U.S. military guards raided the largest camp at Guantanamo Bay early Saturday morning and fired four non-lethal shots as they moved detainees into solitary cells to suppress a widening protest, military officials said in a statement.

The unusual pre-dawn raid, ordered by Cmdr. Rear Adm. John W. Smith, was prompted by detainees' efforts to cover surveillance cameras, windows and glass partitions -- blocking views by guards -- amid an ongoing hunger strike that has now spread to more than 40 detainees and required officials to order some prisoners to be force fed through tubes.   

During the raid, "some detainees resisted with improvised weapons, and in response, four less-than-lethal rounds were fired. There were no serious injuries to guards or detainees," according to the statement released by the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo.

Carlos Warner, a lawyer who represents detainees, said in an email to NBC News the raid was "a major event" and accused military officials of "escalating the conflict."

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Warner also said the military timed the raid just after an International Red Cross delegation left the facility.

“They are doing exactly what they shouldn't be doing - provoking men who have nothing to lose and who are ready to die. These actions will drive the men closer to death, so yes the situation is rapidly deteriorating,” he added.

A White House spokesperson said: "We have been monitoring the situation at Guantanamo closely and were informed by DOD in advance of the Task Force's plan to transition detainees at Camp VI from communal to single-cell living to ensure their health and security."

In recent weeks, as the hunger strike has spread among detainees, human rights groups have called on the Obama administration to fulfill its promise to shut down Guantanamo and step  up its efforts to return detainees who have been cleared for release to their home countries.

Lawyers for the detainees said they have been told of detainees losing consciousness and coughing up blood due to the hunger strike.

The Saturday morning raid occurred in Camp VI -- the largest at Guantanamo -- where detainees deemed "compliant" live in communal areas and are given special privileges. But military officials said that, in order to "reestablish proper observation" of the detainees, military forces began moving the detainees back into "single cell" confinement, triggering the resistance that led them to fire shots. Officials have said in the past that guards are equipped with rubber bullets.

Last month, U.S. military officials denied any detainees' lives were in danger but acknowledged that resistance and frustration among the detainees is growing, a development that a senior general said is because they are “devastated” that President Barack Obama’s pledge to shut down the facility has not been fulfilled.

White House officials say they remain committed to closing Guantanamo but have been blocked from doing so by Congress, leading officials to close the small State Department office charged with finding new homes for the detainees.

Related:

Pentagon ponders Gitmo overhaul amid growing detainee unrest

'Non-lethal round' fired at Gitmo detainees in soccer field incident, US military confirms

The Pentagon is considering plans for a $150 million overhaul of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- including building a new dining hall, hospital and barracks for the guards -- as part of an ambitious project recommended by the top general in charge of its operations, officials tell NBC News.    

The proposed spending spree comes amid mounting signs of unrest among Guantanamo detainees that lawyers say is threatening their  lives. U.S. military officials confirmed Wednesday that the number of hunger strikers at Guantanamo has more than tripled in the last two weeks -- from 7 to 25 -- and that eight of them are being force fed through tubes. Defense lawyers said in a letter to Congress this week they have gotten reports that “over two dozen men have lost consciousness.”

U.S. military officials denied any lives were in danger but acknowledged that resistance and frustration among the detainees is growing, a development that a senior general said is because they are “devastated” that President Barack Obama’s pledge to shut down the facility has not been fulfilled.

“They had great optimism that Guantanamo would be closed,” said Gen. John Kelly, the commander of the U.S. Southern Command, when asked about the hunger strikes during testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. “They were devastated, apparently… when the president backed off -- at least their perception -- of closing the facility.

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“He said nothing about it in his inauguration speech,” Kelly continued, referring to President Obama. “He said nothing about it in his State of the Union speech. He has said nothing about it. He's not -- he's not restaffing the office that… looks at closing the facility.”

White House officials say they remain committed to closing Guantanamo but have been blocked from doing so by Congress, leading officials to close the small State Department office charged with finding new homes for the detainees. At the same time, Kelly –- who took over as Southcom commander last year -- began laying the groundwork for a substantial overhaul of Guantanamo, testifying that many of the buildings there are “falling apart.”

“Gitmo seems to be the one place they don’t care about spending money,” said David Remes, a defense lawyer who represents detainees, noting that the plans for the overhaul are moving forward even as the sequester is forcing costs and layoffs throughout the government.

“They will spare no expense to keep these men there rather than bring them to the United States.”

Guantanamo is already considered the country’s most expensive prison per capita by far, with an operating budget this year of nearly $177 million, which means that taxpayers are paying more than $1 million for the care and maintenance of the 166 detainees.

But Lt. Cmdr. Ron Flanders, a spokesman for the Southern Command, told NBC News that Kelly has recommended substantial new spending that includes nearly $100 million slotted to build new barracks for the 848 guards stationed at the facility. The current guard barracks are plagued by mold, he said.

In addition, Flanders said, Kelly has signed off on construction projects that include:

- a new $12 million dining hall for the troops;

- a new $11.2 million hospital and medical units for the detainees;

- a $9.9 million “legal meeting complex” where lawyers can meet their detainee clients;

- a $10.8 million “communications network facility” to store data, including computer records and tapes of interrogations, which has been required by a federal court order.

All these projects have been signed off by Kelly in the last few months and been forwarded to the Pentagon, where they are being reviewed by budget officials in Secretary Chuck Hagel’s office, Flanders said.

At the same time, Flanders said, the operations budget for Guantanamo has already increased substantially this year with the construction of a $40 million fiber optic cable being built from south Florida to the facility in Cuba. The cable is needed to improve Internet access, thereby allowing officials to have improved live video feeds of the military commission proceedings of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

In his testimony, Kelly emphasized that the costs of running Guantanamo are substantially higher because of its remote location at a U.S. military base on the eastern tip of Cuba.

“Everything that’s built down there is at least twice as expensive,” said Kelly. “So a ten-penny nail costs 20 cents. So, everything is more expensive. So we have to take care of the barracks. We have to replace the dining hall…It’s literally falling apart.

“And there’s other projects…none of them have to do with creature comforts for the detainees. They’re already living humanely and comfortably, acknowledging the fact they’re in jail.”

Lawyers for terror suspects held at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo, Cuba, said Tuesday that detainees are engaged in widespread protests of conditions at the prison, including a hunger strike that may imperil their lives.

Calling the situation “alarming,” the lawyers said in a statement that some of their clients are “coughing up blood” and “losing consciousness.”  A letter making similar assertions was sent earlier this week to Navy Rear Adm. John W. Smith, the commander of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo and signed by a dozen lawyers who represent most of the detainees at Guantanamo.  

A spokesman for U.S. military at Guantanamo   disputed the lawyers’ claims of a widespread hunger strike, saying they and their clients were merely trying to get attention and keep Guantanamo “in the news. ” 

The spokesman, Navy Capt. Robert Durand, said that a half-dozen detainees are currently on a hunger strike -- five of whom are being force fed through tubes -- and that no lives were in danger. Durand added that the figure was consistent with the average number of hunger strikers at Guantanamo over the past several years. He also acknowledged that “some detainees” have been disciplined and moved out of Camp 6 -- the most permissive of the camps at Guantanamo, with communal living arrangements -- but he declined to say how many or give the reasons for the action. 

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The conflicting claims underscored the difficulty of obtaining information about conditions at the facility, which President Barack Obama vowed to shut down on his first day in office after his 2008 election but which still remains open as a result of congressional opposition to its closure. There are 166 detainees remaining at the camp, but military rules forbid them from communicating in any way with members of the news media and visits to the camp by outsiders are tightly regulated. Even their communications with their lawyers must be cleared by military censors.

One of those lawyers, David Remes, told NBC News in a telephone interview from Guantanamo Monday night that he saw one of his clients -- Hussain Almerfedi, a Yemeni -- earlier that day and that he had lost “substantial weight” and was “very sick.” Under Guantanamo rules, Remes said he could not share anything that his client told him until the censor cleared the communication. But he said that he offered Almerfedi some trail mix during their meeting and he declined to take it -- a sign,  Remes said,  that his client was participating in the hunger strike.

“The men are at their wit’s end,” he said. “This is their eleventh year of being there and they have no prospect for release.” He also said that since taking over last year as commander,  Adm. Smith had “turned the clock back” to 2002 and 2003, imposing harsher restrictions on the detainees and more-rigorous searches in which personal items were being seized. The searches are being carried out by guards -- some of whom are returning soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq -- who he asserted appear to be extracting vengeance for what they encountered overseas, he said.   

One flashpoint appears to have been a Feb. 6 search at Camp 6 in which, according to the lawyers, camp authorities seized blankets, sheets, towels, sleeping mats, razors and other items from the detainees,  including family photos and religious CDs from the detainees. In their letter to Smith, the lawyers alleged that Arabic interpreters at the camp inspected Qurans “in ways that constitute desecration.” 

Durand, the Guantanamo spokesman, disputed that any harsher restrictions had been imposed by the new commander and said the search last month was in keeping with past practice. He said that search, and earlier ones, have turned up  “a Wal-Mart worth of stuff,” including improvised weapons, illegal electronics and other illicit contraband. But he said that handling of the Qurans was tightly regulated  and that no guards are even permitted to touch the Islamic Holy Books during the searches.

Durand also acknowledged that some of the dispute between camp authorities and the detainees’ lawyers may be about defining terms. Guantanamo officials define a hunger strike as refusing to eat nine meals in a row. But, he said, some of the detainees may be hoarding food in their cells even when they claim to be on a hunger strike.  

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The Guantanamo detainee found dead in his prison cell last weekend had been cleared for  release three years ago by an Obama administration task force that concluded that his detention was no longer necessary, NBC News has learned. 

The disclosure that the detainee, Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, a 32-year-old Yemeni citizen, had been approved for repatriation could raise new questions about the handling of his case and those of scores of others held in Gitmo who also have been cleared for release. Instead, the detainees remain stuck in legal limbo in the U.S. prison for suspected terrorists with no prospect for getting out any time soon.  

A special Obama administration task force review found in 2009 that Latif, who had been held at Gitmo since early 2002 and had waged a long legal battle for his freedom, could be released, a conclusion that could only be reached by a unanimous vote of all U.S. intelligence agencies. 

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That finding was buttressed a year later when U.S. Judge Henry Kennedy ruled that the U.S. government's initial evidence that Latif had links to al-Qaida and the Taliban was "unconvincing."  Despite both findings, the Obama administration appealed the ruling --  because it did not want to return him to Yemen, a country it viewed as too unstable. 

That stance provoked criticism from human rights groups. At the time of Latif's death, Amnesty International was about to launch an international campaign calling for his freedom, according to David Remes, who headed a legal team that represented Latif. 

"Adnan spent more than ten years in Guantanamo-- nearly a third of his life -- but like most Guantanamo detainees, he was never charged with a crime or accused of violating any law," Remes said in a statement released Tuesday. 

He  "endured great suffering at Guantanamo -- physical and spiritual -- and lived in constant torment" but "could see no end to his confinement,"  it said.  "However he died, Adman's death is a reminder of the injustice of Guantanamo and the urgency of closing the prison." 

Remes told NBC News Tuesday that Latif had been “in despair” over his plight and had told him he would take any opportunity he could to commit suicide. He also said that Latif had been heavily sedated by guards there.

In a statement on its website Tuesday, Amnesty International USA called Latif’s death, “a tragic reminder of the numbing cruelty of the USA’s indefinite detention regime at its Guantánamo Bay detention facility, and the urgent need to resolve the detentions.” 

Latif's death is the ninth at Gitmo since the U.S. prison for terrorists opened in January 2002 and the third since last year. The case is now the subject of an investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Military officials say that Latif, who had no serious medical problems, was found unconscious and unresponsive in his cell at Camp 5 on Saturday afternoon. After efforts to revive him failed, he was rushed to a hospital at the base and pronounced dead. An autopsy was conducted on Sunday, but the results have not yet been released.

Military officials say that Latif had been a disciplinary problem: He had been on a hunger strike that he ended in June and recently had hurled a "cocktail" of food and bodily fluids at guards, causing him to be placed in a special disciplinary cell in Camp 5, where he was isolated from other detainees.

But Remes said that Latif had ample grievances. Pentagon officials had first recommended he be released from Gitmo as early as 2004, but he was caught up in seemingly endless legal battles over the status of detainees. He was brought to the prison in early 2002 after being turned over to Pakistani police to the U.S. military following the invasion of Afghanistan. Latif had said he suffered from brain injuries as a result of an auto accident in Yemen and had gone to Pakistan for free medical help.

U.S. military officials originally claimed that he had been encouraged to leave Yemen by an al-Qaida facilitator named “Abu Khalud” and had received military training at a camp in Afghanistan. But Judge Kennedy noted in his ruling that there was no corroborated evidence that Latif ever met Khalud and that Defense Department officials had previously concluded that Latif  “is not known to have participated in combatant/terrorist training.”

In letters from Gitmo, Latif repeatedly asserted his innocence.  “This prison is a piece of hell that kills everything, the spirit, the body, and kicks away all the symptoms of health from them,” he wrote in one letter that was widely cited by human rights advocates.

Noting President Barack Obama's one-time pledge to close Gitmo, Remes said: "The only detainees who have been released from Gitmo in the last two years have been in caskets."

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GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- The U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, targeted for closure by Barack Obama during his campaign for the presidency, is instead quietly undergoing millions of dollars of upgrades that could allow it to remain open for years as a prison for suspected terrorists, NBC News has learned.

Among the recent improvements to the facility commonly known as “Gitmo”: a heavily guarded soccer field for detainees known as “Super Rec,” which cost nearly $750,000 and opened this week; cable television in a  communal living quarters and “enriching your life” classes for detainees, which include instruction on learning to paint, writing a resume  -- even handling personal finances.

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“Well, that's one class, but it’s not a popular (one),”  Army Col. Donnie Thomas, commander of the military guards at camp, said with a laugh. “But it’s a class. It’s just to keep these guys busy.”

Other improvements are more practical, such as a new headquarters for the guards and a new hospital, which is still in the planning stages.

Navy Adm. David B. “Woody” Woods, commander of the Guantanamo facility, told NBC News that the improvements have “made it safer for the detainees, safer for the guard force,” and have not adversely impacted security at the facility.

“We treat them all as a threat only because if you don't then you're gonna get surprised, and that's not our business,” he said.

Many of the improvements have been made at the most modern facility in the detention center, known as Camp VI, a communal living compound that houses about 80 percent of the 169 detainees currently held at Gitmo. There, detainees who are deemed to be compliant with the rules and therefore eligible for more privileges are able to watch 21 Cable TV channels, DVD movies, read newspapers and borrow books from a library.

The detention center, located within the U.S. Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, was established in 2002 by President George W. Bush to hold detainees from the war in Afghanistan and later Iraq. The base in Cuba was selected as part of a Bush administration strategy to prevent judicial review of the legal status of the prisoners, who were initially denied lawyers.

Obama made its closure a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, arguing that U.S. courts were capable of handling the cases. After taking office, he signed an executive order on Jan. 22, 2009, directing that Gitmo be shut down within a year. The order also called for an immediate case-by case review of detainees at the facility with an eye toward either repatriating them or bringing them to trial in U.S. civilian courts.

But the president’s efforts to shutter the camp were blocked by Congress out of concerns that transferring the detainees to U.S. jails would pose a security risk and invite escape attempts or terrorist attacks on the facilities.

A little more than two years after Obama’s first executive order, on March 7, 2011, he signed another executive order making a number of policy changes regarding Gitmo, including a reversal of his order seeking to bring detainees to trial in civilian courts. Instead, he said, suspects would face military tribunals that would decide their guilt or innocence.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., and four other Guantanamo detainees were the first to go before a military tribunal last month, when they were formally charged with crimes that include murder and terrorism. They face the death penalty if convicted for their roles in the attacks that claimed 2,976 lives in New York, Washington and Shanksville, Pa.

But for the remainder of the detainees – including some who are eligible for release but have no country willing to take them – there is little prospect of leaving Gitmo anytime soon.

And that means U.S. taxpayers will continue to foot the bill for their presence in a U.S. prison that costs $140 million a year to operate – or some $800,000 per detainee.

Woods, the commander of the Guantanamo detention center, said he doesn’t anticipate the closure of the facility any time soon.

“As far as being able to close down the operation, I could do that … in a couple of months, the buildings and the people,” he said. “We have removed these belligerents from the battlefield and our job is to detain them, and we do that very well.”

Michael Isikoff is NBC's national investigative correspondent; Mike Brunker of msnbc.com contributed to this report.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A former U.S. Senate investigator who had previously worked for the CIA was arrested Monday and charged with repeatedly leaking classified information to journalists as well as violating the federal law that forbids disclosing the identity of covert intelligence officers.

John Kiriakou, who between 2009 and last year worked as an investigator for Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was charged by a federal grand jury with one count of violating the Intelligence Agencies Protection Act, two counts of violating the Espionage Act and one count of lying to the CIA about his actions in an effort to convince the agency to let him publish a book, "The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror."

Kiriakou turned himself into the FBI Monday morning. In an initial court appearance in Alexandria, Va., Monday afternoon, Kiriakou waived a preliminary hearing and was released on a $250,000 bond after surrendering his passport and agreeing to stay in the Washington area and not to contact any witnesses in the case. His lawyer, Plato Cacheris, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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The charges cap a three-year investigation by Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago,  into how photographs of covert CIA officers involved in the interrogation of terror suspects ended up in the Guantanamo prison cell of one of the accused 9/11 terrorists. The discovery of the photographs stunned top CIA officials. Fitzgerald was then appointed by Attorney General Eric Holder to oversee the probe because of his prior expertise in the intelligence protection act as special counsel in charge of the Bush era investigation into the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame.

DOCUMENT: Read the complaint against Kiriakou

The investigation initially focused on the role of defense lawyers, who used a private investigator to obtain surveillance photos of CIA officers. But the probe found no wrongdoing by the defense lawyers or the investigator. Instead, a Justice Department complaint charged, it found that Kiriakou provided information to three journalists, emailing one of them the name of a covert officer who then supplied the name of the officer to a defense investigator. (The journalist is not identified in the complaint). The complaint also alleges that Kiriakou provided another reporter at the New York Times with classified information about another CIA officer's role in the capture of accused Gitmo terrorist Abu Zubaydah. The information was included in a front page June 22, 2008, article in the Times entitled, "Inside the Interrogation of a 9/11 Mastermind" that raised questions about the use of waterboarding.

In an interview with FBI agents last week, Kiriakou denied disclosing information about the CIA officer to the New York Times reporter, Scott Shane, answering, "Heavens no," when asked if he had done so, according to the criminal complaint. But the complaint charges that Kirikou provided the reporter with the CIA officer's phone number and personal address.

The charges are the latest in a series of criminal leak cases brought by the Justice Department under President Barack Obama. But the cases have so far proven difficult for federal prosecutors; one major one, involving former NSA employee Thomas Drake, accused of leaking classified information to a Baltimore Sun reporter, resulted in a resounding defeat for the Justice Department last year when federal prosecutors withdrew all criminal charges against him.

Kiriakou spent 14 years with the CIA, between 1990 and 2004. He was hired by Kerry in 2009 to help investigate national security related issues for the Foreign Relations Committee. This came after Kiriakou gained prominence by giving a 2007 interview to ABC News about the use of waterboarding and how it allegedly broke Zubaydah in 35 seconds -- a claim that has been much disputed. (It was later disclosed that Zubaydah had been waterboarded 83 times.)  Kiriakou, who for a time worked as an ABC News consultant and appeared on several NBC News and MSNBC TV programs, later said that he did not personally participate in the waterboarding and had only read about it in intelligence reports.

A judge last year refused to find the CIA in contempt of court when it destroyed dozens of videotapes of the interrogation of Zubaydah and other detainees.

In December 2007, the CIA acknowledged doing so as part of the detention program begun after the Sept. 11 attacks.
A spokeswoman for Kerry, Jodi Seth, emailed this statement Monday to NBC News: “John Kiriakou was an investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from mid-2009 to 2011 when he left the committee voluntarily.  These charges date back to actions allegedly taken when he was employed by the intelligence community and both pre-date and are unrelated to his work for the committee. Understandably, our office has no information beyond what is publicly available, and only today did we become aware of this situation.”

In a statement issued after the charges were filed, CIA Director David Petraeus issued a statement to agency employees reminding them of the need to protect classified information.

"In return for the secrecy we need to do our work, the American people and our elected representatives expect us to uphold our nation’s laws and values," Petraeus said in the email. "When we joined this organization, we swore to safeguard classified information; those oaths stay with us for life. Unauthorized disclosures of any sort -- including information concerning the identities of other Agency officers -- betray the public trust, our country and our colleagues. Given the sensitive nature of many of our agency’s operations and the risks we ask our employees to take, the illegal passage of secrets is an abuse of trust that may put lives in jeopardy."

Michael Isikoff is NBC News national investigative correspondent. Msnbc.com news services contributed to this report.