Aminda Marqus Gonzalez

VP/Executive Editor

April 4, 2014

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel U.S. Department of Defense Pentagon Washington, DC 20301 Secretary Hagel: From March 17-21 four Miami Herald journalists visited your detention center at Guantanamo Bay and conducted a reporting trip under new expansive ground rules that forbade the media that week from photographing the faces of anyone but the detention center commander, his spokesman and the contractor in charge of catering. Under these new more restrictive ground rules, written by the public affairs officer and adopted by the U.S. Southern Command, my journalists were forbidden to report the names of any other members of the 2,100-member staff of JTF GTMO. During their trip, two sergeants and a private introduced as "your operational security officers systematically deleted any imagery that showed the face of any other member in a superstructure of censorship that portrayed any face, even those previously disclosed through public affairs imagery, as an operational security threat to the 13-year-old detention center. Their military escorts ordered them to photograph troops from the neck down, and forbade the soldiers we interviewed from giving their true names. Yesterday, soldiers assigned to the same operation as your enlisted operational security officers published a story and photos under the headline, There and Back Again: Guantanamo guards return 12 years later. It showed the names and faces of four soldiers on the 2,100member staff, quoted them by name and published a routine interview on the web and in print, journalistic style. If we at the Miami Herald do the same thing, under Southcom's new gag order on troops talking to media and new ground rules governing civilian media access, the people who censored my journalists at Guantnamo have the authority to expel them from the base and permanently ban them from reporting there. In short, under your rules, the story your media wing published would have been defined as an operational security violation had we published the same thing. Mr. Secretary, a culture of censorship has set in at Guantnamo of a scale we have not experienced in the past 13 years of reporting from there. Your troops are wielding editorial instruments on independent journalists with an ever-expanding interpretation of their power to influence the story of Guantanamo in the free press. And in doing so, the organization whose motto is Safe, Humane, Legal, Transparent detention is implementing a dishonest double standard that snuffs out the reporting of basic information the public was once allowed to know.

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel April 4, 2014 Page 2

As an example: For nine months the detention center routinely released a daily count of the number of detainees on a Navy medical list of those eligible to receive enteral feeds. On December 3, Marine Gen. John F. Kelly imposed a gag order on that information. The London Daily Mail reported that the military considers hunger strike figures to now be "classified." Another example: In December, your troops seized the video of a visiting French journalist who recorded a scene of Santa Claus at the Guantanamo commissary, with permission of an escort. They deleted the imagery and then days later staged a similar photo and published it on the cover of the detention center's in-house newsletter, The Wire. We write this letter to protest the prison camp's recently adopted unilateral ground rules and to ask you to order their immediate withdrawal. We respectfully request that you order Joint Task Force Guantanamo to resume using the Office of Secretary of Defense ground rules that still govern reporters' visits during OSD-sponsored Military Commissions trips. Those September 2010 rules were negotiated through a protracted, respectful process of negotiation between the media and your Office of Public Affairs. While we do not approve of everything in those rules, they do not give a soldier the power to in one moment delete a journalist's photo and in the next take the same image and publish it as Pentagon product. They do not prevent us from publishing the name, rank and service of a detention center staff member while empowering an Army journalist to do it. Respectfully yours,

~cdt

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Aminda Marques Gonzalez

3511 NW 91 Avenue, Miami, FL 33172 1305-376-3429

I fax 305-376-8910

I amarques@miamiherald.com

I www.miamiherald.com

miamH~eral~
MEDI,\COMPANY

Mami Herald photo from March 17-21 reporting trip deleted all but neck-down

photography.

Pentagon photo published "Members

April 4, 2014 by same unit that imposed

restrictions

0 I visiting journalists.

Caption:

of the 339th Military Police Company, pose with their guidon atCamp Joint Task Force Guantanamo.

X-Ray, Thursday, March 27,12

years after their first deploymentto

From left to rig t: Army Sgt. 1st Class Larry

Nilmeier, Army 1st Sgt. John Nelson, and Army Staff Sgts. Seve Prokup and Curt Jackson."

4/4/2014

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News: There and back again: Guantanamo

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decade old, taken mere months on terror began, Witness were four members Company, Davenport, Soldiers

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12 years after their first deployment to Joint TaskForce Guantanamo. From left to right: AnmySgt. 1sf: Class Lany Nilmeier, Anmy 1st Sgt. John Nelson, and Anmy Staff S9tS. Seve Prokup and Curt Jackson.

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returned with their unitto canryout the same mission: custodyofthe detainees

Army Staff Sgt. Steve Prokup is one of the four retuning guards. He said the media often portrays detainees in Camp X-Ray, despite getting tours of the modem camps.Troesn't make a good news story that they're being treated well: When the 339th first arrived in January2002, were working day and night, welding with banana rats. Their showers city just above the camp called Freedom Camp X-Ray was still under construction. Sea bees

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and took care of their basic needs

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as well. This was difficult, as there was no indoor facilities

the detainees there a few months

until Camp Delta was opened and

lit

"The environment plumbing." "We still respected

was different, definitely," said Army Sgt. 1st Class LarryNilmeier. buckets ourselves

"We were

outside. We had to empty the feces outofthe

and now they have flushable

everything about them. We just did a job and we did our job humanely. of the camp and we did it together," said Nelmeier.

We

tried to keep the order and discipline

Army 1st Sgt. John Nelson, a platoon sergeant instance for them.
In April, the detainees were transferred to Camp

during his previous rotation, recalled how a from the detainees. In one memorable odd. The

general would come through and ask for complaints a detainee had spoken

up and said that the water was bad; thatittasted

general drank the same water straight from the garden hose to ensure that its quality was good

Delta, a location with indoor and communal in wooden remained buildings the same. "We took 0 called

living. The guard force were moved to Camp America and housed sea huts. While conditions improved for both parties, the mission

"Since we opened in 2002, we actually treated every detainee

humanely,"

said Nilmeir.

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4/4/2014
care of them." Twelve years later, the returning are a testamentto are medical capabilities. "1 was interested the beginning progressed detainee members

DVIDS - Ney,s - There and backagain:

Guantanamo guards return 12 -,ears later

of the 339th are overwhelmed Five and Six are air-conditioned, to detention facilities

by the improvements quality facilities that

made from their first tour at GTMO. Camps treatment

care, comparable

in the United States. There and entertainment

centers and a library, as well as recreation

in seeing how things had changed

down here since we were able to be here at things have in." facilities that the detainees are housed

and after 12 years see how they look now," said Nelson, "Obviously quite a bit. We now have state-of-the-art lessons learned have developed

The operational

further for the guard force as well, especially

with regard to Soldier and Trooper care. "This is not your typical overseas deployment, but yet it can be mentally exhausting as you now

see you also have things in place like JSMART," said Nilmeir. With JTF potentially members closing

"We didn't have that back then." how long the guard

in the coming years, there is no wayofknowing of caring for detainees,

force will be in the business carrying outthe mission

but untu the last one is transferred, care and custodyofdetainees.

of the 339th and their peers will perform all of their duties to their best of their abilities; of safe, legal and humane

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RELEVANT LINKS:

Guantanamo prison article: There and Back Again, published 4/4/14 http://bit.ly/1lwfaae Guantanamo prison staff photograph, released 4/4/14, released http://bit.ly/1lGsyev OSD-PAs negotiated Ground Rules for Guantanamo Reporters: http://bit.ly/1gXagTf Joint Task Force Guantanamos unilaterally Issued Ground Rules: http://bit.ly/PtqWau Nine months of Hunger Strike Disclosures: http://hrld.us/18kPPIm Guantanamo Prison Newsletter, The Wire, 12/27/13: http://bit.ly/1eg01EN