The Torture Transcripts

By Scott Horton

A few weeks ago, the Department of Defense announced that the sessions of its Combat Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) would be conducted in secret, and that transcripts of the proceedings would be available later after they had been redacted to remove sensitive information. The AP's Pete Yost called me and asked why the Pentagon would feel compelled to censor the transcripts. I told him that was a fluff ball of a question: the Pentagon believes that when detainees are tortured, they are subjected to highly classified national security procedures, and disclosing the particulars of the torture techniques would be a breach of national security. Those who have seen Terry Gilliam's movie “Brazil” will, of course, be familiar with this unflappable logic.

Of course, the real concern is not and never was national security. After all, the procedures used on the Gitmo detainees have been described in intricate detail in the press around the world and briefed in public hearings on Capitol Hill. There's nothing remotely secret about the techniques used, including waterboarding, hypothermia, long-time standing, sleep deprivation and the gamut of Kubark Report level one preparations. The concern lies elsewhere. These techniques are illegal, and their use was and is a crime. The secrecy claims are being invoked to cover up this criminal conduct and to protect those who perpetrated it. Were the full story to come out, the CSRT proceedings would quickly be transformed from inquiries into the character of the detainees into an exposé of the criminal practices employed at Gitmo.

My speculation has now been established. Two transcripts have been released and both show that the “redactions” undertaken by the Pentagon were principally of statements by the detainees of how they were tortured while in United States custody. The last to appear is particularly audacious—the detainee's personal representative presents a statement on his behalf that he was tortured, the panel asks the detainee to describe how, and the subsequent presentation is simply censored.

These transcripts make for interesting reading. Essentially all the things one would associate with fair process are absent. One might call them “kangaroo courts,” but that would be a slander against kangaroo courts.