NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The Navy would have immediately changed plans had it known that details of ship movements had been leaked to suspected terrorism supporters, a former top Navy official testified Wednesday at the trial of a former sailor on terrorism charges.
Hassan Abu-Jihaad, 32, of Phoenix has pleaded not guilty to federal charges alleging he provided material support to terrorists and disclosed classified national defense information.
If convicted, he faces up to 25 years in prison.
Abu-Jihaad, an American-born Muslim convert formerly known as Paul Hall, is accused of leaking information that could have doomed his own ship, the USS Benfold. He was a Navy signalman and received an honorable discharge in 2002.
He is accused of leaking details that included the makeup of his Navy battle group, its planned movements and a drawing of the group’s formation when it was to pass through the Straits of Hormuz on April 29, 2001.
Files found on a computer disk recovered by prosecutors from an alleged terror supporter’s home also included the number and type of personnel on each ship and the ships’ capabilities and ended with instructions to destroy the message.
Retired Rear Adm. David Hart, who was involved in planning the deployment of the battle group, testified Wednesday that he would have immediately alerted his supervisor in 2001 had he known that a battle group document was in the hands of suspected terrorism supporters. He said he would have sought an opportunity to change the time and nature of the operation.
“It was a very vulnerable period of time for us,” Hart said. He noted earlier that naval officials had taken steps to protect sailors after 17 of them were killed in the 2000 terrorist attack on the USS Cole in Yemen.
Hart also said that sailors were typically in a heightened state of readiness through Strait of Hormuz, a busy narrow Persian Gulf waterway where they are frequently challenged by Iranian officials.
Hart confirmed that the information Abu-Jihaad is accused of leaking was sensitive and classified.
But on cross-examination, Abu-Jihaad’s attorney, Dan Labelle, said the Navy wasn’t shy about letting the world know when it was deploying ships to the Persian Gulf because it wanted to project strength and deter a crisis.
“I think that’s fair to say,” Hart responded.
Hart testified that some other information in the leaked documents was incorrect. Defense attorneys introduced a ship log indicating that the battle group passed through the Strait of Hormuz on May 2, 2001, not April 29.
The documents indicated that ships would pass through the strait in a dual formation, which did not happen, Hart said. He also called a diagram that showed a submarine on each side of the ships “tactically unfeasible.”
Hart testified that he was still concerned because even if the allegedly leaked details were not precisely accurate, they would have given away the key tactical element of surprise.
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