Welcome to The Bay – Part 1
"This morning, I watched President Obama talking about Guantanamo Bay, which by the way we are keeping open and we're gonna load it up with some bad dudes, believe me, we're gonna load it up." ~Trump
If you’ve been reading my writing, you know that I think it’s unlikely that what we’re being shown is what’s really happening. Years of corruption and an attempted coup of the government should not go unpunished. I can see why people would think it would since it’s always been that way. But that was before Trump. He isn’t a politician. He isn’t a criminal. He is a red-blooded, flag-loving American. The type of American that doesn’t accept bullshit and has often said that he will seek retribution against his enemies. His enemies include some big names like Obama, Clinton, and others. We don’t accept that he just walked away from his enemies.
I’ll admit that I’m a conspiracy theorist. I’m actually proud of it. I believe in certain conspiracies and I work to prove or disprove my theory. I have a gut feeling and then find information from different sources to verify the theory. It’s not all hope and wishful thinking. It’s also not clickbait. My theories are backed up by sources. The theory in this paper is no different and it too is backed up with sources.
Due to algorithms and other reasons, I’m going to refer to this area as ‘The Bay’ whenever I can. I trust you’ll know what I mean.
This little part of Cuba has been working its way through my brain for years. It’s unclear when I first became aware of it. It’s one of those things that I’ve just always known about, especially since 9/11. It’s moved to the forefront of my mind in recent years, so I decided to dedicate time to understanding it. This research grew into something much bigger than I expected. While I can’t definitively confirm the theory that former government officials are current residents of that little island, I certainly can’t rule it out.
While everyone has different opinions about what is happening, I believe that events planned by Black Hats were taken over and used against them. Did they hijack President Trump’s “Save America March,” on January 6th to make it look like a violent insurrection? In J6: A Different Perspective, I suggest that the White Hats knew of their plans and used that opportunity to distract us as they rounded up treasonous public officials.
Did the Black Hats intentionally release and amplify a deadly pandemic? If so, did the White Hats use the pandemic as a distraction to detain the most dangerous people in government and entertainment? In The War of 2020 I question if the Navy ships brought in for medical assistance were actually used to transport people to The Bay.
Were the rules and constitutional workarounds that were introduced since 9/11 to permanently detain prisoners on that island now used against corrupt members of our government to detain them there?
Talk about a boomerang.
If the operation is nearing its end and these criminals are detained, they could be anywhere in the world. The Bay just seems like the most logical place. My plan was to look further into the area to decide whether it was worth researching. It was, and I did. I’ve been down rabbit holes I never imagined. This paper is an organized summary of what I found. There’s too much for one paper, so I will break it up to make it easier to digest. Please bear with me as I try to organize and explain what I found so you can come to your own conclusions. I welcome discussion on it, and would love to know what you think after you hear what I’ve found.
History of The Bay
In 1903, the Cuban government signed an agreement to lease the area to the United States. The Cuban–American Treaty of Relations stipulated that the United States would have "complete jurisdiction and control,” while the Republic of Cuba would retain ultimate authority over the area. The agreement required the United States to send $2,000 in gold payment every year for the cost of the lease.
When the United States removed the gold standard, the form of payment was changed from gold to paper checks. Due to inflation, the payment due in July 1974, was changed from $2,000 to $4,085. The lease payment has remained that amount. Since the Cuban Revolution in the 1950s, the Cuban government has cashed just one check and that was only because of "confusion." Apparently, Cuba is no longer happy with this arrangement, but they’re stuck with it. When the lease was renegotiated in 1934, it was agreed that the area would be returned to Cuba only if the United States abandoned it or if both parties agreed to return control to Cuba.
The Bay is like a small city (it’s no bigger than San Francisco) with a school system for the children of sailors and contractors who live there, restaurants, a golf course, bowling alley, and beaches. Both the Navy base and the prison are on the island. I always thought of The Bay as just a prison, not considering that it is also a Navy base. It’s important to keep the two separate. Although there has been talk over the years of closing the area, I believe that was in reference to the prison, not the Navy base.
Prior to the current prison which holds the 9/11 terrorists, the area was home to a detention camp for Haitian and Cuban refugees in the early 1990’s. Tent cities were built, and more than 45,000 refugees were held there. The last of the refugees left the island in 1996. Interestingly, this detention camp and its tent cities were overseen by then-Attorney General William Barr. The same William Barr who served as Attorney General in the Trump administration. William Barr is not the only member of the Trump Administration that has history with The Bay.
President Trump’s former Chief of Staff, John Kelly, was a US Marine Corps General who served as the head of US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) during Obama’s second term (2012 – 2016). In addition to the Caribbean and Central and South America, the naval base at The Bay is also under the control of SOUTHCOM. John Kelly managed The Bay prior to President Trump’s election.
Both William Barr and John Kelly had history with The Bay prior to joining President Trump’s administration.
Obama’s Plan to Close It
On January 22, 2009, just two days after taking office, Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13492 Review and Disposition of Individuals Detained at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and Closure of Detention Facilities. The EO laid out a plan for releasing or relocating the detainees and a plan to close the prison. “The detention facilities at Guantanamo for individuals covered by this order shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than 1 year from the date of this order.” Fifteen years later, it’s still open.
10 highlights from Guantanamo closure plan details Obama’s plan to close the detention center and release some detainees while moving others to the United States. Throughout his presidency, Obama struggled to close the prison, and Congress wasn’t eager to help him achieve his campaign promise. In 2010, Republican staffers on the House Armed Services Committee found a way to stop the release or movement of detainees by prohibiting spending money on doing so. They created a provision that made the Secretary of Defense personally responsible for ensuring that a released detainee would not engage in terrorist activity. This was something that would be impossible to guarantee.
The prison once held 779 prisoners. By the time Obama took office in 2009, 242 remained. In July 2016, only 76 remained and the prison remained open at a cost of $445 million, “an expensive reminder that the United States…is willing to hold people captive, perhaps for life, without a trial.”
Obama hadn’t closed the prison by July 2016, and his failure to do so was becoming a stain on his presidency. With only six months remaining in his term, his national-security adviser, Susan Rice, spoke on the urgency of closing the prison: “I can’t say with certainty that we’re one hundred percent going to get there, but I can tell you we’re going to die trying.” They didn’t close the prison, and they didn’t die trying.
When Barack Obama left office on January 19, 2017, 41 prisoners remained at Guantanamo Bay.
Trump’s Plan to Keep it Open
During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump announced that he would keep the prison at The Bay open. In August 2016, as a presidential candidate, he told the Miami Herald that it “would be fine” if Americans were tried by military commissions at Guantanamo, something not currently permitted by U.S. law.
At the time President Trump was sworn in, there were 41 prisoners remaining at the prison, and a detention center spokesman said that they had space for 200 new prisoners. When asked how quickly they could accommodate new prisoners, the spokesman replied, “pretty quickly.”
In March 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that he would advise President Trump to send newly captured terrorism suspects to the prison, which he called “a very fine place.” Sessions said of the prison, “There’s plenty of space…Eventually, this will be decided by the military rather than the Justice Department. But I see no legal problem whatsoever with doing that.”
On July 7, 2017 Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, visited The Bay to get “an up-to-date understanding” of current operations. As a former U.S. Senator, Jeff Sessions was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the prison and military commissions system, whose rules are a hybrid of U.S. military and federal legal systems. (Like Bill Barr and John Kelly, Jeff Sessions was also someone familiar with The Bay who became an important figure in Trump’s Cabinet.)
Trump’s Pentagon wants to spend almost $500 million on Guantanamo construction reported in August 2017 that “behind the scenes, the U.S. military is planning for nearly a half-billion dollars in new construction during the Trump administration.” The new construction included a $250 million, five-bed hospital, an $8.4 million prisoner clinic, a $12.4 million dining room for prison staff, and $124 million to build new barracks. John Kelly had tried to get replacement housing units when he was in charge of SOUTHCOM but the Obama administration repeatedly rejected the plan as an unnecessary investment in dwindling detention operations it sought to close. Now the Department of Defense had approved the request and committees in both chambers of Congress supported it. The barracks were expected to be complete in 2021.
In addition, $66 million was planned for a new school, as well as a contract to build a $43 million fiber-optic link from The Bay to Puerto Rico to complement its already $40 million funded link from Florida.
The Miami Herald reported that “the proposed up-to $100 million migrant camp project is a bit mysterious.” The Pentagon was seeking bids to build a skeletal structure for a 13,000-migrant tent city and housing for 5,000 U.S. forces. Congress appropriated $33 million for a similar project in 2007. Then, fields were leveled, cement-block bathhouses were built, and a sewage treatment capacity was set up. Now just ten years later, the Navy was soliciting bids for work on the same site to include demolition of structures, the addition of concrete slabs for kitchens, a new headquarters building, and a public-address system to be placed on top of utility poles. A spokesman said the site would be accessible to people with disabilities. Congress appropriated $33 million for the project in 2007. In 2017 they were seeking $100 million – an increase of $67 million in just ten years.
Spokesmen for the Navy, SOUTHCOM, and the Department of Homeland Security were unable to say why the military needed to house 5,000 U.S. forces and staff to run an encampment housing 13,000 people. A surge of that size would more than triple the population on base. (Emphasis added because of the importance of this statement. Why would the population triple?)
The Army holds regular training exercises, spending millions of dollars to rehearse a mock migration crisis. In 2017, it flew in 400 troops, plus Homeland Security and Department of State officials. The troops were housed around the base for the drill, which was closed to the media. When asked about seeking funding for the migrant camp, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was not involved in the contract, and ICE didn’t have any plans for new or additional detention. Shouldn’t the Departments for Immigration and Homeland Security be involved in a tent-city project for migrants?
After much anticipation, on January 30, 2018 President Trump signed Executive Order 13823 Protecting America Through Lawful Detention of Terrorists. Section 2 calls out Obama’s Executive Order and states that that EO, “ordering the closure of detention facilities at U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, is hereby revoked.” At his State of the Union Address on the same day, President Trump announced, “We must be clear. Terrorists are not merely criminals. They are unlawful enemy combatants.” The term “enemy combatants” has proven to be important in researching this paper.
The Camps at The Bay
Like all military bases, there are areas that are off-limits. Guantanamo Prison: A Primer offers a description of some of the camps. Below is a brief summary from the article, with information on changes that may have occurred after this article was published. This is not an exhaustive list, but I think it provides a good starting point for those of us who have never been there.
Camp X-Ray:
311 cells made of chain-link fencing.
Camp Delta:
Metal shipping containers welded together to create 720 individual steel and mesh cells.
Navy Base Brig:
High-value detainees were housed in the 10-cell lockup.
Camp Echo:
Segregation 24-cell camp.
Camp 4:
Detention area for 175.
In January 2018 A Notice Regarding Camp Four was filed with the US District Court in Washington DC stating, in part, “The dormant Camp Four occupies an important plot of land near this ongoing construction project... (we) intend to use a portion of Camp Four as an administrative space while medical operations transition to the new Camp Five facilities in early 2018.” What “ongoing construction project” are they referring to?
Camp 5:
Maximum-security, two-tiered building capable of housing about 75 captives monitored by guards using closed-circuit cameras and a central locking system.
An $8.4 million renovation was underway at Camp 5 in October 2017 to transform a cellblock into a clinic and mental health ward.
Camp 5 Echo:
24-unit boxcar-style lockup within Camp 5.
Scheduled for demolition at the end of 2017. In its place would be a new meeting spot for captives and will allow troops to efficiently move captives to and from legal meetings.
Camp 6:
200-cell minimum-security prison.
Camp 7:
Top Secret 32-cell, two-tier camp. The existence of this Camp was only revealed in declassified notes in December 2007. The Pentagon refuses to say how much it cost to build it or when it was built. This is confirmation that there are some things that are not disclosed to the press or the public. We have no idea what is really going on at The Bay.
In February 2018 the Pentagon requested $69 million to replace the Top Secret prison, with a proposed completion date of July 2022. According to specifications, the building would measure 25,000 square feet. (Although it was later reported that the request for funding was denied, as this prison was previously classified, there is no guarantee the new Camp 8 wasn’t also classified.)
Camp Iguana:
Segregated housing compound.
In July 2017 it was reported that the prison planned to demolish the Camp to use it as a recreation site.
Behavioral Health Unit:
Psychiatric ward that can hold up to 12 detainees. The unit was closed in May 2018.
Camp Justice:
The site where military commissions and Periodic Review Board hearings are held.
Why are such major renovations taking place for an island housing 30 prisoners, that was once slated to be closed? Supposedly the USS Cole bombing and 9/11 terrorist trials are to begin in the near future, but we’ve been told that for years. All of these renovations took place during President Trump’s first term. Is the U.S. currently involved in a war? President Trump has declared his dislike of “forever wars.” Why is so much money being spent to renovate The Bay? Are we expecting ISIS fighters? Al-Qaeda? Ukrainians, North Koreans, Syrians, Iranians? Former elected officials, government employees, members of Hollywood? Who are the occupants of The Bay?
Defense Department Contracts
In addition to the renovation of the Camps, other improvements are taking place around The Bay. The Defense Department’s Contract page provides information on contracts awarded for work at The Bay during President Trump’s first term. Transparency is not a priority of the federal government. The harder it is to track something down, the better. Some contracts may be labeled as “classified” or “Top Secret” and we may never know about them, as we saw with Camp 7.
This is not an exhaustive list, but it provides a glimpse into the improvements made and the contracts awarded. These include construction of a mass migration complex (tent city); a legal complex which includes SCIF’s (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities); new construction and related demolition work; repair of an aviation hangar; repairs to 84 housing units; barracks; a detention legal office and Communications Center; a new fiber optic cable system; asphalt.
Of particular interest was a 2023 contract for $99 million for a team of experts to provide translation, transcription, and interpretation services to the Office of the Chief Prosecutor. Contract personnel must be cleared to work with classified materials, including Top Secret and higher (what is higher than Top Secret?). What was most interesting was that a similar contract awarded to the same vendor with a 2023 expiration date was valued at $10 million. The new contract is an increase of $89 million over the previous contract. Are these services for new detainees or for the decreasing number of current detainees? (Don’t miss the transcription services in the middle of “translation and interpretation.” It’s easy to focus on translation and interpretation for non-English speaking individuals. Those services are included, but the word transcription implies a documented permanent record like we see with court reporting.)
To organize the DOD contracts, I created a table with detail, award date, dollar amount, and estimated completion date. If what we’ve been told about the number of prisoners there is true, the government should be working toward downsizing this area, not expanding it. The dollar amount awarded for the contracts on that table alone total $820 - $838 million. Almost a billion dollars. This is only a portion of the contracts awarded to the Defense Department. It doesn’t account for contracts awarded to other government agencies, or contracts that are classified as Top Secret. We are talking about tons of money. (It does cost more for construction in Cuba due to transporting the materials, but it’s still tons of money.)
To complement the contracts on the DOD website, When it comes to Guantanamo, Trump is truly the builder in chief in March 2018 provides further information on the DOD contracts. For instance, the new war court project would include a sixth holding cell for the maximum-security Top Secret courtroom, an evidence locker, and separate office space for the defense teams of the six former CIA captives in capital proceedings. (Are they really building a new war court for six captives?)
The Pentagon invoked "emergency construction authority" and notified Congress in January 2018 that it planned to spend $14 million on the project, more than the courthouse complex's original (2007) $12 million construction costs. It cited "national security" and called the additional construction a "strategically critical time-sensitive expansion project" necessary "to support the large number of personnel on the capital defense and prosecution teams for the trials to start on the USS Cole and 9/11 cases.” With the awarding of the contract, the price tag could rise to $18.9 million, the Navy said.
All of this is focused around the upcoming court cases for the current detainees, but does not give any hint that new detainees may someday arrive.
“Emergency construction authority,” “national security,” and “strategically critical time-sensitive expansion project” implies a certain urgency. The renovations, improvements, and money are supposedly for the trial of a handful of men who have been held at the prison for decades. Why in 2018 was there a sense of urgency to complete these projects?
As you can see, there is a lot of information to digest, and I appreciate you hanging in there with me. Now that we’ve laid the groundwork, we need to explore some other areas such as the changes to media access at The Bay, enemy combatants, the Geneva Convention, and a whole lot more. Stick with me, please, the best is yet to come 😉.
Links to my other papers on Guantanamo Bay:
This is very interesting research, and it opens up a whole new portal of enquiry foregrounded currently by the change of guard in the political landscape. Can't wait to continue reading...