03/07/07

Opposition to media being kept out of hearings at Guantanamo


By PETE YOST
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Legal experts criticized the Bush administration Wednesday for barring the news media from military hearings that begin this week for 14 terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay.

The detainees include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

"It's a mistake to close the entirety of the hearing," said First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams. "Closing the courtroom to scrutiny sends a troubling signal to much of the world about the fairness of our process."

"The whole world is watching," said Scott Silliman, who was an Air Force lawyer for 25 years. "If Congress enacts what it claims to be a fair system for prosecuting these people, why is there a need to shield it from the press?"

The Pentagon said Tuesday that reporters will be kept out of the hearings, which begin Friday.

In a letter to top Pentagon officials, The Associated Press said the decision to close the proceedings "lock, stock and barrel" violates the Defense Department's own regulations.

The AP said some portions of the tribunals might need to be held in secret, but it would be "an unconstitutional mistake to close the proceedings in their entirety."

The AP's letter was delivered to Pentagon General Counsel William Haynes and Alan Liotta, acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs.

Explaining the Pentagon's position, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said "a good deal of the discussion associated with their evaluation is going to be classified information, that's the reason" for keeping out the press.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Pentagon would release the name of each detainee with edited hearing transcripts.

Whitman said he could not say which of the 14 would go first or how long the process would take. Nothing about the hearings will be made public until the government releases the partial transcripts.

News coverage of previous combatant status review tribunals -- there were more than 550 between July 2004 and March 2005 -- was not prohibited, although there were restrictions on some information.

The hearings are meant to determine whether a prisoner is an "enemy combatant." If the prisoner is deemed to be an enemy combatant, then President Bush can designate him as eligible for a military trial, the first of which are expected to begin this summer.

The hearings for the 14 formerly held in CIA prisons will be closed to the news media in order to protect national security interests that could be compromised by statements made by the detainees, the Pentagon said.

However, what the Pentagon is really concerned about is that "these 14 will open their mouths and say what was done to them," said Scott Horton, chair of the international law committee of the New York City Bar Association. "They were tortured and mistreated, and that fact is classified secret, which just shows you the perversity in which this whole process is traveling."

At the hearings, the legal burden is on the detainee to demonstrate he is not an unlawful combatant, the detainee does not have an attorney present, and classified evidence the U.S. military uses against the detainees is not revealed to them.

"There are already so many questions about the integrity of the CSRT process, and excluding the press doesn't help very much," said national security law expert Steve Vladeck at the University of Miami.