Miami Herald journalist sues Defense Department over Guantánamo staffing data | McClatchy Washington Bureau

One of the country’s leading reporters on the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is suing the Pentagon over its delay in providing figures for staffing levels at the controversial facility.

Carol Rosenberg, a Miami Herald journalist who’s reported on the Guantánamo prison since 2002, filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking expedited release of the data.

“I’ve been trying to examine staffing levels for years,” Rosenberg said. “The detention center used to give us precise numbers on a given day, then the Southern Command stopped them.”

The U.S. Southern Command, one of nine geographical and logistical commands that oversee American military forces, is responsible for the overall operation of the Guantánamo prison.

Rosenberg said that staffing levels are key to understanding what the military’s plans are for Guantánamo. Approximately 2,000 people are assigned to the prison, though the number of detainees there has fallen to 60 from a high of 677 in July 2003.

“I’ve filed a series of requests under the Freedom of Information Act, all essentially ignored by the U.S. military,” she said.

Rear Adm. Peter J. Clarke, the prison’s commander, said earlier this year that the number of personnel assigned to it varies between 1,950 and 2,200 as civilian and military staffers arrive and depart.

Most of the military personnel are U.S. Army troops, with a smaller number of Navy medical staff.

Robert Appin, a Southern Command spokesman, said he could not comment on Rosenberg’s request for staffing data because the dispute is under litigation.

The Guantanamo military prison opened in January 2002, four months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans. The cost of operating the detention center has been a subject of controversy, especially as the number of prisoners has declined. Prison operations cost an estimated $455 million in 2015.

John Langford, a Yale Law School research scholar who wrote the brief for Rosenberg’s case, said continuing investments at the Guantánamo base raise questions about the stated desire of President Barack Obama and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to close the prison.

According to the brief, those investments include “$240 million to construct new buildings and repair existing structures and $66 million to build a new school for the children of base residents.” The Navy also has proposed spending $40 million to lay a fiber optic cable between the base and Puerto Rico, according to the brief.

Many of those expenditures are unrelated to the military prison, which occupies only a portion of the 45-square-mile base, the oldest overseas U.S. Navy base. But Langford said they suggest “tension with the Obama administration’s stated intention to close the facility.”

Congress repeatedly has voted to limit the Obama administration’s ability to transfer detainees from Guantánamo to maximum-security penitentiaries in the United States.