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Ex-Bush Admin Official: Many at Gitmo Are Innocent
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Many detainees locked up at Guantanamo were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday. "There are still innocent people there," Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, told The Associated Press. "Some have been there six or seven years."
In this photo, reviewed by the U.S. Military, a guard stands near the shadow of a detainee at Guantanamo's Camp 5 detention center, at the U.S. Naval Base, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, January 21, 2009. (REUTERS/Brennan Linsley/Pool/Files) Wilkerson, who first made the assertions in an Internet posting on Tuesday, told the AP he learned from briefings and by communicating with military commanders that the U.S. soon realized many Guantanamo detainees were innocent but nevertheless held them in hopes they could provide information for a "mosaic" of intelligence.
"It did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance," Wilkerson wrote in the blog. He said intelligence analysts hoped to gather "sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified."
Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, said vetting on the battlefield during the early stages of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan was incompetent with no meaningful attempt to discriminate "who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation."
Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to comment on Wilkerson's specific allegations but noted that the military has consistently said that dealing with foreign fighters from a wide variety of countries in a wartime setting was a complex process. The military has insisted that those held at Guantanamo were enemy combatants and posed a threat to the United States.
In his posting for The Washington Note blog, Wilkerson wrote that "U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released."
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney fought efforts to address the situation, Wilkerson said, because "to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership."
Wilkerson told the AP in a telephone interview that many detainees "clearly had no connection to al-Qaida and the Taliban and were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Pakistanis turned many over for $5,000 a head."
Some 800 men have been held at Guantanamo since the prison opened in January 2002, and 240 remain. Wilkerson said two dozen are terrorists, including confessed Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was transferred to Guantanamo from CIA custody in September 2006.
"We need to put those people in a high-security prison like the one in Colorado, forget them and throw away the key," Wilkerson said. "We can't try them because we tortured them and didn't keep an evidence trail."
But the rest of the detainees need to be released, he said.
Wilkerson, who flew combat missions as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and left the government in January 2005, said he did not speak out while in government because some of the information was classified. He said he feels compelled to do so now because Cheney has claimed in recent press interviews that President Barack Obama is making the U.S. less safe by reversing Bush administration policies toward terror suspects, including ordering Guantanamo closed.
The administration is now evaluating what to do with the prisoners who remain at the U.S. military base in Cuba.
"I'm very concerned about the kinds of things Cheney is saying to make it seem Obama is a danger to this republic," Wilkerson said. "To have a former vice president fearmongering like this is really, really dangerous."
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Show AllSelsky sez; "Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney fought efforts to address the situation, Wilkerson said, because 'to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership.'"
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Well! We certainly wouldn't want such a smudge on that paragon of purity known as Cheney-Rumsfeld 'leadership'.
Oh, and Mr. Wilkerson ... nice of you to man up and break from the pack with this earthshaking revelation only seven years after the fact. What - you just now get McClellan's memo that it was safe to crawl out from under your rock?
"Oh, and Mr. Wilkerson ... nice of you to man up and break from the pack with this earthshaking revelation only seven years after the fact."
Perhaps you haven't been paying attention: since he left State in 2005, Wilkerson has been a consistent and extremely harsh critic of the Bush administration.
Dubya, Cheney, & Co. were an cabal of incompetent fascists who's reign will be looked upon by future generations with a mix of shock, disbelief, & tut-tutting. Just as the generation of Germans who were mid-wife to Hitler and his cronies are forever shamed by the association, so too are Americans who voted for these clowns and actually bought their monumental bait and switch.
That they carried out what they did in Gitmo is a prime example of pursuing power because they could. A just outcome would be for these scumbags to be imprisoned in Abu Ghraib.
While Dubya, Cheney & Co. are undoubtedly fascists, they were far from incompetent. They and their PNAC buddies laid out a plan and followed it to the letter. The Bush administration was probably the most competent presidency in the history of our country. Just look what they acomplished:
(1) Transfered untold sums of our money (with no-bid contracts no less) to their buddies, and in the case of Cheney, to his own pockets through his "blind" investments.
(2) Dismantled the free press.
(3) Destablized large sections of the world to ensure their continued military investment profits even after they have left office.
(4) Enriched the oil companies (again their buddies).
(5) Shredded our constitution and pushed through obcenities like the USA PATRIOT act.
(6) Ethinically cleansed New Orleans making it safe for Republican Party rule.
(7) Get tax breaks for their rich friends while enslaving the other classes.
(8) Destroyed Medicare's prescription drug benefits.
(9) Continued the tradition since Reagan of raiding the Social Security Trust Fund, thus ensuring its eventual collapse.
Call them what you will, but this evil bunch acomplished everything they set out to do and more. Too bad they destroyed our Country and our Democracy in the process.
Bystander--you're absolutely right when you say that Bush et al were not incompetent. I've been saying that for years! I think they were wildly successful and did indeed accomplish just about everything they set out to, just like Cheney claimed. Unfortunately for us, this grand success was at the expense of our beautiful Constitution. I wonder how we will ever reclaim what we have lost.
AND, according to the news today, finally made it possible for
Bush's buddies in the oil "bidness" to finally get their hands on
all that Iraq oil. Now he can finally say "Mission Accomplished"
and really mean it. That's what it was all about.
I agree with Goebels below on the contempt for the extreme moral cowardice exhibited by the likes of Wilkerson.
but one line exposes the continuing idiocy of the right:
"We need to put those people in a high-security prison like the one in Colorado, forget them and throw away the key," Wilkerson said. "We can't try them because we tortured them and didn't keep an evidence trail."
Duh you big Dummy!
Are your ilk so seriously stupid as to not understand one of the reasons why we on the left OPPOSE torture? It's because we do NOT want these assholes let loose because some other CIA Assholes felt that torture was useful! Had you listened to us "bleeding hearts", as you are so fond of calling us, you would have tried those two dozen bad guys and they WOULD be locked up today in a full, legitimate prison, forgotten already, and the key would be gone!
Now they are going to not only be released...no doubt with even deeper certainty that they were right about "The Great Satan" all along...but they will have the right to sue the USA's ass off in our own courts. Hell, I even hope they win and win damm big at this stage!
You wrote: "but one line exposes the continuing idiocy of the right:
'We need to put those people in a high-security prison like the one in Colorado, forget them and throw away the key,' Wilkerson said. 'We can't try them because we tortured them and didn't keep an evidence trail.'"
Oh for crying out loud: Wilkerson's whole point is that the twig administration relinquished any credible opportunity to bring actual criminals to justice without subverting the notion of justice. He has pointed an incurious press and an American electorate in deep denial in a direction they might not otherise have gone. Give the guy not just a break, but a well-deserved round of applause. If you can't do that, then you have no idea how fucking dangerous Dick Cheney's recent statements are.
I do not see your point in his statement. What I see is someone who, though decrying torture, which is good, is advocating locking people up and throwing away the key without a trial or due process because they are 'guilty'. He is acknowledging that a trail is now impossible, but wants to hold these 'guilty' people anyway.
So just how, exactly, given that we cannot hold a trial, are we to establish their guilt or innocence?
My point is that this guy, despite advocating many good things, by this statement clearly does not support the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" rather he seems to support the conservative idea that all who are accused of a crime "must be guilty of something".
There is still a clear moral disconnect going on.
While the vast majority of prisoners remained at Guantanamo are innocent, there is extremely compelling evidence - obtained not by torture, directly or indirectly, but by traditional international police work - that some two dozen perpetrated terrible crimes for which it will be difficult for the US to try them. Are you suggesting that they be released? If so, where? Not a single country in the world will accept them, unless to imprison or execute them. What do you suggest be done with them? Give them new identities and relocate them to ... oh, I don't know, how about Sioux City?
Wilkerson: "We can't try them because we tortured them."
So, no trial, no conviction of guilt . . . and so they are not guilty!
They should be released and then they should sue the US for a billion dollars each.
These people are innocent.
The US used Chinese torture methods for "obtainining false confessions".
Now they're all victim-witnesses of US war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the US gov't feels compelled to keep these innocents locked up to protect itself. It's that simple.
Aloha, salud, lechiem,
- Tobias
http://www.youtube.com/user/tobiasaurusrex
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Co.'s crimes make Nixon's look like child's play. And that's pretty bad considering Nixon was a mass murderer, liar and crook!
Let me get this right. Obama, Holder and most of Congress think it's perfectly all right to abduct, torture and hold innocent people indefinitely without trial, but that it's highly ethical and wise to give de facto immunity to confessed war criminals. Now that's change we can believe in!
Surprise, surprise, some of the detainees are innocent. Like
anyone with more than one brain cell didn't know this.
regrettably too many people think "24" is a documentary.
Somehow we just "know" who the guilty ones are and our army of Jack Bauer's in the CIA are paternally protecting us from them.
This is the mind-set Cheney and the REpugs try to tap into, it allows them complete freedom to destroy the freedom of others.
Oh we got a "mosaic of intelligence" alright. I've heard that at least three prisoners confessed under torture to being Osama bin Laden and none of them looked anything like him at all.
Unfortunately things got worse at Guantanamo when President Obama took office because he didn't send anyone there to oversee what was going on.
Obama talked the talk about torture, so he knew it was going on, and when he took office he knew it was going on under his watch, but all he did was keep talking.
If he had been the innocent person being tortured, what would he think would be a decent length of time for a President who claimed to oppose torture to send somebody to oversee a place where he knew that torture was being carried out on innocent people under his watch?
The very first thing that Obama did upon taking office was to thank former President Bush. That couldn't wait, but torture apparently could.
The pain and agony of the tortured, the terror of thinking that you're dying as you're being waterboarded, and the outrage that this is being done to you by the United States, a country that many of the innocent victims of torture had supported because they foolishly thought it was a democratic country and a proponent of human rights, guarantees that none of us will ever be able to feel safe. There's no point in trying to tell them that we American citizens are innocent and that it was our government that tortured them, because they were innocent also and nobody cared. Oh there was change that they could believe in, but it was change for the worse.
We are all guilty. It wasn't just Bush, Cheney, and their cronies. We knew Bush wasn't elected, yet enough people voted in the next election for him to claim a second term. Why do people still vote in elections where they know that their votes might not even be counted before a President is installed, as happened in 2000 and 2004? Why do people vote in elections where they know that the only candidates with a chance of winning are both committed to wars of aggression based on lies as happened in 2008? When will we grow up and stop delegating our power by voting for people we know we cannot hold accountable during their terms of office (and so far, not even AFTER their terms of office when the damage has been done and cannot be undone)?
Don't vote -- it only encourages them. If voting could change anything it would be illegal. Stop asking mommy and daddy to do things for you and start taking responsibility for your own actions. This is and always has been a genocidal government run by an oligarchy. As long as you continue to legitimize their power by voting for them, they will continue to rule you. Voting is the right that forfeits all other rights--once you delegate your power, you don't have it any more. Boycott 2012. There is no greater and lesser evil, just a choice between two evils that no decent person could be forced into making except under torture. Were you tortured, or did you vote willingly? If you voted willingly, it wasn't Bush who shredded our Constitution, it was you. Don't do it again.
You have just played right into Republican hands.
Why do you think Republicans in all states try over and over again to make sure that people do exactly as you wish....and don't vote. Why do you think they try to take ACORN to court in EVERY SINGLE ELECTION?
They pass laws in every state trying to make it difficult to vote and easy to not vote. They oppose motor-voter laws. They oppose registration drives. They even try to intimidate people with threatening letters and try to confuse people with bogus mailings. They even use the power of the state to intimidate politicians who run against their candidates (and fire attorney generals who have too much integrity to agree with this practice).
They know that they win when most people do not vote.
So you have just locked in Republican victory forever by not voting.
Given that, your commentary is completely inconsistent with the outcome of your actions.
Like every Lesser Evilist and Dem Party Apologist, you seem brainwashed beyond hope. The poster's correct, voting is nothing more than a charade in the US.
By the way, Democrats now control the White House and congress. If they were really serious, they would've brought the troops home by now. Or prosecuted Bush. Instead they're following in his footsteps.
Obusha's only interests seem to be pumping trillions of our tax dollars into Wall Street and starting more wars. So stop blaming Republicans only.
Cheney's mongering over all this because the plan is a fascist coup in 2012. Notice the RWA and White Supremacy uptick? It's ain't a coincidence.
Everyone who served in the White House under George Bush needs to be held accountable for this. These people need to be prosecuted. Nothing less than this will do. American lives are not more precious than the lives of people in foreign countries. This plastic bubble of "true elitism" that the Bush White House has encouraged needs to be over with. It needs to be over with!
I have had co-workers who retired and then would go around the community telling everyone who would listen how incompetent his replacement was compared to his own past sterling performance.
They weren't what you would call nice people, but I suppose Cheney is jealous of his reputation as a scumbag.