Slideshow: The artist strikes a nerve

The arrest and trial of alleged al-Qaida spokesman Suleiman Abu Ghaith may resolve a long-standing debate inside the U.S. intelligence community on what Iranian officials did with members of the terrorist group who snuck into the country shortly after 9-11, hoping they would be treated, if not warmly, then as "the enemy of my enemy," as one U.S official put it.

Abu Ghaith, who was arraigned on Friday in federal court in New York on charges he plotted to kill Americans, described the conditions under which al-Qaida officials' were confined in Iran in a 22-page statement signed after his arrest last week in Jordan.

The statement, which was referenced in his court appearance, is expected to shed light on the accuracy of intelligence gathered by the U.S. in months after 9-11 indicating that the so-called al-Qaida “management council” detained in Iran was still conducting business, even discussing procurement of nuclear weapons.

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The debate among U.S. intelligence officers and agencies centers on how Iran treated the al-Qaida leaders and bin Laden relatives following their capture in Iran in early 2002, and how much it they were allowed to communicate with other members of the terrorist group. The faction in Iran, which with family and bodyguards numbered in the hundreds, bribed their way into the country but was rounded up not long afterward. As one U.S. official told NBC News Thursday, what happened next occurred inside the "blackest of the black boxes" of Iran's intelligence apparatus.

Some analysts believe that members of the group were more or less placed under house arrest. Iranian officials denied that, saying they were "in jail."

Another question is whether the group had significant operational communications with other al-Qaida leaders. One high-ranking former U.S. official told NBC News this week that he was unaware of any contact regarding al-Qaida operations.

But George Tenet, director of the CIA following the 9-11 attacks, painted a different picture in his memoirs, "At the Center of the Storm," written with William Harlow.

In the book, Tenet described incidents in which he learned that the group was not only communicating with Saudi-based al-Qaida leaders on operational matters, but also trying to obtain nuclear weapons. 

"From the end of 2002 to the spring of 2003, we received a stream of reliable reporting that the senior al-Qaida leadership in Saudi Arabia was negotiating for the purchase of three Russian nuclear devices,” Tenet wrote. “Saudi al-Qaida chief Abu Bakr relayed the offer directly to the al-Qaida leadership in Iran, where Sayf al-Adl and (Mohammed) Abdel al-Aziz al-Masri (described as al-Qaida’s “nuclear chief” by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) were reportedly being held under a loose form of house arrest by the Iranian regime.

Tenet wrote that the al-Qaida leaders had learned lessons from previous attempts to procure nuclear devices in the nuclear black market in the early 1990s.

“Saif al-Adel told Abu Bakr that no price was too high to pay if they could get their hands on such weapons,” he wrote. “However, he cautioned Abu Bakr that al-Qaida had been stung by scams in the past and that Pakistani specialists should be brought to Saudi Arabia to inspect the merchandise prior to purchase.

"As soon as I got wind of al-Qaida negotiations to purchase nuclear components in Saudi Arabia, I contacted the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar, and gave him all the details we had," Tenet said.

The CIA also communicated its intelligence to the Iranians, being uncertain of what the Islamic Republic knew of the communications, according to the former CIA director’s account.

"One senior al-Qaida operative told us that Mohammed Abdel al-Aziz al-Masri, who had been detained in Iran, managed al-Qaida’s nuclear program and had conducted experiments with explosives to test the effects of producing a nuclear yield. We passed this information to the Iranians in the hope that they would recognize our common interest in preventing any attack against U.S. interests."

Another U.S. security official told NBC News that Tenet's message did get attention in Tehran and that, in 2003, the group in Iran’s communications with other al-Qaida leaders were down.

Beyond the historical debate, U.S. officials want to know what happened to the other leaders in the management council. Apart from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is awaiting trial before a U.S. military court, the whereabouts of the others are unknown. There have been  intermittent reports over the years that Saif al-Adel, the Egyptian-born military director of al-Qaida, was permitted to leave Iran, but they have not been confirmed.  

 

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Lawyers for terror suspects held at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo, Cuba, said Tuesday that detainees are engaged in widespread protests of conditions at the prison, including a hunger strike that may imperil their lives.

Calling the situation “alarming,” the lawyers said in a statement that some of their clients are “coughing up blood” and “losing consciousness.”  A letter making similar assertions was sent earlier this week to Navy Rear Adm. John W. Smith, the commander of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo and signed by a dozen lawyers who represent most of the detainees at Guantanamo.  

A spokesman for U.S. military at Guantanamo   disputed the lawyers’ claims of a widespread hunger strike, saying they and their clients were merely trying to get attention and keep Guantanamo “in the news. ” 

The spokesman, Navy Capt. Robert Durand, said that a half-dozen detainees are currently on a hunger strike -- five of whom are being force fed through tubes -- and that no lives were in danger. Durand added that the figure was consistent with the average number of hunger strikers at Guantanamo over the past several years. He also acknowledged that “some detainees” have been disciplined and moved out of Camp 6 -- the most permissive of the camps at Guantanamo, with communal living arrangements -- but he declined to say how many or give the reasons for the action. 

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The conflicting claims underscored the difficulty of obtaining information about conditions at the facility, which President Barack Obama vowed to shut down on his first day in office after his 2008 election but which still remains open as a result of congressional opposition to its closure. There are 166 detainees remaining at the camp, but military rules forbid them from communicating in any way with members of the news media and visits to the camp by outsiders are tightly regulated. Even their communications with their lawyers must be cleared by military censors.

One of those lawyers, David Remes, told NBC News in a telephone interview from Guantanamo Monday night that he saw one of his clients -- Hussain Almerfedi, a Yemeni -- earlier that day and that he had lost “substantial weight” and was “very sick.” Under Guantanamo rules, Remes said he could not share anything that his client told him until the censor cleared the communication. But he said that he offered Almerfedi some trail mix during their meeting and he declined to take it -- a sign,  Remes said,  that his client was participating in the hunger strike.

“The men are at their wit’s end,” he said. “This is their eleventh year of being there and they have no prospect for release.” He also said that since taking over last year as commander,  Adm. Smith had “turned the clock back” to 2002 and 2003, imposing harsher restrictions on the detainees and more-rigorous searches in which personal items were being seized. The searches are being carried out by guards -- some of whom are returning soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq -- who he asserted appear to be extracting vengeance for what they encountered overseas, he said.   

One flashpoint appears to have been a Feb. 6 search at Camp 6 in which, according to the lawyers, camp authorities seized blankets, sheets, towels, sleeping mats, razors and other items from the detainees,  including family photos and religious CDs from the detainees. In their letter to Smith, the lawyers alleged that Arabic interpreters at the camp inspected Qurans “in ways that constitute desecration.” 

Durand, the Guantanamo spokesman, disputed that any harsher restrictions had been imposed by the new commander and said the search last month was in keeping with past practice. He said that search, and earlier ones, have turned up  “a Wal-Mart worth of stuff,” including improvised weapons, illegal electronics and other illicit contraband. But he said that handling of the Qurans was tightly regulated  and that no guards are even permitted to touch the Islamic Holy Books during the searches.

Durand also acknowledged that some of the dispute between camp authorities and the detainees’ lawyers may be about defining terms. Guantanamo officials define a hunger strike as refusing to eat nine meals in a row. But, he said, some of the detainees may be hoarding food in their cells even when they claim to be on a hunger strike.  

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GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- The U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, targeted for closure by Barack Obama during his campaign for the presidency, is instead quietly undergoing millions of dollars of upgrades that could allow it to remain open for years as a prison for suspected terrorists, NBC News has learned.

Among the recent improvements to the facility commonly known as “Gitmo”: a heavily guarded soccer field for detainees known as “Super Rec,” which cost nearly $750,000 and opened this week; cable television in a  communal living quarters and “enriching your life” classes for detainees, which include instruction on learning to paint, writing a resume  -- even handling personal finances.

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“Well, that's one class, but it’s not a popular (one),”  Army Col. Donnie Thomas, commander of the military guards at camp, said with a laugh. “But it’s a class. It’s just to keep these guys busy.”

Other improvements are more practical, such as a new headquarters for the guards and a new hospital, which is still in the planning stages.

Navy Adm. David B. “Woody” Woods, commander of the Guantanamo facility, told NBC News that the improvements have “made it safer for the detainees, safer for the guard force,” and have not adversely impacted security at the facility.

“We treat them all as a threat only because if you don't then you're gonna get surprised, and that's not our business,” he said.

Many of the improvements have been made at the most modern facility in the detention center, known as Camp VI, a communal living compound that houses about 80 percent of the 169 detainees currently held at Gitmo. There, detainees who are deemed to be compliant with the rules and therefore eligible for more privileges are able to watch 21 Cable TV channels, DVD movies, read newspapers and borrow books from a library.

The detention center, located within the U.S. Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, was established in 2002 by President George W. Bush to hold detainees from the war in Afghanistan and later Iraq. The base in Cuba was selected as part of a Bush administration strategy to prevent judicial review of the legal status of the prisoners, who were initially denied lawyers.

Obama made its closure a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, arguing that U.S. courts were capable of handling the cases. After taking office, he signed an executive order on Jan. 22, 2009, directing that Gitmo be shut down within a year. The order also called for an immediate case-by case review of detainees at the facility with an eye toward either repatriating them or bringing them to trial in U.S. civilian courts.

But the president’s efforts to shutter the camp were blocked by Congress out of concerns that transferring the detainees to U.S. jails would pose a security risk and invite escape attempts or terrorist attacks on the facilities.

A little more than two years after Obama’s first executive order, on March 7, 2011, he signed another executive order making a number of policy changes regarding Gitmo, including a reversal of his order seeking to bring detainees to trial in civilian courts. Instead, he said, suspects would face military tribunals that would decide their guilt or innocence.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., and four other Guantanamo detainees were the first to go before a military tribunal last month, when they were formally charged with crimes that include murder and terrorism. They face the death penalty if convicted for their roles in the attacks that claimed 2,976 lives in New York, Washington and Shanksville, Pa.

But for the remainder of the detainees – including some who are eligible for release but have no country willing to take them – there is little prospect of leaving Gitmo anytime soon.

And that means U.S. taxpayers will continue to foot the bill for their presence in a U.S. prison that costs $140 million a year to operate – or some $800,000 per detainee.

Woods, the commander of the Guantanamo detention center, said he doesn’t anticipate the closure of the facility any time soon.

“As far as being able to close down the operation, I could do that … in a couple of months, the buildings and the people,” he said. “We have removed these belligerents from the battlefield and our job is to detain them, and we do that very well.”

Michael Isikoff is NBC's national investigative correspondent; Mike Brunker of msnbc.com contributed to this report.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WASHINGTON - In northern Bucharest, in a busy residential neighborhood minutes from the heart of the capital city, is a secret the Romanian government has long tried to protect.

For years, the CIA used a government building — codenamed "Bright Light" — as a makeshift prison for its most valuable detainees. There it held al-Qaida operatives Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, and others in a basement prison before they were ultimately transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006, according to former U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the location and inner workings of the prison.

The existence of a CIA prison in Romania has been widely reported, but its location has never been made public. The Associated Press and German public television ARD located the former prison and learned details of the facility where harsh interrogation tactics were used. ARD's program on the CIA prison is set to air Thursday.

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The Romanian prison was part of a network of so-called black sites that the CIA operated and controlled overseas in Thailand, Lithuania and Poland. All the prisons were closed by May 2006, and the CIA's detention and interrogation program ended in 2009.  

 Unlike the CIA's facility in Lithuania's countryside or the one hidden in a Polish military installation, the CIA's prison in Romania was not in a remote location. It was hidden in plain sight, a couple blocks off a major boulevard on a street lined with trees and homes, along busy train tracks.

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The building is used as the National Registry Office for Classified Information, which is also known as ORNISS. Classified information from NATO and the European Union is stored there. Former intelligence officials both described the location of the prison and identified pictures of the building.

In an interview at the building in November, senior ORNISS official Adrian Camarasan said the basement is one of the most secure rooms in all of Romania. But he said Americans never ran a prison there.

"No, no. Impossible, impossible," he said in an ARD interview for its "Panorama" news broadcast, as a security official monitored the interview.

The CIA prison opened for business in the fall of 2003, after the CIA decided to empty the black site in Poland, according to former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the detention program with reporters.

Shuttling detainees into the facility without being seen was relatively easy. After flying into Bucharest, the detainees were brought to the site in vans. CIA operatives then drove down a side road and entered the compound through a rear gate that led to the actual prison.

The detainees could then be unloaded and whisked into the ground floor of the prison and into the basement.

Imported Halal meat
The basement consisted of six prefabricated cells, each with a clock and arrow pointing to Mecca, the officials said. The cells were on springs, keeping them slightly off balance and causing disorientation among some detainees.

The CIA declined to comment on the prison.

During the first month of their detention, the detainees endured sleep deprivation and were doused with water, slapped or forced to stand in painful positions, several former officials said. Waterboarding, the notorious interrogation technique that simulates drowning, was not performed in Romania, they said.

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After the initial interrogations, the detainees were treated with care, the officials said. The prisoners received regular dental and medical checkups. The CIA shipped in Halal food to the site from Frankfurt, Germany, the agency's European center for operations. Halal meat is prepared under religious rules similar to kosher food.

Former U.S. officials said that because the building was a government installation, it provided excellent cover. The prison didn't need heavy security because area residents knew it was owned by the government. People wouldn't be inclined to snoop in post-communist Romania, with its extensive security apparatus known for spying on the country's own citizens.

Human rights activists have urged the Eastern European countries to investigate the roles their governments played in hosting the prisons in which interrogation techniques such as waterboarding were used. Officials from these countries continue to deny these prisons ever existed.

"We know of the criticism, but we have no knowledge of this subject," Romanian President Traian Basescu said in a September interview with AP.

The CIA has tried to close the book on the detention program, which President Barack Obama ended shortly after taking office.

"That controversy has largely subsided," the CIA's top lawyer, Stephen Preston, said at a conference this month.

'Years of official denials'
But details of the prison network continue to trickle out through investigations by international bodies, reporters and human rights groups. "There have been years of official denials," said Dick Marty, a Swiss lawmaker who led an investigation into the CIA secret prisons for the Council of Europe. "We are at last beginning to learn what really happened in Bucharest."

During the Council of Europe's investigation, Romania's foreign affairs minister assured investigators in a written report that, "No public official or other person acting in an official capacity has been involved in the unacknowledged deprivation of any individual, or transport of any individual while so deprived of their liberty." That report also described several other government investigations into reports of a secret CIA prison in Romania and said: "No such activities took place on Romanian territory."

Reporters and human rights investigators have previously used flight records to tie Romania to the secret prison program. Flight records for a Boeing 737 known to be used by the CIA showed a flight from Poland to Bucharest in September 2003. Among the prisoners on board, according to former CIA officials, were Mohammed and Walid bin Attash, who has been implicated in the bombing of the USS Cole.

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Later, other detainees — Ramzi Binalshibh, Abd al-Nashiri and Abu Faraj al-Libi — were also moved to Romania. A deceptive al-Libi, who was taken to the prison in June 2005, provided information that would later help the CIA identify Osama bin Laden's trusted courier, a man who unwittingly led them the CIA to bin Laden himself.

 Court documents recently discovered in a lawsuit have also added to the body of evidence pointing to a CIA prison in Romania. The files show CIA contractor Richmor Aviation Inc., a New York-based charter company, operated flights to and from Romania along with other locations including Morocco and the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

For the CIA officers working at the secret prison, the assignment wasn't glamorous. The officers served 90-day tours, slept on the compound and ate their meals there, too. Officers were prevented from the leaving the base after their presence in the neighborhood stoked suspicion. One former officer complained that the CIA spent most of its time baby-sitting detainees like Binalshibh and Mohammed whose intelligence value diminished as the years passed.

The Romanian and Lithuanian sites were eventually closed in the first half of 2006 before CIA Director Porter Goss left the job. Some of the detainees were taken to Kabul, where the CIA could legally hold them before they were sent to Guantanamo. Others were sent back to their native countries.

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