Civil Liberties

Guantanamo: Who Really 'Returned to the Battlefield'?

American Strategy — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 13:03:00 -0400

As President Obama receives formal recommendations in the coming months on issues surrounding the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, it is crucial that policymakers and the public have an accurate picture of the threat to the United States posed by those detainees already released. Contrary to recent assertions that one in seven, or 14 percent, of the former prisoners had "returned to the battlefield," our analysis of Pentagon reports, news stories, and other public records indicates that the number who were confirmed or suspected to be involved in anti-U.S.

Wiki White House

Stephanie Gunter — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:30:00 -0500

A New America Event
01/09/2009 - 12:00pm

Technology evangelists believe that Barack Obama has the potential to fundamentally alter communication between the presidency and the people. Wikis in the White House? Online public comments on legislation? A real-time two-way conversation between citizens and their elected officials?

For better or worse, however, nothing is as easy as it might seem. Federal regulations, First Amendment issues, and just plain common sense are going to slow -- and potentially stagnate -- technological innovation in Washington.

CA EVENT: Censorship and Politics

Communications — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:00:00 -0400

A New America Event
10/10/2008 - 12:00pm

Come hear more about the book that Studs Terkel calls "revelatory and stunning"; that Anthony Lewis praises for providing "a dramatic glimpse of a dark American past"; that Publishers Weekly says "artfully weaves the personal and the political" in a way that "readers will find engaging on more than one level." Rick Wartzman, Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation, will lecture on his new book, "Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John… more

Obscene In the Extreme

Ron Tang — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:08:00 -0400

Few books have caused as big a stir as John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, when it was published in April 1939. By May, it was the nation’s number one bestseller, but in Kern County, California -- the Joads’ newfound home -- the book was burned publicly and banned from library shelves. Obscene in the Extreme tells the remarkable story behind this fit of censorship.

When W. B. “Bill” Camp, a giant cotton and potato grower, presided over its burning in… more

Gay Marriage: The Key to Happiness?

Ron Tang — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 06:21:00 -0400

Who knew? The legalization of gay marriage might make Californians happier. At least that's what a new study based on surveys of 350,000 people in nearly 100 countries suggests.

No, the authors aren't gay activists, nor do they seem to be peddling any particular political agenda. But in their search to discover which countries are happier than others and why, these scholars -- led by University of Michigan political scientist Ronald Inglehart -- have stumbled on one pretty fundamental conclusion about what people want out of life: freedom.

Yes, that's right, more or less the same thing you were celebrating Friday by scarfing down hamburgers next to the pool in your brother-in-law's backyard. How exactly, you ask, is gay marriage connected with "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"?

It's simple. According to surveys, in developed countries discrimination against women and minorities is actually waning and gays remain the least tolerated "outgroup" in society. They are the proverbial canaries in the coal mine. In most developed countries, the relative level of their acceptance or rejection is a sensitive indicator of that society's overall tolerance toward minorities. And -- here's the takeaway -- social tolerance "broadens the range of choices available to people," thereby enhancing happiness for both the tolerant and the intolerant alike.

Sounds a little too touchy-feely, right? Are they saying that Armenians, who were next to last in the study's happiness ranking, should immediately allow gays to marry in order to be happier? Not exactly.

The researchers have found that freedom of choice is not only a universal aspiration but the single most important basis of human happiness. But to get to freedom of choice for Armenians, who live in poverty, social tolerance might not beat out economic development on the national "to-do" list. That's because first, you have to have enough food to eat. Of course, economic well-being doesn't just buy food, it also frees people from the lack of life choices that deprivation imposes -- suddenly you're on your way up the happiness scale.

But money can only take you so far. The transition from a subsistence economy to moderate economic security has a profound effect on a nation's happiness. But once a nation gets past the level of, say, Portugal (No. 47), economic growth begins to produce diminishing returns. That's when, the study's authors theorize, humans can afford to try to maximize "free choice in all the realms of life." Here in the U.S., we know all about post-materialist politics and the emergence of "quality of life" issues.

At this stage, what does a society have to look like in order to create more free choice and more happiness? The study indicates that you need democratization and, most important of all, social tolerance.

"Yes, I know that all this sounds like I've been brainwashed by my third-grade teacher," lead researcher Inglehart told me, "but it turns out it's true. The empirical evidence is clear: Freedom is conducive to happiness."

For years, scholars were convinced that a nation's level of happiness was constant. Previous research indicated that neither sudden tragedy nor rising fortunes could alter a nation's long-term levels of satisfaction. Biological studies also have shown the degree to which happiness can be inherited. But the sheer size of the survey sample in this study, as well as the fact that it was longitudinal -- tracking results for most countries over nearly 20 years -- strongly suggest that the old studies were wrong. The happiness of a society fluctuates and usually is based on the relative freedom (including freedom from scarcity) of its population.

The researchers' theories can account for a lot about the rankings that emerged from their work, but not everything. After all, the big picture might be development, democracy and tolerance, but individual happiness is still pretty subjective, and there are other, more minor factors that determine life satisfaction.

Where did the U.S. come in? Sixteenth. Which country was No. 1? Denmark. One impressive showing came from Latin America, where many of the nations ranked higher than the researchers had expected. Colombia, for example, came in at No. 3; Puerto Rico at No. 2. In fact, for all the study's emphasis on development, democratization and tolerance, Latin America makes even the researchers wonder. They speculate that happiness in Latin America might have something to do with those societies' strong belief in God. Traditional religion, according to the researchers, is also conducive to happiness.

Which brings us to a modern-day quandary. Modernity is good because it facilitates development, democracy and freedom of choice; but so is tradition because it gives us a sense of security, predictability and purpose in our lives. The study suggests that religious faith and social tolerance are a winning combination. Which leaves me wondering: Perhaps people in the U.S. would all be happier if more ministers, rabbis, imams and priests conducted more gay marriages.

American Strategy Program event with Sen. Russ Feingold in CQ Today | 'Surveillance Showdown Promised'

Communications — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:34:00 -0400

...“We’ll be requiring key procedural votes, and also taking some time on the floor this week, to indicate the problems of this legislation,” Russ Feingold , D-Wis., said Monday of himself and Christopher J. Dodd , D-Conn., speaking at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank. “We’re not just going to let it quickly pass...” LINK

Beyond the Torture Debate

Communications — Tue, 06 May 2008 08:30:00 -0400

A New America Event
05/06/2008 - 3:30pm

On May 6th the American Strategy Program hosted an event with Philippe Sands, Professor of International Law at University College London and Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff for Colon Powell. Mr. Sands was in DC to testify to the House Judiciary Committee about the findings in his new book, Torture Team, which examines the legal implications of the Bush administration’s policy of torture. Col. Wilkerson was on hand for commentary on the subject. The event was moderated by… more

Afghans Hold Secret Trials For Men That U.S. Detained

Ron Tang — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 05:24:00 -0400

Kabul, Afghanistan -- Dozens of Afghan men who were previously held by the United States at Bagram Air Base and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are now being tried here in secretive Afghan criminal proceedings based mainly on allegations forwarded by the American military.

The prisoners are being convicted and sentenced to as much as 20 years’ confinement in trials that typically run between half an hour and an hour, said human rights investigators who have observed them. One early trial was reported to have lasted barely 10 minutes, an investigator said.

The prosecutions are based in part on a security law promulgated in 1987, during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Witnesses do not appear in court and cannot be cross-examined. There are no sworn statements of their testimony.

Instead, the trials appear to be based almost entirely on terse summaries of allegations that are forwarded to the Afghan authorities by the United States military. Afghan security agents add what evidence they can, but the cases generally center on events that sometimes occurred years ago in war zones that the authorities may now be unable to reach.

“These are no-witness paper trials that deny the defendants a fundamental fair-trial right to challenge the evidence and mount a defense,” said Sahr MuhammedAlly, a lawyer for the advocacy group Human Rights First who has studied the proceedings. “So any convictions you get are fundamentally flawed.”

The head of Afghanistan’s national intelligence agency, Amrullah Saleh, said his investigators did their best to develop their own evidence. But he added that the Afghan judicial system remained crippled by problems more than six years after the fall of the Taliban.

“This is Afghanistan,” he said. Referring to the Afghan trials, he added, “I am equally critical of that procedure, but who is supposed to fix it?”

Since 2002 the Bush administration has pressed foreign governments to prosecute the Guantánamo prisoners from their countries as a condition of the men’s repatriation. But many of those governments -- including such close American allies as Britain -- have objected, saying the American evidence would not hold up in their courts.

Afghanistan represents perhaps the most notable exception.

Although President Hamid Karzai refused to sign a decree law drafted with American help that would have allowed Afghanistan to hold the former detainees indefinitely as “enemy combatants,” the Afghan authorities have now tried 82 of the former prisoners since last October and referred more than 120 other cases for prosecution.

Of the prisoners who have been through the makeshift Afghan court, 65 have been convicted and 17 acquitted, according to a report on the prosecutions by Human Rights First that is to be made public on Thursday. A draft copy of the report was provided to The New York Times.

United States officials defended their role in providing information for the Afghan trials as a legitimate way to try to contain the threats that some of the more dangerous detainees would pose if they were released outright.

“These are not prosecutions that are being done at the request or behest of the United States government,” said Sandra L. Hodgkinson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detention policy. “These are prosecutions that are being done by Afghans for crimes committed on their territory by their nationals.”

Ms. Hodgkinson said the United States had pressed the Afghan authorities “to conduct the trials in a fair manner,” and had insisted that lawyers be provided for the prisoners after the first 10 of them were convicted without legal representation. But she did not directly reject the criticisms raised in the Human Rights First report, adding, “these trials are much more consistent with the traditional Afghan justice process than they are with ours.”

The new court is located on the ground floor of a new high-security Afghan prison that was built by the United States at Pul-i-Charki, on the outskirts of Kabul.

Although Afghan officials say the trials there are not officially secret, they have allowed only three outside observers -- two human rights investigators and a representative of a local United Nations office. The human rights investigators were permitted to see two trials in February, review some trial documents and interview judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers for the court.

Gen. Safiullah Safi, the Afghan Army officer who runs the prison where the trials are being held, told a reporter that permission to view the trials could be granted only by Mr. Karzai’s office. But that office referred the request to Abdul Jabar Sabit, the Afghan attorney general. Mr. Sabit’s office finally said he was too busy to meet with a journalist.

The human rights investigators who observed the operations of the new court described them as a perversion of the efforts by Afghanistan and the United States to rebuild and reform the Afghan judicial system after years of war, corruption and neglect.

They said that the defense lawyers, who work for a legal aid organization based in New York, typically meet their clients five days before their trials begin and have few resources to investigate the distant events on which they turn. At least some of the Afghan judges also appear to accept the American allegations at face value, they said, and routinely admit allegations that would not pass the evidentiary standards of special military tribunals at Guantánamo, much less the federal courts of the United States.

“The files provided by U.S. authorities and the information in them would never have been admissible in a U.S. court or even a military commission in Guantánamo,” said Jonathan Horowitz, an investigator for One World Research, a public-interest investigations firm in New York that also monitored the Afghan trials.

In an interview, one of the justices of the Afghan Supreme Court argued that while the trials might have some flaws, they represented a fair process.

“All of these trials have been prepared by our friends from the United States,” said the justice, who uses the single name Rashid. “They have seen it themselves. We don’t have any doubts about the trial not being fair.”

Justice Rashid added that he had complete confidence in the accuracy of the information that was being provided to Afghan investigators by the American military.

“I’m 100 percent sure that what was done by the United States was done according to the legal system of the United States,” he said. “And I am familiar with the legal system of the United States.”

But one case file that was partly reproduced in the Human Rights First report underscores questions that have been raised about the procedures of the Afghan trials and the American evidence with which they begin.

In a single paragraph, the United States “Report of Investigation” recounts that the Afghan prisoner Rais Mohammed Khan was detained by the police as he and a friend tried to cross the Afghan border in the eastern department of Khost on May 1, 2006. The report, which misidentifies Mr. Khan by a name his father used, Matelky, notes that he and his injured friend were suspected of having planned a suicide bombing that went awry.

“Their stories are conflicting, and the Khost Police Force believe they are directly tied to suicide attacks that were taking place during the Independence Day Parade in Khost,” the report reads. It notes that Mr. Khan appeared to lie on a polygraph examination when he denied involvement in suicide bombing. But it adds:

“Confessions/Admissions/Incriminating Statements: None”

“Witnesses: None”

“Physical Evidence: None”

“Photographs: None”

Also in his Afghan court file was a one-page summary of the recommendation from the United States military panel that reviewed his case at Bagram. It describes him as a low threat to American and coalition forces and him as “low prosecution value.”

He was convicted under the 1987 Afghan security law and sentenced to eight years in prison.

Guantanamo: The Bigger Picture

Ron Tang — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 04:50:00 -0400

The U.S. base at Guantanamo has been called many things. The "gulag of our time" (Amnesty International General Secretary Irene Khan, May 2005). "The key strategic intelligence platform in the war on terror" (Charles Stimson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, January 2007). The "legal equivalent of outer space" (unnamed Administration official). The right place for "the worst of a very bad lot" (Vice President Dick Cheney, January 2002) and for the "most dangerous, best trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth" (former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, January 2002).

Guantanamo is now best known as the home of oversized iguanas, banana rats, and the more than 700 "enemy combatants" who have been detained, tortured, and interrogated there over the past six years as part of the Bush administration’s global war on terrorism. But, the history of the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay stretches much further back -- to the beginning of the last century -- when the United States wrestled this prime real-estate from Spain to become the colonial power in the hemisphere.

Twenty-first century experiences at Guantanamo have now been exposed in a sheaf of books, including difficult, vivid memoirs from former detainees and powerful poetry, and dramatized in plays and films, such as the best-documentary Oscar winner Taxi to the Dark Side and the critically-acclaimed Road to Guantanamo. The iconic orange jumpsuits are on display at every anti-war protest and the word "Guantanamo" is often used as shorthand for the Bush administration’s whole system of indefinite detention, rendition, torture, and abuse of power established since September 2001.

Harold and Kumar Escape Guantanamo

Calls to "shut down Guantanamo" from legal and human rights experts, politicians, and the international community are now strong, irrepressible and growing louder each day. At the same time, the facility has finally penetrated pop culture. This spring, movie-goers can enjoy the sequel of the 2004 slacker-stoner Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. In the new film, the two friends are arrested after smuggling a bong on a flight to Amsterdam and end up at Guantanamo. Yep, the movie is titled: Harold and Kumar II: Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Promoted with the tag-line: "This Time, They’re Running from the Joint," the film is described as "an irreverent and epic journey of deep thoughts, deeper inhaling and a wild trip around the world that is as ‘un-PC’ as it gets."

Guantanamo is getting more attention (both outraged and outrageous), but the question of how the United States came to control a swath of Cuban territory is worth more discussion. If the Guantanamo prison is shuttered tomorrow, and the prisoners get their day in court, the U.S. base will continue to exist as a key colonial outpost in a post-colonial world. Now that Fidel Castro has turned over power to his brother Raul and the United States is again poised to "democratize" socialist Cuba, this question has even greater resonance.

Booty from a "Splendid Little War"

Perched on the south-eastern corner of Cuba, the U.S. Naval Base straddles the deep water harbor of Guantanamo Bay and occupies 45 square miles of Cuban territory.

In 1898, the United States and Spain battled for control of Cuba and other Spanish colonies in what Washington had come to see as part of its "sphere of influence." The Spanish-American War is known for the Rough Riders and the "Remember the Maine" call to arms (which refers to the now historically suspect attack on the USS Maine battleship sunk in the Havana Harbor). In a letter to his good friend Teddy Roosevelt, the U.S. Ambassador to England dubbed it a "splendid little war." Ignoring the countless (literally) Cubans, Filipinos and others who were killed, one could see his point. The United States won a lot in the war: it lasted less than four months, resulted in the death of fewer than 1,000 U.S. soldiers and put the United States in charge of Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam -- all former Spanish colonies -- and gave the United States control of Hawaii. The U.S. Navy also discovered the benefits of Guantánamo Bay when they sought refuge from summer hurricanes. One hundred and ten years later, they are still there.

While the U.S. Congress promised Cuba independence after the war, the Platt Amendment forced a peace treaty that granted the United States the right to "stabilize" the island militarily and established a permanent U.S. naval base in Cuba.

Cuban-American Treaty

The Cuban-American Treaty was signed in 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt and Tomas Estrada Palma, the President of Cuba -- a U.S. citizen fully backed by Washington. According to the text of the treaty, the U.S. military presence will "enable the United States to maintain the independence of Cuba, and to protect the people thereof, as well as for its own defense, the Cuban Government will sell or lease to the United States the lands necessary for coaling or naval stations." The treaty goes onto acknowledge Cuba’s "ultimate sovereignty" over the territory, but asserts that while the United States occupies it, they have "complete jurisdiction and control" over the land.

It’s difficult to call an agreement between a world power and a conquered colony a treaty, but it has governed operations there ever since. Only a few restrictions were placed on U.S. freedom of operation, even when the treaty was updated in 1934. The document stipulated that the site could only be used for the purposes outlined and prohibited the U.S. from conducting private enterprise there. The U.S. granted Cuba and her trading partners free access through the bay and agreed to pay Havana $2,000 in gold per year. Finally, the two countries promised to return fugitives from justice who crossed into the others’ territory.

As U.S. Navy Rear Admiral M.E. Murphy, a military historian, put it in his 1953 History of Guantanamo Bay: the land is "a bit of American territory, and so it will probably remain as long as we have a Navy." He goes on to note "we have a lease in perpetuity to this Naval reservation and it is inconceivable that we would abandon it."

And we have not abandoned it.

After the Revolution

When Washington’s close ally Fulgencio Batista was overthrown by the Cuban Revolution in 1958, the relationship between the U.S. base and the nation it occupied changed dramatically. When Batista fled to Spain (where he lived the rest of his life in luxury), thousands of Cubans with ties to his regime sought refuge on the base, and the rest of the island was deemed off limits to U.S. servicemen and civilians in 1959. Washington cut diplomatic relations in 1961.

In February 1964, two years after the Cuban missile crisis, Cuban President Fidel Castro cut water and supply lines to the base and since then, the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay has been self-sufficient. It is outfitted with a de-salinization plant to produce water, and windmills and other technology produce all of the base’s electricity.

In 2002, the first "enemy combatants" in the global war on terrorism landed at the Base. But this was not the first time the U.S. had confined internationals at the base. In the early 1990s, civil unrest in Haiti and economic crisis in Cuba drove tens of thousands of people from both countries to seek refuge in the United States. In little boats overcrowded with migrants, these people set off from the United States -- only to end up at Guantanamo Bay. As many as 45,000 migrants were "processed" through the base, with many of the Haitians sent home to deprivation and the majority of the Cubans granted asylum.

"Honor Bound to Defend Freedom"

"Honor Bound to Defend Freedom" is the proud sentiment emblazoned above the entrance to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo. The website for the Commander of Navy Installations Command Guantanamo features a large picture of an iguana and the greeting: "welcome to the website for the oldest overseas U.S. Naval Station and the only one in a country with which the U.S. does not maintain diplomatic relations."

Navy Commander Jeffery D. Gordon explains that the U.S. presence at Guantanamo serves "a vital role in Caribbean regional security, protection from narco-trafficking and terrorism and safeguards against mass migration attempts in unseaworthy craft." The Navy’s Atlantic fleet is based there and the base is described as being "on the front lines of the battle for regional security."

Changing the Rationale

The military aggressively makes the case for the base. Eighty years ago, Guantanamo was crucial to colonial expansion and the smooth extraction of resources from Latin America; 30 years ago, it would have been justified as playing a key role in supporting anti-democratic regimes in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and elsewhere. More recently, the war on drugs served as rationale.

But, before 2001, the number of military personnel stationed at the base had dwindled to about 300. And many saw Guantanamo’s greatest value as a carrot to dangle before the Cuban people in Washington’s long project to unseat Fidel Castro. Part of the 1996 Helms Burton Act (the chief aim of which was to strengthen and continue to U.S. trade related embargo on Cuba) -- for example -- offered to open negotiations with a "democratically elected Cuban government" to return the base at Guantanamo to Cuba or redefine the lease.

Then, Washington decided that the Guantanamo base would be an ideal place to try and hide war on terrorism detainees from the law and public scrutiny. And planeloads of shackled prisoners wearing blacked-out goggles, noise canceling headphones, and orange jumpsuits began landing at the U.S. base. Initially, many were housed in chain-link cages. In June 2005, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters that the Pentagon had invested $100 million to construct new prisons and barracks and upgrade other facilities. Operating the base and the prison cost another $95 million a year. For U.S. soldiers and Marines stationed there, Guantanamo is a slice of the American mall culture transported to coastal Cuba -- there is a weekly newspaper, The Guantanamo Bay Gazette, a movie theater that offers current films like "I Am Legend" and "The Spiderwick Chronicles." McDonalds and Starbucks are both on base.

With no end in sight to the global war on terrorism, more than 8,000 military personnel are now based at Guantanamo. So, for the time being, the military has a new way to fend off calls to shut down the U.S. military base there. In a January 2007 interview on C-SPAN, Charles Stimson, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, justified the U.S. base at Guantanamo, saying "It is important during time of war to have a place where, number one, you can take people off the battlefield and not allow them to go back to the battlefield, but also, exploit intelligence that they may possess... Guantanamo today remains the key strategic intelligence platform in the war on terror."

"To my knowledge, the Cubans have never officially asked for it back" John Regan, the acting Officer at the State Department’s Cuba Desk, is quoted as saying in an April 2007 Los Angeles Times article. He goes on to say that they have not raised objections to the presence of war on terrorism prisoners. He must not be listening very closely.

In June 2002, at the United Nations General Assembly, Cuba demanded that the Guantánamo territory be returned to the island. And two years later, Cuba’s Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque proposed a resolution before the United Nations Human Rights Commission that would have condemned the violation of human rights at Guantanamo. More recently, these calls have grown louder. In a December 2007 speech in Havana, Roque said: "We demand today, on the World Day of Human Rights, that the President of the United States and that the U.S. Government close down the torture center in Guantánamo and return to our homeland the territory that they occupy illegally." Cuba protests in other ways as well. The U.S. Treasury continues to pay the "gold" that Roosevelt promised 105 years ago. Annual checks for $4,085 are deposited into an account for the Cuban government, but not a single one has been cashed in 47 years.

Toxic Brand

Cuba doesn’t like Guantanamo, and many in the administration agree that the detention facility has become a problem. During Robert Gates’ first week as Secretary of Defense following the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld, he argued that the detention facility should be closed, pointing out that the U.S. image abroad is so tainted that any legal proceedings for detainees at the base will be viewed as illegitimate. He commented: "I think that Guantanamo has become symbolic, whether we like it or not, for many around the world." He also cut one big zero off Rumsfeld’s plan to spend $100 million on new infrastructure, resulting in a more modest (but still significant) $10 million expenditure for air-conditioned pods and other amenities for the military commissions hearings.

President George W. Bush acknowledges Guantanamo as a problem too, saying during a June 2006 press conference: "I’d like to close Guantanamo. No question: Guantanamo sends a signal to some of our friends and provides an excuse -- for example, to say the United States is not upholding the values that they’re trying to encourage other countries to adhere to." Despite his claims to being the "decider in chief," Bush has not taken any executive steps to change the signal we are sending.

What is at the heart of the administration’s discomfort with Guantanamo? It is not torture -- President Bush just vetoed a law that would have prohibited water-boarding. It is certainly not respect for Cuba’s sovereignty -- the State Department has a whole office devoted to meddling in the country’s affairs. It is the PR problem. In March of last year, William Taft, a former State Department adviser, testified before the House of Representatives on Guantanamo. He acknowledged that the logistical advantages of housing prisoners at Guantanamo are outweighed by the "political costs of continuing its operation. At some point a brand becomes so toxic that no amount of Madison Avenue talent can rehabilitate it."

One solution is to give the base back to Cuba. But, Julia Sweig, the Director for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, is not sure Havana would want it back, saying "it’s become such a global symbol of what has gone wrong with America -- not just a symbol of our colonial impulses, but of the anti-imperialist fight throughout Latin America -- it is something Cuba uses to greater benefit than getting the base back." Rhetorical benefits are of value -- but you can’t eat, trade or wield geo-political power with rhetoric.

What Next?

But closing the prison and relinquishing control of the territory are two completely different things. Can Cuba get Guantanamo Bay back?

The Guantanamo prison is not a hot-button campaign issue. Lee Feinstein, Director of National Security for Senator Hillary Clinton’s campaign, says that "as President, she would direct the Justice Department to evaluate the evidence amassed against these prisoners and make a determination." Not exactly a rousing and definitive call to shut down Guantanamo, but at least she has a process. For his part, Senator Barack Obama does not see the need for military justice proceedings there, asserting "I believe that our civilian courts or our traditional system of military courts-martial are best able to meet this challenge and demonstrate our commitment to the rule of law." On the Republican side, Senator John McCain has pushed for Guantanamo to be closed and the prisoners sent to maximum security prison in Ft. Leavenworth, Kentucky.

On the larger issue of U.S.-Cuba relations, Obama favors engagement and dialogue without preconditions, while Clinton would predicate diplomatic overtures on Cuba’s steps towards democratization. McCain holds the position that U.S. containment policy has worked, and he would not talk to Cuba until they held free elections and released political prisoners and made other reforms.

Returning the occupied territory to Cuba has not been mentioned as an option by Presidential candidates, and it is not high on the list of objectives in Cuba policy circles. Close Cuba-watcher Patrick Doherty -- the Deputy Director of the New America Foundation’s American Strategy Program -- predicts it would come up only in "the later stages of a long-term process of rapprochement." That’s because, in addition to the geographic value of an American military base at Guantanamo, Doherty says "one of our most effective areas of quiet cooperation with the Cuban government is at the mil-mil level in managing our presence and operations out of Guantanamo... and working on counter narcotics, counter-crime, and general Caribbean security issues. Without many other vehicles for official dialogue, Guantanamo, ironically, is acting like a confidence-building measure."

Some international law experts assert that the United States is in violation of the treaty made with Cuba and that could be the basis of a movement to win the territory back. Dr. Alfredo de Zayas, a professor of international law at the Geneva School for Diplomacy, argues that even before looking at specific violations, the treaty can be nullified because, "the lease for the military base in a foreign country is conditioned on the friendly relations between states." While relations between Cuba and the United States were friendly at the time of the treaty, that is no longer the case. De Zayas also asserts that the treaty is "voidable by virtue of a material breach," because it clearly stipulates that the area should be used for naval purposes (coaling refers to re-fueling naval vessels when they were steam powered) and "for no other purpose" including housing war on terrorism detainees. Additionally, the treaty bars the United States from establishing "commercial, industrial or other enterprises" but the base is home to McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway sandwiches, and other commercial enterprises, another material breach.

While Washington does not make a habit of abiding by the treaty or its obligations under it, the 1903 agreement was repeatedly cited as a reason to keep Guantanamo detainees and their cases out of U.S. courts. During Supreme Court hearings for Rasul vs. Bush and Al Odah vs. United States, government lawyers argued that under the 1903 treaty and the 1934 revisions, the United States "recognizes the continuance of the ultimate sovereignty" of Cuba over Guantanamo and that the base is thus "not part of the sovereign territory of the United States," and therefore not under U.S. law, meaning that the prisoners at Guantanamo should not be allowed access to U.S. courts.

In 2004, the Supreme Court rejected those arguments, but the legal fight continues.

Shut it Down

The decision of what to do with the prisoners at Guantanamo will most likely be left to the next administration. Washington’s policy and attitude towards Cuba will also be shaped by the next person to sit behind the big desk in the Oval Office. The next steps in the global war on terrorism; a major change (up or down) in the size, scope and objective of the U.S. occupation of Iraq; a shift in how (or if) we communicate and cooperate with the rest of the world; an exploration of the effectiveness of U.S. military might in resolving problems: these pressing issues will be seen through new eyes post-November 2008.

The U.S. military occupation and control of territory -- from Guantanamo to Germany to Okinawa and beyond -- should be included in this reckoning. Shutting down Guantanamo -- not just the prison where men are tortured, abused, and held in contravention of U.S. and international law, but the sprawling colonial-holdover enterprise that the United States came to control and continues to occupy illegitimately and illegally -- would be a huge symbolic step towards the rule of law, respect for other nations and the dawning recognition that military might is a tool of last resort not first assault. One hundred and five years later, the time has more than come.

I Was Kidnapped by the CIA

Ron Tang — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

For hours, the words come pouring out of Abu Omar as he describes his years of torture at the hands of Egypt's security services. Spreading his arms in a crucifixion position, he demonstrates how he was tied to a metal door as shocks were administered to his nipples and genitals. His legs tremble as he describes how he was twice raped. He mentions, almost casually, the hearing loss in his left ear from the beatings, and how he still wakes up at night screaming, takes tranquilizers, finds it hard to concentrate, and has unspecified "problems with my wife at home." He is, in short, a broken man.

There is nothing particularly unusual about Abu Omar's story. Torture is a standard investigative technique of Egypt's intelligence services and police, as the State Department and human rights organizations have documented myriad times over the years. What is somewhat unusual is that Abu Omar ended up inside Egypt's torture chambers courtesy of the United States, via an "extraordinary rendition" -- in this case, a spectacular daylight kidnapping by the Central Intelligence Agency on the streets of Milan, Italy.

First introduced during the Clinton administration, extraordinary renditions -- in which suspected terrorists are turned over to countries known to use torture, usually for the purpose of extracting information from them -- have been one of the CIA's most controversial tools in the war on terror. According to legal experts, the practice has no justification in United States law and flagrantly violates the Convention Against Torture, an international treaty that Congress ratified in 1994. Nonetheless, Congress and the American courts have essentially ignored the practice, and the Bush administration has insisted that it has never knowingly sent anyone to a place where he will be tortured.

But Abu Omar's case is unique: Unlike any other rendition case, it has prompted a massive criminal investigation -- though not in the United States. An Italian prosecutor has launched a probe of the kidnapping, resulting in the indictment of 26 American officials, almost all of them suspected CIA agents. It has also generated a treasure trove of documents on the secretive rendition program, including thousands of pages of court filings that detail how it actually works. Late last year, I traveled to Milan to review those documents and to Egypt, where Abu Omar now lives. What I found was a remarkable tale of CIA overreach and its consequences -- a tale that could represent the beginning of a global legal backlash against the war on terror.

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An avuncular, portly man in his mid-40s clad in a turban and a floor-length blue robe, Abu Omar met me at a corner store near his home, the first time he had agreed to talk to an American magazine reporter. He took me to his tidy, cramped apartment near Alexandria's run-down Victorian rail station. The walls were bare other than some religious calligraphy. The screen saver on his computer was a picture of Mecca.

Abu Omar, whose full name is Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, served me pungent coffee and sugary biscuits prepared by his unseen wife. Then, leaning forward in a massive gilded chair, he told me how in the weeks before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, he'd felt he was being watched and followed as he walked the streets of Milan, where he'd been granted political asylum in 2001 following an earlier spell of imprisonment and torture in Egypt. A member of Egypt's militant Islamic Group and a part-time cleric, he had been waging a public campaign against the impending war; Italian authorities had been investigating his circle of acquaintances since mid-2002 and believed he might have been recruiting fighters to go to Iraq, a charge he denies.

A little before noon on February 17, 2003, Abu Omar was headed to his mosque, incongruously located inside a garage. He strolled down Via Guerzoni, a quiet street mostly empty of businesses and lined with high, view-blocking walls. A red Fiat pulled up beside him and a man jumped out, shouting "Polizia! Polizia!" Abu Omar produced his ID. "Suddenly I was lifted in the air," he recalled. He was dragged into a white van and beaten, he said, by wordless men wearing balaclavas. After trussing him with restraints and blindfolding him, they sped away.

Hours later, when the van stopped, Abu Omar heard airplane noise. His clothes were cut off and something was stuffed in his anus, likely a tranquilizing suppository. His head was entirely covered in tape with only small holes for his mouth and nose, and he was placed on a plane. Hours later he was hustled off the jet. He heard someone speaking Arabic in a familiar cadence; in the distance, a muezzin was calling the dawn prayer. After more than a decade in exile, he was back in Egypt.

Abu Omar was taken into a building, put in a blue prison suit, freshly blindfolded, and presented to someone described as an important pasha, or government official. The pasha said he'd be released if he'd go back to Italy to spy on the militants at his mosque. He said no.

And so began Abu Omar's descent into one of the 21st century's nastier circles of hell. His cell had no lights or windows, and the temperature alternated between freezing and baking. He was kept blindfolded and handcuffed for seven months. Interrogations could come at any time of the day or night. He was beaten with fists, electric cables, and chairs, stripped naked, and given electric shocks.

His tormentors' questions largely revolved around his circle of Islamists in Italy, though every now and again they'd indicate that they knew he wasn't a big-time terrorist. They were detaining him only because "the Americans imposed you on us." When he asked, "Why, then, do you abuse me so much?" they replied, "This is our family tradition."

In the fall of 2003, Abu Omar was taken to another prison; it was here that he was crucified and raped by the guards. After seven more months of torture, a Cairo court found there was no evidence that Abu Omar was involved in terrorism and ordered him freed. He was told not to contact anyone in Italy -- including his wife -- and not to speak to the press or human rights groups. Above all, he was not to tell anyone what had happened.

After agreeing to the conditions, he was deposited at his mother's home in Alexandria. He promptly called his wife in Italy. It was the first time she'd heard from him in 14 months. Italian investigators, who'd been monitoring Abu Omar's phone in Milan for years, recorded the call. His wife asked him how he had been treated. He told her sarcastically, "They brought me food from the fanciest restaurant," though nearly three weeks later, he admitted to her, "I was very close to dying." He also spoke with a friend in Milan, Mohamed Reda El Badry, whose phone was also being tapped by Italian investigators. "I was freed on health grounds," he told El Badry in one of the recorded calls. "I was almost paralyzed; still today I cannot walk more than 200 yards... I was incontinent, suffered from kidney trouble."

And then, just as suddenly as Abu Omar had reappeared, he vanished again. Egyptian authorities had gotten wind of his calls to Italy. This time he was imprisoned for three years. He smuggled out a letter describing his ordeal, which found its way to the Arab and Italian press and international human rights organizations. Inevitably, that led to more torture.

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Was it illegal for American officials to send Abu Omar to Egypt? Yes, according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which prohibits delivering someone to a country where there are "substantial grounds" to assume that he might be tortured. Were there substantial grounds to believe that transferring Abu Omar to Egypt would result in his being tortured? Plenty, according to a State Department report that detailed the methods used by Egypt's security services during the year that Abu Omar was abducted and confined, including stripping and blindfolding prisoners; dousing them with cold water; beatings with fists, whips, metal rods, and other objects; administering electric shocks; suspending prisoners by their arms; and sexual assault and threats of rape.

The White House has routinely claimed that when the United States renders individuals to other countries it receives assurances that, as President Bush stated at a press conference in March 2005, "they won't be tortured... This country does not believe in torture." Several months later, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reiterated, "The United States has not transported anyone, and will not transport anyone, to a country when we believe he will be tortured."

But in the case of Abu Omar, Rice's assertions are demonstrably false. According to a previously unpublished study conducted by Katherine Tiedemann of The New America Foundation and myself, the same is true of many of the extraordinary renditions going back to the program's beginnings in 1995. (See "Rendition by the Numbers.") Fourteen documented extraordinary renditions took place under the Clinton administration. Almost all of those prisoners were rendered to Egypt, where at least three were executed. After 9/11 the pace of renditions sped up and the program expanded dramatically. Prisoners were now also transferred to Jordan, Yemen, Morocco, Algeria, and even Libya, Sudan, and Syria. In all, we found 53 documented cases of extraordinary rendition since September 2001; only one prisoner specifically said he had not been tortured. Of the sixteen men who have been released, eight claimed they were tortured and/or mistreated while in foreign custody; one died within weeks of being released. Nineteen of the rendered men have not been heard from since they disappeared.

Brad Garrett is a former FBI special agent who obtained uncoerced confessions from two of the most high-profile terrorists in recent American history: Ramzi Yousef, who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, and Mir Aimal Kasi, who shot and killed two CIA employees outside the Agency's headquarters the same year. "The whole idea that you would send anyone to some other country to obtain the intel you want is ludicrous," he told me in an email. "If we want the intel, there are approaches that will render the information without torture. The problem is that someone in the U.S. government is convinced that torture is the way to go, and so if we are not allowed to do it, then send them to someplace where torture is sanctioned."

The extraordinary rendition program was not primarily intended to yield information, according to Michael Scheuer, the CIA official whom the Clinton White House tasked with implementing it. "It came from an improvisation to dismantle these terrorist cells overseas. We wanted to get suspects off the streets and grab their papers," Scheuer explains. "The interrogation part wasn't important." He also claims that the program was overseen by congressional committees and "was lawyered to death." After 9/11, "The White House was desperate," Scheuer says. The rendition program quickly expanded because holding any but the most important Al Qaeda prisoners was a "burdensome proposition" for the Agency.

"Before 9/11 we never asked for some guarantee that prisoners would not be tortured or coerced," says Scheuer. The Bush administration says it has since sought such assurances, but Garrett, the interrogator, thinks those promises are worthless in any case. "In my view it is a shell game and a legal CYA to say that the other country (Egypt -- give me a break) will not use torture," he wrote. "We are unfortunately promoting terrorism by using these abhorrent approaches. Shame on us."

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Milan's slate-grey skies glower over the city in both summer and winter, and charmless skyscrapers dominate the skyline of the financial, media, and fashion capital of Italy. It's an unlikely setting for the operatic tale of Abu Omar's CIA kidnappers and their nemesis, Deputy Chief Prosecutor Armando Spataro.

Spataro may have launched the first-ever criminal case against American officials over an extraordinary rendition, but he's hardly a bleeding-heart Euro-liberal. A prosecutor for more than three decades, the affable 59-year-old has put droves of drug traffickers, mafia dons, and terrorists behind bars. When I asked him if he was anti-American, he laughed and asked, "What do you think?" gesturing around his massive office inside the gloomy, Mussolini-era Palace of Justice. The walls were festooned with photographs of marathons he has run in the United States, certificates of appreciation from the Drug Enforcement Administration, and reproductions of paintings by Warhol, Rockwell, and Hopper.

Spataro had been building a potential terrorism case against Abu Omar for months before his kidnapping; as a result of his investigation, a number of Abu Omar's acquaintances were convicted of terrorism offenses and in 2005 Abu Omar himself was indicted in absentia on charges that he had been recruiting fighters to go to Iraq. But his sudden disappearance into the bowels of Egypt's prisons had set back Spataro's probe dramatically.

I asked Spataro why he'd pushed so hard to investigate the snatching of a militant he himself was about to indict. In measured tones, he explained, "Kidnapping is a serious crime. It is important for European democracy that all people are submitted to the law. It is possible to combat terrorism without extraordinary means."

The prosecutor also didn't appreciate being lied to -- American officials had let it be known around Milan that Abu Omar had likely fled to the Balkans. It didn't take Spataro long to get past the smoke screen and even track down an eyewitness to the abduction. But the bulk of his case would revolve around a rookie mistake made by the kidnappers: using cell phones, and unencrypted ones at that. Spataro's investigators reviewed the records from three Italian cell phone companies with relay towers in the vicinity of where the Egyptian militant disappeared and ran them through a commercial data-crunching program. Of the more than 10,000 cell phones in use during a three-hour window around the kidnapping, 17 were in constant communication with each other. The investigators also determined that soon after the abduction, some of the cell phones' users traveled to Aviano Air Base, a major American installation several hours east of Milan. And virtually all of the phone numbers stopped working two or three days after the abduction.

The suspicious cell phones had made calls to the American consulate in Milan and to numbers in Virginia (where the CIA is headquartered). The phones, most registered under bogus names, also made many calls to prominent hotels in Milan -- hotels where, the Italian investigators found, a dozen Americans had stayed in the weeks before the kidnapping. They registered under addresses in the Washington, D.C., area, and Spataro believes they used their real passports. Their movements matched those of the suspicious cell phones. Over the course of several weeks the Americans had blown more than $100,000 on easily traceable credit cards at hotels such as the Principe di Savoia, where rates start at $345 a night and which offers a special room-service menu for dogs. Others took side trips to Venice, where they stayed at the five-star Danieli and Sofitel hotels.

If the Americans had only used encrypted satellite phones and paid in cash -- standard tradecraft, according to CIA veteran Robert Baer, the former operative who was the model for George Clooney's character in Syriana -- Spataro would have had fewer leads to follow. Why the sloppiness? Very probably, say law enforcement sources in Milan, because the Americans had clued in senior Italian intelligence officials about their plans and thus felt safe.

Next, Spataro's investigators began reviewing records from Italian air-traffic control, NATO, and the main European air-traffic facility in Brussels. They discovered that a 10-seat jet departed from Aviano a few hours after Abu Omar was abducted and flew to Ramstein Air Base in Germany. An hour after it landed, an Executive Gulfstream with the tail number N85VM departed Ramstein for Cairo. In March 2005, the Chicago Tribune reported that this jet was owned by Phillip Morse, a partner in the Boston Red Sox and one of a number of individuals whose planes are occasionally rented by the CIA.

One of the suspicious cell phones had made hundreds of calls in the vicinity of both the Milan residence and the country house of the CIA's station chief in Milan, Robert Lady. Armed with a warrant, Spataro's investigators searched Lady's country house in June 2005 and found that he'd gone on a 10-day trip to Cairo a week after Abu Omar's abduction. The investigators also found surveillance photos of Abu Omar taken on the street where he was picked up, as well as printed directions to Aviano Air Base. And they discovered a telling email sent to Lady from a former colleague in the Milan consulate: On Christmas Eve, 2004, as Spataro's inquiry was gathering momentum, she told Lady she'd received an email "through work" titled "Italy, don't go there" -- an apparent reference to the investigation. She'd also heard that Lady, who has since retired, had relocated to Geneva "until this all blew over."

Even Arianna Barbazza, the court-appointed public defender for 13 of the 26 American officials indicted in the Abu Omar case, conceded that the case against Lady and his colleagues is substantial. Lady could receive a sentence of up to 15 years. (The trial is scheduled to start in March, although none of the indicted Americans is expected to show up. The CIA has refused to comment on the case or its rendition program.)

Another important break came when Luciano Pironi, the mysterious Italian police officer who had first "arrested" Abu Omar on the street, began to cooperate with Spataro. Prior to Abu Omar's arrest, Pironi was found to have been "frequently and intensely" in contact with Lady. Pironi said that Lady had told him that the operation was approved by the Italian military-intelligence agency, SISMI, and that Lady had received a tip that Abu Omar was planning to hijack a school bus operated by the American school in Milan -- a claim Italian law enforcement officials say is false.

Lady, who speaks fluent Italian and had good relations with his local counterparts, emerges from this tale as something of a tragic figure. He had opposed the snatch of Abu Omar on the grounds that it was counterproductive; he knew that Italy's counterterrorism police had been trying to build a case against the Egyptian militant and had even warned a top Italian counterterrorism official, Stefano D'Ambrosio, that the CIA was planning the Abu Omar operation. D'Ambrosio told Italian investigators that Lady considered the whole scheme "stupid." But Lady was forced to lead the operation by his bosses in Rome and Langley, who were under intense pressure from the White House to produce results in the war on terrorism. Lady told Pironi that he'd never have spent all his savings to buy a retirement house in the Italian countryside "unless he had been sure that no inquiry against him was under way."

Today, that house has been seized by Italian authorities and Lady, who fled to the States, is the subject of a Europe-wide arrest warrant. In a final twist of irony, Lady told a friend in the Italian police that in his retirement he'd hoped to work for a firm made up of former CIA officers who specialize in negotiating releases for people abducted in South America.

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In february 2007, Abu Omar was finally released -- this time, it seems, for good. "Without the human rights and media campaign, I would still be in prison," he told me. The conditions of his release were that he stay in Egypt and keep quiet about his treatment. But realizing that notoriety might be his best protection, Abu Omar attended the trial of a 22-year-old blogger whom the Egyptian government accused of insulting President Hosni Mubarak. (He was sentenced to four years.) In the Alexandria courtroom, he paraded his scars before the cameras and talked about his years of torture. "Now I am a public figure," he told me. "It protects me."

Jobless and still monitored by Egypt's security services, Abu Omar now spends most of his time cruising the Internet and posting occasional comments on Arabic-language newspaper sites. Toward the end of our interview he pulled out a plastic bag stuffed full of Christmas cards with pictures of windmills and little red robins sent by people in the United Kingdom who'd learned about his case through a letter-writing campaign organized by Amnesty International. He told me he is happy that these kind people write, sending the message that someone out there knows he hasn't disappeared.