TV News LIES

Guantanamo's Camp Justice is a place where you can sit at your laptop or by your phone only if there's a member of the military within earshot. It's a place where you can go to court only in the custody of a military public affairs officer. Inside, if there's only one escort — this happened recently — and somebody has to go to the bathroom, every reporter has to leave court, too.

It's a place where a soldier stands over your shoulder, looks in your viewfinder and says 'Don't take that picture, I'll delete it.'

This happened earlier in July. The government censor stands in front of a No Photography sign and says, "New policy, the sign and scene behind are now OK. Have at it." You take your camera to a shed for a security review a few minutes later and a sergeant says, "Um, 'No Photography' signs are forbidden." "They just told us it was OK," I say. "For real?" he asks. "For real," I reply. He deletes it anyway. There was a sliver of concrete in the frame. The fringes of a bunker you're not allowed to see.

And it's a place where the Pentagon believes it can tell you not to include in your story the name of a man who outed himself in a newspaper interview in 2008 to clear his name.

It's a place where, if you ask why, they tell you, "That's the rules ma'am." If you say that wasn't the rule a year ago, a month ago — they shrug and say that's the rule today.

You can't write that man's name any more. Never mind that reporters at the same war court reported that same interrogator's name in Guantanamo stories in 2008.

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