World>Terrorism & Security
posted March 22, 2005, updated 12:00 p.m.

Gitmo abuse allegations linger

Reports of more interrogation tapes, and restored sections of FBI memo, again raise questions about tactics.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

An Australian lawyer who had at one point defended an Australian citizen being held at the US military prisoner facility at Guant��namo Bay, Cuba, says that more than 500 hours of videotape of prisoner interrogations exist, and that they will ultimately reveal abuse of prisoners by US military personnel as "explosive as anything from Abu Ghraib."

The Australian reported Monday that lawyer Stephen Kenny told a legal convention that the existence of the tapes came to light after a member of the US military, who had been told to masquarade as a prisoner during a training session at Guant��namo, was beaten so badly he reportedly suffered brain damage.

The Guardian also reported on the existence of interrogation tapes in May, 2004. US military officials confirmed their existence at that time.


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Mr. Kenny said that the American Center for Civil Liberties is pressing for the tapes to be released after a report alleged that a "secret military review" of only 20 hours of the tapes found "10 substantial cases of abuse."

The US government has refused to release the tapes so far on the grounds of "privacy concerns." Kenny's comments came the same day that the US Justice Department released the full-text of a memo written last May by departmental lawyers who "dismissed intelligence obtained by coercive methods used by the military at Guant��namo Bay, Cuba, as 'suspect at best.' " The New York Times reported Monday that the memo, which had been known about for months, had been heavily edited prior to its first release.

The edited material was only made public when Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan asked the Justice Department to restore those sections. His request followed the Senate confirmation hearings on Michael Chertoff's nomination to be secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

"The facts related to interrogation practices used against some detainees are slowly being forced to the surface, and we will keep pushing for more," Mr. Levin said in a statement in which he referred to the Department of Defense as DOD. "Today we were able to obtain some information that had previously been blacked out in an FBI document critical of DOD interrogation practices. As I suspected, the previously withheld information had nothing to do with protecting intelligence sources or methods, and everything to do with protecting DOD from embarrassment."

The Washington Post reports that the new sections of the memo show that FBI agents who were present in Gitmo, and who witnessed the conteroversial methods of interrogations, found them to be " suspect at best."

The Post also reports another section that was originally withheld said "Justice Department criminal division officials were so concerned about the military interrogation practices that they took their complaints to the office of the Pentagon's chief attorney..."

The FBI memos described "torture techniques" such as "shackling detainees into painful positions, forced nakedness, deafening music, temperature extremes, and sexual humiliation by female interrogators."

The Detroit Free Press says the report also shows that exchanges between the US military personnel and the FBI at Guant��namo were sometimes contentious.

In one of the e-mails, an unidentified FBI agent said 'conversations got somewhat heated' when he told senior military commanders and Pentagon officials that the information produced by the military's interrogations 'was nothing more than what the FBI got using simple investigative techniques.'

The Boston Globe reported last week that the FBI wasn't the only group concerned about the tactics being used at Guant��namo after 9/11. In 2002, top Navy officials at the base were "so outraged" at the abusive interrogation tactics being used that "they considered removing Navy interrogators from the operation, according to a portion of a recent Pentagon report that has not been made public."

A top Navy psychologist reported to his supervisor in December 2002 that interrogators at Guant��namo were starting to use 'abusive techniques' In a separate incident that same month, the Defense Department's joint investigative service, which includes Navy investigators, formally 'disassociated' itself from the interrogation of a detainee, after learning that he had been subjected to particularly abusive and degrading treatment.

The Guardian had also reported last year that British interrogators at Gitmo were concerned about the techniques being used by their American counterparts.

Also last week, Newsweek reported that four women interrogators have been recalled to active duty and may face military court-martials because of their involvement with abusive interrogation techniques. The Miami Herald reported last Wednesday that Army Gen. Bantz Craddock, chief of Miami's Southern Command, could not confirm the report that "investigators have turned up some evidence of abuses" at Guant��namo Bay.

The week before the new allegations of abuse arose, Gen. Craddock had told Congress that the interrogations at the base had been a huge success and that, regardless of FBI comments to the contrary, they had produced "an intelligence bonanza."

Conservative Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby, looking at the allegations of abuse of US detainees, wrote Monday that " torture is never worth it."

Some things we don't do, not because they never work, not because they aren't ''deserved," but because our very right to call ourselves decent human beings depends in part on our not doing them. Torture is in that category. Let us wage and win this war against the barbarians without becoming barbaric in the process.