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I began my column last week with the words "We know all about Guantanamo". I was wrong. Courtesy of the Toronto press - until a few days ago, when half of them were censored out of the drumhead courts martial that pass for "justice" in this execrable place - I have been learning a lot more. Because the case involves a Canadian citizen - and because the Canadian government is doing sod-all for its passport-carrying prisoner - it hasn't been getting a lot of publicity on this side of the Atlantic. It should.
Omar Khadr was 15 when he allegedly - the word "'allegedly" is going to have to be used for ever, since this is not a fair trial - shot and killed a US Special Forces soldier in eastern Afghanistan in July 2002. Last week, a former US serviceman called Damien Corsetti, nicknamed "The Monster" at the Bagram jailhouse where torture and murder were widespread, agreed via a video link to the Guantanamo "court" that Khadr was trussed up in a cage "in one of the worst places on earth". "We could do basically anything to scare the prisoners," Corsetti announced.
Beating was forbidden, "The Monster" acknowledged, but prisoners could be threatened with "nightmarish scenarios" like rendition to Egypt or Israel where, according to Canada's Globe and Mail, "they would disappear". Which tells you a lot about Israel. Or what the Americans think of Israel. Quite a lot about Egypt, too, come to think of it.
I should add that Mr Khadr, who is now 23, was gravely wounded when he was brought to Bagram. As Mr Corsetti said, "He was a 15-year old kid with three holes in his body, a bunch of shrapnel in his face." The lads at Bagram - the guards and interrogators, that is - dubbed him "Buckshot Bob". Clever, huh?
Mr Corsetti, I should also add, was kind to Mr Khadr. He was earlier acquitted of charges of detainee abuse - not involving Khadr - and now says he is a disabled veteran being treated for "post-traumatic stress disorder". In other words, quite a find for Khadr's defence lawyers. Not for the Canadian government, however, which asked the Obama administration to suppress the fact that in 2003 and 2004, Khadr had given information to officials of the Ottawa department of foreign affairs and to agents of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS, for those who care).
The Canadian Supreme Court (for which I care a lot, because it appears to be fair) has already ruled that the conditions of Khadr's imprisonment at Guantanamo when interrogated by CSIS "constituted a clear violation of Canada's international human rights obligations" .
Another American interrogator at Bagram, a sergeant, it turned out at the Guantanamo hearings, had questioned Khadr about his role in the Taliban. This interrogator, named Joshua Claus, was later convicted of detainee abuse - though not against Khadr. Claus also pleaded guilty to assaulting an innocent Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar who died in custody at Bagram.
We know Claus's identity because he gave press interviews to, among others, The Toronto Star, in 2008, when he claimed that his former employers were "trying to imply I'm beating or torturing everybody I ever talked to". Claus said, "Omar was pretty much my first big case. With Omar, I spent a lot of time trying to understand who he was and what I could say to him or do for him, whether it be to bring him extra food or get a letter out to his family." There was a lot more stuff at these hearings, admission of a "fear up" and "fear down" technique, for example - "fear up" apparently involved the threat of rape "by four big black guys".
In other words, another horrible, obscene story from Guantanamo. But wait. We can't have this kind of publicity show in the Canadian press, can we? Not least when Khadr's own government will do nothing for him. So get this. The Pentagon has announced that more than half of the Canadian press - including The Globe and Mail and the Star - will no longer be able to report the Guantanamo "proceedings" because they named Mr Claus as one of the interrogators - even though Mr Claus had himself given interviews to the press two years ago. But he wasn't named at Guantanamo. Get it?
Information already in the public domain is no longer in the public domain when it isn't mentioned at a drumhead trial in Cuba. (Yes, let's just remember that Guantanamo is actually in bloody Cuba!) The Pentagon didn't even call the reporters concerned - they used email, of course, because there might have been an argument, mightn't there?
Fairness in court? Not that we are going to find out. Khadr's father was an al-Qa'ida official. His life was almost certainly saved by US medics - there are some good guys in these wars - but he was most definitely tortured; and Canada (here I quote the Globe and Mail's excellent editorial) "in a sneaky and illegal fashion, participated in the abuse. It turned the fruits of its own interrogations of Mr Khadr to the prosecution, at a time when the military commissions had no explicit bar against evidence obtained coercively".
Too bad we won't have to hear much more about this trial, not in Canada, at least. The Star and The Globe and Mail have since made no reference to Claus's identity. Not surprising, I suppose. But remember, you read it here.
Inside the Secret Interrogation Facility at Bagram
MAY 14 2010, 8:03 AM ET
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) runs a classified interrogation facility for high-value detainees inside Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan, defense and administration officials said, and prisoners there are sometimes subject to tougher interrogation methods than those used elsewhere.
Both the New York Times and the BBC reported that prisoners who passed through the facility reported abuse, like beatings and sexual humiliation, to the Red Cross, which is not allowed access. The commander in charge of detention operations in Afghanistan, Vice Admiral Robert Hayward, has insisted that all detainees under his purview have regular Red Cross access and are not mistreated.
It has been previously reported that the facility, beige on the outside with a green gate, was operated by members of a Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) group, allegedly outside of Hayward's jurisdiction. But JSOC, a component command made up of highly secret special mission units and task forces, does not operate the facility.
Instead, it is manned by intelligence operatives and interrogators who work for the DIA's Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center (DCHC). They perform interrogations for a sub-unit of Task Force 714, an elite counter-terrorism brigade.
Called the "black jail" by some of those who have transited through it, it is a way-point for detainees who are thought to possess actionable information about the Taliban or Al Qaeda.
Intelligence gleaned from these interrogations has often led to some of the military's highest profile captures. Usually, captives are first detained at one of at least six classified Field Interrogation Sites in Afghanistan, and then dropped off at the DIA facility -- and, when the interrogators are finished, transferred to the main prison population at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility.
"DoD does operate some temporary screening detention facilities which are classified to preserve operational security; however, both the [Red Cross] and the host nation have knowledge of these facilities," said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesperson. "Screening facilities help military officials determine if an individual should be detained further and assists military forces with timely information vital to ongoing operations." Whitman would not say who ran the facility or provide any details. A DIA spokesperson declined to comment, as did the White House, which referred questions to the Pentagon.
Under a directive issued by the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, those captured on the battlefield can be detained for only 96 hours unless they are deemed to possess intelligence value. In practice, military units can unofficially transfer detainees they pick up to other field units before they arrive at interrogation sites, giving American and Afghan interrogators more time to ferret out useful information.
According to other officials, personnel at the facility are supposed to follow the Army Field Manual's guidelines for interrogations. When he took office, President Obama signed anexecutive order banning the Central Intelligence Agency and the military from using techniques not listed in the manual. But he has a task force studying whether the expressly manual-approved tactics are sufficient.
However, under secret authorization, the DIA interrogators use methods detailed in an appendix to the Field Manual, Appendix M, which spells out "restricted" interrogation techniques.
Under certain circumstances, interrogators can deprive prisoners of sleep (four hours at a time, for up to 30 days), to confuse their senses, and to keep them separate from the rest of the prison population. The Red Cross is now notified if the captives are kept at the facility for longer than two weeks.
When interrogators are using Appendix M measures, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Gen.James Clapper (Ret.) is the man on the hook. Detainees designated as prisoners of war cannot be subjected to Appendix M measures.
The DCHC is a relatively new organization. It has several branches and has absorbed staff from the the now largely disbanded Strategic Support Branch, which provided CIA-like intelligence services to ground combat units. The DCHC also performs some of the work that the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), which was accused of spying on American political groups, used to do. Many of the staff, civilian and military, as well as many contractors, previously worked with CIFA.
Defense officials said that the White House is kept appraised of the methods used by interrogators at the site. The reason why the Red Cross hasn't been invited to tour it, officials said, was because the U.S. does not believe it to be a detention facility, classifying it instead as an intelligence gathering facility.
A Defense official said that the agency's inspector general had launched an internal investigation into reports in the Washington Post that several teenagers were beaten by the interrogators, but Whitman disputes this.
When the Obama Administration took over, it forbade the DIA from keeping prisoners in the facility longer than 30 days, although it is not clear how that dictum is enforced. It is also not clear how much Congress knows about the DIA's interrogation procedures, which have largely escaped public scrutiny.
"In all our facilities the standard is humane treatment and all DoD detention facilities are required to be compliant with Common Article III, The Detainee Treatment Act, the Executive Order signed by the President last year, and the DoD Detainee Directive and the Army Field Manual," Whitman said.
Although the CIA's enhanced interrogation program was investigated and a Justice Department prosecutor is currently reviewing those files, the Defense Department's parallel activities have been given little scrutiny. To this day, the Department denies the existence of a "special access program," codenamed "Copper Green," which allegedly authorized military interrogators to use extremely harsh methods, including the infliction of sexual humiliation, on high-value terrorists.
Only about 200 military and civilian personnel were aware of Copper Green's existence before it was disclosed by the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh. The CIA's program, known internally by the acronym "GST," has been discontinued. Although "Copper Green" was disbanded, the Defense Department's detainee affairs section has set up a new special access program under which the rules for battlefield interrogations are established. It is classified Top Secret.
Bagram is in the middle of a major expansion, and the DIA facility is being renovated, officials said.
Hayward, a former special operations squadron commander, has said he hopes to turn the base over to the Afghan military by 2011.
Who Runs The Secret 'Black Jail' at Bagram?
May 14, 2010
This week the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed the existence of a secret prison facility within the larger Bagram prison complex in Afghanistan. This followed in-depth reports by the BBC and The New York Times detailing specific allegations of abuse at the facility that some prisoners referred to as the "Black Jail." There has been speculation and reporting indicating that the prison was run by the Joint Special Operations Command, the elite of the elite of US special forces.
Today Marc Ambinder has a big scoop over at The Atlantic. According to defense and administration sources, Ambinderreports, the "classified interrogation facility for high-value detainees" is actually run by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center (DCHC). "They perform interrogations for a sub-unit of Task Force 714, an elite counter-terrorism brigade," Ambinder writes. "Intelligence gleaned from these interrogations has often led to some of the military's highest profile captures. Usually, captives are first detained at one of at least six classified Field Interrogation Sites in Afghanistan, and then dropped off at the DIA facility -- and, when the interrogators are finished, transferred to the main prison population at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility."
The DCHC, according to Ambinder, "has absorbed staff from the the now largely disbanded Strategic Support Branch, which provided CIA-like intelligence services to ground combat units.The DCHC also performs some of the work that the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), which was accused of spying on American political groups, used to do. Many of the staff, civilian and military, as well as many contractors, previously worked with CIFA."
President Obama, upon taking office, issued an executive order requiring the CIA and military to adhere to the Army Field Manual's guidelines for interrogations. "However, under secret authorization, the DIA interrogators use methods detailed in an appendix to the Field Manual, Appendix M, which spells out "restricted" interrogation techniques," reports Ambinder:
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"Under certain circumstances, interrogators can deprive prisoners of sleep (four hours at a time, for up to 30 days), to confuse their senses, and to keep them separate from the rest of the prison population. The Red Cross is now notified if the captives are kept at the facility for longer than two weeks.
"When interrogators are using Appendix M measures, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Gen.James Clapper (Ret.) is the man on the hook. Detainees designated as prisoners of war cannot be subjected to Appendix M measures."
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