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What to do with Gitmo: a new chapter

By Mark Obbie

The Post's Peter Finn and Joby Warrick provide new glimpses of the mess that U.S. officials find themselves in as they wrestle with what to do with particular Guantanamo detainees. Their focus in today's front-pager is seven-year detainee Abu Zubaida, an early and seemingly valuable intelligence source whose interrogations -- both traditional and tortured -- yielded a mountain of material that set off manhunts and warnings worldwide. The trouble, say Finn's and Warrick's sources -- "former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations" -- is that Zubaida's status in al-Qaida was overestimated and every concrete tip he gave his interrogators "ultimately dissolved into smoke and shadow." The reporters clearly believe those sources' take on it, and not another anonymous official who, later in the story, chimes in to say that Zubaida's information was valuable. The anonymity makes it impossible for us readers to judge who may be right. But regardless, the details and controversy show how difficult it's proving to be to decide what to do with the 241 detainees.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on March 29, 2009 (boomark / email).