A Redacted America: Critiquing the Lack of Transparency at Guantanamo Bay

Abstract

The willingness to undermine liberal standards of justice and imprisonment has been a major criticism of the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay. The camp’s propensity to evade judicial mechanisms offered on American soil is particularly due to its deliberate opacity.

This paper begins with a brief overview of the major arguments in favour of the closure of the facility and the challenges that have prohibited the closure thus far, based on a review of debates and commentary found in investigative reports, legal documents, and scholarly analyses. A substantive portion of this piece will highlight three demonstrable areas where transparency is being detrimentally avoided in the conduct of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp: press access, health care, and the detainee defense counsel. A critique of increasing transparency as a possible impetus to keep the facility open will close the discussion. Ultimately, the transgressions of Guantánamo are so detrimental to American self-conception of liberal values that a correction of the facility’s opacity should be but an intermediary step to closing the facility entirely.