Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [305]
On January 11, 2002, al-Qaida and Taliban detainees began arriving at Guantánamo Bay. Initially, they were housed at Camp X-Ray, an existing facility built during the Clinton administration for illegal immigrants. We intended this arrangement to be temporary, pending construction of appropriate, modern facilities, which were completed within a few months. Soon After the first detainees arrived, we suffered a costly self-inflicted wound. Intending to demonstrate openness to the press, and to showcase the humane treatment of the detainees, the Pentagon public affairs office released photographs taken while the detainees were still in temporary quarters at Camp X-Ray. The photographs showed prisoners wearing orange jumpsuits behind chain-link and barbed-wire fences. Some wore blacked-out goggles and had their hands tied behind their backs during transfers, so that they could not attack their guards. The photographs, with primitive facilities and conditions, became enduring images of Guantánamo. They were repeatedly referred to by critics of the Bush administration long After the permanent, state-of-the-art facilities were completed. It was another example of how little was understood about war in the information age.
Contrary to the notions suggested by those early photos, the detainees at Gitmo had warm showers, toiletries, water, clean clothes, blankets, culturally appropriate meals, prayer mats, Korans, modern medical attention equal to that provided to our troops, exercise, writing materials, and regular visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
In early 2002, the U.S. military’s Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) sent up, through the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, a construction proposal for a permanent detention facility at Guantánamo Bay. The proposal, presented to me through General Pete Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs and a former SOUTHCOM commander, envisioned a costly and seemingly permanent two-thousand-bed facility. Given the battlefield pressures to move detainees out of the areas of operations, military commanders wanted to move as many as possible as quickly as possible to Guantánamo Bay.
Government organizations tend to use whatever resources are available to them. I knew that if I approved such a large facility, our forces would almost certainly ship enough prisoners to fill it. I wanted to preempt that tendency. I told General Pace that I thought we would be better off with a considerably smaller facility, and that I wanted to generate downward pressure on the number of inmates to be sent to Gitmo. I said I wanted transfers of detainees to Guantánamo Bay to be kept to a minimum—to only individuals of high interest for interrogation who posed a threat to our nation’s security. Pace came back with revised proposals several times. On each go-round, the size of the proposed expansion of the facility became smaller and more specialized, to handle only the toughest and most dangerous cases. It was not an easy process for General Pace, who had to balance the pressures from CENTCOM’s battlefield commanders with pressures from a secretary of defense who was dead set against making it easier for them to avoid tough choices by simply sending all questionable cases off to Gitmo. Pace was getting squeezed, but typically he handled the situation with good humor. At one point, when he was preparing to present yet another version of the proposal, he showed up for our meeting wearing a flak jacket, a helmet, and a grin. Finally