having created ad hoc rules in a time of crisis that might permanently undermine our democracy.

Why not try ‘unlawful combat detainees’ in a regular court of law like the one that convicted Johnny Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban”? Didn’t we have enough faith in our own legal system? Were we not undermining the Geneva Conventions with our actions? What would I have done during the internment of the American Japanese during World War II on blanket charges of ‘treason’ or other abuses of American and international law? As I listened to Swift’s passionate critiques of Gitmo’s damaging impact on our democracy, I also asked myself where I would have stood in an earlier era when Senator Joe McCarthy ran roughshod over US laws in a time of crisis to arrest Americans for being suspected Communists?

As someone studying declining perceptions of the US in the Middle East and Europe, I also asked myself how the world would perceive us if we continued to run what most foreigners saw as an off shore “gulag” to avoid our own laws? What about the “universal truths” that we felt applied to all men, including those who had been charged, but not convinced, of terrorism?

I had to agree with Swift. For all his obvious involvement with Bin Laden, Hamdan deserved a fair trial. This was what America was about. This principle was bigger even than the war on terror. Hamdan deserved to be tried for the specific crimes he had allegedly committed, nothing more.

This was the key to my decision to act as an expert witness in the case. In my professional judgment, Sageman, Swift and his team were right: Salim Hamdan was not a member of the Al Qaeda terrorist elite. Having carried out my own research on an Al Qaeda sleeper cell that struck Istanbul in 2003, I realized Hamdan did not fit my profile of an Al Qaeda terrorist either. In my judgment his crime was not planning or participating in 9/11, it was something that I as an Afghan specialist understood all too well. I understood that Hamdan was providing logistic support for a little known Al Qaeda group known as the Ansars .

Part Four: Brian Williams put the Ansars in context and tries to convince the court of his convictions at Salim Hamdan’s pre-trial hearing.

I had concluded that Salim Hamdan, Bin Laden’s driver, was providing support for an Al Qaeda field army known as the Ansars (Supporters). They had generally been overlooked by most outsiders focusing on Al Qaeda’s terrorist cells. During my interviews with Taliban prisoners held in a medieval castle-prison in the deserts of northern Afghanistan by a Uzbek warlord named Dostum, I had collected many stories of Arab jihadi volunteer fighters. These fighters formed an elite Al Qaeda support army for the Taliban known as the 055 Brigade, or more colloquially as the Ansars. This unit had thousands of Egyptians, Yemenis, Uzbeks, Uighurs, Saudis, Algerians, Sudanese, and even one American named Johnny Walker Lindh (the so-called “American Taliban”) in its ranks.

The 055 Brigade was deployed primarily against Northern Alliance opposition in north-eastern Afghanistan. There its soldiers fought under a black banner known as the rayah. They were armed with light artillery, outdated Soviet T-62 tanks, multiple rocket launcher systems, and light infantry weapons (AK-47s and -74s, PK machine guns, RPG-7s etc). The Taliban prisoners told me that the foreign fighters had better weapons, better training and discipline (many had served in the armies of the home countries), and even uniforms (of a sort, this was Afghanistan after all). Their uniforms consisted of black turbans or Arab keffiyeh headscarves, camouflage jackets and pants, and Western style boots or sneakers (a rarity in Afghanistan where men wore robe-like shalwar kameez and sandals). They also had a well organized command structure.

The 055 fighters were in a class of their own in Afghanistan and were known as the cutting edge of the Taliban sword. My Uzbek Northern Alliance hosts told me of numerous occasions when the Ansars stormed their positions as shock troops for the Taliban. When the US invaded, these foreign foot-soldiers were deployed against Coalition forces. As the Taliban melted away into the countryside by late November 2001, the Arabs fought on in places like Kandahar, southern Afghanistan.

And it was in Kandahar that Hamdan was captured transporting out-dated SA-7s, which were probably for use in trying to shoot down US helicopters. In other words, Hamdan’s possession of these heat seeking missiles did not constitute terrorism. He was simply transporting weapons for an Al Qaeda field force that was the most organized enemy fighting unit in Afghanistan. As a fighting force with a command structure, recognized insignia and uniform, involved in frontal combat, the Ansars were not terrorists or ‘unlawful combatants’, they were legal combatants. As such they were covered by the Geneva Conventions on handling prisoners of war, even though they were the enemy.

Clearly, low-level paid employees like Hamdan and the Ansar rank-and-file soldiers were not involved in the 9/11 attacks (which actually caught many of the Al Qaeda elite by surprise, not to mention the cannon-fodder in the trenches). Had all of these armed soldiers been involved in the 9/11 plot carried out by Khaled Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), Ramzi Binalshibh, Bin Laden, and the 19 hijackers, it wouldn’t have remained secret for long! In fact my research showed me that many Al Qaeda members subsequently came out against the so-called ‘Holy Tuesday’ attack. Some low level employees, including Bin Laden’s former pilot, Esam al Riddi, had even offered their services to the FBI due to their distaste for terrorism.

In other words, I argued that there were many people engaged in military activities or support services for combat operations in Afghanistan (such as Hamdan) who were not necessarily terrorists linked to 9/11 . To support my contention that there was an Al Qaeda frontal fighting force operating in the Afghan theater of operations, I referenced a Department of Defense statement from October 2001 which declared, “The Afghan Arabs are more motivated. They've had recent training. They consider themselves professional, not just part-time. So that’s a big difference.”

In preparing my testimony I also found articles in the mainstream media which spoke of Arabs in uniforms with field weapons. Among others I referenced one eye-witness account in the Christian Science Monitor which spoke of seeing “Arab fighters in fresh, new uniforms scramble through the doors of civilian homes and small shops of Kabul as US jets scream overhead.” BBC also had some wonderful pictures of Arab fighters in camouflage uniforms and I shared many of my own stories of Arab frontal fighting forces in Afghanistan. Clearly men in Afghanistan in uniforms, with guns in their hands were not members of sleeper-infiltration cells in the USA, they were legal combatants. While they may have been as fanatical as the Japanese at Iwo Jima (who were similarly dehumanized by their American enemies at the time), they were enemy soldiers not terrorists.

Swift and his team decided to use my testimony to help shed light on Hamdan not as a terrorist, but as someone providing logistic support for a Geneva-Convention-worthy fighting force. As for the charges of driving Bin Laden around and protecting him, the Defense chose not to contest these charges. Clearly he was guilty on that count and had freely admitted to having done so all along.

In December 2007 I flew from Andrews Air Base down to Guantanamo Bay with Swift and the team to testify before Judge Keith Allred in the pre-trial hearing. The whole case had been rather abstract thus far, but when Hamdan, a small man wearing an Arab headscarf, robe and Western style jacket, came into the court in shackles our eyes met and it became real. At that moment I understood that my testimony could play a key role in deciding whether or not this man spent his life in Guantanamo Bay or returned to his homeland to be with his wife and daughters. I was not the only one to reach this conclusion: the Prosecution was clearly not happy with my efforts to provide an in-depth analysis of the Al Qaeda battle order and fighting formations. This was not the terrorist side of the organization they were exclusively focusing on.

While the Prosecution tried to undermine my nuanced argument, the slides I presented of Al Qaeda foot soldiers, destroyed enemy tanks, flags, and stories of this fighting unit’s actions in combat, were admitted into the final trial which was scheduled to be held in the summer. During my time on the stand, I noticed that Hamdan (who was listening to my testimony via Arabic translation ear phones) would occasionally nod in agreement. I must say I felt only a small sense of identification with him, but was proud that I was helping him get a fair trial.

And to be honest, the more I heard about him from Brian Mizer and Andrea Prasow, the more convinced I was of the correctness of my decision to support his defense. This diminutive father-of-two, whose greatest dream was returning to his wife, definitely deserved jail time for aiding Bin Laden. But I did not think he deserved life in prison. This was the sentence we gave to those who were convicted of murder on the U.S. mainland and not even the Prosecution was trying to convict him for murder.

Part Five: Salim Hamdan gets his day in court, in the first US military tribunal since World War II.

While Hamdan’s court date was initially set for May, it eventually took place in August. As I was doing field work in Turkey at the time, I was unable to fly in person to Guantanamo Bay to testify. Instead I testified by video conference from Incrilik Air Base in south-eastern Turkey. Joe McMillan, an incredibly gifted lawyer working with Swift’s team, walked me through my testimony on the 055 Brigade for the six member military jury.

Once again I painted a picture of an altogether different Al Qaeda than the one most Americans think about when they envision the 9/11 Hamburg Cell. And once again the Prosecution vigorously sought to undermine me. Interestingly, they did not, however, attempt to refute my main contention (i.e. that there was a bona fide Al Qaeda field army in Afghanistan). The evidence I gave for the existence of a large military wing for Al Qaeda was irrefutable and the jury clearly saw this.

Instead of attacking my findings, the Prosecution waged a series of distracting attacks that were meant to divert attention from my main argument. The Prosecution beat the drum of 9/11 in an effort to get the jury to think solely with their hearts, not their minds. Having hired an expert witness of their own who created a documentary featuring a barrage of images of the burning World Trade Centers, the Prosecution was tapping into a visceral instinct that all Americans (including myself) could relate to: revenge. Hamdan and anyone even remotely related to Bin Laden, from the simple Al Qaeda foot soldiers in the trenches to paid employees, was part of a vast conspiracy to attack the US on 9/11. As such, Hamdan was a terrorist with blood on his hands.

Would the military jury buy into this emotive argument, or my more nuanced approach based on years of studying Afghanistan’s fighting formations and Al Qaeda sleeper cells? After testifying, I flew back to western Turkey and eagerly awaited the news from Gitmo.

Finally, after two days of jury deliberation, I received a phone call from Joe McMillan at Guantanamo Bay and held my breath as he broke the news. Joe informed me that the jury had met and had found Hamdan innocent of involvement in conspiring to commit terrorism, but had found him guilty on five of the eight lesser charges of providing material support. He explained that my expert witness testimony had played a valuable role in refuting the Prosecution’s vast conspiracy charge and had helped explain the existence of missiles in Hamdan’s car. The jury had clearly rejected the Prosecution’s contention that Hamdan was a terrorist mastermind and had even come to accept the fact that there was another explanation for possession of the missiles than terrorism.

The verdict was all the Defense could have asked for and now they were nervously awaiting the sentencing. How many years would the jury give Hamdan for the lesser crimes of driving and protecting Bin Laden?

When the sentence came it was five and half years. When I heard the sentence I was stunned. Swift’s team – which had tried unsuccessfully to get a plea bargain of ten years – was of course thrilled. An ecstatic Swift raised in his fist in the air in triumph while a bewildered Hamdan tried to control his tears as he sought to understand what had just happened. While President Bush subsequently declared himself ‘satisfied’ with the results, a sentence of what amounted to five more months (after time served) was hardly a victory for those who had established the Guantanamo Bay Military Commissions precisely to lock men like Hamdan up for life.

For me it was a vindication of the US military and rebuttal for all those who felt that an all-military jury could not be impartial. And it was perhaps a signal that now, seven years after 9/11, we as a nation were finally able to take a step back and look at the war on terror and that sad day in 2001 with more clarity than we did in the immediate aftermath. I believe that the verdict and sentence also vindicated the US judicial system.

The verdict will doubtless begin the process of rebuilding America’s reputation which has been damaged abroad by those who focus only on our faults and mistakes. While Guantanamo Bay remains a bone of contention even with close allies like the British, I believe that the Hamdan verdict will begin the process of reminding the world of what America stood for before it became defined by such terms as Abu Ghraib, Haditha, rendition, and most infamous of all, Gitmo.

Postscript

Hamdan remains in Guantanamo Bay and the Pentagon has declared it has the right to keep him and all other prisoners there indefinitely, despite the sensational verdict. It will, however, be harder to keep this high profile prisoner in Gitmo after his remarkable victory. Human rights groups and foreign governments applauded the verdict even as they deplored the continued existence of the Guantanamo Bay system. The actor George Clooney recently purchased the rights to do a movie on the case with himself possibly playing the role of Charlie Swift. Both McCain and Obama have criticized the Guantanamo Bay prison and it faces an uncertain future under both candidates.


Brian Glyn Williams
August 2008