Trump Tapped For Guantanamo Resort Makeover

New York, September 19, 2009 -- Legendary real estate tycoon and "Apprentice" star Donald Trump has been selected by the Department of Defense to give the widely criticized internment camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba a much-needed facelift. According to sources close to the project, Trump has been tasked with converting the camp into a first-class resort hotel and casino. Prisoners will still be held at the facility, but will be interspersed with visiting tourists, gamblers and pleasure-seekers in "an upscale, classic resort environment that evokes the bygone magnificence of Cuba's pre-Castro glory days."

The new facility, to be dubbed "Guantanamo Palace Resort" will feature a 1,200-room hotel, making it one of the largest in the Caribbean. Five individual casinos offering the full spectrum of Vegas-style games of chance will provide ample gambling excitement for visitors.

Trump plans to clear a full thousand feet of beachfront minefields for the resort's private beach, which will offer scuba lessons, windsurfing, JetSki rentals, parasailing, and evasive maneuvers. A world-class eighteen-hole golf course designed by golf great Greg Norman will wend its way through the scenic dunes, bunkers and shelling ranges, perhaps offering new meaning to the word "Fore!".

"It's a way of cleaning up the camp's image a little, and also providing a little additional revenue for the DoD slush fund," said the source, who asked not to be identified. "With Congress' continued information demands and refusal to allocate resources until they get it, this way we can keep things up and running without them. It's win-win."

Approximately 400 prisoners are held at the existing facility, most of whom have not been identified publicly, charged with a crime, nor permitted to consult with legal counsel, representatives of their governments, or family members. Some have been held for nearly eight years, causing periodic outcries from human rights and democracy advocates.

When the new hotel is complete, these prisoners will be transferred from the small chain-link cages they currently inhabit and placed in a series of unmarked "safe rooms" throughout the hotel. From the exterior, the rooms will resemble any other guest suite, but the doors opening into the public areas of the hotel will be sealed. Access to the rooms, which are to be fully sound-proofed, will be via maintenance ducts within the hotel's interior.

"That way, torture, I mean coerced interrogation, of detainees can continue without disturbing any of the other guests," said the source. "The rooms have a completely independent ventilation system, too, so neither unpleasant sounds nor smells can interfere with the resort experience."

Five-star chef Pierre André LeBlanc of Washington's famed Café Tais-toi will oversee the kitchen of the hotel's primary top-scale dining establishment, and promises to provide a broad and succulent range of international fare topped off with tantalizing nouveau-Caribbean delicacies such as conch and sea scallop.

What's more, an impressive list of entertainment talent is already signed for upcoming performances, promising the Guantanamo Palace Resort will compete impressively with its more established rivals in Atlantic City, Vegas, and Connecticut. Ground is expected to be broken by late December, with a grand opening planned for Memorial Day weekend, 2011.

"We think it will be an all-round first class gambling vacation resort experience for our visitors," said the source, "and the fact that there might be a psychologically shattered foreign farmer or car mechanic being … interrogated right in the next room will add a truly unique dash of zest. Plus, with detainees being held in a first-class casino resort with a five-star restaurant, we think the namby-pamby liberal contingent will pipe down a little."

By Ion Zwitter, Avant News Editor