Guantanamo braces for change

[darrels joy]

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