GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba -- For nearly two and a half years, American officials have maintained that locked within the steel-mesh cells of the military prison here are some of the world's most dangerous terrorists.. The New York Times has found that government and military officials have repeatedly exaggerated both the danger the detainees posed and the intelligence they have provided.

In interviews, dozens of high-level military, intelligence and law-enforcement officials in the United States, Europe and the Middle East said that contrary to the repeated assertions of senior administration officials, none of the detainees at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay ranked as leaders or senior operatives of Al Qaeda. They said only a relative handful -- some put the number at about a dozen, others more than two dozen -- were sworn Qaeda members or other militants able to elucidate the organization's inner workings.

Let's translate this into plain English, and put it in its appropriate context: Hundreds of prisoners, held without rights and without charges on Guantanamo for over two years are ... NOT TERRORISTS AFTER ALL. Perhaps two dozen of these 600 prisoners have yielded any useful info, and a 2002 CIA report questioned the value of keeping these detainees. And meanwhile, construction continues on expanding Guantanamo, to hold 50,000 more prisoners. Prisoners captured in Afghanistan aboard an American plane bound for Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, early in the detention program.

In interviews, dozens of high-level military, intelligence and law-enforcement officials in the United States, Europe and the Middle East said that contrary to the repeated assertions of senior administration officials, none of the detainees at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay ranked as leaders or senior operatives of Al Qaeda. ..the commander of the task force that runs the Guantánamo prison, Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, acknowledged disappointment among some senior officials in Washington. ''The expectations, I think, may have been too high at the outset,'' he said. ''There are those who expected a flow of intelligence that would help us break the most sophisticated terror organization in a matter of months. But that hasn't happened.''

The Pentagon's determination to hold the detainees as ''enemy combatants'' -- beyond the reach of United States law and unbound by the Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners of war -- has also come under renewed scrutiny in the wake of the scandal over abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.. Tim Golden and Don Van Natta Jr.,The New York Times; June 21, 2004