This report is more evidence of the breadth and depth of the challenge posed by Islamic fundamentalism. Methods for meeting the challenge are going to be very un-politically correct.
U.S. interpreters at the military prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who are under suspicion of espionage, may have sabotaged interviews with detainees by inaccurately translating interrogators' questions and prisoners' answers, senior U.S. officials said Monday.Posted by Alan at October 7, 2003 05:06 PMIt is unclear in how many cases, if any, this may have happened, the officials said. But military investigators are taking the issue seriously enough to review taped interrogations involving the Arabic-language interpreters under scrutiny to spot-check their accuracy.
If the investigators' worst fears are realized, officials said, scores of interviews with suspected Al-Qaida or Taliban prisoners at the detention center could be compromised, and military officials could be forced to re-interview many of the camp's 660 detainees.
On one level, each branch of the military is investigating the espionage-related accusations against members of its own service. But a senior defense official said these inquiries were also being coordinated as part of a broader investigation involving numerous government agencies that he would not discuss in further detail.
"The worst fear is that it's all one interrelated network that was inspired by Al-Qaida," said a senior Air Force official. "But we don't have any concrete evidence of that yet."
New York Times story via the Mercury News