Dan Rather Reports for Tomorrow

We hope you tune in tomorrow night to catch a very important episode of “Dan Rather Reports.” The episode focuses on the U.S. Detention Camp and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and the continuing debate about whether or not torture continues at the Camp.

Tomorrow’s program includes the first U.S. television interview with the man at the center of political and legal storm – Lakhdar Boumediene. Boumediene spent nearly seven years in the U.S. Detention Camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The program also travels “inside the wire” to the detention facility itself, where – as the fate of 239 men remains up in the air -- the message from the military is “Guantanamo is not what you think.”

Mr. Boumediene has been at the center of a political and legal storm since shortly after he was sent to Guantanamo in 2002. He became the lead petitioner in the landmark 2008 Supreme Court case /Boumediene v. Bush, /establishing that Guantanamo prisoners have a constitutional right to challenge their detention in federal court. Once Mr. Boumediene won that right, a federal judge appointed by George W. Bush reviewed the government’s evidence and found the President had “no legal basis” to justify holding him.

His attorney tells “Dan Rather Reports” that there are other men like Boumediene - “still inside double-barb wire, looking at the Caribbean just below them” - who are innocent.

In the interview, Boumediene reveals allegations of torture and mistreatment at the hands of American soldiers, intelligence officials, and military doctors.

"Nothing change [sic] in Guantanamo. Nothing,” said Boumediene. “The same rules. They torture me in the Obama time more than Bush."

But Rear Admiral David Thomas flatly denied those allegations. “There is no torture at Guantanamo,” Thomas said. During a tour, “Dan Rather Reports” was shown a $200 million, state-of-the-art facility that’s come a long way since the camp’s early days. There is now satellite television, exercise equipment and English classes for compliant detainees. The program also presents footage of rooms where interrogations, or “strategic debriefs,” happen, which are furnished with comfortable couches, faux Persian rugs and television sets. In fact, there are guards who say that conditions at Guantanamo are better than those at U.S. prisons. Our goal is “to take the conditions of detention off the table of the debate,” Thomas said.

"Dan Rather Reports: 7 Years Inside Gitmo" premieres tomorrow at 8:00 p.m. ET.

Thanks for your support of the program and we hope you tune in tomorrow night!

The Staff at "Dan Rather Reports"

ENDS