According to a report by the Associated Press, the CIA secretly ferried four high profile detainees out of Guantanamo Bay to secret and as-yet unidentified “black sites” overseas to avoid having to give them access to lawyers.
The CIA had originally delivered the four detainees to Gitmo in September of 2003, but then in March 2004, fearing a pending Supreme Court ruling that would give them legal access to lawyers and the US court system, they were transferred back into the “black sites” where they were interrogated for years in secret.
CIA officials shrugged off the report, insisting that the black sites were “administered on the basis of guidance from the Department of Justice,” and that at any rate they were ordered closed in 2009 by President Obama.
But the fact remains that this report suggests the CIA deliberately transferred the detainees into these legal black holes not for national security reasons but for their own convenience, and to subvert the American legal system. Whether this one done of the CIA’s own volition or on the recommendation of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, the fact that it was done at all should be of enormous significance.