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chicagotribune.com
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news
Guantanamo braces for
change
The U.S. says secrecy has enabled it to
collect vital intelligence from enemy combatants. Human-rights
groups are skeptical. Military hearings begin this week.
By E.A. Torriero
Tribune staff reporter
Published July 12, 2004
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- For nearly two years, the prisoner
refused to talk about terrorist connections. Then, a few days
ago, an interrogator got him chatting.
Puffing on a cigarette, sipping coffee, and eating chocolate
cake, he sat for hours in an orange jumpsuit and shackles
talking to U.S. operatives in the "Gold 12" room of
a trailer at the Navy's Guantanamo Bay base in eastern Cuba.
An intelligence analyst listened on headphones, watching from
behind a two-way mirror while typing the prisoner's
disclosures into a U.S. global database on terrorism.
At one point, an interrogator rose and gave the detainee an
all-American high-five. The prisoner laughed.
"We get pieces of the puzzle," said Esteban
Rodriguez, who leads the information-gathering teams.
"Then we compare it to what others have said. We are
getting successful intelligence."
Military and civilian interrogators at the highest levels here
say the government has collected thousands of pages of
intelligence at Guantanamo about terrorist cells in the U.S.
and around the world, the financing of operations and the
planning of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Such claims cannot be independently confirmed, and
human-rights activists have doubts about the information.
But in intelligence briefings given here to the Tribune
last week, the Tribune learned that recent information from
Guantanamo has derailed plans for attacks during the Athens
Olympics next month and possibly forestalled at least a dozen
attacks elsewhere.
This detention facility has been cloaked in secrecy since the
U.S. decided in early 2002 to bring prisoners from Afghanistan
and elsewhere to Guantanamo. Now, the veil is lifting in the
wake of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision giving prisoners
held as enemy combatants the right to challenge their
detention.
In gaining access to the detention facility, the Tribune
agreed to allow military officials to escort its reporter and
photographer, to choose the itinerary and to screen
photographs and delete those that the Pentagon regarded as
compromising intelligence. Under the agreement, no detainees
could be photographed showing their faces and no pictures were
allowed of interrogations and of some other venues at the
base. CNN, which toured Guantanamo at the same time as the
Tribune, operated under the same arrangements.
Commanders here fear the Supreme Court ruling will cause the
intelligence operation to be compromised because prisoners
will have access to people outside the base. Under orders from
President Bush, the nearly 600 detainees at Guantanamo have
remained without hearings or counsel since 2002. In coming
days, that will change as legal processes unfold.
There is much skepticism, however, about the value and
legitimacy of what's been learned at Guantanamo.
Human-rights groups that have only incomplete lists of
detainees' names reportedly have found that many were picked
up in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere after the U.S.
offered bounties for the capture of Taliban and Al Qaeda
fighters.
In some cases, human-rights groups charge, detainees were
wrongly apprehended because locals turned them in for the
money.
Lawyers contend the government is inflating the value of its
intelligence from Guantanamo to bolster its case to detain
people without due process.
And there is no way to verify government claims about
Guantanamo activities and humane treatment because interviews
with prisoners are prohibited and documents classified.
"We don't know what goes on in Guantanamo because we
haven't been allowed there," said Jumana Musa of Amnesty
International.
Intelligence agents here acknowledge that up to half and
possibly two-thirds of the detainees have little more of value
to tell.
More than 150 detainees' cases have been in a bureaucratic
limbo in Washington for the last year, awaiting review by
several federal agencies. Commanders at Guantanamo say they
hope the Supreme Court decision will hasten the release of
those prisoners.
"We need to let go of those who have no purpose and who
are no longer a threat," said one high-level commander.
Silent 10 percent
But senior officials say they are convinced that at least 10
percent of the prisoners have yet to talk.
Most of that percentage are hard-core terrorists who
intelligence officers know have crucial information about Al
Qaeda and terrorism, officials say.
While designed as a prison, Guantanamo's Camp Delta's primary
mission now is not detention but intelligence gathering. The
facilities are in a remote section of the naval base.
Detainees are mostly kept in Camp Delta in barracks. Military
guards keep watch through personal and high-tech surveillance
so that no inmate is out of sight for more than 30 seconds.
Detainees are taken several times a month to intelligence
interrogations where U.S. operatives chat with them, mostly
about their personal lives.
Interrogators probe for ways to get detainees to divulge
intelligence. Sometimes that comes while playing board games
with the detainees. Other times it comes out of building a
personal relationship, interrogators said.
Detainees who cooperate are given incentives such as more time
outdoors and additional toiletries. About 150 have been moved
to a minimum-security area where they share communal meals,
wear traditional white Arab clothing, are given reading
lessons in their native languages and even get an occasional
day of beach recreation.
"They have been consistently getting very valuable
intelligence at Guantanamo," said Bob Newman, a former
military intelligence officer and interrogation expert.
Newman, now a Denver talk show host, said he speaks regularly
with those involved in gathering intelligence at Guantanamo.
"If the American people only knew some of it, they would
fight to keep Guantanamo as closed as possible," he said.
Droves of civilian lawyers will soon descend on the island to
do otherwise.
The information they gather, along with descriptions of
detention here from dozens of prisoners who may be freed soon,
will give Guantanamo the public scrutiny that officials sought
for years to avoid.
Starting this week, the inmates will be formally informed
about the recent Supreme Court decision.
Over the next weeks, three military panels, each with three
officers, will evaluate their cases. In the end, they will be
charged, let go or transferred. The panels are to start early
this week and work six days a week, conducting hearings for 12
prisoners a day and 72 per week, the Pentagon said Friday.
Meanwhile, more than 60 lawsuits have been filed in U.S.
courts challenging the way the military plans to handle
detainee cases.
Lawyers hope to get details from detainees to determine their
treatment and the government's interrogation methods. From
scant reports, lawyers fear detainees are suffering under the
duress of being locked up, most of them in single cells, with
no due process.
Several lawsuits allege that the detainees have been subject
to duress such as being forced to stand for hours or sit for
prolong periods in uncomfortable positions.
In interviews, guards, intelligence officers and senior
leaders claim the kinds of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq
did not occur here.
A handful of guards have been disciplined for breaking
regulations and dealing harshly with detainees. But
human-rights groups say conditions need review and
transparency.
Tapes on way to Congress
This week, a congressional committee will receive hundreds of
videotapes showing the conduct of an elite squad here that
responds to trouble in the cells. It will be the first public
airing of footage taken in the closed cellblocks that shows
guards dealing with detainees.
Of the 500 tapes reviewed here by military commanders, at
least three dozen are being analyzed further for possible
violations, they said. Most are technical or procedural
problems and do not constitute abuse, commanders say.
As the government braces for details about Guantanamo to be
made public, the Pentagon is considering moving the detainees
it considers of highest value elsewhere.
It's likely that Bagram air base in Afghanistan will soon
become the hub of intelligence activities rather than
Guantanamo, officials here predict.
"Guantanamo as we have known it will never be
again," said a senior commander here. "The nature of
intelligence gathering is that it is done in secret. That
can't fully happen anymore."
Copyright © 2004, Chicago
Tribune
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