The New York Times has revealed the chief judge at Guantanamo Bay once harshly criticized the military trials of prisoners that he now oversees. The judge, Colonel Ralph Kohlmann, was a Master’s degree candidate at the Naval War College when the military commissions were proposed five years ago. In a paper on the plans, Kohlmann wrote the trials would face “credibility problems” over the “apparent lack of independence.” He concluded the Bush administration should try prisoners in federal courts, writing, “Even a good military tribunal is a bad idea…Unnecessary use of military tribunals in the face of reasonable international criticism is an ill-advised move.”