TERROR WAR, SOUTH FRONT; Interrogators at Gitmo glean 'golden threads'.(PAGE ONE)(SPECIAL REPORT)

Byline: Guy Taylor, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

U.S. NAVAL BASE GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba - More than 600 al Qaeda and Taliban suspects imprisoned here are being interrogated by "Tiger Teams" during sessions that last as long as 16 hours, military officials say.

Forty such four- and five-member teams - consisting of Defense Department personnel, law-enforcement interrogators, a linguist and an analyst - work inside Camp Delta.

The barbed-wire-ringed series of cellblocks is home to the detainees, all of whom are Muslim men, representing 44 countries and speaking 17 languages. While the identities of the men have been kept secret, military officials here say all were arrested in Afghanistan.

The 105-year history of this unique base - the only U.S. military installation in a communist country - has been peppered with such major events of international consequence as the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban missile crisis.

Construction of Camp Delta since September 11 again turned the world's eyes toward here to watch the development of a new situation, one plagued by questions about the legal status of those held in the war on terror, exacerbated by charges of misconduct by officials working with the prisoners.

But Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who heads U.S. efforts to obtain intelligence from the detainees, told The Washington Times that information being gleaned from them has been "extremely valuable."

He vigorously dismissed the notion that recent charges leveled against some who worked in or closely with the Tiger Teams suggested the presence of a "fifth column," or organized group within the prison camp seeking to aid the detainees.

"There's absolutely zero possibility ... with the Tiger Teams that there's any of that," said the general, a native Texan who has been in the military for more than 25 years.

'Golden threads'

Gen. Miller said that even as the majority of Guantanamo prisoners have been isolated from the changing world for nearly two years, they continue to be a treasure trove of intelligence.

"There are three different kinds of intelligence for which we interrogate: tactical, operational and strategic," he said.

Tactical is the lowest level, used to lay a base from which deeper interrogation can be built. It consists of outlining when an individual was captured, what kind of weapon he had, how many people he was working with and what precisely they were doing.

Tactical intelligence "decays …