The Press Gets Rejected
Friday will mark the beginning of the hearings for 14 terror suspects that were being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The suspects have now been moved to secret CIA prisons to await their hearing. Word on the street is that no reporters will be allowed to witness, and subsequently report on any of the hearings.
I’m not sure how normal or out-of-the-ordinary this is (not allowing reporters into a suspected terrorist hearing), but I’m not sure I like it.
Only edited versions of the proceedings will be released. Supposedly they will be removing the parts that could compromise US national security. Okay, I understand that. I wouldn’t want to make a bad situation, worse, but isn’t it hard to trust our government these days?
Maybe it’s all the bad news that has been centered around Guantanamo Bay recently, and the suspicions about those secret prisons that make an announcement such as not allowing reporters into the hearings, upsetting. I don’t know enough about any of this Guantanamo/prison stuff to really talk about it, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth anyway.
Don’t get me wrong, regardless of what mistakes this government has made post 9/11, I still want to see those who participated in the planning of 9/11 to be punished. Most all of us do. I’ve just been hoping for more honesty from our leaders, which may be silly of me. In my head, where everything turns out just fine, I would think that we could find 2 or 3 reputable reporters to sit in on the hearings, and have the capacity to report only that information which did not have the potential to harm national security. Is that really not possible? Or is our government afraid of something other than a security breech?
Check out this article discussing the hearings:
“At Gitmo detainee hearings, no journalists allowed”
February 28th, 2008 at 11:48 am
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