Reporter On 'Suicide Watch' at Gitmo

By: Greg Mitchell Michael Gordon of the Charlotte Observer was the first U.S. reporter to arrive at the Guantanamo prison camp just after three prisoners at the controversial facility committed suicide on Saturday. Since then he has filed some remarkable dispatches, culminating in the latest on Tuesday, in which the U.S. commander of the camp, Col. Mike Bumgarner, angrily declared that all the prisoners had proven to be untrustworthy.

They can't be trusted -- to not kill themselves, that is.

Now Gordon is at the center of a media storm, denied further access to the prison, as two of his colleagues, from the Miami Herald and Los Angeles Times, were ordered off the island by the Pentagon. A Pentagon press officer told E&P that Gordon's Tuesday article, described below, "caused controversy" and that he should have the good manners to leave now, since he's had enough time to research his "hometowner." Gordon may have decided to leave on Wednesday with the other journalists.

He happened to be at Gitmo to write a profile of the camp commander, who hails from North Carolina.

"Right now, we are at ground zero," Bumgarner, the commander, told his officers at his morning staff meeting, Gordon related. Bumgarner ordered a round of changes to prevent suicides amid rumors of more to come (several nooses have been seized). "The trust level is gone. They have shown time and time again that we can't trust them any farther than we can throw them. There is not a trustworthy son of a ----- in the entire bunch."

The three prisoners who hung themselves were not among the handful at the prison who have been formally charged with any crime. That, among other reasons, has prompted fresh calls for the U.S. to shutter the facility.

But the commander of the Guantanamo Bay naval base, Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris, has complained that the suicides were a concerted act of "asymmetrical warfare" designed to bring more public scorn onto the prison. A State Department official called the suicides "a good P.R. move," inspiring outrage in the Muslim world as well as among European allies.

Gordon was there -- an Observer photographer, Todd Sumlin, is also at the scene -- as a staff meeting took place on Monday in a conference room inside the prison wire. Gordon was not allowed to attend the meeting "because classified information was shown on a screen," he explained, but was "allowed to listen a few feet away by an open door."

The article continued: "Bumgarner ordered a high suicide alert for 'the brothers,' the term used by the military personnel to describe the detainees. 'Brother' also is a term of Muslim endearment the inmates use among themselves. 'If any brother says he's going to kill himself ... or says the death chant, anything. That brother will immediately go to a suicide blanket and smock,' Bumgarner said."

The suicide blanket apparently is made of a tightly wound material that is hard to puncture or strip. The smock, Gordon explained, keeps a detainee from ripping apart his shirt, pants or underwear to knot a rope.

Later in the discussion, as Gordon recounted, Bumgarner ordered a smock for another detainee. "Sir," one of his officers said, "we're going to run out of smocks."

"Order some more," Bumgarner said. "I want them in the next 72 hours if I have to put you on a jet to get them."

In an earlier article this week, Gordon provided a balanced look at the prison and prisoners, then closed with this:
"Lawyers for some of the detainees said many captives have lost their will to live because they have been given indefinite detentions and little access to the courts. The lawyers said their clients have been told they will be held in Guantanamo 'forever.'

"'Nobody should be even slightly surprised by this,' said Josh Colangelo Bryan, who represents a detainee who attempted suicide in October. He said one of his clients told him, 'I would simply die than live here forever without rights.'

"Charlotte attorney Jeff Davis represents a Saudi jailed at Guantanamo Bay for four years. 'Quite frankly, we're behaving in an unconstitutional manner and it scares the hell out of me,' Davis said."

Now Gordon's further access to the camp has been denied.