(CNN) -- Nearly 800 classified U.S. military documents obtained by WikiLeaks reveal extraordinary details about the alleged terrorist activities of al Qaeda operatives captured and housed at the U.S. Navy's detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The secret documents have been made available to several news organizations, including the New York Times and the Washington Post -- and some have been published by WikiLeaks, an organization that facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information.
CNN was not among the news organizations granted early access to the latest files.
The documents shed light on the way detainees behaved while at Guantanamo and on how they were assessed in terms of their danger to the United States. They are intelligence assessments of nearly every one of the 779 individuals who have been held at Guantanamo since 2002, according to the Post.
The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement that the documents underscore a need for an independent judicial review of the cases of those being held at Guantanamo.
"These documents are remarkable because they show just how questionable the government's basis has been for detaining hundreds of people, in some cases indefinitely, at Guantanamo," said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, in the statement. "The one-sided assessments are rife with uncorroborated evidence, information obtained through torture, speculation, errors and allegations that have been proven false.
"These documents are the fruit of the original sin by which the rule of law was scrapped when Guantanamo detainees were first rounded up," Shamsi said. "if the government had followed the law, it would have established a meaningful and prompt process to separate the innocent from those who are legally detainable".
The classified files described some of the detainees as being compliant while others threatened violence against guards. One stated he would fly planes into houses. CNN
