More Security Breaches Suspected at Guantanamo

The U.S. military is expanding its probe of possible security breaches at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp following disclosures that two servicemen who worked at the maximum-security compound have been arrested on suspicion of espionage.

Senior Pentagon officials expressed alarm that the prison for Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives on the eastern edge of Cuba might have been penetrated, and indicated that the investigation already points to the possibility of other attempted breaches and additional suspects.

“We don’t presume that the two we know about is all there is to it,” Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Wednesday.

Military officials said investigators are scrutinizing at least two other individuals, including an outside contractor, in their widening security probe. The officials declined to elaborate and stressed that there had been no new arrests.

“I do get the sense from our law enforcement guys that other arrests are imminent,” a Navy official said.

The matter threatens to become a new source of friction between the United States and Syria because the two suspects in custody -- an Air Force translator and an Army chaplain -- have Syrian connections.

Senior Airman Ahmad I. Al-Halabi, 24, is being held at Vandenberg Air Force Base, northwest of Santa Barbara, on multiple espionage charges, including allegations that he sought to pass military secrets to Syria, his native country. Al-Halabi’s military attorney, Air Force Maj. James E. Key III, did not return calls seeking comment but has publicly denied the charges.

The other suspect, Army Capt. James Y. Yee, was detained Sept. 10 at a naval air station in Jacksonville, Fla., after he allegedly was found carrying classified documents from Guantanamo, including notes on prisoners and diagrams of the detention facility. Yee, 35, spent several years in Syria in the mid-1990s learning Arabic and studying Islam before returning to the Army to serve as a chaplain. As of late Wednesday, he had not been charged with any crime.

Military officials said the two men served at Guantanamo at the same time and might have known one another, but they cautioned that there is no evidence suggesting their cases are related.

The Syrian government denied any connection to the men or involvement in any effort to spy at Guantanamo.

“Syria has no relationship with this individual,” said Faisal Mekdad, the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, speaking of Al-Halabi. “He is from Syrian origin. But from the viewpoint of intelligence, Syria has no relationship in this connection.”

Mekdad also said the U.S. government had contacted Syria on the matter.

In Damascus, Syrian Information Minister Ahmed Hassan scoffed at the allegations.

“Any allegations that Halabi has any kind of connection with Syria are baseless,” he said, according to a report by Associated Press. “How could Syria have a spy in Guantanamo?”

That question and others continued to puzzle U.S. military and intelligence officials Wednesday. Several officials who spoke on condition of anonymity struggled to account for the apparent security breaches and voiced skepticism that Syria would risk its already tenuous relationship with the United States in an effort to collect intelligence at Guantanamo.

“Syria is clearly not connected to Al Qaeda, sees Al Qaeda as an enormous threat, so it’s hard to imagine what this is about,” said a former U.S. intelligence official and Middle East expert. “It’s highly unlikely that they might be interested in knowing what’s going on at Guantanamo.”

Syria has a “decent” intelligence service, Syrian General Intelligence, the former official said, but it is smaller and less aggressive than that of other nations and has never been known to recruit informants or spies in North America.

“They just don’t have the wealth or inclination to be a worldwide intelligence service,” the ex-official said. “They are a regional intelligence service.”

It is not known whether any Syrian nationals are held at Guantanamo. The prison has about 660 detainees from more than 40 nations, but the Pentagon has never identified them or listed their nationalities.

Though Syria is credited with being helpful in the war on terrorism, it also has been criticized, particularly by officials at the Pentagon, during and after the war in Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has chastised Syria for allowing enemy fighters and terrorists to cross its border into Iraq and harass U.S. forces.

Several Pentagon officials speculated Wednesday that Al-Halabi was acting on his own and might have sought to sell secrets to the Syrian government.

There are often simple motives in spying cases, noted one Pentagon official. “Maybe he needed money and thought he could sell information,” the official said. “Or perhaps it was ideological. He was sympathetic toward [the prisoners’] plight and was trying to help them.”

Al-Halabi, who was taken into custody in July after serving eight months at Guantanamo, is accused of trying to deliver more than 180 notes from prisoners, cellblock numbers, a map of the compound and the flight patterns of military aircraft to Syrian contacts that were not specified in court papers filed by military authorities. One charge accuses Al-Halabi of delivering baklava, a Middle Eastern pastry, to prisoners. In all, Al-Halabi faces 30 counts, including spying charges that could bring the death penalty.

Sources who have worked at Guantanamo Bay said it would not have been difficult for a translator such as Al-Halabi to be in unsupervised contact with prisoners and smuggle out classified and sensitive information.

Though there are inspection points and checks, the base operates on trust to a significant degree because those working there have security clearances.

“When I was there, they didn’t check your pockets and there was no metal detector,” said William Tierney, a former Army intelligence officer who served as a civilian translator at Guantanamo in 2002 before being forced to leave after being accused of interfering with interrogations.

A former interrogator at Guantanamo Bay said that translators also had access to classified computer networks, and that documents such as flight schedules and cell configurations were widely available.

“Any one of us could walk out of there with security documents,” the former interrogator said.

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Times staff writers Richard A. Serrano and Robin Wright contributed to this report.