[Ppnews] New Guatánamo Whistleblowers Emerge

[Political Prisoner News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/

August 8, 2007

A CounterPunch Exclusive


New Guatánamo Whistleblowers Emerge


Backing Up Lt. Col. Abraham

By ANDY WORTHINGTON

In June, when Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, an Army 
reservist with 26 years’ experience in military 
intelligence, stepped forward to complain, in the 
case of a Kuwaiti detainee in Guantánamo, Fawzi 
al-Odah, that the entire process of confirming 
the detainees’ status as “enemy combatants” (in 
the Combatant Status Review Tribunals) was 
severely flawed, often relying on “generic” 
evidence and designed solely to rubber-stamp the 
detainees’ prior designation as “enemy 
combatants,” he was feted as a hero by lawyers 
representing the detainees, by human rights 
organizations, and, refreshingly, by numerous 
newspapers throughout the United States (“Heroism 
comes in many forms,” for example, was the 
headline of an article in the Salt Lake Tribune).

Since then, despite the fact that I pointed out a 
month ago that he was not the only insider to 
criticize the process, and that dissenting 
opinions had been filed by an unnamed Army major 
in one other case at Guantánamo, and by a 
detainee’s Personal Representative in at least 
two other cases, the administration has attempted 
to isolate him and demean his testimony, with the 
Department of Justice smearing his words as 
“innuendo,” and Navy Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler, a 
Pentagon spokesman, claiming that, as a database 
manager, he served only a “brief stint on active duty several years ago.”

Two weeks ago, Lt. Col. Abraham visited Capitol 
Hill to reiterate his testimony before the House 
Armed Services Committee. Although the story was 
not widely reported in the US media, the New York 
Times covered it, adding weight to Abraham’s 
statements by describing him as “the star 
witness.” Reporter William Glaberson, who called 
his testimony “[s]pirited and enthusiastic,” 
noted that, after explaining that “in his 
database work he saw thousands of documents that 
were used as evidence in more than 300 of the 558 
hearings conducted in 2004 and 2005,” Abraham 
“said he had raised frequent concerns about the 
fairness of the process,” but noted that “a quick 
result was preferred over a probing inquiry.”

He also revisited the tribunal hearing in which 
he took part – that of Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi, a 
Libyan shopkeeper married to an Afghan woman – 
testifying that “the three panel members all 
agreed that the military did not have evidence 
against the detainee,” and explaining, “Not only 
I, but the other members of the panel said, ‘This 
is garbage.’” Although criticized by some 
Republican Representatives, and by 
representatives of the administration – including 
his former boss, Navy Rear Adm. James M. 
McGarrah, who claimed that “his view was of a 
very narrow piece of the process,” and that the 
administration “had dozens of people working on 
information collection” – Glaberson noted that 
some of the Democrats on the Congressional panel 
“called him a brave man and thanked him.”

In the last week, other voices have joined the 
growing chorus of disapproval. On Wednesday, 
lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights 
filed a petition on behalf of a Somali detainee, 
Mohammed Sulaymon Barre, in which they cited not 
only Stephen Abraham’s testimony, but also 
statements made by Navy Rear Adm. McGarrah. In an 
audacious move, the lawyers extracted two 
passages from a declaration made by McGarrah in 
May, in which he admitted that, in some cases, 
the military did not present all exculpatory 
evidence relating to the detainees. While the 
first of these statements – that “if certain 
information which suggested that the detainee 
should not be designated as an enemy combatant 
was duplicative,” then the “duplicative 
information” was sometimes not presented to the 
tribunals – strikes me as rather inconclusive, 
the second – that evidence which indicated that 
the detainee was not an “enemy combatant” may 
have been excluded “if it did not relate to a 
specific allegation being made against the 
detainee” – is far more troubling, as it 
indicates, explicitly, that specific, and 
original exculpatory evidence was deliberately 
excluded if it tended to distract from the 
administration’s single-minded pursuit of its preconceived agenda.

Although other critics of the Guantánamo regime 
have been in the news in the last week – in GQ, 
for example, Sean Flynn profiled military lawyers 
William Kuebler and Tom Fleener, who were 
devastatingly critical of the Military 
Commissions at Guantánamo – no other 
whistleblowers have yet stepped forward to 
declare, in public, their support for Lt. Col. 
Abraham’s criticisms of the CSRT process.

Recently, however, Lt. Col. Abraham has received 
correspondence from a former colleague in OARDEC 
(the Office for the Administrative Review of the 
Detention of Enemy Combatants), who provided 
independent confirmation of the criticisms of the 
CSRT process. The officer, who participated in 
tribunals both in Washington and Guantánamo, 
wrote, “Just wanted to say good luck and my 
recollections of the process are similar to yours.

The finding of enemy combatant was expected, the 
finding of not an enemy combatant was looked upon 
as a failure of the process.” Lt. Col. Abraham 
added that he met another “fellow OARDEC member,” 
who expressed support for his efforts, and 
explained that these comments “serve as 
independent verification of at least a portion of 
what I had said,” and that they “demonstrate or 
would tend to demonstrate that other people were 
and are troubled by the proceedings or a portion 
of them.” He added that they “respond to the 
claim that as the only dissenter my word should be given no regard.”

As an extra point of interest, the officer who 
wrote to Lt. Col. Abraham added that an 
“additional tidbit” that had not yet been 
reported was that, “after several detainees were 
found to be not an enemy combatant, DoD took away 
that option and we had to start using the term 
‘no longer an enemy combatant’ for those held for 
no apparent reason,” an insight that vividly 
demonstrates the administration’s Orwellian 
approach to semantics. As Lt. Col. Abraham noted 
in a subsequent e-mail, “If the option of NOT an 
enemy combatant is removed, the CSRT process no 
longer was used to rubber-stamp prior 
determinations. Rather, by definition, from that 
point on, the status of all detainees was fixed 
and the only question would be whether they had somehow reformed themselves.”

While I wait for more whistleblowers to step 
forward, it’s worth reflecting on how much trust 
can be placed in an administration that, when 
challenged by its own employees in rigged 
tribunals that are manifestly unjust, 
reconfigures language so that no one captured in 
the “War on Terror” – regardless of how they came 
to be in US custody, or how flimsy the “evidence” 
against them – is ever innocent.

Andy Worthington is a 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk>British 
historian, and the author of ‘The Guantánamo 
Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in 
America’s Illegal Prison’ (to be published by Pluto Press in October 2007).

He can be reached at: 
<mailto:andy at andyworthington.co.uk>andy at andyworthington.co.uk




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