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Okay, good afternoon.
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We are very grateful to you for participating
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in the Witness to Guantanamo project.
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We invite you to speak of your experiences and involvement
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with detainees and others who were in Guantanamo bay, Cuba.
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We are hoping to provide you with opportunity to
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tell your story in your own words.
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We are creating an archive of stories
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that people around the world and in America
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will have a better understanding of what you
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and others have experienced and observed.
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Future generations must to know what happened
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in Guantanamo and by telling your story,
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you are contributing to history
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and we appreciate your willingness to speak with us today.
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If at any time during the interview
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you'd like take a break just let us know
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and if you say something that you'd like us to remove
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we can do that if you let us know as well.
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So we'd like to begin with just personal information
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your name, your hometown, your date of birth and age.
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Maybe we could start with that.
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My name is Tom Berg.
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I'm 60 years old.
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I live currently in Houston, have since 1970
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I was born in Washington DC,
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raised in Mexico City Mexico,
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went through primary and secondary school there
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and then came back to Houston,
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which is where my family's from
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to go to university in law school.
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Your date of birth?
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March 19th, 1952.
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And did you go to college
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or university and law school here in Houston?
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Yes, I did.
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Rice University for undergraduate
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and then the University of Houston law school.
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And what's your current occupation?
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I am a criminal defense lawyer.
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So maybe you'd give us a little background
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on how you first got involved
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with the military pre 9/11, or were you?
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I joined the army reserve in 1986.
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I was direct commission as a Lieutenant
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in the JAG Corps back in 1986,
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that consisted of one weekend a month
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eating donuts and reading newspapers.
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The reserves were not very active in those days.
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That was the late stages of the cold war
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when things were winding down.
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That changed, I was mobilized first for the Gulf War
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and then subsequently served a tour of active duty
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in Bosnia.
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Then after 9/11, I was mobilized to work
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first on the judge advocate
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general of the armies program
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for military commissions in November of 2001.
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And then later I was detailed to be the staff judge advocate
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for detaining operations in Guantanamo, Cuba in 2002.
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Okay, let's go back to right after 9/11,
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where were you on 9/11
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and how did it happen
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that they selected you to be the advisor in November?
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I was Houston on 9/11 driving
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from Houston to Brazoria county to go attend court
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when I heard over the radio
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that the towers had been brought down.
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I figured that that would implicate me shortly.
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And it did.
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The army lawyer, the active duty lawyer
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who was put in charge of the military commissions project
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at that early stage was a Colonel
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by the name of Larry Morris.
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And I had known Colonel Morris
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since my activation for the Gulf war
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and later served directly under him in Bosnia.
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So he knew that I was a criminal law practitioner.
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He was assembling a team of people
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with experience in criminal law
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to come up with rules and procedures and definitions
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for crimes related to what took place on 9/11.
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And so he asked me if I would come on active duty
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and under the circumstances I could not say no.
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And can you tell us a little bit
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about how that process worked
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when you when you joined his team?
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We had offices in the Pentagon directly adjacent
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to the area that had been blown up
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by the impact of the aircraft that hit the Pentagon.
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So we worked with the smells and with mold
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and everything else that was related
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to the damage in the place.
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As we were trying to grind out, I guess,
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do the groundwork
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of developing rules and procedures using primarily resources
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from the uniform code of military justice
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and experience based on the Nuremberg trials
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cause we read transcripts of a number of those cases
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and talked with some of the surviving lawyers
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to try and come up with a process
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we thought would look fair in 50 years.
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That was our goal was to create something
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that was transparent and fair.
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We were naive because we didn't appreciate
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how political the process really was
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and who was ultimately calling the shots.
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We thought the army would have the lead.
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We had lots of interference from civilians
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and department of defense from the white house,
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from department of justice who ultimately took control
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of the process.
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Could you give us some details
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on how that happened?
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How you had interference?
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Well, we would do a lot of work.
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Our leadership would go meet with this collection
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of individuals from various agencies to discuss what
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they want to do, whether they would be things
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like a presumption of innocence,
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a burden of proof on the government,
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whether hearsay was admissible.
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Some of the fundamental issues
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for what we thought was a fair trial,
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because we were basing our experience
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on the uniform code of military justice
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and things that would look a lot like a court martial,
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a system that we are proud of and we've been inculcated with
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for a long time.
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And we found out that they didn't necessarily agree
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with that though.
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How did you find that out?
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Well because our leadership came back pretty battered
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from those meetings with the civilians.
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They would report to us that that things
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were not going well.
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Well could you give us some specifics
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what would happen
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at a meeting that caused them to feel battered?
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Yeah, they just get criticism,
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people like Haynes
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from Pentagon would tell them,
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no we're not doing it that way.
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There was a sense that the trials that they wanted
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were essentially show trials
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where the outcome was a foregone conclusion.
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They didn't want acquittals under any circumstances.
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How did you feel about that?
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Pretty uncomfortable.
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All of us grew up with due process.
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We're all American lawyers and we understand
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our culture in the law.
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And again, our point of departure
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was the uniform code of military justice
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which is very due process oriented,
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even more so perhaps than the civilian federal practice
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and Nuremberg.
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Like I said, we wanted this to look fair
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and transparent after we were gone.
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And it was evident
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that not everybody agreed with our premise.
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And why do you call yourself an IDU?
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Because we went in there with a great deal of enthusiasm.
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I think a sense of patriotism thinking
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that this was going to be an opportunity for America
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to show the world how it was truly great,
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that we would rise
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above what had happened to us, do the right thing.
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And it was clear that some people wanted
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immediate political gain out of this
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as opposed to long-term perspective.
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Did your committee disband then when you...
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It continued, but in February I was sent down first
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to Guantanamo.
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That was my first trip to Guantanamo
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was really a site visit
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to see if there was a suitable place to set up
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a court martial facility or a military commissions facility.
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Cause because by then
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the secretary of defense had decided that Guantanamo
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was the place where the prisoners would be coming.
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And then in early March, I was then designated
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by the judge advocate general to be the staff judge advocate
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for detaining operations there in Guantanamo.
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So could you describe your first visit
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to Guantanamo in February?
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What that was like?
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It was surprising.
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My only experience with Guantanamo
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as it was with many people
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was a bad movie called "A Few Good Men"
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and the real Guantanamo bears no resemblance
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to anything that you see in that movie.
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What did you see when you went down there
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the first time?
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It was arid, there were iguanas, protected iguanas,
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wandering about the place and banana rats,
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nasty critters.
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Did you see the detainees?
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I saw the detainees they'd camp Camp X-ray.
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At the time they were living in conditions
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not too dissimilar from the guards that were detaining them.
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The guards were in some rather old GP medium tents,
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canvas tents, directly adjacent to the facility
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where they were being kept.
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They've been portrayed, I think in the media, as dog cages
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but they'd been detention pens
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that had been originally built to hold
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Haitian and Cuban immigrants who had come ashore
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in the 1990s during one of the various floods
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of immigrants who tried to gain access
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to the United States through Guantanamo.
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So the conditions they'd look worse than they actually were.
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One of the advantages of living
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in those open cells was that people could see your condition
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and it made you less subject to abuse.
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What goes on in the night and undercover
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of darkness in closed steel rooms is much different
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than what can happen in transparent cages.
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So you weren't that upset
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at that point as to what you observing?
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No, of course we didn't know
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that they would be people there 10 years later, either.
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The notion that we had at the beginning
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is this was temporary.
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There was a sorting out process
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that was required because we didn't know who we had.
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We really didn't.
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We were gathering people up off the battlefield
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and they were not being effectively screened there.
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They could not be effectively screened there.
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And so determinations we thought would be made later
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and then there'd be a sorting process
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and those who turned out
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not to be the worst of the worst would then be sent out.
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And had you heard anything about
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the way the men have been treated in Afghanistan
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before they came to Guantanamo by that early date?
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No, no.
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We didn't have any information about abuse at that point.
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And at that point, did you understand
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that all the men you will looking at were dangerous?
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We had been told that when we saw them
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we were probably more dubious.
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Why?
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Well, some of them were ancient,
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a few were non-campus.
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Were what?
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Non-campus meant as they were
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a couple of them were simply out of their mind.
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We had one guy that was referred to it was half dead Bob.
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A number who had been shot,
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shot in the rear.
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We could tell that they were simply
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the last guys down some foxhole.
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Well, why was half dead pop called that?
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Well, because when he arrived he was literally half dead.
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He managed to survive
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From fire?
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From gunfire, yeah.
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And he wasn't in the clinic?
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No, we did have a full Naval clinic there.
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We had a Naval hospital
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and ultimately we established an auxiliary clinic
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adjacent to the camp.
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But the half dead Bob was he in the clinic?
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was he in one...
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No he wasn't in the clinic.
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Did you get to talk to the detainees
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when you first came down that first time in February?
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There was no real occasion to do so.
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00:12:07.810 --> 00:12:10.770
I wasn't there to interview or interrogate them out.
273
00:12:10.770 --> 00:12:13.078
Just looking at that first trip,
274
00:12:13.078 --> 00:12:14.870
again looking for a site
275
00:12:14.870 --> 00:12:17.680
where we could set up a court facility.
276
00:12:17.680 --> 00:12:19.180
And then afterwards, when I was in charge
277
00:12:19.180 --> 00:12:21.015
of detention operations
278
00:12:21.015 --> 00:12:24.540
I would pass through, I would observe them
279
00:12:24.540 --> 00:12:27.140
but it wasn't my job to talk with them, for example.
280
00:12:28.010 --> 00:12:29.340
Well, let's go to that second time
281
00:12:29.340 --> 00:12:30.830
when you came down in March,
282
00:12:30.830 --> 00:12:33.390
that's when you were in charge of detention operation,
283
00:12:33.390 --> 00:12:35.550
what exactly did that entail?
284
00:12:35.550 --> 00:12:38.140
At the time there were two separate task forces.
285
00:12:38.140 --> 00:12:39.590
One was detention operations
286
00:12:39.590 --> 00:12:41.780
which was a military police function
287
00:12:41.780 --> 00:12:43.920
run a prisoner of war camp.
288
00:12:43.920 --> 00:12:47.773
The other one was an intelligence gathering operation.
289
00:12:48.610 --> 00:12:51.823
Our operation was under the command of a one-star general.
290
00:12:52.786 --> 00:12:53.820
Who was?
291
00:12:53.820 --> 00:12:55.990
That would have been General Baccus.
292
00:12:55.990 --> 00:12:59.110
Rick Baccus from the Rhode Island National Guard.
293
00:12:59.110 --> 00:13:00.960
And then the intelligence gathering operation
294
00:13:00.960 --> 00:13:03.560
was under a Major General Dan Levy.
295
00:13:03.560 --> 00:13:08.560
Mike Dan Levy who was an army reserve general.
296
00:13:09.830 --> 00:13:11.850
And what was your role?
297
00:13:11.850 --> 00:13:14.440
My role, I was the legal advisor to General Baccus.
298
00:13:14.440 --> 00:13:16.840
What did that entail?
299
00:13:16.840 --> 00:13:19.110
That entailed everything has to have
300
00:13:19.110 --> 00:13:22.650
judge advocate generally does from criminal justice issues
301
00:13:22.650 --> 00:13:25.400
with maintenance of discipline with the troops
302
00:13:25.400 --> 00:13:29.400
to legal opinions on a variety of, I guess,
303
00:13:29.400 --> 00:13:31.750
relatively benign issues.
304
00:13:31.750 --> 00:13:32.780
We had unique issues.
305
00:13:32.780 --> 00:13:34.010
We had to anticipate.
306
00:13:34.010 --> 00:13:36.020
What if one of our detainees dies?
307
00:13:36.020 --> 00:13:37.200
How do we conduct a burial?
308
00:13:37.200 --> 00:13:39.279
How do we establish a Muslim burial ground there?
309
00:13:39.279 --> 00:13:41.680
Even if it's temporary.
310
00:13:41.680 --> 00:13:43.620
So that's consistent with the religious mores
311
00:13:43.620 --> 00:13:45.180
of the people we've got.
312
00:13:45.180 --> 00:13:47.363
I was also liaison to the red cross.
313
00:13:48.410 --> 00:13:49.760
What does that entail?
314
00:13:49.760 --> 00:13:51.970
That required frequent communication
315
00:13:51.970 --> 00:13:55.070
with the representative of the international committee
316
00:13:55.070 --> 00:13:55.903
of the red cross.
317
00:13:55.903 --> 00:13:59.000
They'd been invited in by a Colonel Manny Superville
318
00:13:59.000 --> 00:14:02.950
who was the staff judge advocate in Florida
319
00:14:02.950 --> 00:14:04.053
our higher command.
320
00:14:05.883 --> 00:14:08.600
When the red cross was there
321
00:14:08.600 --> 00:14:12.280
we had heard from some detainees that most of the letters
322
00:14:12.280 --> 00:14:14.610
if they received them at all were redacted.
323
00:14:14.610 --> 00:14:16.810
There's hardly anything on the letters
324
00:14:16.810 --> 00:14:18.720
going both out and coming in.
325
00:14:18.720 --> 00:14:21.030
Is that your experience?
326
00:14:21.030 --> 00:14:23.369
They were subject to some censorship, but I don't know
327
00:14:23.369 --> 00:14:24.378
that they were totally redacted.
328
00:14:24.378 --> 00:14:28.413
We know that many of them got to their destinations.
329
00:14:29.496 --> 00:14:31.417
Did you ever see any of the letters?
330
00:14:31.417 --> 00:14:32.310
I did.
331
00:14:32.310 --> 00:14:34.560
Did you ever see lush flag?
332
00:14:34.560 --> 00:14:35.393
No.
333
00:14:36.530 --> 00:14:37.790
Pause no.
334
00:14:37.790 --> 00:14:40.429
Most of the letters were not that blackened out.
335
00:14:40.429 --> 00:14:42.443
Do you recall?
They were.
336
00:14:42.443 --> 00:14:44.845
Had you heard any inklings
337
00:14:44.845 --> 00:14:46.480
in these early days?
338
00:14:46.480 --> 00:14:49.440
How long were you the advisor to?
339
00:14:49.440 --> 00:14:51.123
I was there through August.
340
00:14:51.123 --> 00:14:51.960
Of 02.
341
00:14:51.960 --> 00:14:53.030
Of 02.
342
00:14:53.030 --> 00:14:54.410
during that six month period,
343
00:14:54.410 --> 00:14:57.670
had you heard any talk about possibly
344
00:14:57.670 --> 00:15:01.740
using more harsh interrogation
345
00:15:01.740 --> 00:15:03.630
in the intel side of things?
346
00:15:03.630 --> 00:15:06.645
We were always alert to that possibility.
347
00:15:06.645 --> 00:15:08.180
Why?
348
00:15:08.180 --> 00:15:10.840
Because it was our responsibility
349
00:15:10.840 --> 00:15:15.170
as the detention operation to ensure the security
350
00:15:15.170 --> 00:15:17.860
of the people we were charged with protecting.
351
00:15:17.860 --> 00:15:20.070
When you do detention operations
352
00:15:20.070 --> 00:15:23.253
you have responsibility for the welfare of your prisoners.
353
00:15:24.450 --> 00:15:28.970
And that could put us in conflict with the Intel side
354
00:15:28.970 --> 00:15:32.477
if they wanted to do things that would constitute torture.
355
00:15:32.477 --> 00:15:34.568
So had you heard any chatter
356
00:15:34.568 --> 00:15:38.660
about that possibly occurring in the interrogations?
357
00:15:38.660 --> 00:15:42.240
We heard suggestions of it.
358
00:15:42.240 --> 00:15:43.420
Like I said, we were alert.
359
00:15:43.420 --> 00:15:46.210
There were some people who were in a special category
360
00:15:46.210 --> 00:15:48.360
of detention who were held in the Navy brig
361
00:15:49.400 --> 00:15:52.663
and the red cross did not have access to them initially.
362
00:15:53.810 --> 00:15:58.630
And this was justified by the Intel operation to us.
363
00:15:58.630 --> 00:16:02.340
And we were concerned what was going on with that.
364
00:16:02.340 --> 00:16:03.235
You talked about
365
00:16:03.235 --> 00:16:04.363
the Naval brig in Guantanamo?
366
00:16:04.363 --> 00:16:06.210
Right, the Naval brig in Guantanamo
367
00:16:06.210 --> 00:16:08.698
which was just a nasty old block house.
368
00:16:08.698 --> 00:16:11.600
And what could do about them?
369
00:16:11.600 --> 00:16:13.803
Well, two stars trumps one star.
370
00:16:15.010 --> 00:16:15.843
Which means?
371
00:16:15.843 --> 00:16:18.880
Which means that general Dan Levy could put his foot down
372
00:16:18.880 --> 00:16:23.030
and he had his lines of communication
373
00:16:23.030 --> 00:16:24.923
through self common to the Pentagon.
374
00:16:27.920 --> 00:16:31.360
So if you heard, how did you hear
375
00:16:31.360 --> 00:16:35.300
that there might be something that is untold
376
00:16:35.300 --> 00:16:37.647
going on in the interrogation.
377
00:16:37.647 --> 00:16:39.100
There was an active effort
378
00:16:39.100 --> 00:16:41.763
by the Intel side to co-op some of our guards.
379
00:16:43.130 --> 00:16:43.980
What does that mean?
380
00:16:43.980 --> 00:16:47.073
To get them to become intelligence gatherers for them?
381
00:16:48.470 --> 00:16:51.000
As an MP doing it
382
00:16:51.000 --> 00:16:52.640
for example a prisoner of war operation
383
00:16:52.640 --> 00:16:56.050
you have a responsibility to gather passive information.
384
00:16:56.050 --> 00:16:58.353
If you observe something, you report it
385
00:16:58.353 --> 00:17:01.050
but you do not become an active intelligence gatherer.
386
00:17:01.050 --> 00:17:03.750
You don't have the training and you don't have the job
387
00:17:04.810 --> 00:17:07.710
and your charges are going to be much more difficult
388
00:17:07.710 --> 00:17:09.850
for you to manage if they perceive that
389
00:17:09.850 --> 00:17:13.320
you are working contrary to the general interest
390
00:17:13.320 --> 00:17:15.193
of just maintaining them in custody.
391
00:17:16.140 --> 00:17:17.700
So we had this inherent conflict.
392
00:17:17.700 --> 00:17:20.800
We were trying to give a pretty clear guidance
393
00:17:20.800 --> 00:17:23.440
and rules to the young soldiers
394
00:17:23.440 --> 00:17:25.553
who were performing the guard duties.
395
00:17:26.550 --> 00:17:29.520
And the other entity on the on the base
396
00:17:29.520 --> 00:17:32.630
was trying to utilize them in a different fashion.
397
00:17:32.630 --> 00:17:35.470
So we had a lot of conflict generated
398
00:17:35.470 --> 00:17:39.030
between the two commands over those issues.
399
00:17:39.030 --> 00:17:44.030
What did you do if you heard
400
00:17:44.722 --> 00:17:47.230
that some guard was or several guards
401
00:17:47.230 --> 00:17:50.040
were being approached by the intel?
402
00:17:50.040 --> 00:17:51.290
My lines of communication
403
00:17:51.290 --> 00:17:53.290
were to general Dan Levy's lawyer
404
00:17:54.170 --> 00:17:55.610
to voice complaints and of course
405
00:17:55.610 --> 00:17:58.170
to keep my commander informed
406
00:17:58.170 --> 00:17:59.590
and then they would meet as well,
407
00:17:59.590 --> 00:18:02.104
general Dan Levy and Baccus.
408
00:18:02.104 --> 00:18:03.710
They were pretty much oil in water
409
00:18:03.710 --> 00:18:04.830
most of the time.
410
00:18:04.830 --> 00:18:06.483
They did not get along.
411
00:18:09.930 --> 00:18:12.083
General Baccus as I explained to them,
412
00:18:12.930 --> 00:18:13.763
the law of torture
413
00:18:13.763 --> 00:18:18.250
is defined even in title 18 United States code.
414
00:18:18.250 --> 00:18:20.110
So we could be criminally liable
415
00:18:20.110 --> 00:18:21.710
for anything that happened under our watch
416
00:18:21.710 --> 00:18:23.650
that we acquiesced in
417
00:18:23.650 --> 00:18:27.840
and that because many of the interrogators were nameless.
418
00:18:27.840 --> 00:18:28.990
If anybody ever looked
419
00:18:28.990 --> 00:18:30.920
they'd looked for the people who actually had names
420
00:18:30.920 --> 00:18:32.480
and that would have been him.
421
00:18:32.480 --> 00:18:35.440
So he was cautious based on my legal advice
422
00:18:35.440 --> 00:18:39.833
and he tried to conform his activity to that.
423
00:18:42.180 --> 00:18:45.030
But it sounds like he just bumped up
424
00:18:45.030 --> 00:18:46.560
against a wall
425
00:18:46.560 --> 00:18:48.579
and he just had no say
426
00:18:48.579 --> 00:18:53.579
in reducing the Intel side from approaching your staff
427
00:18:55.500 --> 00:19:00.190
or from otherwise interfering thing with your work
428
00:19:00.190 --> 00:19:02.640
Well the normal way you resolve problems
429
00:19:02.640 --> 00:19:04.320
when you can't resolve them at your level
430
00:19:04.320 --> 00:19:05.660
is to bump it to the next level
431
00:19:05.660 --> 00:19:07.260
which would have been SOUTHCOMM.
432
00:19:08.330 --> 00:19:10.680
And we raised a lot of these legal issues
433
00:19:10.680 --> 00:19:11.740
to the next higher level
434
00:19:11.740 --> 00:19:14.820
but they refused to give a significant guidance.
435
00:19:14.820 --> 00:19:17.340
In other words, they wanted us to work it out
436
00:19:17.340 --> 00:19:20.010
on the ground so that they didn't have to be responsible
437
00:19:20.010 --> 00:19:22.500
for it or they didn't have to go to the Pentagon
438
00:19:22.500 --> 00:19:24.130
and then face the heat
439
00:19:24.130 --> 00:19:26.530
from the political powers who would come after him
440
00:19:26.530 --> 00:19:28.853
for bringing these issues to them.
441
00:19:31.060 --> 00:19:32.926
Do you think they suspected that
442
00:19:32.926 --> 00:19:35.300
or did you suspect anybody suspect
443
00:19:35.300 --> 00:19:36.957
where this was coming from
444
00:19:36.957 --> 00:19:40.500
this idea of using harsh interrogation
445
00:19:40.500 --> 00:19:44.820
with who was actually behind this very.
446
00:19:44.820 --> 00:19:47.310
Was it coming from Dan Levy or come from above?
447
00:19:47.310 --> 00:19:48.380
It was coming from above,
448
00:19:48.380 --> 00:19:49.750
Dan Levy I don't think you would have come
449
00:19:49.750 --> 00:19:50.900
up with this himself
450
00:19:52.383 --> 00:19:54.040
but there was a tremendous amount
451
00:19:54.040 --> 00:19:56.750
of frustration over the lack of results.
452
00:19:56.750 --> 00:19:59.490
Again, we gathered a bunch of people off the battlefield
453
00:19:59.490 --> 00:20:00.910
the secretary of defense had declared
454
00:20:00.910 --> 00:20:02.600
they were the worst of the worst.
455
00:20:02.600 --> 00:20:04.340
And so in the perception of the minds
456
00:20:04.340 --> 00:20:07.650
of American and many in the military, we had the bad guys
457
00:20:08.610 --> 00:20:11.040
and then you get to the truth on the ground there
458
00:20:11.040 --> 00:20:13.500
and yeah, you do have some really bad guys
459
00:20:13.500 --> 00:20:14.333
but you got a whole bunch
460
00:20:14.333 --> 00:20:16.540
of people who know little or nothing,
461
00:20:16.540 --> 00:20:17.373
and they're worthless
462
00:20:17.373 --> 00:20:18.206
but you can't get rid
463
00:20:18.206 --> 00:20:19.150
of them because you've already declared
464
00:20:19.150 --> 00:20:20.810
that they're the worst of the worst.
465
00:20:20.810 --> 00:20:22.240
And we're still trying to get rid
466
00:20:22.240 --> 00:20:23.550
of many of those people.
467
00:20:23.550 --> 00:20:24.840
Look at the wiggers
468
00:20:24.840 --> 00:20:26.380
and the trouble we've gone through
469
00:20:26.380 --> 00:20:29.134
to try and send them somewhere.
470
00:20:29.134 --> 00:20:32.770
I think we've got some tending golf courses
471
00:20:32.770 --> 00:20:33.850
in The Bahamas now
472
00:20:33.850 --> 00:20:35.927
and we just sent some to central America.
473
00:20:35.927 --> 00:20:38.293
It's been a bizarre journey for them.
474
00:20:39.426 --> 00:20:40.610
Do you think Dan Levy
475
00:20:40.610 --> 00:20:42.833
believed in this harsh interrogation?
476
00:20:45.160 --> 00:20:46.860
It's hard to say.
477
00:20:46.860 --> 00:20:49.810
He certainly drank more of the Kool-Aid
478
00:20:49.810 --> 00:20:51.253
than I think he should have.
479
00:20:55.180 --> 00:20:56.013
He was a bully.
480
00:20:57.080 --> 00:20:58.880
I think everybody who met him down there
481
00:20:58.880 --> 00:21:00.150
realized he was a bully
482
00:21:01.200 --> 00:21:02.480
and he threw his weight around,
483
00:21:02.480 --> 00:21:03.883
he threw his rack around.
484
00:21:04.960 --> 00:21:07.580
And it's consistent with being a bully
485
00:21:07.580 --> 00:21:11.927
that he would permit those kinds of activities
486
00:21:12.986 --> 00:21:15.373
to take place like harsh interrogations.
487
00:21:16.600 --> 00:21:18.850
When you spoke to the guards,
488
00:21:19.724 --> 00:21:22.570
Hey you and no longer participate with Intel
489
00:21:22.570 --> 00:21:25.300
or did some of them disobey you and continue
490
00:21:25.300 --> 00:21:27.203
to participate with Intel?
491
00:21:28.730 --> 00:21:31.100
I don't know whether they continued to participate
492
00:21:31.100 --> 00:21:32.768
because they wouldn't have told me
493
00:21:32.768 --> 00:21:35.590
had they continued to do that, but we were very clear
494
00:21:35.590 --> 00:21:38.040
in our training about what their roles were
495
00:21:38.040 --> 00:21:39.530
and what their roles were not
496
00:21:40.840 --> 00:21:43.393
in order to maintain discipline.
497
00:21:45.100 --> 00:21:45.940
And were you frustrated
498
00:21:45.940 --> 00:21:49.490
with the fact that SOUTHCOM would not assist you?
499
00:21:49.490 --> 00:21:50.640
Very.
500
00:21:50.640 --> 00:21:52.910
Is there anything else that you could have done?
501
00:21:52.910 --> 00:21:55.350
No, I mean that was our chain of command
502
00:21:55.350 --> 00:21:57.110
and we had to work within our chain of command.
503
00:21:57.110 --> 00:22:00.670
So it was very frustrating to try and elevate issues
504
00:22:00.670 --> 00:22:02.660
to the chain of command only to have them pushed back
505
00:22:02.660 --> 00:22:05.743
down on us because there was no resolution our level,
506
00:22:08.060 --> 00:22:11.373
they were telling us the Geneva conventions didn't apply.
507
00:22:14.599 --> 00:22:16.200
I know as a lawyer that
508
00:22:17.240 --> 00:22:20.070
approval of the Geneva conventions was an act of Congress.
509
00:22:20.070 --> 00:22:21.900
It's a treaty signed by the United States.
510
00:22:21.900 --> 00:22:23.950
Not even the president can abrigate them.
511
00:22:25.070 --> 00:22:26.720
And of course the Supreme Court a few years later
512
00:22:26.720 --> 00:22:28.853
confirmed that that was indeed the case,
513
00:22:29.930 --> 00:22:32.770
but we were in an atmosphere where other lawyers
514
00:22:32.770 --> 00:22:34.280
were saying, yes, he did
515
00:22:34.280 --> 00:22:35.960
and you're not being very patriotic
516
00:22:35.960 --> 00:22:37.913
by taking the different position.
517
00:22:39.950 --> 00:22:43.320
So is there any incident you can tell us
518
00:22:43.320 --> 00:22:46.640
about between February or March and August
519
00:22:46.640 --> 00:22:48.710
that might be interesting for viewers
520
00:22:48.710 --> 00:22:53.090
50 years now to represent what you're describing?
521
00:22:53.940 --> 00:22:56.780
There was one circumstance that I recall
522
00:22:56.780 --> 00:22:59.770
very close to the time I left, where general Dan Levy and I
523
00:23:01.049 --> 00:23:05.250
at camp Delta, went into one of the buildings
524
00:23:05.250 --> 00:23:09.390
at the request of the red cross, because there was a rumor
525
00:23:09.390 --> 00:23:11.293
that someone was being mistreated.
526
00:23:13.510 --> 00:23:18.510
And one of the detainees was held naked in a detention cell
527
00:23:19.500 --> 00:23:21.120
which is all steel,
528
00:23:21.120 --> 00:23:22.640
and the temperature had been dropped.
529
00:23:22.640 --> 00:23:25.700
I think about 60 degrees with the air conditioning
530
00:23:25.700 --> 00:23:28.300
and the windows had been obscured.
531
00:23:28.300 --> 00:23:29.763
So there was no daylight.
532
00:23:31.520 --> 00:23:34.700
Those are collectively violations of the law of war
533
00:23:34.700 --> 00:23:36.290
because those are prohibited actions.
534
00:23:36.290 --> 00:23:39.740
You have to have daylight, you have to have clothing,
535
00:23:39.740 --> 00:23:43.073
you have to be kept properly warmed.
536
00:23:44.440 --> 00:23:48.170
And he turned on the lights and he reported back to me
537
00:23:50.430 --> 00:23:52.072
that he turned on the lights and what he saw
538
00:23:52.072 --> 00:23:55.142
and that we could then not assure the representative
539
00:23:55.142 --> 00:23:58.263
of the ICRC that he was now okay.
540
00:24:00.310 --> 00:24:02.860
Did you report that to anyone else?
541
00:24:05.091 --> 00:24:08.970
I report to the general and he's the one
542
00:24:08.970 --> 00:24:11.340
who has to report it on.
543
00:24:11.340 --> 00:24:12.730
You to know what he did?
544
00:24:12.730 --> 00:24:15.560
So I don't know whether he pursued that or not.
545
00:24:15.560 --> 00:24:18.180
He probably pursued it with Dan Levy.
546
00:24:18.180 --> 00:24:21.460
And then again, SOUTHCOM was like sending it
547
00:24:21.460 --> 00:24:22.610
into a black hole.
548
00:24:22.610 --> 00:24:24.373
But you actually observed this?
549
00:24:25.780 --> 00:24:28.430
I was with general Baccus when he went in
550
00:24:28.430 --> 00:24:29.853
and he told me what he saw.
551
00:24:30.808 --> 00:24:31.832
But you didn't see yourself.
552
00:24:31.832 --> 00:24:32.665
I didn't see it myself.
553
00:24:32.665 --> 00:24:33.498
But he told you...
554
00:24:33.498 --> 00:24:35.170
But he told me after we went in
555
00:24:35.170 --> 00:24:37.250
and then I relayed that information
556
00:24:37.250 --> 00:24:39.083
to the representative of the ICRC.
557
00:24:42.590 --> 00:24:43.490
So at that point,
558
00:24:43.490 --> 00:24:45.800
what were you thinking in terms of
559
00:24:45.800 --> 00:24:50.750
all that you had brought to the military
560
00:24:50.750 --> 00:24:52.740
and your belief in the rule of law
561
00:24:52.740 --> 00:24:57.010
at that point, when it was starkly clear to you
562
00:24:57.010 --> 00:25:01.900
that we weren't adhering to what you had understood
563
00:25:01.900 --> 00:25:04.930
to be the proper Geneva convention approach
564
00:25:04.930 --> 00:25:06.083
to prisoners of war,
565
00:25:07.270 --> 00:25:10.170
did you think it was time for you to leave or?
566
00:25:10.170 --> 00:25:11.060
I didn't think it was time
567
00:25:11.060 --> 00:25:13.560
for me to quit the JAG corps and quit the army.
568
00:25:13.560 --> 00:25:15.550
No, I thought it was probably time
569
00:25:15.550 --> 00:25:19.160
to double down on our adherence to due process.
570
00:25:19.160 --> 00:25:23.258
When I came back and I talked with army lawyers
571
00:25:23.258 --> 00:25:25.780
I told them what had happened, what I'd seen
572
00:25:26.770 --> 00:25:28.300
and that we were in for a long fight,
573
00:25:28.300 --> 00:25:31.110
not just with the enemy but with ourselves,
574
00:25:31.110 --> 00:25:33.370
but it was certainly not a time to quit.
575
00:25:33.370 --> 00:25:35.140
Cause then you're giving into the dark side
576
00:25:35.140 --> 00:25:36.553
as opposed to resisting it.
577
00:25:37.590 --> 00:25:40.240
Did any of the army lawyers listen to you
578
00:25:40.240 --> 00:25:41.890
and pursue it?
579
00:25:41.890 --> 00:25:42.723
Yeah.
580
00:25:42.723 --> 00:25:45.110
Well our judge advocate general at the time
581
00:25:45.110 --> 00:25:48.900
General Romig was certainly aware of the difficulties
582
00:25:48.900 --> 00:25:51.720
and he along with the other judge advocate generals
583
00:25:51.720 --> 00:25:56.720
when they spoke to Congress expressed their concerns.
584
00:26:01.270 --> 00:26:03.263
Why did you leave in August?
585
00:26:04.720 --> 00:26:06.390
I was a reservist, had been mobilized
586
00:26:06.390 --> 00:26:08.363
and they could only keep me so long.
587
00:26:10.960 --> 00:26:12.370
They asked me if I would stay longer
588
00:26:12.370 --> 00:26:16.000
but I was pretty worn out from six months of fighting
589
00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:19.140
on the ground in Gitmo and I was ready to come back home
590
00:26:19.140 --> 00:26:23.270
and resume practicing law and be a civilian for awhile.
591
00:26:23.270 --> 00:26:25.340
It was clear that the military commission project
592
00:26:25.340 --> 00:26:28.520
that we had started out with was not going to take fruit,
593
00:26:28.520 --> 00:26:30.410
and we were not gonna be trying any court martials
594
00:26:30.410 --> 00:26:33.440
anytime soon down there or any military commissions.
595
00:26:33.440 --> 00:26:35.120
Why was that clear?
596
00:26:35.120 --> 00:26:37.370
Because the process had completely stalled.
597
00:26:38.264 --> 00:26:40.597
Why is that?
598
00:26:41.549 --> 00:26:44.100
Because the politicians had taken it over
599
00:26:44.100 --> 00:26:45.370
and they were in conflict with
600
00:26:45.370 --> 00:26:48.680
the judge advocate general over how to do it.
601
00:26:48.680 --> 00:26:50.480
They wanted to use military commissions.
602
00:26:50.480 --> 00:26:53.240
They wanted to use military people in them.
603
00:26:53.240 --> 00:26:58.240
The military was resisting the civilian pressure
604
00:26:58.880 --> 00:27:01.653
to make these into simply kangaroo courts.
605
00:27:03.330 --> 00:27:06.640
And in order to have trials, you've got to have evidence
606
00:27:06.640 --> 00:27:08.950
and you've got to have suitable defendants
607
00:27:10.160 --> 00:27:12.630
and they were having trouble developing sufficient evidence
608
00:27:12.630 --> 00:27:13.463
to even bring forward
609
00:27:13.463 --> 00:27:15.470
in a kangaroo trial to present something.
610
00:27:17.369 --> 00:27:18.415
I want to go back to that,
611
00:27:18.415 --> 00:27:21.120
so in August did you go home then?
612
00:27:21.120 --> 00:27:22.788
So I came back.
613
00:27:22.788 --> 00:27:25.860
And did you stay home or did you go back?
614
00:27:25.860 --> 00:27:27.660
I made a couple of visits to Gitmo
615
00:27:29.210 --> 00:27:31.673
later on but they were semi-official.
616
00:27:34.070 --> 00:27:38.160
I was mobilized for Afghanistan in 2003,
617
00:27:39.337 --> 00:27:41.140
and I went with a civil affairs unit
618
00:27:41.140 --> 00:27:42.160
and I spent a tour there
619
00:27:42.160 --> 00:27:45.583
and then I went to Iraq in 2008, 2009.
620
00:27:46.790 --> 00:27:48.260
Could you tell us about
621
00:27:48.260 --> 00:27:50.140
the subsequent visits Guantanamo?
622
00:27:50.140 --> 00:27:52.750
Why you went and what you saw then?
623
00:27:52.750 --> 00:27:53.583
In some respect,
624
00:27:53.583 --> 00:27:56.130
I was assigned to a reserve unit,
625
00:27:56.130 --> 00:27:57.880
which was still supporting
626
00:27:57.880 --> 00:28:00.010
the rump military commission process
627
00:28:00.010 --> 00:28:02.710
along with like three other lawyers.
628
00:28:02.710 --> 00:28:04.900
And so for my annual training
629
00:28:04.900 --> 00:28:07.183
I was able to get a trip down there.
630
00:28:08.715 --> 00:28:09.670
And what did you see
631
00:28:09.670 --> 00:28:11.860
that was different from what you had experienced?
632
00:28:11.860 --> 00:28:15.534
Well, by then Camp Delta was well-established.
633
00:28:15.534 --> 00:28:17.910
We were coordinating with Syda,
634
00:28:17.910 --> 00:28:21.563
which was the the CID task force.
635
00:28:22.780 --> 00:28:24.680
In addition to these military task force,
636
00:28:24.680 --> 00:28:27.900
you had a collection of law enforcement agencies
637
00:28:27.900 --> 00:28:29.333
that were trying to develop evidence
638
00:28:29.333 --> 00:28:32.900
with the idea that there might be civilian trials.
639
00:28:32.900 --> 00:28:35.650
And so they were trying to gather and preserve evidence
640
00:28:37.147 --> 00:28:39.290
and develop intelligence that could be used
641
00:28:39.290 --> 00:28:40.940
for criminal prosecutions
642
00:28:40.940 --> 00:28:43.163
as opposed to military prosecutions.
643
00:28:44.440 --> 00:28:47.330
And we still had an advisory function to them.
644
00:28:47.330 --> 00:28:49.730
So I did some of that.
645
00:28:49.730 --> 00:28:51.730
What did you do exactly?
646
00:28:52.890 --> 00:28:54.460
Provided basic legal advice
647
00:28:54.460 --> 00:28:57.490
to some of the sidif agents on the ground
648
00:28:57.490 --> 00:28:59.520
from the various elements.
649
00:28:59.520 --> 00:29:02.193
There was army, CID, Navy, NCIS.
650
00:29:03.330 --> 00:29:04.383
FBI was there.
651
00:29:06.421 --> 00:29:07.980
What did you think one time
652
00:29:07.980 --> 00:29:11.820
when we went back those two times or three times
653
00:29:11.820 --> 00:29:13.780
after you left it,
654
00:29:13.780 --> 00:29:15.190
could you describe how it looked different?
655
00:29:15.190 --> 00:29:17.150
You said that kept after.
656
00:29:17.150 --> 00:29:18.453
What else did you notice?
657
00:29:24.936 --> 00:29:27.120
Well, of course by then Camp X-ray had been abandoned.
658
00:29:27.120 --> 00:29:29.530
It was just overgrown with weeds
659
00:29:29.530 --> 00:29:31.070
and everything was contained
660
00:29:31.070 --> 00:29:34.763
within a much less transparent area.
661
00:29:37.079 --> 00:29:39.290
The significant thing when I went back
662
00:29:39.290 --> 00:29:42.400
was that the detention task force had actually been merged
663
00:29:42.400 --> 00:29:45.700
into the Intel task force and became subordinate to it
664
00:29:45.700 --> 00:29:49.820
under the command of still at that time general Dan Levy.
665
00:29:49.820 --> 00:29:50.970
What did you think of that?
666
00:29:50.970 --> 00:29:53.090
I thought that was a terrible idea.
667
00:29:53.090 --> 00:29:53.923
Because?
668
00:29:53.923 --> 00:29:55.713
Because that's a fox in the hen house.
669
00:29:58.430 --> 00:30:00.460
As difficult as the tension was
670
00:30:00.460 --> 00:30:01.420
during the time we were there
671
00:30:01.420 --> 00:30:04.160
I think it was healthy that there'd be resistance
672
00:30:04.160 --> 00:30:06.740
to those intelligence operatives
673
00:30:06.740 --> 00:30:10.170
who were willing to bend the rules, to take the gloves off
674
00:30:10.170 --> 00:30:12.743
as I think it was Dick Cheney said.
675
00:30:14.810 --> 00:30:18.300
And when you lost that, then you lost accountability
676
00:30:19.610 --> 00:30:22.310
and and you lost any kind of dialectical process
677
00:30:22.310 --> 00:30:23.593
for decision-making.
678
00:30:24.970 --> 00:30:26.960
What kind of people were in target
679
00:30:26.960 --> 00:30:28.097
is that you saw?
680
00:30:30.020 --> 00:30:32.098
There were a variety.
681
00:30:32.098 --> 00:30:33.970
You might find some people who were
682
00:30:33.970 --> 00:30:35.700
military intelligence MI,
683
00:30:35.700 --> 00:30:37.853
interrogators who'd had standard training.
684
00:30:38.950 --> 00:30:42.540
Then we had people who I guess
685
00:30:45.251 --> 00:30:47.310
they were certainly non-military.
686
00:30:47.310 --> 00:30:49.823
There were other governmental agencies OGAs.
687
00:30:50.880 --> 00:30:53.000
Did you see CIA agents down there?
688
00:30:53.000 --> 00:30:55.210
Well I wouldn't know what that they were CIA
689
00:30:55.210 --> 00:30:58.997
but I would assume that they were CIA or other DIA.
690
00:31:01.122 --> 00:31:04.400
One of the many acronyms for other governmental agencies
691
00:31:05.490 --> 00:31:07.240
and some were probably contractors.
692
00:31:10.060 --> 00:31:12.026
Did you ever speak to any detainee
693
00:31:12.026 --> 00:31:14.900
who was interrogated?
694
00:31:14.900 --> 00:31:15.733
No.
695
00:31:17.570 --> 00:31:19.370
You never did speak to detainees at all?
696
00:31:19.370 --> 00:31:21.531
Did you ever have a chance to speak to the detainees?
697
00:31:21.531 --> 00:31:25.870
I would speak to them briefly walking through,
698
00:31:25.870 --> 00:31:27.040
one of the things that we did
699
00:31:27.040 --> 00:31:31.163
that distinguishes Gitmo from Abu Ghraib for example,
700
00:31:32.250 --> 00:31:34.420
is we did random checks
701
00:31:34.420 --> 00:31:38.013
at odd hours to make sure things weren't going wrong.
702
00:31:39.250 --> 00:31:41.540
General Baccus would show up at two o'clock in the morning,
703
00:31:41.540 --> 00:31:43.670
for example something which wasn't going on
704
00:31:43.670 --> 00:31:45.420
in Abu Ghraib later.
705
00:31:45.420 --> 00:31:48.800
And I would do that from occasion to occasion as well.
706
00:31:48.800 --> 00:31:51.810
And so I'd have casual contact
707
00:31:51.810 --> 00:31:55.630
walking up and down a hallway with detainees.
708
00:31:55.630 --> 00:31:58.495
And those that could speak English could say something,
709
00:31:58.495 --> 00:32:01.950
but other than that casual chat
710
00:32:01.950 --> 00:32:04.200
I wasn't going to get into intelligence gathering either,
711
00:32:04.200 --> 00:32:06.093
that wasn't my job and I knew better.
712
00:32:07.770 --> 00:32:11.360
Did you ever see any people
713
00:32:11.360 --> 00:32:14.573
from other nations present in Guantanamo?
714
00:32:16.496 --> 00:32:19.510
You mean like are the interpreters?
715
00:32:19.510 --> 00:32:21.820
No, perhaps the diplomats
716
00:32:21.820 --> 00:32:26.820
or maybe interrogators or agents
717
00:32:27.370 --> 00:32:30.400
from the countries who would interrogate the detainees?
718
00:32:30.400 --> 00:32:31.500
I knew that they were ,
719
00:32:31.500 --> 00:32:33.470
that they'd gotten country clearance to come in.
720
00:32:33.470 --> 00:32:34.580
Did I see them in action?
721
00:32:34.580 --> 00:32:36.740
No, but did I know that they were there?
722
00:32:36.740 --> 00:32:37.573
Yes.
723
00:32:38.940 --> 00:32:41.930
Why would they tell you they were there?
724
00:32:41.930 --> 00:32:44.270
Well, we just learned about them coming in
725
00:32:44.270 --> 00:32:45.850
because in order to come in to get mail,
726
00:32:45.850 --> 00:32:47.400
you had to get country clearance
727
00:32:47.400 --> 00:32:48.550
and you had to come through the Navy.
728
00:32:48.550 --> 00:32:52.343
And so that's not exactly a super secret.
729
00:32:53.700 --> 00:32:56.344
Any thoughts about those visits?
730
00:32:56.344 --> 00:32:59.350
What do you think about it back then?
731
00:32:59.350 --> 00:33:02.680
If they were allied nations trying to gather information
732
00:33:02.680 --> 00:33:05.723
I don't know that that triggered anything suspicious.
733
00:33:07.330 --> 00:33:08.450
Did you see any juveniles
734
00:33:08.450 --> 00:33:10.083
while you were in Guantanamo?
735
00:33:12.950 --> 00:33:15.203
I'm thinking we sent back a juvenile.
736
00:33:16.110 --> 00:33:17.650
Once we found out he was a juvenile
737
00:33:17.650 --> 00:33:21.104
and of course we found an American citizen too
738
00:33:21.104 --> 00:33:25.552
and he'd been born in Louisiana
739
00:33:25.552 --> 00:33:28.343
and once we determined that
740
00:33:28.343 --> 00:33:30.791
we had to get him out of there pretty quickly too.
741
00:33:30.791 --> 00:33:31.770
Why there?
742
00:33:31.770 --> 00:33:32.603
Well, because our rules
743
00:33:32.603 --> 00:33:33.970
provided that American citizens
744
00:33:33.970 --> 00:33:35.750
wouldn't go to Guantanamo.
745
00:33:35.750 --> 00:33:37.070
So were you actually
746
00:33:37.070 --> 00:33:39.617
the one who discovered he was an American citizen?
747
00:33:39.617 --> 00:33:41.012
No, I wasn't the one that discovered it
748
00:33:41.012 --> 00:33:46.012
the folks conducting I guess general admission
749
00:33:47.470 --> 00:33:48.680
found out about that.
750
00:33:48.680 --> 00:33:51.660
And then it came to my desk and I said,
751
00:33:51.660 --> 00:33:53.320
well, he's an American citizen.
752
00:33:53.320 --> 00:33:54.901
That's the end of that.
753
00:33:54.901 --> 00:33:57.040
We have to do something else.
754
00:33:57.040 --> 00:33:59.410
And did you follow along
755
00:33:59.410 --> 00:34:03.210
when he was sent to the Naval brig in South Carolina,
756
00:34:03.210 --> 00:34:04.360
were you aware of that?
757
00:34:05.422 --> 00:34:06.310
Yes.
758
00:34:06.310 --> 00:34:08.460
And did you have any input
759
00:34:08.460 --> 00:34:13.023
or any understanding what was going on in that brig?
760
00:34:14.750 --> 00:34:16.530
In the beginning I did.
761
00:34:16.530 --> 00:34:19.910
They were asking how we did certain things.
762
00:34:19.910 --> 00:34:20.960
What did we provide?
763
00:34:20.960 --> 00:34:25.083
What could we provide the detainees for amusement?
764
00:34:26.850 --> 00:34:29.583
Books, cards, games, whatnot.
765
00:34:31.238 --> 00:34:33.480
And so at that superficial level of general
766
00:34:34.440 --> 00:34:35.490
how do you hold them?
767
00:34:37.150 --> 00:34:42.150
Yeah, I did talk with the detainee officials at the brig.
768
00:34:42.150 --> 00:34:43.423
Now, what happened later?
769
00:34:44.940 --> 00:34:45.800
That I don't know.
770
00:34:45.800 --> 00:34:46.950
You had no idea?
771
00:34:46.950 --> 00:34:48.970
I had no idea if he was held in isolation
772
00:34:48.970 --> 00:34:50.370
for a prolonged period of time
773
00:34:50.370 --> 00:34:52.960
once that got going, no.
774
00:34:52.960 --> 00:34:54.690
You would have no jurisdiction that area.
775
00:34:54.690 --> 00:34:55.988
That's was not something
776
00:34:55.988 --> 00:34:57.940
General Baccus would have had any jurisdiction.
777
00:34:57.940 --> 00:35:01.837
No, we were at Gitmo and that was it.
778
00:35:02.916 --> 00:35:05.240
You went back, you said a couple of times
779
00:35:05.240 --> 00:35:06.870
to Guantanamo,
780
00:35:06.870 --> 00:35:07.703
the next time we went back
781
00:35:07.703 --> 00:35:09.680
was it any difference against
782
00:35:09.680 --> 00:35:11.363
any incidents you can describe to us
783
00:35:11.363 --> 00:35:13.289
that might help people understand
784
00:35:13.289 --> 00:35:17.122
what you observed and what you were thinking?
785
00:35:17.122 --> 00:35:19.870
At that time the relationship between the task force
786
00:35:19.870 --> 00:35:22.440
and the Naval base had broken down significantly.
787
00:35:22.440 --> 00:35:23.713
There was hostility,
788
00:35:24.830 --> 00:35:28.720
when we were there it was a collaborative effort,
789
00:35:28.720 --> 00:35:31.560
but by then I think the Navy had realized
790
00:35:31.560 --> 00:35:34.220
that they had something ugly on their hands
791
00:35:35.270 --> 00:35:38.100
and it was not a good thing be associated with.
792
00:35:38.100 --> 00:35:42.910
And so it was a more complex social environment
793
00:35:43.750 --> 00:35:45.663
for the people serving down there.
794
00:35:46.760 --> 00:35:49.410
Dan Levy had worn out his welcome in a big way
795
00:35:49.410 --> 00:35:53.023
and so things were tense.
796
00:35:54.030 --> 00:35:55.060
And you could pick that up.
797
00:35:55.060 --> 00:35:56.860
You knew that when you came down.
798
00:35:56.860 --> 00:35:58.160
Yeah, I had been on good terms
799
00:35:58.160 --> 00:35:59.280
with the Naval personnel
800
00:35:59.280 --> 00:36:01.580
and I'd had dinner with
801
00:36:01.580 --> 00:36:04.040
the commander of the base and Navy captain
802
00:36:04.040 --> 00:36:08.425
and with the head of the hospital as well.
803
00:36:08.425 --> 00:36:11.050
And so I developed a social relationship with them
804
00:36:11.050 --> 00:36:12.000
and so when I came back
805
00:36:12.000 --> 00:36:13.600
and I visited not talk with him,
806
00:36:14.680 --> 00:36:16.600
we saw how things had played out
807
00:36:16.600 --> 00:36:21.040
once the detention operation had been subsumed
808
00:36:21.040 --> 00:36:22.553
by the Intel operation.
809
00:36:23.670 --> 00:36:26.500
The hospital was resisting providing medical records
810
00:36:26.500 --> 00:36:28.164
to the Intel people, because they perceived that
811
00:36:28.164 --> 00:36:31.080
in violation of their mission under the
812
00:36:32.450 --> 00:36:37.230
I guess like HIPPA, disclosing down unauthorized people.
813
00:36:37.230 --> 00:36:38.760
They didn't think they had the authority
814
00:36:38.760 --> 00:36:41.023
to give medical records to this group.
815
00:36:41.023 --> 00:36:42.430
And they didn't think it was
816
00:36:42.430 --> 00:36:45.880
in compliance with the Geneva conventions
817
00:36:45.880 --> 00:36:48.330
which everybody was still trying to adhere to.
818
00:36:48.330 --> 00:36:50.110
When the president said Geneva didn't apply
819
00:36:50.110 --> 00:36:51.430
but it would be Geneva like,
820
00:36:51.430 --> 00:36:52.370
of course, that was the end
821
00:36:52.370 --> 00:36:53.547
of the guidance that we got.
822
00:36:53.547 --> 00:36:55.223
What's Geneva like.
823
00:36:57.750 --> 00:36:59.220
My legal opinion at the time was
824
00:36:59.220 --> 00:37:00.550
the president didn't have the authority
825
00:37:00.550 --> 00:37:02.627
to abandon the Geneva convention in the first place.
826
00:37:02.627 --> 00:37:04.590
And that was what the task force lived with
827
00:37:04.590 --> 00:37:05.563
while I was there.
828
00:37:06.880 --> 00:37:09.420
Did you see any people
829
00:37:09.420 --> 00:37:11.110
on hunger strikes while you were there?
830
00:37:11.110 --> 00:37:11.943
Yes.
831
00:37:11.943 --> 00:37:13.193
Could you describe that?
832
00:37:14.720 --> 00:37:16.010
When they went on hunger strikes,
833
00:37:16.010 --> 00:37:20.440
they were taken to the hospital and they would be fed.
834
00:37:20.440 --> 00:37:22.741
If they refuse food, then they would be fed
835
00:37:22.741 --> 00:37:25.766
through a hose system that would go through their nose.
836
00:37:25.766 --> 00:37:27.570
Did you see that?
837
00:37:27.570 --> 00:37:30.490
I saw the implements of it and I'm familiar with it
838
00:37:30.490 --> 00:37:32.950
because it's been used as well in the bureau of prisons.
839
00:37:32.950 --> 00:37:34.290
That was a practice that was used
840
00:37:34.290 --> 00:37:37.793
in the bureau of prisons that got transferred down there.
841
00:37:38.790 --> 00:37:41.010
I was not overly offended by it.
842
00:37:41.010 --> 00:37:42.633
I know that it's uncomfortable,
843
00:37:43.470 --> 00:37:48.090
but I also know that a detainee who wants to die
844
00:37:48.950 --> 00:37:51.633
is doing that for a political reason generally.
845
00:37:53.070 --> 00:37:57.100
And we don't have to give into his political reasons
846
00:37:57.100 --> 00:37:59.240
and certainly we are responsible for their care.
847
00:37:59.240 --> 00:38:00.410
We should not be letting them die.
848
00:38:00.410 --> 00:38:04.060
So I know there was conflict between the people
849
00:38:04.060 --> 00:38:05.940
who thought that that was torture.
850
00:38:05.940 --> 00:38:09.820
In my opinion, it was not, it was unpleasant
851
00:38:09.820 --> 00:38:12.720
but it was an unpleasantness that was provoked
852
00:38:12.720 --> 00:38:14.610
by decision of the detainee
853
00:38:14.610 --> 00:38:15.523
not to eat.
854
00:38:16.500 --> 00:38:18.190
Were you present in Guantanamo
855
00:38:18.190 --> 00:38:21.070
whenever the detainees tried to commit suicide?
856
00:38:21.070 --> 00:38:21.903
No.
857
00:38:23.310 --> 00:38:24.670
You hadn't heard any of those?
858
00:38:24.670 --> 00:38:26.120
I had not heard about that.
859
00:38:26.980 --> 00:38:28.340
Did you ever go through the clinic?
860
00:38:28.340 --> 00:38:29.480
Were ever in the clinic?
861
00:38:29.480 --> 00:38:31.610
And see some of the detainees in the clinic?
862
00:38:31.610 --> 00:38:32.443
Yes.
863
00:38:32.443 --> 00:38:33.390
You could you describe
864
00:38:33.390 --> 00:38:34.313
how they were treated in the clinic?
865
00:38:34.313 --> 00:38:37.120
In the clinic they were treated like everybody else.
866
00:38:37.120 --> 00:38:38.781
There was no distinction made between them
867
00:38:38.781 --> 00:38:41.620
and American soldiers or sailors.
868
00:38:41.620 --> 00:38:42.970
Were they shackled?
869
00:38:42.970 --> 00:38:44.050
They were shackled.
870
00:38:44.050 --> 00:38:45.671
I mean, I guess there is that distinction
871
00:38:45.671 --> 00:38:47.000
that they're not getting off
872
00:38:47.000 --> 00:38:49.480
their gurney and wandering around,
873
00:38:49.480 --> 00:38:52.450
but other than restraints to keep them in place,
874
00:38:52.450 --> 00:38:54.683
the level of medical care was the same.
875
00:38:56.010 --> 00:38:57.720
Who replaced General Baccus
876
00:38:57.720 --> 00:38:59.383
and General Dan Levy?
877
00:39:03.140 --> 00:39:07.373
Of course Baccus once he left his function was subsumed.
878
00:39:08.540 --> 00:39:11.563
So there was no real replacement for him at that point.
879
00:39:12.640 --> 00:39:15.160
I'm trying to remember the name of the major general
880
00:39:15.160 --> 00:39:17.063
who came down and replaced Dan Levy.
881
00:39:18.410 --> 00:39:23.050
Cause he was the one who later made the trip over to Iraq,
882
00:39:23.050 --> 00:39:25.132
and we knew Iraq was about to happen.
883
00:39:25.132 --> 00:39:25.965
You mean General Miller?
884
00:39:25.965 --> 00:39:27.520
General Miller, Jeff Miller.
885
00:39:27.520 --> 00:39:28.353
That's right.
886
00:39:28.353 --> 00:39:29.190
When you say you knew,
887
00:39:29.190 --> 00:39:31.463
what did you know about Iraq?
888
00:39:32.410 --> 00:39:35.630
When we got down there, we had a lot of active duty forces
889
00:39:35.630 --> 00:39:38.970
in terms of our guard force, active duty MPs.
890
00:39:38.970 --> 00:39:41.390
Even though we had also a large contention of reservist
891
00:39:41.390 --> 00:39:45.430
and the command was actually a national guard
892
00:39:45.430 --> 00:39:47.549
but they started pulling the active duty forces.
893
00:39:47.549 --> 00:39:50.580
We didn't have the A team down there
894
00:39:50.580 --> 00:39:53.300
in terms of the personnel that we were getting.
895
00:39:53.300 --> 00:39:56.080
And we could tell that things were gearing up for
896
00:39:57.360 --> 00:40:00.037
Iraq and that's why our resources...
897
00:40:00.037 --> 00:40:02.860
You saw that coming?
898
00:40:02.860 --> 00:40:05.070
That was no secret, we had people.
899
00:40:05.070 --> 00:40:07.420
I remember talking with some interrogators
900
00:40:07.420 --> 00:40:09.730
in the mess hall who were convinced
901
00:40:09.730 --> 00:40:13.570
that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.
902
00:40:13.570 --> 00:40:15.450
And they were gonna be the ones who found it.
903
00:40:15.450 --> 00:40:17.250
They were very proud of that.
904
00:40:17.250 --> 00:40:18.882
And I thought they were a wacko,
905
00:40:18.882 --> 00:40:22.243
but there was no secret that's what they were
906
00:40:22.243 --> 00:40:26.377
affirmatively looking for those links in the interrogation.
907
00:40:26.377 --> 00:40:27.210
In Guantanamo.
908
00:40:27.210 --> 00:40:32.210
In Guantanamo in early 2002, in order to support a claim
909
00:40:32.640 --> 00:40:34.650
that Saddam Hussein was connected to it.
910
00:40:34.650 --> 00:40:36.000
So you think they were ordered
911
00:40:36.000 --> 00:40:38.530
to look for that connection?
912
00:40:38.530 --> 00:40:41.510
Well, I can't speculate as to whether they were ordered.
913
00:40:41.510 --> 00:40:44.107
They certainly seemed highly motivated to try and find it.
914
00:40:44.107 --> 00:40:45.800
Of course there wasn't one
915
00:40:45.800 --> 00:40:48.773
but not for their lack of looking.
916
00:40:49.670 --> 00:40:52.210
And do you think General Miller
917
00:40:55.640 --> 00:40:59.300
continued or perhaps even intensified
918
00:40:59.300 --> 00:41:03.170
the harsh interrogation and then brought it to Abu Ghraib?
919
00:41:03.170 --> 00:41:04.460
That's some people have said,
920
00:41:04.460 --> 00:41:05.450
do you know anything about that?
921
00:41:05.450 --> 00:41:10.050
I don't know how much cross-pollination there was
922
00:41:10.950 --> 00:41:14.313
based on his trips there and what advice he provided.
923
00:41:17.340 --> 00:41:22.030
Technically the Iraq incursion
924
00:41:23.410 --> 00:41:25.660
was entirely under the Geneva conventions.
925
00:41:25.660 --> 00:41:29.640
It was a war between nations.
926
00:41:29.640 --> 00:41:31.840
And so our detention operations
927
00:41:31.840 --> 00:41:34.040
should have been in complete compliance with
928
00:41:35.523 --> 00:41:37.951
the Geneva conventions.
929
00:41:37.951 --> 00:41:40.250
Had you heard rumors about General Miller
930
00:41:40.250 --> 00:41:41.620
in Guantanamo
931
00:41:41.620 --> 00:41:44.660
and perhaps intensifying the hush interrogations
932
00:41:44.660 --> 00:41:45.863
post Dan Levy?
933
00:41:47.340 --> 00:41:48.990
I had not heard rumors of that.
934
00:41:51.520 --> 00:41:56.340
So looking back at just that bit
935
00:41:56.340 --> 00:41:58.310
before we go on,
936
00:41:58.310 --> 00:41:59.670
if you were in charge,
937
00:41:59.670 --> 00:42:01.620
how would you have done it differently?
938
00:42:10.970 --> 00:42:12.954
I wouldn't have put it in Guantanamo to start.
939
00:42:12.954 --> 00:42:14.230
Why?
940
00:42:14.230 --> 00:42:17.690
I think Guantanamo was selected.
941
00:42:17.690 --> 00:42:18.870
It was a fallacious reason.
942
00:42:18.870 --> 00:42:20.940
One of the reasons that was given
943
00:42:20.940 --> 00:42:23.170
was that it was technically not US territory
944
00:42:23.170 --> 00:42:25.930
therefore US federal courts would have no jurisdiction
945
00:42:25.930 --> 00:42:27.080
over it.
946
00:42:27.080 --> 00:42:31.053
That's pretty cynical to prevent legal oversight.
947
00:42:33.510 --> 00:42:37.070
The other reason if you've ever been in Washington DC
948
00:42:37.070 --> 00:42:40.290
in January, it's miserable,
949
00:42:40.290 --> 00:42:43.490
how nice it is to take a tropical trip.
950
00:42:43.490 --> 00:42:46.370
And we had so many official government tourists
951
00:42:46.370 --> 00:42:49.260
come down to Guantanamo, and then they get these tours
952
00:42:50.129 --> 00:42:51.360
and they get a little ball cap
953
00:42:51.360 --> 00:42:53.450
that said that they'd been at Guantanamo
954
00:42:53.450 --> 00:42:57.033
and they got to see real Taliban in cages and whatnot.
955
00:42:58.170 --> 00:42:59.340
Part of it was convenience
956
00:42:59.340 --> 00:43:01.380
for that kind of official nonsense.
957
00:43:01.380 --> 00:43:03.570
And we had quite the director of health
958
00:43:03.570 --> 00:43:05.670
and human services come down.
959
00:43:05.670 --> 00:43:07.710
He had no connection with what was going on
960
00:43:07.710 --> 00:43:10.263
but he was one of the official tourists as well.
961
00:43:11.510 --> 00:43:14.950
So by being so close, it became a tour destination
962
00:43:14.950 --> 00:43:17.229
for Republican officials.
963
00:43:17.229 --> 00:43:18.853
Where should the men have been taken
964
00:43:18.853 --> 00:43:21.290
that we captured if it was not Guantanamo.
965
00:43:21.290 --> 00:43:22.920
If we were concerned about security
966
00:43:22.920 --> 00:43:24.930
one of the places we were looking at
967
00:43:24.930 --> 00:43:29.070
back in November of 2001 was Tinian
968
00:43:29.070 --> 00:43:31.270
the island out in the Pacific
969
00:43:31.270 --> 00:43:35.910
where we'd taken off the drop the atomic bombs
970
00:43:35.910 --> 00:43:40.910
because it was easy to secure and it was isolated.
971
00:43:43.000 --> 00:43:45.320
Why didn't we use that do you think?
972
00:43:45.320 --> 00:43:49.432
Well I think Guantanamo offered convenience
973
00:43:49.432 --> 00:43:52.290
and this false premise
974
00:43:52.290 --> 00:43:54.060
that there was no federal jurisdiction
975
00:43:54.060 --> 00:43:55.763
because it was technically Cuba's.
976
00:43:58.980 --> 00:43:59.930
And is there something else
977
00:43:59.930 --> 00:44:00.900
that you would have done differently
978
00:44:00.900 --> 00:44:04.100
besides not going to Guantanamo?
979
00:44:04.100 --> 00:44:07.540
Well, out of adherence strictly
980
00:44:07.540 --> 00:44:09.374
from the very beginning to the Geneva conventions
981
00:44:09.374 --> 00:44:10.913
as we tried to do.
982
00:44:12.170 --> 00:44:13.662
Why is that important to you?
983
00:44:13.662 --> 00:44:14.560
Why is that important to me?
984
00:44:14.560 --> 00:44:18.170
I was raised with due process of law and fairness
985
00:44:18.170 --> 00:44:21.963
and we're Americans, we're supposed to be better than that.
986
00:44:24.320 --> 00:44:29.320
And we weren't, and it still troubles me
987
00:44:30.692 --> 00:44:35.130
that we weren't, that we couldn't see past the calamity
988
00:44:35.130 --> 00:44:37.403
that 9/11 certainly was,
989
00:44:39.840 --> 00:44:44.660
the tragedy that it would be twisted into a pretext
990
00:44:44.660 --> 00:44:47.163
for the invasion of Iraq.
991
00:44:49.350 --> 00:44:54.350
When I served in Afghanistan in 2003, 2004,
992
00:44:55.340 --> 00:44:56.190
we were in a position
993
00:44:56.190 --> 00:44:58.220
where we could have concluded operations
994
00:45:00.150 --> 00:45:01.783
and essentially left victorious.
995
00:45:02.820 --> 00:45:05.150
But for the fact that all the resources got sucked away
996
00:45:05.150 --> 00:45:10.150
to Iraq, and now we're still stuck in Afghanistan.
997
00:45:11.830 --> 00:45:14.640
That's a direct result of a lot of those decisions
998
00:45:14.640 --> 00:45:15.750
that were made
999
00:45:15.750 --> 00:45:18.460
and a lot of the hubris that was involved
1000
00:45:18.460 --> 00:45:20.223
in making those stupid decisions.
1001
00:45:22.470 --> 00:45:25.060
How'd you feel when Obama was elected?
1002
00:45:25.060 --> 00:45:28.220
Did you think he was gonna make a difference?
1003
00:45:28.220 --> 00:45:29.053
Yeah.
1004
00:45:29.053 --> 00:45:30.730
I actually met him in Baghdad when he was a candidate
1005
00:45:30.730 --> 00:45:32.820
and he came for a tour.
1006
00:45:32.820 --> 00:45:34.580
He'd been challenged by Senator McCain
1007
00:45:34.580 --> 00:45:36.910
because he'd not visited the troops in the war zone.
1008
00:45:36.910 --> 00:45:39.460
So he came and he was very popular with the troops.
1009
00:45:40.445 --> 00:45:41.709
And I had a chance to meet,
1010
00:45:41.709 --> 00:45:43.569
talk with him for like five minutes.
1011
00:45:43.569 --> 00:45:44.825
Really?
1012
00:45:44.825 --> 00:45:47.440
Because of your position he gave you...
1013
00:45:47.440 --> 00:45:48.610
I was working in the embassy
1014
00:45:48.610 --> 00:45:51.540
as a liaison in the rule of law section
1015
00:45:51.540 --> 00:45:53.943
and I worked directly with the Iraqi judiciary.
1016
00:45:54.954 --> 00:45:55.787
Even at that time
1017
00:45:55.787 --> 00:45:57.520
we were trying to give back to them
1018
00:45:58.410 --> 00:46:00.230
the thousands of people we were holding
1019
00:46:00.230 --> 00:46:01.270
in detention in Iraq.
1020
00:46:01.270 --> 00:46:05.623
I got stuck in detention operations again, over in Iraq.
1021
00:46:07.120 --> 00:46:08.080
Can you tell us
1022
00:46:08.080 --> 00:46:09.856
about your conversation with him?
1023
00:46:09.856 --> 00:46:12.410
I mean it was superficial as can be of course,
1024
00:46:12.410 --> 00:46:15.300
we weren't talking shop just a general visit.
1025
00:46:15.300 --> 00:46:19.420
It was immensely charming, really a rockstar.
1026
00:46:19.420 --> 00:46:21.830
There was a stage set up in the embassy
1027
00:46:21.830 --> 00:46:23.970
and he and the ambassador
1028
00:46:25.140 --> 00:46:27.700
and a couple of US senators got up on the stage.
1029
00:46:27.700 --> 00:46:28.930
It was like a rock show.
1030
00:46:28.930 --> 00:46:31.410
I've still got a video I recorded of that.
1031
00:46:35.490 --> 00:46:36.530
They just charmed the crowd.
1032
00:46:36.530 --> 00:46:37.644
It was fun.
1033
00:46:37.644 --> 00:46:39.713
Did he make any statements about Iraq or Afghanistan,
1034
00:46:39.713 --> 00:46:40.940
that you recall?
1035
00:46:40.940 --> 00:46:41.773
No.
1036
00:46:41.773 --> 00:46:45.250
No, he avoided over controversy with that
1037
00:46:45.250 --> 00:46:47.133
because he was aware of where he was.
1038
00:46:48.000 --> 00:46:52.200
And when he announced that day after
1039
00:46:53.990 --> 00:46:56.070
he became president that he was going to close Guantanamo
1040
00:46:56.070 --> 00:46:57.350
what did you think?
1041
00:46:57.350 --> 00:46:58.900
I thought great.
1042
00:46:58.900 --> 00:47:01.130
I thought we could try those people in civilian courts.
1043
00:47:01.130 --> 00:47:03.550
We didn't need military commissions to do it.
1044
00:47:03.550 --> 00:47:05.550
We didn't have that many people we could try anyway,
1045
00:47:05.550 --> 00:47:07.800
based on the evidence that had been gathered.
1046
00:47:09.520 --> 00:47:10.450
Did you think he would be able
1047
00:47:10.450 --> 00:47:12.490
to shut it down?
1048
00:47:12.490 --> 00:47:15.440
Well, he needed Congress to go along to do it.
1049
00:47:15.440 --> 00:47:17.870
He can have all the will in the world as the executive
1050
00:47:17.870 --> 00:47:22.870
but he can't act entirely on his own in our country.
1051
00:47:23.280 --> 00:47:26.710
And in this instance, the politicians who set
1052
00:47:26.710 --> 00:47:28.604
out to make him fail,
1053
00:47:28.604 --> 00:47:30.730
were successful in thwarting that effort
1054
00:47:30.730 --> 00:47:32.113
to shut down Guantanamo.
1055
00:47:33.150 --> 00:47:35.180
Well, would you have gotten rid of all the men lefting
1056
00:47:35.180 --> 00:47:37.830
Guantanamo if you should shut it down.
1057
00:47:37.830 --> 00:47:41.830
(Tom Laughs) That's something I would have certainly
1058
00:47:41.830 --> 00:47:43.240
done different from the beginning,
1059
00:47:43.240 --> 00:47:45.520
because I think there were 17 or 18
1060
00:47:45.520 --> 00:47:47.010
different people who I had to vote
1061
00:47:47.010 --> 00:47:48.710
in agreement to release anybody
1062
00:47:49.790 --> 00:47:51.330
from different groups and agencies
1063
00:47:51.330 --> 00:47:54.000
and no one wanted to be responsible if they let someone out
1064
00:47:54.000 --> 00:47:57.272
and it came back that the person resumed combat operations
1065
00:47:57.272 --> 00:48:00.140
in Afghanistan or did something horrible.
1066
00:48:00.140 --> 00:48:03.070
And so that froze them in place.
1067
00:48:03.070 --> 00:48:04.750
And that kept us holding people
1068
00:48:04.750 --> 00:48:06.953
that we wanted to get rid of for years.
1069
00:48:09.500 --> 00:48:11.480
There was no mechanism to let them go
1070
00:48:11.480 --> 00:48:14.210
when you found out they didn't have useful intelligence
1071
00:48:14.210 --> 00:48:17.160
or they had not committed crimes against the United States.
1072
00:48:20.363 --> 00:48:21.400
You think that fear factor
1073
00:48:21.400 --> 00:48:23.710
is true for judges also?
1074
00:48:23.710 --> 00:48:27.180
That they wouldn't wanna decide in favor of a detainee
1075
00:48:27.180 --> 00:48:29.680
for fear that they might also release that person?
1076
00:48:34.160 --> 00:48:37.937
No, most judges that's not a factor.
1077
00:48:37.937 --> 00:48:38.838
But it was a fact that made people
1078
00:48:38.838 --> 00:48:40.373
that you work with?
1079
00:48:40.373 --> 00:48:42.060
The political agencies, yeah.
1080
00:48:42.060 --> 00:48:44.140
People have to run for office are always afraid
1081
00:48:44.140 --> 00:48:46.360
of blow back from any decision they make
1082
00:48:47.250 --> 00:48:49.883
and that paralyzed them.
1083
00:48:52.028 --> 00:48:53.340
What do you think today
1084
00:48:53.340 --> 00:48:55.692
now that Guantanamo is still open
1085
00:48:55.692 --> 00:49:00.692
and 69 people still live there and do you see a future?
1086
00:49:03.202 --> 00:49:06.483
What are you seeing next 10 years going forward?
1087
00:49:10.231 --> 00:49:13.990
Until Congress changes, we can't close it.
1088
00:49:13.990 --> 00:49:16.720
So it probably just dangles along
1089
00:49:16.720 --> 00:49:18.393
costing a whole lot of money.
1090
00:49:20.750 --> 00:49:24.081
People that we're holding will, as time goes on,
1091
00:49:24.081 --> 00:49:28.330
either be removed in onesies and twosies
1092
00:49:28.330 --> 00:49:31.963
or they'll die there and repatriate their bodies.
1093
00:49:33.530 --> 00:49:36.400
Are there some people there who should never be let out?
1094
00:49:36.400 --> 00:49:41.400
Yeah, I know that there are because they will kill Americans
1095
00:49:43.330 --> 00:49:45.420
and they would've killed Americans before they were there.
1096
00:49:45.420 --> 00:49:46.700
And it's not that they were turned
1097
00:49:46.700 --> 00:49:51.570
into American haters by their experience in Guantanamo.
1098
00:49:51.570 --> 00:49:53.053
They are really dangerous.
1099
00:49:54.966 --> 00:49:59.040
But many, many are not
1100
00:49:59.040 --> 00:50:01.600
and we simply can't get rid of them.
1101
00:50:01.600 --> 00:50:02.550
It's the irony of it
1102
00:50:02.550 --> 00:50:05.230
by painting them all with that initial label
1103
00:50:05.230 --> 00:50:09.113
of the worst of the worst, we got stuck with them.
1104
00:50:10.960 --> 00:50:13.640
Have you been following the KSM
1105
00:50:13.640 --> 00:50:16.380
and trial of the five men
1106
00:50:16.380 --> 00:50:19.050
who just went through hearings
1107
00:50:19.050 --> 00:50:21.186
and when she have a trial I've been following?
1108
00:50:21.186 --> 00:50:22.350
I have been following that.
1109
00:50:22.350 --> 00:50:24.023
I know a number of the players.
1110
00:50:25.070 --> 00:50:27.540
I served with the General Martins in Iraq
1111
00:50:27.540 --> 00:50:31.070
when he was a General Patraeus and staff judge advocate.
1112
00:50:31.070 --> 00:50:31.903
I know the judge
1113
00:50:31.903 --> 00:50:34.453
because I was seven years a military judge myself.
1114
00:50:35.870 --> 00:50:36.703
So what are your thoughts
1115
00:50:36.703 --> 00:50:38.143
about the trial today?
1116
00:50:42.021 --> 00:50:45.793
I'm curious to see how the evidence will be presented.
1117
00:50:47.320 --> 00:50:48.570
Obviously the big issue is
1118
00:50:48.570 --> 00:50:50.870
how does the government dance around the fact
1119
00:50:50.870 --> 00:50:52.720
that he was objected to waterboarding
1120
00:50:54.320 --> 00:50:56.770
and what evidence is not tainted by that process?
1121
00:50:58.400 --> 00:50:59.480
What would you have done instead?
1122
00:50:59.480 --> 00:51:03.323
Would you have done a federal trial or a court martial.
1123
00:51:04.720 --> 00:51:07.255
I would have opted for a civilian trial over
1124
00:51:07.255 --> 00:51:09.210
a commissions trial
1125
00:51:09.210 --> 00:51:11.580
but I can tell you that the rules in place now
1126
00:51:11.580 --> 00:51:14.520
for the commissions are much closer to a court martial
1127
00:51:15.820 --> 00:51:18.330
than what the administration wanted in 2003.
1128
00:51:21.270 --> 00:51:23.100
Meaning do you think this is going
1129
00:51:23.100 --> 00:51:24.850
to be a fair trial?
1130
00:51:24.850 --> 00:51:27.200
I think it will be a fair trial.
1131
00:51:27.200 --> 00:51:28.720
It will be mostly transparent.
1132
00:51:28.720 --> 00:51:30.793
I realized that there are certain classified things
1133
00:51:30.793 --> 00:51:33.170
that would not be disclosed there.
1134
00:51:33.170 --> 00:51:34.300
They would not be disclosed
1135
00:51:34.300 --> 00:51:38.270
in a federal trial either because if they're classified
1136
00:51:38.270 --> 00:51:39.870
then the judge is going to make a determination
1137
00:51:39.870 --> 00:51:42.320
to clear the courtroom for that kind of evidence.
1138
00:51:45.550 --> 00:51:47.650
Is there something I didn't ask you that
1139
00:51:49.080 --> 00:51:50.489
maybe you wanted to just tell us that
1140
00:51:50.489 --> 00:51:51.810
that you were picking,
1141
00:51:51.810 --> 00:51:55.180
that you'd like the world to know about your experiences
1142
00:51:55.180 --> 00:51:57.890
and what you've observed in the last 12 years
1143
00:51:58.960 --> 00:52:01.463
just before 9/11 and going up to today?
1144
00:52:07.290 --> 00:52:09.790
Our country knows what's right and what's wrong.
1145
00:52:11.040 --> 00:52:12.760
I think we know it instinctively,
1146
00:52:12.760 --> 00:52:17.760
we've got it in our charter, in our founding documents.
1147
00:52:20.180 --> 00:52:25.180
And I think we know when we go astray of that knowledge
1148
00:52:26.830 --> 00:52:28.043
of what is right.
1149
00:52:29.910 --> 00:52:31.870
We always regret it later.
1150
00:52:31.870 --> 00:52:34.470
Why it is we don't stop and think at the time
1151
00:52:34.470 --> 00:52:36.710
I don't know whether it's just the impulsiveness
1152
00:52:36.710 --> 00:52:38.183
of our national character,
1153
00:52:39.230 --> 00:52:40.980
the willingness to take a shortcut,
1154
00:52:42.030 --> 00:52:44.653
if that's a flaw in America too.
1155
00:52:46.820 --> 00:52:51.470
What we did in Guantanamo and what we did in Abu Ghraib
1156
00:52:52.440 --> 00:52:54.890
and what we've subsequently done in smaller scale
1157
00:52:54.890 --> 00:52:58.040
and other places are disgraceful things
1158
00:52:58.040 --> 00:52:59.630
that hurt us in the world,
1159
00:52:59.630 --> 00:53:01.883
that actually cost soldiers' lives later on.
1160
00:53:05.180 --> 00:53:09.600
We polled the detainees and we had like 25,000 detainees
1161
00:53:09.600 --> 00:53:13.880
in Iraq at one time in some of our institutions.
1162
00:53:13.880 --> 00:53:16.200
Every one of them had been exposed to the imagery
1163
00:53:16.200 --> 00:53:17.650
from Abu Ghraib,
1164
00:53:17.650 --> 00:53:19.500
the guy who was spread out
1165
00:53:19.500 --> 00:53:21.430
with wires and a hood over his head
1166
00:53:21.430 --> 00:53:23.270
they'd all seen that, we made that
1167
00:53:25.690 --> 00:53:26.890
and our soldiers died
1168
00:53:26.890 --> 00:53:29.700
and a lot of Iraqis died because that was done.
1169
00:53:29.700 --> 00:53:31.373
It was utterly unnecessary.
1170
00:53:33.720 --> 00:53:35.103
So yeah.
1171
00:53:37.750 --> 00:53:40.083
Has America learned that lesson yet?
1172
00:53:42.860 --> 00:53:44.910
I think our current president knows it,
1173
00:53:46.410 --> 00:53:49.730
but I don't know that as a country
1174
00:53:49.730 --> 00:53:52.170
we completely accepted our responsibility
1175
00:53:52.170 --> 00:53:54.640
or acknowledged our guilt
1176
00:53:54.640 --> 00:53:57.033
for some of the things that were done in our name.
1177
00:53:58.270 --> 00:53:59.470
There's one political party
1178
00:53:59.470 --> 00:54:01.873
that refuses to acknowledge that.
1179
00:54:04.830 --> 00:54:06.880
And the other ones that brought that war.
1180
00:54:10.130 --> 00:54:13.090
Johnny is there anything you wanna ask?
1181
00:54:13.090 --> 00:54:14.257
No.
1182
00:54:15.863 --> 00:54:17.680
I don't have anything else
1183
00:54:17.680 --> 00:54:21.408
I need to ask you currently unless there's something
1184
00:54:21.408 --> 00:54:25.210
else that you want to talk about that I overlooked,
1185
00:54:25.210 --> 00:54:28.350
given your what background I just don't know
1186
00:54:28.350 --> 00:54:31.080
if there's something else I missed.
1187
00:54:31.080 --> 00:54:32.330
Scuba diving was great.
1188
00:54:32.330 --> 00:54:33.930
Life under the water in Guantanamo
1189
00:54:33.930 --> 00:54:35.280
was better than life above.
1190
00:54:36.320 --> 00:54:38.600
My understanding from several
1191
00:54:38.600 --> 00:54:40.140
of the prison guys we interviewed
1192
00:54:40.140 --> 00:54:41.871
was that they all went out drinking every night
1193
00:54:41.871 --> 00:54:44.110
or scuba diving or whatever
1194
00:54:44.110 --> 00:54:48.450
in order to not have to confront what they were seeing.
1195
00:54:48.450 --> 00:54:50.330
Otherwise it was just too hot for them
1196
00:54:50.330 --> 00:54:54.500
and this is a way of just burying their emotions
1197
00:54:55.570 --> 00:54:58.400
and feelings from not having to address them.
1198
00:54:58.400 --> 00:55:00.470
You had heard anything like that?
1199
00:55:00.470 --> 00:55:05.470
No, we did go diving every night after work.
1200
00:55:06.570 --> 00:55:09.840
It wasn't to escape the turmoil.
1201
00:55:09.840 --> 00:55:11.590
Of course I was, I guess, lucky
1202
00:55:11.590 --> 00:55:14.350
that I didn't really make that many moral compromises
1203
00:55:14.350 --> 00:55:18.110
while I was down there that I had to avoid thinking about.
1204
00:55:18.110 --> 00:55:19.700
Cause I stuck to my guns
1205
00:55:19.700 --> 00:55:22.810
and then just got shipped home
1206
00:55:23.680 --> 00:55:25.610
and it I wasn't sure what would happen
1207
00:55:25.610 --> 00:55:28.740
in my career later as a result of the positions I took
1208
00:55:28.740 --> 00:55:30.900
but it had no adverse effect on me.
1209
00:55:30.900 --> 00:55:34.073
I got promoted again and got good jobs.
1210
00:55:35.930 --> 00:55:38.800
Did General Baccus get promoted?
1211
00:55:38.800 --> 00:55:40.799
Or id he retire after?
1212
00:55:40.799 --> 00:55:43.223
He was abused?
1213
00:55:44.700 --> 00:55:48.510
The administration let leak that he was soft on terrorism
1214
00:55:49.610 --> 00:55:52.980
because he had addressed the terrorists as prisoners
1215
00:55:52.980 --> 00:55:54.920
in the campus, the commander of the camp.
1216
00:55:54.920 --> 00:55:56.505
He was certainly entitled to do that,
1217
00:55:56.505 --> 00:55:58.853
entitled to address their grievances.
1218
00:56:00.100 --> 00:56:04.550
But they attempted to portray him as weak
1219
00:56:04.550 --> 00:56:06.423
and soft on terrorism.
1220
00:56:08.280 --> 00:56:11.920
Part of the process of getting rid of the detention
1221
00:56:11.920 --> 00:56:14.260
operation as a separate entity.
1222
00:56:14.260 --> 00:56:18.000
So he was treated unfairly by the administration.
1223
00:56:18.000 --> 00:56:19.910
It was in the press.
1224
00:56:19.910 --> 00:56:21.380
I wrote a letter to the Army Times
1225
00:56:21.380 --> 00:56:23.333
that they published in his defense after that came out,
1226
00:56:23.333 --> 00:56:25.630
because I thought that was particularly unfair.
1227
00:56:25.630 --> 00:56:26.730
How was he treated unfairly?
1228
00:56:26.730 --> 00:56:29.630
Well, they attempted to force him to retire as a Colonel
1229
00:56:30.720 --> 00:56:32.210
and they came up with some pretexts
1230
00:56:32.210 --> 00:56:35.520
over how he failed to address some soldiers problem.
1231
00:56:35.520 --> 00:56:39.038
But it was all around the fact that he had been resisting
1232
00:56:39.038 --> 00:56:41.210
Dan Levy who was really a proxy
1233
00:56:41.210 --> 00:56:44.823
for Secretary Rumsfeld in the department of defense though.
1234
00:56:47.120 --> 00:56:52.120
The neo-cons who were trying to drive this abusive train
1235
00:56:52.800 --> 00:56:54.300
in the treatment of detainees.
1236
00:56:55.460 --> 00:56:58.200
So what did happen to him at the end?
1237
00:56:58.200 --> 00:57:00.070
He persisted and in the end,
1238
00:57:00.070 --> 00:57:01.540
he retired as a brigadier general.
1239
00:57:01.540 --> 00:57:02.680
He didn't get promoted again.
1240
00:57:02.680 --> 00:57:04.480
So it was the end of his career
1241
00:57:06.010 --> 00:57:08.750
and I guess he was an avid distance runner.
1242
00:57:08.750 --> 00:57:11.440
So he's probably still running up in Rhode Island.
1243
00:57:11.440 --> 00:57:16.063
He'd been working, I think at a VA cemetery,
1244
00:57:17.270 --> 00:57:18.280
in a civilian job.
1245
00:57:18.280 --> 00:57:19.840
And I think that's where he ended up.
1246
00:57:19.840 --> 00:57:21.360
You didn't stay in touch with him?
1247
00:57:21.360 --> 00:57:23.470
I did for a couple of years afterwards
1248
00:57:24.360 --> 00:57:25.810
but he was out of the army
1249
00:57:25.810 --> 00:57:28.320
and I was still in and I was getting deployed again.
1250
00:57:28.320 --> 00:57:30.373
And so I lost contact with him.
1251
00:57:32.490 --> 00:57:37.230
Did you ever meet Haynes
1252
00:57:37.230 --> 00:57:40.350
the chief counsel in the Pentagon?
1253
00:57:40.350 --> 00:57:41.200
Jim Haynes.
1254
00:57:41.200 --> 00:57:42.033
I saw him.
1255
00:57:42.033 --> 00:57:44.090
I never was formally introduced to him
1256
00:57:44.090 --> 00:57:47.820
at the time I was a major and then just very briefly,
1257
00:57:47.820 --> 00:57:50.130
I had pinned on like two days
1258
00:57:50.130 --> 00:57:52.550
before I went to Guantanamo as Lieutenant Colonel.
1259
00:57:52.550 --> 00:57:55.523
So I would have been beneath his vision.
1260
00:57:56.860 --> 00:57:59.580
And I assume you never met with Rumsfeld.
1261
00:57:59.580 --> 00:58:02.890
Did he come down to Guantanamo while you were there?
1262
00:58:02.890 --> 00:58:04.950
I don't recall that he came there.
1263
00:58:04.950 --> 00:58:07.060
Alberto Gonzales made a trip there
1264
00:58:07.060 --> 00:58:09.655
and like I said there was a whole string of...
1265
00:58:09.655 --> 00:58:11.070
When Gonzalez came, did you speak to him?
1266
00:58:11.070 --> 00:58:11.903
No.
1267
00:58:13.270 --> 00:58:15.330
Did Addington come down?
1268
00:58:15.330 --> 00:58:16.163
Yeah.
1269
00:58:16.163 --> 00:58:17.050
Did you speak to him?
1270
00:58:17.050 --> 00:58:17.883
No.
1271
00:58:17.883 --> 00:58:19.950
I didn't get to talk with any of those folks.
1272
00:58:19.950 --> 00:58:21.373
You were too low.
1273
00:58:24.540 --> 00:58:27.430
Other than the tour guides provided by the task force,
1274
00:58:27.430 --> 00:58:28.830
they were getting their briefings
1275
00:58:28.830 --> 00:58:29.900
from the Intel side
1276
00:58:29.900 --> 00:58:32.850
not from the detention operation
1277
00:58:32.850 --> 00:58:33.960
and they probably wouldn't have wanted to hear
1278
00:58:33.960 --> 00:58:38.959
from me anyway, because I didn't think well of him.
1279
00:58:38.959 --> 00:58:41.610
The counsel to Dan Levy,
1280
00:58:41.610 --> 00:58:43.723
do you know what happened to him?
1281
00:58:44.630 --> 00:58:46.357
Were you able to communicate well with him
1282
00:58:46.357 --> 00:58:49.210
or you had trouble with him too?
1283
00:58:49.210 --> 00:58:50.740
I'm trying to remember the guy's name now.
1284
00:58:50.740 --> 00:58:51.630
He was a slime ball.
1285
00:58:51.630 --> 00:58:52.710
He could not be trusted.
1286
00:58:52.710 --> 00:58:55.460
We'd come to agreements and then he would renege on them.
1287
00:58:55.460 --> 00:58:56.560
Boom, boom, boom.
1288
00:58:56.560 --> 00:58:58.450
Part of it was the pressure from Dan Levy
1289
00:58:58.450 --> 00:59:01.844
who I think was miserable because Diane Beaver
1290
00:59:01.844 --> 00:59:06.712
also worked with him once he was there solo.
1291
00:59:06.712 --> 00:59:08.480
Him meaning.
1292
00:59:08.480 --> 00:59:09.313
Dan Levy.
1293
00:59:10.157 --> 00:59:13.440
And I know she had a very difficult time.
1294
00:59:13.440 --> 00:59:14.830
She came between Dan Levy and me
1295
00:59:14.830 --> 00:59:18.450
when we nearly came to fisticuffs at the bar on the base
1296
00:59:18.450 --> 00:59:19.420
cause he'd been drinking
1297
00:59:19.420 --> 00:59:21.940
and he came and he told me
1298
00:59:21.940 --> 00:59:24.520
that I was the biggest asshole on the island,
1299
00:59:24.520 --> 00:59:26.950
and that's pretty big Cuba with Fidel there
1300
00:59:26.950 --> 00:59:30.090
and he picked me as the biggest irritant
1301
00:59:31.740 --> 00:59:32.920
and was ready to go at it.
1302
00:59:32.920 --> 00:59:33.930
And he's a huge guy.
1303
00:59:33.930 --> 00:59:37.350
He was like I don't know 230, 240 pounds.
1304
00:59:37.350 --> 00:59:40.173
You can see I'm slight in comparison.
1305
00:59:42.500 --> 00:59:44.073
And she separated us.
1306
00:59:45.030 --> 00:59:45.863
Really?
1307
00:59:45.863 --> 00:59:47.298
Yeah.
1308
00:59:47.298 --> 00:59:50.470
Why did he think that of you?
1309
00:59:50.470 --> 00:59:53.163
Because I wouldn't agree with his worldview.
1310
00:59:56.602 --> 00:59:57.810
I wasn't gonna change the legal advice
1311
00:59:57.810 --> 01:00:01.913
I was giving my commander just because he disagreed with it.
1312
01:00:03.740 --> 01:00:08.170
In civilian life he was I believe a juvenile court judge
1313
01:00:08.170 --> 01:00:10.780
in Pennsylvania and the lawyer as well.
1314
01:00:10.780 --> 01:00:12.250
So he thought he could just buddy buddy
1315
01:00:12.250 --> 01:00:14.850
and then as a tyrannical judge
1316
01:00:14.850 --> 01:00:18.348
coerce other lawyers to do what he thought.
1317
01:00:18.348 --> 01:00:19.510
And it wasn't the case,
1318
01:00:19.510 --> 01:00:22.253
he was despised universally.
1319
01:00:23.130 --> 01:00:25.770
And so we had nothing to do with them socially.
1320
01:00:25.770 --> 01:00:26.770
We avoided it.
1321
01:00:26.770 --> 01:00:29.250
Studiously, we'd have little bar association meetings
1322
01:00:29.250 --> 01:00:34.250
and not invite him and so we had bad relationship.
1323
01:00:38.660 --> 01:00:40.770
Did you get along with Diane Beaver?
1324
01:00:40.770 --> 01:00:41.603
I did.
1325
01:00:42.854 --> 01:00:44.930
Were you there when she wrote her memo?
1326
01:00:44.930 --> 01:00:46.580
No, that was afterwards.
1327
01:00:46.580 --> 01:00:48.040
Do you know anything about that?
1328
01:00:48.040 --> 01:00:49.073
Why she wrote it?
1329
01:00:50.990 --> 01:00:55.990
Well, I really don't know why she wrote it
1330
01:00:56.160 --> 01:00:58.133
unless it was Dan Levy's direction,
1331
01:00:58.980 --> 01:01:01.530
and she may have been trying to actually to mitigate
1332
01:01:01.530 --> 01:01:02.570
some of the harsher things
1333
01:01:02.570 --> 01:01:06.100
that they were proposing by compromising there.
1334
01:01:06.100 --> 01:01:08.493
The trouble is that scenario where you can't compromise.
1335
01:01:10.372 --> 01:01:11.510
Do you think she ever regretted
1336
01:01:11.510 --> 01:01:12.410
writing that memo?
1337
01:01:13.390 --> 01:01:14.223
Yeah.
1338
01:01:14.223 --> 01:01:16.050
Why do you think that?
1339
01:01:17.930 --> 01:01:19.830
Because in hindsight she probably knows
1340
01:01:19.830 --> 01:01:22.680
that some of the things that were recommended were wrong.
1341
01:01:23.740 --> 01:01:25.000
You think she felt the pressure
1342
01:01:25.000 --> 01:01:26.700
to write that and maybe like you said
1343
01:01:26.700 --> 01:01:28.823
compromise she didn't have much choice.
1344
01:01:29.860 --> 01:01:31.320
Well, you always have a choice.
1345
01:01:31.320 --> 01:01:35.050
And the problem is there there was compromise
1346
01:01:35.050 --> 01:01:36.000
where there shouldn't have been.
1347
01:01:36.000 --> 01:01:38.540
And so she's probably troubled by that
1348
01:01:39.838 --> 01:01:42.140
because I think basically a decent person,
1349
01:01:42.140 --> 01:01:45.110
she was looking at retiring from there
1350
01:01:46.070 --> 01:01:51.070
and her reputation suffered as a result.
1351
01:01:53.577 --> 01:01:56.280
Did she not retire after that?
1352
01:01:56.280 --> 01:01:57.380
I think she got a job
1353
01:01:57.380 --> 01:01:58.337
in the department of defense.
1354
01:01:58.337 --> 01:02:01.081
She did retire from the army.
1355
01:02:01.081 --> 01:02:02.530
And I think she was employed
1356
01:02:02.530 --> 01:02:03.720
in the department of defense for a while
1357
01:02:03.720 --> 01:02:04.840
but I don't know what's happened to her
1358
01:02:04.840 --> 01:02:05.700
since then.
1359
01:02:11.020 --> 01:02:15.990
And you knew the director of the clinic,
1360
01:02:15.990 --> 01:02:17.190
Albert Shimkus.
1361
01:02:17.190 --> 01:02:18.050
Yes.
1362
01:02:18.050 --> 01:02:19.870
And did guys get along?
1363
01:02:19.870 --> 01:02:21.220
We got along great.
1364
01:02:21.220 --> 01:02:24.253
We saw eye to eye on how the detainees needed to be treated.
1365
01:02:25.890 --> 01:02:27.890
I had a secret stash of medical records
1366
01:02:27.890 --> 01:02:30.350
that I didn't share with the Intel side.
1367
01:02:30.350 --> 01:02:32.812
There were two sets, his set and my set.
1368
01:02:32.812 --> 01:02:33.975
Really?
1369
01:02:33.975 --> 01:02:35.680
How did you manage to have your own set?
1370
01:02:35.680 --> 01:02:37.950
Well, we thought there needed to be two sets,
1371
01:02:37.950 --> 01:02:40.550
but not one that was disclosed to the Intel side
1372
01:02:40.550 --> 01:02:41.670
of the house.
1373
01:02:41.670 --> 01:02:44.611
So we kept things separate.
1374
01:02:44.611 --> 01:02:46.840
And your set, what was in your set
1375
01:02:46.840 --> 01:02:49.460
that wasn't in the set that went to Intel.
1376
01:02:49.460 --> 01:02:52.056
We didn't give Intel medical records.
1377
01:02:52.056 --> 01:02:54.740
Treatment records of the doctors were not
1378
01:02:54.740 --> 01:02:56.490
supposed to be turned over to them.
1379
01:02:57.330 --> 01:02:58.743
So we just wanted to.
1380
01:02:58.743 --> 01:03:00.743
So you had a second set?
1381
01:03:04.200 --> 01:03:06.950
You still in touch with Shimkus?
1382
01:03:06.950 --> 01:03:09.787
Not for years, but I thought well of him.
1383
01:03:11.107 --> 01:03:14.250
Well, I guess colonel,
1384
01:03:14.250 --> 01:03:15.540
I don't have any other questions
1385
01:03:15.540 --> 01:03:17.240
unless there's something else you still wanna add.
1386
01:03:17.240 --> 01:03:19.490
I think we've pretty much covered
1387
01:03:19.490 --> 01:03:21.390
your work in Guantanamo.
1388
01:03:21.390 --> 01:03:23.360
You never saw a Camp Seven.
1389
01:03:23.360 --> 01:03:25.260
You never heard of Camp Seven?
1390
01:03:25.260 --> 01:03:26.410
No.
1391
01:03:26.410 --> 01:03:27.260
And Camp Noah,
1392
01:03:27.260 --> 01:03:28.140
have you ever heard of that?
1393
01:03:28.140 --> 01:03:28.973
No.
1394
01:03:31.057 --> 01:03:32.410
So is there anything else
1395
01:03:32.410 --> 01:03:33.310
that you just remember
1396
01:03:33.310 --> 01:03:35.253
that maybe you wanna add or otherwise?
1397
01:03:38.050 --> 01:03:43.030
No, it's 10 years now so my memory is faded a bit.
1398
01:03:43.030 --> 01:03:44.830
You might wanna go back to that frontline interview
1399
01:03:44.830 --> 01:03:48.650
if there's something I said then when it was closer in time.
1400
01:03:48.650 --> 01:03:50.640
I don't you did that we didn't cover.
1401
01:03:50.640 --> 01:03:55.493
I think you pretty much told us, I mean your own words,
1402
01:03:56.392 --> 01:03:59.610
a different perspective than work.
1403
01:03:59.610 --> 01:04:01.043
You sit in the front line.
1404
01:04:10.400 --> 01:04:12.240
You never had any dealings
1405
01:04:12.240 --> 01:04:14.033
with a John Walker Lindh, right?
1406
01:04:15.115 --> 01:04:16.635
No.
1407
01:04:16.635 --> 01:04:19.892
The so-called Johnny Taliban guy?
1408
01:04:19.892 --> 01:04:21.290
No.
1409
01:04:21.290 --> 01:04:23.540
That was handled entirely in a federal court.
1410
01:04:26.570 --> 01:04:29.650
And did ever meet General Miller?
1411
01:04:29.650 --> 01:04:31.200
I did meet him once.
1412
01:04:31.200 --> 01:04:33.734
In what context was that?
1413
01:04:33.734 --> 01:04:35.039
I'd made one of those trips
1414
01:04:35.039 --> 01:04:40.039
down to Guantanamo and I think I just met him in passing.
1415
01:04:40.436 --> 01:04:43.135
Did he know your background
1416
01:04:43.135 --> 01:04:47.530
and how you saw it?
1417
01:04:47.530 --> 01:04:48.450
Probably not.
1418
01:04:48.450 --> 01:04:51.240
I have no idea what he knew about me
1419
01:04:52.210 --> 01:04:54.710
and I didn't know that much about him at the time.
1420
01:04:56.410 --> 01:04:58.155
Well, I guess then I really wanna thank you.
1421
01:04:58.155 --> 01:05:01.420
Johnny needs 20 seconds of room tone
1422
01:05:01.420 --> 01:05:03.770
before we quit just of silence.
1423
01:05:03.770 --> 01:05:07.760
So he's gonna do that and then we can end the interview.
1424
01:05:07.760 --> 01:05:08.593
Okay.
1425
01:05:08.593 --> 01:05:09.790
Okay, thank you.
1426
01:05:09.790 --> 01:05:14.790
Can we get a room tone.
1427
01:05:28.174 --> 01:05:29.591
End of room tone.