Guantanamo // Current TV

10 Years Too Many: National Day of Action against Guantánamo

January 11, 2012, marks 10 years since the first detainees were transferred to the... more

joeeddy
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Is Guantanamo forever?

A decade ago, after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush authorized the detention... more

joeeddy
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2 months ago
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It Costs $72 Million A Year to Hold Cleared Prisoners at Guantánamo

Last week, the exorbitant expense of maintaining the Bush administration’s... more

Anonmaly
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3 months ago
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Sin City Showdown: The Las Vegas/CNN Debate Recap (VIDEO)

Las Vegas has seen everything...at least we thought so until tonight's CNN... more

StewSteve
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"Mentally Fragile" Bradley Manning "Should Never Have Been Sent to Iraq" "VIDEO"

Bradley Manning, the US soldier accused of passing on some 720,000 diplomatic and... more

Radical_Centrist
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Supreme Court Rejects Gitmo Appeal Over Torture

The Supreme Court has turned down an appeal from prisoners at the U.S. military base... more

treewolf39
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The internal documents from the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, published in The Times on Monday were a chilling reminder of the legal and moral disaster that President George W. Bush created there. They describe the chaos, lawlessness and incompetence in his administration’s system for deciding detainees’ guilt or innocence and assessing whether they would be a threat if released.

Innocent men were picked up on the basis of scant or nonexistent evidence and subjected to lengthy detention and often to abuse and torture. Some people were released who later acted against the United States. Inmates who committed suicide were regarded only as a public relations problem. There are seriously dangerous prisoners at Guantánamo who cannot be released but may never get a real trial because the evidence is so tainted.

The torture has stopped. The inmates’ cases have been reviewed. But the detention camp in Cuba remains a festering sore on this country’s global reputation. Hampered by ideologues and cowards in Congress, President Obama has made scant progress in healing it.

Evidence obtained from torture and the uncorroborated whispers of fellow prisoners fill the more than 700 classified documents obtained by The Times and other news organizations. Mohammed al-Qahtani, a Saudi believed to have been an intended participant in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was leashed like a dog, sexually humiliated and forced to urinate on himself. Yet claims Mr. Qahtani is said to have made about at least 16 prisoners are cited in their files with no mention of the coercion.

Some assessments relied on innuendo, gossip or information supplied by individuals whose motives were untrustworthy and whose information later proved false. Haji Jalil was captured in 2003 after an Afghan intelligence official said he had taken an “active part” in an ambush that killed American soldiers. He was sent home two years later, an inexcusable delay, after American officials determined that Mr. Jalil had been used to provide cover for the involvement of the intelligence official and others in the attack.

The Obama administration objected to release of the classified documents. The administration notes that the assessments were written between 2002 and early 2009 and that the task force established by Mr. Obama in January 2009 came to different conclusions about some of the remaining 172 prisoners. We accept that caution. But the administration is wrong to insist on secrecy. Inordinate resort to secrecy and resistance to testing evidence in fair and credible legal proceedings put the nation in this fix.

The administration should make its assessments of the remaining Guantánamo detainees public to the extent possible and free lawyers for detainees to fully communicate their clients’ side of the story.

The military commission trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and five other alleged Sept. 11 plotters should be pursued by the Defense Department using only evidence that would pass muster in federal court, and with maximum transparency.

The disaster at Guantánamo Bay is now Mr. Obama’s problem. He should not compound Mr. Bush’s mistakes in his efforts to correct them.

http://nyti.ms/gaaegeThe internal documents from the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, published in... more

letsliveinpeace
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10 months ago
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WikiLeaks Releases Guantanamo Prisoner Files

The revelations in those documents range from intelligence on the whereabouts of Al... more

Paisano1
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10 months ago
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WikiLeaks reveals details about Guantanamo detainees

Nearly 800 classified U.S. military documents obtained by WikiLeaks reveal... more

remyric
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10 months ago
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MI5 implicated in new torture allegations

The British intelligence services have been implicated in fresh allegations of... more

spectacle
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10 months ago
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Super Frat: Obama Repeats Himself

White House intern MPH confronts the president on the toilet.

TonyDiGerolamo
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11 months ago
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“We Want To Let Them Go, But Bush Won’t Let Us!”

[T]he Obama administration has still chosen to accept the concept of indefinite... more

joeeddy
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11 months ago
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President Does Good...Obama Orders Guantanamo Trials to Resume

Barack Obama has given the green light to resume military trials of terror suspects... more

congoboy
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11 months ago
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Obama creates indefinite detention system for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay

The war of terror continues. . .yeap, bush oughta be proud of Obama. By Peter Finn... more

Roldan
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11 months ago
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If you read this, you will know: Then what?

My Tortured Journey With Former Guantanamo Detainee David Hicks I’ve been... more

joeeddy
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12 months ago
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I guess he wants to keep his promise, but Congress won’t let him…

Obama administration officials say they plan to reject Congressional efforts to limit... more

joeeddy
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1 year ago
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Americans Face Guantanamo-Like Torture Everyday in a Super-Max Prison Near You

To little public outcry, tens of thousands of citizens are being held in horrific... more

toyotabedzrock
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1 year ago
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Obama lays blow to closing Guantanamo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama, in a setback to hopes for the... more

shanklinmike
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1 year ago
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WikiLeaks’ Assange threatened to sue Guardian and for Violations of Agreement other Revelations

Vanity Fair's Sarah Ellison has a comprehensive piece online detailing the relationship between WikiLeaks and The Guardian. The story gives an up-close look at how Julian Assange provided his leaked cache of classified documents on Afghanistan, Iraq, and U.S. diplomacy to the British newspaper and other news organizations last year.
The alliance between the old-media outlet and the Web-driven document clearinghouse proved rocky at times. It grew particularly strained recently after the paper turned its lens on Assange. (This was pretty much the same dynamic that upended WikiLeaks' relationship with the New York Times.)
What's more, Ellison notes, the Guardian and WikiLeaks were by no means committed to a shared agenda or pursuing common journalistic aims just because each organization wanted to make information public:
The partnership between The Guardian and WikiLeaks brought together two desperately ambitious organizations that happen to be diametric opposites in their approach to reporting the news. One of the oldest newspapers in the world, with strict and established journalistic standards, joined up by one of the newest in a breed of online muckrakers, with no standards at all except fealty to an ideal of 'transparency'—that is, dumping raw material into the public square for people to pick over as they will. It is very likely that neither [Guardian editor-in-chief] Alan Rusbridger nor Julian Assange fully understood the nature of the other's organization when they joined forces."
Ellison's account offers a great tick-tock chronology of last year's set of WikiLeaks dumps, together with several revelations regarding WikiLeaks' media strategy.
How The Guardian got involved: Reporter Nick Davies has written about his involvement with Assange before, but Ellison adds new details to the timeline. In June, Davies read a short Guardian piece on the arrest of Bradley Manning, the army private who's believed to be a principal WikiLeaks source and who's been kept in solitary confinement since his detainment. Davies was determined to track Manning down. Davies learned Assange would be in Brussels, so Brussels-based Guardian reporter Ian Traynor spoke with the WikiLeaks chief and learned he had two million documents. Davies headed to Brussels and "went to the Hotel Leopold, woke up Assange, and began a conversation that lasted for the next six hours."
How the New York Times got involved: Davies and Assange discussed bringing in the Times while in Brussels, and back in London, Rusbridger called Times executive editor Bill Keller. Times reporter Eric Schmitt flew to London to see the material, reported it was genuine, and the Times came aboard. Assange then brought in Der Spiegel on his own.
How Channel 4 got involved, and Assange split with Davies: In July, Assange provided Britain's Channel 4 network with the Afghanistan documents. Ellison writes that Davies was "livid" over the breach of Assange's presumed first-look arrangement with The Guardian and that the two haven't spoken again. (Slate's Jack Shafer has a good take on Vanity Fair piece, including the expectations reporters sometimes have for the sources they've "cultivated.")
How The Guardian got the cables from Assange: Investigative editor David Leigh agreed to a delay in publishing articles related to the Iraq documents because Assange wanted to bring in the nonprofit Bureau of Investigative Journalism to work with Channel 4 and Al Jazeera. In exchange for a six-week delay, Assange provided "package three" -- the State Dept. cables -- to the Guardian. In doing so, Assange got a letter from the Guardian agreeing not to publish anything on the leaked cables until he gave the go-ahead. But...
The Guardian got the cables from a second source: This bit of news fills in an interesting gap and explains friction between Assange and The Guardian. The British newspaper agreed to Assange's embargo on a release date for the cables, because WikiLeaks was its source. But in October, The Guardian received the full cache of cables from freelance journalist Heather Brooke. She had obtained the cables independently from an ex-WikiLeaks volunteer. (Brooke suggested on Twitter today that there's more to the story). Regardless, The Guardian now had the full database from a different source and believed it was free from the embargo agreed upon with Assange. The Guardian then provided those documents to Der Spiegel and The New York Times. These news organizations planned to published on Nov. 8--with or without Assange's input.
Why Assange threatened to sue: Assange and his lawyer met in Rusbridger's office and threatened to sue if The Guardian published anything from the cables ahead of the embargo. Ellison writes that Rusbridger, Guardian investigations editor David Leigh, and editors from Der Spiegel "spent a marathon session with Assange, his lawyer, and [WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn] Hrafnsson, eventually restoring an uneasy calm." They agreed to delay publication a few weeks while Assange brought in two more media partners, Le Monde (France) and El Pais (Spain).
So what's next? Last week, The Cutline raised some questions for WikiLeaks in 2011. In Ellison's piece, Davies notes that Assange has discussed having files on all Guantanamo Bay prisoners. (Wired zeroes in on this detail). Assange has also spoken about having documents that could take down a bank or two. But it remains to be seen exactly what Assange has and also how he may choose to work with news organizations going forward. As Ellison explains, it hasn't always been an easy relationship.
Since readers have asked me about neglecting specific revelations from the WikiLeaks docs, just a reminder: this is a media blog so the focus is on the media relationships and strategy. For more on WikiLeaks revelations, check out The Guardian, New York Times, a very good new CBS round-up or WikiLeaks itself. And for daily updates on all-things-WikiLeaks, The Nation's Greg Mitchell is a must-read.Vanity Fair's Sarah Ellison has a comprehensive piece online detailing the... more

gerardange
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1 year ago
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