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<v Interviewer>Okay, good morning.</v>

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<v ->Good morning.</v>

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<v ->We are very grateful to you for participating</v>

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in the Witness to Guantanamo project.

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We invite you to speak of your experience and involvement

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with the people who were involved in Guantanamo

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and still are involved in Guantanamo in Cuba.

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We are hoping to provide you with an opportunity

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to tell your story in your own words.

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We are creating an archive of stories

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so that people in America and around the world

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will have a better understanding

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of what you and others have observed.

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And we're very grateful that you came today

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to share your experiences with us.

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<v ->Thank you for inviting me.</v>

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<v ->Thank you.</v>

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Future generations must know what happened,

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and by telling your story you contribute to history.

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If you want to take a break, let us know,

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and we're happy to do that.

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And if there's something you say that you'd like to remove,

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we can remove it if you tell us at the end of the interview.

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<v ->Okay.</v>

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<v ->Okay, great.</v>

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We'd like to begin, if you wouldn't mind telling us

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your name and occupation, and where you were born.

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A little bit of your background

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including your age and date of birth.

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<v ->So my name is Charlie Savage.</v>

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I was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

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I'm 41 years old now.

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I work for the New York Times,

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and covering among other things,

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Guantanamo and detention policy issues.

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I went to college, undergrad at Harvard,

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and then worked the Miami Herald for awhile.

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And then went to Yale Law School

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for a master's degree program for journalists.

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And shortly after that joined the Boston Globe in 2003

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and then joined the New York Times in 2008,

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where I've worked ever since.

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<v ->And when you began with the Miami Herald,</v>

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what year was that?

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<v ->That was right out of college. I graduated in '98.</v>

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And I was sick for a while and so I had a delayed beginning,

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but I started with them in early '99.

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<v ->And what kind of work did you begin with</v>

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with them before you got involved in Guantanamo?

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<v ->I began as a total cub reporter,</v>

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so I was out in the distant unincorporated suburbs

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of Miami-Dade County covering zoning board meetings,

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and suburban police issues.

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And gradually worked my way up to small cities,

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and then the Broward County Commission,

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and then the Miami-Dade School Board.

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And it was really then when I took that year off

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for a fellowship at Yale in '02-'03

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that I became more interested in national security,

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and rule of law issues, or more of a specialist in them.

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That was the year after 9/11.

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The sort of the first shock had gone through,

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and people were starting to think about

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all these issues raised by the government's response

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to 9/11 through a legal lens.

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We didn't know yet about warrant-less surveillance,

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and torture, but we did know about Guantanamo, for example,

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and some other things like that.

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And that was a hugely hot topic on the law school campus.

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We had guest speakers coming in,

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professors were building classes

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around ongoing legal disputes.

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For example, in my constitutional law small group class,

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we had to write briefs, and do mock oral arguments.

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And the professor Paul Kahn had chosen

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a pair of appeals court cases in the third and sixth circuit

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about the bulk closure of deportation hearings,

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at the time for these large numbers of Arab men

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who were being arrested and sent out of the country.

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And whether that could be done as a matter

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of the First Amendment and so forth.

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That was the issue.

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And so I came out of that year thinking,

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this was the hot, almost too trivial to say hot.

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This was the great issue of our time was how was

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United States understanding of civil liberties,

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and the rule of law going to change in response

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to the sort of catastrophic threat

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of Al Qaeda-style transnational terrorism?

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<v Interviewer>Did you go to law school for that purpose</v>

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because you were inspired by what happened post 9/11,

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you felt you'd educate yourself on it?

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<v ->No, that would be saying too much.</v>

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I was interested in law school and legal issues, generally.

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My older brother is a lawyer,

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and I'd always wanted to go to law school.

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In this fellowship program,

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and I'm covering police issues and court issues.

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I did have some hand as a younger reporter

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covering post 9/11 things.

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At that point, I was covering the Broward County Commission.

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And some of the hijackers had been in Broward County,

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or just North of Broward County

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before in the flight schools.

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And I was sort of chasing the FBI

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around reconstructing their lives

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in these sort of seedy motels where they

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had been staying and so forth.

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And there was a lot of early sort

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of Homeland security jostling

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about what are we gonna do about the sea port?

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Is there too much danger of having these large tanks

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of jet fuel so close to the highway?

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And so that was on my mind,

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but I really, I would have applied for this program.

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In fact, I might even have applied for it,

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I can't remember when that application was due

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before 9/11 happened.

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But once I was there, I was this sort of crucible,

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and that really changed my thinking

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about what I was interested in.

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<v Interviewer>So when you came back to Miami,</v>

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did you go down to Guantanamo then?

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<v ->I came back to Miami after that academic year was over,</v>

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so this would be early June of '03.

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And the only other reporter there who was really interested

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in the issues that I was now very interested in

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was Carol Rosenberg, who became my friend.

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And I had a desk near her,

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and we constantly would nerd out over these issues.

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And then very quickly after that she

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was sent to Iraq, in the Iraq war.

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And obviously, the invasion had happened

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in McClatchy, or actually at the time,

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it was the during the Knight Ridder newspaper chain

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was sending a lot of reporters over there.

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And so she, without her there

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the pressure was whether the Miami Herald

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would drop the story of Guantanamo.

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And she and I both very much didn't want that to happen.

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And she lobbied to let me take over coverage of it.

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And in addition, while I was there,

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I had inaugurated, back in '03,

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I inaugurated a new beat, I proposed and created one

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on sort of regional Homeland Security issues,

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which was not one they'd had before.

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Which was also trying to bring

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this terrorism post 9/11 issues into the newspaper.

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I had met, however, at Yale, my now wife,

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and we had become engaged.

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And so I was also trying to get out of Miami,

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because she didn't want to move to Miami.

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She's a Canadian journalist,

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and I didn't want to move to Canada.

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We'd agree, we were gonna converge in Washington.

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And so part of all of that exercise

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was also writing stories, and trying to sort of show

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that I could operate on a national level

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in hopes of getting a job in Washington.

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<v Interviewer>When was the first time you</v>

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went to Guantanamo?

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What was your sense of it when you first,

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the first day you arrived?

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<v ->So in, I think it was late July,</v>

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maybe in early August of '03, I went into Guantanamo

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for the first time on behalf of the Miami Herald.

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I didn't quite know what to expect.

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I was flying in on this little strange plane,

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and landing and they didn't,

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you know, it was interesting,

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they didn't check our passports.

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And the next time I went in

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they started checking our passports,

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because they suddenly to get rid of lawsuits,

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they wanted to stress to the courts

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that this was a foreign country.

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But the first time I went in,

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they didn't check our passports,

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because they were treating it like

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an extension of the United States.

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There was a number of reporters on that trip.

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Some from foreign media,

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an Australian film crew, I remember.

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One of the things that was interesting as I was flying in,

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they just let us sit, they assigned to wherever

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in this sort of hopper flight.

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And I was sitting next to someone

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that I struck up a conversation with on the plane,

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who turned out to be an engineer

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for Kellogg Brown &amp; Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton.

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And I asked him, "What are you going in for?"

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And he told me he was going into work on camp five.

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And I was, "Okay."

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The first thing that happens once you get in,

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and you get processed and get your card,

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when you're now herded with the media,

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is they give you a sort of a briefing

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in a old hangar about what are you gonna see?

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What's going on here?

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What exists? What's the history so far?

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And they talked only about camps, one through four.

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And I raised my hand, I said, "What about camp five?"

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And the press people professed

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to not know what I was talking about.

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And then later I got to talk to the commanding,

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the JTF commander, General Jeffery Miller at the time.

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And I asked him about camp five.

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And he said, "How do you know about camp five?"

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And I openly told him.

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And then he openly told me quite a bit about it.

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So camp five was, at this point, they still just

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had these sort of hastily thrown up structures of open air,

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sort of, you know, shipping containers practically.

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And he explained that camp five was gonna be

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a concrete-walled prison that they were building.

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And it was gonna be a much more permanent structure.

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And he told me it was gonna take six

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or eight months to build.

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And then I came back to talk to him a second time,

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and I asked, "Why is it gonna take so long to build

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when these others you were able

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to throw up in a few months?"

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And that's when he really explained this

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is modeled after a prison in Indiana,

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and we have to float in on barges

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all these pre-formed concrete.

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And it's gonna have cameras, and electricity,

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and air conditioning and a control center,

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and it's gonna be a real prison.

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And so that became my first scoop about Guantanamo.

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That this was going to be, basically,

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this sort of ad hoc policy that the Bush Administration

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had created sort of on the fly.

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Because they needed to get all these wartime prisoners

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out of Afghanistan after the uprising at Mazari Sharif

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because they'd had to put them somewhere

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let's put them here.

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But no one, even they didn't expect this

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was gonna be evolved into something permanent.

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And the fact that in the summer of '03,

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they were making plans to build

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a permanent, expensive concrete-walled,

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two-story prison building was the sign

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that they were pouring concrete around, literally,

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around this policy, or figuratively, but almost literally.

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So I wrote that story,

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and I remember that it was picked up by the wires,

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and it was replicated around the world.

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And it was sort of like what, wow,

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there is global interest in this.

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This is not just like writing about the Miami School Board

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where people don't care outside

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of the immediate environments.

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<v Interviewer>What is your sense of Guantanamo</v>

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simply from that?

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Just the experience you had of walking through it,

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even though it was a guided tour of the camp,

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and the people you saw there?

259
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<v ->What was the experience?</v>

260
00:11:05.140 --> 00:11:08.040
So, we walked through camp,

261
00:11:08.040 --> 00:11:10.274
camps one through three were similar-

262
00:11:10.274 --> 00:11:11.511
<v Interviewer>Was X-Ray still there?</v>

263
00:11:11.511 --> 00:11:12.344
<v ->What's that?</v>

264
00:11:12.344 --> 00:11:13.177
<v Interviewer>Was Camp X-Ray still-</v>

265
00:11:13.177 --> 00:11:15.910
<v ->No, no, Camp X-Ray was gone within a few months.</v>

266
00:11:15.910 --> 00:11:17.660
That was, that was-

267
00:11:17.660 --> 00:11:18.600
<v Interviewer>They didn't take you there.</v>

268
00:11:18.600 --> 00:11:20.520
<v ->Well, you went through it, but it was just overgrown</v>

269
00:11:20.520 --> 00:11:22.513
with weed, because there was no one living there.

270
00:11:23.600 --> 00:11:26.270
So Camp X-Ray was thrown up in January of '02,

271
00:11:26.270 --> 00:11:29.010
and by the Summer of '02, everyone had been moved

272
00:11:29.010 --> 00:11:31.030
into Camp Delta, which is also known

273
00:11:31.030 --> 00:11:32.330
as camps one through four.

274
00:11:33.430 --> 00:11:35.730
In camps one through three in Delta were these

275
00:11:36.780 --> 00:11:39.770
individual cells in these long,

276
00:11:39.770 --> 00:11:42.753
sort of open air passageways.

277
00:11:44.724 --> 00:11:46.600
And then camp four was communal living

278
00:11:46.600 --> 00:11:49.410
where people lived in, the more compliant prisoners lived

279
00:11:49.410 --> 00:11:50.963
in these sort of huts.

280
00:11:52.620 --> 00:11:54.490
And eight together and so forth.

281
00:11:54.490 --> 00:11:57.330
So you couldn't talk to a prisoner.

282
00:11:57.330 --> 00:11:58.370
To this day, you can't talk to

283
00:11:58.370 --> 00:11:59.203
a prisoner while you're there.

284
00:11:59.203 --> 00:12:02.970
And so they would take you through an empty cell block

285
00:12:02.970 --> 00:12:05.470
of one through three, and you could sort of see

286
00:12:05.470 --> 00:12:06.470
what the cells looked like.

287
00:12:06.470 --> 00:12:09.470
It was, whichever one, they would periodically move

288
00:12:09.470 --> 00:12:12.350
the prisoners around, so they could do maintenance,

289
00:12:12.350 --> 00:12:13.200
repaint and whatever.

290
00:12:13.200 --> 00:12:14.450
So you could see what it looked like,

291
00:12:14.450 --> 00:12:16.150
and here's what's in a typical cell.

292
00:12:16.150 --> 00:12:18.580
And here's the arrow on the floor that points to mecca

293
00:12:18.580 --> 00:12:20.910
so they know which way to pray.

294
00:12:20.910 --> 00:12:24.130
And around you the men in other cell blocks

295
00:12:24.130 --> 00:12:26.800
knew you were there, and sometimes them would be shouting.

296
00:12:26.800 --> 00:12:29.493
You couldn't see them, but you could hear that.

297
00:12:31.060 --> 00:12:34.490
And then in four, which is the communal area,

298
00:12:34.490 --> 00:12:36.850
you could see the detainees sort of from a distance.

299
00:12:36.850 --> 00:12:38.190
And they would sort of be looking at you,

300
00:12:38.190 --> 00:12:39.370
and you'd look at them,

301
00:12:39.370 --> 00:12:41.713
but there was no way to communicate.

302
00:12:42.632 --> 00:12:46.032
<v Interviewer>So after that first piece,</v>

303
00:12:46.032 --> 00:12:49.250
how soon did you go back to Guantanamo?

304
00:12:49.250 --> 00:12:52.880
<v ->So I right after that, and that story helped a lot.</v>

305
00:12:52.880 --> 00:12:53.790
Actually I did two stories,

306
00:12:53.790 --> 00:12:56.950
one about the camp five and its significance.

307
00:12:56.950 --> 00:12:59.900
And one was more of a feature about what

308
00:12:59.900 --> 00:13:02.023
is life like inside, what's the scene?

309
00:13:02.870 --> 00:13:06.543
What's the look like, just what is this bizarre place?

310
00:13:07.690 --> 00:13:09.310
Those two stories, which the Miami Herald

311
00:13:09.310 --> 00:13:11.273
gave very good play to,

312
00:13:14.670 --> 00:13:18.170
helped me get a job at the Boston Globe.

313
00:13:18.170 --> 00:13:21.840
So I then left, I went to on my honeymoon, I got married.

314
00:13:21.840 --> 00:13:25.330
I thought I was gonna have to come back to Miami,

315
00:13:25.330 --> 00:13:27.737
even though my future, now wife,

316
00:13:27.737 --> 00:13:29.750
had already gotten a job in DC.

317
00:13:29.750 --> 00:13:30.673
And I remember,

318
00:13:32.110 --> 00:13:35.020
we were on our honeymoon in Banff, in Canada.

319
00:13:35.020 --> 00:13:39.330
And that was when the Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo,

320
00:13:39.330 --> 00:13:44.330
James Yee, was arrested and accused of being a spy.

321
00:13:44.500 --> 00:13:46.730
And what was interesting about that was he was one part

322
00:13:46.730 --> 00:13:49.600
of the tour that I had just been on.

323
00:13:49.600 --> 00:13:52.200
So this is September of '03, that was August of '03.

324
00:13:55.570 --> 00:13:56.950
So you go, you meet the Muslim chaplain,

325
00:13:56.950 --> 00:14:00.080
and he just tells you, what's it like to interact

326
00:14:00.080 --> 00:14:00.913
with these detainees.

327
00:14:00.913 --> 00:14:04.380
And it was a really boring interview at the time.

328
00:14:04.380 --> 00:14:07.710
But I had it, and the tape of it,

329
00:14:07.710 --> 00:14:10.020
the transcript of it in my laptop.

330
00:14:10.020 --> 00:14:11.280
And we're on our honeymoon,

331
00:14:11.280 --> 00:14:13.830
and suddenly he's arrested for being a spy for Al Qaeda,

332
00:14:13.830 --> 00:14:15.780
which was not true, but that's moot.

333
00:14:15.780 --> 00:14:19.050
And suddenly, this seemingly mundane

334
00:14:20.280 --> 00:14:22.820
discussion of his attitude towards the detainees,

335
00:14:22.820 --> 00:14:24.660
and how he just tries to help them with Islam,

336
00:14:24.660 --> 00:14:26.420
and not think about why they're there, or whatever,

337
00:14:26.420 --> 00:14:28.163
became incredibly interesting.

338
00:14:29.401 --> 00:14:31.060
And my wife is also a journalist as I mentioned,

339
00:14:31.060 --> 00:14:31.893
was like, "You've got to write this."

340
00:14:31.893 --> 00:14:36.020
And so I wrote a story about Jim Yee

341
00:14:37.508 --> 00:14:38.341
from my honeymoon.

342
00:14:38.341 --> 00:14:39.840
And then I got all kinds of ribbing

343
00:14:39.840 --> 00:14:40.790
about that from my colleagues,

344
00:14:40.790 --> 00:14:42.740
when I got back to the Miami Herald to,

345
00:14:43.750 --> 00:14:44.910
what a nerd I was.

346
00:14:44.910 --> 00:14:46.893
But while I was on that honeymoon,

347
00:14:48.180 --> 00:14:50.380
the Boston Globe called me and offered me a job

348
00:14:50.380 --> 00:14:51.370
in their Washington bureau,

349
00:14:51.370 --> 00:14:52.880
covering these sorts of issues along with

350
00:14:52.880 --> 00:14:54.660
the Department of Justice and Homeland Security.

351
00:14:54.660 --> 00:14:58.700
So by October, I had moved to the Globe.

352
00:14:58.700 --> 00:15:00.980
And later that year, the end of '03,

353
00:15:00.980 --> 00:15:02.940
I went down to Guantanamo again,

354
00:15:02.940 --> 00:15:04.940
now, on behalf of the Globe to do,

355
00:15:04.940 --> 00:15:06.550
'cause they hadn't sent someone there before

356
00:15:06.550 --> 00:15:08.253
to do another sort of big,

357
00:15:09.170 --> 00:15:10.873
what's up with Guantanamo?

358
00:15:12.570 --> 00:15:14.400
So that was the second time I went down.

359
00:15:14.400 --> 00:15:15.400
<v Interviewer>Were they,</v>

360
00:15:15.400 --> 00:15:17.230
can I make a quick mic adjustment?

361
00:15:17.230 --> 00:15:18.510
<v ->Sure.</v>

362
00:15:18.510 --> 00:15:20.312
<v Interviewer>We are up.</v>

363
00:15:20.312 --> 00:15:22.530
Was the Boston, I shouldn't ask you this, and you can,

364
00:15:22.530 --> 00:15:24.350
but was the Boston Globe as supportive

365
00:15:24.350 --> 00:15:28.743
as the Miami Herald in terms of stories about Guantanamo?

366
00:15:30.170 --> 00:15:33.790
<v ->Well, yes and no.</v>

367
00:15:33.790 --> 00:15:35.760
It's sort of hard to give a simple answer to that,

368
00:15:35.760 --> 00:15:39.950
because the level of news interest in Guantanamo

369
00:15:39.950 --> 00:15:43.240
in 2003, 2004, might be different

370
00:15:43.240 --> 00:15:47.123
than '08, '09, 2012, 2016, and ongoing.

371
00:15:47.990 --> 00:15:50.300
I mean Guantanamo was still a huge story

372
00:15:51.220 --> 00:15:53.410
when there were 600 or 700 people there,

373
00:15:53.410 --> 00:15:55.410
and it was still not clear what was gonna happen.

374
00:15:55.410 --> 00:15:57.940
And the Supreme Court was deciding whether or not

375
00:15:57.940 --> 00:15:59.630
there was jurisdiction.

376
00:15:59.630 --> 00:16:03.840
And over time I think, the basic facts of it

377
00:16:03.840 --> 00:16:05.453
have sort of stabilized,

378
00:16:06.770 --> 00:16:07.840
there was a different narrative, which was,

379
00:16:07.840 --> 00:16:10.100
is Obama gonna succeed in closing it, or not?

380
00:16:10.100 --> 00:16:11.540
By then I'm not at the Globe anymore.

381
00:16:11.540 --> 00:16:13.743
And that sort of ran its course, as well.

382
00:16:14.950 --> 00:16:17.800
I think that Miami Herald is unique

383
00:16:17.800 --> 00:16:20.960
in being willing to invest the resources

384
00:16:20.960 --> 00:16:25.960
to have Carol, my friend, cover it in person.

385
00:16:26.000 --> 00:16:29.390
Even though now you can just watch proceedings

386
00:16:29.390 --> 00:16:31.300
from the military commissions at least remotely,

387
00:16:31.300 --> 00:16:32.940
without having to go to the expense and trouble

388
00:16:32.940 --> 00:16:34.840
of getting to the base.

389
00:16:34.840 --> 00:16:38.210
But wanting to have her there soup to nuts.

390
00:16:38.210 --> 00:16:40.730
And so she's performing a unique service in that.

391
00:16:40.730 --> 00:16:42.573
For me, it has been especially,

392
00:16:43.840 --> 00:16:46.270
well, actually at the Globe, but also the Times as well,

393
00:16:46.270 --> 00:16:49.040
it's one of many things that I focus on.

394
00:16:49.040 --> 00:16:50.520
I'm interested in Guantanamo,

395
00:16:50.520 --> 00:16:52.360
and I periodically check in on it.

396
00:16:52.360 --> 00:16:54.900
And if something important happens I'm gonna cover it.

397
00:16:54.900 --> 00:16:56.920
But I'm also working on drones,

398
00:16:56.920 --> 00:16:59.130
and I'm also working on surveillance,

399
00:16:59.130 --> 00:17:02.370
and I'm also working on secrecy and leak investigations,

400
00:17:02.370 --> 00:17:03.860
and all the, and war powers.

401
00:17:03.860 --> 00:17:06.570
And all these sort of consolation of, to me,

402
00:17:06.570 --> 00:17:08.230
national security legal policy issues

403
00:17:08.230 --> 00:17:10.270
that are raised by the post 9/11 world.

404
00:17:10.270 --> 00:17:13.493
It's not that I'm covering GITMO full stop.

405
00:17:14.630 --> 00:17:16.040
And I'm not sure that I would want to there.

406
00:17:16.040 --> 00:17:19.950
I mean, Carol's a saint. It's a grind.

407
00:17:19.950 --> 00:17:23.410
She spends a huge amount of her life getting to and from,

408
00:17:23.410 --> 00:17:25.400
and living in a tent down there.

409
00:17:25.400 --> 00:17:29.343
And a lot of, especially the military commissions coverage,

410
00:17:31.570 --> 00:17:33.400
it's a system that sort of spins its wheels,

411
00:17:33.400 --> 00:17:36.503
and nothing really goes off on tangents for long times.

412
00:17:37.490 --> 00:17:40.610
It's the opportunity cost of focusing on it exclusively.

413
00:17:40.610 --> 00:17:41.803
It's not just that the,

414
00:17:44.110 --> 00:17:46.670
the papers I've worked for have been less interested

415
00:17:46.670 --> 00:17:48.900
than the Miami Herald, but I think that is part of it.

416
00:17:48.900 --> 00:17:53.363
Part of that is that SouthComm is a local story for Miami.

417
00:17:54.370 --> 00:17:57.710
But it's also just, you know, what else could you

418
00:17:57.710 --> 00:17:59.710
be writing about today?

419
00:17:59.710 --> 00:18:01.390
There's a variety of interesting things happening

420
00:18:01.390 --> 00:18:03.727
in this space of which Guantanamo's one,

421
00:18:03.727 --> 00:18:06.160
has sort of been my attitude.

422
00:18:06.160 --> 00:18:08.320
<v Interviewer>Well, can you just say how important</v>

423
00:18:08.320 --> 00:18:10.420
is Guantanamo in the last generation,

424
00:18:10.420 --> 00:18:13.480
or the last 15 years in terms of waking,

425
00:18:13.480 --> 00:18:15.393
describing their security issues?

426
00:18:16.680 --> 00:18:21.370
<v ->Well, it's a hugely important symbol, first of all,</v>

427
00:18:21.370 --> 00:18:25.470
of the wrenching changes to international law,

428
00:18:25.470 --> 00:18:28.523
and the country's sort of image of itself.

429
00:18:30.840 --> 00:18:34.540
On the other hand, calling the word a symbol,

430
00:18:34.540 --> 00:18:37.133
and it's hugely important for the men who are there.

431
00:18:38.020 --> 00:18:39.230
And it's a symbol around the world

432
00:18:39.230 --> 00:18:42.360
of what the United States evolved into after 9/11.

433
00:18:42.360 --> 00:18:46.140
On the other hand, far more people

434
00:18:46.140 --> 00:18:49.410
were held at Bagram Air Base

435
00:18:49.410 --> 00:18:51.030
under very similar circumstances

436
00:18:51.030 --> 00:18:52.930
than were ever brought to Guantanamo.

437
00:18:52.930 --> 00:18:57.930
To say nothing of the various prison camps

438
00:18:57.990 --> 00:19:00.423
in Iraq at the height of the war there.

439
00:19:01.500 --> 00:19:04.600
And to say nothing of the more extreme prisons

440
00:19:04.600 --> 00:19:06.540
with fewer people in them that the CIA

441
00:19:06.540 --> 00:19:08.600
ran around the world.

442
00:19:08.600 --> 00:19:12.450
So it depends on how you look at it, I suppose,

443
00:19:12.450 --> 00:19:17.140
in sort of weighing GITMO versus detention policy,

444
00:19:17.140 --> 00:19:18.633
interrogation policy,

445
00:19:19.740 --> 00:19:22.773
terrorism prosecutions policy writ large.

446
00:19:23.730 --> 00:19:25.470
<v Interviewer>Well, how do you weigh it?</v>

447
00:19:25.470 --> 00:19:29.210
Because in our travels we find that people outside

448
00:19:29.210 --> 00:19:31.310
the country are much more concerned about Guantanamo

449
00:19:31.310 --> 00:19:33.123
than people inside this country.

450
00:19:34.360 --> 00:19:35.810
And of course, people inside this country

451
00:19:35.810 --> 00:19:37.726
know nothing about Bagram.

452
00:19:37.726 --> 00:19:39.150
So why is that?

453
00:19:39.150 --> 00:19:41.250
Why is it that it just doesn't weigh

454
00:19:41.250 --> 00:19:42.940
that heavily in America?

455
00:19:42.940 --> 00:19:45.620
In fact, I'll just tell you this and you can respond.

456
00:19:45.620 --> 00:19:47.620
When we reach out people who kind of work with during,

457
00:19:47.620 --> 00:19:51.000
they often say, "I thought Guantanamo was closed."

458
00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:52.900
People thought Obama was gonna close it,

459
00:19:52.900 --> 00:19:56.340
therefore, they felt, they believed he closed it.

460
00:19:56.340 --> 00:20:00.260
And the result is that Guantanamo's not an issue,

461
00:20:00.260 --> 00:20:01.530
much of an issue in America,

462
00:20:01.530 --> 00:20:03.160
and it is much more of an issue

463
00:20:03.160 --> 00:20:05.993
we'd call a symbol outside this country.

464
00:20:07.020 --> 00:20:09.280
<v ->That probably has a lot to do with,</v>

465
00:20:09.280 --> 00:20:12.103
some to do with media coverage here, versus abroad.

466
00:20:13.400 --> 00:20:15.090
Certainly, I've been writing about it,

467
00:20:15.090 --> 00:20:16.680
and Carol's been writing about it.

468
00:20:16.680 --> 00:20:19.220
But does Joe Average read the New York Times,

469
00:20:19.220 --> 00:20:21.803
or the Miami Herald, or tune out?

470
00:20:23.330 --> 00:20:24.723
It's also the case that,

471
00:20:25.870 --> 00:20:29.630
some of the things that made it extraordinary have...

472
00:20:31.610 --> 00:20:35.093
The rough edges have been sanded smooth over time.

473
00:20:36.860 --> 00:20:40.260
The notion that the country could hold people

474
00:20:40.260 --> 00:20:43.660
there incommunicado, outside of any judicial review,

475
00:20:43.660 --> 00:20:47.600
without any kind of process, to make sure they were

476
00:20:47.600 --> 00:20:50.150
who they were claimed to have been.

477
00:20:50.150 --> 00:20:53.180
That was part of what made, and at the Geneva Conventions,

478
00:20:53.180 --> 00:20:55.320
humanitarian protections do not apply

479
00:20:55.320 --> 00:20:57.090
to people who are held there.

480
00:20:57.090 --> 00:20:58.683
I mean, that's GITMO 2002.

481
00:21:01.540 --> 00:21:02.850
But that's not GITMO today,

482
00:21:02.850 --> 00:21:05.060
and that's not been GITMO for awhile.

483
00:21:05.060 --> 00:21:07.393
The arrival of habeas corpus,

484
00:21:08.306 --> 00:21:11.090
the proclamation that the Geneva Conventions come

485
00:21:11.090 --> 00:21:14.210
in Article III has to govern conduct there.

486
00:21:14.210 --> 00:21:16.060
You know, six from the Hamdam ruling.

487
00:21:17.930 --> 00:21:21.900
And the sort of arrival of the habeas bar

488
00:21:21.900 --> 00:21:25.850
to provide a conduit to sort of keep an eye

489
00:21:25.850 --> 00:21:27.100
on what's going on there.

490
00:21:28.680 --> 00:21:31.790
And also, the shrinking, the huge reduction,

491
00:21:31.790 --> 00:21:35.390
if not elimination of the detention population there,

492
00:21:35.390 --> 00:21:38.250
as Obama has tried to wind it down.

493
00:21:38.250 --> 00:21:40.350
And Bush before him tried to wind it down,

494
00:21:41.979 --> 00:21:44.210
has I think, contributed, as well,

495
00:21:44.210 --> 00:21:49.210
to the outrage that was widely felt in '02.

496
00:21:51.120 --> 00:21:55.190
Some of the contributing factors to that have been resolved.

497
00:21:55.190 --> 00:21:56.990
Even though the prison remains open.

498
00:21:57.900 --> 00:21:59.440
<v Interviewer>Even Obama says that it's still</v>

499
00:21:59.440 --> 00:22:01.830
a black stain on America.

500
00:22:01.830 --> 00:22:05.540
And people see that outside, but yet Americans don't.

501
00:22:05.540 --> 00:22:07.660
And maybe you're right, not Joe Average doesn't read

502
00:22:07.660 --> 00:22:11.050
the New York Times, but apparently not many people

503
00:22:11.050 --> 00:22:12.357
care anyway, whether they leave it or not.

504
00:22:12.357 --> 00:22:14.023
It's just not an issue.

505
00:22:15.850 --> 00:22:18.873
But you still feel the need to keep writing about it.

506
00:22:20.150 --> 00:22:23.313
<v ->I see that as a subset of a larger question.</v>

507
00:22:25.360 --> 00:22:27.790
I've written two books about national security,

508
00:22:27.790 --> 00:22:29.460
and executive power, and the rule of law,

509
00:22:29.460 --> 00:22:31.190
and civil liberties and so forth.

510
00:22:31.190 --> 00:22:33.000
I'm very proud of those books.

511
00:22:33.000 --> 00:22:38.000
But neither of them sells remotely what a flimsy-

512
00:22:38.240 --> 00:22:39.692
<v Interviewer>John Grisham, for example.</v>

513
00:22:39.692 --> 00:22:41.883
<v ->Or some Ann Coulter or something.</v>

514
00:22:43.840 --> 00:22:47.010
Even though in terms of, I would say without false modesty,

515
00:22:47.010 --> 00:22:50.990
that their value is probably greater.

516
00:22:50.990 --> 00:22:51.823
But why is that?

517
00:22:51.823 --> 00:22:53.900
It was like someone said to me once

518
00:22:53.900 --> 00:22:56.130
that no one thinks about executive power

519
00:22:56.130 --> 00:22:58.423
when they're mowing their lawn.

520
00:23:00.352 --> 00:23:02.590
To the extent they think about government and policy,

521
00:23:02.590 --> 00:23:05.350
maybe they think, "Are my taxes going up or down?

522
00:23:05.350 --> 00:23:08.610
Do I feel safe, or is there crime in my neighborhood?"

523
00:23:08.610 --> 00:23:12.200
And that's kind of where people stop. Most people.

524
00:23:12.200 --> 00:23:15.933
But that doesn't mean that all people are that way.

525
00:23:18.161 --> 00:23:19.940
Some of these very fundamental issues about

526
00:23:19.940 --> 00:23:21.790
what the country is, and its understanding

527
00:23:21.790 --> 00:23:24.100
of the rule of law, and so forth,

528
00:23:24.100 --> 00:23:27.620
is hugely important for the people who make decisions.

529
00:23:27.620 --> 00:23:30.490
And the people who are engaged in politics and policy.

530
00:23:30.490 --> 00:23:33.170
And those may not be the random person you stop

531
00:23:33.170 --> 00:23:36.220
in the street who thinks GITMO's already been closed.

532
00:23:36.220 --> 00:23:37.530
The random person you stop on the street

533
00:23:37.530 --> 00:23:39.550
probably can't name the chief justice,

534
00:23:39.550 --> 00:23:40.833
or the vice president.

535
00:23:42.522 --> 00:23:43.810
That doesn't mean that you don't cover

536
00:23:43.810 --> 00:23:46.363
the Supreme Court, or the White House.

537
00:23:47.807 --> 00:23:50.950
<v Interviewer>So do you see yourself covering Guantanamo</v>

538
00:23:50.950 --> 00:23:53.420
in the Trump Administration?

539
00:23:53.420 --> 00:23:55.330
<v ->So well, we'll see. Well, yes.</v>

540
00:23:55.330 --> 00:23:58.260
But the question is, how much is there going to be to cover?

541
00:23:58.260 --> 00:24:01.150
So Obama, we're having this interview three days

542
00:24:01.150 --> 00:24:04.070
before Trump's inauguration.

543
00:24:04.070 --> 00:24:06.053
Just on Monday, yesterday,

544
00:24:07.250 --> 00:24:09.840
the last big batch of detainees that Obama

545
00:24:09.840 --> 00:24:12.830
has been trying to get out went to Oman, another 10 guys.

546
00:24:12.830 --> 00:24:15.933
There's now 45 men left there.

547
00:24:16.778 --> 00:24:21.070
And I think a few more will go before Friday.

548
00:24:21.070 --> 00:24:22.230
One more to Saudi Arabia,

549
00:24:22.230 --> 00:24:24.570
and a couple to the Emirates for sure,

550
00:24:24.570 --> 00:24:25.870
maybe one to Italy.

551
00:24:25.870 --> 00:24:28.620
But the upshot of this is that for most

552
00:24:28.620 --> 00:24:33.620
of the Obama era, there's been two major stories.

553
00:24:33.960 --> 00:24:38.410
There's been the effort, first to turn off,

554
00:24:38.410 --> 00:24:40.770
and then turn back on prosecutions

555
00:24:40.770 --> 00:24:42.920
before a military commission system.

556
00:24:42.920 --> 00:24:45.080
And although that system has floundered,

557
00:24:45.080 --> 00:24:47.820
those prosecutions continue.

558
00:24:47.820 --> 00:24:51.160
And so those, the need to cover them

559
00:24:51.160 --> 00:24:53.250
will continue in the Trump era.

560
00:24:53.250 --> 00:24:56.463
And then the other big storyline has been that,

561
00:24:58.280 --> 00:25:01.840
when Obama came in he instituted a process

562
00:25:01.840 --> 00:25:05.477
whereby six agencies, career civil service people

563
00:25:05.477 --> 00:25:08.280
and not political appointees,

564
00:25:08.280 --> 00:25:11.570
reviewed every single detainee who was left at the prison

565
00:25:11.570 --> 00:25:14.330
when he took over, the 242 men,

566
00:25:14.330 --> 00:25:16.090
and sort of racked and stacked them.

567
00:25:16.090 --> 00:25:17.500
Here's the people we can let go,

568
00:25:17.500 --> 00:25:19.360
here's the people that we can prosecute,

569
00:25:19.360 --> 00:25:21.520
here's the people we can neither prosecute,

570
00:25:21.520 --> 00:25:23.120
but are too dangerous to let go.

571
00:25:24.570 --> 00:25:27.240
The fact that the list of those who could,

572
00:25:27.240 --> 00:25:29.260
who were recommended for transfer

573
00:25:29.260 --> 00:25:32.660
if security conditions could be met in the receiving country

574
00:25:32.660 --> 00:25:33.660
was a very long list.

575
00:25:33.660 --> 00:25:36.009
It was huge amounts of Yemenis on them,

576
00:25:36.009 --> 00:25:37.540
particularly of people from countries

577
00:25:37.540 --> 00:25:40.040
where they couldn't easily be repatriated.

578
00:25:40.040 --> 00:25:43.920
Because their home countries lacked a real government,

579
00:25:43.920 --> 00:25:44.963
or were in chaos.

580
00:25:46.010 --> 00:25:48.560
So these men then found themselves being stuck

581
00:25:48.560 --> 00:25:50.860
at GITMO for years, and years and years,

582
00:25:50.860 --> 00:25:52.550
even though the government had decided

583
00:25:52.550 --> 00:25:54.413
it did not want to keep holding them.

584
00:25:55.650 --> 00:25:58.570
Putting aside though, is the prison gonna be closed?

585
00:25:58.570 --> 00:26:00.340
Because Obama's plan to close it was just

586
00:26:00.340 --> 00:26:03.090
to take everyone else and move them to a different prison.

587
00:26:03.090 --> 00:26:05.660
The fact that, which is a very muddy solution

588
00:26:05.660 --> 00:26:07.100
to closing it, right?

589
00:26:07.100 --> 00:26:09.200
The fact that the government didn't want

590
00:26:09.200 --> 00:26:11.130
to be holding these 100 plus guys,

591
00:26:11.130 --> 00:26:14.230
and years were passing and then we continued to hold them,

592
00:26:14.230 --> 00:26:17.980
was a very clear, I think sort of,

593
00:26:17.980 --> 00:26:20.940
moral or governance failure.

594
00:26:20.940 --> 00:26:23.750
And the efforts to get rid of the people

595
00:26:23.750 --> 00:26:25.450
that it didn't want to be holding,

596
00:26:26.750 --> 00:26:31.477
provided an energy to cover it.

597
00:26:31.477 --> 00:26:34.230
And it sort of proceeded in fits and starts.

598
00:26:34.230 --> 00:26:36.690
Now it was jammed up, and now the Pentagon was blocking it,

599
00:26:36.690 --> 00:26:37.910
and now it was unjammed,

600
00:26:37.910 --> 00:26:39.790
and big batches were going again.

601
00:26:39.790 --> 00:26:40.623
And where were they going?

602
00:26:40.623 --> 00:26:42.990
And were they becoming recidivists, or not?

603
00:26:42.990 --> 00:26:45.510
And that whole narrative.

604
00:26:45.510 --> 00:26:47.640
So that list now, is very, very short.

605
00:26:47.640 --> 00:26:49.440
Obama's gonna leave it,

606
00:26:49.440 --> 00:26:51.320
he's not gonna get all the guys out on that list,

607
00:26:51.320 --> 00:26:53.050
but we're now into the single digits,

608
00:26:53.050 --> 00:26:54.750
and will go even smaller.

609
00:26:54.750 --> 00:26:59.750
And so the whole effort to negotiate new homes

610
00:27:00.620 --> 00:27:02.820
for people the government didn't want

611
00:27:02.820 --> 00:27:06.460
to be holding anyway, is a dramatically shrunk story

612
00:27:06.460 --> 00:27:08.483
heading into the Trump Administration.

613
00:27:09.320 --> 00:27:11.890
I suspected the alphas of Guantanamo closure,

614
00:27:11.890 --> 00:27:14.730
the State Department and the Pentagon will be closed,

615
00:27:14.730 --> 00:27:17.010
not just because Trump doesn't want to close GITMO,

616
00:27:17.010 --> 00:27:18.810
but because they just won't have much to do.

617
00:27:18.810 --> 00:27:21.060
There may be one or two guys somewhere

618
00:27:21.060 --> 00:27:22.910
that occasionally the government decides

619
00:27:22.910 --> 00:27:25.753
it doesn't need to be holding anymore, but not hundreds.

620
00:27:28.622 --> 00:27:32.100
That thing, I don't see there being much need

621
00:27:32.100 --> 00:27:35.300
to cover in the Trump Administration.

622
00:27:35.300 --> 00:27:37.460
The unanswered question is,

623
00:27:37.460 --> 00:27:39.350
will Trump start bringing new people there?

624
00:27:39.350 --> 00:27:42.460
Obama refused to bring anyone to Guantanamo.

625
00:27:42.460 --> 00:27:43.670
Even though he failed to close it he

626
00:27:43.670 --> 00:27:45.650
did not add to its population,

627
00:27:45.650 --> 00:27:47.090
and he chipped away into it.

628
00:27:47.090 --> 00:27:49.410
And he's gonna leave with a little over 40 guys down

629
00:27:49.410 --> 00:27:52.223
from the little over 240 that he inherited.

630
00:27:56.900 --> 00:27:58.370
Will Trump bring someone there?

631
00:27:58.370 --> 00:28:02.500
Will he do it just because to show that he can, right?

632
00:28:02.500 --> 00:28:04.587
Or will national security voices around him say,

633
00:28:04.587 --> 00:28:06.090
"We shouldn't bring anyone there until

634
00:28:06.090 --> 00:28:07.960
these transfer restrictions are lifted?

635
00:28:07.960 --> 00:28:10.660
Because why would we tie our own hands operationally

636
00:28:10.660 --> 00:28:12.980
from what we could do with someone?"

637
00:28:12.980 --> 00:28:14.670
If he does bring people there will

638
00:28:14.670 --> 00:28:17.810
the government tell us who they are, by the way?

639
00:28:17.810 --> 00:28:19.440
Or will it be a big thing that we need

640
00:28:19.440 --> 00:28:20.920
to figure out, who are these people?

641
00:28:20.920 --> 00:28:21.980
What are they accused of?

642
00:28:21.980 --> 00:28:23.750
How are they being treated?

643
00:28:23.750 --> 00:28:25.300
Are we gonna be back in '02,

644
00:28:25.300 --> 00:28:26.533
in other words, 2002?

645
00:28:27.670 --> 00:28:28.570
We don't know yet.

646
00:28:29.550 --> 00:28:32.630
That could be something that provides

647
00:28:32.630 --> 00:28:34.790
a great need for journalism.

648
00:28:34.790 --> 00:28:36.940
<v Interviewer>What about the forever prisoners?</v>

649
00:28:36.940 --> 00:28:38.530
Does journalism need to cover them?

650
00:28:38.530 --> 00:28:41.713
Or are they just basically so much collateral damage?

651
00:28:43.980 --> 00:28:46.780
<v ->So your use of the term forever prisoners I think</v>

652
00:28:46.780 --> 00:28:50.770
is a reference to the men who are neither facing charges

653
00:28:50.770 --> 00:28:52.990
in the military commission system,

654
00:28:52.990 --> 00:28:54.870
who are also forever prisoners, by the way,

655
00:28:54.870 --> 00:28:57.340
KSM is never gonna be set go.

656
00:28:57.340 --> 00:28:59.750
<v Interviewer>In theory he's gonna be convicted someday.</v>

657
00:28:59.750 --> 00:29:02.220
<v ->Right, but he's still a forever prisoner in that sense.</v>

658
00:29:02.220 --> 00:29:04.240
The people who are not being charged,

659
00:29:04.240 --> 00:29:07.030
but also, are not currently recommended for transfer.

660
00:29:07.030 --> 00:29:11.430
So this population is going to be about two dozen

661
00:29:11.430 --> 00:29:13.630
by the time Obama leaves office,

662
00:29:13.630 --> 00:29:14.517
a little bit more than that.

663
00:29:14.517 --> 00:29:16.050
And then maybe Trump will add to it,

664
00:29:16.050 --> 00:29:16.950
or maybe he won't.

665
00:29:18.910 --> 00:29:21.270
So yes, there'll be a need to cover that

666
00:29:21.270 --> 00:29:22.633
if something is happening.

667
00:29:24.280 --> 00:29:27.440
Generally, for news, you need something to happen.

668
00:29:27.440 --> 00:29:29.240
So you know, they are still there,

669
00:29:29.240 --> 00:29:31.810
is not necessarily a story on Tuesday,

670
00:29:31.810 --> 00:29:33.890
and Wednesday, and Thursday and Friday.

671
00:29:33.890 --> 00:29:37.180
But you know, in the past there have been hunger strikes.

672
00:29:37.180 --> 00:29:39.500
Maybe something like that will happen,

673
00:29:39.500 --> 00:29:42.540
or Trump will, or will not keep the system

674
00:29:42.540 --> 00:29:45.570
of parole-like hearings, the Periodic Review Board,

675
00:29:45.570 --> 00:29:48.110
to give them reviews and see whether

676
00:29:48.110 --> 00:29:49.660
they still need to be held.

677
00:29:49.660 --> 00:29:52.820
So what he does with that structure impacts

678
00:29:52.820 --> 00:29:56.340
whether they ever have a shot at getting out,

679
00:29:56.340 --> 00:29:58.530
will be something to look at.

680
00:29:58.530 --> 00:29:59.910
<v Interviewer>I want to go back to Trump in a moment.</v>

681
00:29:59.910 --> 00:30:03.633
But were you surprised that Obama never closed the prison?

682
00:30:04.750 --> 00:30:05.883
<v ->Was I surprised?</v>

683
00:30:10.430 --> 00:30:12.330
I covered why he didn't do it.

684
00:30:12.330 --> 00:30:15.320
So to ask whether I was surprised, you know-

685
00:30:15.320 --> 00:30:17.770
<v Interviewer>Why didn't he do it, in your words?</v>

686
00:30:17.770 --> 00:30:19.257
<v ->So he came in and he said,</v>

687
00:30:19.257 --> 00:30:21.107
"We're gonna close it within a year."

688
00:30:22.070 --> 00:30:25.560
I wrote huge amounts about this in my book.

689
00:30:25.560 --> 00:30:29.460
He set up an agency, people to think about

690
00:30:29.460 --> 00:30:31.630
how they were gonna do it, and very quickly,

691
00:30:31.630 --> 00:30:34.870
I would say maybe it became clear to them,

692
00:30:34.870 --> 00:30:36.610
that there was a cohort of men

693
00:30:36.610 --> 00:30:39.400
who could not be prosecuted.

694
00:30:39.400 --> 00:30:43.440
Because, they hadn't done anything specific

695
00:30:43.440 --> 00:30:46.160
like blown something up.

696
00:30:46.160 --> 00:30:50.280
And because, the laws that we generally use

697
00:30:50.280 --> 00:30:51.900
to lock up dangerous terrorists

698
00:30:51.900 --> 00:30:54.040
who have not yet done something specific,

699
00:30:54.040 --> 00:30:55.720
providing material support to terrorism,

700
00:30:55.720 --> 00:30:58.860
conspiracy, did not apply,

701
00:30:58.860 --> 00:31:00.730
especially, for the material support law

702
00:31:00.730 --> 00:31:04.850
to non-citizens abroad, prior to the Patriotic Act,

703
00:31:04.850 --> 00:31:06.393
which is October of 2001.

704
00:31:10.970 --> 00:31:12.393
But that doesn't necessarily, in their view mean,

705
00:31:12.393 --> 00:31:14.130
that if they let this person go,

706
00:31:14.130 --> 00:31:16.870
he wouldn't immediately go and kill some people.

707
00:31:16.870 --> 00:31:18.940
And so they were faced with this dilemma,

708
00:31:18.940 --> 00:31:21.250
with do we let these guys out?

709
00:31:21.250 --> 00:31:23.720
And knowing that they're gonna go probably

710
00:31:23.720 --> 00:31:26.540
kill some people, as the war is ongoing,

711
00:31:26.540 --> 00:31:27.870
when the Supreme Court has said

712
00:31:27.870 --> 00:31:31.040
it is lawful for us to hold them, or not?

713
00:31:31.040 --> 00:31:32.840
And they very quickly reached the decision, no.

714
00:31:32.840 --> 00:31:34.220
If the Supreme Court has says it's lawful

715
00:31:34.220 --> 00:31:36.420
for us to hold them, essentially as POWs,

716
00:31:36.420 --> 00:31:37.980
the war continues, they're dangerous,

717
00:31:37.980 --> 00:31:38.910
we're not gonna let them go.

718
00:31:38.910 --> 00:31:41.630
And that meant that closing Guantanamo

719
00:31:41.630 --> 00:31:44.800
did not mean letting everyone go

720
00:31:44.800 --> 00:31:46.210
who could not be prosecuted.

721
00:31:46.210 --> 00:31:49.310
It meant that there was still gonna be essentially

722
00:31:49.310 --> 00:31:52.167
a POW camp somewhere, and closing Guantanamo

723
00:31:52.167 --> 00:31:53.670
was simply gonna be moving it.

724
00:31:53.670 --> 00:31:57.120
And so a lot of 2009 was designed around

725
00:31:57.120 --> 00:31:58.523
where are the options?

726
00:31:59.690 --> 00:32:02.610
Fort Leavenworth, or Miramar, or Charleston,

727
00:32:02.610 --> 00:32:05.720
or could we buy this unused prison in Michigan

728
00:32:05.720 --> 00:32:09.180
in Standish, or Thomson, Illinois?

729
00:32:09.180 --> 00:32:11.913
They eventually settled on Thomson.

730
00:32:13.000 --> 00:32:16.293
But by then, over the course of 2009,

731
00:32:17.200 --> 00:32:18.973
the politics had shifted.

732
00:32:21.020 --> 00:32:23.970
In 2008 John McCain, and Obama,

733
00:32:23.970 --> 00:32:25.420
and George W. Bush for that matter,

734
00:32:25.420 --> 00:32:27.340
all thought Guantanamo should be closed.

735
00:32:27.340 --> 00:32:31.250
But Republicans in the course of 2009 discovered

736
00:32:31.250 --> 00:32:33.520
that shifting positions on Guantanamo

737
00:32:33.520 --> 00:32:36.180
from Bush and McCain's to criticizing

738
00:32:36.180 --> 00:32:39.060
the Obama Administration for being feckless,

739
00:32:39.060 --> 00:32:40.840
and making the world more dangerous,

740
00:32:40.840 --> 00:32:44.810
and so forth, was good politics.

741
00:32:44.810 --> 00:32:49.000
And then in particular, after the Christmas of '09,

742
00:32:49.000 --> 00:32:51.710
attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner

743
00:32:51.710 --> 00:32:54.630
by a branch of Al-Qaeda that was based in Yemen,

744
00:32:54.630 --> 00:32:56.580
which nearly succeeded.

745
00:32:56.580 --> 00:33:00.100
There was a great wave of fear,

746
00:33:00.100 --> 00:33:02.810
a renewed fear that Obama's election, and so forth

747
00:33:02.810 --> 00:33:05.240
had not ended the war on terror.

748
00:33:05.240 --> 00:33:06.270
In fact, they were still out,

749
00:33:06.270 --> 00:33:08.600
they literally were still out there trying to kill us.

750
00:33:08.600 --> 00:33:10.250
Which was true, they were,

751
00:33:10.250 --> 00:33:13.050
as the Christmas attack demonstrated.

752
00:33:13.050 --> 00:33:15.110
So that's when support drains away

753
00:33:15.110 --> 00:33:18.580
for bringing the military commission cases

754
00:33:18.580 --> 00:33:20.640
into the normal court system,

755
00:33:20.640 --> 00:33:23.000
and having the 9/11 trial in New York.

756
00:33:23.000 --> 00:33:24.583
And that's also when,

757
00:33:25.723 --> 00:33:27.870
because there was this Yemen branch of Al-Qaeda

758
00:33:27.870 --> 00:33:29.540
that had launched that attack.

759
00:33:29.540 --> 00:33:31.610
Obama imposes a moratorium on sending

760
00:33:31.610 --> 00:33:33.680
any detainees from Guantanamo to Yemen.

761
00:33:33.680 --> 00:33:35.410
Because a huge number of the detainees

762
00:33:35.410 --> 00:33:37.050
on the cleared list, cleared,

763
00:33:37.050 --> 00:33:38.240
meaning recommended for transfer,

764
00:33:38.240 --> 00:33:42.010
not cleared as in innocent, were Yemenis.

765
00:33:42.010 --> 00:33:43.290
That meant that there was gonna be

766
00:33:43.290 --> 00:33:45.083
a large, large number of people who

767
00:33:45.083 --> 00:33:47.880
were not gonna be transferred in the near future.

768
00:33:47.880 --> 00:33:52.210
And that was the death knell of the effort to close it

769
00:33:52.210 --> 00:33:54.600
in the sense that, as part of that politics,

770
00:33:54.600 --> 00:33:57.430
then Congress imposes a ban on bringing people

771
00:33:57.430 --> 00:33:58.540
to the United States.

772
00:33:58.540 --> 00:33:59.850
And that's the end.

773
00:33:59.850 --> 00:34:01.450
And until Congress lifts that law,

774
00:34:01.450 --> 00:34:05.570
or if Obama had been willing to violate the law,

775
00:34:05.570 --> 00:34:07.220
in a George W. Bush like way,

776
00:34:07.220 --> 00:34:08.500
saying, "I'm the Commander in Chief,

777
00:34:08.500 --> 00:34:10.660
and the statutes can't bind my decisions

778
00:34:10.660 --> 00:34:12.180
about war time matters."

779
00:34:12.180 --> 00:34:14.130
Which Obama and the Left had been

780
00:34:14.130 --> 00:34:16.450
a huge critic of when Bush did that,

781
00:34:16.450 --> 00:34:18.640
then he was stuck at that point.

782
00:34:18.640 --> 00:34:19.510
Go ahead.
<v ->Sorry.</v>

783
00:34:19.510 --> 00:34:23.527
<v ->So in hindsight, and he has said this,</v>

784
00:34:23.527 --> 00:34:25.080
if he really wanted to close GITMO

785
00:34:25.080 --> 00:34:27.740
with his planned of relocating these men

786
00:34:27.740 --> 00:34:29.090
to a different prison,

787
00:34:29.090 --> 00:34:31.110
he should not have waited.

788
00:34:31.110 --> 00:34:34.850
And had this sort of slow, carefully, prudent,

789
00:34:34.850 --> 00:34:37.920
methodical policy analysis of the pros and cons,

790
00:34:37.920 --> 00:34:38.880
and what are the issues,

791
00:34:38.880 --> 00:34:39.740
and what do we need to do?

792
00:34:39.740 --> 00:34:41.810
Will we need to build something here,

793
00:34:41.810 --> 00:34:43.830
or what legal issues will be raised?

794
00:34:43.830 --> 00:34:46.810
He could have capriciously ordered

795
00:34:46.810 --> 00:34:48.710
the military to put them on a plane

796
00:34:48.710 --> 00:34:50.500
in January of '09 and just bring them

797
00:34:50.500 --> 00:34:52.720
to Fort Leavenworth, or something.

798
00:34:52.720 --> 00:34:55.387
And deal with working through the legal issues

799
00:34:55.387 --> 00:34:57.840
and the fencing issues and stuff later.

800
00:34:57.840 --> 00:35:00.690
Which would have looked irresponsible in 2009,

801
00:35:00.690 --> 00:35:02.750
not knowing how this was gonna play out.

802
00:35:02.750 --> 00:35:06.073
Once it did play out, his hands were tied.

803
00:35:07.391 --> 00:35:08.990
He whittled it away, and he kept telling,

804
00:35:08.990 --> 00:35:11.250
asking Congress to lift those restrictions,

805
00:35:11.250 --> 00:35:13.200
and they were not willing to.

806
00:35:13.200 --> 00:35:14.843
And that's why he didn't close it.

807
00:35:15.970 --> 00:35:16.820
<v Interviewer>I'm sorry to interrupt,</v>

808
00:35:16.820 --> 00:35:19.970
but he signed those military

809
00:35:21.790 --> 00:35:23.770
bills that he did that did keep

810
00:35:23.770 --> 00:35:24.950
the restrictions on him.

811
00:35:24.950 --> 00:35:27.350
He, of course, could have vetoed them all these,

812
00:35:28.950 --> 00:35:31.900
done something other than sign those bills, or whatever.

813
00:35:31.900 --> 00:35:33.070
Reasons that he did sign them,

814
00:35:33.070 --> 00:35:35.650
he did sign his own restrictions, right?

815
00:35:35.650 --> 00:35:38.228
<v ->That's true, he did sign those bills.</v>

816
00:35:38.228 --> 00:35:39.710
It was not like there was a bill that came

817
00:35:39.710 --> 00:35:41.300
to him that said, "You can't do this."

818
00:35:41.300 --> 00:35:43.480
It was 1,000 page bill that said,

819
00:35:43.480 --> 00:35:45.590
we're gonna keep funding the military,

820
00:35:45.590 --> 00:35:46.860
and by the way, you're fighting a war

821
00:35:46.860 --> 00:35:48.530
in Libya, and Afghanistan and Iraq,

822
00:35:48.530 --> 00:35:50.773
and here's all this other stuff.

823
00:35:53.400 --> 00:35:54.770
It would have, you know,

824
00:35:54.770 --> 00:35:56.630
when Congress wants to pass something

825
00:35:56.630 --> 00:35:58.160
and they're gonna add it to every single bill

826
00:35:58.160 --> 00:36:00.500
they send you, the question is whether

827
00:36:00.500 --> 00:36:02.630
that's the thing to go to war over.

828
00:36:02.630 --> 00:36:03.670
<v Interviewer>Right, right.</v>

829
00:36:03.670 --> 00:36:05.279
<v ->And he chose not to go to war over it.</v>

830
00:36:05.279 --> 00:36:06.112
<v Interviewer>Again, and again, right?</v>

831
00:36:08.380 --> 00:36:09.473
Going back to Trump.

832
00:36:10.399 --> 00:36:13.163
You said Trump might send men to Guantanamo.

833
00:36:14.550 --> 00:36:16.853
He also said he might send Americans to Guantanamo.

834
00:36:16.853 --> 00:36:18.710
I know the law doesn't permit it now,

835
00:36:18.710 --> 00:36:21.400
but do you see that happening,

836
00:36:21.400 --> 00:36:23.679
Congress could actually change the law

837
00:36:23.679 --> 00:36:24.512
for that to happen?

838
00:36:24.512 --> 00:36:27.623
<v ->So Trump, what you're referring to is that Trump,</v>

839
00:36:28.950 --> 00:36:31.040
during the campaign was asked

840
00:36:31.040 --> 00:36:34.680
about prosecuting terrorism suspects,

841
00:36:34.680 --> 00:36:36.390
and said that he didn't like

842
00:36:36.390 --> 00:36:38.417
using civilian courts to do that.

843
00:36:38.417 --> 00:36:41.110
And that even if an American was a terrorism suspect,

844
00:36:41.110 --> 00:36:42.210
maybe they should be sent to GITMO

845
00:36:42.210 --> 00:36:43.810
for a military commission prosecution.

846
00:36:43.810 --> 00:36:45.650
So that's sort of one of the complexities of this

847
00:36:45.650 --> 00:36:50.650
is disentangling war time detention without trial,

848
00:36:51.050 --> 00:36:53.410
at Guantanamo or somewhere else,

849
00:36:53.410 --> 00:36:55.570
from the use of military commissions,

850
00:36:55.570 --> 00:36:57.460
as opposed to civilian court to prosecute people.

851
00:36:57.460 --> 00:36:58.670
And right now the military commissions

852
00:36:58.670 --> 00:37:01.173
only exist at Guantanamo, so necessarily it means.

853
00:37:02.870 --> 00:37:07.870
So there's no clear law against sending,

854
00:37:08.250 --> 00:37:11.570
holding an American in indefinite detention without trial.

855
00:37:11.570 --> 00:37:13.400
Bush did that twice.

856
00:37:13.400 --> 00:37:17.080
And two appeals courts came to opposite decisions about it,

857
00:37:17.080 --> 00:37:21.600
and then before a Supreme Court resolution of that conflict,

858
00:37:21.600 --> 00:37:24.920
Bush moved that man into the civilian court system,

859
00:37:24.920 --> 00:37:26.610
and so we have none.

860
00:37:26.610 --> 00:37:28.940
And there's been this sort of ambiguity floating

861
00:37:28.940 --> 00:37:31.890
above detention law ever since 9/11

862
00:37:31.890 --> 00:37:34.670
about whether or not even the intent of Congress

863
00:37:34.670 --> 00:37:38.630
was to let Americans arrested on domestic soil

864
00:37:38.630 --> 00:37:40.760
be held as war time detainees.

865
00:37:40.760 --> 00:37:42.380
And Congress has repeatedly punted,

866
00:37:42.380 --> 00:37:44.940
rather than trying to clarify what the rules should be

867
00:37:44.940 --> 00:37:48.640
in sort of a great failure in living up to their role

868
00:37:48.640 --> 00:37:50.113
of making the law.

869
00:37:52.250 --> 00:37:53.370
So that's good.

870
00:37:53.370 --> 00:37:56.180
Congress has clearly said American citizens cannot

871
00:37:56.180 --> 00:37:58.510
be prosecuted in the military commission system.

872
00:37:58.510 --> 00:38:00.730
That's one of the actually time bombs sitting

873
00:38:00.730 --> 00:38:01.990
in the military commission system,

874
00:38:01.990 --> 00:38:05.270
because to the extent the Constitution applies there.

875
00:38:05.270 --> 00:38:08.280
Having unequal rules could be something

876
00:38:08.280 --> 00:38:09.440
that an appeals court could use

877
00:38:09.440 --> 00:38:13.400
to invalidate any conviction if we ever get

878
00:38:13.400 --> 00:38:15.223
to a trial at some point.

879
00:38:16.380 --> 00:38:18.020
So Congress would have to change that.

880
00:38:18.020 --> 00:38:20.140
The thing about Trump is that,

881
00:38:20.140 --> 00:38:23.363
he gets asked, or he decides to say something,

882
00:38:25.580 --> 00:38:27.580
and he just says something off the cuff.

883
00:38:28.520 --> 00:38:31.220
You don't really know, our experience so far

884
00:38:31.220 --> 00:38:32.740
in the campaign transition,

885
00:38:32.740 --> 00:38:34.283
you don't really know, is this really something

886
00:38:34.283 --> 00:38:37.580
that he really has thought about and thought through?

887
00:38:37.580 --> 00:38:38.967
Does the right people is behind it,

888
00:38:38.967 --> 00:38:41.610
and everyone's on board, and this is what they're gonna do?

889
00:38:41.610 --> 00:38:43.470
Or is it just a thought

890
00:38:43.470 --> 00:38:45.570
that sort of goes off and then dissipates?

891
00:38:48.670 --> 00:38:52.400
I haven't seen any sign from the few people I know

892
00:38:52.400 --> 00:38:56.680
in the transition that they have some well-designed plan,

893
00:38:56.680 --> 00:39:00.320
or they're even talking about sending Americans down there?

894
00:39:00.320 --> 00:39:02.700
It's the kind of thing, I guess at some point,

895
00:39:02.700 --> 00:39:06.240
somebody will be arrested for a terrorism offense

896
00:39:06.240 --> 00:39:08.040
on domestic soil, and we'll see what they do.

897
00:39:08.040 --> 00:39:09.100
Maybe that will be the point where

898
00:39:09.100 --> 00:39:10.550
they actually think about it.

899
00:39:11.880 --> 00:39:14.300
But so far that looks like that was

900
00:39:14.300 --> 00:39:16.370
an off the cuff comment that he may not

901
00:39:16.370 --> 00:39:18.370
have even thought of since.

902
00:39:18.370 --> 00:39:20.853
<v Interviewer>Well, you know he brought up Jose Padir,</v>

903
00:39:20.853 --> 00:39:22.350
a name (unintelligible).

904
00:39:22.350 --> 00:39:25.040
And I think it's important to understand

905
00:39:25.040 --> 00:39:28.040
that that is a possibility under Trump,

906
00:39:28.040 --> 00:39:29.290
that seemingly could be more

907
00:39:29.290 --> 00:39:30.840
a possibility than under Obama.

908
00:39:32.100 --> 00:39:34.220
I mean, on a lot of conjecture,

909
00:39:34.220 --> 00:39:36.640
is that something also, we should think about?

910
00:39:36.640 --> 00:39:39.220
<v ->It's certainly true that a core tenant</v>

911
00:39:39.220 --> 00:39:41.420
of Obama's national security legal policy

912
00:39:41.420 --> 00:39:44.900
and philosophy has been a consistent one.

913
00:39:44.900 --> 00:39:47.910
There are places where he came in as an idealist,

914
00:39:47.910 --> 00:39:51.150
and then compromised in a variety of ways

915
00:39:51.150 --> 00:39:52.420
under various pressures.

916
00:39:52.420 --> 00:39:54.030
And this one where he never compromised

917
00:39:54.030 --> 00:39:54.863
and he stuck with it.

918
00:39:54.863 --> 00:39:58.880
Which is that military force, military agencies

919
00:39:58.880 --> 00:40:02.350
should not be used to handle terrorism offenses

920
00:40:02.350 --> 00:40:03.760
arising on domestic soil.

921
00:40:03.760 --> 00:40:05.660
The police does not patrol the street,

922
00:40:06.980 --> 00:40:10.520
the military does not patrol the streets of America.

923
00:40:10.520 --> 00:40:15.030
So every time a terrorism suspect was arrested inside

924
00:40:15.030 --> 00:40:18.260
the United States and was read his Miranda rights,

925
00:40:18.260 --> 00:40:21.480
and prosecuted in civilian court, Republicans

926
00:40:21.480 --> 00:40:24.230
would attack that decision.

927
00:40:24.230 --> 00:40:27.050
Going back to that Christmas 2009

928
00:40:27.050 --> 00:40:27.883
on the bombing attempt,

929
00:40:27.883 --> 00:40:29.440
and the sort of political fall out of that,

930
00:40:29.440 --> 00:40:33.293
we saw that sort of hardened into a cycle of,

931
00:40:34.610 --> 00:40:37.380
because it was very successful in January of 2010 for them.

932
00:40:37.380 --> 00:40:40.620
It probably led to the election of Senator Scott Brown,

933
00:40:40.620 --> 00:40:44.250
a Republican in Massachusetts, a very liberal state

934
00:40:44.250 --> 00:40:47.650
to fill the seat left vacant when Ted Kennedy died.

935
00:40:47.650 --> 00:40:52.650
But it didn't really have that much of a shift after that.

936
00:40:52.807 --> 00:40:55.010
That was sort of a unique moment it turns out.

937
00:40:55.010 --> 00:40:56.360
And Obama stuck to his guns.

938
00:40:56.360 --> 00:40:58.070
And so you would get these press releases,

939
00:40:58.070 --> 00:40:59.933
and then life would go on.

940
00:41:01.310 --> 00:41:04.560
So it will be very interesting to see what

941
00:41:04.560 --> 00:41:05.910
the Trump Administration does for that.

942
00:41:05.910 --> 00:41:07.420
I mean, one of the reasons the Obama people

943
00:41:07.420 --> 00:41:12.420
were invested in the existing law enforcement approach

944
00:41:13.240 --> 00:41:15.570
to dealing with terrorism cases

945
00:41:15.570 --> 00:41:16.940
that arose on United States soil,

946
00:41:16.940 --> 00:41:19.460
rather than sending people to Guantanamo,

947
00:41:19.460 --> 00:41:21.770
is that as a practical matter.

948
00:41:21.770 --> 00:41:23.510
It's not just that they were

949
00:41:24.630 --> 00:41:26.120
human rights idealists,

950
00:41:26.120 --> 00:41:26.953
as a practical matter,

951
00:41:26.953 --> 00:41:29.730
the national security professionals found

952
00:41:29.730 --> 00:41:30.950
that it was very effective.

953
00:41:30.950 --> 00:41:35.300
That there were in Article III with courts

954
00:41:35.300 --> 00:41:38.590
they could use various tools available as interrogators

955
00:41:38.590 --> 00:41:42.180
to induce cooperation without using torture.

956
00:41:42.180 --> 00:41:45.100
They could offer credit for time served,

957
00:41:45.100 --> 00:41:46.210
and all kinds of other things

958
00:41:46.210 --> 00:41:48.800
that aren't available in the military commission system.

959
00:41:48.800 --> 00:41:52.250
And they could even use the defense lawyer assigned

960
00:41:52.250 --> 00:41:54.307
to represent someone as an ally to say,

961
00:41:54.307 --> 00:41:56.690
"You better cooperate, because you know,

962
00:41:56.690 --> 00:41:58.670
you're really facing some serious situation here.

963
00:41:58.670 --> 00:42:01.220
Maybe you can improve your situation a little bit."

964
00:42:02.690 --> 00:42:05.370
And then once someone was convicted,

965
00:42:05.370 --> 00:42:10.340
the trial happened quickly, compared to Guantanamo,

966
00:42:10.340 --> 00:42:12.840
the verdict was upheld on appeal.

967
00:42:12.840 --> 00:42:15.150
The person disappears into the Florence Supermax,

968
00:42:15.150 --> 00:42:16.710
and never to be heard from again.

969
00:42:16.710 --> 00:42:20.700
While the sort of circus of an attempt

970
00:42:20.700 --> 00:42:24.200
to bring even to get through pretrial hearings on a case,

971
00:42:24.200 --> 00:42:28.050
the commission system continues to be ineffective.

972
00:42:28.050 --> 00:42:32.470
And so it'll be, there are practical,

973
00:42:32.470 --> 00:42:35.200
or pragmatic arguments for this let

974
00:42:35.200 --> 00:42:36.700
the professionals have totally apart

975
00:42:36.700 --> 00:42:38.390
from the political rhetoric

976
00:42:38.390 --> 00:42:40.920
about which way was being tougher on terrorism.

977
00:42:40.920 --> 00:42:42.000
One of the things that will be very interesting

978
00:42:42.000 --> 00:42:45.220
to watch for is how national security professionals

979
00:42:45.220 --> 00:42:48.430
in the Trump Administration handle

980
00:42:48.430 --> 00:42:49.700
these issues as they arise.

981
00:42:49.700 --> 00:42:51.430
And whether they make such arguments

982
00:42:51.430 --> 00:42:52.490
and whether they're listened to,

983
00:42:52.490 --> 00:42:56.920
or whether there's a desire to show a different approach

984
00:42:56.920 --> 00:42:59.940
that prevails over that kind of an argument.

985
00:42:59.940 --> 00:43:01.330
<v Interviewer>I mean if for a really strong argument</v>

986
00:43:01.330 --> 00:43:02.870
for the rule of law,

987
00:43:02.870 --> 00:43:07.630
which I've seen you've made many times,

988
00:43:07.630 --> 00:43:10.913
but it's probably something that not everyone hears.

989
00:43:14.288 --> 00:43:18.043
Actually, you've totally really upset me here I must say,

990
00:43:18.999 --> 00:43:21.860
(unintelligible) 'cause to see something like

991
00:43:21.860 --> 00:43:24.440
that happening again with the Trump Administration,

992
00:43:24.440 --> 00:43:27.490
as opposed what you described a really well situation

993
00:43:27.490 --> 00:43:32.490
that seems more successful in obtaining intel.

994
00:43:34.880 --> 00:43:35.930
You'll write about it.

995
00:43:35.930 --> 00:43:38.160
Will the national security people under Trump

996
00:43:38.160 --> 00:43:39.870
think about what you just described

997
00:43:39.870 --> 00:43:40.997
and understand what you just described,

998
00:43:40.997 --> 00:43:42.750
and maybe you should write a piece about

999
00:43:42.750 --> 00:43:44.223
it for them to read.

1000
00:43:45.460 --> 00:43:47.143
Are they as aware as you are

1001
00:43:47.143 --> 00:43:49.490
of what you just described as to-

1002
00:43:49.490 --> 00:43:50.570
<v ->You're talking about the career</v>

1003
00:43:50.570 --> 00:43:52.340
of national security professionals in the government

1004
00:43:52.340 --> 00:43:54.810
who stay on between administrations

1005
00:43:54.810 --> 00:43:55.840
they are completely aware.

1006
00:43:55.840 --> 00:43:58.740
These are going to be the same people.

1007
00:43:58.740 --> 00:44:00.440
These aren't political appointees.

1008
00:44:04.460 --> 00:44:06.530
<v Interviewer>Your sense of the future,</v>

1009
00:44:06.530 --> 00:44:08.913
and given all that you've done,

1010
00:44:10.010 --> 00:44:11.630
how do you see that in 15 years,

1011
00:44:11.630 --> 00:44:13.430
and how do you see us going forward?

1012
00:44:16.706 --> 00:44:19.530
In your generation, what have you seen has changed?

1013
00:44:19.530 --> 00:44:22.293
Has a lot changed since 9/11?

1014
00:44:24.370 --> 00:44:26.460
And how's it gonna unfold to you

1015
00:44:26.460 --> 00:44:27.913
from all your work?

1016
00:44:29.690 --> 00:44:31.490
<v ->You know, that's such a broad question,</v>

1017
00:44:31.490 --> 00:44:32.840
that I don't even know, begin to know

1018
00:44:32.840 --> 00:44:34.043
how to answer it.

1019
00:44:35.830 --> 00:44:38.090
I've written two long books about it,

1020
00:44:38.090 --> 00:44:39.650
so how do I sum that up?

1021
00:44:39.650 --> 00:44:41.790
<v Interviewer>Well, is it unique?</v>

1022
00:44:41.790 --> 00:44:43.593
Is this a unique period to you,

1023
00:44:43.593 --> 00:44:44.660
because you wrote those two book?

1024
00:44:44.660 --> 00:44:46.793
Are these 15 years unique to you?

1025
00:44:46.793 --> 00:44:50.240
Are they any different from what you know in history?

1026
00:44:50.240 --> 00:44:52.500
Do you think we've really-

1027
00:44:52.500 --> 00:44:55.230
<v ->Well, yes and no.</v>

1028
00:44:55.230 --> 00:44:56.380
This is our crisis,

1029
00:44:56.380 --> 00:45:00.493
this is our generation's defining dilemmas.

1030
00:45:01.620 --> 00:45:03.745
A lot of it dilemmas, right?

1031
00:45:03.745 --> 00:45:04.750
That's why it's interesting,

1032
00:45:04.750 --> 00:45:06.030
and why it's not resolved is there's

1033
00:45:06.030 --> 00:45:08.790
a lot of things that are not black and white.

1034
00:45:08.790 --> 00:45:11.280
That is not to say that previous generations

1035
00:45:11.280 --> 00:45:12.260
didn't have their own.

1036
00:45:12.260 --> 00:45:14.713
There were equally crises.

1037
00:45:16.240 --> 00:45:20.283
The arrival of the nuclear age, or whatever.

1038
00:45:22.810 --> 00:45:25.050
But this is ours, and this is when I'm alive

1039
00:45:25.050 --> 00:45:27.080
and able to contribute as a journalist,

1040
00:45:27.080 --> 00:45:29.023
so this is what I'm focusing on.

1041
00:45:30.200 --> 00:45:33.240
The future of national security,

1042
00:45:33.240 --> 00:45:35.163
real loss of liberties,

1043
00:45:36.260 --> 00:45:38.303
the structure of separation of powers,

1044
00:45:39.540 --> 00:45:40.400
within the government,

1045
00:45:40.400 --> 00:45:42.840
and the government versus the individual.

1046
00:45:42.840 --> 00:45:44.550
And the United States' role in the world,

1047
00:45:44.550 --> 00:45:46.550
and our approach to adherence to,

1048
00:45:46.550 --> 00:45:48.253
or defiance of international law.

1049
00:45:49.946 --> 00:45:52.260
And not just that, the world's response, as well,

1050
00:45:52.260 --> 00:45:57.260
to the arrival, transnational, international terrorism

1051
00:45:58.300 --> 00:46:02.913
on a scale that was previously unimaginable.

1052
00:46:06.734 --> 00:46:07.960
It's an amazing period.

1053
00:46:07.960 --> 00:46:11.483
If Hillary Clinton had won, I think a lot,

1054
00:46:12.410 --> 00:46:14.530
Obama was leaving a lot of these things

1055
00:46:14.530 --> 00:46:16.943
in what could have been a fairly stable forum.

1056
00:46:18.150 --> 00:46:20.810
Bush did all this stuff in his first term,

1057
00:46:20.810 --> 00:46:24.730
a lot of it lawlessly, based on Commander in Chief claims,

1058
00:46:24.730 --> 00:46:27.210
that a President need not obey statutes.

1059
00:46:27.210 --> 00:46:29.323
By his second term, they were starting to,

1060
00:46:33.120 --> 00:46:34.780
put things on a firmer legal basis,

1061
00:46:34.780 --> 00:46:37.670
they were getting statutory authority for things.

1062
00:46:37.670 --> 00:46:40.580
They were stopping doing certain torture techniques

1063
00:46:40.580 --> 00:46:42.640
that would be impossible to make legal.

1064
00:46:42.640 --> 00:46:46.600
And they were getting court oversight,

1065
00:46:46.600 --> 00:46:48.100
and approval and so forth.

1066
00:46:48.100 --> 00:46:51.810
Obama continued that approach in sort of right-sizing,

1067
00:46:51.810 --> 00:46:56.810
and maybe a balanced, as they saw it at least, approach

1068
00:46:57.160 --> 00:46:59.340
to the threat posed by Al-Qaeda

1069
00:46:59.340 --> 00:47:01.233
and its progeny, like ISIS,

1070
00:47:03.000 --> 00:47:05.113
that seemed to have certain tenants.

1071
00:47:06.310 --> 00:47:08.270
Targeted killings using drones away

1072
00:47:08.270 --> 00:47:10.540
from conventional war zones are okay,

1073
00:47:10.540 --> 00:47:12.140
but only under narrow circumstances,

1074
00:47:12.140 --> 00:47:13.740
and let's have all this process.

1075
00:47:15.460 --> 00:47:17.010
As opposed to willy-nilly bombing,

1076
00:47:17.010 --> 00:47:18.850
but also as opposed to doing nothing

1077
00:47:18.850 --> 00:47:21.920
when there's someone sort of lawless badlands,

1078
00:47:21.920 --> 00:47:23.090
who is plotting an attack,

1079
00:47:23.090 --> 00:47:24.830
and there's not police that can go arrest

1080
00:47:24.830 --> 00:47:26.240
that person on our behalf.

1081
00:47:26.240 --> 00:47:27.370
And we don't have troops on the ground

1082
00:47:27.370 --> 00:47:28.520
to do it for us.

1083
00:47:28.520 --> 00:47:31.010
Or we're not gonna have the military police things

1084
00:47:31.010 --> 00:47:33.320
on domestic soil, but we do accept

1085
00:47:33.320 --> 00:47:36.370
a limited role of military detention.

1086
00:47:36.370 --> 00:47:37.850
Especially for these difficult cases

1087
00:47:37.850 --> 00:47:39.320
of men who are arrested

1088
00:47:39.320 --> 00:47:42.470
before material support for terrorism laws

1089
00:47:42.470 --> 00:47:45.160
were expanded to cover their types of actions.

1090
00:47:45.160 --> 00:47:46.477
Well, let's keep trying to close Guantanamo,

1091
00:47:46.477 --> 00:47:49.183
and so forth, and we're gonna have surveillance, yes.

1092
00:47:50.930 --> 00:47:52.510
With the court overseeing it,

1093
00:47:52.510 --> 00:47:53.520
and statutory authority,

1094
00:47:53.520 --> 00:47:55.510
not just the executive deciding in secret

1095
00:47:55.510 --> 00:47:57.100
that it can do this stuff.

1096
00:47:57.100 --> 00:47:58.540
And you may or may not like that,

1097
00:47:58.540 --> 00:48:02.787
but it seemed much more stable than

1098
00:48:03.840 --> 00:48:05.750
it had been in '02, '03,

1099
00:48:05.750 --> 00:48:08.990
when the sort of immediate chaos after 9/11.

1100
00:48:08.990 --> 00:48:11.420
And I think we would have seen a Clinton Administration

1101
00:48:11.420 --> 00:48:14.070
that would have largely have continued that approach.

1102
00:48:15.440 --> 00:48:17.223
With Trump, of course, coming in,

1103
00:48:19.730 --> 00:48:22.210
all the sort of winding of things down

1104
00:48:22.210 --> 00:48:24.200
could be reversed, or not.

1105
00:48:24.200 --> 00:48:25.650
You know, we just don't know.

1106
00:48:26.730 --> 00:48:28.430
We're all putting a new chapter now,

1107
00:48:28.430 --> 00:48:30.460
in which things that seems like they

1108
00:48:30.460 --> 00:48:34.330
had been settled after a period of dislocation

1109
00:48:34.330 --> 00:48:36.653
may be, once again, up for grabs.

1110
00:48:38.950 --> 00:48:40.700
Maybe what happens in the Trump years

1111
00:48:40.700 --> 00:48:42.610
will cause people to reevaluate what

1112
00:48:42.610 --> 00:48:43.587
had happened in the Obama years,

1113
00:48:43.587 --> 00:48:46.283
and so forth, in hindsight.

1114
00:48:47.490 --> 00:48:48.880
So it's gonna be very interesting.

1115
00:48:48.880 --> 00:48:50.630
<v Interviewer>I mean, what you're saying</v>

1116
00:48:50.630 --> 00:48:52.690
works on the assumption there won't be

1117
00:48:52.690 --> 00:48:54.750
another 9/11 attack, right?

1118
00:48:54.750 --> 00:48:59.583
Because that'll change the territory very quickly.

1119
00:49:01.710 --> 00:49:03.041
I mean, even under Obama,

1120
00:49:03.041 --> 00:49:05.020
if there was another 9/11 attack,

1121
00:49:05.020 --> 00:49:07.570
would it be different from what you just described?

1122
00:49:09.830 --> 00:49:10.663
<v ->Well.</v>

1123
00:49:12.640 --> 00:49:16.100
Whether or not, in other words, another attack where

1124
00:49:16.100 --> 00:49:17.900
several thousand people are killed, as opposed to?

1125
00:49:17.900 --> 00:49:19.480
I mean, we had the Boston Marathon,

1126
00:49:19.480 --> 00:49:23.340
we had San Bernadino, we had Orlando.

1127
00:49:23.340 --> 00:49:25.400
<v Interviewer>You wouldn't equate them to 9/11, right?</v>

1128
00:49:25.400 --> 00:49:29.610
<v ->No, but they are terrorist attacks on domestic soil</v>

1129
00:49:29.610 --> 00:49:31.373
that killed a lot of people.

1130
00:49:35.440 --> 00:49:37.040
I don't know that I would agree.

1131
00:49:38.420 --> 00:49:40.380
Obviously, it's not like there's one type

1132
00:49:40.380 --> 00:49:42.893
and then the other, there's a sliding scale.

1133
00:49:44.160 --> 00:49:46.610
Yes, so any time there's a terrorist attack,

1134
00:49:46.610 --> 00:49:48.103
even an unsuccessful one,

1135
00:49:50.410 --> 00:49:54.260
people get scared, and the government power increases.

1136
00:49:54.260 --> 00:49:55.200
And then when there's a period

1137
00:49:55.200 --> 00:49:56.370
in which there's not one for awhile,

1138
00:49:56.370 --> 00:49:58.930
people start to think about other equities.

1139
00:49:58.930 --> 00:50:00.853
And that's normal, that's natural.

1140
00:50:04.341 --> 00:50:05.200
<v Interviewer>Is there something that you want</v>

1141
00:50:05.200 --> 00:50:06.897
to talk about, Charlie, that I didn't ask you?

1142
00:50:06.897 --> 00:50:08.633
Like when you came here you're thinking

1143
00:50:08.633 --> 00:50:11.572
that is important for the world to know?

1144
00:50:11.572 --> 00:50:13.060
<v ->(sighs) Well, we talked,</v>

1145
00:50:13.060 --> 00:50:16.070
we flicked at the beginning about my visit

1146
00:50:16.070 --> 00:50:18.240
to this guy in Estonia?

1147
00:50:18.240 --> 00:50:20.080
<v Interviewer>Oh yeah, off camera, sure.</v>

1148
00:50:20.080 --> 00:50:21.430
Have you tell us on camera.

1149
00:50:21.430 --> 00:50:23.050
<v ->Yeah, there's something interesting</v>

1150
00:50:23.050 --> 00:50:25.180
to say about that, I guess.

1151
00:50:25.180 --> 00:50:28.090
Most of my coverage of Guantanamo

1152
00:50:28.090 --> 00:50:31.400
has been at the policy level.

1153
00:50:31.400 --> 00:50:33.300
I'd go down there from time to time

1154
00:50:33.300 --> 00:50:35.430
and I walk through the prison blocks

1155
00:50:35.430 --> 00:50:37.943
and I talk to the guards, and talk to the warden.

1156
00:50:38.780 --> 00:50:41.010
But part of what I'm doing there is just getting color

1157
00:50:41.010 --> 00:50:45.190
and vivid detail to inform an article

1158
00:50:45.190 --> 00:50:46.450
about the policy decisions

1159
00:50:46.450 --> 00:50:49.823
that are being made here in Washington DC.

1160
00:50:50.830 --> 00:50:53.200
Are we gonna start push harder to let people go,

1161
00:50:53.200 --> 00:50:54.130
or pull it back?

1162
00:50:54.130 --> 00:50:55.470
Are we gonna force feed people,

1163
00:50:55.470 --> 00:50:57.280
or let them starve themselves?

1164
00:50:57.280 --> 00:50:59.490
Are we going to continue to use

1165
00:50:59.490 --> 00:51:01.570
the military commission system and defend it

1166
00:51:01.570 --> 00:51:04.740
and expand it, or try to reduce its size

1167
00:51:04.740 --> 00:51:06.090
and maybe get away from it?

1168
00:51:07.810 --> 00:51:08.710
But that's all very abstract,

1169
00:51:08.710 --> 00:51:11.160
so I go down there and I get color and add to it.

1170
00:51:12.300 --> 00:51:13.850
And because even when you do go there,

1171
00:51:13.850 --> 00:51:15.450
you don't get to talk to detainees.

1172
00:51:15.450 --> 00:51:17.640
You just sort of see them from afar

1173
00:51:17.640 --> 00:51:19.843
through the glass of a door, or something.

1174
00:51:22.540 --> 00:51:24.200
I haven't actually had that much experience

1175
00:51:24.200 --> 00:51:28.090
with the actual human beings who are stuck there.

1176
00:51:28.090 --> 00:51:33.090
And so with the encouragement of my editors last year,

1177
00:51:34.330 --> 00:51:36.730
I decided to do a project where I would go

1178
00:51:36.730 --> 00:51:38.930
track down someone who hadn't talked

1179
00:51:38.930 --> 00:51:40.230
to the media before.

1180
00:51:40.230 --> 00:51:42.760
And that turned out to be, and see what their life was like.

1181
00:51:42.760 --> 00:51:45.293
And not just at Guantanamo, but after Guantanamo.

1182
00:51:46.730 --> 00:51:48.572
And that turned out to be tricky, a little bit.

1183
00:51:48.572 --> 00:51:51.250
I mean, obviously I couldn't go, for safety reasons

1184
00:51:51.250 --> 00:51:53.110
to certain countries.

1185
00:51:53.110 --> 00:51:56.720
And detainees who had, there were a few detainees

1186
00:51:56.720 --> 00:51:58.280
who talk to the media all the time.

1187
00:51:58.280 --> 00:51:59.600
They're kind of media whores,

1188
00:51:59.600 --> 00:52:00.870
and that's not actually interesting

1189
00:52:00.870 --> 00:52:02.750
to talk to them redundantly.

1190
00:52:02.750 --> 00:52:05.120
And then the others ones, you may have found this yourself

1191
00:52:05.120 --> 00:52:07.280
when you were trying to track them down.

1192
00:52:07.280 --> 00:52:08.570
The ones who haven't talked to the media

1193
00:52:08.570 --> 00:52:09.700
have deliberately not done that,

1194
00:52:09.700 --> 00:52:11.320
and they're trying to keep their head down,

1195
00:52:11.320 --> 00:52:13.200
and just want to move on with their lives.

1196
00:52:13.200 --> 00:52:14.250
And the last thing they want to do

1197
00:52:14.250 --> 00:52:15.780
is advertise to their new neighbors

1198
00:52:15.780 --> 00:52:18.830
that they're a Guantanamo detainee.

1199
00:52:18.830 --> 00:52:19.850
Maybe it's not so hard for you,

1200
00:52:19.850 --> 00:52:21.990
'cause you're just making it for the archive.

1201
00:52:21.990 --> 00:52:23.747
But to be on the New York Times and be like,

1202
00:52:23.747 --> 00:52:25.447
"Hey there, everyone, look at me."

1203
00:52:26.860 --> 00:52:29.980
So I identified some candidates who,

1204
00:52:29.980 --> 00:52:31.810
with some help from people who had,

1205
00:52:31.810 --> 00:52:33.737
inside the government who had been involved.

1206
00:52:33.737 --> 00:52:34.810
"Oh, you should try this guy,

1207
00:52:34.810 --> 00:52:37.248
he speaks English well," or whatever.

1208
00:52:37.248 --> 00:52:40.070
The first few turned me down, and then finally,

1209
00:52:40.070 --> 00:52:42.480
one Yemeni named Ahmed Khadr,

1210
00:52:42.480 --> 00:52:45.810
who had went to Estonia a couple years ago.

1211
00:52:45.810 --> 00:52:48.367
When they finally started resettling in Mid East,

1212
00:52:48.367 --> 00:52:50.780
and kind of gave up on Yemen.

1213
00:52:50.780 --> 00:52:53.380
Stabilizing enough that they could repatriate Yemenis,

1214
00:52:53.380 --> 00:52:54.980
agreed to let me come visit him.

1215
00:52:56.690 --> 00:53:00.180
And so I went and I spent sort of a week in Estonia,

1216
00:53:00.180 --> 00:53:02.480
I talked several days, spent all day with him

1217
00:53:02.480 --> 00:53:05.280
in his apartment or riding the bus around town,

1218
00:53:05.280 --> 00:53:06.781
speaking to his friends.

1219
00:53:06.781 --> 00:53:09.133
I went to the mosque with him where he prays,

1220
00:53:09.133 --> 00:53:11.327
a very small mosque in town.

1221
00:53:11.327 --> 00:53:12.970
And sort of getting a sense of his life.

1222
00:53:12.970 --> 00:53:14.950
And he's sort of glad to be out,

1223
00:53:14.950 --> 00:53:18.280
but also the struggles, he's in this strange place

1224
00:53:18.280 --> 00:53:20.545
where he's trying to learn the language,

1225
00:53:20.545 --> 00:53:22.740
he doesn't speak it well enough yet.

1226
00:53:22.740 --> 00:53:23.880
Although, they do speak English there,

1227
00:53:23.880 --> 00:53:25.060
he speaks English that helps.

1228
00:53:25.060 --> 00:53:26.900
That actually may be a crutch for him.

1229
00:53:26.900 --> 00:53:31.900
Very small Muslim community, so hard to get Halal food.

1230
00:53:32.250 --> 00:53:34.290
And he sort of misses his family,

1231
00:53:34.290 --> 00:53:37.040
and hasn't been able to reunite with them and so forth.

1232
00:53:38.290 --> 00:53:42.060
Larger than that his sort of crippling fear,

1233
00:53:42.060 --> 00:53:45.590
as he described it that he will be blamed

1234
00:53:45.590 --> 00:53:46.877
if a bomb goes off somewhere,

1235
00:53:46.877 --> 00:53:48.147
and they don't know who did it.

1236
00:53:48.147 --> 00:53:50.440
"Oh, that ex-GITMO guy must have done it."

1237
00:53:50.440 --> 00:53:52.700
In his mind at least, he was falsely blamed

1238
00:53:52.700 --> 00:53:54.750
even for being involved with Al-Qaeda,

1239
00:53:54.750 --> 00:53:57.233
because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

1240
00:53:58.510 --> 00:54:02.510
And he just sort of has trouble leaving

1241
00:54:02.510 --> 00:54:04.360
his apartment sometimes, because he's just like,

1242
00:54:04.360 --> 00:54:05.240
what if something goes off?

1243
00:54:05.240 --> 00:54:07.530
And he gradually got used to going around Estonia,

1244
00:54:07.530 --> 00:54:09.730
but has not traveled to other countries

1245
00:54:09.730 --> 00:54:11.680
in the EU, even though he's allowed to.

1246
00:54:13.430 --> 00:54:15.813
At least on paper, 'cause it's the Schengen zone.

1247
00:54:16.980 --> 00:54:18.817
Even though he lost his 20s,

1248
00:54:18.817 --> 00:54:20.770
and would kind of like to see the world,

1249
00:54:20.770 --> 00:54:22.030
but what if some bomb goes?

1250
00:54:22.030 --> 00:54:23.650
He likes the fact that he thinks

1251
00:54:23.650 --> 00:54:25.030
he's under surveillance in Estonia,

1252
00:54:25.030 --> 00:54:26.300
because that means they'll know

1253
00:54:26.300 --> 00:54:30.592
if something goes off that he was just, you know,

1254
00:54:30.592 --> 00:54:33.092
having cereal in his apartment when that happened.

1255
00:54:35.910 --> 00:54:37.890
The thing that he...

1256
00:54:37.890 --> 00:54:41.440
So he was a guy who had been sort of a teenager,

1257
00:54:41.440 --> 00:54:43.840
went to Afghanistan before,

1258
00:54:43.840 --> 00:54:46.603
went to Pakistan and then Afghanistan before 9/11.

1259
00:54:48.290 --> 00:54:50.670
Was sort of studying, been kind of drifting around,

1260
00:54:50.670 --> 00:54:51.970
and started having adventures.

1261
00:54:51.970 --> 00:54:55.683
And sort of came into contact with the Taliban.

1262
00:54:56.570 --> 00:54:59.320
There's no accusation that he fought even

1263
00:54:59.320 --> 00:55:00.560
against the Northern Alliance,

1264
00:55:00.560 --> 00:55:02.240
let alone the United States.

1265
00:55:02.240 --> 00:55:05.253
But he sort of had these, he lived in this one house,

1266
00:55:05.253 --> 00:55:07.100
then he was in this guest house

1267
00:55:07.100 --> 00:55:09.133
when there was a raid, and so forth.

1268
00:55:11.021 --> 00:55:12.021
And that was enough.

1269
00:55:12.950 --> 00:55:15.020
They would have gotten rid of him a long time before,

1270
00:55:15.020 --> 00:55:16.750
except he was Yemeni, and there was nothing,

1271
00:55:16.750 --> 00:55:18.150
the Yemenis were all stuck.

1272
00:55:18.150 --> 00:55:21.550
So he ends up spending 13, 14 years of his life

1273
00:55:21.550 --> 00:55:24.080
behind bars in Guantanamo.

1274
00:55:24.080 --> 00:55:27.453
Not really being a significant figure at all.

1275
00:55:29.440 --> 00:55:33.890
But he comes out and he, part of this is his fear

1276
00:55:33.890 --> 00:55:36.020
that I talked about about people will,

1277
00:55:36.020 --> 00:55:37.720
they just hear Guantanamo and this sort of

1278
00:55:37.720 --> 00:55:40.150
being branded as the terrorist.

1279
00:55:40.150 --> 00:55:44.890
And also, which he thinks flows into difficulties

1280
00:55:44.890 --> 00:55:46.600
in getting a job, because eventually the people have

1281
00:55:46.600 --> 00:55:49.040
to know who he is, and so forth.

1282
00:55:49.040 --> 00:55:54.040
What he really wanted was a statement of some exoneration

1283
00:55:55.690 --> 00:55:56.970
from the US Government.

1284
00:55:56.970 --> 00:56:01.600
We held this guy by mistake, he's not a terrorist.

1285
00:56:01.600 --> 00:56:03.660
Even though he lost his habeas corpus case.

1286
00:56:03.660 --> 00:56:07.640
The ties he had to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda

1287
00:56:07.640 --> 00:56:10.010
were deemed sufficient that he was more likely

1288
00:56:10.010 --> 00:56:12.560
than not part of Al-Qaeda says the court.

1289
00:56:12.560 --> 00:56:14.983
After, I'm sure you'll get into it a whole,

1290
00:56:16.310 --> 00:56:19.340
hollowing out of whether the habeas corpus process

1291
00:56:20.610 --> 00:56:22.650
had a meaningful chance of getting out people

1292
00:56:22.650 --> 00:56:24.883
who are being held by mistake.

1293
00:56:27.652 --> 00:56:29.897
So what was interesting about that was his,

1294
00:56:31.120 --> 00:56:34.450
there's two dossiers about him, and most detainees,

1295
00:56:34.450 --> 00:56:36.380
who are still there as of 2009.

1296
00:56:36.380 --> 00:56:39.490
There's one that the military made

1297
00:56:39.490 --> 00:56:42.170
and that became public because Chelsea Manning

1298
00:56:42.170 --> 00:56:43.780
leaked them all through WikiLeaks,

1299
00:56:43.780 --> 00:56:45.990
and are now on the internet.

1300
00:56:45.990 --> 00:56:47.740
Including on New York Times website.

1301
00:56:47.740 --> 00:56:50.180
And so anyone who encounters him, or someone else,

1302
00:56:50.180 --> 00:56:53.070
it's like I wonder what there is to know about him,

1303
00:56:53.070 --> 00:56:54.780
types in their name and up comes this thing.

1304
00:56:54.780 --> 00:56:57.910
And it's full of this, oh, he probably did this.

1305
00:56:57.910 --> 00:57:00.600
And detainee so-and-so said he saw him there,

1306
00:57:00.600 --> 00:57:02.300
and that his role was here, right?

1307
00:57:03.350 --> 00:57:04.430
And some of that stuff is true,

1308
00:57:04.430 --> 00:57:06.150
and some of that stuff is not true.

1309
00:57:06.150 --> 00:57:07.770
And we know that some of the stuff is not true,

1310
00:57:07.770 --> 00:57:11.780
because in 2009 when the six agency task force came in

1311
00:57:11.780 --> 00:57:14.730
and took a second look at all the detainees

1312
00:57:14.730 --> 00:57:15.580
who were still there,

1313
00:57:15.580 --> 00:57:18.710
they took a much more rigorous look at all the evidence.

1314
00:57:18.710 --> 00:57:20.880
And they cross referenced things that different agencies had

1315
00:57:20.880 --> 00:57:21.920
in different filing cabinets

1316
00:57:21.920 --> 00:57:23.850
that had never been put in one place.

1317
00:57:23.850 --> 00:57:27.680
And they came up with assessments, new assessments,

1318
00:57:27.680 --> 00:57:29.317
threat assessments of who this person was,

1319
00:57:29.317 --> 00:57:32.930
and whether this claim that this one detainee said

1320
00:57:32.930 --> 00:57:35.100
when shown 30 photographs.

1321
00:57:35.100 --> 00:57:38.140
And said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah those guys were Al-Farouq.

1322
00:57:38.140 --> 00:57:39.990
Can I have my hamburger now?

1323
00:57:39.990 --> 00:57:42.040
Look how cooperative I'm being."

1324
00:57:42.040 --> 00:57:44.730
Is there a reason to believe that this person actually

1325
00:57:44.730 --> 00:57:45.870
knew what they were talking about?

1326
00:57:45.870 --> 00:57:48.320
Did they say other things that were corroborated?

1327
00:57:49.310 --> 00:57:53.670
And they came up with a group that they thought

1328
00:57:53.670 --> 00:57:56.920
that there was no actual real evidence

1329
00:57:56.920 --> 00:58:00.270
that they had engaged in terrorism

1330
00:58:00.270 --> 00:58:01.720
against the United States.

1331
00:58:01.720 --> 00:58:03.990
Terrorist activity, not just attacks

1332
00:58:03.990 --> 00:58:06.033
on the United States or against its allies.

1333
00:58:07.560 --> 00:58:09.543
And this is one of them, this guy.

1334
00:58:10.610 --> 00:58:12.040
Someone who'd read that dossier told me

1335
00:58:12.040 --> 00:58:13.280
that this line that indicates

1336
00:58:13.280 --> 00:58:15.490
there's no actual evidence of terrorist activity,

1337
00:58:15.490 --> 00:58:16.660
is in his dossier.

1338
00:58:16.660 --> 00:58:18.940
But those dossiers are still secret,

1339
00:58:18.940 --> 00:58:20.240
'cause no one leaked them.

1340
00:58:21.800 --> 00:58:24.500
You know, that's the closest thing

1341
00:58:24.500 --> 00:58:27.010
to what he and surely, lots of others who

1342
00:58:27.010 --> 00:58:28.970
are similarly situation could use.

1343
00:58:28.970 --> 00:58:31.460
Which is this thing that's on the internet

1344
00:58:31.460 --> 00:58:33.490
that Chelsea Manning leaked,

1345
00:58:33.490 --> 00:58:37.610
we, the US Government, don't actually believe seven

1346
00:58:37.610 --> 00:58:40.573
of these 10 things that are said against this person.

1347
00:58:41.410 --> 00:58:42.960
In the United States Government's files

1348
00:58:42.960 --> 00:58:44.380
there is a better dossier

1349
00:58:44.380 --> 00:58:45.990
that more carefully goes through it,

1350
00:58:45.990 --> 00:58:47.610
and explains why they think this stuff is true,

1351
00:58:47.610 --> 00:58:49.200
but this other stuff is not credible.

1352
00:58:49.200 --> 00:58:50.250
And they're not putting it out.

1353
00:58:50.250 --> 00:58:53.680
So we have filed, the New York Times and I have filed

1354
00:58:53.680 --> 00:58:55.800
a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit

1355
00:58:55.800 --> 00:58:58.680
to try to get those second dossiers out.

1356
00:58:58.680 --> 00:58:59.780
It's not gonna help some people,

1357
00:58:59.780 --> 00:59:00.750
because some of it's gonna say,

1358
00:59:00.750 --> 00:59:02.440
we think it's truth that this guy learned

1359
00:59:02.440 --> 00:59:03.273
how to build bombs.

1360
00:59:03.273 --> 00:59:05.540
Or this guy was involved in this plot.

1361
00:59:05.540 --> 00:59:08.670
But for that group that was really the hardest luck cases,

1362
00:59:08.670 --> 00:59:12.950
the wrong place, wrong time people, it could do...

1363
00:59:14.906 --> 00:59:17.210
If the US Government has access to better information

1364
00:59:17.210 --> 00:59:18.660
than what is floating out there,

1365
00:59:18.660 --> 00:59:20.120
not through the fault of the US Government,

1366
00:59:20.120 --> 00:59:21.820
but there it is, anyway,

1367
00:59:21.820 --> 00:59:24.260
and it has these lingering consequences,

1368
00:59:24.260 --> 00:59:27.210
that may make it difficult for these people who are out

1369
00:59:27.210 --> 00:59:30.010
to successfully reintegrate into society,

1370
00:59:30.010 --> 00:59:32.600
which is truly in everyone's interest.

1371
00:59:32.600 --> 00:59:35.500
Just from a national security perspective if nothing else,

1372
00:59:36.460 --> 00:59:38.010
I think that they should make that public.

1373
00:59:38.010 --> 00:59:39.623
And so we're bringing a lawsuit.

1374
00:59:40.960 --> 00:59:44.090
And we'll see whether it works or not.

1375
00:59:44.090 --> 00:59:46.010
But that's another sort of aspect

1376
00:59:46.010 --> 00:59:48.740
of my journalism about Guantanamo that,

1377
00:59:48.740 --> 00:59:50.490
you asked if there's something else I would bring up.

1378
00:59:50.490 --> 00:59:51.323
That's one of them.

1379
00:59:51.323 --> 00:59:53.090
<v Interviewer>Was it your idea</v>

1380
00:59:53.090 --> 00:59:54.010
to bring that lawsuit?

1381
00:59:54.010 --> 00:59:54.843
<v ->Yeah.</v>

1382
00:59:54.843 --> 00:59:56.630
<v Interviewer>And how far has it gone?</v>

1383
00:59:59.340 --> 01:00:03.030
<v ->So we filed it in the summer.</v>

1384
01:00:03.030 --> 01:00:06.363
In the fall the government said,

1385
01:00:07.290 --> 01:00:10.200
this is all withholdable under FOIA, and it's classified.

1386
01:00:10.200 --> 01:00:12.300
It's internal, deliberative stuff.

1387
01:00:12.300 --> 01:00:13.740
It was written towards the question,

1388
01:00:13.740 --> 01:00:15.050
of what should we do with this person?

1389
01:00:15.050 --> 01:00:18.170
And deliberative materials, classified materials

1390
01:00:18.170 --> 01:00:19.220
are exempt from FOIA.

1391
01:00:21.590 --> 01:00:23.740
And I've heard though that they are written

1392
01:00:25.130 --> 01:00:27.780
in a way that there's like a factual section,

1393
01:00:27.780 --> 01:00:32.340
and then there's a deliberative section.

1394
01:00:32.340 --> 01:00:33.590
Here's who we think this guy is,

1395
01:00:33.590 --> 01:00:35.220
okay, now, what should we do with him?

1396
01:00:35.220 --> 01:00:37.290
Which would suggest that maybe

1397
01:00:37.290 --> 01:00:40.211
we have a legal argument that we're,

1398
01:00:40.211 --> 01:00:43.360
that we should be able to get this first part disclosed,

1399
01:00:43.360 --> 01:00:44.510
if not the second part.

1400
01:00:45.440 --> 01:00:50.440
The judge ordered the government to give him, in camera,

1401
01:00:53.780 --> 01:00:56.290
in other words, only to him, not to us,

1402
01:00:56.290 --> 01:01:01.030
a few, I think a few, randomly chosen ones.

1403
01:01:01.030 --> 01:01:02.880
And so the government, just we can sort of get

1404
01:01:02.880 --> 01:01:04.610
a sense of it, before the next stage.

1405
01:01:04.610 --> 01:01:06.250
And the government has done that now,

1406
01:01:06.250 --> 01:01:08.710
that happened in December,

1407
01:01:08.710 --> 01:01:10.743
and we're waiting for the next thing.

1408
01:01:12.710 --> 01:01:13.800
<v Interviewer>How long do you think</v>

1409
01:01:13.800 --> 01:01:15.240
these FOIA cases take?

1410
01:01:15.240 --> 01:01:16.920
<v ->Oh, they take forever.</v>

1411
01:01:16.920 --> 01:01:19.600
If the government fights, they take forever.

1412
01:01:19.600 --> 01:01:22.307
The government always has the option of just saying,

1413
01:01:22.307 --> 01:01:23.570
"Okay, we'll give you some stuff."

1414
01:01:23.570 --> 01:01:25.400
And then that ends the case.

1415
01:01:25.400 --> 01:01:26.640
They did that a lot, for example,

1416
01:01:26.640 --> 01:01:27.820
I've read a lot of FOIA cases

1417
01:01:27.820 --> 01:01:30.740
about surveillance matters after the Edward Snowden leaks.

1418
01:01:30.740 --> 01:01:32.740
And we didn't have to litigate like this,

1419
01:01:32.740 --> 01:01:33.987
because the government said,

1420
01:01:33.987 --> 01:01:36.290
"Let's just pause the case, we will,

1421
01:01:36.290 --> 01:01:38.460
we're in fact gonna put this stuff out.

1422
01:01:38.460 --> 01:01:42.840
We're just reviewing it now, as opposed to fighting you."

1423
01:01:42.840 --> 01:01:44.490
Here so far, they're fighting us.

1424
01:01:45.329 --> 01:01:46.760
<v Interviewer>You know, that reminds me, Charlie.</v>

1425
01:01:46.760 --> 01:01:49.780
Why do you think the Obama Administration,

1426
01:01:49.780 --> 01:01:52.700
the attorney general's office would challenge

1427
01:01:52.700 --> 01:01:56.290
every habeas claim on behalf of the detainees

1428
01:01:56.290 --> 01:01:57.300
that was brought,

1429
01:01:57.300 --> 01:02:00.070
and they appealed anything that was won

1430
01:02:00.070 --> 01:02:01.040
in the district court?

1431
01:02:01.040 --> 01:02:03.180
Why do you think, given your understanding

1432
01:02:03.180 --> 01:02:04.250
of the Obama Administration,

1433
01:02:04.250 --> 01:02:07.070
why they challenged every one of those?

1434
01:02:07.070 --> 01:02:09.390
<v ->I think they really don't...</v>

1435
01:02:09.390 --> 01:02:13.190
So the administration is heterogeneous, right?

1436
01:02:13.190 --> 01:02:16.250
There are groups within of litigators and so forth

1437
01:02:16.250 --> 01:02:17.530
within the Justice Department whose job

1438
01:02:17.530 --> 01:02:20.180
is to defend the government against any challenge.

1439
01:02:20.180 --> 01:02:22.120
And so they're pushing to,

1440
01:02:22.120 --> 01:02:22.953
we have good arguments,

1441
01:02:22.953 --> 01:02:24.870
we should make them let the judge decide.

1442
01:02:26.620 --> 01:02:29.730
In addition, within the national security community,

1443
01:02:29.730 --> 01:02:31.833
the intelligence community, the military,

1444
01:02:35.232 --> 01:02:38.253
they have genuine security concerns about some guys.

1445
01:02:39.920 --> 01:02:42.010
You put those two together, and the argument

1446
01:02:42.010 --> 01:02:43.603
that's made internally is,

1447
01:02:44.990 --> 01:02:48.393
we maybe let people go, but it should up to us.

1448
01:02:49.520 --> 01:02:52.180
We should be making this based on our expertise,

1449
01:02:52.180 --> 01:02:53.970
after our inter-agency deliberations

1450
01:02:53.970 --> 01:02:55.950
as a policy choice.

1451
01:02:55.950 --> 01:02:59.200
We don't want to cede control to courts

1452
01:02:59.200 --> 01:03:00.610
to order us to let people go,

1453
01:03:00.610 --> 01:03:02.780
even if there's 10 people they order us to let go,

1454
01:03:02.780 --> 01:03:04.870
we're gonna let go eight anyway.

1455
01:03:04.870 --> 01:03:07.040
The two that we want to hold onto, we want to hold onto.

1456
01:03:07.040 --> 01:03:10.020
Therefore, we have to defend against all 10

1457
01:03:10.020 --> 01:03:13.380
to avoid creating a structure in which

1458
01:03:13.380 --> 01:03:15.403
the courts have a say,

1459
01:03:16.950 --> 01:03:19.833
a broader say in this than they do today.

1460
01:03:20.810 --> 01:03:22.370
That doesn't mean that these other eight guys

1461
01:03:22.370 --> 01:03:23.203
don't get out anyway,

1462
01:03:23.203 --> 01:03:24.480
but they're gonna get out 'cause we say so,

1463
01:03:24.480 --> 01:03:26.040
not 'cause they say so.

1464
01:03:26.040 --> 01:03:30.230
And I think that's why, with one exception,

1465
01:03:30.230 --> 01:03:32.650
they always fought every habeas claim.

1466
01:03:32.650 --> 01:03:37.650
They didn't fight the Sudanese guy who was so unhealthy.

1467
01:03:40.510 --> 01:03:41.610
<v Interviewer>Given that your two books,</v>

1468
01:03:41.610 --> 01:03:44.990
is that consistent with your understanding

1469
01:03:44.990 --> 01:03:48.750
of how the executive powers should prevail

1470
01:03:48.750 --> 01:03:52.110
in terms of these executives taking authority here,

1471
01:03:52.110 --> 01:03:56.780
when in fact, maybe the courts should be involved?

1472
01:03:56.780 --> 01:03:58.260
<v ->So that's a normative question</v>

1473
01:03:58.260 --> 01:04:00.970
about matters that I write about.

1474
01:04:00.970 --> 01:04:03.330
So that's not either appropriate for me to weigh in,

1475
01:04:03.330 --> 01:04:05.880
or even how I think about it that much.

1476
01:04:05.880 --> 01:04:07.853
I'm seeking to understand and explain,

1477
01:04:09.060 --> 01:04:12.200
here's the dilemma and the different points of view

1478
01:04:12.200 --> 01:04:13.820
coming in to bear on it.

1479
01:04:13.820 --> 01:04:15.150
Whereas, opposed to saying what I think,

1480
01:04:15.150 --> 01:04:16.710
the answer is X.

1481
01:04:16.710 --> 01:04:17.663
<v Interviewer>Okay.</v>

1482
01:04:20.207 --> 01:04:21.640
So you kind of hedged on that,

1483
01:04:21.640 --> 01:04:25.240
do you see an administration apologizing someday

1484
01:04:25.240 --> 01:04:28.180
for Guantanamo, since you said this gentleman

1485
01:04:28.180 --> 01:04:33.014
in Estonia certainly would value that,

1486
01:04:33.014 --> 01:04:35.614
and would appreciate that, and feels he deserves it?

1487
01:04:36.780 --> 01:04:37.940
<v ->I'm gonna have to go here in a second.</v>

1488
01:04:37.940 --> 01:04:38.773
<v Interviewer>Okay.</v>

1489
01:04:40.440 --> 01:04:41.920
<v ->You know, I think it was...</v>

1490
01:04:43.430 --> 01:04:45.600
There's two different things that he wanted, right?

1491
01:04:45.600 --> 01:04:46.556
And he just sort of threw it out.

1492
01:04:46.556 --> 01:04:49.140
I don't know even know he had thought through these two.

1493
01:04:49.140 --> 01:04:52.160
An apology, a clear statement that it was,

1494
01:04:52.160 --> 01:04:53.810
he was not a terrorist after all.

1495
01:04:56.720 --> 01:04:59.690
Much, much harder to envision an apology,

1496
01:04:59.690 --> 01:05:01.840
especially in a situation where courts

1497
01:05:01.840 --> 01:05:03.060
had upheld his detention,

1498
01:05:03.060 --> 01:05:07.260
and upheld the idea of detention without trial

1499
01:05:07.260 --> 01:05:09.893
in this war time context, POW-style detention.

1500
01:05:11.110 --> 01:05:14.120
Maybe, someday, but not in our,

1501
01:05:14.120 --> 01:05:16.760
not until these issues are long since settled in history,

1502
01:05:16.760 --> 01:05:18.700
rather than current events.

1503
01:05:18.700 --> 01:05:19.740
Just like it took so long for

1504
01:05:19.740 --> 01:05:21.010
the Japanese, and so forth.

1505
01:05:21.010 --> 01:05:23.710
But this is also qualitatively different than the Japanese.

1506
01:05:23.710 --> 01:05:26.350
Those were totally innocent American citizens

1507
01:05:26.350 --> 01:05:28.850
being discriminated against because of their race.

1508
01:05:30.560 --> 01:05:32.700
These are people picked up in a war zone,

1509
01:05:32.700 --> 01:05:34.120
that the courts looked at and said

1510
01:05:34.120 --> 01:05:36.150
there's a specific reason to hold them.

1511
01:05:36.150 --> 01:05:38.750
And that it's lawful as a matter of the laws of war.

1512
01:05:39.800 --> 01:05:42.800
In that sense, it's not the same thing.

1513
01:05:42.800 --> 01:05:45.460
But I think at least, if the government has already,

1514
01:05:45.460 --> 01:05:47.140
and I am willing to say this, I've said it already.

1515
01:05:47.140 --> 01:05:51.110
If the government, in its internal files has determined

1516
01:05:51.110 --> 01:05:53.593
that guy X was not actually a terrorist,

1517
01:05:54.750 --> 01:05:56.740
or at least didn't engage in terrorist activity,

1518
01:05:56.740 --> 01:05:58.790
that leaves this ambiguity about whether

1519
01:05:58.790 --> 01:05:59.930
maybe they were part of the group

1520
01:05:59.930 --> 01:06:02.923
without actually doing anything actively.

1521
01:06:08.807 --> 01:06:09.880
There's a greater chance

1522
01:06:09.880 --> 01:06:11.470
that it might someday say so publicly.

1523
01:06:11.470 --> 01:06:13.860
And it has said so publicly about,

1524
01:06:13.860 --> 01:06:16.280
for example, six guys that it sent to Uruguay.

1525
01:06:16.280 --> 01:06:17.970
'Cause the president of Uruguay wanted

1526
01:06:17.970 --> 01:06:19.770
a statement like that, so they wrote a letter,

1527
01:06:19.770 --> 01:06:21.823
and pulled out a line out of the reports.

1528
01:06:23.330 --> 01:06:24.540
Knowing that it was unclassified

1529
01:06:24.540 --> 01:06:25.530
and that the president of Uruguay

1530
01:06:25.530 --> 01:06:28.260
was gonna make it public for domestic consumption.

1531
01:06:28.260 --> 01:06:30.130
So why not do that for the rest of them?

1532
01:06:30.130 --> 01:06:31.540
<v Interviewer>So there's precedent to this.</v>

1533
01:06:31.540 --> 01:06:32.780
<v ->That's right.</v>

1534
01:06:32.780 --> 01:06:35.680
<v Interviewer>Well, if there's nothing else,</v>

1535
01:06:35.680 --> 01:06:37.750
we need 20, is there something else, Charlie

1536
01:06:37.750 --> 01:06:39.030
that you want to say?
<v ->Nope, nope.</v>

1537
01:06:39.030 --> 01:06:41.260
<v Interviewer>Okay, we need 20 seconds of a room tone</v>

1538
01:06:41.260 --> 01:06:43.100
and then we can end this interview.

1539
01:06:43.100 --> 01:06:45.050
So Johnny needs that.

1540
01:06:45.050 --> 01:06:46.640
<v Johnny>Okay, so we just all hold tight</v>

1541
01:06:46.640 --> 01:06:48.630
for 20 seconds silently.

1542
01:06:48.630 --> 01:06:49.463
Begin room tone.

1543
01:07:01.046 --> 01:07:01.879
Okay.

1544
01:07:01.879 --> 01:07:03.243
<v Charlie>Is that like you subtract?</v>