[Security1] It’s unclear when the Obama administration will actually close the facility. There’s a possibility it could still carry out the closure before the end of the year: The Defense Department has asked Congress for $350 million for all aspects of closing the Guantanamo detention facility and purchasing a new Illinois prison to house the residual population that has yet to be tried or repatriated (as well as about 48 detainees the administration seeks to hold in indefinite detention). It has placed the money in the politically potent request for funding operations in the Afghanistan war. That choice itself reflects the bipartisan resistance in Congress to actually closing the facility, despite both party’s presidential candidates in 2008 running on a pledge to end an international symbol of infamy.

Accordingly, a group of reporters toured a few of Camp Delta’s nine facilities today to get a highly constrained glimpse of residual life in Guantanamo Bay. The military command has reviewed every photograph presented here to prevent inadvertent disclosures of classified information; seven photographs I took were deleted.

A rare glimpse between two outer layers of security surrounding Camp 5 and Camp 6, two facilities modeled on prisons in Indiana and Michigan. Recently-relaxed rules for restricting photography now allow some visual representation of the shoreline. We did not get to see Camp 7, a facility containing high value detainees. “We do acknowledge there’s a Camp 7,” said Lt. Col. Andrew McManus, the deputy commander of the Joint Detention Group, which oversees detention operations. “That’s all we say about it.” When I asked if the 14 detainees at Guantanamo Bay who arrived in September 2006 from undisclosed prisons run by the CIA — including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his fellow 9/11 co-conspirators — lived in communal housing or are held in individual cells, McManus replied, “I know nothing about that whatsoever.”

A detainee jogs around the central recreation yard in Camp 4, a communal-housing facility for detainees who comply with guards’ orders. When he saw a group of reporters taking pictures of the area, he yelled out in English, “Put me beside bin Laden!” The consensus of the press corps was he was joking.

Two contrasting images from an area in Camp 4 used for holding educational classes. With the exception of the prayer mat, the recreational materials on this table — the Soduko book, the art supplies and the magazines — are comfort items provided to help “compliant” detainees at Camp 4 while away the time. In the makeshift classroom, detainees watch DVDs — some are said to be partial to Jackie Chan movies and the Alaskan fishing show “Deadliest Catch” — as well as attending art and language and “life skill” courses. But across the floor in the classroom are small metal eyebolts used to shackle detainees to their seats during the classes. “For the safety of the instructor, the detainees are shackled,” McManus explained.

Camp 6, modeled on a Michigan prison, is a $37 million facility consisting of eight blocks of 22 cells. It’s a communal-living facility, meaning detainees live with each other, although there are several cells that aren’t big enough for more than a single occupant. Here, a detainee — a slight man, maybe about 5 foot 5 — ambles over from a common area to speak amiably with a guard, who’s separated from the detainee by a schoolyard-fence style barrier. I was allowed to publish these photographs because I blurred the detainee’s faces.

This is the ceiling of a single-occupancy detainee’s cell in H Block in Camp 6, just above the toilet. I laid down on the concrete platform set up for a detainee’s bed to get a sense of what might be the last thing he sees before going to sleep at night.

Another shot from the recreation yard at Camp 4. The only towers we’re allowed to photograph are those with guards manning them, and only then if the guard’s face isn’t able to be determined. Similarly, the crouching detainee below pulled the collar of his shirt above his nose, obscuring his face enough so that a photograph of the scene could clear a security review.

We weren’t allowed inside this Camp 4 facility. While there’s no indication this behavior persists at Guantanamo, early in the detention facility’s existence, behavioral-science teams were involved in abusive interrogation and detention operations, as a Senate Armed Services Committee report in 2008 meticulously documented. There haven’t been accounts of behaviorally-enhanced interrogations for years. “We have visitors here every day of the week,” McManus said, including the International Committee of the Red Cross.

A view of the American flag through the perimeter fences around Camp 4 and Camp 5. A Toronto Star journalist remarked that it was probably the single most photographed American flag around. Then she snapped some pictures.

So, what do I mean by pessimism? Many Republicans who spoke out at the rally — far more came there than had been announced — acknowledged that passage was looking more likely.

“Regardless of what happens tomorrow,” said Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), “do not lose faith!”

“Regardless of what happens tomorrow,” said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), “we will be here!”

There was some ugliness — an effigy of Obama in doctor garb railing against “voo-doo” medicine, a protester daring Democrats to “bring your boy Obama out here” — outweighed by a lot of annoyed people on their best behavior. The most interesting thing, to me, was the degree of focus on the next steps that will have to be taken if health care passes.

WARNING: Photos in the slideshow below depict graphic violence.

As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prepares to speak to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, a trove of photographs — most of which have never before been published — documenting the summer’s uprising against the disputed election has emerged, thanks to a dedicated network of digital smuggling.

Most of the photographs were taken by Iranian dissidents themselves, and several were shot with cell-phone cameras while in the midst of the protests that shook Tehran following the disputed June 12 elections. Some are extremely graphic, and show a level of repression exhibited against the Iranian people that did not appear in Western media. There are images of the aftermath of rubber-bullet welts, security forces on motorcycles terrorizing women, and bloodied protesters.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

The protests caught the world’s attention and led to a sustained crackdown on the Iranian opposition, particularly its ability to communicate with the outside world. One image shows the wreckage of a computer lab at Tehran University after regime elements targeted it in June. Human rights groups have documented widespread detentions and prison abuses, including rapes. On Sept. 11, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, the supreme leader of Iran, threatened a “harsh response” to those who continue denouncing the government. Yet this weekend, thousands of demonstrators turned the annual Jerusalem Day celebration into an occasion to denounce the regime at great personal risk.

As a result of the crackdown, tech-savvy dissidents have created a network stretching far outside of Iran to pass information out of the country. Sympathetic political activists outside of Iran operate clandestine servers beyond the regime’s technological reach that serve as a clearinghouse for information like these photos. TWI was given access to one such server on condition of anonymity, by Iranian dissidents and their international allies in advance of Ahmadinejad’s remarks to the U.N. general assembly — anticipated to focus on a defense of the Iranian nuclear program — at a time when many in the Iranian opposition worry that global interest in Iranian repression has dissipated.

At a speech Friday previewing the U.S. agenda for this week’s general assembly session, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that the Iranian regime had to make a fundamental choice about whether it wanted warmer relations with the U.S. and Europe, a path accessible only through a perishable offer to negotiate on issues beyond Iran’s nuclear program. “The international community has made abundantly clear what is possible for all Iranians if Iran lives up to its responsibilities on the nuclear issue – the benefits of economic connections to the rest of the world, cooperation on peaceful nuclear energy, and partnership in education and science,” she said. “But there will be accompanying costs for Iran’s continued defiance – more isolation and economic pressure, less possibility of progress for the people of Iran.”

Clinton singled out the regime’s treatment of its dissenters, denouncing it for launching “a campaign of politically motivated arrests, show trials, and suppression of free speech” and saying it “stands in the way of the justice it seeks.”

The Iranian uprising and subsequent crackdown “undoubtedly complicated” the Obama administration’s efforts at diplomacy with the regime, and forced the administration to reconsider some of its assumptions, one administration official conceded. “First, there was the concern of not wanting to do anything that may undermine the Iranian opposition,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They also splashed cold water on any possibility of making real substantive gestures towards Iran beyond symbolic outreach, raised the domestic political costs of engagement, and most importantly ensured that in the short-term Iran would be ruled by a more hardline regime less likely to negotiate. The elections also caused a significant delay in our engagement policy by ensuring that rather than looking outward Iran would be internally absorbed and unable to make major foreign policy decisions.”

Yet as the Iranian regime has looked inward — which, in this context, means violently suppressing dissent — some Iranian human-rights advocates believe the world has looked elsewhere. On Monday afternoon, Human Rights Watch and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran will hold a joint press conference across from U.N. headquarters in New York, in which a tortured Iranian dissident will speak.

“The Iranian government is doing its best to prevent any news from inside Iran to reach the outside word,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. “The level of repression is increasing and detentions of activists is continuing. But the international community should realize that the protests in Iran are not over, just as we saw yesterday with tens of thousands risking their lives to publicly protest. As Ahmadinajed comes to the U.N., the focus should be on the grave human rights violations of the past three months: murder of protestors, torture and rape of detainees. The U.N. General Assembly should hold Ahmadinejad accountable by appointing a special envoy to investigate and document the extent of crimes that have taken place.”

The official said Maliki warned that releasing the photos would lead to more violence that could delay the scheduled U.S. withdrawal from cities by June 30 and that Iraqis wouldn’t make a distinction between old and new photos. The public outrage and increase in violence could lead Iraqis to demand a referendum on the security agreement and refuse to permit U.S. forces to stay until the end of 2011.

Maliki said, “Baghdad will burn” if the photos are released, said a second U.S. military official.

The prospect of losing a popular referendum — slated to be held, if it occurs at all (it’s unclear), by July 30 — that would compel U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraq ahead of the Status of Forces Agreement’s December 2011 timeframe was also referenced in statements from Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, and Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. troops in the Middle East and South Asia, to the Second Circuit Circuit Court of Appeals last week. Petraeus told the court that releasing the photographs would mean “pressure will mount on the Prime Minister to allow for a national referendum on the Security Agreement and the Strategic Framework Agreement.” Odierno assessed, “The release of the photos may incite the Iraqi public and cause the referendum to be defeated.” He added that “senior Iraqi officials” — he didn’t mention Maliki by name — believe that releasing the images would benefit Iraqi rejectionists, who would argue against reconciliation “with a Government that has aligned itself with a country that committed this abuse.” (The full statements, in PDF format, are here.)

When President Obama makes wise decisions, as I believe he has done in some respects on Afghanistan, and in reversing his plan to release incendiary photos, he deserves our support.

One of those decisions was a campaign promise, and the other came after … weeks of public pressure from Dick Cheney.

The photos are supposed to be released on May 28 in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

“The release of these old photographs of past behavior that has now been clearly prohibited will serve no public good, but will empower al-Qaeda propaganda operations, hurt our country’s image, and endanger our men and women in uniform,” the senators wrote in a May 6 letter. “We urge you in the strongest possible terms to fight the release of these old pictures of detainees in the war on terror, including appealing the decision of the Second Circuit in the ACLU lawsuit to the Supreme Court and pursuing all legal options to prevent the public disclosure of these pictures.”

The ACLU, meanwhile, is keeping the up fight for the photos:

“These photographs provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib,” ACLU attorney Amrit Singh told Secrecy News. “Their disclosure is critical for helping the public understand the scope and scale of prisoner abuse as well as for holding senior officials accountable for authorizing or permitting such abuse.”

An initially thin crowd in Lafayette Square slowly filled out as people ventured out in the rain.

A volunteer men’s quartet with some, uh, minor tuning issues kicked things off with renditions of “The Star Spangled Banner,” “America the Beautiful” and “God Bless America.”

This gentleman came all the way from Oregon to demonstrate his frustration with the Fed in front of the White House.

The event was rife with the obligatory communist references, including this shirt purchased from mikechurch.com.

And some Mussolini references too. At least this guy got his first name right.

An event for the whole family.

For everything else, there’s MasterCard.

The opening speaker emphatically declared that the demonstrators were NOT right-wing extremists. This guy begged to differ.

Ah, there’s the tea we’ve been hearing about.

This young man was the only demonstrator I saw calling for Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) to be hanged.

Meanwhile, a very different kind of protest was going on across the street.

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