Gitmo PR attempts

JANE MAYER: I was surprised by how much the Department of Defense let me see. They clearly are waging a tough public-relations battle to try to improve Guantánamo's image in the world, and to do so they have apparently decided that they need to get better press coverage. The soldiers and officers I met there seemed very dedicated and committed to the mission, and they seemed at least publicly convinced that most of the detainees would present a serious threat to U.S. security if they had the chance to get out.

However, while military officials led me on a tour of Camp Delta, where most of the detainees are housed, they would not allow interviews with the detainees. Under these circumstances, only one side of the story was available: that of the U.S. military.

With this major caveat, they bent over backward to allow access to a number of fascinating scenes in Guantánamo, including allowing me to attend one of the Administrative Review Board hearings in which detainees can challenge their status as a danger to the U.S. In the one I attended, the detainee, whose name I had to agree not to release, demanded to see the evidence that the U.S. had against him, so that he could refute it. But much of the evidence, U.S. military authorities told him, was classified, and he would not be allowed to see it.

[...]

I could not learn the disposition of his case, as the Review Board sends its recommendations in secret up the chain of command in the Department of Defense. What came through to me was the complete breakdown of communication and understanding between the U.S. officials and the detainee, and also the utter lack of due process.

[...]

You talk about a period in late 2002 and 2003 when there was a great deal of pressure on the interrogators at Guantánamo to get results. How high up does responsibility for what happens in an interrogation room go?

When the commanders in Guantánamo wanted permission to use more coercive interrogation methods than those allowed under the U.S. Military Code of Justice, their requests went up to the top of the Pentagon, to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. This is where responsibility resides.

Continue reading...