Clemente, Jim - short clip - InterrogationMethods

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-	At one point when I found out	0:00
	what their interrogation methods were,	0:02
	you know, this fear up, and anxiety up,	0:04
	and and all that kind of crap, and worse,	0:06
	I said, well,	0:12
	there's no wonder you're not getting any information.	0:13
	You're hardening them against you and our clause.	0:15
	And the whole point of an interrogation	0:19
	is to try to win them over,	0:23
	to try to get them to understand your side	0:24
	as you understand them	0:27
	and then get them to work for you rather than against you.	0:29
	They've been trained, not only by a hard life,	0:33
	but by training camps	0:38
	in order to resist this kind of harsh treatment.	0:40
	And so when you treat them harshly,	0:44
	you reinforce that belief that we're the devil,	0:46
	that we're evil.	0:48
	And so you help them do what they're doing, resisting you.	0:49
	So it's really counterproductive.	0:53
	So I told them to let me have access to a detainee	0:55
	that wasn't cooperating at all.	1:01
	And they brought in detainee 682,	1:02
	and he was doing nothing but sitting mute	1:07
	during interrogations or reciting the Koran from memory.	1:12
	And I realized that, you know,	1:15
	this was gonna be a tough task.	1:21
	So I set out to do this.	1:23
	I met with him,	1:24
	I think maybe a dozen times over the next 21 days.	1:25
	I gave him as much dignity and respect as I could	1:28
	under the circumstances.	1:34
	He had to be shackled in the room and so forth.	1:35
	But still within that,	1:37
	the first thing I did was tell him	1:39
	that I was a behavioral analyst	1:41
	and I don't care anything about what he did.	1:43
	What I wanna do is learn about his culture and his religion.	1:46
	And because he's an educated man,	1:49
	he's smarter than anybody else in this camp.	1:52
	He has a degree in engineering	1:54
	from the University of Felix.	1:55
	He speaks incredibly articulately in English	1:57
	and he can share with me the nuances	2:00
	of his people and his culture.	2:03
	And I would love to learn from him if he wouldn't mind.	2:05
	And of course being a good Muslim,	2:07
	he wants to teach others about his religion.	2:10
	So that's fine.	2:13
	He could do that without sort of violating his code.	2:15
	And it took him a while	2:18
	to warm up to where he would actually talk to me.	2:20
	But then he started teaching me about his religion.	2:22
	And we had discussions about	2:24
	the many overlaps between Christianity and Islam,	2:26
	and we related on a human level.	2:31
	And after 21 days, he was my friend.	2:35
	I mean, I would walk in the room	2:40
	and he spread his arms and say,	2:42
	"Jim, my friend, what can I do for you?"	2:43
	And I turned it back over to the interrogators	2:45
	and he was extremely cooperative.	2:48
	And I use that as a test case	2:50
	to show them how this can be done successfully	2:51
	even with the most hardened person.	2:55
	The guy who would not say a thing.	2:58
	Who knew exactly how to resist,	3:00
	because he's a human being.	3:03

Item Info

Title:

Clemente, Jim - short clip - InterrogationMethods

Date:

June 13, 2010

Interviewer:

Honigsberg, Peter Jan

Interviewee:

Clemente, Jim

Role:

Description:

This interview may include descriptions of violence.
FBI Criminal Profiler
Jim Clemente, male, age 50 was an FBI Supervisory Special Agent and was stationed in Guantanamo to consult on interrogation methods and the development of an interrogation plan. He took a public stand against the tactics being used, saying they violated the U.S. Torture Statute.
Description was provided by Witness to Guantanamo.

Subject:

United States

Format:

oral histories

Language:

English

Extent:

1:43:34

Digital Collection:

Witness to Guantanamo

Source Collection:

Witness to Guantanamo Video Collection, 2009-2017

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Rights Note:

Unless otherwise noted, copyright is held by Peter Hongisberg. Under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license, you are free to use and share these materials subject to the following conditions: You must attribute Peter Hongisberg as the rights holder. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. You may not distribute any modifications to the materials. For other uses, including commercial uses, please contact Rubenstein Library at http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/ask.

Identifier:

9ab276b5dff5e4cdf7a1e1bf3c26fd22
witnesstoguantanamo
ark:/87924/r4hh6kr21
0c8a12df-0efd-43ca-971c-bf0edd1e9e35

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4hh6kr21

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Clemente, Jim - short clip - InterrogationMethods

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