The New York Times brings more details to light of the meeting between the Pentagon general counsel, William J. Haynes II, and top military lawyers:
[A]t the meeting on Wednesday, Mr. Haynes sought to enlist the lawyers on the administration’s side by asking whether any would object to signing a letter lending their support to aspects of the White House proposal over which they had voiced little concern.The lawyers agreed, but only after hours of negotiating over specific words, so that they would not appear to be wholly endorsing the plan.
What followed was a scuffle that left at least some of the military lawyers embittered and stoked old tensions at the Pentagon between civilian leaders and uniformed military officers, who under Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have often found themselves privately at odds.
The Washington Post, meanwhile, tells a slightly different story:
Officials who attended the meeting in question, in the office of Pentagon general counsel William J. Haynes II on Wednesday, said there was no pressure on the military lawyers to produce the letter, describing a robust discussion about how to word its contents. The lawyers initially drafted a letter saying they “support” the two sections but later settled on saying they “do not object” to them.