By John Hendren and Mark Mazzetti
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
July 9, 2004
WASHINGTON — Despite pledging yearly reviews for all prisoners held by the
U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Pentagon officials tentatively agreed
during a high-level meeting last month to deny that process to some detainees
and to keep their existence secret "for intelligence reasons," senior defense
officials said Thursday.
Under the proposal, some prisoners would in
effect be kept off public records and away from the scrutiny of lawyers and
judges.
The meeting on the Guantanamo reviews occurred months after U.S.
officials came under harsh criticism by investigators and human rights observers
for practices involving "ghost" detainees in Iraq who were kept hidden from
inspectors for intelligence purposes.
It was unclear Thursday whether
the Pentagon had followed through with the proposal, or how it would be affected
by last month's Supreme Court ruling that granted detainees access to American
courts. It also was not clear how many detainees the proposal would apply to.
T he Pentagon said there currently were 594 detainees at the camp, nicknamed
"Gitmo." A Swedish detainee was released Thursday.
But at the Pentagon
meeting called to discuss the annual detainee reviews — which are to be
overseen by Navy Secretary Gordon R. England — senior officials said they
wanted to keep a small number of prisoners' names out of public records to allow
intelligence officials to continue interrogations, a senior defense official
said on condition of anonymity.
Such a move would create an exception
to the Pentagon promise to review the case of every detainee annually to
determine whether he continued to pose a threat to the United States. Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld first disclosed plans to provide annual reviews to
detainees in February, in response to human rights concerns expressed over
open-ended imprisonment.
Two senior defense officials said they believed
that the prisoners who would be denied the reviews might be held by the CIA,
rather than the Defense Department.
A U.S. intelligence official said
Thursday that the CIA was not holding any detainees at Guantanamo, but added
that the annual reviews would not apply to CIA prisoners elsewhere.
But
another source, a former senior defense official with knowledge of detainee
issues, said the Pentagon did not control the interrogations of all Guantanamo
detainees. "There are some individuals down there where DOD doesn't have the
lead on their interrogation and intelligence exploitation," the former senior
defense official said on condition of anonymity.
Another senior
defense official said that the wording in a June 23 statement on the promised
annual reviews led him to believe that the detainees exempted from the review
were being held by the CIA.
In that memo, England described mandatory
annual reviews of "Department of Defense" detainees — a designation that
would exclude any detainee held by the CIA. One of the senior defense officials
said Wednesday that tha t designation had been inserted deliberately.
"People very, very carefully crafted those words," the official said. "When the
draft language was sent around, they were very adamant about keeping the words
'under DOD control' in. It led me to believe that there were non-DOD detainees
down there."
When Pentagon officials this week announced a separate,
one-time review into whether each prisoner had been properly labeled an "enemy
combatant," the order again specified that it applied to "all detainees under
the control of the Department of Defense."
The proposal to deny some
detainees' annual reviews rankled some in the Pentagon, which is trying to
recover from international criticism of the abuse scandal at the U.S.-run Abu
Ghraib prison near Baghdad. In light of the Supreme Court decision granting
Guantanamo detainees access to American courts, some internal Pentagon critics
said it would be unlikely that detainees held secretly would be allowed to
appear in federal courts.
A Pentagon spokesman said he knew of no
detainee at Guantanamo who would not receive annual reviews, and did not know of
an agreement to deny detainees reviews.
"It's my understanding that
everybody under DOD custody will be subject … to the annual review process
that has been outlined previously," said the spokesman, a senior defense
official.
Asked if any detainees were not under the Defense Department's
control, he said, "Not that I'm aware of."
One of the senior defense
officials was skeptical as to whether denying such a review would conform with
the Supreme Court ruling giving detainees access to federal courts.
"I
don't know how any of this squares with anything. That's been my problem with
this thing from the beginning," he said. "Any time you get the dark side
involved, human rights tend to be less of an issue."
One critic said
he spoke out about the proposal because he felt that holding detainees "off the
books" was unnecessary and potentially illegal. He discounted arguments that
the secrecy would withhold news of the captures from other terrorists.
"These Al Qaeda guys are smart," one of the senior defense officials who was
critical of the policy said on condition of anonymity. "If Mohamed is no longer
on the other end of the phone, they're going to know we've got him."