Rosenberg, Carol - Interview master file / Witness to Guantanamo / Duke Digital Repository

Peter

Okay, good morning.

0:06

We are very grateful to you

0:08

for participating in the Witness to Guantanamo project.

0:10

We invite you to speak of your experiences

0:14

and involvement and observations while in Guantanamo

0:17

for the past 10 years.

0:20

And we are hoping to provide you

0:22

an opportunity to tell your story in your own words.

0:23

We are creating an archive of stories

0:28

so that people in America and around the world

0:30

will have a better understanding of what you

0:33

and others have observed and experienced.

0:36

Future generations must know what happened at Guantanamo.

0:40

And by telling your story, you're contributing to history.

0:43

We appreciate your willingness,

0:46

courage to speak with us today.

0:48

And if any time, during the interview

0:51

you'd like take a break, just let us know.

0:53

And if there's anything you say

0:54

that you like us to remove, we can remove it as well.

0:55

-

Okay.

0:58

Peter

And I'd like to start

0:59

with some basic information such as your name

1:00

and your hometown and date of birth and age.

1:05

Why don't we start with that?

1:07

-

I'm Carol Rosenberg.

1:09

I live in Miami, Florida, actually in Miami beach, Florida.

1:10

I'm 52 years old and I was born in March, 1959.

1:14

Peter

What city were you born in?

1:21

-

I was born in North Dakota, but I grew up in New England.

1:23

Peter

And what education?

1:27

Just briefly your education and marital status?

1:29

-

I'm single.

1:33

I studied at the University of Massachusetts Amherst

1:34

for an undergraduate degree,

1:37

journalism, sociology, middle Eastern studies.

1:39

And after spending seven years in the Middle East

1:43

as a correspondent, I did a post-graduate program

1:46

for journalism fellows at Stanford University

1:51

in '94 and '95, studied there.

1:54

Peter

And your current occupation?

1:58

-

My title is military affairs correspondent

2:01

for the Miami Herald,

2:04

but fundamentally I'm the Guantanamo correspondent.

2:05

I do other things, but I write about Guantanamo a lot.

2:09

Peter

Well, maybe we can just briefly

2:13

talk about background and what led you

2:15

to become a Miami correspondent for Guantanamo (indistinct)

2:17

-

The background is that between Christmas and New Year's

2:23

and after the September 11th attacks,

2:27

I was covering the Southern command

2:31

which is the Pentagon's office in Miami.

2:32

And they let it be known that they were setting up

2:35

a prison in Cuba, and that they were going to be using

2:38

this prison as alternately, either a relief valve

2:41

for overcrowded prisons in Afghanistan,

2:46

where they had collected these foreign men

2:50

after the post 9/11 invasion of Afghanistan,

2:54

either as a relief valve, I had one person tell me

2:57

that it would only be the cream of the captives,

3:00

like the really valuable captives.

3:04

What we later learned would be called

3:06

the worst of the worst.

3:08

And then I was also told at some point

3:10

that this would maybe have a justice element,

3:12

but what we knew is they were going to be getting

3:15

into the prison business, the detention business

3:17

the POW business, at Guantanamo before New Year's.

3:20

And what's interesting about that is,

3:26

that was the terminology that was used at the time.

3:30

There was no discussion of Geneva Conventions

3:32

or whether they would be called detainees or POW's.

3:34

We just knew that there were captives

3:37

over there in Afghanistan, that it was cold

3:39

that the American troops were

3:41

overwhelmed by the number of so-called foreign fighters

3:46

that had been collected up,

3:50

and that they were going to set up an air bridge

3:51

and move some of these men to Cuba.

3:54

Peter

Who told you this?

3:58

In what context was it told

3:59

and was the term relief valve used?

4:01

Was that your term?

4:04

-

I don't know that anyone used that term

4:07

but that was our understanding

4:09

is that they were so overwhelmed,

4:10

they needed to get the pressure off.

4:12

And I can tell you that I was told this

4:13

by people in the military,

4:15

I can't tell you specifically when.

4:16

I don't know if it's when I first got to Guantanamo,

4:18

before the detainees got there

4:20

or when they were setting it up.

4:23

But we understood quite vividly

4:24

before a prisoner was ever taken there

4:26

that they needed to get some of them out of Afghanistan

4:30

that the conditions were overcrowded.

4:34

Peter

And when you first heard this,

4:36

what were you thinking?

4:38

What did you think?

4:39

-

The first thing I ever saw was a press release

4:43

I think around, yeah, around Christmas

4:48

that said that they had been a task order.

4:51

Because a lot of my work is done with documents.

4:53

And a lot of my work is done with orders

4:55

from the Pentagon to SOUTHCOM to Cuba,

4:57

where there's the Navy base.

5:00

So, very early on

5:02

before anybody would have thought about Guantanamo,

5:04

I saw a piece of paper that said there was a task order

5:07

and assignment, build 2000 cells.

5:09

And I thought, 2000 cells?

5:12

Now, what I didn't explain to you

5:15

is I had been to Guantanamo before, I had seen the base.

5:17

I was one of the few civilians

5:20

who had actually seen the base

5:22

in the interim after there was a boat lift for Cuban

5:24

and a humanitarian operation for Cuban and Haitian.

5:27

So I'd been there.

5:31

So I saw a piece of paper that said 10,000 cells task order.

5:32

The military was supposed to get them ready.

5:35

I pick up the phone

5:38

and I called someone and I said, 2000 cells?

5:38

And one of the first conversations I had

5:41

with someone in the military was,

5:43

"Oh Carol, we're not really gonna need that many.

5:45

"What we're going to do is bring in maybe a 100.

5:47

"This'll be the really important prisoners."

5:51

We could go back and look at that article

5:55

and we could find the term,

5:56

but what I leave later realized

5:57

is what he was saying was what became the expression

5:59

the worst of the worst.

6:02

So to continue that I went to my boss and I said

6:04

they're getting into the prison business in Cuba.

6:07

And A, I'm writing a story and he agreed.

6:10

And we both thought how strange it was,

6:14

that you'd be moving these people

6:16

at very early, I mean I had to go to a map, and 8,000 miles.

6:17

And

6:22

remember this was

6:25

just after the September 11th attacks.

6:28

And we, in fact, I'd already been to the Middle East

6:30

and back again, since then I was a Middle East correspondent

6:34

and I had already been to Cairo and Doha

6:37

and Israel, Palestine reporting

6:39

in between the September 11th attacks in this period.

6:42

So I was home on a break from reporting

6:45

and,

6:49

back in Miami.

6:51

And

6:52

my editor said, "Go down there

6:55

"and stay there."

7:00

He understood A,

7:01

that this was

7:04

our piece of the war on terror journalistically.

7:06

He understood, we were in Miami, the plane stopped,

7:10

but 9/11 was New York

7:15

and this was, 9/11 coming kind of to us.

7:17

And remember, we already had many reporters.

7:21

So we were traveling the world

7:23

but this was going to be the 9/11 response in Latin America

7:24

in our own backyard, in Cuba, which was,

7:27

we had many Cuban Americans living in Miami.

7:30

And this was a story that my editor decided

7:33

he wanted us to own, before I ever went down there.

7:35

And we asked for, and discussed having what they call

7:39

the time in embed which would have been

7:42

me living down there pretty permanently

7:45

covering this thing with the military

7:47

under certain ground rules.

7:49

Which never quite happened.

7:51

But I think I came as close

7:53

to having an embed as anyone did.

7:54

Peter

So were you worried about going down there

7:58

as to what you might see or what expectations do you have?

8:01

What did you think you'd observed?

8:05

-

The first trip I took was two or three days

8:09

before the first prisoners ever got there.

8:12

And there was the,

8:14

Pentagon was putting on a trip for 20 reporters

8:16

to show the world that they were building

8:19

this detention center.

8:22

And so we scrambled the photographer and I,

8:23

to get to Puerto Rico, to get on a military plane,

8:26

to get to Cuba, to get off a plane, to get on a boat

8:28

to go look at this thing called Camp X-Ray.

8:32

And there was no apprehension.

8:34

This was before there were detainees,

8:37

this was a Pentagon show tour.

8:39

They had invited major television networks

8:43

and writers and newspaper.

8:45

I mean, journalists from major organizations

8:47

there was a radio man there,

8:50

there was some of the networks were there.

8:52

We were there and we were going down to see them

8:54

putting together this operation.

8:58

And as it happens while we were there

9:00

it became apparent that the first airlift was coming.

9:03

And so as that trip morphed into,

9:06

not just going and writing a one-up piece

9:09

on getting into the detention center business,

9:12

but the arrival of the detainees

9:15

and that's sort of how it happened, that I found myself

9:18

on a hillside overlooking the tarmac

9:20

when this C-141 Starlifter airplane arrived

9:24

from Afghanistan and dislodged the first 20 men

9:29

that you see in the photo, that's fairly emblematic

9:34

of Guantanamo, in orange jumpsuits with.

9:37

Peter

Could you just tell us how that happened

9:43

in terms of where exactly you were when you observed this

9:45

and what you were thinking you were expecting to see,

9:50

and what you did see?

9:54

-

Sure.

9:56

First of all, what I've learned

9:57

in about 10 years of Gitmo's, there's always ground rules.

9:59

So this was my first real ground rule experience

10:02

and they had decided there'd be no photography.

10:05

And so our news photographers were forbidden

10:08

to take pictures of this,

10:11

and this was going to be frankly, a writer story.

10:14

And we knew this going into it.

10:18

We knew that there might be combat camera for the Pentagon

10:20

but there'd be no pictures.

10:22

And that we were suddenly turned into a pool

10:24

and we were in the terminal at Guantanamo,

10:27

and there were ground rules.

10:29

You will go with an escort, you will sit on a hillside,

10:31

you will get there an hour or so

10:34

before the plane touches down.

10:36

And it was January, but it was hot.

10:38

So we grabbed water and hats and we went there

10:41

and you will sit with your escort and you will watch,

10:43

and then this will be under embargo.

10:45

And at some point you can file a pool report

10:48

to the world to describe what happened,

10:50

and you will write your own story.

10:53

And so that was sort of the guidelines.

10:55

Peter

How far away were you from the landing?

10:59

-

People have asked me this and I've never been able

11:06

to quite, first of all, we brought binocular.

11:07

So what we were closer.

11:09

But we were on a hilltop overlooking the airstrip.

11:10

I mean, you could certainly make out the individuals.

11:13

You could hear that there was shouting,

11:18

but you couldn't make out the words

11:19

because it was at a distance.

11:21

I don't know the answer to that.

11:22

It's been written, it's been figured out

11:23

but I don't know the answer to that.

11:24

Peter

What exactly did you see?

11:27

-

Before, what I saw you were wondering

11:32

about sort of like the apprehension issue?

11:34

Peter

Yeah.

11:37

-

I mean, it was right after September 11th

11:38

and several months later and they had told us,

11:41

the day before, before the airlift came,

11:46

that these were going to be the worst of the worst,

11:48

that they were fanatical, potentially suicidal,

11:52

radical, terrorists who hated America

11:59

and had been captured for,

12:04

and had been weeded out through this process

12:07

from this bulging jails in Bagram.

12:11

So,

12:15

I think that people,

12:18

I think there were different feelings

12:24

about it at the time.

12:26

I come from a maybe skeptical background where I wondered

12:27

right from the start, how would we get it right?

12:32

How would we really know?

12:36

Were that good?

12:38

Could we figure it out, had these men

12:40

and we would later learn boys made it so clear

12:43

to the Americans that,

12:48

everyone was equally guilty, equally bad, equally dangerous?

12:50

But I also remember thinking,

12:56

one of the things about doing that job

12:59

is you try to put yourself in different roles,

13:00

how scared a guard must be having been told that

13:02

how raw, which was really

13:08

the way it was at the beginning,

13:10

very raw American feelings were towards Al-Qaeda

13:12

and the people who carried that out.

13:17

And,

13:20

so I can't say there was fear

13:23

but there was huge curiosity.

13:25

How would we treat them?

13:28

How would they be transported?

13:29

We later on heard this business about the chief of staff.

13:32

I think it was briefed the joint chiefs of staff

13:35

brief that they were capable of nine

13:37

the hydraulic lines out of the aircraft,

13:40

that was some embellishment that came later.

13:43

But how would they be moved?

13:45

And I remember also thinking, because like I said,

13:47

it was 8,000 miles

13:51

and maybe 26 hours,

13:54

they stopped off.

13:57

And it's all in the first story, but thinking,

14:01

how angry somebody who had been taken on that trip might be

14:09

and how,

14:15

it would be reasonable to expect them to be dangerous.

14:18

So what did we see?

14:21

We were taken to this Hilltop

14:27

and we saw helicopters and Humvees and lots of Marines

14:28

everywhere around the airstrip.

14:31

The theory was, one of the things is you secured them

14:33

in case somebody tried to break loose and run away.

14:36

And these were 20 men was we saw very soon

14:39

shackled at the ankles, shackled at the wrists

14:42

and in what they call three piece suits,

14:45

with the shackles

14:48

attached to a big belt, with a bolt on it.

14:51

So the notion that anyone could run anywhere

14:55

they'd fall flat on their face.

14:58

But,

15:00

the first thing we saw was an airplane come

15:03

that wasn't with the detainees,

15:05

it was just another airplane.

15:08

I don't know, I guess she changed her mind.

15:15

So eventually this cargo plane lands, the Marines,

15:18

mentioned this cargo planes lands, the Marines

15:24

surround it.

15:29

There were ships or boats patrol boats off the coast,

15:30

because this is an airstrip right along the Caribbean,

15:34

there were

15:39

boats patrolling.

15:41

There was a helicopter with a gunman in it.

15:42

There was a Humvee, there was lots of security,

15:45

lots of security for this flight.

15:48

And I have to say that what I know from my experience,

15:50

from the military, I was involved with.

15:53

I'm not saying that nobody knew

15:57

but certainly the people I was with

15:58

had no idea who was on that plane either.

16:00

So there was an equal sort of measure of curiosity

16:02

and interest and anxiety over how this was gonna go.

16:06

Remember, they'd never done this before.

16:10

They had loaded them on a plane,

16:13

they had flown 'em to an air base.

16:15

As it turns out in Turkey they had taken them off,

16:18

changed them into these, we learned later,

16:21

orange jumpsuits, put

16:23

blackout goggles on their eyes,

16:27

surgical masks on their mouths,

16:31

orange caps.

16:35

I think they were orange on their heads.

16:37

They had those orange jumpsuits that are famous.

16:39

They had them in mittens that were taped together

16:42

so that their hands didn't move.

16:45

And there was this combination of things

16:47

when they came off the plane.

16:49

They were brought off one by one.

16:51

They were shuffling, they were chained at the ankles,

16:52

and it was pretty Hannibal Lecter looking, frankly.

16:56

And we were curious, why would you do this?

17:04

And for each one of those techniques

17:07

there was a very clear explanation

17:09

given by the end of the day.

17:11

And each one of those reasons was perfectly logical.

17:13

You didn't want them to see

17:18

what was going on on the airplane,

17:19

'cause this was a security operation.

17:21

The caps were on their head because actually it was cold.

17:23

Did I mention that they had like a headset,

17:30

they were sound canceling headsets on.

17:33

So they couldn't hear each other and talk to each other.

17:37

And the surgical mask was on their mouths

17:40

because there was some suspicion

17:41

that they were carrying contagious diseases.

17:43

I mean, this was really an unknown period.

17:45

Subsequently, the guards at various points

17:49

would wear those masks because,

17:51

but at this point, this was how they,

17:53

their hands were immobilized because they,

17:57

I mean these were people who couldn't go very far

17:59

and couldn't do very much.

18:02

And what I remember there's a Marine

18:03

on either side of them, he was not armed.

18:05

There's a whole MP protocol

18:08

that you don't have a gun next to a detainee like that.

18:09

You may have sharpshooters around,

18:15

but guards don't carry weapons

18:19

they carry walkie talkies.

18:23

Weapons get lost, weapons get used by the enemy.

18:26

So they don't.

18:28

Okay, so they came off one by one,

18:29

C-141 which was the plane they were using at the time

18:33

has a big back flap that opens up,

18:36

where you could drive a tank on.

18:41

So it's a flap, and they walked them out one at a time

18:43

down this

18:49

cart flap

18:50

ramp, I guess you'd call it, it's ramp.

18:53

And the first one appeared,

18:55

actually I'll tell you that the first thing

18:58

that came off that plane was a big box.

19:00

(door knocking)

19:06

Peter

Let's take a break from.

19:07

-

That's fine.

19:08

Carol

And I'll go.

19:09

Peter

(indistinct) This room.

19:13

Woman

We're not using this room, sorry Peter.

19:13

This is my class.

19:15

Peter

No one told me that.

19:17

Woman

I'm sorry,

19:18

I don't know why they didn't tell you that

19:20

but I've got a whole full class, with people

19:21

plus two guest speakers.

19:23

So I don't know what we're gonna be able to do

19:26

but this is my class meeting time.

19:27

Peter

Is there any other room?

19:29

How could she do that to us?

19:33

-

So what I was gonna say is, the ramp came down

19:37

and the first thing that actually came off that plane

19:40

was a big metal box, a container.

19:43

And I remember, we were sitting on this hillside

19:48

escorts and reporters altogether,

19:51

because as we know Guantanamo was a place

19:55

where they made it up as they went along,

19:58

nobody knew what to expect.

20:01

And this box got rolled down this ramp.

20:02

And I remember one of my colleagues saying,

20:04

"Oh my God, they're bringing them in individual cells,

20:07

"each one of them."

20:10

And it really did evoke Hannibal Lecter kind of,

20:11

and there was no reason to disbelieve it,

20:15

except that,

20:17

really the individual cells.

20:20

I mean, it seemed, conair it seemed conceivable,

20:22

but we looked at our escorts

20:26

and our escorts had no ideas either.

20:28

And everybody took down notes.

20:30

And I found that notebook.

20:31

It would be individual cell question mark.

20:33

But pretty soon, two Marines walked off that plane,

20:35

one on each side with the first detainee in between

20:41

shuffled them down, they came shuffling down one by one.

20:46

I can find you the pool report if you want,

20:48

because their ankles were chained together.

20:50

They could only move, very, very incrementally.

20:52

And they came off this air conditioned airplane

20:56

in this getup, and they walked him away from the ramp

20:59

and his knees buckled.

21:02

And he went down on his knees.

21:05

And I remember this happened over and over again.

21:07

And it was

21:10

a subject of debate among everybody who was watching,

21:13

whether somebody had

21:16

hit him in the back of the knees to get him on his knees,

21:20

or the explanation we were later given was they,

21:23

come out of, if you remember in Afghanistan it was snowing,

21:28

freezing cold there.

21:31

And they hit the Caribbean heat.

21:32

And these get-ups after having been traveling

21:34

for all this time, and the heat really knocked them out

21:36

and they got them down on their knees

21:41

and what we were told as they settled them

21:42

onto their knees to prevent them from falling.

21:44

And they came down one at a time like this,

21:48

each one with two Marines.

21:52

And we watched from a distance with binoculars

21:53

as they were patted down all over again, as though somewhere

21:55

somehow they could have on that plane

21:58

acquired some sort of a weapon or become more dangerous

22:01

than the way they were put on that plane.

22:05

Now, these were the Marines

22:07

who were going to be working at Camp X-Ray.

22:08

These were their guards, these were their future guards.

22:10

These were like suddenly their guards.

22:13

So they had not encountered them either.

22:15

They were taking custody of them off this airplane.

22:17

And,

22:20

it went

22:22

what seemed like an eternity,

22:23

one, by one, by one.

22:25

Peter

Do you know where they went,

22:28

when they were taken down?

22:29

-

I know exactly where they went,

22:30

I know that they went after they had been patted

22:31

and put through this process onto a white school bus

22:35

that had the seats removed,

22:40

that had what we later learned were called shackle points,

22:43

built into the bottom of it onto the floor.

22:47

They were basically chained to the floor of a bus.

22:50

There may have been two buses for the first 20

22:53

and each with their guards.

22:56

And that getup was on them.

22:59

If you think about what you've seen for Guantanamo

23:01

you see men on their knees in a cage

23:04

with all of that, getup on them.

23:06

They wore that onto that bus,

23:09

where they were shackled to the floor of the bus,

23:11

the bus was driven to a ferry.

23:13

The ferry was driven across Guantanamo Bay.

23:16

It was driven down Sherman Avenue.

23:19

which is main street Guantanamo,

23:21

past the movie theater, past the McDonald's,

23:23

past the church on the Hill,

23:27

past the site of what would later become a mini golf course

23:29

past sailors housing, practically to the Northeast gate,

23:33

which is the entrance to Cuba,

23:38

where there was a waiting for them Camp X-Ray

23:39

which was the first thing that they built, which we'd seen.

23:42

We'd seen them building it.

23:46

They had started off with I think, 40 or 30 cages.

23:47

And they had CBS pounding new cages in,

23:51

even as detainees were arriving,

23:56

because this thing was built up to 311 cells.

23:59

And they were taken off of that bus.

24:03

And they were put into that cage that you see

24:06

in that picture, where a camera man, a Navy, Petty Officer

24:08

on assignment for combat camera, taking classified photos,

24:15

presumptively kept classified photos

24:18

had a still camera on a monopod,

24:22

stuck it up over the chain-link fence

24:26

and took the picture that made Guantanamo infamous.

24:29

And we stayed at the terminal, we didn't see any of that.

24:34

We were under embargo at the terminal

24:38

where we had our filing center,

24:41

where we created a pool report

24:42

that described this to the world.

24:45

And it was one of those moments, as I tell people,

24:47

when it was really a sense of,

24:50

one felt a sense of it was important

24:54

to get it right for history, there were no cameras.

24:57

There was no CNN and we needed to write and describe

25:00

the day Guantanamo opened.

25:05

Peter

Was there a disagreement among the 10

25:07

of you as to what exactly you saw

25:08

and happened when you wrote a pool report?

25:11

-

No, because if you see the pool report

25:17

it would reflect the different views.

25:19

Some people believe that they were knocked down,

25:21

other people believe that they were, put on their knees.

25:23

And the explanation, I believe that the first pool report

25:29

also included the explanation for that,

25:31

why each security measure was used on each individual.

25:35

And it described each of them coming off,

25:41

all 20 of the first came off on their own feet.

25:43

Later on when we wrote about these things for pool reports

25:47

they came off on stretchers.

25:49

Peter

I would like to talk about that.

25:51

I just wondered-

25:52

-

So they take them across and we were under embargo

25:54

and prepared this pool report.

25:57

And at that point communications were really rudimentary.

25:58

I don't even remember how we got that stories

26:02

and pool reports out because we didn't have internet.

26:04

We had phone lines, we rigged up

26:06

into this old abandoned terminal that we're plugging

26:08

into the backup laptops that we were using

26:11

to get the information out really.

26:13

I mean, it was really for the media

26:15

make it up as you go along.

26:17

And at some point we got taken across and shown them,

26:20

after that picture was taken,

26:26

hours and hours and hours later in those cells,

26:28

X-Ray.

26:33

Peter

Could you write about that?

26:34

-

Yeah.

26:35

In the early days,

26:38

we were never told we couldn't what we were told.

26:39

We were told we couldn't write things.

26:42

We were told, we couldn't write detainees names.

26:43

We couldn't write soldiers or military people's names

26:46

without permission, but the only people who ever spoke

26:49

to us who want, I mean, people gave us their names.

26:53

And if they gave us their names

26:56

they understood it would go to the media.

26:57

So there wasn't really that sort of tension,

26:58

but there was a rule,

27:01

there was a very

27:03

primitive understanding

27:06

that under the Geneva conventions

27:07

these people had privacy protections,

27:09

so that we could watch them on a Hill side and describe it.

27:12

But someone felt that maybe there shouldn't be photos.

27:16

And there was also concern at the very beginning

27:19

that since this was gonna reveal security measures,

27:21

how these people were handled as they came off,

27:23

that that was too much information for the world to see.

27:27

But we were allowed to describe the caliber guns

27:29

on the Humvees and the helicopter over.

27:32

I mean, none of that was censored.

27:34

And there was never a suggestion

27:36

that we couldn't describe what we saw.

27:38

We were always allowed to describe what we saw

27:40

but sometimes they didn't let us close

27:42

to see certain things when they were happening.

27:43

Like we didn't see processing,

27:45

which is people coming out of that cage

27:48

where they're taken off the bus.

27:50

And then through Red Cross registration point

27:52

and into showers, we didn't see that

27:54

for several airplanes later,

27:56

but we did it at one point.

28:00

Peter

I like to talk about that,

28:02

but just your first impressions

28:03

when you said you actually went to Camp X-Ray

28:04

that first time

28:07

-

The first time I went to Camp X-Ray it was empty

28:08

and they were building it.

28:10

But let me tell you that

28:12

because they brought the reporters over

28:12

and there were Navy Seabees, engineers

28:14

hammering cages into the ground.

28:20

This is before the, even the detainees were in the air

28:21

and there were Marines inside the cages

28:24

practicing on each other, how to handle a detainee.

28:26

And

28:31

one of my colleagues,

28:34

as we walked up, sputtered

28:37

"It looks like a kennel."

28:40

And the Colonel in charge said,

28:44

"It's not a kennel.

28:49

"Those aren't kennels, it's their units.

28:52

"This is a detention center."

28:54

But I mean, right from the start,

28:57

it was pretty shocking at how crude that place was.

29:00

I mean, these were open air chain, link fences.

29:05

The dimensions have been reported

29:11

sitting on concrete slabs with exposed to the elements.

29:13

One next to the other next to the other

29:18

next to the other, which was, they were cells.

29:20

Peter

So when you went there

29:25

subsequently after their arrival,

29:27

you said you went there.

29:30

-

And we saw them in there.

29:31

Peter

And how close could you get to the cells?

29:32

-

Once again, we were staged at a place

29:34

where we could see individuals.

29:36

I mean, this was their interpretation

29:40

of the Geneva conventions, at that point

29:42

is you couldn't make out their features.

29:43

There was this whole theory.

29:47

Which evolved into the photography drill

29:50

which was, if their mother couldn't recognize them

29:52

in a photo, then that was a photo

29:55

you were allowed to show the world.

29:57

So we were actually put at that distance of

29:58

if you were their mom

30:02

you might not know which one was yours.

30:04

So distance, I mean, it was far away.

30:06

And we went in,

30:09

it was like nothing I'd ever seen.

30:14

Peter

Why?

30:16

-

They were sitting in,

30:20

there were 20 guys in orange jumpsuits inside these cages.

30:21

And it had started.

30:27

Peter

What were they doing in the cages?

30:29

-

Nothing.

30:30

I mean, it took a while for them

30:31

to authorize them to even pray.

30:35

I mean, we've been subsequently,

30:39

I went back and I saw them praying,

30:40

and that was pretty interesting.

30:41

Nothing.

30:44

They were seated inside those cages

30:45

and they were being moved back and forth to latrines.

30:48

Nothing.

30:51

You saw guards, you saw detainees,

30:52

you saw a little bit of movement

30:57

and I'll tell you that I saw no abuse

31:00

or I would have reported it.

31:05

Just people in cages and guards guarding.

31:07

Peter

Did the people

31:12

look like what you expected them to look like.

31:14

-

They're just look like people in orange.

31:21

They look like people who've been put in orange jumpsuits.

31:27

There was nothing,

31:34

that made them look any scarier or,

31:36

I mean, ferocious or living up to their reputation.

31:43

But yeah, they were in a cage who knew.

31:48

And, it was made clear to us very early on.

31:53

They haven't showered,

31:55

I think by the time they were in there

31:56

and they'd been given changes of clothes

31:58

and it was made clear to us

31:59

that they were fairly shocked, stunned, exhausted.

32:00

They'd been through this trip

32:05

and they were taken out of Bagram,

32:06

in snow conditions in Afghanistan.

32:10

And it was January, but it was hot.

32:13

January is nice in Guantanamo

32:17

in comparison to other times, but it was hot.

32:18

And so, I mean, basically they were,

32:20

it was jet lag, plus, I suppose.

32:25

Peter

So, and you mentioned that you saw

32:29

people coming in stretches later on.

32:33

Could you describe that?

32:34

-

Yeah, I mean,

32:37

We wrote our stories, we actually,

32:41

the pool was disbanded and we left the base,

32:43

but I got back pretty quickly

32:46

because we had decided we were gonna cover this thing.

32:47

We were gonna cover it solidly.

32:50

So I got back pretty quickly

32:51

and I was back by the third airlift.

32:53

So we missed the, 20 came in, then 30 came in.

32:56

I didn't see that those 30, no reporter saw those 30,

33:00

but then I saw the subsequent loads and prisoners.

33:04

And there was a point where, we would be briefed

33:09

before we'd go to the cell and we'd be briefed.

33:13

And they were doing a better job

33:15

of notifying the prison camp, what was coming.

33:17

And so, the spokesmen that public affairs officers

33:20

were doing a good job of letting us know.

33:24

And I remember they said,

33:26

"We're gonna have stretcher cases."

33:27

"And these are people who were wounded in battle

33:29

"and they'd been treated

33:32

"and they're coming here among other reasons

33:33

"because we can give them superior treatment healthcare.

33:35

Which as you know became part

33:39

of the talking point of Guantanamo,

33:41

what great medical care they got.

33:44

People came with battlefield wounds that they told us,

33:48

if they couldn't

33:53

treat and clean out properly

33:57

would end in amputation, which it did.

33:58

And they told us when they did the amputations.

34:01

People came, already with amputation, missing limbs

34:04

that had been lost in some instances,

34:09

in this most recent round of battle,

34:12

maybe, I don't know specifically, but could have been

34:14

off Tora Bora, but other people came with who were amputees

34:18

who had lost limbs in the previous,

34:22

in battles with the Northern Alliance

34:25

nothing to do with the American invasion,

34:26

nothing to do with, clean amputations.

34:28

But there were a number of people with open wounds

34:31

that resulted in amputations.

34:35

And I know this because I reported about it

34:38

because they took us to the hospital and they told us

34:40

because in the early days,

34:42

when they did this kind of medicine, they were very open

34:44

about the fact that they were trying to save these limbs.

34:48

And at a certain date,

34:51

certain which I could tell you about,

34:52

it became clear that they needed to do this amputation.

34:56

And what had happened is that they had briefed us.

35:00

The military medical staff Navy had briefed us.

35:02

"We brought in these people and three weeks out

35:06

"five weeks out, I'd have to look at the chart.

35:09

"If we can't clean up this wound

35:11

"we will have to do an amputation."

35:12

So I noted it in my diary and the next one,

35:14

and right around that date when I came back

35:18

for one of these tours they had

35:20

I said to the Naval hospital commander

35:21

have you done any amputations?

35:24

It's about time.

35:25

And he looked at me and he said,

35:27

"We did our first one this morning."

35:29

And so, I was able to write a story

35:31

about that first amputation.

35:32

Peter

Had you heard any rumors at this early stage

35:34

about what might've happened to the Bagram

35:37

or Kandahar before they came to Guantanamo?

35:39

-

No, because quite frankly

35:44

Guantanamo was a fairly isolated place.

35:48

We sent our news out, but news didn't really come in.

35:52

I will tell you that I was very surprised later on to learn

35:56

that some of these pictures of them

36:03

in orange jumpsuits had hit the front pages

36:05

of European newspapers.

36:08

They'd been distributed by the Pentagon

36:10

and resulted in headlines that said torture

36:12

because we didn't know any of this.

36:15

We were just writing dispatches

36:18

but what was in front of our nose,

36:20

what was being said, but, Guantanamo

36:21

was in virtual caretaker status when we got there,

36:24

there was very little infrastructure.

36:27

We were working night and day, we saw almost no TV.

36:32

There were no newspapers arriving

36:34

except when I would bring Miami heralds on my trips.

36:36

And when I would come out of there,

36:39

it would be to do a few things and turn around and go back.

36:40

I was, very Guantanamo oriented.

36:43

I don't know when I would first heard

36:47

about anything from Bagram.

36:49

And we knew that's where they were coming from

36:50

but we didn't know what that was certainly.

36:54

We did know that at one point some people

36:57

had been inserted who'd come from

37:02

the former Yugoslavia.

37:07

And that was because somebody had seen a report

37:10

that said, some people who weren't coming

37:13

out of the battlefield,

37:16

but were coming from the former Yugoslavia

37:17

had been inserted into the airlift

37:20

and had come off a certain flight we'd seen.

37:21

And as we later knew that was Boumediene.

37:24

And that was the source of what would become

37:26

a very important Supreme court case.

37:28

But it was also sort of the first hint that maybe

37:31

when they said they were taking people off the battlefield,

37:34

the battlefield was a little bit bigger and broader

37:37

than our understanding of the place where men with guns met.

37:40

Peter

Did you begin to see some skepticism

37:45

with cynicism among the pool of reporters

37:47

that you worked with?

37:50

-

The reporters came and went

37:52

and I was the only one who stayed.

37:53

And so they came in batches of 20

37:54

twice a week on airplanes for two days.

37:57

They would come in, they would be taking

38:00

Guantanamo one-on-one.

38:05

They would see the detention center, talk to a few guards,

38:06

go to the hospital, get a press conference

38:10

with the commander, do a few other things and leave.

38:15

And I would go along to all of those

38:17

because I was tracking the progression.

38:19

And as the answer's changed

38:21

I was able to write different stories.

38:22

I was able to detect the different changes

38:24

in the presentations, whereas other people

38:26

were just writing Guantanamo one-on-one.

38:28

So,

38:30

there was a range, sure,

38:32

there were a lot of skeptics coming.

38:33

There were a lot of skeptics.

38:36

There were, I mean, I have on my chart that,

38:37

when Al Jazeera showed up,

38:40

Al Jazeera came very early on to do a story.

38:41

And I remember there was definite doubt

38:44

that they'd had the right people.

38:47

Peter

What about you,

38:49

when you saw changes in what you were hearing?

38:50

What were you thinking about that?

38:52

-

I guess I had never bought into

38:59

they were the worst of the worst.

39:01

And so, I had always brought to this story,

39:03

a question of who they were

39:06

and trying to sort out in my mind

39:08

and for my readers, who they were.

39:11

I mean, I very early on wrote that they were this really

39:13

multinational collection.

39:17

I remember realizing that some were Somalis,

39:20

and some were Sudanese and some were Yemenis

39:24

in part because of having worked

39:26

in these parts of the world.

39:29

And I like, as I told you earlier

39:31

I remember going through the hospital

39:33

and seeing Asian men with Asian features

39:35

who I had no idea who they were,

39:38

and subsequently learning that they were Uighers,

39:39

people from a part of the world, I didn't know, existed,

39:42

but ethnicity, I learned all about because of Guantanamo.

39:45

So, I was never really about,

39:48

I wasn't about judging it.

39:53

I was about reporting what was going on

39:55

and, they sent someone back relatively early.

39:59

They separated people out.

40:04

There was no sense down there that everyone was,

40:06

the talking point is that everyone was equally culpable

40:09

and everyone was equally fanatical

40:12

but the way it ran, it was clear that,

40:14

the doctrine that you should assume

40:17

that everybody was dangerous was true

40:21

but that just the behavior was clear, made clear.

40:23

Well, very early on, I was briefed

40:28

that there had been people that had been removed from X-Ray

40:29

and taken to the brick, and those were high values.

40:31

What were considered, I mean,

40:36

they were sorting

40:40

and it became clear that they were sorting.

40:41

We knew that there was X number of languages

40:43

'cause they told us how many languages were spoken.

40:46

We knew that there were Anglo-Saxons.

40:48

We knew that somebody had threatened.

40:50

I mean, we weren't without briefings.

40:53

Somebody had threatened very in his first 24 hours

40:55

to kill an American before he left Guantanamo Bay,

40:58

in English in articulate English.

41:01

And it was later alleged that it was David Hicks

41:04

by a member of Congress who went through on a tour.

41:08

I mean, they say that Guantanamo was a mosaic

41:10

of collecting intelligence about Al Qaeda.

41:13

Well, for a reporter, you took the mosaic

41:16

of what Guantanamo and reported a different piece

41:19

of it every day, if you could, if that makes sense.

41:21

Peter

(indistinct) Inconsistencies

41:24

that seemed totally appropriate.

41:26

-

I wrote about Guantanamo every day.

41:28

So those inconsistencies are reflected in those stories.

41:30

I didn't write one story,

41:33

I didn't have a single theme that said

41:37

these are the worst of the worst fanatical, suicidal,

41:39

Al-Qaeda equally guilty.

41:42

That was the military's narrative,

41:45

I wrote a very different story.

41:47

What happened today?

41:49

And it was clear that there were grades of individuals

41:50

and different sorts of issues going on.

41:53

If you look at my stories, they reflect that.

41:56

Peter

And what kind of response did you get

41:59

from your readers when you wrote those kinds of stories?

42:02

-

Again, because we didn't have great internet.

42:10

I wasn't always aware

42:15

of the exact response of the readers, but.

42:18

My readers thought they were too well-treated,

42:31

my readers didn't necessarily understand

42:34

why we would give them three meals a day

42:38

and try to make them healthy and make sure

42:42

that their limbs didn't,

42:45

and treat battlefield wounds.

42:52

So I had a,

42:55

mostly I had a series of angry responses to the fact

42:56

that the sense was that we were treating them too well.

43:01

And I'll tell you the example of that,

43:05

because within about a couple of weeks,

43:06

by March I believe it was, we had our first hunger strike

43:09

and that the Camp X-Ray had a hunger strike.

43:14

Peter

How did you know?

43:16

-

Because they told us, because they had been counting

43:19

and finally, somebody in the military said,

43:22

"This is the third meal in a row

43:24

"where they have refused their food.

43:26

"And they are having a action in the camps."

43:30

It was a challenge.

43:33

And they were having an action in the camps

43:34

over what they said at the time,

43:35

was a

43:37

erroneously mistakenly kicked Quran.

43:41

There was an episode in one of those cages, in which.

43:46

At the very beginning, there were rules,

43:49

your towel was your towel, and it was used for one thing.

43:51

And your mat was your mat and was used for another thing.

43:53

And at that point, they had Qu'rans

43:55

and you had to handle them a certain way.

43:58

And there was a certain prisoner

44:00

in one of the cages who had fashioned

44:04

his towel into a turban.

44:06

And the guard was standing outside of the cage,

44:08

telling him, "Take that towel down, no turbans allowed."

44:10

And it was a rule, you couldn't.

44:14

And he entered his cage and he,

44:18

this is what the military told us.

44:21

This is what the marines told us.

44:22

So this is, their version of what,

44:23

and this is what I reported.

44:25

And he went in and he pulled the towel off his head,

44:27

no turbans aloud.

44:31

And in the process, as I remember

44:32

the Marine major told me, the soldiers foot.

44:34

And he told me this wincing,

44:38

the soldiers foot mistakenly made contact with the Quran.

44:39

And by the time he got out, the word had spread

44:44

through those cells that they had abused the Quran

44:47

and that they had torn this turban off this man's head

44:53

which he considered to be part of his prayer,

44:56

and a hunger strike happened.

45:01

And the reason I brought up the hunger strike is,

45:04

that I wrote a story about the hunger strike

45:06

because the Marines in the military are very meticulous.

45:08

And they told us how many people had refused

45:10

how many meals, and we wrote these stories.

45:13

Hunger strike, X number of people.

45:15

And I started getting word back from readers

45:18

that we should starve them.

45:21

That they didn't understand why a hunger strike

45:23

was a problem at Guantanamo.

45:26

And I talked to my editor and I said,

45:28

and I wrote, a very straightforward story,

45:31

either five or six reasons

45:34

why we don't let them starve at Guantanamo Bay.

45:36

And one of them was, we have an obligation

45:39

under international law to treat them in a certain way.

45:41

Another was for the military to have,

45:45

ultimately, you want sound order and good discipline

45:48

in your detention center.

45:53

It's not the detainees who run the detention center,

45:55

it's the captors, not the captives.

45:59

And this was probably for that reason,

46:02

and they don't decide.

46:04

And then, I mean, I remember these points.

46:05

I talked to the medical staff, military Navy medical staff

46:07

and they said, "We took an oath.

46:11

"You do not let someone starve to death

46:12

"and we have an obligation to keep them alive."

46:14

And then I also wrote, because one of the reasons

46:16

for Guantanamo is that they expected

46:20

that they were gonna get actionable intelligence,

46:22

that these people were going to give them information

46:25

early on, we thought to lead them to Osama bin Ladin,

46:28

but actual information about Al-Qaeda

46:33

and that you wanted people.

46:36

I think, as I wrote in the story, fat, happy and talking,

46:37

and that there was no interest by the Americans

46:41

in allowing them to starve

46:43

And I wrote that.

46:44

I mean, and it was a really interesting

46:46

learning experience for me, because I sort of knew

46:47

that America shouldn't let people starve

46:50

who are in our custody, but I had to sort of parse it.

46:53

And I learned a lot.

46:55

I learned about international law,

46:56

I learned about the Geneva conventions.

46:57

I learned a little bit about prison doctrine.

46:59

I thought a lot.

47:01

I mean, I learned, I thought a lot

47:02

about what was Guantanamo in writing that piece.

47:03

And it was a well-read piece.

47:05

It was well read piece.

47:08

Peter

And did the military early on

47:10

have a problem with your writings?

47:12

I know they did later on, but just in (indistinct)

47:15

-

No, I would tell you that at the beginning

47:16

that they were extremely supportive of my role there,

47:19

that they were extremely,

47:23

they weren't always responsive,

47:27

but they were willing to entertain questions.

47:28

I mean, there have been periods of Guantanamo

47:30

including now, when they just don't want the question.

47:32

I recently did a story on the costs,

47:35

financial funding, how it works

47:38

and the detention center would have nothing to do

47:40

with that story, and would not entertain the question.

47:43

And would not help me with it.

47:45

But back then, there was no question

47:47

that they wouldn't try to answer.

47:49

And I learned why, because at the beginning

47:50

this was uncharted territory.

47:54

And a general subsequently told his staff,

47:56

because I learned this,

47:58

"Any question she asks, America will be asking

48:00

"we might as well hear it and get going."

48:03

There was no perception that we weren't,

48:06

I would tell you that at the beginning of Guantanamo

48:10

everybody who was there felt that they were in it together.

48:12

The military thought they were designing something

48:16

that they'd never done before,

48:19

and doing the best they could.

48:20

Reporters were trying to figure out what was going on

48:22

and doing the best they could.

48:25

And it was,

48:27

there was an adversarial relationship.

48:28

Everybody has their roles.

48:30

They certainly didn't want any security information

48:32

to get out, and that there was a sense

48:35

that even then they would prefer to control the message

48:39

and have sort of one story going out.

48:44

But this was an organic thing.

48:46

They were solving problems every day.

48:48

And I was writing about the problems they were solving.

48:49

What are you gonna do if there's a hurricane?

48:51

I lived in Miami, hurricanes were an issue.

48:53

How do you solve a hunger strike?

48:56

You know how you solve that hunger strike?

48:58

After days and days of trying to figure it out

49:01

the general got in his Jeep or his vehicle

49:04

and drove down to Camp X-Ray got on a loudspeaker

49:06

and said, "Okay you can wear your towels as turbines,

49:08

"please eat."

49:12

And I wrote that story and I saw it

49:13

as the military figuring out how to do this

49:17

as they went along, avoiding a train wreck.

49:21

And I will tell you that there were a lot of people

49:25

who were extremely critical

49:27

of that Marine general for doing that.

49:28

And I looked at it and I thought,

49:30

they're figuring out how to do this thing.

49:32

And they need to be in charge.

49:34

And if they're in charge,

49:36

they can make a decision that ends the hunger strike.

49:37

And you know what it ended, they started eating.

49:40

Peter

So the first round of military personnel

49:44

seemed to have a positive attitude

49:49

about what they were doing.

49:51

-

Yeah, they were given a mission.

49:55

This was an important thing.

49:56

One of the things I wanted to tell you is,

49:59

it's hard to remember what it was like back then

50:01

but we woke up on September 12th

50:03

and America knew nothing about Al Qaeda.

50:06

These people had committed this crime,

50:10

the perpetrators were in Afghanistan.

50:13

This was an organization that had done this terrible thing.

50:17

And we were fairly ignorant about Al Qaeda.

50:21

There was the fear of sleeper cells, excuse me.

50:25

There was the fear of sleeper cells.

50:27

There was this understanding

50:29

that someone had organized this thing.

50:31

And the military was very eager to contribute,

50:33

to figuring out what was Al Qaeda,

50:38

learning, what they could.

50:41

I mean, everybody down there was eager and hopeful

50:43

that they had, in the detention center

50:46

the bad guys.

50:52

I mean, if you remember one of the messages,

50:54

I mean there were many messages

50:57

of Guantanamo in the early days.

50:58

And I've thought about it a lot,

51:00

because we carried that message in a way by reporting it.

51:02

And one of them, for sure and certainly the Pentagon,

51:05

put out those photos to say,

51:09

certainly to America, "We got them,

51:12

"here we are, we got 'em."

51:14

Justice or something is happening.

51:16

And they were sending a message with those pictures.

51:20

And I think that Guantanamo was sending a message.

51:22

And it's been said, the Pentagon people,

51:24

senior defense people have said this in briefing,

51:27

they were sending a message to the world,

51:29

mess with us, and you end up in a cage at Guantanamo Bay.

51:31

So people were very proud

51:34

of what they were doing down there, and still are.

51:38

I mean, you still get that today.

51:41

I can say that it's tempered today a little bit

51:44

by the fact that we've had an administration change

51:46

and a president who has publicly described

51:50

Guantanamo is a mess quote unquote.

51:52

And that it seems that,

51:56

and a president who has said he wants to close it.

51:58

So I think that,

52:01

it's a much more ambiguous relationship to the enterprise

52:04

but individually people believe

52:06

they have behaved honorably,

52:08

and done well under circumstances

52:10

that may be stretched their training

52:13

and capacity to perform.

52:16

I mean, I think that is, we've discussed this.

52:17

That is the story of Guantanamo.

52:19

Guantanamo is

52:21

many people presented with challenges

52:27

outside their training and experience

52:31

who did their very best to rise to the occasion.

52:34

And in some instances did extremely well.

52:36

I mean, those first people who set it up

52:38

had no template for this, and they solve problems

52:42

hour to hour, if not minutes to minute,

52:47

as they invented a detention center, off US soil,

52:49

away from the battlefield with an evolving definition

52:53

of who these men were, enemy combatants,

52:57

Geneva conventions, war prisoners,

53:00

prisoners of war, detainees.

53:03

This thing was organic.

53:05

I remember, they were very firmly.

53:08

They wanted us to call them detainees,

53:12

because they knew that they didn't want them

53:14

to be POW's, but they weren't quite sure why.

53:15

And as we know, it's still evolving.

53:18

It's still evolving.

53:20

There are 171 men there right now,

53:22

four of them, the military will call prisoners,

53:25

the rest of them they call detainees.

53:28

And that's because four of them are convicted of war crimes.

53:30

And in the military jargon, that's important.

53:33

Peter

Going back to the begin,

53:38

did you meet any interrogators at the beginning?

53:38

-

Nope, there were no interrogators at the beginning.

53:41

This was a detention operation at the very beginning.

53:44

And the interrogators were brought in later.

53:46

This was, I mean, they really were getting them

53:49

out of the battlefield to get them

53:50

into this safe, secure zone.

53:52

If I could look at my chart,

53:54

I could tell you when the interrogations began,

53:55

but once they began, we saw them coming and going.

53:58

They were wearing polo shirts with their insignia,

54:02

FBI NCIS on them as they went to and from the interrogation

54:06

huts, which were sort of along the path

54:10

where the reporters were standing.

54:13

But no, I never spoke to an interrogator,

54:14

until many years later, when I met people

54:18

who had done some of the most sophisticated interrogations

54:21

at Guantanamo for the trials,

54:25

which they turned up for the trials.

54:27

Peter

So I'm just looking at a timeline.

54:30

We'll look at the chart a little later.

54:33

But in terms of getting any messages

54:34

that there might've been any mistreatment,

54:37

there was no sense of that at all in those early days.

54:39

-

Overt mistreatment?

54:44

Peter

Well.

54:47

-

No, I would say that, there was a question

54:48

about whether keeping them under these conditions,

54:51

I mean, these conditions were terrible

54:54

and there was no,

54:56

they made the best of these bad conditions.

54:59

They were terrible conditions.

55:01

But in terms of like what we would learn later

55:02

it happened to 63, Mohammed Qahtani

55:05

in an interrogation booth, short shackled, sleep deprived.

55:08

Absolutely not, absolutely not.

55:14

Peter

Did anyone expect,

55:17

no one expected that kind of?

55:18

-

I think that anybody who grows up in America

55:23

who's a thoughtful person,

55:27

understands that there can be an abuse of power.

55:28

So I don't know what expectation is,

55:33

but it wasn't beyond the realm of.

55:35

I also have to say that back to that whole thing

55:41

about feelings were raw.

55:43

There were a lot of, there were a number of angry people

55:48

in positions of either guarding or authority in the camps.

55:53

Not at all.

55:58

A lot of people were proud and honorable

55:59

but you'd meet people who were really angry about 9/11.

56:00

And you wondered if that was necessarily

56:05

the kind of person you wanted in charge of captors.

56:08

Peter

These are higher officials,

56:14

not just prison guards?

56:15

-

Correct.

56:17

I mean, not the senior, senior staff,

56:18

the senior staff were very professional, yeah.

56:19

But you meet

56:23

I remember a former prosecutor from New York.

56:26

I can't remember if it was Brooklyn or Manhattan

56:31

who was in a uniform, call up who carried a photo

56:34

of a burning World Trade Center in his pocket

56:39

to remind himself what these people had done, as he told me.

56:42

And I kept thinking,

56:47

you gotta be careful,

56:52

really raw, really angry, really scared.

56:54

I mean, American was scared then.

56:58

And military professional and people behave professionally

57:01

but not everybody all the time.

57:04

I mean the story of the guard whose foot touched the Qur'an

57:06

who went in and ripped the turban off the head of it,

57:11

that wasn't SOP, as they would say,

57:17

Standard Operating Procedures,

57:19

he was improvising as he went.

57:20

And he was a state trooper from a Midwestern state

57:23

who was in a reserve capacity in the army national guard.

57:29

I can't remember the state

57:33

but I remember, sort of, I didn't know him

57:34

but I remember asking who this person was and thinking,

57:37

understanding enough of the profile

57:41

of who we had guarding these,

57:43

that, like I said, we were unprepared for this.

57:44

It wasn't like there was a unit of American military

57:47

prepared to guard detainees

57:52

in an extra territorial, extra judicial,

57:55

we had taken prisoners.

57:58

America had taken prisoners in the Gulf war,

58:00

which I'd covered, but they were held.

58:02

They may have been interrogated

58:07

and they were certainly registered with the Red Cross.

58:08

And then that war was over very quickly.

58:11

So, I mean, there's no parallel experience

58:13

in my reporting experience to this thing.

58:15

We later got it subsequently in the new Iraq invasion

58:18

but at the moment of Gitmo

58:21

we were as a country unprepared.

58:24

Peter

I wanna go back to this,

58:28

but could you just since you mentioned it earlier

58:29

can you tell us what you observed

58:31

when you finally got to observe

58:32

the processing of the detainees?

58:33

-

Sure.

58:36

And it was really kind of surreal

58:38

because it would happen at night

58:39

under kind of stadium lighting.

58:41

And it was the rhythm of the airplanes that they came in,

58:45

and they were processed after dark.

58:48

And I don't, it was the rhythm of the airlifts,

58:50

it was nothing more than that.

58:52

And you'd get taken over and you'd watch Camp X-Ray

58:53

and what you would see from a distance.

58:56

And it was surreal was,

58:58

we had been in the camp infrastructure.

59:04

So we understood what we were looking at

59:06

because, or I had been

59:08

because I had been in there before

59:09

the detainees arrived

59:12

after they started arriving, nobody went in.

59:13

So what I realized was happening was,

59:15

behind a obscured view

59:19

their orange uniforms were being cut off them.

59:24

They were being given rudimentary health exams.

59:26

They were having towels wrapped around their waists.

59:31

And I would have to look at the footage

59:35

but I believe they were still shackled at the ankles.

59:37

And they were marched across the view we could see

59:40

to these showers, for showers, after their rides.

59:44

Then they would sort of disappear

59:49

at the back of the showers.

59:50

And we knew that on the other side of that

59:51

was Red Cross processing 'cause we'd been told.

59:52

And then the next time you'd see them come into view.

59:55

They had new clean orange jumpsuits on

59:57

and they were being led off to their unit.

1:00:01

And so you watched a prisoner being processed

1:00:05

one by one,

1:00:10

if you look for it for your project,

1:00:13

you'll find CNN took some of the stuff

1:00:14

with night vision lenses, with permission

1:00:17

and it's out there.

1:00:20

It's sort of men being processed

1:00:20

like that exists in footage.

1:00:24

Peter

And did you ever talk

1:00:26

to the Red Cross as to what-

1:00:27

-

No, the Red Cross had made it a policy

1:00:29

of never speaking to the media,

1:00:31

and I will tell you that they showed up fairly quickly,

1:00:36

but not right away.

1:00:40

They certainly weren't there for the first airlift.

1:00:41

And again, it's on my chart when they came,

1:00:44

but,

1:00:46

they weren't there from the start

1:00:49

we learned subsequently when we read

1:00:50

the Southern Commands an attorney there called them up

1:00:53

and said, "We're opening a prison, you should come down."

1:00:55

We did talk to the guards though, by the way,

1:01:00

that at the beginning of the guards would come

1:01:02

on shift changes right past us and talk to us,

1:01:03

and you could ask them questions.

1:01:06

Peter

Were they free to just talk to you?

1:01:08

-

Yeah.

1:01:10

Peter

Did they say anything

1:01:11

that you recall after 10 years that might be?

1:01:12

-

Sure.

1:01:14

I remember one young man from,

1:01:15

I believe it was from Atlanta who

1:01:17

said to me,

1:01:23

this was very early on,

1:01:26

said to me, at this point they were allowed prayer,

1:01:28

because

1:01:32

they were allowed to pray pretty fast,

1:01:34

anyways said to me

1:01:36

that during prayer time

1:01:38

somebody had emerged as a leader of them

1:01:40

and that he was shouting out to them

1:01:46

in a language they didn't understand,

1:01:49

and that he was rattled by it.

1:01:52

And then he seemed to be the leader.

1:01:55

And man, he only has one leg.

1:01:58

And I remember thinking,

1:02:02

that's kind of interesting

1:02:06

how is it evolving in there?

1:02:09

And asking a number of the other guards,

1:02:10

what's the deal with the one legged prayer leader?

1:02:13

And the guard saying, yeah,

1:02:16

the linguists, the interpreters were keeping a special ear

1:02:18

to what he was saying, to try and figure out

1:02:24

because there was an understanding

1:02:26

that he wasn't exactly following the liturgy

1:02:28

and that maybe he,

1:02:31

no, I mean I'm pretty sure that the translations

1:02:32

were, "Be strong men, we're going to prevail men."

1:02:34

They were not doing the prayer book.

1:02:41

And I wrote a story about it,

1:02:42

that this sort of loose structural

1:02:45

command organization was evolving around prayer time

1:02:49

and pulled it together as one of the stories.

1:02:53

And it caused a bit of a sensation

1:02:57

because everybody was interested

1:02:58

in what was going on in Guantanamo.

1:02:59

And when the next batch of reporters came in,

1:03:03

they asked at a press conference,

1:03:06

the general in charge about this.

1:03:07

And he sort of shrugged the question off

1:03:09

and was a little bit cynical or skeptical of this article

1:03:12

that had been written about this thing.

1:03:18

And then in a couple of days later

1:03:21

when he had the next briefing announced

1:03:22

that in fact there had been some sort of

1:03:24

a loose organization evolving

1:03:26

in the camps around prayer time.

1:03:29

Peter

So did the military respond

1:03:31

to some of your articles?

1:03:33

Is that what you're saying?

1:03:34

On some level, the military read your articles

1:03:36

and might they have responded?

1:03:38

-

I believe one of the reasons I was allowed

1:03:39

to stay down there as long as I was and report,

1:03:42

as detailed and extensively as I was,

1:03:45

is because the people who were running,

1:03:47

who were supervising the camps

1:03:50

were Southern command in Miami.

1:03:51

And every morning they picked up the Miami Herald.

1:03:53

And that was one of the pieces of intelligence

1:03:55

thing picked up about what was going on at Gitmo

1:03:56

and that they were interested,

1:03:59

and that they would read things in the paper

1:04:01

about what it was like, and that this was important to them.

1:04:03

I mean, they were getting their dispatches

1:04:06

from their people, but they,

1:04:08

I don't know how much there was an understanding

1:04:11

of the fact that I had before I got to Guantanamo

1:04:13

spent many years in the middle East

1:04:18

and had experience about this,

1:04:19

but there was certainly support for my continued reporting

1:04:21

and continued questioning.

1:04:26

And I was allowed to stay down there, excuse me.

1:04:29

I think 100 of the first 150 days.

1:04:35

So unlike reporters who got two nights,

1:04:39

three nights and an airplane off.

1:04:44

And I was tracking it and I will tell you,

1:04:47

can I have a drink?

1:04:51

I do right.

1:04:52

'Cause I'm choking her.

1:04:53

But if I can't, I can't.

1:04:57

What I was gonna say is,

1:04:59

that one example of this is that I went to,

1:05:00

I go to X-Ray one day

1:05:03

and I've come back from a few days out

1:05:05

and they're now carrying people

1:05:09

that interrogation stretchers,

1:05:10

and you may have seen these pictures.

1:05:13

They're orange jumpsuited men flat on stretchers

1:05:15

being carried through the high grass of Camp X-Ray

1:05:20

to these interrogation huts.

1:05:23

And I remember saying to the Colonel, what is this?

1:05:25

And he said, "They're chained at the ankle.

1:05:29

"They're moving, in baby steps.

1:05:32

"And it was taking forever to get them

1:05:35

"to and from the interrogation booths.

1:05:37

"And there's no mistreatment there.

1:05:41

"It's just efficient, it's more comfortable for them.

1:05:43

"It's hard for them to walk the distances

1:05:45

"from their cells to the interrogation booth,

1:05:47

"so we're getting them there."

1:05:48

And I said to him, this looks terrible.

1:05:50

And he said, "No, no, no, it's okay.

1:05:53

"This is why we're doing it.

1:05:55

"And they're going in this way.

1:05:56

"They're not just coming out this way.

1:05:58

"It's nothing's going on in the interrogation booths."

1:05:59

And there was a photographer

1:06:02

from the AP there, Lynn Slatkin

1:06:03

And she's (making camera shutter sounds)

1:06:05

as these guys are being moved through stretchers.

1:06:07

And I said, there may be the best explanation

1:06:09

in the world, and I'm gonna include this in the story

1:06:12

but I'm writing an article about this.

1:06:14

And I wrote an article and it appeared

1:06:16

on page three of the Miami Herald.

1:06:17

They're taking them to and from, in stretchers,

1:06:19

this is the explanation.

1:06:23

They're not coming up this way.

1:06:26

They're going both ways, baby steps.

1:06:27

Exactly as I explained it to you.

1:06:29

Somebody picked up their paper the next morning

1:06:30

and SOUTHCOM and said get rid of the stretchers.

1:06:33

And they stopped with the stretchers,

1:06:36

and pretty soon they got golf carts.

1:06:38

And so they were riding them to and from

1:06:40

interrogation on golf cart sitting up.

1:06:41

But there was definitely,

1:06:44

the stories were part of this evolving Guantanamo enterprise

1:06:46

where the questions were valid.

1:06:52

Peter

Some people must have been upset

1:06:55

that you were there.

1:06:58

I'm surprised they let you stay there for so long.

1:06:59

-

The beginning, I think that the military.

1:07:02

First of all, when they got to Camp X-Ray

1:07:08

nobody in the military down there wanted them

1:07:10

to be in Camp X-Ray, it was inefficient to run.

1:07:12

It was exposed to the elements.

1:07:15

They were this collective of people

1:07:18

who could talk to each other at any time.

1:07:21

It wasn't the way you'd wanna run a prison.

1:07:23

And I think that there was great interest

1:07:25

in the military and having how crude and makeshift X-Ray was

1:07:28

before the American people,

1:07:35

so that Congress would fund what became Camp Delta.

1:07:37

We wrote a lot of stories about they couldn't break ground

1:07:41

and they couldn't build the new detention center

1:07:43

because they needed approval from Congress.

1:07:45

And there were some members I would,

1:07:47

who would tell you

1:07:50

that they thought that X-Ray was good enough.

1:07:50

And so, I think that there was an interest

1:07:53

in having the media write about how crude it was.

1:07:55

I think that very quickly there were senior members

1:07:58

of the military who understood

1:08:03

that this was an enterprise

1:08:06

that was with us for the foreseeable future.

1:08:07

And that this was America's Guantanamo.

1:08:11

There's always been a certain tension,

1:08:16

Is it the Pentagon's prison?

1:08:18

Is it America's prison?

1:08:19

Is it the Pentagon's war court?

1:08:20

Is it America's war court?

1:08:22

And there are people in the military who believe

1:08:23

that America needs to embrace this, the public.

1:08:26

So I think that there were senior people in the military

1:08:30

who understood that the enthusiasm

1:08:36

for this enterprise would diminish,

1:08:38

and they would be the military, the army,

1:08:40

we thought at the time,

1:08:43

would be left with human beings in cells.

1:08:44

And,

1:08:49

there was wide interest in there being continuous coverage,

1:08:53

different, the military is not one thing.

1:08:57

So there were other people who only wanted one story

1:08:59

which is safe, humane, transparent treatment

1:09:01

the same story written over and over again

1:09:05

which is what you have today.

1:09:07

A basic Guantanamo one-on-one

1:09:08

that any reporter who writes the detention center

1:09:11

and asked for two nights

1:09:15

and a stop at the souvenir shop can get,

1:09:16

and they write that story over and over again.

1:09:20

And, that is certainly in the interests of some people

1:09:22

in the department of defense,

1:09:25

but there's other people who do I think

1:09:27

understand that this is a sophisticated problem.

1:09:29

And increasingly this became true.

1:09:32

And so coverage was important.

1:09:33

Peter

So you had said to me, maybe tell us

1:09:35

about how some Admirals and Generals supported you

1:09:39

in your work.

1:09:42

-

Yeah sure.

1:09:44

Right from the start, the first general

1:09:48

who ran the detention center, public affairs officers

1:09:50

and what they would call field grade officers

1:09:54

came to him and said, "She's asking questions."

1:09:58

I was told this.

1:10:02

"She's asking questions.

1:10:02

"She wants to know when we run a flag up the pole

1:10:04

"that has three stars on it,

1:10:06

"who's the three-star on the base.

1:10:07

"And she wants to know what we're gonna do

1:10:09

"if there's a hurricane.

1:10:11

"And she wants to know,

1:10:12

"we don't think we should answer that."

1:10:17

And I was told reliably that he said,

1:10:20

"If a three-star wants his flag

1:10:23

"flown on the flagpole at the airstrip

1:10:25

"he better be willing to allow the military

1:10:29

"to say who he is."

1:10:32

You don't have to fly that flag.

1:10:34

People can come and go without these sort of ceremony.

1:10:36

But, there was one point when I had asked this

1:10:39

and it turned out that the three-star

1:10:41

was assigned to a CIA.

1:10:43

And so that became a little item that I reported.

1:10:44

And I tracked the coming and going

1:10:48

in the development of the camp this way.

1:10:49

But subsequently there were periods

1:10:51

when different people in the Pentagon,

1:10:53

particularly the further you got from Gitmo,

1:10:57

I think the less support there was for my coverage.

1:10:59

The people in the Pentagon

1:11:03

had tried to

1:11:06

at various time suggest that someone else

1:11:09

should report Guantanamo, that I had too much knowledge.

1:11:11

Or that I was maybe too aggressive

1:11:14

or too interested or whatever.

1:11:16

And there was one particular period where I will tell you

1:11:18

that generals and

1:11:22

military judges

1:11:28

and people who in civilian labs were judges

1:11:29

and call them into the military,

1:11:31

got in touch with my paper and said,

1:11:33

she should keep reporting, it's important what she does.

1:11:36

And I was very surprised at this

1:11:40

because, the military is not necessarily an institution

1:11:41

where people are willing to stick their necks out,

1:11:44

certainly for a civilian or a reporter.

1:11:45

And people spoke to my editors through the years

1:11:48

and said what she's doing is important down there

1:11:50

and she should keep doing it.

1:11:52

So that's one of the reasons I've kept doing it.

1:11:53

It wasn't necessarily anything I imagined

1:11:58

would last more than months, and now it's 10 years.

1:12:00

There were years where I really was

1:12:10

almost the only reporter down there,

1:12:14

and as you probably know,

1:12:17

the defense department is something called the Early Bird

1:12:19

which is a newsletter, in which they publish

1:12:22

relevant stories for the generals and the seniors.

1:12:25

It was a clip service before we had the internet.

1:12:31

And it's called the Early Bird,

1:12:34

and it's stories of significance about the military

1:12:35

from the New York times and the Washington Post

1:12:41

and the Wall Street journal.

1:12:43

And, my Guantanamo coverage is often in there.

1:12:46

And people got used to inside the e-ring as it were,

1:12:50

finding out what's going on in Guantanamo

1:12:54

by reading these articles.

1:12:56

Not always liking them, not always agreeing with them.

1:12:57

And I have heard from people

1:12:59

that sometimes they thought I got it wrong,

1:13:02

more than sometimes

1:13:04

but people wanna know what's going on there.

1:13:05

And they actually,

1:13:08

I will tell you that there are many people

1:13:09

in the military who respect the role

1:13:11

of the press in this society.

1:13:12

And they come to my defense and helped me

1:13:14

get on and off that base and answers to questions.

1:13:16

When other people in the military

1:13:21

didn't necessarily find this to be

1:13:23

in their interest or wanted to,

1:13:25

the most recent example is this money story.

1:13:28

The detention center will not discuss

1:13:32

or break down how it costs $800,000

1:13:35

a detainee to maintain this operation.

1:13:38

They declared themselves too busy,

1:13:42

too disinterested, whatever you want.

1:13:44

And I have worked my way through other parts

1:13:46

of the military to start the detection process.

1:13:48

Peter

I wasn't that you were the only reporter

1:13:52

for awhile (indistinct)?

1:13:54

-

People lost interest.

1:13:56

Peter

And why did you maintain it?

1:13:58

Was it your paper that?

1:14:00

-

Yeah, my first editor who sent me down there

1:14:02

at the time was maybe managing or Metro editor,

1:14:08

Mark Seibel, who had been my foreign editor,

1:14:11

and is now chief of correspondence

1:14:14

for McClatchy Washington.

1:14:16

He has believed strongly since day one

1:14:18

that this, and he would tell you

1:14:21

if he were sitting here.

1:14:23

The Pentagon specifically made this place

1:14:24

to be out of reach of law,

1:14:28

off of US soil and out of reach of American journalism.

1:14:30

And that we were going to do everything we could

1:14:33

to report as much as we could about someplace

1:14:36

that was put out of sight for a very specific reason.

1:14:40

And he was determined that we would cover this,

1:14:43

at times when frankly I would have probably moved on.

1:14:46

And when I went to the Iraq war,

1:14:49

another reporter went down there to keep an eye on it.

1:14:54

When I would take a vacation.

1:14:57

I mean, I can tell you

1:14:59

that I would have welcomed some other reporter

1:15:00

at the Miami Herald embracing it

1:15:02

just split it by most people went down once

1:15:03

and never wanted to go back again.

1:15:06

So, we've inserted people to keep the coverage up.

1:15:07

And particularly during the period,

1:15:11

when I was banned by the Pentagon

1:15:13

over what they considered an infraction

1:15:16

of the ground rules at military commissions,

1:15:19

my editor pointedly sent reporters

1:15:21

to every hearing of the military commissions

1:15:23

while we appealed my ban and got me reinstated.

1:15:26

So the Harold and McClatchy, and before that night Ritter

1:15:28

which was the owner of the Herald,

1:15:34

made a decision

1:15:35

that if they put a prison or a detention center,

1:15:37

within what could be a 50 minute flight from the Miami,

1:15:42

that we had an obligation to cover it and cover it.

1:15:46

I mean, I would have welcomed more reporters down there,

1:15:50

I think it would've made it easier on me.

1:15:52

And I think it would be better for the American public

1:15:54

for there be more people asking questions

1:15:56

and writing about what's going on there.

1:15:58

But they seem to ebb and flow.

1:16:00

They show up for big profile hearings

1:16:01

and military commissions

1:16:04

and then with there's some minor character,

1:16:05

foot soldier down there.

1:16:09

I haven't been the only reporter

1:16:11

at the war court in the tents.

1:16:12

Peter

So I was gonna ask you this later

1:16:15

but it seems like it's probably testing there.

1:16:17

So how do you see yourself

1:16:19

looking back over 10 years as to your role in history?

1:16:21

-

I guess, okay.

1:16:35

Let me see if I can figure out how to say this.

1:16:36

Peter

Take your time to think about it.

1:16:40

-

No, no, no, here's the thing.

1:16:41

I'm a journalist, I'm a daily news reporter.

1:16:44

I came from the wire service, I'm the first draft writer.

1:16:46

I write the first draft.

1:16:48

I write what's in front of my nose.

1:16:49

I do the investigations, or I ask the questions

1:16:51

but I am not there to pull all the pieces together

1:16:53

to write the perfect narrative.

1:16:56

Everybody has a role.

1:16:58

My role is because of this assignment, I got, to write.

1:16:59

I don't wanna say what's in front of my nose

1:17:04

because that would suggest

1:17:06

that whatever they present, you don't scrutinize.

1:17:07

But newspapers write the first draft of history.

1:17:10

We say, what's happening today, the best we can

1:17:15

with the smartest analysis and the most transparency

1:17:18

we can get to this enterprise.

1:17:23

But that doesn't mean

1:17:25

that there aren't lots of questions that aren't answered.

1:17:26

And there's a better story to be told,

1:17:29

because there will be.

1:17:30

And there are people who tell a better story.

1:17:31

Jane Mayer, the Dark Side,

1:17:35

she tells a much more sophisticated thing

1:17:36

about what goes on in Guantanamo.

1:17:38

And there are people who do that.

1:17:41

But my role, because I got sent there

1:17:44

and we decided to leave me there,

1:17:49

is to write the first draft.

1:17:51

To write the trials, to write the economics,

1:17:53

to write the politics and the policy,

1:17:56

and frankly to write the human interest stories

1:17:59

and to do it for, in daily bites or week.

1:18:02

Every once in a while, a weekend story

1:18:06

and every once in a while more rarely

1:18:08

an investigation I spent four months to do the money story

1:18:10

but we are the first drafters.

1:18:13

We are not judging it.

1:18:15

And we are not deciding what will,

1:18:17

how it will be viewed through history.

1:18:21

And we certainly aren't, frankly,

1:18:23

I know that it frustrates people,

1:18:26

but we aren't sticking an opinion

1:18:29

on whether this was right or wrong,

1:18:32

whether it should say open or closed.

1:18:33

There are people on the left who think

1:18:35

that my coverage should be more aggressive

1:18:36

to try and close it.

1:18:39

There are people on the right or in the military

1:18:40

or who are Guantanamo advocates,

1:18:43

who wishes my story would be more persuasive

1:18:47

to the people who wanna close it.

1:18:50

And we just write it.

1:18:52

And I know it's a frustration to people,

1:18:53

but I think that that's sort of has been

1:18:56

why the Miami Harold's coverage and McClatchy's coverage

1:18:59

of Guantanamo has been so respected,

1:19:02

because we have never staked a claim

1:19:05

to what should be the future

1:19:09

and whether it should have happened.

1:19:11

We just explained where they are today,

1:19:13

and where they are today is 171 men,

1:19:15

guarded by 1,850 soldiers

1:19:18

and contractors,

1:19:23

and a prison operation of 1,850 government employees.

1:19:24

That costs, if you follow it all up

1:19:32

and you to the total,

1:19:35

$800,000 a detainee, and we write it.

1:19:37

Peter

And if you hadn't been there

1:19:41

would America have had a poverty of information?

1:19:45

-

I have to assume some other reporter

1:19:54

would have embraced it.

1:19:55

That day they came in on the plane

1:19:56

and I realized there were no cameras,

1:19:58

and I was going to write down what it looked like

1:20:00

as they came off the plane on January 11th, 2002,

1:20:02

I thought, this is what American journalism is.

1:20:05

It's showing people things with words,

1:20:10

and that's probably the day I embraced this assignment

1:20:13

but somebody else would have.

1:20:16

It was too important.

1:20:18

It's too uncharted, it's too different.

1:20:20

This isn't like anything

1:20:22

that we've ever done in this hemisphere.

1:20:24

This is 9/11.

1:20:25

I mean, all of America was inventing

1:20:27

from, I said in the morning of September 12th.

1:20:28

So if we hadn't done it,

1:20:31

somebody else would have for sure.

1:20:32

And others have,

1:20:34

I mean, very important stories have been written

1:20:35

by other reporters who've gone through Guantanamo.

1:20:38

The Associated Press, not only reported important stories

1:20:41

but staked out a decision to go to court

1:20:45

to get the names of those detainees.

1:20:47

Remember for a couple of years

1:20:48

we were required to make them anonymous.

1:20:50

And the military refused to tell us who were in the cells.

1:20:52

And the AP got a lawyer and went to court in New York

1:20:55

in federal court and made those names public.

1:20:58

Very important reporting has been done in Guantanamo

1:21:02

by many well-resourced organizations

1:21:04

with vision of the importance of Gitmo.

1:21:08

Peter

Yeah, I mean, you might be the face

1:21:11

of those reportings, more than.

1:21:13

I wanna actually since you brought up the names,

1:21:16

and I'd like to get to that,

1:21:19

but you mentioned earlier about the CIA,

1:21:20

did you actually see?

1:21:22

-

No.

1:21:23

-

Okay.

-

I never saw any intelligence down there.

1:21:25

I mean, I saw FBI, I've never seen CIA down there.

1:21:26

I don't know anyone from the CIA

1:21:29

who was involved in Guantanamo, I don't think.

1:21:30

Peter

But you heard the CA was down there.

1:21:34

You hadn't even heard that?

1:21:36

-

I learned that the CIA had a secret prison camp down there

1:21:39

in the Washington Post by Dana Priest.

1:21:42

Peter

Did you ever see that camp?

1:21:45

-

I've been in that camp.

1:21:46

And I've been in that camp subsequently.

1:21:47

And when I read it in the Washington post that Camp Echo,

1:21:49

Camp echo was a CIA holding center

1:21:53

before it was used by the military.

1:21:55

I'm not saying it's true or false.

1:22:00

I'm saying it made perfect sense to me

1:22:01

having been on the ground and seen it.

1:22:03

That that's what that could have been used for.

1:22:05

Peter

Why?

1:22:07

-

Segregated, separate, different than the rest,

1:22:08

not on the main route.

1:22:13

That camp she describes as having been the CIA block site

1:22:17

was subsequently used as the segregation center

1:22:22

for the military commissions candidates.

1:22:25

We learned in the, I think it was the David Hicks

1:22:27

hearings early on, that he was in Camp Echo

1:22:30

and didn't see the sun for something like 13 months.

1:22:33

So, there were cells without windows.

1:22:36

and his rec time was supposedly at night.

1:22:39

Peter

Could Camp Echo be Camp No?

1:22:42

-

No.

1:22:44

Peter

Why did you that?

1:22:45

-

Cause it can't be Camp Echo is used today

1:22:46

as a place for lawyers to meet their clients

1:22:51

and habeas meetings.

1:22:55

And I've been in there,

1:22:56

I've been in there subsequent

1:22:59

to the creation of what people call camp No.

1:23:00

What people call Camp 7.

1:23:05

Camp no it actually may be different things

1:23:08

to different people.

1:23:10

But if you're asking ,

1:23:11

if Camp Echo is the place where they're keeping

1:23:12

the high value detainees and secret detention, it's not.

1:23:16

It's where they keep people

1:23:19

who probably have informed on other detainees

1:23:22

and it's too data just to keep them

1:23:25

in this regular population.

1:23:26

People who are being rewarded with extra,

1:23:28

comfort items as they call it

1:23:34

and places where people meet there.

1:23:36

I mean, I've been in Camp Echo.

1:23:38

Peter

Have you been to Camp 7.

1:23:39

-

Nope.

1:23:41

And I have asked there was, and I will tell you

1:23:42

that I did not know about the existence of Camp 7.

1:23:45

And I was looking at it overnight.

1:23:47

We learned about the existence of Camp 7

1:23:52

in some D classified attorney client notes

1:23:54

about a meeting with one of the high-value detainees

1:23:59

in which the law attorneys mentioned

1:24:03

that he was kept in Camp 7.

1:24:05

And I knew the numerology of Guantanamo,

1:24:07

and I first thought that was a mistake.

1:24:09

And then I realized that I was learning

1:24:11

that there was another camp there.

1:24:13

And I subsequently asked for years

1:24:14

on every trip down there to be taken to Camp 7.

1:24:17

The military, the Pentagon talks about how hundreds,

1:24:23

if not thousands of reporters have gone through Guantanamo

1:24:29

and how it's such a transparent place,

1:24:32

and that we, the world can see

1:24:35

what goes on at Guantanamo.

1:24:37

And that they said that

1:24:39

while there was an existence of a secret camp,

1:24:42

they didn't tell us about.

1:24:44

They say that now, while there is a camp we've not seen,

1:24:45

is a troubling talking point.

1:24:49

No reporter wants to be used

1:24:51

as like a Pentagon prop in a talking point.

1:24:54

And the fact that they would suggest

1:24:57

that we get to see what it's like down there.

1:24:58

We get to see what they let us see

1:25:02

and we get to ask whatever we want

1:25:04

but they don't answer everything.

1:25:06

And certainly

1:25:08

the fact that they kept the existence of this camp

1:25:10

a secret for as long as they did

1:25:13

is surprising given their talking point.

1:25:16

Peter

You had told me,

1:25:22

so maybe you can tell on camera

1:25:24

about the time you were there, on an anniversary of 9/11

1:25:26

and you were sitting over looking,

1:25:30

or maybe it was we, as you were sitting on a hilltop

1:25:33

and overlooking wasn't when they first arrived.

1:25:37

There was another event that only you

1:25:40

are you allowed to go into a tower.

1:25:42

-

Oh, I know what you're talking about.

1:25:44

You're talking about the day that Guantanamo didn't close,

1:25:45

which was January 22nd,

1:25:48

a year after the president was elected, president Obama.

1:25:53

He signed an executive order,

1:25:57

on January 22nd

1:26:01

and said it will be closed within a year.

1:26:02

And as it happened, I was down there

1:26:05

for some reporting time too.

1:26:07

I had spent the year when the president,

1:26:11

under the president's closure order

1:26:14

writing about preparation for closure.

1:26:15

I had gone to South Carolina.

1:26:17

I had done a series about closing Guantanamo.

1:26:18

I talked to the military about how they were going to do it.

1:26:21

I talked to administration people,

1:26:24

I had been charting this thing for a year.

1:26:25

And it became apparent fairly early on that the president

1:26:27

wasn't going to be able to meet this goal.

1:26:31

But on the day when he didn't meet this goal

1:26:33

I was the only person living in tent city

1:26:35

out at camp justice through a variety of circumstances.

1:26:37

I was the only reporter there.

1:26:40

And the day before, two days before I had turned to a,

1:26:42

some of the public affairs people

1:26:47

who were very into transparency and said to them,

1:26:48

it would be really nice to see what it's like

1:26:51

in the camps on the day that didn't close.

1:26:53

It would be nice to know if there.

1:26:55

I mean, part of it is is they always say

1:26:57

it's another normal day in the camp,

1:26:59

nothing happened Groundhog day.

1:27:00

So I'm always curious on these,

1:27:02

holidays and anniversary days, if that's true.

1:27:04

There are hunger strikes.

1:27:07

There have been riots, there have been problems.

1:27:08

So the public affairs officer at the time

1:27:10

and the major who worked with him agreed

1:27:14

that this would be something

1:27:16

that on this historic day,

1:27:18

reporters should be allowed to see.

1:27:20

So I would say at about 3:00 in the morning,

1:27:21

they came and picked me up in my tent

1:27:24

and where the media tent city

1:27:26

where they're supposed to be keeping 60 reporters.

1:27:27

But I was the only one, and we got in a car

1:27:29

and we drove from the court complex to the prison camps

1:27:35

which is about a 15 minute drive,

1:27:38

at that hour and went inside the wire

1:27:40

which is where they have the detention center.

1:27:42

And went quietly

1:27:45

up a guard tower into a position

1:27:48

where a female guard from I think Rhode Island,

1:27:52

a soldier was guarding.

1:27:55

And we sat there, and we waited

1:27:59

while camp four, a communal camp

1:28:01

where they sleep in base together.

1:28:03

And then they come out and pray together, woke up

1:28:05

to the call to prayer and came out

1:28:08

and had their group morning prayer with,

1:28:10

and went about their day.

1:28:15

And the only real rule was they couldn't see me

1:28:17

because, the thing about Guantanamo

1:28:22

is they're always trying to figure out

1:28:25

what the Geneva convention protections means.

1:28:26

Like they know you're not supposed

1:28:30

to put detainees on parade

1:28:31

and they've interpreted that to mean

1:28:35

that you can't take a photo full on of a prisoner.

1:28:36

And so that's why you don't see pictures of detainees

1:28:40

in the prison camps at Guantanamo with their faces.

1:28:44

They have the reporters, shoot them from behind

1:28:46

or from the chin down, et cetera.

1:28:49

And that's how they've interpreted it.

1:28:51

But they also know that maybe people watching them

1:28:53

while they pray,

1:28:56

might be some sort of an infringement on their privacy,

1:28:57

which isn't exactly the right word.

1:29:01

Disrespectful.

1:29:04

And it also would be disruptive,

1:29:05

frankly if a detainee at Guantanamo looked up

1:29:07

into the guard tower and saw a reporter standing there,

1:29:09

they'd be pretty angry and it would be disruptive.

1:29:12

So the deal was, we could listen,

1:29:14

we could keep an eye on it

1:29:16

but we couldn't be just gawking at them.

1:29:17

So we got in hours before the prayer.

1:29:19

We sat basically on the floor of this guard tower

1:29:22

and listened to the morning

1:29:24

and listened to people wake up, and listened to people pray

1:29:25

and then go about their breakfast.

1:29:27

And then we climbed down the stairs and went

1:29:29

and I did a story about how it really did start

1:29:31

like any other day, on a day when it shouldn't have happened

1:29:34

it shouldn't have been there.

1:29:37

Peter

Why do you expect it wouldn't close?

1:29:39

-

We have a visitor.

1:29:41

(speaking off mic)

1:29:44

Jeremy

Okay, we're rolling.

1:29:47

Peter

Okay.

1:29:48

So, why do you think early on that Guantanamo

1:29:49

wasn't gonna close in that one year

1:29:52

when we had this year?

1:29:54

-

Oh, under the presidential executive order?

1:29:57

Peter

Mm-hmm (affirmative)

1:29:58

-

First of all, they weren't moving them out fast enough.

1:30:03

The Obama administration theory that seemed to evolve

1:30:06

and you've spoken to administration officials.

1:30:11

Is as I wrote it very early on was divide and conquer.

1:30:14

They were going to send some out

1:30:17

to other countries for resettlement.

1:30:19

They were going to send some home to rehabilitation.

1:30:21

They were gonna bring some to US soil for federal trials.

1:30:25

They were maybe at the beginning

1:30:29

they weren't going to keep the military commissions

1:30:31

because the president had been really contemptuous of them,

1:30:33

President Obama as a Senator.

1:30:37

And so it was this divide and conquer thing

1:30:39

where you were going to not have these 240 men,

1:30:41

but you might have like a smaller Guantanamo on US soil.

1:30:45

And it would still be kind of Guantanamo

1:30:49

but it would be without the stigma of being in Cuba

1:30:51

and you'd be getting a fresh start.

1:30:53

And then you would be sent.

1:30:55

Like I said, you'd be sending people

1:30:57

to different solutions depending on their categories.

1:30:58

And it just wasn't happening.

1:31:01

They weren't getting them.

1:31:02

The court ordered some Uighers released,

1:31:06

and there was an effort to get them resettled

1:31:08

on US soil because the decision had been made

1:31:11

that they weren't actually enemy combatants after all.

1:31:13

And once it became clear

1:31:15

that they weren't going to resettle them in the States

1:31:16

even though Tallahassee and the Lutherans

1:31:19

and the beltway had offered to take them

1:31:21

under their wing, and they couldn't go back to China.

1:31:23

So you had these like micro problems

1:31:28

that weren't being solved.

1:31:30

And then you had the macro problems

1:31:31

of where were they gonna go?

1:31:33

So having watched them come in

1:31:34

in twenties and thirties on airplanes,

1:31:37

the Admiral down there told me, "If they want

1:31:39

"I can clear this place out in 48 hours

1:31:42

"bring in enough airplanes and give me destinations.

1:31:44

"We can move these men."

1:31:47

But the reality was, it was never gonna work that way.

1:31:48

It was never going to be a reverse airlift

1:31:51

where they were gonna move them in twenties and thirties

1:31:54

the Obama administration had seen,

1:31:56

that the Bush in letting 500 men go

1:31:58

had not fashioned appropriate solutions for individuals.

1:32:01

And they had this terrible recidivous rate

1:32:05

that the defense intelligence she was reporting.

1:32:08

So the Obama administration

1:32:11

was really going to send them away

1:32:12

in ones and twos with individual solutions,

1:32:14

maybe fours and fives, and it wasn't happening.

1:32:17

And when you would call people in the administration

1:32:20

and say, well, how are you gonna do it?

1:32:21

You're gonna close it, the clock is ticking.

1:32:23

You could never find the person

1:32:26

who was taking ownership of making that happen.

1:32:29

Now, as we understood it was Greg Craig,

1:32:33

but you could never find the person who took ownership

1:32:35

for making that happen.

1:32:40

And down there, they were down in the detention center

1:32:41

good to go to close, but they had the plan.

1:32:43

The blueprint is still in, the door somewhere.

1:32:46

They know how to close it.

1:32:50

The military knows how to open it,

1:32:52

they know how to close it, they know how to run it.

1:32:53

But you have to have a place to send them

1:32:55

and they didn't have it.

1:32:57

They didn't have their pieces in line.

1:32:58

Peter

Will it ever close?

1:33:00

-

I don't know that it, Congress has made it very difficult.

1:33:02

Congress has imposed such restrictions on this place,

1:33:10

that

1:33:15

at this moment,

1:33:17

you'd have to get 171 court orders

1:33:20

to move those people out of there,

1:33:23

one at a time from federal judges,

1:33:25

an appealed and maybe you need a decision

1:33:28

of the Supreme court.

1:33:32

And then there's the issue.

1:33:38

As long as we're talking about this

1:33:39

of whether closing Guantanamo,

1:33:40

what is closing Guantanamo?

1:33:42

Is closing Guantanamo walking away from a policy

1:33:43

of extra judicial detention?

1:33:46

Is closing Guantanamo turning everybody

1:33:49

into classic POW's with full Geneva Conventions?

1:33:51

Is closing Guantanamo trying to get convictions

1:33:54

on those who are convictable

1:33:57

and letting anybody else who is not convicted move on?

1:33:58

But the Obama administration

1:34:04

has created a Guantanamo style doctrine

1:34:05

that at this moment allows 46 people

1:34:12

to be held indefinitely without charge or trial.

1:34:13

So let's say you move them.

1:34:16

They may not be in that corner of Cuba

1:34:18

in a place called Guantanamo.

1:34:20

But when they set out to close Guantanamo,

1:34:22

what did they have in mind versus where are we today?

1:34:24

Which is the question, not the answer.

1:34:27

Peter

I want to ask you how it changed over time

1:34:31

but I'm reminded of, you mentioned earlier

1:34:33

about how the Pentagon banned you

1:34:36

and I believe a few other reporters.

1:34:39

Can you tell us about that?

1:34:41

-

Sure, it was a pretrial hearing for Omar Khadr

1:34:42

the Canadian who was captured at age 15 in Afghanistan

1:34:45

and has subsequently confessed to throwing a grenade

1:34:49

that killed a soldier.

1:34:52

And we were in hearings that the military, the war court

1:34:53

over, whether his admissions

1:34:58

under interrogation would be acceptable at a trial

1:35:01

before there was a decision to plead.

1:35:04

So it's a procedural portion.

1:35:06

And during that week, they were examining allegations

1:35:08

that he was tortured into confessing,

1:35:14

and claims by the government that he,

1:35:16

because under Obama the standard was voluntariness.

1:35:18

Did he voluntarily, subsequently at various times

1:35:22

admit to throwing that grenade

1:35:27

and admit to being with Al qaeda?

1:35:28

And the war court fruit of the poisonous tree

1:35:30

is a little different than maybe in federal court.

1:35:36

So, coming that week was the first man

1:35:38

to interrogate Omar Khadr in Bagram,

1:35:42

after he had been captured shot through the back,

1:35:46

woke up in a hospital, was saved.

1:35:51

I mean, he was near dead when he was captured

1:35:54

in this special forces attack, in which he now admits

1:35:57

he threw a grenade that killed a special forces Sergeant.

1:36:00

He wakes up, he's shackled to a gurney or stretcher,

1:36:04

and he's being interrogated.

1:36:09

And this was going to be a subject

1:36:10

of discussion at the war court

1:36:12

and the whole concept of fruit of the poisonous tree.

1:36:16

And under the military commissions

1:36:18

the names of interrogators are protected

1:36:22

which means that you're not allowed to name them,

1:36:24

which means that as has always been practiced at Guantanamo

1:36:26

that if you tripped over a piece of information down there

1:36:31

that you wouldn't have seen, otherwise,

1:36:34

if somebody blurted out a name by mistake,

1:36:36

if somebody, it's hard to explain it.

1:36:39

There would be things that you might learn

1:36:46

that under the protected information,

1:36:48

for example jury's names are protected.

1:36:50

A reporter in a federal court might overhear a juror's name.

1:36:54

But if a judge says you can't name that jury

1:36:57

you can't name that juror.

1:36:59

Same idea.

1:37:00

So the interrogators names were protected,

1:37:01

but we knew that the first interrogator

1:37:04

of Omar Khadr was coming to court.

1:37:06

We also knew that a man named Joshua Claus

1:37:08

who had been an interrogator in the US military

1:37:12

had called up a reporter in Canada

1:37:16

and said, "I was Omar Khadr's first interrogator.

1:37:18

"I am Joshua Claus.

1:37:21

"And this Sergeant staff, Sergeant Staff Joshua Claus.

1:37:22

"And this was a clean interrogation, I did nothing wrong.

1:37:25

"And I am here to tell you, Michelle Shepherd

1:37:30

"of the Toronto Star, that this was a good interrogation."

1:37:32

And it was of consequence because Joshua Claus

1:37:35

had previously been court-marshaled

1:37:37

in another detainee abuse case

1:37:39

in which that detainee had died.

1:37:42

And so, he was more than interrogator number one,

1:37:46

he was someone with a lot of information associated with him

1:37:51

who had voluntarily more than a year earlier

1:37:56

picked up the phone and called Canada

1:37:59

and identified himself as interrogator Number one.

1:38:00

And in identifying himself as interrogator one,

1:38:03

talked about this court martial in that other abuse case.

1:38:06

So it's days ahead of his testimony.

1:38:13

And I reported along with three other Canadian reporters

1:38:15

that I reported, that the first man interrogator number one

1:38:19

that man would be testifying as interrogator number one,

1:38:25

he had been previously identified in Canadian presses,

1:38:28

Sergeant Joshua Klaus, who had been court marshaled

1:38:32

in another detainee abuse case,

1:38:37

in which the detainee had died.

1:38:40

One paragraph.

1:38:43

Not the judge, not the court,

1:38:45

but somebody up in the Pentagon public affairs establishment

1:38:49

decided that I had violated the judge's protective order.

1:38:52

They didn't ask the judge.

1:38:56

They interpreted it from an administrative point of view,

1:38:58

and they said under the ground rules,

1:39:01

by which you get access to military commissions,

1:39:03

you must honor the protective orders.

1:39:05

You Carol are banned for life,

1:39:08

along with these other three reporters.

1:39:10

They said, you may never cover a military commission again.

1:39:12

They called us out into the hanger.

1:39:14

The commissions are done in this really sort of crude corner

1:39:15

of Gitmo that doesn't look like the rest of Gitmo,

1:39:19

it looks more like a battlefield system

1:39:21

as opposed to everything else, which looks like suburbia.

1:39:23

So they brought us out into the hangar,

1:39:25

and this, at the time, major

1:39:27

an army major read banning notice,

1:39:30

and it's captured on footage for posterity

1:39:32

in which it was declared that we would not be allowed

1:39:37

to ever cover military commissions again.

1:39:40

I knew they were wrong.

1:39:47

I knew this wasn't a violation of the ground rules

1:39:48

because we had these ground rules forever,

1:39:50

where you weren't allowed to do certain names,

1:39:54

but they had always allowed you to import information

1:39:56

that had been published elsewhere, into your stories.

1:39:59

For example, we weren't allowed to name detainees for years

1:40:02

but David Hicks, the Australian was being written about

1:40:05

in Australian press as having been in Guantanamo camps.

1:40:08

So you would write, David Hicks is at Guantanamo,

1:40:12

according to the Australian press,

1:40:14

under a Guantanamo Dateline, from Guantanamo

1:40:16

and there was never a peep because people understood

1:40:18

this was not information you had learned by,

1:40:20

eavesdropping on the command staff.

1:40:24

This was information that was in the public domain.

1:40:26

So I remember saying to them at the time,

1:40:28

this is a mistake, I've done nothing wrong.

1:40:30

This is a common practice,

1:40:32

and that's not what the ground rule is all about.

1:40:34

But it took my organization, hiring an attorney

1:40:37

and linking up with the corporation counsel

1:40:44

for a number of other news organizations,

1:40:48

the leading news organizations in the country

1:40:51

to have a conversation about whether they'd file a writ

1:40:54

to argue that, this was prior restraint and this.

1:40:58

And see what the Pentagon said was,

1:41:04

"Carol can't go in there anymore 'cause she broke the rules,

1:41:07

"but you the Miami Herald can send somebody else."

1:41:10

And so this was the latest effort to take somebody

1:41:12

out of reporting somebody with experience who knew the story

1:41:16

and get them to start from scratch.

1:41:19

And my editors hung pretty tight.

1:41:21

Our attorneys hung pretty tight.

1:41:23

Other members of the media and corporation councils

1:41:26

at the leading newspapers and news organizations in America

1:41:30

decided this was like something they could not stand,

1:41:32

because it was understood for among other things.

1:41:37

Again, and then the Herald had sent me

1:41:40

or someone else down to cover every hearing,

1:41:44

we had covered every hearing,

1:41:47

even when it was unpopular, even when it was marginally

1:41:48

in other news organizations knew,

1:41:52

if they wanted to figure out what was going on

1:41:54

at Gitmo, go to Miami herald.com/Guantanamo

1:41:56

and you'll get that ordinary routine coverage of the day.

1:41:59

And this was gonna become a problem.

1:42:02

So in the end there was no action,

1:42:04

but in the end there was,

1:42:07

the public affairs apparatus was overruled

1:42:12

and we were reinstated all of us.

1:42:15

And we were back in time

1:42:17

for Omar Khadr's subsequent hearings.

1:42:18

Is that enough?

1:42:22

Peter

It is.

1:42:22

I know you wanna think about it

1:42:25

but I know you had another incident in Guantanamo.

1:42:27

I don't know how much you can tell us about it,

1:42:33

or anything, but.

1:42:35

-

Well, there was a period when I was smeared,

1:42:36

in which somebody, a uniformed officer posted

1:42:39

a smear job on the internet and calling it a complaint

1:42:46

which it wasn't,

1:42:53

it was a smear.

1:42:57

And anyways, all I can say about that is

1:42:58

my newspaper

1:43:03

investigated it,

1:43:06

found that it was without merit.

1:43:08

I think I've established has been a long series

1:43:13

of efforts to try to disrupt our coverage.

1:43:15

I consider that one of them.

1:43:18

I'm continuing to cover the story and the person

1:43:20

who filed that smear is no longer in uniform,

1:43:23

and lost that portfolio right away.

1:43:27

It was not something that, and that's all I'm gonna say.

1:43:29

Peter

There were other ways

1:43:32

that people tried to disrupt your coverage?

1:43:33

-

Absolutely.

1:43:35

One of the very early generals who ran the prison camps

1:43:38

not the earliest, reached out

1:43:40

to my editor in Miami and said,

1:43:42

"We'd like you to send another reporter down.

1:43:44

"She knows too much.

1:43:46

"It's kind of embarrassing for the public affairs officers

1:43:47

"because she knows more than they do.

1:43:49

"And we think it's uncomfortable that she has more of a."

1:43:51

And my editor actually wrote a very strong letter back,

1:43:55

in which he said, "The Miami Herald decides

1:43:58

"which reporter they send on a story.

1:44:03

"In a democracy, it is the newspaper that decides

1:44:05

"what reporter covers it.

1:44:09

"The government in Cuba tries to tell us

1:44:12

"who we can send down there, we do not accept it from them.

1:44:14

"We will not accept it from you."

1:44:18

And

1:44:20

there was,

1:44:23

after the suicides,

1:44:26

there was a first batch of triple suicide.

1:44:27

Three men were found hanging in a cell block

1:44:30

and camp one on a Saturday night

1:44:32

in what has been a topic of much exploration.

1:44:37

I went down there with another reporter

1:44:42

and they decided they didn't want coverage.

1:44:44

And the secretary of defense

1:44:48

says public affairs office ordered us removed,

1:44:51

and a plane was sent in and taken back to Miami.

1:44:55

after a couple of days.

1:44:57

The truth is we are at Gitmo

1:44:59

I am a Gitmo reporters at Gitmo

1:45:00

at the pleasure of the military.

1:45:02

So going there and,

1:45:07

you're always a guest, you're always in custody.

1:45:08

The one exception is in terms of military commissions

1:45:10

the court, Congress has mandated

1:45:13

that those be transparent and open.

1:45:15

So they can't really ban us individual

1:45:17

from the court unless they find a clear violation.

1:45:20

So if they're gonna have a court session

1:45:22

we should be able to go.

1:45:24

In terms of getting in and out of and doing interviews.

1:45:25

It really is at the pleasure of the Pentagon.

1:45:28

And sometimes they have not found it pleasurable.

1:45:30

Peter

Did you always have an escort

1:45:34

whenever you were there?

1:45:35

-

Yes.

1:45:36

Jeremy

Can we stop for just a sec,

1:45:37

I want you to move your chair about six inches.

1:45:38

Its because of the lighting, it creeping into

1:45:43

(speaking off mic)

1:45:44

-

Is that all right?

1:45:45

It's now closer to the current.

1:45:46

You get the lines.

1:45:49

Yes.

1:45:55

Jeremy

That's fine.

1:45:56

Go ahead.

1:45:57

-

Yes, the certainly today, certainly currently

1:45:59

you are under escort all the time.

1:46:03

There is a member of the,

1:46:05

when we are filing our stories for military commissions

1:46:08

and we are sitting in the press room

1:46:11

with a phone and a computer, writing our stories.

1:46:14

If I call up and do an interview,

1:46:18

if I sit there and I'm writing my story,

1:46:20

and I turn to a colleague,

1:46:22

there is always somebody listening.

1:46:24

There is always someone in uniform listening

1:46:25

and it is a subject of unhappiness.

1:46:28

I mean, you don't get cops

1:46:31

sitting in police department press rooms,

1:46:34

listening in on reporters.

1:46:37

You don't have at the Pentagon press room,

1:46:39

a member of the public affairs unit

1:46:44

sitting there in earshot listening in,

1:46:46

but at Guantanamo, they've made a decision

1:46:49

that at the war court,

1:46:51

there will be a soldier or sailor in every room

1:46:52

where somebody is writing and conducting interviews,

1:46:54

and they say they're not listening.

1:46:57

They say that they're there just to make sure

1:46:59

that everything's going right, but it's very different.

1:47:00

And when you are there currently,

1:47:03

you are in custody, you've agreed to go in custody.

1:47:06

So you're always in the custody of the military

1:47:09

and you are under escort every hour of every day,

1:47:12

except when you are sleeping in your tent

1:47:16

where they do not go, but they have the right to.

1:47:18

Peter

Did anyone ever say to you

1:47:24

that you can't write what you're writing at the time?

1:47:25

-

No.

1:47:28

Peter

And do you know if they ever listen

1:47:30

into to your conversation?

1:47:31

-

I'm sure that they do.

1:47:33

I'm sure that they do.

1:47:34

You mean on the telephone?

1:47:36

I am not sure that Guantanamo is sophisticated enough,

1:47:38

but I know that they listen in on my conversations

1:47:41

with other reporters,

1:47:43

because they're sitting in the back of the room,

1:47:43

chuckling or responding, or participating

1:47:47

when it's not necessarily a conversation

1:47:50

that that soldier was part of.

1:47:52

They have been embargoes

1:48:00

in which I've been asked not to write.

1:48:02

I've gotten information on condition,

1:48:03

I don't write it until a date at a time when agreed upon.

1:48:05

But in fact,

1:48:09

there's nothing I have seen

1:48:12

that I haven't put into words that I want.

1:48:15

I mean, that obviously there's lots that happens.

1:48:17

And that came up during a demonstration by the Uighers.

1:48:19

I will tell you real briefly, there was a point

1:48:22

at which we went to a camp four detainees.

1:48:24

Who'd been ordered, released by the courts

1:48:27

and they whipped out signs

1:48:30

and they held up protest signs

1:48:31

in very crude English in one point.

1:48:33

Analogizing the Americans with Hitler,

1:48:36

and in another point I say, use it saying,

1:48:38

"We want the freedom."

1:48:42

And they were really crude signs.

1:48:43

And the photographers swung on them and took pictures.

1:48:45

And following the guidelines of, you can't have faces,

1:48:48

but there was a big debate about whether those pictures

1:48:52

would ever cleared at Guantanamo

1:48:54

because they do sensor the photos quite aggressively.

1:48:56

And I sat down and I wrote a story

1:48:58

and described what those signs said

1:49:00

and what that demonstration was

1:49:02

and published that story on the internet

1:49:04

without any discussion about whether,

1:49:07

that what hide scene was under the same restrictions

1:49:10

as what they wanted to show.

1:49:14

I know people were unhappy that we saw that

1:49:16

and unhappy that I wrote it,

1:49:18

but there was never a suggestion

1:49:20

that I wouldn't have been allowed to write what I saw.

1:49:21

Peter

Well, I'm sure there were many places

1:49:25

where you wrote things that people are unhappy about.

1:49:26

You happen to be present when no one else is present.

1:49:29

Did you ever talk to doctors or psychologists

1:49:34

that gave you some insight into the men?

1:49:37

-

Yeah, the psychological profile

1:49:41

was that these men were highly motivated,

1:49:43

not subject to depression and despair as a general rule

1:49:47

because of this brotherhood of association

1:49:52

and strong feeling towards Islam.

1:49:58

This pretty much fits in with the military

1:50:00

profile of them being all equally committed to their cause

1:50:08

and full blown members of Al Qaeda or Taliban.

1:50:15

So I think that sort of the psychological profile

1:50:18

and people die down there,

1:50:22

and they don't consider it despair.

1:50:26

They don't think that people suicidal out of despair

1:50:28

they think that they suicide out

1:50:30

of continuing their war to embarrass the United States.

1:50:33

So that's sort of what you get

1:50:35

from the psychological people.

1:50:36

Peter

You ever had a doctor kind of tell you

1:50:38

this side saying he or she was not really?

1:50:41

-

Medical staff down there are proud of what they do.

1:50:46

Medical staff have saved lives,

1:50:48

have saved limbs,

1:50:50

have

1:50:53

improved the quality of lives of the detainees.

1:50:56

And they believe that.

1:51:00

And believe that they've honored their Hippocratic oath.

1:51:06

Everyone I've spoken to believes that

1:51:11

they have performed professionally

1:51:14

and honorably in their behavior towards the detainees.

1:51:17

Absolutely.

1:51:22

Peter

I have a few more questions,

1:51:23

but I think why don't we look at the chart

1:51:24

and we can give you a break standing up.

1:51:27

You mentioned

1:51:30

that you had a dinner with General Miller

1:51:30

and I wondered if you could tell us a bit about that?

1:51:32

-

General Miller had a policy of every reporter

1:51:35

who came to town on that safe transparency tour

1:51:38

that they offered weekly, pretty much,

1:51:41

you came off an airplane, you flew in commercially

1:51:45

and your first dinner was in the dining room,

1:51:48

with the general and a number of his command staff.

1:51:52

And it was a meet and greet.

1:51:56

And I actually think, frankly,

1:51:57

that that is a useful tool that the military has,

1:51:59

where rather than the first time you conducted an interview

1:52:03

is the first time you lay eyes on someone,

1:52:06

where you've actually had an opportunity

1:52:09

to meet and greet.

1:52:11

I don't think it necessarily has to be over a meal

1:52:12

but I mean, I've found that my relationships

1:52:13

with senior officers have improved.

1:52:16

If I've had a chance to chat with them before

1:52:17

we were in a sort of an official capacity

1:52:19

where I was officially asking questions

1:52:21

and they were officially answering them.

1:52:23

And he just made it a policy where you'd go

1:52:25

and you'd sit around a table

1:52:27

and,

1:52:29

he wasn't the only detention center commander

1:52:35

who was offered unofficial time with the reporters

1:52:38

to try and figure out what they wanted.

1:52:43

I know this may have been

1:52:45

a source of frustration for the attorneys

1:52:47

who would have also liked to have had off the books,

1:52:50

chat time with the commanders and were not allowed to,

1:52:51

and only had official contact through the SGA.

1:52:54

But I think that they found the report,

1:52:57

the attorneys being litigious

1:52:59

and I think they were more concerned

1:53:04

about contact with the attorneys.

1:53:06

So this didn't happen as a general rule.

1:53:07

But I have met all of the commanders of the detention center

1:53:10

including some that I suppose weren't met by most reporters.

1:53:16

And if I haven't had a cup of coffee

1:53:21

or a passing chat with them,

1:53:23

it's because I wasn't there much during that.

1:53:27

I mean, I know that people find it interesting

1:53:30

that General Miller did this,

1:53:33

General Miller wanted to meet every single reporter.

1:53:34

And he was very much in charge of public affairs,

1:53:37

speaking for the camps.

1:53:44

Peter

And you heard about

1:53:45

some of the mistreatment that might've occurred at the camp

1:53:46

at the time you met General Miller?

1:53:51

-

No.

1:53:52

Well actually, that maybe not be true.

1:53:54

I have to think of the chronology.

1:53:55

The first time I learned about the abuses,

1:53:58

strobe lights, rapping somebody

1:54:04

in an Israeli flag to humiliate them.

1:54:07

Extremes of hot and cold,

1:54:10

loud music was in a habeas Corpus petition

1:54:12

filed by an air force Colonel

1:54:17

on behalf of one of the early, early

1:54:20

military commission candidates.

1:54:22

And this document described things

1:54:24

that were really graphic.

1:54:29

And I remember being struck by the level of detail

1:54:32

and the fact that, army an, air force Colonel JAG

1:54:36

had signed on to this habeas petition.

1:54:41

It was very much eye opening, about treatment.

1:54:45

And I remember going to this Colonel

1:54:47

and saying, she made middle Lieutenant Colonel

1:54:48

at the time saying,

1:54:51

this is pretty damning stuff that this person is alleging.

1:54:53

And she's saying,

1:54:59

"Well he believes it's happened to him."

1:55:00

Because in this project you'll talk to lawyers

1:55:02

about the unique role.

1:55:06

They had military lawyers representing

1:55:07

the interests of their clients.

1:55:09

And she said, "He believed this happened to him.

1:55:10

"We have an obligation as officers of the court to."

1:55:11

And I remember being struck, like I said

1:55:16

by the graphic detail and asking a public affairs officer

1:55:18

this is very early on in 'O4

1:55:24

and asking a public affairs officer about it,

1:55:27

formally filing a query and being told

1:55:29

that it didn't happen, it wasn't true.

1:55:31

And then under FOYA, the ACL, HCLU gets FBI memos

1:55:34

that describe exactly the same thing.

1:55:40

They describe strobe lights,

1:55:43

extremes of hot and cold, wrapping them in the Israeli flag.

1:55:45

So to me

1:55:48

it was clear that

1:55:52

what we were seeing

1:55:56

was not what was happening exclusively,

1:55:57

but it wasn't until the ACLU

1:56:00

managed to declassify these FBI agents protests

1:56:02

over things they had seen that it was-

1:56:07

Peter

That changed your opinion

1:56:11

about Guantanamo or your impressions (indistinct)?

1:56:13

-

I was really disappointed in that public affairs officer.

1:56:15

Peter

What about your sense

1:56:19

of what you were seeing every week

1:56:20

when you go in?

1:56:22

-

I would tell you that I learned at that point

1:56:23

that the public affairs officers,

1:56:24

who I think stick their reputations

1:56:27

on things like that, not happening,

1:56:28

didn't know what was going on in the camps

1:56:32

and it did change, the way I reported,

1:56:33

because I did introduce the question of, have you seen this?

1:56:36

Do you know this?

1:56:42

When somebody would say to me that the internal feeling

1:56:44

what people call the forced feeding,

1:56:47

where they put the tube up the nose

1:56:48

and down the back of the throat is humane.

1:56:50

And that the detainees don't mind

1:56:52

that the go along voluntarily to get shackled in the chair

1:56:54

to have this twice daily feeding done to them

1:56:57

is a pleasant experience.

1:57:01

I remember asking these public affairs officers

1:57:03

have you seen it?

1:57:05

If you haven't seen it, don't go vouching for it.

1:57:07

So it became, the standard by which

1:57:11

I held the spokesman to was a little different

1:57:16

where I wanted to kind of gauge their ability.

1:57:17

I mean, sometimes they're just speaking for the institution

1:57:22

because that's what they've been given to say

1:57:24

as opposed to.

1:57:26

Peter

Can we go on?

1:57:33

Jeremy

Sure.

1:57:34

Peter

Okay, so you talked about the theory,

1:57:35

when I spoke to you before we got on tape

1:57:40

about failure cooperation

1:57:42

that you felt that the military, as you saw it

1:57:44

wanted cooperation from the detainees,

1:57:49

and you mentioned that Hamdan's wife was invited to visit.

1:57:52

Can you tell me something about that?

1:57:58

Did you say something about that?

1:58:00

No.

1:58:01

I wonder where.

1:58:03

-

I can tell you.

1:58:04

No, I can tell you that he was given a phone call to her

1:58:05

and then I've read that in Black Banners, by Ali Soufan.

1:58:09

And I understood that beforehand.

1:58:13

In terms of getting cooperation.

1:58:15

I think the question may have been

1:58:17

were individual detainees

1:58:21

given rewards and incentives to cooperate?

1:58:23

And I think it's clear that they were,

1:58:25

and that they've said they were,

1:58:26

that certainly there was one,

1:58:28

it's part of the court record of the military commissions

1:58:31

that there was one captive down there

1:58:34

who's a Saudi who was inclined to boycott the commisions

1:58:36

and didn't wanna show up.

1:58:41

And that they really wanted his cooperation.

1:58:42

They wanted him to see it

1:58:44

and they didn't wanna have to make a decision

1:58:45

about whether they were gonna be forcing someone into court.

1:58:47

And they got his father on the phone.

1:58:50

And

1:58:53

we know this from testimony

1:58:57

that people have been granted phone calls this.

1:58:59

Now there's phone calls

1:59:03

and video conferencing with families

1:59:05

as part of the Red Cross superstructure

1:59:07

that the Pentagon has negotiated with the Red Cross

1:59:11

so people can speak to home

1:59:13

and they are monitored conversations

1:59:15

and they can speak into a camera.

1:59:17

But there was a period before the Red Cross

1:59:19

had initiated this program

1:59:20

when intelligence was intelligence.

1:59:22

And I believe the prison camp staff were bringing phones

1:59:25

into the camp to allow people

1:59:31

to talk to family as a reward for cooperation, for sure.

1:59:32

But if you want to do the cooperation thing

1:59:38

there's always been, a sort of tinkering

1:59:40

with the management, by the management of the camp

1:59:43

with how do we make this thing run smoothly?

1:59:45

How do we get them to follow the rules?

1:59:48

How do we not have this tension

1:59:50

between the guards and the detainees on a day-to-day basis?

1:59:53

This is not about

1:59:57

like intelligence or interrogation,

1:59:58

but the guards come and go,

2:00:00

six, nine, one year rotations.

2:00:04

They are frequently in the age group of 20 to 24.

2:00:07

The only people who've been there from the start

2:00:12

are the detainees,

2:00:15

they watch them come, they watch them go.

2:00:17

The detainees can play with the guards and mess with them.

2:00:19

The guards come along

2:00:22

and they look through the cages at these captives

2:00:23

and maybe they also

2:00:26

haven't always behaved in the most professional manner.

2:00:30

And so, the idea is to avoid this tension

2:00:33

and to try to figure out a way

2:00:36

to give them their own environment,

2:00:38

as opposed to having this constant friction.

2:00:39

And I think they're at that stage with a lot of them

2:00:43

where that's more the case, the less.

2:00:46

When we first went Camp Six,

2:00:50

which is or 220 prisoner prison camp, built

2:00:51

a prison building a penitentiary building,

2:00:59

built in cell blocks based on an American prison structure.

2:01:01

It was after the suicides and they were moved

2:01:06

into this building and they were in single cell occupancy.

2:01:09

You will have people in this project

2:01:13

who will say it was solitary confinement.

2:01:14

The military would tell you

2:01:16

there wasn't solitary confinement

2:01:17

because they had human contact.

2:01:18

And they work in these cells,

2:01:20

22 hours a day, 24 hours a day.

2:01:24

Not really, but 22 hours a day or longer,

2:01:28

they ate, they prayed.

2:01:30

They were in these boxes all the time.

2:01:32

And you'd go on tour

2:01:34

and you'd see them in these boxes,

2:01:35

pacing back and forth, back and forth,

2:01:36

back and forth the windows.

2:01:38

And you could see what the lawyers described

2:01:39

as a real austere, emotionally,

2:01:43

physically, difficult structure of detention.

2:01:49

Now you go to that camp, the doors are open

2:01:53

that prison building, the doors are open,

2:01:55

and the detainees have the

2:01:57

run of that block.

2:02:02

They can move around up and down the stairs.

2:02:03

And within this area

2:02:05

where they can come and go from their cells,

2:02:06

they can go take a shower.

2:02:08

They aren't shackled as they were

2:02:09

during the previous period.

2:02:11

And they were taking the showers

2:02:12

and the guards are in the cages.

2:02:14

They have built chain, link fences,

2:02:17

chain link fence cages inside the cell blocks

2:02:21

near the exit where they have maybe

2:02:24

three feet of space in front of them.

2:02:29

And they're in these

2:02:31

like I said these little chain-link fence enclosures

2:02:32

where the detainee can come up and make a request

2:02:35

or talk to them or pass their laundry,

2:02:37

or ask for a bottle of water or something.

2:02:39

And you see the guards pacing back and forth

2:02:41

in these very confined areas

2:02:43

so that their feet don't fall asleep so that they stay alert

2:02:46

because their job is to keep an eye on the detainees.

2:02:48

And it's 10 years later.

2:02:53

And what you've seen is this is an experiment

2:02:54

in which they're continuing to tinker,

2:02:58

but having watched the evolution of it,

2:03:00

it is striking how,

2:03:03

I'm not saying it will be like this tomorrow.

2:03:06

I'm not saying it's been like this forever

2:03:07

but at this moment about 70, 80% of the detainees

2:03:09

are in more of a POW style, eat together, pray together

2:03:13

and have a little mini library together setting

2:03:18

than they've had at the beginning.

2:03:20

Peter

Wow, that's great.

2:03:23

-

Okay.

2:03:25

Peter

That's great.

2:03:26

Well, is there something that I didn't ask you

2:03:27

that you wanna talk about Carol?

2:03:29

And also just an overall attitude change

2:03:31

in the last, besides that, that you wanna just?

2:03:34

-

Well, it's been a difficult period lately

2:03:37

because I think that the new management has decided that

2:03:39

since it's not getting closed, and it's not being closed

2:03:42

and there's some elements of government that consider

2:03:47

perhaps Guantanamo to be an embarrassment,

2:03:52

that I think the public affairs aspect right now

2:03:54

is not particularly open.

2:03:57

But I think that that's come and gone through the years

2:03:58

as you get different personalities down there.

2:04:01

And that sometimes they're more inclined

2:04:03

to be transparent than others.

2:04:06

I mean, there's never true transparency,

2:04:08

but there's more cooperation or less cooperation.

2:04:10

It's a difficult period now.

2:04:13

A lot of I would say escorting.

2:04:14

I just came back.

2:04:21

We had an issue where for the first time in years

2:04:22

there was a question about

2:04:26

whether we'd be able to walk from the tent

2:04:27

to the filing center without a soldier sailor next to us.

2:04:29

And it was a source of unhappiness for reporters

2:04:33

who've been going there for years.

2:04:37

I mean the same story I told about the guards

2:04:38

and the detainees who've always been there.

2:04:42

There's some reporters who've been there

2:04:44

for years and years, and when the escorts change

2:04:45

and they they come up with new rules,

2:04:47

there's that tension as well.

2:04:49

And so we're having tension.

2:04:50

The only thing I wanted to say just real quickly

2:04:51

is that the reason we've been able to report

2:04:53

and I've been able to report

2:04:55

is that there've been public affairs operators

2:04:56

who have aggressively advocated access

2:04:58

and have felt, and do feel even today,

2:05:04

that in American society

2:05:08

reporters should be allowed to report,

2:05:10

and that you need to push to even when it's uncomfortable,

2:05:12

even when they know the story is not necessarily

2:05:17

going to reflect very well,

2:05:20

that this is what in America we do.

2:05:22

And so, as I show you this chart I'm about to show you,

2:05:24

this chart is a product of since retired army Colonel

2:05:28

advocating a press room for reporters down at Gitmo

2:05:33

allowing us to use this,

2:05:37

create this rudimentary timeline on the wall

2:05:39

of a building on a military base

2:05:43

that the military would never have sanctioned

2:05:45

as their official language.

2:05:47

And they understood

2:05:49

that this was media work product in our spot.

2:05:49

And that we, during the period when we were creating this

2:05:54

there was nobody listening in on our conversations.

2:05:57

We were in one office they were in another.

2:05:59

But through the years there've been a number of people,

2:06:01

genuinely in the military, in uniform

2:06:04

who have made it possible for us to report.

2:06:07

And while I have my

2:06:11

frustration and clashes with public affairs officers,

2:06:15

for every one who I think is unreasonably unwilling

2:06:19

to answer a question, the American people want the answer to

2:06:23

there've been others who've pushed

2:06:27

and opened up things that, greatly.

2:06:28

Peter

You said to me

2:06:33

and I'd like to just put on tape

2:06:34

that you speak for the American people.

2:06:35

Do you see yourself as the voice of the American people

2:06:38

have, you've been there 10 years

2:06:42

-

Speak for the American,

2:06:42

All I know is if somebody emails me a question

2:06:44

and I think it's a valid question, I try to get it answered

2:06:47

and I try and report it.

2:06:50

I think that, we in the media have a role

2:06:51

that obviously in society,

2:06:54

but the Pentagon conferred upon us

2:06:57

when they allowed 20 reporters in

2:07:00

two days before the first batch,

2:07:02

and that we continue to have a serious responsibility

2:07:05

to continue reporting that place,

2:07:09

especially because at the podium, at the Pentagon,

2:07:11

they always talk about how transparent Guantanamo is,

2:07:15

how hundreds of reporters have gone through that place,

2:07:18

and to not keep asking questions

2:07:20

and not keep reporting what's going on down there.

2:07:22

And to allow them to have that talking point

2:07:24

really makes the press, this prop

2:07:27

and this Guantanamo experiment

2:07:29

that is yet to be resolved.

2:07:31

So, not me, but the media have to be down there reporting.

2:07:33

I believe that genuinely.

2:07:39

(indistinct)

2:07:41

Yeah.

2:07:43

For the moment.

2:07:45

Peter

Well, it's fabulous.

2:07:46

Let's go look at the chart.

2:07:47

Jeremy

We need a couple minutes gentlemen to.

2:07:49

Peter

I might ask some questions

2:07:51

but it's your show.

2:07:53

-

I'll do it real quick whenever you tell me.

2:07:54

Jeremy

Okay, you're up.

2:07:57

-

So this is a relic from the very earliest days

2:07:57

of Gitmo because when the media first came down

2:08:00

we were working out of a media center

2:08:02

which was just a room on the top of the terminal

2:08:04

with phone lines strung through it,

2:08:08

and events were happening so fast and furiously

2:08:10

that we were trying to keep track

2:08:13

of what happened day to day,

2:08:14

at what I starts out with is the command comes in

2:08:16

on the sixth to set up this detention center.

2:08:20

Peter

Can you read the words?

2:08:24

-

And it says January 6th, JTF arrives Gitmo.

2:08:25

And what's important or interesting about it,

2:08:28

from my point of view is by January 9th,

2:08:30

the first media are there.

2:08:32

So whatever the message was that the Pentagon

2:08:33

wanted to convey to the American people,

2:08:36

it was important enough that we were down there really fast.

2:08:37

And the reason we did this is the planes

2:08:40

were coming really rapidly, with 20, with 30

2:08:42

with a series of, with detainees.

2:08:46

And we were trying to keep track

2:08:48

of how many flights there had been.

2:08:50

So here's the first flight, January 11th,

2:08:51

first prisoners are 20.

2:08:53

You see that somebody came in and crossed out prisoners

2:08:55

and wrote detainees because the military

2:08:57

was always very concerned

2:08:59

with the language of this operation.

2:09:03

And they didn't want us calling them prisoners.

2:09:06

And then by January 13th,

2:09:08

there's 20 prisoners or detainees at Gitmo

2:09:10

they've conducted their first surgery.

2:09:13

They've taken some money out of Camp X-Ray

2:09:14

into the Naval hospital.

2:09:16

On the 14th, the second airlift arrives

2:09:18

from Afghanistan, and the population at X-Ray is 50.

2:09:21

The third shipment arrives on the 16th.

2:09:28

There's up to 80 detainees.

2:09:31

We have something called the biting incident.

2:09:33

The general in charge reported that one of the detainees

2:09:35

had bitten a guard, but not broken skin.

2:09:38

This is just a reminder,

2:09:42

and that the coast guard has now pulled up

2:09:43

and they were securing the Bay.

2:09:45

So we just did this in order to keep track

2:09:47

of the developments one by one by one,

2:09:49

and the story of Gitmo is people

2:09:50

improvising and doing the best they can,

2:09:54

as they go along, making it up and using what they have.

2:09:56

And what's interesting about this

2:10:00

is when we decided we wanted to make these charts.

2:10:02

We went to the Colonel in charge and said,

2:10:04

do you mind if we set up a chart

2:10:07

and keep our own information in the press room?

2:10:09

And he said, "It's your press room.

2:10:11

"It's your information.

2:10:12

"We're not going to approve it or disprove it.

2:10:14

"We're not endorsing it, but you write what you want."

2:10:16

And the only thing we could find

2:10:19

for poster board were what they called burn bags.

2:10:20

So these were big bags that they kept

2:10:22

in the command headquarters of the detention center

2:10:24

that we peeled open and turned into posters.

2:10:28

And a burn bag was something where you put secret in it

2:10:31

sealed it up and they burnt it

2:10:34

because it was classified.

2:10:35

Real quickly, we were trying to figure out,

2:10:38

it's a reflection of trying to wrap our brain

2:10:40

around what Guantanamo would be, and what were the issues.

2:10:43

As we now all know vividly,

2:10:46

as we all know vividly

2:10:51

it was a reflection of what Guantanamo would.

2:10:52

Nobody knew what it was.

2:10:56

So one of the things we decided to write on January 19th

2:10:58

detainees had been there for eight days,

2:11:01

was in LA Ramsey Clark and some clergy

2:11:03

filed the first ever habeas Corpus petition

2:11:06

because habeas Corpus was like something

2:11:09

that was already a question very, very early on.

2:11:10

It got kicked out immediately,

2:11:14

he had no standing, so it was gone.

2:11:15

But we were aware down there that very early on

2:11:17

this was going to be headed for the courts.

2:11:21

And they filed, this petition, it gets kicked.

2:11:24

And on the 20th, the fifth shipment arrives.

2:11:28

There's now 144 detainees at Guantanamo.

2:11:31

This is the fifth flight from Afghanistan.

2:11:35

And that photo has come out,

2:11:38

that famous photo of them on their knees

2:11:39

in the orange jumpsuits,

2:11:41

and appeared in a British tabloid

2:11:43

under the headline, "Torture."

2:11:44

And the rest of it becomes sort of the motif

2:11:45

of covering Guantanamo.

2:11:48

The courts, the perception,

2:11:49

the Red Cross has arrived six days into it.

2:11:52

On again, off again,

2:11:56

you notice on the 23rd,

2:11:58

they finally bring in a Muslim Imam.

2:11:59

The plan is they stood it up as they began didn't,

2:12:02

they knew that they had to have hello meals,

2:12:06

and they showed us those from the beginning,

2:12:07

and that they knew that they were Muslim prisoners

2:12:09

and they did, but they're there, they're up to 158 people.

2:12:11

And on the 23rd of January, 2002

2:12:15

the Imam arrives and he's bringing Qurans.

2:12:18

And the next morning on the 24th, all of this was reported.

2:12:21

They had the first call of prayer on the camps.

2:12:24

And then the rest of it's sort of obvious.

2:12:27

Peter

Anything interested

2:12:32

about Rumsfeld visit?

2:12:33

Were you there?

2:12:34

-

Yeah I was there.

2:12:35

He was on the ferry.

2:12:40

We all crossed the ferry with him from the Bay.

2:12:42

And he reminisced about that time when he was a pilot,

2:12:44

and had flown in and out of Gitmo, cold war stuff.

2:12:46

I mean, Rumsfeld was there to put his imprint

2:12:52

on this evolving operation and give it the support.

2:12:56

First surgery, also of interest to me,

2:13:01

very important as I report is on February 7th

2:13:04

they're almost a month into it

2:13:08

and they conduct their first amputation.

2:13:10

Later, later, you would go down there

2:13:13

and they'd brief that they never have done any amputations

2:13:16

that everybody came without.

2:13:19

The thing about Guantanamo is the rotations,

2:13:22

there's no institutional memory.

2:13:24

So the

2:13:26

head of the hospital arrives,

2:13:29

there hasn't been an amputation for a couple of years.

2:13:31

He assumes that there were never any amputation,

2:13:34

and you have to take him aside and say, sir,

2:13:36

I was here when they briefed the first amputation.

2:13:38

Peter

What did he say when you said that?

2:13:42

-

People, different people,

2:13:44

when you take them aside respond differently.

2:13:46

This gentleman didn't doubt when I told him

2:13:48

that another Navy captain had briefed this

2:13:51

on such and such a day,

2:13:54

it was not a problem.

2:13:57

This is a family of two Brits

2:14:03

an Aussie file habeas Corpus in DC.

2:14:05

Yeah, that's Russell.

2:14:07

That does become the true case

2:14:07

that goes to the Supreme court.

2:14:10

And then one more thing, and then I will stop.

2:14:13

The turban episode I spoke about

2:14:14

was on the 26th of February,

2:14:16

and somewhere here, oh, here's the hunger strike beginning.

2:14:19

And this is how transparent they were.

2:14:24

They went back and they told us then on the 27th of February

2:14:29

159 detainees refused their lunch.

2:14:32

Well, at this point, we know that there's 300 captives.

2:14:36

So a half of them refused to eat lunch,

2:14:38

109 refused to eat dinner.

2:14:40

This is at the time when they were willing

2:14:42

to be much more transparent about their hunger striking.

2:14:44

They're less transparent now.

2:14:48

Peter

Is there anything else on these charts that?

2:14:51

-

I mean, we really did follow the hunger strikes.

2:14:55

Pretty interestingly.

2:14:59

The Marines leave on the 20th of March

2:15:02

and replaced by the army.

2:15:04

That's the first rotation,

2:15:05

March 21st,

2:15:10

we start learning that there's going to be tribunals

2:15:11

but they haven't decided that they're at Gitmo.

2:15:14

Force-feeding comes up.

2:15:21

Peter

How did that come up?

2:15:25

-

They told us

2:15:27

that there were people who hadn't eaten

2:15:28

that we're becoming a health issue

2:15:30

and that they needed to develop guidelines

2:15:33

to make sure that nobody died on their watch.

2:15:36

This was very great concern to them.

2:15:38

And they figured out at what point

2:15:40

they needed to tether tubes up their nose,

2:15:42

and down the back of their throat and pumping insure.

2:15:45

And they started it.

2:15:48

Peter

You were able to observe?

2:15:49

-

No, I've never seen it.

2:15:50

On occasion they offered to let reporters

2:15:52

undergo this experience.

2:15:56

But the truth of the matter is,

2:15:58

is if you voluntarily sit in a chair

2:15:59

and slide a tube up my nose and down the back of my throat

2:16:01

it's very different than being a detainee.

2:16:04

So there's no point and that's, I declined.

2:16:06

And then it ended.

2:16:11

And I can tell you part of the reason I think it ended

2:16:12

is that, there was a change of public affairs staff.

2:16:15

And the new public affairs staff

2:16:18

was very unhappy with the idea that we would have

2:16:20

our own narrative that wasn't military approved.

2:16:23

And this came down, and it was saved

2:16:25

and Army Colonel brought it back to Miami

2:16:30

and said, "I saved this from the trash bin, here it is."

2:16:32

Peter

You weren't allowed to take it back yourself?

2:16:37

-

I had left it on the wall of the media center

2:16:39

as I came and went updating it.

2:16:42

So at some point, while I was away,

2:16:44

a new commander came in and said,

2:16:46

"No, we will not have this."

2:16:49

And decided this wasn't consistent

2:16:52

with the military Understanding.

2:16:54

This is pretty interesting,

2:16:56

on the 5th of April Yasser Hamdi leaves

2:16:57

and he's Hamdi who goes to the Supreme court.

2:17:01

And he was the American citizen in the camp.

2:17:03

And this was a big concern of theirs because they believed

2:17:06

that they could treat foreigners different.

2:17:08

That if there were a citizen there

2:17:11

constitutional rights would attach.

2:17:15

And so they needed to get them out of the camp.

2:17:17

And this I think, is known,

2:17:18

he went from there to a Brigg in the States and.

2:17:20

Peter

Were you aware that Hamdi

2:17:23

was a citizen at the time?

2:17:24

-

It appeared the day before

2:17:26

in a newspaper in the beltway

2:17:27

that there was an American in the camp

2:17:28

and they were getting him out of there fast.

2:17:30

I got up that morning, at I think 5:00 AM.

2:17:32

And watch the C-130 take off from the airstrip

2:17:34

carrying him off the base, Guantanamo is small,

2:17:36

you get to see stuff.

2:17:40

Peter

You wanna show this picture?

2:17:42

Jeremy

No.

2:17:45

-

We're done.

2:17:47

Peter

We're done?

2:17:47

Is there anything?

2:17:49

Jeremy

The only thing I might wanna do.

2:17:50

Peter

Get that off.

2:17:53

Carol

Making noise into the ear, painful and awful.

2:17:55

I could actually turn it off.

2:18:01

But I'll just let you do that.

2:18:03

Peter

Thank you.

2:18:05

Carol

I have to tell you,

2:18:09

you really wanna go to Alcatraz

2:18:10

because within two days of getting there,

2:18:11

I called it the Alcatraz of the Caribbean.

2:18:14

Peter

Well, I think I, i never

2:18:17

as I keep thinking to go need to go see it.

2:18:19

Carol

Jeremy, I don't trust Peter,

2:18:23

will you roll it up very gently and put it in here?

2:18:25

Jeremy

Yeah, and then, oh, you can give it to you.

2:18:27

Perfect.

2:18:29

Carol

And that's really, all I care about

2:18:30

is that I don't lose it.

2:18:32

Jeremy

What else?

2:18:35

Carol

I'm gonna take the rest with me.

2:18:36

Jeremy

Don't forget your phone.

2:18:39

Carol

Yeah.

2:18:41

It just, it's a little brittle.

2:18:46

Jeremy

Yeah.

2:18:48

Do they roll up all three together?

2:18:49

Carol

Yeah.

2:18:51

And then on the outside I put the KSM thing.

2:18:52

'Cause it's a little heavier and you just curl them

2:18:55

inside each other, you'll do it.

2:18:58

Jeremy

Mm-hmm (affirmative)

2:18:59

Carol

I just don't trust Peter.

2:19:01

Peter

I don't believe me either, Jeremy is the artist.

2:19:03

I just called them, they should have answered,

2:19:12

so I'm just texting them.

2:19:14

Carol

No, it's all right.

2:19:15

Peter

I don't mind,

2:19:16

Jeremy I'll be back.

2:19:18

Jeremy

Take your time.

2:19:19

Carol

And I won't see you?

2:19:21

Peter

You won't see me, Jeremy come here.

2:19:23

Woman

You know where they are?

2:21:27

Jeremy

Yeah, they went outside to try and catch a cab.

2:21:28

Woman

Oh, really?

2:21:33

Jeremy

So you should zip up and.

2:21:34

This is the first poster board again

2:22:32

in close up until.

2:22:37

Room tone.

2:23:04

And room tone

2:23:18

Rosenberg, Carol - Interview master file

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