DAVID BRANCACCIO: NOW on PBS…

It's an image seared in our minds, the hooded figure from Abu Ghraib prison — photos that surfaced exactly one year ago. Now in his first American television interview about what he says happened, the man under the hood.

HAJ ALI: They made me stand on a box with my hands hooked to wires. When they shocked me with electricity, it felt like my eyeballs were coming out of their sockets.

BRANCACCIO: And, an extraordinary visit to another place cameras rarely go, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

WILNER: Charles Manson lives in much better conditions than these people do. And they haven't even been charged with a crime.

BRANCACCIO: The prisoners of terror from the Mid East to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A special edition of NOW.

BRANCACCIO: Welcome.

Yes, that Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. military base that houses camps where the American government is currently holding hundreds of detainees captured as part of the War on Terror.

America's closest ally in that war — Britain — has concluded in a Parliamentary report that the United States committed "grave violations of human rights" here. The Bush administration says it does not authorize or condone torture, but there's no secret as to why it is holding the detainees here in the first place: to try and keep them beyond the reach of American courts and away from the protections of the U.S. Constitution.

Producer Bryan Myers and I traveled here to find out more.

BRANCACCIO: The first prisoners began arriving here a little more than three years ago. Guantanamo Bay — "Gitmo," if you want to save some syllables &3151; is America's oldest overseas military base. Set up a century ago as a Naval refueling station.

After 9/11, the Bush administration wanted a place to imprison suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters indefinitely. Gitmo provided a loophole of sorts. Gitmo operates under a lease signed with the Cuban government long before Castro. Since it can be argued that it's not quite Cuban and not quite American territory, the administration calculated that detainees don't have the right to challenge their imprisonment in court.

That decision — to deny these prisoners any legal rights — outraged many, attorney Tom Wilner among them.

TOM WILNER, DETAINEE ATTORNEY: These are the most fundamental rights of a civilized nation. The most fundamental right established in the Magna Carta is that no free man can be deprived of his liberty except by a jury of his peers and the law of the land.

BRANCACCIO: Wilner's an unlikely crusader. He's a corporate lawyer and a former fraternity brother of President Bush's at Yale. But right from the beginning, Wilner saw Gitmo as an affront to American values. So in the first few months of the prison's operation, he filed suit on behalf of several of its detainees.

TOM WILNER: I can't say for sure that each of my clients is an innocent person, although I believe they are. But what I can say for sure as an American, is that they are entitled to due process. That you just can't lock people up and throw away the key without some process, and some reason for holding them. That's what our country is about.

BRANCACCIO: Wilner argued that even the iguanas at Gitmo have more legal rights than the detainees, at least the iguanas are protected by the Endangered Species Act. His lawsuit eventually went all the way to Supreme Court. More about that later. But the Bush administration intended Gitmo to be more than just a prison. Desperate for information on Al Qaeda, they also saw it as an ideal place to interrogate suspected terrorists. Brigadier General Jay Hood is the commander currently in charge of the detainees.

BRIG. GEN. JAY HOOD: We're holding enemy combatants here, men that were taken off the battlefield in the global War on Terror, many of them who posed a significant threat to the United States and our allies and many of whom possessed intelligence information that would be valuable to us in that conflict.

BRANCACCIO: So, the administration made another big decision regarding Gitmo. In December 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved the use of several interrogation techniques so harsh, they're normally forbidden.

Harsh interrogation techniques, no legal rights and a secretive, out-of-the way location. Critics worried all of it could create an "anything goes" environment, a recipe for trouble. Now, government documents have come to light alleging that many of these detainees were physically abused, possibly even tortured.

Anthony Romero is the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. In the fall of 2003, the ACLU asked the government to see documents on the treatment of the detainees.

ANTHONY ROMERO: We filed this Freedom of Information Act ironically before the Abu Ghraib scandal broke. This was at a time when we had a hunch that perhaps the interrogation procedures at Guantanamo, at Iraq, and Afghanistan and elsewhere were perhaps going beyond what was allowed under law.

BRANCACCIO: The Bush administration denied that request, so the ACLU decided to put up a fight. But while they were tussling in court, a startling event: exactly one year ago, came these images of torture from the now infamous prison "Abu Ghraib."

Haj Ali says you know him: he says he's the subject of this photo that so shocked and horrified the world.

HAJ ALI: I'm the person, I'm a 100% sure of it. I remember the box, the pipes, and the two wires they used.

BRANCACCIO: For the first time on American television, Ali talks about that photo and the American soldiers who tortured him with electricity.

The military confirms Haj Ali spent almost three months in Abu Ghraib. In late 2003, American troops were rounding up civil and religious leaders they believed were behind the insurgency. Ali, who says he had nothing to do with the insurgency, was the mayor of a Baghdad suburb and a member of the ruling Baath Party. One day, Ali was yanked off the street and taken to Abu Ghraib prison.

HAJ ALI: They ordered me to strip naked, but I refused, so five American soldiers forcibly stripped me. They covered my head and chained my legs and hands. Then they kicked me and I fell. Later, they chained me to a pipe, pointed guns to my head, and poured cold water over me.

BRANCACCIO: As the weeks went by, it got even worse, resulting, he told us, in this now infamous photo.

HAJ ALI: They made me stand on a box with my hands hooked to wires. When they shocked me with electricity, it felt like my eyeballs were coming out of their sockets. I fell, and they put me back up again for more. Once, I bit my tongue so hard, my mouth was full of blood. All this time, they were laughing.

BRANCACCIO: Government documents show Haj Ali was not the only one tortured and photographed in a similar fashion. Life at Abu Ghraib was as mentally harsh as it was physically. Sleep was next to impossible, with screams filling the hallways. Ali was often hooded, but says he was able to recognize one man who led much of the torture, American soldier Charles Graner.

HAJ ALI: I used to respect the Americans. It was their boots that walked on the moon for the first time. But I never thought it would be these boots that would stomp on men's heads.

BRANCACCIO: Haj Ali's family had no idea where he was. Several times, family members came to Abu Ghraib asking if he was a prisoner. They were told "no." Interrogators once even threatened to secretly send him to Guantanamo Bay — a place, they told him, "where even dogs can't survive." Ali describes it as, "just like being dead."

Ali was released from Abu Ghraib just as abruptly as he was arrested, tossed off the back of a truck. He says the torture at Abu Ghraib continues to this day; he now runs a program to document those stories. What he hears, he says, isn't good news for the Americans.

HAJ ALI: Abu Ghraib is a breeding ground for insurgents. Ninety-nine percent of the people brought in are innocent, but all the insults and torture make them ready to do just about anything. Who can blame them?

BRANCACCIO: ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero says it was the Abu Ghraib scandal that broke the legal logjam. A judge agreed, the public needed to know more. Soon, Romero and his staff were pouring over tens of thousands of pages from the Pentagon, the Justice Department, and the State Department full of allegations of abuse, and all, up until now, kept secret.

ROMERO: Initially, when we read through these memos, we were shocked. We were shocked because our worst fears about what was going on in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere were confirmed in the government's very own reports.

BRANCACCIO: Here's just one item. Dated August 2004, it's an e-mail written by an FBI agent to his superiors describing what he saw not at Abu Ghraib, but at Guantanamo Bay. "I entered...rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor…[other detainees] had urinated or defecated on themselves and had been left there for ...24 hours or more. On another occasion, air conditioning had been turned off, making the temperature...probably well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been... pulling his own hair out."

ROMERO: One FBI memo talks about torture techniques, doesn't put it in quotation marks, doesn't call it "so-called" torture. And it was clear that there were a number of men and women in government service who were very troubled by what they were seeing.

BRANCACCIO: Daniel Coleman is troubled, too. Up until his retirement last year, he was the FBI's foremost expert on Al Qaeda. Coleman spoke frequently with FBI agents assigned to Guantanamo. He says they often complained about how interrogations were being conducted.

COLEMAN: It's illegal. It's immoral. It's unethical. And it doesn't work.

BRANCACCIO: Coleman and his colleagues had developed a methodical approach to interrogation based on years of experience.

COLEMAN: You have to develop a rapport with them.

BRANCACCIO: Even if it's from the so-called high value senior Al Qaeda guys?

COLEMAN: Them even more.

BRANCACCIO: That approach helped solve the East Africa embassy bombings, resulting in the convictions of four Al Qaeda operatives. And, Coleman says, some of his sources in that case are still talking to this day, providing potentially life saving information.

COLEMAN: Some of the witnesses that we gathered, you know, several years ago, are still able to come up with information, because we've developed them into, they're almost like repositories.

BRANCACCIO: But you develop these resources, as you call them.

COLEMAN: Yes.

BRANCACCIO: … in part by not beating them.

COLEMAN: No. They wouldn't still be with us and still talking to us if we'd done that.

BRANCACCIO: Coleman believes abusive treatment poses another problem: it can produce unreliable information which can end up in the hands of policy makers.

Consider this: former Secretary of State Colin Powell's UN speech from February 2003. In it, he spoke of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda — information credited to an interrogation of an Al Qaeda operative named Al Libi.

POWELL: Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story.

BRANCACCIO: That operative's story was later revealed to be false, some fear the result of a harsh interrogation.

COLEMAN: Some of the things they talked about, there's water boarding and things like that.

BRANCACCIO: Water boarding is like holding someone's head under water? COLEMAN: Right. I'd say anything to make somebody stop that.

BRANCACCIO: In those FBI e-mails from Guantanamo Bay, agents also complained that confessions obtained under duress were, quote, "suspect at best."

Some of the allegations from Guantanamo are similar to those from Abu Ghraib: being chained in painful positions, deprived of sleep for days, and exposed to extremes in temperature. Many of the interrogation techniques used in both places were approved at the highest levels of the military. Former Abu Ghraib prisoner Haj Ali says his captors even bragged about how they were working on behalf of, quote, the American "Minister of Defense." Attorney Tom Wilner sees a pattern.

WILNER: The fact that the same type of abuses were occurring in every place where these people were held shows that it wasn't a frolic by some rogue group in one place. It had to in some way have been policy.

BRANCACCIO: How serious was the abuse? The Army is now looking into the possible homicides of 27 detainees held in U.S. custody at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. Human rights groups believe some of those detainees were tortured to death. To date, only seven low-ranking soldiers have been convicted in the Abu Ghraib scandal, all of them enlisted personnel. But there are those trying to hold higher-ups responsible. Until the year 2000, John Hutson was the Judge Advocate General of the Navy, its highest ranking lawyer.

BRANCACCIO: Do you think that interrogation methods approved by Secretary Rumsfeld led to torture?

JOHN HUTSON: Yeah, I think they did. I mean we have fought wars for hundreds of years and not had these kinds of problems.

BRANCACCIO: Just last week, an Army report cleared several high ranking generals of wrongdoing at Abu Ghraib, sayings such charges were unsubstantiated.

HUTSON: What happens is that people like Lynndie England are doing what they think is wanted by people at the top. Because the people at the top are talking to the generals, the generals are talking to the colonels, the colonels are talking to the captains. The captains are talking to the sergeants, and pretty soon, Lynndie England is leading somebody around by a leash.

BRANCACCIO: Hutson recently signed on as an attorney with the group Humans Rights First in a lawsuit against Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Earlier this year, Hutson also appeared before Congress to speak against the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General. You may remember, it was Gonzales who wrote a memo advising President Bush that the Geneva Convention protecting prisoners of war was, quote, "obsolete."

HUTSON [CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY]: I believe that the prisoner abuses we've seen in Iraq, as well as in Afghanistan and Gitmo, found their genesis in the decision to get cute with the Geneva Conventions.

HUTSON: When you start playing around with those definitions of torture, and you're playing around with what's okay and what's not okay, and "It's okay, but now it isn't," kind of thing, pretty soon you're gonna end up with what we saw.

We should have a bright line. They may be terrorists, they may be evil-doers, but they're human beings and we're Americans. And we will treat them with the dignity and respect that Americans have always treated human beings simply by virtue of their humanity.

BRANCACCIO: I would have thought your bias was toward a firm fist on national security?

HUTSON: My bias is toward a firm fist on national security. What we've been doing in regard to detainees undermines, in the long run, national security. It undermines the respect with which the United States and the United States Armed Forces are held by people, countries that we would like to have as our partners. You know, who wants to go to war alongside a country that you fear is going to mistreat their prisoners?

BRANCACCIO: It's against this back drop that we got permission to come to Guantanamo Bay.

BRANCACCIO: A while back, the Red Cross came out with a report that suggested that some of the treatment of detainees here might have been, in their phrase, "tantamount to torture."

GENERAL HOOD: I don't believe that is in any way an accurate representation of how the detainees are being cared for here. The detainees under our charge are well cared for physically and mentally.

BRANCACCIO: Hood's been here about a year, and dealing with the bad publicity is part of his job. The abuse documented in those FBI e-mails started long before Hood got here, but he vows things are different today. So, General Hood has taken the extraordinary step of opening up Gitmo to reporters like us.

Just inside this fence lies the military prison known as "Camp Delta." Located on a barren and windswept corner of Guantanamo Bay, some 500 detainees have called Camp Delta home for the better part of three years.

We were met by several minders who accompanied us every step of the way, partly for security reasons, but also intent on portraying Camp Delta in its most positive light.

We did see some of the detainees. These prisoners wear white, a sign that they're cooperative. Our escorts told us not to show their faces, saying they might be branded collaborators should they ever be allowed to return home.

But for detainees who aren't cooperative, it's one of these-an open air metal cage, one man to a unit. Almost one half the detainees at Gitmo live in these cells. When the prison was first put together, the military's orders were, make it "humane but not comfortable." Standing in one of these, comfortable is not the first word that comes to mind.

Camp commanders were quick to tell us that detainees have the chance to improve their lives by demonstrating what they called "compliance."

From here, we were taken to another section of Camp Delta. This section has barracks, reserved for detainees deemed to be the most well behaved. Here, prisoners are able to sleep and eat communally, and spend up to eight hours a day outside in a common yard.

HAGER: This is ultimately where they want to be. They are in a communal setting.

BRANCACCIO: In some ways, this scene resembles the recreation yard of an ordinary jail back in the U.S., with important distinctions: none of these prisoners has ever been charged with or convicted of a crime, and none, at the moment, has the basic legal rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.

And who is being held here? The American sweep has been very wide, rounding up everyone from those suspected of being hard core terrorists, to people who may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

SOLDIER: You're standing in the detainee hospital now.

BRANCACCIO: In its attempt to defuse allegations of abuse, the military always makes sure to bring reporters here. Officers told us this medical clinic is as good as any available to the average American.

But make no mistake, Camp Delta is austere, even as prisons go. Nonetheless, it's a step up from what came before. This is Camp X-Ray, the prison where the detainees were originally held. X-Ray now stands empty, draped in weeds baked brown by the sun. Commanders here point to the closure of X-Ray as evidence of their concern for the well-being of detainees.

BRANCACCIO: The standards under which the detainees are held, can I with confidence say, "Geneva Convention."

GENERAL HOOD: Absolutely, Absolutely.

BRANCACCIO: That's important to you as a soldier?

GENERAL HOOD: That is absolutely important.

BRANCACCIO: Attorney Tom Wilner says physical abuse at Gitmo probably has stopped, but says psychological abuse continues. According to Wilner, his clients are routinely denied access to basic items the military claims it provides, like books and the chance to exercise.

WILNER: The problem now really is that these people are being held in conditions that are worse than the worst convicted murderer or rapist in the United States. Charles Manson lives in much better conditions than these people do. And they haven't even been charged with a crime.

BRANCACCIO: Commanders here emphatically deny that. But one thing can be said about Gitmo: the detainees here may be better off than others held elsewhere. American soldiers have been arresting so many, Guantanamo couldn't possibly hold them all. As a result, there are thousands of others held in a network of American-run prisons around the globe. There are said to be dozens of camps in such far flung places as Jordan, Pakistan, and the island of Diego Garcia in The Indian Ocean.

In some of those camps, the American government is believed to be holding several members of Al Qaeda as "ghost detainees," so-named because their imprisonment is kept secret from groups like the Red Cross, even family members. Former FBI agent Daniel Coleman worries such secrecy leads to torture.

COLEMAN: Just because it's a war doesn't mean all bets are off. I have no problem with killing people on the battlefield, but it they surrender or are captured, well then, sorry, but you've got to take care of them. That's the way it works.

BRANCACCIO: Attorney Tom Wilner says things are beginning to change just a little. Three months ago, he was able to meet his clients for the first time after representing them for almost three years. But one thing that hasn't changed: the legal status of the detainees. Remember Wilner's lawsuit? Last year, the Supreme Court ruled in the detainees' favor. In a landmark decision it gave them, for the first time, the right to challenge their imprisonment in court. But the Bush administration has not allowed that to happen, and is fighting parts of that ruling.

Meanwhile, the administration has come up with an alternative, something newly devised called an "Administrative Review Board Hearing," or ARB. An ARB is not a trial, and it's not about determining innocence or guilt — it's only about determining whether a detainee no longer poses a threat and can be released.

While at Guantanamo, we were able to witness an ARB. We were among the first reporters to do so, but our cameras had to stay outside. As the hearing began, I sat four feet away from the prisoner, a 52-year old Afghani man accused of working for the Taliban. Facing him, three stern military officers who will recommend whether he should be released or not. Another officer read a report claiming the prisoner was caught with documents linked to Osama bin Laden. The prisoner had no lawyer or power to investigate the evidence against him. It was the word of a lone, nervous man against an official, classified report.

We may never know the fate of this prisoner; the outcome of these reviews are kept secret, and the prisoners have no right of appeal. But officers here assured us, some do get released.

Afterwards, something struck me about this building. Known as "Camp Five," it's the newest addition at Gitmo, built for the purpose of holding what the military calls "high value" detainees. It's modeled after a penitentiary in Indiana.

SOLDIER: This is our typical interrogation room.

BRANCACCIO: But Camp Five differs from that prison in Indiana in one crucial respect: prisoners in Indiana are subject to the rights of the American legal system. Prisoners in Guantanamo are subject to, well, no one is quite sure. Judging by Camp Five's architecture, someone is planning for those detainees to be around for a long time.

How we treat people we like isn't much of a measure of anything. How we treat those we regard as our enemies says a lot about who we are, as Americans, and as ethical people who live by our own rules, whether it's here in Gitmo, at Abu Ghraib, in Afghanistan, or where ever enemy combatants are held in U.S. custody.

BRANCACCIO: As 2005 progresses, we'll stay on the Guantanamo story and the larger policy questions it raises — but next week, we're back in the continental United States exploring more issues Americans are talking about at their kitchen tables.

Two unique views on our democracy that span the political spectrum.

From the right: former Congressman Bob Barr on civil liberties and The Patriot Act.

And from the left: Janeane Garofalo of Air America with a few choice words for the Republican Party.

JANEANE GAROFALO: Patriotism is the first and last refuge of a scoundrel.

BRANCACCIO: And that's it for NOW. From Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, I'm David Brancaccio. We'll see you next week.

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