The documents, more than 750 individual assessments of former and current Guantanamo detainees, show an intelligence operation that was tremendously dependant on informants — both prison camp snitches repeating what they'd heard from fellow captives and self-described, at times self-aggrandizing, alleged al Qaida insiders turned government witnesses who Pentagon records show have since been released.
Intelligence analysts are at odds with each other over which informants to trust, at times drawing inferences from prisoners' exercise habits. They order DNA tests, tether Taliban suspects to polygraphs, string together tidbits in ways that seemed to defy common sense.
Guantanamo analysts at times questioned the reliability of some information gleaned from other detainees' interrogations.
Allegations and information from one Yemeni, no longer at Guantanamo, appears in at least 135 detainees' files, prompting Navy Rear Adm. Dave Thomas, the prison camps commander in August 2008, to include this warning:
"Any information provided should be adequately verified through other sources before being utilized."
The same report goes on to praise the captive as an "invaluable intelligence source" for information about al Qaida and Taliban training, operations, personnel and facilities," and warns that he'd be at risk of retaliation if he were released into Yemeni society. He was resettled in Europe by the Obama administration.
In fact, information from just eight men showed up in forms for at least 235 Guantanamo detainees — some 30 percent of those known to have been held there.
It gets worse. Bush officials rounded up people for no good reason at all, but also a good hundred or so "high risk" detainees have been freed or transferred to other countries. Some high risk detainees have now become US allies and informants. One of those released high risk detainees and suspected AQ member is now a Libyan rebel leader.
The worst part, even when the information from informants was considered suspect or even flat out wrong, the Cheney "One Percent Doctrine" kicked in, and the Bush Pentagon used the information anyway to continue to detain some on the "one percent chance" it might be the break in a major terror case that saved American lives. One percent was far too generous.
The crazy part? Some detainees in Gitmo were originally rounded up because they wore a specific make of Casio wristwatch that the Pentagon suspected may have been a favored bomb timer of AQ operatives. We arrested people in Afghanistan for wearing the wrong wristwatch and called them terrorists.
Our Gitmo policy was a mess. It still is. Yet we can never, ever close the place or America will be flooded with supervillains who are wearing wristwatches that could kill your entire family.
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