GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - U.S. security restrictions governing the statements of former CIA captives held at Guantanamo are so stringent that one prisoner's assessment of basketball star LeBron James was treated as a top national secret for two months, a military defense lawyer said on Tuesday.
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.
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