Pentagon Rescinds Guantanamo Press Rules

By: Paisley Dodds, Associated Press Writer (AP) The U.S. military has rescinded controversial "ground rules" for journalists that were imposed after the arrests of two interpreters and a Muslim chaplain who worked at the base in Guantanamo, officials at U.S. Southern Command said Tuesday.

Before boarding a plane to Guantanamo on Tuesday, reporters in Jacksonville, Fla., were asked to sign a form that warned them U.S. officials would not talk about investigations or future operations, said Capt. Tom Crosson, spokesman for Southern Command in Miami.

The arrangement represented a change from a stricter one implemented last week, when reporters were required to sign ground rules for coverage that banned questions about the investigations.

Under last week's rules, reporters who did ask questions about the investigations risked being removed from the remote base on the eastern tip of Cuba or losing their Defense Department press credentials. The Associated Press and The New York Times signed only after protesting.

"The newly added sentence that appeared in our ground rules last week has been rescinded," said Army Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, detention mission spokeswoman at Guantanamo. "Although the intent was to protect the integrity of the investigation and ongoing assessment here, we were momentarily a bit too conservative with our execution."

Since the detention mission began January 2002 in Guantanamo, media access has been tightened with U.S. military officials handpicking soldiers for interviews and monitoring all movements of journalists.

The three pages of ground rules still prohibit journalists from communicating with detainees or identifying them.

Five journalists, including a Miami Herald reporter and a writer from Vanity Fair magazine, were among those on Tuesday's trip.

The recent arrests involve civilian interpreter Ahmed Mehalba, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Egypt found with classified documents from Guantanamo, and Air Force Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi, an interpreter accused of espionage for allegedly sending classified information about the camp to an unspecified "enemy."

Army Capt. Yousef Yee, a Muslim chaplain, has also been charged with disobeying an order and is accused of leaving with diagrams of the camp.

Almost all the detainees, from more than 40 countries, are said to be members of the al-Qaida terrorist network or the ousted Afghan Taliban regime. The U.S. government says they could be held until it declares an end to its "war on terrorism."