Still life at Guantanamo Bay
After tens of millions of taxpayer dollars sunk into its prison camps, interrogation facilities and war-crimes courts, it’s no wonder life goes on at Guantanamo Bay.
“It’s a fascinating challenge,” said Army Col. Bruce Vargo, of suburban Dayton, Ohio, commander of the Joint Detention Center at Guantanamo.
“You just cannot beat it when the military gives you a chance to command troops,” added the 48-year-old Vargo, interviewed in Cleveland this month after delivering a presentation on what it’s like to guard terrorism-war prisoners to a national convention of prison wardens.
He thinks so even though Guantanamo assignments have ground up more than one military career.
The last such official to come to Cleveland – Guantanamo chief military prosecutor Col. Morris Davis – resigned last fall with very public swipes at the impartiality and fairness of the war-crimes process.
What’s more, the terrorism-war camp that opened in 2002 is just about out of time. All three leading presidential candidates – Republican John McCain and Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama – have already said they will close it.
“We are not doing any active planning” to shut the camp, Vargo said. “But obviously that’s a decision for our leaders. When they make that decision, we will move out and do as instructed.”
The camp has tried to relax security and provide more communal facilities, but Vargo said most prisoners remain in higher security cells for repeated rule-breaking, including attacking the guards with spit, feces and urine.
Guantanamo Bay’s prison camp was designed to hold “enemy combatants” indefinitely. Yet now it’s in a gray zone – somewhere between gradually closing and clawing to stay open.
At one end of the spectrum, Pentagon officials are pushing hard to charge more inmates with war crimes and begin trials in front of “military commissions” before the end of this year.
That process could complicate attempts to close the camp. Yet at the other, the camp appears to be closing by degrees.
It has already shipped 500 inmates to other countries, leaving the camp with less than half its peak population.
“The president is running out the clock,” says lawyer Wells Dixon, of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City, which represents most of the Guantanamo inmates in civilian appeals seeking their release on the grounds that the government has never adequately spelled out the evidence against them.
“They’re going to leave the mess to the next administration, which is a terrible, terrible thing for our clients.”
Dixon said defense lawyers also remain incensed that rules for upcoming war-crimes trials don’t rule out the use of evidence acquired through coercion, including waterboarding. The CIA has admitted it waterboarded at least three suspects during interrogation.
In his speech, however, Vargo suggested most of the inmates’ accusations of torture reflect an al-Qaida manual that spells it out as a way captured terrorists can embarrass their Western captors.
Of the 275 terrorism-war detainees remaining at Guantanamo, 15 have been charged with war-related crimes under a recent U.S. law after spending years in detention. Military officials suggest more than 60 others could face charges.
Last year, in the camp’s only conviction, Australian David Hicks pleaded guilty in a plea bargain to providing terrorist support to the Taliban in Afghanistan, and was sent to Australia to serve the final months of his sentence.
Among those being held at the prison is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged Sept. 11 operational mastermind and one of six Guantanamo detainees charged Feb. 11 with planning the Sept. 11 attacks. All face the death penalty.