Inside "The Wire"

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So far, the processing of detainees, whether for trial or release, has been slow; the Supreme Court's intervention, however, may have delivered a jolt. A U.S. military official tells TIME that at least 140 detainees—"the easiest 20%"—are scheduled for release. The processing of these men has sped up since the Supreme Court announced it would take the case, said the source, who believes the military is "waiting for a politically propitious time to release them." U.S. officials concluded that some detainees were there because they had been kidnapped by Afghan warlords and sold for the bounty the U.S. was offering for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. "Many would not have been detained under the normal rules of engagement," the source concedes. "We're dealing with some very, very dangerous people, but the pendulum is swinging too far in the wrong direction."

Still, even as he speaks, new interrogation headquarters are being built to replace the long beige trailers where questioning occurs. If over the past two years conditions at Guantanamo—Gitmo for short—have become more humane, it is partly because they are also more permanent. The standards have come a long way from Camp X-Ray, the holding pen established during the Afghan war, where the world saw shocking images of detainees on their knees, blindfolded and shackled in a compound of cages. These days at X-Ray, vines curl through the old cells; turkey vultures circle overhead. X-Ray has been replaced by Camp Delta, but because the Army has allowed no outside photographers to shoot the new facilities, it is the old image that lingers.

The population of the naval base, civilian and military, has tripled to more than 6,000 since January 2002. To accommodate the growth, a great deal of new construction is going on beyond the cellblocks. In addition to McDonald's, there are now Pizza Hut, Subway and KFC. Another gym is being built, and town houses, and a four-year college opens next month. Amenities matter because the troops have nowhere else to go; the rest of Cuba is off limits. Asked what he misses most besides his family, Sergeant John Campbell, a National Guardsman on a one-year deployment, talks as if he's in detention too: "the ability to get in a car and drive somewhere else."

The priority of the base is security—keep terrorists off the streets—but the product is information. Every week close to half the detainees are brought in for sessions that may last anywhere from one to 16 hours. They are conducted by any of the 40 four-person "tiger" teams—two interrogators, a linguist and an analyst. The commanders have concluded that interrogators should be young, maybe mid-20s, fairly new to the service. "Intelligence gathering is a young person's job," says Miller. "They're inventive and thoughtful." The idea is to build rapport with the detainees and come at them again and again, using new leads from intelligence gathered at Gitmo or elsewhere. "We got five times as much intelligence [from the detainees] last month as in January '03," says Miller, which, depending on whom you talk to, means that either the interrogators are getting better or the inmates more willing to say anything.

British detainee Moazzam Begg is among the first six prisoners cleared for possible trial. His parents say he had gone to Afghanistan to do humanitarian work—set up a school, install water pipes—and was picked up in Pakistan by American soldiers at the house where he was staying. "It is nearly a complete year since I have been in custody," he wrote to his parents early this year.

"After all this time, I still don't know what crime I am supposed to have committed. I am beginning to lose the fight against depression and hopelessness." According to lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, Begg confessed to an al-Qaeda plot to load a drone aircraft and then dust the House of Commons with anthrax. Smith, who represents the British detainees at the behest of their families, dismisses the confession as nonsense. "If you're held in solitary confinement, you're going to start making things up just to try and get out of that," he says. "Part of this whole Alice in Wonderland world is that in order to get charged with an offense down there and in order to get a lawyer, you have to agree to plead guilty."