[Peace-discuss] More USG corruption

[C. G. Estabrook]

Tortured Confessions and the Gitmo Protection Orders
By: emptywheel Tuesday April 26, 2011 9:33 am

An unfortunate side effect of the NYT and NPR’s attempt to preempt WikiLeaks’ 
embargo on the Gitmo Files is that their coverage–rather than the coverage of 
those who had been working on the files for several weeks–got the most 
attention. Notably, McClatchy’s team of Tom Lasseter (who had done a series on 
Gitmo) and Carol Rosenberg (who knows more about it than anyone) had to scramble 
to get their first story out.

McClatchy’s [chief of correspondents Mark] Seibel said the WikiLeaks notified 
him at 5:30 p.m. EST that the embargo was lifted. So McClatchy — and the other 
news organizations working on the project — needed to scramble to finish their 
first stories as The Times and NPR put the finishing touches on theirs.

Carol Rosenberg, a reporter for McClatchy’s Miami Herald and one of the foremost 
authorities on Guantanamo Bay in the press corps, said she was caught off guard 
by the abrupt change of plans. “All I know is I spent nearly the last month 
digging through documents and was surprised tonight to learn that the embargo 
was about to be lifted on two hours notice,” Rosenberg said in an email.

Which is why the topic of their second story is so important. It shows that 8 
unreliable detainees, several of whom are known to have been tortured, provided 
a great deal of the intelligence justifying the continuing detention of Gitmo 
detainees.

The allegations and observations of just eight detainees were used to help build 
cases against some 255 men at Guantanamo roughly a third of all who passed 
through the prison. Yet the testimony of some of the eight was later questioned 
by Guantanamo analysts themselves, and the others were subjected to 
interrogation tactics that defense attorneys say amounted to torture and 
compromised the veracity of their information.

How different would the focus on the Gitmo Files be if the first story about it 
were about the unreliability of the intelligence in the Detainee Assessment 
Briefs, rather than how many people labeled “high risk” in those DABs went on to 
be transferred?

To see background on the people who incriminated many of the other Gitmo 
detainees, go read the whole article. Meanwhile, I just wanted to point out one 
point about the Gitmo protection order I described yesterday.

McClatchy notes that Mohammed al-Qahtani–whom Convening Authority Susan Crawford 
admitted was tortured at Gitmo–provided intelligence against 31 detainees.

Muhammad al Qahtani, a Saudi man whose interrogations reportedly included 
20-hour sessions and being led around by a leash, appeared as a source in at 
least 31 cases. A Guantanamo analyst note about Qahtani acknowledged that 
“starting in winter 2002/2003, (Qahtani) began retracting statements,” though it 
argued that based on corroborating information “it is believed that (his) 
initial admissions were the truth.”At the Center for Constitutional Rights in 
New York, the firm that has championed Qahtani’s unlawful detention lawsuit, 
senior attorney Shane Kadidal said that “the information that was given in the 
first place (by Qahtani) was not reliable.” As a condition of his security 
clearance, Kadidal said, he couldn’t discuss the specifics of the WikiLeaks 
documents.

As they point out, Shane Kadidal and the Center for Constitutional Rights have 
handled his defense and presumably know a great deal about the intelligence tied 
to Qahtani. But because DOJ (and surely, DOD) have warned them that speaking 
about the Gitmo Files leaked by WikiLeaks would be a violation of their 
protection order, they can’t comment on them.

In effect, in the name of protecting secrets that are already in the public 
domain, DOJ has gagged the people best able to comment on these issues.

But then, that’s the way our government uses secrecy to stifle informed 
discussions in this country.

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