Gov't could destroy records in hundreds of Gitmo cases

Propublica:

A stockpile of documents about hundreds of Guantanamo Bay detainees, some written by the prisoners themselves, could be destroyed under a little-known provision of a federal court order the Bush administration obtained in 2004.
For four years, records in the prisoners' habeas corpus lawsuits challenging the legality of their detentions have been piling up in a secure federal facility in the Crystal City neighborhood of Arlington, Va. Because much of the information is classified, the 750 or so attorneys representing the prisoners are required to do and store all their work on-site.

The provision is part of a broad order [1] (PDF) issued at the very outset of the habeas cases -- at the last official count in January, 220 cases remained -- that set rules for how sensitive documents and attorney access should be handled. It calls for the government to destroy all classified records given to, prepared by or kept by prisoners' lawyers -- including originals and copies of writings, photographs, videotapes, computer files and voice recordings -- when the cases end.

Case files already fill 40 to 50 locked file cabinets, and restricted computer drives hold still more. Documents include captives' letters, drawings and poems [2], their attorneys' notes from meetings with them, and reports of their interrogations, according to several lawyers who routinely access the files. In some cases they describe the capture, transfer and investigation of prisoners, the identities of their accusers, and the government's reasons for holding them. The lawyers estimate that a quarter to a third of the records have been marked classified.

Although the lawyers are forbidden to reveal classified details, they could include prisoners' personal accounts of abuses [3] and interrogation procedures [4] that have recently been described in secondhand reports. These voices have been missing, the New York Times noted [5] today, because the government refuses to disclose prisoners' statements and their lawyers operate under a gag order.