The memorandums provide the most complete record to date of how uniformed military lawyers were frequently the chief dissenters as government officials formulated interrogation policies.

Many of the Pentagon's experts on military justice, uniformed lawyers who had spent their careers working on such issues, were mostly kept in the dark.

Many of the Pentagon's uniformed lawyers were angered by the implication that the military would be used to deliver "rough justice" for the terrorists.

Even as uniformed lawyers were given a greater role in writing rules for the commissions, they still felt out of the loop.

In early 2002, the administration brushed aside the objections of the military's most senior uniformed lawyers to the original plans for military commissions.

Colonel Borch apparently has no dearth of uniformed lawyers eager to join the prosecution, though he declined to specify the size of his team.

Senior uniformed lawyers in all the military services also objected sharply to the interrogation policy, according to internal documents declassified last year.

The uniformed lawyers have been especially forceful, not only in asserting their clients' innocence but also in denouncing the tribunal system as inherently unfair and rigged.

It took an internal protest by uniformed lawyers from the Navy to force the Pentagon to review the Guantánamo rules and restrict them a bit.

If it had not been for a group of uniformed lawyers, the nation might never have learned of the torture and detention memos.