WEBVTT
1
00:00:05.520 --> 00:00:06.986
Okay, rolling.
2
00:00:06.986 --> 00:00:07.819
Good.
3
00:00:07.819 --> 00:00:08.652
Okay, good morning.
4
00:00:08.652 --> 00:00:09.570
Good morning.
5
00:00:09.570 --> 00:00:10.920
We're very grateful to you
6
00:00:10.920 --> 00:00:14.213
for participating in the witness to Guantanamo project.
7
00:00:15.240 --> 00:00:16.260
We invite you to speak
8
00:00:16.260 --> 00:00:18.400
of your experiences and your involvement
9
00:00:18.400 --> 00:00:22.040
with the detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
10
00:00:22.040 --> 00:00:23.868
We are hoping to provide you
11
00:00:23.868 --> 00:00:27.400
with an opportunity to tell your story in your own words.
12
00:00:27.400 --> 00:00:29.350
We are creating an archive of stories
13
00:00:29.350 --> 00:00:32.480
so that people in America and around the world
14
00:00:32.480 --> 00:00:35.380
will have a better understanding of what you and others
15
00:00:35.380 --> 00:00:38.400
have observed and experienced.
16
00:00:38.400 --> 00:00:41.720
Our future generations must know what happened in Guantanamo
17
00:00:41.720 --> 00:00:44.533
and by telling the story you're contributing to history.
18
00:00:45.790 --> 00:00:47.680
And we appreciate your courage and willingness
19
00:00:47.680 --> 00:00:49.910
to speak with us today.
20
00:00:49.910 --> 00:00:53.230
And if there's anything you say, David
21
00:00:53.230 --> 00:00:54.497
that you wanna retract just let us know
22
00:00:54.497 --> 00:00:56.150
and we can remove it
23
00:00:56.150 --> 00:00:59.185
and if you wanna take a break at any time, let us know
24
00:00:59.185 --> 00:01:00.063
and we can do that.
25
00:01:00.063 --> 00:01:01.044
Okay.
26
00:01:01.044 --> 00:01:01.877
So, thanks.
27
00:01:01.877 --> 00:01:03.020
So I'd like to begin by having you
28
00:01:03.020 --> 00:01:04.840
tell us a little about yourself, your name
29
00:01:04.840 --> 00:01:09.840
and your age and birthday and background education.
30
00:01:10.380 --> 00:01:13.370
Okay, well, I was born in 1954.
31
00:01:13.370 --> 00:01:15.370
I'm 57 in Brooklyn.
32
00:01:15.370 --> 00:01:18.433
When I was seven, we moved to Manhattan, Chelsea.
33
00:01:20.500 --> 00:01:23.550
I went to Public's Elementary School,
34
00:01:23.550 --> 00:01:26.710
then I went to private high school called Horace Mann
35
00:01:26.710 --> 00:01:30.080
and then I went to Columbia University for my BA
36
00:01:30.080 --> 00:01:31.973
and then Harvard for my JD.
37
00:01:33.700 --> 00:01:38.700
My background prepared me for the work that I do now
38
00:01:39.530 --> 00:01:41.230
in perhaps a unique way.
39
00:01:41.230 --> 00:01:44.400
My father was a member of the communist party
40
00:01:44.400 --> 00:01:47.930
who went to jail in the early '60s
41
00:01:47.930 --> 00:01:50.360
as part of the witch-hunt
42
00:01:50.360 --> 00:01:53.540
of second level communist party officials.
43
00:01:53.540 --> 00:01:58.540
He was a party organizer from at least the mid '30s
44
00:01:59.040 --> 00:02:04.040
until the party went underground in '49 or '50
45
00:02:04.370 --> 00:02:06.980
then he became the education director
46
00:02:06.980 --> 00:02:11.420
and then he was indicted and tried with a group of others
47
00:02:11.420 --> 00:02:16.420
in '57 or '58 convicted on the testimony
48
00:02:18.960 --> 00:02:23.960
of an army deserter that the government induced to identify
49
00:02:24.430 --> 00:02:27.860
and testify against, and then spent 16 months
50
00:02:27.860 --> 00:02:30.873
in a federal prison in Milan, Michigan.
51
00:02:32.620 --> 00:02:36.930
My mother, oh, and I should say that my father
52
00:02:36.930 --> 00:02:41.930
was the youngest of a family of immigrants
53
00:02:42.480 --> 00:02:46.330
from Eastern Europe who came over as part of the great wave
54
00:02:46.330 --> 00:02:47.990
in the late 19th century.
55
00:02:47.990 --> 00:02:50.710
My father was one of five children.
56
00:02:50.710 --> 00:02:55.230
I think that my family on their side came from Galicia
57
00:02:55.230 --> 00:02:59.600
in the Austria-Hungarian empire, but basically
58
00:02:59.600 --> 00:03:01.860
there was an immigrant background,
59
00:03:01.860 --> 00:03:06.860
there was a childhood in poverty, orphanages and the like,
60
00:03:07.310 --> 00:03:10.090
but he was very intent on education
61
00:03:10.090 --> 00:03:12.050
and he went to City College,
62
00:03:12.050 --> 00:03:16.130
which he got kicked out of for a tuition strike.
63
00:03:16.130 --> 00:03:19.150
And that was sort of his career.
64
00:03:19.150 --> 00:03:21.080
And I grew up in a background
65
00:03:23.410 --> 00:03:27.670
of a father who had suffered a great injustice
66
00:03:27.670 --> 00:03:32.670
and who had been motivated by the purest ideals.
67
00:03:33.610 --> 00:03:38.060
My mother grew up in a middle class Jewish family
68
00:03:39.780 --> 00:03:43.970
lived in the suburbs first on her block to have a bicycle
69
00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:47.710
but her family was progressive too.
70
00:03:47.710 --> 00:03:51.990
Her mother was the leader of the local NAACP chapter
71
00:03:51.990 --> 00:03:54.330
and was monitored by the FBI.
72
00:03:54.330 --> 00:03:57.410
And my mother subscribed to the tenets of my father,
73
00:03:57.410 --> 00:03:59.640
they met 1949.
74
00:03:59.640 --> 00:04:03.283
So I grew up in that background.
75
00:04:05.280 --> 00:04:08.640
I didn't really do anything political as a child,
76
00:04:08.640 --> 00:04:12.310
but when I became 14 or 15 or 16,
77
00:04:12.310 --> 00:04:17.030
you had the cultural revolution in the United States,
78
00:04:17.030 --> 00:04:21.410
the anti-authoritarian movement in the United States.
79
00:04:21.410 --> 00:04:24.570
And maybe I would have become involved and passionate
80
00:04:24.570 --> 00:04:27.540
in that activity anyway,
81
00:04:27.540 --> 00:04:32.290
but it was surely intensified perhaps
82
00:04:32.290 --> 00:04:34.083
by my parents' background,
83
00:04:35.110 --> 00:04:37.810
I went to the anti war marches.
84
00:04:37.810 --> 00:04:39.900
I even went with a good friend
85
00:04:39.900 --> 00:04:42.520
to a Black Panther party rally,
86
00:04:42.520 --> 00:04:45.140
despite warnings that it was going to be dangerous
87
00:04:45.140 --> 00:04:46.663
for two white kids.
88
00:04:47.540 --> 00:04:52.163
I was a leader of the anti-Vietnam group at Horace Mann.
89
00:04:53.090 --> 00:04:56.210
And when I got to Columbia in 1972,
90
00:04:56.210 --> 00:04:59.840
I was disappointed that I had missed most of the action
91
00:04:59.840 --> 00:05:01.380
that was over by then.
92
00:05:01.380 --> 00:05:03.240
I went then to Harvard Law School
93
00:05:03.240 --> 00:05:06.400
where I was apolitical,
94
00:05:06.400 --> 00:05:10.140
I worked with Professor Laurence Tribe after I graduated
95
00:05:10.140 --> 00:05:13.410
of renowned constitutional law scholar
96
00:05:13.410 --> 00:05:15.760
then came down to Washington
97
00:05:15.760 --> 00:05:18.020
and worked for 25 years
98
00:05:18.020 --> 00:05:22.870
in a very prestigious corporate law firm
99
00:05:22.870 --> 00:05:24.403
called Covington & Burling.
100
00:05:25.900 --> 00:05:28.720
There was really no political activity
101
00:05:28.720 --> 00:05:31.170
that aroused my passion at that time
102
00:05:31.170 --> 00:05:33.290
the Reagan revolution occurred,
103
00:05:33.290 --> 00:05:37.210
but that wasn't the kind of injustice
104
00:05:37.210 --> 00:05:38.780
that really stirred me.
105
00:05:38.780 --> 00:05:41.740
Of course I was against everything that they did.
106
00:05:43.570 --> 00:05:46.560
I wanted to get into politics and policy
107
00:05:46.560 --> 00:05:50.560
which was the reason that I came down to Washington.
108
00:05:50.560 --> 00:05:54.130
I'd already married Naomi in 1979.
109
00:05:54.130 --> 00:05:57.410
And when you go to a corporate law firm like Covington,
110
00:05:57.410 --> 00:06:01.010
you can do policy and politics, but you have to do them
111
00:06:01.010 --> 00:06:05.293
on behalf of malefactors of great wealth.
112
00:06:06.200 --> 00:06:10.410
And so I was brought in as an appellate lawyer,
113
00:06:10.410 --> 00:06:12.454
as a constitutional lawyer
114
00:06:12.454 --> 00:06:16.490
and I continued to do that work, but beginning of 1985
115
00:06:16.490 --> 00:06:21.490
I became a key part of the firm's tobacco practice
116
00:06:23.530 --> 00:06:26.260
and for the next 15 years or so,
117
00:06:26.260 --> 00:06:29.450
I spent my time not in the lawsuits,
118
00:06:29.450 --> 00:06:34.450
but on the legislative front dreaming up arguments
119
00:06:34.570 --> 00:06:37.380
against regulation of tobacco companies
120
00:06:37.380 --> 00:06:41.950
going around the country and testifying writing point papers
121
00:06:41.950 --> 00:06:45.860
all the kinds of things that a legislative advocate does.
122
00:06:45.860 --> 00:06:49.770
And it really was the best training in the world
123
00:06:49.770 --> 00:06:52.230
for what I'm doing now, ironically,
124
00:06:52.230 --> 00:06:55.563
the real training and advocacy.
125
00:06:56.410 --> 00:07:01.410
And at the time I believe in what I was doing as a cause
126
00:07:03.100 --> 00:07:08.100
because it involved constitutional issues, statutory issues
127
00:07:08.550 --> 00:07:12.550
and I felt that here was a situation of the state
128
00:07:12.550 --> 00:07:14.520
abusing its power.
129
00:07:14.520 --> 00:07:19.520
I simply didn't pay any attention to the social equities.
130
00:07:20.440 --> 00:07:23.123
It was really the political and legal equities.
131
00:07:24.350 --> 00:07:27.920
In 2001 or so, there was a big settlement
132
00:07:27.920 --> 00:07:30.380
between the tobacco industry
133
00:07:30.380 --> 00:07:32.250
and the attorneys general,
134
00:07:32.250 --> 00:07:35.340
actually the settlement was in 1998,
135
00:07:35.340 --> 00:07:40.340
but by 2001 or so that work really evaporated at the firm.
136
00:07:43.620 --> 00:07:46.493
I continued to do other work within my skillsets.
137
00:07:47.410 --> 00:07:50.250
Up until that point, I had filed an Amicus briefs
138
00:07:50.250 --> 00:07:53.480
maybe a couple of years, a couple each year
139
00:07:53.480 --> 00:07:55.550
for groups like the ACLU,
140
00:07:55.550 --> 00:07:59.110
Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
141
00:07:59.110 --> 00:08:03.160
I was deeply involved in the new Dow case
142
00:08:03.160 --> 00:08:06.120
which was the pledge of allegiance case
143
00:08:08.370 --> 00:08:13.370
just deeply involved in it as an Amicus for the ACLU
144
00:08:14.313 --> 00:08:18.103
and people of United for Separation of Church and State.
145
00:08:19.260 --> 00:08:23.510
And then that was decided in about 2002.
146
00:08:23.510 --> 00:08:28.430
Then in the spring of I just to roll back,
147
00:08:28.430 --> 00:08:33.430
I got a young lawyer named Neil Katyal at Georgetown
148
00:08:35.510 --> 00:08:39.480
to team up with Richard Epstein at Chicago.
149
00:08:39.480 --> 00:08:42.280
It was sort of a left to right combination
150
00:08:42.280 --> 00:08:44.280
in the new Dow case.
151
00:08:44.280 --> 00:08:48.530
And I mentioned this because in the spring of 2004,
152
00:08:48.530 --> 00:08:53.530
Neil asked me to represent anarchy, generals and admirals
153
00:08:57.230 --> 00:09:00.763
in the district court, in the Hamdan case.
154
00:09:01.780 --> 00:09:04.910
That was a great experience
155
00:09:06.500 --> 00:09:11.500
and it was really ego gratifying
156
00:09:11.850 --> 00:09:16.070
when Judge Robertson singled our brief out
157
00:09:16.070 --> 00:09:20.040
and actually ruled on the basis of arguments
158
00:09:20.040 --> 00:09:21.283
that we had presented.
159
00:09:22.160 --> 00:09:27.050
We locked out basically, but because I was known
160
00:09:27.050 --> 00:09:29.800
as having been involved in Hamdan,
161
00:09:29.800 --> 00:09:33.270
at the next stage when the Supreme court ruled
162
00:09:33.270 --> 00:09:36.900
in the Rasul case, that the detainees
163
00:09:36.900 --> 00:09:39.670
were entitled to bring habeas actions,
164
00:09:39.670 --> 00:09:41.420
that the courthouse doors were open
165
00:09:41.420 --> 00:09:45.100
and that they could have lawyers, a young colleague
166
00:09:45.100 --> 00:09:49.889
in our New York office, Mark Falcoff not so young
167
00:09:49.889 --> 00:09:54.270
but basically a new associate reached out to CCR
168
00:09:54.270 --> 00:09:56.610
and asked if there were any Guantanamo cases
169
00:09:56.610 --> 00:09:57.543
we could handle.
170
00:10:01.170 --> 00:10:06.170
At the time, CCR was handing out batches of clients
171
00:10:07.440 --> 00:10:12.440
to big law firms and they handed out 13 Yemenis to us.
172
00:10:14.410 --> 00:10:16.490
Mark called up and asked
173
00:10:16.490 --> 00:10:19.963
whether I would be the supervising partner for this work.
174
00:10:20.850 --> 00:10:22.920
I was extremely busy at the time.
175
00:10:22.920 --> 00:10:26.050
And I said to Mark, yes, I'll supervise
176
00:10:26.050 --> 00:10:30.660
as long as I don't have to do any work on this stuff.
177
00:10:30.660 --> 00:10:32.170
But as soon became apparent
178
00:10:32.170 --> 00:10:36.480
that the firm would have no influence in the litigation
179
00:10:36.480 --> 00:10:40.923
unless a senior guy like me got involved,
180
00:10:41.960 --> 00:10:46.960
and to make a long story short, the more I got involved,
181
00:10:47.110 --> 00:10:49.590
the more deeply I got involved,
182
00:10:49.590 --> 00:10:54.460
the more passionately I felt about what was happening here.
183
00:10:57.820 --> 00:11:01.040
These were real human beings, individuals
184
00:11:01.040 --> 00:11:06.040
who were being treated absolutely outrageously
185
00:11:08.721 --> 00:11:13.721
and injustice viably by our own government.
186
00:11:14.300 --> 00:11:18.130
And I guess that's what aroused my passion most.
187
00:11:18.130 --> 00:11:23.130
I had represented gay men in the '80s before.
188
00:11:26.984 --> 00:11:30.590
It was really not, I wouldn't say before it was respectable,
189
00:11:30.590 --> 00:11:34.323
I'd say before it was a movement.
190
00:11:35.500 --> 00:11:37.820
I was always drawn to cases
191
00:11:37.820 --> 00:11:41.090
in which the government was placing its boot
192
00:11:41.090 --> 00:11:45.070
on somebody's neck, but representing individuals
193
00:11:45.070 --> 00:11:47.160
where this happens is much different
194
00:11:47.160 --> 00:11:49.950
from representing corporations
195
00:11:49.950 --> 00:11:54.693
even though as Mr. Romney says, corporations are people.
196
00:11:55.850 --> 00:11:57.860
So, okay, well anyway,
197
00:11:57.860 --> 00:12:00.200
let me just make the long story short.
198
00:12:00.200 --> 00:12:04.810
So over the next four years, I was in Yemen several times
199
00:12:04.810 --> 00:12:09.140
representing, going to the families, I got to know them,
200
00:12:09.140 --> 00:12:13.690
I got to have some feel for the culture,
201
00:12:13.690 --> 00:12:16.493
which is just beautiful.
202
00:12:17.990 --> 00:12:21.600
I fell in love with the work that I was doing.
203
00:12:21.600 --> 00:12:26.600
And by 2008, I had lost all interest in the corporate work.
204
00:12:27.768 --> 00:12:32.768
It didn't grab me whether or not IBM won in a pension case
205
00:12:34.330 --> 00:12:39.253
against a class of plaintiffs or patents suit.
206
00:12:40.460 --> 00:12:44.570
It called upon my legal skillsets
207
00:12:44.570 --> 00:12:49.290
but the work had become meaningless to me and empty.
208
00:12:49.290 --> 00:12:51.020
And I just couldn't keep my mind on it.
209
00:12:51.020 --> 00:12:53.560
I was always doing the Guantanamo stuff.
210
00:12:53.560 --> 00:12:56.450
So I left in the summer of 2008.
211
00:12:56.450 --> 00:13:01.450
I organized a nonprofit, which I called appeal for justice
212
00:13:01.870 --> 00:13:06.870
which has devolved into the name of my practice
213
00:13:07.690 --> 00:13:11.150
because I haven't developed it as an organization.
214
00:13:11.150 --> 00:13:12.730
And that's what I've been doing
215
00:13:12.730 --> 00:13:17.270
for the last four or five years.
216
00:13:17.270 --> 00:13:22.270
And I think I'm one of the few habeas lawyers
217
00:13:22.430 --> 00:13:27.430
who have been involved in the work since Rasul,
218
00:13:27.820 --> 00:13:32.120
and maybe probably the only individual habeas lawyer
219
00:13:32.120 --> 00:13:35.710
who represents anything like the number of clients
220
00:13:35.710 --> 00:13:36.880
that I represent.
221
00:13:36.880 --> 00:13:40.520
I'd say that I represent now more than one in 10
222
00:13:41.686 --> 00:13:42.900
of the detainees
223
00:13:42.900 --> 00:13:46.540
and that includes the high value detainees in the account.
224
00:13:46.540 --> 00:13:48.030
If you take them out of the equation,
225
00:13:48.030 --> 00:13:50.140
the percentage is even higher.
226
00:13:50.140 --> 00:13:52.996
I'm very proud of it.
227
00:13:52.996 --> 00:13:57.996
It's given my life's work meaning,
228
00:13:59.000 --> 00:14:02.200
that's not why I did it but it turns out that way.
229
00:14:02.200 --> 00:14:06.570
I'd rather have on my tombstone the epitaph
230
00:14:07.940 --> 00:14:10.390
that I represented Guantanamo,
231
00:14:10.390 --> 00:14:12.310
David Remes Guantanamo lawyer
232
00:14:12.310 --> 00:14:15.063
than David Remes anti trust lawyer.
233
00:14:16.780 --> 00:14:18.671
Just to follow up on that.
234
00:14:18.671 --> 00:14:19.921
And then I wanna go back,
235
00:14:22.150 --> 00:14:27.150
how do you support this single operation that you're doing?
236
00:14:28.460 --> 00:14:30.300
Well up until 2008,
237
00:14:30.300 --> 00:14:33.410
I was very handsomely paid by Covington.
238
00:14:33.410 --> 00:14:36.253
So I could have my cake and eat it too.
239
00:14:37.900 --> 00:14:42.900
Since 2008, I've spent all of my time on this work.
240
00:14:43.960 --> 00:14:46.460
I haven't had any other source of income
241
00:14:46.460 --> 00:14:49.430
except for my minor honoraria.
242
00:14:49.430 --> 00:14:52.430
And I've been paying for the work out of own pocket.
243
00:14:52.430 --> 00:14:57.430
I received a generous separation payment from Covington
244
00:14:57.510 --> 00:15:02.170
and I've sort of spent that down and beyond that
245
00:15:03.180 --> 00:15:07.170
I'm just drawing down on a bank account
246
00:15:08.230 --> 00:15:09.770
and what that means
247
00:15:11.875 --> 00:15:14.400
and I can't keep doing it for much longer,
248
00:15:14.400 --> 00:15:19.400
but what that means from a material standpoint
249
00:15:19.940 --> 00:15:23.210
is that we can't make the house dance here,
250
00:15:23.210 --> 00:15:26.750
we can't go on a big vacations
251
00:15:26.750 --> 00:15:29.340
and we'll have a very different retirement
252
00:15:29.340 --> 00:15:30.693
than we would have had.
253
00:15:31.690 --> 00:15:33.880
And I feel kind of bad about that
254
00:15:33.880 --> 00:15:38.450
and sometimes I regret it from that standpoint
255
00:15:38.450 --> 00:15:41.170
but my girls were out of school and independent.
256
00:15:41.170 --> 00:15:42.993
So I didn't have the tuition burden,
257
00:15:43.970 --> 00:15:46.520
we had renovated the house,
258
00:15:46.520 --> 00:15:49.090
we don't go on extravagant vacations.
259
00:15:49.090 --> 00:15:53.943
So we haven't, we're not part of the 47%.
260
00:15:57.140 --> 00:16:00.000
And going back to two questions, one is,
261
00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:02.460
did you and I don't wanna go into it any more than this
262
00:16:02.460 --> 00:16:04.200
but just what you were saying.
263
00:16:04.200 --> 00:16:05.820
Did your parents tell you the stories
264
00:16:05.820 --> 00:16:09.090
that you started this interview with
265
00:16:09.090 --> 00:16:12.880
so that you were they informed your upbringing as well?
266
00:16:12.880 --> 00:16:14.440
It isn't that you heard them later on
267
00:16:14.440 --> 00:16:15.960
you knew as you were growing up
268
00:16:15.960 --> 00:16:19.000
about the hardship your father had suffered?
269
00:16:19.000 --> 00:16:24.000
Well, it's not really possible for children
270
00:16:24.200 --> 00:16:26.312
at the age of seven or eight
271
00:16:26.312 --> 00:16:29.060
to understand this kind of thing.
272
00:16:29.060 --> 00:16:32.240
And I don't think I really began to understand it
273
00:16:32.240 --> 00:16:37.240
until I was 11 or 12, but when my father got out of jail,
274
00:16:37.600 --> 00:16:40.590
he and my mother sat me and my sister down
275
00:16:40.590 --> 00:16:44.240
and the way they presented what had happened to him
276
00:16:44.240 --> 00:16:46.740
was in a very romantic light.
277
00:16:46.740 --> 00:16:51.203
They compared him to Robin Hood basically.
278
00:16:52.060 --> 00:16:54.150
And as the years went on, I got filled
279
00:16:54.150 --> 00:16:59.150
in on more and more of the details but I had the basic story
280
00:16:59.247 --> 00:17:01.200
and the political aspect of the story
281
00:17:01.200 --> 00:17:03.750
by the time I was 10 or 11.
282
00:17:03.750 --> 00:17:08.310
It was something still to be not ashamed of
283
00:17:08.310 --> 00:17:13.310
but the cause of worry, if people knew about it.
284
00:17:14.900 --> 00:17:19.900
So my father and mother kept it to themselves.
285
00:17:20.150 --> 00:17:22.120
I kept it to myself.
286
00:17:22.120 --> 00:17:25.020
My sister was kind of apolitical,
287
00:17:25.020 --> 00:17:26.640
but for many years
288
00:17:27.560 --> 00:17:30.240
it was something I just didn't talk about.
289
00:17:30.240 --> 00:17:34.130
And so then going into 911,
290
00:17:34.130 --> 00:17:36.490
when 911 happened when the detainees
291
00:17:36.490 --> 00:17:38.333
were first taken to Guantanamo,
292
00:17:39.330 --> 00:17:42.750
since, what were you thinking at that time
293
00:17:42.750 --> 00:17:45.030
and when you agreed to do, how then were you thinking of it
294
00:17:45.030 --> 00:17:50.030
as just another one of your many pro bono projects
295
00:17:50.890 --> 00:17:53.410
or did you begin to pay more attention,
296
00:17:53.410 --> 00:17:56.590
I just want to know what happened during those four years
297
00:17:56.590 --> 00:17:59.140
that kind of led you to do the hominid grief.
298
00:17:59.140 --> 00:18:04.140
Well, on September 11th, 2001, I was on a conference call
299
00:18:06.160 --> 00:18:10.110
with one of my partners, with a client arguing about this.
300
00:18:10.110 --> 00:18:13.760
And all of a sudden my partner said
301
00:18:13.760 --> 00:18:17.190
plane went into one of the world trade centers.
302
00:18:17.190 --> 00:18:22.040
Have I thought a little by plane.
303
00:18:22.040 --> 00:18:25.290
And then he said, because he had a television,
304
00:18:25.290 --> 00:18:27.550
he said another plane has gone into the other one.
305
00:18:27.550 --> 00:18:30.520
And with my gift for perspicacity,
306
00:18:30.520 --> 00:18:33.143
I said that can't be a coincidence.
307
00:18:34.200 --> 00:18:39.200
And then I remember not really thinking about it very much.
308
00:18:40.680 --> 00:18:44.550
I thought about 911 because it had happened to my home city
309
00:18:44.550 --> 00:18:46.000
where my sister still lived
310
00:18:46.000 --> 00:18:48.970
and I really did feel a sense of personal danger
311
00:18:48.970 --> 00:18:51.510
because they also bombed the Pentagon
312
00:18:51.510 --> 00:18:53.580
and there were rumors they'd bombed Capitol
313
00:18:53.580 --> 00:18:55.133
or the White House and so on.
314
00:18:56.550 --> 00:18:58.300
But I really didn't think about it.
315
00:18:58.300 --> 00:19:00.680
I noticed that the government said
316
00:19:00.680 --> 00:19:02.700
that these detainees didn't have rights
317
00:19:02.700 --> 00:19:04.730
under the Geneva convention,
318
00:19:04.730 --> 00:19:07.170
that they were arriving at Guantanamo,
319
00:19:07.170 --> 00:19:08.920
but I really didn't think about it.
320
00:19:10.598 --> 00:19:15.598
By in 2004, when I was asked to work on the Hamdan case,
321
00:19:16.090 --> 00:19:19.463
it was just another case, it was an interesting case.
322
00:19:20.440 --> 00:19:24.800
I had no idea what a military commission was,
323
00:19:24.800 --> 00:19:28.200
I had no idea what GTMo meant.
324
00:19:28.200 --> 00:19:30.870
And I learned these things as I went along
325
00:19:30.870 --> 00:19:33.100
and I was very blessed to have associates
326
00:19:33.100 --> 00:19:37.513
who could do a lot of the work with me.
327
00:19:38.370 --> 00:19:39.660
And it wasn't really
328
00:19:39.660 --> 00:19:44.660
until I began to get into the work after Rasul.
329
00:19:47.920 --> 00:19:52.520
And even at that immediate point in July, 2004,
330
00:19:52.520 --> 00:19:54.320
it was an abstraction.
331
00:19:54.320 --> 00:19:59.320
It wasn't until I went to Guantanamo in December
332
00:19:59.390 --> 00:20:01.980
or late November of 2004
333
00:20:02.850 --> 00:20:07.850
and met the detainees that I really got the profound sense
334
00:20:10.530 --> 00:20:15.530
of horror that began the rock rolling down the hill.
335
00:20:19.010 --> 00:20:20.570
Good, and that's where I want to go.
336
00:20:20.570 --> 00:20:22.930
So could you have any expectations
337
00:20:22.930 --> 00:20:26.383
before you got on the airplane to Guantanamo is to what you?
338
00:20:26.383 --> 00:20:28.930
I have absolutely no idea.
339
00:20:28.930 --> 00:20:29.763
And when.
340
00:20:29.763 --> 00:20:32.950
We had to go, we had had to go through fight
341
00:20:32.950 --> 00:20:35.400
on the legal question of whether
342
00:20:37.040 --> 00:20:40.280
we could get the factual returns for the guys
343
00:20:40.280 --> 00:20:42.700
which were the accusations.
344
00:20:42.700 --> 00:20:47.700
My colleague Mark, when he looked at the returns,
345
00:20:48.720 --> 00:20:52.147
said, "David, my God, we're representing four people
346
00:20:52.147 --> 00:20:54.770
"who were in the 3030."
347
00:20:54.770 --> 00:20:59.710
We had absolutely no idea and no sense of these guys
348
00:20:59.710 --> 00:21:02.253
and no personal commitment to them at that point.
349
00:21:03.250 --> 00:21:04.900
And so when you arrived in Guantanamo,
350
00:21:04.900 --> 00:21:08.210
could you tell us what that was like
351
00:21:08.210 --> 00:21:11.830
in terms of your level and your meeting the clients?
352
00:21:11.830 --> 00:21:16.360
Well at that time, the military there,
353
00:21:16.360 --> 00:21:21.360
the joint task force Guantanamo really regarded these men
354
00:21:21.960 --> 00:21:26.743
as dangerous terrorists, really.
355
00:21:28.080 --> 00:21:33.080
And when we came off of the plane, it was evening,
356
00:21:33.470 --> 00:21:37.970
there were two bright Klieg lights facing us,
357
00:21:37.970 --> 00:21:42.540
two armed soldiers with machine guns
358
00:21:42.540 --> 00:21:45.450
and we were herded through an inspection line
359
00:21:45.450 --> 00:21:47.740
where they went through all our belongings,
360
00:21:47.740 --> 00:21:50.460
we were taken to the CBQ,
361
00:21:50.460 --> 00:21:55.460
which was the equivalent of a grade B motel six at the time.
362
00:21:59.560 --> 00:22:01.143
Then in the morning,
363
00:22:03.710 --> 00:22:06.730
we were ferried over to the other side of the Bay.
364
00:22:06.730 --> 00:22:08.320
The habeas lawyers were kept
365
00:22:08.320 --> 00:22:12.533
on the Leeward side of the Bay where the airport was.
366
00:22:13.445 --> 00:22:15.810
It was basically devoid of any civilization
367
00:22:16.650 --> 00:22:18.660
and that wasn't accidental.
368
00:22:18.660 --> 00:22:22.250
They still didn't accept the legitimacy
369
00:22:22.250 --> 00:22:23.990
of the habeas lawyers.
370
00:22:23.990 --> 00:22:28.990
I overheard one Sergeant say, when other Sergeant
371
00:22:30.130 --> 00:22:34.023
that Rasul was simply an advisory opinion.
372
00:22:35.670 --> 00:22:37.140
Yeah, wow.
373
00:22:37.140 --> 00:22:42.140
So we then were brought to Camp Delta or Camp Echo
374
00:22:43.220 --> 00:22:47.910
where they had set up these huts for client meetings.
375
00:22:47.910 --> 00:22:52.910
And in that way that the huts were organized, you'd go in,
376
00:22:53.720 --> 00:22:56.050
there'd be a cage on one side
377
00:22:56.050 --> 00:22:58.230
where the detainees were kept
378
00:22:58.230 --> 00:23:00.430
when they weren't meeting with their lawyers
379
00:23:00.430 --> 00:23:03.820
and then there was the meeting room where
380
00:23:03.820 --> 00:23:07.730
or the meeting area, 'cause the cage was a cage
381
00:23:07.730 --> 00:23:09.540
where there'd be a table
382
00:23:10.770 --> 00:23:14.070
and facing the back wall would be the detainee.
383
00:23:14.070 --> 00:23:15.630
And then the, on the other side
384
00:23:15.630 --> 00:23:18.020
with our backs facing the door
385
00:23:18.020 --> 00:23:20.333
were the lawyers and the translators.
386
00:23:21.690 --> 00:23:26.690
By the way, the interview rooms, the meeting rooms
387
00:23:27.420 --> 00:23:32.420
are bigger than this room, deeper than this room.
388
00:23:37.560 --> 00:23:40.490
The interview area was probably narrower.
389
00:23:40.490 --> 00:23:43.230
No, yeah, basically the same as this room
390
00:23:43.230 --> 00:23:46.390
it was not a big area is the point I'm trying to make.
391
00:23:46.390 --> 00:23:51.390
And the cage was even a smaller area with a concrete bed
392
00:23:52.700 --> 00:23:57.307
against the wall, a metal sink and toilet
393
00:23:58.790 --> 00:24:01.770
and more than one client has told me
394
00:24:01.770 --> 00:24:03.410
that being there all this time
395
00:24:03.410 --> 00:24:07.993
has been like living in a bathroom and I can see why.
396
00:24:09.300 --> 00:24:12.770
And so we arrived there
397
00:24:12.770 --> 00:24:17.770
and these clients were utterly abject.
398
00:24:21.760 --> 00:24:24.880
They had no idea what to expect from us.
399
00:24:24.880 --> 00:24:28.253
We had no idea what to expect from them.
400
00:24:29.420 --> 00:24:34.420
I'm told that they all thought that the habeas lawyers
401
00:24:34.540 --> 00:24:39.030
were another set of interrogators at the very beginning.
402
00:24:39.030 --> 00:24:40.973
And they had every reason to think so,
403
00:24:42.010 --> 00:24:44.530
but most of them at least, pardon.
404
00:24:44.530 --> 00:24:46.550
Why they have every reason to think so?
405
00:24:46.550 --> 00:24:50.020
Because they had been interrogated,
406
00:24:50.020 --> 00:24:52.303
of course hundreds of times,
407
00:24:53.308 --> 00:24:58.308
the authorities used every trick in the book to lie to them,
408
00:25:00.130 --> 00:25:01.593
disorient them,
409
00:25:02.780 --> 00:25:07.670
get them to tell the real truth of their activities.
410
00:25:07.670 --> 00:25:12.440
And this, from their standpoint was just the latest tactic
411
00:25:12.440 --> 00:25:13.603
that they were using.
412
00:25:14.670 --> 00:25:18.860
And later they tried to discredit the habeas lawyers
413
00:25:18.860 --> 00:25:23.030
by sending in interrogators who were sort of dressed
414
00:25:23.030 --> 00:25:24.700
like habeas lawyers
415
00:25:24.700 --> 00:25:29.700
but were wearing hairpieces that were sort of a skew
416
00:25:30.350 --> 00:25:35.350
and by accusing us, as you may have heard from other lawyers
417
00:25:35.450 --> 00:25:39.780
of being Jewish or being gay, stuff like that
418
00:25:39.780 --> 00:25:42.650
and found many other ways to try to separate us.
419
00:25:42.650 --> 00:25:46.330
But that's another story the detainees at first
420
00:25:46.330 --> 00:25:49.680
thought that we were government agents
421
00:25:49.680 --> 00:25:54.680
and I think that that survived for quite a while, at least.
422
00:25:56.140 --> 00:25:58.890
Yeah, for quite a while, for a couple of years.
423
00:25:58.890 --> 00:26:01.370
Some of them still felt that we were that way.
424
00:26:01.370 --> 00:26:06.020
And when we went and met their families in Yemen,
425
00:26:06.020 --> 00:26:09.480
they felt that we were trying to trick the families
426
00:26:09.480 --> 00:26:12.050
into getting information
427
00:26:12.050 --> 00:26:14.703
that we could then report back to the government.
428
00:26:16.310 --> 00:26:21.080
But they put their trust in us over time
429
00:26:22.540 --> 00:26:25.313
despite their misgivings.
430
00:26:26.440 --> 00:26:29.060
At one point a client said to me
431
00:26:29.060 --> 00:26:30.780
this was Hassan bin Attash
432
00:26:30.780 --> 00:26:34.020
who was captured when he was about 16,
433
00:26:34.020 --> 00:26:37.140
and his brother Walid bin Attash
434
00:26:37.140 --> 00:26:39.930
is one of the high value detainees
435
00:26:39.930 --> 00:26:43.120
and one of the 5911 defendants.
436
00:26:43.120 --> 00:26:48.120
Hassan said, "I trust you, but I don't trust you 100%."
437
00:26:50.979 --> 00:26:53.770
(laughs)
438
00:26:53.770 --> 00:26:58.200
And another client Abdul-Salam al-Hilam
439
00:26:58.200 --> 00:27:02.060
who was quite a prominent businessman in Sanaa
440
00:27:02.060 --> 00:27:06.130
and was actually kidnapped in Cairo said,
441
00:27:09.127 --> 00:27:11.467
"No matter what I tell you,
442
00:27:11.467 --> 00:27:14.403
"no matter how innocuous it is,
443
00:27:15.697 --> 00:27:18.437
"the government will find some way
444
00:27:18.437 --> 00:27:21.507
"to twist something that I said
445
00:27:21.507 --> 00:27:24.930
"even as if it's 1% against me."
446
00:27:24.930 --> 00:27:26.220
So they had all these fears.
447
00:27:26.220 --> 00:27:29.373
And I must say that over the years,
448
00:27:30.620 --> 00:27:35.620
most of them gave us a narrative that didn't really change
449
00:27:39.680 --> 00:27:42.910
from the narratives they had provided
450
00:27:42.910 --> 00:27:45.590
to their interrogators before.
451
00:27:45.590 --> 00:27:50.590
In some cases they did saying that they had been tortured
452
00:27:50.900 --> 00:27:53.420
or coerced into confessions
453
00:27:53.420 --> 00:27:57.620
or that they were the victims of snitches
454
00:27:57.620 --> 00:27:59.460
who were making false accusations
455
00:27:59.460 --> 00:28:01.430
but they still gave us the narratives.
456
00:28:01.430 --> 00:28:05.253
It wasn't as though we came in and they said,
457
00:28:06.540 --> 00:28:10.030
we really did commit terrorist acts.
458
00:28:10.030 --> 00:28:11.740
I mean, we haven't been telling anybody
459
00:28:11.740 --> 00:28:14.810
but we blew this up, we conspired with bin Laden
460
00:28:15.810 --> 00:28:17.500
and we can give you all these secrets
461
00:28:17.500 --> 00:28:19.340
because we're your lawyers.
462
00:28:19.340 --> 00:28:22.860
The fact is that at least for our clients,
463
00:28:22.860 --> 00:28:26.010
their accounts to us were consistent
464
00:28:26.010 --> 00:28:27.680
with their previous accounts.
465
00:28:27.680 --> 00:28:32.390
And it turns out that we could corroborate their accounts.
466
00:28:32.390 --> 00:28:33.270
So David.
467
00:28:33.270 --> 00:28:36.790
But the thing I wanna say about the first meeting,
468
00:28:36.790 --> 00:28:38.240
Yeah.
469
00:28:38.240 --> 00:28:41.750
is Mark had visited them maybe a little bit earlier
470
00:28:44.270 --> 00:28:49.270
and when each of us got back, we slept for two days.
471
00:28:51.380 --> 00:28:56.380
Absolutely because what we found was a mixture of appalling,
472
00:29:00.120 --> 00:29:05.120
interesting, and well, I can use other words.
473
00:29:09.340 --> 00:29:11.350
I think appalling covers it best.
474
00:29:11.350 --> 00:29:14.830
We were shocked and the emotional,
475
00:29:14.830 --> 00:29:19.670
I mean the emotional impact
476
00:29:19.670 --> 00:29:23.910
I can't begin to tell you because of the abjectness
477
00:29:23.910 --> 00:29:28.340
of these men having been held there at the time
478
00:29:28.340 --> 00:29:31.420
it was only two and a half years,
479
00:29:31.420 --> 00:29:33.970
now it's over 10 years for most of them.
480
00:29:33.970 --> 00:29:37.070
That's what I think would show the audience
481
00:29:37.070 --> 00:29:38.220
what you're expressing.
482
00:29:38.220 --> 00:29:40.120
If you can describe what you saw
483
00:29:40.120 --> 00:29:43.010
when you walked into that hut,
484
00:29:43.010 --> 00:29:46.160
what did you see before you, and did that surprise you?
485
00:29:46.160 --> 00:29:50.513
I saw these men, most of whom were not,
486
00:29:54.420 --> 00:29:58.360
some of whom were very slight physically.
487
00:30:02.182 --> 00:30:04.993
None of whom was more than average build.
488
00:30:07.590 --> 00:30:09.853
They were sitting behind their chair,
489
00:30:10.840 --> 00:30:12.420
behind the desk and a chair
490
00:30:12.420 --> 00:30:14.523
with one leg chained to the floor.
491
00:30:17.260 --> 00:30:20.770
We had two seats in front of the table
492
00:30:21.730 --> 00:30:23.810
for a translator and the lawyer.
493
00:30:23.810 --> 00:30:25.380
And if there were more lawyers,
494
00:30:25.380 --> 00:30:27.710
there'd be more seats of course.
495
00:30:27.710 --> 00:30:31.530
And all I can tell you is we were hit by
496
00:30:31.530 --> 00:30:34.343
and they were all wearing yellow jumpsuits.
497
00:30:36.770 --> 00:30:40.300
We were just appalled.
498
00:30:40.300 --> 00:30:44.630
And remember, none of us had ever been on a military base.
499
00:30:44.630 --> 00:30:49.257
So being there under the supervision of escorts
500
00:30:53.200 --> 00:30:57.380
which we also had to have and who were at the beginning
501
00:30:57.380 --> 00:31:01.910
chief petty officers who get to be chief petty officers
502
00:31:01.910 --> 00:31:04.280
by being Royal Schmucks.
503
00:31:04.280 --> 00:31:05.790
And I don't think I'm saying anything
504
00:31:05.790 --> 00:31:08.373
that the junior men wouldn't say.
505
00:31:09.570 --> 00:31:14.140
So we had this very strange feeling
506
00:31:14.140 --> 00:31:19.140
of being on a military base and seeing soldiers with guns
507
00:31:19.210 --> 00:31:23.840
and code words with one were picked up by our escorts
508
00:31:23.840 --> 00:31:25.840
and they were driving us toward the base.
509
00:31:25.840 --> 00:31:30.840
They pick up the phone and say charcoal or rubric.
510
00:31:31.710 --> 00:31:34.760
And these are actually brevity codes.
511
00:31:34.760 --> 00:31:39.670
They call them, instead of saying a long bunch of words,
512
00:31:39.670 --> 00:31:41.010
they use the shorthand.
513
00:31:41.010 --> 00:31:42.910
It's really not supposed to be secret.
514
00:31:42.910 --> 00:31:46.100
I don't think, I don't think secrecy
515
00:31:46.100 --> 00:31:47.780
would serve much of a purpose.
516
00:31:47.780 --> 00:31:52.780
We had to go through a checkpoint of guards at
517
00:31:53.115 --> 00:31:55.880
I think it's called the Roosevelt checkpoint.
518
00:31:55.880 --> 00:31:59.500
The guards all had guns and machine guns.
519
00:31:59.500 --> 00:32:02.030
There must have been four or five.
520
00:32:02.030 --> 00:32:07.030
We had to, of course, where identity badges all the time.
521
00:32:07.030 --> 00:32:09.060
We couldn't go around without escorts.
522
00:32:09.060 --> 00:32:14.060
There were these Barb wire ringed prison camps.
523
00:32:20.320 --> 00:32:23.113
And just to give you a sense, because this is relevant.
524
00:32:23.980 --> 00:32:27.493
Once after the habeas work started growing,
525
00:32:28.380 --> 00:32:33.380
I was part of group of maybe 15 or 20 habeas lawyers
526
00:32:33.560 --> 00:32:36.860
going through Camp Echo,
527
00:32:36.860 --> 00:32:40.050
which was a series of interview huts as I mentioned,
528
00:32:40.050 --> 00:32:43.860
forming a square with a courtyard in the middle of it,
529
00:32:43.860 --> 00:32:45.730
a square courtyard.
530
00:32:45.730 --> 00:32:50.730
And there we were, there were these huts, the tarp wall
531
00:32:53.010 --> 00:32:58.010
the tarp, the sniper tarp parks on the fences,
532
00:33:03.130 --> 00:33:06.510
basically designed to obscure a sniper's vision
533
00:33:06.510 --> 00:33:11.510
into the camp, the guard towers, the barbed wires.
534
00:33:14.310 --> 00:33:17.460
And there we were sort of a Motley group,
535
00:33:17.460 --> 00:33:20.470
all shapes and sizes.
536
00:33:20.470 --> 00:33:23.700
Heinz is 57 different varieties.
537
00:33:23.700 --> 00:33:27.653
And the young guard turned and said,
538
00:33:29.337 --> 00:33:32.687
"This looks like a tour of a concentration camp."
539
00:33:37.190 --> 00:33:39.300
Out of the mouth of babes.
540
00:33:39.300 --> 00:33:44.300
And I say that because it really helps validate
541
00:33:47.040 --> 00:33:48.543
the picture that we present.
542
00:33:49.660 --> 00:33:51.970
Then we were brought into the huts
543
00:33:51.970 --> 00:33:53.820
and there were these guys,
544
00:33:53.820 --> 00:33:57.673
they were unfamiliar to us in every way.
545
00:33:58.992 --> 00:34:03.992
They were Arabs and most of them were colored
546
00:34:15.250 --> 00:34:18.540
as middle Eastern Arabs are,
547
00:34:18.540 --> 00:34:21.970
they all had great big black beards
548
00:34:21.970 --> 00:34:24.940
because they're not supposed to shave and mustaches.
549
00:34:24.940 --> 00:34:29.383
And most of them had big heads of unruly hair.
550
00:34:30.890 --> 00:34:35.890
They spoke a language we had never heard.
551
00:34:36.400 --> 00:34:41.400
They worshiped a religion that was totally alien to us.
552
00:34:42.800 --> 00:34:45.253
Their culture was entirely unfamiliar.
553
00:34:47.300 --> 00:34:49.170
So in a certain way, it was like
554
00:34:50.980 --> 00:34:55.980
meeting people from a different, an alternative world.
555
00:34:57.250 --> 00:35:00.030
And plus they were people
556
00:35:01.430 --> 00:35:03.650
and they were sitting there in orange jumpsuits
557
00:35:03.650 --> 00:35:07.740
chained to the floor, telling us stories
558
00:35:07.740 --> 00:35:12.610
of horrible treatment and horrible experiences
559
00:35:12.610 --> 00:35:17.610
in Afghanistan and Pakistan, stories of torture,
560
00:35:17.860 --> 00:35:21.380
stories of what they endured simply
561
00:35:21.380 --> 00:35:23.650
as they were going through mountain passes
562
00:35:23.650 --> 00:35:28.650
from Afghanistan to Pakistan,
563
00:35:28.700 --> 00:35:32.890
walking eight days in nearly naked, not naked
564
00:35:32.890 --> 00:35:37.150
but near shoeless without a proper attire
565
00:35:37.150 --> 00:35:41.773
through snow bound mountains, little food,
566
00:35:43.640 --> 00:35:46.760
almost like, it wasn't a forced march at all
567
00:35:46.760 --> 00:35:49.170
but it was the way they had to escape.
568
00:35:49.170 --> 00:35:54.170
And just the image of these men fleeing in these conditions.
569
00:35:57.010 --> 00:36:02.003
It was all very visual, almost cinematic and very shocking.
570
00:36:08.750 --> 00:36:12.080
We had never imagined pictures like that in our minds,
571
00:36:12.080 --> 00:36:17.080
appalling, as I mentioned and fascinating at the same time
572
00:36:17.150 --> 00:36:20.033
it was that weird combination.
573
00:36:21.360 --> 00:36:25.190
And we had never seen people so abject.
574
00:36:25.190 --> 00:36:27.840
Wasn't like meeting somebody who had stolen a hubcap,
575
00:36:29.690 --> 00:36:34.360
this was entirely new to us.
576
00:36:34.360 --> 00:36:38.020
And it didn't really, it took a while for us,
577
00:36:38.020 --> 00:36:41.560
I'm making a generalization, but I think that it's true
578
00:36:41.560 --> 00:36:46.560
to number one, differentiate among our clients.
579
00:36:48.820 --> 00:36:50.549
Interesting.
580
00:36:50.549 --> 00:36:52.820
No, one shoe was the same as another.
581
00:36:52.820 --> 00:36:55.930
They all have polish noses and that kind of thing
582
00:36:57.960 --> 00:37:02.150
but at the beginning, it's difficult to differentiate
583
00:37:02.150 --> 00:37:04.660
when everybody shares those same,
584
00:37:04.660 --> 00:37:07.003
the same characteristics that I've mentioned.
585
00:37:08.120 --> 00:37:13.120
And one of the horrors in the whole Guantanamo narrative
586
00:37:14.650 --> 00:37:18.130
is how the Pentagon cast these guys
587
00:37:18.130 --> 00:37:21.080
as an undifferentiated mass,
588
00:37:21.080 --> 00:37:22.910
each one is the same as another.
589
00:37:22.910 --> 00:37:25.790
They're all fungible, the worst of the worst
590
00:37:25.790 --> 00:37:27.270
but it's time went on.
591
00:37:27.270 --> 00:37:32.270
We had 13 clients, we began to appreciate
592
00:37:33.909 --> 00:37:38.909
the individuality of each man, the uniqueness of this story,
593
00:37:39.050 --> 00:37:43.540
the uniqueness of this family and family situation.
594
00:37:43.540 --> 00:37:47.660
And these detainees became people to us.
595
00:37:47.660 --> 00:37:51.530
And I can't tell you what an impact that had
596
00:37:51.530 --> 00:37:54.540
because then the spotlight turned
597
00:37:54.540 --> 00:37:57.470
on how they were being treated,
598
00:37:57.470 --> 00:38:02.470
how they had been treated by the United States.
599
00:38:03.600 --> 00:38:05.330
I don't know whether that answers your question.
600
00:38:05.330 --> 00:38:09.790
It's actually very amazingly interesting
601
00:38:09.790 --> 00:38:11.750
because how you evolve.
602
00:38:11.750 --> 00:38:13.590
We haven't heard that from many people,
603
00:38:13.590 --> 00:38:17.890
just that evolution of the turning coming into the prison
604
00:38:17.890 --> 00:38:20.100
and over the years, that's been really interesting.
605
00:38:20.100 --> 00:38:22.120
So yeah, it does.
606
00:38:22.120 --> 00:38:22.990
One more last thing.
607
00:38:22.990 --> 00:38:24.620
Yeah.
608
00:38:24.620 --> 00:38:29.200
We had a very adversary relationship
609
00:38:29.200 --> 00:38:33.100
with JTF from the beginning.
610
00:38:33.100 --> 00:38:38.100
First of all, as I said, they didn't except our legitimacy.
611
00:38:40.640 --> 00:38:45.640
They thought that we were extensions of our clients.
612
00:38:50.300 --> 00:38:55.300
And on one occasion, I nearly came to blows
613
00:38:57.750 --> 00:38:59.560
with a Lieutenant commander
614
00:39:00.470 --> 00:39:02.640
because a client hadn't been brought
615
00:39:03.620 --> 00:39:05.220
when he was supposed to be brought out,
616
00:39:05.220 --> 00:39:08.270
the wrong client was brought at another time,
617
00:39:08.270 --> 00:39:13.270
they made life miserable for the detainees who had lawyers
618
00:39:13.430 --> 00:39:16.630
requiring them to spend two or three days in isolation
619
00:39:16.630 --> 00:39:18.523
before and afterward.
620
00:39:20.380 --> 00:39:21.660
And we were regarded as the enemy
621
00:39:21.660 --> 00:39:26.140
and they did everything they could to make life hard for us.
622
00:39:26.140 --> 00:39:29.920
And at one point I picked up the phone
623
00:39:29.920 --> 00:39:33.527
and I shouted at the Lieutenant commander.
624
00:39:37.180 --> 00:39:40.200
I said, one of my clients is missing.
625
00:39:40.200 --> 00:39:43.700
And he said, "He's not missing, we know where he is."
626
00:39:43.700 --> 00:39:47.430
And the wrong client was brought and on and on.
627
00:39:47.430 --> 00:39:48.690
And then he came over
628
00:39:48.690 --> 00:39:52.387
and chewed me out for being disrespectful for his guards.
629
00:39:53.800 --> 00:39:58.130
And then I denied it and we really had a face-off.
630
00:39:58.130 --> 00:39:59.800
We nearly came to blows,
631
00:39:59.800 --> 00:40:03.320
at another point Clive Smith was pistol whipped
632
00:40:03.320 --> 00:40:06.163
by guards and threatened with arrest,
633
00:40:07.100 --> 00:40:08.940
pistol whip maybe a little strong
634
00:40:08.940 --> 00:40:11.020
you'd have to ask him again.
635
00:40:11.020 --> 00:40:14.500
My understanding was that a pistol was involved.
636
00:40:14.500 --> 00:40:17.800
The Lieutenant commander that I almost came to blows with
637
00:40:18.930 --> 00:40:22.253
got back at me by opening my legal mail.
638
00:40:24.320 --> 00:40:26.460
And then the claim was
639
00:40:26.460 --> 00:40:30.250
that the illegal mail was simply jostled
640
00:40:30.250 --> 00:40:34.640
in being carried from one place to another.
641
00:40:34.640 --> 00:40:37.720
And it really was antagonistic.
642
00:40:37.720 --> 00:40:40.510
And over the years it's become routinized
643
00:40:40.510 --> 00:40:42.990
and they do their thing, we do our thing.
644
00:40:42.990 --> 00:40:46.380
This is all, it's like getting,
645
00:40:46.380 --> 00:40:49.940
renewing your license at the DMV.
646
00:40:49.940 --> 00:40:52.000
But in the first few years
647
00:40:52.000 --> 00:40:57.000
I'd stay through 2006, 2007, maybe even later,
648
00:40:57.040 --> 00:41:02.040
it was a relationship of hostility on their part toward us.
649
00:41:05.270 --> 00:41:09.880
And as I say, finally, this was going on so long
650
00:41:09.880 --> 00:41:14.880
that the two sides and the hysteria of 911 and Iraq
651
00:41:15.970 --> 00:41:19.960
started to recede that this became,
652
00:41:19.960 --> 00:41:22.360
these visits became routine
653
00:41:22.360 --> 00:41:26.550
but at the beginning, when you add that to our encounter
654
00:41:26.550 --> 00:41:31.223
with the detainees, our encounter with the military,
655
00:41:33.230 --> 00:41:38.230
it was a pretty impactful situation.
656
00:41:39.930 --> 00:41:40.763
Well, you mentioned Jewish.
657
00:41:40.763 --> 00:41:41.596
Just a second.
658
00:41:41.596 --> 00:41:44.490
Would you mind setting the bottle down?
659
00:41:44.490 --> 00:41:47.743
You're welcome to first drink wherever you want.
660
00:41:47.743 --> 00:41:49.630
I just don't wanna have it in the shot (indistinct)
661
00:41:49.630 --> 00:41:50.510
Sorry.
662
00:41:50.510 --> 00:41:51.839
It's okay.
663
00:41:51.839 --> 00:41:54.480
I hope you can edit it out or something.
664
00:41:54.480 --> 00:41:55.850
I hope I haven't ruined this.
665
00:41:55.850 --> 00:41:57.436
No, no, not at all.
666
00:41:57.436 --> 00:41:58.269
I actually.
667
00:41:58.269 --> 00:41:59.102
Don't wanna make it (indistinct)
668
00:41:59.102 --> 00:41:59.935
Okay.
669
00:41:59.935 --> 00:42:00.768
(laughs)
670
00:42:00.768 --> 00:42:04.250
Oh, that's what they tell me when I'm on TV,
671
00:42:04.250 --> 00:42:06.323
don't have that Coke bottle there.
672
00:42:08.840 --> 00:42:10.390
You mentioned Jewish earlier.
673
00:42:10.390 --> 00:42:14.660
Did the JTF, or did any of the military tell your clients
674
00:42:14.660 --> 00:42:15.560
that you were Jewish
675
00:42:15.560 --> 00:42:18.936
and that maybe they shouldn't trust you because of that?
676
00:42:18.936 --> 00:42:19.939
Do you know?
677
00:42:19.939 --> 00:42:23.650
Yes, well, the specific example is Tom Wilner.
678
00:42:23.650 --> 00:42:25.740
I don't know whether you've interviewed him
679
00:42:25.740 --> 00:42:30.740
but they would say these guys
680
00:42:31.440 --> 00:42:34.890
and we know this because either
681
00:42:34.890 --> 00:42:37.900
because somehow the idea was planted in these guys' minds.
682
00:42:37.900 --> 00:42:41.421
I mean, they actually heard that
683
00:42:41.421 --> 00:42:46.123
and they actually said that, but they would also say,
684
00:42:47.610 --> 00:42:51.460
these guys are Jews and Jews will never do anything
685
00:42:51.460 --> 00:42:53.653
for you without getting something back.
686
00:42:55.070 --> 00:42:59.033
They want fame, they want money, somehow or other,
687
00:43:01.880 --> 00:43:06.880
their motives here are materialistic and selfish
688
00:43:09.560 --> 00:43:14.010
which of course is the Shylock kind of image.
689
00:43:14.010 --> 00:43:19.010
And of course, the men equate Jews with Israelis
690
00:43:21.450 --> 00:43:26.450
and Israelis are the evil empire
691
00:43:27.110 --> 00:43:29.120
as far as the men are concerned
692
00:43:29.120 --> 00:43:32.940
but I never experienced antisemitism.
693
00:43:32.940 --> 00:43:34.750
I never experienced it.
694
00:43:34.750 --> 00:43:38.330
My clients would go out of their way to say,
695
00:43:38.330 --> 00:43:39.940
we embrace all religions
696
00:43:39.940 --> 00:43:44.020
whether it's Muslim or Christianity of Judaism,
697
00:43:44.020 --> 00:43:46.360
their theory, as I understand it
698
00:43:46.360 --> 00:43:51.360
is that Islam is simply the highest stage of a progression
699
00:43:52.570 --> 00:43:54.838
and the Jews are somewhere down there
700
00:43:54.838 --> 00:43:56.560
and the Christians are somewhere down there.
701
00:43:56.560 --> 00:44:01.020
And it's sort of like a Marxian view
702
00:44:01.020 --> 00:44:03.093
of evolution toward perfection.
703
00:44:04.080 --> 00:44:08.293
Some of them were anti of war.
704
00:44:09.270 --> 00:44:13.300
I would have to say anti-semitic, but they're antisemitism.
705
00:44:13.300 --> 00:44:16.330
And this is something that's hard for people to understand
706
00:44:16.330 --> 00:44:19.613
was not racial, their antisemitism,
707
00:44:22.272 --> 00:44:24.772
to the extent you can call it, that was political.
708
00:44:26.750 --> 00:44:28.610
It wasn't racial, it wasn't religious,
709
00:44:28.610 --> 00:44:32.400
it was political because of the identification Israel.
710
00:44:32.400 --> 00:44:35.080
So I know that nobody
711
00:44:36.500 --> 00:44:40.190
except my fellow habeas lawyers will understand this
712
00:44:40.190 --> 00:44:43.070
because antisemitism is antisemitism.
713
00:44:43.070 --> 00:44:46.543
This was political, not religious or racial.
714
00:44:47.910 --> 00:44:50.030
And do you believe your clients
715
00:44:50.030 --> 00:44:52.180
when they first told you what apparently
716
00:44:52.180 --> 00:44:53.920
was somewhat shocking stories
717
00:44:53.920 --> 00:44:56.290
that you weren't expecting to hear
718
00:44:56.290 --> 00:44:58.920
the first time you met them and then subsequently
719
00:44:58.920 --> 00:45:02.500
I'm sure you began to believe it, but in those early days.
720
00:45:02.500 --> 00:45:04.600
I believed it from the very beginning.
721
00:45:04.600 --> 00:45:06.267
Why?
722
00:45:09.880 --> 00:45:10.713
Why not?
723
00:45:12.230 --> 00:45:14.820
No, I mean, that's little bit to flip
724
00:45:15.720 --> 00:45:20.720
because of the human character of their experiences
725
00:45:25.180 --> 00:45:29.010
and the uniqueness of their experiences,
726
00:45:29.010 --> 00:45:31.823
the vividness of their accounts,
727
00:45:32.770 --> 00:45:37.453
the similarities of their accounts.
728
00:45:38.330 --> 00:45:40.990
And I don't believe that over two years,
729
00:45:40.990 --> 00:45:45.170
800 people sat down to work out a common story
730
00:45:45.170 --> 00:45:48.990
'cause there were also differences that were significant.
731
00:45:48.990 --> 00:45:50.530
Some people were apprehended here,
732
00:45:50.530 --> 00:45:52.603
some people were apprehended there.
733
00:45:55.320 --> 00:45:58.900
The military would say, these guys can't been
734
00:45:58.900 --> 00:46:01.250
in Afghanistan to teach Quran
735
00:46:02.440 --> 00:46:06.570
because they know Arabic, the Afghanis are
736
00:46:06.570 --> 00:46:11.500
or the Afghans are Pashtun and there's no middle language.
737
00:46:11.500 --> 00:46:14.730
And I'd make the point that up until the early '60s,
738
00:46:14.730 --> 00:46:17.010
the Bible was taught in Latin
739
00:46:17.010 --> 00:46:19.820
and nobody knew what that meant either.
740
00:46:19.820 --> 00:46:22.070
And of course there were translators
741
00:46:22.070 --> 00:46:24.320
but I think that was part of the military view
742
00:46:24.320 --> 00:46:27.193
but every guy had his own story.
743
00:46:28.108 --> 00:46:33.108
They seemed to be victims when you met them.
744
00:46:34.600 --> 00:46:37.080
I think that's probably
745
00:46:37.080 --> 00:46:41.870
and then their stories were both believable visually
746
00:46:45.050 --> 00:46:50.050
not all that comprehensible factually,
747
00:46:51.490 --> 00:46:56.010
not because they were difficult to understand
748
00:46:56.010 --> 00:47:00.305
at the literal level, but because it was all
749
00:47:00.305 --> 00:47:02.320
against a background that was completely unfamiliar.
750
00:47:02.320 --> 00:47:05.890
But I will say just to make a very long story short,
751
00:47:05.890 --> 00:47:07.840
it was the humanity of the situation
752
00:47:09.660 --> 00:47:14.390
that led us to simply take for granted
753
00:47:14.390 --> 00:47:16.403
that what they told us was true.
754
00:47:17.260 --> 00:47:20.030
Did they tell you about their treatment
755
00:47:20.030 --> 00:47:23.330
in Guantanamo and do you believe that too?
756
00:47:23.330 --> 00:47:25.190
I mean, other than the history
757
00:47:25.190 --> 00:47:27.310
of why they ended up in Guantanamo,
758
00:47:27.310 --> 00:47:28.610
did they talk about
759
00:47:28.610 --> 00:47:30.960
whether they were mistreated in Guantanamo and?
760
00:47:31.980 --> 00:47:34.410
Yeah, just to start even earlier,
761
00:47:34.410 --> 00:47:38.680
they told us about their horrifying treatment
762
00:47:38.680 --> 00:47:43.680
in the dark prison which was a CIA prison, bog room prison,
763
00:47:46.380 --> 00:47:51.210
and then Guantanamo and they told us
764
00:47:51.210 --> 00:47:53.530
about the physical abuse
765
00:47:53.530 --> 00:47:55.993
and the psychological abuse they suffered,
766
00:47:58.220 --> 00:48:03.220
their relationship with the guards and the military there.
767
00:48:07.050 --> 00:48:10.850
One of the things about having been involved in this so long
768
00:48:10.850 --> 00:48:14.050
and on such a broad basis
769
00:48:14.050 --> 00:48:16.910
is that I have an institutional memory
770
00:48:16.910 --> 00:48:18.890
about what has gone on.
771
00:48:18.890 --> 00:48:21.870
I can trace it on a timeline what happened this year,
772
00:48:21.870 --> 00:48:25.610
what happened that year, this particular event,
773
00:48:25.610 --> 00:48:29.080
that particular event, who was the leader of this group,
774
00:48:29.080 --> 00:48:30.890
who was in this cell block,
775
00:48:30.890 --> 00:48:35.070
whether this cell block was a torture cell block
776
00:48:35.070 --> 00:48:39.820
or a punishment cell block, the movement of detainees.
777
00:48:39.820 --> 00:48:42.670
I learned this stuff from them
778
00:48:42.670 --> 00:48:45.633
and because I represented so many detainees,
779
00:48:46.690 --> 00:48:49.670
I've had a panoramic sense of it.
780
00:48:49.670 --> 00:48:51.690
And I absolutely believed it.
781
00:48:51.690 --> 00:48:53.950
Can you tell us one or two stories
782
00:48:53.950 --> 00:48:55.490
just for viewers
783
00:48:55.490 --> 00:48:58.130
'cause you might not watch this for 50 years
784
00:48:58.130 --> 00:49:01.490
and so for them to have an actual story or two
785
00:49:01.490 --> 00:49:03.320
that just what you see,
786
00:49:03.320 --> 00:49:06.870
what you experienced would be really helpful.
787
00:49:06.870 --> 00:49:08.610
Yes, and of course, all I can recount
788
00:49:08.610 --> 00:49:10.350
is what they told me.
789
00:49:10.350 --> 00:49:11.363
Sure.
790
00:49:12.480 --> 00:49:15.350
And I also want to draw the distinction.
791
00:49:15.350 --> 00:49:20.350
There were the interrogators, and then there were the guards
792
00:49:22.100 --> 00:49:26.270
and the prison keepers, the administrators.
793
00:49:26.270 --> 00:49:30.480
And I make the distinction because people on the outside
794
00:49:31.640 --> 00:49:36.350
have really been be, oh sorry,
795
00:49:36.350 --> 00:49:41.350
because the narratives that people have been exposed to
796
00:49:44.820 --> 00:49:47.500
involve interrogations,
797
00:49:47.500 --> 00:49:51.440
enhanced interrogations, what have you.
798
00:49:51.440 --> 00:49:56.440
And when Jane Mayer, who I who's one of the best journalists
799
00:49:57.330 --> 00:50:01.150
and deepest journalists in the world writes a book
800
00:50:01.150 --> 00:50:06.150
that follows the torture policy up the string to Rumsfeld,
801
00:50:06.410 --> 00:50:09.223
she's talking about interrogations.
802
00:50:10.330 --> 00:50:14.830
I ran into Chris Wallace of Fox of all people.
803
00:50:14.830 --> 00:50:19.830
And I said, there's torture going on.
804
00:50:20.360 --> 00:50:22.000
I said that in one way or another.
805
00:50:22.000 --> 00:50:24.330
And he said, I thought that was just
806
00:50:24.330 --> 00:50:25.563
with the interrogations,
807
00:50:26.890 --> 00:50:31.890
but the guards and the officers in charge,
808
00:50:32.790 --> 00:50:37.560
and the commanders created a situation
809
00:50:37.560 --> 00:50:42.560
and implemented a situation that was savage, sadistic,
810
00:50:46.930 --> 00:50:51.930
brutal, good with a Saurus and look up the synonyms.
811
00:50:53.130 --> 00:50:56.390
It was just, I know you want examples.
812
00:50:56.390 --> 00:50:58.373
So I'll give you a couple of examples.
813
00:51:00.860 --> 00:51:03.343
Here on the psychological level.
814
00:51:06.270 --> 00:51:10.370
This is not physical so much, but psychological.
815
00:51:10.370 --> 00:51:14.100
They made it difficult, very difficult
816
00:51:14.100 --> 00:51:18.733
for the men to pray by purposely putting them in shorts.
817
00:51:20.650 --> 00:51:25.650
And I guess from the standpoint of Islam,
818
00:51:25.670 --> 00:51:28.340
you're not supposed to show your behind
819
00:51:28.340 --> 00:51:30.680
to somebody behind you wearing shorts.
820
00:51:30.680 --> 00:51:33.700
I can only speculate on the reason
821
00:51:33.700 --> 00:51:35.530
but it was this serious reason.
822
00:51:35.530 --> 00:51:38.240
They would interrupt prayer calls,
823
00:51:38.240 --> 00:51:43.240
they would put the arrow to Mecca in the wrong place,
824
00:51:43.440 --> 00:51:45.950
they'd give them the wrong time,
825
00:51:45.950 --> 00:51:50.840
they were very systematic and careful
826
00:51:50.840 --> 00:51:55.710
about hitting these guys where it hurt most their religion
827
00:51:55.710 --> 00:51:59.710
because these men, most of them,
828
00:52:01.110 --> 00:52:06.110
if not all of them were devoutly religious across the board
829
00:52:06.830 --> 00:52:10.480
in a way that Westerners can't understand.
830
00:52:10.480 --> 00:52:13.630
I once suggested to a reporter
831
00:52:13.630 --> 00:52:18.500
that he think of Manhattan populated by hosteds
832
00:52:18.500 --> 00:52:20.653
from the Bowery up to the Bronx.
833
00:52:23.240 --> 00:52:25.193
It was sort of like that.
834
00:52:28.550 --> 00:52:33.550
And that is the greatest point of sensitivity for them.
835
00:52:34.020 --> 00:52:37.110
As you know there are the burning Quran stories
836
00:52:38.280 --> 00:52:40.680
and stories like that.
837
00:52:40.680 --> 00:52:42.350
And so this is all background
838
00:52:42.350 --> 00:52:47.350
to what I thought was the most horrifying of all
839
00:52:47.620 --> 00:52:52.550
which was at a certain point, they would punish a detainee
840
00:52:53.870 --> 00:52:56.660
by taking him to a special room
841
00:52:57.650 --> 00:53:02.650
which I call room 101 after the infamous room
842
00:53:02.810 --> 00:53:06.670
in George Orwell's 1984,
843
00:53:06.670 --> 00:53:09.870
where they would sit the detainee down in a chair
844
00:53:09.870 --> 00:53:11.053
and cut off his beard.
845
00:53:15.250 --> 00:53:19.150
And the Quran says, you have to have a beard.
846
00:53:19.150 --> 00:53:24.150
And to me, it was a horrifying Echo of what the Germans
847
00:53:27.049 --> 00:53:31.280
and the Nazis did with highly religious Jews.
848
00:53:31.280 --> 00:53:33.880
We could see on the street, they'd just go up to them.
849
00:53:33.880 --> 00:53:36.970
But these morons who were doing this
850
00:53:36.970 --> 00:53:39.410
only knew that it was very humiliating,
851
00:53:39.410 --> 00:53:41.500
they didn't make the reference.
852
00:53:41.500 --> 00:53:43.610
There was the incessant use
853
00:53:43.610 --> 00:53:48.610
of what were called earth teams emergency response forces
854
00:53:49.070 --> 00:53:53.090
where maybe half a dozen soldiers
855
00:53:54.360 --> 00:53:58.130
dressed in these robo cop uniforms would go in
856
00:53:58.130 --> 00:54:00.850
and just beat the shit out of these guys
857
00:54:00.850 --> 00:54:04.750
on no pretext or the slightest pretext.
858
00:54:04.750 --> 00:54:07.810
And when I was in the inspection area,
859
00:54:07.810 --> 00:54:09.980
going into Echo for interviews,
860
00:54:09.980 --> 00:54:14.740
I once saw these black uniforms
861
00:54:16.130 --> 00:54:19.930
and they were very frightening.
862
00:54:19.930 --> 00:54:24.930
Okay, then there were things like guards
863
00:54:25.530 --> 00:54:29.430
simply shoving the detainees by the head
864
00:54:29.430 --> 00:54:30.883
into the toilet hall.
865
00:54:33.670 --> 00:54:38.670
And there's a trace of that even now in one of the camps.
866
00:54:40.240 --> 00:54:44.060
There was verbal abuse, there was physical abuse,
867
00:54:44.060 --> 00:54:46.670
banging heads on walls.
868
00:54:46.670 --> 00:54:51.670
One of my clients still has a terribly sore back
869
00:54:52.630 --> 00:54:56.160
as a result of this, another client.
870
00:54:56.160 --> 00:55:00.210
I mean, some clients bear the physical marks of this.
871
00:55:00.210 --> 00:55:03.370
And what I'm saying is verbal
872
00:55:04.570 --> 00:55:09.570
but when you began to visualize the abuse
873
00:55:10.200 --> 00:55:12.620
that these men suffered,
874
00:55:12.620 --> 00:55:17.620
not as individuals who were being interrogated
875
00:55:18.700 --> 00:55:23.690
but people who live day to day under these circumstances,
876
00:55:23.690 --> 00:55:27.800
men had to urinate in their cells naked
877
00:55:29.440 --> 00:55:31.300
or wherever, pulling down their pants
878
00:55:31.300 --> 00:55:36.300
in the full view of the guards, they were lied to.
879
00:55:37.170 --> 00:55:39.470
I once said to a client,
880
00:55:39.470 --> 00:55:42.200
they put you in a situation where you don't know
881
00:55:42.200 --> 00:55:44.950
whether anything that's said it's a lie
882
00:55:44.950 --> 00:55:47.793
and where you don't know what's up, what's down.
883
00:55:49.260 --> 00:55:50.910
I do suspect that that is more
884
00:55:50.910 --> 00:55:52.500
along the lines of interrogators
885
00:55:52.500 --> 00:55:56.630
but there was just relentless physical brutality.
886
00:55:56.630 --> 00:55:59.500
The men responded in their own ways
887
00:56:01.920 --> 00:56:05.343
splashing as the most known one.
888
00:56:06.630 --> 00:56:08.050
And I just I'd have to go back
889
00:56:08.050 --> 00:56:12.220
to my notes to recount all the forms of physical abuse
890
00:56:12.220 --> 00:56:14.370
and all the forms of psychological abuse.
891
00:56:14.370 --> 00:56:17.070
And they've told me that the forms of psychological abuse
892
00:56:17.070 --> 00:56:20.540
and religious abuse were the worst of all
893
00:56:20.540 --> 00:56:24.383
and the commander actually had an advisor,
894
00:56:25.250 --> 00:56:28.083
a Muslim advisor, seriously.
895
00:56:28.960 --> 00:56:30.270
I have his name somewhere,
896
00:56:30.270 --> 00:56:35.270
he's well known who basically told the command,
897
00:56:35.890 --> 00:56:39.620
this is how you get to them on the religious ground.
898
00:56:39.620 --> 00:56:43.570
And he was always portrayed by the command
899
00:56:43.570 --> 00:56:48.570
as telling the commanders how to respect the men's religion.
900
00:56:51.210 --> 00:56:54.400
But in fact, this is what he was doing.
901
00:56:54.400 --> 00:56:57.040
They also denied the men a chaplain
902
00:56:57.040 --> 00:56:59.350
after the first chaplain was perceived
903
00:56:59.350 --> 00:57:02.440
as getting too close to the men.
904
00:57:02.440 --> 00:57:05.320
The idea that a Muslim population
905
00:57:05.320 --> 00:57:10.320
hasn't had a Muslim chaplain for eight, nine, 10 years
906
00:57:10.470 --> 00:57:11.723
is also amazing.
907
00:57:12.640 --> 00:57:14.700
Again, I'd have to go back to my notes
908
00:57:14.700 --> 00:57:17.970
which I'm sure will be part of the file
909
00:57:17.970 --> 00:57:21.410
were the specific examples, but they were Legion,
910
00:57:21.410 --> 00:57:23.120
they were very tough
911
00:57:23.120 --> 00:57:25.850
and the worst ones were the psychological religions ones.
912
00:57:25.850 --> 00:57:27.720
I just wanna add to that, David
913
00:57:27.720 --> 00:57:30.240
that many of the detainees we interviewed
914
00:57:31.486 --> 00:57:33.730
called it a psychological prison, more than a physical,
915
00:57:33.730 --> 00:57:34.563
isn't it?
916
00:57:34.563 --> 00:57:35.800
I think that's what you (indistinct)
917
00:57:35.800 --> 00:57:39.623
That's what I'm describing but from my standpoint,
918
00:57:40.800 --> 00:57:43.753
because I don't relate to the depth
919
00:57:50.460 --> 00:57:55.460
of their religious version or religiosity,
920
00:57:58.610 --> 00:58:03.610
I understand that at kind of an abstract level
921
00:58:04.090 --> 00:58:08.173
but the physical stuff I really understand.
922
00:58:09.120 --> 00:58:12.150
Well, do you know any of your clients
923
00:58:12.150 --> 00:58:15.200
who were in isolation for long periods of time?
924
00:58:15.200 --> 00:58:16.033
Yes.
925
00:58:16.033 --> 00:58:18.486
And can you tell us a little about that
926
00:58:18.486 --> 00:58:19.500
and why?
927
00:58:19.500 --> 00:58:24.500
Well, my poor client Adnan Lateef was considered,
928
00:58:28.540 --> 00:58:32.970
I guess kind of a wild man, not in a physical,
929
00:58:32.970 --> 00:58:35.680
I mean not in the sense of being a physical threat
930
00:58:37.170 --> 00:58:40.480
but just because he was sort of uncontrollable.
931
00:58:40.480 --> 00:58:45.150
He had mental issues, psychological issues
932
00:58:45.150 --> 00:58:50.063
plus he was just so obstreperous
933
00:58:51.000 --> 00:58:53.100
that the guards used to ask other detainees
934
00:58:53.100 --> 00:58:54.163
how to handle him.
935
00:58:55.020 --> 00:58:59.237
There were leaders who,
936
00:58:59.237 --> 00:59:02.340
I mean detainees were regarded as leaders
937
00:59:02.340 --> 00:59:05.000
like my clients, Shockya Amir.
938
00:59:05.000 --> 00:59:08.270
He actually negotiated for the detainees at one point
939
00:59:08.270 --> 00:59:12.730
with the administration who were kept in isolation
940
00:59:12.730 --> 00:59:17.730
he's charismatic, mesmerizing, intelligent, perfect English.
941
00:59:18.550 --> 00:59:22.113
He could be anything he wants even when he gets out.
942
00:59:24.350 --> 00:59:26.030
I don't know the rhyme or reason
943
00:59:26.030 --> 00:59:29.990
for keeping a number of clients in isolation.
944
00:59:29.990 --> 00:59:31.260
I really don't.
945
00:59:31.260 --> 00:59:33.380
Someone in isolation is punishment
946
00:59:36.330 --> 00:59:40.230
but all I can do without going back.
947
00:59:40.230 --> 00:59:43.350
I'm sort of embarrassed about this
948
00:59:43.350 --> 00:59:45.550
but I've had so many clients that,
949
00:59:45.550 --> 00:59:48.080
although I know each as an individual,
950
00:59:48.080 --> 00:59:51.600
and I know what experiences they've had.
951
00:59:51.600 --> 00:59:55.787
I can't always put the experience with a particular client.
952
00:59:57.570 --> 00:59:58.403
I think you've given
953
00:59:58.403 --> 01:00:00.080
a really good sense of it
954
01:00:00.080 --> 01:00:01.920
and other people have given it too,
955
01:00:01.920 --> 01:00:03.900
so this is the Mosaic.
956
01:00:03.900 --> 01:00:07.440
And when you put all the videos together, you go get.
957
01:00:07.440 --> 01:00:12.440
And I suspect that you're hearing basically the same story
958
01:00:14.910 --> 01:00:18.253
from us, we all went through this.
959
01:00:19.127 --> 01:00:23.540
It's so fascinating the detainees had generally
960
01:00:25.990 --> 01:00:30.990
a consistent set of experiences from the moment
961
01:00:32.330 --> 01:00:35.763
that they were captured up until through Guantanamo.
962
01:00:39.190 --> 01:00:44.190
My clients like Abdul Salam, who was captured in Cairo
963
01:00:46.050 --> 01:00:49.480
went through sort of an arc of prisons
964
01:00:50.570 --> 01:00:54.570
which I sometimes joke or like stations of the cross.
965
01:00:54.570 --> 01:00:57.990
And at one point I wanted to go to Afghanistan
966
01:00:57.990 --> 01:01:00.560
and trace the particular prisons.
967
01:01:00.560 --> 01:01:03.047
Then there's my client Saifullah Paracha,
968
01:01:03.047 --> 01:01:06.070
who was picked up in Thailand
969
01:01:06.070 --> 01:01:08.230
and he went through his own experiences.
970
01:01:08.230 --> 01:01:10.020
But they'll all tell you what happened
971
01:01:10.020 --> 01:01:12.170
when they got off the plane.
972
01:01:12.170 --> 01:01:14.070
The physical examinations
973
01:01:14.070 --> 01:01:17.940
involving forced rectal examinations,
974
01:01:17.940 --> 01:01:19.840
being kept in these chicken coops,
975
01:01:19.840 --> 01:01:24.700
being forced to be naked in front of women guards
976
01:01:24.700 --> 01:01:28.040
as they were photographed and filmed.
977
01:01:28.040 --> 01:01:31.890
And then what happened to them in the cells?
978
01:01:31.890 --> 01:01:36.890
It's a common experience, unbelievably common
979
01:01:37.230 --> 01:01:39.233
and then we have the common experience.
980
01:01:40.320 --> 01:01:42.630
And you mentioned the dark prison.
981
01:01:42.630 --> 01:01:46.030
Can you describe that to us if you?
982
01:01:46.030 --> 01:01:51.030
Yes, first of all, when the dark prison was mentioned,
983
01:01:53.560 --> 01:01:57.460
we knew it was a prison and we knew it was a special prison
984
01:01:57.460 --> 01:02:02.460
but we had no idea about the significance of these prisons
985
01:02:07.440 --> 01:02:12.440
over time as deliberately designed torture chambers.
986
01:02:14.880 --> 01:02:17.530
I have about maybe three or four clients
987
01:02:17.530 --> 01:02:19.400
who went through it, but the most,
988
01:02:19.400 --> 01:02:22.160
the first and the most vivid description
989
01:02:22.160 --> 01:02:24.303
was by Abdul-Salam al-Hilam.
990
01:02:26.300 --> 01:02:31.300
And what he described was being in a room without any light,
991
01:02:32.560 --> 01:02:37.560
no light in the hallway, except maybe dim lights.
992
01:02:37.570 --> 01:02:40.550
Having his arm chained to the wall
993
01:02:41.430 --> 01:02:44.490
maybe about two and a half, three feet up.
994
01:02:44.490 --> 01:02:46.843
And he would say to us, how do you sleep?
995
01:02:48.130 --> 01:02:49.430
How do you sleep?
996
01:02:49.430 --> 01:02:53.760
And they would play the ear, shattering music.
997
01:02:53.760 --> 01:02:56.540
He'd be completely in the dark.
998
01:02:56.540 --> 01:02:59.290
And then at some point when he couldn't predict it,
999
01:02:59.290 --> 01:03:00.630
the guards would come
1000
01:03:00.630 --> 01:03:02.870
and take him to the interrogation room
1001
01:03:02.870 --> 01:03:05.420
which would also be completely dark,
1002
01:03:05.420 --> 01:03:10.420
except for strobe lights that were directed to him.
1003
01:03:10.730 --> 01:03:12.450
Strobe lights.
1004
01:03:12.450 --> 01:03:16.610
What a disorientation out of coming from that kind of a cell
1005
01:03:16.610 --> 01:03:19.990
and then being questioned under those circumstances.
1006
01:03:19.990 --> 01:03:22.810
He and other clients
1007
01:03:22.810 --> 01:03:27.810
recount hearing screams in other cells from other men.
1008
01:03:29.970 --> 01:03:34.920
It's hard to remember more details.
1009
01:03:34.920 --> 01:03:36.520
I had physical descriptions
1010
01:03:36.520 --> 01:03:40.100
of the facility from him and other clients.
1011
01:03:40.100 --> 01:03:42.430
I have very vivid sense of that
1012
01:03:42.430 --> 01:03:45.680
but I think that Abdul-Salam's treatment
1013
01:03:45.680 --> 01:03:49.600
really summarizes the dark prison.
1014
01:03:49.600 --> 01:03:52.300
I've had other clients who were hung
1015
01:03:52.300 --> 01:03:56.350
by chains from their arms
1016
01:03:56.350 --> 01:03:58.660
with their feet off the ground.
1017
01:03:58.660 --> 01:03:59.700
This is an Afghanistan.
1018
01:03:59.700 --> 01:04:01.190
No, this is, I mean, yeah
1019
01:04:01.190 --> 01:04:03.363
this is an Afghanistan at dark prison.
1020
01:04:05.630 --> 01:04:08.520
And so this was more intense
1021
01:04:08.520 --> 01:04:11.670
than what they went through at bog room.
1022
01:04:11.670 --> 01:04:13.570
But what they went through at bog room
1023
01:04:13.570 --> 01:04:15.063
was pretty intense too.
1024
01:04:16.540 --> 01:04:21.093
So you heard about suicides.
1025
01:04:22.530 --> 01:04:26.740
Did any of your clients try to commit suicide?
1026
01:04:26.740 --> 01:04:28.790
Is that a story you wanna tell us at all?
1027
01:04:29.650 --> 01:04:34.650
What I'll say is that there have been two detainees
1028
01:04:35.627 --> 01:04:39.250
out of, there been nine detainees who died.
1029
01:04:39.250 --> 01:04:40.963
I won't call any of them suicide.
1030
01:04:45.090 --> 01:04:48.790
Two of them died of clearly physical causes.
1031
01:04:48.790 --> 01:04:53.540
One died of cancer, one died of a heart attack
1032
01:04:53.540 --> 01:04:57.973
after exercising on a treadmill, that leaves you with seven.
1033
01:04:58.990 --> 01:05:03.990
There were three, the famous three from 2006 I think
1034
01:05:05.910 --> 01:05:10.910
who died under circumstances that render
1035
01:05:11.970 --> 01:05:15.580
the characterization of their deaths as suicides
1036
01:05:15.580 --> 01:05:17.990
completely unbelievable.
1037
01:05:17.990 --> 01:05:22.990
And Scott Horton of Harpers has really torn that account
1038
01:05:23.100 --> 01:05:28.100
to shreds, so has Mark Denbeaux at Seton Hall?
1039
01:05:30.140 --> 01:05:32.810
So they weren't suicides.
1040
01:05:32.810 --> 01:05:35.550
Then there was someone else who died
1041
01:05:35.550 --> 01:05:40.550
exactly a year afterward by the Muslim calendar.
1042
01:05:41.730 --> 01:05:44.480
I don't remember his story in particular.
1043
01:05:44.480 --> 01:05:47.703
There was a guy named Al Hanashi, ISN 78,
1044
01:05:50.290 --> 01:05:52.073
who died in a psych ward.
1045
01:05:53.690 --> 01:05:55.700
And you can imagine the kind of scrutiny these men
1046
01:05:55.700 --> 01:05:57.100
are under in a psych ward.
1047
01:05:57.100 --> 01:06:01.623
All of the cells throughout the camp are wired for sound,
1048
01:06:03.190 --> 01:06:08.180
have moving dome cameras or cameras within domes.
1049
01:06:08.180 --> 01:06:12.770
And the way that the military said that he died
1050
01:06:12.770 --> 01:06:15.163
was by self strangulation.
1051
01:06:16.090 --> 01:06:18.330
It's almost like a Jim Carey.
1052
01:06:18.330 --> 01:06:22.420
Idea, the idea was that he somehow wrapped his underwear
1053
01:06:22.420 --> 01:06:24.563
around his neck and pulled.
1054
01:06:25.850 --> 01:06:28.653
We think that it was a medication issue.
1055
01:06:29.740 --> 01:06:31.280
Then there was my client Adnan
1056
01:06:32.450 --> 01:06:36.123
who died in September this year.
1057
01:06:37.640 --> 01:06:39.880
The military doesn't even claim
1058
01:06:40.720 --> 01:06:45.720
that it was a suicide or even an intended suicide.
1059
01:06:46.440 --> 01:06:49.000
And since this is designed for the future
1060
01:06:50.040 --> 01:06:53.530
and not current consumption,
1061
01:06:53.530 --> 01:06:57.210
we have become aware of the conclusions
1062
01:06:57.210 --> 01:06:58.830
of the autopsy report
1063
01:07:00.090 --> 01:07:04.240
which I think since this is all second or third hand
1064
01:07:04.240 --> 01:07:08.550
from the government did not claim that it was a suicide.
1065
01:07:08.550 --> 01:07:12.643
Of course, it's not claiming that it was physical brutality,
1066
01:07:13.510 --> 01:07:16.660
but was a medical issue.
1067
01:07:16.660 --> 01:07:21.100
As I suspected, he could have been.
1068
01:07:21.100 --> 01:07:24.290
And we'll find this out in time, the wrong medication,
1069
01:07:24.290 --> 01:07:27.260
too much medication, too little medication,
1070
01:07:27.260 --> 01:07:29.990
medication where it was contra indicated
1071
01:07:29.990 --> 01:07:34.590
or medication that had adverse interactions with others.
1072
01:07:34.590 --> 01:07:36.920
There was a high degree of carelessness
1073
01:07:36.920 --> 01:07:41.720
and indifference and neglect on the part of the authorities
1074
01:07:41.720 --> 01:07:46.720
to the physical problems of the men.
1075
01:07:47.100 --> 01:07:49.980
One of the, I know I'm sort of going off on a tangent.
1076
01:07:49.980 --> 01:07:52.130
One of the great complaints of our clients
1077
01:07:52.130 --> 01:07:54.800
was no matter what their complaint
1078
01:07:54.800 --> 01:07:57.733
in the first several years, the answer was mortuary.
1079
01:08:01.090 --> 01:08:03.530
And the men were very distrustful
1080
01:08:03.530 --> 01:08:08.530
of the corpsmen and the doctors and the nurses.
1081
01:08:08.860 --> 01:08:10.620
But that's another story.
1082
01:08:10.620 --> 01:08:15.580
So Adnan didn't commit suicide.
1083
01:08:15.580 --> 01:08:18.480
Al Hanashi didn't commit suicide.
1084
01:08:18.480 --> 01:08:21.243
These three guys didn't commit suicide.
1085
01:08:22.210 --> 01:08:27.210
There's another guy who was found dead in an exercise area
1086
01:08:32.010 --> 01:08:36.300
under extremely suspicious circumstances,
1087
01:08:36.300 --> 01:08:38.770
how he would have been let into the area
1088
01:08:38.770 --> 01:08:40.790
without being searched
1089
01:08:40.790 --> 01:08:44.404
and deprived of anything he could admit some suicide with
1090
01:08:44.404 --> 01:08:45.420
is kind of a mystery.
1091
01:08:45.420 --> 01:08:46.390
So that's five.
1092
01:08:46.390 --> 01:08:50.500
Then you have the two who died of natural causes
1093
01:08:50.500 --> 01:08:55.500
and then you had one who we don't think committed suicide
1094
01:08:57.110 --> 01:08:59.920
but I can't remember the details of it.
1095
01:08:59.920 --> 01:09:04.920
The suicide story was a cynical attempt
1096
01:09:05.890 --> 01:09:09.280
by the military to absolve themselves
1097
01:09:10.120 --> 01:09:12.780
of responsibility for these deaths.
1098
01:09:12.780 --> 01:09:17.780
And as you may recall, the military went so far
1099
01:09:18.350 --> 01:09:21.480
not only to claim that these men were suicides
1100
01:09:21.480 --> 01:09:24.270
but at the beginning, the military claimed
1101
01:09:24.270 --> 01:09:29.250
that this was part of their war against the United States.
1102
01:09:29.250 --> 01:09:32.870
You may remember that phrase, asymmetric war.
1103
01:09:32.870 --> 01:09:35.370
Well, the idea of committing suicide
1104
01:09:35.370 --> 01:09:40.370
was to bring condemnation to Guantanamo and to America.
1105
01:09:43.460 --> 01:09:47.520
So it wasn't even out of desperation
1106
01:09:47.520 --> 01:09:49.313
or hopelessness or despair.
1107
01:09:50.800 --> 01:09:51.833
This was terrorism.
1108
01:09:52.840 --> 01:09:57.430
The current, I'm sorry, the second most current commander
1109
01:09:59.650 --> 01:10:03.210
or the current commander has said
1110
01:10:03.210 --> 01:10:07.470
that Guantanamo was just another front
1111
01:10:07.470 --> 01:10:10.160
in the war against terrorism.
1112
01:10:10.160 --> 01:10:13.743
And he says this in 2012 or 2011,
1113
01:10:14.800 --> 01:10:16.943
the mindset is unbelievable.
1114
01:10:18.660 --> 01:10:21.320
Why do you think you'll get the information
1115
01:10:21.320 --> 01:10:22.920
on Adnan, isn't it?
1116
01:10:22.920 --> 01:10:24.730
I understood government doesn't have
1117
01:10:24.730 --> 01:10:27.427
to release any further information to you, right?
1118
01:10:28.840 --> 01:10:32.743
And again, this is totally confidential at this point.
1119
01:10:37.240 --> 01:10:41.690
Yemen wouldn't take Adnan's remains back
1120
01:10:41.690 --> 01:10:45.630
unless the US gave them the autopsy report.
1121
01:10:45.630 --> 01:10:49.320
So the US is going to give them the autopsy report
1122
01:10:49.320 --> 01:10:52.980
and the Yemen government will give the autopsy report
1123
01:10:52.980 --> 01:10:53.983
to the families.
1124
01:10:56.440 --> 01:11:01.440
And we will talk to one of Adnan's brothers,
1125
01:11:02.780 --> 01:11:05.410
we'll try to place the first call tomorrow
1126
01:11:05.410 --> 01:11:08.070
and give him a heads up of what's happening
1127
01:11:08.070 --> 01:11:12.423
and what we think the report will conclude.
1128
01:11:14.990 --> 01:11:17.170
And we're going to give the autopsy report
1129
01:11:17.170 --> 01:11:22.003
to some independent pathologists to review as well.
1130
01:11:23.700 --> 01:11:25.450
So that's how we know about it.
1131
01:11:25.450 --> 01:11:29.770
And that's the unusual circumstance
1132
01:11:29.770 --> 01:11:31.670
with the US with releasing it.
1133
01:11:31.670 --> 01:11:36.670
Now true to a public affairs strategy.
1134
01:11:38.520 --> 01:11:41.950
The report will be turned over to the Yemen government
1135
01:11:41.950 --> 01:11:44.380
in the week of the presidential elections
1136
01:11:45.370 --> 01:11:46.640
so it will be unnoticed.
1137
01:11:46.640 --> 01:11:50.470
The Pentagon is not only wish you a press-release,
1138
01:11:50.470 --> 01:11:53.913
Yemen may not even acknowledge it.
1139
01:11:55.090 --> 01:11:59.470
So the US is doing everything possible
1140
01:11:59.470 --> 01:12:02.140
to bury the story if you'll pardon the phrase
1141
01:12:03.060 --> 01:12:06.610
but that's another long way of answering your question.
1142
01:12:06.610 --> 01:12:09.640
Then there is an investigation ongoing
1143
01:12:09.640 --> 01:12:12.850
by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service
1144
01:12:12.850 --> 01:12:17.074
which we can understand why it's taking so long.
1145
01:12:17.074 --> 01:12:18.444
Investigating what?.
1146
01:12:18.444 --> 01:12:23.444
Investigating the sequence of events.
1147
01:12:26.970 --> 01:12:29.520
Who's responsible for what.
1148
01:12:29.520 --> 01:12:33.570
The pathologist determines the cause of death
1149
01:12:33.570 --> 01:12:37.570
with input by the car and or I guess or medical examiner.
1150
01:12:40.930 --> 01:12:45.140
But then the NCIS is exploring whether there was criminal
1151
01:12:45.140 --> 01:12:48.060
or culpable activities and that's routine.
1152
01:12:48.060 --> 01:12:52.030
They do it in the case of every detainee
1153
01:12:52.030 --> 01:12:56.820
but they sometimes take a couple of years to do it.
1154
01:12:56.820 --> 01:12:59.620
They sometimes never finish.
1155
01:12:59.620 --> 01:13:02.230
And all that's released to the public
1156
01:13:02.230 --> 01:13:06.263
turns out to be a heavily redacted version.
1157
01:13:07.610 --> 01:13:11.557
The FBI seems to be investigating it because Shaker told me
1158
01:13:12.770 --> 01:13:17.770
that the FBI wanted to interrogate him about Adnan's death
1159
01:13:17.810 --> 01:13:22.530
'cause they were both in the punishment cell block,
1160
01:13:22.530 --> 01:13:26.143
in the psych cells of the punishment cell blocks.
1161
01:13:28.320 --> 01:13:31.450
But so Shaker said, well, my lawyer
1162
01:13:31.450 --> 01:13:33.150
David Remes is down here.
1163
01:13:33.150 --> 01:13:35.810
I'm not gonna talk to you unless my lawyer's here.
1164
01:13:35.810 --> 01:13:38.000
So take advantage of the opportunity.
1165
01:13:38.000 --> 01:13:39.460
I'll tell you anything you wanna know
1166
01:13:39.460 --> 01:13:41.930
but I have to have the lawyer in my room.
1167
01:13:41.930 --> 01:13:42.763
They never did that.
1168
01:13:42.763 --> 01:13:44.360
They never took advantage of that.
1169
01:13:46.580 --> 01:13:48.530
Another side note,
1170
01:13:48.530 --> 01:13:50.212
I won't go into this
1171
01:13:50.212 --> 01:13:54.150
but there will be outside investigators coming in
1172
01:13:54.150 --> 01:13:57.440
and again, taking information from him.
1173
01:13:57.440 --> 01:13:58.420
But that has nothing to do
1174
01:13:58.420 --> 01:14:00.910
with the suicide point.
1175
01:14:00.910 --> 01:14:05.770
Then SOUTHCOM, which is the unit
1176
01:14:06.770 --> 01:14:10.150
of the military with overall responsibility
1177
01:14:11.074 --> 01:14:15.560
for South America and Latin America.
1178
01:14:15.560 --> 01:14:17.403
And I don't know what else,
1179
01:14:19.390 --> 01:14:23.010
I don't know what else, you can find that out pretty easily
1180
01:14:23.010 --> 01:14:25.163
is conducting its own investigation.
1181
01:14:26.940 --> 01:14:29.980
So right now you have three investigations ongoing
1182
01:14:31.630 --> 01:14:34.360
with no claim that this was suicide,
1183
01:14:34.360 --> 01:14:37.963
with no claim that this was natural causes.
1184
01:14:39.100 --> 01:14:43.970
When he was found dead, I've been told
1185
01:14:43.970 --> 01:14:45.830
that the news went all the way up
1186
01:14:46.800 --> 01:14:49.860
to the joint chiefs of staff
1187
01:14:49.860 --> 01:14:54.103
because it was regarded as such a political hot potato.
1188
01:14:56.120 --> 01:14:59.370
Again, I'm getting in front of the story.
1189
01:14:59.370 --> 01:15:04.370
So yeah, the question or witness privilege.
1190
01:15:11.100 --> 01:15:12.383
Absolutely (indistinct)
1191
01:15:12.383 --> 01:15:13.250
I'll invoke.
1192
01:15:13.250 --> 01:15:16.500
So no, the others, the government
1193
01:15:16.500 --> 01:15:20.060
was able to sort of pass off very easily,
1194
01:15:20.060 --> 01:15:22.623
but it's not able to do that here.
1195
01:15:24.400 --> 01:15:25.490
That's why I think
1196
01:15:25.490 --> 01:15:28.720
there are so many investigations going on.
1197
01:15:28.720 --> 01:15:30.290
And I also think that the Pentagon
1198
01:15:30.290 --> 01:15:31.800
and the government in general
1199
01:15:31.800 --> 01:15:34.050
wanna get their stories straight.
1200
01:15:34.050 --> 01:15:35.540
I mean, why wouldn't they do investigations?
1201
01:15:35.540 --> 01:15:38.290
Why wouldn't they just bury the whole thing and just say?
1202
01:15:38.290 --> 01:15:39.870
Well, it's I say, it's routine
1203
01:15:39.870 --> 01:15:43.430
for the NCIS to do investigations in the case of deaths.
1204
01:15:43.430 --> 01:15:45.620
This is not unique to Adnan.
1205
01:15:45.620 --> 01:15:47.650
I don't know about the FBI.
1206
01:15:47.650 --> 01:15:49.200
And I only say it's the FBI
1207
01:15:49.200 --> 01:15:53.600
because Shaker told me that it was the FBI.
1208
01:15:53.600 --> 01:15:56.933
And we know that it's SOUTHCOM,
1209
01:15:57.830 --> 01:16:02.050
I can't remember how we know, but we know.
1210
01:16:02.050 --> 01:16:04.493
We know based on objective sources.
1211
01:16:05.720 --> 01:16:08.160
Why do you think Shaker is not released
1212
01:16:08.160 --> 01:16:10.410
since he's your client?
1213
01:16:10.410 --> 01:16:14.440
Can you tell us 'cause apparently he was destined
1214
01:16:15.840 --> 01:16:19.400
for release and then he hasn't been over these years?
1215
01:16:19.400 --> 01:16:22.410
And just to mention, Adnan was approved
1216
01:16:22.410 --> 01:16:24.473
for release four times.
1217
01:16:25.560 --> 01:16:28.300
Why he wouldn't be released, he was the prime candidate
1218
01:16:28.300 --> 01:16:30.920
for release on humanitarian grounds.
1219
01:16:30.920 --> 01:16:34.552
We have other clients who have been approved for release
1220
01:16:34.552 --> 01:16:35.502
who are till there.
1221
01:16:37.240 --> 01:16:38.870
They're Yemenis.
1222
01:16:38.870 --> 01:16:43.870
He is the last UK resident at Guantanamo.
1223
01:16:44.380 --> 01:16:47.410
He was one of the detainee leaders,
1224
01:16:47.410 --> 01:16:51.270
he's been in isolation for
1225
01:16:51.270 --> 01:16:53.400
almost since the beginning.
1226
01:16:53.400 --> 01:16:57.593
They do have ways of communicating despite being isolated.
1227
01:16:59.240 --> 01:17:04.240
He has always felt that the US was afraid to release him
1228
01:17:06.893 --> 01:17:11.893
because he would reveal the horrors that he suffered,
1229
01:17:14.840 --> 01:17:18.040
he thinks that the UK doesn't want him
1230
01:17:18.040 --> 01:17:23.040
because he would support and complain about horrors
1231
01:17:25.550 --> 01:17:28.400
that the British were complicit in
1232
01:17:29.690 --> 01:17:31.790
and would go out on his soap box anyway
1233
01:17:31.790 --> 01:17:33.100
and become a big critic.
1234
01:17:33.100 --> 01:17:34.890
That's his theory.
1235
01:17:34.890 --> 01:17:39.560
There are always whispers that there are negotiations
1236
01:17:39.560 --> 01:17:44.560
between the UK and Shaker over his release
1237
01:17:45.000 --> 01:17:47.563
which is also a political hot potato.
1238
01:17:48.670 --> 01:17:51.110
Everybody says they're trying to do the right thing
1239
01:17:51.110 --> 01:17:52.943
but the right thing never happens.
1240
01:17:54.890 --> 01:17:59.890
They sort of toss the ball at each other on this.
1241
01:18:00.770 --> 01:18:05.150
The Brits complain that Congress passed a law
1242
01:18:05.150 --> 01:18:07.940
that makes it, well, we claim
1243
01:18:07.940 --> 01:18:11.290
that Congress passed a law that make us very horrible.
1244
01:18:11.290 --> 01:18:12.940
I mean, not horrible, really
1245
01:18:12.940 --> 01:18:15.820
but hard to approve the release of anybody,
1246
01:18:15.820 --> 01:18:17.890
even those people that the government
1247
01:18:17.890 --> 01:18:19.230
doesn't wanna release.
1248
01:18:19.230 --> 01:18:23.440
He's a very high profile detainee.
1249
01:18:23.440 --> 01:18:25.240
And I know I wander all over the place
1250
01:18:25.240 --> 01:18:29.180
in some of these answers, but for some reason
1251
01:18:29.180 --> 01:18:31.710
he's just a hard nut to crack.
1252
01:18:31.710 --> 01:18:33.860
He's not a nut, but he's hard to crack.
1253
01:18:33.860 --> 01:18:36.730
So, my understanding the US has said
1254
01:18:36.730 --> 01:18:38.540
that they will not keep anybody
1255
01:18:38.540 --> 01:18:41.030
in isolation for more than 30 days.
1256
01:18:41.030 --> 01:18:42.750
And you just described Shaker
1257
01:18:42.750 --> 01:18:46.770
as being in isolation for what apparently these years.
1258
01:18:46.770 --> 01:18:48.760
How does the US justify that?
1259
01:18:48.760 --> 01:18:51.550
I think that the US is talking
1260
01:18:51.550 --> 01:18:56.550
about individuals ordinary rank and file detainees
1261
01:18:57.510 --> 01:19:01.723
say those in Camp Six who commit some violation,
1262
01:19:02.610 --> 01:19:04.140
big or small.
1263
01:19:04.140 --> 01:19:09.140
They're sent to Camp Five and put there as punishment.
1264
01:19:09.250 --> 01:19:11.430
They may stay there for 30 days.
1265
01:19:11.430 --> 01:19:13.560
I think that's the official policy.
1266
01:19:13.560 --> 01:19:17.500
Some of them stay longer, but then there is another class
1267
01:19:17.500 --> 01:19:22.500
of detainee who is kept in isolation for other reasons.
1268
01:19:25.100 --> 01:19:29.333
And I have a few clients who fall into that category.
1269
01:19:30.750 --> 01:19:33.180
So the 30 day maximum
1270
01:19:33.180 --> 01:19:37.917
and they talk about is for situations
1271
01:19:39.650 --> 01:19:42.660
other than those that my clients are involved in,
1272
01:19:42.660 --> 01:19:47.430
who have special cases.
1273
01:19:47.430 --> 01:19:49.560
Could you describe the kind of isolation
1274
01:19:49.560 --> 01:19:50.553
that he's in?
1275
01:19:52.190 --> 01:19:55.540
Yes, let me have a sip of water first.
1276
01:19:55.540 --> 01:19:57.103
Yeah, if you want to get him,
1277
01:19:57.103 --> 01:19:58.010
should we get another one of these?
1278
01:19:58.010 --> 01:20:01.300
If you got anything I'd love a can of diet Coke
1279
01:20:01.300 --> 01:20:04.461
but that maybe room service will barely bring it up.
1280
01:20:04.461 --> 01:20:05.654
We don't have one actually.
1281
01:20:05.654 --> 01:20:07.730
Can you turn off the camera for a minute.
1282
01:20:07.730 --> 01:20:11.430
About the isolation that Shaker has experienced
1283
01:20:11.430 --> 01:20:12.490
or is experiencing
1284
01:20:12.490 --> 01:20:16.870
Yes, Shaker experienced
1285
01:20:16.870 --> 01:20:19.430
and some of my other clients experienced
1286
01:20:21.600 --> 01:20:26.600
particularly horrible isolation in the last couple of years.
1287
01:20:31.900 --> 01:20:36.350
I wouldn't say that I was proud
1288
01:20:36.350 --> 01:20:39.830
to have the number of clients I did
1289
01:20:39.830 --> 01:20:42.960
who were isolated this way
1290
01:20:42.960 --> 01:20:47.960
but it did seem impressive to me.
1291
01:20:48.186 --> 01:20:50.269
(laughs)
1292
01:20:51.320 --> 01:20:55.223
This a reference to Five Echo.
1293
01:20:57.810 --> 01:21:01.327
Echo is the camp that holds the men
1294
01:21:04.380 --> 01:21:09.270
who have been convicted by the military commission.
1295
01:21:09.270 --> 01:21:14.270
It holds a special group, which I'll go into a little later
1296
01:21:14.770 --> 01:21:19.770
of men who are deemed to be extraordinarily influential
1297
01:21:21.150 --> 01:21:23.193
among the detainee population.
1298
01:21:24.400 --> 01:21:26.950
It houses hunger strikers
1299
01:21:26.950 --> 01:21:29.040
of which there aren't a lot anymore.
1300
01:21:29.040 --> 01:21:34.040
And it's the place where the detainees who violate the rules
1301
01:21:38.520 --> 01:21:41.100
or who are said to violate the rules are sent to.
1302
01:21:41.100 --> 01:21:44.870
It's the punishment camp.
1303
01:21:44.870 --> 01:21:49.003
And just to describe the geography of it,
1304
01:21:50.280 --> 01:21:52.763
in the beginning there was Delta.
1305
01:21:54.140 --> 01:21:59.140
Delta was a very large camp, full of converted,
1306
01:21:59.180 --> 01:22:03.680
large converted trailers and divided into cells.
1307
01:22:03.680 --> 01:22:06.503
And each cell was caged and they were mesh wires,
1308
01:22:08.607 --> 01:22:12.673
mesh wiring, or crosshatched iron sides,
1309
01:22:16.730 --> 01:22:21.423
which is why I call it a cage, squat toilets,
1310
01:22:22.860 --> 01:22:27.860
which is what most of the men are customed to anyway,
1311
01:22:28.080 --> 01:22:33.080
but that doesn't excuse it in an American camp.
1312
01:22:34.600 --> 01:22:37.010
I've story of his story to tell about that
1313
01:22:37.010 --> 01:22:39.980
but I'll leave it until later if we have time.
1314
01:22:39.980 --> 01:22:44.980
Then the military built Camp Five, which had four wings,
1315
01:22:48.850 --> 01:22:53.850
Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Echo.
1316
01:22:56.780 --> 01:23:00.510
Then the military built Camp Six
1317
01:23:02.170 --> 01:23:07.170
both of them are modeled on maximum security US prisons.
1318
01:23:09.820 --> 01:23:11.093
There are two stories.
1319
01:23:17.730 --> 01:23:20.773
And skipping way ahead to the present.
1320
01:23:24.780 --> 01:23:26.980
Maybe two or three years ago.
1321
01:23:26.980 --> 01:23:28.603
Well, three or four years ago,
1322
01:23:29.550 --> 01:23:32.253
the Bush administration set up,
1323
01:23:34.639 --> 01:23:35.760
I miss camp.
1324
01:23:35.760 --> 01:23:40.030
It it's Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, okay?
1325
01:23:40.030 --> 01:23:44.390
They set up an Echo called Five Echo.
1326
01:23:44.390 --> 01:23:49.390
Echo was sort of attached to the main camp,
1327
01:23:50.457 --> 01:23:55.457
five camp proper, except it too was a converted trailer.
1328
01:23:58.340 --> 01:24:00.580
The Pentagon released photos of this
1329
01:24:00.580 --> 01:24:04.810
after Ben Fox of the AP broke this story
1330
01:24:04.810 --> 01:24:09.743
in December, 2010, I think.
1331
01:24:11.660 --> 01:24:13.363
Probably 2010.
1332
01:24:14.270 --> 01:24:18.125
Maybe 2011, the years sort of merge into each other.
1333
01:24:18.125 --> 01:24:19.360
The story you're gonna tell us?
1334
01:24:19.360 --> 01:24:21.570
Yeah, very briefly.
1335
01:24:21.570 --> 01:24:25.083
And he didn't tell it in the detail that I can tell it in.
1336
01:24:25.083 --> 01:24:26.560
Okay.
1337
01:24:26.560 --> 01:24:31.560
This is where a number of the influentials were placed,
1338
01:24:32.640 --> 01:24:35.540
which is includes Shaker.
1339
01:24:35.540 --> 01:24:38.190
It included Hassan bin Attash,
1340
01:24:38.190 --> 01:24:40.383
It included Abdul-Salam al-Hilam.
1341
01:24:44.430 --> 01:24:47.470
Shaker has been the most vivid
1342
01:24:47.470 --> 01:24:49.763
in describing the circumstances.
1343
01:24:50.950 --> 01:24:55.950
What he hated was the way he had to go to the bathroom.
1344
01:25:03.920 --> 01:25:05.890
You'll understand why when I explain it
1345
01:25:07.520 --> 01:25:12.300
because these men were meant to be punished
1346
01:25:14.350 --> 01:25:16.083
extraordinarily harshly.
1347
01:25:18.250 --> 01:25:23.250
The makeup of the cell would be you had the bed,
1348
01:25:24.010 --> 01:25:28.532
the concrete bed, you didn't have a toilet.
1349
01:25:28.532 --> 01:25:31.173
You had a hole in the ground.
1350
01:25:31.173 --> 01:25:33.733
You didn't have a sink, you have a faucet.
1351
01:25:37.540 --> 01:25:40.550
Let me reverse it so I can explain it better
1352
01:25:40.550 --> 01:25:45.550
because I'm, right-handed, here's the bed, here's the hole,
1353
01:25:47.350 --> 01:25:48.230
here's the faucet
1354
01:25:49.330 --> 01:25:53.823
and here's a drain pipe going from faucet to hole.
1355
01:25:56.040 --> 01:26:00.020
The hole is located
1356
01:26:00.020 --> 01:26:03.723
in a way that makes it impossible for you squat.
1357
01:26:05.190 --> 01:26:09.977
You have to dig your foot at the perpendicular line
1358
01:26:12.690 --> 01:26:15.200
where the bed connects to the floor
1359
01:26:16.500 --> 01:26:21.500
and place your other foot on the diagonal drain pipe
1360
01:26:23.890 --> 01:26:26.613
in order to take a dump,
1361
01:26:27.640 --> 01:26:30.683
in order to take a dump and urinate,
1362
01:26:31.860 --> 01:26:35.513
you have to stuff your penis into the hole.
1363
01:26:42.190 --> 01:26:47.190
The faucet will turn on the water for two minutes
1364
01:26:47.910 --> 01:26:50.073
or something like that, maybe even less.
1365
01:26:51.440 --> 01:26:56.440
Shaker has developed a practice
1366
01:26:58.520 --> 01:27:01.790
of flushing the toilet a few times
1367
01:27:01.790 --> 01:27:05.590
and then using the toilet water, putting his hands in
1368
01:27:05.590 --> 01:27:08.603
and using the toilet water to bathe himself.
1369
01:27:14.800 --> 01:27:19.800
There were blinding lights, mirrors, cameras,
1370
01:27:24.410 --> 01:27:29.410
and Shaker was kept in Five Echo until Ben wrote his story.
1371
01:27:30.660 --> 01:27:33.903
And we got a lot of publicity out of it.
1372
01:27:35.790 --> 01:27:40.790
The military told him that this cell,
1373
01:27:42.550 --> 01:27:44.260
this kind of cell complied
1374
01:27:44.260 --> 01:27:49.173
with the standards of the American Bureau of Prisons,
1375
01:27:51.610 --> 01:27:52.910
not a government organization,
1376
01:27:52.910 --> 01:27:55.503
a standard setting organization.
1377
01:27:57.240 --> 01:28:02.240
I've never heard of that even from Lusaway and the like.
1378
01:28:03.820 --> 01:28:08.580
And there were a few other aspects,
1379
01:28:10.030 --> 01:28:13.570
but that by itself is torture.
1380
01:28:13.570 --> 01:28:18.570
He had to count on guards to wake him up
1381
01:28:18.670 --> 01:28:21.010
at the proper time for prayer.
1382
01:28:21.010 --> 01:28:23.880
And sometimes the guards did it and sometimes they didn't.
1383
01:28:23.880 --> 01:28:27.360
So he ended up staying up all night often
1384
01:28:27.360 --> 01:28:29.623
in order to meet morning prayer.
1385
01:28:30.860 --> 01:28:33.090
The people in Five Echo
1386
01:28:33.090 --> 01:28:35.480
weren't allowed to have any communication
1387
01:28:35.480 --> 01:28:37.180
with other detainees.
1388
01:28:37.180 --> 01:28:38.780
They played in,
1389
01:28:38.780 --> 01:28:43.480
they got physical activity in a rec area
1390
01:28:43.480 --> 01:28:46.390
that was too far away from the other rec areas
1391
01:28:46.390 --> 01:28:51.390
to shout total isolation inside and outside.
1392
01:28:51.600 --> 01:28:54.763
And the authorities finally closed this down.
1393
01:28:56.640 --> 01:28:59.470
One detail about this that I forgot to mention
1394
01:28:59.470 --> 01:29:01.170
but it was important.
1395
01:29:01.170 --> 01:29:06.170
This Five Echo block was set up
1396
01:29:06.480 --> 01:29:08.890
under the Bush administration.
1397
01:29:08.890 --> 01:29:11.977
The Bush people used it for a very short period of time
1398
01:29:11.977 --> 01:29:15.953
and then abandoned it because they thought it was so cruel.
1399
01:29:18.960 --> 01:29:23.960
It was the Obama administration that reinstated its use
1400
01:29:23.990 --> 01:29:27.340
under the commanders that the Obama administration
1401
01:29:27.340 --> 01:29:29.410
put there, I'm not saying president Obama
1402
01:29:30.430 --> 01:29:32.520
checked it off on a box.
1403
01:29:32.520 --> 01:29:34.470
I think it was the command decision down there
1404
01:29:34.470 --> 01:29:37.490
but it's a very, very great irony.
1405
01:29:37.490 --> 01:29:42.457
Now, Shaker is in a blocking Camp Five
1406
01:29:44.030 --> 01:29:47.060
that is a punishment block.
1407
01:29:47.060 --> 01:29:49.053
It only has a few detainees.
1408
01:29:50.330 --> 01:29:54.150
It has Shaker, it had Adnan
1409
01:29:56.010 --> 01:29:58.643
and maybe one or two others there, maybe one other.
1410
01:30:01.998 --> 01:30:06.963
Shaker and Adnan were in a joining cells.
1411
01:30:09.670 --> 01:30:12.760
Shaker, and I have to be careful at this point
1412
01:30:12.760 --> 01:30:17.150
because the military tries to treat as classified
1413
01:30:17.150 --> 01:30:19.750
everything surrounding Adnan's death
1414
01:30:21.390 --> 01:30:23.750
but everything I'm telling you is unclassified
1415
01:30:24.610 --> 01:30:28.730
and the US will probably declassify it in 75 years
1416
01:30:28.730 --> 01:30:33.730
you realize coats from World War I are still classified,
1417
01:30:35.220 --> 01:30:38.980
I think or only declassified lately.
1418
01:30:38.980 --> 01:30:43.980
So there are, so Shaker is in a cell
1419
01:30:47.070 --> 01:30:52.070
that has floor to ceiling glass, plexiglass doors
1420
01:30:57.800 --> 01:31:02.800
with a guard monitoring him all the time
1421
01:31:03.340 --> 01:31:07.040
plus there are guards who go by every three minutes
1422
01:31:07.040 --> 01:31:08.822
or every one minute.
1423
01:31:08.822 --> 01:31:13.157
And as a matter of routine, I would suspect
1424
01:31:15.930 --> 01:31:17.930
which is all I can say at this point
1425
01:31:17.930 --> 01:31:21.233
that Adnan was in the same kind of cell.
1426
01:31:24.060 --> 01:31:29.060
So Shaker was an eye witness to Adnan's death
1427
01:31:29.290 --> 01:31:34.290
as was another detainee I presume who was also there
1428
01:31:40.040 --> 01:31:44.450
in a cell practically opposite to Adnan's.
1429
01:31:44.450 --> 01:31:46.363
I can't say that he was eye witness.
1430
01:31:49.070 --> 01:31:54.070
So all this cell block is, is a series of iron
1431
01:32:00.940 --> 01:32:05.940
or concrete cells with the little key hole.
1432
01:32:06.560 --> 01:32:08.803
There's no communal living.
1433
01:32:09.710 --> 01:32:14.710
The US calls these the equivalent of single residence cells.
1434
01:32:19.600 --> 01:32:20.750
That's how they put it.
1435
01:32:22.700 --> 01:32:27.700
It may not be technical isolation by some definitions
1436
01:32:31.540 --> 01:32:34.840
but as far as these men are concerned
1437
01:32:34.840 --> 01:32:38.120
because they're confined 22 hours a day,
1438
01:32:38.120 --> 01:32:42.193
they have this very limited ability to communicate,
1439
01:32:43.550 --> 01:32:46.063
they're cut off from the general population,
1440
01:32:49.170 --> 01:32:52.483
I can't really go further than that,
1441
01:32:54.560 --> 01:32:59.560
but I think it's the fact that there's no communal life.
1442
01:32:59.600 --> 01:33:03.413
The fact that there are so few of them, according to Shaker,
1443
01:33:05.163 --> 01:33:09.370
blinding lights are shined into his cell.
1444
01:33:12.100 --> 01:33:16.053
There are generators going right behind the walls.
1445
01:33:17.710 --> 01:33:19.030
Can you state,
1446
01:33:19.030 --> 01:33:22.540
was Adnan and Shaker able to talk
1447
01:33:22.540 --> 01:33:24.660
because they're so close
1448
01:33:24.660 --> 01:33:27.460
through the plexiglass or through some?
1449
01:33:27.460 --> 01:33:29.290
Well, I don't know that
1450
01:33:29.290 --> 01:33:34.290
I have heard Shaker say that he talked to Adnan.
1451
01:33:40.690 --> 01:33:43.970
Or to the other person who was there?
1452
01:33:43.970 --> 01:33:48.970
But based on the physical situations in other blocks
1453
01:33:51.470 --> 01:33:54.670
that I'm aware of, it would have been possible
1454
01:33:54.670 --> 01:33:56.830
for them to shout to each other.
1455
01:33:56.830 --> 01:34:01.830
And there is information that is still classified
1456
01:34:02.960 --> 01:34:05.573
that corroborates that Shaker
1457
01:34:08.950 --> 01:34:12.633
could hear Adnan very, very well.
1458
01:34:16.720 --> 01:34:20.800
So I don't doubt that they can communicate,
1459
01:34:20.800 --> 01:34:25.543
but I and my colleagues still regard it as isolation.
1460
01:34:26.710 --> 01:34:28.670
They factor isolation
1461
01:34:28.670 --> 01:34:31.420
and that's the way it used to be throughout the camp
1462
01:34:31.420 --> 01:34:35.213
until the camp began to allow communal living.
1463
01:34:39.980 --> 01:34:41.080
No common rec.
1464
01:34:41.080 --> 01:34:43.573
When you took rec, you took it by yourself.
1465
01:34:44.760 --> 01:34:46.130
That's true for these men
1466
01:34:46.130 --> 01:34:47.330
that you're describing.
1467
01:34:47.330 --> 01:34:48.163
That's right.
1468
01:34:49.560 --> 01:34:50.393
Right, so.
1469
01:34:50.393 --> 01:34:52.620
And rec maybe a two o'clock in the morning.
1470
01:34:52.620 --> 01:34:54.330
Right, so he had very little
1471
01:34:54.330 --> 01:34:57.040
of any communication with another.
1472
01:34:58.292 --> 01:35:03.292
Right, or the general population though I have to say
1473
01:35:04.610 --> 01:35:09.610
despite all, these men find ways
1474
01:35:12.050 --> 01:35:14.110
to communicate with each other,
1475
01:35:14.110 --> 01:35:15.940
not necessarily
1476
01:35:15.940 --> 01:35:18.640
somebody like Shaker's not gonna get much information.
1477
01:35:25.860 --> 01:35:29.050
At one point, my clients Saifullah Paracha told me
1478
01:35:29.050 --> 01:35:31.500
that in the camp where he was,
1479
01:35:31.500 --> 01:35:33.840
they used to talk to each other through air vents
1480
01:35:33.840 --> 01:35:36.202
and through drainpipes.
1481
01:35:36.202 --> 01:35:38.140
Right.
1482
01:35:38.140 --> 01:35:40.900
And I'm kind of, I've always been kind of surprised
1483
01:35:40.900 --> 01:35:45.900
because you think that the camp was listening to the man
1484
01:35:46.140 --> 01:35:48.300
although it listens anyway,
1485
01:35:48.300 --> 01:35:51.000
and that the men would say something
1486
01:35:51.000 --> 01:35:54.510
that would upset the authorities
1487
01:35:54.510 --> 01:35:57.613
but this is just normal.
1488
01:35:59.910 --> 01:36:01.430
Well, it could be the authorities
1489
01:36:01.430 --> 01:36:05.047
were not hearing what is being said just you know.
1490
01:36:05.047 --> 01:36:07.550
You had mentioned when we took a break
1491
01:36:07.550 --> 01:36:12.243
about having a gay client, which I hadn't heard before.
1492
01:36:13.650 --> 01:36:17.870
Can you describe what it's like
1493
01:36:17.870 --> 01:36:22.633
to be gay men in that community?
1494
01:36:28.290 --> 01:36:31.833
I don't know of a single openly gay detainee.
1495
01:36:33.600 --> 01:36:38.600
I think that an open detainee would be ostracized,
1496
01:36:40.820 --> 01:36:42.373
totally ostracized.
1497
01:36:44.140 --> 01:36:46.350
One of my clients is ostracized
1498
01:36:46.350 --> 01:36:51.350
for far less in quotes than being gay.
1499
01:36:56.410 --> 01:36:58.700
Well, the government know though.
1500
01:36:58.700 --> 01:37:00.299
I mean, people must know
1501
01:37:00.299 --> 01:37:02.283
'cause everything's on camera.
1502
01:37:03.250 --> 01:37:08.250
But they don't engage in sex in the camp
1503
01:37:08.660 --> 01:37:10.670
between themselves.
1504
01:37:10.670 --> 01:37:15.253
But hilariously there's a warning sign
1505
01:37:18.010 --> 01:37:23.010
at the exit into the rec area that says no sex
1506
01:37:25.570 --> 01:37:29.510
in the rec area, yeah, so.
1507
01:37:29.510 --> 01:37:30.760
You've been told that, are you serious?
1508
01:37:30.760 --> 01:37:31.860
I've been told that.
1509
01:37:34.310 --> 01:37:38.193
Anyway, it began to emerge.
1510
01:37:39.050 --> 01:37:44.050
I think the first time I and my translators
1511
01:37:44.870 --> 01:37:47.530
noticed anything that was a little bit
1512
01:37:47.530 --> 01:37:52.530
out of the ordinary was when my client and I
1513
01:37:53.400 --> 01:37:57.980
were sitting at a where he was at the head
1514
01:37:57.980 --> 01:37:59.730
with his back to the wall.
1515
01:37:59.730 --> 01:38:02.240
And instead of being here with my back to the door,
1516
01:38:02.240 --> 01:38:05.453
I was perpendicular facing the cage.
1517
01:38:06.320 --> 01:38:11.320
He put his foot, his ankle, his shin on mine.
1518
01:38:14.820 --> 01:38:17.563
I think he was wondering what my reaction would be.
1519
01:38:19.010 --> 01:38:20.353
I didn't react at all.
1520
01:38:23.640 --> 01:38:28.500
Other things, he'd say to me, you're my lawyer
1521
01:38:28.500 --> 01:38:32.980
but you're so much more to me than your lawyer,
1522
01:38:32.980 --> 01:38:33.863
than my lawyer.
1523
01:38:36.610 --> 01:38:41.610
At some point I wrote a note to him that I had translated
1524
01:38:41.680 --> 01:38:46.680
because I didn't want to embarrass him by saying it.
1525
01:38:48.530 --> 01:38:51.260
I said, look, one way out of here
1526
01:38:52.180 --> 01:38:54.130
is if you acknowledge you're gay.
1527
01:38:54.130 --> 01:38:55.281
Really?
1528
01:38:55.281 --> 01:38:59.407
I mean, no, that's a guess on my part because of the risk
1529
01:39:00.400 --> 01:39:03.483
the authorities would assume he'd be subject to.
1530
01:39:04.610 --> 01:39:09.610
Just we're always looking for ways to get our clients out.
1531
01:39:11.610 --> 01:39:16.610
So the long and the short of the note was if you're gay,
1532
01:39:16.930 --> 01:39:19.410
we'll use that to try to get you out.
1533
01:39:19.410 --> 01:39:22.690
And his response after he spent about two minutes
1534
01:39:23.900 --> 01:39:28.900
looking at this and thinking was a lie that I am,
1535
01:39:28.940 --> 01:39:29.963
if you want me to.
1536
01:39:31.946 --> 01:39:33.780
And you don't think the other detainees
1537
01:39:33.780 --> 01:39:35.943
would pick up this?
1538
01:39:38.380 --> 01:39:39.273
Who knows?
1539
01:39:41.730 --> 01:39:44.430
I think, he said it it's a secret.
1540
01:39:44.430 --> 01:39:45.653
I assume it's a secret.
1541
01:39:47.842 --> 01:39:48.675
And the authorities,
1542
01:39:48.675 --> 01:39:50.950
you don't think pick it up or they don't wanna pick it up.
1543
01:39:55.240 --> 01:39:56.073
I don't know.
1544
01:39:57.730 --> 01:39:58.800
Ask them.
1545
01:39:58.800 --> 01:40:01.850
Yeah, interesting.
1546
01:40:01.850 --> 01:40:05.760
Can you tell us why that (indistinct) was ostracized?
1547
01:40:05.760 --> 01:40:08.830
That was another detainer that I mentioned.
1548
01:40:08.830 --> 01:40:10.653
My clients Saifullah Paracha,
1549
01:40:11.624 --> 01:40:12.474
He's a Pakistani.
1550
01:40:13.370 --> 01:40:14.750
He speaks perfect English
1551
01:40:14.750 --> 01:40:18.020
because he came to the US in 1971.
1552
01:40:18.020 --> 01:40:19.970
He's a green card holder.
1553
01:40:19.970 --> 01:40:22.040
His wife is a green card holder.
1554
01:40:22.040 --> 01:40:24.770
He has family in the US.
1555
01:40:24.770 --> 01:40:27.143
He's the one who was kidnapped in Thailand.
1556
01:40:29.038 --> 01:40:30.040
And the government's accusation
1557
01:40:30.040 --> 01:40:35.040
is that he was a financier for Al-Qaeda.
1558
01:40:37.340 --> 01:40:39.040
He doesn't speak Arabic.
1559
01:40:39.040 --> 01:40:40.713
He only speaks Urdu.
1560
01:40:43.120 --> 01:40:46.500
The authorities have stuck him in a cell block
1561
01:40:47.520 --> 01:40:52.520
of detainees who only speak Arabic.
1562
01:40:53.470 --> 01:40:55.800
There are other detainees.
1563
01:40:55.800 --> 01:40:59.210
I think the brothers Ramah Rabbani
1564
01:40:59.210 --> 01:41:02.900
the Rabbani brothers who speak Urdu
1565
01:41:02.900 --> 01:41:05.650
but they've put Saifullah in this block
1566
01:41:05.650 --> 01:41:07.640
where nobody speaks Urdu.
1567
01:41:07.640 --> 01:41:10.123
And this has gone on for many, many years.
1568
01:41:11.000 --> 01:41:12.770
Well, how does project communicate
1569
01:41:12.770 --> 01:41:15.290
or does he not communicate with anybody else?
1570
01:41:15.290 --> 01:41:17.323
He isolated by language then.
1571
01:41:18.490 --> 01:41:21.980
Within the block, although there may be,
1572
01:41:21.980 --> 01:41:26.950
I think there may be detainees who speak English and Arabic.
1573
01:41:30.230 --> 01:41:34.350
Oh, but other than that,
1574
01:41:34.350 --> 01:41:35.810
he would be isolated.
1575
01:41:35.810 --> 01:41:38.250
He wouldn't have no way of communicating
1576
01:41:38.250 --> 01:41:40.120
except with the guards.
1577
01:41:40.120 --> 01:41:42.653
And that is probably his salvation.
1578
01:41:45.370 --> 01:41:46.670
He knows a lot.
1579
01:41:46.670 --> 01:41:49.550
I mean, he knows, and this gets
1580
01:41:49.550 --> 01:41:52.333
into another area that I'll cover very briefly.
1581
01:41:53.410 --> 01:41:55.840
He and other detainees
1582
01:41:55.840 --> 01:42:00.790
now know everything that goes on in the world.
1583
01:42:00.790 --> 01:42:03.020
In fact, sometimes I go there
1584
01:42:03.020 --> 01:42:07.410
and they tell me things that I don't know with the access
1585
01:42:07.410 --> 01:42:11.480
to all the media I have access to because a few years ago
1586
01:42:12.610 --> 01:42:15.423
after keeping the men totally incommunicado,
1587
01:42:16.500 --> 01:42:21.310
the authorities put television sets up
1588
01:42:23.360 --> 01:42:28.360
which included state televisions
1589
01:42:29.840 --> 01:42:34.583
but that's better than nothing and Al Jazeera English.
1590
01:42:36.430 --> 01:42:40.450
It made it very hard for the Arabic only speakers.
1591
01:42:43.180 --> 01:42:45.460
And in fact, some of the friction
1592
01:42:45.460 --> 01:42:48.570
among the detainees involved, what channel to watch
1593
01:42:50.070 --> 01:42:52.300
which must be familiar to all of us,
1594
01:42:52.300 --> 01:42:57.300
children and adults alike, but Saifullah listens to CNN,
1595
01:43:01.000 --> 01:43:05.570
listens to al Jazeera English.
1596
01:43:05.570 --> 01:43:08.300
I've been on Al Jazeera English many times.
1597
01:43:08.300 --> 01:43:09.830
And when I go down there
1598
01:43:11.060 --> 01:43:14.040
all of the men say, I saw you there.
1599
01:43:14.040 --> 01:43:15.920
Some men say, I didn't see your picture
1600
01:43:15.920 --> 01:43:18.030
but I heard your voice.
1601
01:43:18.030 --> 01:43:20.410
Others say, I heard your voice.
1602
01:43:20.410 --> 01:43:23.890
And I saw you in your suit and everything.
1603
01:43:23.890 --> 01:43:28.530
And one thing that got all of their attention,
1604
01:43:28.530 --> 01:43:32.530
impressed them was something I said
1605
01:43:32.530 --> 01:43:36.360
right after Adnan died, which was,
1606
01:43:36.360 --> 01:43:39.210
they may not know the specific cause of death
1607
01:43:40.460 --> 01:43:42.547
but it was Guantanamo that killed him.
1608
01:43:45.400 --> 01:43:50.040
So anyway, that is a long way
1609
01:43:50.040 --> 01:43:54.180
of going back to this Southern separatists.
1610
01:43:54.180 --> 01:43:56.870
And that is to explain that another client
1611
01:43:56.870 --> 01:43:59.433
has been put in a similar situation.
1612
01:44:00.600 --> 01:44:01.580
I think you kind of sit there.
1613
01:44:01.580 --> 01:44:02.950
I just want to confirm that,
1614
01:44:02.950 --> 01:44:04.970
do you think Paracha was put there
1615
01:44:06.310 --> 01:44:09.050
for a reason that he knew too much?
1616
01:44:09.050 --> 01:44:12.053
Why do you think they put him with only Arabic speakers?
1617
01:44:13.000 --> 01:44:16.343
Well, there are hardly any Urdu speakers.
1618
01:44:17.820 --> 01:44:21.120
So the question is why is he being kept
1619
01:44:21.120 --> 01:44:24.780
from the only other detainees who speak Urdu?
1620
01:44:24.780 --> 01:44:29.750
And I think that the two others, I'm pretty sure
1621
01:44:29.750 --> 01:44:34.750
the two others are these two brothers whose last names
1622
01:44:35.330 --> 01:44:38.143
in our terms are Rabbani.
1623
01:44:39.140 --> 01:44:43.913
I can't remember who, they are the Pakistanis,
1624
01:44:47.210 --> 01:44:50.040
the Pakistan government considers them
1625
01:44:50.040 --> 01:44:52.540
the only true Pakistanis.
1626
01:44:52.540 --> 01:44:57.470
They think that KSM, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
1627
01:44:57.470 --> 01:45:01.580
is not a real Pakistani, but he's from another country
1628
01:45:01.580 --> 01:45:04.640
and there's another 911 defendant.
1629
01:45:04.640 --> 01:45:09.640
I think it's Mashi Con who's KSM's nephew if I recall.
1630
01:45:19.370 --> 01:45:22.330
And when I've been over to the Pakistani embassy,
1631
01:45:22.330 --> 01:45:25.110
those are the only real Pakistanis,
1632
01:45:25.110 --> 01:45:27.520
the others come from somewhere else.
1633
01:45:27.520 --> 01:45:31.150
So anyway, that's another anecdote on the side.
1634
01:45:31.150 --> 01:45:35.700
So the mystery is why they don't put him with with Rabbanis.
1635
01:45:38.500 --> 01:45:41.940
Okay, and Rabbanis,
1636
01:45:41.940 --> 01:45:46.130
have they been dedicated for release too, are they?
1637
01:45:46.130 --> 01:45:47.930
I can't recall.
1638
01:45:47.930 --> 01:45:51.220
Okay I haven't touched on yet
1639
01:45:51.220 --> 01:45:54.621
your trip to Yemen, you've gone several times.
1640
01:45:54.621 --> 01:45:55.454
Eight times.
1641
01:45:55.454 --> 01:45:56.720
Eight times.
1642
01:45:56.720 --> 01:45:58.120
Is there something you can tell us
1643
01:45:58.120 --> 01:46:01.383
about those trips that might be interesting for the viewers?
1644
01:46:02.460 --> 01:46:07.460
Yes, both a personal and the political levels.
1645
01:46:10.670 --> 01:46:13.100
First of course, when I went to Yemen
1646
01:46:13.100 --> 01:46:17.340
I was completely disoriented because it's nothing.
1647
01:46:17.340 --> 01:46:22.083
I mean, it has no virtually no Western culture.
1648
01:46:23.310 --> 01:46:25.623
You go to Saudi Arabia or Dubai,
1649
01:46:27.750 --> 01:46:31.940
you might as well be or Hong Kong I mean,
1650
01:46:31.940 --> 01:46:35.297
but Yemen in particular, because it's so poor
1651
01:46:36.970 --> 01:46:38.323
and so backward,
1652
01:46:39.350 --> 01:46:43.463
there has been hardly any American investment there.
1653
01:46:44.950 --> 01:46:49.810
I may have seen one or two billboard signs
1654
01:46:51.160 --> 01:46:55.630
for Kentucky Fried Chicken or something
1655
01:46:55.630 --> 01:47:00.573
but there's virtually no Western cultural presence.
1656
01:47:03.670 --> 01:47:06.560
So that's one thing.
1657
01:47:06.560 --> 01:47:08.253
You can buy consumer goods.
1658
01:47:09.790 --> 01:47:11.200
So that's one thing.
1659
01:47:11.200 --> 01:47:13.740
The second was, it was all strange
1660
01:47:15.100 --> 01:47:19.190
because the dress is strange for example.
1661
01:47:19.190 --> 01:47:24.190
The men may wear these white robes, have their cathedral.
1662
01:47:25.430 --> 01:47:28.820
That's how Arabic head covering on their heads,
1663
01:47:28.820 --> 01:47:32.070
wearing Western style jackets.
1664
01:47:32.070 --> 01:47:34.730
And it's a big point of pride
1665
01:47:34.730 --> 01:47:37.900
if you have the label on the outside
1666
01:47:37.900 --> 01:47:41.370
so everybody knows that you have Briani suit.
1667
01:47:41.370 --> 01:47:46.370
And then they wear jambia which are curved knives
1668
01:47:47.900 --> 01:47:52.900
in curved sheets, the kind that you associate with a Latin
1669
01:47:56.030 --> 01:48:01.030
and the 40 knights, the women are virtually all attired
1670
01:48:02.800 --> 01:48:06.850
in abayas that go from the top of their heads
1671
01:48:06.850 --> 01:48:11.850
where their hijabs are to their ankles
1672
01:48:12.110 --> 01:48:17.097
and they also wear knee cobs
1673
01:48:18.360 --> 01:48:21.060
so that all you can see is the eyes.
1674
01:48:21.060 --> 01:48:24.007
And the more conservative ones wear screens
1675
01:48:26.840 --> 01:48:31.270
that go across so you don't even see their eyes.
1676
01:48:31.270 --> 01:48:36.270
All you really see is these they're almost trouts
1677
01:48:36.600 --> 01:48:38.500
because they're also designed
1678
01:48:38.500 --> 01:48:41.540
not to indicate the body contours.
1679
01:48:41.540 --> 01:48:44.440
And then you look down in there wearing Reebok's sneakers.
1680
01:48:45.890 --> 01:48:48.450
It's the most paradoxical thing.
1681
01:48:48.450 --> 01:48:52.690
We arrived there,
1682
01:48:52.690 --> 01:48:56.320
we had this guy who was supposed to tail us around.
1683
01:48:56.320 --> 01:48:58.870
We tried to get rid of him.
1684
01:48:58.870 --> 01:49:01.700
It was very hard because we didn't wanna be
1685
01:49:01.700 --> 01:49:06.480
followed by the KGB minder.
1686
01:49:06.480 --> 01:49:11.380
It turned out that he was just this Porsche nook journalist,
1687
01:49:11.380 --> 01:49:12.860
who was making a little money
1688
01:49:13.760 --> 01:49:16.200
and he'd report back to headquarters,
1689
01:49:16.200 --> 01:49:19.933
but he wasn't a spy or anything.
1690
01:49:20.960 --> 01:49:24.123
And we sort of managed to push him away.
1691
01:49:25.000 --> 01:49:27.840
We went to, we first met the publisher
1692
01:49:27.840 --> 01:49:31.780
of one of the English language papers who snuckered us.
1693
01:49:31.780 --> 01:49:35.180
I use snuck her and she snuck out of $100
1694
01:49:36.200 --> 01:49:38.800
saying that this was the price of this
1695
01:49:38.800 --> 01:49:40.490
or this was the price of that.
1696
01:49:40.490 --> 01:49:42.360
And you have to bear in mind
1697
01:49:42.360 --> 01:49:47.360
that $1 is two rials and rials are their version of $1.
1698
01:49:54.360 --> 01:49:57.253
So think of what $100 means.
1699
01:49:58.830 --> 01:50:03.107
If once I paid three rials for a cab drive,
1700
01:50:09.430 --> 01:50:12.170
a cab, like being transported by cab
1701
01:50:13.100 --> 01:50:17.300
which even though there was only two rials
1702
01:50:17.300 --> 01:50:19.600
I think I may have the counting wrong,
1703
01:50:19.600 --> 01:50:21.833
300 rials or 200 rials.
1704
01:50:22.820 --> 01:50:24.530
Don't take my word for it.
1705
01:50:24.530 --> 01:50:26.280
I'm just giving you an idea.
1706
01:50:26.280 --> 01:50:28.760
And the cab driver was so grateful
1707
01:50:28.760 --> 01:50:30.653
for the 100 rials tip.
1708
01:50:31.940 --> 01:50:33.760
That's how poor they are.
1709
01:50:33.760 --> 01:50:38.760
Anyway, we found a guide named Nasser Arabi
1710
01:50:39.210 --> 01:50:42.610
who was a life saver and became a very good friend.
1711
01:50:42.610 --> 01:50:46.513
He is an international translator.
1712
01:50:47.630 --> 01:50:52.630
He is a human rights activist and he's a journalist.
1713
01:50:55.750 --> 01:50:59.640
He's played down the activist part of it over the years.
1714
01:50:59.640 --> 01:51:04.180
He's respected by everyone, has no enemies,
1715
01:51:04.180 --> 01:51:09.063
has unbelievable contacts and he became our guide.
1716
01:51:10.250 --> 01:51:15.250
We met thanks to him, the almost all of the ministers.
1717
01:51:17.340 --> 01:51:20.090
It's like meeting cabinet members here.
1718
01:51:20.090 --> 01:51:21.350
The attorney general,
1719
01:51:21.350 --> 01:51:25.113
the minister of the Ministry Human Rights,
1720
01:51:26.000 --> 01:51:27.733
the minister of human rights,
1721
01:51:28.690 --> 01:51:32.010
the minister of foreign affairs,
1722
01:51:32.010 --> 01:51:34.483
the minister of this,
1723
01:51:37.820 --> 01:51:41.610
this ministry that's very hard for us to comprehend,
1724
01:51:41.610 --> 01:51:46.447
which is in charge of providing groups with medic
1725
01:51:46.447 --> 01:51:48.020
with the religious charity.
1726
01:51:48.020 --> 01:51:49.600
I mean, if there was never a combination
1727
01:51:49.600 --> 01:51:53.150
of church and state, and most amazingly,
1728
01:51:53.150 --> 01:51:54.550
he got us a meeting
1729
01:51:54.550 --> 01:51:59.550
with the head of the political security office
1730
01:52:03.350 --> 01:52:08.350
which is responsible for the political persecution
1731
01:52:10.590 --> 01:52:15.590
so to speak and really captures political enemies
1732
01:52:17.150 --> 01:52:19.453
of the regime, or at least accused ones.
1733
01:52:20.450 --> 01:52:22.120
And we sat in a great room
1734
01:52:22.960 --> 01:52:27.960
and he sat in one easy chair with the thick arms.
1735
01:52:34.340 --> 01:52:38.290
I sat in another one, parallel to him.
1736
01:52:38.290 --> 01:52:41.510
There was a table between us with water or tea.
1737
01:52:41.510 --> 01:52:43.963
Then there was a circle of everybody else.
1738
01:52:45.420 --> 01:52:47.810
And one of my young colleagues said
1739
01:52:47.810 --> 01:52:50.883
it looked like a meeting between a heads of state.
1740
01:52:52.290 --> 01:52:54.850
So it was an extraordinary.
1741
01:52:54.850 --> 01:52:56.040
And then we had.
1742
01:52:56.040 --> 01:52:58.540
What was the reason to meet there?
1743
01:53:01.800 --> 01:53:03.550
I wanted to say one other thing.
1744
01:53:03.550 --> 01:53:04.470
Sorry.
1745
01:53:04.470 --> 01:53:06.740
We met with the media.
1746
01:53:06.740 --> 01:53:09.670
We met with Arabic language press.
1747
01:53:09.670 --> 01:53:14.670
We met with English language press, BBC, Germans, Japanese.
1748
01:53:20.870 --> 01:53:22.683
Media from all over the world.
1749
01:53:23.820 --> 01:53:27.390
My purpose in going there was twofold.
1750
01:53:27.390 --> 01:53:31.660
First, I wanted to bring the families up to date
1751
01:53:31.660 --> 01:53:34.420
and meet the families and try to give them some hope
1752
01:53:34.420 --> 01:53:39.420
that people were really working for their sons, brothers,
1753
01:53:39.660 --> 01:53:42.243
cousins, et cetera, in Guantanamo,
1754
01:53:44.400 --> 01:53:48.150
and give them some comfort or sense of what was going on.
1755
01:53:48.150 --> 01:53:51.850
The second reason was, that actually was threefold.
1756
01:53:51.850 --> 01:53:56.850
The second reason was that I wanted to do what I could
1757
01:53:57.070 --> 01:54:00.560
to build pressure on the Yemen government
1758
01:54:01.770 --> 01:54:04.600
to place more pressure on the United States
1759
01:54:05.800 --> 01:54:09.370
because president Abdullah Sallah,
1760
01:54:09.370 --> 01:54:12.820
Abdullah Ali Sallah would say all the right things,
1761
01:54:12.820 --> 01:54:14.070
but nothing would happen.
1762
01:54:15.570 --> 01:54:20.570
And the third reason was purely a media reason
1763
01:54:23.830 --> 01:54:27.873
to bring attention to the Yemeni detainees.
1764
01:54:29.430 --> 01:54:33.927
So it was the, all three of these purposes
1765
01:54:38.690 --> 01:54:42.763
came together in meeting with all these government people.
1766
01:54:44.890 --> 01:54:49.890
And, but we had the great experience because of our guide
1767
01:54:51.410 --> 01:54:56.410
of being driven from Sanaa which is the capital city
1768
01:54:56.610 --> 01:55:00.840
and the edge of the states influence
1769
01:55:00.840 --> 01:55:05.840
down to Ogden the old English colonial port
1770
01:55:06.460 --> 01:55:09.860
whose biggest claim to fame is the Queen Elizabeth
1771
01:55:09.860 --> 01:55:12.963
stayed in a hotel there in 1958.
1772
01:55:15.480 --> 01:55:19.240
As you go, you go through another city
1773
01:55:19.240 --> 01:55:24.203
but then you go through fields where women,
1774
01:55:25.260 --> 01:55:28.210
till the fields or harvest the fields,
1775
01:55:28.210 --> 01:55:32.570
wearing the abaya and sand pants.
1776
01:55:32.570 --> 01:55:34.223
You remember those conical,
1777
01:55:35.560 --> 01:55:40.560
there are blue thin blue plastic bags all over the place,
1778
01:55:41.130 --> 01:55:44.800
the type you would get in a supermarket
1779
01:55:44.800 --> 01:55:47.670
or what the newspapers are wrapped up in.
1780
01:55:47.670 --> 01:55:52.437
They're all empty but they were all used to carry cot,
1781
01:55:53.590 --> 01:55:58.590
which is a narcotic not a heavy narcotic,
1782
01:55:59.340 --> 01:56:01.277
but I think first stimulates you
1783
01:56:01.277 --> 01:56:05.930
and then it puts you in a hallucinogenic state.
1784
01:56:05.930 --> 01:56:08.280
To be honest, I've tried it a few times
1785
01:56:08.280 --> 01:56:10.704
and it didn't do anything for me
1786
01:56:10.704 --> 01:56:12.843
but you give you a little bit of a caffeine buzz.
1787
01:56:15.120 --> 01:56:20.120
And we met people who were totally uneducated and illiterate
1788
01:56:22.510 --> 01:56:27.510
whose lives consisted mainly of cot consumption
1789
01:56:27.660 --> 01:56:32.130
and sitting around not exactly playing cards with other men
1790
01:56:32.130 --> 01:56:34.133
but the equivalent of playing cards.
1791
01:56:37.720 --> 01:56:42.423
We saw herds of camels as we went to the South.
1792
01:56:45.260 --> 01:56:47.620
We went to, when I brought my wife and daughter,
1793
01:56:47.620 --> 01:56:52.620
we went to a hot bath in a defunct volcano,
1794
01:56:55.490 --> 01:56:58.730
but naturally there was one bath for men
1795
01:56:58.730 --> 01:57:01.053
and another bath for women.
1796
01:57:02.760 --> 01:57:04.000
I just can't be.
1797
01:57:04.000 --> 01:57:08.463
And there's so much natural beauty in Sanaa,
1798
01:57:09.340 --> 01:57:12.070
around Sanaa and starting to go down,
1799
01:57:12.070 --> 01:57:16.760
you have these geographical formations
1800
01:57:16.760 --> 01:57:19.840
that are sort of like what you'd find in Death Valley,
1801
01:57:19.840 --> 01:57:22.033
I think with the road runner.
1802
01:57:23.840 --> 01:57:28.840
But then as you go through toward the South to Tayis,
1803
01:57:29.140 --> 01:57:34.140
you have these mountains where there that are terrorist
1804
01:57:35.580 --> 01:57:40.580
for planting fertile area.
1805
01:57:44.376 --> 01:57:45.710
And then as you go further to the South,
1806
01:57:45.710 --> 01:57:50.710
it gets sandier and dryer again.
1807
01:57:51.800 --> 01:57:56.800
So, and we went out to pure local Arabic restaurants.
1808
01:57:59.100 --> 01:58:00.910
I mean, Yemeni restaurants,
1809
01:58:00.910 --> 01:58:02.890
which is a whole other story in itself.
1810
01:58:02.890 --> 01:58:07.400
We stayed away from anything that catered to Westerners
1811
01:58:07.400 --> 01:58:08.790
or businessmen.
1812
01:58:08.790 --> 01:58:10.740
And this is the kind of thing we wanted to eat
1813
01:58:10.740 --> 01:58:15.060
where the common Yemeni ate and how the common Yemeni ate
1814
01:58:15.060 --> 01:58:19.300
which meant sitting on the floor, usually on plastic,
1815
01:58:19.300 --> 01:58:23.500
having maybe a dozen dishes in front of you
1816
01:58:23.500 --> 01:58:25.820
and eating with your hands.
1817
01:58:25.820 --> 01:58:29.801
And this is in a country that also has practically
1818
01:58:29.801 --> 01:58:30.701
no paper products.
1819
01:58:31.540 --> 01:58:33.893
So you don't get napkins.
1820
01:58:35.520 --> 01:58:38.800
There's an area where you can wash your hands
1821
01:58:38.800 --> 01:58:42.300
and the soap is like laundry detergent.
1822
01:58:42.300 --> 01:58:45.163
And there's a box of tissues at the cash register.
1823
01:58:46.170 --> 01:58:48.280
I love those places.
1824
01:58:48.280 --> 01:58:51.880
There's a kind of place that has two big stoves.
1825
01:58:51.880 --> 01:58:55.780
And all they do is prepare boiled lentils.
1826
01:58:55.780 --> 01:58:57.600
I love boiled lentils.
1827
01:58:57.600 --> 01:59:00.330
So I've told my friends that it's, I love the food
1828
01:59:00.330 --> 01:59:04.110
that it's one of the best cuisines in the world
1829
01:59:04.110 --> 01:59:08.190
but this is all to say that we were introduced
1830
01:59:08.190 --> 01:59:12.913
to just the most fantastic.
1831
01:59:13.760 --> 01:59:16.210
And I mean that in the old fashioned sense,
1832
01:59:16.210 --> 01:59:20.670
the most fantastic civilization.
1833
01:59:20.670 --> 01:59:21.800
Is the way I'd put it.
1834
01:59:21.800 --> 01:59:23.360
Everything was strange.
1835
01:59:23.360 --> 01:59:27.320
Everything foreign, our friend Nassar Arabi
1836
01:59:28.230 --> 01:59:33.230
was just a treasure in being able to guide us around
1837
01:59:35.950 --> 01:59:39.713
in his contacts, in his reputation.
1838
01:59:42.360 --> 01:59:47.360
And he's been my guy ever since.
1839
01:59:48.830 --> 01:59:52.060
How did the families talk to you?
1840
01:59:52.060 --> 01:59:55.290
Most of the families met with us.
1841
01:59:55.290 --> 01:59:57.500
There was one that I can remember
1842
01:59:57.500 --> 02:00:00.560
that definitely didn't meet with us.
1843
02:00:00.560 --> 02:00:04.150
There might've been more than one
1844
02:00:04.150 --> 02:00:08.417
but everyone was so desperate for news because these were
1845
02:00:08.417 --> 02:00:13.417
and this was in the days before the camp
1846
02:00:13.670 --> 02:00:16.330
allowed any kind of real communication
1847
02:00:16.330 --> 02:00:19.563
between the families and the detainees.
1848
02:00:20.470 --> 02:00:23.130
So the families were desperate for information.
1849
02:00:23.130 --> 02:00:26.653
We wanted to learn what was going on with the families.
1850
02:00:29.790 --> 02:00:31.430
Perhaps over the years,
1851
02:00:31.430 --> 02:00:34.740
one or two families stopped meeting with us
1852
02:00:35.720 --> 02:00:39.000
because we never had anything to say
1853
02:00:39.000 --> 02:00:41.970
that meant anything to them
1854
02:00:41.970 --> 02:00:44.840
in terms of your son's getting out of there.
1855
02:00:44.840 --> 02:00:47.690
And they didn't care about all the political mumbo-jumbo.
1856
02:00:49.220 --> 02:00:53.990
Mark Falcoff and another, a couple of other associates
1857
02:00:53.990 --> 02:00:58.990
accompanied me and Mark took videos of our meetings
1858
02:00:59.700 --> 02:01:01.150
with the families.
1859
02:01:01.150 --> 02:01:05.870
And I have almost all, I have almost all the videos
1860
02:01:05.870 --> 02:01:09.000
from those meetings, and they're kind of personal
1861
02:01:09.000 --> 02:01:14.000
in the sense that I would say to the mothers
1862
02:01:14.220 --> 02:01:15.393
or grandmothers,
1863
02:01:16.910 --> 02:01:21.353
for your son's sake, take your knee cab off.
1864
02:01:22.650 --> 02:01:24.100
That is what covers the face.
1865
02:01:24.100 --> 02:01:28.090
So they'd still have their hijab on
1866
02:01:28.090 --> 02:01:32.870
and the wives and the mothers, the grandmothers did,
1867
02:01:32.870 --> 02:01:37.870
which was a totally amazing things for them to do
1868
02:01:43.810 --> 02:01:48.810
because men are not supposed to see that kind of skin
1869
02:01:48.980 --> 02:01:50.770
except their wives
1870
02:01:53.120 --> 02:01:56.890
and maybe other women in the immediate family.
1871
02:01:56.890 --> 02:01:59.910
So this was the equivalent
1872
02:01:59.910 --> 02:02:02.650
of asking these women to take off their clothes
1873
02:02:03.580 --> 02:02:07.620
but they did it because they wanted their sons to see them.
1874
02:02:07.620 --> 02:02:11.600
And the women always cried, always ended up crying.
1875
02:02:11.600 --> 02:02:16.600
Some of the fathers expressed gratitude and thanks
1876
02:02:19.130 --> 02:02:20.900
which simply made us feel ashamed
1877
02:02:20.900 --> 02:02:24.090
because we hadn't gotten our guys out.
1878
02:02:24.090 --> 02:02:25.650
Others were kind of neutral.
1879
02:02:25.650 --> 02:02:27.420
Maybe one or two were angry
1880
02:02:28.960 --> 02:02:33.883
but almost all of them were very appreciative of us.
1881
02:02:35.620 --> 02:02:40.620
One family down there in Adnan the father was there
1882
02:02:41.950 --> 02:02:44.100
and three or four daughters were there
1883
02:02:44.100 --> 02:02:48.259
and they addressed in their Sunday best to see us.
1884
02:02:48.259 --> 02:02:50.400
And we had a room in the local Sheraton
1885
02:02:52.000 --> 02:02:54.673
and we explained things to them.
1886
02:02:56.170 --> 02:02:59.150
Once we talked to the detainees
1887
02:02:59.150 --> 02:03:00.850
and told them what we'd found,
1888
02:03:00.850 --> 02:03:05.850
some of them were violently angry, not violently.
1889
02:03:08.900 --> 02:03:11.080
Some of them were terribly angry
1890
02:03:11.080 --> 02:03:12.850
that we had met the families.
1891
02:03:12.850 --> 02:03:16.870
They thought it was a violation of their privacy,
1892
02:03:16.870 --> 02:03:18.860
of the family's privacy.
1893
02:03:18.860 --> 02:03:22.440
And that we were just agents trying to get information
1894
02:03:22.440 --> 02:03:24.055
from them.
1895
02:03:24.055 --> 02:03:27.190
And some of our clients prohibited us
1896
02:03:27.190 --> 02:03:28.823
from seeing their families.
1897
02:03:31.930 --> 02:03:35.030
These families, I mean, these detainees
1898
02:03:35.030 --> 02:03:39.633
not only missed the births of their own children.
1899
02:03:40.720 --> 02:03:43.390
Let's say your wife was pregnant when you were picked up
1900
02:03:44.800 --> 02:03:49.800
and the growing up of their own children.
1901
02:03:49.960 --> 02:03:52.843
But naturally that also applied to of the children
1902
02:03:58.090 --> 02:04:02.253
not just their own children, members of the extended family,
1903
02:04:03.960 --> 02:04:08.960
mothers and fathers died while these men were in Guantanamo.
1904
02:04:12.130 --> 02:04:14.853
Abdul-Salam has one of the worst stories.
1905
02:04:17.020 --> 02:04:18.680
His mother died.
1906
02:04:18.680 --> 02:04:23.200
He says a part break about the detention
1907
02:04:23.200 --> 02:04:27.340
but his two sons died horrible deaths.
1908
02:04:27.340 --> 02:04:28.950
They were playing with a hand grenade
1909
02:04:28.950 --> 02:04:31.663
that exploded, a live hand grenade.
1910
02:04:36.400 --> 02:04:38.450
How do you hear about it?
1911
02:04:40.970 --> 02:04:42.555
I don't know.
1912
02:04:42.555 --> 02:04:45.520
I think maybe the ICRC informed him
1913
02:04:46.690 --> 02:04:50.380
but such as the setup in the camps, even now
1914
02:04:52.040 --> 02:04:56.700
that one of my clients learned that his father had died
1915
02:04:56.700 --> 02:05:00.960
only because the family of another detainee
1916
02:05:00.960 --> 02:05:02.053
found out about it.
1917
02:05:02.910 --> 02:05:05.160
So he didn't even get a direct communication.
1918
02:05:07.750 --> 02:05:10.720
And one dimension of this is that most of these guys
1919
02:05:10.720 --> 02:05:13.800
were picked up when they were 19, 20, 21.
1920
02:05:13.800 --> 02:05:16.440
These were their golden years
1921
02:05:16.440 --> 02:05:21.440
not just physically in the narrow sense
1922
02:05:23.940 --> 02:05:27.853
but these are the years when you sow your wild seeds.
1923
02:05:28.970 --> 02:05:32.710
Is that the right expression?
1924
02:05:32.710 --> 02:05:34.760
Oh, you sell your oats.
1925
02:05:34.760 --> 02:05:37.200
And these men are, have lost that.
1926
02:05:37.200 --> 02:05:40.363
If they go back, they'll go back in their 30s,
1927
02:05:41.250 --> 02:05:45.193
long after they would've set up families.
1928
02:05:46.170 --> 02:05:48.570
Their most productive active years
1929
02:05:48.570 --> 02:05:50.460
have been taken away from them.
1930
02:05:50.460 --> 02:05:53.930
In some cases, our clients have spent
1931
02:05:53.930 --> 02:05:57.260
a third of their lives in Guantanamo
1932
02:05:59.960 --> 02:06:03.320
away from their families away from their homes.
1933
02:06:03.320 --> 02:06:08.320
And for them, our world is a strange to them
1934
02:06:08.640 --> 02:06:11.970
as theirs is to us.
1935
02:06:11.970 --> 02:06:13.393
Back to Yemen briefly,
1936
02:06:14.800 --> 02:06:19.800
I met with former Al-Qaeda members.
1937
02:06:23.620 --> 02:06:26.883
former Taliban ministers,
1938
02:06:28.110 --> 02:06:32.520
others who I suspected were Al Qaeda
1939
02:06:32.520 --> 02:06:37.520
because one of them gleaned over at lunch and said
1940
02:06:40.100 --> 02:06:42.483
what's your view on martyrdom operation?
1941
02:06:46.020 --> 02:06:51.020
And I said, well, look, I'm just against innocence civilians
1942
02:06:51.080 --> 02:06:51.913
being killed.
1943
02:06:52.840 --> 02:06:55.960
And that was part of an experience.
1944
02:06:55.960 --> 02:06:58.630
That's another story if you ever do follow ups,
1945
02:06:58.630 --> 02:07:01.830
because I have a billion of these stories.
1946
02:07:01.830 --> 02:07:06.810
Another one was, I don't remember his name at the moment
1947
02:07:06.810 --> 02:07:09.860
but he's a former Al-Qaeda guy.
1948
02:07:09.860 --> 02:07:13.963
He was Osama bin Laden chief body guard.
1949
02:07:16.875 --> 02:07:20.000
He's the man with no country
1950
02:07:20.000 --> 02:07:24.330
because he ratted out the Al-Qaeda people,
1951
02:07:24.330 --> 02:07:28.200
his buddies and the government tolerates him.
1952
02:07:28.200 --> 02:07:29.923
But isn't in love with him either.
1953
02:07:31.220 --> 02:07:35.430
And I must tell you about one conversation I had with him.
1954
02:07:35.430 --> 02:07:37.410
It was maybe the first time I met with him
1955
02:07:37.410 --> 02:07:38.770
or the second time,
1956
02:07:38.770 --> 02:07:43.250
we met in the dining room at the hotel Sheba,
1957
02:07:43.250 --> 02:07:45.830
which is where we stayed all the time
1958
02:07:47.360 --> 02:07:51.830
run by Indians and pretty Western
1959
02:07:51.830 --> 02:07:54.170
in the sense that it had Western toilets
1960
02:07:54.170 --> 02:07:58.540
and a business center, had spoke English.
1961
02:07:58.540 --> 02:08:00.800
So we met in the dining room there
1962
02:08:02.280 --> 02:08:05.280
in one of the non-smoking tables
1963
02:08:07.370 --> 02:08:08.580
There are smoking restrictions,
1964
02:08:08.580 --> 02:08:11.510
consistent smoking tables, non-smoking tables.
1965
02:08:11.510 --> 02:08:13.770
And we were talking politics
1966
02:08:15.450 --> 02:08:17.373
and we were talking about 911.
1967
02:08:19.990 --> 02:08:24.990
And I said, look how many civilians were killed?
1968
02:08:27.400 --> 02:08:30.347
And he said, "That was collateral damage."
1969
02:08:33.180 --> 02:08:38.180
I said, and besides think about how an Afghan mother
1970
02:08:43.310 --> 02:08:47.910
or wife feels when they hear American bomber jets
1971
02:08:49.710 --> 02:08:50.923
fly overhead.
1972
02:08:54.090 --> 02:08:57.810
And somehow or other we came to the subject.
1973
02:08:57.810 --> 02:08:58.820
I know what I said.
1974
02:08:58.820 --> 02:09:03.680
I said, I find this situation kind of ironic
1975
02:09:03.680 --> 02:09:06.450
that here you have Pakistan with thousands
1976
02:09:06.450 --> 02:09:10.650
of nuclear weapons and Afghanistan,
1977
02:09:10.650 --> 02:09:12.673
this poor primitive country.
1978
02:09:14.260 --> 02:09:19.260
And he said, "Well, all I'd need is one nuclear weapon."
1979
02:09:22.470 --> 02:09:24.630
And I said, for what?
1980
02:09:24.630 --> 02:09:27.113
And he said to drop on the United States.
1981
02:09:28.130 --> 02:09:30.290
And my palms get sweaty.
1982
02:09:30.290 --> 02:09:32.560
I said, you're scaring the shit out of me.
1983
02:09:32.560 --> 02:09:34.093
My palms got sweaty.
1984
02:09:37.220 --> 02:09:42.220
I don't think many Americans have broken bread
1985
02:09:42.280 --> 02:09:45.360
without Al-Qaeda members or former Al-Qaeda members
1986
02:09:46.490 --> 02:09:51.220
or Taliban ministers, people who were in charge
1987
02:09:52.680 --> 02:09:57.680
of getting the Taliban safe passage out of Afghanistan
1988
02:10:00.190 --> 02:10:05.190
or out of Pakistan or wherever they were after 911,
1989
02:10:05.600 --> 02:10:10.600
who could describe sort of organization.
1990
02:10:11.210 --> 02:10:13.990
I don't mean like an organization chart,
1991
02:10:13.990 --> 02:10:15.650
but where they fit in,
1992
02:10:15.650 --> 02:10:19.872
what kind of position for work and so on.
1993
02:10:19.872 --> 02:10:23.773
It was an extraordinary experience I have,
1994
02:10:26.540 --> 02:10:28.690
stories within this story.
1995
02:10:28.690 --> 02:10:33.173
We could go on for 10 hours that I could discuss.
1996
02:10:34.630 --> 02:10:39.630
I had to get a security clearance to do this work
1997
02:10:43.560 --> 02:10:47.210
because well, you can speculate
1998
02:10:47.210 --> 02:10:50.703
on the government's reasons for acquiring it.
1999
02:10:55.112 --> 02:10:58.713
And every other lawyer has to get a security clearance.
2000
02:10:59.590 --> 02:11:04.590
I think that wherever my father is up there,
2001
02:11:05.760 --> 02:11:10.760
he must have been totally amazed, but also kind of mused
2002
02:11:12.120 --> 02:11:13.750
that I would get a security clearance
2003
02:11:13.750 --> 02:11:16.120
because remember what security clearance has meant
2004
02:11:16.120 --> 02:11:17.793
in the '50s or '60s,
2005
02:11:18.750 --> 02:11:23.750
then I want to represent a high value detainee
2006
02:11:24.130 --> 02:11:27.930
and to get a security clearance
2007
02:11:27.930 --> 02:11:30.520
means getting a top secret clearance
2008
02:11:32.310 --> 02:11:37.310
SCI, TSSCI and the TSSCI stands for,
2009
02:11:39.490 --> 02:11:44.230
the SCI stands for secret compartmented information
2010
02:11:44.230 --> 02:11:48.240
which means here's secret, here's top secret
2011
02:11:48.240 --> 02:11:50.860
and then here's SCI.
2012
02:11:50.860 --> 02:11:53.163
You just get a sliver what you're working on.
2013
02:11:54.290 --> 02:11:58.760
After three years of struggle, I got my approval.
2014
02:11:58.760 --> 02:12:02.050
Think of what my father would have thought.
2015
02:12:03.352 --> 02:12:07.150
And at the moment, I have a pretty good shot
2016
02:12:08.920 --> 02:12:11.833
of joining the defense team for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
2017
02:12:14.470 --> 02:12:15.710
And you'd like to do that?
2018
02:12:15.710 --> 02:12:20.710
I think that I want to do that more than any thing next
2019
02:12:22.250 --> 02:12:24.100
in my legal career.
2020
02:12:24.100 --> 02:12:24.933
Why?
2021
02:12:26.200 --> 02:12:28.360
Do I think he's innocent?
2022
02:12:28.360 --> 02:12:31.040
Well, for reasons of privilege,
2023
02:12:31.040 --> 02:12:34.010
I'm not going to answer the question.
2024
02:12:34.010 --> 02:12:36.563
Should he serve a very harsh sentence?
2025
02:12:37.700 --> 02:12:39.750
Well, because of privilege issues,
2026
02:12:39.750 --> 02:12:42.110
I'm not going to answer the question,
2027
02:12:42.110 --> 02:12:45.723
but to me, this is a political trial.
2028
02:12:46.660 --> 02:12:49.440
It's a show trial, although it was one of his lawyers
2029
02:12:49.440 --> 02:12:53.750
pointed out it's the first secret show trial.
2030
02:12:53.750 --> 02:12:56.210
And I really want to use the trial
2031
02:12:57.210 --> 02:13:01.080
to put our system of justice on trial
2032
02:13:02.230 --> 02:13:06.640
to expose the proceedings
2033
02:13:06.640 --> 02:13:11.000
as the political proceedings show trials that they are.
2034
02:13:11.000 --> 02:13:15.020
I suppose, one of the motivations
2035
02:13:15.020 --> 02:13:18.560
of this relate back to my father
2036
02:13:18.560 --> 02:13:22.210
but also when I was in the late '60s,
2037
02:13:22.210 --> 02:13:25.937
I was a great admirer of the defendants
2038
02:13:30.720 --> 02:13:33.710
in the Chicago wait trial.
2039
02:13:33.710 --> 02:13:37.343
I thought that some Black Panthers,
2040
02:13:38.630 --> 02:13:41.000
I sort of glorified in my mind
2041
02:13:41.000 --> 02:13:43.783
certain Black Panthers and what they went through.
2042
02:13:45.795 --> 02:13:47.030
I think it was a guy named George Jackson
2043
02:13:47.030 --> 02:13:49.116
but he was one of my,
2044
02:13:49.116 --> 02:13:53.540
I was angry about the injustices visited on him.
2045
02:13:53.540 --> 02:13:57.640
So I think that that political education
2046
02:13:57.640 --> 02:13:59.130
was a big part of it.
2047
02:13:59.130 --> 02:14:01.240
So I wanna get in the middle of this
2048
02:14:02.210 --> 02:14:04.480
not the criminal law aspects
2049
02:14:04.480 --> 02:14:07.253
but for the political aspects of it.
2050
02:14:08.770 --> 02:14:09.840
I have a few more questions
2051
02:14:09.840 --> 02:14:11.640
but do you have jotted down some notes?
2052
02:14:11.640 --> 02:14:14.520
Are there some things you want to address now
2053
02:14:14.520 --> 02:14:19.520
and then I can kind of go into more questions?
2054
02:14:19.542 --> 02:14:23.993
Okay, this is just a detail.
2055
02:14:26.610 --> 02:14:27.893
This is just a detail.
2056
02:14:29.060 --> 02:14:32.320
The first is that I want to acknowledge
2057
02:14:32.320 --> 02:14:37.320
the incredible support that my law firm,
2058
02:14:38.980 --> 02:14:42.900
Covington & Burling has provided since I left.
2059
02:14:42.900 --> 02:14:44.600
While I was at the firm
2060
02:14:44.600 --> 02:14:46.100
during the Rasul period
2061
02:14:46.100 --> 02:14:48.703
up until the Boumediene period,
2062
02:14:49.580 --> 02:14:54.580
the issues that we faced legally were not client specific.
2063
02:14:56.560 --> 02:14:57.950
They were all broad issues.
2064
02:14:57.950 --> 02:15:00.840
Like what should the protective border look like?
2065
02:15:00.840 --> 02:15:04.053
Should the government be able to dismiss the cases?
2066
02:15:05.900 --> 02:15:08.950
Because there was a stay of Rasul
2067
02:15:08.950 --> 02:15:11.800
and we weren't allowed to actually move forward in court.
2068
02:15:12.930 --> 02:15:15.090
When Boumediene was decided,
2069
02:15:15.090 --> 02:15:19.580
all of a sudden we had 13 separate court proceedings.
2070
02:15:19.580 --> 02:15:21.180
So I couldn't have done it alone
2071
02:15:24.040 --> 02:15:28.190
but I'm not just expressing appreciation to them
2072
02:15:28.190 --> 02:15:33.190
because they enabled me to continue to do what I was doing
2073
02:15:34.530 --> 02:15:39.530
but they put so much resources into this
2074
02:15:40.050 --> 02:15:45.050
because these detainees continued to be their clients
2075
02:15:47.530 --> 02:15:50.700
and Covington was just unstinting
2076
02:15:50.700 --> 02:15:53.730
and not only were they indispensable
2077
02:15:53.730 --> 02:15:58.580
but they stepped up to the cases.
2078
02:15:58.580 --> 02:16:03.233
I ended up still doing a lot of the common issues.
2079
02:16:04.310 --> 02:16:09.190
I have been working very intensively with the media
2080
02:16:11.910 --> 02:16:13.660
while Covington has handled
2081
02:16:13.660 --> 02:16:18.280
the sort of day-to-day nuts and bolts matters
2082
02:16:18.280 --> 02:16:21.260
like discovery and motions.
2083
02:16:21.260 --> 02:16:23.770
Very important motions, I have to say,
2084
02:16:23.770 --> 02:16:25.100
but they have eight associates,
2085
02:16:25.100 --> 02:16:27.310
nine associates, and two partners.
2086
02:16:27.310 --> 02:16:29.780
Sometimes I joke that I'm getting more support now
2087
02:16:29.780 --> 02:16:32.833
that I've left the firm than I had when I was there.
2088
02:16:34.170 --> 02:16:37.410
Although I don't call all the shots now.
2089
02:16:37.410 --> 02:16:41.187
The other is that I've received threats
2090
02:16:44.920 --> 02:16:46.453
including a death threat,
2091
02:16:47.600 --> 02:16:52.600
as well as your ordinary abusive email.
2092
02:16:56.250 --> 02:17:01.250
The guy who sent the death threat didn't reach me
2093
02:17:03.350 --> 02:17:06.617
so he left the message on my phone mail.
2094
02:17:06.617 --> 02:17:08.700
(laughs)
2095
02:17:10.430 --> 02:17:15.430
And he swore he used every crude word
2096
02:17:17.360 --> 02:17:19.430
in the English language
2097
02:17:19.430 --> 02:17:24.020
and his last sentence was, watch the back of your head
2098
02:17:25.420 --> 02:17:27.130
or watch your back.
2099
02:17:27.130 --> 02:17:31.637
But it was clearly you better count on being an object
2100
02:17:36.280 --> 02:17:39.023
of a threat here.
2101
02:17:41.180 --> 02:17:43.080
And then over the years
2102
02:17:43.080 --> 02:17:47.030
I've just received several emails about,
2103
02:17:47.030 --> 02:17:49.730
again calling me all sorts of names.
2104
02:17:49.730 --> 02:17:51.001
Who are these people?
2105
02:17:51.001 --> 02:17:51.834
Do you know who,
2106
02:17:51.834 --> 02:17:53.217
I mean you don't have to give us the names
2107
02:17:53.217 --> 02:17:55.633
but what kind of person left you this?
2108
02:17:56.680 --> 02:17:59.880
This particular guy,
2109
02:17:59.880 --> 02:18:01.750
we don't know who he was.
2110
02:18:01.750 --> 02:18:06.750
The firm went to great lengths to track it down.
2111
02:18:07.020 --> 02:18:10.760
And the very, very vigilant security people
2112
02:18:10.760 --> 02:18:13.840
at Covington had me keep the shades down
2113
02:18:13.840 --> 02:18:18.840
and the blinds closed and be very careful when I walk home,
2114
02:18:19.160 --> 02:18:20.480
they took it very seriously
2115
02:18:20.480 --> 02:18:21.960
and they did a lot of investigation,
2116
02:18:21.960 --> 02:18:24.080
but they could never find.
2117
02:18:24.080 --> 02:18:28.747
The others, I suppose some were really hostile
2118
02:18:31.370 --> 02:18:33.550
at a serious political level.
2119
02:18:33.550 --> 02:18:38.340
But there was one woman who sent me an email
2120
02:18:39.620 --> 02:18:42.910
with how could you do this, et cetera, and so forth.
2121
02:18:42.910 --> 02:18:47.800
And I picked up the phone and I called her and I said, well
2122
02:18:47.800 --> 02:18:50.263
this is a question of basic fairness,
2123
02:18:51.450 --> 02:18:55.860
would you wanna be held without charge,
2124
02:18:55.860 --> 02:18:58.270
without knowing how long it would be
2125
02:18:58.270 --> 02:19:00.053
with no evidence against you?
2126
02:19:01.000 --> 02:19:03.933
Would you want, how would you feel if that happened to you?
2127
02:19:05.210 --> 02:19:08.483
And she said, "Look, I'm just scared.
2128
02:19:09.937 --> 02:19:11.187
"I don't know what to do.
2129
02:19:12.917 --> 02:19:17.917
"I've gone a long way by trying to speak to these people.
2130
02:19:22.067 --> 02:19:26.630
"I don't mean that derisively people who have threatened me
2131
02:19:27.997 --> 02:19:31.170
"and very often, that's what it is, it's fear."
2132
02:19:31.170 --> 02:19:33.090
And they'll admit that it's fear.
2133
02:19:33.090 --> 02:19:34.140
Sometimes they'll just say, well
2134
02:19:34.140 --> 02:19:38.520
you're representing killers, but then you have these people
2135
02:19:38.520 --> 02:19:43.520
and they are so appreciative of having someone like me
2136
02:19:44.580 --> 02:19:48.620
talk to them, acknowledge the reality, but the fears.
2137
02:19:48.620 --> 02:19:51.620
So those are the two things I wanted to mention.
2138
02:19:51.620 --> 02:19:54.370
Well, a couple of things.
2139
02:19:54.370 --> 02:19:58.430
Did you ever go to Camp Seven
2140
02:19:58.430 --> 02:20:01.893
or did you see Camp Seven or Camp No, either one?
2141
02:20:02.740 --> 02:20:05.560
I have never seen Camp Seven.
2142
02:20:05.560 --> 02:20:08.020
I don't believe I ever, I won't ever
2143
02:20:08.020 --> 02:20:09.670
and I don't even think the lawyers
2144
02:20:09.670 --> 02:20:11.970
for these men have seen Camp Seven.
2145
02:20:11.970 --> 02:20:15.120
I think that there is a separate interview site
2146
02:20:16.080 --> 02:20:17.910
for these men.
2147
02:20:17.910 --> 02:20:22.893
I mean, you can see Camp Seven aerially through Google.
2148
02:20:24.240 --> 02:20:29.157
And one of the lawyers for an HVD told me
2149
02:20:30.110 --> 02:20:32.520
that I can find it simply
2150
02:20:32.520 --> 02:20:36.810
by comparing the image before it was built
2151
02:20:36.810 --> 02:20:39.390
with the image after it was built.
2152
02:20:39.390 --> 02:20:43.383
As for Camp No, I never saw it.
2153
02:20:44.470 --> 02:20:48.030
I think it might've been taken apart
2154
02:20:52.090 --> 02:20:53.490
and I wouldn't have seen it.
2155
02:20:56.349 --> 02:20:57.227
And why do you think
2156
02:20:57.227 --> 02:20:58.213
it has been taken apart?
2157
02:21:00.900 --> 02:21:03.300
Probably because it was revealed.
2158
02:21:03.300 --> 02:21:04.563
It became camp yes.
2159
02:21:10.520 --> 02:21:13.080
You mentioned you had an incident
2160
02:21:13.080 --> 02:21:17.330
about the toilet that you wanted to tell us.
2161
02:21:17.330 --> 02:21:21.210
You might have a shocker but it was a separate one.
2162
02:21:21.210 --> 02:21:26.210
There was a separate one, which is sad, very sad
2163
02:21:33.500 --> 02:21:36.443
and also humorous.
2164
02:21:38.950 --> 02:21:41.950
One day I was having a meeting
2165
02:21:41.950 --> 02:21:46.950
with Adnan Lateef and my translator was sitting on my left
2166
02:21:49.917 --> 02:21:52.367
and I was sitting there and he was sitting across
2167
02:21:53.240 --> 02:21:57.913
and toward the end of the meeting,
2168
02:21:59.550 --> 02:22:04.550
he started engaging me in a heated argument
2169
02:22:05.310 --> 02:22:09.003
about whether a particular detainee who was still in a camp.
2170
02:22:09.960 --> 02:22:13.794
I knew that he wasn't hot and was insisting that he was.
2171
02:22:13.794 --> 02:22:15.250
And then at a certain point,
2172
02:22:15.250 --> 02:22:18.360
Adnan picked up a little container of his blood
2173
02:22:18.360 --> 02:22:19.423
and threw it at me.
2174
02:22:20.310 --> 02:22:23.940
And I was drenched from head to my knees.
2175
02:22:23.940 --> 02:22:26.333
And even though it was a little cup,
2176
02:22:27.220 --> 02:22:31.173
it's bladders and goes a long way.
2177
02:22:32.490 --> 02:22:35.570
If you think of it in terms of drops
2178
02:22:35.570 --> 02:22:37.423
and what Adnan had done,
2179
02:22:38.580 --> 02:22:41.770
and he's known for this kind of ingeniousness
2180
02:22:41.770 --> 02:22:46.770
was slice away probably with his fingers
2181
02:22:49.020 --> 02:22:52.100
a chip of Formica from under the table
2182
02:22:52.960 --> 02:22:56.220
and use another cup that I had brought
2183
02:22:56.220 --> 02:23:01.220
that he took off the table without my seeing it.
2184
02:23:01.220 --> 02:23:06.150
And he used the sliver of Formica to cut his wrists
2185
02:23:07.130 --> 02:23:09.183
and drip his blood into the cup.
2186
02:23:13.180 --> 02:23:15.223
So the blood hit me.
2187
02:23:16.790 --> 02:23:19.880
I was shocked, I wasn't angry
2188
02:23:19.880 --> 02:23:22.920
as I would have been with my other clients, I think.
2189
02:23:22.920 --> 02:23:27.350
And I was in sort of a shock days.
2190
02:23:27.350 --> 02:23:30.490
I kept saying, why are you doing this?
2191
02:23:30.490 --> 02:23:32.480
Why did you do this?
2192
02:23:32.480 --> 02:23:35.207
And at a certain point, he just said,
2193
02:23:35.207 --> 02:23:36.907
"This wasn't against you."
2194
02:23:38.800 --> 02:23:41.140
I have to go back and say that
2195
02:23:41.140 --> 02:23:43.027
when he threw it at me, he said,
2196
02:23:43.027 --> 02:23:45.737
"This is so you'll remember me."
2197
02:23:46.670 --> 02:23:50.430
My translator says that when he did this,
2198
02:23:50.430 --> 02:23:55.430
he had some look in his eyes that indicated
2199
02:23:58.920 --> 02:24:00.823
that he didn't know what he was doing.
2200
02:24:03.280 --> 02:24:06.707
He was being guided by a Jinney or Jin
2201
02:24:09.730 --> 02:24:12.420
which is what Jinney is derived from
2202
02:24:12.420 --> 02:24:14.093
but in this case
2203
02:24:14.093 --> 02:24:16.040
it's the little devil sitting on your shoulder
2204
02:24:16.040 --> 02:24:18.640
making you do things that you wouldn't do otherwise.
2205
02:24:21.740 --> 02:24:25.663
And I was taken out of the cell quickly by,
2206
02:24:26.720 --> 02:24:29.260
I had occasion to look up Jin the other day.
2207
02:24:29.260 --> 02:24:33.892
It's J-I-N-N-E-Y.
2208
02:24:33.892 --> 02:24:35.250
I think so, if you wanna look it up
2209
02:24:36.410 --> 02:24:41.080
and he had always claimed, by the way
2210
02:24:41.080 --> 02:24:45.230
my footnotes are like a law review law review footnotes.
2211
02:24:45.230 --> 02:24:49.660
He at the beginning claimed that he had attempted suicide
2212
02:24:49.660 --> 02:24:51.610
under the influence of a Jin
2213
02:24:51.610 --> 02:24:55.090
because it was contrary to Islam to try to kill himself.
2214
02:24:55.090 --> 02:24:57.640
So I wasn't responsible for it.
2215
02:24:57.640 --> 02:25:00.880
Anyhow, the glaze look in his eyes,
2216
02:25:00.880 --> 02:25:02.730
the guards immediately rushed him
2217
02:25:03.870 --> 02:25:08.410
and all of a sudden it wasn't guards and lawyer.
2218
02:25:08.410 --> 02:25:11.933
It was person to person and American to American.
2219
02:25:12.970 --> 02:25:14.868
It was so amazing.
2220
02:25:14.868 --> 02:25:16.770
A complete change in personas.
2221
02:25:16.770 --> 02:25:21.770
I washed my eyes out in one of those, I washed things.
2222
02:25:21.860 --> 02:25:24.600
And then I went back to the next at lunchtime
2223
02:25:24.600 --> 02:25:29.600
which is the department store supermarket,
2224
02:25:32.331 --> 02:25:36.287
a place that people buy the basics at.
2225
02:25:38.980 --> 02:25:43.133
And I bought a new shirt and I bought a new pair of pants.
2226
02:25:44.400 --> 02:25:46.500
I didn't buy a new pair of sneakers.
2227
02:25:46.500 --> 02:25:49.850
And for a year afterward, I walked around with sneakers
2228
02:25:49.850 --> 02:25:51.583
with Adnan's blood on them.
2229
02:25:53.570 --> 02:25:56.363
Now that's just the beginning.
2230
02:25:57.820 --> 02:26:02.820
The next visit I think this was May and June.
2231
02:26:03.050 --> 02:26:06.753
The next visit, they would only let me see Adnan
2232
02:26:10.490 --> 02:26:14.830
under the most restrictive conditions
2233
02:26:14.830 --> 02:26:17.173
as though he was Hannibal Lecter,
2234
02:26:18.420 --> 02:26:23.420
but in a certain way, he controlled them in the way
2235
02:26:24.870 --> 02:26:28.210
that the joke goes one rat says to the other,
2236
02:26:28.210 --> 02:26:30.820
every time I press the lever, he gives me food.
2237
02:26:30.820 --> 02:26:35.820
So anyway, he came to the hut
2238
02:26:36.620 --> 02:26:41.620
with about three soldiers on each side with hard handcuffs.
2239
02:26:45.890 --> 02:26:49.990
And of course they were chained to his waist chain
2240
02:26:53.420 --> 02:26:57.180
and they were connected to his ankle chains.
2241
02:26:57.180 --> 02:26:58.300
But in addition,
2242
02:26:58.300 --> 02:27:03.300
he had a second set of what amounted to handcuffs
2243
02:27:07.830 --> 02:27:11.870
that amounted to a straight jacket.
2244
02:27:11.870 --> 02:27:15.210
They pinned his elbows to his side
2245
02:27:15.210 --> 02:27:17.940
and they pinned his hands to his shoulders
2246
02:27:18.810 --> 02:27:22.033
so that he was essentially immobile except for walking.
2247
02:27:23.470 --> 02:27:25.530
And I didn't see him approach,
2248
02:27:25.530 --> 02:27:30.530
but with these guards on each side and him in his chains,
2249
02:27:30.950 --> 02:27:34.870
I again thought of Christ and the Romans
2250
02:27:34.870 --> 02:27:38.440
going up the Hill or of a Royal procession.
2251
02:27:38.440 --> 02:27:40.580
And it's the Royal precession aspect.
2252
02:27:40.580 --> 02:27:42.660
I mean, it's sort of horrible from the outside
2253
02:27:42.660 --> 02:27:47.010
but he must have said, hey, look what I've accomplished.
2254
02:27:47.010 --> 02:27:48.960
Nothing could be done out of the protocol
2255
02:27:48.960 --> 02:27:53.960
without the commanders specific instructions.
2256
02:27:55.380 --> 02:27:57.563
When he was brought into the cell,
2257
02:27:58.490 --> 02:28:00.850
they don't let him sit behind a camera.
2258
02:28:00.850 --> 02:28:03.350
I mean, behind a table or anything,
2259
02:28:03.350 --> 02:28:06.140
they don't know what this wizard will do next.
2260
02:28:06.140 --> 02:28:09.580
I said, how is he supposed to eat
2261
02:28:09.580 --> 02:28:12.850
if both arms are like this?
2262
02:28:12.850 --> 02:28:15.140
So they followed it up the chain.
2263
02:28:15.140 --> 02:28:18.410
And finally the top guy said, okay,
2264
02:28:18.410 --> 02:28:22.623
you can loosen his right hand so that he would be like this.
2265
02:28:25.840 --> 02:28:30.413
There were two guards inside this hut
2266
02:28:33.100 --> 02:28:34.600
which is obviously a violation
2267
02:28:34.600 --> 02:28:36.690
of the attorney-client privilege
2268
02:28:36.690 --> 02:28:39.980
about six guards outside, looking in
2269
02:28:39.980 --> 02:28:43.023
or looking at what was going on through a camera.
2270
02:28:45.040 --> 02:28:50.040
My translator took off for lunch at about 12:00
2271
02:28:51.110 --> 02:28:54.923
but I wanted to continue to sit with Adnan.
2272
02:28:55.910 --> 02:29:00.910
At about 12:20 he said that he had to go to the bathroom
2273
02:29:04.010 --> 02:29:08.573
which meant moving him from his chair to the cage.
2274
02:29:09.410 --> 02:29:14.410
I convey that to the poor young guard who said, well,
2275
02:29:15.300 --> 02:29:20.100
we can't move him, we have to keep him in that chair
2276
02:29:20.100 --> 02:29:22.083
with those restraints, I'm sorry.
2277
02:29:23.330 --> 02:29:26.490
And I said, well, please try to get permission.
2278
02:29:26.490 --> 02:29:31.380
So she left and nobody ever came back.
2279
02:29:31.380 --> 02:29:34.813
Then as it approached one o'clock, he said,
2280
02:29:35.984 --> 02:29:37.634
"It's time for afternoon prayer."
2281
02:29:39.250 --> 02:29:42.470
So I again, notified the people on the outside
2282
02:29:42.470 --> 02:29:46.730
and maybe it went up the chain, but the answer was,
2283
02:29:46.730 --> 02:29:50.683
he cannot be moved to the cage.
2284
02:29:52.090 --> 02:29:56.540
we'll put a prayer mat in front of the chair
2285
02:29:56.540 --> 02:29:58.500
and he can pray on the prayer mat.
2286
02:29:58.500 --> 02:30:01.790
Well, obviously that was unacceptable to him.
2287
02:30:01.790 --> 02:30:04.900
So they said, all right, we'll bring you into the cage.
2288
02:30:04.900 --> 02:30:08.763
And there were several guards in the room at the time.
2289
02:30:10.130 --> 02:30:14.000
And I said, would you please
2290
02:30:14.000 --> 02:30:19.000
remove his upper body restraints so he can use the toilet?
2291
02:30:19.890 --> 02:30:23.083
And they said, no, he can't.
2292
02:30:24.440 --> 02:30:27.713
He has to keep them on while he goes to the toilet.
2293
02:30:28.940 --> 02:30:31.750
And I said, well, you have to remove
2294
02:30:31.750 --> 02:30:35.733
his upper body restraints for him to pray.
2295
02:30:37.040 --> 02:30:39.493
And they said, no, we'll just lay a mat out.
2296
02:30:44.440 --> 02:30:48.963
Once I went berserk, but I complained very vigorously
2297
02:30:51.650 --> 02:30:53.483
but had no success.
2298
02:30:54.960 --> 02:30:59.350
So he didn't go to the toilet and he didn't pray
2299
02:31:00.610 --> 02:31:03.813
and demanded that he be taken back to his cell.
2300
02:31:05.300 --> 02:31:10.120
But here's the thing that makes it even more interesting.
2301
02:31:10.120 --> 02:31:13.250
When they said that they would not remove
2302
02:31:13.250 --> 02:31:18.250
his upper body restraints, I went immediately to the next,
2303
02:31:18.610 --> 02:31:20.853
which had only telephones I could use.
2304
02:31:21.937 --> 02:31:24.580
I called up my counterpart at the justice department
2305
02:31:24.580 --> 02:31:25.960
explained the situation
2306
02:31:25.960 --> 02:31:28.250
said that I wanted to talk to the judge.
2307
02:31:28.250 --> 02:31:32.160
This is judge Henry Kennedy, on very short notice.
2308
02:31:32.160 --> 02:31:36.880
And at one point I said there, well,
2309
02:31:36.880 --> 02:31:39.940
at one point, I said they're treating him like KSM.
2310
02:31:39.940 --> 02:31:43.903
And judge Kennedy said, what's KSM?
2311
02:31:46.000 --> 02:31:50.690
So not everybody is quite as intensely involved.
2312
02:31:50.690 --> 02:31:55.310
So we went through, I filed an emergency declaration
2313
02:31:55.310 --> 02:31:59.180
explaining what was going on, an emergency motion.
2314
02:31:59.180 --> 02:32:00.740
And you just go back
2315
02:32:00.740 --> 02:32:04.340
and these are public documents on the file.
2316
02:32:04.340 --> 02:32:09.320
Motion to allow client to go to the toilet and pray
2317
02:32:09.320 --> 02:32:13.800
without restraints, 'cause we like to tell the story
2318
02:32:13.800 --> 02:32:16.073
through the name of the brief.
2319
02:32:17.120 --> 02:32:21.740
And here is what is amazing about the call.
2320
02:32:24.730 --> 02:32:29.200
From now on he said to the government never bring him
2321
02:32:29.200 --> 02:32:33.750
to his lawyer at a time when he'll have to pray
2322
02:32:33.750 --> 02:32:37.160
because under no circumstances
2323
02:32:37.160 --> 02:32:42.160
am I going to allow you to make him pray in chains?
2324
02:32:42.320 --> 02:32:44.183
That's just out of it.
2325
02:32:45.090 --> 02:32:49.490
The government lawyer said with respect to using the toilet
2326
02:32:49.490 --> 02:32:52.610
that they wanted him held in chains
2327
02:32:52.610 --> 02:32:57.260
for force protection reasons.
2328
02:32:59.040 --> 02:33:01.800
It's a book response, but they were basically saying
2329
02:33:02.900 --> 02:33:05.260
that it was a security threat.
2330
02:33:05.260 --> 02:33:09.050
He's in this cage, a locked cage, no contact,
2331
02:33:09.050 --> 02:33:11.220
no physical contact with me,
2332
02:33:11.220 --> 02:33:14.670
two guards watching him from two different directions.
2333
02:33:14.670 --> 02:33:17.410
They wouldn't let him out of the chains
2334
02:33:17.410 --> 02:33:21.413
saying that they feared he would act up.
2335
02:33:22.830 --> 02:33:26.623
So one got past the prayer point
2336
02:33:29.500 --> 02:33:31.810
and got to the toilet point,
2337
02:33:31.810 --> 02:33:35.550
the government lawyer said, there's a security issue here.
2338
02:33:35.550 --> 02:33:40.550
And Judge Kennedy, and this could go either way.
2339
02:33:41.180 --> 02:33:42.880
Said, well Mr. Remes,
2340
02:33:42.880 --> 02:33:47.880
I'm not going to second guess the military's determination
2341
02:33:48.810 --> 02:33:51.550
that there's a security issue here
2342
02:33:55.360 --> 02:33:59.137
but the man and then the lawyer said,
2343
02:34:06.270 --> 02:34:07.580
the government lawyer said
2344
02:34:07.580 --> 02:34:09.683
and I'll have two things out of order.
2345
02:34:11.660 --> 02:34:15.773
We know how to manage the situation.
2346
02:34:16.630 --> 02:34:21.630
And I said but one thing you can't do is tell a man
2347
02:34:21.970 --> 02:34:23.243
how to go to the toilet.
2348
02:34:30.770 --> 02:34:33.893
And here's the worst part of it.
2349
02:34:35.290 --> 02:34:37.850
You have this federal judge,
2350
02:34:37.850 --> 02:34:42.850
this August figure with such power
2351
02:34:42.860 --> 02:34:47.740
and such dignity saying to the government lawyer,
2352
02:34:47.740 --> 02:34:49.983
well, he has to be able to clean himself.
2353
02:34:52.470 --> 02:34:54.030
And I have the transcript
2354
02:34:54.030 --> 02:34:58.993
of our conversation based on my notes, but it was surreal.
2355
02:34:59.860 --> 02:35:01.090
So when we went back
2356
02:35:01.090 --> 02:35:03.530
and he heard that he'd have to stay in chains
2357
02:35:03.530 --> 02:35:06.390
that's when he broke up the meeting.
2358
02:35:06.390 --> 02:35:09.823
And he's the one who died last month.
2359
02:35:16.250 --> 02:35:21.250
I managed to have some of the most colorful clients
2360
02:35:22.600 --> 02:35:24.290
at Guantanamo.
2361
02:35:24.290 --> 02:35:26.180
And pregnant stories.
2362
02:35:26.180 --> 02:35:27.013
Yes.
2363
02:35:34.660 --> 02:35:37.030
Since your clients
2364
02:35:37.030 --> 02:35:40.230
are the ones most impacted in numbers
2365
02:35:40.230 --> 02:35:44.190
by the fact that there are a lot,
2366
02:35:44.190 --> 02:35:47.410
almost half of them left in Guantanamo
2367
02:35:47.410 --> 02:35:48.640
and they're not gonna be released
2368
02:35:48.640 --> 02:35:52.253
because apparently you haven't is too unstable,
2369
02:35:53.290 --> 02:35:54.740
Can you, I guess (indistinct)
2370
02:35:54.740 --> 02:35:57.020
That's assertively why.
2371
02:35:57.020 --> 02:35:57.880
It's assertively why.
2372
02:35:57.880 --> 02:35:59.047
Maybe you can just that
2373
02:35:59.047 --> 02:36:02.390
but in the same context, could you address
2374
02:36:02.390 --> 02:36:04.690
how you see the Obama administration
2375
02:36:04.690 --> 02:36:08.150
since you have a good sense of it?
2376
02:36:08.150 --> 02:36:10.890
Many lawyers we interviewed were there early
2377
02:36:10.890 --> 02:36:12.630
in the early days, but you're here
2378
02:36:13.530 --> 02:36:16.283
in the present and you could just address.
2379
02:36:17.310 --> 02:36:18.820
Let me, I'll do that.
2380
02:36:18.820 --> 02:36:22.600
Let me also say, as a matter of process
2381
02:36:22.600 --> 02:36:27.600
that if you need to break this up, I'd would be very happy
2382
02:36:27.990 --> 02:36:30.780
and very eager to come back for another session
2383
02:36:30.780 --> 02:36:33.823
so I can fill in some of the details.
2384
02:36:34.820 --> 02:36:36.560
Let's take a break for a minute Johnny?
2385
02:36:36.560 --> 02:36:37.393
Yeah.
2386
02:36:38.490 --> 02:36:41.610
Okay, so we're back on is to your thoughts
2387
02:36:41.610 --> 02:36:44.123
about the Obama administration,
2388
02:36:44.123 --> 02:36:47.270
given that you have so many clients who are impacted
2389
02:36:47.270 --> 02:36:52.270
by his actions for you could best explain what you think
2390
02:36:52.520 --> 02:36:55.520
about what the Obama ministration has done compared to Bush.
2391
02:36:58.620 --> 02:37:03.620
Obama was naive coming into office.
2392
02:37:03.970 --> 02:37:08.530
He didn't anticipate that the Republicans
2393
02:37:08.530 --> 02:37:13.530
would turn it against him and make it a terrorism issue.
2394
02:37:14.120 --> 02:37:16.740
He thought there was universal support for it,
2395
02:37:16.740 --> 02:37:18.360
which in fact there was.
2396
02:37:18.360 --> 02:37:19.840
Bush said he wanted to close it,
2397
02:37:19.840 --> 02:37:22.963
McCain said he wanted to close it.
2398
02:37:24.050 --> 02:37:27.360
But Obama came into office.
2399
02:37:27.360 --> 02:37:31.760
He signed the executive order with great flourish
2400
02:37:31.760 --> 02:37:35.123
and fanfare and made it a signature issue.
2401
02:37:37.190 --> 02:37:42.190
He then set up a task force to review each man's file
2402
02:37:43.860 --> 02:37:47.050
and make a determination of whether
2403
02:37:47.050 --> 02:37:50.853
that individual should be kept or released.
2404
02:37:51.870 --> 02:37:56.870
It's my sense that people
2405
02:37:57.320 --> 02:38:02.320
within our habeas community pressed for this task force
2406
02:38:02.800 --> 02:38:04.070
on the theory that,
2407
02:38:04.070 --> 02:38:06.830
oh, well once you look at the files,
2408
02:38:06.830 --> 02:38:09.296
it'll be clear that nobody should be here
2409
02:38:09.296 --> 02:38:10.580
and then let everybody go.
2410
02:38:10.580 --> 02:38:14.040
I think that this was,
2411
02:38:14.040 --> 02:38:17.853
it turned out to be a huge mistake in retrospect.
2412
02:38:19.440 --> 02:38:22.410
I opposed a lot of other people opposed it.
2413
02:38:22.410 --> 02:38:24.670
We said, what do we need a task force
2414
02:38:24.670 --> 02:38:28.310
to get them to get rid of people from Guantanamo?
2415
02:38:28.310 --> 02:38:33.310
After all 779 men passed through, Bush released 532 of them.
2416
02:38:38.420 --> 02:38:40.653
So I think in the first couple of weeks,
2417
02:38:41.540 --> 02:38:44.810
Obama could have released a large number of men
2418
02:38:46.720 --> 02:38:48.193
but he didn't.
2419
02:38:48.193 --> 02:38:51.720
Instead he made Guantanamo a signature issue
2420
02:38:53.040 --> 02:38:56.510
and opposing his plans for Guantanamo
2421
02:38:56.510 --> 02:39:00.640
became a big political sledgehammer for the Republicans.
2422
02:39:00.640 --> 02:39:03.140
And because he had set up this task force
2423
02:39:04.010 --> 02:39:06.160
which didn't come into existence
2424
02:39:06.160 --> 02:39:09.460
or functioning until mid spring or late spring.
2425
02:39:09.460 --> 02:39:12.880
And then which took a year to complete,
2426
02:39:12.880 --> 02:39:15.140
the Republicans filled the vacuum,
2427
02:39:15.140 --> 02:39:17.810
made Guantanamo a litmus test
2428
02:39:17.810 --> 02:39:20.583
for whether you're for terrorism or against terrorism.
2429
02:39:21.530 --> 02:39:23.510
And at that point Guantanamo
2430
02:39:23.510 --> 02:39:26.300
became a big political issue for Obama.
2431
02:39:26.300 --> 02:39:29.130
If he hadn't made it up a signature issue,
2432
02:39:29.130 --> 02:39:31.720
if he hadn't put the target on his back
2433
02:39:31.720 --> 02:39:34.003
and he had just done it,
2434
02:39:35.580 --> 02:39:39.080
I think a lot of men who are there now would be gone.
2435
02:39:39.080 --> 02:39:43.530
But instead as I say, they thought they were smarter
2436
02:39:43.530 --> 02:39:48.260
than the Bush people, better educated, fair,
2437
02:39:48.260 --> 02:39:50.210
jester, rationaler
2438
02:39:51.070 --> 02:39:56.070
and they just at smarter themselves with the task force.
2439
02:39:56.400 --> 02:39:58.960
And the same thing goes
2440
02:39:58.960 --> 02:40:02.410
with the a week is that could have been brought to America.
2441
02:40:02.410 --> 02:40:05.293
That's part of the same time.
2442
02:40:06.190 --> 02:40:08.820
If you'll let me, I'm gonna answer the question
2443
02:40:08.820 --> 02:40:10.910
but let me go back just a little bit.
2444
02:40:10.910 --> 02:40:11.933
Okay.
2445
02:40:18.230 --> 02:40:19.410
There was something I was going to say,
2446
02:40:19.410 --> 02:40:22.550
but I got distracted, so I'll go on.
2447
02:40:22.550 --> 02:40:24.310
Oh, I know what I was going to say.
2448
02:40:24.310 --> 02:40:29.310
At the point that it became a political hot potato,
2449
02:40:34.580 --> 02:40:39.293
President Obama retreated every single time.
2450
02:40:40.200 --> 02:40:44.290
He thought Guantanamo, I guess,
2451
02:40:44.290 --> 02:40:49.290
would be this isn't easy dramatic break with Bush,
2452
02:40:50.210 --> 02:40:51.660
everybody will love me
2453
02:40:51.660 --> 02:40:53.880
and now I can go on and do what I wanna do.
2454
02:40:53.880 --> 02:40:55.540
And his biggest program of course,
2455
02:40:55.540 --> 02:40:59.550
was the healthcare reform legislation.
2456
02:40:59.550 --> 02:41:03.600
Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff
2457
02:41:03.600 --> 02:41:08.600
is widely believed to have sold Obama on the idea
2458
02:41:10.695 --> 02:41:15.695
that Obama should expend
2459
02:41:17.890 --> 02:41:22.550
absolutely zero political capital on Guantanamo
2460
02:41:22.550 --> 02:41:25.010
because what was more important
2461
02:41:25.010 --> 02:41:28.870
passing healthcare legislation that would affect millions,
2462
02:41:28.870 --> 02:41:30.610
tens of millions of people.
2463
02:41:30.610 --> 02:41:33.640
We're getting a few guys out of Guantanamo
2464
02:41:33.640 --> 02:41:36.170
where there's absolutely no political upside,
2465
02:41:36.170 --> 02:41:38.280
only down side.
2466
02:41:38.280 --> 02:41:40.653
And we're just not gonna lose a boat over that.
2467
02:41:41.800 --> 02:41:44.580
So I think that continued,
2468
02:41:44.580 --> 02:41:49.580
there were very ardent supporters of closing Guantanamo
2469
02:41:49.980 --> 02:41:51.683
such as Greg Craig,
2470
02:41:52.880 --> 02:41:56.600
who I think was in charge of that issue in the White House
2471
02:41:57.740 --> 02:42:02.223
but he got kicked out, partly over this issue.
2472
02:42:03.730 --> 02:42:08.180
I was in Guantanamo when president Obama
2473
02:42:08.180 --> 02:42:12.703
issued his press release, his executive order.
2474
02:42:13.580 --> 02:42:18.580
When I heard the advance news that it was coming,
2475
02:42:21.070 --> 02:42:24.083
I was almost elated.
2476
02:42:24.960 --> 02:42:26.837
And my clients said to me,
2477
02:42:26.837 --> 02:42:31.800
"David, you always see the glass as half empty or more."
2478
02:42:31.800 --> 02:42:32.910
And that is my policy
2479
02:42:32.910 --> 02:42:35.970
because I don't wanna oversell anything
2480
02:42:35.970 --> 02:42:37.750
for the sake of my own credibility
2481
02:42:37.750 --> 02:42:40.780
and my pessimism has never failed me.
2482
02:42:40.780 --> 02:42:43.670
So they had that advance notice
2483
02:42:43.670 --> 02:42:48.670
but then when I saw the actual executive order the next day,
2484
02:42:48.820 --> 02:42:53.270
I saw the loopholes that were built into it.
2485
02:42:53.270 --> 02:42:55.230
When I got to a point
2486
02:42:55.230 --> 02:43:00.230
which says any detainees who aren't sent home
2487
02:43:00.650 --> 02:43:03.840
by the end of the one-year period shall be transferred
2488
02:43:03.840 --> 02:43:05.913
to detention facilities elsewhere.
2489
02:43:08.090 --> 02:43:09.700
That was the loophole.
2490
02:43:09.700 --> 02:43:12.120
Now of course, it all became moved later on.
2491
02:43:12.120 --> 02:43:13.500
But when I looked at the loophole,
2492
02:43:13.500 --> 02:43:18.500
when I looked at how carefully lawyered the document was
2493
02:43:19.370 --> 02:43:23.270
to really leave Obama a very free hand,
2494
02:43:23.270 --> 02:43:26.620
I realized that it was more sizzle than steak,
2495
02:43:30.850 --> 02:43:33.173
as we said in 2012.
2496
02:43:35.600 --> 02:43:40.600
Anyhow Obama, and I use him as a shorthand
2497
02:43:41.240 --> 02:43:43.430
for his administration.
2498
02:43:43.430 --> 02:43:48.430
Finally set up this cumbersome Guantanamo review task force
2499
02:43:49.030 --> 02:43:50.770
naturally as a government bureaucracy
2500
02:43:50.770 --> 02:43:52.400
it took a long time to set up
2501
02:43:53.750 --> 02:43:57.440
and it had to establish protocols and methods of review
2502
02:43:57.440 --> 02:43:58.483
and on and on.
2503
02:44:00.710 --> 02:44:03.163
In the spring maybe April,
2504
02:44:05.610 --> 02:44:10.610
the administration found in North Virginia
2505
02:44:10.720 --> 02:44:14.720
a community of Uyghurs who would welcome
2506
02:44:14.720 --> 02:44:16.640
the 22 Uyghurs at Guantanamo.
2507
02:44:16.640 --> 02:44:19.543
I think it was 22 at the time with open arms,
2508
02:44:21.150 --> 02:44:25.380
take them in, make sure that they succeeded
2509
02:44:27.393 --> 02:44:29.393
and would just generally support them.
2510
02:44:30.830 --> 02:44:35.830
So the administration decided to send the Uyghurs
2511
02:44:36.732 --> 02:44:39.340
to Northern Virginia.
2512
02:44:39.340 --> 02:44:41.840
By the way, I may be misstating the number.
2513
02:44:41.840 --> 02:44:43.413
It may only have been four Uyghurs
2514
02:44:43.413 --> 02:44:46.603
that were 22 all in all at Guantanamo.
2515
02:44:48.010 --> 02:44:50.430
So they were going to do that.
2516
02:44:50.430 --> 02:44:54.410
They were about to do that then somehow or other
2517
02:44:54.410 --> 02:44:57.073
news got out that they were going to do it.
2518
02:44:58.260 --> 02:45:02.380
Frank Wolf, a representative from Northern Virginia
2519
02:45:02.380 --> 02:45:04.460
raised a stink about it.
2520
02:45:04.460 --> 02:45:07.030
God everybody's scared and concerned.
2521
02:45:07.030 --> 02:45:10.343
The administration just backed off, no attempt to defend it.
2522
02:45:11.280 --> 02:45:12.770
They're just okay.
2523
02:45:12.770 --> 02:45:13.993
They just backed off.
2524
02:45:14.870 --> 02:45:18.430
And that had very serious ramifications
2525
02:45:18.430 --> 02:45:22.670
because later on down the road when ambassador Dan Fried
2526
02:45:22.670 --> 02:45:24.970
was trying to resettle
2527
02:45:25.810 --> 02:45:30.450
many detainees in Western Europe, Eastern Europe,
2528
02:45:30.450 --> 02:45:31.900
these countries would say, well,
2529
02:45:31.900 --> 02:45:35.223
why should we take these guys when you won't even take them?
2530
02:45:36.270 --> 02:45:37.900
And I think he said at one point,
2531
02:45:37.900 --> 02:45:40.740
this has recently been quoted somewhere
2532
02:45:40.740 --> 02:45:45.740
that it would reduce his success by 50% or 60%.
2533
02:45:48.270 --> 02:45:51.450
Again, the historical record should be checked
2534
02:45:51.450 --> 02:45:54.460
but it was sort of that kind of a statement.
2535
02:45:54.460 --> 02:45:56.040
If the other countries say to us,
2536
02:45:56.040 --> 02:46:00.023
why should we import your headache?
2537
02:46:03.210 --> 02:46:07.683
So that made it very difficult to resettle people.
2538
02:46:09.100 --> 02:46:14.100
The next event, if I recall correctly was November, 2009
2539
02:46:17.940 --> 02:46:20.560
when Attorney General Holder announced
2540
02:46:20.560 --> 02:46:23.780
that the 5911 defendants
2541
02:46:23.780 --> 02:46:27.343
would be tried in federal court in New York.
2542
02:46:28.460 --> 02:46:29.770
Actually it wasn't the next event.
2543
02:46:29.770 --> 02:46:33.190
There was a speech that Obama gave in the National Archives
2544
02:46:33.190 --> 02:46:38.190
in May of 2009, in which he laid out the various principles.
2545
02:46:38.650 --> 02:46:39.740
He was going to follow
2546
02:46:39.740 --> 02:46:42.450
in deciding who to keep and who to release.
2547
02:46:42.450 --> 02:46:46.280
And it winded up bringing him all the positive publicity
2548
02:46:46.280 --> 02:46:50.100
of his first debate in the presidential elections.
2549
02:46:50.100 --> 02:46:51.440
I mean, it didn't do him any harm
2550
02:46:51.440 --> 02:46:53.210
but it sort of sank like a stone
2551
02:46:53.210 --> 02:46:56.280
but he laid that out and he was pretty faithful to it.
2552
02:46:56.280 --> 02:46:59.620
It contemplated indefinite detention by the way,
2553
02:46:59.620 --> 02:47:01.940
which dismayed us.
2554
02:47:01.940 --> 02:47:06.940
So Obama took the position
2555
02:47:07.770 --> 02:47:10.020
that he should have the flexibility
2556
02:47:10.020 --> 02:47:12.960
that some people should be tried in federal court,
2557
02:47:12.960 --> 02:47:16.650
other people should be tried in the military commissions
2558
02:47:16.650 --> 02:47:18.510
and he decided to,
2559
02:47:18.510 --> 02:47:21.530
and I'm not just saying this on my own authority.
2560
02:47:21.530 --> 02:47:25.620
It's stuff that I've read and studied educated recounting.
2561
02:47:27.880 --> 02:47:31.617
Okay, he wanted the first trial to be a trial
2562
02:47:38.380 --> 02:47:41.810
in federal court of the 5911 defendants
2563
02:47:41.810 --> 02:47:46.750
because he thought that this would be the ultimate proof
2564
02:47:46.750 --> 02:47:51.670
that the civilian system could work and deliver justice.
2565
02:47:51.670 --> 02:47:52.970
There might be other people.
2566
02:47:52.970 --> 02:47:56.160
And he actually named about five other people as I recall
2567
02:47:56.160 --> 02:47:58.660
who would go to the military commissions.
2568
02:47:58.660 --> 02:48:02.050
I don't remember who they all are
2569
02:48:02.050 --> 02:48:07.050
but initially Mayor Bloomberg,
2570
02:48:07.260 --> 02:48:10.700
he, by the way Obama chose the Southern District of New York
2571
02:48:11.580 --> 02:48:16.050
which is in Manhattan, Mayor Bloomberg endorsed this.
2572
02:48:16.050 --> 02:48:18.890
There may have been a couple of other prominent politicians
2573
02:48:18.890 --> 02:48:19.923
who endorsed it.
2574
02:48:20.820 --> 02:48:24.820
But once again, as soon as it became known,
2575
02:48:24.820 --> 02:48:26.030
there was an explosion
2576
02:48:27.330 --> 02:48:32.330
and within a month or two, Eric Holder had withdrawn
2577
02:48:35.250 --> 02:48:37.410
or dismissed the indictment
2578
02:48:37.410 --> 02:48:39.040
and it became evident
2579
02:48:39.040 --> 02:48:41.380
that if they were going to be tried anywhere,
2580
02:48:41.380 --> 02:48:43.990
they'd be tried in Guantanamo.
2581
02:48:43.990 --> 02:48:48.990
The scare was, it wasn't Frank Wolf this time.
2582
02:48:49.590 --> 02:48:52.500
It was representative Peter King
2583
02:48:52.500 --> 02:48:54.270
who I think is from Staten Island
2584
02:48:54.270 --> 02:48:58.343
but he may be from one of the other outer boroughs.
2585
02:49:00.340 --> 02:49:04.070
That's how people broke up in New York talk.
2586
02:49:04.070 --> 02:49:05.593
The city means Manhattan.
2587
02:49:08.860 --> 02:49:12.900
So all of a sudden, oh my God,
2588
02:49:12.900 --> 02:49:16.840
instead of being a symbol of our strength
2589
02:49:16.840 --> 02:49:19.870
to try these guys two blocks away
2590
02:49:19.870 --> 02:49:22.180
from the ruins of the world trade center,
2591
02:49:22.180 --> 02:49:26.623
it became a full hearty invitation to terrorist attacks.
2592
02:49:29.970 --> 02:49:34.763
They contemplated having hundreds of police.
2593
02:49:35.630 --> 02:49:38.540
Everybody from the tri-state area
2594
02:49:38.540 --> 02:49:42.003
would have to come in figuratively speaking.
2595
02:49:43.060 --> 02:49:45.340
Then, and as I said,
2596
02:49:45.340 --> 02:49:50.340
they feared that there would be terrorist attempts
2597
02:49:50.430 --> 02:49:52.930
that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
2598
02:49:52.930 --> 02:49:57.840
Okay, so he backs off from that in December, 2009,
2599
02:49:57.840 --> 02:50:01.333
then the task force report comes out in,
2600
02:50:02.370 --> 02:50:07.340
and I use that to illustrate his unwillingness
2601
02:50:07.340 --> 02:50:12.340
to expend any political capital to promote his own policy.
2602
02:50:15.390 --> 02:50:18.510
Now, in the Uyghurs case, their explanation,
2603
02:50:18.510 --> 02:50:20.500
the administration's explanation is,
2604
02:50:20.500 --> 02:50:22.740
well, we didn't work it out in advance
2605
02:50:22.740 --> 02:50:25.200
because if we thought, if we did,
2606
02:50:25.200 --> 02:50:26.700
we knew we'd get an explosion,
2607
02:50:27.630 --> 02:50:32.140
but the problem is having not made the foundation for this,
2608
02:50:32.140 --> 02:50:34.270
they suffered the consequences politically.
2609
02:50:34.270 --> 02:50:37.653
So then in 2009, you get the joint task force report.
2610
02:50:38.880 --> 02:50:41.573
People slowly start being released.
2611
02:50:42.470 --> 02:50:47.470
Only 67 have been released from Guantanamo alive
2612
02:50:52.820 --> 02:50:55.683
of those who have left Guantanamo,
2613
02:51:01.970 --> 02:51:03.750
all of whom would have been approved
2614
02:51:03.750 --> 02:51:05.793
for transfer by the task force.
2615
02:51:08.420 --> 02:51:11.670
So, and ambassador Fried had a very hard time
2616
02:51:11.670 --> 02:51:14.430
because we wouldn't take anybody.
2617
02:51:14.430 --> 02:51:19.240
The other aspect of this that was really ironic
2618
02:51:19.240 --> 02:51:21.280
is that at the very time,
2619
02:51:21.280 --> 02:51:24.760
the US was trying to convince other countries
2620
02:51:24.760 --> 02:51:26.110
to take these guys.
2621
02:51:26.110 --> 02:51:29.480
He put aside the question of whether we take them or not.
2622
02:51:29.480 --> 02:51:34.480
It was arguing in court that these were Al-Qaeda members.
2623
02:51:34.710 --> 02:51:36.700
These were Taliban members.
2624
02:51:36.700 --> 02:51:39.260
The US had a lawful right to hold them
2625
02:51:39.260 --> 02:51:41.083
because they were dangerous.
2626
02:51:43.620 --> 02:51:46.650
The justice department and the state department
2627
02:51:46.650 --> 02:51:49.033
were working completely across purposes.
2628
02:51:50.850 --> 02:51:52.960
Why should we take a terrorist?
2629
02:51:52.960 --> 02:51:55.220
Why should we take anybody?
2630
02:51:55.220 --> 02:51:56.810
So that's what was happening
2631
02:51:58.400 --> 02:52:02.150
with respect to the effort to release people.
2632
02:52:02.150 --> 02:52:05.040
Then the next thing that happened of significance
2633
02:52:05.040 --> 02:52:08.180
is December, 2009,
2634
02:52:08.180 --> 02:52:12.380
I guess this was shortly after Holder folded.
2635
02:52:12.380 --> 02:52:17.360
There was the Christmas day airliner bombing attempt
2636
02:52:17.360 --> 02:52:22.360
by I won't even try to remember his name,
2637
02:52:23.090 --> 02:52:28.083
but he was colloquially known as the underwear bomber.
2638
02:52:31.050 --> 02:52:35.120
In weeks before that, there had been a shooting
2639
02:52:36.160 --> 02:52:38.283
in Fort Hood in American base.
2640
02:52:39.310 --> 02:52:42.293
I can't remember what state, by a Muslim.
2641
02:52:44.420 --> 02:52:49.420
And it was believed that the Muslim had been in contact
2642
02:52:49.470 --> 02:52:53.283
with this American cleric in Yemen named Al-Awlaki.
2643
02:52:54.530 --> 02:52:58.310
And so Al-Awlaki was considered
2644
02:52:58.310 --> 02:53:01.550
to be a spider in the center of the web.
2645
02:53:01.550 --> 02:53:03.550
Then you have the Christmas day bombing
2646
02:53:03.550 --> 02:53:07.640
and it immediately becomes a matter of belief
2647
02:53:07.640 --> 02:53:11.010
that the Nigerian who tried the bombing
2648
02:53:11.010 --> 02:53:14.383
had also been in touch with Al-Awlaki.
2649
02:53:15.660 --> 02:53:19.540
That built Al-Awlaki up even more.
2650
02:53:19.540 --> 02:53:21.530
Although in fact, he was a pretty minor figure
2651
02:53:21.530 --> 02:53:22.930
as I understand it.
2652
02:53:22.930 --> 02:53:27.930
So within a day or two, senior political members of Congress
2653
02:53:30.230 --> 02:53:33.730
from both parties were demanding
2654
02:53:33.730 --> 02:53:38.730
that Obama stop transferring Guantanamo detainees to Yemen.
2655
02:53:42.010 --> 02:53:43.940
They said that,
2656
02:53:43.940 --> 02:53:46.680
the administration said when they announced it
2657
02:53:46.680 --> 02:53:50.930
that this was because of unsettled conditions
2658
02:53:50.930 --> 02:53:55.820
or the unsettled situation, but it wasn't,
2659
02:53:55.820 --> 02:53:58.730
it was a purely political move
2660
02:53:58.730 --> 02:54:02.733
to quell this political uproar.
2661
02:54:04.380 --> 02:54:07.870
Now since Yemenis account for over half
2662
02:54:07.870 --> 02:54:12.340
of the detainee population right away there,
2663
02:54:12.340 --> 02:54:15.230
you've said, these guys are off the table.
2664
02:54:15.230 --> 02:54:18.450
Not only are they half of the population
2665
02:54:18.450 --> 02:54:20.420
but they're two thirds
2666
02:54:20.420 --> 02:54:23.143
of the men who have been approved for transfer.
2667
02:54:27.290 --> 02:54:29.590
And I don't have to spin out the implications.
2668
02:54:30.740 --> 02:54:32.870
Then Congress got into the act
2669
02:54:32.870 --> 02:54:35.960
and began passing legislation
2670
02:54:35.960 --> 02:54:38.750
that really tied the presence hands
2671
02:54:38.750 --> 02:54:41.900
by requiring him to make certifications
2672
02:54:41.900 --> 02:54:43.320
or his secretary of defense
2673
02:54:43.320 --> 02:54:45.763
that no secretary of defense would make.
2674
02:54:47.420 --> 02:54:49.970
And meanwhile, the courts
2675
02:54:49.970 --> 02:54:52.880
particularly a reactionary DC circuit
2676
02:54:55.180 --> 02:54:56.940
kept ruling for the government.
2677
02:54:56.940 --> 02:54:58.890
And the worst ruling of all was
2678
02:54:58.890 --> 02:55:01.963
that even if a detainee one is habeas corpus case,
2679
02:55:02.970 --> 02:55:06.100
the court couldn't enforce an order
2680
02:55:06.100 --> 02:55:08.940
against the United States to release him.
2681
02:55:08.940 --> 02:55:10.850
So that eliminated habeas
2682
02:55:10.850 --> 02:55:14.790
as a remedy for all intents and purposes.
2683
02:55:14.790 --> 02:55:16.113
So look where we are.
2684
02:55:17.100 --> 02:55:19.903
Congress has tied the president's hands.
2685
02:55:22.440 --> 02:55:25.400
The president has taken half the detainees
2686
02:55:26.240 --> 02:55:29.920
off the table or two thirds of the approved ones.
2687
02:55:29.920 --> 02:55:32.120
And the court has said that
2688
02:55:34.194 --> 02:55:37.010
he doesn't have to release even people
2689
02:55:37.010 --> 02:55:39.630
who were in habeas cases.
2690
02:55:39.630 --> 02:55:41.980
So we had all three branches
2691
02:55:41.980 --> 02:55:45.750
of raid against us and we still do, we still do.
2692
02:55:45.750 --> 02:55:47.990
And we probably always will.
2693
02:55:47.990 --> 02:55:51.410
I don't know what will break this issue
2694
02:55:51.410 --> 02:55:54.800
and then achieve the results that we're fighting for.
2695
02:55:54.800 --> 02:55:58.630
That's pretty much been the situation so far
2696
02:55:58.630 --> 02:56:00.330
from a legal standpoint.
2697
02:56:00.330 --> 02:56:05.090
Congress has passed the Guantanamo,
2698
02:56:05.090 --> 02:56:06.490
the defense, sorry
2699
02:56:06.490 --> 02:56:09.030
the National Defense Authorization Act
2700
02:56:09.030 --> 02:56:12.450
a couple of times for 2011, 2012,
2701
02:56:12.450 --> 02:56:14.250
that had these restrictions in them.
2702
02:56:15.560 --> 02:56:20.560
And it's now considering the act for 2013
2703
02:56:20.670 --> 02:56:21.910
and there's no reason to believe
2704
02:56:21.910 --> 02:56:25.170
that the restrictions won't be there actually 2012
2705
02:56:25.170 --> 02:56:27.883
was more restrictive than 2011.
2706
02:56:29.270 --> 02:56:31.990
Obama is not going to drop his policy.
2707
02:56:31.990 --> 02:56:36.050
Then Romney certainly won't drop his policy
2708
02:56:36.050 --> 02:56:39.480
of keeping people from being transferred from Yemen.
2709
02:56:39.480 --> 02:56:41.450
And I don't think an American president
2710
02:56:41.450 --> 02:56:45.790
will transfer more than a trickle of detainees
2711
02:56:46.870 --> 02:56:51.870
as long as it will be hardly noticed
2712
02:56:52.260 --> 02:56:54.453
and not controversial at all.
2713
02:56:56.030 --> 02:57:01.010
One of our clients Hodson Odine one is habeas case
2714
02:57:01.010 --> 02:57:06.010
and the government did transfer him to Yemen
2715
02:57:07.430 --> 02:57:09.680
after he had won the case and didn't appeal
2716
02:57:10.660 --> 02:57:15.360
because his story aroused so much outrage.
2717
02:57:15.360 --> 02:57:19.310
He had been a university student who visited a friend
2718
02:57:19.310 --> 02:57:24.260
the evening that the Pakistani police raided the house,
2719
02:57:24.260 --> 02:57:25.950
seized everybody in it.
2720
02:57:25.950 --> 02:57:29.860
And then he wound up in Guantanamo for eight years.
2721
02:57:29.860 --> 02:57:32.480
And the district court Judge Kennedy
2722
02:57:32.480 --> 02:57:34.420
wrote a scathing opinion.
2723
02:57:34.420 --> 02:57:37.860
So the US made an exception to the no Yemeni policy
2724
02:57:37.860 --> 02:57:40.660
and sent him back, which was great.
2725
02:57:40.660 --> 02:57:41.493
When was it?
2726
02:57:41.493 --> 02:57:44.380
This was in the summer of 2010.
2727
02:57:44.380 --> 02:57:49.380
They released two other of our clients in December, 2009
2728
02:57:51.230 --> 02:57:53.700
before the airliner bombing attempt
2729
02:57:54.710 --> 02:57:57.380
together with three or four other Yemenis
2730
02:57:58.400 --> 02:58:00.540
and their plan as I understand it
2731
02:58:00.540 --> 02:58:03.830
was to ship about half a dozen Yemenis every month
2732
02:58:03.830 --> 02:58:04.683
back to Yemen.
2733
02:58:05.750 --> 02:58:08.670
But these two guys sort of caught the last train
2734
02:58:08.670 --> 02:58:09.703
out of Paris.
2735
02:58:11.360 --> 02:58:13.180
It just became pure luck
2736
02:58:14.190 --> 02:58:16.063
because the Yemenis were then stuck.
2737
02:58:19.400 --> 02:58:24.400
The Guantanamo has not been even a gleam in anybody's eye
2738
02:58:26.710 --> 02:58:29.100
in the presidential campaign.
2739
02:58:29.100 --> 02:58:31.730
The war against terrorism so-called,
2740
02:58:31.730 --> 02:58:33.910
hasn't really been an issue
2741
02:58:35.320 --> 02:58:37.810
in the presidential campaign.
2742
02:58:37.810 --> 02:58:39.060
I don't think any president
2743
02:58:39.060 --> 02:58:44.060
is going to release more than a handful of detainees
2744
02:58:45.660 --> 02:58:50.103
because there's no political upside, it's all downside.
2745
02:58:51.400 --> 02:58:56.400
And so I think my final judgment is
2746
02:58:58.840 --> 02:59:03.840
that Obama was naive coming into office,
2747
02:59:05.370 --> 02:59:07.410
thinking that it would be easy
2748
02:59:07.410 --> 02:59:10.483
and applauded and popular,
2749
02:59:13.717 --> 02:59:17.067
and he thereafter exercised no leadership
2750
02:59:20.210 --> 02:59:22.920
in promoting his own policy.
2751
02:59:22.920 --> 02:59:25.320
Didn't give support to members of Congress,
2752
02:59:25.320 --> 02:59:29.098
kept litigating the habeas cases as fiercely
2753
02:59:29.098 --> 02:59:30.448
as beverly has ever before.
2754
02:59:31.670 --> 02:59:35.470
Wouldn't spend a simple grain of sand
2755
02:59:35.470 --> 02:59:37.180
of political capital on it
2756
02:59:37.180 --> 02:59:40.100
with the result that the men continued there
2757
02:59:40.100 --> 02:59:43.260
except those that Dan Fried
2758
02:59:43.260 --> 02:59:48.260
was able to get out, which actually isn't unimpressive.
2759
02:59:48.460 --> 02:59:52.600
When Obama came in, there were 242 detainees
2760
02:59:53.780 --> 02:59:58.780
and the US has released 67 by now.
2761
02:59:59.500 --> 03:00:01.410
So that's really a quarter of the population,
2762
03:00:01.410 --> 03:00:03.070
over a quarter of the population
2763
03:00:03.070 --> 03:00:05.900
but there are still almost 90 men
2764
03:00:05.900 --> 03:00:07.970
who have been approved for transfer,
2765
03:00:07.970 --> 03:00:09.300
who haven't been transferred.
2766
03:00:09.300 --> 03:00:12.220
There's still the regime of indefinite detention
2767
03:00:12.220 --> 03:00:15.240
and there's still the regime of military commission trials
2768
03:00:15.240 --> 03:00:20.240
which were invented to make it easier to convict defendants.
2769
03:00:22.360 --> 03:00:27.360
It's like I say to my friends,
2770
03:00:28.260 --> 03:00:31.103
the situation is hopeless, but I'm not discouraged.
2771
03:00:34.120 --> 03:00:36.052
Well, I was gonna say
2772
03:00:36.052 --> 03:00:37.154
if there's anything that I didn't ask you
2773
03:00:37.154 --> 03:00:38.700
but I just wanted to say, 'cause you kind of said,
2774
03:00:38.700 --> 03:00:40.670
I just wanna confirm going forward.
2775
03:00:40.670 --> 03:00:42.500
You don't see change.
2776
03:00:42.500 --> 03:00:45.530
I mean, it's not, it could be inevitable
2777
03:00:45.530 --> 03:00:48.670
at some men are gonna die in Guantanamo.
2778
03:00:48.670 --> 03:00:50.353
They're just gonna live their rest of lives there.
2779
03:00:51.310 --> 03:00:52.993
When my, yes, I do.
2780
03:00:53.900 --> 03:00:58.900
When one died of a heart attack, one died of cancer,
2781
03:01:00.370 --> 03:01:04.530
I have the dubious distinction
2782
03:01:04.530 --> 03:01:08.300
of representing the oldest detainees at Guantanamo.
2783
03:01:08.300 --> 03:01:12.340
Saifullah Paracha who's in his 60s
2784
03:01:12.340 --> 03:01:14.240
and I have another one who's in his 60s
2785
03:01:14.240 --> 03:01:16.850
but looks like he's in his 80s
2786
03:01:16.850 --> 03:01:21.850
and Saifullah has serious heart condition, serious diabetes.
2787
03:01:22.890 --> 03:01:27.020
He wanted to be operated on in the states.
2788
03:01:27.020 --> 03:01:28.760
They wouldn't do it.
2789
03:01:28.760 --> 03:01:30.360
And he didn't wanna be operated
2790
03:01:30.360 --> 03:01:32.500
spread eagle than having his arms and legs
2791
03:01:32.500 --> 03:01:34.580
chained to the operating table.
2792
03:01:34.580 --> 03:01:37.280
So the result was that he lives off his medication
2793
03:01:37.280 --> 03:01:39.630
but that's just a digression from the fact
2794
03:01:39.630 --> 03:01:42.720
that I can see no end to this.
2795
03:01:42.720 --> 03:01:44.220
And even though the men are mainly
2796
03:01:44.220 --> 03:01:47.503
in their 30s and 40s now,
2797
03:01:49.510 --> 03:01:52.160
I see no light at the end of the tunnel,
2798
03:01:52.160 --> 03:01:57.160
except for a few unusual detainees Shaker on is an example.
2799
03:01:59.950 --> 03:02:03.410
Maybe the two remaining Uyghurs will be examples
2800
03:02:03.410 --> 03:02:05.240
but they will be the exceptions
2801
03:02:05.240 --> 03:02:07.943
that prove the rules the rule.
2802
03:02:08.980 --> 03:02:13.980
And like I say, I don't see an end to this at this point.
2803
03:02:16.210 --> 03:02:18.220
Well, and that kind of depressing.
2804
03:02:18.220 --> 03:02:19.610
May I say one other thing?
2805
03:02:19.610 --> 03:02:20.760
Yeah, please.
2806
03:02:20.760 --> 03:02:22.123
Which I wanted to say.
2807
03:02:25.947 --> 03:02:26.780
I was gonna ask you (indistinct)
2808
03:02:26.780 --> 03:02:29.180
Yeah, well, this is the other thing I wanted to say.
2809
03:02:33.360 --> 03:02:38.360
This is an oral history with the expectation
2810
03:02:39.860 --> 03:02:43.410
that in a decade, two decades, three decades,
2811
03:02:43.410 --> 03:02:45.960
people are still going to be interested in this,
2812
03:02:45.960 --> 03:02:48.010
are going to be writing about it,
2813
03:02:48.010 --> 03:02:50.170
are going to be researching it.
2814
03:02:50.170 --> 03:02:51.930
The books will be written
2815
03:02:51.930 --> 03:02:56.827
that this will be like the Japanese internment situation.
2816
03:03:01.430 --> 03:03:06.430
And that it really is a matter of historical importance.
2817
03:03:11.920 --> 03:03:13.990
I think that some of the habeas lawyers
2818
03:03:13.990 --> 03:03:16.370
who came in to the case,
2819
03:03:16.370 --> 03:03:19.380
there were probably about 200 at one time,
2820
03:03:19.380 --> 03:03:24.380
came in because this guy's being unjustly detained.
2821
03:03:24.580 --> 03:03:25.713
We wanna get him out.
2822
03:03:27.380 --> 03:03:32.060
Others came in saying, looking at it like,
2823
03:03:32.060 --> 03:03:34.800
we're a law firm, this is a case,
2824
03:03:34.800 --> 03:03:38.483
we'll pursue the case and we win, we win, we lose, we lose.
2825
03:03:39.510 --> 03:03:42.010
But then there were others of us
2826
03:03:42.010 --> 03:03:44.210
who viewed Guantanamo as a cause
2827
03:03:46.640 --> 03:03:51.640
and have devoted a large chunk of our lives to this.
2828
03:03:52.320 --> 03:03:57.320
Or in my case, it appears a never ending commitment to this
2829
03:03:58.490 --> 03:04:03.490
unless I get on a defense team and one of the trials
2830
03:04:05.590 --> 03:04:07.193
of the 911 defendants.
2831
03:04:09.550 --> 03:04:14.550
And I am conscious of the historical character
2832
03:04:18.270 --> 03:04:20.763
of the work that we're doing.
2833
03:04:22.910 --> 03:04:25.400
And it's kind
2834
03:04:25.400 --> 03:04:30.400
of an amazing thought of becoming part of history.
2835
03:04:32.400 --> 03:04:37.400
Maybe a footnote, maybe only one mentioned in the index
2836
03:04:38.570 --> 03:04:40.150
but really a part of history.
2837
03:04:40.150 --> 03:04:41.850
I'm conscious of that.
2838
03:04:41.850 --> 03:04:44.580
I think the people at the center for constitutional rights
2839
03:04:44.580 --> 03:04:47.900
and the other human rights organizations recognize it
2840
03:04:47.900 --> 03:04:51.510
but now the number of lawyers
2841
03:04:53.610 --> 03:04:58.610
working on the cases who regard it as a cause or calling
2842
03:04:59.020 --> 03:05:02.293
have dwindled maybe to a handful,
2843
03:05:03.220 --> 03:05:06.326
the CCR people, the reprieve people
2844
03:05:06.326 --> 03:05:07.463
and so on that I mentioned,
2845
03:05:10.090 --> 03:05:12.900
once the cases were allowed to move forward individually
2846
03:05:12.900 --> 03:05:14.660
in the Boumediene case,
2847
03:05:14.660 --> 03:05:16.810
people paid attention to their individual cases
2848
03:05:16.810 --> 03:05:18.950
and didn't pay attention to Guantanamo.
2849
03:05:18.950 --> 03:05:23.950
So you immediately lost that among the habeas lawyers
2850
03:05:24.010 --> 03:05:28.570
plus Obama was able to diffuse the issue to a large extent.
2851
03:05:28.570 --> 03:05:32.593
But so we're faced with a problem
2852
03:05:32.593 --> 03:05:37.150
that Guantanamo really isn't viewed broadly
2853
03:05:37.150 --> 03:05:38.790
as an issue anymore.
2854
03:05:38.790 --> 03:05:43.310
There are very few of us in the habeas council community
2855
03:05:43.310 --> 03:05:46.350
who present it as a cause.
2856
03:05:46.350 --> 03:05:50.500
And that's very sad
2857
03:05:50.500 --> 03:05:54.080
'cause we're not taking advantage of the resources we have
2858
03:05:55.370 --> 03:05:58.270
but I think that we're conscious
2859
03:05:58.270 --> 03:06:02.113
of the historical dimension of the matter.
2860
03:06:03.060 --> 03:06:05.010
Well to just add, I think,
2861
03:06:05.010 --> 03:06:06.280
I mean 50 years,
2862
03:06:06.280 --> 03:06:08.470
it took six years for the Japanese to determine it.
2863
03:06:08.470 --> 03:06:11.710
It could take that long, a generation for before people
2864
03:06:11.710 --> 03:06:14.120
really do look back at what happened in Guantanamo.
2865
03:06:14.120 --> 03:06:17.084
So what you're telling us, it would be
2866
03:06:17.084 --> 03:06:22.000
I think more worthwhile 30 years from now than it is today.
2867
03:06:22.000 --> 03:06:23.680
People will finally be willing
2868
03:06:23.680 --> 03:06:25.270
to look back at what happened?
2869
03:06:25.270 --> 03:06:26.743
There should be a record.
2870
03:06:28.238 --> 03:06:29.150
And I really appreciate
2871
03:06:29.150 --> 03:06:30.030
what you've given us.
2872
03:06:30.030 --> 03:06:33.080
You've given us the longest interview you've done up to now
2873
03:06:33.080 --> 03:06:36.462
and we really appreciate it.
2874
03:06:36.462 --> 03:06:37.295
And before we.
2875
03:06:37.295 --> 03:06:40.560
And if you had come back, I'm glad to give you more time.
2876
03:06:40.560 --> 03:06:43.310
And I welcome that and it might happen.
2877
03:06:44.680 --> 03:06:47.420
Before we close, Johnny needs 20 seconds of room tone
2878
03:06:47.420 --> 03:06:49.600
where we just exit quietly,
2879
03:06:49.600 --> 03:06:52.600
so before we can turn off the mic, so.
2880
03:06:52.600 --> 03:06:53.433
Right.
2881
03:06:55.220 --> 03:06:56.570
Begin room tone.
2882
03:07:10.500 --> 03:07:11.333
End room tone.