Penny Lane (Guantanamo)

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The CIA operated a mole recruitment and training facility a couple of hundred yards from the military run internment facility.

Penny Lane was the name of a clandestine CIA detention facility housed within the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and distinct from the military operated Guantanamo Bay detention camp.[1] The Associated Press reported the existence of the camp on November 25, 2013, and asserted the name Penny Lane was from the Beatles' album Yellow Submarine, which had also provided the name for another CIA run clandestine detention site at Guantanamo -- Strawberry Fields.

Strawberry Fields was intended to hold secretly hold captives who the CIA felt could never be released -- captives who were to be held, in the words of the song "forever". Penny Lane was intended to hold captives who were held in a comfortable motel-like environment, where they might be turned into double agents, who would penetrate extremist networks. According to the Associated Press report, dozens of captives were held in Penny Lane, and evaluated for their suitability for recruitment as moles, but a smaller number were actually targets of recruitement.

The Associated Press reported it was not known how many of the moles were effective, and how many the DoD would later list as "Guantanamo recidivists".

References

  1. Adam Goldman, Matt Apuzzo (2013-11-25). "The secret Guantanamo Bay facility where CIA turned prisoners into double agents". The Province. http://www.theprovince.com/news/secret+Guantanamo+facility+where+turned+prisoners+into+double/9212307/story.html. Retrieved 2013-11-26. "Some of the men who passed through Penny Lane helped the CIA find and kill many top al-Qaida operatives, current and former U.S. officials said. Others stopped providing useful information and the CIA lost touch with them."