Military Confirms Secret Guantanamo Jail

Segregated, Top-Secret Detention "Camp 7" Houses 15 Most Valuable Detainees

(AP)  Somewhere amid the cactus-studded hills on this sprawling Navy base, separate from the cells where hundreds of men suspected of links to al Qaeda and the Taliban have been locked up for years, is a place even more closely guarded - a jailhouse so protected that its very location is top secret.

For the first time, the top commander of detention operations at Guantanamo has confirmed the existence of the mysterious Camp 7. In an interview with The Associated Press, Rear Adm. Mark Buzby also provided a few details about the maximum-security lockup.

Guantanamo commanders said Camp 7 is for key alleged al Qaeda members, who must be kept apart from other prisoners to prevent them from retaliating against long-term detainees who have talked to interrogators. They also want the location kept secret for fear of terrorist attack.

Many operations have been classified since the detention center opened in January 2002 in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. More than four years passed before the military released even the names of detainees held on this 45-square-mile base in southeast Cuba - and it did so only after the AP filed a Freedom of Information Act request.

Detainees have been held in Camp Echo and Camps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Journalists cleared by the military have been allowed to tour some of these lockups, where 260 men are held, but aren't allowed to speak to detainees. Some lawmakers and other VIPs have passed through, and the International Red Cross has access, but doesn't divulge details of visits with prisoners.

Camp 7, where 15 "high-value detainees" are held, is so secret that its very existence was not publicly known until it was mentioned in December by attorneys for Majid Khan, a former Baltimore resident who allegedly plotted to bomb gas stations in the United States. Previously, many observers believed the 15 were being held in Camps 5 or 6, which are maximum-security facilities.

"Under the gag order ... we are prohibited from saying anything more about their camp," lawyer Gitanjali Gutierrez, who met with Khan in October, said Tuesday. Most of the lawyers' notes and memos have been stamped "top secret" by the government.

Buzby told the AP he is sharply limiting to a "very few" the number of people who know Camp 7's whereabouts.

He described it as a maximum security facility that was already built when President Bush announced in September 2006 that 14 high-value terrorism suspects had been transferred from CIA secret detention facilities to Guantanamo. An additional detainee, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, arrived last April.

"They went straight into that facility," Buzby said.

Buzby, who heads all military detention operations on Guantanamo, said he controls Camp 7, but would not discuss whether the CIA might still be talking with the high-value detainees.

Paul Rester, the military's chief interrogator at Guantanamo, told AP he has been interviewing one of the Camp 7 detainees and that others may be interrogated, depending on intelligence needs.

But other key military commanders on the base have been told to leave Camp 7 to others.

"Not everybody, even within the Joint Task Force, has access or even knowledge of where Camp 7 is," said Army Col. Bruce Vargo. As commander of the military's Joint Detention Group at Guantanamo, Vargo is responsible for the camps holding 260 detainees. But not for Camp 7.

Red Cross representatives have visited Camp 7 and all the other detention facilities at Guantanamo, confirmed Geoff Loane, head of the humanitarian organization's delegation in Washington. He declined to give details.

Buzby said the 15 are kept isolated in part to protect other prisoners. "Detainees have told us a lot of things about this group of people, and if there were potential for retribution it would be a very, very dangerous situation," he said.

For his part, Vargo said he is preoccupied by the possibility of an al Qaeda attack on Guantanamo.

"Although we are trying to be open, security is paramount," he said. "I mean, if you can fly a plane into the towers, you can attack Guantanamo if that's what you choose to do. It's something I think about on a day-to-day basis."

Vargo declined to discuss whether the U.S. has received information that al Qaeda may be planning such an attack. "We have intelligence reports, but I don't want to release what we know for obvious reasons," he said.

While some military personnel have reportedly grumbled about being kept out of the loop, others don't mind.

Army Col. Larry James, whose team of psychologists assists interrogators, said he does not want to know where Camp 7 is.

"I learned a long, long time ago, if I'm going to be successful in the intel community, I'm meticulously - in a very, very dedicated way - going to stay in my lane," he said. "So if I don't have a specific need to know about something, I don't want to know about it. I don't ask about it."

[prinzowhales]

The Washington Regime--sans declaration--went to war with Afghanistan...The Taliban ran the place...or at least 90% of it...Their principles treated with the Taliban for oil pipeline routes...

If there is anyone who did not belong in Afghanistan...it was the Americans...The Taliban even warned Washington that something was coming prior to 9-11...

The Americans once faced the same obstacles when they fought a ''George'' and his mercenaries, taxers and murderers for their freedom. We cast off a king!! God''s annointed!! We flew in the face of an Age! We might find the ways and mores of Afghanistan strange...but it is not for us to determine how they will live--and certainly not for the sake of drug lords and opium production and pipeline routes.

[prinzowhales]

Here is what the Palestinians face at the hands of IDF terrorists:

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3504407,00.html

People have a natural right...a God-given right to resist and defy tyranny. They have a right--not given by any state, or monarch, pope or potentate-- to resist...they have a right to defend their persons...their property...their other God-given rights...the freedom to associate, to speak, to write, to think...to believe...

Afghanistan was not even listed as a state that harboured terrorists...the Taliban were given $43 million for their efforts against the Opium Trade a few months before 9-11...The Afghans have the right to self-determination...as do the Iraqis...they have a right to resist any occupying power...

...and for all the crimes and lies of the Washington Regime we have no trials...no impeachments...no incarcerations...instead some sad little ''kafir'' in a horrid pen in a horrid place is to be given a show trial...but for the ''pantsing'' of the Regime through the accidental release of evidence, this monstrous miscarriage of justice and reason would go on to its inevitable and heinous conclusion.

[taotxzen]

Employers are scared of hiring veterans because of what the war has done to them.

Strained by war, recently discharged veterans are having a harder time finding civilian jobs and are more likely to earn lower wages for years, partly because of employer concerns about their mental health and overall skills, a government study says.

The Department of Veterans Affairs report, obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, points to continuing problems with the Bush administration''s efforts to help 4.4 million people who have been discharged from active duty since 1990.

The 2007 study by the consulting firm Abt Associates Inc. found that 18 percent of the veterans who sought jobs within one to three years of discharge were unemployed, while one out of four who did find jobs earned less than $21,840 a year. Many had taken advantage of government programs such as the GI Bill to boost job prospects, but there was little evidence that education benefits yielded higher pay or better advancement.

The report blamed the poor prospects partly on inadequate job networks and lack of mentors after extended periods in war. It said employers often had misplaced stereotypes about veterans'' fitness for employment, such as concerns they did not possess adequate technological skills, or were too rigid, lacked education or were at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder.

[kesac4650]

So, we have a more secure area for the baddest guys. Big deal.
Guantanamo is the most humanely ran POW camp in the history of the world.

[juwboy]

In the UK, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Anglican/Episcopalian church, has recommended that Moslems should be given the right to have cases heard under Sharia law.

Is this cassocked cretin out of his mind?

A Brit who steals from a Moslem-owned store will have his right hand chopped off!

[otdky07]

The Japanese also used the Condoleezza Rice doctrine of preemptive military action (at Pearl Harbor) to protect their nation from threats.

At Hiroshima and Nagasaki they haplessly illustrated the flaws in her naive ivory tower theories.

Posted by Iceman_1960 at 06:11 PM : Feb 07, 2008

It''''''''s a shame the moron in the White House never studied history, instead of spending his college years drunk and high on coke.


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Posted by SgtRDS

I didnt realize just how stupid you two really are.


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Posted by poopusbuttus at 02:12 AM : Feb 08, 2008
+ report abuse

I don''t know why, but I can''t stop laughing at this last comment.

[poopusbuttus]

The Japanese also used the Condoleezza Rice doctrine of preemptive military action (at Pearl Harbor) to protect their nation from threats.

At Hiroshima and Nagasaki they haplessly illustrated the flaws in her naive ivory tower theories.

Posted by Iceman_1960 at 06:11 PM : Feb 07, 2008

It''''s a shame the moron in the White House never studied history, instead of spending his college years drunk and high on coke.


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Posted by SgtRDS

I didnt realize just how stupid you two really are.

[marcosis78]

Bush and his cronies have done far worse to us than any Clinton, past or present.

[sharncedar]

Just think, soon all of this state terror apparatus will be in the hands of Hillary. She is utterly ruthless, and without human empathy, and driven only by greed and hate.

do you guys remember "hate speech" and the Clintons crack down on free speech? The Clintons crakc down on religious rights? Remember how they torched those people at Waco and then bulldozed away the evidence?

Bush created new tools of evil. Hillary will teach us to fear them.

All she has to do is make a proclamation defining something, let''s say domestic violence, as "terrorism" and the entire extra-legal mechanism becomes active. Habeus corpus is gone, right to see a lawyer gone, all of it.

hillary and her pack of wolves are licking their lips - the meal is us.

[feelfree1]

Well we know that the Bush regime tortures people, sometimes to death. We know that they hold children in secret prisons, for years, never charging them with a crime.

We know that 935 lies were used by the Regime to lie the country into illegal war that has cost the lives of some 1 million+ people.

We know that the Regime has a contempt for the rule of law and basic decency, and that he taps the ignorance of hatred of religious zealots to cheer on his atrocities. We have seen his secret police with privatized terrorist-for-rent organizations like Blackwater.

We know that the Regime has a dutiful and deadly propaganda factory, disguised as a free press.

What was it that we were supposed to "never forget" again?

What the Bush regime is doing better than the WWII Nazis...because why? Because most of his most heinously treated victims are not white?

[denn034]

The words "keep secret for fear of a terrorist attack" says it all.

[rowdytexan2]

tucanofulano, that was a junior Canadian bureaucrat and the Country of Canada apologized and removed it.


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Posted by donbl1 at 08:04 PM : Feb 07, 2008

You mean after the Neocons called the Canadian diplomats and threatened hari kari on them, rofl

[tucano2]

We understand Canada, among other civilized countries, has added the USA as a renegade nation that routinely uses torture on political prisoners (duh, just like Stalinist USSR).

[sgtrds]

The Japanese also used the Condoleezza Rice doctrine of preemptive military action (at Pearl Harbor) to protect their nation from threats.

At Hiroshima and Nagasaki they haplessly illustrated the flaws in her naive ivory tower theories.

Posted by Iceman_1960 at 06:11 PM : Feb 07, 2008

It''s a shame the moron in the White House never studied history, instead of spending his college years drunk and high on coke.

[iceman_1960]

"The Japanese in WWII used torture on our prisoners and we did not, but we did defeat them and they were a much much much bigger threat!"
- Posted by SgtRDS at 01:44 PM : Feb 07, 2008

The Japanese also used the Condoleezza Rice doctrine of preemptive military action (at Pearl Harbor) to protect their nation from threats.

At Hiroshima and Nagasaki they haplessly illustrated the flaws in her naive ivory tower theories.

[sgtrds]

''''We do not torture'''' - Bu$h

Posted by Inventagod at 04:17 PM : Feb 07, 2008


It''s a shame that it''s not Bush that were do torture.

[inventagod]

''We do not torture'' - Bu$h

[david1737]

JEGibbons

You''re out of touch with reality.

You claim that this is a case of:

"CBS inflammatory speculative reporting. An effort to instigate or shore up conclusions about GITMO that are simply NOT TRUE."


If this is the case then explain why FOX News is running the same story?

Take you meds you paranoid SOB!

[jegibbons]

You paranoid Bush Schizos really think everything is a CONSPIRACY. You need to wake up, Really?. There was no shooter on the grassy knoll. I was there.

[jegibbons]

All this balley-Hoo is a lot of wind with no rain. Watch this story die.
Interesting you all are moe interested in defending CBS rather than the importance ofthis story which is no story at all. Watch this story die.