Guantánamo suicides remark is bad P.R. for White House

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration distanced itself Monday from remarks by a U.S. diplomat that the weekend suicides of three Arab detainees at the Guantánamo Bay military prison were a "good P.R. move."

"I would just point out in public that we would not say that it was a P.R. stunt," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, using the abbreviation for public relations. "We have serious concerns any time anybody takes their own life."

Colleen Graffy, deputy assistant U.S. secretary of state for public diplomacy, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that the deaths at the U.S.-run camp in Cuba were a "good P.R. move to draw attention." She also said the deaths were "a tactic to further the jihadi cause."

Graffy's unscripted remarks threw a monkey wrench into the administration's careful plan to demonstrate concern over the deaths and respond to rising criticism of the U.S. operation of the prison.

President Bush expressed "serious concern" Saturday over the suicides, and he directed an aggressive effort by his administration to reach out diplomatically while it investigates.

Graffy's boss, Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes, is charged with improving the U.S. image in the Arab world. The former White House communications adviser and longtime Bush aide heads an office at the State Department that monitors and responds to inaccurate or distorted portrayals of U.S. views and actions in the Arab media.

Graffy's remarks were quickly picked up in the Arab press. "Her comments appeared to be bad P.R. moves for the U.S. administration," an article on the Web site of Lebanon's The Daily Star newspaper said.

Two Saudis and one Yemeni hanged themselves Saturday, the first successful suicides at the base after dozens of attempts.

Military officials said the suicides were coordinated acts of protest, but human-rights activists and defense attorneys said the deaths signaled the desperation of many of the 460 detainees held on suspicion of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Former Army Capt. James Yee, a Muslim chaplain who served at Guantánamo and now lives in Olympia, says the three suicides there last weekend are a military and intelligence failure.

Further, he said: "If we give the government and military the benefit of the doubt that these prisoners in Guantánamo yield valuable information, then the loss of these three means the loss of potentially valuable information. That's an intelligence failure."

Yee's service at Guantánamo ended when he was arrested in September 2003 and accused of spying. He spent 76 days in solitary confinement before he was eventually cleared, after the government's case unraveled and all criminal charges were dismissed in March 2004. He received an honorable discharge in 2005.

He said that when he served at the prison camp on Cuba, suicide watch was a priority for guards, who constantly walked through the cellblocks. But he said a successful suicide at Guantánamo was almost inevitable.

"When I was there in 2002-2003, the situation was already dire," he said. "Here we are now well into the fifth year of detention. It was only a matter of time."

Only 10 detainees have been charged with crimes. The Supreme Court is expected to rule this month on whether Bush overstepped his power in setting up war-crimes tribunals for those detainees.

The prison at Guantánamo Bay is a point of contention between the United States and many of its allies in Europe and the Mideast, and the suicides renewed international pressure to shut it down.

The European Union on Monday called the prison an "anomaly" and said it would urge Bush to shut it down when he comes to Europe for a trans-Atlantic summit next week.

"Humanitarian standards and human rights have to be observed" in the fight against terrorism, Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik said. "For the United States, a country committed to freedom, the rule of law and due process, this is an anomaly."

Meanwhile, a group of prominent religious leaders endorsed a statement, which is set to appear in The New York Times today, protesting any American use of torture as "morally intolerable." The White House has said the U.S. does not condone or practice torture.

"Nothing less is at stake in the torture abuse crisis than the soul of our nation," the ad reads. "Let America abolish torture now — without exceptions."

Among the signers to the statement are the Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals; the Rev. Rick Warren, author of "The Purpose Driven Life"; and retiring Roman Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Organizers say former President Carter has also signed onto the ad, along with several Jewish, Muslim and black leaders.

Associated Press reporter Doug Esser contributed to this report.