In September 2006, a US military C-17 cargo plane arrived at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and deposited 14 new prisoners. The men had previously been held in CIA “black site” prisons around the world, where many were tortured outside the protections of US law.
One of them was Ammar al-Baluchi, one of the five men facing a military tribunal at Gitmo for allegedly aiding the 9/11 hijackers. Prior to arriving at the island prison, Baluchi was subject to isolation, forced shavings, beatings, dousings with ice water, stress positions including being shackled to a ceiling, and food denial. In one particularly disturbing incident, trainee interrogators formed a line and repeatedly slammed his head against a wall for practice in a technique known as “walling,” leaving him with brain damage, according to a CIA report declassified in 2022.
When he arrived at the island US naval base alongside the 13 others, they were spirited to an equally shadowy lock-up: Camp 7.
Camp 7, before it closed in 2021, was the most clandestine part of Gitmo, so closely guarded its exact location, design, and costs were secret. It held some of America’s most high-value detainees, including Baluchi and his uncle, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
Nearly two decades after those prisoners arrived at Guantánamo, a new lawsuit could reveal more about what went on inside, and whether it was under the full “operational control” of the CIA.
On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union asked the Supreme Court to take up Connell v CIA, which argues that the intelligence agency was wrongly able to dodge a records request about its ties to Camp 7. What might seem like an arcane legal fight about records policy has the potential to shed new light on one of the ongoing secrets of the War on Terror.
The case stems from Baluchi’s legal defense. Baluchi, who was born in Kuwait and captured in Pakistan in 2003, is accused of providing money and travel arrangements for the 9/11 hijackers at the request of his uncle. The Kuwaiti has said he didn’t know for certain what the recipients of his support were planning to do, and hasn’t been convicted of any crimes.
In 2017, Baluchi’s lawyer James G. Connell III filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA, seeking information about his time being detained in Camp 7, a facility the 2014 Senate torture report later described as being under the “operational control” of the CIA at the time Baluchi arrived. The agency replied with three records, but withheld a fourth in its entirety, and it refused to clarify whether any further records linking the CIA and Camp 7 even existed.
The ACLU argues the CIA’s non-denial denial, its cliched “we can neither confirm nor deny” response known as a “Glomar” defense, defies common sense because the torture report, Guantánamo Bay military commission testimony, and declassified documents all suggest CIA activity at Camp 7.
“The CIA’s claim to secrecy in this case is as extreme as it is absurd, given the extensive public record about the CIA’s connection to Camp 7,” Brett Max Kaufman, one of the ACLU attorneys arguing the case, said in a statement. “The CIA has once again stretched Glomar past its breaking point, and the courts should not be roped into endorsing a patent secrecy charade like this one.”
The Independent has contacted the CIA for comment, and the Defense Department referred requests for information to the intelligence agency.
Some lower courts have so far sided with the CIA, finding that in records cases, judges need not look further afield for information that might contradict an agency’s silence. The ACLU argues, however, that appeals courts are split on the matter, and judges shouldn’t have to “bury their heads in the sand” if there are indications that an agency is refusing to acknowledge, and potentially divulge, information it likely possesses.
The civil rights group argues the CIA regularly abuses the Glomar defense, using it to deflect inquiries on controversial issues like drone strikes, extrajudicial killings of US citizens, and questions of potential spying on Congress.
What is public about Camp 7 and the CIA’s activities at Guatánamo is concerning to many observers.
