[NYTr] Guantanamo Whistleblowers: Abraham Is Not the First

[nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com]

CounterPunch - Jul 2, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington07022007.html

The Guantánamo Whistleblowers

Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham is not the First Insider 
to Condemn the Kangaroo Tribunals

By ANDY WORTHINGTON

Jostling for media space in the last week--and largely losing out to
spurious claims that Guantánamo is about to close--is the story of Lt.
Col. Stephen Abraham, an army intelligence officer with 26 years'
experience, who has bravely spoken out against the Guantánamo regime.
In an affidavit filed with an Appeal Court petition on behalf of
Kuwaiti detainee Fawzi al-Odah, Abraham delivered a damning verdict on
the legitimacy of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which ran from
July 2004 to March 2005, and were set up to determine whether the
Guantánamo detainees had been correctly designated as "enemy
combatants."

Currently an army reservist and an attorney in California, Abraham
worked at Guantánamo, from 11 September 2004 to 9 March 2005, in the
Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy
Combatants (OARDEC) as "an agency liaison, responsible for coordinating
with government agencies, including certain Department of Defense (DoD)
and non-DoD organizations, to gather or validate information relating
to detainees for use in CSRTs." He also served as a member of a CSRT,
and, as he described it, "had the opportunity to observe and
participate in the operation of the CSRT process," and he concluded
from his experience that the gathering of materials for use in the
tribunals was severely flawed, and that the whole system was geared
towards rubber-stamping the detainees' prior designation as "enemy
combatants."

Specifically, Abraham complained that the OARDEC personnel--mostly from
the military reserves--who were responsible for compiling the
information used in the "Unclassified Summary of Evidence" against each
detainee were woefully inexperienced, and that few of whom "had any
experience or training in the legal or intelligence fields." He also
complained that the tribunals' Recorders were similarly inexperienced,
and were "typically relatively junior officers with little training or
experience in matters relating to the collection, processing,
analyzing, and/or dissemination of intelligence material," and that
those who actually aggregated the information--the case writers--"in
most instances" had "the same limited degree of knowledge and
experience relating to the intelligence community and intelligence
products." Given the shortcomings of the majority of the personnel
involved, Abraham also noted that, although "large amounts of
information" were received, the workers "often had no context for
determining whether the information was relevant," and frequently
discarded information because it was "considered to be ambiguous,
confusing or poorly written," as well as "reject[ing] some information
arbitrarily while accepting other information without any articulable
rationale."

Abraham expressed a similar disdain for the quality of the information
produced by the various government agencies, which the largely
unqualified workers were required to collate and aggregate. This
information, he wrote, frequently consisted of intelligence "of a
generalized nature--often outdated, often 'generic,' rarely
specifically relating to the individual subjects of the CSRTs or to the
circumstances related to those individuals' status," and additional
information, contained within the Detainee Information Management
System and other databases, was equally "deficient," typically
"excluding information that was characterized as highly sensitive law
enforcement information, highly classified information, or information
not voluntarily released by the originating agency." Neither the case
writers nor the Recorders, Abraham asserted, had "access to numerous
information sources generally available within the intelligence
community."

Further proof that the gathering of information for the tribunals was
not geared towards justice and transparency came when, as "one of only
a few intelligence-trained and suitably cleared officers," Abraham was
tasked with investigating aspects of the "evidence," to confirm "in a
statement to be relied upon by the CSRT board members that the
organizations did not possess 'exculpatory information' relating to the
subject of the CSRT." When he approached the various agencies involved,
however, he discovered that he was only allowed "limited access to
information, typically prescreened and filtered," was not permitted to
request additional searches for information, and was rebuffed when he
asked for written statements confirming that there was no exculpatory
information. His experience confirmed that the agencies were largely
providing or withholding information at their own discretion, without
any process of outside scrutiny being available.

His bitterest experience, however, occurred when he was chosen--along
with an Air Force colonel and an Air Force major--to take part in a
CSRT. After reviewing the evidence, all three men "found the
information presented to lack substance," noting that supposedly
specific factual statements "lacked even the most fundamental earmarks
of objectively credible evidence," that statements made by alleged
witnesses "lacked detail," and that generalized statements were
presented "in indirect and passive forms without stating the source of
the information or providing a basis for establishing the reliability
or the credibility of the source." In addition, Abraham wrote that
statements by the interrogators, which were presented to the panel,
"offered inferences" from which they were "expected to draw
conclusions" that the detainee was an "enemy combatant," but that when
they subjected these statements to even the most cursory of questions,
the Recorder's only response was, "We'll have to get back to you."

Based on the "paucity and weakness of the information provided both
during and after the CSRT hearing," Abraham and his colleagues duly
determined that there was "no factual basis" for concluding that the
detainee was an "enemy combatant," but that was not the end of the
story. The director and deputy director of OARDEC "immediately
questioned the validity" of the decision, ordering the tribunal members
to prepare statements containing the specific questions they had raised
to enable the Recorder to provide "further responses," and reopening
the hearing to allow the Recorder to "present further argument."
Refusing to bow to the pressure, Abraham and his colleagues failed to
change their determination, and as a result, as he declared in a pithy
conclusion to the affidavit, "I was not assigned to another CSRT
panel." He pointed out, however, that OARDEC's response to the decision
was "consistent with the few other instances" when the rigged system
had been bucked. In meetings attended by Abraham that followed the
sporadic decisions that detainees were not "enemy combatants"--there
were only 38 in total, out of 558 CSRTs--he wrote that the focus of
inquiry was always "what went wrong."

Speaking after the affidavit was first publicized, Abraham said that he
had first raised his concerns about the tribunals during his time at
Guantánamo, but had decided to submit the affidavit because "the issues
were not adequately addressed." He told the Associated Press, "I
pointed out nothing less than facts, facts that can and should be
fixed," adding that he had a responsibility to point out that officers
"did not have the proper tools" to determine whether a detainee was in
fact an "enemy combatant," and explaining, "I take very seriously my
responsibility, my duties as a citizen." David Cynamon, one of
al-Odah's lawyers--who was put in contact with Abraham by his sister,
after she attended a public lecture on Guantánamo given by Cynamon and
his colleagues--described Abraham's affidavit as "prov[ing] what we all
suspected, which is that the CSRTs were a complete sham," while adding
that he feared that his courage was "probably an assurance of career
suicide." Cynamon's colleague, Matthew J. MacLean, who pointed out that
Abraham was the first CSRT member who has been identified, let alone
been willing to criticize the tribunals in the public record, declared,
"It wouldn't be quite right to say this is the most important piece of
evidence that has come out of the CSRT process, because this is the
only piece of evidence ever to come out of the CSRT process. It's our
only view into the CSRT."

In fact, MacLean's comments were not entirely accurate. Whilst it's
certainly true that Abraham was the first ex-tribunal member to
criticize the CSRT process in public, his is not the first reported
example of dissent amongst tribunal members. In September 2006, in a
Boston Globe article, Detentions over charity ties questioned , Farah
Stockman reported on the case of Adel Hassan Hamad, a Sudanese hospital
administrator, who was captured in May 2002 in Pakistan--where he had
been working for 17 years--and sold to the American forces. In his
CSRT, Hamad was judged to be an "enemy combatant" because of exactly
the kind of "generic" allegations described by Lt. Col. Abraham. The
Saudi charity he worked for, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, was
described as an organization that "supports terrorist ideals and
causes," even though it has never appeared on a terrorism watchlist
(despite being investigated by the US Senate), and was one of the
favored projects of the late Saudi King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz, and
another organization that he had worked for previously, the
Kuwait-based Lajanat Dawa Islamiya (which also does not feature on any
US terrorism watchlist), was described as "one of the most active"
Islamic NGOs "providing logistical and financial support" to mujahideen
operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which "may be" associated with
Osama bin Laden.

An exasperated Hamad refuted all the allegations, at one point telling
his tribunal, "arresting employees like myself [who] is not capable of
supporting terrorists financially, is this justice? I am an employee
who works for a living and I have no connection to the [organization's]
political views or its financial resources, so why do you punish me for
a crime I did not commit. Why don't you arrest the charities'
presidents or the people who support [them] financially instead of
arresting a simple employee with no informational value?" Predictably,
his tribunal judged that he had been correctly designated an "enemy
combatant," but although his pleas appeared to have been ignored,
Stockman, who was allowed to examine the CSRT documentation, noted that
one of the tribunal members--an unidentified army major, whose name was
redacted--had issued a dissenting opinion. Taking into account the fact
that neither WAMY nor LDI appears on the State Department's list of
terrorist organizations, he argued that, "even assuming all the
allegations... are accurate, the detainee does not meet the definition
of enemy combatant." He added, "These NGOs presumably have numerous
employees and volunteer workers who have been working in legitimate
humanitarian roles. The mere fact that some elements of these NGOs
provide support to "terrorist ideals and causes" is insufficient to
declare one of the employees an enemy combatant." Stockman noted,
however, that the major was overruled by his colleagues, one of
whom--in a single line that discredits the whole tribunal process as
effectively as Lt. Col. Abraham's affidavit--wrote that the case
"passed the 'low evidentiary hurdle' set up by the rules of the
hearings."

In two other cases, the dissenting officer was not a tribunal member,
but the detainees' Personal Representative. In a majority of the CSRTs,
the Personal Representative fulfilled his intended function as a pale
shadow of a legitimate defense counsel, failing to "participate in any
meaningful way," as Lt. Col. Abraham noted of the Personal
Representative in his tribunal. In February 2006, however, in two
articles for the National Journal, Guantánamo's Grip and Empty
Evidence , Corine Hegland reported the story of an unidentified
lieutenant colonel in the army (whose name was also redacted), who
fought a brave, if unsuccessful battle for two of his detainees. Along
the way, however, he demolished the tribunals' legitimacy even more
comprehensively than either Lt. Col. Abraham or Adel Hamad's dissenting
major.

The first case--that of Farouq Saif, a young Yemeni who went to
Afghanistan to teach the Koran--is particularly noteworthy because Saif
was judged as an "enemy combatant" because of two false allegations.
The first--that he was a bodyguard of Osama bin Laden--was directed at
30 detainees in total, and was made under duress, and later retracted,
by Mohammed al-Qahtani. One of several purported "20th hijackers" for
the 9/11 attacks, al-Qahtani made the allegations during a seven-week
period, from November 2002 to January 2003, when he was subjected to
Pentagon-approved "extreme interrogation techniques" (otherwise known
as torture). The second allegation--that Saif had been seen at Osama
bin Laden's private airport in Kandahar, where he was "wearing
camouflage and carrying an AK-47"--proved so intolerable to his
Personal Representative that he submitted a written protest, in which
he stated that the government's sole evidence that Saif had been at bin
Laden's airport was the statement of another prisoner, who, according
to an FBI memo that he presented to the tribunal, was a notorious liar.
According to the FBI, he "had lied, not only about Farouq, but about
other Yemeni detainees as well. The other detainee claimed he had seen
the Yemenis at times and in places where they simply could not have
been." The Personal Representative wrote, "I do feel with some
certainty that [the accuser] has lied about other detainees to receive
preferable treatment and to cause them problems while in custody. Had
the tribunal taken this evidence out as unreliable, then the position
we have taken is that a teacher of the Koran (to the Taliban's
children) is an enemy combatant (partially because he slept under a
Taliban roof)."

The "notorious liar" actually made false allegations against 60
prisoners in total, as was revealed after the tribunal of Mohammed
al-Tumani. A young Syrian economic migrant, who had traveled to
Afghanistan with other family members to join his father in Kabul,
where he was working as a cook, al-Tumani and his father were captured
in Pakistan after fleeing the chaos of post-invasion Afghanistan. In
his tribunal, he denied an allegation that he had attended the
al-Farouq training camp with such vigor that his Personal
Representative decided to investigate the matter further. When he
looked at the classified evidence, however, he found that only one
man--the same detainee mentioned above--claimed to have seen him at
al-Farouq, and had identified him as being there three months before he
arrived in Afghanistan. As Corine Hegland described it, "The curious US
officer pulled the classified file of the accuser, saw that he had
accused 60 men, and, suddenly skeptical, pulled the files of every
detainee the accuser had placed at the one training camp. None of the
men had been in Afghanistan at the time the accuser said he saw them at
the camp."

The identity of the other 58 detainees falsely accused by the
"notorious liar" are unknown, as the dissenting officer involved in
unveiling this monstrous injustice--perhaps unwilling to risk "career
suicide"--has not come forward to elaborate, but in my forthcoming
book, The Guantánamo Files, I report on numerous other examples of
patently false allegations masquerading as "evidence," which were
ignored by compliant tribunal members accepting the "low evidentiary
hurdle" of the process. While I wait to see if Lt. Col. Abraham's
principled stand will encourage other insiders to speak out, it's worth
pointing out that Adel Hamad, Farouq Saif and Mohammed al-Tumani remain
in Guantánamo. Hamad has finally been judged to be "No Longer an Enemy
Combatant" and is awaiting release, but Saif and al-Tumani are still
damned by the false confessions of a "notorious liar."

[Andy Worthington (http://www.andyworthington.co.uk) is a British
historian, and the author of 'The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the
774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison' (to be published by Pluto
Press in October 2007). He can be reached at:
andy at andyworthington.co.uk ]