President George W. Bush on Wednesday confirmed the existence of secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency which held 14 terrorist suspects who have now been sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and called on Congress to pass new legislation authorizing military tribunals for terrorists.

“In addition to the terrorists held at Guantanamo, a small number of suspected terrorist leaders and operatives captured during the war have been held and questioned outside the United States, in a separate program operated by the Central Intelligence Agency,” Bush said. “This group includes individuals believed to be the key architects of the September the 11th attacks, and attacks on the USS Cole, an operative involved in the bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and individuals involved in other attacks that have taken the lives of innocent civilians across the world. These are dangerous men with unparalleled knowledge about terrorist networks and their plans for new attacks. The security of our nation and the lives of our citizens depend on our ability to learn what these terrorists know.”

Bush gave several examples of high-level terrorists held in the secret prisons, including 9/11 plotters Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and Ramzi bin al Shibh, as well as Abu Zubaydah, Majid Khan and Hambali. He described several attacks that terrorists were planning when they were captured, including “planned attacks on buildings inside the United States,” as well as “developing anthrax for attacks against the United States.”

“This program has helped us take potential mass murderers off the streets before they were able to kill,” he said. In addition, he said, interrogators used the questioning to increase their understanding of al-Qaeda’s structure, financing, logistics and communications, to make sense of documents and computer records and to identify voices in recordings of intercepted calls.

“This intelligence has helped us connect the dots and stop attacks before they occur,” Bush said. If not for the CIA program, “al-Qaeda would have succeeded in launching another attack on the American homeland,” he said. “This program has saved innocent lives.” — Washington Post

While the CIA program now has no terrorists in it, it’s still open for business. Terrorists captured in the future may be brought into the secret program if they have intelligence value.

In addition, the White House on Tuesday released its updated National Strategy for Combating Terrorism.

Attacking terrorist organizations, controlling weapons of mass destruction and protecting the homeland remain U.S. priorities, the document says. But the strategy places new emphasis on the need for training experts in languages and Islamic culture, for enhanced partnerships abroad and with the American Muslim community, and for better information-sharing among domestic counterterrorism agencies.

What today’s extremists have in common, it says, is “that they exploit Islam and use terrorism for ideological ends.” But “although al-Qaeda functions as the movement’s vanguard . . . the movement is not controlled by any single individual, group or state.” — Washington Post

I’m quite glad to see the administration become more forthcoming about what’s going on in the war on terror, even if it is politically motivated. There is an election just around the corner, after all. But this “war” has gone on in secrecy so black it made the Cold War look like an open book. There are things that need to be secret, and there are things that need to be open, and unfortunately, this administration has confused too many of them in the past.

I’m playing the wait-and-see card. I expect the person who orchestrates the killing of almost 3,000 people to receive just as fair a trial whether he carries the “terrorist” label or not. If that doesn’t happen, then how can we claim to be any better than them?