The Pentagon has long claimed that it can infringe on the public’s right to know what takes place at the island prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, under the guise of protecting national security. Now it’s going to absurd lengths to justify a secret hearing involving a Saudi captive’s account of how CIA agents interrogated him while shackled in custody.

The government has played the national security card repeatedly for more than 10 years, relying on post-9/11 paranoia and fear of terrorism to win public support for the kind of odious policies that have no place in a democracy. Secret interrogations, secret custody, secret jails.

Even the Red Cross was kept in the dark at one time about who was in captivity, and where – a violation of fundamental Geneva Conventions rules. Basic rights of fair trial have been denied.

We as a nation used to condemn the Soviet Union for these sorts of practices, and still condemn Cuba and other dictatorships for violating commonly recognized standards of justice. Yet it happens at Guantanamo.

Thanks to the public outcry and persistent challenges by civil liberties advocates and some news organizations, progress has been made on a few fronts. The secret overseas jails are gone, or so the government has said, and reporters have gained limited access at Guantanamo. But old habits die hard and the Pentagon is at it once again with the upcoming hearing for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

Nashiri is accused of orchestrating al-Qaida’s suicide bombing of a U.S. Navy warship, the USS Cole, off Yemen in October 2000. Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed in the attack, and the Pentagon war court prosecutor is pursuing this case as its first death-penalty trial. In a bid to win a court order that he be unshackled during prison camp meetings with his attorneys, defense lawyers want to call him as a witness to describe the trauma of his CIA interrogations.

To be clear, the issue is not whether he should be shackled during his trial, but rather when meeting with his own attorneys. That’s what a hearing scheduled for this week is about, but Col. James L. Pohl, a military judge, has ordered a blanket closure of the entire hearing because it touches on what lawyers claim is his treatment under interrogation prior to incarceration at Guantanamo.

The Miami Herald and a wide range of news organizations, including Fox News and The Washington Post, have rightly objected. In the first place, there’s that pesky thing called the First Amendment that protects public access to the proceedings, particularly in a case that commands worldwide attention and raises significant issues.

Beyond that, it’s ridiculous to shield the public from testimony covering information already in the public domain. Declassified abuse investigations show that, while Nashiri was shackled, CIA agents waterboarded him, racked a semi-automatic handgun near his head and used a power drill to frighten him in 2002 and 2003.

What’s left to hide? The list of published accounts detailing Nashiri’s detention with the CIA covers five pages of a pleading submitted by defense attorneys to the court. The filing also points out that the court’s own media rules explicitly forbid exclusion of information that has already been publicly disclosed.

Besides, if any information that remains classified should emerge, it can easily be kept from reporters, who sit in a separate, soundproof room and hear information only after a 40-second delay.

Just hitting a button can keep the secret material from being heard by reporters. The court’s own guidelines require using the least intrusive rules to keep information secret, which would seem to rule out a blanket closure.

There’s no legitimate reason to keep these proceedings a secret.