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Did the Pentagon Lie About Why it Barred Journalists from Guantanamo Bay Soon After Prisoner Suicides?

The U.S. has barred journalists from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay. Three visiting reporters were forced off the island Wednesday under orders from the office of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. A Pentagon spokesperson said the removals were ordered following complaints from other media outlets they were being denied equal access.

But questions are being raised over whether the Pentagon was motivated by a different reason. Last week's Guantanamo suicides have only intensified international scrutiny of the US-run prison. The three banned reporters - from the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald and the Charlotte Observer - were the only journalists who were able to file reports on the suicides from Guantanamo.

• Carol Williams, one of the three reporters forced out of Guantanamo. She is Caribbean Bureau Chief for the Los Angeles Times. She wrote an article in Sunday's LA Times entitled "Kicked Out of Gitmo." She speaks to us from St. Kitts.
• David Rose, journalist who writes for the Observer of London and Vanity Fair. He is the author of several books, including "Guantanamo: America's War on Human Rights", which has just come out in paperback.

AMY GOODMAN: Our first guest is one of those three reporters. Carol Williams is the Caribbean Bureau Chief for the Los Angeles Times. She wrote a piece in Sunday’s L.A. Times entitled “Kicked Out of Gitmo.” She speaks to us from St. Kitts. We’re also joined by David Rose, journalist who writes for the Observer of London and Vanity Fair. He’s the author of several books, including Guantanamo: America's War on Human Rights, which has just come out on paperback. Last week he was on his way to Guantanamo to cover a military tribunal, when he suddenly had his clearance revoked. We welcome you both to Democracy Now!

Let us begin with Carol Williams. Carol, can you talk about what happened on Guantanamo? How long were you there? When were you told you had to leave? When were you flown out?

CAROL WILLIAMS: I was there for five days. And I was told actually before I even left Ft. Lauderdale on a charter flight to Guantanamo on the Saturday of the suicides that I shouldn't go, because my travel clearance had been revoked by the Office of the Military Commissions, which runs the tribunals, and we were going down to cover a session of the tribunals. But because I had been to Guantanamo previously under authorization of different arms of the Pentagon, I called the admiral in charge of the detention facility and asked his staff if I couldn't come down anyway, because even though there were no tribunals to cover that week, that there was a story that American readers needed to know about. And after some back-and-forth he agreed, and he invited myself and Carol Rosenberg from the Miami Herald to proceed with our trip.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, you went there, and how long were you there?

CAROL WILLIAMS: There, five days. On the Monday, two days after we arrived, I got a call from the same person from Rumsfeld's office, who had said our travel clearance to cover the tribunals had been revoked, to say we had to leave, because it wasn't fair to the other journalists that the Pentagon was preventing from coming down for us to be there to cover the story. So this went back and forth again for another couple of days. And then on Tuesday night, we were told that we had -- by the admiral staff, that they had been given orders from the Secretary of Defense office to clear the island of media by the following morning. And they put us on a military plane bound for Miami and shipped us off.

AMY GOODMAN: So you were there at the time of the suicides?

CAROL WILLIAMS: No, we were there a few hours later. They occurred overnight, actually, I think shortly after midnight, early Saturday morning. And we were coincidentally flying into Guantanamo from Ft. Lauderdale. Myself and Carol Rosenberg live in Miami and cover our beats from there. So we were flying separately from the rest of the Office of Military Commission's delegation that was supposed to leave, I believe, on Sunday on a military flight from Andrews Air Force Base, and because the British journalists who were coming to cover the tribunals and some of our other colleagues had been booked through the military to get down to Guantanamo, when they cancelled the tribunals, they cancelled the flight to bring the journalists and staff down. So they were kind of marooned.

But we argued with the Defense Department that our colleagues should be allowed to proceed, when they were making the argument that, you know, it wasn't right for us to be there, because our competitors and fellow journalists weren't there. We proposed a number of junctures that they let those people come down and that all media should be there. And we would have been happy to pool the information, if that was the only way we could stay and to get around this perception that it was somehow unfair that any eyes of the world were on Guantanamo that week.

AMY GOODMAN: It's interesting to note the link between the two of you, the two of our guests. David Rose, you write, “Three U.S. reporters at the base were ordered to leave. According to a Pentagon spokesman quoted by the U.S. media, the reason was that two barred British reporters -- us -- had threatened to sue if the Americans were allowed to stay. This was, of course, untrue,” you write. So in other words, you say the Pentagon is falsely blaming you for the reason why Carol Williams was forced to leave Guantanamo?

DAVID ROSE: Absolutely. The full story of my experience is quite kafkaesque. It’s an overused epithet, but I think it's applicable in this instance. I was in the air when news of the suicides broke, on my way from London. I arrived in Washington on Saturday evening and discovered that the flight from Andrews to Gitmo had been cancelled, as had the military commission.

So the first thing I did the next morning was call the Pentagon, the Office of Military Commissions, and I spoke to Jeffrey D. Gordon, the Naval Lieutenant Commander who is in charge of granting media access to the military commissions. I said, “Look, I’ve come a long way. With the suicides, there's clearly a very good reason for going to Guantanamo, and I had already made arrangements with the Guantanamo Public Affairs people, that as well as covering the military commissions, I would tour the base, as I have done before, and interview other officials about the general regime at Guantanamo.”

So, at this point, he couldn't have been more helpful. He said, “Look, I can't give you a new clearance, because you had clearance for the military commission,” although, as he accepted, I did also have clearance for a more general tour of the base. He said, “Talk to the folks at Gitmo. Talk to the people at South Com, and you can probably get a new clearance.”

So within an hour or so, I was talking to Naval Lieutenant Commander Robert Durand, who’s in charge of the Gitmo Public Affairs Office, and he said, “Look, I’m sure it will be fine. I’ll talk to the admiral. He's a very open sort of guy. You can get new clearance.” And indeed, I have an email from him, which was copied to me, where he explains to one of his colleagues that I’m going to get new clearance, he's going to talk to the admiral, and he asks his colleague to assist me with getting transportation.

Well, as it turned out, it was very difficult to get a flight. The small little scheduled flights that fly out of Ft. Lauderdale and Kingston, Jamaica were full. But with another British colleague, David Jones, that I’d emailed, we managed to find a firm that was willing to fly us on a personal charter from Kingston, Jamaica.

Anyhow, things went on during the afternoon, and finally at 7:00 in the evening or so, I got a call from Guantanamo saying, “Great news! Your clearances have come through. We'll fax them to your hotel.” So by 19:53 that evening -- that’s the time on the fax -- I had a new clearance to enter Guantanamo Bay to report on the aftermath of the suicides and to interview officials there.

On the strength of that, I got up early the next morning with David Jones. We went from Dulles Airport down to Miami. We checked in once more with Guantanamo. We spoke to officials there. They said, “You're good to go. We'll meet your plane when you arrive at 6:30 p.m. has arrived. We'll have a full program for you. You can stay the rest of the week.” So we thought, “Fine, this is just great.” So we ponied up the $4,000 for the private plane and flew on to Kingston, Jamaica.

Well, we were just checking in for the private flight at Kingston that afternoon when the manager, looking very flustered, came and said, “Look, I’m really sorry, guys. You can't go.” I said, “What do you mean? We have clearances.” He said, “Well, they've just been revoked.” I said, “What do you mean they’ve been revoked? We got them last night. Look. Here’s the fax. 19:53.” He said, “I’ve just had a call from Jeffrey D. Gordon, the same official in the Pentagon in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Your clearances have been revoked. You can't travel.”

Well, I called J.D. Gordon, and here's the really interesting part. I said, “Why can't we go?” He said, “Because the two Carols, from the Miami Herald and the L.A. Times, have just been ordered to leave. I can't let you come when they've been ordered to leave, or the whole of the American media will be down on my neck like a ton of bricks. I can't order Americans out and let British reporters in.” I said, “You're telling me they've already been ordered to leave and we can't come?” He said, “That's the position.”

Well, this is very interesting, what Carol has just said, because it's clear that she wasn't even told to leave until the following evening. So while they're using -- when speaking to us, the O.S.D., the Office of the Secretary of Defense, is using the American reporters as a reason for not letting us in; when expelling the Americans, they’re using us, the Brits, as a reason for them having to leave. In fact, both these statements are untrue. They hadn't told the Americans to leave. There was no reason at all not to let us go and use the clearance that we had obtained. Equally, we were not threatening to sue or making any other kind of complaint. We were just very angry that we had been told we had clearance to go, and suddenly it had been revoked, and no reason was being given.

What made it even worse was that we had further phone and email contact over the next few days, which ended up by Jeffrey D. Gordon claiming absolutely falsely that I had obtained a clearance from a junior enlisted clerk, whereas in fact, as the email I have from the head of Gitmo Public Affairs shows very clearly, it had come from the base admiral. And then, when I pointed this out to him, he accused me of dubious professional conduct, at best, which is really quite extraordinary.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to David Rose, British journalist who writes for the Observer of London and Vanity Fair. He’s speaking to us from Oxford in England. And Carol Williams is on the line with us from St. Kitts. She’s the Caribbean Bureau Chief for the Los Angeles Times. We’ll come back to both of them in a minute.