Nothing’s private at Gitmo
The stickers on our media room phones are new. Or new since I was last here at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba 10 months ago.
They read: “Use of this telephone constitutes consent to monitoring.”
Of course, when you come to a place like Gitmo, you have to presume nothing you say is private, and in light of recent disclosures on the widespread NSA monitoring, perhaps Pentagon snooping on journalists here elicits no more than a shrug.
That red-and- white sticker still feels jarring and indicative of the larger challenges journalists face covering Guantanamo. Journalists have come here since 2002, so why has it taken 11 years to warn us our phone calls are not ours alone? This is my 26th Guantanamo trip. Our media contingent for this week’s hearings against the five detainees accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11 attacks is a combination of veterans and first-timers, a good mix of fresh eyes and experienced ones.
Before any of us board the flight here from Andrews Air Force Base, we must sign the Pentagon’s ground rules. If you want to get on the plane, you sign the rules. Other restrictions are described once you arrive and they seem to vary trip to trip.
It’s the rules on photography which are often the most frustrating. We were told Sunday when we arrived that this time we could photograph the coastline and “golf balls” (presumably they are, or were, what’s known as “radomes” which collect signals intelligence). Those were no-no’s before.
When artist Janet Hamlin was here in June, suddenly the stadium glasses she used in court to view the accused were banned. She had used them for three years, and fought for a few years before to get that right. The reason given was that “ocular amplification” was not allowed in these war crimes courts.
A sign inside the courtroom gallery now states: “No binoculars or other visual enhancement devices.” Underneath are the “Drawing, Sketching, Doodling Etc. Rules.”
There were no restrictions on the pens or notebooks we could bring into court Monday, which there have been in the past. I have been here for hearings during the one-pen rule, the military-issue-only-pen rule and the-no-spiral-notebook-rule.
The rules are not the fault of the public affairs officers, our constant companions. They have their job to do too, and are given the restrictions they must enforce, which change slightly with each rotation.
This is just the reality of reporting on pretrial hearings for the Sept. 11 trial, dubbed by some lawyers as the “trial of the century.”
Michelle Shephard
Lyme disease …
Say hello to the Ixodes scapularis, a.k.a. the deer or blacklegged tick. Ticks are vectors for Lyme disease, a growing menace in the United States, where it is now the most commonly reported tick-borne illness. But no one seems to agree on anything when it comes to Lyme — not on how to treat it, diagnose it or even the number of people getting infected. Today, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced early results from three ongoing studies attempting to estimate the true burden of Lyme disease. The agency says it’s about 10 times higher than previously thought. Every year, some 30,000 cases are reported in the United States but many suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg. Now, the CDC thinks the real figure could be closer to 300,000. Lyme disease is spreading fast across the American northeast and now seems to be closing in on Canada, too. According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, Lyme disease is now endemic in seven areas in Ontario, as well as parts of B.C., Manitoba, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Jennifer Yang