CONSPIRACY THEORY

It sounds ominous: As many as 10 workers at Guantanamo Bay charged with espionage, treason and aiding the enemy. Since most of the 600 prisoners at Guantanamo, although they’re from more than 40 countries, are supposed to be members of Al Qaeda or the Taliban, the horrors of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks provide a chilling subtext to the charges.

But the Red Cross protests, the reports of suicide attempts, the fact that some of the prisoners are 15 or younger, the unending and uncertain nature of the imprisonments at the government installation -- indeed, the very lack of transparency at Guantanamo’s Camp X-Ray -- beg the questions: Is the treason just general sympathy for the prisoners? Is the espionage actually attempts to act against prison conditions, rather than against the United States?

So little information has been released that it’s difficult to assess. One of the few details U.S. Army lawyers have given is that Muslim Army chaplain Capt. Yousef Yee, now being held at the Charlestown, S.C., Naval Weapons Station brig, was arrested carrying a list of Guantanamo detainees and a map of the facility. Ahmed Fathy Mehalba, a translator who’s also been charged, was found with a compact disc containing “secret information obtained from Guantanamo Bay,” according to The Associated Press. The judge in the case “also cited a later search of Mehalba’s personal computer -- which he sold before leaving Guantanamo -- that turned up similar classified documents.” (Mehalba’s security clearance meant he was allowed to see classified documents, but not travel with them. So the compact disc was illegal, but the PC documents may not have been.)

A list of detainees? A map of Camp X-Ray? “Secret information” from a place where 600 prisoners are being kept indefinitely without being charged? “Similar classified documents” on a PC that was sold?

Would a single Muslim chaplain serving 600 people need a map or list of his ministry? Even if he didn’t, what sinister purpose could he serve with such secrets? And is it truly such a cause for concern that someone who can look at secret documents might actually break a rule (or law) to travel with them? And, unless the buyer of his computer is also under suspicion for treason or espionage, what does it say about the value of those documents that Mehalba failed to wipe them from his hard drive before letting them slip through his fingers?

All of this can be argued the other way, too, because these are simply bits of odd data without meaning. But it’s worth remembering that things can look damning for no reason just as easily as people can look innocent but have evil motives. Either way, it’s odd that the U.S. government can’t come up with anything more alarming to release to the public.

It could be sort of a “man arrested for carrying knife” story, without it being mentioned that it was a dull knife, and he was also carrying a pan of brownies.