How many threats? Studies don't agree

WASHINGTON — Had a majority of the men imprisoned at Guantánamo after 2002 attacked the United States or American troops?

The answer depends on the source.

A professor at the Seton Hall School of Law found that 45 percent of 516 Guantánamo detainees examined had committed hostile acts against the United States or its allies, and that only 8 percent had been al-Qaida fighters. The 2006 study drew on unclassified Defense Department transcripts and documents from military tribunals.

West Point's Combating Terrorism Center, working from the same documents, found that 73 percent of those detainees posed a "demonstrated threat."

Seton Hall is an independent Roman Catholic university in New Jersey, and the professor who co-authored its study represented two Guantánamo detainees. West Point is the U.S. Military Academy, where many top Army officers are educated.

So who was right?

It's not possible to say definitively. However, McClatchy Newspapers came to conclusions similar to the Seton Hall study. West Point's statistical breakdown, under close examination, helps explain how Guantánamo's cellblocks became filled with innocents and low-level Taliban grunts.

West Point included in its "demonstrated threat" category anyone who had committed hostile acts; been identified as a fighter; received training at a camp run by al-Qaida, the Taliban or associated forces; or received training in combat weapons other than rifles or other small arms.

Of 291 men included in the West Point study's hostile-acts subgroup, 104 — more than one-third — reportedly manned the front lines. However, the front lines in northern Afghanistan in late 2001 were manned by conscripts, young volunteers from Pakistan or low-ranking Taliban fighters. Top al-Qaida and Taliban leaders had fled.

The system of identifying men as fighters, a second subgroup, depended on accounts of those who initially detained them, often Afghan commanders looking for bounties from U.S. forces who paid more for alleged Taliban or al-Qaida leaders.

According to the Seton Hall study, in cases where captors' identities were known, only 8 percent of Guantánamo detainees were captured by U.S. forces; 86 percent were turned over to the U.S. by Pakistan or by the Northern Alliance, a coalition led by anti-Taliban commanders.

The bounty hunters often were the source of allegations about training in al-Qaida and Taliban camps, the Seton Hall study said. While some camps were dens of dangerous radicals, others taught little more than how to use an AK-47, a skill known to many Afghan boys.