[Ppnews] C.I.A. Detainees Sent to Guantánamo

[Political Prisoner News]

September 6, 2006
<http://www.nytimes.com/>
The New York Times



C.I.A. Detainees Sent to Guantánamo

By 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/david_stout/index.html?inline=nyt-per>DAVID 
STOUT

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6 – President Bush said today 
that 14 suspected terrorists held in secret 
locations by the 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central_intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org>C.I.A., 
including some who were deeply involved in the 
Sept. 11 attacks and other notorious assaults on 
Americans, are being transferred to the 
Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba to stand trial.

Mr. Bush said in a speech at the White House that 
he welcomed the transfers as a way to provide a 
measure of justice for relatives of the nearly 
3,000 people who died in the attacks five years 
ago next Monday. “They should have to wait no longer,” he said.

The president also urged Congress to approve 
legislation he was proposing that would authorize 
the use of military commissions to try the 
Guantánamo detainees. The legislation is aimed at 
addressing a 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/supreme_court/index.html?inline=nyt-org>United 
States Supreme Court ruling in June that 
tribunals set up by the Bush administration could 
not be used because Congress had not approved them.

Mr. Bush’s speech coincided with the Pentagon’s 
release of a new manual spelling out specific 
procedures that can be used to interrogate 
prisoners in Defense Department custody. The 
manual rules out some questioning tactics that 
could be defined as torture, or humiliation, or 
both. The manual does not apply to the Central Intelligence Agency.

The president’s announcement that the 14 
terrorist suspects would be sent to Guantánamo 
was the first time he that he had acknowledged 
the secret program run by the C.I.A. to hold and 
question “high value” terrorist suspects overseas.

Allusions to the secret program have surfaced in 
court documents, however, and some administration 
officials have assailed news organizations for reporting about it.

Mr. Bush said that the “small number of terrorist 
suspects’’ detained by the C.I.A. “includes 
individuals believed to be key architects of the 
Sept. 11 attacks and attacks on the USS Cole,’’ 
as well as on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

“These are dangerous men with unparalleled 
knowledge about terror networks and their plans 
of new attacks,’’ the president said. ’’The 
security of our nation and the lives of our 
citizens depend on our ability to learn what these terrorists know.’’

He said that the location of the C.I.A. detention 
facilities could not be divulged to protect U.S. 
allies that had allowed the agency to operate 
within their borders. But he said: “I can say 
that innocent lives have been saved, here in the 
United States and across the world,’’ he said.

He also said the C.I.A. could continue to detain 
and interrogate terrorists suspects, though none 
are currently in the agency’s custody.

Interrogation procedures used by the agency 
against a former aide to 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/osama_bin_laden/index.html?inline=nyt-per>Osama 
bin Laden, Abu Zubaydah, had been ’’tough, and 
safe and necessary,’’ Mr. Bush said. His 
disclosures under interrogation led to the arrest 
of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who in turn led U.S. 
authorities to other terrorists. Mr. Bush said 
his proposal to Congress for trials before 
military commissions is both legal and within 
America’s tradition of respecting individual rights.

The suspected 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/al_qaeda/index.html?inline=nyt-org>Al 
Qaeda and 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/t/taliban/index.html?inline=nyt-org>Taliban 
members held at Guantánamo are not “common 
criminals or bystanders accidentally swept up on 
the battlefield,” Mr. Bush said, but killers 
whose hatred for the United States is bottomless.

Mr. Bush asked Congress to clarify what 
interrogators can and cannot do, and to give them 
protection from lawsuits in United States courts 
by detainees who might allege that their rights 
under the Geneva Convention have been violated. 
The applicable section of the convention is too 
“vague and undefined,” he said.

Mr. Bush’s announcements today, made in a 
36-minute speech in the White House with some 
relatives of 9/11 victims present, may be 
interpreted by administration critics as a 
retreat from his previous hard-line stand on the 
handling of terrorist suspects.

But the president adopted a posture of 
cooperation rather than surrender today as he 
pledged to work closely with Congress to enact 
his package. And with the traditional Labor Day 
start of the campaign season just past, he put 
pressure on the lawmakers to declare their 
positions on terrorism and how to fight it.

Brian Knowlton of the International Herald 
Tribune contributed reporting for this article.

The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
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