[News] CIA has prison within a prison at Guantanamo Bay

[News at freedomarchives.org]

<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/12/17//cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/12/17/MNG9DAD66D1.DTL>CIA 
has prison within a prison at Guantanamo Bay
Spy agency had been holding terror suspects in nations around the world
- Dana Priest, Scott Higham, Washington Post
Friday, December 17, 2004

Washington -- Within the heavily guarded perimeters of the Defense 
Department's Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, the CIA has maintained a jail 
for valuable al Qaeda captives that has never been mentioned in public, 
according to military officials and several current and former intelligence 
officers.
The buildings used by the CIA are shrouded by high fences covered with 
thick green mesh plastic and ringed with floodlights, officials said. They 
sit within the larger Camp Echo complex, which was erected to house the 
Pentagon's high-value detainees and those awaiting military trials on 
terrorism charges.
The prison has housed detainees from Pakistan, West Africa, Yemen and other 
countries under the strictest secrecy, the sources said. "People are 
constantly leaving and coming," said one U.S. official who visited the base 
in recent months. It is unclear whether it is still operating today. The 
CIA and the Defense Department declined to comment.
Most international terrorism suspects in U.S. custody are held not by the 
CIA but by the Defense Department at the Guantanamo Bay prison. They are 
guaranteed access to the International Committee of the Red Cross and, as a 
result of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this year, have the right to 
challenge their imprisonment in federal courts.
CIA detainees, by contrast, are held under separate rules and far greater 
secrecy. Under a presidential directive and authorities approved by 
administration lawyers, the CIA is allowed to capture and hold certain 
classes of suspects without accounting for them in any public way and 
without revealing the rules for their treatment. The roster of CIA 
prisoners is not public, but current and former U.S. intelligence officials 
say the agency holds the most valuable al Qaeda leaders and many mid-level 
members with knowledge of the group's logistics, financing and regional 
operations.
The CIA prison at Guantanamo Bay was constructed over the past year as the 
agency confronted one of its toughest emerging problems: where to hold 
suspected terrorists for interrogations that could last for years.
During the 1990s, the CIA typically had custody of half a dozen terrorists 
at any time and usually kept them in foreign prisons, mostly in Egypt and 
Jordan. But two months after the Sept. 11 attacks, CIA paramilitary teams 
working with foreign intelligence services had arrested dozens of people 
thought to have knowledge of impending attacks on the United States.
The CIA is believed to be holding about three dozen al Qaeda leaders in 
undisclosed locations, U.S. national security officials say. Among them are 
pivotal Sept. 11 plotters Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu 
Zubaida and the leader of Southeast Asia's Islamic terrorist movement, 
Nurjaman Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali.

CIA prisons have been in an off-limits corner of the Bagram air base in 
Afghanistan, on ships at sea and on Britain's Diego Garcia island in the 
Indian Ocean.
Maintaining facilities in foreign countries is difficult, however, said 
current and former CIA officials. Binalshibh and Abu Zubaida were believed 
to have been taken to Thailand immediately after capture. The Thai 
government eventually insisted that they be transferred elsewhere.
"People are willing to help but not to hold," said one CIA veteran of 
counterterrorism operations.
The U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay thus provided the CIA with an isolated 
venue devoid of the sensitive international politics. But it came with 
strings attached.
The U.S. military, which controls the base, required the agency to register 
all detainees, abide by military detention standards and permit the Red 
Cross access.
"If you're going to be in my back yard, you're going to have to abide by my 
rules," is how one military official explained it.
Army officials investigating the Abu Ghraib prison scandal concluded that 
the CIA had held "ghost detainees" at the prison, inmates who were not 
registered or officially acknowledged, a violation of military rules.
Asked about the arrangement with the CIA at Guantanamo Bay, Pentagon 
spokesman Bryan Whitman said he could not comment on operations of other 
agencies.
"As we have stated since the beginning of detention operations at 
Guantanamo, the (Red Cross) has access to detainees at Guantanamo and is 
permitted to meet with them, consistent with military necessity," Whitman 
said. Pentagon policy "is that all (Defense) detainees, including those at 
Guantanamo, are treated humanely, and in accordance with applicable law."
Red Cross officials declined to say where they had been permitted to visit, 
or whom. "We have been granted broad access to the camp," the Red Cross 
said. "We are confident we have visited all of the people detained at 
Guantanamo, in all of the places they are being detained."
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