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Sounds to me as if someone's planning a breakout, with maybe an attempt to get to Castro's Cuba and ask for asylum. If security's not tight there now, it should be.

Well, as someone who spent a year stationed at Guantanamo, I would advise them to pray to Allah that they not get blown to pieces in the U.S. minefields.

If they survive that, I would advise them to pray to Allah that they not get blown to pieces in the Cuban minefields.

If security's not tight there now, it should be.

If any Steve McQueen [The Great Escape] wannabees get past the MPs, there is an infantry battalion to get past... before they get to the Marines responsible for perimeter security.

Now, with everything on the base defined as classified, the CD's could be nothing more than pictures of this guy grip-n-grinning with various base luminaries, "this is my hooch," etc. And he could have innocently just been showing these to his relatives in Egypt or wherever.... but he is technically in violation even if he argues his intent was innocent. This isn't a law where one needs to prove intent.

And... if what he had was less innocuous than the minimum, he's toast. The only good thing from his point of view is that he is in Boston, home to an extremely liberal/Democrat federal district.

Bomp, bomp, bomp. Another one bites the dust.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

PS -- to the guy who suggested everything is taped -- if the translators are crook, who listens to the tapes? Do you know how many loyal Americans speak Arabic, Farsi, Dari or Pushto? The military has never trained more than a couple hundred a year (and then sets most of them to work in military motor pools or swabbing decks on ships... but that's another issue). And school-trained linguists are normally far inferior to native speakers or immersion-trained linguists (where you run security risks). Think of all the other needs USG has for terrorist-language expertise (intelligence agencies, State Department, teams in the field, etc) and you'll see there just aren't enough of these priceless resources... the entire military linguistic programme resulted from us being in exactly this position vis-a-vis Japan in WWII. If it hadn't been for hundreds and hundreds of loyal Americans from Japanese families, we'd have been screwed then).