Susan Jean Crawford[1] (born April 22, 1947)[2] is an American lawyer, who was appointed the Convening Authority for the Guantanamo military commissions, on February 7, 2007.

[4] She had previously served as judge and chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, Inspector General of the Department of Defense (appointed by George H. W. Bush), General Counsel for the Department of the Army (appointed by Ronald Reagan) and Assistant State's Attorney for Garrett County, Maryland.

In 2006, by a vote of 4–1, the CAAF found unconstitutional the dual role of Lindsey O. Graham as a senator (Republican from South Carolina) and as a reserve officer sitting as a military judge on the Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals.

The majority's opinion relied upon the Constitution's "incompatibility clause" in Article I, " saying that "no person holding any office under the United States shall be a member of either House during his continuance in service."

"[9] Crawford is reported to have directly negotiated the plea bargain of David Hicks, an Australian linked with Al Qaeda and the Taliban, without any input from the Prosecution.

"[citation needed]On October 10, 2007, Morris D. Davis, the Chief Prosecutor for Office of Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, resigned in protest, concluding that: ... full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system.

[12]Davis criticized Susan Crawford as a cause of the problems in the Military Commissions process, through her mixing of convening authority and prosecutor roles and her use of closed-door hearings, which he considered unnecessary.

On August 9, 2008, William Glaberson wrote in The New York Times about Crawford's role in the recent Hamdan conviction:[13] In an interview with Bob Woodward published in The Washington Post on January 14, 2009, Crawford responded to questions about why she had not referred the case of Mohammed al Qahtani, the so-called "20th hijacker" of the September 11th attacks, to trial:[14] We tortured Qahtani.

It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge [to call it torture].Mohamed Jawad was a detainee whose case was referred to the civilian court system, which dropped the charges against him and recommended that he be repatriated.