Interviewer: Okay, good morning. - Good morning. Interviewer: We are very grateful to you for participating in the Witness to Guantanamo project. We invite you to speak of your experiences in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And we hope we provide you an opportunity to tell the world and Americans your story of your work down in Guantanamo. We are creating an archive of stories of people in America and around the world who have a better understanding of what Guantanamo is and what has happened down there. And future generations must know what happened in Guantanamo by telling your story you're contributing to history. And we're very grateful for you coming today. And if you wanna take a break at any point just please let us know and we can stop. And if there's something you say that you realize you probably shouldn't have, if you tell us, we can remove it in time as well. - Okay, thank you, well, I really appreciate that you're doing this. Interviewer: Oh, thanks very much. And we'd like to begin if you wouldn't mind telling us your name and a little bit about your background including your military prep. - Sure. - Where you were born and also where you lived in, how old you are and what you do. - Sure, sure. My name's Janet Hamlin. I was raised in a military family. My father was an air force pilot. I was born in Mountain Home, Idaho, which is an air force base, I believe, And grew up until the age of 16 on various air force deployments and bases throughout, including Germany and England. I'm 56. I was living in Brooklyn during the 9/11 attacks. For years I have been a freelance illustrator. And the way that I got involved with the court sketching is the associated press was a client of mine and started sending me to sketch in court trials. At the first one being the Martha Moxley Skakel trial in Connecticut. And then they sent me to Fort Bragg and then Omar Khadr was going to be seen in court for hearing. And they wanted to send somebody to sketch him in 2006. So this is five years after the 9/11 attacks. Interviewer: Even at your first trial you were sent to Guantanamo. - It was in April of 2006. Interviewer: Could you describe before we talk about the illustrating for that particular trial, can you describe what it was like for you to go into Guantanamo? What you expected and what you found? - Yes, so the first time there's this kind of mythology or this typical vision we all have of Guantanamo's camp x-ray photos. And, so I didn't quite know what to expect. But when we landed, I looked around and I saw what looked very familiar to me because it is a base. It's now, it's always been a military base for different factions, no joint task force now. And so when I first landed, I thought, well, this looks very familiar, it almost looks like home only with palm trees And navigating through it was not that unfamiliar. The only difference being, or the biggest difference is that we have camp x-ray over the hills and the various encampments and the court system. But there are families that are stationed there that have nothing to do with it. So it felt oddly familiar. Interviewer: And, then were you escorted into a particular area where the trial was being held? Can you describe how that was? - It's changed quite a bit in the years that I've been going. Interviewer: Maybe the first trial. - The first time was definitely the most intimidating because there are, and continue to be many, many rules as to what you can and cannot draw, what you can and cannot photograph. But at the time it was in some ways less, more and less restrictive. Initially, I was not allowed to draw the faces of the detainees. There was a Geneva convention rules cited about, there could be no unflattering image of a detainee put out there. It could be considered humiliating or something. So flat out, couldn't draw features. But the courtroom that we were in was up on the hill and there was no barrier. It was an open courtroom with a very intimate setting. And so I was sitting fairly close and had pretty good visual access. But the difference was that I had to erase and ghost out his features. But I also avail myself to draw another detainee on trial. So every time I go down there, I try to draw inside and outside the court at every moment because it's quite a bit to get there. We have to fly out of Andrews. We have to go through security, make sure we've been vetted for travel, have our passports, get tagged, get into our residence. At that time, we were staying on the other side of the Bay, and so we had to ride a ferry across. And then I have to go through two levels of security. We all do to get into the courtroom and out. So with all that. Interviewer: Can we just back up just so that, - Sure. - For history who paid you to go down there? Why were you sent there? - Initially, the associated press sent me down to sketch for the pool. Initially: And just for history too, no photographs were allowed and that's why they needed a sketch artist? - Yeah. No, they allow photographs outside of the courtroom. And even those are very restricted. But no photographs of any personnel. And there are a lot of people involved that are in service who don't wanna be identified. And there are a lot of elements inside the courtroom that they don't want sketched are drawn, whether they're the soldiers, the troops lining, security detail, and any kind of exit and certain translators or people like that can opt out on having their features drawn. But at the time it was expressly forbidden to draw Omar Khadr or anybody else who was a detainee being tried. Initially: So you could sketch the faces of the prosecutor or some of the other personnel, the defense lawyers? - Yes. They all are allowed to, if they choose, review it or opt out. And every sketch that I do has to be reviewed by the security officer. Who's the same fellow that can now currently censor any kind of verbal exchange. He can press a button and wipe out what we hear currently. But he's also the security detail. So he will come and review my sketches before I can leave the environment. And he has to sign off and he has occasionally, whoever is the security office at the time has asked me to erase or smudge out. They might feel that I've put in Omar's face, maybe I've put like a socket or an indication of a shadow. So it wasn't just blank. And he'd say, "Smudge that out more." So it was kind of challenging. And there was another detainee that I drew where I drew him holding up the word con, this is a con, and he was holding it up to us and it was reflected in the monitor. And so I drew that and they got very agitated. "Are you trying to get a face in there?" It was no, for me, it was just anything that's really interesting. And I feel it's my job with the limitations of what I can draw. The biggest tell is body language. What are people doing? How are they positioned? What are they gesturing or holding up? Where are they? Seated? There's symbolism a lot with the 9/11 accused. Khalid Shaikh is in the front because his accusations and charges are of the highest order. And then the five sit based kind of on that. So there are many, many details that I try to capture. So that first trip, I couldn't draw Omar, but the second time I went was a year later for David Hicks. And I was told there was a possibility that I could draw his face and the military does try to work with me. "How can we help you do your job?" And so I was given the choice of a seat. We have assigned seatings. I said, well, if I sit at this angle, I can really get him and the people behind. So the next day when I came in, instead they had me sitting directly behind him and he had long hair and I was so frustrated. I said, "I'm gonna be drawing what looks like cousin Ed. From behind with this long hair, it's not beneficial to anybody. Can I move over? And I hit a wall with them. And at the time, Jackie Northam and some other people were sitting. Interviewer: Who's Jackie Northam? - She's with MPR. She was sitting over where some of the other media was. And she said, "I'm gonna be vacating." So at some point maybe you can take my seat or in this area. So I said, "Can I speak to somebody?" And I ended up saying, going up the chain of refusal, and finally saying, "If I can't do my job, then I might as well just leave. There's no point in me being here." So that's it. And I'm gonna have to go back with just this. And at that point, it was a really interesting, they said, "Okay, we'll let you move. But you can't have your table. You're gonna have to sit with all your things in your lap." And so I did. And then my escort, we're always escorted. My escort at the time- Interviewer: Military, I guess. - Military, J. D. Gordon said, "Just draw his face because they're telling me it's allowed." I said, okay. And so I went ahead and I thought, well, why not? Because I can always smudge it out or erase it. And so I sketched everything I could with with everything in my lap. And Jackie said, "Well, I'm gonna head out." And he said, "Oh, take the sketch." And I said, "Well, it hasn't been signed off." "Take it." So she rolled it up and took it. And I continued to stay and sketch. And literally 25 minutes later, I was surrounded by many angry people saying, you've broken the rules. You allowed this to happen. It's out in the media without the sign off. And everybody behind me thankfully said, no, she resisted and she was assured that it was okay. And so now that the horse was out of the barn that kind of opened it up where I could draw the features from then on out. - Yeah. 'Cause it- Interviewer: So all the other detainees going forward? - Yeah, it was, I think, on the edge, and maybe the escort realized that, hey, once it's out, it's out. And it ended up being a big deal. Because at that time we thought it was just a hearing and it ended up that they had a plea deal in place and we ended up staying and they flew in the first ever jury that's comprised of officers from different factions who came in and it was a full trial. So it went from what was gonna be a three day to an extended visit. And so the next time I saw David Hicks, he had a short haircut, he had a suit on, he stood up, he pled guilty. I was able to draw a featureless, but at least indicate hair and uniform of the jury. And that went out and it was the opening to that. And then, as will happen in every courtroom, but in Guantanamo, especially, I can no longer draw, I could no longer draw jury when it came to Omar Khadr. So I was forced to draw numbers. So I'm kind of jumping forward, but I'm just saying, with David Hicks, I have all these drawings of what's really interesting. You've got all these different service members. And now with Omar Khadr, I had to resort to drawing giant numbers, indicating the jury number person. I had to draw something and that's what I came up with. Because everybody addresses the jury. They all look at, they present evidence to. So that was an odd work around. Interviewer: Before, I know you turned back and forth, but I just wanna go back to Khadr for a moment. When you walked into that tribunal and watched that, what kind of feelings do you have? What were you thinking when you saw this experience? You had an experience that a few people had. - Oh yeah. I was thinking, he reminded me of a big Labrador. He a teenage kid, and then he had his civilian clothes on, but the shoes like, tennis shoes like a kid. And then the next year when I saw him, his hair grown out, he was in a khaki, for, like a khaki garb the detainees were and he was very angry and frustrated looking. So he went from this sort of civilian look teenager to the next year, angry and frustrated. And then the following. And in the entire series of hearings, 'cause that was the most comprehensive. Yeah, Canada was constantly going and covering this, Michelle Shepherd, Global Mail, all the Canadian media. And so I was there for a lot, almost all the pretrial and the trial complete. Whereas with Hom Don and some of the others, it was sort of just the beginning and sometimes in between or rarely was it ever an ending. With Omar though, you saw all these different people speaking. And so I was able to get the most visual, comprehensive telling from that first time in 2006. - Did you know anything about Omar and Guantanamo before you went down there? - I really didn't initially know. But over all the hearings and all the the conversation I had with various people and just watching him, I got more of a sense about. And I didn't know what to think and how much was this nature, how much of it is nurture? What chances a kid have? When is this his father saying you have to be a part of my gang more or less. And then you're thrown in with people that you either sink or swim with. What do you do? What do you say? I think at the time I was just doing everything I could to show what he was doing and let what he's what was being shown and what people were saying visually kind of inform that. But to me, he just looked like a kid, a teenager who was growing into a young adult in that environment. Interviewer: And you also sketched the prosecutor. You said, did you see changes in that aspect in terms of prosecutors and defense counsel all the way? - Yeah, one of the things that the detainees can do is they can fire their teams of lawyers. And Omar had a lot of distrust and went through, I wanna say like, two or three different iterations of counsel. And he's not the only one, but so we had a changing of the guard and that was setting things back. And it was a little bit of a mobius loop, it almost felt like. So that I also sketched all the different legal counsel from Keebler to Coby Flowers, to finally Jackson, who, I was there when he collapsed. He was by himself almost at that time with just some helpers. And he literally collapsed in court one day. Fell to the ground and they ended up air backing him out and sending us home, and then we returned later, but a month or so later. So I've seen a lot of that. I've seen the prosecution. We have, Mark Martin's very, very bright. With 9/11 we have it's death penalty. So we have learned counsel. So there's all these different people coming and going. And many people who retire, or in one case, if they didn't want to do something, they ended up leaving service. There are all these different rules that affect end of... Interviewer: Did you have to know background of the cases in order for you to just sketch? Did that make a difference? - It helps to understand. But I'm far from being... It would be nice if I knew I understood law and the repercussions of it, but in some ways maybe it's better that I don't, because I'm just getting what I see and understand. And that's for better or worse. I think it's what all of America, all of the world is going to see and understand too. I've come over time to really understand more just from the exposure of it. But yeah, I try to at least know why they're there, what their charges are. I try to have, I love having conversations with people from both sides to try to understand why do you do this, or how do you feel about it, or what's your experiences with this person? Just for my own wanting to understand. Interviewer: Does the military hold these illustrations too? Or are they just for the APA, the media? - Well, I have them all. Interviewer: You kept a copy of them all? - I have all the originals. I've provided the military with them and the media has them the images for news reporting and things like that, but I've not sold or done anything with the originals because I think, I didn't realize this was gonna happen. I never went down there thinking, I was gonna continue doing this. I thought it was, I'm just going once, okay, I'm going twice. I'm going a dozen times. And when I realized that it was a sequential telling which usually in court art that doesn't happen. On the mainland court artists come and go and they'll grab sound bites, or visual bites of the opening or closing, but rarely are you going through the whole thing or the same person following it. So I have a visual documentation that I think at some point I would try to make it to I think, Library of Congress has expressed interest or something. I think it's more important as a collective, University of Richmond did have a showing and anytime people can learn from it. It's what I've hoped. Interviewer: Where do you store it? - I have it in these museum boxes and out of daylight and sort of temperate dry area. Interviewer: And do you have backups if something happened to them in terms of? - Yeah, they're all digitally archived. So, there was also Carol and Rosenberg, Michelle Shepherd, Jane Sutton, many of the journalists and other people involved wrote essays and helped me put together a book. So a book was published from 2006 to 2013. So all those are scanned and archived as well. There's just a few years of drawings that haven't been scanned like that. So yeah. Interviewer: And did you find that some people were more difficult to draw than others in terms of who they are or how they moved around? I mean, trying to capture... - Yeah, once they built the other courtroom expressly for the 9/11 hearings and we moved out of the more intimate setting that Omar Khadr hummed on and a few other people, Hicks were tried through. The new courtroom has seating in the back behind soundproof glass. And over time the glass is kind of fogged. So you've got like this, a little bit of a haze, almost like a car window of fog. So you've got a little bit of a hazy, three pane, these windows and you're sitting in the back. And so, now I'm drawing these guys who are seated in the main courtroom with Khalid Shaikh Muhammad or whoever the accused is, sitting in the far front at the end of the table. So I've got obstacles of sound, delayed sound, fade, glass, and distance. And as the case has mounted, literally books have mounted, amazing documentation, racks and racks of books started piling up. So I sometimes have to stand just in order to see Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, or I've opted to sit in the top farthest away seat just to get to see him. The other thing I try to do is negotiate a way to see their faces from the front. And I sent in a pitch to the Pentagon, how about if I sit where the jury would sit with soundproof headphones and you can have two guys by me and they can watch everything I sketch and you guys can sign off on it, but I won't have any barriers and it helps you and me because you'll have this great, better recording. Look at the differences with Omar Khadr, and now look at what I'm able to do here. And I was just gonna, and they said, "No way, that's not gonna happen. We're not gonna give you that kind of clearance." Plus what am I gonna see in their papers and whatnot that are visual. So instead they came up with, how about, we'll send you to a room with monitors and the monitors will be statically pointing at them and you can draw from a monitor. So ironically, I'm going back to the old courthouse building called AV 134, where all the court reporters archive, they listen, two sets of court reporters. Some who archive what's inside and some who archive the edited feed. So, I'm in that building with them, drawing from monitors, get faces, so... Interviewer: How is that, is that better for you? - It's better in terms of being able to draw faces, but it's frustrating, 'cause I'm getting a closed view of it. So somebody off cameras lifting up their shirt to show scars, which has happened, I might not see it. If somebody drops something or whatever, I'm not gonna see that. And it's delayed. It's also at a 40 second delay. So there's... Interviewer: When you mentioned that sound, I mean, you can't hear sound when you have three panes of glass between you and the people being prosecuted. Why does sound matter to you? - Because it's a cue to what's happening in the court. I'm doing a lot of drawing like this, blind contour, but I've still got to look down and make sure that I'm getting it in the right place. And when you're looking down, you can't rely, on your ears. By the time we hear, all rise, people literally already sat down in the courtroom. Interviewer: Proving a 40 second delay. - Yeah. When we hear all rise, the judges long entered, everybody stood up and said, that's the kind of delay. So a lot of times I'm opting out to stay in the courtroom. So I can just look and see what's going on. And then occasionally there are five monitors up with the closeup shots that I can occasionally look up and see whatever they're looking at. But it flicks to whoever's speaking Interviewer: Who's interested in your drawings these days? Are they still published in newspapers? - They run archived. Interviewer: People are paying you to go down there and just to do drawings that are archived? - No, they have them in archives. So wires do, and the media that. Whenever they send me down there, I cover my own travel. It's come down to that. Because after the AP didn't wanna keep sending a pool person and nobody wanted to bear the burden of the expenses for a pool person. I said, look, if I can have at least five or more media outlets buy-in to the rights, then I can afford, I'll take the money out of that to fly down. And I pared it down so I could continue to cover it. Because I found it really personally satisfying to be able to capture this, to use my skills to do that. Because as an illustrator from many years, I'd do something and it was a fun career. But today's illustration is in tomorrow's recycling. And nothing against it, it's all wonderful career. And it's been great. But to have gone through 9/11, to understand the importance of being able to use, being allowed and being a part of using my illustrative skills in a way that I can actually archive this visually is really gratifying. And it's an honor. And so, I decided I'm gonna start trying to figure out ways to keep myself involved. And, so I started kind of throwing out lines. Carol would say, "Look I want you to go." So let's try to figure out how we can work this out so that media can continue to have coverage of it but it won't burden them. So, but there's been less and less interest because this has been going on and on and on. The 9/11 pre-trial hearings are, there's not a lot visually that's changing, rarely have I gone down and not felt like I'm drawing the same thing over and over again. It's almost like Groundhog Day. Until there's something that's changed other than Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's appearance, which has radically changed. I mean, people have gained and lost weight, but he started dying his beard, he's wearing the camo, these kinds of things are important to show. 'Cause that's telling. But I'll hopefully be going down there when we do get witnesses, when we do go to trial and I would like to capture all that. I mean, in the back of my mind, I feel like all of this is being archived on video right now, anyway. But it's not being made public. So until it is, there will be this. Interviewer: Are you the only one, if you weren't there, there'd be no outside illustration or photo? Well, no photos at all, but nothing at all visually, if you weren't there is, that true? - Well, the international Red Cross does have the photos that they take. Interviewer: They take photos during those hearings? - Not during the hearings. So to be clear, they'd take them of the detainees. So of detainees, there's only those photos. Of the hearings, since 2006, prior to that, Arlene went, he's a Supreme Court court artist, but I've been the only one covering for media consistently since 2006. There were two other artists that went, one for Vice, one for Harper's. But it was more about the environment itself, not necessarily the courts. So yeah, two. Interviewer: So if you hadn't voluntarily gone, like you said, you you'd have to pay your own flight, even though you've got five media organizations to support you, no one would be there presumably. - Right, at this time, yeah. Right. I've, that's exactly right. I have pitched going and not enough people have been able to say, there's only one or two of us going. And so I haven't been able to go. Because I do other work too, and I've picked up other work. So I have to now jog that as well. It was, one time it was never expected to be, or intended to be something that I would make a career or. In fact, if anything, I was concerned that I didn't wanna look like a predatory person trying to profit off this tragedy. It's more that I wanted to archive it. Interviewer: So someone fell again, like you described earlier or a detainee, there'd be no visual image of that if you weren't present to illustrate it. - Right. Yeah. Interviewer: And the fact is the military could still take it from you even if it were... - Well that actually, that's the other things that have happened. A couple of times, I've had to negotiate. There was a time with David Hicks. There was a time with- Initially: Can you tell us the time with David Hicks? - With David Hicks where I mentioned that I couldn't draw the face and I had to, threatened to leave. There was the time when I sketched Khalid Shaikh Mohammed for the first time and I didn't have a lot of time to do it. And so I drew his face really fast, but I knew it wasn't very good. But there were still five men to draw. And it was a sentencing, which here in the mainland could be 15 minutes if you're lucky. And I have 100 people, if you count everybody there almost, but the other thing an artist, court artist has to do is visually edit without taking it out of context, or at least that's my goal. How can I pair this down so that's the essence of the visual information? But, so I'm getting these five guys, and as it turned out, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad stood up and started chanting. And I had him sitting down. So I just drew over with pastel. You can do that. But when it came time to leave, they said, well, we've got to show this to his lawyers. And he rejected it. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed said, "I don't like this. I don't want it to go." And I actually saw him through the glass, 'cause I went back to pick up something from the media room and I saw him shaking his head. And I literally had to go back without the drawing and getting an FBI printout, go back through, of a photograph, a pre-existing photograph of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's face, go back to where the drawing was being held in a secure a skiff, a secure facility, with the security details surrounding me while I changed Khalid's nose and features and made them more accurate. And once they determined it was accurate, it was signed off. And then I was able to bring it back down to the media center and move it out. And it made a huge fear that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed could basically edit or direct the sketch. So that became sort of its own issue. The other time is Majeed Khan is somebody who was accused. He was a Baltimore educated person now there. And he's in his hearing or his arraignment or whatever. I sketched him. And then they took them back and he didn't realize he was being sketched and didn't want any drawings to be moved. And they weren't going to give them to me. Or they were gonna have me cut him out or black him out. And I said, well, this opens the door to the last transparency being now thrown into the ground. Like you're now saying "If he doesn't wanna be sketched, I can't?" I said, "Well, nobody in any court can do that." So that means if I'm coming down here, I don't know if I'm gonna be allowed to draw that person or not, there'll be no point in sending anybody. And I literally said, I'm not leaving until I see that rule in black and white. And the security officer said, "Well, I'm trained and you're not." And I said, "Well, then show me your training." And it took four hours of me doing a sit in. And I thought, "What can I do here? I can't curse." I'm gonna have to do what Martin Luther King or Gandhi would do. And just sit and wait for a reasonable explanation. And I ended up calling the commander who was helping the media and she came up and work the phones and all the security was looking madly for this black and white rule. And there was none. The judge wouldn't listen to me. The lawyers would, they said, "I have no dog in this fight." Lawyers said, "Why don't you wait 24 hours until he's eaten and slept, and maybe he'll change his mind." I said, "24 hours is 24 hours too late. " So it took four hours for them to reach the right person who has said, "There is no court order. There's no protective order that says you can't and there never will be." So then I said, "I need reassurance that the the media, that we all need this reassurance that that's not gonna change." So there was that. There has been a few other times too, but... Interviewer: So that meant going forward you could have always illustrated and the detainees had no say on the illustration at all. - They have a say on the illustration, as we know, I mean, they can decide if they like the way it looks or not, but myself or anybody covering this, a sketch artist can draw them. Interviewer: But if they don't like it, can you still publish it? - Well, as demonstrated, not until if there's something, a feature or something they don't like that could be altered apparently. At least in my experience that seems to be, things change though. I mean, I had these plastic stadium glasses that I bought. I have no metal on them that kind of help you magnify. And I bought those so I could get a better view and use them for years. And then there was one time when there was an artist for bias who came and they had asked me to tell her, okay, "What should you bring?" And I said, well, just bring some kind of stadium glasses, something plastic or whatever. Well, she brought these little binoculars and they said, "No, you can't bring that." And then the question arose, "Oh, well she can't then why can she?" Interviewer: They took them away from you? - No, they said no more. They didn't physically take them away, but they said "You must put those away and you cannot use them." No ocular enhancement devices. Interviewer: There is no rule. I'm sure there was no rule that said that. - There is now. No ocular enhancement devices are allowed. And the next thing I knew there was a color xerox of stadium glasses. And also at the time that Google had some kind of glass, Google Glass. So they specifically put, made a sign and you know more. So after years of it not being an issue. Interviewer: So we've heard over and over again people that are rules were pretty much made by the seat of the pants. Is that what you're telling us? - That one seemed to be because it was, when things... I think when things unexpected happen they try to determine what kind of, is there going to a threat to security, to intelligence? I think that the idea was, if she has ocular enhancement devices, she's gonna be able to read classified documents. There was a time I try to avail myself of every visual opportunity I've gone. I've always, other than the resistance, it's always been polite, it's I think, negotiating, understanding the military and the civilian and trying to find the middle ground. I did go on a trip to see what the wiggers were saying. And I had a camera with me at the time. And we were taking pictures. The wiggers came out. We weren't allowed to talk to them, but they use their drawing pads to draw protest signs. Interviewer: The wiggers did? - The wiggers did. We need to freedom. You are double Hitler in your behavior, things like that. So we started taking pictures and they, "Whoa, whoa." "How are we gonna react to this? We need to shut this down." So they said, "Okay, the tour is over." We went back and they said, "We need to review everybody's photos." Well, people were afraid that things are gonna get scrubbed. And I said, well, take, take my desk. 'Cause I just was there for curiosity. And so they reviewed mine. It was the same as everybody else's and nothing was scrubbed but nothing was allowed out for while they decided. And so it was delayed till hours, many hours later. And I ended up, Al Jazeera ended up using mine. But there's that instance of how do we deal with this unexpected and how does this affect, how can we be transparent, but also not lose our security. That's my get best sense of what is going on. I tried to follow the rules, but at the same time, if they seem unreasonable and I'm not allowed to do my job then, explain to me why. Why are we gonna not do this? Interviewer: You said you have a good relation with Carol Rosenberg of all these years, the journalist for the Miami Herald. Could you tell us how that really worked for you and why that was helpful? - Yeah, well, she was one of the people that we call the Dean. She's been going down there. A lot of media will go down there but she has been assigned, that's her beat. She's the one person who's consistently going when almost nobody else can consistently or will consistently go. And she shares her information because to her, my census, it's so important that whatever anybody is writing is right. So there's a board up there and she'll write down who's a commander now or who had a promotion or who's the prosecution and it's a cheat sheet or it's a help sheet. So the first thing she did is sit next to me and say, is there anything I can do to help you out with the sketches? And I said, well, yeah. I mean, I need to know who's who and what's what. And she did. She sat down and said, "You know this? And she said, well, why don't you sketch us watching this?" And I've started polling people saying, if there's anything you'd like to see they haven't seen yet, let me try to negotiate it because otherwise it's gonna be the same thing over and over. And that's what I'll do is, I'll push for, "Hey, can I stand by the victim family members and draw their perspective?" Yeah, I was able to negotiate moving around and getting different perspectives from within the range. Just watching, thinking about how would a photographer, a journalist wanna cover this. They try to look behind every stone or find another facet on the diamond, another viewpoint. How can I make this as rich a visual prop, storytelling as possible. I've gone to the far side of the court from the NGO views as much as possible, anything to capture it. There've been times when all five of the accused, they have the right to not attend after the first day where I've sketched their seats empty, but all the other people present. Because that tells something too. It tells us that they don't have to be there, but all these people are. So there's a lot of different things that I try to keep in mind. Interviewer: Can you describe those illustrations so that somebody who sees them knows what you're trying to do? - Sure. I brought the one. Interviewer: I'd like you to show us then. Would you describe actually, so if someone looks at an illustration with, let's say four members of the being questioned that are not present today, do you actually put a subtitle? - Not always. I've tried to write the date, morning of this date, or this is what the hearing is. Sometimes if I can get, if there's family members who allow me to draw them, because some of them don't wanna be drawn. If they want their names, I'll write their names under them. I'll take little notes on the drawings. But I don't always get as much as I wish I did. Interviewer: So it's possible to see one of your illustrations and not know exactly what you're illustrating? - Somebody might. They'll say, well, I date them all. So they can refer to that. They always know if they look back what's on the docket and yeah. And I always write what it's about or who, that's for me along with everybody else. But sometimes I'll have several drawings going at once, 'cause things are changing. So I might have a closeup started, but then something happened here or a full view of the entire scene. 'Cause there's no timeline for me. Things can stop on a dime. So I'll kind of have a wishlist in my mind about what I wanna get that day. And once I've gotten one, two or three on that, then I'll start kind of branching out on other things. I mean, I've done as few as two or as many as 13 drawings a day. Interviewer: You have a full table? - No, I only use that board. Interviewer: Okay, why don't you show us some of the illustrations and we can go back to have some more questions, but as long as we're talking about. - Sure, sure. I just brought the one full sized sketch and then I have my sketchbook too. So this cardboard board is my table and I balanced it on a chair and all my drawings are done on this surface. Because we have to go through metal detectors and all that. I have to pre sharp everything that I bring in, because I can't bring any sharpening devices for my pencils or tools because and even this gets scanned. My drawing kit gets scanned twice before I go in. And I do pastel on a... Here we go. So you can see sort of the scale of this. And this can kind of show you, this is where I sat behind the victim family members. And there's the security sign off. And I always make sure that's prominent. You can see some of the notes Interviewer: But could you read that to us? 'Cause- - Sure. It says 9/11 pre-trial hearings, April 15th, 2014. With its signature of the security officer and that's him there. And that red light flashes if he omits sound. These are the monitors I mentioned earlier that zoom in on whoever's speaking, the judge or whoever's addressing him, the court officers. You can see very vaguely the security detailed indicated carefully so that you don't see features, but you can see that there are people or somebody standing there. Interviewer: So is Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in the front there? - Yes, that's Khalid Shaikh Mohammad in the front with, speaking with his counsel. I can't, sometimes without meaning to, I omit some people because they just simply don't have the time or the focus. But you can see some of the defense dresses and modest attire, indifference to... Interviewer: Their clients? Janet: Yeah. Interviewer: And, is that all one courtroom or is the far on the right, another version of... - It's all the one courtroom through the windows. So this is where the, that's Mark Martins, a Brigadier General prosecutor and his staff. And then on this side we have translators and paralegals and lawyers and death penalty experts who are all representing the detainees. And then you have all the five flags of the service or six, well, US flag and family members. Interviewer: And these people allow you to illustrate them? They sign off? - They did, they signed off on this. But sometimes I'll get their faces, but this viewpoint worked and it's a little bit skewed to fit. I mean that's the other challenge is how can I compose this? A lot of times, they'll try to think about how can I get the most out of something, somebody can zoom in pan and scan, or tell five stories by parsing out visual information. So I'm trying to make it as telling as possible. But this one's all about the distance and the barrier. It's even zoomed in a little bit. I mean, there's more things and more people between me and him or them. Interviewer: So for the viewer, could you describe, there are three windows, and what is that? - There's actually five windows. There's more to the left, a few more windows. I happened to be behind the victim family members and they see it them first. And then they see media further over in the front and then going back, NGOs. And then finally just people who are interested, observers. Depending on the limit how many people can go in, I think it's seven or eight and it's all assigned seating. But in this case, I was able to negotiate after a few days. Interviewer: And is that a cement barrier with windows or is that a wooden barrier? - It's all portable and this whole courtroom can be taken apart and moved. But it's a sturdy barrier with this all being soundproof. And it's a little distorted. These windows are in fact actually more rectangular, but again, I had to distort a bit and take some license with perspective and things to get it all in there. So, and you can see, I use a brown line to sort of blueprint it out and then put color in. 'Cause there's just not a lot of time. Interviewer: And is there a reason why you use a brown background as opposed to white background? - Yeah, actually, you can build up a scene faster. Courtrooms are primarily a brown. If you can't fill something in, doesn't look as empty. You can pull highlights and darks out of it faster. So it's just a neutral ground to built out of. Yeah, yeah, so, it's... Interviewer: And you said you'll do anywhere from three to 13 drawings a day? - Right. In a typical day, it's probably about four. Two in the morning, two in the afternoon, maybe more if I get like, if somebody is at a stand, and they're only there for a minute. I might get one officer or a little shots like that. Interviewer: And the media is entitled to license any of the drawings that you do, the ones that pay you to? - Yes. Yeah. I have, if there's a school doing a lecture, things like that, I'll say, here's a JPEG, you know what I mean? Yeah, so you don't have to pay me for that. If you're using this for a teaching tool, that's important. I mean, I want future generations to have access. Interviewer: Schools have contacted you for? - They have, yeah. Universities, people have done lectures, who were involved. And I said, sure, yes. The military commissions, if you want to have this up there. I just need to cover my travel over there and make sure that I can afford to do this, I suppose, not to sound. I mean, the main is that I find this very important. So if I'm able to, if I find my work schedule is free, and this is happening and it's important, then yes, I'm gonna try to go, so... Interviewer: Do you have plans to go soon? - Not anytime soon, because I think everything's sort of in, is right now all paperwork cycle, the pre-trial hearings are all pretty, there's not a lot of visual for me, visual change to pick up. Interviewer: Have you noticed how do you know when there is a change? - Well, Carol might know that there's something coming up or media will contact, they'll say, "This is a really important thing. And we wanna send a sketch artist. Are you able to go?" So then that's how the outreach works. When this does finally go to, if it does, and that could change, but if it does, I would definitely like to try to be there. Interviewer: Could we see your sketchbook? - Sure, sure. So the other thing I do is whenever I'm there, I try to warm up because this is all, this is all sort of the stretching before the race. It's visual sprints. So I keep this little sketchbook and I just sketch when Martins will come in and talk to the media about what's coming up, just try to do these little warmups. Interviewer: Hmm. Are those also viewed by the military before? - Yeah, because I don't want anybody to think I'm trying to pull anything. I don't wanna lose any kind of trust I have with either people. I wanna make sure I'm respecting everybody's boundaries, but also, looking out for my own, make sure I'm able to do what I do. So these are just a few of the sketches in the press room of people that I may not have that kind of proximity to. So I'll do studies to familiarize myself with them. But I've also been able to go into the camps. And so I did bring this because it's kind of an interesting view of the main media in a camp environment talking. Oh, it's an iguana that came up behind. This also was interesting to me as, when, at the time they were allowing us to tour the camps during a trial, but now during hearing times, but now they separate that out. But before, they did take us to tour the hospital, and so this is the enteral feeding display. Interviewer: Louis, get a good shot of that. They let you do that? - Yeah, well there's photographs of this. I'm sorry, I'm gonna move my pencil. Yeah, so this is the doctor talking about that. Interviewer: And you had to wipe out the doctors' face? Or is a... - Yes. Yeah. You can't show any, I'm gonna just put this down, medical, any personnel who are speaking with us. 'Cause they're all service members. And I thought that was interesting. It said, at no time will a detainee remain unrestrained in medical and this is at a psych facility. So, and this is an eye test. This is inside camp five. So I'm just pushing myself. Oh, sure. That was a fellow sitting at a table and I just thought, oh, he's, I can't remember if this is during a class, sometimes they'll hold art classes or they'll hold like. Interviewer: So that's a detainee? Janet: Yeah, through a two-way glass. So you're not supposed to show faces. So it was an opportunity to get his face covered. I did a quick rubbing of camp five. I thought that was kind of interesting. Interviewer: That was actually gonna make... Janet: It says established may of 2004, and that was camp five when it was built. Camp five items provided to detainees. We have photos of these, but I still like to challenge myself here and there. This is some of the acoustic ceilings over the cells in camp five. And then I was taking notes about how much the holding cells were. Courthouse was 3 million. Anyway. Interviewer: Could you move from transpose some of these sketches onto a larger piece? - I probably could, but then I would be doing it. It's a little rule in myself. Once I leave a courtroom, and it's been signed off to me, it's frozen in time. The only thing I can do is remove smudges. But I don't feel that morally I should alter it. It's been approved that way. It's frozen that way. And I fell sort of, maybe I'll enhance these a bit, because they're for my own personal exercise, but they've become sort of valuable, because in some ways I've been able to capture things that aren't as. I am edited, I am under the same rules as a camera. But I can fade something and I can show a person and fade it. And it doesn't look like a headless horseman. You know? Interviewer: You must have piles of those sketchbooks. Janet: I do have several. This was one that I grabbed because I thought, wow, I've got actually got some of the camp in here. Now I'm not getting that as much because it's not allowed. Interviewer: What's not allowed? - When I go down for a hearing, we're not doing camp tours anymore. I'm not going to be going there, unless, I went specifically to fly to see the camps. You have to go separately for that now. (inaudible) - I could ask, but I wouldn't expect. I have asked this too. I do rent a bike when I go there and I do bike around. Interviewer: Without an escort? - But within the areas in which we're allowed to go, yes. I can cross out of our compound but I have to make sure I have my media pass with me. And I try not to. I just, I don't try to shake the nest at all. I don't wanna poke unreasonably, but I do want to to go see where I'm at and not try to take advantage of that sketch whatever I can without breaking any rules. Interviewer: Have you ever sketched the prison guards when they're off duty? - No, I don't think I'd have access and I don't, think they'd want that. They might. I never thought to ask. I think that there's, since it's a duty thing for them I don't know if that would be allowed. Interviewer: Do you pay for your housing? - No, we had in the past, when we were staying in the bachelors quarters, but the tent camp justice compound is all free. We do have to pay, I have to pay for internet. So when I get there, I have to pay the $150 for the week to be able to move sketches and things like that. And it used to be that a photographer would go down, but I've become that person. So I will literally go up sketch, come back, And while I'm eating lunch, I'm photographing the work and writing the cut lines and sending it out to media. And then going back through security and going up for the second round. That's sort of, I've become sort of a one man band at times, depending on who's there what's their resources. Interviewer: July, do you have some questions? July: I have a general question about your... - Oh sure. July: When you draw, you called it visual storytelling, Is your goal to be as objective as possible or to take an assessment and to try to project what you think the audience needs to see? - I really battle with that. It's so important to me that I treat it like a journalist and try to impart the information as objectively but truthfully as possible. I mean, that to me is the most important thing as emotional as I might feel here and there, I don't want that to alter what I'm showing unless it can put a humanity to it. I don't want it to just be a cold Polaroid. So I might show movement or I might draw the eye here or there with a thicker line, or a darker area or more detail or a little color. But my goal is to try to approach this in the way of not putting myself other than my training to task. Like, how can I tell this as truthfully as possible and let whoever's looking at it to take away what they see? Like I said, the body language, I'll take every visual opportunity I can to tell it from all sides, whether it's a family member who might be holding up a picture of somebody they lost or a detainee pointing out something that happened to them or standing up to make a point or coming in restraint, because they can't walk. Or prosecution pointing something out that's an important image. Like if there's anything being projected that's visual evidence, I'll draw that as well. Because I don't know if that's going to come out. So that to me, that's my job is, how can I do this without altering it or skewing it? So that it's as honest an image as possible, but it's not always easy to do that for a lot of different reasons, but I'm hoping that I do somehow achieve it. I hope that answers the question. - I have a second- - Could you look at me when you answer? - Yeah, sure, sure. July: I have a second general question, as a member of the media, and I know that the staff socialize at Guantanamo. Do you socialize with the people who work at Guantanamo? - Inevitably, you do. Because of the nature of where you're at. It's almost like being on a campus. You fly in with family members and all the people involved in the court, many of the people anyway, and then you fly out with many of them. And you run into them. You might go out for dinner and there's Judge Paul. July: So things from them, or are they circumspect? You talk about Guantanamo when you are with people who work there? - Yeah. I have spoken with people from all sides. I'm curious to know what their perspectives are. But they're not going to tell me what they don't want me to know too. I mean, anybody prosecutors or somebody who's working with Khalid Shaikh Muhammad isn't gonna tell me their opinions or feelings. But I will ask how is it to represent somebody that claims to have masterminded this? And they'll say, "Well, he's a family man. And he has this and that. And these are his beliefs. And he's very forbid about it and he feels justified." And they'll tell me this stuff, and I wanna hear it. I won't make in a judgment on them, but then I'll hear family members speak. We're not allowed to talk to them unless they speak to us. We have to stay respectful, but I'll be approached. Sometimes I'll be asked, can you draw us while we watch this? Because we want to see, yeah, to us, this is important. And I'll say, well, if I can, I will, yeah, absolutely. If you want me to, and I've got time to do that, I will. And I've spoken, I've heard testimony and I've listened to Omar's past interrogator who calls himself the monster who regrets what he has done. There's a lot of psychological damage I think that some service people have gone through in doing service. So it's been interesting. Like I did have the opportunity to send images of my sketches to Hom Don and ask him, "How did he feel in these images?" I want to know that, I wanna know all sides. But I'm also a member and everybody's eyes as a media person, so there's a certain guardedness, but there are times when I've heard things from both sides. And I just make a point of keeping it separate and not sharing one with the other. July: And I have another last question, as a child who was in a military family and in military barracks, what is the sort of general feel for you of the Guantanamo experience overall, compared to other places where you lived? I realize you were a child then, but do you get a sense that it's different? I know you said it looked familiar, but how does it feel? - Well, yeah, my father used to talk about civilians, "Oh, the civilians don't understand, or the civilians don't get this or that." And he was part of silk purse, which is a kind of secret. He was a pilot. He did mid-air refueling during Vietnam war. So he had this viewpoint that the civilians just didn't understand the sacrifice that the military goes through to keep us all safe. So I grew up hearing that, but I also became a civilian. Isn't it all? And lived through, saw the 9/11 attacks and worked with the associated press, as a graphics journalist. And so I feel like I have one foot here and one foot there and it's straddling it. So I think that helped me when I had to negotiate the four hours sit in to say I really understand the security. I really respect what you're trying to do to serve us. But I also know that we have this role, and we have this transparency and we need to do that. So I think it's really helped me negotiate my position a lot to really kind of understand, or try to understand and be sensitive to both perspectives. I think it's served me that way. Interviewer: Johnny, did you have something? Johnny: Yeah. Interviewer: As a filmmaker, I'm sure. Johnny: Well, yeah, but I'm also struck by, as you tell this story, how much you had to be an advocate for yourself in that space and that the, is that a new experience or how much would you attribute that to the complexities of Guantanamo and the intensity of the whole environment? It seems like you kind of had to step up and that actually kept you more engaged. - Yeah, it's extremely uncomfortable, because I am really not a confrontational person at all. I'll do anything I can to avoid conflict. But this is the ultimate conflict and there's really literally nobody there. There's one journalist that'll go to observe. And many of the other journalists will stay in the mock, the media, back in the hangar where they work. 'Cause they can watch the video feed and they can tweet, 'cause otherwise they're only able to write, and they've even taken when people have drawn a schematic they've taken that away from them. So I'm it, I'm the only person representing myself. So yeah, the confrontations, the complexities, all of it can be scary and daunting and I've just, adrenaline. And just trying to think, okay, how can I swim through this and stay with my head and shoulders above the water and just get to the other side and resolve it? Visually, personally and make sure we're all working together. So that, I'm trying to do it, and it's really, sometimes really, it's adrenaline all the way. It's exhausting days of navigating that. But the pay office, I think I get the best that I can possibly get, or at least that's what I'm striving for. But you just never know when you're going to hit it a weird roadblock and it will happen out of nowhere. Like the Majeed Khan thing or something like that. So yeah, you're kind of ready. It's a lot, I mean, any, I think any journalist or any camera person will probably share the same thing that there are all these rules and you're just constantly, am I breaking it? Is this gonna be scrubbed? I mean, is this going to be taken away? Is this, how much can I do within this box? And is there a wiggle room? But, yeah, it's, I guess I hope I've answered it 1,000 ways right now, but if, yeah, it's a challenge. Interviewer: I want to follow up on that because so did Guantanamo change you? - Change me? - I don't know. Are you a different person than you were when you first went down in 06 to? - Probably. I mean, I have a better awareness. I mean, a lot more awareness. I didn't know what was going on there, what it was like. Interviewer: Well, what kind of awareness did, if the world became aware of the way you are, would things be different? I mean, is that kind of where does that all people need to have and don't have? - Well, a lot of people, there's things that I know that are probably, certain things, I haven't seen everything. None of us have seen everything that's going on, or heard everything that's going on. It's just a known thing. But what I've seen and heard, people don't realize it is a working base, that they're fenced off or literally, yeah. The detention center is literally on the other side as far away from where people are living and working. People lived and work there for years have never had anything to do with it. So people don't realize that it's a working base, an active base, it always has been, it was before, it is still. But I've come out understanding much more of the, just by exposure to the court environment, to the journalist, to all the people involved, the military, the prosecutors, just by listening to them, I have a much richer sense of what's happening down there. And so that's changed. I'm educated on that. Camp x-ray's overgrown. They make sure we all know that. It's the one tour I think we do have, is, look how overgrown this is. But it to see it physically and to see, kind of thrown together prison nine month or whatever length of detainment, but isn't, Cuba's tough. I mean, I can't imagine that being in prison, outside, in those little spaces with the limitations that they had and, no, it's a good thing it's closed. And a lot of the other prisons have closed since I've been there at the camps, that's where told to call them. Everything has an acronym or a different name, detainee, camp, different language. But yeah, I'm changed from a better understanding of just physically what it is and mentally what's happening visually. Interviewer: I have two more questions unless something else comes up. One is, have you ever gotten criticism outside of the military for your illustrations? Have people ever said things to you either written to you or spoken to you about your work? - Yeah, I mean, I got criticized in a review of the book saying, how could somebody do that and be neutral? They were angry that I made it sort of a political or whatever, but I felt like that's the goal of the book. So I didn't feel it was harsh. I mean people have complained that the likenesses are bad, and I would tend to agree with them. It's not that, some of these drawings are just, I cringe, but it's what I did, and it's what I did in the time that I had. So yeah, there are always gonna be, I wasn't that fat, or I wasn't that bald, or you left me out, which is horrifying, which happens. Or I did, I wasn't quite in that chair. Oops. I did move a row, sorry. Yeah, there is some human error there. So there's plenty of room for, I'm sure, criticism. And I'm might even my own harshest critic when I walk away from it all, 'cause you're always hoping to do a little bit better than maybe you did. Interviewer: And are there are people who will compliment you and thank you for your work because you're the only one who doing it? - They do. And I really appreciate that. And I've heard it from surprising sources. I've heard feedback from apparently detainees and their families have appreciated seeing, "Oh, somebody is wearing the scarf I sent." And I've also heard prosecution say, "Oh great, you got us here." Or somebody will say, "Oh, I was standing on the side as one of those anonymous people, but it's cool because I can tell my friends I was part of that detail." Observers, they'll be glad that they're represented. NGOs, human rights, military, I'm trying to get everybody that's part of it. They're all important. They're all part of it. And it's my job to try to include them and make sure they're represented visually. Interviewer: So is this something you are thinking about talking about that I didn't ask you, and you're... - I think, well, I hope, I'm sure there'll be 1,000 things later, but if there are, I'd be happy to always answer, but I think you're pretty comprehensive here and I hope that I've given you. Interviewer: Do you see yourself going forward if Trump sends people to Guantanamo? Do you see yourself continuing this process? - Well, yeah. I mean, if he was to send, there was a question whether he was gonna send some recently detained people, he could have, and I think instead they did go federally. So if they hadn't, I think that would have been really important. So, if I'm in a position to be able to go and there's, yeah. Who knows, I mean, Carol and I and a few other people have joked that we could easily be senior citizens in the not too distant future, less distant nowadays, but this has gone on. For me, what is it now? - Almost 12 years. - Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I would never have thought. It was never occurred to me that it would be. But it could easily be one of those things that just won't move forward. It's very glacial. I mean, that's the difference. The military commissions are glacial. There's just so much stuff that we feel. It feels like it takes a lot much longer time there than anywhere else. And some reasons are clear, and some reasons are not so, but... Interviewer: Well, we need 20 seconds of room tone before we can shut down. So if you feel, I think you've pretty much answered that there's nothing else. We'll take the 20 seconds and then end. - Okay. - Okay. - Yeah. Thank you. Johnny: So we'll sit quietly here for a minute. Janet: Okay. Johnny: Begin room tone.