From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone.

The worst of the worst is how Donald Rumsfeld described the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

For the most part, we've been forced to take his word for it. But after a 2004

Supreme Court ruling that U.S. citizens at least had the right to challenge their detentions,

the Pentagon set up a process whereby detainees could have their day in court. And when I say

court, I mean a trailer where a military panel hears from the detainee and decides whether or not he's really an enemy combatant.

The answer to that question is almost certain to be yes in the latest round of combatant status review tribunals that started Friday.

In the hot seat are 14 of the highest value terror suspects,

supposedly the worst of the worst of the worst,

including alleged 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

They were transferred to Gitmo last summer

after spending years in the CIA's global network of secret prisons,

but hopes that the tribunals would finally give us a glimpse of these men were dashed this week when the Pentagon, citing

national security concerns, banned reporters from covering them. Miami Herald staff writer Carol

Rosenberg has been reporting on detainee issues for five years. She says in the early days of

the tribunals, the government took a much different tack. They wanted us there. They went out of

their way to bring in flights and sponsor trips for reporters to come in and sit at a table

and watch these things.

You had to sign some ground rules, and the most difficult one was if the man uttered his name in the course of the proceeding or you found out his name, you were forbidden to report it.

They want reporters there to report on proceedings, judging the fate of people whom they cannot name?

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