Jay W. Hood

Vice President Cheney has called the prisoners being held by the US at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, “the worst of a very bad lot” (see January 27, 2002) and other US officials have suggested that information from them has exposed terrorist cells and foiled attacks. But a lengthy New York Times investigation finds that US “government and military officials have repeatedly exaggerated both the danger the detainees posed and the intelligence they have provided.… In interviews, dozens of high-level military, intelligence and law-enforcement officials in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East said that contrary to the repeated assertions of senior administration officials, none of the detainees at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay ranked as leaders or senior operatives of al-Qaeda. They said only a relative handful—some put the number at about a dozen, others more than two dozen—were sworn al-Qaeda members or other militants able to elucidate the organization’s inner workings.” While some information from the prisoners has been useful to investigators, none of it has stopped any imminent attacks. Information from Guantanamo is considered “only a trickle” compared to what is being learned from prisoners held by the CIA in secret prisons elsewhere. Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, in charge of the task force running the prison, says, “The expectations, I think, may have been too high at the outset. There are those who expected a flow of intelligence that would help us break the most sophisticated terror organization in a matter of months. But that hasn’t happened.” Ironically, although few prisoners have been released, it appears about five have rejoined the Taliban and resumed attacks against US forces. Abdullah Laghmani, the chief of the National Security Directorate in Kandahar, Afghanistan, says, “There are lots of people who were innocent, and they are capturing them, just on anyone’s information. And then they are releasing guilty people.” [New York Times, 6/21/2004] Abdurahman Khadr, a CIA informant posing as a Guantanamo inmate for much of 2003 (see November 10, 2001-Early 2003 and Spring 2003), will later say about the prison: “There’s only, like, a 10 percent of the people that are really dangerous, that should be there. And the rest are people that, you know, don’t have anything to do with it, don’t even- you know, don’t even understand what they’re doing here.” [PBS Frontline, 4/22/2004] The Los Angeles Times reported back in August 2002 that no al-Qaeda leaders are being held at Guantanamo (see August 18, 2002). Some al-Qaeda leaders will be transferred into the prison from secret CIA prisons in September 2006 (see September 2-3, 2006).