Detention Plan In Guantanamo, Prisoners Languish In Sea of Red Tape Inmates Waiting to Be Freed Are Caught in Uncertainty; Improvising Along the Way
The Wall Street Journal
by Christopher Cooper
January 26, 2005
A Split Over Interrogations
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- Brig. Gen. Michael Lehnert surveyed the
sagging remains of an abandoned detention center here on Jan. 6, 2002.
Nearly two months into the Afghanistan war, Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld had given him just 96 hours to build a prison for 100 captured
fighters. "Humane but not comfortable," Gen. Lehnert recalls his orders
saying. "And nothing permanent."
The result, finished with nine hours to spare, resembled a
high-security kennel: narrow chain-link cells on concrete slabs, topped
with spirals of razor wire. The next day, the first batch of prisoners
arrived from Afghanistan, wearing blacked-out safety goggles, shackles
and mittens for extra restraint. In the next few weeks, Gen. Lehnert's
orders kept changing: boost the number of cells to 300, then to 2,000.
Then the Pentagon said to prepare the place for interrogations.
The history of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay is a
particularly graphic illustration of how the U.S. stumbled into the war
on terrorism unprepared for a new kind of enemy and had to improvise
along the way. With combat in Afghanistan well under way, the U.S. had
no place to detain captured Taliban and al Qaeda fighters and no
procedures for handling them.
Since then, the detention camp, which now employs more than 2,200
soldiers and civilians, has struggled with the consequences of its
rushed birth. American commanders acknowledge that many prisoners
shouldn't have been locked up here in the first place because they
weren't dangerous and didn't know anything of value. "Sometimes, we
just didn't get the right folks," says Brig. Gen. Jay Hood,
Guantanamo's current commander.
Emptying cells has posed yet another challenge. Commanders now
estimate that up to 40% of the 549 current detainees probably pose no
threat and possess no significant information. Military officials at
Guantanamo say they have specifically recommended the release of about
100 of those men. But after a year of delay, the Pentagon, which makes
the final call, has yet to act.
In a typical war covered by the Geneva Conventions, battlefield
prisoners are freed en masse when peace is declared. The fight against
Islamic terrorists, in contrast, promises to last indefinitely, and
Defense Department officials admit that they are hesitant to release
detainees while the conflict continues. "There wasn't a blueprint for
this; the war is ongoing," says Gen. Hood. Overall, about 750 men have
been brought to Guantanamo since January 2002, and roughly 200 have
been released, including four Britons and one Australian freed this
week. No prisoners have died at the camp, the U.S. says.
Questions about how to handle the minority of detainees thought to
possess valuable information have also complicated the military's
mission at Guantanamo. That uncertainty sparked a behind-the-scenes
debate over harsh interrogation tactics that even some within
government criticized as ineffective.
America's oldest overseas base, Guantanamo sits on the south[ea]st
coast of Cuba. The U.S. took possession of the area as a ship-refueling
depot under a lease signed with the Cuban government in 1904, long
before the rise of Fidel Castro. Breaking the lease requires the
agreement of both governments, and the U.S. has just stayed put.
Covering two sides of a wide bay, Guantanamo has been used as a firing
range and a naval training center. For a time in the early and
mid-1990s, it held thousands of refugees the U.S. intercepted as they
fled Haiti and Cuba.
As the Pentagon prepared to invade Afghanistan, military officials
say, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld first considered locations in southeast
and central Asia, before deciding that Guantanamo was "the best of the
worst." Some Bush administration officials say Guantanamo's murky legal
status is an added plus.
Even though the U.S. controls the base, the Bush administration
considers it to be beyond the reach of American laws. The
administration has said that as "enemy combatants," rather than
"prisoners of war," the detainees aren't covered by the Geneva
Conventions but has pledged to treat them "in a manner consistent" with
the conventions' principles. Critics, including lawyers representing
Guantanamo detainees in suits against the government, allege that
American officials have taken advantage of the legal haziness to
mistreat prisoners and deny them their rights.
The first facility that Gen. Lehnert rebuilt and expanded is known
as Camp X-Ray. As more enemy combatants arrived in early 2002, he
started work a few miles away on Camp Delta, which held more than 700
prisoners at its peak later that year. Delta has more substantial
open-air cells with bunks and sinks.
U.S. commanders now concede that rapid and sometimes-imprecise
screening of the roughly 10,000 foes captured in Afghanistan meant that
a portion of the men brought to Guantanamo didn't know much of
importance about al Qaeda or the Taliban. Complicating the process,
some prisoners had no identification, gave several aliases and spoke
languages many American soldiers didn't understand. Most of those
captured were taken to Bagram Air Base near Kabul, and a large majority
have since been released.
About 80 to 85 men brought to Guantanamo turned out to have serious
mental problems, American officers say, and several other prisoners
were deathly ill. One psychotic Afghan prisoner, nicknamed "Wild Bill"
by his captors, spoke four languages but spent most of his time
shouting nonsense in English. Another man soldiers dubbed "Half-Dead
Bob" arrived weighing 78 pounds and suffering from pneumonia,
tuberculosis, frostbite and dysentery. Neither man offered much in the
way of intelligence; they were treated and then returned to
Afghanistan, American officials say.
Split Command
After Gen. Lehnert's tour at Guantanamo ended in March 2002, a new
pair of commanders arrived and with them came a split over
interrogation tactics. It was during this period that reports of
prisoner abuse at the base started to circulate within the government.
Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey, an Army reservist and a county judge in
Pennsylvania, took over as the new commander of Guantanamo's
interrogators. Brig. Gen. Rick Baccus, a national guardsman from Rhode
Island, oversaw the guards. Gen. Baccus says that he generally
advocated taking a more humanitarian approach, while Gen. Dunlavey
pushed for tougher tactics. "We may not have always agreed on my
philosophy regarding prisoner treatment," Gen. Baccus says. He adds,
however, that he doesn't know of any detainees being mistreated during
the period of the joint command -- from March through October of 2002.
Gen. Dunlavey declined to comment, citing a lawsuit filed against
the U.S. military by three former detainees, in which he is one of the
named defendants. The case is pending before a federal court in
Washington.
A senior officer at the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees
military operations in Latin American, including Guantanamo, says
officials now believe that recent revelations about the possible
mistreatment of prisoners may describe events during the period of
split command in mid-2002. Some of the allegations are contained in
e-mail sent by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents who participated
in interrogations at Guantanamo. The e-mail, addressed to FBI
colleagues and supervisors, became public as a result of a suit filed
by the American Civil Liberties Union.
FBI agents described a variety of questionable interrogation
techniques, including shackling prisoners for hours on the floor in the
fetal position, subjecting them to extremes of heat and cold and
introducing dogs into interrogations. In one case, a detainee was
wrapped in an Israeli flag in an attempt to humiliate him, according to
FBI e-mail.
The Southern Command has appointed a brigadier general to
investigate the FBI complaints. Separate abuse allegations made by
soldiers at Guantanamo have spawned another dozen or so internal
investigations.
Officials at the Southern Command say that much of what happened in
mid-2002 occurred without clear procedures in place or attentive
oversight. "The truth is, there's a black hole in the timeline," says
one Southern Command officer.
The White House had put into play the question of whether to use
tougher-than-standard methods of interrogation. In response to a
request from White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, the Justice
Department produced an official legal opinion in August 2002 that
narrowed the definition of torture during interrogation, clearing the
way for tougher methods. In his recent Senate hearings on his
nomination to be attorney general, Mr. Gonzales said he opposes torture
in all forms.
In October 2002, during the final days of his Guantanamo command,
Gen. Dunlavey wrote a memo to his superiors at Southern Command, asking
permission to step up the pressure on certain prisoners during
interrogation. Current methods, the memo said, "have become less
effective over time."
In early December, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld authorized the use of
more aggressive tactics for a pair of detainees thought to have
specific information about al Qaeda plans, U.S. officials say. One of
those prisoners, Saudi national Mohamed al Qahtani, had tried
unsuccessfully to enter the U.S. in August 2001 and was thought by
American officials to have been a potential member of the 9/11
hijacking squad. Interrogators believed that Mr. Qahtani, who was
captured on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, knew about possible future
terrorism plans, but he had resisted talking under conventional
questioning methods.
With Mr. Rumsfeld's permission, interrogators isolated Mr. Qahtani
and questioned him for grueling 20-hour sessions that included the use
of a spotlight and loud music to disorient him. After 42 days, he
cracked and provided information about some of al Qaeda's inner
workings, U.S. officials say. He is now awaiting a military trial. The
other detainee covered by the Rumsfeld authorization provided useful
information under standard questioning, U.S. officials say.
Psychologist's Unease
Despite the successful Qahtani interrogation, there was unease in
some quarters at Guantanamo about the overall effectiveness of such
tactics.
A team of about 10 federal law-enforcement officials, led by
Michael Gelles, a Navy Criminal Investigative Service behavioral
psychologist, was visiting the facility to offer advice. Most of
Guantanamo's interrogators were actually Arabic or Farsi linguists with
little training in questioning. In late 2002, Mr. Gelles became
concerned about the use of what he believed were improper and
ineffective tactics, according to people who were involved.
Mr. Gelles, a civilian naval employee, tried to persuade Maj. Gen.
Geoffrey Miller, who took over sole command of Guantanamo in November
2002 and held that post until early 2004, that interrogation based on
building "rapport" made more sense. This approach calls for rewarding
cooperation with extra privileges: better food, phone calls home and
the like. The Gelles team argued that Muslim extremists, who consider
the U.S. to be evil, can be psychologically shaken if they receive good
treatment.
At least in the case of someone like Mr. Qahtani, Gen. Miller
disagreed. "It was the same plan they'd been using for six months with
no success," he says.
Gen. Miller went on to command the notorious prison at Abu Ghraib
in Iraq, where extensive inmate abuse occurred. Though he was not
commander there when the abuse took place, and he denies having any
knowledge of it, some soldiers say he introduced aggressive
interrogation procedures at Abu Ghraib during a visit there in late
summer of 2003.
Frustrated at Guantanamo, Mr. Gelles took his concerns up the chain
of command, ultimately to the Navy's general counsel, Alberto Mora, who
relayed them to Mr. Rumsfeld. In January 2003, just six weeks after
approving harsher techniques for Mr. Qahtani, the defense secretary
rescinded them, convening a group of Pentagon lawyers to discuss the
issue further. In March, that group recommended dialing back the
techniques. Mr. Rumsfeld acceded, and the less aggressive rules, which
hew more closely to standard military doctrine, remain in place today
at Guantanamo, officials say.
Guantanamo records made available to The Wall Street Journal
suggest that in many cases, plans for interrogation sessions have
become less confrontational. A plan drafted in February 2003 for a
juvenile prisoner called for six hours of direct questioning
emphasizing the theme that his mother would want him to be cooperative.
Coffee and tea were to be used as incentives. "It's important to get
the name right," the interrogation plan says. "Try to get him to write down his name in his native script."
The camp's current commander, Gen. Hood, a former artillery officer
who took over from Gen. Miller in March 2004, says he, too, favors the
softer approach to interrogation and has even expanded the reward
system. But he is hamstrung in his efforts because the ultimate reward
-- a convincing promise of release -- is hard to provide.
To illustrate, Gen. Hood calls up from a computer database the
dossier of what he says is a typical detainee: a 25-year-old man with a
bright smile, tangled hair and four aliases. The database, known as the
Detainee Interrogation Management System, includes biographical facts,
polygraph results and interrogation summaries. This prisoner, a former
yarn-factory worker who speaks four languages, arrived at Guantanamo
with tuberculosis but has since recovered. He has had run-ins with
guards, threatening at one point to kill one of them. He has been
observed over the years engaged in physical training and sometimes
leads Islamic prayers from his cell.
But the digital dossier concludes that the detainee has been
truthful -- and fully drained of any useful information. Gen. Hood says
that he recommended within the past six months -- he won't say exactly
when -- that the man be released. But that hasn't happened yet.
In theory, once a detainee is thought no longer to present a threat
to the U.S. or possess any valuable intelligence, he should be sent
home. Current policy calls for him to receive a pair of jeans, a white
or light-blue polo shirt and, if headed for cooler climes, a
windbreaker.
In practice, the system is stuck. Releasing a prisoner requires the
approval of Defense Department headquarters, as well as the State
Department, Central Intelligence Agency and the FBI. "Nobody wants to
be the one who signs the release papers," says Gen. Hood. "There's no
muscle in the system." With less than a third of current detainees
being actively interrogated, Guantanamo officials say the prison
population should be much smaller.
The Pentagon concedes that it has been somewhat flummoxed by the
challenge of freeing former fighters while the fight against terrorism
persists. "We've wanted to be thorough and deliberate, and there are a
number of pressures and risks" when detainees are identified for
release, says Matthew Waxman, deputy assistant secretary of defense for
detainee affairs. "Without a lot of experience under our belt, it was
hard to figure out where to draw the line." Indeed, there have been
cases of recidivism: Of the 200 men released so far from Guantanamo,
the Pentagon says about a dozen are thought to have rejoined forces
fighting the U.S.
Some otherwise releasable detainees present special problems. Two
dozen Uighurs, Muslim ethnic [Turkic] from central Asia who were picked
up in Afghanistan, would face almost certain execution if returned to
Beijing.
The inability to promise freedom as a realistic incentive has
itself become a potential hindrance. The recent interrogation of a
Yemeni prisoner illustrates the problem. The detainee, a thin man with
a huge beard and shaved head, arrived in the camp in October after
being held for two years in Afghanistan. He sat impassively in a
cramped concrete interview booth, as an interrogator and a linguist
asked warm-up questions about the health of his family.
"They are writing that they're healthy, but they're careful what
they write," the detainee said in Arabic. "They don't want to depress
me."
In a dispassionate tone, the interrogator accused the Yemeni of
having been a Taliban commander and demanded that he confirm this.
"Evidently, you did bad things," the interrogator said.
The Yemeni grimaced, twisting a strand of his beard through long fingers. "My enemies brought me to you," he said.
When the interrogator suggested that cooperation could win his release, the Yemeni grew morose. "They asked me in Khandahar ;
they asked me at Bagram. I say I don't know," he replied. "I dreamed
that I will die in here. No matter how much you ask me questions, I
know my case will never be finished."
Steve Rodriguez, a former military-intelligence officer who, as a
private contractor, heads the intelligence unit at Guantanamo, says
gathering new information has become more challenging as detainees
retain lawyers and the White House releases details on what questioning
methods are allowed. Visiting lawyers, for instance, provide their
clients with information that undermines the sense of isolation that
interrogators count on to disorient detainees. News from the outside
spreads quickly among prisoners. It was only a few hours after
President Bush won re-election that the whole camp knew the result,
Gen. Hood says. "I'm told that they had a pretty active discussion
about red and blue states."
Gen. Hood says he is optimistic that a new panel, called the
Ad[ministr]ation Review Board, will send scores of prisoners home. Meeting
in December to hear its first two cases, the board promises to operate
like an independent parole body, reviewing every prisoner's case at
least once a year. "There are significant numbers of men here, who once
their cases are heard will probably be given over to their government
or released," Gen. [Hood] says. "If that doesn't happen, I'm going to be
doing some yelling."
But Michael Ratner, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional
Rights in New York, which represents several detainees and finds
attorneys for others, is skeptical. "It's the hope of all of us that
they just need an excuse or rationale to clear the place out," he says,
"but I'm not sure why they would change now."
Even as Gen. Hood tries to empty some cells, Guantanamo is taking
on a more permanent feel. About half of the population now lives
dormitory-style in a sprawling camp, where prisoners can wash their own
clothes and play soccer.
In December, Camp Delta published the first issue of a detainee
newsletter. It had articles on the elections in Afghanistan and the
Afghan Olympic team, a list of professional soccer standings and a
weather map of the Middle East (except for Israel). The military
recently put the finishing touches on Camp Iguana: a new barbed
wire-enclosed structure that offers detainees televisions and a rare
glimpse of the sea.
This spring, the military expects to break ground for the
construction of a more conventional $35 million prison for 220 inmates.
Gen. Hood says, "We've all come around to the realization that some of
these guys are going to be with us for a long, long time."
Write to Christopher Cooper at christopher.cooper@wsj.com