CIA Censorship of Guantánamo Military Commissions?

To watch the full interview with Jess Bravin on Democracy Now!, visit Wall Street Journal reporter Jess Bravin describes how a courtroom audio feed was mysteriously cut during the Guantánamo Bay trial for the men accused of orchestrating 9/11. He has covered the military commissions at Guantánamo for 10 years. His book, "The Terror CourtsRough Justice at Guantánamo Bay," has just been published.

JESS BRAVIN: "And what has characterized this project for its entire history has been conflict between the CIA and the Department of Defense over the access to evidence. And this again, given what happened later with the CIA and their secret prison network and so on, might be surprising, but it turns out, as least from my reporting and talking to CIA officials, is that they were quite comfortable with the existing pre-9/11 setup here in New York. In the Southern District of New York, they're very experienced prosecutors and judges who deal with very sensitive cases, and the CIA had worked with them for years and was comfortable that they could handle very important, classified, national security evidence and still get their trials underway.

The CIA had no involvement in setting up military commissions; did not know the military officers involved in them; did not have a high regard for a bunch of unknown, mid-level people, reservists and so forth; and was very uncooperative with military commissions all the way. Colonel Couch and other prosecutors frequently, trying to get information from the CIA, not because they wanted to know what evidence there was and also because they felt they had a duty to present the defense with anything that could be exculpatory, ran into roadblock after roadblock. And to this day, the CIA continues to have a somewhat conflicting relationship with military commissions, as recently as a few weeks ago, when apparently a CIA censor, unknown to the military judge, briefly blocked the audio transmission from the Guantánamo courtroom.

Well, there is right now—I mean, and again, there are military commissions now. They are a modified version of what originally was envisioned. There are a number of changes that make them significantly less unfair than what could have occurred. But there is a—in a high-security courtroom down there, the proceedings take place behind soundproof glass. And if you are in the press and you're there watching, or if you're watching the video feed here on the mainland at Fort Meade, Maryland, there is a 40-second delay. So what you're seeing is actually taking place 40 seconds in the future from what you're hearing. And that is so government censors can cut the feed if what they deem to be secret information is released in the courtroom by a witness or a prisoner or a lawyer, what have you.

So, that button has been pushed several times. Up until now, it had always been pushed by the courtroom security officer. Most recently, it was pushed by someone who the judge didn't even know was listening, and we assume that it was the CIA, because it has classification authority, as they say in government speak, over this information. Now, to be fair, in every instance, the military judge has concluded that the censor was in error. And what was said during that period was put back on the record. So, there hasn't actually been anything said in that courtroom that has been kept down. But that potential is there."

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