To defend the waters around Guantánamo Bay from fears of an al-Qaida attack in 2004, the prison spent $1.9 million on a temporary US Coast Guard unit. Camp Delta contractor costs totaled $22.5 million for that year, when the Pentagon held about 660 war-on-terror prisoners in Cuba. The prison spent $2.4 million on detainee food alone, plus another $3 million to run the dining hall that prepared the captives' meals and fed prison staff. But the Air Force officer who prepared the breakdown was forbidden to furnish those figures, by order of a superior.
Now, a reply to a decade-old filing under the Freedom of Information Act found that secrecy was wrong. "I am sorry that this response was not provided in a more timely manner," Michael Rhodes, director of administration and management at the Pentagon, wrote on Dec. 14, 2015 as he released three pages of documents the Herald sought in a Feb. 3, 2005 Freedom of Information Act filing. 3,966 days from original Freedom of Information request to release of data already assembled for the Miami Herald.
The Obama administration estimates that $3.7 million has been spent on each of the 107 captives at the detention camp in Guantanamo.
With the advantage of hindsight, the figures contained in the three-page release may not be surprising. The Obama administration, after all, estimates today's per-prisoner costs at $3.7 million per captive at the offshore prison of 107 captives that on New Year's Eve was staffed by just under 2,000 troops and civilians.
But back in 2004, the Pentagon under President George W. Bush was preparing for the war crimes tribunals of Osama bin Laden's driver -- since convicted, repatriated and exonerated. And nobody but the Herald was particularly interested in examining costs. In fact, Democrats in Congress would only tally up the expense in 2013 --at least $5 billion -- after President Barack Obama had called the detention center a waste of resources.
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