WASHINGTON, Dec. 18, 2006

Is $100M Guantanamo Courthouse Necessary?

Pentagon's Plans For Another Facility To Try 60 People Are Questioned

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    Congress is questioning the Pentagon's plans for a $100 million courthouse on Guantanamo Bay that would be used to try 60 detainees. Sharyl Attkisson reports on how your tax dollars are being spent.

  • Detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. The Pentagon wants to build a $100 million courthouse to try about 60 detainees being held there. Photo

    Detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. The Pentagon wants to build a $100 million courthouse to try about 60 detainees being held there.  (CBS)

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(CBS)  The U.S. government already has a courthouse at Guantanamo Bay, but the Pentagon isn't satisfied, CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports. It plans to spend $100 million of your tax dollars to build a huge new facility just down the hill.

"This is very expensive for the number of cases, 60, which they anticipate trying," says Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

That's right, a $100 million courthouse to try about 60 cases. That's $1.6 million per defendant ... just for the building. The trials will cost many millions more.

Of course, these aren't run-of-the-mill defendants. They're terror suspects including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad. Still, both Republicans and Democrats in Congress are balking at the idea — and the cost — in private meetings with Defense Department officials.

"I asked them if they had looked at alternatives in the United States, looked at them, and the answer was no," Feinstein says. "I was surprised that they hadn't looked at Fort Leavenworth, at other places to build a courthouse, to bring these people over, to keep them in secure custody, to try them."

But this building will house more than courtrooms. The courthouse would sleep up to 1,200 people, there would be a dining facility for 800, and a garage big enough for 100 vehicles.

Tax watchdog Tom Finnigan of Citizens Against Government Waste says his radar antennae went up when the Pentagon recently tried to push the plans through Congress on an emergency basis without any votes.

"They tried to rush the funding through the process. That alone raises a red flag this could be a boondoggle in the works," Finnigan says.

No one from the Defense Department would agree to an interview, but a spokesman told CBS News the new facility is needed so more than one defendant at a time can be tried under heavy security. The trials could take years, and the space allows for lots of observers and reporters for maximum transparency, the Pentagon says.

It looks as though there's enough skepticism on Capitol Hill that the Pentagon will have to put the project through the formal processes in January, so Congress can actually vote on whether to spend $100 million of your money on a very special courthouse.


©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Add a Comment See all 44 Comments
by itgranny December 18, 2006 9:53 PM PST
why bother? these poor guys don't seem to be getting trials anyhow.
Reply to this comment
by onlyinva December 18, 2006 10:25 PM PST
I cannot believe the 100 million dollar pricetag on the proposed prison at Gitmo. It breaks my heart to think the money will be spent when so much is needed here in the United States, in Afganistan and Iraq. Why has the United States become solely responsible for the prisoners? Why is it only the United States responsibility to bring these prisoners to trial?
Reply to this comment
by natural302 December 19, 2006 1:20 AM PST
$100 million in tax dollars to build a courthouse.
I don't think so! how stupid is that.

Dee dee dee!
Reply to this comment
by jhindson1 December 19, 2006 2:45 AM PST
Figures - This building will cost 10 times more than the US Supreme Court did - and this is before the cost *overruns* come in. It will cost 200 million if anyone approves it. AND IT WILL NEVER BE USED

Reply to this comment
by December 19, 2006 6:19 AM PST
I have a friend that works in the Pentagon, his job is purchasing, procurement, and contracting, I'll have to call him on this one to see who is trying to line their pockets with these contracts
Reply to this comment
by gramto7 December 19, 2006 6:30 AM PST
ncolsens,
Please ask him to try to keep Haliburton's hands off the deal!
I just do not believe that this 'courthouse' will ever be used as such. Most likely, these detainees will never see a court of any sort. They will simply be held indefinitely, or possibly they will be sent to another country who will look into the matter and find there was no reason to hold them to start with.
Reply to this comment
by December 19, 2006 7:02 AM PST
We recently read the military needed equipment in Iraq, but there was not enough money to buy what they needed. Now, we have money to build a courthouse? We have a perfectly good courthouse here in Kansas, they can try 2 criminals at a time, and it won't cost money that the middle class American can't afford to lose. How about it?
Reply to this comment
by msdawhip December 19, 2006 7:19 AM PST
Why not come to Oklahoma City instead? We have an empty GM plant right next to a large Air Force base and we have already experienced terrorism first-hand from a U.S. citizen. The building also survived minimal damage from a killer tornado. Surely the Feds could learn something from a few episodes of a house-flip show and put walls up at the plant for less than a million bucks...
Reply to this comment
by tnichlsn December 19, 2006 7:25 AM PST
They might want to use that money building a new 'high-end' prison in the Hague, because that's where the real criminals of this war (Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld) will be tried and sentenced.
Reply to this comment
by houser123 December 19, 2006 8:30 AM PST
Can anyone spell special interest payback? How can someone in our government who has any conscious try to push through such an ill conceived and wasteful "Emergency Appropriation" bill in the middle of the night when no one is supposedly watching. I don't care if these guys are supposed to be the worst of the worst, that's even more reason to not give them the type of accomodations that someone is saying is needed. Geez, these people never cease to astonish me, the next thing they will ask for is to build a
$1,000,000,000 apparatus to execute these guys. Has this administration totally sold out to special interest?

Reply to this comment
by observantx December 19, 2006 9:08 AM PST
The courthouse would sleep up to 1,200 people, there would be a dining facility for 800, and a garage big enough for 100 vehicles.

What IS this? A courthouse or a spa?

They have a courthouse now. It should be sufficient to handle 60 prisoners. End of story. The court house needs to be big enough top handle the judges, the lawyers, the prisoner, a couple of file clerks, translators, a maintenance man, security and a couple of gofers. We are talking about 20 people or less.

The fact that someone tried to rush this through in the dead of night shows that our %u201Cconservatives%u201D are not conservative at all when it comes to spending our money. This $100 million is a nice fat backdoor payback for someone. We need to find out who the benefactor is and who the beneficiary is and run them all out of town.

Reply to this comment
by blondmadison December 19, 2006 9:11 AM PST
There are plenty of places to hold trials. $100 million? Soooo Not necessary and it doesn't take a brain surgeon to know this!

I am sick of these people taking the taxpayers money, lying and duping the tax payer---sick of it. This is beyond not having a conscience--to blatant, in the face B.S.

Will it really cost 100 Million or is some of that going in their pockets? It's hard to know due to constant continous lies.
Reply to this comment
by blondmadison December 19, 2006 9:15 AM PST
"The fact that someone tried to rush this through in the dead of night shows that our %u201Cconservatives%u201D are not conservative at all when it comes to spending our money. This $100 million is a nice fat backdoor payback for someone. We need to find out who the benefactor is and who the beneficiary is and run them all out of town."
Posted by ObservantX at 09:08 AM : Dec 19, 2006

Brilliant deduction Watson and well said.
Reply to this comment
by blondmadison December 19, 2006 9:20 AM PST
"I am confused why would a concentration camp need a courthouse??"
Posted by jerryomara at 03:54 AM : Dec 19, 2006

You are sooooooooooo right! Good blogs today!
Reply to this comment
by nadeau4201 December 19, 2006 9:53 AM PST
EVERYONE PLEASE LOOK UP
www.newswithview.com/Craig/roberts10.htm
It is were America is headed.
Reply to this comment
by meboard December 19, 2006 10:01 AM PST
Yet another perfect example of how this terrorism business has snowballed into a self serving means to keep and use unchecked power.
Reply to this comment
by grumpas December 19, 2006 10:28 AM PST
No doubt Bush has Halliburton in mind to build it! It will probably wind up being another rape of the American taxpayer by the time Bush's cronies get through f......it completely up! I hope I never hear another Republican say they are fiscally conservative! I am sick to death of the squander! These people should be in jail!
Reply to this comment
by randalds December 19, 2006 10:36 AM PST
The only possible use I could see for this would be as a secure place to hold the war crimes trials of George W. Bush and his Nazi-want-to-be cronies.
Reply to this comment
by randalds December 19, 2006 10:56 AM PST
Good point grumpas. You know the people who should be the most angry at this administration are the true republicans. They got had even worse then the democrats who opposed them. This administration has dragged the conservative republican name through the filth by running up huge deficits. Real republican values are supposed to be about small government, low taxes (for everyone, not just the rich), no foreign entanglements, a balanced budget and staying out of peoples private business. True Barry Goldwater republican conservatives have been screwed by Bush and Cheney the past 6 years and Barry is no doubt spinning in his grave that they dare call themselves "conservatives" of any kind.
Reply to this comment
by rharrin1 December 19, 2006 11:58 AM PST
The answer is NO, we need to build a reservoir to stop this MONEY WATERFALL.
Reply to this comment
by bluestardad December 19, 2006 1:01 PM PST
Is haliburton in on this? it sounds too good to be true.
Reply to this comment
by talkingham December 19, 2006 1:02 PM PST
Well, that's only $1.4-million per prisoner but of course that doesn't include court costs and the costs of prosecution. Heck, this was only exceeded on a per prisoner basis by what the repubs spent to track down Clinton's sexcapades. These repubs really have their act in gear and their priorities organizized.

Why not build a $200-million courthouse we don't want to be outdone by Iran or the Saudis.
Reply to this comment
by oleander8 December 19, 2006 1:33 PM PST
For 60 detainees??? What's wrong with a tent??
Reply to this comment
by hvac1000 December 19, 2006 1:33 PM PST
Just pitch a tent. That is all they need.
Reply to this comment
by randalds December 19, 2006 1:36 PM PST
Just pitch a tent. That is all they need.

Posted by hvac1000 at 01:33 PM : Dec 19, 2006

That works for the good folks of Marijo county in Arizona (Phoenix). They have a tent city for jail overflow. Of course the difference there is that the sheriff (even though he's pretty much an as*s on most things) is actually going to let his prisoners have a fair trial. Something the neocons have no intention of doing.
Reply to this comment
by randalds December 19, 2006 2:00 PM PST
Maricopa county.
Reply to this comment
by December 19, 2006 2:56 PM PST
My sources tell me that this so called court house is to be built adjacent to the existing one, and that because Castro's health is ailing him, and that there might be a need for celebration upon his death, this building would not be for court but for countless politicians boon-doggles. The contractor has yet to be named.
Reply to this comment
by antoniof123 December 19, 2006 3:32 PM PST
The repbulican's should never have used the word conservitive. When they did they allowed the religious nuts in because they said hey this would work for me too. Of course you know how the religious nuts work, it works for them as long as it is there way. Then add the nazi's to the party and you have a real religious mess. The longer I live the more I relize that the Republican's only want one thing and that is to be rich and in charge. Well, not for all the republican's that is because the religious nuts they are okay with being poor as long as you do as they tell you. What else is new they are the worst sort of people. You see them in every country take a look at Iraq, Iran, and any other place where most of the problems are happening. I do not know about you but I am sick and tired of them and I wish they would go and form their own country away from the rest of us.
Reply to this comment
by sandy994 December 19, 2006 4:11 PM PST
This is an outrageous waste of money. We have millions of people going to bed hungry in the United States every night. Because of this Republican administration, we have deficits we will never be able to pay off. Lets hope when the Dems become the majority in January they cut the funding for this debacle right away. It would be cheaper to give each detaniee a thousand dollars and a ticket home. We would never hear from them again.Where is the oversight? Its coming in January.
Reply to this comment
by firststate December 19, 2006 4:30 PM PST
No pentagon interview, saying nothing beats their habitual lies. Does this project mean that there are company directors who haven't been repaid many times their campaign contributions? Why should Stalag Guantanamo need a new courthouse? A room big enough for a desk and a person to use a rubber stamp should be big enough. The outcomes of the trials are known now. They have been convicted by bush and await rubber stamps on the paperwork to be signed by a judge, janitor or passerby. Der wannabe Fuhrer Bush has decided they're guilty. If not he's got to explain their apprehension & dentention.
Their trial rules:
Fair trial = defendant is convicted;
Good trial = conviction on all charges;
Excellent trial = conviction on all charges and advance guilty verdicts on some future charges.

The $100 million courthouse probably wouldn't be completed before the shrub is gone. The next holder of that office might be rational so that trials not completed will be conducted constitutionally, so that the courthouse wouldn't be needed. Then it could be renovated as a spa facility for pentagon brass. It'd only take about $150 million or so more as an emergency inclusion for either KBR or Parsons.
Reply to this comment
by tejasdemo December 19, 2006 5:37 PM PST
I agree. Build a tent and have Cheney, Dumbya, Limpbaugh and Sean Hannity watch over them.
Reply to this comment
by tejasdemo December 19, 2006 5:38 PM PST
What about trying them in the White House ? That way we could hold the impeachment trial for Bush at the same time.
Reply to this comment
by hangelle December 19, 2006 5:58 PM PST
What a massive waste of money! I want my tax dollars back.
Reply to this comment
by vancouverboo December 19, 2006 6:17 PM PST
Only the biggest and bestest for Our Show Trials.
Reply to this comment
by agnim December 19, 2006 7:33 PM PST
'Easy come, easy go' the tax dollars!

When the government can so easily steal citizens monies as tax dollar, why not squander it. There is always more to fleece.

Talk about 'tax and squander'! LOL

And the hypocrites do the most squandering of Americans' hard earned wealth!
Reply to this comment
by catt42701 December 19, 2006 8:23 PM PST
I think the time is past asking them to find somewhere else. It's time to tell them to find a courthouse and secure holding cells for the prisoners stateside. They would be more secure stateside in the first place and it would be more transparent and there would already be somewhere for everyone to sleep.I also think it is time to write your congress person to tell them that, quickly, before they start building. Shame on them.
Reply to this comment
by randalds December 19, 2006 9:41 PM PST
That's why they won't bring them here for the trial catt, because it'll be more transparent. The last thing this pathetic Bush government wants is to expose more of their lies, torturing and phony charges against people they have no evidence against. They swept these people up when they invaded Afghanistan by telling the drug lords they'd pay a bounty for every Taliban member they turn over to them. Of course every poppy farmer in the country used this as a chance to get rid of anyone who'd pis*sed them off, Taliban or not. Most of the people in Gitmo are there just because they happened to be in the wrong place (their home) at the wrong time.
Reply to this comment
by feelfree1 December 19, 2006 10:42 PM PST
I am in favor of this project. With the completion of this courtroom, we will then own a top-rate, full-service compound, with the capacity to detain, try, convict, and sentence the members of the illegitimate Bush-puppet regime.

An "illegal war of aggression" is regarded as an extremely serious offense in the eyes of U.S. ratified international law, of which, our public servants Constitutionally bound to uphold.

One relevant treaty is the Nuremberg Charter. Following WWII, the U.S. and others, used this treaty as a framework to try many top Nazi officials. The actions of these WWII Nazi, officials have many striking similarities to the heinous conduct of the Bush League and the rest of the neo-conservative/liberal movement.

Several of the leading WWII Nazi figures were sentenced to death by hanging. The globe will celebrate when our criminal "leadership" is finally brought to justice.

Guantanimo Bay would make an excellent location to process the Bush League global pirates through war-crimes tribunals. I'd even bet that Castro would extend the lease at no cost for this purpose.
Reply to this comment
by randalds December 19, 2006 11:27 PM PST
Couldn't have said it better myself FeelFree1. I 2nd that motion. The crimes of the Bush administration certainly do mirror the Nazi crimes in many ways and Cuba would be a wonderful place to hold a Nuremberg type trial. I would hope of course that we bring international judges in however as it'll give the trials much more credibility. Also I think a more fitting punishment then outright hanging would be to turn them over to the families of the Iraqi's they've murdered and let them punish them themselves in what ever way the choose.
Reply to this comment
by firststate December 20, 2006 12:53 AM PST
RandalDS, not bad yourself, let the Iraqi's handle it. I'll love to see his expression when he was dropped off in sadr city. He'd probably be willing to listen to his intellectual and moral superiors and really want his daddy to rescue him.

If you've ever read any of the stuff from the Nuremberg trials, the B-C team could have xeroxed the Nazi's statements as their strategy book. Hermann Goering said, "...the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." Sounds familiar, doesn't it? DI CKhas played Goering to the current war-criminal-in-chief.
Reply to this comment
by kata8 December 20, 2006 2:25 AM PST
Everyone must watch this video, concerning 9/11 and the evidence. The links are below.

http://911truthdvd.com/

Boston Air Traffic Controller Says 9/11 An Inside Job
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2006/141206trafficcontroller.htm
Reply to this comment
by randalds December 20, 2006 1:39 PM PST
I have a quote back to ya that Bush must believe in too.

"How lucky it is for rulers, that men don't think" Adolph Hitler.

Personally I see Cheney as Goering too (fat, full of threats and darkness and possibly addicted to drugs), with Rove as Goebbels (sawed off little liar that he is) and Rice as a combination of Magda Goebbels and Eva Braun(devoted to der fuehrer and servicing him sexually at his command). Besides I could just see Condi in thigh-high leather boots with a whip. "You've been a very naughty president Bushy! A very very naughty president indeed!"
Reply to this comment
by sevenveils December 20, 2006 4:32 PM PST
I support this decision for the new courthouse. I believe that besides those that are already captured, many more terrorists will pass through its halls in the years to come.
Reply to this comment
by randalds December 20, 2006 5:19 PM PST
I support this decision for the new courthouse. I believe that besides those that are already captured, many more terrorists will pass through its halls in the years to come.
Posted by Sevenveils at 04:32 PM : Dec 20, 2006

I agree. Terrorists like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and (no we haven't forgotten you you little as*shole) Wolfowitz. It'll serve as a nice secure place to bring in judges from the Hague to conduct trials and then to ship the above named off to be dropped into Sadr City, after they're convicted of course.
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