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<dd><a href="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
<dd>Spy agency had been holding terror suspects in nations around the
world</a> </font>
<dd><font face="arial" size=1>- Dana Priest, Scott Higham, Washington
Post
<dd>Friday, December 17, 2004 <br><br>
</font>
<dd><font size=3>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. <br>
<dd>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. <br>
<dd>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. <br>
<dd>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. <br>
<dd>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. <br>
<dd>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.
<br>
<dd>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. <br>
<dd>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.
<br><br>
<dd>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. <br>
<dd>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.
<br>
<dd>"People are willing to help but not to hold," said one CIA
veteran of counterterrorism operations. <br>
<dd>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. <br>
<dd>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. <br>
<dd>"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.
<br>
<dd>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. <br>
<dd>Asked about the arrangement with the CIA at Guantanamo Bay, Pentagon
spokesman Bryan Whitman said he could not comment on operations of other
agencies. <br>
<dd>"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." <br>
<dd>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." <br>
<dd>Page A - 5
<dd>URL:
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