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March CAN SUBS cover Final2 1/21/10 11:32 AM Page 1 EDWARD CONLON: THE POLICE-ENTERTAINMENT COMPLEX HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MARCH 2010 $7.95 ◆ THE GUANTANAMO “SUICIDES” A Camp Delta Sergeant Blows the Whistle By Scott Horton MAMMON FROM HEAVEN The Prosperity Gospel in Recession By Benjamin Anastas THAT’LL BE TWO DOLLARS AND FIFTY CENTS PLEASE A story by Myla Goldberg Also: William H. Gass and Philip Levine ◆ REPORT THE GUANTANAMO “SUICIDES” A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle By Scott Horton 1. “ASYMMETRICAL WA RFA R E” Late on the evening of June 9 that following day, the camp quickly went year, three prisoners at Guantánamo into lockdown. The authorities or- When President Barack Obama took died suddenly and violently. Salah dered nearly all the reporters at offi ce last year, he promised to “restore Ahmed Al-Salami, from Yemen, Guantánamo to leave and those en the standards of due process and the was thirty-seven. Mani Shaman Al- route to turn back. The commander core constitutional values at Guantánamo, Rear Ad- that have made this coun- miral Harry Harris, then try great.” Toward that end, declared the deaths “sui- the president issued an ex- cides.” In an unusual ecutive order declaring that move, he also used the an- the extra-constitutional nouncement to attack the prison camp at Guantána- dead men. “I believe this mo Naval Base “shall be was not an act of despera- closed as soon as practica- tion,” he said, “but an act ble, and no later than one of asymmetrical warfare year from the date of this waged against us.” Report- order.” Obama has failed to ers accepted the official fulfill his promise. Some account, and even lawyers prisoners there are being for the prisoners appeared charged with crimes, oth- to believe that they had ers released, but the date killed themselves. Only for closing the camp seems the prisoners’ families in to recede steadily into the Saudi Arabia and Yemen future. Furthermore, new evidence Utaybi, from Saudi Arabia, was thir- rejected the notion. now emerging may entangle Obama’s ty. Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, also from Two years later, the U.S. Naval young administration with crimes that Saudi Arabia, was twenty-two, and Criminal Investigative Service, which occurred during the George W. Bush had been imprisoned at Guantána- has primary investigative jurisdiction presidency, evidence that suggests the mo since he was captured at the age within the naval base, issued a report current administration failed to inves- of seventeen. None of the men had supporting the account originally ad- tigate seriously—and may even have been charged with a crime, though vanced by Harris, now a vice-admiral continued—a cover-up of the possible all three had been engaged in hunger in command of the Sixth Fleet. The homicides of three prisoners at Guan- strikes to protest the conditions of Pentagon declined to make the NCIS tánamo in 2006. their imprisonment. They were being report public, and only when pressed held in a cell block, known as Alpha with Freedom of Information Act de- Scott Horton is a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine. His last article for the Block, reserved for particularly trou- mands did it disclose parts of the re- magazine, “Justice After Bush,” appeared in blesome or high-value prisoners. port, some 1,700 pages of documents the December 2008 issue. As news of the deaths emerged the so heavily redacted as to be nearly in- The external fence of Camp Delta, in Guantánamo, June 2006. Photograph © Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos R E P O R T 2 7 HHortonorton Final2.inddFinal2.indd 2727 11/21/10/21/10 111:22:371:22:37 AAMM comprehensible. The NCIS documents minutes. The report claimed that the matically at odds with the NCIS re- were carefully cross-referenced and de- prisoners had hung sheets or blankets port—a report for which they were ciphered by students and faculty at the to hide their activities and shaped neither interviewed nor approached. law school of Seton Hall University in more sheets and pillows to look like All four soldiers say they were or- New Jersey, and their fi ndings, released bodies sleeping in their beds, but it did dered by their commanding officer in November 2009, made clear why not explain where they were able to not to speak out, and all four soldiers the Pentagon had been unwilling to acquire so much fabric beyond their provide evidence that authorities ini- make its conclusions public. The offi - tightly controlled allotment, or why tiated a cover-up within hours of the cial story of the prisoners’ deaths was the Navy guards would allow such an prisoners’ deaths. Army Staff Ser- full of unacknowledged contradictions, obvious and immediately observable geant Joseph Hickman and men un- and the centerpiece of the report—a deviation from permitted behavior. der his supervision have disclosed evi- reconstruction of the events—was Nor did the report explain how the dence in interviews with Harper’s simply unbelievable. dead men managed to hang undetect- Magazine that strongly suggests that According to the NCIS docu- ed for more than two hours or why the the three prisoners who died on June ments, each prisoner had fashioned a Navy guards on duty, having for what- 9 had been transported to another lo- noose from torn sheets and T-shirts ever reason so grievously failed in their cation prior to their deaths. The and tied it to the top of his cell’s duties, were never disciplined. guards’ accounts also reveal the exis- eight-foot-high steel-mesh wall. Each A separate report, the result of an tence of a previously unreported black prisoner was able somehow to bind “informal investigation” initiated by site at Guantánamo where the deaths, his own hands, and, in at least one Admiral Harris, found that standard or at least the events that led directly case, his own feet, then stuff more operating procedures were violated to the deaths, most likely occurred. rags deep down into his own throat. that night but concluded that disci- We are then asked to believe that plinary action was not warranted, 2. “CAMP NO” each prisoner, even as he was chok- because of the “generally permissive ing on those rags, climbed up on his environment” of the cell block and The soldiers of the Maryland-based washbasin, slipped his head through the numerous “concessions” that had 629th Military Intelligence Battalion the noose, tightened it, and leapt been made with regard to the prison- arrived at Guantánamo Naval Base in from the washbasin to hang until he ers’ comfort, “concessions” that had March 2006, assigned to provide secu- asphyxiated. The NCIS report also resulted in a “general confusion by rity to Camp America, the sector of proposes that the three prisoners, the guard and the JDG staff over the base containing the fi ve individual who were held in non-adjoining cells, many of the rules that applied to the prison compounds that house the pris- carried out each of these actions al- guard force’s handling of the detain- oners. Camp Delta was at the time the most simultaneously. ees.” According to Harris, even had largest of these compounds, and with- Al-Zahrani, according to the re- in its walls were four smaller camps, port, was discovered fi rst, at 12:39 numbered 1 through 4, which in a.m., and taken by several Alpha THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT FACES turn were divided into cell blocks. Block guards to the camp’s detention Life at Camp America, as at all medical clinic. No doctors could be A CHOICE BETWEEN THE RULE prisons, was and remains rigorously found there, nor the phone number OF LAW AND THE EXPEDIENCE OF routinized for both prisoners and for one, so a clinic staffer dialed 911. their jailers. Navy guards patrol the During this time, other guards dis- POLITICAL SILENCE cell blocks and Army personnel covered Al-Utaybi. Still others dis- control the exterior areas of the covered Al-Salami a few minutes camp. All observed incidents must later. Although rigor mortis had already standard operating procedures been be logged. For the Army guards who set in—indicating that the men had followed, “it is possible that the de- man the towers and “sally ports” (ac- been dead for at least two hours—the tainees could have successfully com- cess points), knowing who enters and NCIS report claims that an unnamed mitted suicide anyway.” leaves the camp, and exactly when, is medical offi cer attempted to resuscitate This is the offi cial story, adopted the essence of their mission. one of the men, and, in attempting to by NCIS and Guantánamo com- One of the new guards who arrived pry open his jaw, broke his teeth. mand and reiterated by the Justice that March was Joe Hickman, then a The fact that at least two of the Department in formal pleadings, by sergeant. Hickman grew up in Balti- prisoners also had cloth masks affi xed the Defense Department in briefi ngs more and joined the Marines in 1983, to their faces, presumably to prevent and press releases, and by the State at the age of nineteen. When I inter- the expulsion of the rags from their Department. Now four members of viewed him in January at his home in mouths, went unremarked by the the Military Intelligence unit as- Wisconsin, he told me he had been NCIS, as did the fact that standard signed to guard Camp Delta, includ- inspired to enlist by Ronald Reagan, operating procedure at Camp Delta ing a decorated non-commissioned “the greatest president we’ve ever required the Navy guards on duty after Army offi cer who was on duty as ser- had.” He worked in a military intelli- midnight to “conduct a visual search” geant of the guard the night of June gence unit and was eventually tapped of each cell and detainee every ten 9, have furnished an account dra- for Reagan’s Presidential Guard detail, 28 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MARCH 2010 HHortonorton Final2.inddFinal2.indd 2828 11/21/10/21/10 111:22:371:22:37 AAMM Hickman and his men also discov- ered that there were odd exceptions to their duties.