What is happening with Guantanamo? We hear President Bush say in Berlin that he would "like to close Guantanamo," but is "awaiting the Supreme Court to make a decision." What would he do with the detainees? "Put them on trial," according to the President. In fact Mr. Bush needs to be briefed that Military Commissions -- on hold for months while U.S. courts made glacial progress -- are finally underway as you read this. Detainees standing in front of the Commissions this week include the only white detainee in Guantanamo, Australian terrorist David Matthew Hicks, a veteran of the Pakistani LET, the Kosovo Liberation Army, and al Qaeda.
I recently debated one of the attorneys for some of the detainees on BBC radio. Clive Stafford-Smith, a hard-left human rights lawyer who seems to find desirable clients principally from among the oppressed anti-American terrorist community, wistfully hoped that the "innocent" detainees would only get a "fair hearing." An admirable desire to be sure, and one that I personally wish would also be applied by irrational critics to America's actions -- practically alone -- in combating Islamofascism worldwide, including the need to detain and interrogate these thugs in places like Guantanamo.
Not to be outdone by the President's expressed wish, the British government's top legal advisor, Lord Goldsmith, meanwhile issued a pontificatory statement informing us that "the existence of Guantanamo is unacceptable." One wonders if his Lordship would prefer that the fewer than 490 terrorists now detained at the facility take up residence in his Parliamentary district. Since at least two of the detainees have advanced degrees in economics from the London School and are proficient in terrorist money laundering and fundraising, they could have useful skills. No doubt in some areas of the UK that are already rapidly undergoing Islamification the idea of terrorists relocating to the neighborhood might be more than a hypothetical possibility.
Meanwhile in the real world, the part that looks askance at the idea of taking hundreds of the "worst of the worst" terrorists and turning them loose again, the efficacy of Guantanamo needs to be discussed in more practical, serious tones. Consider if you will the artificial "wall" that Clinton-appointed Assistant Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick erected to enforce a separation between law enforcement and intelligence gathering agencies is by now well known. It was loudly but hypocritically condemned by the 911 Commission since wall architect Gorelick was, herself, a member of the Commission. Not only did she fail to recuse herself from discussion of the aberration that she created, but some say she ought to have been subpoenaed to testify. Nevertheless the point was made: intelligence and law enforcement missions have become blurred and overlapping in this war. Information sharing must be conducted in a timely manner. It follows that analyzed material derived from interrogations and operational data sharing must take place as well.
But is that happening? Word in the intel community seems to indicate that necessary exchanges are not taking place in a timely manner.
Even more significantly since the missions of various agencies conflict with one another, focus is naturally on the needs of the particular agency perhaps to the detriment of others that ought to be involved.
Disposition and handling of individual terrorist detainees has brought this issue to a head. This is an historical, not recently emerging issue. For example, back in the highly confused first few months of 2002 when Guantanamo Bay was hastily opened as a detention/interrogation center for enemy combatants captured for the most part in Afghanistan and Pakistan, several agencies were interested in these thugs, each for its own reasons.
Primarily domestic-focused, law enforcement agencies such as Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation and major cities' police agencies were out to build cases against individual detainees that would stand up in the harsh light of a criminal court. They were concerned with niceties of a highly refined American legal system preoccupied with defendant's rights, rules of procedure, and evidentiary processes. While they were properly concerned with potential future attacks, FBI and other similar groups were focused in large part on alleged past criminal acts for which they could prosecute.
Military and Central Intelligence Agency interrogators, on the other hand, were less focused on building a court case than they were in what would be properly classified as national security or military intelligence information. In a phrase they were out to learn the capabilities and intentions of the enemy especially regarding current operations and future attacks. They wanted to know everything about the al Qaeda organization, training, recruiting, financial processes, tactics, personalities, alliances with outside states and movements, technical and tactical proficiency, and planned operations. They were considerably less focused on prosecution of an individual and sought more to defeat a movement.
Analysis of these early, admittedly confused months in Guantanamo shows that all too often the "wall" still existed and was a great impediment to proper interrogation of the detainees. Agencies operated without an overall, coordinated interrogation plan and with few common objectives. The result was akin to researchers conducting multiple science projects in the same Petri dish: each participant ruined the other participants' projects. On several occasions, according to present day Gitmo interrogators, detainees actually complained about the unprofessional nature of these early interrogations and some astoundingly even offered advice to the interrogators on how to conduct a more effective session. Some actionable information was derived but how much was lost is impossible to say.
In these early days the interrogators argued and competed among themselves. Not only did they not share information, plans, and acceptable techniques but it was rare that they even discussed the situation civilly with each other. Principals in each competing agency exerted absolute control over their people. So rather than having unity of command -- the first principle in the art of war -- each organization stove-piped right down to the actors on the spot. Exacerbating the problem was that even within the military jurisdiction over the detainees was initially split between two Task Forces, TF-160 and TF-170.
It was during these early months that accusations of abuse -- real and fabricated -- emerged from the fog of Guantanamo. FBI agents were unfamiliar with the latitude that military interrogators had, and CIA interrogators played their own secret hand. Partially as a result, a few poorly prepared FBI agents -- never briefed or trained to deal with wartime enemy combatants but accustomed to Mirandized accused criminals in a Stateside environment -- panicked and sent hysterically overstated "reports" back to the U.S. One of those emails made the floor of the Senate as Senator Dick Durbin (D, IL) used it as a political club to smack the Administration, tangentially attacking American troops. He carelessly, thoughtlessly besmirched our soldiers' worldwide reputations along with that of his country.
But that was then, this is now. These issues have been long resolved and for several years Guantanamo interrogations have been extraordinarily professional and effective, a success totally ignored by the legacy media. Investigations such as that conducted independently by Admiral Church and his committee and by former Defense Secretary Schlesinger and his blue-ribbon, bipartisan panel, have given Joint Task Force Guantanamo the highest marks for humane treatment and proper interrogation procedure.
But despite this amazing progress we still have evidence of the artificial wall keeping agencies apart and hampering American efforts. We are not so well off in our intelligence efforts against al Qaeda and other terrorists that we can afford to squander the small amount of precious human intelligence that we can access. Yet because of our "walls" we are doing exactly that. At this stage of evolution, Guantanamo is highly controlled, under intense scrutiny including 24-hour International Committee of the Red Cross oversight, and is functioning as the most effective detention/interrogation platform in the world.
Yet we are using it for only a tiny number of those who merit proper interrogation, most especially the cell members and terrorists who have been apprehended and in many cases tried and convicted, in American courts. If someone like Sammi al-Arian is sentenced to jail time he ought to be assigned to Gitmo to fill out that time. During his confinement he can be properly interrogated. Otherwise he and the others such as John Walker Lindh, Zaccarias Mousaoui, the Beltway Snipers, the Lackawanna Six, and every one of the others who are just rotting in Federal prison cells while the information inside their heads is forever secret.
Every terrorist captured abroad deemed sufficient threat or to possess actionable intelligence information ought to be evacuated and kept at Guantanamo. Similarly every terrorist convicted in American domestic courts should be assigned to Gitmo to serve their sentences. Our needs for this information are too great to give it up voluntarily in time of war by ignoring these potentially rich intelligence sources.
Gordon Cucullu is a former Green Beret lieutenant colonel and author of Separated at Birth: How North Korea became the Evil Twin. |
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The US should shut Guantánamo Bay and give detainees access to a fair trial or release them, a UN human rights watchdog said today. The UN committee against torture voiced concern that detainees were being held at the camp for long periods without judicial scrutiny of the reasons for their detention, adding that Guantánamo detainees had insufficient legal safeguards. "The state party should cease to detain any person at Guantánamo Bay and close the detention facility," a committee report, published today, said.