Gitmo Prisoner’s Low Opinion of LeBron James Was Considered ‘Top Secret’

Even people being held at Gitmo feel bad for Cleveland Cavaliers fans. According to the lawyer of one prisoner, his view of LeBron James was considered “Top Secret” by the U.S. government for quite some time. From Reuters: “The incident was disclosed by Navy Lieutenant Commander Kevin Bogucki, a defense lawyer for Yemeni defendant Ramzi Binalshibh, one of five prisoners charged with orchestrating the September 11 plot to crash hijacked commercial planes into U.S. buildings. Bogucki said another of his Guantanamo prisoner clients, former CIA captive Muhammed Rahim, wrote a note criticizing the National Basketball Association star’s decision to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat in 2010. ‘LeBron James is a very bad man. He should apologize to the city of Cleveland,’ Bogucki quoted the note as saying. Rahim has not been charged with a crime but because he was previously held and interrogated by the CIA, his communications are subject to restrictions similar to those of the alleged September 11 plotters – every word they write or utter is presumed to be ‘Top Secret’ unless a government Security Classification Review Team declares them safe for public release. ‘It took that classification authority approximately two months to determine that my client’s opinion of LeBron James did not pose a grievous threat to national security,’ said Bogucki, who did not indicate when the note was written. Defense lawyers say the security restrictions are overbroad and impair their ability to prepare a defense in a case that could end with their clients’ execution. The defendants, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the hijacked plane attacks that killed 2,976 people in the United States in 2001, are charged in the Guantanamo tribunal with conspiring with al Qaeda, attacking civilians and civilian targets, murder in violation of the laws of war, destruction of property, hijacking and terrorism. Security restrictions surrounding their trial are a key topic at a weeklong pretrial hearing this week at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba.”