GITMO - "There Are NO Files"

[kpete]

THIS EXPLAINS A LOT.... Hilzoy reported on this overnight, but I don't want the news to get lost in the shuffle. It's one of those breathtaking stories that is almost too painful to believe.

Upon announcing his plan to close the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Barack Obama also began a process that would review the case files for every detainee. The problem for the new administration, however, is that there are no files.

President Obama's plans to expeditiously determine the fates of about 245 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and quickly close the military prison there were set back last week when incoming legal and national security officials -- barred until the inauguration from examining classified material on the detainees -- discovered that there were no comprehensive case files on many of them.

Instead, they found that information on individual prisoners is "scattered throughout the executive branch," a senior administration official said. The executive order Obama signed Thursday orders the prison closed within one year, and a Cabinet-level panel named to review each case separately will have to spend its initial weeks and perhaps months scouring the corners of the federal government in search of relevant material.

Several former Bush administration officials agreed that the files are incomplete and that no single government entity was charged with pulling together all the facts and the range of options for each prisoner. They said that the CIA and other intelligence agencies were reluctant to share information, and that the Bush administration's focus on detention and interrogation made preparation of viable prosecutions a far lower priority. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_01/016593.php

I mention this, in part to help resolve some lingering confusion. On the one hand, the Bush administration released some detainees who apparently turned out to be pretty dangerous. On the other, the Bush administration refused to release other detainees who weren't dangerous at all, and were actually U.S. allies.

How could this happen? In light of these revelations about the lack of files, it starts to make a lot more sense.

But to put this in an even larger context, consider just how big a mess Bush has left for Obama here. The previous administration a) tortured detainees, making it harder to prosecute dangerous terrorists; b) released bad guys while detaining good guys; and c) neglected to keep comprehensive files on possible terrorists who've been in U.S. custody for several years. As if the fiasco at Gitmo weren't hard enough to clean up.

.................

more at:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_01/016597.php

[dkofos]

1. No files, no problem. The bush way.

[Grinchie]

76. No Emails either, apparently.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

79. Need to search Rove's non-govt email accounts

:tin-foil-hat:

[enlightenment]

2. Then let them all go.

This violates every sense of due process.

[Mist]

6. Yes, let them go, and blame it on the Rethug admin. No files, no cases, ergo, no prosecutions . nt

[lynnertic]

9. ...and then set those bad boys and their families up for life so that they are too comfortable

to be bothered with Al-Qaeda again.

[lunatica]

13. You forgot to post the sarcasm thingy right?

[stray cat]

17. Hopefully but I doubt it....

[enlightenment]

29. Why should it be sarcastic?

Incarcerating people for years without charging them with a crime and then - when it looks like they might actually get their day in court - admitting that there is no supporting evidence for their incarceration. That is distinctly unfunny, imo.

There might be some 'bad guys' in with that lot - but how is anyone supposed to tell? At this point it's more likely that the incarceration has managed to radicalize those who were not 'bad guys' to start - but how is anyone supposed to tell?

No, I wasn't kidding. When law enforcement screws up and can't produce evidence to support a charge, the charge is dropped . . . or are we still going to use the Bush playbook and just accept the 'they're evil-doers because I say so' explanation?

[Smith_3]

74. If there is no evidence against them they must be let go. Its that simple.

No files, no case. Too bad, but that's how the rule of law works.

[DainBramaged]

3. They didn't even have close to up to date computers in the White House

what makes you think the B* misAdministration had the proper controls on it's prisoners and the charges against them?

The entire eight years was a gigantic clusterfuck.

[CrispyQ]

10. Can't it all just be Pam's dream?

So much destruction. :grr:

[lunatica]

11. I would think the military in charge of the detention center would keep records

They're the ones being ordered to mistreat the prisoners. But as far as legal documentation, how could the prisoners have any files if their lawyers were never allowed to even talk to them?

And why can't they keep these prisoners in one of those detention centers they've built in this country? You know the ones they built in case of some catastrophic influx of illegal aliens that can house 5000 people at a time?

[Politicalboi]

49. Why should we keep them?

We have NO PROOF thanks to Bush that these guys committed any crimes let alone being terrorist. And if we don't prosecute Bush we will regret that. Maybe some of these detainees would love to see the terrorist who locked them away stand trial. I know I would.

[MadMaddie]

57. No way! The civilian * admin had their hands in everything

from directives to documenation. They had to control everything and that may be their downfall.

[NV Whino]

4. We can never, ever again

lose control over our government as we did for the last eight years. This is appalling.

[geckosfeet]

5. This is preposterous. What a bunch of keystone cops.

Thank goodness adults are in charge now.

[bullimiami]

7. it is time we closed the cia, nsa and other intel services down. they are a cancer to our democracy.

[bertman]

34. The Kennedy brothers tried to reign in the CIA. Look where it got them.

[tavalon]

37. Too fast for me!

That's what I was going to say.

[lunatica]

8. Bush and PNACs scorched earth policy

And yes, it all makes sense now. They're real goals are becoming much harder to ignore. I always knew that Bush was going to leave a wake of deeply scorched earth as his real legacy.

He thinks like a terrorist.

[madokie]

18. He is a terrorist

the whole mis-administration is/was/are. Throw their sorry traitorous asses in jail and throw away the fricking key already. fuck

[Sanity Claws]

12. No files?

Clearly they had no intention of ever prosecuting or following up on any alleged "intelligence" gleaned.

[DainBramaged]

14. This will be turned around on the PNAC crowd and used to bury them

Accused terrorists, and NO evidence of same. How BOOSHE.

[bigtree]

15. if we followed our laws

. . . these prisoners would be ordered released.

No wonder they've been sitting there for so long without any resolution of their case. There is no existing case on some of them. What a joke. Records "scattered throughout the executive branch??" Where the fuck might that be and why is it so hard to get access to these files?

[Old and In the Way]

16. Guantonomo was a show place

It's primary function was to send Americans a message. To the Right, it was "we're tough on terrorism". To us, it was "we don't need no stinkin' laws". Any records they had were shredded before Bush-Cheney vacated the premises.

[glitch]

21. Not to mention its chilling effect on everybody. "This could be you if you speak out" Twofer

The "show" while the real work of the Bushes was done: looting the treasury for decades to come.

[stillcool]

19. I'm sure it was just an accident...

I seem to remember someone having the original files from all the detainee's as they were released through I think a FOIA request. Anyone else remember this? I had a list of detainee's that I went through, writing a summary of where they were picked up, and what they were suppose to have done.

[Torn_Scorned_Ignored]

30. Here's a list of prisoners

http://www.cageprisoners.com/page.php?id=10

Content of the Cageprisoners.com Report
Our report presents the names of approximately 480 detainees, and has identified the nationalities of a further 174. It organises detainees according to their nationalities, listing them alphabetically (according to their forenames) within each category. We have also listed the residents of a particular country along with their nationals. The number of prisoners of each nationality has also been mentioned. The respective countries have been arranged alphabetically, followed by a brief listing of those whose nationalities have not been identified.

In addition we have arranged the countries according to the numbers of citizens held in Cuba, for each state. The report concludes with a timeline of the released detainees.
To view photos, letters or for further information on a particular detainee, please follow the links to their respective profiles.

[stillcool]

31. thank you!

that is way more comprehensive then what I was thinking of that was way back when.

[lunatica]

20. Now is a good time for people in the know to come forward

There is no excuse not to. President Obama has given an Executive Order protecting whistleblowers again. We need them to come forth.

I think they will.

[Demeter]

22. Another Heckova Job! Or as Ollie says:

"This is another fine mess you've gotten us into!"

[omega minimo]

23. mebbe they embedded microchips in each one

[nashville_brook]

24. Cheney replied "you want those files, then come up my ass and get them!"

[teknomanzer]

64. I would respond,

"Looks like there is room for my foot jackass!"

[spanone]

25. this way the pentagon is free to throw around any kind of numbers they like

there is no accountability throughout this entire previous administration

[jmowreader]

26. Why would there be files? Answer me that.

Many of the people sitting in Guantanamo are there not because they were caught in the act of terrorism, but because they were in the midst of some sort of clan disagreement. Think of it as the al-Hatfield--al-McCoy Feud, and just like the famous American feud, these latter-day feuds are largely about land.

The Army knows this, but the CIA was so hell-bent on racking up huge numbers of captured Arabs so they could claim we were "winning the war on terrorism" they kept hauling them in and incarcerating them in Gitmo for no damn reason. So...no one ever kept records on them.

As to your allegation that we kept good guys while releasing bad guys...you're probably right, and it's easy to see why: the bad guys are harder to control, so they're going to get rid of them. Better to just keep good guys locked up so we can point to all the detainees and tell America, "you're safer tonight because these people are not running around your hometown blowing things up." Which would have been the case if we would have never arrested them at all, but let's not talk about that.

[FatDave]

32. I always figured it went something like this:

They'd grab a guy off the street. A supposed terrorist. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. That doesn't matter.

They start torturing him, asking "who are you working with?" Now he can't give a real name because either he's not going to rat on his friends or he doesn't know any real bad guys. But he's got to say something to stop the torture, so he remembers the neighbor whose dog used to shit in his yard all the time. He gives them his name.

Then they go and grab the neighbor. They torture him, asking "who are you working with?" and the cycle repeats itself.

[jmowreader]

84. That's part of it...

but the CIA was buying Terrorist Suspects, and getting people in exactly the way I described.

[Hippo_Tron]

48. Exactly, which is why this is such a clusterfuck

There really should have been no need for a secret extra-judicial prison in the first place. People captured on the battlefield (most of them probably just participating in tribal battles as you said) can be held until the end of the war and then returned to their country when the war is over.

Those who are captured for suspected terrorist activity could be tried for it. The CIA just wanted free reign to break the law and Bush wanted a political issue to make the other side look "weak on terror". That's what this all comes down to.

[rrneck]

27. Important information highly

compartmentalized or missing, making accountability difficult or impossible. Welcome to Cheneyland. The ones they kept are probably the ones that actually posed no danger but may be able to incriminate them later. Better to just try to completely break them like they broke Padilla make them hate us so much they become raving jihadists whether they were to start with or not to cover their tracks in the creation of this mess.

I just finished The Lucifer Effect by Phil Zimbardo. I highly recommend it.


From the website:

"He also began to feel anonymous because 'no one was listening to my position. It was clear that there was no accountability.' Moreover, the physical setting in which he found himself conferred total anonymity by its barren ugliness. Anonymity of place combined with anonymity of person, given that it became the norm to stop wearing their full military uniforms while on duty. And all around them, most visitors and the civilian interrogators came and went unnamed. No one in charge was readily identifiable, and the seemingly endless mass of prisoners, wearing orange jumpsuits or totally naked, were also indistinguishable from one another. It was as extreme a setting for creating deindividuation as I can imagine." (From Chapter 14, page 351)

From the preface to the book:

One of the dominant conclusions of the Stanford Prison Experiment is that the pervasive yet subtle power of a host of situational variables can dominate the individual's will to resist. That conclusion is further embellished and given greater depth in a set of chapters detailing this phenomenon across a body of social science research. We see how a range of research participants, other college student subjects and average citizen volunteers alike, come to conform, comply, obey, and are readily seduced into doing things they could not imagine doing when they were outside those situational force fields. A set of dynamic psychological processes are outlined which can induce good people to do evil, among them, deindividuation, obedience to authority, passivity in the face of threats, self justification and rationalization. Dehumanization is one of the central processes in the transformation of ordinary, normal people into indifferent or even wanton perpetrators of evil. Dehumanization is like a cortical cataract that clouds one’s thinking and fosters the perception that other people are less than human. It makes some people come to see those others as enemies deserving of torment, torture, and annihilation.

[flvegan]

28. Demand prosecution of everyone involved.

From Bush, Cheney and Condi down to the commanding officers on scene.

[NM Independent]

33. Relentless Ideology and Apalling Incompetence.

These two things alone should forever be known as the worst failing qualities of W.

[Number23]

41. Do you honestly think it was just incompetence?

I read this as a deliberate attempt to keep the international court/civil rights lawyers in the dark. If there are no files, then the Bush admin can not be charged with violating any number of international laws on detaining civilians and combatants... or at least that may be what they are hoping.

The files may have never been kept or may have been destroyed, but I don't think it was an accident at all.

[NM Independent]

50. Of course not.

There's a bit of evil and good old fashioned CYA mixed in there as well.

We are, after all, talking about republics.

[Number23]

72. Just thought I'd check.

[Zhade]

35. I'll say it again -- if there's no evidence, WHY ARE THESE PEOPLE BEING HELD???

NT!

[moggie]

36. Did Franz Kafka work for the Bush administration?

This is not incompetence: the CIA and the military have plenty of experience with detention procedures. They meant it to be this way.

[EFerrari]

38. They're lying. Surprised?

[Number23]

39. If Bush and his cronies could have put half as much energy into doing what was right...

as they did in covering their own asses, there would be alot less misery and suffering in the world right now.

Kicked and Rec'd.

[JAbuchan08]

40. I'm sure it was just incompetence

and not something nefarious :sarcasm:

[chollybocker]

42. With no 'hard' evidence left behind, * & Rice & Cheney & Rummy MUST now be s.p. to testify.

[Canuckistanian]

43. The Nazis never kept files of Auschwitz, either

Sure, there were records of trains going back and forth and how many people they carried, but there were never any direct records of an extermination program or references to gas chamber killings.

Even the blueprints of the death camps never alluded to the true purpose of the facilities.

My guess is, they knew that such records could have been used against them if they ever lost the war.

[myrna minx]

44. K&R n/t

[Politicalboi]

45. Let them go then

This is all Bush's fault. Set them up in his neighborhood. Hell if they sue that motherfucker they can live in his house. Hell we all should be able to sue Bush. I wonder if that would work? A class action lawsuit Bush/Cheney against the US.

[burythehatchet]

46. in the old days they called it "getting rid of the evidence"

[HughMoran]

47. The Bush fiasco

a lasting legacy :eyes:

[OneGrassRoot]

51. This comes second hand, but....

my SO called this morning and apologized right off the bat because "I was watching Fox," he said...lol....but proceeded to say that there was a military guy on with Chris Wallace, and they were discussing this very issue.

Not only about no records, but the very real possibility that American citizens who may have gone against Bushco are there AND the military guy alluded to the fact that it isn't even military personnel working at Gitmo. He said something to the effect, "It's amazing that you don't even have to go to boot camp anymore; those are the guys watching Gitmo." Blackwater, most likely?

[ColbertWatcher]

52. What a bunch of incompetent assholes.

Under these morans, millions of emails disappear, billions of dollars disappear and when the law specifically asks for documentation, the GOP are unable to collect any.

However, when it comes to spying on innocent American citizens, they can't seem to collect enough information!

[jillan]

53. I wonder if Obama is going to share this with the public.

[glinda]

54. Send them to Crawford.

[Juan_de_la_Dem]

55. No files, no case, no reason for detention....let 'em out

[proud patriot]

56. Still Bushed

:grr:

[DallasNE]

58. This Has Dick Cheney's Fingerprints All Over It

This also suggests that no amount of looking will turn them up. Only if someone took some CYA copies will we know what happened. It is just like Bush's National Guard records. The suckers somehow just come up missing. Expect to find other embarrassing documents to have found their way into the shredders whether it is the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson or the US Attorney purge.

[zogtheobvious]

59. What an absolute walking cluster-fuck of an adminstration.

:freak:

[tom_paine]

60. The Bushies sure did learn from their predecessors, the nazis, so very well.

The Nazis' extensive penchant for recordkeeping sunk them at Nuremberg.

The Bushies LEARNED from their former allies.

[Kitty Herder]

61. This just blows my mind.

These criminals Bush bastards belong behind bars. By not creating files, they make it that much more difficult to give Gitmo prisoners to get the far trials they deserve. And I'm sure that's what they intended.

[caseymoz]

62. A reason to suspend Habeus Corpus-- laziness.

No need to build a case.

[kestrel91316]

63. NO FILES??? Release them all immediately for PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT.

And prosecute the folks who let this state of affairs exist.

Next Al Quaeda attack, we now get to say in all truthfulness that Bushco is 100% responsible due to their incompetence.

[JCMach1]

65. So, Guantanamo= Crawford Ranch

i.e. ALL PROP

Why am I not shocked?

[nolabels]

66. Count on corporate media to miss this story as much as possible

They will do all they can in trying to minimize any idea they were complicit in this and other bush-boy mis-administration crimes

[Skip Intro]

67. unfuckingreal nt

[Waiting For Everyman]

68. The good guys detained probably include some potential 9/11 whistleblowers,

who are likely now human vegetables. I'd bet that was the primary reason for opening that place and using those techniques to begin with.

Too much gets blamed on stupidity and incompetence. If they released dangerous people, they meant to; if they refused to release innocents, they meant that too.

That has always been true before, and I see no reason why this would be the first exception now.

Oh and, I'm sure that's why there are no files.

[defendandprotect]

69. I'm shocked . .. the Nazis used to keep files . . . !!!

[Blackhatjack]

70. The way to approach this problem is the opposite of what you might expect....

Convene a team of investigators to compile a list of individuals who would have been in charge of creating and maintaining records on the detainees, and their superiors. Place them under oath and question them about the existence and locations of the missing files, and who gave them their orders --- and then charge them with criminal perjury and/or obstruction of justice if they lie or refuse to testify truthfully.

Sending out officials on a 'scavenger hunt' to scour the entire Federal Government is no way to handle this.

When people start getting charged criminally and going to jail... memories will clear up and cooperation will ensue.

[McCamy Taylor]

71. I smell obstruction of justice.....

[Blue Dog Dominion]

73. information on individual prisoners is “scattered throughout the executive branch”

I know some of you like to have your blood pressure elevated for some reason, but you can calm down for a sec.

Ahhhh-Oooooooooooom.
Ahhhh-Oooooooooooom.
Ahhhh-Oooooooooooom.

Better? Now get pissed off again. Just looks like a departmentmental pissing contests.

http://washingtonindependent.com/27182/gitmo-prisoner-case-files-a-mess

[Moochy]

80. I could not find a blue one

But really now, Blue Dog Dominion(ist)? who lost their fucking sock?

[Optical.Catalyst]

75. Video tape the testimony from everyone ot these detainees to be used as evidence against Bush

Bush is guilty of war crimes, torture, and illegal imprisonment.

[whistle]

77. Shredded or burned just like the Nazis did near the end of WWII

...to cover the Gitmo interrogator's tracks. Lack of files and paperwork is an absolute indicator that crimes against humanity were being committed.

[Wapsie B]

78. What did I say before 1/20?

Chimp and Cheney destroyed any evidence of what happened behind the scenes the last 8 years. Remember Nixon's 18-minute gap in a tape recording? This will be an 8 year gap. Documents vaporized, hard drives destroyed and buried in some landfill.

[condoleeza]

81. Were these files in the boxes Cheney injured himself moving?

[Wapsie B]

82. Sounds plausible to me.

With that crew anything's not out of the realm of possibility if they're covering their trail.

[14thColony]

83. I know two guys who were intelligence analysts at Gitmo

I talked to each at different times, and neither of them has ever met the other.

One told me in his opinion 2/3 of the people in there had never done anything.

Unprompted, the other separately set the number at 3/4 of those in there.