Crapaganda.com

The following in the most complete list we could find of all of the casualties of the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001.  As you go through the list of airplane passengers you will notice that the names of the alleged attackers are suspiciously missing.

The Pentagon

• Paul W. Ambrose
• Spc. Craig S. Amundson, Army Petty Office
• Melissa Rose Barnes, Navy
• Master Sgt. Max J. Beilke, Army, Retired
• Yeneneh Betru
• Petty Officer Kris Romeo Bishundat, Navy
• Carrie R. Blagburn
• Col. Canfield D. Boone, Army National Guard
• Mary Jane Booth
• Donna M. Bowen
• Allen P. Boyle
• Bernard C. Brown II
• Petty Officer Christopher L. Burford, Navy
• Capt. Charles F. Burlingame III, Naval Reserve, Retired
• Petty Officer Daniel M. Caballero, Navy
• Sgt. Jose O. Calderon-Olmedo, Army
• Suzanne M. Calley
• Angelene C. Carter
• Sharon A. Carver
• William E. Caswell
• Sgt. 1st Class John J. Chada, Army, Retired
• Rosa Maria Chapa
• David M. Charlebois
• Sara M. Clark
• Julian T. Cooper
• Asia S. Cottom
• Lt. Cmdr. Eric A. Cranford, Navy
• Ada M. Davis
• James D. Debeuneure
• Capt. Gerald F. DeConto, Navy
• Rodney Dickens
• Lt. Col. Jerry D. Dickerson, Army
• Eddie A. Dillard
• Petty Officer Johnnie Doctor Jr., Navy
• Capt. Robert E. Dolan Jr., Navy
• Cmdr. William H. Donovan, Navy
• Lt. Cmdr. Charles A. Droz III, Navy, Retired
• Cmdr. Patrick Dunn, Navy
• Petty Officer Edward T. Earhart, Navy
• Barbara G. Edwards
• Lt. Cmdr. Robert R. Elseth, Naval Reserve
• Charles S. Falkenberg
• Leslie A. Whittington
• Dana Falkenberg
• Zoe Falkenberg
• Petty Officer Jamie L. Fallon, Navy
• J. Joseph Ferguson
• Amelia V. Fields
• Gerald P. Fisher
• Darlene E. Flagg
• Rear Adm. Wilson F. Flagg, Naval Reserve, Retired
• Petty Officer Matthew M. Flocco, Navy
• Sandra N. Foster
• 1st Lt. Richard P. Gabriel, Marine Corps, Retired
• Capt. Lawrence D. Getzfred, Navy
• Cortez Ghee
• Brenda C. Gibson
• Col. Ronald F. Golinski, Army, Retired
• Ian J. Gray
• Diane Hale-McKinzy
• Stanley R. Hall
• Carolyn B. Halmon
• Michele M. Heidenberger
• Sheila M.S. Hein
• Petty Officer Ronald J. Hemenway, Navy
• Maj. Wallace Cole Hogan Jr., Army
• Staff Sgt. Jimmie I. Holley, Army, Retired
• Angela M. Houtz
• Brady Kay Howell
• Peggie M. Hurt
• Lt. Col. Stephen N. Hyland Jr., Army
• Lt. Col. Robert J. Hymel, Air Force, Retired
• Sgt. Maj. Lacey B. Ivory, Army
• Bryan C. Jack
• Steven D. Jacoby
• Lt. Col. Dennis M. Johnson, Army
• Judith L. Jones
• Ann C. Judge
• Brenda Kegler
• Chandler R. Keller
• Yvonne E. Kennedy
• Norma Cruz Khan
• Karen Ann Kincaid
• Lt. Michael S. Lamana, Navy
• David W. Laychak
• Dong Chul Lee
• Jennifer Lewis
• Kenneth E. Lewis
• Samantha L. Lightbourn-Allen
• Maj. Stephen V. Long, Army
• James T. Lynch Jr.
• Terence M. Lynch
• Petty Officer Nehamon Lyons IV, Navy
• Shelley A. Marshall
• Teresa M. Martin
• Ada L. Mason-Acker
• Lt. Col. Dean E. Mattson, Army
• Lt. Gen. Timothy J. Maude, Army
• Robert J. Maxwell
• Renée A. May
• Molly L. McKenzie
• Dora Marie Menchaca
• Patricia E. Mickley
• Maj. Ronald D. Milam, Army
• Gerard P. Moran Jr.
• Odessa V. Morris
• Petty Officer Brian A. Moss, Navy
• Teddington H. Moy
• Lt. Cmdr. Patrick J. Murphy, Naval Reserve
• Christopher C. Newton
• Khang Ngoc Nguyen
• Petty Officer Michael A. Noeth, Navy
• Barbara K. Olson
• Ruben S. Ornedo
• Diana B. Padro
• Lt. Jonas M. Panik, Naval Reserve
• Maj. Clifford L. Patterson Jr., Army
• Robert Penninger
• Robert R. Ploger III
• Zandra F. Ploger
• Lt. Darin H. Pontell, Naval Reserve
• Scott Powell
• Capt. Jack D. Punches, Navy, Retired
• Petty Officer Joseph J. Pycior Jr., Navy
• Lisa J. Raines
• Deborah A. Ramsaur
• Rhonda Sue Rasmussen
• Petty Officer Marsha D. Ratchford, Navy
• Martha M. Reszke
• Todd H. Reuben
• Cecelia E. (Lawson) Richard
• Edward V. Rowenhorst
• Judy Rowlett
• Sgt. Maj. Robert E. Russell, Army, Retired
• Chief Warrant Officer William R. Ruth, Army National Guard
• Charles E. Sabin Sr.
• Marjorie C. Salamone
• John P. Sammartino
• Col. David M. Scales, Army
• Cmdr. Robert A. Schlegel, Navy
• Janice M. Scott
• Lt. Col. Michael L. Selves, Army, Retired
• Marian H. Serva
• Cmdr. Dan F. Shanower, Navy
• Antionette M. Sherman
• Diane M. Simmons
• George W. Simmons
• Donald D. Simmons
• Cheryle D. Sincock
• Petty Officer Gregg H. Smallwood, Navy
• Lt. Col. Gary F. Smith, Army, Retired
• Mari-Rae Sopper
• Robert Speisman
• Patricia J. Statz
• Edna L. Stephens
• Norma Lang Steuerle
• Sgt. Maj. Larry L. Strickland, Army
• Hilda E. Taylor
• Lt. Col. Kip P. Taylor, Army
• Leonard E. Taylor
• Sandra C. Taylor
• Sandra D. Teague
• Lt. Col. Karl W. Teepe, Army, Retired
• Sgt. Tamara C. Thurman, Army
• Lt. Cmdr. Otis V. Tolbert, Navy
• Staff Sgt. Willie Q. Troy, Army, Retired
• Lt. Cmdr. Ronald J. Vauk, Naval Reserve
• Lt. Col. Karen J. Wagner, Army
• Meta L. (Fuller) Waller
• Spc. Chin Sun Pak Wells, Army
• Staff Sgt. Maudlyn A. White, Army
• Sandra L. White
• Ernest M. Willcher
• Lt. Cmdr. David L. Williams, Navy
• Maj. Dwayne Williams, Army
• Chief Petty Officer Marvin Roger Woods, Navy, Retired
• Capt. John D. Yamnicky Sr., Navy, Retired
• Vicki Yancey
• Petty Officer Kevin W. Yokum, Navy
• Chief Petty Officer Donald M. Young, Navy
• Edmond G. Young Jr.
• Lisa L. Young
• Shuyin Yang
• Yuguang Zheng

World Trade Center

• Gordon M. Aamoth Jr.
• Edelmiro Abad
• Maria Rose Abad
• Andrew Anthony Abate
• Vincent Abate Read more »

A blinking Christmas ornament in a Pentagon subway trash can caused the station to be shut down Wednesday during morning rush hour, diverting hundreds of passengers in frigid temperatures while authorities investigated the “suspicious object.”

Trains on the Washington area Metro system were ordered to bypass the huge Defense Department headquarters after the object was discovered in the station at 7:15 a.m., said Chris Layman, spokesman for the Pentagon police force.

“Someone spotted some lights that were was blinking in a trash can,” Layman said. “We took it seriously, it was called a ‘suspicious object’ and they came and x-rayed and inspected the item.”

Trains were forced to pass through the station without stopping, meaning passengers had to get off at a different station and walk, or take a bus back, to the building. The Pentagon is also a major transit point for a number of area buses, and people lined up by the hundreds as police investigated.

“We determined it was a battery-operated Christmas ornament,” Layman said.

An “all clear” was issued at 8:44 a.m.

The Department of Homeland Security is planning to get rid of the color-coded terrorism alert system. Known officially as the Homeland Security Advisory System, the five-color scheme was introduced by the Bush administration in March 2002.

Red, the highest level, meant “severe risk of terrorist attacks.” The lowest level, green, meant “low risk of terrorist attacks.” Between those were blue (guarded risk), yellow (significant) and orange (high).

The nation has generally lived in the yellow and orange range. The threat level has never been green, or even blue.

In an interview on “The Daily Show” last year, the homeland security chief, Janet Napolitano, said the department was “revisiting the whole issue of color codes and schemes as to whether, you know, these things really communicate anything to the American people any more.”

The answer, apparently, is no.

The color-coded threat levels were doomed to fail because “they don’t tell people what they can do — they just make people afraid,” said Bruce Schneier, an author on security issues. He said the system was “a relic of our panic after 9/11” that “never served any security purpose.”

The Homeland Security Department said the colors would be replaced with a new system — recommendations are still under review — that should provide more clarity and guidance. The change was first reported by The Associated Press.

“The goal is to replace a system that communicates nothing,” the agency said, “with a partnership approach with law enforcement, the private sector and the American public that provides specific, actionable information based on the latest intelligence.”

The department has already begun working toward the goal of providing more specific alerts.

After a Nigerian citizen, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was accused of trying to bring down a Detroit-bound plane last Christmas with explosives, the department issued new guidelines to airports and airlines without raising the threat level.

While the system may have had limited usefulness for the American people, it proved to be comedy gold for late-night shows.

Conan O’Brien joked, “Champagne-fuchsia means we’re being attacked by Martha Stewart.” Jay Leno said, “They added a plaid in case we were ever attacked by Scotland.”

Meanwhile, critics of the Bush administration argued that the system was a political tool.

And even Tom Ridge, the secretary of homeland security under President George W. Bush, has raised questions. In his memoir, “The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege … And How We Can Be Safe Again,” Mr. Ridge said Attorney General John Ashcroft and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, pushed for an elevated terrorism level in October 2004 after a threatening tape from Osama bin Laden was revealed.

Mr. Ridge wrote that after “a vigorous, some might say dramatic, debate, I wondered, ‘Is this about security, or politics?’ ” While the security level ultimately was not raised, he said the incident helped him decide that it was time to leave the government in February 2005.

Amy Wax, president of the International Association of Color Consultants North America, said — perhaps not surprisingly — colors could be an effective part of a warning system if tied to specific action. “How are we going to take those instructions and apply it to our lives?” she said. “Are we going to go to the airport, or not go to the airport?”

She said the agency’s use of “childish” primary colors like red, yellow and blue might have diluted the impact. “Purple, orange and magenta might create a sense of something that would get attention,” she said.

Source: NY Times

The Postal Service is ready to deliver lifesaving drugs to about a quarter of the residents of Minneapolis-St. Paul, the only metropolitan area in the nation where letter carriers have been trained to dispense medication after a large-scale terrorist attack involving biological weapons.

Six years after the government began exploring the idea of using postal workers as rapid-response medicine dispensers and eight months after President Obama ordered government agencies to develop a plan to do so, efforts are underway in six cities to train workers to deliver the drugs needed to counter anthrax or other potentially deadly agents, the White House says.

The White House won’t name the six cities, and Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Amy Kudwa says she can’t talk about whether more cities are interested in the voluntary program.

Cities are not required to adopt the plan, and most have separate plans in place to set up distribution centers in schools, community health centers and other government buildings where people can go to pick up drugs in the event of an attack. The White House, however, says using the Postal Service is a cost-effective and efficient way to create a reliable system for drug distribution in a crisis because postal workers can get drugs to the elderly and others who can’t get out easily or wait in long lines.

“We need the capability” to get lifesaving drugs to people in a hurry because in the case of an anthrax attack, in particular, “what we know is: hours matter,” White House spokesman Nick Shapiro says.

He says “many cities have expressed interest” in the program, especially now that there is a successful model to follow in Minneapolis.

The nation’s capital is among them. “We’re still looking at it,” says Dena Iverson of the District of Columbia Department of Health.

The projected cost to set up the program and train postal workers: $1 million per city, according to the White House.

In 2001, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a series of small-scale anthrax attacks killed five people. Victims can be saved, however, if they begin taking antibiotics soon after they’ve been exposed.

“It doesn’t make any difference if we make all these new antibiotics and vaccines if we don’t have ways to get them to people,” says Randall Larsen of the WMD Center, a think tank that focuses on bioterrorism.

The idea of having letter carriers deliver drugs to people in their homes has been discussed since 2004.

Since then:

•In 2006 and 2007, test runs were done in Seattle, Philadelphia and Boston.

•In 2008, the Bush administration issued an emergency order allowing the Food and Drug Administration to approve advance distribution of antibiotics to letter carriers who volunteer for the program and their families so that they would be protected from exposure to anything they encounter on their rounds.

•In December 2009, Obama issued an executive order to jump-start the process. It gave federal agencies 180 days to develop a Postal Service model that could be replicated around the country. It also required the government to meet a demand from the Postal Service: that workers delivering the drugs be accompanied by law enforcement officers to protect them from panicked and potentially violent crowds.

Now, “we’re fine if they (terrorists) attack Minneapolis,” says James Talent, former vice chairman of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission. The Postal Service has “proven they can do it.”

With a model in place, the White House says it is working to expand the voluntary program to cities across the country.

Natalie Grant director of Boston’s Office of Public Health Preparedness says the city is awaiting instruction from the federal government about how to proceed.

Minneapolis postal worker Chris Wittenburg of the National Association of Letter Carriers says setting up the program is complicated. First, letter carriers have to volunteer, undergo medical tests to make sure they can take the antibiotics, be fitted for masks (no facial hair allowed) and be trained. Routes have to be combined, and systems set up to suspend regular mail delivery in an instant, call postal workers in and send them out carrying boxes of drugs and fliers telling people what to do.

About 60% of the city’s letter carriers volunteered for the program, which was given a trial run in May.

Workers there can now deliver drugs to 205,000 households, or 575,000 people, within eight hours. Officials plan to expand the program to reach all 735,000 households in the metro area.

The need to get drugs or other antidotes to people fast is a “unique situation,” Wittenburg says, “and the Postal Service is really the only organization with the capability to pull it off.”

Source: USA Today

Filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy takes on a terrifying question: How does the Taliban convince children to become suicide bombers? Propaganda footage from a training camp is intercut with her interviews of young camp graduates. A shocking vision.

Prosecutors attached to the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid are reportedly requesting that Judge Ismael Moreno issue an order for the arrest of thirteen CIA agents involved in an extraordinary rendition operation from 2004, the newspaper El País reports this afternoon, citing sources within the court.

The case relates to Khaled El-Masri, a greengrocer from Neu-Ulm, Germany, seized by the United States as a result of mistaken identity while he was on vacation in the former Yugoslavia. El-Masri was placed on a CIA-chartered jet that arrived in Macedonia from Palma de Majorca in January 2004, en route ultimately to Afghanistan. It appears that Majorca was used regularly as a refueling and temporary sheltering point for the CIA, with the knowledge of the prior conservative government. While held in the notorious CIA prison known as the Salt Pit, El-Masri was apparently tortured during extensive interrogations before intelligence officers realized that they had seized the wrong man. The Washington Post reported that CIA agents, fearing the consequences of releasing him, argued for his continued detention and in fact held him for at least several weeks after his release had been ordered. Condoleezza Rice, then national security advisor to President Bush, intervened and directed his release. El-Masri’s CIA abductors entered Spanish territory using forged British passports, according to the prosecutors. They are seeking James Fairing, Jason Franklin, Michael Grady, Lyle Edgar Lumsen III, Eric Matthew Fain, Charles Goldman Bryson, Kirk James Bird, Walter Richard Greensbore, Patricia O’Riley, Jane Payne, James O’Hale, John Richard Deckard and Héctor Lorenzo, according to information provided by the Spanish Guardia Civil. The case is also under investigation in Germany.

The Spanish prosecutors have been closely studying the prosecution in Italy of 23 American agents in connection with another extraordinary rendition, involving an Egyptian cleric known as Abu Omar, who was seized off the streets of Milan and taken to Egypt, where he was tortured. The Italian proceedings occurred in absentia after the Americans fled to avoid arrest. The trial resulted in the conviction of 23 Americans, 21 of them intelligence operatives. A criminal proceeding relating to the kidnapping and torture of El-Masri is also underway in Germany.

Source: Harpers

Kaczynski documents prepped for auction with X-Acto knife redactions

X-Acto knives in hand, FBI employees are poised to manually redact a mountain of documents – 20,000 pages of which are handwritten – that were seized from the Montana cabin of Ted Kaczynski, the convicted Unabomber. In August 2006, a federal judge ordered that the killer’s papers be auctioned, with the proceeds being used to pay restitution to victims of the deadly bombing spree. That online sale was stayed while Kaczynski appealed Judge Garland Burrell, Jr.’s ruling, which was affirmed last year by the Court of Appeals. Since then, FBI officials have been processing Kaczynski’s documents in advance of forwarding them to an auctioneer selected by the United States Marshals Service. However, before the Kaczynski material can be sold, FBI workers will have to manually cut out portions of the documents containing material that Burrell has ordered removed from the documents (such as the names of victims and their families, and bomb-making instructions). According to a May 10 status report filed in U.S. District Court, prosecutors reported that “the safest method to redact an original document with minimal defacing is via extraction, i.e., by cutting the document.” The X-Acto redactions–likely a first for the bureau–will take FBI workers about 60 days. It is unclear how extensive those extractions will be, or if some of the jailed-for-life lunatic’s writings, like his infamous manifesto, could end up resembling paper dolls or Swiss cheese.

See the court order (4 pages)

For reporters covering the war crimes tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, the ground rules are pretty draconian: As a condition of attending, they have to sign agreements not to disclose anything the court deems secret; media officers review all photos and videos shot on the island; and there sure as hell ain’t no Tweeting from the super-secure courtroom.

Now the military has taken another great step toward enhancing the credibility of the proceedings by booting four reporters for violating a judge’s secrecy order. Their violation?  Publishing the name of a former military interrogator who was a witness at the hearing. The Pentagon has now barred Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg, Toronto Star reporter Michelle Shephard, Globe and Mail reporter Paul Koring and CanWest news service reporter Steven Edwards from covering future military commissions at Gitmo.

And here’s the kicker: The identity of the interrogator had been widely reported before the trial. The name of the individual — known as “Interrogator No. 1″ in the courtroom at Gitmo — had been published during a 2005 court-martial in which he pleaded guilty to prisoner abuse in Afghanistan. And he had also allowed the use of his name in an interview with Shepard (!) in 2008.

Jeff Stein at Spy Talk has the reaction from several of the news organizations hit by the ban. “Absurd,” said Michael Cooke, editor of the Toronto Star. Mindy Marques, managing editor at Miami Herald, told Stein the paper would appeal.

But the most heartfelt account of all of this comes from our pal Spencer Ackerman, who’s been filing a fantastic series of dispatches from Gitmo. All four of those reporters, he notes, “are invaluable resources about this place and this trial — Michelle literally wrote the book on Omar Khadr — to their readers and their colleagues.”

Ackerman summed up the mood in the press center. “We’re all in the press center working,” he said. “We’ve already become darkly humorous, even, because that’s how reporters are. All of us in the press room are working on filing our stories for our next editions. As am I. Just under a somber cloud.”

A quick footnote on how arbitrary the press rules at Guantanamo Bay can be: On a stopover at Gitmo on my way to Haiti earlier this year, I was told that photos of the control tower — pictured here — were off limits. The image posted here, however, is from the Pentagon’s official website.

Another footnote: This isn’t Carol Rosenberg’s first run-in with touchy military minders. Last year, a Navy commander complained to the Herald that she had, uh, diminished his manhood.

Source:  Wired.com

Cops: New high-tech screener triggered fight over manhood insult

A Transportation Security Administration screener is facing an assault rap after he allegedly beat a co-worker who joked about the size of the man’s genitalia after he walked through a security scanner. The May 4 confrontation involved Rolando Negrin, 44, and other TSA employees who had previously taken part in a training session at Miami International Airport, according to the below Miami-Dade Police Department reports. Negrin, pictured in the mug shot at right, and his co-workers had been training with new “whole body image” machines–the controversial kind that provide very revealing images of a traveler–when Negrin walked through the scanner. “The X-ray revealed that [Negrin] has a small penis and co-workers made fun of him on a daily basis,” reported cops. Following his arrest, Negrin told police that he “could not take the jokes anymore and lost his mind.” After work Tuesday evening, Negrin confronted fellow TSA screener Hugo Osorno in an airport parking lot. Negrin wanted to “resolve a problem,” and get Osorno, 34, to “finally respect him.” Instead, Negrin allegedly pulled out a police baton and began striking Osorno, while demanding an apology. A witness told cops that Negrin told Osorno, in Spanish, “Get on your knees or I will kill you and you better apologize.” When Negrin, wearing his TSA uniform, arrived for work yesterday, he was arrested on an aggravated battery count and booked into the Miami-Dade lockup. Osorno, police reported, suffered “bruises and abrasions on his back and arms” during the attack.

See Arrest Report (4 pages)

Source: The Smoking Gun

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.

Colonel Wilkerson, who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible to release them”.

General Powell, who left the Bush Administration in 2005, angry about the misinformation that he unwittingly gave the world when he made the case for the invasion of Iraq at the UN, is understood to have backed Colonel Wilkerson’s declaration.

Colonel Wilkerson, a long-time critic of the Bush Administration’s approach to counter-terrorism and the war in Iraq, claimed that the majority of detainees — children as young as 12 and men as old as 93, he said — never saw a US soldier when they were captured. He said that many were turned over by Afghans and Pakistanis for up to $5,000. Little or no evidence was produced as to why they had been taken.

He also claimed that one reason Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld did not want the innocent detainees released was because “the detention efforts would be revealed as the incredibly confused operation that they were”. This was “not acceptable to the Administration and would have been severely detrimental to the leadership at DoD [Mr Rumsfeld at the Defence Department]”.

Referring to Mr Cheney, Colonel Wilkerson, who served 31 years in the US Army, asserted: “He had absolutely no concern that the vast majority of Guantánamo detainees were innocent … If hundreds of innocent individuals had to suffer in order to detain a handful of hardcore terrorists, so be it.”

He alleged that for Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld “innocent people languishing in Guantánamo for years was justified by the broader War on Terror and the small number of terrorists who were responsible for the September 11 attacks”.

He added: “I discussed the issue of the Guantánamo detainees with Secretary Powell. I learnt that it was his view that it was not just Vice-President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld, but also President Bush who was involved in all of the Guantánamo decision making.”

Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld, Colonel Wilkerson said, deemed the incarceration of innocent men acceptable if some genuine militants were captured, leading to a better intelligence picture of Iraq at a time when the Bush Administration was desperate to find a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, “thus justifying the Administration’s plans for war with that country”.

He signed the declaration in support of Adel Hassan Hamad, a Sudanese man who was held at Guantánamo Bay from March 2003 until December 2007. Mr Hamad claims that he was tortured by US agents while in custody and yesterday filed a damages action against a list of American officials.

Defenders of Guantánamo said that detainees began to be released as early as September 2002, nine months after the first prisoners were sent to the jail at the US naval base in Cuba. By the time Mr Bush left office more than 530 detainees had been freed.

A spokesman for Mr Bush said of Colonel Wilkerson’s allegations: “We are not going to have any comment on that.” A former associate to Mr Rumsfeld said that Mr Wilkerson’s assertions were completely untrue.

The associate said the former Defence Secretary had worked harder than anyone to get detainees released and worked assiduously to keep the prison population as small as possible. Mr Cheney’s office did not respond.

There are currently about 180 detainees left in the facility.

Source: Times UK