Ten and a half years into the Guantánamo experiment, as it becomes ever harder for those who are still appalled by the prison's existence, and by the failures of all three branches of the US government — under Barack Obama — to close it, my friends and colleagues Jeffrey Kaye and Jason Leopold are to be commended for not giving up, and for digging away at the secrets that still shroud Guantánamo, and that, moreover, are still capable of providing a shock when uncovered, even if they are generally ignored by the mainstream media.

On Wednesday, the mainstream media decided to pay attention for a change, and Jeff and Jason's report on a drugging scandal at Guantánamo, published on Truthout, where Jason is the lead investigative reporter and Jeff, a full-time psychologist, is also a regular contributor, was picked up by mainstream media outlets including the Associated Press, AFP and Britain's Daily Mail.

Their article was based on the release of a Pentagon report, "Investigation of Allegations of the Use of Mind-Altering Drugs to Facilitate Interrogations of Detainees" that they requested through Freedom of Information legislation two years ago, and it paints a depressing story of prisoners at Guantánamo being given given powerful anti-psychotic medication and then, on occasions, interrogated, even though they were in no fit state to answer questions competently.

The report also uncovers evidence that Jose Padilla, the US citizen held and tortured on the US mainland as an "enemy combatant," on the basis of a non-existent terrorist plot, was the subject of an unethical trick, given a flu vaccine but told that it was a truth serum.

Although there is no smoking gun establishing that any prisoners were drugged as part of the interrogation process, the very fact that men put under a savage chemical cosh were subjected to interrogation at all is a disturbing reminder of a fundamental truth that I have been striving to attract attention to for many years — that what passes for evidence in Guantánamo is generally something darker and far more dangerous, consisting largely of false statements made by other prisoners (in Guantánamo or in other "war on terror" prisons), either because they were tortured or otherwise coerced, or because they were bribed with perks, such as better food or entertainment, and that many of these people were preyed upon by interrogators because they had mental health problems – largely, though not exclusively, as a result of their treatment in US custody.

This is a theme that I have exposed throughout my work, and that has gained prominence since last year in my ongoing analysis of the classified military files released by WikiLeaks, on which I worked as a media partner, in which the files demonstrate, over and over again, how the intelligence extracted in Guantánamo — and, by extension, in other "war on terror" prisons — is a house of cards, built on torture and lies.

Moreover, this is not just an academic matter, as 168 prisoners remain at Guantánamo, and, for many of them, the promise that the habeas corpus rights that the Supreme Court granted them in 2008 might lead to their release have been dashed by appeal court judges in the D.C. Circuit Court, who, for nakedly ideological reasons, have rewritten the rules on detention to make sure that no prisoners can have their habeas petitions granted. The judges have done this by insisting that a presumption of accuracy must be given to all the government's interrogation reports, but as Shatyana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights told Jeff and Jason, under the system set up by the D.C. Circuit Court, "any statements detainees made during these interrogations would be presumed accurate even if detainees took medication that could produce unreliable information."

It would be excellent if the mainstream media really picked this up and ran with it, but I doubt they will. At the very least, however, by picking up on Jeff and Jason's story, they have briefly reminded those who are still awake and aware that America has not returned from the "dark side" that Dick Cheney delivered it to after 9/11, that Guantánamo still exists, that 87 of the 168 men still held have been cleared for release, that it still needs to be closed as a matter of relentless urgency, and that those who authorized its creation, and the programs of torture and rendition that accompanied it, still need to be held accountable.

Those being reminded of what is really in the mirror that America looks into also need to note that doing all of the above requires recognizing that, in Guantánamo, human beings — soldiers in an Afghan war that was unconnected to 9/11, innocent people sold for bounties, and the merest smattering of genuine terror suspects — were treated in ways that ought to shock the conscience, and that there is never any excuse for that.

My thanks to Jeff and Jason,