WASHINGTON - Reporters will be barred from hearings that begin Friday in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the 14 terror suspects who were transferred last year from secret CIA prisons, officials said Tuesday.
Interest in the 14 is particularly high because of their alleged links to al-Qaida. Among them is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. He was captured in Pakistan in March 2003.
In announcing the hearings, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he could not say which of the 14 would go first or how long the process would take. No word of the hearings will be made public until the government releases a transcript of the proceedings, edited to remove material deemed damaging to national security, he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070306/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/guantanamo_prisonerstranslation: we don't want anyone to know how badly we tortured them or other embarrassments until we take it out of the transcripts. Plus we want to make them look really guilty.