Arendt, Christopher - Interview master file / Witness to Guantanamo / Duke Digital Repository

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Three, four, three.

0:05

Interviewer

Yeah, we're done, wait a minute, rolling.

0:06

Okay, good afternoon.

0:09

Good afternoon.

0:11

Interviewer

We are very grateful to you

0:12

for participating in the witness to Guantanamo project.

0:13

We invite you to speak of your experiences and involvement

0:17

with detainees who were held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

0:21

We are hoping to provide you with an opportunity

0:24

to tell your story in your own words.

0:27

We're creating an archive of stories

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that people in America and around the world

0:32

will have a better understanding of what you

0:35

and others have experienced and observed.

0:38

Future generations must know what happened at Guantanamo,

0:41

and by telling a story you're contributing to history.

0:44

We appreciate your courage

0:48

and your willingness to speak with us.

0:50

If at any time during the interview,

0:52

you wanna take a break, just let us know.

0:54

And anything you say that you'd like to retract

0:56

or just review, just let us know

0:58

and we can go back over that.

1:00

And I'd like to begin

1:02

with some general background information such as your name

1:04

and your hometown and birth date and age.

1:07

Maybe you could tell us that.

1:11

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Name, Christopher Brandon Arendt, A-R-E-N-D-T,

1:13

hometown, Lansing, Michigan

1:17

and well, born in Sparrow Hospital, Lansing, Michigan,

1:19

raised in Charlotte, Michigan.

1:23

And then birth date, 02/18/1984,

1:25

the February 18th, 1984.

1:31

I feel like this is a pretty military breakdown.

1:33

Like social security should come next.

1:35

Zero, two, five, eight.

1:37

Interviewer

And what's your age?

1:39

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27.

1:40

Interviewer

And where do you currently live?

1:41

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I live in Trumansburg, New York.

1:45

Interviewer

And a little bit, are you,

1:47

your marital status?

1:49

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Single.

1:50

Interviewer

And your education?

1:51

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Like some college didn't, have not finished a degree.

1:55

Interviewer

Okay, and your current occupation?

1:59

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The art director

2:04

of the veterans sanctuary combat paper project.

2:06

(laughs)

2:09

It sounds pretty professional, right?

2:10

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Good, okay.

2:12

So I'd like to begin just how you first joined the military

2:13

and why you did and which branch?

2:16

Just a little background on that.

2:19

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Was gonna join the military pretty much my whole life.

2:22

I have memories dating back to childhood.

2:24

I'd say like eight, nine, 10 years old,

2:28

having conversations with my mom

2:29

about joining the military, military family,

2:31

so, and also very poor.

2:33

And my mom had kind of built into my brain

2:36

that it was like college money, military equals college.

2:39

Military equals you going to college,

2:42

is like how it broke down.

2:43

So I had accepted that the military was something

2:46

I was gonna do for a long time.

2:47

And then in November of 2007, no, 2001, I'm sorry,

2:49

I was a senior in high school

2:55

and I was gonna join the Marine Corp,

2:56

but then my family started to kind of fall apart.

2:58

And I ended up staying with friends

3:01

and realized that I needed, like I needed money of my own,

3:05

like I no longer had kind of any financial support.

3:10

So I'd been working and I had my own job

3:12

and everything, but I realized I needed a future.

3:17

So I decided to join The National Guard

3:18

instead of the Marine Corps,

3:21

'cause by then the war had started,

3:23

the 911 had happened

3:25

and I decided that I did not wanna shoot people.

3:26

I was really disgusted by the anti Muslim sentiment,

3:31

the whole turn it into a glass parking lot

3:34

and I wanna kill rag heads and the whole favor

3:36

against the Islamic nation that came around.

3:40

I was really disturbed by it,

3:44

so I did not wanna participate in the war.

3:45

So, but I did want the college benefits in the military.

3:48

So I joined The National Guard

3:50

under the false assumption that we would guard the nation.

3:52

Interviewer

And what kind of training

3:57

did you give The National Guard?

3:58

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I joined the field artillery

4:00

and I was trained for 16 weeks.

4:03

And eight of them was for basic combat training

4:06

for shooting targets and stabbing targets and running around

4:09

and doing pushups and learning how to yes sir, no sir

4:14

and who to say yes sir or no sir to

4:17

and all the rules of the game.

4:19

And then another eight weeks training

4:20

on how to fire M109 howitzer cannons,

4:22

the whole firing operations

4:29

and maintenance of self-propelled howitzers

4:31

and then that was.

4:34

Interviewer

It was purposeful then.

4:37

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For shooting cannons for combat.

4:38

I mean, it's a National Guard unit

4:41

so it's pretty hard to explain why there are things

4:43

like artillery units in The National Guard

4:46

but mine is not to question why.

4:49

All I know is that I kind of failed the ASVAB

4:52

which is the initial test for the military

4:54

and I got a 55, so I could not join.

4:56

I could only join the infantry or the artillery

4:59

and artillery comes with vehicles

5:02

and you don't have to walk around so much.

5:03

So as a naturally lazy person,

5:05

I decided that the artillery would be better.

5:07

Interviewer

And after those 18 weeks,

5:12

what happened then?

5:13

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I reported back to Michigan

5:15

and started drilling with my unit

5:17

which is drilling is like three days a month.

5:18

We go in and sweep the floors,

5:22

complain about things,

5:25

most of the times, we're not even around our canons

5:27

until the summertime comes

5:29

and then we start drilling up North

5:31

where we kept our cannons

5:32

and we would fire them for a couple of days

5:34

and then in the summer,

5:36

we would have what's called an annual training

5:37

and we'd fire our canons for two weeks at a time,

5:39

and then spent, well actually most of that time

5:42

was spent in the motor pool, kicking sand around

5:45

and smoking cigarettes and pitching violence.

5:48

Interviewer

How did it happen

5:51

that you ended up in Guantanamo, how did that happen?

5:53

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In October of 2001, I was called by my section chief.

5:55

Oh, sorry.

5:58

Interviewer

You joined in 2000?

5:59

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Oh, I'm sorry, 2004, I'm sorry.

6:01

Timeline mixed up, October of 2003.

6:03

So I was trying to go to school.

6:06

I was living in a place called Kalamazoo, Michigan

6:09

and going to community college

6:11

and my phone rings and my chief it's my chief.

6:13

And he gives us the call sign for,

6:15

that we've been deployed basically.

6:18

They'd let us know when the war started

6:20

that if we ever get deployed, this is what we'll say,

6:22

when we call you on the phone to let you know

6:23

that we're gonna go somewhere.

6:26

So my chief calls and he's the jerk.

6:27

So all he says is these words

6:29

that you know it's raging bull.

6:31

He just goes raging bull and then hangs up the phone.

6:33

And that's it.

6:35

So like for probably three weeks

6:36

I had no idea what was going on.

6:38

Nobody would answer my calls

6:40

or telling me what was going on.

6:41

I just knew when the next time I had to go for drill was so

6:42

I was so for three weeks, I was just like I'm deployed,

6:45

but I don't know where to, I don't know how to get out,

6:49

I don't know what to do about this.

6:52

So I basically just went into like a big drug coma.

6:56

Like it just did everything.

6:59

I put everything in my mouth I could for

7:00

that entire period of time.

7:02

And then we get to drill for the next month.

7:04

We sit around all weekend long

7:07

everybody's talking about where we're gonna go.

7:08

We're gonna be in Afghanistan,

7:10

we're gonna be in Iraq,

7:12

we're gonna be in England.

7:13

I heard probably six different countries we're gonna go to.

7:14

None of them were going on Guantanamo Bay.

7:17

No one saw that coming.

7:19

And then they line us all up

7:21

and they start showing us these clips of jet skis

7:23

and beautiful beaches.

7:25

And they were like Charlie battery

7:28

been we've been deployed to Guantanamo Bay.

7:29

And then that was really all that was said about it.

7:31

I mean, I went home and looked it up online.

7:35

I'd heard about it

7:37

but I never really thought about the place much.

7:38

I just knew that's where they said

7:42

that they were gonna put detainees, and.

7:44

Interviewer

And did they give you any specific training

7:46

before you went to Guantanamo?

7:49

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We had one month of what's called mobilization

7:50

because technically, they had to train,

7:56

they had to do something to trade our jobs.

7:58

You can't make a person, you can't switch a person

8:01

in the military from operating a canon

8:04

to operating a detainee or a detention facility

8:06

without any training whatsoever.

8:09

So, but they didn't put a whole lot of effort

8:11

into their training program.

8:17

We got like a day of culture training

8:18

which was geared towards people deploying to Iraq.

8:21

Like, it's basically

8:24

there was a bunch of generic Iraq deployment stuff

8:24

'cause they were, it's 2004,

8:28

they had people going everywhere.

8:30

This base was full of people deploying

8:32

to every National Guard units.

8:34

I mean, it was Fort Dix, New Jersey.

8:36

So it's a retired base that they don't use anymore

8:41

full of National Guard people who have just been activated.

8:44

So you have like a hive of confused,

8:46

under-trained, poorly militarized people

8:50

that are ill adapted to lifestyle,

8:52

all swarmed onto this base, all prepared,

8:55

trying to prepare for this ridiculous excursion

8:58

into some other cultures world.

9:01

And so they didn't really, the only thing that they had

9:04

that was specifically for training us for Guantanamo

9:09

was this rinky dink little camp

9:11

that they made out in the middle of nowhere.

9:13

They put it as far away as they could.

9:14

It was like a 20 mile bus ride out there.

9:16

And it was just a bunch of chicken wire shacks

9:19

that they put out there

9:21

and they taught us how to like walk around.

9:22

Basically, they just released us to play around

9:26

on the camps.

9:27

They gave us a bunch of locks and keys and shackles

9:29

and said shackle yourselves up,

9:30

lock yourselves in cages, walk around,

9:32

and that happened for like two days and then.

9:33

Interviewer

Did they teach you how to shackle

9:40

or you just practiced on each other?

9:41

Interviewer

They gave us a few instructions

9:43

on how to shackle.

9:45

It's pretty simple.

9:46

You get it pretty quick.

9:47

Interviewer

And did they try to frighten you

9:48

as to what you would see when you went to Guantanamo?

9:50

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Oh yeah.

9:53

I mean, we did the largest chunk of our training

9:54

was combat training, fighting training,

9:57

stabbing knife training.

10:00

And a lot of, one of the most terrifying experiences

10:03

that I had was there with the knife training

10:06

'cause I was not everybody,

10:09

everybody are already want an excuse to beat my ass.

10:11

So then they had this formalized experience

10:14

of like we all got together on these mats

10:17

and they gave us rubber knives

10:20

and then just stabbed the fuck out of each other

10:21

with rubber knives for like two days,

10:24

we were stabbing each other and chanting, like screaming,

10:26

this mantra that they've made us yell, which was,

10:30

I will get stabbed but I will not die,

10:33

over and over and over again.

10:35

That's all we said for like the whole day

10:37

is we're like stabbing at each other,

10:39

and that was all to prepare us for what they said

10:41

was the likelihood that the detainees

10:46

would craft knives out of anything, including toilet paper.

10:49

They told us that they would make knives out of toilet paper

10:52

and that they would stab us with them.

10:54

So we had to be prepared for that so that they did,

10:56

they work mostly like the biggest training that we got

11:01

was fear-mongering about the capabilities

11:04

of these super powered detainees

11:06

that could craft knives out of toilet paper.

11:08

And basically like they just had this mystique of like,

11:11

we'll kill you with a whim.

11:15

These are hardened terrorists.

11:16

They've been trained in hand-to-hand combat.

11:17

It's like a clash between this like ultra respective,

11:20

they're fighting prowess

11:24

and then totally belittling them 'cause you know,

11:26

and I mean, to be quite frank,

11:29

the language that we were using to talk about these people

11:32

was at this time, understand that whenever we referred

11:34

to these people, the nicest thing we called them

11:39

was tainers, which is a shortening of detainees

11:41

'cause they wouldn't let us call them prisoners.

11:44

But I mean, the rest of the terms ran along the lines

11:46

of like the really racist stuff

11:50

like a little bit of haji

11:51

that we didn't use it, but a lot of like

11:54

I don't even wanna say it, but for the purposes

11:57

of documentation sand nigger was like,

11:59

everyday I heard that term refer to them,

12:02

camel jockeys, ridiculous stuff like dune coons.

12:05

It was all just a bunch of different racial slurs

12:09

to refer to them

12:13

which was exclusively how we referred to them.

12:14

Interviewer

Why couldn't you call them prisoners?

12:19

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Because it violates the Geneva conventions

12:20

that, yes, that was something that they were very,

12:23

the only things about the rules

12:27

that they were very specific on

12:28

were the nomenclature of what we can call things

12:30

to keep it in this detentions kind of atmosphere.

12:35

It's like, I don't think people understand

12:39

how much of the detentions policy

12:41

really runs on the rhetoric

12:44

of changing the name of somebody

12:45

from a prisoner to a detainee

12:47

because just calling someone a detainee

12:49

puts them in a whole different kind

12:52

of legal situation where, so it's,

12:53

That was a really key focus

12:56

that they definitely drove into our head of these people

13:00

when you refer to them,

13:03

they're detainees, they're not prisoners.

13:04

And so that's one thing that they were really specific on us

13:06

taking away from our little educational experience.

13:09

Interviewer

What were you thinking you would see

13:13

in Guantanamo before you came there

13:16

given what you (indistinct)

13:18

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Oh man I didn't have fucking clue.

13:19

I didn't have a clue.

13:21

There was no way I could have predicted that, I mean.

13:22

Interviewer

What did you think you would see now

13:25

when you did see, what did you think you would be seeing?

13:27

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There was a lot of speculation on everybody's part.

13:32

I don't remember really doing much pre-planning.

13:34

I mean, I'm like thinking about what was gonna happen.

13:41

I do remember assuming

13:47

that there would be gross amounts of torture,

13:48

that it would be that the things that people think about

13:51

when they think about torture would be occurring there.

13:55

Interviewer

Why (indistinct)

13:57

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Because I thought that due to the nature of like

13:59

how we were talking about them as terrorists

14:04

and due to the nature of what they were like,

14:06

it was proposed as an intelligence gathering place

14:08

and intelligence gathering to me and to everybody else

14:13

just kind of read as we're gonna torture these people

14:17

until they tell us things.

14:21

And then, so that's basically

14:22

what I was assuming was gonna happen, I guess,

14:26

but I didn't really like imagine it 'cause I don't,

14:28

that's kind of like playing the game

14:31

of like imagining what a psychopath thinks about?

14:33

And I was very, I remember being very clear with myself

14:36

to avoid that whole deranged game of like

14:41

I was really desired to not play the psychological games

14:44

that all of the people in my unit were playing

14:49

'cause they were very fancy free

14:51

with imagining the different kinds of torture

14:54

that they wanted to enact.

14:55

It was like, I mean, it was like living in all of a sudden

14:57

the 150 people that I knew beforehand

15:02

turned into violent psychopaths

15:04

that were totally free to talk, to run their miles.

15:07

No women, no normal people around

15:10

and they just turned

15:12

into the whole hog racist killing machines

15:13

that were just like all talk about

15:17

how they wanted to torture these people.

15:19

So not that when we got down there, actuality in actuality

15:21

it was totally different story.

15:26

Like people that talk shit, some went through with it,

15:28

some were turned out to be tree huggers.

15:31

Some turned out to be much more sympathetic

15:35

than they thought they would.

15:37

Some turned out to not really give back,

15:38

some, people want a million different ways

15:40

but when we were preparing, everybody was really anxious

15:43

to seem as gung-ho as possible because not being

15:45

into the mission, the mission being torturing

15:49

and beating these people to a polyp

15:51

then you're not a real man.

15:55

And at the time too, we were all kind of like,

15:57

well this is pretty cake deployment to pull during,

16:00

everybody else we know is getting into humvees

16:02

and going cross the seed of the ocean

16:05

to the Middle East.

16:08

So we were also kind of like all pretty relieved

16:09

that while I was relieved

16:14

that it was such an like an easy duty assignment, but.

16:15

Interviewer

So where did you see

16:19

when you first arrived in Guantanamo?

16:20

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When we first arrived,

16:24

the Camp Delta is a separate, is in Guantanamo Bay.

16:25

Like there is a distinction there that Guantanamo Bay

16:29

is just a Naval base in Cuba.

16:31

And then on Guantanamo is Camp Delta

16:34

where all of these things happen

16:38

inside of a certain encampment.

16:39

So when I first got there, I really didn't see anything

16:44

except Camp Delta from the outside.

16:46

And I could hear Camp Delta,

16:49

but mostly I just saw Guantanamo Bay proper,

16:52

like they took a lot of time to show us the external things

16:58

and a lot of paperwork in lines and stuff,

17:02

for like three weeks, we didn't even go into the camps.

17:05

We just did processing and processing and processing.

17:08

And yeah, we signed way more papers than we did,

17:11

than we took in tutorials on how to do our jobs, but.

17:16

Interviewer

What do those papers say?

17:20

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Oh, just, there are a lot of like the military

17:22

she's got like a million different papers

17:26

you have to sign for anything.

17:27

So if they move you somewhere, your equipment's got papers,

17:29

your pills have papers, your food has papers,

17:32

your wife has papers, your kids have papers,

17:35

your shots had papers,

17:37

my psychologist had papers upon papers.

17:40

My papers had papers.

17:42

There's papers everywhere in the military.

17:44

I mean, there's files for everybody.

17:46

They're so thick.

17:48

And especially when you deploy, I mean,

17:49

there's just, it's a really crazy system of bureaucracy

17:53

and you gotta go one by one through these lines

17:57

where they've got one person doing this one paper

18:00

and you're sitting in a line

18:02

with your little packet for hours

18:04

just drinking coffee and just being like, ah,

18:06

to hold my spot, I need to go smoke 50 cigarettes.

18:08

Interviewer

What were your impressions

18:11

during those first three weeks

18:12

they had really, had it change you?

18:13

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Oh, a lot.

18:17

I had a lot of impressions starting that first three weeks.

18:19

There was a lot of things to get used to down there.

18:21

One is that the camp,

18:24

the whole place is run by third country nationals.

18:25

So I was really shocked by the fact that

18:29

no soldiers anywhere were doing any of the jobs

18:31

that I had assumed were done by soldiers, cooks,

18:34

people working in different areas.

18:38

All of these people were little short Filipino dudes

18:40

and a few Jamaicans that drove our buses

18:43

but at first I was just overwhelmed

18:46

by the all of our services, everything,

18:48

everything was done by third country nationals.

18:50

And it's, I started to like think,

18:53

why are they paying other people to do these jobs

18:56

when you've got perfectly disposable soldiers

18:58

that are trained to do things like sweep floors

19:02

and take the trash out and do our own paperwork

19:05

and do our own laundry and stuff like that.

19:08

You've hired a whole slave force

19:09

of these poor people down here.

19:12

And very quickly, I was like,

19:14

I bet you this dudes making a dollar an hour

19:15

and then some fat white dudes probably making $50 an hour

19:17

to have that one dude down there, you know?

19:20

And it's like, that stuff's starting to me off.

19:22

I didn't even really think about the camp a whole lot

19:25

until we started to go down there

19:28

and then I started to realize like, oh my God

19:29

this shit's gonna get really crazy.

19:31

I was on like a lot of personal issues at that point in time

19:33

like really having an adjustment disorder

19:36

just to being in the military full-time, so, I don't know.

19:39

Interviewer

So as the three weeks went by,

19:45

when you finally went into the camp,

19:47

can you describe what you first saw

19:49

and what your first duties were?

19:51

-

My first, I remember my first day very clearly.

19:54

Now, before I explain that though,

19:57

I'm gonna explain how they work you in the camp

19:59

to keep a sense of disorder about your mental state

20:02

as you go through things, you never do the same job

20:05

two days in a row.

20:08

You never work the same block with the same detainees,

20:09

you never even do the same type of task.

20:11

You might not work the blocks two days in a row,

20:15

You might work the blocks two days in a row

20:17

but then the next day you'll be on escorts

20:18

or you'll be in a sally guard or a sally gate

20:20

which is like opening a gate for people

20:23

or you'll be doing some other weird mission.

20:25

And then you'll be back on the blocks for a day

20:29

and then you'll be somewhere else.

20:30

And so that it's a constant psychological game

20:31

of shuffling you around

20:36

to different locations and keeping you

20:38

and also working different shifts

20:40

'cause you'll work morning shifts and then night shifts

20:43

and then afternoon shifts.

20:46

They'll have you on a week of mornings

20:48

and then a week of nights and then a week of afternoons.

20:49

And then they'll say you have a week off

20:52

but you'll end up in the camp replacing some other unit.

20:53

And then, so to deal with like the first impressions

20:56

of the camp is really difficult

21:01

because my first impressions of the camp

21:03

that was very successfully for them

21:04

very disheveled and like all over the place,

21:07

where the fuck am I, who is this person?

21:09

I don't remember any faces 'cause I was on the camp

21:12

in like in working the blocks

21:14

for such a short period of time

21:16

that I didn't really get to cycle through more

21:18

than maybe a couple of times through the different jobs

21:21

before they realized that I was not a good block guard

21:23

and they took me off to do clerical work.

21:26

But I can't explain my first like first memory

21:28

of the place is very vivid of my first day in the blocks.

21:33

We lined up to meet the unit

21:37

that we were gonna be working with in the blocks

21:39

and this was outside of the camp.

21:42

And then on one side was all black dudes and women

21:44

and with one Latino Lieutenant

21:48

who was their platoon leader

21:51

and then on our side was all white dudes

21:53

with a couple of black, maybe two black guys in our unit.

21:56

And then, and that's it.

21:59

And so, and all of the dudes I was with really racist

22:00

and I knew it and I've heard him

22:04

say the most awful thing.

22:05

So it was like, okay, 365 days

22:07

was like assigned to working with this unit.

22:10

This is gonna be,

22:12

so at first I thought it was gonna be funny.

22:13

I was like, these guys are gonna knock.

22:16

I wanted this other unit to like,

22:18

just beat the jet out of my unit for like

22:21

I could see it happening.

22:25

So we meet and greet and they do the whole thing

22:28

where they came right out and they said like

22:30

clearly you're not the same.

22:33

(laughs)

22:35

And we're just gonna have to get along here with like

22:36

green is the only color they did this whole like speech

22:39

and I'm like dying, laughing on the inside

22:42

not the stone face on the outside

22:46

but inside, I'm just like,

22:47

I can't believe that I'm in this whole thing of adults

22:49

and they have to pull us together

22:52

and make this like speech about how the white people

22:54

and the black people

22:58

were just gonna have to get along for now

22:59

while we torture the brown people.

23:01

So it's like, I don't know, it was weird.

23:02

So then we just, they marched us.

23:05

We marched down, we walked through the camp,

23:06

went through the sally ports,

23:11

they checked everybody's stuff,

23:12

and then we went to our separate blocks

23:13

and we walked into the blocks and mine was Oscar block.

23:18

I was on there,

23:21

I was like one of the only new people working on that block.

23:22

And it's an isolation block.

23:26

I don't know, I guess I should,

23:29

I don't know if I,

23:32

it's so hard to explain this stuff like, as it comes along

23:34

but the isolation blocks were,

23:35

there were fewer cells probably like 24 all told

23:38

and they were solid steel instead of the,

23:45

like latticed cages you see,

23:47

they were just solid metal frames

23:51

with like basically like port windows on the doors of them

23:55

and in a bean hole

23:59

and a little tiny exhaust fan up in the back.

24:02

And they were phenomenally hot, really hot inside there.

24:04

Just to walk down,

24:07

I could feel the cells radiating from the doors

24:09

'cause it just like, everything's like a metal

24:11

it's like a metal chicken coop,

24:14

and every property that you think that like that would have

24:16

under the blazing hot Guantanamo sun, it does,

24:19

those rooms are cooking.

24:22

Like they are so ungodly hot.

24:24

All I can really remember is just feeling so,

24:29

like the kind of hot that just took my breath away.

24:31

And on top of that, the whole place smelled like,

24:34

this whole block smelled like OSI spray.

24:37

I'm sure this has been explained to you before

24:40

by somebody had to say something about OSI spray.

24:42

It's oil based like mace that they use

24:46

to spray the detainees with.

24:50

And it's got, it smells like Frank's hot sauce basically

24:52

but really pungently, and it's not so much a smell

24:55

as something that you just feel everywhere

24:57

and it burns your eyes.

25:00

And you could just, I mean I was like crying,

25:01

like burning eyes, like,

25:04

so basically I'm like walking around

25:06

with like bloodshot red eyes crying on the blocks

25:07

and like the detainees were,

25:11

some of them, it was really weird.

25:13

I was like, it was like being in some kind of weird zoo,

25:16

like I'd look in and one guy's pacing around

25:18

in this tiny little circle talking to himself

25:21

and another guy is reading from the Quran

25:23

and just looking totally kicked back and relaxed.

25:27

And another guy's just staring at me in the window

25:29

just like sitting in there

25:31

and just like staring at me, like he's

25:32

and I don't remember saying anything to any of them

25:35

until I got down to the end of the block.

25:38

And then this guy wanted toilet paper

25:42

and I didn't wanna give him the toilet paper

25:44

because there was like rules

25:46

about how much toilet paper you could give them.

25:48

And when you gave them toilet paper

25:50

and we were already like,

25:51

had given them their allotment of stuff for the day,

25:53

so what you do all at one time

25:56

you just go through and you're like here's your food

25:57

and your toothpaste and everything.

26:00

And then you collect back what they can't have.

26:02

It's a big ordeal,

26:04

it's like you give them items.

26:05

Some of the stuff you get back

26:07

you have to know what they can get back.

26:08

Some detainees can't have this.

26:10

Somebody detainees can't have a cup

26:11

or a little one inch toothbrush or something like that.

26:13

So they can use them, but you have to give them back.

26:16

So everything's is complicated process

26:19

of like you put something in the bean hole

26:21

and if they don't wanna give it back,

26:23

then you have to get into their cell

26:24

and get it back from them

26:27

which is I learned very violent process.

26:28

And it's like how the detainees

26:31

choose to fight the guards

26:34

and how the guards choose to fight the detainees,

26:35

is where all the aggression comes together

26:37

is when detainees decide to keep things inside their cells.

26:39

and then we have to come in and get it.

26:43

It was just so childish, you know.

26:47

Interviewer

Well, I'll get to that,

26:48

but let's just talk about

26:49

when you said you saw the president wanted more toilet paper

26:50

and what did you do?

26:53

-

Well, eventually after a long argument, he spoke English.

26:55

Perfect English, British English.

26:58

Interviewer

Do you know who he was?

27:00

-

Yes, his name's Terrick.

27:02

I've met him since then, which is, but do you know Terrick?

27:03

Yes, yeah.

27:11

It's him with the one arm

27:12

and so he got the toilet paper, I gave it to him,

27:15

but, well, actually when I put it in the cell,

27:22

I was kind of like frustrated and he'd kind of want.

27:24

And I was just like, really just super embarrassed

27:27

like burning face, like the anxiety prickles

27:30

just like, I just felt like a super sheer head,

27:33

that this is what I'm doing with my life right now.

27:36

I was having this conversation about toilet paper.

27:37

And so I finally like gave him the toilet paper

27:40

just one of the situation to be done.

27:43

And with his one good arm, he just grabbed my whole wrist

27:45

and then just drop right down to the floor.

27:47

And so like pulled me all the way into the cell

27:49

up to my shoulder and I'm like smashed against the window,

27:51

like looking down at him

27:55

and he's screaming obscenities at me.

27:56

And nobody from the rest of the block has come.

27:59

They're all upfront bullshitting.

28:01

They've left me to watch this whole block of,

28:03

I mean, presumably an Oscar block.

28:07

If these are the worst of the worst

28:09

which Guantanamo was supposed to be,

28:12

Oscar block is more or less the worst of the worst

28:14

of the worst of the worst.

28:17

So it's like, this is the final stop

28:18

for the behaviorally challenged in Guantanamo Bay

28:22

where it's the ultimate form of like,

28:24

but so you don't wanna get along in the camps.

28:27

Okay, sit in this hot little box by yourself all day long,

28:29

see how you like that.

28:32

And they'll put people in there for months and it is hell.

28:34

I mean, it is hell inside that place, so.

28:37

Interviewer

What happened to you

28:41

of you being pulled down?

28:42

-

He finally just let me go.

28:44

And I stood there for a couple of seconds and I was like

28:45

what do I do now?

28:48

Because I knew that if I went and told the guards

28:49

that it would be, he'd probably be earthed,

28:51

I knew that the next step would be to earth them.

28:56

And there was a sick little moment that happened

29:00

where I really wanted to get some vengeance,

29:02

'cause I felt like such like this guy

29:05

had made such a fool out of me

29:06

that I wanted to like,

29:07

I kind of wanted to buy in on that violence.

29:10

And everybody was so excited for it.

29:13

Everybody wanted it.

29:14

We knew what an earth was.

29:15

We knew that that's how to beat up detainees.

29:16

And everybody was like, chomping at the bit

29:19

to get that first one.

29:21

And I was like, am I gonna be the first person

29:22

to like have to instigate these things,

29:24

and just had this kind of gross little moment.

29:27

Before I could even figure it out myself,

29:29

he kind of settled it for me,

29:31

and he's like, yeah, why don't you go tell all your friends

29:33

that you just got beat up by the one-arm dude.

29:35

And that back that's sitting in a cell, like what,

29:37

I felt probably love that,

29:39

and they called me a bitch a couple of times.

29:40

And I was just like, wow

29:42

that's a good point that you bring up.

29:44

I can't really go tell people.

29:46

It's not gonna improve my reputation at all

29:48

if I go and tell them that the one-armed detainee

29:50

inside of the isolation cell

29:52

just beat my ass through a hole

29:54

that I compromised myself

29:57

and did exactly what I shouldn't have done

30:00

which was put my hand inside the cell.

30:01

And then I just realized

30:03

that there was like a dozen different ways

30:04

that I'd handled the situation

30:05

that would lead back to me being at fault.

30:07

And so I just kind of realized like, no,

30:09

not gonna let this one,

30:15

not gonna take this to the next step.

30:17

And then throughout the course of that day, and that night

30:20

like when I went home, felt disgusting,

30:23

totally fucking sick.

30:25

Like I would say, like rape victim sick,

30:26

probably like how people feel

30:29

after experiencing really super intense trauma.

30:30

I sat in the bottom of the shower

30:34

for like an hour that night

30:37

and with a cold water on just crying

30:40

and realizing that this is gonna be my life.

30:42

This is where I was gonna live.

30:44

And I was gonna have,

30:45

that I was gonna have to deal with,

30:47

basically the thing that gross me out most

30:49

was that I had wanted to like hurt that guy.

30:51

I wanted to call in all of these guards

30:58

and watch him get his ass kicked.

31:00

I'd wanted to see that kind of violence.

31:02

And, but I didn't want that.

31:04

It's like, it's hard to explain.

31:09

When you have, when you're given that kind of authority

31:10

and that kind of power,

31:12

it is a really disturbing and sick thing.

31:13

And there was two parts of me

31:15

going two totally different ways,

31:17

then the one part of me that I consider

31:18

to be my conscious self really hated the part of me

31:21

that it was just like this, yeah.

31:24

Interviewer

And what did your buddies,

31:30

the other people who were in your troop

31:33

or fake when they saw you sitting in the shower in tears.

31:38

-

No, this is we had, we lived in houses.

31:42

We had, I had a bathroom

31:43

and a house and a bedroom completely

31:46

all like any kind of cheap house, military housing

31:50

that they provide anywhere on base.

31:55

I shared a room with a guy, but we had a full shower sink,

31:57

the mirror, toilet, the tile floor,

32:01

we're not in tents, we're not in,

32:04

bizarrely, we're living in some kind of weird

32:09

like on base situation.

32:11

So it's like, another thing that alienates our situation

32:12

in the war to other people's situation

32:16

is that we just had this cushy bougie job

32:19

where we got to go home.

32:22

And it's really bizarre to go from what to me seemed

32:24

like working in a concentration camp into a cozy little bed

32:28

and taking showers at night.

32:31

But yeah, so, I mean, I was locked in the bathroom by myself

32:32

when that was happening.

32:36

And when otherwise was in my room by myself,

32:36

my roommate drank a lot and was out all the time.

32:42

So I was renowned for locking myself in my room

32:44

and just kind of people wouldn't see me

32:46

for two or three weeks,

32:48

at a time I'd sleep for the time that I wasn't.

32:49

I mean, just like, come back from work.

32:52

If I showered that I'd shower and then I'd get in bed

32:54

and read like five pages and sleep throughout the day

32:58

and just wake up when I had to go to work again.

33:01

And that's when people would see me

33:04

and then I just wouldn't, you know.

33:06

Interviewer

Do you ever express

33:08

what you were going through to other colleagues?

33:09

-

I don't remember to what extent I did or did not.

33:12

I can't be honest about that question.

33:15

I've been asked a lot about it

33:17

and I don't remember if I did.

33:18

I know that I was really frank about being,

33:21

basically I had told everyone

33:28

that I was psychologically ill-equipped

33:31

for the job from the very beginning

33:32

and I tried to get out of the deployment.

33:34

So what I had said was that I was losing my mind

33:35

and that it was me that was broken, not the job.

33:39

I'd never said that it was the camp.

33:45

It was I always said that I couldn't take it

33:47

but I did frequently say

33:52

like that I was losing my shit

33:54

and I couldn't keep it together.

33:57

And I had a very small group of friends who knew me

33:59

and made fun of me

34:03

and just kind of like kept things in perspective

34:03

and they kind of made me realize that, like, you've

34:05

what are you gonna do?

34:08

You know?

34:09

Well, I mean, there was one thing that we knew I could do

34:11

and I eventually tried it

34:16

just like all the detainees try it and failed

34:18

just like all the detainees fail.

34:21

And then that was kind of the end of that story.

34:23

Interviewer

What is the way out?

34:26

-

Suicide man.

34:27

That's the one way out of the camp.

34:28

That's your one one ticket away from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

34:30

is to hang yourself.

34:33

No, I think seven people have died there.

34:36

I know, right after we left there was a rash of hangings

34:40

that succeeded.

34:44

Most of them do not

34:46

'cause other detainees don't accept that.

34:48

Even though a lot of people try, when you try,

34:50

it takes the complicity of everybody else in the block

34:54

to not say anything

34:57

'cause there's supposed to be somebody walking up and down.

34:59

It takes takes about five to seven minutes for a person

35:04

to choke themselves and to die from

35:08

'cause you can't hang yourself from the top,

35:12

you've got to hang yourself from the side.

35:14

So you're still kind of restrained.

35:16

So it takes a long time

35:19

for you to fully fixate from that.

35:22

So normally a soldier will walk by and see that

35:24

and they'll, it's kind of a long process

35:28

because if there's a detainee in the cell

35:32

next to that detainee,

35:34

then you have to get that person out and move them

35:35

but usually the whole block just lights up

35:39

wherever everybody's like, MP, MP, MP,

35:42

this guy's trying to kill himself quick.

35:44

Get in here, get in here.

35:45

Like, I mean, so you'll know right off the bat, it's not,

35:46

it's highly unlikely that somebody's gonna try to,

35:49

I have heard of it, but I've never seen it

35:51

where somebody has tried to hang themselves

35:54

and like all the other detainees on the block

35:56

are just like sitting there letting it happen?

35:58

And those that did happen a few times at night too.

36:01

Interviewer

Are you saying you were present

36:04

when people did try to commit suicide?

36:06

-

Everybody was, I mean, it was a fairly regular occurrence.

36:09

Interviewer

Did you see, actually see somebody

36:12

being pulled down 'cause they're drank.

36:15

-

Yeah, yeah, and never parked, like actually cut them down

36:16

but I was part of the,

36:22

usually I was the person

36:25

that opened up the gates for people,

36:27

'cause people didn't really want me around for things,

36:30

I was known as kind of an emotionally wrecked person.

36:32

So I would always get the off jobs.

36:35

So my job was to let people in and out of the block

36:38

because as soon as something like that happens,

36:41

you put a radio call out

36:43

and then a medical team runs to the situation.

36:44

And a video camera comes, eventually later, that was my job

36:49

when I got switched off of the blocks

36:53

which is a whole other world was to videotape things.

36:54

But there's a whole bunch of people report to the block

36:58

to respond to the situations.

37:01

So most of the time, if it happened, then I never saw one

37:03

and said, hey, this guy is trying to kill himself.

37:08

I was always kind of like off doing other things.

37:12

So never really directly participated like with that.

37:17

And actually, I don't think I've ever really seen any

37:21

like up-close I know I've looked down the block

37:24

and been like, that guy is definitely hanging in there,

37:26

cutting him down like that,

37:28

Interviewer

I've seen that.

37:30

-

That I've seen and known that it was happening

37:31

either on my block or on another block close to me

37:33

but never like cutting them down.

37:37

Interviewer

So when the people did commit suicide

37:41

at Guantanamo, you weren't present at that time?

37:43

-

No none of my unit was.

37:45

Interviewer

So what else did you see

37:49

before you got taken off blocks.

37:50

What else did you see day to day as you walked

37:53

(indistinct) your job

37:57

as you walked through,

37:59

were you always in isolation, are you?

38:00

-

No, so like I said, switched blocks, switched jobs.

38:01

So like I also worked in the sally port,

38:04

so just opened up gates or,

38:06

they did a lot of after my first couple of days

38:08

on the blocks, I got a lot of those jobs,

38:11

like non block jobs because every day that I worked

38:13

I made it more and more evident that I couldn't,

38:17

I really was not good at this job.

38:20

Just like my psychological review had said

38:22

that I would not be good at this job, so.

38:24

Interviewer

Did you ever walk detainees

38:27

to interrogations?

38:30

-

Yes, that's called escorts

38:30

and I did that job frequently.

38:33

Interviewer

Can you describe what that's like.

38:34

-

You have a radio and you're calling on the radio

38:38

and they you come into the office and you're handed a slip

38:42

and it has the detainees number, location

38:45

and where they're gonna move to,

38:48

you get a pair of three piece shackles, handcuffs,

38:49

waist belt and feat shackles that are all chained together

38:53

and one lock and a set of keys

38:57

and then you walk to the location where the detainee is.

39:00

You ask them to put,

39:04

you tell them that they're going to interrogation.

39:06

You open up the bean holes.

39:08

They put their hands through, you shackle their hands.

39:10

It's like left first and then right.

39:13

And it's finger, you put one finger in and tightened down

39:15

but most people just cranked them on.

39:18

And then you drop the rest of the shackle set

39:22

down to the floor and you open up the foot being holes

39:30

and you reach in and you do their feet

39:34

in the same fashion that you did their hands

39:36

and then you ask them to hold one end of the chain

39:40

for the waist belt and then they grab that

39:44

and then they spin around and you hold the other end

39:46

and then when they come back around

39:49

you grab both and you shackle their waists to use the lock

39:51

to shackle the waist belt to the chain

39:56

that goes from the handcuffs from here down to their feet.

39:59

And then the block guards will open up the door

40:04

and the detainee will be shuffled out.

40:08

And then from that point until they get from there

40:11

until they're locked in the interrogation booth,

40:13

there's both guards are to have a two points of contact

40:15

on the detainee at all times.

40:21

So you walk with your hands,

40:23

one on a pressure position on their shoulder,

40:25

which is what they tell us.

40:28

So you're constantly ready to apply pressure

40:30

to try to subdue them from behind

40:33

and then the other is to hold their arm while, while yeah,

40:35

it's like that.

40:39

And then you just kind of push them forward

40:40

and they shuffle and it's a very slow process.

40:43

And you shuffle all the way to the interrogation booth

40:45

which is usually through several different sally ports

40:47

that you shuffle with these.

40:50

And they've got sandals on there.

40:52

They always get rocks in their sandals.

40:53

Like oftentimes people drag them.

40:55

I never dragged.

41:02

I was always very polite about the whole thing for bashful

41:02

and embarrassed about the process.

41:05

After my first encounter,

41:07

I had a totally different tact with the detainee.

41:09

So it was all yeses bear pleases and thank you's

41:10

and trying to be as polite as possible.

41:14

Interviewer

Some people drag them.

41:17

-

Yep.

41:19

Interviewer

Because detainees resisted being.

41:20

-

Walking, yeah.

41:22

Usually after being earthed, they would resist

41:23

'cause sometimes they could resist going to reservation

41:27

and that's what they called the interrogations reservations.

41:31

So they would resist going to those.

41:36

So then they would be earthed and taken out anyway

41:38

and then take into their interrogation anyway.

41:39

And if that was the case,

41:42

then they'd just be dragged along the stones.

41:43

I've seen, I've dragged people along the stones before.

41:44

Interviewer

Where dragging mean

41:48

that they're on all floors (indistinct)

41:49

-

No you hold them by their arm and you drag them

41:50

and their legs dangle and ride along the rocks.

41:53

Lady

Is there a translator there?

41:58

-

Yes.

42:00

I've heard that they're bad.

42:02

I heard that they're not very good at what they do

42:03

but there's translators for every language in the camp.

42:05

Interviewer

And when you got to the interrogation room,

42:08

did you take the detainee inside the room?

42:10

Is that part of your job?

42:14

-

You take them in and you do what we call short shackling

42:15

where you shackle their feet cuffs and their handcuffs

42:19

to an eyeball lifting plug that they screwed into the door.

42:22

So it'll be on the floor.

42:26

And then they, sometimes there'll be a chair there,

42:27

there's different procedure for what's in the room

42:30

when you get there.

42:34

And usually you're told in advance,

42:35

like when I was, I'll get to this later,

42:37

but you're told how to leave them in advance.

42:39

And then so oftentimes you would sit them down on the chair

42:43

and then shackle them

42:46

to the point where their arms will be down like this

42:47

and they'll just kind of hang

42:49

or there'll be no chair and you just shackle them

42:52

and they just kind of continuously do

42:54

this weird repositioning, trying to find a comfortable spot

42:57

but there is no comfortable spot

43:02

'cause if you fall back any which way,

43:04

you're pulling against the shackles,

43:06

which cut into your hands.

43:08

So I've seen a lot of people with like really

43:10

you get a lot of cut risks,

43:13

a lot of risks like wounds, scabs

43:15

and shit on people's wrists.

43:19

And especially people that they interrogate in this fashion

43:20

for a long period of time often 'cause they do,

43:24

it's like some people never get interrogated down there,

43:28

some people get interrogated every day

43:31

and some interrogation are like good interrogations

43:33

where they can smoke a hookah.

43:36

There was a lot of talk about porn,

43:39

about like they would get McDonald's

43:41

and then there's interrogations

43:44

where they'll sit in a freezing cold box

43:46

with like music blasting at them for 12 hours in a row.

43:48

They'd just sit in there with music.

43:52

And then at the end of it, the interrogator would,

43:53

well we would never actually see what would go on

43:56

inside the booth 'cause once you're done

43:58

shackling the detainee floor, that's it, you're done.

43:59

You're job over, you go,

44:02

you turn in the keys to those shackles

44:04

to the escort control and then you wait for another call.

44:07

That's it.

44:09

They shut the door and there's rooms

44:10

where the cameras work,

44:15

there's rooms where the cameras doesn't,

44:15

there's people that monitor those cameras.

44:17

That's a whole nother assignment

44:19

is to monitor the interrogation buildings but the intero.

44:20

Interviewer

How do you know what

44:25

when an interrogation if (indistinct)

44:26

-

No, we don't know.

44:27

We didn't have no idea what goes on interrogations.

44:28

Interviewer

And did you monitor

44:31

the cameras in the internet?

44:32

-

Nope, but this, I know several people that did

44:35

and no one ever reported anything extreme,

44:38

like I mean more extreme than just the general idea

44:42

of like that this room is freezing cold

44:45

and that you're short shackled to the floor for 12 hours

44:46

which is pretty fucking extreme

44:49

but I never heard of anybody saying

44:50

like there were dogs in there,

44:52

that this person was being whipped,

44:54

but those were the rooms where their cameras didn't work.

44:57

So I mean, when they're there,

45:00

when you could monitor the interrogations,

45:03

then there was nothing to monitor.

45:06

The interrogators knew that

45:07

that would be a video friendly interrogation

45:08

and then there's not video friendly interrogation, so.

45:11

Interviewer

Did you pick up the detainee

45:16

after the interrogation take him back to his cell?

45:18

-

It's not necessarily the same team that picks them up.

45:21

It's basically like any team that's available at the time

45:24

'cause interrogations are that's big business in Guantanamo,

45:27

constantly rotating, constantly doing something.

45:31

You're not, there are times

45:33

where you're sitting around sometimes,

45:34

but most of the time it's like,

45:36

eventually that my job was to be

45:39

the dispatcher of the escort teams, so.

45:41

Interviewer

Did you ever pick up someone

45:44

after an interrogation?

45:45

-

Yes, yeah.

45:46

Interviewer

Could you describe what you saw

45:48

after you picked him up?

45:49

-

Well, I mean, there is, again

45:52

something is like very normalized behavior.

45:53

It's happened in a bunch of different ways.

45:56

It's like, I remember talking to one guy

45:58

about how they said, I mean,

46:01

every week they would tell this guy,

46:04

his name is Triple Nickel.

46:06

That's not his science name.

46:08

It's Isiah 7555

46:09

and every week he would,

46:12

he was a Christian Muslim and he was a Christian dude.

46:14

So it's kind of weird.

46:18

He spoke good English.

46:19

He used to be a drug mule

46:20

and basically they'd take him in.

46:22

I assumed that he would just ride a bunch of people out

46:24

and then they'd tell him, he'd go home next week.

46:26

And every week when you go back, it's just like so sad

46:28

because he's like, they telling me I'm going home,

46:31

I'm gonna go home.

46:32

And he never lost that hope.

46:33

It was like the joke of the whole year.

46:35

We were there is like,

46:37

is Triple Nickel's still going home, you know?

46:38

So sometimes there's that weird sense of like

46:41

what the are these guys doing

46:45

playing around with these people like this,

46:46

you know they're not going anywhere.

46:48

Triple Nickel's probably still down there.

46:50

Like, well, actually it probably got rid of him

46:51

because it was,

46:54

we all had kind of a general opinion consensus

46:56

that he wasn't worth a diamond

47:00

as far as intelligence was worth

47:01

'cause he told us everything that he would have told them.

47:02

I mean, he's very forward about just being like,

47:05

oh yeah I know I told him that this guy's brother

47:07

was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

47:09

And it's like, man I don't understand what you're saying,

47:11

but that's.

47:13

Interviewer

What, did you see anything else

47:14

when you picked up

47:15

-

Pretty people that were pretty broken?

47:17

I mean, I remember picking up a lot of people

47:19

that looked like they were fucking dead afterwards.

47:21

Like that, especially the long ones.

47:22

That's another time when people get dragged

47:26

back to their cells is when they're just like done,

47:28

exhausted, burned out, got bigger problems than you.

47:33

And they're in a whole nother world.

47:35

It's weird.

47:37

You can just, it's like dragging a ghost around.

47:38

It's not, they're just broken people.

47:41

Interviewer

Did you ever see any juveniles

47:45

while you were in?

47:46

-

I did see the young man,

47:47

the person who was brought in when he was 14,

47:50

Omar Katar is his name, Katar.

47:54

I saw him on several occasions, I never escorted him.

47:58

I know that he had a lot of emotional issues

48:02

and I know that he was in the camp that my friend worked in,

48:04

which was camp four

48:07

which is supposed to be like a softer camp

48:09

until he was exposed that he was being brutally raped,

48:11

regular basis by other detainees

48:17

and then I never saw him after that again.

48:18

Interviewer

How did you get that?

48:21

-

What?

48:22

Interviewer

How'd you get that?

48:23

-

Well, at first it came about from a joke from my friends

48:25

who worked in the camp.

48:29

He said that he'd seen two men

48:30

'cause they're open bays in camp four,

48:34

there were 10 people sleeping in the same bay.

48:36

I think it's 10 or 12.

48:39

He said he saw two dudes having sex.

48:40

And he's a very conservative dude.

48:44

So he, I apologize for the frankness of the story,

48:46

but he opened up the mic on the radio

48:50

'cause he's got a radio that goes to every, like

48:52

into the gay and he just yelled faggots, faggots, faggots,

48:55

and they stopped.

48:59

And as he's explaining this story,

49:00

he's already in like point of disgust.

49:04

So then he said when the situation,

49:08

like the dudes separated and he kind of realized

49:14

that the person that was the recipient of the sexual act

49:18

was this kid who was like 15 at the time

49:23

and was exhibiting like

49:29

really intensely like negative behavior.

49:32

So he like this guy that hit at first,

49:37

like thought that it was just two dudes having sex

49:40

with each other in the base

49:42

kind of started to realize that this kid

49:44

was probably being molested like frequently.

49:47

And that he was like showing every sign

49:49

of being like a total, like it's really fucking

49:51

as psychology as well as the fact that

49:53

he'd like lives in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

49:56

and has since he was a young adolescent.

49:58

Has been detained since he was like 12 and then.

50:01

Interviewer

Did you report them?

50:06

-

No.

50:08

Interviewer

Why not, do you think.

50:09

-

That's gotta be scratched his name,

50:12

please but can't use his name.

50:14

He's a really good friend of mine

50:17

and I would never drag him into anything

50:18

that I've chosen to do.

50:20

This gig is a little on the dangerous side

50:24

how the paperwork floats.

50:26

And none of my friends are anxious to be out

50:28

where I am with it, so cool.

50:30

But that, no, it was never reported.

50:33

It was later realized and dealt with

50:36

I think it was probably a psychologist that

50:40

or it came out in an interrogation or something of the sort

50:44

and he was moved.

50:47

I think he was moved into the psych block

50:49

or something like that

50:51

but he was moved into a place where he was a nice isolated

50:52

solitary confinement for the rest of my deployment there

50:54

and since then I have no idea.

50:57

Interviewer

Did you see any other,

50:59

did you see your a mistreatment,

51:03

any kind of mistreatment while you were walking through?

51:05

-

The blocks through the camp?

51:09

Yes, lots of it.

51:11

Like I said, the IRFs are where the bulk of it happens.

51:12

I mean, there's like all kinds of verbal abuses,

51:15

things like that.

51:19

I mean, all day, every day,

51:20

like you can just assume that there's,

51:21

I mean massive quantities of verbal abuse happening.

51:24

They're always physical abuse, saw it regularly.

51:27

I'm not gonna say it was the rules.

51:33

I'm not gonna say that everyone did it.

51:36

I've learned a lesson about that.

51:38

I don't know how to exactly quantify

51:40

exactly how much it happened.

51:42

All I will say is that there is a high capacity

51:44

for excessive amounts of violence

51:48

during the extraction, cell extractions.

51:52

And that that's where most of the soldier

51:55

on detainee violence occurs.

52:01

That's, and, but then there's a lot of other casual

52:03

kind of violence taking away items from them

52:07

like comfort items and a lot of psychological games

52:10

that are played in that camp as well.

52:14

So but everything, it all reduces down to a dialogue about

52:15

what people constitute as like torture

52:22

or excessive amounts of violence.

52:24

And like in the one camp you've got,

52:26

these are terrorists taking away

52:28

their corps is such a big deal.

52:29

And then in the camp that I like to be considered a part of

52:31

is that these are human beings

52:34

that have never been proven guilty of anything.

52:35

So the idea of limiting them to just to corp is insane.

52:37

Interviewer

Can you give us an example

52:44

of an earth that you either videotaped

52:46

or did you participate in any.

52:48

Did you ever wear.

52:50

-

I never went into a cell ever.

52:51

I do not really want to discuss this in great detail.

52:59

A lot of, I have memory issues

53:02

about the things that I've seen in earths

53:05

or a lot of them a lot of images coming to my mind

53:08

and I don't really want them in my head,

53:11

and I don't, man,

53:13

I don't really like thinking about them a whole lot.

53:15

I've seen people be kicked in the face repeatedly.

53:19

And I mean, I'll only speak to the things

53:26

that I've specifically seen.

53:29

I know that a lot of things happened outside of my view

53:31

but I'm not going to use that as testimony in a real way.

53:37

What I have seen is people being kicked in the face,

53:40

excessive amounts of punching,

53:44

way excessive usage of OSI spray

53:45

would be the number one thing I would say

53:49

instead of like OSI spray is to be used

53:50

as a one second verse across the bridge of the nose.

53:53

And I've seen whole cans of it sprayed

53:56

in the whole block.

53:58

The lieutenants that would just walk down the block

53:59

just spraying the whole can

54:02

as if it was like an aerosol freshener into the cells.

54:04

There's a few more,

54:11

I don't really wanna go into it though.

54:13

I think that should do, that those have occurred.

54:14

Interviewer

And sometimes you videotape

54:20

some of those you said.

54:22

-

Yes, later when I got into the DOC,

54:22

part of my responsibilities were videotaping these.

54:24

Every everything like this is videotaped

54:27

for transparency purposes.

54:29

What happens to those films?

54:32

I don't know who they're transparent to, I do not know.

54:33

Whether or not they could be used as,

54:36

if I were to file a complaint, still, could I do that?

54:38

And could I, is that what those films are there for,

54:40

is like egregious usages of violence.

54:43

I assume that's what they're there to stop

54:46

but they're never referenced.

54:48

I've never heard them referenced.

54:50

I've never heard anybody speak of them.

54:51

I've never heard them brought into the legal side of things.

54:53

Interviewer

Where do they go after you've filmed them,

54:57

where do that go?

54:58

-

They're taped onto little cassettes

55:00

and then I would file the cassettes

55:01

into a filing cabinet and then they would just sit

55:03

in a filing cabinet.

55:05

Interviewer

And did people ever pull them out

55:07

and watch them?

55:08

-

No, I don't think so.

55:09

Interviewer

And were they labeled (indistinct)

55:11

-

I don't even know who is responsible for the,

55:12

no, they're not really labeled all that well,

55:14

either they just have a date on them,

55:16

as far as I know, as far as I can remember is like

55:18

we'd use the same footage,

55:21

the same tape for a lot of different earths

55:23

and then like, we would just collect the tapes

55:27

until they filled up and then we would use another tape

55:29

and that it would just have the start date on it

55:32

and then at the beginning of each earth on the film,

55:33

it would be everybody, we would go through

55:38

and everybody that's in partaking in it would say

55:42

I'm the number one man, my name

55:46

and my social security today's date.

55:48

And then the next person would say, I'm number two,

55:50

my name social security today's date.

55:52

So that was their means of accountability.

55:54

But then the thing that happens with these videotapes

55:57

is that when there's an earth,

56:00

there's like 15 people that come to the spot.

56:01

And whenever I would go with the camera,

56:04

I remember the first time I went out and like,

56:08

my NCO was like, all right, make sure

56:10

that you just kind of be, like kind of forgiving about this.

56:14

I don't know how to say it exactly

56:22

how he told me to go into the situation

56:23

but basically you were saying, if it gets crazy,

56:26

don't videotape what they're doing.

56:29

Like so, and then I got to the situation,

56:31

never been trained on what to do

56:34

and I realized that they had shouldered all of these people,

56:36

the medics and the officers and the platoon sergeants

56:39

had shouldered me to the back

56:42

and this was, and it was looking like,

56:44

it's this is like crazy block riot situation that's going on

56:45

'cause it's like, it's during the period.

56:49

I think that this was during, when we were trying to take,

56:52

we were taking pants away from people on Romeo block

56:55

and that was crazy, crazy, people share everywhere.

56:57

They had to build plastic.

57:01

They put plastic things on the sides

57:03

of the cells in Romeo block

57:05

'cause it was a literal shit storm.

57:06

Like, I mean, just like people that were working the blocks

57:09

said that it was like feces and pee

57:12

just spraying across the blocks all day long

57:14

just like a constant bombardment of it.

57:17

And I remember trying to get into that space and everybody

57:20

I realized I was being like really shouldered out like that.

57:25

It was, they were making it impossible for me

57:28

to get in there.

57:31

So I finally was just got like really assertive

57:31

for once and I was just like, get out of my way.

57:34

Like I've got a responsibility.

57:35

So I pushed the Lieutenant to the side

57:37

which I was later reprimanded for pushing an officer.

57:39

And then, but then somebody stood up for me.

57:44

So, but I kind of got up

57:47

and I had to like reach the camera up

57:51

and I twisted the thing down

57:53

and I had to get this like top-down view

57:54

over the people's heads

57:56

plus with an earth you're talking about five grown soldiers

57:58

in riot gear and a detainee

58:04

inside of a five foot by eight foot space.

58:07

That's six people, it's a six person party inside of a cell.

58:11

It's already occupied by a toilet and a bed and you know

58:16

all their other stuff.

58:20

So when all their other stuff,

58:21

not like they had that much stuff to occupy it with, but.

58:23

So it's a lot of commotion that goes on in those situations.

58:26

And it's really like, you can't see much during the camera

58:31

except you see five dudes doing that and then you know

58:34

that that's like, I mean,

58:39

I can't tell you how many times I've videotaped that

58:43

where it's just like pummeling,

58:44

people being fucking pummeled after

58:46

during these things that long past

58:48

and then there's always the little kicks

58:51

and jabs and stuff too.

58:53

Interviewer

And then what happens

58:56

after they get pummeled?

58:57

-

Either they go to wherever they were supposed to go

59:01

or whatever was supposed to be taken from them

59:03

is taken from them

59:05

and then they go back into the cell.

59:06

Their hair is shaved.

59:08

That's one thing that they do,

59:09

is they take them out into the rec yard

59:11

and they shave their hair off and then bring them back in.

59:13

It's kind of like a mark of the hoofed

59:16

is the shaved head, but poorly shaved head

59:21

'cause they'll leave patches of hair

59:24

all over the place long, strands of beard.

59:26

They'll shave at their beards,

59:30

which is obviously that like way against the rules.

59:31

Later they cracked down on shit like that

59:35

and they started saying like,

59:38

no, that's really unprofessional, you know?

59:39

Like they picked and choose what they would say was too,

59:41

that's too crazy for this place but.

59:46

Interviewer

Did you ever see anybody water hosed?

59:49

-

We had hoses on the blocks

1:00:00

and I know that we used to

1:00:02

like kind of playfully spray the detainees

1:00:08

every once in a while.

1:00:11

I'm really hoping that that's still a playful memory

1:00:14

and I've never thought about it as like, holy shit

1:00:17

why are hosing these people.

1:00:20

But I mean, it's just like a garden hose.

1:00:21

And I mean, it's really hot there too.

1:00:23

So I don't know a lot of times when they were playing

1:00:24

and 'cause not everything

1:00:28

is super intense, crazy violent there all also,

1:00:29

everything like basically

1:00:32

I'm just pointing out the egregious errors in this,

1:00:34

a lot of times like just totally peaceful,

1:00:38

whatever you're doing your thing, I'm doing my thing.

1:00:41

Especially after we got into the the vibe of the place.

1:00:43

At first people got out a lot of aggression

1:00:47

and then for the other eight months of the year,

1:00:50

you're just kind of doing a job.

1:00:53

So there were playful times too.

1:00:54

And I remember people talking about spraying the detainees

1:00:56

with hoses in the rec yards,

1:00:59

'cause they like asked for it

1:01:01

or like joking and like spraying inside the cells.

1:01:02

And I really hope that those stories were as positive

1:01:07

and friendly and jovial as they struck me

1:01:10

because I would hate to think that that situation

1:01:13

was yet another guard story of somebody like walking

1:01:15

through the cell's spraying.

1:01:19

And I could see that being an issue

1:01:21

because if you spray the Catan or Quran Catan,

1:01:22

sorry we've been playing a sport camp,

1:01:25

settlers of Catan anyway.

1:01:28

But if you spray the Quran with water

1:01:30

you'd probably start a shit show also, but.

1:01:32

Interviewer

Why was everyone's pants being removed?

1:01:36

-

'Cause we were giving them shorts instead of pants,

1:01:40

pants were too much of a responsibility for them.

1:01:43

I don't know.

1:01:45

Interviewer

That's what you think?

1:01:46

-

These are just those crazy,

1:01:47

you know just like crazy rules that come from on high.

1:01:50

Like the kernel makes some half fast wild decision

1:01:53

in the middle of the day.

1:01:58

And then all of a sudden a new paperwork is out

1:01:59

and we have to route through a whole block

1:02:00

or a whole camp to get some item back from people

1:02:02

'cause he is or giving them something

1:02:05

'cause he's feeling either generous or like a tyrant.

1:02:07

So it's like once or twice a week,

1:02:12

there'd be a new thing introduced or taken back.

1:02:15

It's a constant ebb and flow of things.

1:02:18

If they didn't provide us with reasons to go in

1:02:21

and have them, then we'd provide our own

1:02:24

by making situations that we knew they would react to, so.

1:02:26

Interviewer

You were saying

1:02:28

that you wanted long pants to replace them with shorts.

1:02:29

-

Yeah.

1:02:32

Interviewer

That's understood.

1:02:33

Did you ever see any force feeding or an hunger strike?

1:02:34

-

No, I heard of hunger strikes, yes.

1:02:41

People, like people very frequently would not eat

1:02:43

and hand back their food a lot.

1:02:47

But like I said, we never had

1:02:49

like a one-on-one relationship with any detainees

1:02:50

'cause of how we traveled through the camps.

1:02:53

So, and camps, there's multiple camps

1:02:54

and they would rotate you through the camps as well.

1:02:58

So you never really got a feeling for like,

1:02:59

oh this guy is hunger striking all the time or not.

1:03:02

They'll be in their notes.

1:03:07

if you're supposed to say,

1:03:08

you're supposed to type it into the computer

1:03:11

whenever a detainee does anything of note.

1:03:12

And if they're not eating

1:03:15

or if they've handed back a full meal

1:03:16

then that's something that you would put into the computer.

1:03:18

A lot of people don't do that shit though.

1:03:19

I mean, a lot of people were just like, whatever

1:03:21

just throw it in the garbage, fine.

1:03:24

They don't wanna write something in the computer.

1:03:26

Interviewer

And you saw, I never saw a force feeding.

1:03:29

You were never in the medical clinic?

1:03:31

-

No, nope.

1:03:32

But I know it happened.

1:03:33

I mean, I've talked to enough detainees from them,

1:03:34

they've been forced fed.

1:03:37

Interviewer

They would tell you that?

1:03:39

-

Yeah, but that's all gathered from

1:03:40

like Gerald Omari and Marvin begging Omar

1:03:43

to guys who all said that they were forced fed

1:03:46

at some point in time or the other, so.

1:03:49

Interviewer

Did you ever observe doctors

1:03:51

in the cells at all?

1:03:54

You said there was a medic.

1:03:55

-

Yeah, there's medics and there's psychs

1:03:56

and then there's, the doctors make the rounds every day

1:03:59

and ask about complaints and set up schedules

1:04:05

for people to go to the hospital or to the clinic.

1:04:07

There's two different things in the camp,

1:04:11

the clinic in the hospital,

1:04:13

clinics for like a little day to day shit.

1:04:14

And the hospital is where they had like,

1:04:16

I think there's two people.

1:04:21

What'd they call, they called one the guy from oh shit.

1:04:23

Timmy, they call him Timmy.

1:04:32

I don't know.

1:04:33

He was beaten so severely in one of the camps

1:04:35

that he was rendered completely physically

1:04:39

and mentally retarded.

1:04:41

And he was like hooked up to life support

1:04:42

in the hospital all the time.

1:04:45

I don't know when this happened.

1:04:47

It was before we came, he was like a camp legend.

1:04:49

He was just some detainee that was just totally broken.

1:04:51

And we were just keeping him alive in the camp.

1:04:55

Interviewer

You never saw him.

1:04:58

-

I did see him once.

1:04:59

Interviewer

You saw him when hooked up on life support?

1:05:02

-

Yeah, I was in the hospital one time.

1:05:04

I mean, it's not like crazy life support.

1:05:07

Like, I mean, it's just like,

1:05:08

I think they just feed him with tubes and stuff.

1:05:10

It's not like respiratory.

1:05:13

I think he's still conscious, just super, super fucked up.

1:05:15

Interviewer

And people told you that

1:05:20

it was the result of being beaten.

1:05:22

-

Yeah, that was word on the street.

1:05:24

But total rumor, we couldn't,

1:05:26

we had no way of checking these things,

1:05:27

and the detainee hospital

1:05:29

has a top secret file clearance too.

1:05:31

So you can't get information

1:05:34

about detainees that are in the hospital

1:05:36

as well even when I worked in the DOC,

1:05:38

the detention operations center,

1:05:39

where I had access

1:05:41

to basically all the detainees information

1:05:44

that they would allow, there was a whole other tier

1:05:46

to that system that I could not access in the hospital,

1:05:48

anybody in the hospital was one of them.

1:05:51

So I couldn't get any information about that.

1:05:53

I remember being really bummed out

1:05:55

'cause I liked researching the detainees

1:05:57

and seeing what was going on

1:05:59

but that was really limited to the guard notes.

1:06:00

We didn't get any of the interrogation notes

1:06:02

or like these files that the were just released.

1:06:04

That's all stuff that was out of our hands.

1:06:07

Interviewer

Could you tell us

1:06:11

what the detainee operations center is?

1:06:12

-

It's the DOC, detention operations center.

1:06:15

It is where,

1:06:19

it's basically the hub of information

1:06:21

for everything that happens in the camp

1:06:23

'cause you've got an alphabet of blocks

1:06:24

A through I think there's a Zulu block.

1:06:27

There might just be a Yankee block.

1:06:30

I think there's a Zulu block, I can't remember.

1:06:31

And camp five and camp six and camp Guana

1:06:35

and all of these different things gather information.

1:06:39

Like that's the purpose of the campus to gather information

1:06:43

and to monitor the detainees.

1:06:45

So all of that information

1:06:47

routes back into the detention operations center

1:06:50

which takes that information, organizes it, edits it

1:06:53

and also has the job of keeping up communications

1:06:57

with the auxiliary operations of the unit

1:07:03

like the tower guards,

1:07:06

the infantry that would patrol around the camp,

1:07:08

the infantry reaction forces

1:07:10

that would like, that if the camp was like really crazy,

1:07:13

they would call in like a big assault force

1:07:18

to kind of just like take the camp over again.

1:07:20

Never happened

1:07:23

but it's like a theoretical, could happen.

1:07:24

And you know there's a quartermaster

1:07:29

where that has guns and everything.

1:07:32

So basically, and all of the food that goes to the camp.

1:07:34

It's basically like every operation,

1:07:38

it's paperwork folk,

1:07:42

it like comes through the DOC

1:07:43

and is rerouted to whatever particular office

1:07:46

that needed to be rerouted from.

1:07:48

And that is largely a computerized system.

1:07:50

And due to the charms of the modern war

1:07:54

that everything's run by computers and the NCO

1:07:59

the non commissioned officers

1:08:03

and the officers are all older people

1:08:04

that in 2004 didn't even know how to use fucking computers.

1:08:06

So they realized that they had a whole bank

1:08:10

of things that they didn't know how to operate

1:08:12

and they basically made a call out to the units and said,

1:08:16

send us your nerds.

1:08:19

We want all of your computer nerds, your geeks,

1:08:21

like if they know how to use the computer,

1:08:24

send us your 19 year old freaks, we want, we need them.

1:08:27

So I was gathered up in a minute.

1:08:30

My Charlie battery was like, we got you guy.

1:08:33

And they sent me there.

1:08:36

I interviewed with the NCO in charge there.

1:08:37

And then that was my new job.

1:08:41

Interviewer

And what was your job then?

1:08:44

-

I learned from a guy who ran the thing before.

1:08:47

And it was basically to just do everything.

1:08:51

I mean, you're on every hour, you're making radio checks,

1:08:54

you're playing over the loudspeakers.

1:08:57

You're playing the call to prayer on time.

1:09:00

You're making phone checks with the blocks,

1:09:04

your radio checks to the block,

1:09:07

making sure that radio communication

1:09:08

is operating throughout the camp.

1:09:10

You are fielding questions

1:09:13

and you're the standard operating procedure guru

1:09:15

of the camp.

1:09:19

Like basically, like I had to know

1:09:19

that thing inside and out about it.

1:09:21

So like when they called me, I could say, well

1:09:23

the rule book says this and the rule book says that,

1:09:26

but then there was a dozen different varieties

1:09:29

of the standard operating procedure at the same time.

1:09:31

The detention operation center had an updated version

1:09:33

and the blocks had all the old paper versions.

1:09:36

So it's like, so there was all these misconceptions

1:09:39

that went on and it changed.

1:09:42

Like I said, like the commander of the camp

1:09:44

loved to release memorandums of new rules,

1:09:46

amendments to rules and stuff like that.

1:09:49

So, I mean, there was a standard opera operating procedure

1:09:51

and then there was like 2.5,

1:09:55

which is like a whole other book of amendments

1:09:57

to the whole thing and like things that work,

1:09:59

things that don't work.

1:10:01

And then, oh, sorry.

1:10:02

Interviewer

Do you wanna ask the question?

1:10:07

Lady

Next time.

1:10:09

Interviewer

(indistinct)

1:10:10

Lady

(indistinct)

1:10:11

Interviewer

Okay.

1:10:12

-

Yeah, I think, well,

1:10:15

so I'll finish breaking down the operations of the DOC

1:10:17

and then there's another section

1:10:20

which is escort control, separate office,

1:10:21

and that's what I just explained earlier.

1:10:24

The escort teams,

1:10:26

they all sign up at the beginning of a shift.

1:10:28

They receive a radio,

1:10:30

the escort control person signs for everything in that room,

1:10:33

all the keys, all the radios, all the shackles, everything.

1:10:36

This is the military man.

1:10:38

You lose it and you're online.

1:10:39

And the yeah, then.

1:10:44

Interviewer

You were the central person

1:10:47

for a lot of this?

1:10:50

-

Yeah, either in the DOC.

1:10:51

When I worked in the DOC,

1:10:53

I was a central person there, but there are still NCOs, NCOs

1:10:54

there that do that job.

1:10:58

I was only the central person

1:10:59

for like operating the computers.

1:11:02

All the decision-making,

1:11:04

all that went to the up and ups.

1:11:05

I was just the person that they said,

1:11:08

log this in the computer.

1:11:10

If this is the USS enterprise,

1:11:11

I'm like, I don't know what the checkoff,

1:11:13

like I'm just with my little computer,

1:11:17

like putting things in,

1:11:19

not decision-maker just making the radios work,

1:11:20

and doing stuff and filing the papers, not decision-making.

1:11:24

And then in the escort control side,

1:11:28

it's all basically just

1:11:30

fulfilling the expectations of that job.

1:11:35

I don't know how to explain it so, so much, but.

1:11:36

So those are the two major functions of that.

1:11:42

And then that office,

1:11:44

we shared that office with all the command

1:11:50

and the whole camp, command, Sergeant Major Mendez

1:11:52

and Colonel, oh God, we went through two generals

1:11:55

'cause I came when Miller was there and then Miller left

1:12:00

and then there was some other guys that were a cowboy hat

1:12:02

for a while.

1:12:06

Thought he was real awesome weirdo, fucking weirdo.

1:12:07

And he was only there for a little while.

1:12:10

I think he was hood.

1:12:13

No, it's not hood.

1:12:14

I don't know.

1:12:17

And then there was Colonel something

1:12:18

who was just this frumpy old dude from Ohio

1:12:19

who just looked like, he just sat at his desk.

1:12:22

He was at the, always at the end of the hall.

1:12:25

Every day I walked in and I will see him

1:12:27

and he was just sitting down there and was just like,

1:12:29

like, so it's like just bummed out.

1:12:32

Like he was just like I don't know.

1:12:34

I felt like we had a real special connection with him.

1:12:36

And even if he didn't know that we had it,

1:12:39

like I felt like somewhere we were on the same page

1:12:41

because he just looked really resentful.

1:12:43

He was a National Guard guy that like,

1:12:45

I feel like he was like, kind of had the feeling

1:12:48

like he had gotten pinned into this

1:12:53

and had become like the fall guy.

1:12:55

Like they knew that this shit was too super whack

1:12:56

and they just needed some random replaceable officer

1:12:59

to stick in there.

1:13:03

And he got rank.

1:13:04

I mean, he got up to general in that office

1:13:05

but he didn't do shit and he never left the office.

1:13:07

He just sat back there and moped all day.

1:13:09

I think, I mean, I saw him pick up a pen

1:13:11

like a half dozen times.

1:13:12

I don't know what his job was.

1:13:14

Command Sergeant Major Mendez ran everything

1:13:16

'cause he loved his job.

1:13:18

Loved it, loved everything about it.

1:13:20

Loved yelling at us

1:13:22

Loved, he loved causing pain for detainees

1:13:23

and soldiers alike.

1:13:28

It was like if they hadn't built Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,

1:13:29

I don't know what that man would have done with his life.

1:13:32

Oh, it probably would have just continued working

1:13:35

at the prison that you worked at beforehand

1:13:37

with the military.

1:13:38

So, but he was made for it man.

1:13:39

That guy, he's my nemesis.

1:13:43

I hate him.

1:13:45

I hate him more than anything.

1:13:47

Spawn of Satan on the planet.

1:13:48

Interviewer

Did you meet with Miller?

1:13:53

-

I mean, meet like as much as me, there's as an officer,

1:13:55

as a general of Miller's caliber is gonna have in like

1:14:01

a specialist that's just working in the office.

1:14:04

We pass by a couple of times and I'm kind of a weird person.

1:14:07

I have a weird bill, didn't fit in, in the military.

1:14:11

I also have trouble controlling my mouth.

1:14:14

So because of the close operations

1:14:17

and because he was in the same office,

1:14:20

a lot of like our weird personal stuff would spill out

1:14:21

and I'd get a lot of, kind of like

1:14:25

there'd be a lot of weird memorandums

1:14:26

that would come in about stuff that I would do

1:14:28

or that was kind of seemed specifically directed

1:14:30

towards my personality disorder from him.

1:14:33

So he would address the issue of me, but we never like met.

1:14:37

So I think the only time we talked to each other

1:14:41

is in the chow hall when I begged and pleaded him

1:14:44

once a month to put vegetarian food in there,

1:14:47

which he never did.

1:14:50

So I picked up a habit

1:14:51

of starving myself while I was down there.

1:14:54

Well that, and the responsibility of being signed

1:14:56

for 40 radios and 40 sets of shackle keys

1:14:58

which are the same colors, the dirt.

1:15:02

And if you lose them, then everything stops.

1:15:04

Everything, whole camp shuts down.

1:15:07

No sally ports open, nobody goes anywhere.

1:15:09

Everybody gets fully inspected and it's all my fault.

1:15:12

So if I left for half an hour to go to lunch

1:15:16

and somebody misplaced his keys, that's it, that's like it.

1:15:18

I mean that level of responsibility caused such a huge,

1:15:23

I don't know, man,

1:15:30

I still like can't touch a pair of keys to save my life.

1:15:31

Like if you put keys in my hands,

1:15:35

like all I can think about is them is keys.

1:15:36

And I haven't, it's just, oh man, that's really wild.

1:15:40

Interviewer

Change all the locks, if you lost the keys.

1:15:45

-

No, 'cause it's a generic lock key thing for the handcuffs

1:15:50

and for the, they would have to get new handcuffs,

1:15:53

new shackle things like, but I mean,

1:15:56

it got down to the point one time where

1:16:00

they were checking in toilets

1:16:02

and they'd shut down the camp for like a couple hours.

1:16:04

I know we were extended there

1:16:09

and people were hating me, hating me.

1:16:10

And I was like total line

1:16:12

with a command Sergeant, Major Mendez

1:16:14

and he's screaming at me, he's like,

1:16:16

I'm gonna lose everything over losing these keys.

1:16:20

And the detainees are gonna get out of their shackles

1:16:23

and killed guards.

1:16:26

And it's all gonna be my fault

1:16:27

and it all the way on my head.

1:16:28

And it's all my responsibility and I'm such a shit bag.

1:16:29

And then I go into my office and take all that anger out

1:16:32

on all of the people that I have the authority

1:16:36

to take my anger out on, which I shouldn't have

1:16:39

'cause most of them aren't ranked me,

1:16:41

but call them in one by one and be like,

1:16:43

you find me these keys you shit bag.

1:16:45

Well, I mean like that's how the military works.

1:16:47

One person yells at you.

1:16:49

You immediately take it to the next person

1:16:50

that you have the authority to yell at and yell at them.

1:16:52

And it's that's you pass it on?

1:16:55

Interviewer

Do you wanna (indistinct)

1:16:58

Do you wanna take (indistinct)

1:16:59

-

No, I'm good, I'm kinda good on everything.

1:17:00

If you guys want a break.

1:17:02

Interviewer

No bro.

1:17:04

-

[Man With Low Voice] We've got about nine minutes.

1:17:05

Interviewer

Okay, well let's,

1:17:06

if you wanna ask your question.

1:17:07

Lady

When you do respond, could you look at the camera?

1:17:09

-

Mhm.

1:17:12

Interviewer

Or look up here.

1:17:13

-

Okay.

1:17:14

Lady

I had a question when you said early on

1:17:15

when you were grabbed by the one around prisoner

1:17:17

and you've mentioned that you've spoken to him subsequently,

1:17:23

could you describe a little bit about that,

1:17:26

how that went and how it came up

1:17:28

and kind of relationship (indistinct)

1:17:30

-

That kind of unfolds into a super large question

1:17:32

'cause that gets into like, oh yeah,

1:17:35

that kind of unfolds into a super large question

1:17:38

'cause that gets into

1:17:40

how I got involved in anti-war activism

1:17:41

after I got out of the military

1:17:43

and then how that, how I was contacted

1:17:45

and you know it took years to set that situation up

1:17:50

in which I met those people.

1:17:55

So I think it will probably work more organically

1:17:57

to work towards that later if that's okay.

1:17:59

Like to work on a timeline 'cause I feel like

1:18:00

while we're talking about the get more stuff

1:18:04

I'd kinda like to get that over in this chunk

1:18:05

and not have to continuously reference back to it.

1:18:07

Lady

Another question is you mentioned

1:18:12

that when you saw the interrogator,

1:18:15

she never went into the room.

1:18:19

Were those interrogators non-military

1:18:21

and did you ever interact with those interrogators

1:18:25

outside the interrogation rooms?

1:18:28

-

Yeah, they're, all of the military,

1:18:32

all of the interrogators are non-military.

1:18:35

If they are military,

1:18:38

then they wear civilian clothes,

1:18:39

Hawaiian shirts, almost gaudy nonmilitary types.

1:18:41

And I do, I worked with, when I was an escort control,

1:18:45

I worked very closely with them.

1:18:50

They would come into office, they knew me.

1:18:51

They called me Chris,

1:18:52

they'd come in and they'd be like, hey man,

1:18:53

here's my reservations for the day.

1:18:55

They give me their list

1:18:57

and then I'd have to write that out into my big list.

1:18:58

Each interrogator would come in,

1:19:01

they all work with different organizations,

1:19:03

different countries, different,

1:19:07

like there was a German guy there.

1:19:08

Like there were people that

1:19:09

I didn't even understand

1:19:11

what political affiliations they had to anything

1:19:12

and they wouldn't explain it.

1:19:14

And that so, I had top secret clearance

1:19:15

so I thought that I was free to ask questions from people

1:19:18

but it's very not free to ask questions from people but,

1:19:21

yeah, so there are a lot of non-military,

1:19:27

a lot of CIA types, a lot of, I think probably FBI

1:19:29

but I don't remember too much FBI.

1:19:33

What did they say?

1:19:37

The No Such Agency, NSA,

1:19:38

then there's the,

1:19:40

I think there's even contractors down there

1:19:44

who do like psychologists,

1:19:47

like people that are kind of like unaffiliated,

1:19:49

like really weird loose relationships

1:19:51

with the interrogation process.

1:19:53

Yeah, and they were all,

1:19:56

there was one guy that was like a brick share house

1:19:57

big white dude with like 80 style handlebar,

1:19:59

mustache all poofy, real jovial like come in

1:20:03

and he'd kind of like, hey, what's up man.

1:20:06

And he'd shoot the shit if you will.

1:20:09

But then when on the camp was that he was a monster

1:20:12

in the interrogation room.

1:20:16

Like people really had built up for that guy

1:20:17

a big reputation of being like

1:20:19

a little bit of a bone breaker

1:20:21

and like a real intense interrogator.

1:20:22

So that kind of scared me.

1:20:25

And then there was a lady

1:20:27

who was like this really sexy blonde, like 40-ish woman.

1:20:28

And then supposedly she was the one

1:20:36

that like kind of sexually harassed the detainees.

1:20:38

I've heard a lot of like people being touched

1:20:42

in their genital areas by women.

1:20:45

And I think that was the lady that did that style

1:20:47

of interrogation more likely

1:20:50

'cause women make Muslim men uncomfortable

1:20:52

not, oh, wow, that was a really shitty thing to say,

1:20:54

not accurate

1:20:57

but women and Muslim men have their own relationship

1:20:57

and a non Muslim woman being really forward

1:21:01

and sexually aggressive with them

1:21:05

makes them really uncomfortable.

1:21:06

And you know,

1:21:07

they definitely played with those borders there, so.

1:21:08

Interviewer

How do you know that?

1:21:11

-

Well, like detainees telling us,

1:21:15

detainees complaining about things,

1:21:17

that her general makeup and demeanor

1:21:20

and presence would suggest that

1:21:25

because she dressed very erotically seductively

1:21:27

which is I'm gonna say dangerous for lack of a better term

1:21:31

around the soldiers as well

1:21:35

because there was also a lot of rape that happened

1:21:37

in Guantanamo soldier on soldier rape.

1:21:41

And so to have like a very scantily clad woman

1:21:46

walking around a place with all uniformed,

1:21:52

aggressive men and a few women, there's very few women there

1:21:55

but a lot of combat arms type men is a dangerous situation.

1:22:00

So I knew that.

1:22:06

And also she was a professional

1:22:08

so I knew that like she had to be dressed up like that

1:22:09

for a reason, that's part of.

1:22:12

And that's how everything is there.

1:22:14

Everything's for a reason, nothing happens haphazardly,

1:22:15

even the Hawaiian shirt is there for a reason that you know

1:22:19

everything about their demeanor is there

1:22:22

for some kind of psychological game.

1:22:24

That's probably the end for that tape, right?

1:22:28

Interviewer

Yeah let's take a break

1:22:29

and then come back, any questions?

1:22:31

Then we can.

1:22:35

Lady

(indistinct)

1:22:37

Interviewer

Okay.

1:22:38

You're ready?

1:22:39

-

Mhm.

1:22:40

Interviewer

Okay, you were saying some things

1:22:41

about the interrogators and about the woman who was

1:22:42

as you described seductive

1:22:45

and could you tell us a little bit more about

1:22:47

what your impressions were about the interrogators

1:22:50

if there's anything that (indistinct)

1:22:54

-

I mean, they were just, it's hard to explain,

1:22:57

in a place like that, they're the superheroes of the camp,

1:23:00

they're the people that are getting,

1:23:03

they're people that have the picture

1:23:04

that we were all missing.

1:23:06

So we were all kind of,

1:23:07

we kind of mythologized their position amongst the camp

1:23:10

'cause it's like these people know what's really going on,

1:23:13

what we're only guessing at.

1:23:16

So a part of me definitely wanted that information

1:23:17

and their authority was attractive

1:23:23

that they were completely outside of any rules

1:23:25

or regulations or guidelines or answering to anyone

1:23:28

they talked to Sergeant Major Mendez

1:23:31

as if that he was their personal assistant,

1:23:33

like run off and get me this now, kind of behavior.

1:23:36

So they kind of asserted a very like cool in charge.

1:23:41

Like they were like clearly the people

1:23:46

that really ran the camp

1:23:48

if they wanted something, they got it.

1:23:49

We were all there to do what they wanted.

1:23:51

If they wanted anything to happen to a detainee,

1:23:53

we made it happen, so.

1:23:56

Interviewer

And you said some of them were foreign,

1:23:59

like you said you saw a German.

1:24:00

Was he interviewing only people who spoke German or was he?

1:24:01

-

I don't have that kind of, I didn't keep that close.

1:24:06

I mean, when I was organizing the interrogations,

1:24:09

there's 50 of them in a day

1:24:14

and on top of that I've got to rotate everybody

1:24:16

out through chow.

1:24:18

So the Sergeant major wants the trash cleaned out of,

1:24:19

wants soldiers to walk along and pick the garbage

1:24:22

out of the concertina wire along the camp.

1:24:25

I got other fish to fry.

1:24:27

I can't sit around and be like,

1:24:28

so this guy wants this guy from this country.

1:24:31

It must be for this reason.

1:24:32

Like all of my political, like piecing things together,

1:24:34

like, who's this,

1:24:37

why do they want this guy all got swamped out

1:24:38

by just being overly exhausted

1:24:40

on their responsibility front.

1:24:43

Interviewer

So I just wanna go back to the woman

1:24:45

who you said was seductive.

1:24:47

Detainees kind of told you

1:24:48

that there was some inappropriate behavior from her?

1:24:50

-

They told my friends

1:24:54

and my friends told me.

1:24:55

So it's uncertain weather and ow much came from them?

1:24:56

How much came from my guard buddies out.

1:24:58

It was definitely amongst us.

1:25:01

We said terrible things about her.

1:25:03

We assumed that she had sex with them.

1:25:06

Like people regarded her as if she was hooker,

1:25:08

and then people would back that up

1:25:14

with things that the detainees would say about that.

1:25:17

And then from, and then upon further hearing more

1:25:18

about detainee stories as my research has gone onwards

1:25:22

into what they have said about what happened there,

1:25:25

I know that they, that a lot of them talk about

1:25:28

being sexually assaulted by a woman interrogator

1:25:31

and she's the only woman that I know there, so.

1:25:34

Interviewer

And was she there the whole time

1:25:39

you were there?

1:25:40

-

She was there the whole time I was there.

1:25:41

All the interrogators that I knew that were there

1:25:42

were there before we came and they were there when we went

1:25:45

and they were probably still down there.

1:25:47

Interviewer

And when you talked about rape

1:25:48

at Guantanamo, what were you talking about exactly

1:25:50

when you said.

1:25:52

-

The women soldiers were raped.

1:25:54

Women in our units were raped.

1:25:55

Interviewer

Five soldiers?

1:25:58

-

Yes, five people in my unit,

1:25:59

people in other unit,

1:26:01

men in my unit and other units.

1:26:02

Interviewer

Did they report it?

1:26:05

-

I think occasionally it wasn't,

1:26:07

it was probably squash.

1:26:09

I only knew one woman that had specifically told me

1:26:11

that she had been raped by people in my unit

1:26:16

and that I never reported that,

1:26:19

and she never reported that, and.

1:26:21

Interviewer

Why do you think?

1:26:25

-

About not reporting it?

1:26:27

She knew she wouldn't be taken seriously

1:26:28

and I agreed with her.

1:26:30

Not, they all operated under,

1:26:32

we were the least of their concerns

1:26:36

and our problems were not to not,

1:26:38

I mean it's all a matter of chain of command

1:26:41

because we were there as JTF-GTMO

1:26:43

So we would have to report to JTF-GTMO.

1:26:45

So if you're gonna report something like that to that camp,

1:26:47

it's all very small and these women work in these units,

1:26:50

everybody would know immediately,

1:26:54

I mean it would be if you dropped that thing,

1:26:56

if it got outside of the chain of command,

1:26:58

it's gonna be a huge issue all in,

1:27:01

so that it never became a huge issue

1:27:04

means that those women that did bring those charges up

1:27:07

were not taken seriously.

1:27:09

And from further communication with that woman that I know

1:27:12

that was there, that was raped,

1:27:16

I know that she knows of other women that were raped

1:27:17

while they were there.

1:27:20

And I do not, I am not surprised by the general behavior

1:27:22

and the general mentality of the people that I saw there

1:27:26

that that is the case.

1:27:29

I oftentimes felt very sexually threatened

1:27:32

in that I might be raped.

1:27:34

I was very, because I am,

1:27:36

I don't fit the normal manly build of the soldier,

1:27:40

I was oftentimes kind of treated like a woman

1:27:45

or more realistically, just a gay soldier.

1:27:49

My name was basically faggot while I was in the military

1:27:53

and I had a lot of rape threats.

1:27:55

I had a lot of really creepy things said

1:27:58

on top of just, I mean, pounds and pounds and pounds

1:28:00

of daily verbal abuse that I learned to just accept.

1:28:04

And there were several situations.

1:28:08

One time I was duct taped to my bed by people in my unit

1:28:10

and I thought that I was going to be raped.

1:28:13

I thought that I was being raped the whole time.

1:28:15

And I was left in my bed duct-taped naked to my bed.

1:28:17

And I was late for work the next day

1:28:20

until my roommate came home

1:28:22

and unduct taped me.

1:28:25

Interviewer

Why did that happen?

1:28:28

-

They got drunk.

1:28:30

They didn't even remember that they did it the next day

1:28:32

or they'd never admitted to it.

1:28:34

I took it immediately to my command

1:28:35

'cause I was punished upon getting to work

1:28:37

about why I had showed up late.

1:28:41

And then, so I immediately said, well

1:28:42

my guys in my unit did this

1:28:45

and my superiors in the DOC said, well

1:28:47

then we're gonna have to talk to your command

1:28:51

and then it just all disappeared.

1:28:52

And apparently they'd done it

1:28:54

to like three other people on our unit.

1:28:56

Interviewer

How did you manage to survive

1:28:58

during your time in Guantanamo where you personally lived?

1:29:00

-

I stayed in my room and slept and dreamed.

1:29:06

I created two, there was two different worlds.

1:29:07

There's the world outside

1:29:09

and then there was the world inside

1:29:10

and I'd learned to take the world inside of myself

1:29:12

as a totally separate and pristine environment

1:29:14

that I worked very hard to keep separate

1:29:17

and I became really detached from reality

1:29:19

and lived inside of a dream of what I wanted to do

1:29:21

when I got back and what I basically art thinking

1:29:25

about writing and writers and goals of my life.

1:29:27

I became very self-centered and very focused

1:29:32

on the beautiful things that I wanted to do with my life

1:29:35

after GTMO and that's how I survived.

1:29:39

Interviewer

Can we go back to the translators?

1:29:44

-

Yeah.

1:29:45

-

Everybody thoughts

about the translator that you saw.

1:29:46

-

Not more than that.

1:29:50

They're just kind of run of the mill translators

1:29:51

that some of them didn't seem super adequate.

1:29:54

It seemed like a lot of times they caused trouble

1:29:56

more than helped it

1:29:59

that they were not necessarily on one side or the other

1:30:01

but that they could occasionally be on either side.

1:30:05

I've seen it on both ways where it seemed

1:30:08

like the translator was hindering the guard's process

1:30:11

by favoring the detainee or otherwise

1:30:17

but it was,

1:30:20

they were oftentimes a third point in communications.

1:30:22

They would filter kind of statements.

1:30:27

They would save detainees

1:30:31

from things that they'd said

1:30:33

that are particularly like inflammatory.

1:30:34

You could tell like a detainee would be screaming

1:30:36

and yelling for five minutes

1:30:39

and then the interrogator would go,

1:30:40

he says that he wants this in his meals.

1:30:43

You know, so it's like, well,

1:30:46

it sounds like he said some other things in there.

1:30:48

What's all that?

1:30:51

And then you'd hear occasional swear words in English

1:30:53

come out and none of that would come through it.

1:30:55

It's basically like watching a translated film

1:30:58

that's been translated really poorly

1:31:01

and you're not really getting,

1:31:02

'cause the super emotion on a detainee's face

1:31:04

and then the translator is looking at you

1:31:08

and just kind of like reducing

1:31:09

these three or four or five minute dialogues down

1:31:11

to little snippets of what they're saying.

1:31:15

So it's a lot of synthesis that happens there too.

1:31:17

Interviewer

Another question I had for you

1:31:22

was about the plane rights that we use.

1:31:23

Did you ever scored any detainees and plan

1:31:26

or do you know any people in your unit who did?

1:31:30

-

Our unit was tasked to assign people

1:31:33

to that special mission?

1:31:35

I was not chosen.

1:31:37

I was by that time already working

1:31:38

in the detention operations center.

1:31:40

So no longer fell under my former command.

1:31:41

So they couldn't assign me to do anything nor would they,

1:31:44

the people that they chose to send were all fairly

1:31:48

rough around the edges types,

1:31:52

like people that they could expect to keep their mouth shut.

1:31:54

They were good soldiers.

1:31:56

They were hand selected by our chain command,

1:31:57

people that were definitely insider people with our unit,

1:31:59

people that our commander trusted.

1:32:04

And one of my friends was selected to go.

1:32:07

And they were all very quiet about it.

1:32:10

All I heard when they came back

1:32:12

from the mission was that they'd gone to Turkey.

1:32:13

A couple of them had sex with hookers.

1:32:19

They did a lot of drugs, they drank,

1:32:21

but none of them talked about anything that happened

1:32:23

except for my friend who told me a few uncomfortable things

1:32:26

about the experience, but all he always fought

1:32:31

with kind of like, he really believed

1:32:35

in what we were doing and that these people were terrorists.

1:32:38

And that's kind of just one of those things that we accepted

1:32:40

in the lack of communication in our dialogue

1:32:42

but he seemed noticeably weirded out

1:32:48

by how that whole thing had gone.

1:32:52

And more than that,

1:32:54

that was kind of the first time that I started thinking,

1:32:56

well where did these people go?

1:32:59

'Cause we were also at that same time

1:33:02

starting all of these like mock trials too.

1:33:04

So it was really confusing

1:33:06

'cause you've got these bullshit courts happening

1:33:08

the military tribunals, which are a huge to do.

1:33:12

I mean, 'cause they had to take the detainees

1:33:16

outside of the camp and I would have to arrange the pistols.

1:33:18

They'd have to pick up pistols ammunition

1:33:22

and a vehicle to transport the detainee

1:33:25

and the detainee would have to be hooded

1:33:28

and shackled in a different way

1:33:30

and taken in a different uniform.

1:33:32

And it was just like, why are we taking one group of people

1:33:36

that have gone through no process whatsoever

1:33:43

back to their countries

1:33:46

and putting other people through this silly trial system

1:33:47

that seems broken right off the bat.

1:33:52

I mean like the lawyers

1:33:54

from these things were all military.

1:33:56

I talked to a few of them

1:33:59

and it did not seem like they were like,

1:34:01

I mean everybody's attitude seemed like

1:34:03

these were phony trials made to like kind of what I mean.

1:34:06

And once again with interrogators it's like.

1:34:09

Interviewer

Could we just go back to the plains again?

1:34:14

Can you tell me exactly what was uncomfortable

1:34:16

about those things.

1:34:20

-

I just heard how they were transported,

1:34:21

shackled to the floor.

1:34:23

And that I believe that though, that they were beaten

1:34:25

while I think that that during that flight

1:34:28

those detainees were probably harassed pretty intensely.

1:34:31

It was kind of, it sounds like

1:34:34

they were given the green light to basically,

1:34:36

I mean really do whatever they wanted to,

1:34:39

which is really unfortunate

1:34:43

'cause if those people did go back,

1:34:44

they were the most innocent of the bunch.

1:34:47

They were the people that the government first said

1:34:49

was like, okay, we really screwed up with these people.

1:34:52

They don't belong here at all, send them back.

1:34:54

And there was also a lot of rumors

1:34:56

that some of these people had been killed

1:34:59

as soon as they went back to their countries,

1:35:01

that they would be killed going back to their countries

1:35:04

and upon further analysis now in the future,

1:35:06

I believe that probably a lot of them

1:35:09

probably were killed by their governments

1:35:10

because now that I find out about how they were detained,

1:35:12

a lot of them were just on lists

1:35:15

from like Omar, the guy is a detainee

1:35:16

who was only ever on any of these lists

1:35:21

because his father and his whole family

1:35:24

are basically the precursors to today's Libyan rebels

1:35:29

who were anti Gaddafi people.

1:35:34

And Gaddafi had said, I don't want these people in my,

1:35:36

I don't want them around here.

1:35:39

And so that's why they live in England

1:35:40

'cause they were trying to get asylum from Libya

1:35:43

and then he'd made some random trip to Afghanistan

1:35:47

and got detained there because Gaddafi had said,

1:35:50

here's the list of people that I want in cages.

1:35:53

And China did the same thing with the Weigers.

1:35:55

And so when you take those people back

1:35:57

to those countries on planes,

1:36:01

they don't want them still.

1:36:03

And if they're just sitting there on a tarmac,

1:36:04

all shackled up,

1:36:07

these places are not the United States of America

1:36:08

and they won't hesitate.

1:36:10

Look at how they operate.

1:36:11

They won't hesitate to put a bullet in the back

1:36:12

of somebody's brain on the tarmac,

1:36:14

throw you off the side of the ditch

1:36:15

and then their problem is fucking over it.

1:36:17

Interviewer

Did your friends see that happen

1:36:18

or you just.

1:36:20

-

They never said anything about it.

1:36:21

Interviewer

Do you know if the planes had guards

1:36:23

on where.

1:36:25

-

They were the guards.

1:36:26

Interviewer

They were the guards?

1:36:27

-

They were the guards.

1:36:28

Interviewer

Were they on the same level

1:36:29

or were they in a second level, do you know that from?

1:36:30

-

No, it was all gutted.

1:36:32

It was a gutted C140, is of C140.

1:36:34

C140 rolling down the street.

1:36:42

I don't know, it was some old.

1:36:43

Interviewer

And they just stand there as guards?

1:36:45

-

Yes, and then all the detainees

1:36:46

were short shackled to the ground, hooded with goggles on,

1:36:48

full transportation mode, which is really horrible.

1:36:51

That is a super long flight and the traveling accommodation,

1:36:56

they just pissed themselves.

1:37:00

I know that, that I know that my friend

1:37:02

that went on that was said that they just peed themselves

1:37:03

where they sat and that it was really uncomfortable to see

1:37:06

and that they were sedating them with drugs

1:37:11

that they were just, the doctors would just stick them

1:37:13

and put them out with whatever on labeled drugs.

1:37:17

Interviewer

And when they were brought to Guantanamo,

1:37:21

do you know anybody

1:37:23

who was on any of those planes (indistinct)

1:37:24

-

No, no.

1:37:26

Lady

How would you know that those people

1:37:28

were sent back to their country to be freed?

1:37:30

Could any of them been rendered?

1:37:32

-

Anything could have happened?

1:37:36

We didn't know anything.

1:37:37

The detainees could have been freed or killed

1:37:39

or put in another prison or put in another American prison.

1:37:41

They could have been sent back to the same camps,

1:37:44

maybe they're back in Kandahar biogram

1:37:47

or any of these black campsites.

1:37:49

They could have, anything could have happened to them.

1:37:51

And that's kind of the mystery of being a soldier

1:37:53

in Guantanamo Bay is that

1:37:56

anything could have happened with these people

1:37:58

and anything can happen with them after you come and go.

1:38:00

Your job is not to worry about that.

1:38:03

Your job is to feed them

1:38:04

and to make sure that they don't die

1:38:05

while you're watching them.

1:38:06

Lady

Did you have any encounters

1:38:08

where people were put on plane

1:38:09

and then the plane never took off?

1:38:11

-

No, that sounds entirely unfamiliar.

1:38:14

Interviewer

Did you ever hear of Camp Nou?

1:38:18

-

No.

1:38:21

Interviewer

No, okay.

1:38:22

(laughs)

1:38:23

-

Sounds like it was adequately named.

1:38:24

Interviewer

You've heard.

1:38:25

We asked you in the break and you know

1:38:29

your initial impressions of the detainees,

1:38:32

did you resent them when you first arrived?

1:38:35

-

[Man With Low Voice] First let's (indistinct)

1:38:40

Interviewer

Okay.

1:38:41

(siren whistles)

1:38:42

-

He's driving around the block?

1:38:55

(laughs)

1:38:56

Sounds like it's all on the same spot.

1:39:10

It doesn't sound like it's moving at all.

1:39:11

There it goes now, it's getting a little bit more distant.

1:39:14

Interviewer

Okay, so your initial impression

1:39:22

with detainees,

1:39:24

I'm gonna ask you, during the break

1:39:25

if you had some initial resentment

1:39:28

before your attitude changed.

1:39:30

-

I would like to qualify this

1:39:34

with the resentment is a natural part of that job.

1:39:36

Yes, I was resentful that my life was interrupted

1:39:40

because at first I thought that there was a high likelihood

1:39:45

that these people probably were terrorists.

1:39:50

I wanted to believe very much

1:39:51

that we were not being asked to do something totally wrong

1:39:53

and that there had to be some reason

1:39:58

and that I was just being too liberal

1:40:01

and idealistic to think that these people were all innocent.

1:40:03

And I did hate the ones that were terrorists.

1:40:06

I do still, like, I think that if they're causing violence,

1:40:10

I hate them as much as I hate American soldiers

1:40:15

that cause violence.

1:40:17

I hate them as much as the American politicians

1:40:19

and businessmen that cause violence.

1:40:22

I resent anybody who is killing for whatever reason.

1:40:25

And I do resent the idea of terrorism.

1:40:31

It was, the only thing that stopped me

1:40:37

from letting that go whole hog and fully resenting them

1:40:39

is that they were never proven to be guilty of anything.

1:40:42

And I never had any evidence to hold my hand

1:40:45

and I'm just principled in that way.

1:40:47

I won't hate anybody without being given.

1:40:49

So it's very confusing and resentment comes and it goes,

1:40:51

some days he resent more than others.

1:40:55

Some days you're a tree hugger and some days,

1:40:57

I won't lie.

1:41:03

There were days where I said and did some pretty awful shit

1:41:03

and allowed a lot of awful shit to happen

1:41:08

that I didn't challenge because I maybe was getting out

1:41:11

my little kicks against them in my own little way.

1:41:16

Yes, there was resentment, but more against the soldiers.

1:41:19

I resented the soldiers much more and much more clearly

1:41:23

and much more violently than I resented the detainees.

1:41:25

So if there was resentment against the detainees,

1:41:32

I felt much more kindred or kinship with them as well too.

1:41:33

Interviewer

Why did you resent the soldiers?

1:41:39

-

Because they were rapists.

1:41:42

And I had seen enough of their racism

1:41:44

and I had been called a faggot by most of them

1:41:48

for the last three at that time,

1:41:51

three to four years of my life.

1:41:54

And I thought that they were dumb

1:41:56

and I thought that they were violent

1:42:00

and that they had been given the opportunity to be violent

1:42:02

and that a lot of them had taken it.

1:42:08

And I pretty much say that everything about them.

1:42:09

Just about everybody, I hated them all.

1:42:14

I hated them for being in the military.

1:42:17

I hated me for being in the military for that matter.

1:42:19

I wasn't sparing myself from any of this hatred.

1:42:21

During this, the person I resented the most was this guy.

1:42:23

I mean, I really, really loathed myself

1:42:26

during that period of time, so.

1:42:29

Interviewer

But there was no way out really.

1:42:33

-

No, just the initial way that we discussed already.

1:42:35

I mean, other than doing your time

1:42:39

and spending your whole year there, but for the detainees,

1:42:41

there's literally no way out,

1:42:43

instead of waiting for this infuriating legal process

1:42:47

to manifest around you when it chooses to.

1:42:50

Interviewer

Were there other friends of yours

1:42:53

who felt the same way as you did who wanted out too?

1:42:56

-

No.

1:43:00

Interviewer

You were pretty alone?

1:43:01

-

Pretty, I would, yeah.

1:43:03

I never made contact with anybody on the terms

1:43:04

that we collaboratively thought

1:43:08

that what we were doing was wrong.

1:43:11

No, I would never expose that.

1:43:16

I felt like exposing that would be like walking out

1:43:17

into 1940 to Germany and saying I'm a Jewish

1:43:20

or I'm a Jew, it's like, I felt very strongly that

1:43:25

to express an opinion of distasteful for what was going on

1:43:31

with label me as I would either get beaten up or,

1:43:34

who knows they're murdered.

1:43:42

I could easily, I could name 20 people

1:43:44

who would love to kill me,

1:43:47

who would love to kill me

1:43:48

before I even started doing this stuff,

1:43:49

who probably just wanted to kill me from the day they met me

1:43:51

'cause they thought that I was a fag or whatever,

1:43:55

there were a lot of people that I was really afraid of.

1:43:58

And also really afraid to expose myself is not military,

1:44:02

is not masculine

1:44:08

'cause I had to be very sharp and very quick

1:44:09

to defend that so that I could keep my buy-in

1:44:12

with these people so that I didn't, wasn't always a freak.

1:44:16

It took me a lot of,

1:44:19

I had to create an entire other persona to be around them.

1:44:20

You know this like sharp witted

1:44:24

kind of alpha male of an intellect kind of,

1:44:28

like I made it very quick that if you came to make fun of me

1:44:32

or to deride me that you were probably going to leave,

1:44:37

looking and feeling like a fucking asshole

1:44:40

for having ever endeavored to do so

1:44:43

and I got really good at it.

1:44:45

And it was almost impossible to change the behavior

1:44:47

when I came back 'cause all I knew how to do

1:44:49

was defend myself against people

1:44:52

and make them feel like shit.

1:44:53

And I was in Guantanamo.

1:44:54

Perfect behavioral trait that had application all day,

1:44:56

every day at home, really difficult to adjust

1:44:59

to my friendships again, and to find lasting relationships.

1:45:03

And to this day still, I still find myself

1:45:07

very defensive against other people.

1:45:12

I can be open for a period of time

1:45:14

and then once anything gets towards the real

1:45:17

like relationship, I find that that personality

1:45:20

is now not so much under my control

1:45:24

so much as just a dark part of myself

1:45:26

that I'll probably always have, so.

1:45:29

Interviewer

And you think being in Guantanamo

1:45:33

where the military

1:45:35

is what helps this develop

1:45:36

this kind of personality character?

1:45:39

-

It's the only reason I made it.

1:45:41

I would have never been like this otherwise I would.

1:45:42

Well, that's not true.

1:45:45

I mean, I grew up in the country around a lot of rural,

1:45:46

the behavior had developed to a certain degree

1:45:49

amongst country boys

1:45:51

who had also been calling me a fag

1:45:54

since that and a lot of the problem with my unit

1:45:56

is that these people were from my local area,

1:45:59

I'd known some of them before we even joined the military.

1:46:01

I had known some of them since we were five, you know?

1:46:04

So it's like,

1:46:06

no, I'd already learned how to deal

1:46:11

with that kind of repressive behavior,

1:46:13

which I wanted very much to leave.

1:46:15

I wanted to move to the city.

1:46:16

I wanted to be able to be whoever I wanted to be

1:46:18

without being criticized about that

1:46:20

and the military was just,

1:46:22

and that's why for me being activated

1:46:23

was such a brutal reality for me.

1:46:26

It was that I was gonna be around only these people

1:46:29

for a long time.

1:46:31

And then they provided me with every, I mean,

1:46:32

it was the full validation of everything that I had.

1:46:35

Before I thought just had been

1:46:39

like selfish weakness on my part of like,

1:46:40

I can't play with all these rough edge to boys

1:46:43

to now fully hating them for what I saw inside of them

1:46:46

and will ultimately see inside of myself as well.

1:46:50

It's something that I fight against every day

1:46:53

and work against being like,

1:46:55

and have always worked against being like

1:46:58

is a violent rapist really.

1:46:59

Interviewer

Did you see rape of any males?

1:47:05

Did you hear rape of any?

1:47:08

-

Long connected stories.

1:47:11

Like stories with far-flung connections

1:47:14

but I know of a gay boy who was in the Navy,

1:47:15

who was a medic there and people talked

1:47:20

that he'd been raped by infantry soldiers, but not,

1:47:23

I mean nothing that was too substantial.

1:47:26

Interviewer

Do you have any real quick (indistinct)

1:47:31

before we move on to.

1:47:33

Lady

Not just one,

1:47:34

most of the soldiers that you were with,

1:47:35

were they also National Guard or where do they come from?

1:47:37

-

A lot of soldiers from The National Guard,

1:47:39

a lot of soldiers from the regular army,

1:47:42

the ones that were from the regular army

1:47:45

were from actual MPU units.

1:47:46

The ones from The National Guard units

1:47:48

were from combat arms units that were

1:47:50

quote unquote reclassified as block guards.

1:47:53

A lot like us, like tankers or as a unit of tankers.

1:47:57

I assume that we were brought in mostly

1:48:00

because we were useless as what we did.

1:48:02

Our equipment would not let us be artillery men

1:48:05

or tankers in Iraq or Afghanistan

1:48:08

because the rigors of keeping, you need new tanks

1:48:09

and those things, even brand new tanks will break down

1:48:13

in the desert all the time.

1:48:16

A 1980s tank will not work in the desert at all.

1:48:17

So we had no jobs in the global war on terror

1:48:20

except to burn trash and to be block guards.

1:48:22

And that's what they did with The National Guard is like,

1:48:25

devious up, give us all new jobs and fill is cocked

1:48:27

throughout the whole global war on terror.

1:48:31

Just fill in all these little jobs

1:48:32

that they couldn't give to third country nationals.

1:48:34

And so there was a lot of national guard there.

1:48:37

The Navy deployed a whole like 100 chiefs, all E7s.

1:48:41

I don't know what their game plan with that was,

1:48:47

like one day there was all of a sudden

1:48:49

just a whole bunch of E7

1:48:51

standing around who all were supposed to operate

1:48:54

as like normal block guards to do the jobs of what

1:48:57

E3s and E4s and E5s.

1:49:01

And so here's these people that are used to being

1:49:04

all rank and file, and now they're signing up

1:49:06

and coming to me every day to be escort teams.

1:49:09

And they're, I'm telling them what to do

1:49:11

and was typically really to not military about it.

1:49:15

The Marines sent people to,

1:49:19

and I was not military enough for them

1:49:20

'cause I'd gotten used to people

1:49:22

and they'd gotten used to me.

1:49:23

So I could kind of just be like,

1:49:24

hey, here's this thing, go do this.

1:49:26

I've got 150 things to do at any one minute.

1:49:29

So I don't have time to stand at parade rest

1:49:33

and do the yes Sergeant no Sergeant thing.

1:49:35

I'd just gotten rid of it immediately.

1:49:37

And people hated it for a while.

1:49:39

And then I kind of just charmed my way

1:49:40

into the position of just being, it was accepted.

1:49:43

I was good at what I did,

1:49:45

everybody knew that when I was on, it worked,

1:49:46

everything worked,

1:49:48

it moved and they just accepted like, all right,

1:49:49

he's a share head

1:49:52

but whatever, he makes this one place work.

1:49:53

It's really crappy job, whatever.

1:49:56

So, but these chiefs just never adapted to it,

1:49:58

They'd just come in and they'd be like.

1:50:01

"You can't talk to me like that."

1:50:03

And that's, I'd be like, oh, well, I mean

1:50:04

how do you guys handle it in the Navy?

1:50:06

You feel free to inform me.

1:50:07

I'll stand however you want me to stand

1:50:09

and tell you whatever I need to tell you

1:50:10

but I still need this person moved from here to here.

1:50:12

Like, that's all I'm saying is like this.

1:50:15

I didn't come up with this.

1:50:17

I didn't make this job, I didn't make this assignment.

1:50:19

I just, I'm here, you're here, we're all here,

1:50:23

we're all doing what we're supposed to do

1:50:26

and now what I'm asking you to do

1:50:27

is take this person from here to here.

1:50:30

And if you need to be patted on the shoulder,

1:50:31

treated like your rank and time

1:50:33

is worth fucking anything to me, then I'll do it.

1:50:36

I'll do the song and dance.

1:50:38

I don't want to but I'll do it for you while you're here.

1:50:39

But it just caused endless amounts of drama

1:50:42

'cause I'd forget

1:50:45

and then we'd have that conversation

1:50:46

over and over and over again.

1:50:48

And they'd always dressed me down and do the whole, like

1:50:49

they try to put me in front leaning respite,

1:50:53

which is pushups.

1:50:55

People would be like drop down and give me 20.

1:50:56

And then my, I had like a superior NCO

1:50:58

who was an E7

1:51:03

who was there to basically handle situations like that

1:51:03

to be my flag guard against situations exactly like that.

1:51:06

And he'd always just open up the window and he'd be like,

1:51:10

that's my art.

1:51:13

You don't tell him what to do.

1:51:14

So then I'd be like, oh, okay.

1:51:16

So he's yours and he's like, yeah,

1:51:18

nobody makes him do pushups.

1:51:19

The leadership that was directly in charge of me

1:51:24

was really fantastic during the whole thing.

1:51:25

Basically, they were like my, they were my defenders

1:51:27

so that I could be weird Chris, and just get my job done.

1:51:33

And they knew that from the get-go

1:51:36

that they didn't understand me,

1:51:38

didn't wanna deal with me, but they knew that I could do

1:51:39

what they needed done and I could do it well

1:51:42

and better than anybody else that they could have in there.

1:51:45

And I was really smart.

1:51:47

They all acknowledged

1:51:48

that that's where I should be in this camp.

1:51:49

And they just did a really good job

1:51:51

of covering up for me during that.

1:51:54

So I never really had to deal with the reality

1:51:56

that I was otherwise just a totally shitty soldier,

1:51:59

not good at what we were supposed to do.

1:52:03

Interviewer

So could you just describe how it was

1:52:07

when you left Guantanamo, a year was up

1:52:10

or was there some other reason why you left?

1:52:13

-

Yeah, the year was up, our deployment was over.

1:52:15

It kind of just came,

1:52:17

it was like we'd all, the date changed a million times.

1:52:19

They kept it very loose.

1:52:24

It was anywhere from October to December.

1:52:26

We ended up leaving in the end of October

1:52:28

we found out like two weeks in advance.

1:52:30

So from the moment that we found out we were coming home,

1:52:32

that every minute was just like that clock

1:52:35

just like (groans) ground down to a hall.

1:52:37

I remember sitting in that office

1:52:40

and just being like, oh God, 12 hours in here.

1:52:41

12 hours is just so long.

1:52:47

Psychologically that last two weeks

1:52:49

I felt all of that time.

1:52:52

I mean, it's not like 12 hours

1:52:54

was easy to get through before

1:52:56

but there is this kind of like, where else am I gonna be?

1:52:57

But then all of a sudden there was like we're going home.

1:53:00

So then I knew everywhere else where I could be.

1:53:03

And I was, I couldn't stop thinking about it.

1:53:05

I was like, I'm gonna ride a bike, I'm gonna see women.

1:53:07

And I'm like just like be in a place

1:53:09

where there was women that are not in uniform

1:53:11

was like so exciting to me.

1:53:14

And I had a girlfriend online.

1:53:16

I was really excited to like go home.

1:53:17

She lived in Tennessee.

1:53:19

I was pretty sure that we were gonna be in love forever.

1:53:22

We were not.

1:53:24

Interviewer

So did you get,

1:53:28

were you then released from the military

1:53:29

when you went back home?

1:53:31

-

No, we got three months off after we got home.

1:53:32

I got on unemployment, which lasted for six months

1:53:34

and then after that three months, we were right back

1:53:37

and I'll be in Michigan drilling one weekend a month.

1:53:40

And that's how I lived out.

1:53:43

The rest of my military experience is,

1:53:44

I know I was never promoted, but I was,

1:53:51

what do they call it?

1:53:56

They call it, like a win year promotion.

1:53:58

They changed my job title to ammo team chief.

1:54:00

And so all of a sudden I was acting like a Sergeant

1:54:02

on an E4s pay, which I hated

1:54:06

'cause I just didn't want,

1:54:08

all I wanted to not do was act like a Sergeant.

1:54:09

I would've taken the pay,

1:54:11

but I didn't wanna act like a Sergeant.

1:54:12

So they gave me the worst of both worlds is to pay me

1:54:14

like E4 and then give me the responsibility.

1:54:16

So, and that was just for like control of the ammunition

1:54:19

that we would fire on the howitzers, which is bullshit

1:54:23

And I just ended up doing everything myself

1:54:25

'cause I couldn't trust the people around me.

1:54:27

One guy was a chronic smoker

1:54:29

and there's cordite explosives everywhere,

1:54:31

bags, giant bags of stuff that launches 100 pound rounds,

1:54:33

18 miles down the road.

1:54:38

So it's like this guy

1:54:40

couldn't stop smoking cigarettes around him.

1:54:41

I slapped him in the face

1:54:43

like a handful of times just being like wake up now,

1:54:44

like we are, you could blow us up.

1:54:47

I mean, and that was it for just weekends.

1:54:50

Lots of anxiety about waiting for my phone calls,

1:54:54

like waiting for that next raging bull

1:54:57

'cause it's like, I knew it.

1:54:59

I knew it was coming, but we got really lucky in that

1:55:00

they detached the rest of our unit.

1:55:03

They sent, they only sent half of us to Guantanamo

1:55:06

'cause the other half of us were new enlistees

1:55:08

that were in basic while we were gone.

1:55:11

And people who had gotten out of this deployment,

1:55:14

there's a lot of like, they had a pretty minimal cap.

1:55:16

So there was like a whole, everybody that could flee fled.

1:55:20

And then while we were gone,

1:55:24

we were all like, oh, those shit bags

1:55:26

couldn't even come on this deployment.

1:55:28

And we just talk endless amounts of shit.

1:55:30

And then right when it was coming up for time for us to go,

1:55:31

the government was like, hey, other half of the 119

1:55:36

that we left behind, you guys are gonna to Iraq

1:55:40

and they split them up and send them everywhere all over

1:55:44

to a bunch of different prisons and those guys.

1:55:46

So basically our unit was technically deployed

1:55:49

until like 2006.

1:55:53

We are on some kind of deployment roster.

1:55:57

So we got really lucky in that

1:56:00

'cause they sent enough people to Iraq,

1:56:03

that was finally like,

1:56:07

they wouldn't send our detachment 'cause we were too small.

1:56:09

The Guantanamo detachment was too small

1:56:11

to fill anything for them

1:56:13

but they were doing some wild and wacky shit back then

1:56:15

like taking weird little groups of five or six people

1:56:17

from different units all over the nation

1:56:21

and jamming them into one giant national guard unit,

1:56:23

sending them into Iraq

1:56:26

and then rebreaking them up into God knows which ways.

1:56:27

And sending them all over the place again too.

1:56:30

They've been doing some really crazy mobilization cycles

1:56:32

with national guards, so.

1:56:35

-

So then you got out in what?

1:56:38

-

2007.

1:56:39

So I had one year

1:56:41

of like possible deployment time basically.

1:56:43

And as soon as that year came up,

1:56:45

I was I was also up for review, for medical review

1:56:47

for like where I was at the military does a pre,

1:56:50

you get out kind of medical tests.

1:56:55

And I went back in and I was like,

1:56:57

they started asking me questions,

1:56:59

do you use drugs?

1:57:01

And I was like, every day I do, I can't stop.

1:57:02

Like, I was just honest with them.

1:57:04

I was like, I've told you, I told you before that

1:57:05

and they were like, when did you tell us this?

1:57:09

Like, how has this been on record this whole time?

1:57:11

So they go back and they pull out all of my file

1:57:15

and they go through it and I can,

1:57:18

I'm just watching this guy go through.

1:57:20

And he's like, oh my God, oh my God, they deployed you,

1:57:21

they deployed you?

1:57:25

Like and I was like, yeah, they deployed me man.

1:57:26

Like, of course they deployed me.

1:57:28

They deployed everybody.

1:57:30

And he's like what?

1:57:31

They said that they shouldn't.

1:57:33

And I was like

1:57:33

maybe that's a conversation we should have had back in 2004.

1:57:34

Don't you think?

1:57:37

Like I was pissed, I was so irate.

1:57:38

I blew up on the sky.

1:57:39

He sent me back home with a paperwork,

1:57:41

a paper that said basically like,

1:57:46

we have totally fucked the situation up,

1:57:48

this person is undeployable,

1:57:51

cannot touch a rifle, cannot touch a weapon,

1:57:53

can not touch anything, do not ever like,

1:57:55

this, like basically they were just

1:57:58

like trying to prepare me to get kicked out of the military

1:58:00

on psychological grounds

1:58:03

'cause I had admitted to doing acid and Mescalin

1:58:05

and cocaine and mushrooms and weed smoking every day

1:58:09

before I'd gone to Guantanamo Bay

1:58:13

and then continuously put in other psychological things

1:58:15

that totally confirmed that I was on a heavy drug diet

1:58:19

throughout the entire time I was in the military,

1:58:22

that I was suffering from huge issues

1:58:24

that I'd had suicide attempts.

1:58:26

All of this stuff is in my pile of papers.

1:58:28

And nobody had ever realistically looked at it

1:58:30

and said this person is undeployable.

1:58:33

They just always said, we need the bodies.

1:58:36

You're fucking going.

1:58:38

You're they'd call me a bitch

1:58:39

'cause I was trying to get out of it.

1:58:41

Sorry to use the terms that,

1:58:42

but to stick to the reality,

1:58:44

I'd prefer to use exactly what they said, you know?

1:58:45

So there was a lot of hate

1:58:49

about me trying to get out of the deployment.

1:58:52

And it was just, it was just.

1:58:54

Interviewer

Did you see a psychologist in Guantanamo?

1:58:56

-

No, they had.

1:58:58

Before I left because of all the paperwork

1:58:59

and psychological complaints I've made

1:59:01

prior to my deployment,

1:59:03

they had said that to be there,

1:59:05

I would have to be on medication and seeing a psychologist

1:59:06

but that that was my commands responsibility

1:59:09

to make sure that that happened and then we got down there.

1:59:11

I never followed it up, they never followed it up,

1:59:13

I didn't want the pills.

1:59:16

So nobody ever did anything with it.

1:59:17

Basically. It just got, it was a non,

1:59:19

it was a forgotten issue.

1:59:22

The only person that checked in on me

1:59:23

that cared about this was,

1:59:25

it was one NCO who I respect more than anything

1:59:27

who is like a golden light of rationality

1:59:31

who I think probably was on my page

1:59:34

but was really proud of being a soldier.

1:59:38

He came from a really kind of trashy family

1:59:41

and it meant a lot to him to be a soldier.

1:59:43

And he's a really good NCO.

1:59:45

And he made me write a list of all the things

1:59:46

that I wanted to live for

1:59:49

and all of the things that I wanted to do

1:59:50

and really took me under his wing

1:59:53

and kind of became the one person that was like really,

1:59:54

I don't know that really actually cared about that

2:00:00

and push me to get into the psychologist's office

2:00:02

but then never pushed too hard,

2:00:05

but checked in on me.

2:00:07

He was really the only NCO or person from our unit

2:00:09

that really gave a fuck about it.

2:00:12

Everybody else.

2:00:14

The only thing that they said

2:00:15

when they were presented with the paperwork

2:00:17

that came from the psychologist

2:00:18

that said that I should not send them

2:00:20

was my commander took the paper and the guy next to him,

2:00:21

our platoon Sergeant said, what'd you tell him you're gay.

2:00:25

And then that's it,

2:00:28

that's all that was ever said about it

2:00:30

and then my commander basically said,

2:00:31

well this isn't gonna fly, I'm gonna deploy you anyway

2:00:34

and that's what happened?

2:00:36

Interviewer

Did people take drugs in Guantanamo?

2:00:39

-

No.

2:00:41

I found out later that they did.

2:00:42

I was looking like a fiend while I was down there.

2:00:44

There was Jamaicans and every Jamaican bus driver,

2:00:46

every hair cutter, every person, I was like,

2:00:49

yo you got any weed?

2:00:52

And then everybody was like, man, you can't, I can't,

2:00:53

like there's no way I'm gonna,

2:00:57

no, I can't even say anything to an American soldier.

2:00:59

Like if I lose this job, I'm fucked man.

2:01:02

Like there's no, nobody here is gonna give you drugs.

2:01:04

And, but later I heard stories that people

2:01:08

had been getting meth and weed shipped in.

2:01:13

Meth was a big problem in our unit.

2:01:15

And that people were taking like hardcore drugs

2:01:17

the whole time that we were there and I'd never known.

2:01:21

And everybody knew that I was like a drug fin.

2:01:23

So I got, I remember getting really off

2:01:25

when I found out that this one guy in our unit had been,

2:01:28

he said that he'd been smoking weed the whole time.

2:01:31

And I froze the conversation.

2:01:34

I was like, what are you talking?

2:01:35

Wait, all the time, you had it the whole time.

2:01:37

You know that I wanted some, like

2:01:41

why didn't you ever say anything to me?

2:01:42

And he's like, I thought she'd go crazy, man.

2:01:44

I didn't want you to smoke my weed.

2:01:46

And it's hard to get it down there.

2:01:47

So I didn't wanna like share.

2:01:48

I got really pissed off at him.

2:01:51

Interviewer

So maybe we (indistinct)

2:01:54

-

But sorry, one thing about that,

2:01:56

but drinking all the time,

2:01:57

booze is cheaper than milk down there.

2:01:59

So we drank on the blocks.

2:02:01

We drank in the camp.

2:02:03

All a lot of people would make cocktails

2:02:06

in their camelbacks the backpacks with liquids in

2:02:08

them that you can drink from a host.

2:02:11

They would come to work with straight whiskey

2:02:12

in those things, they would come to work wasted, drunk,

2:02:14

that they would get drunk

2:02:17

and then do things like duct tape me to the bed,

2:02:18

huge drinking problems, huge, a lot of booze in that camp,

2:02:21

huge involvement of booze in the violence,

2:02:24

booze violence combination thing going on as well.

2:02:26

There is a lot of whiskey breath

2:02:30

during a lot of those earths.

2:02:32

So there is a relationship there.

2:02:35

We had way too ready access to booze.

2:02:36

Interviewer

And nobody seemed to care?

2:02:39

-

Nobody had any, we had no leadership.

2:02:41

There was nobody, everything.

2:02:43

They broke everything down and split everything up

2:02:46

so that nobody, the most you're ever reporting to

2:02:48

is like your section chief was probably also a drunk in E5

2:02:51

like one rank above you

2:02:55

and the problems were so endemic

2:02:57

that it's like you had good NCOs and bad NCOs.

2:03:00

And you knew when you were working well

2:03:03

that works both ways.

2:03:05

Good NCOs being like NCOs that would also be drinking

2:03:06

and that you knew you could drink with.

2:03:09

And the rosters would be put out in advance.

2:03:12

You know who you're working with,

2:03:14

you know who is acceptable to do certain things around.

2:03:16

So they would plan things that,

2:03:18

and the goody two-shoes NCOs were always pinpointed.

2:03:20

Nobody wanted to work around them.

2:03:23

And they were put with like the units would select them

2:03:24

and put them in there, like goody two-shoes little sections

2:03:28

and, or try to get rid of them entirely send them

2:03:33

to other missions because everybody was weary

2:03:35

about having another Abu Ghraib situation

2:03:37

where somebody would say like, whoa,

2:03:40

flag on the play here.

2:03:43

Like we didn't want that.

2:03:45

That was always on people's tongues is like

2:03:47

'cause we knew we were doing stuff like it.

2:03:51

I mean, I've seen things that look a little bit

2:03:53

like those pictures, maybe not as drastic.

2:03:55

And we definitely would never take pictures.

2:03:57

You'd never get a camera into that place.

2:03:59

They'd searched you like,

2:04:01

one kid from our unit tried to bring

2:04:03

a computer chip in one of the little zip drives,

2:04:05

they weren't super popular back then.

2:04:09

He tried to bring one of those into the camp

2:04:12

and they kicked him out of the camp for a week

2:04:13

while they tried to figure out what to do with them

2:04:16

and eventually sent him off to work at a different job

2:04:17

like, 'cause they made such a big deal

2:04:19

about operational security stuff, so.

2:04:21

Interviewer

You sort of said things

2:04:26

similar to have a grade talking about.

2:04:28

-

Just violence is the way we treated the detainees

2:04:31

Interviewer

Minis that asked you about

2:04:38

when you met the detainees outside subsequently

2:04:40

and the one man with the one arm.

2:04:43

-

Terrick.

2:04:46

Interviewer

Terrick, can you tell us a bit about that

2:04:47

or how that happened and your experiences then?

2:04:48

-

Yeah, it's kind of a long chain of events like I said.

2:04:52

In the winter of 2007 in December,

2:04:56

I joined this group called Iraq Veterans Against the War.

2:05:00

I'd heard about it, I had a girlfriend at the time.

2:05:03

Her name is Jamie, we were together

2:05:06

and our relationship was failing

2:05:07

'cause I cheated on her and lied a whole lot.

2:05:09

And it just was really like super acting out

2:05:12

and like being super crazy

2:05:14

like other persona and being really angry

2:05:17

and she was like what in the fuck is going on with you?

2:05:19

You've got two sides and I can't tell what's going on.

2:05:21

You need help.

2:05:24

Like she really wanted to work through it with me.

2:05:25

And she was the only thing that would like make me see it

2:05:28

as like a problem that I needed help with.

2:05:32

She was the only person that would make me like

2:05:34

actually even deal with the fact that I was a veteran.

2:05:37

Other than that, I was just trying to be a hipster.

2:05:39

I was just trying to be out of the military

2:05:41

and not have to deal with it

2:05:43

and not have to think about it

2:05:45

and not have to deal with the reality

2:05:46

that I'm different than everybody else I see all the time.

2:05:48

I wanted to be like them.

2:05:50

So I promised her that I would get help.

2:05:53

So I started looking around

2:05:55

I found this group called Direct Veterans Against the War

2:05:56

and I thought, well,

2:05:59

we'll check this out, see what's going on.

2:06:01

Maybe this will cover

2:06:02

'cause I don't wanna talk to a therapist.

2:06:04

I don't wanna talk to a psychologist.

2:06:06

I don't want pills.

2:06:07

I know I don't wanna go to the VA.

2:06:08

I don't wanna be treated like a demographic.

2:06:10

I don't want all of this shit.

2:06:12

I just want a place where I can talk with people about this.

2:06:14

So I went and I met a bunch of other veterans

2:06:17

and I realized that, yeah, this is really

2:06:20

where I can kind of get my head straight

2:06:23

is around other people that are coming from the same place

2:06:24

that I can trust that know if not

2:06:27

what Guantanamo is all about,

2:06:32

what this war is all about.

2:06:34

And it's all connected.

2:06:36

It's all the same shit is what I saw,

2:06:37

is that everybody everywhere saw the same racism

2:06:38

and acted under the same constraints as I did basically.

2:06:42

And they asked me if I wanted to testify in winter soldier.

2:06:45

I don't think that they really understood what was,

2:06:50

like what my constraints were with like the legal thing

2:06:53

'cause up until the day of nobody asked me anything.

2:06:56

And then right before I was supposed to walk onto the stage,

2:07:00

they were in a little line and somebody goes, all right now,

2:07:03

so you guys are talking about prison camps,

2:07:08

so did anybody ever sign anything like a Non-disclosure Act?

2:07:10

And I was like, oh yeah, we had to,

2:07:13

we had to sign one of those.

2:07:16

And they were like, oh, oh,

2:07:17

well you can't go do this.

2:07:19

And I was like, try to stop me.

2:07:21

Just went out on stage and was like,

2:07:23

basically I remember sitting in front of the mirror

2:07:28

just like total, like game time.

2:07:30

Like I was ready to walk out of there

2:07:32

and handcuffs day.

2:07:34

I had no idea what to expect when you,

2:07:35

I hadn't heard anything

2:07:39

about anybody that had like broken the Non-disclosure Act.

2:07:40

I hadn't heard anything about what would happen.

2:07:43

I could only guess and imagine.

2:07:46

And well, the people that I'm talking to,

2:07:48

a lot of the same people that put these people on cages

2:07:51

in the first place.

2:07:53

So I was really kind of like, well

2:07:54

what rules do they apply to?

2:07:56

Obviously none.

2:07:58

So I can't sit here

2:07:59

and try to rationalize the well how this beast

2:08:01

is gonna relate to me 'cause they could do anything.

2:08:03

They have the possibility to do anything that they want

2:08:06

with the situation.

2:08:09

So I just went and did it

2:08:10

and then got really paranoid about how that,

2:08:13

like what would happen.

2:08:16

I stayed in my apartment with my girlfriend

2:08:17

for a couple of weeks staring out the window,

2:08:19

and then nothing ever came of it

2:08:22

except that people started calling me

2:08:24

and they wanted more and more and more interviews.

2:08:26

Everybody wanted to get on the Guantanamo Bay thing.

2:08:28

So I was like, at first I was so excited,

2:08:32

I was like, yes, people wanna know about it.

2:08:34

I'll show, I'll tell, I'll do everything I can,

2:08:36

I'll express everything I've got, like what a great window.

2:08:39

And I feel like I really kind of lost my head

2:08:44

during that period

2:08:49

because media is really limited

2:08:49

to what they want from us to say,

2:08:51

what I realized that there's a whole world of things

2:08:53

that people want out of this.

2:08:59

They want the torture stories,

2:09:00

they want their concept

2:09:03

of what Guantanamo is to be validated

2:09:06

and they want it to be very simple

2:09:08

and they want it to be very cookie cutter and precise

2:09:09

and they want it to be exactly like they think it is.

2:09:11

And I found that I could never explain to people

2:09:14

that it's not anything like, you'll never imagine it.

2:09:16

It's like trying to imagine what hell is like,

2:09:18

it's totally different.

2:09:20

You can't imagine what.

2:09:21

I spend my life imagining what nine years

2:09:23

inside of a cage feels like

2:09:25

and I know that I'll never understand that

2:09:27

but to a certain existential degree,

2:09:30

I feel like I've got a good understanding

2:09:32

of what that does to your fucking head,

2:09:34

but people outside of that good luck,

2:09:36

you've probably spent the most time that I know of anybody

2:09:39

like gathering multiple different stories

2:09:42

from different angles.

2:09:44

And I'm sure you can understand

2:09:45

how complicated this whole thing is now.

2:09:46

So it's like these conversations don't happen in 15 minutes.

2:09:48

They don't happen in soundbites.

2:09:52

They don't happen short and sweet

2:09:53

and they don't affirm what you think.

2:09:55

They open up a whole new world of despair that people don't,

2:09:58

I have found don't want it to challenge.

2:10:04

Anyway, so long story short,

2:10:06

got into this whole world of public speaking

2:10:08

and was pretty disillusioned

2:10:10

with the whole thing pretty quickly

2:10:14

but then I got contacted from (indistinct) by email.

2:10:16

And he basically said,

2:10:20

hey, I'm a former detainee, I've been released.

2:10:22

I live in England

2:10:26

and this whole time that I'd been out,

2:10:27

like I basically thought nightmare circumstance,

2:10:30

worst case scenario I'm on the street

2:10:34

and some buddy sees me, I don't remember any faces.

2:10:36

So I would never see any,

2:10:39

I'd felt like I would never see anybody and go, holy shit,

2:10:40

you were a detainee in Guantanamo Bay.

2:10:44

Like that never ever crossed my mind that that could happen.

2:10:46

And then I got contacted by mom and I was like,

2:10:52

wow this is really a chance to like,

2:10:55

confront what has become a nightmare to me.

2:10:58

Like I really wanna see how this goes.

2:11:00

And we started setting it up.

2:11:04

I remember he called me one time.

2:11:07

And the first time we'd like talked by voice.

2:11:09

He called my phone.

2:11:11

I was all like drunk.

2:11:11

It was 10 o'clock in the morning.

2:11:13

I was like waking up with a hangover.

2:11:15

And I was like, hello.

2:11:16

And he's like, this is (indistinct)

2:11:17

And I was like, oh, wow.

2:11:19

I remember feeling like a deadness where I thought

2:11:23

that a more profound feeling should be.

2:11:28

Like that there should be something really magical

2:11:29

about this occurrence

2:11:33

but that there for me was a certain amount

2:11:34

of just kind of white noise, where my emotions should be

2:11:37

which is a fairly familiar feeling to me by now,

2:11:41

I've felt more than anything,

2:11:43

a lack of feeling around a lot of things

2:11:47

that I used to know,

2:11:49

a lot of feeling for since I've been deployed.

2:11:49

And definitely you really felt that

2:11:52

with that initial connection

2:11:55

and then also when we first met together,

2:11:57

I started doing it,

2:12:02

and I also kind of felt like

2:12:03

something was not clicking in my head emotionally

2:12:06

about the matter but I went to England

2:12:09

and started to do this tour.

2:12:14

It was 2022, two are dates in 24 towns

2:12:15

that we were gonna drive around in with Omar

2:12:19

and (indistinct) and Sammy L Hodge

2:12:22

was supposed to come as well

2:12:25

but he was detained, not detained, oh my God, not detained

2:12:27

but his passport was denied

2:12:30

or his Visa was denied or something like that.

2:12:32

And on one of the first couple of nights,

2:12:37

we were at the friends meeting hall.

2:12:41

I was kind of like acclimating to (indistinct) who

2:12:44

was a little cold and distant at the time.

2:12:49

not necessarily like the warmest

2:12:53

welcoming party I could have imagined

2:12:54

and feeling really like an idiot for being where I was for

2:12:59

'cause I could tell, like after this event,

2:13:07

was the first time that I'd sat next to these people.

2:13:10

And as the words came out of my mouth,

2:13:12

I knew that it was a really privileged

2:13:14

and stupid thing to think

2:13:21

that my story next to these people's stories

2:13:23

really had anything of value you like this is it.

2:13:27

I don't know how to explain this

2:13:33

but I felt really humbled,

2:13:34

I guess, is the word to the point where it was really like,

2:13:36

oh God, what am I doing?

2:13:42

And this is one of the first speaking events

2:13:43

that we had is like how am I gonna sit here

2:13:44

in front of thousands, upon thousands,

2:13:47

upon thousands of people and to see how people reacted to it

2:13:50

where they were like fascinated with my position

2:13:54

but could seem fucking not to be bothered

2:13:56

by the fact that I'm sitting on a panel

2:13:59

with people that had been detained there.

2:14:01

It's like they have all these questions for me

2:14:03

but they don't want, didn't want anything

2:14:06

that they didn't have this connection

2:14:09

with the guys next to me.

2:14:10

And I just felt like such,

2:14:12

that whole month just felt like

2:14:14

such a freak show environment.

2:14:16

But anyway, long buildup

2:14:17

to the story of meeting Terrick.

2:14:19

After the first event I was outside,

2:14:23

chain smoking cigarettes, just what became my habit

2:14:25

of like escaping outside of the nearest exit

2:14:29

and then finding a corner to smoke in a shadow by myself

2:14:32

and just be alone.

2:14:35

I had a whole hat and face ensemble that would,

2:14:36

I changed my clothes right after everything

2:14:40

so that nobody would know who I am.

2:14:44

And I just sit outside and smoke and listen to what

2:14:45

like the chatter that people would have to say.

2:14:48

And I remember I was like smoking

2:14:50

and kind of zoning out and staring across.

2:14:52

And all of a sudden, like I see this dude on the other end

2:14:54

of the stairwell and this big building.

2:14:57

And it just was like a flashlight,

2:15:02

just a total memory flash.

2:15:05

I just knew that that was him, that that was Terrick.

2:15:07

And that like, that night he actually drove,

2:15:11

I walked over and I introduced myself.

2:15:16

I didn't say anything about the first time we'd met.

2:15:18

I didn't know if he remembered or not.

2:15:22

And he offered to drive me

2:15:23

to where we were having a post speech dinner

2:15:27

and he was really like, nice

2:15:31

and like was super like what I mean,

2:15:34

we're really glad that you came

2:15:36

and really more so than other people wanted to talk with me

2:15:38

about converting to Islam which was a big theme

2:15:41

along the whole thing is like me converting to Islam

2:15:45

is was like a goal that they all had.

2:15:47

And I knew it and they were really seedy about it

2:15:49

but we eventually worked it out

2:15:53

in that I'm more or less fulfilling in Islamic life.

2:15:54

I just really liked some drugs.

2:15:59

And also I've got different notions of premarital sex

2:16:00

and that's about it really.

2:16:04

Other than that, I mean I kind of,

2:16:06

I live mostly by their code.

2:16:10

A lot of things that they take very seriously

2:16:12

like possessions of stuff and like their relationship

2:16:14

to the world or to the existential

2:16:17

or to the God or whatever,

2:16:21

I'm pretty in line with a lot of that stuff.

2:16:24

I just don't call it anything.

2:16:26

Anyway, we worked it out,

2:16:28

but he drove me there that night to that dinner.

2:16:29

It was really weird.

2:16:32

I felt like I kept it all to myself

2:16:33

like this experience of like, I didn't wanna tell him,

2:16:36

I didn't wanna talk to him about it.

2:16:38

I didn't wanna,

2:16:39

'cause he was the one person that I'd always thought

2:16:40

like that's the face that I don't wanna see in the street.

2:16:43

Like this is the person

2:16:46

that I don't wanna have to deal with,

2:16:48

and he's driving one armed and on the cell phone

2:16:52

and then shifting, he has a stick shift.

2:16:55

So he's like in Europe and I'm just like,

2:16:57

this is so fucking weird.

2:17:01

This is so weird.

2:17:02

Like I'm in the wrong side of a car

2:17:04

with a one-armed

2:17:06

former detainee who was talking on the phone in Arabic

2:17:07

and occasionally trying to tell me to become Islam

2:17:11

or a Muslim, and I'm in Europe,

2:17:14

like what in the fuck is going on?

2:17:19

And we got to dinner and we sat down and him and I sat

2:17:22

and we ate and like halfway into the meal.

2:17:24

I said, do you remember me?

2:17:28

And he said, "Yo, I remember you."

2:17:31

And I was like, I remember you.

2:17:33

And then that was it.

2:17:34

We were just on the same page from then on out.

2:17:37

We didn't say anything about it.

2:17:40

It's just that just, we both right then just totally

2:17:42

made eye contact and realized that that moment was a moment

2:17:46

for both of us, and yeah.

2:17:50

Interviewer

You're still in touch with him?

2:17:56

-

He sends me occasional emails,

2:17:57

but I've find that our communication is not, I don't.

2:17:59

No, no, no, we're not really.

2:18:03

He works on some projects and he keeps in touch with them.

2:18:05

They're all very by the book

2:18:09

I guess you could say the book being the Quran.

2:18:12

One thing that I have a difficult time

2:18:18

communicating with a lot of the detainees

2:18:21

because of what has now become an overwhelming obligation

2:18:23

to the rigorous, moral and ethical codes

2:18:29

of the Quran.

2:18:34

They have dependent upon it for so long

2:18:36

and dependent upon their belief in God for so long

2:18:39

that it's like, I mean it's like a card house.

2:18:43

If you take that one card out,

2:18:50

the whole thing's gonna fall over

2:18:52

and you can see it from a mile away.

2:18:53

And that's how I always admired

2:18:54

how the detainees kept their heads together

2:18:57

for the most part, most of them.

2:18:59

Some of them lost their shit.

2:19:00

Like Terrick lost his shit,

2:19:02

There was a guy in the psych ward that lost his shit.

2:19:03

A lot of people lost their shit

2:19:04

but a lot of people kept themselves really dignified

2:19:06

and really hopeful.

2:19:09

And really just like Alice.

2:19:10

Alice is gonna come and everything's gonna be okay

2:19:13

'cause this is just how the world goes

2:19:15

and the world is beautiful.

2:19:17

And this is just the play of a Muslim

2:19:20

and this is what we have to do.

2:19:24

These are the sacrifices that we have to endure

2:19:25

for our cause.

2:19:27

And I always respected that

2:19:29

but at the same time, I am not only,

2:19:31

I'm not gonna say I'm an atheist

2:19:35

'cause I believe in God, but I hate God

2:19:37

and I don't, I think he's an asshole

2:19:39

and that he's never coming

2:19:42

and that we've been created to be horrible creatures

2:19:43

where we've become horrible creatures all on our own.

2:19:48

I don't care to differentiate between them

2:19:50

but I don't see God as some benevolent creature

2:19:52

who is gonna come and save anyone.

2:19:55

And I doubt that if there is a heaven

2:19:57

that any of us are getting in and if there is a hell,

2:20:00

it's probably here on earth, this is probably it.

2:20:03

And on those points and including the drugs and the sex

2:20:06

and everything else, we really don't see eye to eye.

2:20:11

So it's hard to, it feels like walking on eggshells

2:20:16

on a lot of conversations

2:20:19

'cause I wanna be respectful of their space,

2:20:21

but on some of the key issues

2:20:24

like who is our creator and how is the planet really run,

2:20:27

we disagree entirely

2:20:33

and those things will, if we, if either of us change,

2:20:34

it'll unravel all of our existences, so.

2:20:38

So don't know.

2:20:42

I find communication with them very difficult,

2:20:43

but at the same time, while we were traveling around,

2:20:45

the common stuff that we have in common, the camp,

2:20:50

you know is stuff that we talked about a lot.

2:20:52

And there is a lot of stuff in Islam that we did share.

2:20:55

And we talked about that a lot,

2:20:58

like especially more them and I,

2:20:59

probably had the closest bond

2:21:03

and then Omar and I also had a very close bond

2:21:04

and Gerald was,

2:21:07

I don't know if you've had a chance to meet General Omar.

2:21:08

He's a whole other person whom I respect entirely

2:21:11

but he's almost impossible to talk to about anything.

2:21:17

I remember we went to the art,

2:21:21

the Tate Museum in London together,

2:21:23

and this just as a general kind of like

2:21:25

Gerald versus the world now.

2:21:28

He was just looking at art and he was like

2:21:31

I don't understand you white people and your problems,

2:21:34

like this is,

2:21:37

he speaks like he has a really strange accent too.

2:21:38

So this is all kind of like an English ization

2:21:41

of what he was trying to say,

2:21:44

but it's like I don't understand all of this stuff.

2:21:46

This is all bullshit.

2:21:48

Like, I mean, I don't, there's a war going on

2:21:49

and he's the first person to always say like

2:21:52

there are still people detained right now.

2:21:55

It's like, there's no conversation

2:21:57

that you can have with him where he doesn't immediately say

2:21:59

my brother is in jail for no reason,

2:22:03

my friends are in jail for no reason,

2:22:05

we don't have time to bullshit,

2:22:07

We don't have time to dick around.

2:22:08

We're here for a reason.

2:22:09

We're here to talk about this and to,

2:22:10

we've got to fix this place,

2:22:13

it's like he has got a fire or had a fire.

2:22:15

I hope he still has this fire

2:22:18

'cause I don't know what Gerald would look like

2:22:20

without that firearm

2:22:22

'cause I don't know.

2:22:23

He really suffered a lot while he was there.

2:22:25

And, but I definitely admired him a lot for that

2:22:27

but it's like every time it got off subject,

2:22:32

he was like, Guantanamo detention.

2:22:35

what do we do, What do we do, what do we do?

2:22:38

You know, it's like, he's really,

2:22:39

really thumping the book on that one, so.

2:22:42

Interviewer

Just a couple more questions.

2:22:50

One is, so, are there some things I didn't ask you

2:22:51

that you wanna just cover before we close and (indistinct)

2:22:55

-

Well, I mean, not really,

2:22:59

there's a lot of things that you've brought up

2:23:02

that other people have not

2:23:05

that I feel like this is the first time

2:23:07

I've ever heard anybody referenced them.

2:23:09

I know that's the first time I've talked

2:23:11

about a couple of these things.

2:23:13

I feel like, I mean, mostly,

2:23:19

I guess I would just like to add a little bit of perspective

2:23:25

from where I'm at now and how I see things

2:23:29

instead of talking about it retrospectively,

2:23:31

I'd really kind of like to just.

2:23:33

Interviewer

Everything I asked you, there's any word?

2:23:35

-

Okay, I mean, now that this wiki leaks thingy drops

2:23:36

not that I think that it had to drop

2:23:44

for people to really care about it

2:23:45

but I don't know if something happened to me

2:23:48

that has really formalized my rage

2:23:50

about the situation with the coming of this information

2:23:52

and to see these documents,

2:23:55

to see that everything that I'd always suspected

2:23:56

that I didn't really give myself the credit

2:24:00

to fully believe

2:24:02

but that I felt like was going on was true.

2:24:04

As a 19 year old, I figured it all out.

2:24:08

It was all bullshit.

2:24:10

They were all just brown people

2:24:11

that they grabbed up and thrown into cages

2:24:12

for no good reason and they kept him there for a long time.

2:24:14

And I am so pissed.

2:24:17

I rate with this government, with these people,

2:24:19

with these moneymaking people that just will hurt anyone.

2:24:22

They've ruined my life.

2:24:28

They've ruined the lives of all of my friends,

2:24:29

and thousands of people.

2:24:33

And they've ruined the lives of all of these detainees

2:24:34

and given us a disease that will never go away.

2:24:36

And they did it all for lies.

2:24:38

It was all for lies.

2:24:41

It's always been a lie.

2:24:42

It's always been a big fucking lie.

2:24:43

They lied to us about everything.

2:24:44

They lied to me about the terrorists,

2:24:46

they lied to me about my college benefits

2:24:48

which I stopped getting.

2:24:50

They did nothing but lie.

2:24:52

I did nothing but offer myself to them, to this country,

2:24:53

to this glorious idea of country

2:24:57

and they did nothing but lie to us

2:24:59

and get us to do despicable work

2:25:01

so that they could make benefit, they could bank on it.

2:25:02

And then, and you know

2:25:06

it's totally ruined my concept of what America is.

2:25:10

This is no longer the country that fought the Nazis

2:25:12

and was the standard of democracy and goodness,

2:25:18

we have become an evil rotten system.

2:25:23

The legal structures that we have enacted in our country

2:25:27

to provide a democracy,

2:25:30

that bullshit term we throw around

2:25:33

that we're trying to take everywhere,

2:25:35

we've completely bastardized in the process

2:25:36

of creating the detention policy.

2:25:38

It has been wifed with errors from the beginning

2:25:41

and every human rights lawyer,

2:25:44

every, just lawyer, a lawyer,

2:25:47

like people that know the law

2:25:49

or have come out and said, this isn't,

2:25:51

I mean there's no way

2:25:55

that you can even put this transparently down on paper.

2:25:55

It's like half the people you got have been tortured.

2:25:58

None of this evidence is admissible.

2:26:01

You don't even have in evidence for half of this shit.

2:26:03

That other stuff you have or here or say,

2:26:06

it's like, all of this stuff has been said,

2:26:08

now the facts are on the table.

2:26:10

it was a lot of really crappy command decisions.

2:26:13

A lot of these people should've never been detained

2:26:16

in the first place.

2:26:18

A lot of these people should've never been kept in detention

2:26:19

in Kandahar in bog room

2:26:21

and all these little miniature camps all over the place.

2:26:22

And they certainly should not have been

2:26:25

falling across to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

2:26:27

And they shouldn't have been kept there?

2:26:29

And it's like, it's just so super frustrating.

2:26:31

It was all for nothing.

2:26:36

And they'll get out of it and nobody will give a shit.

2:26:38

Nobody's gonna give a shit in time.

2:26:40

You know, and I hope that people look at this stuff.

2:26:42

I hope that people take this in

2:26:43

and realize that this is 2011 baby, it's a whole new world.

2:26:45

We are going into a whole new dark world of law

2:26:50

and the imposition of the corporate world into our lives.

2:26:54

And they have no rules.

2:26:58

They will stop at nothing.

2:27:00

It's the Muslims now but like, just like with the Nazis,

2:27:01

just like what the Abbott said, man,

2:27:05

they're gonna come for this

2:27:06

and then they're gonna come for this,

2:27:07

and then they're gonna come for this.

2:27:08

And when they're all out of people to come forward

2:27:10

they're gonna come for you, the freaks and the weirdos

2:27:12

and just anybody that doesn't fit in with their system.

2:27:14

And they'll be here.

2:27:17

If it's 100 years from now

2:27:17

or if it's 10 years from now, they're coming.

2:27:19

They're breaking the walls down in the law,

2:27:21

in the legal system every day,

2:27:24

they have no one to answer for,

2:27:26

they've totally proven that,

2:27:28

they prove it every day that Guantanamo Bay is open.

2:27:29

They're ruining this country.

2:27:32

Everything, everything that we've always fought for,

2:27:34

they've ruined it.

2:27:36

They've shit on it in a matter of a decade.

2:27:37

This one fiasco has really destroyed anything

2:27:38

that we could believe in,

2:27:43

in like what a democracy is,

2:27:44

we've made fools of ourselves in front of the whole nation

2:27:46

and in front of the whole world and in front of God

2:27:50

that everybody keeps talking about.

2:27:53

Everybody's so worried about God.

2:27:54

God, God, God, would do this for God, would do that for God.

2:27:56

Do we beat people up for God?

2:27:58

Is that what we do now?

2:28:00

We put them in cages for God?

2:28:01

Is that the God that you wanna believe in,

2:28:03

Christian white world?

2:28:05

I mean, I don't know it's so just like,

2:28:06

I just have a lot of emotion

2:28:10

that's really like kind of clicking into place

2:28:12

that I felt like I've repressed in the past about this

2:28:13

'cause I knew it was lies before,

2:28:17

but I took that out on myself and now I know it wasn't me

2:28:18

and it's not, I don't have to blame it on me anymore.

2:28:22

It's not a lie, it's them.

2:28:24

But what's the saying you're gonna do for me.

2:28:25

I'm probably just gonna turn it

2:28:29

into one of these old veterans

2:28:29

sitting on the side of the street going,

2:28:31

do you remember Guantanamo Bay?

2:28:32

It's crazy and secretly title.

2:28:33

All lies, is just drunk and shitty

2:28:35

and homeless 'cause no one, when this is over,

2:28:38

TV's off everybody gets to go home and go to bed.

2:28:41

Everybody else got to clean their hands of it.

2:28:44

Now sinners are stuck in the the hell

2:28:45

of our memories forever

2:28:50

and worse and Crimea river for the sinners.

2:28:52

But I mean, the innocent people that live with this forever

2:28:55

is who my heart really goes out to

2:28:59

is all of the people that were just

2:29:03

with their families and detained

2:29:05

and that we beat thoroughly.

2:29:06

And that we punched and we kicked, we yelled at

2:29:10

and we call them sand niggers

2:29:14

and we called them everything that we possibly could.

2:29:15

We hit him, we were just really fucking shitty to them

2:29:17

and they were all innocent every day of every God damn day,

2:29:20

we went out there and we acted like we wanted to act

2:29:23

and we did a lot of really miserable things to innocent men

2:29:26

because we'd been given a flimsy set of orders

2:29:29

that we wanted to believe 'cause we were violent

2:29:32

and we wanted to believe.

2:29:34

The violence that we were enacting was right.

2:29:36

And it was not, it was never was, it's never been right

2:29:38

and it never will be right.

2:29:41

And that nothing will ever rectify that.

2:29:42

We live with that for everyone now.

2:29:44

These are the things that we learned

2:29:46

from the concentration camps of World War II

2:29:49

that we have obviously not learned our lessons from.

2:29:50

They try to clean up their act.

2:29:53

They try to change their demeanor about going about it

2:29:54

but if you asked me, it's still a concentration camp,

2:29:57

it's a concentration of a racial minority in a camp.

2:30:00

I don't know what else to call it.

2:30:04

I mean, and that's a trick that we learned from the Nazis

2:30:06

as well as pincher attacks.

2:30:10

Like when we tried to come in from Turkey and from Kuwait

2:30:11

at the same time, another Nazi technique.

2:30:13

It's like, if you ask me this place

2:30:15

is getting a little hail Hitler

2:30:17

and and it's all happening under the guise

2:30:19

of it being this nationalistic patriotic bullshit

2:30:22

that everybody keeps spewing and it's just not true anymore.

2:30:25

And it's all been based on lies

2:30:29

and we've all been turned into fools

2:30:30

and if we don't start fighting it,

2:30:32

it's gonna take everything over.

2:30:34

It's game over, man.

2:30:36

I mean, sorry, that's just kind of a large emotional

2:30:39

lump of stuff, but that's my sentiment on this place now

2:30:41

where we stand, where I stand with it

2:30:48

and where it stands in my head and my memory, and,

2:30:50

I think that's it.

2:30:56

Interviewer

Well, we need 20 seconds of quiet time

2:31:00

and Johnny needs it for room tone

2:31:03

but I wanna thank you, but I'll thank you again

2:31:05

when Johnny finishes that.

2:31:08

-

[Man With Low Voice] Begin room tone.

2:31:11

End room tone.

2:31:28

Arendt, Christopher - Interview master file

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