By Steven T. Jones

Harper’s Magazine’s website has posted a disturbing expose that raises serious doubts about what the federal government claims were the simultaneous suicides of three Guantanamo Bay detainees in 2006, indicating that they may actually have been tortured to death at a secret interrogation facility known as Camp No.

Even worse, writer Scott Horton details how four prison guard whistle-blowers who had direct knowledge of flaws in the official story and the cover-up that followed went to the Justice Department last year, and that the Obama administration opted to continue the cover-up.

Slate’s Jack Shafer has attacked the story’s credibility and conclusions, but he does so mostly with a kind of sneering belittlement and disbelief that the military is capable of such a cover-up, while glossing over the evidence offered by multiple whistleblowers and the state of the three men’s bodies.

Harpers and Slate have engaged in an interesting back-and-forth on the issue, but based on what we know about the recent history of this country’s embrace of torture techniques, I have a hard time understanding Shafer’s dismissive tone about the doubts Horton raises. What do you think?