home

Guantanamo Judge Orders End to Secret Censoring of Hearing Testimony

An unnamed government agency has been secretly monitoring court proceedings in the pre-trial hearings of the 9/11 defendants at Guantanamo and pushing the censor button. The judge today ordered it to stop.

Army Col James Pohl ordered an unnamed government agency to remove censorship equipment, as a second round of pretrial hearings finished on Thursday....The judge said in his ruling that he had sole authority to decide when to close a hearing or stop spectators - including journalists and relatives of the victims - from listening to testimony.

From the transcript [Unofficial/Unauthenticated Transcript of the KSM et al. (2) Hearing Dated 1/31/2013 from 9:01 AM to 9:22 AM, accessible here.) [More...]

This is not the first time the suspension of the broadcast has been initiated. It is also not the first time the military judge ruled the
evidence should have been discussed in open court. This is the last time that an OCA or any other third party will be permitted to unilaterally decide if the broadcast should be suspended. The OCA, any OCA does not work for the commission and therefore has no independent decision-making authority on how these proceedings are to be conducted.

The court security officer works for the commission. He is trained in identifying classified materials and is authorized to initiate the temporary suspension of the broadcast of the proceedings if, in his judgment, such action is necessary. He then will consult with the judge. The judge and only the judge will then decide on the appropriate action.

The commission understands that reasonable minds may disagree and have good-faith differences as to whether a particular piece of information is classified. Nonetheless, the commission will not permit any entity except the CSO to suspend broadcast of the proceedings.

Accordingly, I order the government to disconnect any ability for any third party to suspend the broadcast of these proceedings and also no third party to unilaterally suspend the broadcast of these proceedings.

< Senate Hearing on Gun Issues | Thursday Night Open Thread >
  • The Online Magazine with Liberal coverage of crime-related political and injustice news

  • Contribute To TalkLeft


  • Display: Sort:
    So the CIA or (none / 0) (#1)
    by fishcamp on Thu Jan 31, 2013 at 08:31:59 PM EST
    whomever it was can just do their secret stuff until they get caught?  Why are they white noising out stuff?  What is so secret that we don't already know by now.  Where is the transparency?  What is it they don't want us to know?  What a stupid mess.