Will CIA comply with Guantánamo judge’s order? Agency won’t sayThe Miami Herald - Apr 22

By Carol Rosenberg crosenberg@MiamiHerald.com

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- The CIA declined to comment again Tuesday on whether the agency would comply with a military judge’s week-old order to provide USS Cole case defense lawyers with some of the deepest, darkest secrets of its now-defunct overseas prison program.

“Our position on whether to comment to you has not changed,” said spokesman Dean Boyd. “As a general matter, the Agency doesn’t comment on matters of pending litigation.”

The question of compliance loomed over the first day of pretrial hearings in the death-penalty case of one-time waterboarded CIA captive Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, 49, as his attorneys argued unsuccessfully to get the judge who issued the sweeping discovery order to step down from the case.

The judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, was recalled from retirement in 2010 to serve as chief of Guantánamo’s war court judiciary. The Army has to renew his contract each year. He rejected an argument that he has conflicting loyalties between the job and the law in the first day of a six-day hearing scheduled to consider 60 pretrial motions that set the stage for the war crimes trial later this year. More:

Controversial US micro-blog targeting Cuban regime operated clandestinely out of Costa Rica, angering officials

Tico Times - Apr 22

By Zach Dyer

The U.S. government developed the Twitter-like application, called ZunZuneo, over 18 months in Costa Rica and other countries, despite the Costa Rican Foreign Ministry’s refusal to accredit USAID officers. According to La Nación, Costa Rica denied the U.S. support because of doubts over the program’s legitimacy.

ZunZuneo allowed Cubans, who face strict curbs on expression, to be able to “talk freely among themselves” consistent with universal rights and freedoms, according to USAID. White House spokesman Jay Carney said the program was a “development assistance” scheme targeted at Cubans facing government restrictions on information and had never been a secret.

USAID funded the $1.2 million program operated by Creative Associates Inc., a Costa Rica-based company.

USAID spokesman Matt Herrick said the application was built to build interest among Cubans using topics like sports scores, weather and trivia. But the Associated Press, which originally broke the story, reported that political content was to be introduced at a later stage to encourage Cubans to mount “flash mobs” and demonstrate against the island’s communist government.

The White House denied the program was covert and said it was consistent with U.S. law.

La Nación reported that communications from the embassy requesting permissions from the Costa Rican government in April and May of 2009 sidestepped the program’s true intentions. The documents obtained by La Nación referred to the program as the “Latin American Exchange Program,” and said the program’s aims were to “increase communication, links and exchanges between democratic civil society in Cuba and civil society organization in Latin America and the Caribbean, including Costa Rica.”

Costa Rican Foreign Minister Enrique Castillo told La Nación:

“It does not appear correct to the Foreign Ministry that embassies launch actions from Costa Rica that affect another country. We cannot approve this in any case. This is not good.”

In 2009, the Foreign Ministry refused to grant diplomatic accreditations for Xavier Utset and Noy Villalobos, U.S. contractors working on the project for Creative Associates. Castillo told the newspaper that there wasn’t cause at the time to object to the program, but there were enough questions to refuse the U.S. request. More:

+ AP: Largest Nonprofit Cuban-American Organization Provided Strategic Support For White House’s ‘Cuban Twitter’ Program

+ Spanish Left Presents ZunZuneo Case to European Union

+ Cuba files complaint against US over covert social network