On December 11, 2001, in what appears to have been a case of conscious indirection, Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld told journalists that the administration was still mulling the decision about where to hold detainees. Afghanistan, U.S. shipboard, the detaineesâ?? countries of origin, and locations in the United States were all under consideration. In fact, by early December, Guantánamo had emerged as the administrationâ??s clear first choice. All other candidates were deficient in one way or anotherâ??U.S. sites for not-in-my-backyard political reasons; foreign outposts because the Pentagon could not take for granted even allied support for the kind of interrogations it envisioned; U.S. protectorates such as Guam because they lacked immunity from federal court oversight and were open to lawyers and journalists; finally, Afghanistan, because it was still far from stable. Guantánamo met all these objections. Sovereign territory of a hostile state, it offered U.S. military personnel legal and diplomatic immunity. The U.S. military strictly controlled access to the base, securing it from prying eyes and enemies alike. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld later characterized Guantánamo as â??the least worst place.â? But allowing for the inconvenience entailed in transporting prisoners halfway around the world, Guantánamo seemed an obvious choice to many U.S. military officials.
Many, but not all. Establishing a pattern that would hobble the war on terror for the better part of a decade, civilian officials atop the Pentagon settled on Guantánamo as the site for a detention camp only after studiously ignoring the expert counsel of career military officials such as Norman Rogers. To Rogers, Guantánamo was absolutely not the place for such a mission. To begin with, having worked in naval intelligence, Rogers knew that secrecy was paramount in detainee operations, and that there could be no secrecy at Guantánamo Bay. As more candid U.S. military personnel had long since acknowledged, the naval base was surrounded by Cuban high ground. Perched on nearby hills, â??every camera-toting Cuban tourist and his sister enjoyed comprehensive views of everything that went on at the base. Cuban intelligence had photographs of every single person who stepped off a US plane.â?
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