- It was hard to tell who you had. Because you had people who, what we knew is they were on the battlefield. They were fighting, they were fighting back. They had no or minimal pocket litter, no identification. And when we would confront them, they would mislead, misrepresent, lie, whatever it may be. You know, whether they're innocent or not, you know, is a different story. But that, that's what would happen. So you have to look at the, the, the, the mindset of, of we, as, as Americans, 911 is only a few months away. The tower is still burning, anthrax attacks, shoe bomber. You know, it was right around Christmas time. You have all these things happening. And then you have these, and then we're still getting threats. Remember, bin Laden was putting out videos celebrating the attack and saying more is coming. And you have the, all of a sudden you have these people that were, that were there fighting, or they're in a battlefield. And what are you going to assume? But you have to ask yourself this question. Particularly when you're dealing with a European. You know we had 10 Brits, seven French, couple, you know a couple of Belgians, some Danes, some Swedes, some Spaniards, you know, the list goes on. What are they doing in Afghanistan in 2001? What, what are they doing there in October, November, December of 2001? Other than to be part of the, to be part of the conflict. So that, that's part of the mindset. So you realize that they, they are there. They're jihadists. They're, they're there to fight. You know? So then when you get them, and you start, and you start getting this visual, of course, you're assuming, you're assuming the worst. They're the worst of the worst. Now, ultimately, when we start vetting some of these people, you start realizing that there's a generalization. But if you're the 18, 19 year old kid and you've just got into a firefight with a house, and your colleagues been killed, and you walk in, you capture 10 people. Are you going to sit there? "Are you the cook or the driver?" No, you're going to say, look, "All of you are coming." "I'm bringing you to Bagram." "Let them figure it out." "All I know is this house, they're shooting at me." "You know, there's, there's, they're, "they're terrorists or whatever, Taliban in there." "You know, you're all being detained." Bagram was supposed to be a vetting place. They were supposed to be vetted. And those that didn't need to be detained were to be let go, and the bad ones to go to Guantanamo. But you can see what would happen. Is just that people, they'd reach their capacity and like "I'm not going to make this call." You know, "I'm not going to say, I'm 22 years old." "I'm not going to put my name on the line and say, this guy is a cook." "And all of a sudden it's bin Laden's Lieutenant." You know? Boom, they go to Guantanamo. And then ultimately you're getting into the White House, the Situation Room where we would sit with the President and others. And we're sitting like, we've got to make a call. You've, you've got to make a call. You know, this person is, is on the fence. So that's when we came up with the triage of low, mid-level, and high-level threat people. The low level, of course, let them go. We came up with policy for mid-level people that we said, they still pose a threat. They need to be detained, investigated or prosecuted, but we the United States do not have to do it. And that's when the whole transfer policy began.