Gitmo and the lawyers!

[selil]

Sorry Jedburgh I haven't read the entire report, but just from what you posted the conditions at Guantanomo would not meet US prison or jail standards. The only places that 22 hour lock down or special confinement is allowed for prolonged periods of time are at SuperMax in Canon City Colorado and the various Special Offender Centers. Each has their own methods of dealing with it. Inmate violence on the outside is NOT a concern unless the inmate has made specific and relevant threats upon incarceration. Most state and national standards also require judicial review at some point for that kind of lock down on pre-trial detainees. Most people have little to no understanding that what happens on the outside of a prison compound has little relevance on the inside. Both for the good and the bad. Unless you've worked in SuperMax or SOCs it is doubtful many people can understand the special breed of insanity that lock down breeds. This kind of lock down takes special training for the corrections personnel. Insanity inside a prison is literally infectious. I hope they are 3-4ing, or rapid rotating personnel.

[Jedburgh]

IHT, 2 Jul 08: China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of "coercive management techniques" for possible use on prisoners, including "sleep deprivation," "prolonged constraint," and "exposure."

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.....

I take odds with the author's statement that the SERE program became a source of interrogation methods for the Army. I will caveat that by stating that I did have issues in the past with interrogators who had spent time working out at the RTL needing strong mentorship and focused training to ensure that the line remained stark and clear between methods used with those going through the RTL and methods that we use with prisoners and detainees. It would not surprise me that a former RTL interrogator had used such methods operationally - but that occurence is ultimately a leadership failure at the unit level. The article's implication that the Army - as an institution - adopted such methods is patently false.

Here's the '57 study referred to in the article:

Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions from Air Force Prisoners of War

....As a social scientist, I find of singular interest one result of the studies which we and other groups have recently made of Communist attempts to extort "confessions". It is that the finding of our studies whlich should be greeted as most ne-w and spectacular is the finding that essentially there was nothing new or spectacular about the events we studied. \We found, as did other studies such as those of Hinkle and Wolff that human behavior could be manipulated within a certain range by controlled environments. We found that the Chinese Communists used methods of coercing behavior from our men in their hands which Communists of other countries had employed for decades and Which police and inquisitors had employed for centuries. The Chinese interrogators succeeded or failed to influence the behavior of their victims roughly to the extent that the skill and persistence of the personnel they employed nmatched those of practitioners in other places and times.....

[Jedburgh]

CSIS, 15 Sep 08: Closing Guantánamo: From Bumper Sticker to Blueprint

George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and John McCain all agree that the United States ought to close Guantánamo. But how can we expand a position that has been little more than a bumper sticker—"Close Guantánamo!"—and turn it into a blueprint for real policy change? This report outlines an answer to this question.It will likely fall to the next administration to carry out this new policy. The challenges are considerable, and there is no "silver bullet." In fact, there are only imperfect options. That said, Sarah Mendelson and the CSIS Working Group on Guantánamo and Detention Policy have concluded that the costs of keeping Guantánamo open far outweigh the costs of closing it. They recommend that the process of closing Guantánamo should be achieved through a policy called R2T2:

- Review
- Release/Transfer
- Try

During his first week in office, the next president should announce the date for closure of Guantánamo as a detention facility in conjunction with announcing the establishment of a new policy. Implementation of this new policy would be charged to a blue-ribbon panel of eminent Americans tasked to review the files on all remaining Guantánamo detainees. The duties of the panel would include categorizing all detainees to be released or transferred to the custody of another government or, alternatively, to be held for prosecution in the U.S. criminal justice system, whose record in international terrorism cases far outshines that of the Guantánamo military commissions. Since 2001, the U.S. criminal justice system has convicted 145 terrorist suspects, whereas the military commissions, thus far, have only convicted two. Overall, this straightforward policy—R2T2 —can help restore our reputation as a country that is built on and embraces the rule of law.

Complete 31-page paper at the link.

[jmm99]

from CSIS
They recommend that the process of closing Guantánamo should be achieved through a policy called R2T2 ... Review ... Release ... Transfer ... Try.
...
Implementation of this new policy would be charged to a blue-ribbon panel of eminent Americans tasked to review the files on all remaining Guantánamo detainees. ...

Got news for CSIS - we already have "a blue-ribbon panel of eminent Americans" working on the problem. We call them the Federal judges of the DC District and DC Circuit.

And, unlike a "Gitmo Commission", the present "blue-ribbon panels" have the authority to order compliance with their policy of "R2T2" - including putting offenders into the prisons of their choice.

PS: The next president should simply order DoJ and DoD to get with it and clean up these cases. We are dealing with roughly 400 cases at issue - not a large number.