Fallout From Gitmo Reporter Expulsions Continues Coast to Coast

By: Joe Strupp The fallout from last week's expulsion of four journalists from Guantanamo Bay by military officials, who claimed the move was necessary to appease other media outlets seeking similar access, continued in recent days as newspapers from The New York Times to the Los Angeles Times raised concerns about the move.

In addition, journalism organizations such as the Society of Professional Journalists have weighed in on the reporter banishment, claiming the removal of journalists following the suicides of three detainees just a week ago was wrong.

"This is the sort of banana-republic intimidation of the press we sneer at when it occurs on other points on the globe," Charles N. Davis, co-chairman of SPJ's Freedom of Information Committee, said in a statement. "The American public deserves nothing less than knowing what's going on at Guantanamo."

But the latest reaction has come from newspapers themselves.

Carol Williams of the Los Angeles Times, one of the reporters forced to leave last Wednesday after five days in the area, wrote a harsh column Sunday in which she pointed out how the military's willingness to remove journalists from the controversial base during a major news event there -- such as the suicides -- is misguided. Michael Gordon and Todd Sumlin of the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer and Carol Rosenberg of The Miami Herald also were expelled on Wednesday.

"In the best of times, covering Guantanamo means wrangling with a Kafkaesque bureaucracy, with logistics so nonsensical that they turn two hours of reporting into an 18-hour day, with hostile escorts who seem to think you're in league with Al Qaeda, and with the dispiriting reality that you're sure to encounter more iguanas than war-on-terror suspects," Williams wrote in her piece. "In the worst of times--this past week, for example--those quotidian discomforts can be compounded by an invasion of mating crabs skittering into your dormitory, a Pentagon power play that muzzles already reluctant sources and an unceremonious expulsion to Miami on a military plane, safety-belted onto whatever seat is available. In this case, that seat was the toilet.

"I ended up on that plane, on that seat, because of a baffling move by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office, in which the only three newspaper reporters who managed to surmount Pentagon obstacles to covering the first deaths at Guantanamo were ordered off the base Wednesday," she added. "Rumsfeld's office said the decision was made 'to be fair and impartial' to the rest of the media, which the government had refused to let in. Rumsfeld's gatekeepers have long made clear that they view outside scrutiny of the detention operations as a danger to the Bush administration's secretive and often criticized campaign to indefinitely detain 'enemy combatants.' But this time, their actions seemed counterproductive because booting out [the four journalists] only provoked fresh demands to learn what the government is hiding."

Williams' piece came two days after one of her colleagues, Los Angeles Times media writer Tim Rutten, offered his own slam against the expulsion. "When the administration pulls down the shades on this country's free press, as it did this week in Guantanamo, it's because it knows it has something to hide -- and to fear," he wrote. "Its officials know that Americans are instinctively revolted by things like torture and immoral imprisonment and recognize shameful conduct for what it is, even if their leaders do not."

The New York Times today highlighted reaction to the move in a news story that recounted much of the criticism from news outlets and journalism groups. "[T]he abrupt expulsions...reflect the continuing tensions between the military personnel who oversee the base...and reporters who are trying to gather information in the highly secure environment," the story said. "Journalists have complained that they are banned from interviewing detainees, that their movements around the base are tightly controlled and that they receive little information from public affairs personnel."

Gordon, whose initial reason for being at the base was to report on Col. Mike Bumgarner, a Charlotte-area native, found himself covering the suicides alongside Williams and Rosenberg, then being kicked out with them. Gordon finally published his story on Bumgarner Sunday, noting the colonel's past willingness to work with reporters, especially during the suicide aftermath, and his strange lack of communication since those events.

"In a traditionally closed military society, Bumgarner, 47, is an open book. In the hours after the suicides, when some of his superiors wanted to close ranks, the Kings Mountain native kept a promise to throw open the doors on himself and his command," Gordon wrote. "But he also may have jeopardized his career."

Gordon went on to detail how Bumgarner had helped Gordon and his photographer report on the suicides in the hours and days after they occurred, saying, "while the Pentagon tried to lock off the military base that day, Bumgarner opened Camp Delta to two Observer journalists who flew in the same day of the suicides to do a long-scheduled story on the colonel. For the next two days, Bumgarner welcomed the pair in his war room as he and his staff discussed ways to make sure more suicides didn't take place."

But Gordon's story ends with an epilogue indicating Bumgarner may have been silenced for his troubles. "Tuesday night, while packing to leave Guantanamo Bay, I called Bumgarner's cell phone to say goodbye. A strange voice answered. I thought I dialed a wrong number, so I hung up. A few moments later, my phone rang. It was Navy Capt.-select Katie Hampf, Bumgarner's second-in-command. She now had Bumgarner's phone because she was acting prison commander. She wouldn't say any more. The Pentagon would not talk about Bumgarner's status. A spokesman said Bumgarner's decision to allow us to listen in on staff meetings and observe other activities inside the prison 'adds to an already complex and difficult situation'."

At least two newspapers in the past two days editorialized about the lack of information on Guantanamo Bay and the overall problem with its detention of prisoners who have been neither charged nor convicted of crimes. The Washington Post on Sunday stated that "Guantanamo Bay has become a toxic symbol around the world of U.S. human rights violations, a status magnified by recent suicides." At the San Antonio (Texas) Express-News, meanwhile, an editorial in today's paper stated "It's time for the U.S. government to be more forthcoming about the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Three recent inmate suicides there shed fresh light on a facility with a troubled reputation."