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Today's Stories October 9, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Blinded by Ideology: Cato, Trade and Outsourcing October 8, 2007 David Macaray Lesbians for Hillary? or Teamsters for Hillary? Jeff Ballinger Nike, Steroids and Marion Jones Brian Eno This Ban Won't Stop Us Christopher Brauchli Translating Bush Louay Safi End the Disgrace of Guantánamo Matt Reichel Homocide by Cops at the Phoenix Airport Dave Lindorff Finally, A Good Day for the Constitution Thomas P. Healy The Politics of Mercury Pollution Martha Rosenberg E. Coli Spreading Slaughter Allowed to Stay Open Richard Rhames A Democrat's Lament Website of the Day Not All Italians Love Columbus   October 6 / 7, 2007 Alexander Cockburn A Rainbow Over a Graveyard Norman Finkelstein Jeffrey Goldberg's Prison James Bovard Are Presidents Entitled to Kill Foreigners? Patrick Cockburn The Invasion of Afghanistan, Six Years Later Jeffrey St. Clair At Disaster Falls Ralph Nader Where Are the Lawyers of America? Ray McGovern So Who's Afraid of the Israel Lobby? Saul Landau A River Runs Through It Ben Tripp Bring on the Next War! Terry Lodge The Grateful Dead Body Parts Delivered to Your Door Reform Act Seth Sandronsky Market Mystification and the Liberal Virus Kevin Funk / Steve Fake Divestment and Darfur Missy Beattie In the Custody of Bush and Cheney Website of the Weekend Snoop Dogg vs. Bill O'Reilly   October 5, 2007 Andy Worthington The Anonymous Victims of Guantánamo David Macaray De-Skilling America's Labor Force Lee Sustar The Democrats and Iran: Can They Sink Any Lower? Dan La Botz Cincinnati Six Years After the Killings and the Riots Aaron Hess Hate Week Comes to Campus William A. Cook Unmasking AIPAC Website of the Day Range of Memory   October 4, 2007 Uri Avnery The Power of the Israel Lobby Dave Marsh Dick Cheney, a Eulogy Valerio Volpi How Italy Became a Launching Pad for the US Military Cecilie Surasky Dissenting at Your Own Risk Dave Lindorff Remaking Iraq, as Vietnam Norman Solomon Sputnik, 50 Years Later Laura Carlsen Costa Rica and CAFTA: Memo Reveals Manipulation Scheme Walter Brasch When Compassion Fails: Bush and the Children's Health Act Ben Terrall Haitian Human Rights Advocate Kidnapped William S. Lind Beyond the OODA Loop Website of the Day Musicians in Handcuffs   October 3, 2007 Vijay Prashad Gang of Four Anita Sinha Black Ties and Bulldozers in New Orleans Winslow T. Wheeler Posturing at the Petraeus Hearings: Where was the Oversight? Sharon Smith The Kucinich Quandary Jeff Leys Our Bonhoeffer Moment Sen. Russ Feingold We Must End This Tragedy Mohamad Bazzi Playing Into the Hands of Ahmadinejad Brenda Norrell A Cry from the Top of the World Robert Weissman No Sex, Still a Scandal at the IMF Website of the Day Jena by Mellencamp   October 2, 2007 Ibrahim Warde Logical Lies About Bin Laden's Wealth Gary Leupp "I Hate All Iranians": Frank Talk from a Defense Dept. Official David Macaray The Hunt for a Blue November: In Pursuit of the Labor Vote Conn Hallinan Religion and Foreign Policy John Ross The Great American Chess Match Alan Farago Ripping Off Miami's Poor Sonja Karkar The Right to Exist: States or People? Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Meteor and the Mahatma Website of the Day Grandin on Che's Legacy   October 1, 2007 Al Giordano The Clinton Campaign's Reckless Race for Big Money Donors Paul Craig Roberts From Burma to Iraq: Hypocrisy Rules the West Moshe Adler The Crimes of Microsoft Ingmar Lee My Kayak Journey Down the Wild Pacific Coast John V. Walsh Ahmadinejad is Not My Enemy Norman Solomon Political Science and Truth of Consequences Roger Burbach Historic Victory in Ecuador for the Left Ramzy Baroud The Politics of Assassination Stephen Lendman The Maestro of Misery: Greenspan's Dark Legacy Susie Day Honey, I Shrank the Military! Website of the Day Letters from Fort Lewis Brig   September 29 / 30, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Clinton Time: Do We Set Our Clocks Forward or Back? Uri Avnery So What About Iran? Andrew Cockburn Iraq's WMD Myth: Why Clinton is Culpable Jeffrey St. Clair Through the Gates of Lodore Wajahat Ali The Good, the Bad and the Iraqi Andy Worthington The Curse of the Military Commissions Don Santina Ethnic Cleansing in San Francisco Ralph Nader Free Lunches, for Corporations! Fred Gardner The Man Behind the MoveOn Ad Seth Sandronsky The US Economy Since 1980 Gideon Levy The Children of 5767 William S. Lind A Ticking Bomb Reza Fiyouzat An Anti-Imperialist Case Against a Nuclear Iran Richard Rhames Wag the Tail, Frag the Dog David Michael Green Buyer's Remorse: Their Purchase, Our Regret Zach Mason Hate and Hope in Herndon Poets' Basement Gibbons, Ali, Davies and Suss Website of the Weekend Domestic Crusaders     September 28, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison The Teflon Alliance with Israel Roberto J. González / David H. Price When Anthropologists Become Counter-Insurgents Saul Landau September, the Cruelest Month in Chile Tom Clifford Burma by the Numbers Christopher Brauchli Of Toxic Almonds and Bad Beef Martha Rosenberg Spinning Suicide Statistics Dave Zirin Soldier in Winter: John Carlos Speaks Out on the Jena 6 Laray Polk Bush Library or Lockbox? Binoy Kampmark When Reagan Turned Brown James McEnteer Hell, Columbia: an Academic Hotshot Introduces a Petty Tyrant Website of the Day Concerned Anthropologists   September 27, 2007 Alan Farago Housing Market Crashes and Burns Andy Worthington A Bad Week at Guantánamo Jonathan Cook Why Did Israel Attack Syria? William Hughes Billy Graham, a Prince of War Exposed Ray McGovern Bush, Oil and Moral Bankruptcy Ron Jacobs Joe Biden's Plan to Chop Up Iraq Dave Lindorff Quit the Party! Join the Mass Resignation Movement! Joshua Frank Pruning the Green Party Anne Dachel The CDC, Vaccines and Autism Website of the Day The God-O-Meter   September 26, 2007 Bill Quigley HUD's Home Wreckers Paul Craig Roberts A Pandemic of Police Brutality Jeff Kisseloff Still Smearing Alger Hiss China Hand Is China the True Target of Financial Sanctions Against Iran? Behzad Yaghmaian At the Gates of Paradise Sonja Karkar The Quality of Mercy in Gaza Mike Ferner Interrupting the Empire, 30 Seconds at a Time Col. Dan Smith Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Learn Clifton Ross Bollinger's Barbarous and Ignorant Speech Brenda Norrell A Meeting of Indigenous Peoples in Caracas Website of the Day The Smearing of Jean Maria Arrigo, a Psychologist Opposed to Torture   September 25, 2007 Nicole Colson On the March Against Racism Uri Avnery Foam on the Water Brendan Cooney Ahmadinejad on Broadway: Free Speech? Arrest Him! Harry Browne Bruce Springsteen Comes Home ... to Hell Marjorie Cohn The Drift Toward War with Iran David Macaray The UAW-GM Strike: the Long Knives are Already Out Ralph Nader Hypocrisy and Inverted Priorities in Congress Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger, the Climate Change Hypocrite Anthony Papa Perverted Justice & America's Drug Laws Christopher Ketcham All Politicos Now Classed as Sexual Deviants Website of the Day John Waters on Free Speech   September 24, 2007 George Ciccariello-Maher Racist Violence from Jena to Oakland Saree Makdisi The War on Gaza's Children David Keen Action-as-Propaganda: Learning About the Iraq War from Hannah Arendt Sherwood Ross Just How Powerful is the Israel Lobby? Only Cheney Knows for Sure Ron Jacobs Greenspan's Open Secret Donna Saggia The Cult of the Military and the Decline of Democratic Values Mike Ferner Free Speech Takes a Capitol Beating Malini Johar Schueller Norman Hsu is a Model Minority Monique Dols and Dylan Stillwood Ahmadinejad and Columbia Website of the Day The Promotion September 22 / 23, 2007 Alexander Cockburn On Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" Jennifer Loewenstein Beneath the Hideous Veneer of Security Linn Washington, Jr. The Injustice in Jena: Prosecutorial Misconduct More Dangerous Than Racism Jeffrey St. Clair Going Down in Dinosaur: Oil, Dams and Whitewater (Part One) Alan Farago Genuflecting to China Brian Cloughley Of Hate, Hubris and Atrocities Robert Fantina The Deadly Pattern of US Imperialism Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Land Tenure and Resistance in New Mexico Jason Hribal Fear of an Animal Planet David Rosen Slugger Sex: Athletes, Violence and Male Sexuality Mike Whitney The Era of Global Financial Instability John V. Walsh Who Will Lead a Filibuster of the Iraq War Spending Bill? Dave Lindorff Why Aren't We Banning Blackwater Here? David Michael Green Hiding Behind a Camouflage Skirt Fred Gardner Claudia Jensen (Look Back in Anger) Cassandra Jones Support Our Mercenaries Roger van Zwanenberg Pluto Press Under Attack by Israel Lobby Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Ford Website of the Weekend "For the Bible Tells Me So"   September 21, 2007 Karim Makdisi Letter from Lebanon M. Shahid Alam A History of Violence Alan Farago Who Will Buy My House? Joshua Frank The Demise of the Congressional Black Caucus Dave Zirin Notre Dame and the Economy of Sports Kenneth Couesbouc A Short History of Lending and Borrowing Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. David Himmelstein Mass Health Care Failure Ben Terrall The Streets of San Francisco: Where Impeachment is Taken Seriously--By Everyone But Pelosi Steve Fournier Ex-Dems, Sign Up Here Frederico Fuentes, et al Voices in Defense of Bolivia Website of the Day Sabra and Shatila, Remembered   September 20, 2007 Kathleen Christison Whatever Happened to Palestine? Zoltan Grossman An Endless Occupation? Paul Craig Roberts As the Empire Slips: Greenspan and the Economy of Greed Stan Cox and Wes Jackson Carbon-Free and Still Wrecking the Planet Russell Mokhiber AARP to Kucinich: Drop Dead Charles Modiano Jim Crow's Children: the Jena 6, Shaquanda Cotton and Blog Power Raymond J. Lawrence Bush's Worrisome Use of Religion Brendan Cooney Body-Snatched Nation Website of the Day Mind Control for Breakfast   September 19, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand Idly By? Paul Krassner The Power of Laughter Sgt. Martin Smith The New Private Warriors: Blackwater in Iraq Seth Sandronsky Living in a Dilapidated Market: To Rent or Own? Claud Cockburn Looking back at the Great Crash Victoria Buch Israel's Agenda for Ethnic Cleansing and Transfer Robert Weissman Oil Warriors: From Greenspan to Kissinger Mike Ferner Can We Talk? Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger's $9 Billion Boondoggle for Big Water Website of the Day Housing Cost Calculator   September 18, 2007 Mike Whitney U.S. Banks Brace for Storm Surge as Dollar and Credit System Reel Alan Farago Interviewing Alan Greenspan: How 60 Minutes Blew It John Ross America's Great Wall: Where Will the Workers Go When They Finish It? Ron Jacobs Nooses Hung From Jena, La. to College Park, Md. Alex Doherty Britain's 9/11 "Truth Movement": Who's Responsible? September 17, 2007 Marjorie Cohn Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11 Attack on Academic Freedom Paul Craig Roberts Conservatism Isn't What It Used to Be Ricardo Alarcón The Return of C. Wright Mills Amid the Dawn of a New Era Marc Levy Fake Vets Chasing Fame Eva Liddell In 1969 We Already Knew What 2007 Would Look Like Website of the Day Propaganda: Your Job in Germany. Directed by Frank Capra, and written by Theodor Geisel Sept. 15-16, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The General Came to Washington Vicente Navarro How the U.S. Schemed Against Spain's Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy Mike Whitney Plummeting Dollar, Credit Crunch Herman Mindshaftgap Has There Ever Been a Surge? If so, Has it a Future? Ellen Cantarow Girls! Music! Palestine! Jordan Flaherty K-Ville: Fox's New Paean to the N.O.P.D. Zachary Hurwitz Julio Cusurichi on Amazonian Development September 14, 2007 Debbie Nathan New York Times reporter was a member of an illegal underage porn site, claims he was only "posing as online predator" Franklin Lamb Sabra-Shatilla, 25 Years Later Patrick Cockburn Greet Bush and Die: The Killing of Abu Risha Farzana Versey The World's Richest Muslim Tycoon Alan Farago This is Florida, Epicenter of the Housing Bust and of Public Corruption Hank Edson Bill's New Book is Giving Me a Headache September 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Petraeus Confided Presidential Ambitions to Iraqi Official Scott Vest, former Air Force Captain at Minot The Barksdale Nukes Andy Worthington Guantánamo: "Ghost" Prisoners Speak At Last Michael Baney Mr. Fixit of Quake-Stricken Peru Has Death Squad Past Dr. Susan Block Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern? September 12, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts American Economy: RIP Stan Goff The Petraeus Report William Blum When Soldiers Mutiny...Only Those Fighting the War Can End It. Manuel Garcia Forgetting 9/11 Debbie Nathan Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the Big Time September 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Fakery of General Petraeus Iain Boal Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse Michael Dickinson Osama on 9/11 Guerry Hoddersen Free Speech is Not Given, but Taken Bill Hatch Irish Politics in Old Time California Gary Leupp The Legacy of Luciano Pavarotti Website of the Day Elisa Salasin's "My September 11th" September 10, 2007 Uri Avnery A Big Victory Against the Wall Patrick Cockburn Petraeus's Closet Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen Screwing Up In Iraq David Michael Green Why Fred Thompson is Uniquely Qualified to be the GOP's Nominee Pius Adesanmi A Solidarity Letter to a Victim of Michael Vick Betty Schneider How to Deal With Sex Offenders   September 8 / 9, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Will the US Really Bomb Iran? Saul Landau The Irrational Drama of a Declining Empire Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Hurricane Katrina and Bush's Wars Ray McGovern Petraeus, the Westmoreland of Iraq Matthew Abraham Finkelstein's Legacy at DePaul Alan Farago The Governor and the Growth Machine Christopher Brauchli Grand Old Party Animals Rannie Amiri Battle of the Camps Fred Gardner Will Snoops Get Stopped? James L. Secor B-52 Flexing Nuclear Muscles: H-Bombs Over Barksdale Missy Comley Beattie Choices: Shall We Stay or Shall We Go Now? Ben Tripp Still in the Clover Francis Boyle The University of Illinois' Little Red Sambo Show Joe Allen and Paul D'Amato Jason Bourne vs. James Bond Website of the Weekend Drilling Wyoming: the View from Above September 7, 2007 Robert Fantina Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality John Ross Coca-Cola's Raid on a Sacred Mountain James Brooks The Occupation Within Russell Mokhiber Robert Reich and the Elimination of Corporate Criminal Liability Joshua Frank The Green Implosion Continues: Cyberlynching John Murphy John Walsh On the Green Party Mark Brenner New York Taxi Workers Strike Over Tracking Devices Mike Ferner "I Will Salute No More Forever" Website of the Day Help Save Osny Zachary's Life             Subscribe Online

October 9, 2007 Where Coerced Lies are Treated as Evidence Fourth Whistleblower Rocks Guantánamo By ANDY WORTHINGTON The saga of the Guantánamo whistleblowers, which sprang to life in June, but then, like so many news stories, was considered done and dusted by a media hungry for fresh meat, resurfaced unexpectedly last week. A U.S. Army Major filed an affidavit in the case of Adel Hamad, a Sudanese detainee who was kidnapped in July 2002 from his home in Pakistan, where he was working as a hospital administrator. The Major, who does not wish to be identified, stated that, between October 2004 and February 2005, he served on 49 of the 558 Combatant Status Review Tribunals at Guantánamo, which were convened to assess whether or not the detainees had been correctly designated as "enemy combatants." In his affidavit, the Major, a Judge Advocate's General (JAG) officer who served as a Second Lieutenant in the Army Reserves, and has worked as a Deputy District Attorney, explained that the training he received, both in Washington and Guantánamo, was "minimal," that the CSRT process was "not well defined," and that, "although the CSRT rules required having a JAG on each CSRT panel," they were "silent as to the role." He and other JAG lawyers concluded that they were there as "informal legal advisors to the other board members," whose legal knowledge was often poor. He described, for example, "a sentiment among the JAG officers that many of the CSRT officers did not understand the distinction between conclusory statements and evidence," and noted that some tribunal members "did not understand that the presumption was to be given to the evidence." In part, however, this was by design on the government's part, as he also noted, "The CSRT rules afforded the government evidence a presumption of correctness. For me as a tribunal member this meant that when I had a piece of evidence with some small corroboration, then I had to view that with great significance and it would also have made it difficult for any detainee to rebut." Describing the 49 tribunals on which he sat as a member, he wrote that he and his colleagues typically worked 14-hour days, six or seven days a week, and explained that the tribunals' recorders, whose general role was "to generate the evidence" to present to the panels, "did not have much control over the content of the information to be presented to the CSRT hearings," adding that "Much of the material presented was supplied by intelligence agencies and were summaries that were not necessarily justified by the underlying evidence." He also explained that the role of the Personal Representatives, who liaised with the detainees and sometimes helped them put their case to the tribunals, was "unclear," noting that "some PRs did little," but that one Air Force Major "strongly advocated for the detainees he was assigned to assist." In a further demonstration that some of those involved in the process were more concerned with results than with justice, he added, "I heard some CSRT members say that they did not appreciate the zeal with which he tried to assist the detainees." In a particularly telling passage, in which he discussed the CSRT of Adel Hamad, he explained that "the tribunal members had very little discussion of the evidence in his case," and that his "primary concern" was that there was "insufficient evidence to describe him as an enemy combatant." After drafting a dissenting opinion, he discussed it with a Navy Commander, who was also on the panel, and was surprised that his colleague "questioned the meaning of some of the definitions used in my dissenting report," concluding that it "came from a lack of legal training." In one of the most damning passages, he also noted that, although exculpatory evidence, which might have exonerated the detainees, was supposed to be presented separately, "as required in the CSRT rules," none was presented in any of his 49 tribunals, and the only time he ever encountered exculpatory evidence was "by accident," when "some of the evidence presented by the recorder would contradict the allegations made against the detainee." The Major also wrote about taking part in six CSRT hearings, "where there was a unanimous decision that the detainee was a Non Enemy Combatant ("NEC"). He explained that in each case "the Command directed that a new CSRT be held or the original CSRT was ordered reopened," but pointed out that "the 'new evidence' that was presented was in fact a different conclusory intelligence finding," which, significantly, "was not justified by the underlying evidence." In addition, he and other dissenting tribunal members were "briefed by CID (intelligence) agents who were brought in by Command to explain why the NEC results were wrong," and he described discussions that followed these meetings, when he and other tribunal members concluded, with some justification, "that this was an attempt to influence the results of the CSRT hearings." In other passages, he described acrimonious meetings and a "heated conference" that followed "inconsistent decisions" in the cases of 18 Uyghur detainees (Chinese Muslims, oppressed by their government, who had fled to Pakistan from Afghanistan after a ruined village they were living in was bombed by US forces), and explained how his suggestion, based on his experience of the criminal justice system, that "inconsistent results were good for the system," and would show that it was "working correctly," were ignored. In a final point, which also indicates how loaded the process was in favor of the government's allegations, the Major noted that he spent a month and a half working as a legal advisor to the CSRTs, but "was never told that I could review the sufficiency of the evidence and write or discuss that issue with a CSRT." While it remains to be seen whether the major's statement will add significantly to the growing clamor to return habeas corpus rights to the Guantánamo detainees, it has certainly revived a vitally important story, which, until now, looked as if it had been allowed to fall off the radar. The first Guantánamo whistleblower to speak out publicly was Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, an Army reservist with 26 years' experience in military intelligence. In an affidavit filed in the case of the Kuwaiti detainee Fawzi al-Odah, Lt. Col. Abraham, who had been part of the team responsible for compiling the "evidence" used in the tribunals, delivered a blistering condemnation of the entire process, stating that the CSRTs were severely flawed, relying on intelligence "of a generalized nature, often outdated, often 'generic,' rarely specifically relating to the individual subjects of the CSRTs or to the circumstances related to those individuals' status," and that, moreover, the process was designed to rubber-stamp the detainees' prior designation as "enemy combatants." Like the Army Major, Lt. Col. Abraham also experienced bullying when he and the other members of his tribunal decided, in the case of Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi, a Libyan shopkeeper who was married to an Afghan woman, that the detainee was not an "enemy combatant." Despite the uproar that Lt. Col. Abraham's affidavit caused for a few weeks in June and July this year, the press soon moved on. A few ripples of interest still lingered when he visited Capitol Hill in early August to reiterate his testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, but there the trail ended. A week later, after liaising with Lt. Col. Abraham, I reported exclusively that another officer who had taken part in the CSRT process had written to wish him luck, and to declare, "my recollections of the process are similar to yours. The finding of enemy combatant was expected, the finding of not an enemy combatant was looked upon as a failure of the process." Another OARDEC officer had also "expressed support for his efforts," but by that time everyone was on holiday, and the plight of the "enemy combatants" was forgotten. The affidavit filed by the army major in Adel Hamad's case not only revives the important story that Lt. Col. Abraham bravely divulged in June; it also raises the number of former insiders criticizing the process to four, and neatly returns to the first reports of dissent within the ranks of those involved in the CSRTs, which first surfaced in September 2006. In an article for the Boston Globe, Farah Stockman reported on Adel Hamad's case, noting that an Army Major, who is clearly the same man who has now filed an affidavit publicly, even though no one involved in the case is providing any further information, had issued a dissenting opinion. Taking into account the fact that neither of the charity organizations for which Hamad had worked in Pakistan, the Saudi-based World Association of Muslim Youth, and the Kuwait-based Lajanat Dawa Islamiya, appeared on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations, he argued that, "even assuming all the allegations are accurate, the detainee does not meet the definition of enemy combatant." He added, "These NGOs presumably have numerous employees and volunteer workers who have been working in legitimate humanitarian roles. The mere fact that some elements of these NGOs provide support to 'terrorist ideals and causes' is insufficient to declare one of the employees an enemy combatant." After Lt. Col. Abraham first spoke out in June, I wrote an article that drew on Farah Stockman's original story, in which I also noted her shocked conclusion, that the Major was overruled by his colleagues, one of whom, in a single line that discredited the whole tribunal process, wrote that the case "passed the 'low evidentiary hurdle' set up by the rules of the hearings", and I'm pleased to note that, with the Army Major now stepping forward to join the ranks of the Guantánamo whistleblowers, the mystery of Adel Hamad's dissenting tribunal member has now been solved. After the abuse that Lt. Col. Abraham received after going public in June, when the Department of Justice attempted to belittle him, and smeared his account as "innuendo," I also understand why he has refrained from revealing his identity. All that remains now is for more former tribunal members to follow his lead, and also, if he's watching and waiting to do the right thing, for a dissenting officer who served as the Personal Representative in Guantánamo to two particular detainees to come forward too. First reported by Corine Hegland in the National Journal in February 2006, the story of this Personal Representative showed a principled man speaking truth to power on a heroic scale. Alarmed that those he was representing had been accused of crimes that they couldn't possibly have committed, this man, perhaps the Air Force Major referred to in the Army Major's affidavit, checked the file of the detainee who had made the allegations, saw that he had accused 60 men of attending a particular training when none of them had even been in Afghanistan at the time, and took the unprecedented step of submitting a written protest to the authorities after the CSRT of Farouq Saif, a teacher of the Koran who was allegedly seen at Osama bin Laden's private airport in Kandahar. In his letter, the Personal Representative stated that the government's sole evidence that Saif had been at the airport was the statement of another prisoner, who, according to an FBI memo, which he presented to the tribunal, was a notorious liar. According to the FBI, he "had lied, not only about Farouq, but about other Yemeni detainees as well. The other detainee claimed he had seen the Yemenis at times and in places where they simply could not have been." The Personal Representative added, "I do feel with some certainty that [the accuser] has lied about other detainees to receive preferable treatment and to cause them problems while in custody." We know the identity of one of the other 59 men accused by the "notorious liar", Mohammed al-Tumani, a young Syrian who went to Afghanistan with his whole family, to be reunited with his father, who was working as a cook in Kabul, but, although some of the other falsely accused detainees are almost certainly covered in my book The Guantánamo Files, in which I look in depth at false allegations and false confessions, the knockout blow to the credibility of the corrupt tribunals might be delivered if this man, with his insight into lies that were treated as "evidence" on a colossal scale, could be persuaded to join the ranks of Guantánamo's principled whistleblowers. Andy Worthington is a British historian, and the author of 'The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison' (to be published by Pluto Press in October 2007). He can be reached at: andy@andyworthington.co.uk

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