Fourteen “high value detainees” were transferred from CIA “black sites” (secret prisons) to Guantanamo in September 2006. Soon after, the government held hearings before administrative review boards they created called Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) to determine whether the detainees were enemy combatants. The transcripts of these hearings were made public—but with every mention of the prisoners’ treatment in U.S. custody redacted.
We submitted a FOIA request for the unredacted transcripts in April 2007, and when that was denied we filed suit in March 2008, seeking the prisoners’ own descriptions of their treatment. The government argued that the information was classified and that release would harm the nation. We argued that the government’s confirmation that three of these detainees had been waterboarded showed that public disclosure of the CIA’s interrogation techniques would not endanger national security. But the court ruled in the government’s favor because it concluded that all the withheld information was properly classified. We appealed.
After President Obama assumed office and after the declassification of four DOJ memoranda that described in great detail the interrogation techniques that had been used on some of these individuals, the government agreed to reprocess our request. The case was remanded to the district court. In June 2009 some additional documents were released, but we challenged the government’s continued withholding of some of the information we had sought. The court again ruled for the government, and we again appealed.
The government argued that release of the remaining transcripts would disclose intelligence “sources and methods” and “would provide al-Qaida with propaganda it would use to recruit and raise funds.” We argued that the facts about how these men were treated had already been disclosed in great detail in official documents, and that statements made by Guantanamo detainees—who obviously do not have security clearances—cannot properly be classified. But the court of appeals agreed with the government and affirmed.
