Interviewer 1: Due to start, I'm just gonna say some opening statements that we always say just to kind of, set the tone and then, you know, kinda feel like I wanna have ask too many questions. - Well, I don't know, it depends. I might get staged fright or something. - Okay. - Go on. - Okay. Good morning. - Good morning. Interviewer 1: We are very grateful to you for participating in the "Witness To Guantanamo" Project. We invite you to speak of your experiences and involvement with detainees and others who were in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We are hoping to provide you with an opportunity to tell you a story in your own words. - Thank you. Interviewer 1: We are creating an archive of stories that people in America and around the world will have a better understanding of what you and others have contributed and observed. - Okay. Interviewer 1: Future generations must know what happened at Guantanamo. And by telling you a story, you are contributing to history. We appreciate your courage and willingness to speak with us. - Okay. Interviewer 1: If at any time during the interview, you'd like to take a break, let us know and we will take a break. And if there's anything that you said you'd like to retract, just let us know and we can remove it. I like to begin by just asking you to please tell us your name, and your hometown, and birth date, and age, and education, a little bit background in a few words. - Okay. My name is James Clemente. I was born in San Mateo, California, October 30th, 1959, I'm 50 years old. I was raised in New York, and went to Fordham University, got a BS in chemistry and a minor in philosophy. And then I went to law school at Fordham Law School, and prosecuted for the New York city Law Department in the Bronx for a few years, and then was recruited into the FBI. I worked there for 22 years until October 30th, 2009, my 50th birthday. And at which time I retired, and I worked everything from bank robberies, and violent crimes in New York city, to white collar, to public corruption. And in the last 12 years, I worked as a profiler in the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit. That's in the critical incident response group, CIRG. And that is a group of all the FBI's entities that respond to critical incidents across the country and around the world with the hostage rescue team, the hostage negotiators, violent criminal apprehension program, the Behavioral Analysis Unit, and other entities that help, sort of deal with any kind of major incidents. Interviewer 1: What exactly would you do in that unit? - Well, that unit, the Behavioral Analysis Unit is a way to analyze and advise on criminal behavior. We look at violent criminal behavior, sexual criminal behavior. We study it so that we can educate police officers at the local state and federal level with respect to those particular crimes that they're investigating. We become experts in those fields so that they don't have to. They're spending most of their time dealing with, you know, sort of street level issues. And we have the ability to study those cases every day, and put together a body of empirical data that backs up our analysis of cases, so that we can help them focus their investigations. Profiling is basically reverse engineering of a crime. It's nothing like this, well, you know, what the media calls racial profiling, it's the exact opposite actually. Because we look at a crime that's already been committed. We look at the behavior evidence at that crime scene, and then we work backwards towards the kind of person who committed this particular crime. And what it does, is it narrows down the field of suspects and helps police officers focus their investigation so they can resolve crimes a lot faster. We can also, we also advise them on interview strategies and interrogation strategies. Like myself, I taught interviewing interrogation at the FBI Academy at the FBI National Academy. And it's the way we do it is based on, you know, a 100 years of performing those tasks, that's the foundation of what we do in the FBI. And basically, it's all rapport based, in other words. No matter how bad this criminal is that you're talking to, when we talk to the worst of the worst, serial killers, people who abduct children and rape them and kill them, and yet we're still able to build rapport with them. Why is that? Because we know what our job is. We know what the constitution says we can do, and we work within that, to get them to talk to us. We build a human bridge between us. And like I said, no matter how bad they are, they're still human beings. And you can find a way using their particular circumstances, their personality, to draw them out. And the more they talk to you, the more you're gonna learn about them. And in turn, you can turn that around and draw more out of them, and that's basically it in a nutshell. It's effective, and it's what we went down to Guantanamo to do, to advise them on interview and interrogation strategies, because they weren't getting the information they thought was available. Interviewer 1: Could you explain who we are, and how you, and then who invited you to go to Guantanamo, and what year that was? - Yeah. In 2002, our unit chiefs from the Behavioral Analysis Unit went down to... Let me see. All right. In 2002, the unit chief from Behavioral Analysis Unit were invited by the military to come down and analyze their interview and interrogation program, because they felt they were not getting sufficient information from the detainees. They went down, they decided that they were gonna send teams of two FBI behavioral analysts at a time for 45 day stints, to advise on the CITF teams, the task force- Interviewer 1: CITF? - Criminal Investigative Task Force, I believe. Made up of different federal agencies, made up of investigators from different federal agencies. And we would advise them in the military in their interrogation strategies. I went down there in October of 2002 until the beginning of December, 2002. My job was to sort of evaluate their interview plans their interrogation plans, and advise on the best way to maximize the accuracy and completeness of the information- Interviewer 1: Were you observing interrogation, or they would just give you a sheet of how they plan to interrogate? - It started off with sheets but then we would actually observe. And they had every... The interrogation rooms are set up such that there was an observation room in the middle with two video monitors, and then one way mirrors on either side, two different interrogation rooms. So, you could observe with your eyes and you could also look through the video camera if you wanted it to do that. So, yeah, we were doing that, and we were doing sort of on the fly advising. So, we'd watch what they were doing, we'd watch the detainee, we'd see what his body language was. We'd see what he was saying and how you're saying it, and we'd advise them on, you know, whether or not we thought he was hiding something or whether he was being truthful. Or we thought whether we could gain more cooperation from him by using a diff different tact. Well, those are the things that we do. But it's no different than anything we've done for decades in criminal cases. Interviewer 1: I heard that FBI agents sometimes in the room, along with the DOD at the time of the interrogation, is that, you actually in the room, or were you in an adjoining room watching? - All the above? I mean, there were certain cases where they asked us they were having trouble doing it, they weren't getting what they thought was, you know, comprehensive information from somebody. And they asked us to do the interrogations or we volunteer to do interrogations to show them how it's done. For example, when, I mean, I don't know if you want me to go into details here, - Yeah. - For example, at one point when, after I found out how, what their interrogations met... Excuse me, at one point when I found out what their interrogation methods were, you know, there's fear up and anxiety up, and all that kind of crap, they, you know, and worse, I said, well, there's no wonder you're not getting any information, you're hardening them against you and our claws. And the whole point of an interrogation is to try to win them over, to try to get them to understand your side as you understand them, and then get them to work for you rather than against you. They've been trained not only by a hard life, but by training camps in order to resist this kind of harsh treatment. And so, when you treat them harshly you reinforce that belief that we're the devil that we're evil. And so, you help them do what they're doing, resisting you. So, it's really counterproductive. So, I told them to let me have access to a detainee that wasn't cooperating at all, they brought in detainee 682, and he was doing nothing but sitting mute during interrogations, or reciting the Quran from memory. I realized that, you know this was gonna be a tough task, so I set out to do this. I met with him, I think maybe a dozen times over the next 21 days. I gave him, you know, as much dignity and respect as I could under the circumstances. He had to be shackled in the room and so forth. But still within that, the first thing I did was tell him that I was a behavioral analyst, and I don't care anything about what he did. What I wanna do is learn about his culture and his religion. And because he's an educated man, he's smarter than anybody else in this camp. He has a degree in engineering from the university of physics. He speaks incredibly articulately in English, and he can share with me the nuances of his people and his culture. And I would love to learn from him if he wouldn't mind. And, of course, being a good Muslim he wants to teach others, and about his religion. So, that's fine, he could do that without sort of violating his cord. And it took him a while to warm up to where he would actually talk to me. But then he started teaching me about his religion, and we had discussions about the many overlaps between Christianity and Islam, and we related on a human level. And after 21 days, he was my friend. I mean, I would walk in the room and he spread his arms and say, "Jim, my friend, what can I do for you?" And I turned it back over to the interrogators and he was extremely cooperative. And I use that as a test case to show them how this can be done successfully, even with the most hardened person, the guy who would not say a thing, who knew exactly how to resist, because he's a human being. And again, building that human bond and giving them some... An opportunity to sort of feel like they are actually accomplishing something that's good for them, you know? you hand them that, and they're gonna... There's a debt of gratitude that is built there, so, you know, that's what we rely on. You know, I mean, human beings are human beings. Interviewer 1: Did they learn for you? - Well, I think eventually. Certainly the CITF people did. The military people were very resistant to it, they thought we were... In fact, the call from the judges, "You're in there making friends and I'm fighting a war." And I explained to him that he's not fighting a war, that he is running a prison, and these are people in his custody, and they have every right to be treated like everybody else who's in the custody of the United States. And it's a definitely different situation in the battlefield. There's no... You know, these guys who have been here for two-three years now, you know, there's I realized at that time, it was probably a year some of them. But even so, you know, they don't have immediate intelligence that's gonna help you on the battlefield. But what you wanna do is, I mean, because there has to be an end game here. There was no... That was one of the biggest flaws of that whole system. And I know that President Obama now is dealing with that fact, it's just that there was no end game. There's no plan, and all they did was hardening most of these people against us. And then, well, are they gonna let 'em go or they're not gonna let them go? Are they too dangerous? Can we prove they're dangerous? We have no idea. And so, we're stuck with a bunch of people that we've, if they weren't against the United States before, they certainly are now. And so, anyway, we're in a situation where we have an opportunity to learn from these people and we should use it. And there's a way to do that properly, and humanly, and within the constitution of the United States. And, you know, so that's what we advocated. And since then, you know, it didn't come out till probably, two-three years after I was there. But I mean, they changed their tactics, at least somewhat, you know, as a result of me being there. But then eventually, I think when everything came out about Abu Ghraib, they completely changed their tactics. Interviewer 1: Did they think that the FBI was interfering with them? - Yes. Absolutely, no question. I mean, let me just tell you the story. I mean, I got down there, and Lieutenant Colonel Pfeiffer who was General Miller's right-hand man handed me an interrogation plan to sign off on. And I noticed in, there's a certain format for their interrogation plans, and they have to have the game plan for today, and then if that fails, have another phase, and if that fails, a final phase, and so, you know, they have to have an end game in that plan. And so, he handed me this, and right in the beginning of the plan, I noticed that said, "Behavioral Analysis." "FBI Behavioral Analysis: This plan was developed with the cooperation and approved by the FBI's Behavioral Analysis team." And I said, that's pretty interesting because, you know, I'm the guy and I haven't read it, but I guess maybe he's just anticipating that I'm gonna approve it. So, I read on, and I read the first phase, and it was fear up, anxiety up, you know, stripping the guy naked and shaving his body hair and having, you know, 20-hour interrogation sessions with loud music, and lights, and all this stuff. And I said, "You know, not only no but absolutely no, this is ridiculous." And I said, "Who?" And well, that was phase one, phase two was even worse dogs, you know, attack dogs, you know, all sorts of, you know, harsh treatment including, they didn't call it waterboarding, they call it wet toweling at the time. You know, I said, this is outrageous, there's just no way that I will sign off on this plan, nor did anybody else from my unit sign off on this plan. And he said, "Why are you making trouble?" Lieutenant Cornell Pfeiffer? He said, "You know, the guys before you absolutely approve this." And I said, "Really?" And I picked up the phone and I called one of the guys who had just been there before me, and I asked him if he had approved this plan. And he said, I told him, that Pfeiffer, Lieutenant Colonel Pfeiffer, it said that he approved this plan. And he said, that's an out-and-out absolute lie. There's no way, we told them emphatically that we would not be involved in any kind of behavior like that, and that we were advocating a rapport-based interrogation plan. And so, I said this back to Pfeiffer, and he got really upset. And I said, you know, blatantly, "You just cannot do this. And, you know, I don't appreciate you lying to me about, you know, this having been approved by others." And he took the plan out of my hand, and he snatched it out of my hand, he leaned in close to my face and said, "Lead, follow, or get the fuck out of my way." And he, you know, spitting mad, red face. And I just leaned back, and I I kinda crossed my arms, and I smiled at him, I said, "Oh, I guess you're the schoolyard bully." And that got him incensed. Because, you know, he's used to being able to order people out of his way or whatever, you know, intimidate people, but like that. And, you know, wasn't gonna work on me, and he just stormed out of the meeting, and taking the plan with him. But the most important and revealing thing about that plan, was the phase three, which was, and I'll do the best I can to quote it. "But if phases one and two don't work, the third phase of this plan would be to send this detainee to Egypt or another third country, where they would employ torture to get the requisite information from him." And I specifically said to him, "You realize that's against the U.S Torture Statute? I mean, have you read the statute?" And I think that's what went on right before, you know, he got in my face and then left the meeting. But the next, he handed me or somebody handed me, 'cause I don't think he wanted to talk to me much after that. He had to me at the second, a second iteration of that plan. And at that point, he had just taken the word torture out and said, "Other means," instead of torture. And, you know, I said, "You can't cure this, doing the same thing but just calling it something else." I said, "This is illegal, you cannot do it." And so, you know, then the next iteration was something like, to the effect of, that there'll be sent off Island, and South comm will determine what will happen to them. You know, just because, you know, he didn't wanna say it on paper, but they didn't... (chuckles) they didn't change their plan at all, they just changed how it was documented because I was making an issue out of it. And I said, "Look, anybody who signs onto this plan is joining into a conspiracy to commit a violation of the U.S Torture Statute." And that became an issue, you know? And I realized, you know, at that point that I don't know if... I didn't know at that point, whether my superiors at the FBI, or people at DOJ, or people at the Pentagon, or people at the White House knew what was going on down here. So, I realized that, you know the people here, there in Guantanamo were all charged up post 9/11. You know, they're, you know, they saw it as their mission to, you know, get these terrorists and save the world, which, you know, there's a laudatory mission. But they felt that, you know, there were no rules associated with that. You know, I mean, you know, it's the most basic part of being an FBI agent, that you swear an oath to uphold the constitution, you know? And that didn't change just because I was on Guantanamo Bay. I mean, it's not a us military base. I didn't have my gun or my handcuffs. I mean, we had no arrest powers there, I couldn't do anything. I'm surrounded by... You know, if you listen to Jack Nicholson, "5,000 Armed Marines," right? But the fact is that I knew what was right. And it was not for political reasons, it was not for anything other than the fact that, you know, humanly, you had to treat these people, they were in your custody, they were helpless. You have to be... You have to be a sadist to be able to hurt somebody who completely helpless. And not only that, but it's totally counterproductive to our mission. Our mission is to get these people to give us the information that they have, in order to protect our country, you know, and help prosecute people that are, you know, committed crimes against the country. Interviewer 1: Could you say you didn't really know at that time where the interrogation plans come from? So, were you saying you didn't know where these interrogation planes were coming from, or who had written them at the time you were down there? - No, I know they were coming from Lieutenant Colonel Pfeiffer, and the signature point on the bottom was General Miller, General Jeffery Miller. Interviewer 1: But does this mean General Miller, you think created these plans? - No, I think he relied on the people that worked for him, but he certainly encouraged them, and was absolutely aware of what was in them. There's just no question about it. Interviewer 1: Do you think other agencies at that point, were involved in drafting these plans? Could you know that? - I think it was wholly within the U.S military. They also had a behavioral analysis component down there, Major Lacey and Major Bernie were psychologist, and they, their job, they were brought down. They were a reserve military, and they were brought down to counsel the Marine guards who were guarding these guys, the detainees, that was what they were told their job was. And the next thing they found out, they were being asked to provide behavioral guidance on how to get these guys to talk, totally outside their area of expertise. And when I came down there, and I was joined a couple of weeks later by Tom Near, another supervisory special agent. By the way, I never said that, but I was a supervisory special agent in the FBI, and in the Behavioral Analysis Unit. Interviewer 1: And Tom Near was also in the same unit? - Yes, he was in the same unit. And came down a couple of weeks later, and I got them up to speed on what was going on, and he totally, totally agreed with my analysis of it. And from that point forward, what we did was we sort of bifurcated our efforts. And then, I was going to try to, you know, sort of work... Well, we were both doing this, we were working with trying to change the militaries, you know, plans and, you know, make them understand how you can do it effectively without violating the constitution, and also give them a template for a rapport-based interrogation plan for detainees. So, we were building both of those things at the same time. Interviewer 1: Was the military interested in hearing your? - Well, they were interested in hearing it, but that's it, that's as far as it went. You know, when it turned out to be in contradiction to what they want to do, which was, you know, cause as much mayhem, and pain, and suffering as they possibly could, they flat out rejected it. But remind me, and I'll get back to that, you know, sort of when we met with the general at the end. But when we... Early on, we sat down with the two, with Major Lacey and Major Bernie, and discuss with them what we believed the military should be doing in their interrogation plans. And it was like, they were so happy to hear that we were advocating exactly what they were advocating. And so, we wrote up our first communication about this, and included them in it. And because they absolutely agreed that that's what should be done was rapport-based, non, you know, aggressive tactics. And we had a meeting with General Miller and with Lieutenant Cornel Pfeiffer, and the whole group in which we presented that. And after the meeting, I can't remember if it was Lacey or Bernie, but one of them knocked on our door where we were in the CITF Building, and when I opened the door, and the guy was in tears, and he said, "You have to just take our names off that, and don't ever mention again that we sided with you on this." Because Lieutenant Colonel Pfeiffer just threatened him with a court martial for insubordination for going against him in public. And he said if he ever opens his mouth to contradict him again, that he will be court-martialed. And that's why they were not able to sort of join in our plan or, you know, fight what they were doing, because Lieutenant Colonel Pfeiffer was bullying them, and I mean, commanding them not to do that. Interviewer 1: Was there any of the agencies, federal agencies that were along with the FBI in terms of trying to get what you call a rapport-based interrogation? - Yeah. Well, there was Mark Macquarie, was a JAG attorney. I think he was from Naval Criminal Investigative Service, I'm pretty sure. And as soon as I opened my mouth, and kinda went toe to toe with Lieutenant Colonel Pfeiffer after that meeting, he came up to me and said, "I've been trying to do that since I got down here. Thank God you're here." You know, so, we all joined forces- Interviewer 1: The CIA? Where was there? - No. The CIA was not interested at all in what we were talking about. They were... They ran their own interrogations. They would not in general, allow us to view those interrogations, and they did not want any input from them. Interviewer 1: Do you know what kinda interrogations they ran? - Well, I know that the guys 682 that I talked to, he told me eventually, when he opened up, that the reason he had stopped talking, was because he was, he said he was tortured by two FBI agents in Afghanistan. And that clearly upset me very much. I didn't understand it until, you know, later on in the game, when a couple of CIA agents who identified themselves to me as Bob and Bob, claimed in a meeting with the General that I was preventing them from getting access to 682. I said, you know, it's ridiculous because I've never met you before, nor have you ever communicated with me, so I don't believe it's possible for me to prevented you from getting access. You can have access to him anytime you want, I don't control the man. And I said, "Let's go right now." And they said, "Well, we'll do it on our own time." And so, that night I waited in the observation room but they typically used. And sure enough, around 10:30 or 11 o'clock at night, they brought in 682. And when those two guys came in, there's also a female that came in with them. But when they walked in, he sat up straight and said, "I know you guys, you're failing Joe. You're the guy... You're the FBI agents who tortured me in Afghanistan." So, now, it became clear that those two CIA agents had fraudulently portrayed themselves as FBI agents, and then tortured this guy and he stopped talking after that. So, somebody who was originally cooperative became uncooperative because of how he was treated. And then, when I spent over the course of 21 days, you know, about 12 days with this guy, I got him back to the cooperation mode, because I treated him like a human being. I gave them dignity and respect, and I let him control some things, little things that, you know, helped him feel like I was making his life better, and in return, he started talking to us. Interviewer 1: Do you know the detainee ever tell you what, how he was treated by the two men in Afghanistan? - He said things like standing on a box and stress positions, bent over at the waist with his arms out for hours at a time, and things like this. You know, off the top of my head, I don't recall whether he got, you know, wet toweled, you know, what they're calling waterboarding now. I just don't remember all the details of that. But, you know, he didn't... He wasn't that forthcoming because remember, when he was telling me about it, I was the enemy, you know, I was an FBI agent, and in his mind, it's FBI that did this to him. I think probably still to today, because I, you know, I didn't add to his knowledge base at all. It wasn't, you know, certainly not my job to tell him, "Oh, those were CIA agents." You know, that kinda thing, so I didn't do that. Interviewer 1: You ever heard about the stories where CIA agents pretended they were FBI? - I've heard about that, yeah, sure. Interviewer 1: Well, did you hear about that in Guantanamo too, or just? - No, that's the only time I heard, you know, off Island I heard about it. I don't know if it occurred in... And certainly, if these guys didn't tell him, "No, we're not FBI, we're CIA." And they didn't do that when I watched him. So, I think they were continuing to perpetuate that fraud. Interviewer 1: When you saw the interrogation practices in Guantanamo, who did you go to, to report besides your immediate supervisors that the best source to try to see if you can make the change or? - Well, we tried and tried to get a one-on-one with General Miller, and until Lieutenant Colonel Pfeiffer was actually off Island, we didn't get that opportunity. And it was the day before, I believe, I left the Island, sometime in early December. And myself and Tom Near, and our immediate supervisor, Ron van Rankin, and Billy Spencer who's another FBI agent, brilliant guy who really was a subject matter expert. We all went and sat down for about two hours with General Miller, and we each took a segment of time explaining different aspects of it. So, I read my legal analysis of the interrogation techniques, memo to him, and then I went through my interrogation plan, and the results with 682. Tom Near talked about the report-based interrogation plan that we had built for their detainees. And Billy Spencer kind of filled in sort of the historical places where that fit in between the different cases that were going on in the U.S and abroad. And after two hours, the General said to us, "Well, gentlemen, thank you for your time, but my boys know what they're doing. Have a nice day." And dismissed us, and that's it, they did nothing at that time. And I saw, I remember seeing an interview of him, you know, after the whole Abu Ghraib thing broke. And he went from GITMO to Abu Ghraib to get more wise, Abu Ghraib, and he did a great job of it. And he said in this interview, after all that broke, that he was a staunch advocate of rapport-based interrogation techniques, and he never advocated anything aggressive or violent with the detainees. And again, that's an absolute lie, there's just no way that that's the truth. Not only did I see him say, "I want better, faster, cheaper." I want this, I want results, I want all that, Pfeiffer and Becker, Mr. Becker, he was the guy they hired as their interrogation expert. I asked him what his expertise was or his experience in that area, he had done debriefing interviews of Boeing employees when they came back from Hong Kong or something like that. That's his entire experience level, he was not... He's a fraud, he is absolutely not interrogation expert. And I believe the military is touting him as their, you know, sort of expert, and he's been on reports and stuff as an expert. Tom Near and I went to one of the sort of prep sessions before they took detainee 63 from our jurisdiction, from the FBI's jurisdiction. They basically snatched them out in the middle of the night, put a hood on him and, you know, did all sorts of stuff to him, which ended up in the hospital the next day. Interviewer 1: Did you observe other abuses? - Yeah, I will, but let me get to this because I'll forget it. Becker said, you know, they're gonna hold a... We got, we became aware that they were gonna hold a prep session for this, their first, you know, session with 63. Interviewer 1: And could be present there? - Well, we showed up. I don't know that he wanted us there, but we showed up and they didn't prevent us from being there. And we thought we'd be sitting down at a table and discuss in the interrogation plan. And he was standing at the end of the room, Tom and I were standing at the far side, and maybe a dozen Sergeant level, military members were there. Sergeant Lacey was one of them, and I'll have to get back to her too, L-A-C-E-Y, I think or L-A-C-Y. And he got up in front of the room, and he ran it like a pep rally. "General says our boot can't across the Torture Statute line, but our shadow certainly can." "Yeah," everybody's cheering. "General says that the Torture Statute says, you can't have music over 80 decibels, so I wanted it at 79 decibels at all time." And somebody yells out, "79.9." He's like, "Yeah, that's what the general wants to hear." And that's how it was run, and we were just shocked, like, oh, my God, these people! And these are young people, 21, 23-year-olds, they don't have any experience in this. They don't have no idea what they're doing, they don't know what the big picture is, but they're being encouraged by Becker, by Lieutenant Colonel Pfeiffer, by Lieutenant Colonel Beaver to do this, because they believe that this is what the General wants them to do. And I believe this is what the general wants them to do, and when I tried to convince him otherwise, he blatantly threw us out, basically, totally dismissed us. And by the tone of his voice and by his actions, we knew that it was a complete waste of time. And so, it was, you know, it was quite an enlightening experience. But after my first meetings with Pfeiffer and so forth, I decided I better document the things that were going on because I didn't know how high up people knew of what was going on down here. And I knew that every single day leads were coming in from cases from the United States. And they were being put into a binder in every interrogation room. And every interrogator was supposed to, if they got somebody who was cooperative, who was supposed to go through the photographs and the documents and get the detainee to tell them about that. And I tried to teach them about the doctrine of the fruit the poisonous tree, you're gonna ruin every single investigation and case in the United States if you continue to do this stuff. Do you just use simply coercion and you've just blown it all. And is that what you're trying to do here? So, that why I wrote my memo to show them, the different levels of interrogation tactics. And what I did, was I went right from their documents. These are the tactics that are approved, and these are the ones we're using. So, I went right from their document and broke them out into things that I thought were coercive, things that I thought were, you know, unconstitutional, and things that I thought were actually, directly against the Torture Statute. And it's based on, you know, not just the fact that I was a lawyer and a former prosecutor, but the fact that at that point, you know, I had had, you know, I don't know, 15-18 years in the FBI defending the constitution, doing investigations well within the constitution, so I knew it pretty well. So, anyway, I had a meeting with Lieutenant Colonel Beaver because I was asked to sit down and sort of come up with some sort of compromise that we could both agree on, the FBI and the Military. Interviewer 1: Could you tell us who Lieutenant Beaver is? - She was the legal advisor for general Miller at Guantanamo. And she wrote a... I was handed by her, a legal opinion that went through the interrogation tactics. And I was aghast, I could not believe what I had read there. She's sitting across the table from me and I looked, and I said, "You're not serious." Because what she had written, was she went through, you know, the case histories and military case histories and so forth, and talked about, you know, different interrogation techniques and so forth, and the Torture Statute, and she said, "Caution should be exercised in utilizing the following tactics." And, you know, things like pushing, and shoving could be an assault, and so on and so forth. And then, you know, coming down to sort of waterboarding or wet toweling at the time. And she said that the tortures... "Caution should be exercising in utilizing these methods because the Torture Statute specifically addresses and prohibit these behaviors." And so, she then goes on to say, "However, since our intent is not to cause serious physical injury, or mental injury, or death, but to get information, the Torture Statute does not apply." And I just... I just said, "This is not based on any legal standard. Where did you go to law school? How could you possibly write this?" And she goes, "It's a, you know, it's a solid legal opinion or something." And I said, "That's absolutely not true, it's completely false. You're doing a terrible disservice. You know who you're doing it to? The people who are on the front lines, who are gonna follow your opinion, they're gonna do what you tell them to do, and they're gonna be subject to arrest, prosecution." You know, I said, "Arrest, indictment, prosecution, and most likely conviction, because you are telling them to do this, and they believe you." And she said, "Well, the General believes me and not you." And I was like, "What? Why I keep getting thrown back to the school yard here? Who are these immature people?" I mean, it's unbelievable, but these are the people that are doing the job of trying to get this incredibly vital information from these guys. And then she says, she at some point during the... We spent hours and hours trying to hammer out sort of a compromise plan. And during that time, she said that when they ran out of ideas, they were actually watching the show "24," to get ideas on what to do with the detainees. Interviewer 1: She told you this? - She told me that. And I was, I couldn't believe it. It just, it was so wrong. And it, you know, it just went downhill from there. So, what ended up happening, was I said, "Look, there is no compromise plan. I will do a hybrid plan, where I will do rapport-building as my phase one, and we will not sign off on any of the rest of your plan unless you remove all this from the rest of the plan, we will not sign off on it. And so, it's hybrid in that I'm only agreeing to phase one. And I wrote into the actual plan, "The FBI does not agree to this, and unless this is removed, we will not sign off on this plan." And I did it for all the other phases, because they continued to do the same kind of crap, you know, aggressive, you know, demeaning, horrendously bad things to these people in somewhat of... In their, you know, ridiculous attempt to try to get information from them. And then, they added this thing called the Upland Syndrome. And this is something that Tom and I had never heard before. And they basically said that, you know, they found that, the CIA found that when they had agents undercover in foreign lands, and nobody spoke English and they weren't allowed to talk to anybody that they would come back to the United States and get into a taxi and some, a taxi driver would be, speak English to them, and they'd immediately blurred out secret stuff, because they just had this need to talk about what they've been doing. - And so, if this was blended into the interrogation plan, and what they said was, "We're gonna duct tape this guy's mouth shut, and we're gonna ask them questions and bombard them with stuff, and do all this mean nasty stuff to him for four hours straight. And then we're gonna tear off the tape, and he's gonna just wanna talk to us." And it, again, what are you talking about? And it was George Alloquest. Interviewer 1: Who's that? - He was an interpreter who said he worked for the agency before, and was aware of several missions where they use this technique, this is where they're getting this information from. And so, Tom and I met Lacey and Bernie and we said, "You know, look, we've been doing this stuff between us for, you know, 50 years, we've never heard of this. What is it?" And they are the ones that told us about Alloquest and how they got this. And they said, "Look, we were just on the internet trying to find it, because we have never heard of it either." And so, it was just outrageous. - All the upland? - Upland Syndrome. And it's sort of a, you know, maybe a variation of the Stockholm Syndrome or something like that, you know? Interviewer 1: Did you see anybody with duct tape? - I didn't, but my predecessor there, one time he was doing, observing an interrogation in another room and Mr. Becker comes running in all excited, "Yo, you gotta come and see this! You gotta come see this!" He led them into another room where they had completely duct tape the entire face and head of one of the detainees, because he had been just reciting the Quran from memory when they were trying to interrogate him. All over his hair, and his beard, and his face. And it was Bob Morton, and Bob turned to Becker and said, "You know, what do you think you're doing? And how are you gonna get it off?" And he was just totally like, "Well, wait a minute, you're supposed to be all excited about this, 'cause we did this really cool thing." It's just, that's the kind of sophomore crap that they were doing down there. They were completely, you know, misguided, and, you know, unsupervised by anybody who had any kinda moral. Interviewer 1: And you had all these frustrations with General Miller and then with Colonel Beaver, was there anyone else to go to? - Well, yeah, I wrote, I sent it off Island to... I sent my memo to my supervisors and to FBI headquarters to have them address these issues. And they eventually, they sent somebody down to deal with General directly. And they, as a result of Tom and I also said, that we need to have a more permanent presence down here, not just rotating agents through. And they eventually put a permanent unit chief down there and agents for, you know, six or nine months stints instead of 45 days stints. Interviewer 1: But it doesn't seem like the military heard? - Well, they didn't eventually... They didn't initially, but they did eventually. What we did, what basically happened, was it became a real bifurcated process where the federal agents that were down there were using one methodology, and the military were using another, and they were basically, there was a wall in between them because we couldn't convince them. Interviewer 1: So, the FBI would do their own interrogation independently from Military? - Yes, there's a number of... We would have 10 high value detainees that we focused on. And then as new people came in, we sort of evaluated whether they were in, sort of our group or their group, and sometimes we had tug of Wars over them. I mean, 63 was a good example. We wanted to interrogate him, and military wanted to interrogate him, but, you know, more like they want to... We wanted him to interrogate 'em, and they want it to torture 'em, and it was just outrageous. Interviewer 1: Did you observe any abuse of 63 or any? - No, not of 63, because they would take him... They took 'em out of the camp in the middle of the night and brought them to Camp X-Ray from Camp Delta. You know, flew 'em around, you know, a helicopter to disorient them, you know, hooded 'em and did all that stuff, and lights and all that. And all I knew was that I heard the next day, after they did this, without telling us in advance. But I heard the next day that he was in the hospital. I had, I did actually spend some time interviewing him with agent Jim Fitzgerald from New York. And when I did, we spent, he was in isolation in the brig, had been for quite a while. He had been, ever since I was there, and he was there for a long time before I got there in the brig in isolation. And he kept talking about genie and spirits, like he was talking to other people that weren't there. He was not aware of the date or the time, or the time of year. He was speaking... He wanted to get back to the Island where his brothers were. He didn't think he was on Guantanamo anymore. And I said, I wrote out that he needed to be evaluated mentally before any interrogation continued because, you know, for his own mental wellbeing, but also, because you can't trust anything that somebody says if he's elucidating. And so, you know, that was one of the things I said, but they totally disregarded it, and just continued their ridiculous efforts. I think eventually, you know, I know eventually they started implementing things that we had suggested and some of that is still classified, and so, I can't talk about it. But, you know, it was certainly, it was things that we've done traditionally, that actually resulted in him cooperating. You know, but it wasn't until they did their, you know, nasty stuff to him for a while, and that didn't work. Interviewer 1: You said you did observe some abuses? - Yeah. Well, you know... Yes, I did. For example, Sergeant Lacey, I was in a inter... Excuse me, observation room and working with the team that was in this interrogation room through the glass, and I was sitting in front of this monitor. There's another monitor here, and another glass there to that room. She came in at some point, they apparently had a detainee in there, in that room. And she came in and said, you know, "Just," you know, loud and obnoxiously, "Who's messing with this curtain here, you're distracting my detainee." And I had headphones on, I'm watching this and listening to that. And I said, "What are you talking about?" "Somebody is doing this." So, she made a big flourish about ordering the Marine to duct tape the curtain closed on that window. And so, I'm not stupid, you know, obviously she's doing this for a reason. So, her partner then came in and sat really close to the monitor like this to try to block my view of it, so I made sure I watched it very closely. And she walked around him, she's whispering in his ear. She's putting lotion on her hands and rubbing it on his arms. It's Ramadan, and if, you know, and if they're unclean, if they've been touched by a woman they're not married to, they can't pray, and so, it's clear that this is what she's doing. And there's a Marine because her partner was here, there's always has to be somebody else in the room. So, the Marine would go in and stand by and watch when this happened, he's standing by the detainee, and she's kinda walking around the back. And then she sits in front of him, sort of to cut off, block the view from the camera that's behind her, that she kind of sits. He's sitting there like this shackled with his hands and then two bolt, you know, through the chain belt, arm cuffed and then through bolts in the floor. And she sits here with one knee on either side of his knee, close to him. I could see her bringing her hands down, his arms, his bare arms and elbows going towards his hands. And when they got to the area of his crotch, I couldn't see, because of the angle of the camera, but I could see him turning his head and grimacing in pain. And this goes on for a while, and she keeps doing this back and forth. And I documented the time, and her name, and I got that Marine afterwards, and I said, what was she doing, when he... That was causing him to turn his head to the side and grimace in pain? He said, "She was bending his thumbs back, and she was grabbing his shit." I mean, his genitals? And he goes, "If you think that's bad, I've seen her having guys on the floor, in a fetal position, crying for hours after she got done with them." And, you know, it seemed very sadistic to me, and it was consistent with what I saw of her behavior. And she was one of the ones in the room that was cheering when they were planning this 63 interrogation. You know, the one that I told you about with Becker, that Tom Near and I had observed. And so, that was one of the things that I documented, it was an accepted practice down there. It wet towel that was standard operating procedure, because they felt that this was all fine based on Beaver's legal memo, and the General's encouragement. Interviewer 1: Did Beaver say to you that she got that memo from John, you, or Jake Bobby, that they wrote it and she just adopted, but they had instructed her to do? - Absolutely not. She said she wrote it and the General beliefs her and not me. Interviewer 1: for that memo? - absolutely. And if she said now that somebody else wrote that, you know, she's a liar either to me or to whoever she told that to. it was written, it was signed by her. And I've also heard that that Pfeiffer said that Becker did all this stuff and he had nothing to do with it, and that's also an absolute lie. Interviewer 1: Could you tell us again, what roll Becker had with his title? - He was the head of HUMINT. So, he was DHS, Department of Human Services, so human intelligence. So, he was the one that was running the interrogation plans. But Pfeiffer is the one that handed me the plan. So, and then if we approved it, then he would give it to Becker to carry it out. But Becker and Pfeiffer were coming up with the ideas, and apparently, Beaver as well, although, you know, the only session I ever had with Beaver, was that night when they tried to get it... They wanted me to come up with a compromise plan, and instead I did this hybrid because I wouldn't agree to the whole plan. You know, I just, and I wanted to make sure it was clear. And I think I wrote an email the next day, because my bosses were like, "Yeah, this plan is crap." And I said, "Yeah, but you know what? If we don't agree to this hybrid plan, they're gonna start torturing him today. At least this gives us two weeks to do the rapport-building when we could get them to stop the rest from it. It protects this detainee for the next two weeks. And so, I was trying to advocate them doing that, not that I liked the plan, but it was... I was trying to do, to find a legal way to separate myself from the backend of the plan to get him protected now, because I know that any day now, they're gonna snatch him and do their stuff to him. Interviewer 1: When you came to Guantanamo, what did you expect to see? - Oh, my God. I thought we were gonna be sitting down with reasonable people who actually wanted to get the most, you know, unbiased and accurate information from these people. Interviewer 1: You had no idea? - I had no idea. I mean, there was some... I will say this, there were some emails from one of my predecessors down there, Charlie, where he said, you know, these guys are doing crazy stuff. But, you know, email, it's not cloud... It's, you know, it's not classified communication. And, you know, he said, we're having real problems with that and our boss has said, you know, basically said, do not participate in anything that you believe is wrong. You know, this bright line, and that's what they did. But none of the guys that went before me were attorneys, and former prosecutors. And I think I had a more, you know, legal perspective on it, and I don't know that either of them had ever read the Torture Statute. Because certainly we didn't go down there thinking, you know, I need to read the Torture Statute, 'cause we had no idea what to expect. But when I was down there talking to Mark MacQuarrie, the JAG lawyer who's down there, we pulled up the statute and I went through it line by line, and that's how I wrote my legal memo based on that. And, of course my, you know, my training and education before that. But, you know, it was a... It was a shock and surprise to see that they were doing that. I have in my career, I worked in the Behavioral Analysis Unit. I've interviewed serial killers, I've interviewed child abductors who rape and kill their victims. Some really nasty people, psychopaths. I have not been, you know, exposed to anybody that I can't find a way to build rapport with. I don't care who they are, nobody is absolutely evil. And I know that from my own experience in Guantanamo, they can be done, and it's an effective way to do it. But what I've never been exposed to before, was sadistic people who took advantage of a situation. I don't necessarily believe... I mean, from my interaction with Sergeant Lacey, I believe that she had some pretty sadistic behavioral characteristics. I think a lot of them at that level were just gung hoe, U.S Military wanting to save their country. And the leaders were telling them what to do. What I was concerned about, was that the military would blame it on them, you know, push it downhill. And I saw that happening in Abu Ghraib. I mean, as a result of what happened there, who got prosecuted, you know, these lowly "rogue" military personnel. Well, I think that's, I think that's a bunch of crap, I don't believe that at all. And to think that they did that without any supervision or encouragement, I don't believe that's the case. And I, of course, when I did what I did, it was years before that all came out. So, I had no way of knowing that, but I certainly got that feeling, that, that was what was gonna happen. So, I saved, except for that first interrogation plan that Pfeiffer pulled out of my hands, I saved all the other iterations, and I put them there in a classified, safe in my office, in the FBI. You know, I preserve those because I did not believe that the military was gonna stand up and take credit for what they were doing. Interviewer 1: When you went back home in three months? You were there for three months? - I was there for about 45 days, maybe a little more. But I think it was mid-October through the first week of December, something like that. Interviewer 1: So, what were you thinking when you went back home? What did you expect? Did you think Guantanamo was gonna be lawless like that? - No. I'm thinking... Well, in that process, we had a couple of video teleconferences with, you know, sort of all the entities that are involved, Military, you know, the Pentagon, DOJ, FBI, our unit, and GITMO. And one of 'em, Lieutenant Colonel Pfeiffer, you know, report it to everybody that the FBI had signed off on his plan, which was an absolute lie. So, we at that point, Tom and I, and Ron van Rankin. Ron was the sort of the supervisor down there, so he got to make the call that we would not interrupt the VTC and challenged them on video teleconference. And so, we sat down and wrote a letter to the General, and that culminated in us, eventually getting to see him the day before I left the Island, in which we were completely dismissed. But at the next VTC, we had actually told another psychologist, Mike, and I can't remember his last name right now, sorry. But that was sort of a military contractor. We had told him that, you know, if they say that this is, that we've signed off on it, it's absolutely not true. And so, he was at... I don't know if it was the... He was probably at the Pentagon conference room that was on this VTC. When he, when Pfeiffer made that claim, again, he leaned over to the woman who was running it and whispered in her ear, and she said, "Wait a minute, the FBI does not agree with this plan. You guys are having conflict about this. We need to do an immediate dispute resolution or we're calling off this VTC." And then they came down. So, it was right at the end of my time there, and then a whole bunch of people came down, including, you know, higher officials from FBI headquarters and they started working on it. And I think, like I said, there was a real bifurcation after that point, and we made it clear that not only did we, were not gonna participate in this, but you should not be doing this stuff. We didn't have... I don't think we had jurisdiction to tell them what they could do in a military setting, but we told them it was the wrong thing to do because it's not going to produce the kind of information, reliable information that you want. Interviewer 1: At that point, that you heard of John, you, and Jay Bobby's memo, that defined torture the way you described, the memo also did? - I don't know. what's the date of that memo? No. Interviewer 1: August, 1st of 2002. - Yeah. I did not hear of that. I did get at some point, and I believe... Well, I believe it was while I was down there, but I got the Rumsfeld memo, where he wrote on the side about, you know, "I stand for 12 to 16 hours a day," or something like that. Why what's the big deal about eight hours or something? Why only eight hours, something like that. Clearly somebody who doesn't understand, you know, what a stress position is, and, you know, and also, you know, it's if he knows, that they're asking these people questions about U.S cases, he should have the intelligence to understand that, that is gonna taint all these investigations. And I think that's exactly what happened, because when they did try to try, tried to prosecute terrorists in the United States, they found out that the defense were actually gonna ask for what happened down here, where they got this information. And they immediately withdrew those prosecutions. So, you know, it was not a good plan, and it just couldn't hold up. And I was trying to protect and preserve the process as well as protect these helpless human beings. And by the way, when I did talk to 682, when I did start engaging him and he started telling me about family and so forth, I mean, it was amazing. I mean, here's a guy who went to engineering school in the United States, with the express purpose of learning how to build bombs and blowing us up. Interviewer 1: Can you tell us what country his from? - I can't. I mean, I just don't wanna. You know, I'm still telling numbers I know they've published names and stuff, but I don't wanna violate, you know what I'm... You know, it doesn't do me any good to say, they're doing something wrong by violating the rules, and then I do the same thing, so I'm trying not to do that. Interviewer 1: He was in the U.S too? - Yeah, well, he came to U.S to learn, and he went back to actually, you know, do it. And so, he's, you know, he's firmly resolve that they're going to... Islam is gonna take over the world. I mean, it's an extreme view, but he admitted to me he goes, "You don't see me or Osama strapping on a suicide bomb. It's very easy to manipulate 18 to 21-year-olds. And you have to use them for what they're good for." I mean, the lieutenants and the colonels have to lead, and so, they don't do it themselves. And, you know, I mean, he's was very open about that eventually. But, you know, so it's a problem, it's a real issue. But by the same token, he's human being, and you know, and again, it's just you have to be sadistic to be able to hurt somebody when they're helpless, so I just don't understand how they could do that. And on the other hand, there was a 15-year-old who was a detainee. And I can't remember his number, but he was from Canada, but he was badly scarred, and I'm trying to think of what side. I think this side of his face and across his chest. He had been injured in firefight and the U.S medic came to help him, and he was so proud because he waited until the medic came right next to him before he pulled the pin on his grenade, and held it up against the guy's chest and threw it at the guy's chest and killed the medic. And so, he said his father would be really proud of him, that he was able to kill the guy but he thought he was gonna kill himself at the same time, but he didn't die. Interviewer 1: Did he tell you this? - Yeah. - That 15-year-old? Interviewer 1: He told you what you just told me? - Yeah, he did. He was very proud of it, he was beaming. He said his father taught him how to make bombs, and he taught him how to fight, and he would be very proud of him. That's one of the interviews that they asked me to do personally. And Tom and I were in the room with him when he said that. Interviewer 1: Apparently, he was tortured in Afghanistan before he came to Guantanamo. Did he tell you that or have you heard that? - I hadn't heard that. If we're talking about the same guy, I don't know- - There's only one from Canada? Yeah. Okay. All right. Interviewer 1: I can tell you his name, if you want me to reveal it? - You know, I literally made... - I rather not? - No. I made, you know, an effort to learn their numbers, you know, not their names, because I didn't want to reveal something that, you know, I shouldn't, so I don't remember. But I mean, if you tell me his name, I'll see Interviewer 1: Omar Khadir was the 14-year-old who was captured and who was in a family of Al-Qaeda. His father's Lieutenant to Bin Laden, and he was involved in a firefight in Afghanistan. - So, when I talked to this guy, he was 15. And I don't know if you've spoken to him, but he had, you know, major scars across his chest and his face. - He lost an eye? - Yeah, it could be. I just remember, yeah. Yeah, he was pretty bad off. But yeah, I mean, he was... We can just build rapport and we talked to him about his family for a while. You know, and he talks about his father, and then, you know, and then he talked about how his father taught him how to build bombs, and how, you know, his father would have been very proud. I mean, he was bragging at that point. I mean, that's exactly how you get information from him, I mean, he was a 15-year-old kid, it's not that difficult. Interviewer 1: He told you how he killed the sergeant? - Yeah. He was proud of that, yeah. Interviewer 1: Was that documented? When you interview, do you tape interviews, or do you just take notes? Do you, do you know? - No, the interviews were not... They were video monitored but not taped. It's documented in the file. Interviewer 1: Do you write it up after you leave? - I didn't, the case agent. - Who's present at the time? - Yes. - So, that's available too? - I suppose. Interviewer 1: How did you choose who to interview? You said you chose high value detainees, and he was apparently one. Did you make those choices? - I didn't. When I got down there, they had a list of 10 that the FBI had this high value. And there were people that came and went, you know, so that list, whether it was that person was now transferred to the military, they were all filing, they were, you know, no longer deemed important, or somebody else was of more importance. But we basically had a list of 10 that the federal agencies were sort of focusing on. And whether that got... The reason why I got involved in that, was that the teams that were doing the interrogations would ask us for assistance, if they were having, you know, particular difficulty trying to get information out of somebody, or if they felt like they may not have, you know, the best idea how to do it. I mean, we do interview strategies as part of our job in the Behavioral Analysis Unit. I had, you know, experience, you know, interviewing adolescents. So, I, you know, I told him I could it. Interviewer 1: Did you meet him just that one time? - Yeah. What I believe is, and I'm not sure if it's all the same day, but, we watched, Tom and I watched, observed his interview for a while, and then we went in and conducted our interview. But this is, you know, it's one of the sort of bread and butter things that we did in the criminal world in the United States, so it's not... I mean, most of the interviews of teenagers that I've done, have been as victims of crimes, but it's the same exact technique that you use. I mean, you're just trying to humanize yourself to them, and gives them an opportunity to talk about things that are very, you know, sort of low stress to them, to norm them, and to see what their normal like. Interviewer 1: So, if you were that successful, which apparently you were, why wouldn't the military let you return and continue interrogating them? - It's not that I wouldn't be able to, I was doing it as a exercise to teach the case agent that was down there how to do it. Interviewer 1: The case agent to the military person? - No, the CITF people were the ones we were doing that kind of advice for, really, the only... I'm trying to think. Well, there was a number of different detainees that I was involved in, but I'm telling you basically the ones that I had the most interaction with. I mean, I physically did the interrogation of 682. I did one session with this young guy, but most of the time, we would observe, and then they would take a break, and we'd give 'em ideas or areas that I thought that they... I thought, well, this guy he's showing signs of stress, when you talk about this, he may be lying to you about this. He seems to really relax when you talk about this, so why don't you spend some more time doing that? You know, that, and that is, you know, it's an ongoing process, it's the most dynamic form of profiling, is the interrogation process, because you constantly have to shift gears and read, and based on that, and then give information and take information and feedback. And, you know, it's a human interaction. Interviewer 1: The case agent was open to your assistance? - Yeah. The CITF always was. I mean, they were federal agents who came down to, as part of the, you know, sort of investigative effort down there. And so, they were very, you know... Interviewer 1: Appreciative. - Appreciative of our expertise, because, you know, typically they were younger agents, and they didn't have the level of experience, but that's how we got into the unit in the Behavioral Analysis Unit, because we had a high level of experience in these different areas. Interviewer 1: So, when you said the CIA did its own interrogation in its own trailer, I assume you're all permitted to observe that interrogation? - In general, no, but I did go in that one night when they brought 682. But that's the only time I was ever in the... They had these huts, basically, you know, kind of big glorified trailers, I guess, that was separate from the sort of really big, long interrogation buildings that the military, and the FBI, and the federal set of guys used, men ans women actually. Interviewer 1: And had you ever heard of something called Camp No, know when you were down there? - I don't believe so. Interviewer 1: And the General's cottage, had you heard of that? - No. Interviewer 1: Those were terms that we use sometimes for interrogation, but no one really knows. So, I just wondered if that was separate from the CIA trailer? - I don't know. The CIA, I think there were three or four trailers in that separate section that the CIAs use. But I know that there was, you know, there was an isolation section in the brig and not in brig. The brig was, yes, I'm sorry. There's an isolation section where they kept 63 and then the brig, but there was also a solitary section in the actual camp. The brig is, you know, far removed from where the camp was. Interviewer 1: When you say brig, is that a different camp or? - No, the brig is the jail, the military jail that's on the base. Interviewer 1: And that didn't have our camp number? That was totally separate from the camp? - It is the Marine Corps jail. So, they used it for an isolation chamber for 63. Interviewer 1: Just for him alone, or for some other men too? - While I was there, it was just him. Interviewer 1: Wow! - But I think that's all part of like disorienting him, and making him think he's not on the same place. But then, one of the things that we had advocated and I heard, I don't know how long after it happened, it actually happened, was to build sort of the country club version of GITMO to reward people who were being cooperative. And, you know, it could be, you know very minor things, but some freedoms and, you know, soccer field, or, you know, condo type living, whatever it is, and I think they eventually did build that. You know, but there's no... You know, they were, at the time, they were trying to figure out a system of rewards and punishments for these guys. You know, we... It was mostly punishments and very little- Interviewer 1: What do you think of a reward systems that makes sense than the way you train people, is that? - Sure. I mean, again, you know, by giving them a little bit of dignity and respect, it's gonna go a long way to undermine their belief systems about us being evil. If you reinforce it by being mean and nasty and harsh to them, then it's gonna be very easy for them to continue their belief systems. If you undermine their belief systems, it throws them for a loop. They really don't know how to respond, and they're gonna end up responding like a human to, you know, somebody who reaches out their hand and helps them. And, you know, for the most part, it's, you know, it's very effective. I mean, you have to look at the personality of the person you're talking to. If you're dealing with a psychopathic narcissistic offender, then you're gonna have to feed his ego to get to him, because he doesn't care. If you're dealing with somebody who has a human empathy and who cares about, you know, other people, then you might be able to approach them from that, it just depends on that person. And you really have to type that person, and then norm that person and see what their behavior is like, and then use it. Interviewer 1: It seems so common sense to me. I can understand what a military- - Well, they've never been trained in that, that's not their job. They don't do that for a living, and that's why we came down there. Unfortunately, they were not open to what we had to say. Eventually, they did change their manual, and now all rapport-based. So, you know, I think we did accomplish our goal, but, you know, it took time. Interviewer 1: Were the justice department officials down there too, at the time? - When you say justice department officials? - DoJ? - I am a DOJ official. Right. I work for the FBI- - You're also DoJ? - We're under DoJ. I mean, we're in that chain of command, but, you know, certainly, I was not part of the Department of Justice you know, the headquarters, but we certainly interacted with them through these video teleconferences, and also, when I sent my memo up, you know, to... Interviewer 1: But that's so shocking to me 'cause they had to know 'cause they had seen John News memos. I assume and maybe they didn't, but it seems to me that they would have known what you would, you know, the reaction? - What was going on down there? Interviewer 1: Yeah. - Well, I mean, we have a chain of command, right? So, I have to send it to my unit chiefs and to headquarters, and, you know, then they're responsible for giving it to the Pentagon and the DoJ, or whatever. But I'd wanted to make sure that, that process was begun. And like I said, I tried to insert a sort of a two-week rapport-based plan, so that we could have time for the wheels of justice to turn and they come down and fix it. And by the time I, you know, got to that part in the process, I think what eventually happened, was they decided to just take 63 and implement their plan. And, you know, without, of course, our approval or our participation, and we heard about after the fact, you know, 63's gone, "He's in the hospital." Interviewer 1: Why didn't they send you back down to Guantanamo again? Why were you only there for 45 days? - Because, well, first of all, I mean, one of my areas of expertise is interviewing and interrogation, but I worked child abductions, and serial murders, and serial rapes. And that was our, you know, that's my main mission. We rotated down there to help the process, and then advocated for permanent placement down there, of, you know, people in our position so that they'd have continuity and consistency, and they did that. So, we just went back to our regular jobs when we came back. Interviewer 1: Did anybody say anything to you when you went back as to your work in Guantanamo? - Well, I think initially before I wrote my memo, they were like, "Why aren't you getting along down there?" And once they got my memo, I think they realized. And, you know, I said, "Why am I not getting along?" I said, because... And this is what I said to 'em, "Because in 10 years from now, I'm gonna be standing in front of Congress with my right hand raise, trying to explain why I didn't stop this from happening if I don't do what I'm doing." And I think, you know, they got that, you know? And so, it happened a lot sooner than I thought. But what, you know, unfortunately, I got cancer in the middle of all this. And so, a lot of the, you know, interviews and investigations, I did, I was interviewed by phone. But what I felt with all the investigations that had occurred, but they had a very narrow focus. The military were looking at what their military people were doing. The Federal people were looking at what their Federal people were doing, and there was no, "Well, that's somebody else's jurisdiction, we're not looking at that." And so, they asked very narrow questions, and they didn't wanna know the whole picture. And it became very easy for them to say it, to put blinders on and not sort of get the big picture. And so, I think that was the biggest flaw in that system. You know, "The Military will be responsible for turning over the military documents." Well, no, they're not, they're not being responsible, they're not gonna do that, you know? So, anyway, I preserved them. so those are, you know, in a safe at the FBI if they're ever needed. Interviewer 1: Have they been examined by others? - Yeah. Well, I sent them to headquarters, you know, and they, you know, disclosed a number of them I think through freedom of information redacted versions. I think they probably turned them over to Senator Leahy, and Senator McCain's offices. I don't know what I was talking about, so I'm off track here. Interviewer 1: So, you find yourself in a situation that you had no idea what was gonna happen. And then when you came back? - Yeah. When I came back. But I remember what I was gonna say. After I had a bone marrow transplant, I was kind of out of communication for about a month or two. And I got a call, sort of a frantic call from the FBI's General Counsel's Office, and guy said, "We're trying to determine who wrote this legal analysis? Are you aware of this legal analysis?" And I said, yeah, I'm aware of this, I wrote it. And they're, "No, no. We're talking about the legal analysis of the interrogation tactics?" And I said, yeah, I wrote it. He goes, "You wrote this?" And I said, yeah. He goes, "Why did you write it?" And I said, "Because I was down there, I saw what was happening, I saw the problems with it. I wanted to stop it, and I thought maybe somebody at headquarters might be wanting to be made aware of this." And he goes, "Nobody told you to write this?" And I said, "No, nobody told me to." He goes, "You should just be aware you saved the FBI's ass." And I said, "What do you mean?" He goes, "Well, you documented the fact that we were fighting them from the minute we found out about this stuff. And that is, you know, exactly what we did, but at least you put it down on paper." And I said, "I'm a lawyer, I'm an FBI agent, that's what we do, I was just doing my job. It's nothing, you know, out of the ordinary." And, you know, eventually the director was, you know, waving that memo in front of Congress, and so, I'm glad I did it. You know, it was the right thing to do. And in fact, they just finished filming. Well, they just put together, they finished filming it while I was still an agent, but a 45 minute video that they're gonna show to new agents right before they take their oath of office. And it's called "The Core Values," And it's about the FBI's core values. And I did the segment on rigorous obedience to the conference constitution. So, they filmed me talking about it in front of the U.S constitution. And that, you know, to me, you know, 'cause, you know whenever you work in a classified area, there's no, you know, recognition, or you know, anything really from that area, and you just learn to understand and accept that. But it was good to be able to say, "Look, you know, this is what we all do." I mean, no person or agency is perfect, but we took this job because we really believed in this. And there's no excuse for, you know, on one hand saying you're upholding the constitution, on the other hand, you know, completely undermining it. Interviewer 1: Well, it just really inspiring to think what you did, and to think that you walked down there totally unaware of what you would be walking into? - Well. Yeah. And it wasn't just me, because the guys before me, although they may not have, like I said, had the legal perspective, they knew that it was wrong and they objected to it. But we were invited down there to advise them, we weren't down there to control them. So, I think they were, you know, you're sort of a little bit isolated when you're down there and the communications are difficult. So, you know, I think when they went back, they started talking about it, but I was down there already, you know, when they came back. So, they were sort of brewing things up there, and I was brewing things down there, down at GITMO, and I think it came to a head, you know, when Tom Near came down. I mean, he was absolutely fighting, you know, as hard or harder than I was. And, you know, Mark Macquarie was absolutely trying to fight that fight. And Major Lacey or Bernie tried valiantly to do what they were doing, and, you know, unfortunately were ordered to stop. And so, I think there were a lot of people who knew what was right and they were fighting for it. I just happened to be from New York, and I might've been a little more vocal than others, you know, because of that. And, you know, because of my history, you know, as a prosecutor and an agent, I felt very confident that what I was talking about, was the right thing to do. And I had the answer for them, you know, and we presented that answer. Tom, and I, and Bill Spencer to the General, and it was flatly refused. Interviewer 1: Just a couple of more questions. One is, since you mentioned it a couple of times about waterboarding or wet toweling. Have you actually heard of anybody being waterboarded or wet toweling in Guantanamo? - Yes. I can't... I mean, I know they... It was in the plan for 63. I didn't witness it, but when they talk about it, they talked about it absolutely as a matter of fact, yeah, we're gonna do this. And they talked about the SERE techniques, and, and again, you know, SERE is, Survival, Evasion, Resistance, something, I can't remember. But I tried to explain to them, I said, "These tactics were developed in order to build resistance in our pilots, so that if they were tortured, they'd be able to resist it, and not give up the information. So, what you're actually doing by implementing these tactics, is building their resistance against us, doing things like torture. So, how is this gonna promote what you wanna do?" "Well, no, no, it's, you know, they'll go crazy, they do..." No. Well, once you do it to a guy once, he's scared, and he thinks he's drowning, which to me, very clearly a violation of Torture Statute because what is it doing? It's putting him in his fear of losing his life, and that's a violation of the Torture Statute. So, but once you stop, he will know, and everyone he talks to, will know that they won't go past a certain point, and you feel like you're drowning but you're just gonna cough and splutter, and all this other stuff you have a natural reflex relax action to breathe in, when you believe you're actually gonna die by doing it. And so, you know, it's a very... You know, it's a mental torture as well as a physical torture in that case. And so, they just couldn't understand, I don't think it's that subtle. But, you know, so they were using something completely outside of the genre that it was developed for, but that's exactly the kind of just- Interviewer 1: You think they went ahead and did it in spite of your advice apparently? - Yeah. It certainly was part of their plans. And, you know, again, I did not witness any of that, but they spoke of it as if it was, you know, a completely accepted practice there. Interviewer 1: And before you went to Guantanamo, had you heard of torture in Afghanistan? - No. You have to understand that I was working criminal cases. I was doing, you know, child abductions and child sex crimes you know, and serial killers and serial rapists. And, you know, on 9/11, you know, everybody in the FBI began working terrorism cases. I mean, we had a bunch of people that just did that before that, but we in our unit did a study of the actual 19 hijackers. And so, we drilled down on one of 'em, and found out everything we could about their background and their behavior to use as a body of knowledge to prevent this in the future. And so, we spent quite a bit of time, and including and up to the time I went down to GITMO. But I think around the time when I came back from GITMO, we started sort of... I mean, we never stopped doing criminal cases, but they certainly were put on the back burner. You know, cases would come in, and I eventually became completely, my time became completely captivated with that. Interviewer 1: So, you were involved in identifying or profiling the terrorist subjects through those 19 men who, you know, flew the planes? - Yes. Interviewer 1: So, number 63, if people think is a 25 jacker, you use that same profiling to work with? - Well, I mean, again, if you look at profiling, it is looking at somebody who committed a crime, and learning all his behavioral characteristics so that we can, you know, say, you know, this behavior tells us that, you know, this is the kind of person you're dealing with, you know? And then, we have an opportunity to look at the behavior, and then study that person. So, now, next time we have behavior, we can say, well, you're looking for this kind of person or this kind of person. So, we were looking for, you know, distinctions between them, and the leaders and the followers, and so forth. And yeah, I'm fairly, very well aware of what's been published like in Time Magazine about 63, and being the 20th hijacker and all that stuff. You know, obviously, I'm not gonna confirm or deny that, but, you know, you can make your own decisions based on what his behavior was. But the fact is that, you know, I don't care who he was or what he did, or didn't do, you know, we have a mandate to uphold the constitution and that's what we had to do. Interviewer 1: You know, we're almost done unless you wanna add something. But I just wanna ask you, did you see doctors interact with? - Doctors? - Mm-hmm. - Like physicians? - Yeah. - No. Interviewer 1: And did you see any ICRC personnel in there? - What's ICRC? - You know, Red Cross? - Red Cross? You know, there was a time while I was down there, I think that there was a group of them there. Interviewer 1: But you didn't interact? - I did not. Interviewer 1: And did you interact with any foreign diplomats who came in? Apparently, foreign diplomats came in and interrogated the detainees. Did you have any interaction with any of them? - We did not. Interviewer 1: And did you know they were present? - Sure, yeah. Interviewer 1: Did anybody care about how they interrogating the detainees? - As far as I'm aware, they were just given access to the people from their countries, that's all that I know. Interviewer 1: And you were never present in any of the interrogations? - No. Interviewer 1: Were FBI agents present during those interrogations if you know of? - I don't know that anywhere. Interviewer 1: And were psychologist ever talked to you to, you know, either to give you information or to learn something from you? - Well, the CITF psychologist, yeah, we worked together very well up until the point where Pfeiffer basically, you know, threatened them. Not basically, with Pfeiffer threatening them with insubordination and court marshals. They were very open with us and they... We interacted, and we basically agreed on every point. Even though that wasn't their mission, they just could not wrap their arms around, you know, what these guys wanted to do as a methodology, it just didn't make sense to them. We had, you know, our unit had been, you know, for 30 years getting serial killers, you know, these hardened people to talk cooperate. And we said, you know, there's no difference, we can, you know, you can... This is easily translatable, but the difference is the culture and the religion, so learn about it. So, I used my interview with 682 to educate myself so I could better educate other people. And I thought that, you know, was a good model, and, you know, it was effective in that case, and I think it would have been effective in other cases as well. Interviewer 1: Do you have any flips back on Guantanamo? Today, it's still open 10 years later. Do you have any thoughts about, you know, these past 10 years? - Well, I mean, what I believe, first of all, is that there was a need to do something, and I believe Guantanamo was a quick fix. And I believe that keeping these people off of the continental United States was deliberate, and short-sighted. I believe that they should have had better advice, if any advice, on what the long-term ramifications would be. So, I think that what happened, is what happened in fact, is the natural result of not planning. And I believe the generals, there were two reserve generals that ran it before General Miller got there. One of 'em was a family court judge, and I can't remember what the other one was, maybe a mortician. None of the generals that ran it to that point had any experience in running a prison, or in interrogating anybody, yet they were making the decisions. And they were relying on people who also didn't have any experience that I know of, you know, Pfeiffer, and Becker, and Beaver. So, it was, you know doomed for failure in that respect. And it's not that the expertise wasn't available, they asked for it late in the game, but they did ask for it, and then they ignored it for as long as they could, and then eventually, we got them to change that. So, I think, you know, it's a process, you know, it's interacting... The interactions of major components of the U.S government, and sometimes they take a little time to get the word around and get things changed. But I think the system eventually worked in terms of the techniques, but we're still left with this unknown question. What do you do with these people? And, you know, how were they collected in the first place? How accurate was the information you got about them when you collected them? And now that you have 'em, and let's say, you know, they are dangerous, what do you do? I mean, prisoners of war. after the war is over, you turn it back over, right? Is that where you're gonna do? Is there a war? Is it ever gonna be over? You know, all these questions just nobody seemed to be looking at. Although, I do know some of the people that were involved, I guess, I assume they're still involved in sort of trying to develop a current plan for it, you know, some good minds. So, hopefully they'll come up with something. Interviewer 1: I think what you said is really true. There was no end game and no one was thinking. - Yeah. Interviewer 1: Before we go, listening to you, I'm just reminded you had nothing to do with interviewing Jose Pedreiro, or, you know, in the Naval brig in South Carolina? - No. I didn't know. Interviewer 1: And none of the three men who were in that Naval brig. There were two others there, Colombian? - No, I didn't. Yeah. No, I didn't. Interviewer 1: Is there anything else that you would like to say that I didn't ask you, that maybe would be really valuable? - Let me think about that for a second. Interviewer 1: Do you wanna ask a question? Interviewer 2: I just wanna confirm that you didn't experience any negative consequences from internal, from the FBI by being outspoken. It sounds as though obviously long term, they showed their appreciation. Short-term, did you feel that you had... That there were issues? - I think, you know, in the immediate short term, you know, they just like... 'Cause I couldn't actually communicate on email or the phone, unless we use the STU secure phone what was actually going on. And so, the immediate reaction was, why are you, you know bumping heads with these guys? But once they got the information, and you know, they sent Tom down, because the guy that was supposed to be there in a week, couldn't, you know, his background, his clearance just was taking too long. The guy who was supposed to be with me, overlapping from before had a family emergency, so he left early, so it was just me. So, they were like, what is the issue? Why aren't you getting along with these guys? And so, but when I wrote that memo, their reaction was very clear, you know, yeah, we need to do something immediately. And so, you know, that's when the process began. I think that maybe, 'cause I, you know, obviously I wasn't up there, but I think that when they wrote that memo and interacting with Charlie and Bob who had been there right before me, I think that, you know, they sort of coalesced, and went forward. I mean, we... When we came back, we debriefed everybody on what went on, and I'm sure they did the same thing before us. So, you know, I'm sure that process was begun, and I just happened to be the one on the ground when it really kicked in. But we thought that, you know, that since the General, obviously, invited us down for our expertise, that once we actually got to see him face-to-face not filtered through Pfeiffer, that he would understand. And what we found was a guy who spoken, you know, business management, seminar quips, you know, better, faster, cheaper, and, you know- - General Miller? - General Miller. You know, he did not do a lot of, you know, interactive dialogue. He just sort of spurted out these little quips and that was it. And then, you know, he told us have a nice day, you know, basically, so. But, you know, clearly, the FBI from the start was, I mean, I think here's the basis of the problem. You have the U.S military, who in the middle of a military action, has apparently standards that are vastly different than what our standards in the FBI. And now, you've put them both together in a situation where those standards are in conflict, direct conflict of each other. And I think that was the basis of the problem, it was bound to happen. You know, I just happened to be there at the time. And I think anybody who was in that situation, who had my experience, would have done exactly the same thing. - We hope. - Yeah. But but being in that situation, you're... It's a tough situation because you're invited by the military, you know, it's not like you are in the middle of an investigation, where you have your full, you know investigative and arrest powers. And so, it's sort of like, you know, our teeth are taken away, all we can do is advise. And so, you wanna try to find a way to actually convince them, rather than just going head to head and fighting them. And I saw like, right from the start, I mean, when any kind of, you know, conflict, any kind of disagreement was met with, you know ranting and raving by Lieutenant Colonel Pfeiffer, and so, I saw this wasn't gonna be really effective. And then in talking to Mark Macquarie, who clearly cared, I mean, he was really fighting hard but he was one man, you know? And he's in the military, so he has to deal with the chain of command. So, I think, you know, we were able to gain a critical mass at that point, and get the people from FBI headquarters and DoJ involved in down there. And, you know, it sort of gave them a better window into what was going on and the issues. I would think that if any of them knew to that detail, what was going on and the overlap of the U.S cases with the, you know, with the detainees, that, you know were being treated this way. I mean, even if they weren't treated this way by our guys, you know, even if our guys were maintaining the constitutional standards, the fact that they had been treated coercively at a minimum, could have ruined these cases anyway. So, you know, you really have to be careful on those, you know, it's a slippery slope, and I didn't wanna see cases go down the drain. Interviewer 2: One additional question. When you were there and they were adamant that they wanted to continue in their way, did they describe to you, or did you witness any successes that they had in the course of, in harsh tactics? - No. Interviewer 1: When you look at- - Yes, sir. When they... First of all, I'm not aware of any successes. And the whole reason we were there, was because they were failing, and they wanted to just get harsher as a response to that. They did claim, I believe, you know, they talked about somebody off, you know, off the Island who was waterboarded and he cooperated completely, you know, again, I don't wanna use any names, but, you know, my understanding is that he was cooperating with the FBI before they started doing that. And most of the good information they got, was at that rapport-building stage. And then with 63, you know, they said they eventually won, you know, and they got him to talk. Well, in fact, they instituted a program that we suggested and it's all based on giving that person, somebody to talk to in a rapport-based way. And that, that was the way that actually it became effective. And they said, "Well, it's only effective because we were harsh with them, and you were like, sort of bad cop, good cop, so now you're a good cop and that's why it worked." And we said, "No, it would have worked right from the beginning." I think, I can't remember his name, the guy from "Law and Order," the guy with the real kind of slow voice and the deep gravelly voice. He's the one that gave me the award, Human Rights Award. - Fred Thompson? - No. Not Fred, the other guy, that sort- - Sam Waterston? - Waterston. Sam Waterston. Interviewer 1: He gave you the award? - Yes. Sam Waterston told us about his father who had been a military intelligence guy in world war II. And he said more German were bought over to our side by taking them out to a nice steak dinner. And they were, you know, through any other interrogation method. And that's exactly, you know, that's it! That's it, in a nutshell what rapport-building is, treat 'em like human beings. Interviewer 1: What's so amazing is that there was a debate for years about whether, which is more like successful. And the way you describe it, it's not even a debate, it's so clear. - Two minutes. - Okay. Okay, and yeah. I mean, I think it is very clear what's more successful. I don't know, psychologically, or, you know, in actuality, whether or not, on a battlefield, how the best way to get military intelligence that you need immediately to save lives, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about in-custody interrogations and rapport-building is absolutely the best way. It's the only way that's been proven to be effective. Interviewer 1: It's amazing inspirational. Thank you so much. - Well, you know, Thanks. Interviewer 1: It's great and we really appreciate it - Okay. - Okay, we're done.