Fresh Details Emerge on Harsh Methods at Guantánamo
By NEIL A. LEWIS

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/01/national/01gitmo.html?pagewanted=1&oref=login

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 - Sometime after Mohamed
al-Kahtani was imprisoned at Guantánamo around the
beginning of 2003, military officials believed they
had a prize on their hands - someone who was perhaps
intended to have been a hijacker in the Sept. 11 plot.

But his interrogation was not yielding much, so they
decided in the middle of 2003 to try a new tactic. Mr.
Kahtani, a Saudi, was given a tranquilizer, put in
sensory deprivation garb with blackened goggles, and
hustled aboard a plane that was supposedly taking him
to the Middle East.

After hours in the air, the plane landed back at the
United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba,
where he was not returned to the regular prison
compound but put in an isolation cell in the base's
brig. There, he was subjected to harsh interrogation
procedures that he was encouraged to believe were
being conducted by Egyptian national security
operatives.

The account of Mr. Kahtani's treatment given to The
New York Times recently by military intelligence
officials and interrogators is the latest of several
developments that have severely damaged the military's
longstanding public version of how the detention and
interrogation center at Guantánamo operated.

Interviews with former intelligence officers and
interrogators provided new details and confirmed
earlier accounts of inmates being shackled for hours
and left to soil themselves while exposed to blaring
music or the insistent meowing of a cat-food
commercial. In addition, some may have been forcibly
given enemas as punishment.

While all the detainees were threatened with harsh
tactics if they did not cooperate, about one in six
were eventually subjected to those procedures, one
former interrogator estimated. The interrogator said
that when new interrogators arrived they were told
they had great flexibility in extracting information
from detainees because the Geneva Conventions did not
apply at the base.

Military officials have gone to great lengths to
portray Guantánamo as a largely humane facility for
several hundred prisoners, where the harshest
sanctioned punishments consisted of isolation or
taking away items like blankets, toothpaste, dessert
or reading material. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who
was the commander of the Guantánamo operation from
November 2002 to March 2004, regularly told visiting
members of Congress and journalists that the approach
was designed to build trust between the detainee and
his questioner.

"We are detaining these enemy combatants in a humane
manner," General Miller told reporters in March 2004.
"Should our men or women be held in similar
circumstances, I would hope they would be treated in
this manner."

His successor, Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, told reporters
in November that he was "satisfied that the detainees
here have not been abused, they've not been
mistreated, they've not been tortured in any way."

Journalists who were permitted to view an interview
session from behind a glass wall during General Hood's
tenure were shown an interrogator and detainee sharing
a milkshake and fries from the base's McDonald's and
appearing to chat amiably. It became apparent to
reporters comparing notes in August, however, that the
tableau of the interrogator and prisoner sharing a
McDonald's meal was presented to at least three sets
of journalists.

In addition to the account of Mr. Kahtani's treatment,
the new interviews provide details and confirm some of
the accounts in other recent disclosures about
procedures at Guantánamo: the November report in which
the International Committee of the Red Cross
complained privately last summer to the United States
government that the procedures at Guantánamo were
"tantamount to torture"; memorandums from F.B.I.
officials, most of which were released in December as
part of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil
Liberties Union; and another set of interviews with
The Times in October in which other former Guantánamo
officials described coercive and abusive techniques
regularly employed there.

The information from the various sources frequently
matched, providing corroboration of the use of
specific procedures, which included prolonged sleep
deprivation and shackling prisoners in uncomfortable
positions for many hours. One F.B.I. agent wrote his
superiors that he saw such restraining techniques
several times. In the most gruesome of the bureau
memorandums, he recounted observing a detainee who had
been shackled overnight in a hot cell, soiled himself
and pulled out tufts of hair in misery.

Military officials who participated in the practices
said in October that prisoners had been tormented by
being chained to a low chair for hours with bright
flashing lights in their eyes and audio tapes played
loudly next to their ears, including songs by Lil' Kim
and Rage Against the Machine and rap performances by
Eminem.

In a recent interview, another former official added
new details, saying that many interrogators used a
different audio tape on prisoners, a mix of babies
crying and the television commercial for Meow Mix in
which the jingle consists of repetition of the word
"meow."

The people who spoke about what they saw or whose
duties made them aware of what was occurring said they
had different reasons for granting interviews. Some
said they objected to the methods, others said they
objected to what they regarded as a chaotic and badly
run system, while others offered no reason. They all
declined to be identified by name, some saying they
feared retaliation.

Lt. Col. Leon H. Sumpter, the spokesman for the
military command at Guantánamo, said in a statement
that officials would not comment on accusations about
the treatment of any individual detainee including Mr.
Kahtani, who was captured in Afghanistan.

"We do not discuss specific interrogation techniques
nor do we identify any specific detainee," Colonel
Sumpter said in a statement. "All detainees are
safeguarded and are assured food, drink, clothing,
shelter, health care and basic rights, all in
accordance with the Geneva Convention. The U.S. does
not permit, tolerate or condone torture by any of its
personnel or employees."

Colonel Sumpter said that the interrogation regimen at
Guantánamo had produced useful intelligence "based on
trust and not out of fear or duress."

The intelligence officials who spoke with The Times
said that the interrogation personnel and their
assigned prisoners were divided into five groups. Four
were geographically based - one for Saudi Arabia, one
for the Gulf States, another for Pakistan and
Afghanistan and the last for Asia, Europe and the
Americas. The fifth, termed "special projects,"
included Mr. Kahtani.

There was a high confidence among military
intelligence officials that Mr. Kahtani was a
dangerous operative of Al Qaeda. The federal
commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks
concluded in its June report that he was denied entry
into the United States on Aug. 4, 2001, at the Orlando
airport, the same day that Mohamed Atta, the plot's
ringleader, was there and most likely intended to meet
him.

The officials who spoke about the detainees' treatment
said, however, that very few of the other prisoners
had much value. "So much of the questioning was about
Afghanistan," one intelligence official said. "Most of
it was dated. Information about facilitators and
recruiters was useful only in style, not in facts."

The clearest indication that senior commanders at
Guantánamo were aware of and supported what was
occurring may be in some F.B.I. memorandums. One,
dated May 10, 2003, and written by an unidentified
agent, describes a sharp exchange between bureau
officials and General Miller and Maj. Gen. Michael
Dunlavey, who was in charge of the intelligence
operations at Guantánamo then.

"Both sides agreed that the bureau has its way of
doing things and the D.O.D. has their marching orders
from SecDef," the memorandum said, using abbreviations
for the Department of Defense and the secretary of
defense. "Although the two techniques differed
drastically, both generals believed they had a job to
do."

The frustration caused by Mr. Kahtani's refusal to
cooperate set off a high-level review of allowable
interrogation techniques, according to documents
released earlier by the Pentagon. After officials at
Guantánamo asked for more leeway in dealing with Mr.
Kahtani, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in
December 2002 approved a list of 16 techniques for use
there in addition to the 17 methods in the Army Field
Manual. He suspended those approvals the next month
after some Navy lawyers complained that they were
excessive and possibly illegal. But after a review,
Mr. Rumsfeld issued a final policy in April 2003,
approving 24 techniques, some of which needed his
permission to be used.

None of the approved techniques, however, covered some
of what people have now said occurred. Mr. Kahtani
was, for example, forcibly given an enema, officials
said, which was used because it was uncomfortable and
degrading.

Pentagon spokesmen said the procedure was medically
necessary because Mr. Kahtani was dehydrated after an
especially difficult interrogation session. Another
official, told of the use of the enema, said, however,
"I bet they said he was dehydrated," adding that that
was the justification whenever an enema was used as a
coercive technique, as it had been on several
detainees.

In order to carry on the charade that he was not at
Guantánamo, the military arranged it so Mr. Kahtani
was not visited by the Red Cross on a few of its
regular visits, creating a window of several months,
said a person who dealt with him at Guantánamo.
Officials at the Washington office of the Red Cross,
which makes periodic visits to each of the Guantánamo
detainees, said they would not discuss their meetings
with any prisoners as part of their agreement with the
United States government.

Two interrogators confirmed several of the complaints
in the Red Cross report, including the notion that
interrogators were able to obtain prisoners' medical
records easily, which human rights groups say could
discourage inmates from seeking medical care. The
interrogators also discussed another factor in the Red
Cross report, the use of a Behavioral Science
Consultation Team, known as Biscuit, comprising a
psychologist or psychiatrist and psychiatric workers.
The team was used to suggest ways to make prisoners
more cooperative in interrogations.

"They were supposed to help us break them down," one
said.

The same former interrogator said the Red Cross report
was correct in asserting that some female
interrogators used sexual taunts to harass the
detainees.

It is unclear whether the Justice Department's new,
broader definition of torture, posted on the
department's Web site late Thursday, would have
affected operations at Guantánamo.

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