Guantanamo Bay detention camp

Guantanamo detention camp is a facility at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, which is on a U.S.-leased area in Cuba. As is not atypical for bases outside the territory of the United States, it is presumed to be under military jurisdiction rather than that of the U.S. civilian justice system. Its creation was part of the war on terror of the George W. Bush Administration, and it was not the only detention facility included in that program (e.g., see Bagram Airport). The Obama administration has stated it intends to close the facility.

At first, it was used to hold detainees captured in Afghanistan, whom the Administration had determined were not entitled to prisoner of war status under the Third Geneva Convention. It was the position of the George W. Bush Administration that captives apprehended in Afghanistan were not protected by the Geneva Conventions.

Concerns over treatment of prisoners there led to the Detainee Treatment Act and other legislation. Aspects of this policy have been overruled by the United States Congress, in the Detainee Treatment Act and by the Supreme Court of the United States. and the United States Supreme Court.

Creation and organization
On January 4, 2002, United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM) was told to take custody of designated detainees within the United States Central Command area of responsibility, and to escort and hold the detainees at a facility to be built at the Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, a task assigned to Joint Task Force 160. In addition to holding the detainees, the Secretary of Defense directed Southern Command on 22 January 2002 to implement a Department of Defense/Interagency interrogation effort, which would be the reponsibility of Joint Task Force 170. Southern Command had the two task forces working in parallel, establishing Joint Interagency Interrogation Facility (JIIF) on January 22. It was not responsible for guarding prisoners, but for intelligence collection, force protection, and planned terrorist activities. This interrogation effort also supports law enforcement agencies, and tribunal efforts. Interrogations, however, were not necessarily intended to meet the evidentiary or procedural needs of tribunal or law enforcement processes; the emphasis was on information gathering for counterterrorism.

Detention Task Force: JTF 160
In January 2002 more than 1,000 U.S. service members, under the command of U.S. Marine Corps BG Michael Lenhart were sent to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to provide security for detainees under U.S. control. TF 160 reported to United States Southern Command and was principally a security rather than an intelligence operation, with a core of military police fom all the services. Its mission was support the intelligence unit, Joint Task Force 170, established on 16 February 2002. Greenberg said that JTF 170, under reservist MG Michael Dunlavey, was established in February. Dunlavey and Lehnert had parallel commands.

BG Rick Baccus and a Rhode Island Army National Guard Military Police Brigade were sent, in March 2002, to Guantanamo, replacing the ad hoc Marine-based unit with military police. Baccus was a Military Police officer, but not experienced in prison operations. While penology falls generally under a police and judicial function, they are separate specialties; while the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is part of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Bureau of Prisons is a completely separate organization with different organization and training. Even in the FBI, counterterorrism intelligence is a relatively new and specialized function, different from their traditional roles in law enforcement and counterespionage.

Baccus said "By charge of the president, through the secretary of defense, through SOUTHCOM, the charge was to treat the detainees humanely. That was our charge. Let the interrogators handle interrogations, but our charge was to handle the detainees and make sure they were treated humanely... How do you set the conditions of the camp psychologically so that we don't have constant confrontations between detainees and the military police, because that's not good, again, for the security or the safety of the military policemen?" Note that the latter deals with force protection, not intelligence collection. In response to a question if any part of his job was to gather intelligence, he responded "No. As you may be aware, as soon as I arrived and took over as the commander, around the 27th of March, 2002, Joint Task Force 170 had already been stood up earlier that month with MG [Michael E.] Dunlavey in charge, and their mission was to interrogate the detainees and get whatever information they could...."

He continued, "There has to be that necessary tension, because how we look at detention operations is far different than how you would look at interrogation operations. I'm not an interrogator by trade, don't know anything about it, didn't get involved with it while I was at Gitmo. That wasn't my mission. And so the thing I would mention is just that they have to work the one-on-one with the individual detainee. They have to work their interrogation plans. They have to work their relationships to try and garner information."

Intelligence task force: JTF 170
USSOUTHCOM, on 22 January 2002, was directed to create a Joint Interagency Interrogation Facility (JIIF), designated Joint Task Force 170 (JTF 170). It was commanded by MG (U.S. Army Reserve) Michael E. Dunleavey, who, as opposed to Baccus, was an intelligence officer on active duty. In civilian life, he had been a trial attorney.

JTF 170's mission included strategic intelligence collection, force protection, and, although there could be conflicts in rules, law enforcement and tribunal activities.

Merger: JTF-GTMO
On August 27, 2002, GEN James T. Hill became the new commander of USSOUTHCOM. Hill knew MG Miller as a competent general military commander, and selected him, to take command of JTF-GTMO on November 4, 2002. Miller was an experienced military operations officer, which Keane saw as adequate.

Some reports said that Baccus was relieved, but he countered that he was decorated for service, given an outstanding performance review, and JTF-160 received the "Joint Unit Meritorious Award for their time period in Guantanamo, of which I was the commander of that joint task force seven out of the nine months in the period of time of the award. ...my leaving Guantanamo was on a part of a plan to join the two task forces together. I left on the seventh of October; Miller was in place on the first of November."

Policy Changes
In 2002, senior political and military leadership were dissatisfied with the quality of intelligence coming from detainees and pushed for changes.

In the summer of 2002, GEN Jack Keane, Vice Chief of Staff for the U.S. Army, visited GTMO; and found quality of intelligence gathered unsatisfactory finding "... the police are guarding the detainees, and the interrogators are trying to get information out of them, and the two never work together towards common objectives." unified command. It certainly is reasonable to have a common senior leadership, but, as discussed above, police and intelligence approaches to information gathering are different. After subsequent problems such as Abu Ghraib, it became clear that while the intent of Army regulations were that military police did not take part in intelligence interrogation, the current versions, applicable when Keane made his assessments, were not clear on the subject.

A major basis for Administration policy was a legal opinion, dated August 1, 2002,  from  the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice went to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales.

Dunlavey requests stronger measures
In the fall of 2002, LTC Diane Beaver, Staff Judge Advocate to Dunlavey, led brainstorming sessions about stronger interrogation techniques. She found that extreme techniques, while illegal on their face, could be legitimately undertaken with advance permission, or even advance immunity, based on President Bush's determination that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners at Guantanamo; she assumed that Bush could also decide that the Uniform Code of Military Justice did not apply, and thus that torture-like methods could be utilized. "Who am I," she asked later, "to second-guess the President?""

On October 11, 2002, MG Michael E. Dunlavey, JTF-170 commander, requested permission to use tougher interrogation techniques: "the use of scenarios designed to convince the detainee that death or severely painful consequences are imminent" and actions designed "to induce the misperception of suffocation," Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld did not accept all the requests.

Captives' identities
Part of the Bush administrations' policy on captives apprehended during the war on terror was to keep their identities and locations secret. From 2002 through 2006, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and various non-governmental organizations tried to identify captives possibly held by the United States at Guantanamo detention camp and other facilities for extrajudicial detention. The impetus for the investigation were reports that the captives had disappeared without trace, and may have been detained under the George W. Bush Administration policies for the war on terror.

The Associated Press issued many Freedom of Information Act requests, requesting documentation of the captives' identities. The Department of Defense declined to honor these requests. The Associated Press took the Department of Defense. The Department justified withholding the captives identities by arguing that by doing so they were protecting the captives' rights to privacy.

In January 2006 US District Court judge Jed S. Rakoff rejected this argument, and ruled that the Department of Defense had to publish the captives' identities by 6pm Friday March 3rd, 2006. The Department of Defense did not meet this deadline. They did supply the Associated Press with a CDROM with dozens of files on it later on the evening of March 3rd. Fifty-three of the 59 large portable document format files published on March 3rd, 2006 contained 360 sumarized transcripts from Combatant Status Review Tribunals, held in 2004. Three further files were the first of 19 files that contained transcripts from the first annual Administrative Review Board hearings, held in 2005.

The transcripts however were not titled with the captives' names. They were not published in alphabetic order, or in order by the captives' ID numbers. They were identified only by the captives' Internee Security Number.

The Department of Defense published a first official list of captives on April 20th, 2006, and a second, longer, official list on May 15th, 2006. Although these two official lists were published only three weeks apart dozens of the captives' names were spelled inconsistently on the two lists.

Guantanamo captives' living conditions
The first captives to be detained in Guantanamo were housed in a compound called Camp X-ray, in the northeast corner of the base. Captives were housed in open-air cages there. As the number of captives held there grew Camp X-Ray was closed, and a complex of camps called Camp Delta was opened near the coast.

At its high point the camp contained approximately 650 captives. Approximately 780 captives have been housed there. 558 captives had their enemy combatant status reviewed by the Combatant Status Review Tribunals in late 2004, or January 2005.

Housing
To a certain extent, a detainee's level is determined by where he is housed, as well. Most Level 1 detainees are afforded extra privileges in Camp 4.

Uniforms
Numerous transcripts from Combatant Status Review Tribunals and Administrative Review Board hearings contain mention of the Guantanamo captive's uniforms the captives were wearing.

The Tribunals were authorized to recommend whether or not to confirm captives' "enemy combatant" status. "Noncompliant detainees wear orange uniforms, graduating to tan and to white as their cooperation improves. Comfort items vary depending on behavior."

The Board hearings were authorized to whether captives continued to represent a threat, or whether they continued to hold "intelligence value. The uniforms signify, in part, the captive's answers to officer's questions about their uniforms. Level 1 detainees wear white "uniforms" and share living spaces with other detainees. At the other end of the spectrum, Level 4 detainees wear orange, hospital scrub-type outfits and have fewer privileges. Other privileges unique to Camp 4 include electric fans in the bays, ice water available around the clock, plastic tubs with lids for the detainees to store their personal items, and the white uniforms. White is a more culturally respected color and also serves as an incentive to detainees in other camps.

Captives who were regarded as "compliant" were issued white uniforms. Captives who were regarded as "non-compliant" were issued orange uniforms.

Religious observances

 * Early provision of directions to Mecca
 * Alleged abuse of Qu'rans
 * Muslim chaplains and issues

Medical treatment
There have been repeated food strikes. Several inmates petitioned against force-feeding. Gladys Kessler, judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, rejected the petition.

Legal status of detainees
While the legal status continues to develop, both as a result of a new Administration and ongoing court actions, the principal legal guidance comes from the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions Act of 2006. President Obama, almost immediately after taking office, repudiated the most recent Executive Order of the Bush Administration.

Tribunals and Review Boards
In early 2004 the Department of Defense made recommendations to provide a semi-public program to review the captives' status.

Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held in 3 x 6 meter trailer. The captive's hands were cuffed, and his feet shackled to a bolt in the floor. Three chairs were reserved for members of the press, but only 37 of the 574 Tribunals were observed. ]]

Procedures were established for Administrative Review Boards. Annual Administrative Review Board hearings were convened for captives who had been determined, by a CSRT, to be an enemy combatant.

In the summer of 2004 Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense created the Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants (OARDEC), to be headed by a "Designated Civilian Official" (DCO). Rumsfeld appointed Gordon England to be the first Designated Civilian Official. England was the Secretary of the Navy at the time. When England was promoted to Deputy Secretary of Defense he remained the Designated Civilian Official.

Rasul v. Bush
In its ruling in Rasul v. Bush the Supreme Court ruled that the Bush administration had to provide a venue for the captives to learn the reasons why they were being detained, and offer them an opportunity to refute those allegations. The Supreme Court advised that this venue should be modeled after the Tribunals described in Army Regulation 190-8. It lays out the procedures American military personnel should follow to make sure the USA's treatment of captives complies with the Geneva Conventions. The two procedures that OARDEC administers are modeled after the Tribunals described in Army Regulation 190-8, except for their very different mandates.

Guantanamo military commissions
In 2004 President Bush authorized the Office of Military Commissions to charge and try Guantanamo captives.

Eventually ten captives were charged under the first Presidentially authorized Guantanamo Military Commissions. In July of 2006 the Supreme Court ruled that the President lacked the constitutional authority to set up Military commissions. It recommended that only the United States Congress had the authority to set up Military Commissions. In the fall of 2006 Congress passed the Military Commissions Act.

Twenty captives have been charged under the Congressionally authorized Guantanamo Commissions. Most of the captives who originally faced charges, have faced new, different charges under the new Commissions.