Times headline claim that “Ex-Detainees Return to Terror” not supported by article

Times headline: “Many Ex-Detainees Return To Terror, Pentagon Says.” From the January 7 print edition of the Times:

Article reports only that “of some 560 detainees transferred abroad,” “one in five has engaged in or is suspected of engaging in terrorism.” In her Times article, Elisabeth Bumiller does not assert that the detainees in question had previously engaged in terrorist acts, but only that a classified Pentagon report finds that “one in five” former detainees “has engaged in or is suspected of engaging in, terrorism or military activity.” From the article:

Administration officials said Wednesday that a classified Pentagon report concludes that of some 560 detainees transferred abroad from the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, about one in five has engaged in, or is suspected of engaging in, terrorism or militant activity.

Times editor's note previously acknowledged the “premise” that detainees had previously engaged in terrorism “remains unproven”

May 2009 Times report: “74 prisoners released from Guantánamo have returned to terrorism.” As Media Matters has noted, in the original online version of her May 20, 2009, New York Times article, Bumiller reported that an unreleased Pentagon report found “that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has returned to terrorism or militant activity” and that “74 prisoners released from Guantánamo have returned to terrorism, making for a recidivism rate of nearly 14 percent” [emphasis added].

Times editor's note: Headline, lede of article changed because “premise of the report that all the former prisoners had been engaged in terrorism before their detention ... remains unproved.” In an editor's note appended to the article on June 5, 2009, the Times acknowledged that the “premise of the report that all the former prisoners had been engaged in terrorism before their detention” “remains unproved,” and stated that “the day the article appeared in the newspaper, editors changed the headline and the first paragraph on the Times website to refer to prisoners the report said had engaged in terrorism or militant activity since their release.” From the editor's note:

A front-page article and headline on May 21 reported findings from an unreleased Pentagon report about prisoners who have been transferred abroad from the American detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The article said that the Pentagon had found about one in seven of former Guantánamo prisoners had “returned to terrorism or other militant activity,” or as the headline put it, had “rejoined jihad.”

Those phrases accepted a premise of the report that all the former prisoners had been engaged in terrorism before their detention. Because that premise remains unproved, the day the article appeared in the newspaper, editors changed the headline and the first paragraph on the Times Web site to refer to prisoners the report said had engaged in terrorism or militant activity since their release.

Times public editor Hoyt: Article ignored "independent reporting by The Times and others" detainees may have been “radicalized at Guantánamo.” On June 6, 2009, the Times' public editor, Clark Hoyt, wrote of Bumiller's May 20 article:

But the article on which he based that statement was seriously flawed and greatly overplayed. It demonstrated again the dangers when editors run with exclusive leaked material in politically charged circumstances and fail to push back skeptically. The lapse is especially unfortunate at The Times, given its history in covering the run-up to the Iraq war.

The article seemed to adopt the Pentagon's contention that freed prisoners had “returned” to terrorism, ignoring independent reporting by The Times and others that some of them may not have been involved in terrorism before but were radicalized at Guantánamo. It failed to distinguish between former prisoners suspected of new acts of terrorism -- more than half the cases -- and those supposedly confirmed to have rejoined jihad against the West. Had only confirmed cases been considered, one in seven would have changed to one in 20.

Most of the caveats about the report were deep in the article, where they could hardly offset the impact of the headline, the first paragraph and the prominent position on Page 1.

Detainees reportedly became radicalized while at Guantánamo

Guantánamo reportedly radicalized detainees. Guantánamo reportedly played a role in radicalizing detainees, with some “who weren't hardened terrorists” when they arrived at Guantánamo becoming so after their release. In a June 17, 2008, article, McClatchy News reported that its investigation of Guantánamo “found that instead of confining terrorists, Guantanamo often produced more of them by rounding up common criminals, conscripts, low-level foot soldiers and men with no allegiance to radical Islam -- thus inspiring a deep hatred of the United States in them -- and then housing them in cells next to radical Islamists.” Similarly, in a June 21, 2004, article, the Times reported:

American and foreign officials have also grown increasingly concerned about the prospect that detainees who arrived at Guantánamo representing little threat to the United States may have since been radicalized by the conditions of their imprisonment and others held with them.

''Guantánamo is a huge problem for Americans,'' a senior Arab intelligence official familiar with its operations said. ''Even those who were not hard-core extremists have now been indoctrinated by the true believers. Like any other prison, they have been taught to hate. If they let these people go, these people will make trouble.''