Supervielle, Manuel - Interview master file
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Cameraman | We're rolling. | 0:05 |
Peter | Okay. Good morning. | 0:06 |
- | Good morning, Peter. | 0:08 |
- | And we are very grateful to you | 0:10 |
for participating in the Witness to Guantanamo project. | 0:11 | |
And we invite you to speak of your experiences | 0:15 | |
and involvement in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. | 0:17 | |
We are hoping to provide you an opportunity | 0:23 | |
to tell your story in your own words. | 0:25 | |
We are creating an archive of stories | 0:28 | |
that people in America and around the world | 0:30 | |
will have a better opportunity and understanding | 0:33 | |
of what you and others have observed and experienced. | 0:35 | |
Future generations must know what happened in Guantanamo, | 0:40 | |
and by telling your story, you are contributing to history | 0:43 | |
and we are very grateful to you | 0:47 | |
for participating and willing to participate | 0:49 | |
and speaking with us today. | 0:52 | |
If anytime, during the interview you want to take a break, | 0:55 | |
just let us know. | 0:57 | |
- | Okay. | 0:59 |
Peter | And if there's anything you say | 0:59 |
that you would rather have us removed, we can remove it. | 1:01 | |
And I'd like to begin with just some general background | 1:04 | |
including your name and country of origin and hometown. | 1:08 | |
Maybe we can start with that | 1:12 | |
and then we'll go into birth date and age. | 1:13 | |
- | Sure. | 1:15 |
My full name is Manuel Enrique Fernandez, Supervielle. | 1:16 | |
I was born in Havana, Cuba | 1:22 | |
and I currently reside in Miami Beach, Florida. | 1:24 | |
Peter | And your birth date and your age? | 1:28 |
- | 7 October, 1956. | 1:31 |
I am 55 years old. | 1:33 | |
Peter | And your languages and nationality | 1:36 |
and marital status. | 1:40 | |
- | I speak English and Spanish. | 1:42 |
I am married. | 1:45 | |
And what was the other question? | 1:47 | |
Peter | Nationality? | 1:49 |
- | I'm a U.S. citizen. | 1:50 |
Peter | And education, details about your education? | 1:52 |
- | I have a Undergraduate in International Relations | 1:56 |
from St. Mary's University, San Antonio, Texas, | 2:00 | |
a Law degree, JD from the University of Texas, Austin, | 2:03 | |
a Masters in International, I'm sorry, | 2:07 | |
in Military Law from the U.S. Army | 2:10 | |
Judge Advocate General School in Charlottesville, Virginia, | 2:12 | |
a Masters in International Law | 2:15 | |
from the University of Miami, Florida | 2:16 | |
and a Masters in National Security | 2:19 | |
from the National War College in Washington, DC. | 2:21 | |
Peter | And your current occupation? | 2:25 |
- | Independent Consultant, yeah. | 2:27 |
Peter | Well, let's talk a little bit about | 2:30 |
how you got here, and maybe you could begin | 2:33 | |
by how you joined the military? | 2:35 | |
Why you joined the military? | 2:37 | |
And when that was. | 2:38 | |
- | Sure. | 2:39 |
You know, as a Cuban refugee, | 2:41 | |
we lived for only a year in Miami, Florida | 2:44 | |
when we first came out in 1961. | 2:48 | |
And then after that, we lived four years in Indiana | 2:50 | |
where I learned English more or less. | 2:53 | |
And then Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania | 2:55 | |
where I became a big Pirate Steeler fan, still am. | 2:58 | |
And then Tallahassee, Florida. | 3:01 | |
This is all while my dad was getting his education | 3:05 | |
in the United States or reeducation. | 3:08 | |
He already had a Law degree in Cuba | 3:09 | |
but he got a Doctorate in Education. | 3:11 | |
And then ultimately we landed in, | 3:13 | |
we settled in Laredo, Texas, | 3:15 | |
where I did four years of high school. | 3:17 | |
And we did not, I did not have, | 3:20 | |
nor did my parents for that matter have money | 3:23 | |
really for me to go to college. | 3:26 | |
And so I applied for an Army ROTC Scholarship, | 3:28 | |
which I was very fortunate to get. | 3:33 | |
And then I chose to use that at St. Mary's University. | 3:36 | |
I applied for that scholarship for two reasons. | 3:41 | |
One was financial as I indicated | 3:43 | |
but I was also looking to do something of public service | 3:46 | |
in sort of payback, if you will, for the U.S. | 3:49 | |
taking me and my family in. | 3:53 | |
To be perfectly honest with you, | 3:55 | |
I was actually looking at the Peace Corps, | 3:57 | |
but they were only taking people with college degrees. | 3:59 | |
And obviously I was just coming out of high school | 4:03 | |
and they offered no money. | 4:06 | |
So then the army said, hey, you know, we can offer you money | 4:07 | |
and you can still serve your country that way. | 4:10 | |
So that's why I decided to go ahead | 4:12 | |
and take the ROTC Scholarship. | 4:14 | |
Peter | And when you graduated from college, | 4:17 |
what happened then? | 4:18 | |
- | From Undergraduate, | 4:20 |
well before graduating, I had spent... | 4:21 | |
I was gonna be commissioned as an Armor Officer at tanks. | 4:23 | |
And so I spent the Summer between my Junior and Senior year | 4:27 | |
at Fort Bliss, Texas with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment | 4:30 | |
in charge of a platoon, 2nd Squadron, | 4:34 | |
second heavy company there. | 4:37 | |
Anyway, I spent that Summer there | 4:40 | |
and that's when I thought, maybe going to law school | 4:42 | |
wouldn't be such a bad idea. | 4:43 | |
So I took the LSAT and did well on it. | 4:45 | |
And so I asked the army for an educational delay | 4:50 | |
before I started my active duty time. | 4:52 | |
So I went to law school at my own expense, | 4:55 | |
married my sweetheart from college Margie, | 4:58 | |
and then when I graduated from law school | 5:04 | |
I branch transferred from Armor to JAG, | 5:06 | |
Judge Advocate, General School. | 5:11 | |
Peter | Did the army pay for your law school? | 5:14 |
- | No, not at that time, | 5:16 |
because I was the one asking to go to law school. | 5:19 | |
So no. | 5:20 | |
Peter | And after law school, | 5:22 |
then you entered the military? | 5:24 | |
- | Yes. | 5:25 |
After law school, well, I mean, I was already in the army | 5:26 | |
I mean at that point, you know, | 5:29 | |
when I was first commissioned out of St. Mary's, | 5:31 | |
I came out as a Second Lieutenant, | 5:33 | |
and then while I was in law school, you know, | 5:35 | |
I got promoted to First Lieutenant only on paper. | 5:37 | |
And so all the time counted as reserve time | 5:41 | |
but not active duty. | 5:44 | |
So then when I came on active duty in January of '82, | 5:45 | |
January 7th of '82 to be precise, | 5:50 | |
as a Judge Advocate then you go | 5:55 | |
and you did a three-month schooling | 5:56 | |
for new judge advocates, basically coming out of law school. | 5:59 | |
First assignment was with the 24th Infantry Division | 6:03 | |
mechanized at Fort Stewart, Georgia. | 6:06 | |
And I wanted to be in the trial room. | 6:08 | |
I wanted to be an oral advocate. | 6:10 | |
So I was very fortunate once again | 6:13 | |
and I was made a prosecutor for the Division Artillery. | 6:15 | |
I did that for a year, | 6:20 | |
prosecuted about 45 courts martials, | 6:22 | |
everything from murder to mostly drug sales, | 6:26 | |
but assaults, arsons, disrespect, that kind of... | 6:31 | |
And then I was a Defense Counsel for two more years | 6:35 | |
there at Fort Stewart. | 6:37 | |
Then we did about another 70 trials as a Defense Counsel. | 6:39 | |
Again, same kind of cases. | 6:45 | |
Then we went to Korea for two years. | 6:47 | |
While we were at Fort Stewart, we had two children, | 6:49 | |
Christine, the oldest and Joe. | 6:52 | |
They were born in Fort Stewart. | 6:55 | |
And then we moved to Korea, | 6:57 | |
where we were there for two years. | 6:59 | |
I was the Senior Prosecutor for pretty much everything, | 7:01 | |
South of Seoul. | 7:04 | |
We lived in Taegu Korea. | 7:05 | |
Again, more courts martials, | 7:07 | |
but I was doing other stuff as well, administrative law, | 7:09 | |
and it was a lot of interesting things. | 7:12 | |
Then a year of study to get the first Masters in Law, | 7:16 | |
in Charlottesville, | 7:19 | |
then Hawaii for four years. | 7:20 | |
And when I went to Hawaii, | 7:22 | |
that was an International Operational Law | 7:24 | |
position basically. | 7:27 | |
So it was no longer the courtroom stuff. | 7:29 | |
Now it was my first exposure | 7:31 | |
to practicing International Operational Law. | 7:35 | |
So I did a lot of traveling with our deployed forces, | 7:38 | |
when our forces would go on exercises to various places, | 7:42 | |
I would go with the force and deal with host nation | 7:47 | |
on issues that would come up or soldiers doing stupid things | 7:50 | |
or customs issues, tax issues, | 7:53 | |
all kinds of things. | 7:57 | |
I was also involved in Disaster Relief Mission to Bangladesh | 7:59 | |
as the Judge Advocate for Task Force Sea Angel, we called it | 8:06 | |
Madagascar to sort of open relations | 8:11 | |
with the Madagascan military, | 8:14 | |
when they were still somewhat under the Soviet influence. | 8:16 | |
Samoa, like I said, Bangladesh | 8:19 | |
Western Samoa, Thailand, | 8:22 | |
Philippines to help with human rights programs | 8:23 | |
as they were fighting the insurgency there | 8:27 | |
in the late eighties. | 8:29 | |
Peter | Were you trained in international law issues | 8:32 |
or along the way? | 8:34 | |
- | When I did that first Masters in international... | 8:36 |
When I did that first Masters in Military Law, | 8:40 | |
we had a fairly heavy dose of International Law | 8:43 | |
as part of that. | 8:45 | |
And of course, even in the basic course, back in '82 | 8:46 | |
we had a smaller dose, but yes. | 8:49 | |
So even though it was not something | 8:52 | |
that I had focused on in law school, | 8:54 | |
but you know, the military is very, very good | 8:56 | |
at providing you a support system. | 8:59 | |
And so even I had a lot of questions | 9:00 | |
as I was brand new at this stuff, you know, | 9:03 | |
and I was telling, for example, | 9:06 | |
I was telling the captain, the skipper of an army ship | 9:08 | |
that had taken into port in the Solomon Islands, | 9:13 | |
that I didn't see a problem with, you know, | 9:16 | |
customs officials boarding the ship and inspecting it. | 9:18 | |
I found out later that the Navy frowns on that. | 9:20 | |
The U.S. Navy doesn't like that. | 9:22 | |
So, you know, I learned the hard way | 9:24 | |
and that was not the only example, | 9:26 | |
but I also had a lot of folks | 9:27 | |
that I could call back and say, hey, I got this issue. | 9:28 | |
And, you know, either back at the Pentagon, | 9:31 | |
or colleagues. | 9:33 | |
I never felt over my head because I knew | 9:37 | |
that there was always this support group out there | 9:41 | |
that-- | 9:44 | |
Peter | And were you well versed | 9:45 |
in the Geneva Conventions during this time? | 9:46 | |
- | Not well-versed, I mean, I'd studied them | 9:49 |
and I knew what they were, | 9:50 | |
and I knew what the theory was behind them. | 9:52 | |
Like I said, in the Philippines, | 9:55 | |
I was actually trying to talk to them about, you know, | 9:58 | |
Common Article 3 type of issues, | 10:01 | |
but really in many of these foreign countries, | 10:05 | |
especially when it's an internal armed conflict, | 10:07 | |
they don't look at so much the Geneva Conventions | 10:10 | |
as much as the rubric of human rights, | 10:13 | |
and that whole paradigm, you know, it's not, | 10:17 | |
they don't look at it so much | 10:21 | |
in the way of the Geneva Conventions. | 10:22 | |
Peter | So what year are we at now when you were there? | 10:26 |
- | Left, did a Y from '88 to '92, | 10:28 |
then the army sent me to get my Masters in International Law | 10:33 | |
at the University of Miami. | 10:36 | |
Did that for a year, | 10:39 | |
wrote a paper on Status of Forces Agreements, | 10:42 | |
because that was something that I was doing | 10:45 | |
a lot of in the Pacific. | 10:47 | |
And then I went to the Pentagon, to be the Deputy | 10:50 | |
of the Army's International Operation Law Division. | 10:53 | |
And I did that for three years from '93 to '96. | 10:57 | |
There, I began traveling a lot to Latin America, | 11:03 | |
mostly because just happenstance, | 11:07 | |
but I met some very senior people, commanders, | 11:09 | |
the Commander of the Uruguayan Army, for example, | 11:13 | |
and Uruguayans, the Argentines and the Chileans | 11:16 | |
were all heavily engaged in peacekeeping operations | 11:18 | |
around the world, in Africa, | 11:21 | |
and in the Balkans. | 11:24 | |
And their legal system, their military legal system, | 11:27 | |
the photo Taegu that they have, | 11:31 | |
did not really contemplate having forces | 11:33 | |
outside of their home nation in a non-combat operation. | 11:38 | |
And so there was this legal gap that had occurred | 11:43 | |
where the host nation wasn't going to be prosecuting | 11:46 | |
or investigating Argentines for example, | 11:50 | |
and the Argentine code didn't contemplate that, | 11:52 | |
it was not extra territorial in peace time. | 11:55 | |
And so you had this gap, | 11:59 | |
and so I was trying to help these various countries | 12:00 | |
close that gap through legislative measures and training | 12:03 | |
and things of that nature. | 12:10 | |
So I did a lot of that during that period of time | 12:10 | |
traveling other places as well, but there was that. | 12:14 | |
And then Peru also with the Sendero Luminoso, you know, | 12:18 | |
counterinsurgency trying to help the Peruvian military | 12:20 | |
conduct their operations in a manner | 12:23 | |
that would be more consistent again with their own laws | 12:25 | |
and human rights laws. | 12:28 | |
They were having also the trials, | 12:31 | |
where they would cover up the identity | 12:33 | |
of the judges and the prosecutors. | 12:35 | |
And so I sort of advised a little bit on that as well. | 12:37 | |
So let's see, I was '93 to '96, | 12:43 | |
then '96 to '98, we moved to Panama | 12:44 | |
and I was assigned as the Senior Judge Advocate | 12:49 | |
for U.S. Army South. | 12:54 | |
The way the military is structured, | 12:56 | |
we have combatant commands, which are geographic | 12:57 | |
and they are joint in nature. | 13:01 | |
So that that's where you have Central Command, | 13:02 | |
Southern Command, Pacific Command, et cetera. | 13:05 | |
They're joined in the sense that they have all four services | 13:09 | |
underneath them in terms of Army, Navy, Air Force | 13:12 | |
and Marine Corps. | 13:14 | |
So U.S. Army South would be the army component | 13:16 | |
to U.S. Southern Command, which is the joint component. | 13:19 | |
At that time, when we moved down there in '96, | 13:22 | |
U.S. Southern Command was still physically in Panama | 13:25 | |
as was U.S. Army South. | 13:29 | |
I was sent down there because a lot of the work that I... | 13:32 | |
While I was at the Pentagon from '93 to '96, | 13:34 | |
I spent a lot of time working | 13:37 | |
on the Panama Canal turnover issues. | 13:38 | |
And so the Judge Advocate General of the army at the time | 13:41 | |
thought it would be a good idea to have me go down there. | 13:44 | |
I was a Lieutenant Colonel, | 13:47 | |
brand new Lieutenant Colonel at the time, | 13:49 | |
office of about 21, 22 attorneys, | 13:51 | |
and about 30-some support staff, | 13:54 | |
covering the wide range of issues. | 13:59 | |
A lot of young captains, right out of law school, | 14:01 | |
lieutenants right out of law school. | 14:03 | |
I had a very good deputy, | 14:05 | |
and they focused on pretty much a lot of the heavy lifting | 14:07 | |
all of the day-to-day kinds of things. | 14:11 | |
Myself and one of my civilian attorneys | 14:14 | |
focused more on the Panama Canal turnover issues. | 14:16 | |
You know, termination of contracts, | 14:18 | |
a lot of environmental law questions, | 14:21 | |
negotiations for a post 1999 presence. | 14:24 | |
So it was a very interesting time. | 14:28 | |
Plus all the normal operational stuff, | 14:30 | |
we kept doing exercises with foreign countries. | 14:32 | |
'98 to 2000, for a year and a half only, | 14:35 | |
actually Summer of '98 to January of 2000, | 14:41 | |
I was the Chair of the army... | 14:45 | |
I was the Chair of the International Operational | 14:47 | |
Law Division at the Army JAG School, | 14:50 | |
at the Army Judge Advocate General School | 14:52 | |
in Charlottesville, | 14:53 | |
where we taught the Geneva Conventions | 14:56 | |
and other rules of engagement and all those kinds of things. | 14:58 | |
Contractors on the battlefield, human rights, | 15:04 | |
I did that for a year and a half, | 15:08 | |
and then the Commander General Wilhelm, Charles Wilhelm, | 15:10 | |
who's a Marine four-star Commander at SOUTHCOM, | 15:15 | |
U.S. Southern Command hired me to... | 15:18 | |
There was a nomination, I mean, there was a vacancy, | 15:24 | |
and so each service nominates a judge advocate, | 15:25 | |
all four services. | 15:28 | |
And I was selected to be his judge advocate by him | 15:30 | |
starting in I guess it was the very beginning | 15:34 | |
of February of 2000. | 15:37 | |
The initial big marquee item was the implementation | 15:39 | |
of Plan Colombia and the creation | 15:44 | |
of an Army Judge Advocates Corps for the Colombian military | 15:47 | |
to help them with dealing with human rights, | 15:51 | |
abuses, accusations, things like that, | 15:55 | |
and we did that. | 15:59 | |
We working with the Colombians, | 16:00 | |
we helped them to create a JAG Corps. | 16:01 | |
And then that takes us then to obviously | 16:05 | |
September 11th of 2001, | 16:07 | |
and then shortly thereafter-- | 16:12 | |
Peter | Where were you then? | 16:15 |
- | I had just pinned on actually as a Colonel and-- | 16:17 |
Peter | Were you in DC? | 16:22 |
- | No, no, no. | 16:24 |
I was the Southern Command Judge Advocate. | 16:24 | |
I got there in 2000, February of 2000, | 16:27 | |
and then a year and a half later, | 16:30 | |
when 9/11 happened, I was still there. | 16:32 | |
I was at SOUTHCOM for three and a half years | 16:34 | |
from February of 2000 to July of 2003. | 16:37 | |
Peter | So when the planes hit, | 16:43 |
what were you thinking? | 16:46 | |
What were you seeing? | 16:48 | |
What was going on at that day? | 16:49 | |
- | I was literally on an airplane heading to Columbia | 16:51 |
to celebrate the first anniversary | 16:54 | |
of the Colombian JAG Corp, | 16:56 | |
and the pilot diverted to Panama, | 16:59 | |
didn't tell us why. | 17:02 | |
We landed in Panama. | 17:05 | |
There were no customs officials. | 17:06 | |
There were no immigration officials. | 17:09 | |
It was absolute chaotic scene | 17:10 | |
at the Panamanian airport there. | 17:14 | |
And, you know, no one had told us what had happened. | 17:17 | |
So when I got off and I saw | 17:22 | |
one of the Panamanian local people that are working | 17:23 | |
at the airport running around, | 17:27 | |
I said, what's going on? | 17:28 | |
I assumed that there had been a terrorist attack | 17:30 | |
in Columbia, which was not that uncommon at the time. | 17:32 | |
So that's what I thought had happened. | 17:36 | |
But then when they told me what had happened, | 17:38 | |
and then I saw it on the TV, I was stunned. | 17:41 | |
And then it was a question, | 17:47 | |
well, how do I get Columbia from here? | 17:48 | |
And they took us to a hotel and they just dumped us off | 17:52 | |
at the American airlines. | 17:55 | |
And they pretty much said, you know, you're on your own. | 17:57 | |
And I having lived in Panama before, | 18:00 | |
I knew where the American airlines office was. | 18:03 | |
And so I immediately went there and managed to get a flight. | 18:06 | |
It was almost like the last seat available | 18:11 | |
to get to Columbia that day, | 18:13 | |
or that late that night. | 18:15 | |
But I'll tell you that, you know, | 18:17 | |
sitting there briefly, you know, | 18:18 | |
when I got to the hotel the first thing I did | 18:20 | |
was put it on a TV. | 18:21 | |
And aside like every other, you know, | 18:24 | |
300 million Americans feeling the shock | 18:26 | |
of what just happened, you know, | 18:29 | |
I kind of figured that, you know, | 18:35 | |
that our lives were not, as a nation, | 18:37 | |
our lives we're not gonna be the same | 18:40 | |
and our life as a family was in particular | 18:41 | |
not going to be the same. | 18:44 | |
I made it to Columbia. | 18:46 | |
Peter | Why did you still feel the need to go Columbia | 18:48 |
with that current...? | 18:50 | |
- | Well, I mean, a couple of things. | 18:53 |
I mean, number one is that was the mission. | 18:55 | |
We were gonna have this big deal down there. | 18:57 | |
This was the first year anniversary. | 18:59 | |
There was some pride, | 19:01 | |
there were certain elements in Columbia | 19:03 | |
that didn't really like having a JAG Corp. | 19:05 | |
And so it was really important to be there | 19:07 | |
to show the flag, if you will, | 19:11 | |
and provide support to those Colombians | 19:14 | |
who very courageously were pushing forward | 19:16 | |
with this JAG Corp. | 19:18 | |
And I will tell you that they have, you know, | 19:21 | |
the Colombian side have suffered so much, | 19:23 | |
from war and from acts of terror, | 19:26 | |
that they were extraordinarily empathetic | 19:29 | |
to what was happening. | 19:31 | |
And it actually was in many ways comforting to get | 19:33 | |
that kind of empathy from them, | 19:38 | |
when I showed up finally, you know, very late at night | 19:41 | |
I managed to find my way to the, you know, | 19:44 | |
to the military hotel that we were staying at. | 19:45 | |
And then they had a very moving ceremony, | 19:49 | |
in memorial of the victims of 9/11. | 19:51 | |
And, you know, it was very difficult. | 20:00 | |
I mean, if you recall, all the planes were grounded | 20:01 | |
so it's not like I was gonna be able to go anywhere anyway, | 20:04 | |
other than, you know, I was stuck there in Columbia | 20:06 | |
for about 10 days or so, | 20:09 | |
which should have only been... | 20:12 | |
And all the other Americans | 20:13 | |
that were supposed to be coming in for the conference, | 20:14 | |
I was showing up a couple of days early | 20:16 | |
because I was helping to organize it. | 20:18 | |
Nobody else got there. | 20:20 | |
So it was quite a challenge to sort of | 20:22 | |
fill administratively, you know, | 20:25 | |
to make the presentations | 20:28 | |
for some of the people who were not able to show up. | 20:29 | |
Peter | So after those 10 days, | 20:35 |
were you given a new charge, | 20:36 | |
or were you given new responsibilities? | 20:37 | |
- | I went back to... | 20:39 |
Now keep in mind, you know, | 20:41 | |
this was still.... | 20:45 | |
The president at the time had not yet, you know, | 20:47 | |
he did shoot, I believe, you know, | 20:50 | |
some sort of declarations in terms of, you know, | 20:52 | |
who we thought was responsible for this and all that. | 20:55 | |
But no, I went back to SOUTHCOM, you know, | 20:58 | |
at that point, my mission was still focused on | 21:00 | |
Plan Colombia and all the other stuff | 21:03 | |
having to do with the war against drugs. | 21:05 | |
That was a big part of our mission at the time. | 21:08 | |
It still is, you know, | 21:09 | |
all the counter-narcotics intercept at sea, | 21:11 | |
kind of things that we were doing. | 21:15 | |
That was all a big deal. | 21:17 | |
So I was still focused on that. | 21:19 | |
And then just to finish out, you know, | 21:22 | |
I did the three year and a half years at SOUTHCOM, | 21:24 | |
from there another year to get | 21:27 | |
the Masters in National Security | 21:28 | |
at the National War College in Washington, DC. | 21:30 | |
And then I was the Executive Officer | 21:34 | |
to the Army General Counsel, political appointee. | 21:36 | |
So I'm kind of like his military aid, if you will, | 21:39 | |
just to advise on military things | 21:41 | |
that as a civilian he might not otherwise be aware of. | 21:44 | |
Did that for a year, and then I was asked to go serve | 21:50 | |
as the Senior Judge Advocate for all U.S. | 21:53 | |
and coalition forces in Afghanistan for a year. | 21:56 | |
So that would be '05 to '06. | 21:59 | |
And then I came back from that, | 22:01 | |
and then I was selected to be on a faculty | 22:03 | |
at the National War College. | 22:06 | |
And so that was from '06 to when I retired | 22:08 | |
at the beginning of '08. | 22:10 | |
Peter | So can we go back to SOUTHCOM, | 22:13 |
if you were focusing still on Columbia | 22:16 | |
and intersecting drugs, and did that continue? | 22:19 | |
How long did that continue? | 22:23 | |
- | It still goes on today. | 22:25 |
Peter | No, you, you. | 22:26 |
- | Until the day I left. | 22:27 |
Peter | So they never changed your role in spite of 9/11. | 22:29 |
- | Oh, no of course it did, | 22:32 |
once they said on December 17th | 22:34 | |
or somewhere in the middle of December, | 22:37 | |
Secretary of Defense said, | 22:40 | |
we're sending all these people | 22:41 | |
that we've captured in Afghanistan, | 22:44 | |
to the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo, | 22:46 | |
the least worst place that we can put them | 22:49 | |
or something to that effect. | 22:51 | |
And I knew at that point that, you know, | 22:53 | |
once again, you know, our world was going to get | 22:56 | |
turned upside down because Guantanamo was in our area | 22:59 | |
of responsibility. | 23:03 | |
The way the military works is these combatant commands | 23:04 | |
have geographic responsibility. | 23:06 | |
And if something's happening in your area, | 23:08 | |
then you have to deal with it. | 23:10 | |
And so I knew right away, | 23:12 | |
that we were going to be charged with the responsibility | 23:14 | |
of dealing with these people coming over. | 23:16 | |
Peter | And what did you know about those people | 23:20 |
on December 17th? | 23:22 | |
- | Nothing. | 23:24 |
I mean, other than the fact that they'd been captured | 23:24 | |
on the battlefield in Afghanistan. | 23:26 | |
Beyond that, you know, I was not focused on that. | 23:28 | |
Peter | And were you, and from December 17th | 23:33 |
moving forward what was your role | 23:36 | |
and did you go to Guantanamo | 23:39 | |
to see them when they were brought to Guantanamo | 23:40 | |
or did you know who these people were? | 23:43 | |
Or how they would treat in Afghanistan? | 23:47 | |
What did you know along those lines? | 23:49 | |
- | Okay, well, shortly, well, | 23:52 |
I was actually on vacation, | 23:57 | |
because it was right before Christmas, | 23:59 | |
and so I had agreed... | 24:00 | |
I had a staff at SOUTHCOM, | 24:02 | |
let me give you a little bit of context. | 24:03 | |
I had one senior officer from each service. | 24:05 | |
So had an Air force, Colonel Terry Farrell. | 24:08 | |
I had a Navy Captain, Marty Evans. | 24:11 | |
I had a Marine Lieutenant Colonel, Wendy Stafford | 24:14 | |
and I had an Army, | 24:18 | |
I think, I'm not sure if he was a Major at the time | 24:20 | |
or if he was a Lieutenant Colonel. | 24:22 | |
I know he got promoted to Lieutenant Colonel | 24:24 | |
but Mark Jinglers. | 24:25 | |
And then I had a Senior Civilian, | 24:28 | |
but he did engagement programs, legal engagement stuff | 24:29 | |
with folks down in the theater in South America, | 24:33 | |
Central America and Caribbean. | 24:38 | |
So, but those four military officers, | 24:40 | |
that was the entire staff that I had there. | 24:43 | |
Granted, they were all very senior, | 24:47 | |
but it was very small staff. | 24:48 | |
The same as all the other combatant commands. | 24:51 | |
And on December 17th, I was on vacation | 24:53 | |
because the plan was that during Christmas, | 24:59 | |
they were all gonna take off, | 25:02 | |
and then I would come back before they left. | 25:04 | |
That turned out to be a really bad plan | 25:06 | |
because when I got back, some days later, | 25:10 | |
I think like maybe on the 19th or the 20th, | 25:13 | |
something like that, they were all gone, | 25:14 | |
you know, scattered to California and Montana and, you know, | 25:17 | |
wherever Washington State. | 25:22 | |
So that was a very challenging time, | 25:25 | |
because I was essentially there when I got back. | 25:31 | |
It was all very intense as far as, you know, what do we do? | 25:34 | |
And so the immediate priority, | 25:41 | |
the immediate priority was, okay, | 25:43 | |
we're gonna be getting all these guys, | 25:45 | |
where are we going to put them? | 25:46 | |
Where we're going to put them? | 25:48 | |
And so, you know, we would have, you know | 25:50 | |
we were working really long hours | 25:55 | |
and it was the entire staff. | 25:57 | |
The engineer, the command surgeon, the chaplain, | 25:59 | |
the chief of operations, the chief of intelligence, | 26:03 | |
the JAG communications, everybody just trying to figure out | 26:06 | |
what are we gonna do with these guys? | 26:10 | |
And so we contemplated a number of different options | 26:11 | |
and the most reasonable option, | 26:14 | |
this went on for like, I don't know a week or 10 days, | 26:19 | |
all the way through Christmas basically | 26:23 | |
up until it beginning of-- | 26:26 | |
Peter | January. | 26:29 |
- | Yeah, or maybe right after Christmas, before the New Year, | 26:30 |
somewhere in there. | 26:32 | |
I mean, we were contemplating things like, you know | 26:33 | |
do we bring a ship in, for example, | 26:35 | |
and, you know, and just park it | 26:38 | |
and then put these people on board the ship? | 26:39 | |
I mean, that was sort of like a quick solution. | 26:41 | |
You know, they were actually in one | 26:43 | |
of the Geneva Conventions, not the third, | 26:45 | |
but, you know, it talks about not doing that kind of thing. | 26:46 | |
We contemplated tents. | 26:52 | |
I mean, this and that and another thing. | 26:54 | |
At the end of the day, you know, | 26:56 | |
as obviously history proved out, | 26:57 | |
we settled on building up Camp X-Ray | 26:59 | |
which is essentially a place where | 27:02 | |
during the days of the Haitian Migrant | 27:04 | |
work issues back in the mid nineties, | 27:08 | |
was sort of the temporary detention place | 27:11 | |
for people who were misbehaving | 27:13 | |
and needed to be separated or segregated from the main camp. | 27:16 | |
And so all it was, was just basically, | 27:20 | |
there weren't many there, | 27:22 | |
I don't remember the numbers but you know, | 27:23 | |
less than 30 or not many less than that. | 27:26 | |
I mean, it was just a very small footprint there, | 27:29 | |
as far as how many people you could hold, | 27:33 | |
somewhere in the number of maybe 30, something like that. | 27:35 | |
But the thing is with, you know, | 27:37 | |
seven, eight years of non-use, | 27:40 | |
it had been completely overgrown and was really not usable. | 27:42 | |
Nevertheless, our engineers did a fabulously great job | 27:47 | |
of getting in there, clearing it out, | 27:52 | |
and then just creating that initial space | 27:54 | |
that could be used to detain people. | 27:57 | |
The first plane load, I don't remember the exact date | 28:00 | |
but I want to say it was like 10th, 11th, 12th of January | 28:02 | |
or something like that. | 28:05 | |
Peter | 11th. | 28:06 |
- | 11th. | 28:07 |
And so they had precious little time | 28:09 | |
to get that place up and going. | 28:11 | |
And we were getting, we were on an operations tempo, | 28:14 | |
an op tempo of about a plane every other day. | 28:16 | |
And each plane was bringing, I don't know, 30, 35 people. | 28:20 | |
And so these guys were having to build literally | 28:23 | |
and as soon as it was built, | 28:27 | |
the particular cage, if you will, | 28:32 | |
it was filled up and then they build the next one | 28:35 | |
and the next thing, you know, | 28:38 | |
it'd be filled up the next day. | 28:39 | |
Peter | So the idea of where has these men came from | 28:40 |
SOUTHCOM from, essentially your team. | 28:44 | |
I mean, basically the people in DC said, | 28:46 | |
you take care of it. | 28:50 | |
You find a place for them, that's not our job. | 28:51 | |
- | Oh yeah. | 28:53 |
And by my team, of course it was, | 28:54 | |
let me continue to context. | 28:55 | |
The commander at the time was an acting commander, | 28:57 | |
Major General Gary Spear, | 28:59 | |
because our commander had been Peter Pace, General Pace, | 29:03 | |
who then had been promoted up position-wise | 29:07 | |
to be the Vice Chairman of the joint Chiefs of Staff. | 29:09 | |
The new incoming commander was delayed in his arrival | 29:13 | |
for a long period of time for about a year, I think. | 29:16 | |
And so that left us with our Deputy Commander, | 29:20 | |
Major General Gary Spear, as the acting commander. | 29:22 | |
You know, SOUTHCOM as compared | 29:29 | |
to the other combatant commands was relatively junior | 29:30 | |
in terms of its staff. | 29:33 | |
Like, you know, our Chief of Operations | 29:36 | |
was a one-star General. | 29:40 | |
Chief of Intelligence was a one-star General. | 29:41 | |
These are positions that Pay Comm, Pacific Command, | 29:44 | |
or European Command or Central Command would be, you know, | 29:47 | |
two-star Generals, maybe even three, depending. | 29:50 | |
So, you know, we found ourselves, | 29:52 | |
and General Spear found himself all of a sudden | 29:56 | |
thrust into this very difficult situation | 29:58 | |
and being one down, basically, you know, | 30:02 | |
without an actual commander, but with an acting commander. | 30:05 | |
And, you know, he did a, I thought incredibly marvelous job. | 30:09 | |
Peter | But I just wanted to confirm, | 30:15 |
so it was his responsibility with-- | 30:16 | |
- | Yes, you know, in the military, | 30:18 |
we break things down into basically three strata. | 30:21 | |
You have the national or strategic level authority, | 30:24 | |
I should say, | 30:28 | |
and that would be the joint staff, | 30:29 | |
and the department of defense and the president basically | 30:33 | |
and the inter-agency, that's strategic level. | 30:37 | |
And then the operational level are those combatant commands. | 30:40 | |
And then at the tactical level | 30:44 | |
would be whatever joint task force | 30:45 | |
or whatever maneuver units are actually part of the thing. | 30:47 | |
So, yes, we were the ones that were basically told | 30:51 | |
you know, deal with these guys. | 30:55 | |
Find where you're gonna put these guys. | 30:58 | |
Peter | And did you don't know anything more | 31:02 |
about these guys a long way before January 11th | 31:03 | |
just as between that time when you first heard about them | 31:09 | |
and January 11th did you know anything more about them | 31:11 | |
or what was going on? | 31:14 | |
- | Okay. | 31:16 |
I called a friend of mine who had been the staff | 31:19 | |
to judge advocate at U.S. Central Command, | 31:23 | |
but was now retired from his Air Force career, | 31:25 | |
but was still serving as a civilian at U.S. Central Command, | 31:29 | |
retired Colonel Barry Hammel. | 31:33 | |
And so I called him up. | 31:36 | |
Shortly, you know, shortly once I got back to SOUTHCOM, | 31:37 | |
to Miami right before Christmas, | 31:42 | |
and I called him up, | 31:45 | |
and because, I mean, you know, I knew that | 31:47 | |
the first thing is all right, so like, what are these guys? | 31:50 | |
Because people weren't even, | 31:52 | |
they didn't know what the call them, | 31:53 | |
on the news or the... | 31:55 | |
And so I called him up and I said, Hey Barry, | 31:57 | |
I understand you guys are going to be sending us | 32:01 | |
all these guys. | 32:02 | |
He goes, yep. | 32:03 | |
And I said, so what's their legal status ? | 32:04 | |
He says, I don't know. | 32:07 | |
I said, what do you mean you don't know? | 32:10 | |
He says, I can't answer that. | 32:11 | |
I don't know. I've asked the question. | 32:13 | |
I've asked Washington, I've asked Jane, | 32:14 | |
referring to Jane Dalton, who is a dear friend | 32:16 | |
of both his and mine, | 32:18 | |
Navy Captain, she was the Chairman's Legal Advisor. | 32:20 | |
I've asked and so far I have not been given | 32:23 | |
any kind of clear answer. | 32:26 | |
I was just told that, you know, we're working on it. | 32:27 | |
We will get back to you. | 32:30 | |
So, you know, he said, I suggest you call her. | 32:32 | |
And I did. | 32:39 | |
So I called her up. I called Jane. | 32:41 | |
She and I had served together in the Pacific | 32:44 | |
when I was at Pacific Command. | 32:47 | |
She was at CINCPAC Fleet which is the Navy component | 32:49 | |
to Pacific Command. | 32:52 | |
So we had met and I knew her husband who's a Navy Captain. | 32:54 | |
She was at the time a Navy Commander. | 32:58 | |
I was an Army Captain, or I guess Lieutenant Commander. | 33:00 | |
And she pretty much told me what Barry had already said | 33:04 | |
which was, you know, we're working on it, man. | 33:08 | |
You know, we'll get back to you. | 33:09 | |
So I went to go see my boss, General Spear. | 33:13 | |
And I told him, I said, you know, | 33:16 | |
I can't answer for you because how we treat these guys. | 33:19 | |
And a lot of the questions that are being asked now | 33:23 | |
in terms of, you know, at the tactical level, | 33:25 | |
how do we actually conduct this mission, | 33:29 | |
depends on what their status is. | 33:30 | |
And, you know, I'm not getting an answer to that, | 33:33 | |
and so we drafted a letter, a memo, | 33:35 | |
that he signed, going up to the Chairman, | 33:40 | |
basically asking the question. | 33:45 | |
Because, you know, after a few days of this | 33:47 | |
it was apparent that my asking the question, you know, | 33:50 | |
was probably not gonna get it answered. | 33:53 | |
So we decided it would be better to have him | 33:56 | |
ask the question of the Chairman. | 33:58 | |
Peter | As the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff. | 34:01 |
- | The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. | 34:02 |
So I drafted a memo for him and, you know, he sent it on up. | 34:04 | |
It was that memo... | 34:08 | |
I think this was late December. | 34:10 | |
I can't remember if was late December or very early January | 34:12 | |
when this went out, but it was around that timeframe, | 34:14 | |
right around the New Year. | 34:17 | |
It was that memo that I believe it was on February 7th, | 34:18 | |
the president actually answered, | 34:22 | |
with his memo basically saying these guys are detainees | 34:24 | |
and, you know, they are, well, I'm sure you've seen the memo | 34:28 | |
but that memo was in response to the one-- | 34:35 | |
- | That Bush's memo was the response | 34:37 |
to that memo that General Spear sent. | 34:39 | |
- | Well, yeah, because I mean, | 34:42 |
when it went from General Spear to the chairman, | 34:44 | |
then the chairman sent it up the chain | 34:47 | |
to the Secretary of Defense who, | 34:50 | |
and then up in Washington, they, you know, but yeah | 34:52 | |
I mean, sooner or later, they were gonna have to come up | 34:56 | |
with an answer anyway, | 34:58 | |
but hopefully, you know, this memo from us was intended | 34:59 | |
to get an answer quicker or sooner rather than later. | 35:03 | |
What it did do though, is in the meantime, | 35:07 | |
we got sort of a... | 35:11 | |
Without going into too much of the details here, | 35:14 | |
but part of the way the communications, | 35:17 | |
the official communications work | 35:19 | |
when you're being tasked by superior to as a military unit | 35:21 | |
to go do something, you know, | 35:26 | |
oftentimes you're given a warning order | 35:27 | |
which is basically a memo that says, | 35:29 | |
hey we're about to give you a task to go do this. | 35:31 | |
You are here by warned, | 35:34 | |
and start getting yourself ready basically. | 35:35 | |
And so we got one of those saying, | 35:39 | |
hey, you're about to get these detainees | 35:40 | |
or these people from... | 35:42 | |
They weren't calling them detainees at the time, | 35:43 | |
you're about to get these guys from Afghanistan, you know, | 35:44 | |
start working on it. | 35:47 | |
That's what we got around the 17th, 18th, | 35:48 | |
you know, middle of December. | 35:51 | |
Well, as we kept asking questions, | 35:53 | |
there would be changes to that warning order basically | 35:57 | |
saying, okay, you know, | 36:00 | |
change number one, change number two, | 36:02 | |
and each one kind of massaged the original one, | 36:03 | |
the original warning order a little bit. | 36:07 | |
We never actually... | 36:10 | |
What we were hoping for was the actual tasking order | 36:11 | |
telling us, okay here's your exact mission, | 36:14 | |
but we kept getting a, I seem to recall, | 36:17 | |
that we kept getting a series of these modifications. | 36:20 | |
And on one of those in response to our insistence | 36:23 | |
on asking for the status, | 36:26 | |
this has been a really long time, | 36:32 | |
so I don't remember, | 36:33 | |
and I haven't seen it. | 36:34 | |
I have not looked at this stuff, | 36:35 | |
but what it said was something to the effect of | 36:36 | |
that, you know, you shall treat these people | 36:39 | |
in a manner consistent with the principles | 36:43 | |
of the Geneva Convention, but not the Geneva Convention. | 36:47 | |
Peter | This will be before February 7th. | 36:51 |
- | Yes. Oh, yes. | 36:52 |
Yeah, yeah. | 36:53 | |
This was either very late December or early January. | 36:54 | |
And that's what it said. | 36:57 | |
Treat them in a manner consistent with the principles, | 36:59 | |
but you do not apply the actual Geneva Convention | 37:01 | |
as a matter of law. | 37:05 | |
It didn't say that, but that's the way I took. | 37:05 | |
It was you're not applying the Geneva Convention | 37:07 | |
as a matter of law, but follow the principles. | 37:11 | |
I don't know who came up with that. | 37:13 | |
I have no idea where the genesis of that came from, | 37:14 | |
but that's what we got back. | 37:18 | |
Now, if you're a military commander, as you know, | 37:22 | |
you can imagine that that is not the kind of clear guidance | 37:27 | |
that you would prefer. | 37:30 | |
So I talked to my boss and, you know, | 37:33 | |
he wanted me to explain what that meant. | 37:36 | |
And I said, well, you know, | 37:39 | |
this is as good as it's gonna get for a while, | 37:42 | |
so, you know, we need to do what we can with this. | 37:45 | |
And I believe that, you know, within our JAG community, | 37:48 | |
we can ascertain, and there's been articles written | 37:54 | |
in fact from when I was at the Army JAG School, | 37:57 | |
one of the fellows that worked for me | 37:59 | |
who I believe you've met Jeff Corn, | 38:01 | |
he and another fellow Mike Smit, | 38:05 | |
Major Mike Smit had published some articles | 38:08 | |
precisely on the subject of principles | 38:11 | |
of the Geneva Convention. | 38:12 | |
So I say, you know, there's something out there, | 38:15 | |
so let's take a look at it. | 38:17 | |
And, you know, we were having daily, | 38:19 | |
my staff, by the way had come back | 38:22 | |
when I started calling them up, saying, | 38:25 | |
everybody, get back here. | 38:26 | |
It took three or four or five days, | 38:27 | |
but eventually everybody got back. | 38:29 | |
So by, you know, sometime right after Christmas | 38:30 | |
but before the New Year's, we had everybody back. | 38:33 | |
I sent Wendy Stafford up to be... | 38:36 | |
She's a Marine. | 38:39 | |
And I sent her to go support the Marine Commander, | 38:41 | |
who had been tasked to be the Joint Task Force Commander | 38:46 | |
for this thing. | 38:49 | |
Mike Leonard was a Brigadier General, Mike Leonard, | 38:50 | |
and so Wendy went up there | 38:53 | |
and I think they were camped in June | 38:55 | |
and spent like a week or so there with him | 38:58 | |
before they deployed to Guantanamo. | 39:01 | |
Peter | She was supposed to inform him | 39:04 |
on what you told her? | 39:05 | |
- | Yeah, she was our liaison, if you will, | 39:07 |
to make sure that on all these various legal issues | 39:10 | |
and whatnot that I had somebody | 39:13 | |
that actually worked for me there with General Leonard | 39:14 | |
to facilitate communications. | 39:17 | |
Peter | So what were you thinking | 39:23 |
in terms of since this was somewhat ambiguous, | 39:24 | |
since you knew something about Geneva conventions | 39:28 | |
and you knew the law probably better than many people, | 39:30 | |
did you think this was strange | 39:33 | |
or did you figure this was a new paradigm? | 39:35 | |
You know, as Gonzales had said, | 39:36 | |
maybe I don't know if he had set up by this point, | 39:39 | |
but what was your own thoughts | 39:41 | |
in terms of what was going on? | 39:43 | |
- | Well, you know, that's a good question. | 39:47 |
I mean, I think that there was so much | 39:48 | |
chaotic confusion going on, | 39:52 | |
and I mean, every day was just everything's | 39:54 | |
you know, everything from, you know, how high of a gap | 39:57 | |
does there have to be between the chain link | 40:01 | |
and the base cement floor, and, you know | 40:03 | |
just a lot of that kind of stuff. | 40:07 | |
And all the whirlwind of, you know why we can't use a ship | 40:11 | |
or why we shouldn't be using a ship out there. | 40:15 | |
And if we did and those kinds of things, | 40:17 | |
and by the way, I mean, this, you know, | 40:19 | |
all this stuff with Columbia was still going on, | 40:21 | |
the peacekeeping initiatives with the Argentina, | 40:23 | |
all that stuff's going on. | 40:27 | |
It's not like that just stops the war against drugs. | 40:28 | |
In fact, how that interplays, | 40:30 | |
how the war on drugs now is gonna be, | 40:33 | |
how all these things are taking resources away from us | 40:34 | |
that we need to devote to Guantanamo. | 40:38 | |
So all this stuff is going on. | 40:41 | |
So to answer your question, I guess, | 40:42 | |
it was very it was certainly unsettling, | 40:45 | |
because we were not getting sort of clear guidance, | 40:47 | |
but, you know, every time ever since you were a cadet, | 40:50 | |
as in ROTC, or one of the academies, | 40:54 | |
you are taught and trained to work through the very fluid, | 40:58 | |
constantly changing, rapidly changing, chaotic situations | 41:04 | |
to accomplish the mission | 41:07 | |
in a way that you've been... | 41:09 | |
Where you are trying to do that in a manner | 41:11 | |
that is consistent with the values and the principles | 41:13 | |
that you've been taught all along the way. | 41:15 | |
And so, you know, there's an expression in the military | 41:19 | |
that is, that it is better to ask for forgiveness | 41:22 | |
than to ask for permission. | 41:26 | |
That assumes that the person that is acting, | 41:29 | |
is gonna be acting consistent | 41:32 | |
with all their training, education and values | 41:33 | |
that they've received over the years. | 41:35 | |
And so we got to a point here where I thought | 41:39 | |
we had pushed this thing as far as we were going to push it | 41:44 | |
and we had gotten a response, | 41:45 | |
which was, you know, follow the principles, | 41:47 | |
but not the convention. | 41:50 | |
And so when I went to go talk to my staff, | 41:52 | |
I mean I wasn't doing this on my own obviously. | 41:55 | |
I had my staff and I had a big conference table. | 41:57 | |
And every day, several times a day, | 42:00 | |
we'd sit down and say, okay, here's the issue of the hour | 42:01 | |
not even the issue of the day, but the issue of the hour. | 42:04 | |
And on this one, you know, | 42:07 | |
we thought about it pretty hard, | 42:09 | |
but, you know, we came to a consensus that, you know, | 42:10 | |
above all, when you look at | 42:14 | |
the 3rd Geneva convention particular on POW's, | 42:16 | |
there is a very clear and explicit theme | 42:19 | |
and value if you will, of transparency. | 42:23 | |
And because that's what's going to ensure, | 42:26 | |
I mean that's what we were doing with the Colombians, | 42:30 | |
basically trying to create a JAG Corps | 42:31 | |
to create transparency. | 42:33 | |
It's the same thing here. | 42:34 | |
So, you know, the easiest way to do that | 42:36 | |
would be to have the International Committee | 42:39 | |
for the Red Cross which is very specifically mentioned | 42:42 | |
in the Geneva Convention, | 42:44 | |
and have them be physically there to help us. | 42:46 | |
And, oh by the way, you know, | 42:49 | |
I speak Spanish and I understand Latin America, | 42:50 | |
but I knew that these guys that were coming | 42:54 | |
did not speak Spanish and were not Latin. | 42:55 | |
And so we needed some help, cultural help | 42:58 | |
and many other things. | 43:01 | |
And so I went and spoke with with our Chief of Intelligence, | 43:03 | |
General Burgess, Chief of Operations General Jackman, | 43:07 | |
with our chaplain, with our doc medical officer | 43:11 | |
and Public Affairs and others, | 43:16 | |
and everybody was consistently saying, | 43:18 | |
yeah it would be a good idea to have the ICRC. | 43:21 | |
Peter | When was this? | 43:24 |
- | This was taking place again, | 43:26 |
I think before the New Year, late December. | 43:28 | |
Peter | So that early, you thought the ICRC | 43:31 |
the Red Cross should be present? | 43:33 | |
- | Well, yeah. | 43:35 |
I mean, like I said, we had already gotten back | 43:36 | |
the answer of treat them in a manner consistent | 43:40 | |
with the principles, but not the Convention. | 43:42 | |
And so, you know, the short answer is, okay well, | 43:46 | |
one of the big, most important principles | 43:49 | |
is transparency ICRC, let's do it. | 43:51 | |
And so, you know, we didn't operate in a vacuum. | 43:54 | |
We're talked internally within my office, | 43:58 | |
then we talk with Wendy who talked to General Leonard. | 44:02 | |
He said, for sure, that's, you know, it's a great idea. | 44:05 | |
And the rest of the SOUTHCOM staff | 44:09 | |
thought it was a good idea. | 44:11 | |
So then I went to go see my boss General Spear. | 44:12 | |
And he says, all right, you know. | 44:16 | |
Peter | Anybody say, it's not a good idea? | 44:19 |
- | Not anybody that we talked to. | 44:20 |
Peter | And you didn't think you need to go up the chain | 44:22 |
beyond General Spear, before you made that decision? | 44:25 | |
- | Well, what do you mean by, did I think? | 44:30 |
Peter | Well, I think, were you nervous | 44:33 |
about making that kind of decision | 44:35 | |
and thinking that maybe someone above, you know | 44:37 | |
who wouldn't apply to Geneva's as such | 44:40 | |
might be concerned about sending the Red Cross | 44:43 | |
and you should worry about them | 44:45 | |
at that higher level before you-- | 44:48 | |
- | I don't think that I gave that much thought | 44:51 |
to be honest with you. | 44:54 | |
I mean, I think there was just a lot of stuff happening | 44:54 | |
and it, you know, my staff and I thought | 44:57 | |
it was the right thing. | 45:00 | |
The SOUTHCOM staff thought it was the right thing. | 45:01 | |
The JTF Commander thought it was the right thing. | 45:03 | |
And then my boss thought it was the right thing. | 45:06 | |
So maybe if I had stopped to actually think about, you know, | 45:10 | |
consequences and stuff like that, | 45:13 | |
but the bottom line is I didn't. | 45:14 | |
And so when I talked to my boss, he said, | 45:16 | |
all right go ahead and do it, then I did. | 45:18 | |
Peter | How'd you do it? | 45:20 |
- | Well, I didn't have a phone number, obviously. | 45:22 |
So I went to somebody else on our staff | 45:23 | |
in the J-5, which is policy. | 45:26 | |
And there was some people there that I knew | 45:31 | |
dealt with the ICRC. | 45:33 | |
So they gave me a number, | 45:36 | |
but it was like to the ICRC person in Latin America, | 45:37 | |
in Mexico or someplace. | 45:39 | |
I called them up and they gave me the number | 45:40 | |
to the ICRC folks in Washington, | 45:42 | |
and then they gave me the number of the ones in Geneva. | 45:44 | |
So eventually I got ahold of the Geneva office | 45:47 | |
and I called them up. | 45:49 | |
Peter | And what'd you say to them? | 45:50 |
- | Well, I introduce myself, you know, Colonel Supervielle, | 45:52 |
I'm the Senior Judge Advocate at JAG lawyer | 45:58 | |
at U.S Southern Command. | 46:00 | |
You may have heard that in a few weeks, | 46:01 | |
we're going to be receiving these people | 46:04 | |
that were captured on the battlefield from Afghanistan | 46:05 | |
at Guantanamo, and were responsible | 46:08 | |
for the operational planning | 46:09 | |
of the detention of these people. | 46:11 | |
Would you all be interested in having representation there? | 46:14 | |
Peter | And to which they said? | 46:18 |
- | There was a long pause. | 46:21 |
And the guy asked me, he says, who are you again? | 46:23 | |
I said, I'm Colonel Supervielle. | 46:26 | |
And he says, and so you're inviting us to come | 46:28 | |
and be at Guantanamo? | 46:32 | |
And I said, yes. | 46:33 | |
He says, well, yes, we would very much like to be there. | 46:35 | |
Thank you very much. That's very kind of you. | 46:38 | |
And I said, well, you know, just, | 46:41 | |
that was pretty much it. | 46:43 | |
And then it became a question of, | 46:45 | |
then he says, I need to put you in contact, | 46:47 | |
please call Mr. Urs Boegli, | 46:50 | |
who is our Chief Representative for the Americans | 46:52 | |
in Washington, | 46:55 | |
and you can coordinate the details with him. | 46:57 | |
So I did. | 46:59 | |
I think right after that phone call, | 47:00 | |
I called Mr. Boegli up, | 47:01 | |
and he was also very kind and, you know, | 47:04 | |
very appreciative and everything. | 47:07 | |
And then I went to talk to our Chief of Operations | 47:09 | |
General Jackman, | 47:12 | |
and I said, these are the ICRC folks, | 47:13 | |
this is an opera... | 47:15 | |
At this point, you know, getting them there | 47:16 | |
and everything is operational in nature. | 47:18 | |
So I put them in contact and I believe that they spoke, | 47:20 | |
in fact, I'm sure they did. | 47:24 | |
Peter | Did they come before the detainees? | 47:28 |
- | No, no. | 47:31 |
This conversation had to have taken place | 47:32 | |
I guess now that I think about it | 47:36 | |
I guess sometime in January, | 47:37 | |
because if you're saying that | 47:39 | |
the first detainees arrived when? | 47:41 | |
Peter | January 11th. | 47:43 |
- | Okay. | 47:44 |
And these fellows... | 47:45 | |
I went on a flight there, I don't know, | 47:47 | |
I think it was like the middle of the month, | 47:51 | |
like a few days after that first flight of detainees, | 47:53 | |
like maybe on the 15th, | 47:55 | |
and I think maybe two plane loads that arrived or something. | 47:57 | |
And the ICRC showed up like two days after I showed up. | 47:59 | |
So they didn't arrive probably until like January, | 48:03 | |
I don't know, 17, 18, something like that. | 48:07 | |
Peter | And were you there when they showed up? | 48:10 |
- | Oh, yes. | 48:12 |
Peter | And when you there deliberately to be there | 48:13 |
so you could greet them or it just so happened | 48:14 | |
you were there? | 48:16 | |
- | No, well I was there deliberately, | 48:17 |
it wasn't so much so I can greet them. | 48:21 | |
Yeah, what happened next there, going back to the invite | 48:24 | |
and getting the ball rolling and all that, | 48:28 | |
is it wasn't that same day or maybe a day later, | 48:31 | |
two days later, something like that. | 48:36 | |
I was having three or four phone conversations | 48:38 | |
with Captain Dalton, the Chairman's Legal Advisor | 48:42 | |
and so the next phone call of these | 48:45 | |
and we were talking about number of different issues. | 48:47 | |
I mentioned to her that, you know, | 48:51 | |
we had invited the ICRC. | 48:53 | |
And, you know, she was surprised. | 48:57 | |
And initially I believe, you know, | 49:02 | |
she basically said that she didn't think that the folks | 49:05 | |
within the DOD were going to be very pleased about that. | 49:09 | |
Peter | What did you think, when she said that to you? | 49:16 |
- | Well, I said, you know, you all told us | 49:19 |
we asked and we kept asking about status. | 49:25 | |
And then finally you all told us that | 49:28 | |
to apply the principles. | 49:31 | |
And I can't think of a principle that's more important | 49:32 | |
than having transparency and having the ICRC there. | 49:35 | |
So, you know, we were basically just complying | 49:39 | |
with what you all told us to do. | 49:42 | |
You know, it was a little bit of a tense conversation, | 49:46 | |
but I mean, like I said, | 49:50 | |
she's a really good friend, so it was certainly not | 49:52 | |
you know, hostile, but, you know, it was tense. | 49:55 | |
And I was I guess I just had not given it enough thought | 49:59 | |
in terms of thinking about what the reaction was gonna be. | 50:06 | |
I mean, I'm not going to say, | 50:09 | |
I didn't think about it at all, | 50:10 | |
but she made it clear that it was not | 50:12 | |
gonna be well received. | 50:15 | |
So then we were told that in a couple of days, | 50:18 | |
or the next day or two, three days later | 50:23 | |
that there was going to be a delegation of senior lawyers | 50:27 | |
from Washington flying down to Guantanamo. | 50:31 | |
And, you know, my boss General Spear said, | 50:34 | |
I would like for you to be there for that. | 50:39 | |
And I don't honestly recall how it was, | 50:43 | |
that, you know, if it was one of somebody | 50:47 | |
within the DOD General Counsel's office, | 50:51 | |
or it was Captain Dalton or somebody up in DC said, | 50:53 | |
you know, fly up here and then you fly down with them. | 50:56 | |
I just don't recall the details | 51:05 | |
of how that coordination happened. | 51:06 | |
But the point was that it was clear that I needed | 51:08 | |
to get to DC and then fly with that group of folks. | 51:10 | |
And so I flew up, spent one night at a hotel there, | 51:14 | |
and then the next morning they came by to pick me up, | 51:18 | |
and by one of the lawyers that worked for | 51:21 | |
the General Counsel of DOD. | 51:24 | |
And so we went out to Andrews Air Force Base | 51:28 | |
and boarded a small plane. | 51:32 | |
There were not very many military people. | 51:34 | |
Besides myself, I think Mr. Haynes | 51:39 | |
is the General Counsel of DOD. | 51:40 | |
I think his military aid was military. | 51:43 | |
I just don't recall. | 51:49 | |
There may have been others, but I don't recall. | 51:50 | |
There was primarily the DOD General count... | 51:52 | |
Well, first of all, the White House Counsel, | 51:54 | |
the Deputy Solicitor General, the Vice-President's Counsel. | 51:58 | |
Peter | Were on this plane? | 52:04 |
Gonzalez was on this plane? | 52:05 | |
- | Yes, Mr. Gonzales was on the plane. | 52:06 |
Mr. Thompson, I think was the Deputy Solicitor General. | 52:11 | |
I think Mr. Addington was the Vice-President's Counsel. | 52:14 | |
Mr. Haynes was the host, if you will. | 52:20 | |
It was his airplane, | 52:22 | |
Mr. Rumsfeld's lawyer. | 52:24 | |
Peter | Was he on the plane too? | 52:26 |
- | Yes, it was his plane. | 52:27 |
And he's the one that organized the trip. | 52:28 | |
Mr. Taft, who was the Secretary of State's Counsel. | 52:31 | |
Whit Cobb, who worked for Mr. Haynes, | 52:40 | |
the Air Force General Counsel was on the plane | 52:46 | |
and a couple of other folks that who worked at... | 52:52 | |
Mr. Chuck Allen, who worked for Mr. Haynes. | 52:56 | |
So it was primarily the DOD General Counsel's office, | 52:58 | |
the General Counsel, | 53:01 | |
some of his people and then the senior lawyers | 53:02 | |
from some of the other departments were on this plane, | 53:04 | |
and myself. | 53:10 | |
And we, you know, it was a small plane. | 53:12 | |
Peter | What was the reason | 53:16 |
for all these people to go down there? | 53:18 | |
- | Well none of us had been down there, | 53:21 |
and know the detainees had... | 53:23 | |
We already had at least two plane loads of people | 53:26 | |
down there, detainees, | 53:28 | |
and I think they wanted to get some... | 53:29 | |
Oh, Mr. Will was on the plane, | 53:33 | |
John Will was on this plane as well. | 53:34 | |
Yeah, it was to get, I guess, you know, | 53:36 | |
situational awareness of the situation of the facility | 53:41 | |
so that they would be better informed | 53:44 | |
when making policy determinations. | 53:47 | |
I'm assuming I wasn't part of that group, | 53:50 | |
I was just told by my boss to go, because they're going. | 53:52 | |
I want to make sure that you get situational awareness | 53:54 | |
and you're aware of what's, you know, what's happening. | 53:57 | |
Peter | Any of these people talk to you | 53:59 |
about the Red Cross on the plane? | 54:00 | |
- | Yes, they did. | 54:03 |
Peter | To what-- | 54:06 |
- | But I think you knew the... | 54:07 |
Halfway down after about an hour on the plane or so | 54:10 | |
I was asked to, by Mr. Haynes, if I could | 54:14 | |
very nicely, very politely asked | 54:18 | |
if I could come talk to them. | 54:21 | |
So it, like I said, it's a small plane. | 54:23 | |
I went up to the front of the plane | 54:25 | |
and he asked me, you know, they were all sitting up. | 54:27 | |
It was only like two seats and two seats. | 54:31 | |
And maybe, I don't know, five rows back each. | 54:33 | |
So probably not, you know, | 54:36 | |
not more than 20, 25 seats on the plane. | 54:39 | |
And so I came up to the front and Mr. Haynes said, | 54:41 | |
I understand you invited the ICRC to Guantanamo. | 54:46 | |
Is that right? | 54:49 | |
And I said, yes, sir. | 54:50 | |
And he asked, you know, why? | 54:52 | |
And I said, well, | 54:54 | |
basically what I had already just told you, | 54:56 | |
which was, we were told to follow the principles. | 54:57 | |
It is an important principle to have transparency | 55:00 | |
and to have the ICRC there. | 55:03 | |
And so, you know, that's why, and... | 55:07 | |
Peter | And their response? | 55:15 |
- | Well, we had a discussion for, I don't know, | 55:16 |
I don't know, in reality what it was. | 55:26 | |
I know it felt a lot longer, I guess, | 55:27 | |
but in reality it was probably like 15, 20 minutes. | 55:29 | |
You know, comments were made about, well, you know, | 55:36 | |
having these guys here is... | 55:40 | |
You know, we'll expose everything | 55:45 | |
that we're trying to do down there to outsiders. | 55:48 | |
And I said, well, you know, the ICRC is not going to... | 55:52 | |
The ICRC does not report externally. | 55:57 | |
They only report to the detaining power, which would be us. | 56:00 | |
And I was asked, well, how do you know that? | 56:03 | |
And I said, well, you know, they've been around | 56:05 | |
for over a hundred years, | 56:08 | |
and they still haven't, you know, | 56:08 | |
they've been pretty consistent about that. | 56:10 | |
So I'm pretty sure they're not gonna, you know, | 56:11 | |
start violating their own policies now. | 56:13 | |
And besides, I mean, you know, I asked, | 56:16 | |
or I added I should say, you know, | 56:18 | |
we're not gonna be doing anything | 56:23 | |
that we were really should care | 56:26 | |
what anybody sees or not anyway. | 56:27 | |
Peter | You said that? | 56:30 |
- | I did. | 56:31 |
You know, I honestly believe that. | 56:32 | |
I mean, obviously when I said it. | 56:35 | |
There was some more discussion about them | 56:39 | |
and opening up, you know, a can of worms | 56:42 | |
that there would be every other NGO, | 56:46 | |
non-governmental organization would want to go down there | 56:49 | |
and all that. | 56:52 | |
And, you know, we'd be setting a precedent and all that. | 56:53 | |
And I said, well, no, not really, because just the opposite. | 56:55 | |
The ICRC is the only one that is mentioned by name | 56:58 | |
in the Convention. | 57:02 | |
So if we get them in there, then that provides, | 57:04 | |
I think a very legitimate reason | 57:08 | |
because we would not want, I mean, | 57:11 | |
from an operational reason, | 57:12 | |
we wouldn't want to have dozens of organizations | 57:13 | |
run around where we'd have to take our limited manpower | 57:16 | |
to deal with that logistically and everything else. | 57:19 | |
So if we get the guys who are the actual legally | 57:22 | |
by convention, supposed to be there, | 57:25 | |
for the time being it should give us a good reason | 57:28 | |
to tell everybody else to just wait, | 57:30 | |
you know, because we have these guys. | 57:32 | |
I also mentioned that again, | 57:36 | |
I highlighted we are U.S. Southern Command | 57:38 | |
and we know a lot about Latin America, | 57:41 | |
but we don't know squat about, you know, | 57:42 | |
Yemen or Afghanistan or Syria | 57:45 | |
or anywhere else in that part of the world. | 57:48 | |
So having... | 57:50 | |
And the ICRC guys had told us they were bringing in | 57:51 | |
people from that part of the world. | 57:53 | |
So as it, having their expertise on the ground | 57:55 | |
will be very helpful to our Task Force Commander | 57:57 | |
as he has told us, | 58:01 | |
that he wants them there for among other reasons that. | 58:02 | |
They would serve as a means or a channel of communication | 58:07 | |
between us and the trainees, | 58:11 | |
in a way where, you know hopefully we can try | 58:14 | |
and conduct this mission in a way that is consistent | 58:18 | |
with the principles of Geneva Convention. | 58:21 | |
All these things that it made kind of sense. | 58:22 | |
I was asked, well, asked, told, whatever | 58:26 | |
to, you know we need to hold off on these guys, on the ICRC. | 58:32 | |
And I said, you know, it's the ICRC. | 58:35 | |
You don't really tell them what to do. | 58:37 | |
They do whatever they're gonna do, | 58:39 | |
and they're on their way. | 58:41 | |
They're literally on their way. | 58:42 | |
They're there they're coming in from, you know, | 58:44 | |
I don't know, I think it was like Sudan | 58:47 | |
or Ethiopia and Afghanistan. | 58:48 | |
So they're physically on their way. | 58:53 | |
Their team is coming. | 58:55 | |
And then there was some more discussion about | 58:57 | |
telling them to not come. | 58:59 | |
And I said, well, you know, | 59:01 | |
my boss General Spear is the one who authorized me | 59:03 | |
to make the invitation, | 59:06 | |
so he would have to be the one to cancel it. | 59:07 | |
And I mean, obviously you all can talk to his bosses, | 59:11 | |
which in this case, the Secretary of Defense. | 59:16 | |
Some more discussion, and then it was like, | 59:20 | |
well, have them come through Washington first | 59:22 | |
so we can talk to them and postpone it. | 59:25 | |
And I said, again, I can't, | 59:27 | |
you know they're not gonna necessarily do what we want. | 59:30 | |
I said it would... | 59:34 | |
I told them, I said, I believe that, you know, | 59:35 | |
General Jackman has invited them come through SOUTHCOM. | 59:36 | |
So I believe that they are gonna be coming through SOUTHCOM. | 59:39 | |
So at that point, that discussion was tabled | 59:43 | |
for the time being. | 59:46 | |
And then Mr. Haynes asked one of his fellows there Whit Cobb | 59:49 | |
for this list, | 59:56 | |
and he produced a single sheet of paper that had, | 59:57 | |
I don't remember exactly a number 10, 12 different, | 1:00:01 | |
I think it was 10 rights of... | 1:00:04 | |
Not rights but conditions that we would meet | 1:00:10 | |
for the detainees. | 1:00:12 | |
And it was very basic stuff in terms of, you know, | 1:00:15 | |
providing food and water, shelter, | 1:00:18 | |
you know, ability to pray, you know, | 1:00:24 | |
It was really very fundamental and very, very, very basic. | 1:00:31 | |
Now, and so they, he handed that to me, he says | 1:00:36 | |
what do you think of this? | 1:00:38 | |
This is still in front of the group there, you know | 1:00:40 | |
this is what we've come. | 1:00:42 | |
This is what we have come up with in terms of how | 1:00:44 | |
we believe that these people should be treated. | 1:00:46 | |
And what I had done prior to getting up, | 1:00:51 | |
prior to going up to Washington | 1:00:57 | |
is since we were getting such little guidance | 1:00:59 | |
in terms of you know, principles versus the convention, | 1:01:03 | |
okay we're not gonna play the convention | 1:01:07 | |
and so on and so forth. | 1:01:08 | |
Let me also say that as we were putting together, | 1:01:12 | |
the manning document, | 1:01:16 | |
this is the document that when you come up | 1:01:17 | |
with an operation, you you start filling in personnel, | 1:01:19 | |
the people that are going to actually do stuff, right? | 1:01:22 | |
And so the entire SOUTHCOMM staff is doing this. | 1:01:26 | |
And the J-1, which is our personnel chief | 1:01:30 | |
was responsible for, | 1:01:32 | |
and he sends it out to all the staff people saying, okay | 1:01:34 | |
you know, tell us who you think you need. | 1:01:38 | |
You know, you're typically talking about, | 1:01:39 | |
I need whatever, you know 50 military policemen, | 1:01:41 | |
and I need, you know five intelligence officers, | 1:01:44 | |
so on and so forth. | 1:01:47 | |
And since we were getting, this is late December, | 1:01:50 | |
since we were getting no clear guidance | 1:01:51 | |
in terms of their status, | 1:01:53 | |
we thought in my office that, well, you know, | 1:01:56 | |
the fifth article, the article five | 1:01:59 | |
of the third Geneva convention says, | 1:02:02 | |
you know, if you don't know, if you have doubts, | 1:02:03 | |
well then hold the tribunal. | 1:02:06 | |
Have three guys sit around and ask questions | 1:02:08 | |
and get documents or whatever, | 1:02:10 | |
get evidence, and then make a determination on their status. | 1:02:11 | |
And so we thought, all right, | 1:02:15 | |
well we need to do article five tribunals | 1:02:17 | |
because obviously, we don't know what their status is | 1:02:18 | |
because we keep asking them. | 1:02:19 | |
So on the manning document I put down, | 1:02:22 | |
we needed I believe it was 10 maybe even 12, | 1:02:24 | |
but 10 or 12 JAGs, | 1:02:26 | |
made them 12. | 1:02:29 | |
I wanted 14, you know, we wanted four teams | 1:02:30 | |
of three main tribunals, | 1:02:32 | |
and then about 10 enlisted guys | 1:02:34 | |
to support that administratively. | 1:02:36 | |
So we put that in the manning document. | 1:02:40 | |
The manning document went up to the joint staff. | 1:02:42 | |
And then I got a call from the joint staff, | 1:02:44 | |
legal office saying, you know, we're taking that out. | 1:02:47 | |
We're not going to have any article five tribunals. | 1:02:51 | |
And I said, so, do we know their status? | 1:02:54 | |
Have you determined this? | 1:02:57 | |
Said no, still working on it. | 1:02:58 | |
I said, well, then we're not doing article five tribunals, | 1:02:59 | |
we're taking it out. | 1:03:03 | |
Okay, I mean, you know, what are you gonna do? | 1:03:04 | |
So we still don't know the status. | 1:03:06 | |
So at that point, then I went to my JAG staff and said look, | 1:03:09 | |
let's talk about this. | 1:03:12 | |
And so we all sat around and we talked about | 1:03:13 | |
different ways to deal with this | 1:03:15 | |
because you got to have something. | 1:03:16 | |
I mean, you can't just tell a commander, | 1:03:19 | |
well, you know deal with the principals | 1:03:21 | |
because that commander will not want to hear that. | 1:03:22 | |
So you want to give them something more specific. | 1:03:25 | |
So we ultimately decided that it would be best | 1:03:28 | |
to take the third Geneva convention | 1:03:31 | |
and look, putting this in context, | 1:03:35 | |
you know, this was the very beginning. | 1:03:37 | |
We didn't know, we didn't know who these guys were. | 1:03:40 | |
And even the guys who captured them | 1:03:41 | |
didn't really know who these people were. | 1:03:43 | |
And you're dealing with the concept of people | 1:03:44 | |
who are willing to kill themselves in suicide bombing, | 1:03:48 | |
and flying airplanes into buildings and that kind of thing. | 1:03:52 | |
And so the, you know, for people listening to this, | 1:03:54 | |
it's, you know, hindsight is 2020, | 1:03:58 | |
and the emotions and the lack of certainty | 1:04:00 | |
and the chaotic situation is lost on us. | 1:04:03 | |
And for a lot of people, | 1:04:07 | |
they didn't even live through this. | 1:04:08 | |
So it really was like that. | 1:04:09 | |
And so we were taking very very cautious measures | 1:04:12 | |
where we were going to act on the side | 1:04:18 | |
of security and safety. | 1:04:21 | |
And that was really what we were trying to do. | 1:04:22 | |
Not only safety for our guys | 1:04:24 | |
but safety for the detainees as well. | 1:04:26 | |
This was not the, you know, | 1:04:31 | |
the insurgencies that I had experienced | 1:04:33 | |
with in the Philippines and in Peru, and in Colombia, | 1:04:35 | |
those guys were not generally suicide bombers. | 1:04:40 | |
You know, they were going to plant the bomb, | 1:04:44 | |
but then they were gonna run away. | 1:04:45 | |
And so this was an entirely new paradigm | 1:04:47 | |
that we just didn't know really what to expect, | 1:04:49 | |
what to deal with. | 1:04:51 | |
And so ultra conservatism, ultra security, | 1:04:52 | |
safety consciousness, all right. | 1:04:55 | |
But that doesn't mean that | 1:04:58 | |
if those elements of security and operational security | 1:05:00 | |
or safety are not involved in something, | 1:05:04 | |
then our view was, well, then go ahead and give it to them | 1:05:07 | |
because you know, why not? | 1:05:10 | |
We're supposed to be trying to follow the principles. | 1:05:12 | |
That was our approach. | 1:05:15 | |
And so we took the third Geneva Convention | 1:05:16 | |
and broke it down into four or five segments, | 1:05:17 | |
just randomly by numbers, because I had five people, | 1:05:21 | |
you know, four people and said, you know, | 1:05:25 | |
like whatever when do you take one through | 1:05:27 | |
you know, 30, 35, whatever. | 1:05:30 | |
And so we each took... | 1:05:32 | |
I didn't, they did. | 1:05:33 | |
I mean, and the idea was talk, | 1:05:35 | |
first of all common sense approach, | 1:05:40 | |
but then also talk to the Intel guys, | 1:05:41 | |
talk to the JTF people. | 1:05:43 | |
Wendy had come back by now. | 1:05:45 | |
Talk to all the people who were actually going | 1:05:49 | |
to have to do this and figure out | 1:05:50 | |
if it's something that we can clearly give them, | 1:05:51 | |
like you know, | 1:05:54 | |
you know whatever, food and water and stuff like that. | 1:05:56 | |
I mean, that's easy. | 1:05:59 | |
But a Quran, medical treatment, so on and so forth. | 1:06:01 | |
And if it's something we can give them | 1:06:05 | |
and do it in a secure way | 1:06:06 | |
that's not going to compromise operational security | 1:06:08 | |
then put a green bubble next to it. | 1:06:11 | |
We had three options, you know, | 1:06:13 | |
like a traffic light. | 1:06:14 | |
You got to keep this very simple. | 1:06:15 | |
If it's something that makes no sense whatsoever, | 1:06:18 | |
like for example, they can have their own canteen | 1:06:20 | |
where they can have their own little kitchen | 1:06:22 | |
and sell their own products and stuff like that | 1:06:24 | |
where they can have sharp instruments, that's red, | 1:06:26 | |
you know, we're not going to do that. | 1:06:28 | |
And if it's something in between like, you know, exercise, | 1:06:31 | |
yeah, they need to exercise, | 1:06:33 | |
but it's not going to be, you know, | 1:06:35 | |
just open air kind of thing. | 1:06:38 | |
I mean, where they're unsupervised or we're not, you know | 1:06:39 | |
where they're not under some sort of control, | 1:06:43 | |
positive control. | 1:06:44 | |
So we'd put that in yellow saying, yeah, they can exercise | 1:06:45 | |
but under certain circumstances. | 1:06:48 | |
And so these guys, you know, | 1:06:51 | |
I'm very grateful to these wonderful folks | 1:06:52 | |
that were in my office there, | 1:06:56 | |
because they worked on this for like a day straight. | 1:06:57 | |
You know, they stopped everything else that they were doing | 1:07:00 | |
and focused on this | 1:07:02 | |
and worked on it for like 24 hours straight, | 1:07:04 | |
and then I got it just in time to go up to DC. | 1:07:07 | |
So that takes us back to when Mr. Cobb | 1:07:12 | |
handed that piece of paper with the 10 items on it. | 1:07:15 | |
And they said, what do you think? | 1:07:17 | |
And I said, all right, well, you know, | 1:07:19 | |
this takes an approach of, you know, | 1:07:20 | |
what is the minimum, basically. | 1:07:23 | |
We've taken a different approach, | 1:07:26 | |
and then I literally had it in my pocket of my uniform. | 1:07:27 | |
I pulled it out and I said, this is what we're thinking. | 1:07:29 | |
And, you know, I showed it to him | 1:07:33 | |
and I explained everything I just explained to you. | 1:07:34 | |
And there was some discussion about it, | 1:07:36 | |
you know, well, essentially there was some concern about, | 1:07:38 | |
well, if there is... | 1:07:42 | |
And I said, look, you know, even at South Common Miami, | 1:07:46 | |
we can't execute this. | 1:07:50 | |
This has to be executed. | 1:07:51 | |
This is sort of a start point for the JTF Commander. | 1:07:52 | |
Just something to get him started. | 1:07:56 | |
These colors are going to change for sure. | 1:07:58 | |
Things that are red might turn to yellow | 1:08:01 | |
might even turn to green, | 1:08:03 | |
things that are green, we might say, well, | 1:08:04 | |
we shouldn't be doing that, | 1:08:05 | |
turn it to yellow or red, I don't know. | 1:08:06 | |
We don't know, but you got to start somewhere. | 1:08:08 | |
And this is sort of a starting point of specific things | 1:08:11 | |
that the, you know the law requires to some degree. | 1:08:15 | |
And even though we're not applying | 1:08:19 | |
the Geneva convention per se, | 1:08:20 | |
the principle is we ought to try and give as much as we can. | 1:08:22 | |
So I said, you know, and you gotta have faith | 1:08:25 | |
that the people that you have assigned, | 1:08:32 | |
your subordinates that you've assigned | 1:08:34 | |
in this case specifically the JTF Commander, | 1:08:35 | |
JTF 160 Commander, General Leonard knows what he's doing. | 1:08:37 | |
He's a General officer in the United States, Marine Corps. | 1:08:40 | |
You know, he'll know how to deal with this. | 1:08:43 | |
And it's just something, | 1:08:45 | |
it's a tool that will help him get started. | 1:08:46 | |
That's it. | 1:08:49 | |
And, you know, the question was, well, | 1:08:50 | |
what happens if he runs across some issue | 1:08:53 | |
that's really strategically important? | 1:08:56 | |
And I said, well, then he'll recognize it as such, I'm sure. | 1:08:59 | |
Let us know, and then we'll let you know, | 1:09:01 | |
and then you all can make the decision, | 1:09:03 | |
and we'll stand by for your decision. | 1:09:05 | |
But that discussion didn't take us long. | 1:09:06 | |
That was maybe only like 10 minutes. | 1:09:09 | |
And there wasn't really a lot of consternation over that. | 1:09:12 | |
It seemed to make-- | 1:09:18 | |
Peter | They were willing to let you substitute | 1:09:19 |
your program over theirs? | 1:09:20 | |
- | Well, yeah, I mean, their program was basically, | 1:09:23 |
like I said just the list with 10 things on it. | 1:09:24 | |
And ours was the entire third Geneva convention, | 1:09:26 | |
with you know, with an indication | 1:09:29 | |
that we were being conscious of operational security, | 1:09:32 | |
safety, and those kinds of things | 1:09:35 | |
that were not going to compromise the mission. | 1:09:37 | |
So, you know, we landed in Guantanamo, | 1:09:42 | |
We spent the day... | 1:09:47 | |
Mr. Maura, Alberta, Maura who was the Navy General Counsel | 1:09:49 | |
had flown in from some other location on his own airplane, | 1:09:51 | |
met us there, | 1:09:54 | |
and we were being taken around on a yellow school bus | 1:09:56 | |
to the various places. | 1:09:59 | |
We went to X-Ray, and we saw the detainees, | 1:10:00 | |
we walked through, we went to the hospital, | 1:10:04 | |
because they were at the time, | 1:10:07 | |
we were using the Naval hospital there on Guantanamo | 1:10:08 | |
to treat the detainees. | 1:10:10 | |
Like I said there was only like maybe two planeloads | 1:10:14 | |
that had arrived at this time. | 1:10:15 | |
We went in, initially, very first thing is we got a briefing | 1:10:18 | |
from General Leonard, who explained everything. | 1:10:21 | |
I thought it was an excellent briefing | 1:10:24 | |
in terms of laying out what his plans were | 1:10:25 | |
and everything else. | 1:10:27 | |
And then we got the tour, where we walked around | 1:10:29 | |
and saw the various things that they had done | 1:10:32 | |
to get things ready for the rest of the people coming. | 1:10:34 | |
And then at the very end of the day, | 1:10:38 | |
it was just like all day thing, | 1:10:42 | |
we left very early in the morning. | 1:10:43 | |
So we were on the ground for, by now, | 1:10:45 | |
I guess, six hours or something. | 1:10:46 | |
And I already knew my boss had already told me | 1:10:49 | |
that he wanted me to stay anyway. | 1:10:51 | |
But, you know, Mr. Haynes suggested when we were on this, | 1:10:54 | |
we were taking them all back to the flight, | 1:10:59 | |
to the dock, because we were on the windward side | 1:11:03 | |
and we were taking them back to the dock | 1:11:07 | |
where they were going to get on a boat | 1:11:09 | |
to go across to the side to the leeward side, | 1:11:11 | |
where the airstrip was, the runway. | 1:11:12 | |
And, you know, Mr. Haynes, you know, told me to... | 1:11:15 | |
And we knew the ICRC was coming, | 1:11:20 | |
so he basically said, look, you know, | 1:11:22 | |
look, it doesn't look like we're going to be able to | 1:11:23 | |
you know, they're going to come. | 1:11:27 | |
And so, you know, we're counting on you | 1:11:29 | |
where I'm expecting you to handle this. | 1:11:32 | |
And I said, okay. | 1:11:36 | |
And they all got on the plane. | 1:11:38 | |
They left. | 1:11:41 | |
Mr. Maura stayed because he had his own plane. | 1:11:43 | |
He left the next day. | 1:11:45 | |
And then I stayed for, I dunno like 10 days or so. | 1:11:46 | |
The ICRC showed up. | 1:11:51 | |
I think it was two days later. | 1:11:53 | |
Peter | Before we'd get to your visit with the ICRC, | 1:11:56 |
I just want to confirm that you had no more pushback | 1:11:58 | |
on the Red Cross after they left. | 1:12:01 | |
Other than that discussion you had on the plane | 1:12:03 | |
it sounds like you had no more pushback | 1:12:08 | |
on the Red Cross after that. | 1:12:10 | |
They kind of just reconciled themselves that they're coming | 1:12:11 | |
and they're gonna let it go. | 1:12:14 | |
- | You know, I guess you'd have to ask them | 1:12:17 |
in terms of where they had reconciled or not. | 1:12:19 | |
But I mean, essentially other than that last conversation, | 1:12:21 | |
just as we literally walked to the back of the school bus | 1:12:26 | |
Mr. Haynes, and I, he asked me to go with him | 1:12:30 | |
and we went to the back and, you know, | 1:12:33 | |
he expressed that he was not happy about the situation, | 1:12:35 | |
but that there was really, | 1:12:39 | |
didn't look like there was anything | 1:12:42 | |
they were gonna be able to do about it. | 1:12:44 | |
If we withdraw the invitation now it's going to look bad. | 1:12:46 | |
It's going to, so, you know, deal with it. | 1:12:49 | |
Peter | Did he say the Red Cross clear | 1:12:53 |
from certain parts of the camp? | 1:12:55 | |
- | No, no. | 1:12:58 |
I mean, they were gone by the time the ICRC showed up. | 1:12:59 | |
Peter | And what did he advise you to do? | 1:13:02 |
- | No, no. | 1:13:03 |
He gave no specific guidance other than, you know, | 1:13:05 | |
deal with it and handle the situation. | 1:13:07 | |
Peter | Could I just, before we go on | 1:13:15 |
to your meeting with the Red Cross, | 1:13:17 | |
I just want to confirm, why did you not choose the ship | 1:13:20 | |
as a place instead of the Camp X-Ray? | 1:13:26 | |
What was the logic? | 1:13:30 | |
And then you said there Jim Francis don't approve of that. | 1:13:32 | |
Is that the reason why, or was it logistically-- | 1:13:35 | |
- | No, it was all kinds of real, | 1:13:37 |
I mean, it was, | 1:13:38 | |
that was just one more factor, | 1:13:40 | |
but, you know where are we gonna get a ship, literally, | 1:13:42 | |
that would... | 1:13:45 | |
Where are we gonna get a ship that would be able to | 1:13:47 | |
be structured and configured in a way to do the mission? | 1:13:50 | |
I mean, you know, the Navy doesn't have anything like that. | 1:13:54 | |
You know, I mean, in these meetings, you know, | 1:13:58 | |
you throw everything out there. | 1:14:01 | |
It's like, well, maybe we can, you know, hire, | 1:14:02 | |
you know, borrow or buy, or somehow get a, you know | 1:14:04 | |
a cruise ship and then secure the doors | 1:14:08 | |
or we make each cabinet, you know, a cell. | 1:14:10 | |
And it was just, it was not a good idea. | 1:14:12 | |
Peter | And when you first landed in Guantanamo | 1:14:17 |
and you went around with the other people, | 1:14:19 | |
what were your impressions of what you saw | 1:14:23 | |
and came back straight? | 1:14:26 | |
And then I assume there was no real, | 1:14:27 | |
I mean camps out there hadn't yet been built, | 1:14:29 | |
so there was nothing else there, | 1:14:30 | |
essentially Camp X-Ray and the detainees. | 1:14:32 | |
Were there any impressions you recall of seeing the men | 1:14:35 | |
and seeing the camp that might be worth of recording? | 1:14:38 | |
- | Well, I think that there was probably no more | 1:14:44 |
than like 60 because like I said, | 1:14:47 | |
it was like maybe two plane loads. | 1:14:48 | |
And, you know they had their orange jumpsuits on | 1:14:51 | |
and the way Camp X-Ray was set up | 1:14:54 | |
was they were fairly large cages essentially | 1:14:58 | |
where there would be several detainees in each cage. | 1:15:02 | |
And there was a lot of construction going on | 1:15:05 | |
because as I indicated, | 1:15:07 | |
we were building new cages continuously. | 1:15:09 | |
And I guess from a personal level, you know, | 1:15:12 | |
looking at these guys and thinking, | 1:15:20 | |
these are the ones or perhaps they are, perhaps not. | 1:15:26 | |
But I mean, at that time I was assuming | 1:15:29 | |
that these were people who were, you know, | 1:15:31 | |
should have been there basically, | 1:15:34 | |
and had done these things. | 1:15:39 | |
And so there was, you know, a fair amount of mixed, | 1:15:41 | |
all kinds of emotions about it, | 1:15:46 | |
some negative emotion, I guess, towards these people. | 1:15:49 | |
But by the same token, many of them anyway | 1:15:52 | |
looked very, you know, physically small, | 1:15:55 | |
frail, disheveled if you will, | 1:15:59 | |
not abused or anything like that | 1:16:02 | |
I'm just talking physically, because I'm just saying, | 1:16:03 | |
and thinking, boy, you know, so much destruction, | 1:16:06 | |
you know, from this kind of folks. | 1:16:13 | |
I mean, when you see somebody face to face, you know, | 1:16:18 | |
they were all, most of them were looking at us, | 1:16:21 | |
but they didn't say anything. | 1:16:24 | |
I think maybe one or two may have yelled | 1:16:26 | |
a few things, whatever, | 1:16:28 | |
but most of them were just sitting there | 1:16:28 | |
very stoically kind of looking at us. | 1:16:30 | |
They'd only been there for a couple of days themselves | 1:16:34 | |
you know, and they were still I'm sure in shock, | 1:16:36 | |
but yes I guess to your point is that | 1:16:39 | |
there were all kinds of, you know, mixed emotions | 1:16:41 | |
that run through your head | 1:16:44 | |
in a very quick fashion as you see this. | 1:16:46 | |
But then again, I didn't have time to dwell on it | 1:16:48 | |
because we're working back and forth. | 1:16:51 | |
We're getting briefings and we're getting tours | 1:16:53 | |
and I'm thinking of what needs to happen next. | 1:16:55 | |
And I did not have the luxury of time to sit there | 1:16:58 | |
and philosophize about all this or contemplate, | 1:17:01 | |
you know, the... | 1:17:04 | |
Peter | Well, did you have any expectations | 1:17:06 |
before you came down there, what you would see or do-- | 1:17:08 | |
- | Well, you know, in the briefings at SOUTHCOM | 1:17:11 |
before I left and all that, | 1:17:13 | |
the engineer would be showing us slides | 1:17:15 | |
pretty much every day in terms of the construction. | 1:17:17 | |
So yeah, I had some idea of that, you know, | 1:17:19 | |
but it's very much one thing to see it | 1:17:23 | |
in pictures or in bars and charts and graphs | 1:17:25 | |
than it is to physically be there. | 1:17:28 | |
And, you know, the dryness of the place | 1:17:30 | |
and the dust and the dirt | 1:17:33 | |
and the sound from the construction going on | 1:17:34 | |
and to actually see eye to eye with, you know, | 1:17:38 | |
one of the the people sitting there. | 1:17:43 | |
It's a very different thing. | 1:17:45 | |
Peter | And did you speak to the prison guards | 1:17:47 |
at all while you walking through? | 1:17:49 | |
- | No, not, not at all, no. | 1:17:51 |
We were in a big gaggle of just moving, you know | 1:17:54 | |
from point to point where we were supposed to go | 1:17:56 | |
very rapidly. | 1:17:58 | |
It was, you know, it was all happening very quickly. | 1:17:59 | |
Peter | Just one more thing, going back to the plane | 1:18:02 |
when they spoke to you about the Jim mentions, | 1:18:04 | |
did John, you or David Addington have opinions | 1:18:07 | |
when you had that conversation, do you remember, | 1:18:10 | |
beside Jim Haynes, as to whether the Red Cross applies, | 1:18:13 | |
whether do Kansas apply, did you hear any of that? | 1:18:18 | |
- | Well, first of all, | 1:18:22 |
I don't remember Mr. Willis saying anything. | 1:18:24 | |
Mr. Addington was sitting up at the very front | 1:18:27 | |
with across the aisle from Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Taft | 1:18:29 | |
was on the other side of him. | 1:18:35 | |
And Mr. Thomas, I think was another side of Mr. Gonzales | 1:18:36 | |
and Mr. Haynes was standing up next to me | 1:18:39 | |
actually kind of crouched over, | 1:18:41 | |
because of the small airplane, | 1:18:43 | |
but, you know, I made it clear, | 1:18:46 | |
that it we were not applying the Geneva Conventions. | 1:18:50 | |
We were applying the principles of Geneva Convention | 1:18:56 | |
which is what you told us to do. | 1:18:58 | |
So I was very careful not to get into... | 1:19:00 | |
I did not create an opening to have a discussion | 1:19:04 | |
about the applicability or not of the Geneva Conventions | 1:19:07 | |
because I already took it as a given | 1:19:09 | |
that they had decided that it didn't apply, | 1:19:11 | |
but you said to apply the principles. | 1:19:13 | |
And so on that, you know, here's what we did. | 1:19:16 | |
Peter | Just one more thing. | 1:19:22 |
Did you feel after that conversation kind of, | 1:19:25 | |
I don't know how to put it somewhat uncomfortable, | 1:19:28 | |
you know just that maybe, you know, | 1:19:37 | |
you were put in a position that you couldn't defend | 1:19:39 | |
and, you know maybe made the wrong decision | 1:19:41 | |
or did you still feel he made the right decision? | 1:19:43 | |
- | Well, no, I never felt like I made the wrong decision. | 1:19:47 |
Clearly I was uncomfortable. | 1:19:50 | |
I could tell, | 1:19:52 | |
you know, that my adrenaline was flowing. | 1:19:53 | |
I remember I had been a prosecutor and defense counsel. | 1:19:56 | |
I had been a trial advocate for five years. | 1:19:59 | |
And as most people who know me would tell you that | 1:20:02 | |
you know, when I get into a certain mode, you know | 1:20:06 | |
advocacy mode or whatever you want to call it | 1:20:11 | |
adversarial mode, not adversarial, but you know, | 1:20:15 | |
when you're having to defend yourself, | 1:20:18 | |
you know, kind of thing, | 1:20:19 | |
that I engage in that. | 1:20:22 | |
I don't... | 1:20:27 | |
So no, I never thought that it was the wrong decision | 1:20:28 | |
or anything else, | 1:20:30 | |
I felt very comfortable with and very sure | 1:20:31 | |
about the decisions that we had made, | 1:20:35 | |
the fact that they were supported by the JTF Commander | 1:20:38 | |
by my commander at SOUTHCOM, | 1:20:41 | |
by my legal staff, by the rest of the SOUTHCOM staff. | 1:20:42 | |
And we were doing exactly what they told us to do, | 1:20:48 | |
was apply the principles. | 1:20:50 | |
So if anything, if I regret anything I suppose, | 1:20:51 | |
is that I may have been perhaps a little bit | 1:20:57 | |
overly aggressive in my tone. | 1:20:59 | |
And that I was, you know, as a Colonel, | 1:21:06 | |
I should not have been, | 1:21:08 | |
I probably should have been more, | 1:21:09 | |
not backing down from what I was saying, per se, | 1:21:11 | |
but maybe how I was saying it. | 1:21:14 | |
I don't know. | 1:21:15 | |
Fortunately, I have no way of remembering | 1:21:17 | |
exactly what happened. | 1:21:20 | |
I was on a different side, | 1:21:21 | |
but I know that my adrenaline and everything | 1:21:22 | |
had kicked in, a lot. | 1:21:24 | |
Peter | Well, I'm sure. | 1:21:28 |
I mean, do you think you were intimidated by these people, | 1:21:29 | |
you know all essentially crabbing you, | 1:21:36 | |
you know, pushing against you? | 1:21:37 | |
- | You know, they were very polite | 1:21:41 |
and no one raised their voice. | 1:21:43 | |
No one said anything mean or anything like that. | 1:21:45 | |
And there was, I mean, clearly they were very upset. | 1:21:50 | |
Body language and everything else, and, you know, | 1:21:54 | |
certain tone perhaps, but it was all very professional | 1:21:58 | |
and I didn't feel intimidated. | 1:22:01 | |
Like I said, I think that just tends to, you know, | 1:22:08 | |
bring out other qualities. | 1:22:12 | |
Peter | Okay, let's go on. | 1:22:16 |
Then, when the Red Cross arrived, | 1:22:17 | |
were you there to greet them or? | 1:22:21 | |
- | Well, right. | 1:22:23 |
But before they arrived, I mean, | 1:22:24 | |
General Leonard and his principal staff, | 1:22:25 | |
his deputy and myself, | 1:22:28 | |
we all got together and said, okay, you know, | 1:22:31 | |
what's the game plan? | 1:22:33 | |
Are we gonna deal with these guys? | 1:22:34 | |
And, you know, obviously the ICRC | 1:22:36 | |
bases their ability to do their job on being independent. | 1:22:41 | |
And so, you know, we were gonna make sure | 1:22:48 | |
that they got nice quarters to live in, | 1:22:52 | |
and that they had a rental car to drive around in | 1:22:54 | |
but they're gonna have to pay for it, | 1:22:56 | |
to maintain their independence, | 1:22:58 | |
if we gave them that, if we offered it to them for free, | 1:22:59 | |
then that would compromise that. | 1:23:01 | |
So, you know, did that, access to the detainees, | 1:23:02 | |
we were talking, you know, | 1:23:07 | |
in terms of how are we going to do that? | 1:23:08 | |
You know, so we... | 1:23:11 | |
The point is that General Leonard made it very clear | 1:23:13 | |
as the commander that he supported the idea | 1:23:16 | |
of being as cooperative as possible with the ICRC. | 1:23:18 | |
They're here to help us quite frankly, | 1:23:24 | |
that was the whole point, you know, | 1:23:26 | |
and to help us do our mission better. | 1:23:29 | |
So welcome. | 1:23:31 | |
I don't remember whose idea it was. | 1:23:36 | |
It certainly wasn't mine, but somebody had the idea | 1:23:37 | |
which I think was brilliant, | 1:23:40 | |
to actually have a... | 1:23:42 | |
When they showed up you know, | 1:23:44 | |
we went in for the initial briefing, | 1:23:45 | |
and we kind of set out the terms of reference | 1:23:47 | |
the rules of engagement, if you will, between us and them | 1:23:50 | |
and how they were going to interact with. | 1:23:52 | |
And we went straight from the tarmac, | 1:23:55 | |
we picked them up got them into vans. | 1:23:57 | |
You know, I sat in one of the vehicles with them | 1:23:59 | |
and we, all the principal, you know, | 1:24:00 | |
they split up a little bit, but when we got back, | 1:24:02 | |
we had this briefing. | 1:24:05 | |
I don't think it took that long, an hour maybe | 1:24:06 | |
something like that, maybe a little bit more. | 1:24:09 | |
They all spoke English very well. | 1:24:13 | |
Peter | How many were there? | 1:24:14 |
- | Four. | 1:24:15 |
Urs Boegli and three others. | 1:24:17 | |
And the three others, Urs I think was Swiss | 1:24:19 | |
and the three others were, you know, Lebanese or, | 1:24:21 | |
Peter | Middle Eastern. | 1:24:25 |
- | Yeah. | 1:24:27 |
And so I think Egyptian may be, I don't recall, | 1:24:28 | |
but afterwards, one of the ideas that somebody came up with | 1:24:32 | |
was to have a little welcome reception event, | 1:24:37 | |
probably social. | 1:24:42 | |
And the Navy Captain who was the base commander, | 1:24:43 | |
hosted it at his house. | 1:24:47 | |
And the spouses of the senior Navy staff on the base | 1:24:49 | |
you know, had baked, you know, | 1:24:56 | |
had prepared hors d'oeuvres and some food and, you know, | 1:24:58 | |
so on and so forth. | 1:25:01 | |
And we had, you know, sodas and some wine. | 1:25:02 | |
I think there was, you know, one of the guys was French. | 1:25:05 | |
And so after the briefing, we took them, | 1:25:09 | |
they went back to their hotel and all that kind of thing. | 1:25:12 | |
Or I say hotel, I mean that the quarters | 1:25:14 | |
that we had on the base there. | 1:25:15 | |
And, you know, they freshened up and all that.` | 1:25:17 | |
And then that evening, we all went to the captain's house | 1:25:19 | |
for this dinner party. | 1:25:22 | |
And, you know, it was the four of them. | 1:25:24 | |
And I don't know, maybe a dozen of us and spouses, | 1:25:27 | |
so maybe altogether, whatever, 15, 20, 30, | 1:25:34 | |
no, not that many, but around 20 people or so. | 1:25:37 | |
And it was very, very nice event | 1:25:40 | |
where we started talking a little bit about | 1:25:42 | |
and getting to know them and them to know us | 1:25:44 | |
on a more personal basis, | 1:25:46 | |
you know where you're from and so on and so forth. | 1:25:48 | |
And it was not Urs, but it was one of the other guys, | 1:25:50 | |
that at one point, you know, we went out, | 1:25:54 | |
and the Navy Captain, his house was up on a big bluff | 1:25:58 | |
on a cliff overlooking Guantanamo Bay, beautiful view. | 1:26:01 | |
And at night you can see the lights of the city | 1:26:05 | |
of Guantanamo, Cuba off in the distance very clearly. | 1:26:08 | |
And so, you know, we went out on the balcony, | 1:26:14 | |
this guy and I outside over overlooking the bay | 1:26:16 | |
and, you know, by this time, somehow it had already come out | 1:26:24 | |
that I was originally from Cuba, | 1:26:27 | |
and this is my first time back to Cuba since I left in 1961. | 1:26:28 | |
And even though it was an American base, | 1:26:33 | |
it's still technically Cuba | 1:26:35 | |
and it's physically, geographically, flora fauna Cuba. | 1:26:37 | |
So for me, it was an emotional thing | 1:26:41 | |
just to be on Cuban soil, if you will. | 1:26:43 | |
But anyway, the guy knew about this. | 1:26:46 | |
And so, as we were sitting there, | 1:26:48 | |
we were looking in the city of Guantanamo, I asked him | 1:26:49 | |
do you all have a mission here in Cuba? | 1:26:54 | |
And he said, no. | 1:26:56 | |
We've been trying to gain access to Cuba for decades, | 1:26:58 | |
but without success. | 1:27:02 | |
And I said, well, ironic then isn't it, | 1:27:06 | |
that your first visit of the ICRC to Cuba | 1:27:09 | |
is at the invitation of the United States. | 1:27:13 | |
And his response was, well, | 1:27:16 | |
I wouldn't expect anything different from the United States. | 1:27:18 | |
So I said, okay, fair enough. | 1:27:21 | |
Peter | Any of them ask you | 1:27:25 |
what the status of the detainees was? | 1:27:26 | |
Were they concerned, | 1:27:29 | |
since there was no clear status at that time? | 1:27:30 | |
- | Yes, and we told them, I said, you know, | 1:27:32 |
I don't know. | 1:27:34 | |
I didn't know what the column, I mean, | 1:27:35 | |
other than the fact that they are, you know | 1:27:37 | |
I don't believe that we had actually capped it, | 1:27:39 | |
that we weren't calling detainees yet, but I said, you know | 1:27:41 | |
our guidance has been that we were treating them | 1:27:43 | |
in a manner consistent with the principles, | 1:27:45 | |
but we have been told that we are not applying | 1:27:47 | |
as a matter of law, the Geneva Conventions. | 1:27:50 | |
And I showed him the bubble chart and the whole thing | 1:27:53 | |
and them, I mean, not, you know-- | 1:27:56 | |
Peter | Did anyone challenge you and say, well, | 1:27:59 |
that makes no sense, you need to-- | 1:28:01 | |
- | Not quite the contrary. | 1:28:02 |
They said that sounds like a very reasonable approach. | 1:28:04 | |
Peter | Really? | 1:28:06 |
- | Yes. | 1:28:08 |
Peter | Is that surprising that the ICRC would accept | 1:28:10 |
unclear status for the people that were captured? | 1:28:13 | |
- | At that point in time, they understood the situation. | 1:28:18 |
They understood that these guys had just gotten there | 1:28:21 | |
and that... | 1:28:23 | |
These are very smart people. | 1:28:24 | |
And their real mission is to minimize | 1:28:26 | |
unnecessary pain and suffering and damage during war | 1:28:29 | |
and protect innocent people as much as they can. | 1:28:35 | |
And they take a very rational approach to things | 1:28:38 | |
if they take, that's been... | 1:28:44 | |
That was my experience with dealing with them | 1:28:47 | |
in other parts of the world. | 1:28:48 | |
And so I really did not expect anything different here. | 1:28:50 | |
And as long as we can articulate a rationale | 1:28:53 | |
for why we were doing things, | 1:28:55 | |
with a view that the more we learn about these guys | 1:28:57 | |
and the more that the things develop | 1:29:01 | |
and the more that the chaotic situation | 1:29:03 | |
begins to settle down into some sort of a routine, | 1:29:04 | |
which would give us then the opportunity | 1:29:08 | |
to find ways to increase benefits if you will, | 1:29:09 | |
for these guys, assuming they deserve it. | 1:29:14 | |
I mean, assuming that they're not actually... | 1:29:16 | |
Then that's what we're gonna do, | 1:29:18 | |
but for right now, today, these guys just got here. | 1:29:21 | |
And so, you know, the guidance I've been given | 1:29:24 | |
is principles. | 1:29:28 | |
Now, so the guys on the ground were actually very like | 1:29:30 | |
okay, you know, this makes sense. | 1:29:34 | |
We'll work with you. | 1:29:35 | |
That's not to say that ICRC in Geneva | 1:29:36 | |
wasn't already engaged with, or trying to engage with, | 1:29:39 | |
you know, DOD on the issue of status. | 1:29:44 | |
But that was at the, as I mentioned before, | 1:29:48 | |
that was at the strategic level of debate | 1:29:50 | |
and I was at the operational level. | 1:29:52 | |
And so I was aware that that was happening, | 1:29:53 | |
but I was not engaged or involved in that discussion. | 1:29:56 | |
But that was happening parallel to-- | 1:29:59 | |
Peter | Were they having a discussion | 1:30:01 |
on article five hearings, you think? | 1:30:02 | |
- | I don't know. | 1:30:04 |
I mean, at the DC level I have no idea, | 1:30:05 | |
but like I said, I had already been, you know, told-- | 1:30:08 | |
Peter | And no one brought that up to you | 1:30:10 |
when you went down there. | 1:30:11 | |
- | Well, the ICRC guys on the ground, | 1:30:13 |
there at the operational level, within the ICRC community. | 1:30:18 | |
So, you know, we were just dealing with | 1:30:20 | |
what can we do within our sphere of influence here | 1:30:22 | |
from their standpoint to maximize | 1:30:25 | |
the benefits for these guys. | 1:30:29 | |
And I'm saying, we will try to maximize | 1:30:31 | |
within the constraints of operational security and safety. | 1:30:33 | |
Peter | Good. | 1:30:37 |
- | And then just look, we'll just deal with that. | 1:30:38 |
And so, you know, some anecdotes or some things, | 1:30:40 | |
it's like, well, you know, these guys, | 1:30:42 | |
they can't sleep at night, | 1:30:44 | |
because you guys have these bright floodlights | 1:30:45 | |
and sound of machinery, building new cages. | 1:30:47 | |
All right, well, | 1:30:52 | |
how about if we give them some earplugs | 1:30:54 | |
and some eyeshade things, you know, | 1:30:55 | |
to try and help minimize the light and the sound? | 1:30:58 | |
All right, well that would help. | 1:31:01 | |
That's what we did. | 1:31:03 | |
These guys, you know, based on their cultural norms, | 1:31:05 | |
they do not get naked in front of other guys | 1:31:10 | |
because what we were doing is | 1:31:12 | |
we were taking them to take their showers, | 1:31:12 | |
but we had literally a guard with a detainee all the time. | 1:31:14 | |
And so there was an issue about, | 1:31:19 | |
that they were objecting to having our guards | 1:31:21 | |
watch them while they were taking a shower being naked. | 1:31:23 | |
And so what we did is, there were only men out there. | 1:31:27 | |
We did not have any women escorting these guys | 1:31:31 | |
to take their showers obviously. | 1:31:34 | |
What we did is we, you know, we had the shower stall | 1:31:36 | |
and we closed in like three sides of it. | 1:31:39 | |
But the four, one side was left open. | 1:31:42 | |
It was like a little cage essentially. | 1:31:44 | |
And then our guard could keep an eye on him, | 1:31:47 | |
but then we got all these gym shorts | 1:31:49 | |
that had been left over from the Haitian, | 1:31:51 | |
you know refugee thing back in the nineties. | 1:31:54 | |
And so we would give them the shorts | 1:31:57 | |
so that they could take their shower | 1:31:58 | |
with their shorts on and still wash up, but not be exposed. | 1:31:59 | |
There was an issue with regards to privacy. | 1:32:06 | |
You know, the ICRC really insisted on maintaining privacy | 1:32:07 | |
whenever they would have communications with the detainees. | 1:32:11 | |
That's reasonable, | 1:32:13 | |
but by the same token, you know, we wanted to make sure | 1:32:16 | |
that the ICRC reps would be safe. | 1:32:20 | |
Again we're thinking these guys could do something | 1:32:23 | |
to harm them, so we came up with... | 1:32:26 | |
And well, and the thing was that the ICRC reps | 1:32:29 | |
did not want them shackled or handcuffed | 1:32:31 | |
while they were talking to them. | 1:32:34 | |
Those are right. | 1:32:37 | |
Either they're going to be sitting, you know | 1:32:38 | |
either they're sitting down and they are you know, | 1:32:39 | |
somehow shackled to the floor | 1:32:42 | |
or handcuffed or something to where their movements | 1:32:44 | |
are restricted. | 1:32:46 | |
And then we can have our military policemen | 1:32:48 | |
standing you know, like 40 feet away, | 1:32:51 | |
or if you really insist on them not being shackled | 1:32:54 | |
then we're gonna put our guy 20 feet away. | 1:32:57 | |
And then you can whisper to them, you know, | 1:33:00 | |
but I mean we have to find some sort of compromise here | 1:33:03 | |
to where your safety is not going to be endangered. | 1:33:05 | |
And at the same time, we can offer you | 1:33:09 | |
some sort of privacy in your communications with them. | 1:33:12 | |
Peter | How was it resolved? | 1:33:15 |
- | If I recall, they agreed that we would have | 1:33:17 |
our MP at a distant distance where they could not hear. | 1:33:21 | |
This was all the initial intake, | 1:33:27 | |
because the ICRC, you know, was registering everybody. | 1:33:29 | |
And then there was questions about, you know, | 1:33:31 | |
we would like to see whatever documents you have | 1:33:34 | |
that pertain to these guys. | 1:33:36 | |
Initially it was just a lot of little issues | 1:33:38 | |
that were coming up all the time | 1:33:42 | |
that during those 10 days that I was there, | 1:33:44 | |
we were able to get through a lot of them. | 1:33:45 | |
But then I had to get back | 1:33:48 | |
and continue dealing with this issue. | 1:33:50 | |
But at the operational level, not at the... | 1:33:52 | |
Now I'm really at the tactical level | 1:33:54 | |
and decided to get back to it | 1:33:56 | |
and then also get back to dealing with, you know | 1:33:57 | |
Colombia and Argentina and other things. | 1:34:00 | |
So when, when I left, you know, | 1:34:02 | |
we had resolved a lot of initial issues, | 1:34:06 | |
but there were still many, many, many more | 1:34:12 | |
to come Obviously. | 1:34:14 | |
Peter | When the reports were written by the ICRC, | 1:34:16 |
were you allowed to read them? | 1:34:18 | |
Were they sent to you? | 1:34:20 | |
- | Yes. | 1:34:21 |
And in fact, you, I think you were, | 1:34:23 | |
at some point gonna ask me if I ever went back | 1:34:25 | |
to Guantanamo, and I will tell you that, | 1:34:26 | |
Yes, I went back twice more, I think maybe three times, | 1:34:29 | |
I can think at least twice for sure. | 1:34:32 | |
And one of the things that I dealt with when I'd go back | 1:34:34 | |
but for shorter periods of time, like three or four days | 1:34:38 | |
was to talk to the ICRC about their, | 1:34:41 | |
as they call them interventions, | 1:34:44 | |
where they write a report saying, | 1:34:45 | |
you know, here's the latest list of issues | 1:34:47 | |
and complaints or things that we think | 1:34:50 | |
you guys can do better. | 1:34:52 | |
And that was sort of the approach. | 1:34:54 | |
I mean, it was like here, we think you can improve | 1:34:55 | |
on these issues. | 1:34:57 | |
Peter | And you would talk to them about those issues? | 1:34:59 |
- | Yeah, the vast majority of stuff I wasn't dealing with. | 1:35:02 |
Again, they would talk to the JTF staff | 1:35:04 | |
and I don't know, but the majority of those issues | 1:35:09 | |
would be resolved at that level. | 1:35:12 | |
And then if the issue was not resolved at that level, | 1:35:14 | |
then you know, people on my staff | 1:35:17 | |
would get involved in it. | 1:35:21 | |
And then eventually at some point I might get involved. | 1:35:23 | |
I mean, I was only seeing the very few things | 1:35:24 | |
that were not getting resolved at you know, | 1:35:28 | |
two or three layers lower. | 1:35:32 | |
And if there was something, by the way, | 1:35:36 | |
that was at again at the strategic slash political level, | 1:35:39 | |
then I'd say, you know you've got to take this up | 1:35:42 | |
with the folks in DC. | 1:35:44 | |
Peter | Was the ICRC there constantly, continually? | 1:35:46 |
- | Yeah, they were there constantly, continuously | 1:35:49 |
for a fairly lengthy period of time. | 1:35:52 | |
While I was still at SOUTHCOM, in other words, through '03 | 1:35:56 | |
because we're now talking beginning of '02. | 1:36:00 | |
I left in July of '03. | 1:36:03 | |
So basically for the 18 months | 1:36:05 | |
because I had to deal with this. | 1:36:07 | |
At some point, I don't remember when, | 1:36:09 | |
but at some point they did leave | 1:36:12 | |
without leaving anybody on the ground. | 1:36:15 | |
They were rotating people for quite some time | 1:36:18 | |
but I know that there was some gap | 1:36:22 | |
where they didn't have anybody there, | 1:36:25 | |
but then they would send somebody back again. | 1:36:28 | |
So, I don't know how long those gaps lasted. | 1:36:30 | |
And I don't even remember when the first one occurred, | 1:36:32 | |
but they were there on the ground continuously | 1:36:35 | |
I would say pretty well for sure | 1:36:37 | |
for at least the first three, four months. | 1:36:40 | |
Peter | We had heard from some of the detainees | 1:36:42 |
we interviewed that they couldn't get, | 1:36:44 | |
either they couldn't get mail through the ICRC. | 1:36:47 | |
Or if they got it, it was redacted heavily by the U.S. | 1:36:51 | |
and so they didn't have much to read, | 1:36:54 | |
or similarly they sent it out. | 1:36:57 | |
Sometimes it wouldn't be sent out or if it was sent out, | 1:36:58 | |
it was just heavily redacted. | 1:37:00 | |
Did that issue come up in the reports? | 1:37:02 | |
- | Yeah. | 1:37:05 |
Peter | Was that your job to respond to that, | 1:37:06 |
or is that... | 1:37:09 | |
- | You know, first of all, our Intel guys | 1:37:11 |
were the ones who were looking at this correspondence. | 1:37:13 | |
And, you know, under the circumstances, | 1:37:21 | |
I mean we were literally thinking | 1:37:24 | |
that there was a high probability, | 1:37:25 | |
a high possibility of an attack on the base | 1:37:27 | |
by terrorists to make a point, | 1:37:32 | |
interesting things like, you know, | 1:37:36 | |
coordinating with the Cubans on air defense, | 1:37:37 | |
you know, stuff like that. | 1:37:39 | |
I mean, this was serious. | 1:37:41 | |
So now I have no problem in redacting information | 1:37:42 | |
that our intelligence guys thought | 1:37:46 | |
should not be going out or coming in. | 1:37:48 | |
I mean, that's common sense. | 1:37:50 | |
Is that not? | 1:37:53 | |
Peter | But did the Red Cross ever say to you | 1:37:54 |
there's too much being redacted here? | 1:37:55 | |
- | No, I don't recall that. | 1:37:58 |
I do recall that there were issues | 1:38:01 | |
about just sometimes, you know, letters not getting to, | 1:38:02 | |
not getting there at all or something like that. | 1:38:06 | |
But in terms of what is, or what is not being redacted | 1:38:08 | |
I honestly don't remember having that discussion with them | 1:38:11 | |
other than the fact that what I just told you | 1:38:15 | |
of course, we're going to redact stuff. | 1:38:16 | |
If we think that if it's anything that could aid, | 1:38:18 | |
if somebody who might want to conduct an attack on the base | 1:38:23 | |
then of course we're going to redact it. | 1:38:28 | |
Peter | So that was the motivation, interestingly, | 1:38:30 |
that was the much motivation for redacting | 1:38:34 | |
as any other thing? | 1:38:37 | |
- | Why else would you redact? | 1:38:38 |
I mean-- | 1:38:39 | |
Peter | Well, I don't know, | 1:38:40 |
but I mean people thought there were reductions | 1:38:41 | |
for other reasons. | 1:38:42 | |
- | Like? | 1:38:44 |
Peter | One person we interviewed said | 1:38:45 |
that she thought everything was redacted. | 1:38:47 | |
So that the detainee would not know | 1:38:49 | |
that someone cared about him on the outside. | 1:38:51 | |
- | Well, you know, I don't know the answer to that | 1:38:56 |
because I wasn't the one making the decisions | 1:38:58 | |
on what to redact or not redact. | 1:39:00 | |
If the intelligence folks were telling me | 1:39:01 | |
we're redacting information that is of operational security | 1:39:05 | |
or something like that, I have no problem with that. | 1:39:08 | |
If they're telling me that they're and they didn't, | 1:39:11 | |
and if that happened, it would have been later on | 1:39:15 | |
at this stage, you know, | 1:39:17 | |
the first three months of this thing. | 1:39:18 | |
We did not yet have an interrogation mission | 1:39:21 | |
that didn't come until much later. | 1:39:25 | |
And of course, no, I mean, | 1:39:27 | |
well, I mean, an official, | 1:39:29 | |
hey we're creating JTF 170 to do interrogations. | 1:39:31 | |
That didn't happen until I think | 1:39:34 | |
I think March or thereabouts. | 1:39:35 | |
Peter | March of '02. | 1:39:39 |
- | Yeah. | 1:39:40 |
Peter | So that's one month later. | 1:39:41 |
- | Yeah well, they got there at the beginning of two months | 1:39:41 |
and I'll tell you that every month there | 1:39:43 | |
seemed like, you know, half a year. | 1:39:45 | |
So, and emotionally in my mind | 1:39:47 | |
two months is a long time, | 1:39:50 | |
but the initial interrogation was completely ad hoc, | 1:39:53 | |
you know, very helter-skelter in terms of, you know, | 1:39:58 | |
we had intelligence people trying to get intelligence | 1:40:02 | |
for the war. | 1:40:05 | |
We had, you know, FBI and others | 1:40:06 | |
looking at it more from a prosecutorial standpoint | 1:40:10 | |
to build cases to prosecute these guys. | 1:40:13 | |
And so it was all over the place and, you know, | 1:40:15 | |
it created, you know, the confusion | 1:40:18 | |
was certainly not programmed. | 1:40:22 | |
It was natural. | 1:40:25 | |
And if it confused the detainees, well, you know | 1:40:27 | |
it confused us as well. | 1:40:30 | |
And, you know, there were times when intelligence guys | 1:40:36 | |
would come in and you know, ask a lot of questions | 1:40:38 | |
and certainly not in any kind of abusive way, | 1:40:43 | |
but in a kind of heavy handed | 1:40:46 | |
sort of interrogation intelligence way. | 1:40:48 | |
And then they would leave, | 1:40:51 | |
and later in the afternoon, or next day | 1:40:52 | |
the same detainee would be seen by law enforcement people | 1:40:53 | |
who at first they would actually start off | 1:40:57 | |
by reading them the rights. | 1:41:00 | |
Yeah, and you know, when we found out it was like, | 1:41:02 | |
you know, time out, this makes no sense. | 1:41:05 | |
And so there was a lot of work, | 1:41:09 | |
by General Leonard and his staff | 1:41:11 | |
to bring some sort of, you know, | 1:41:13 | |
uniform way of approaching this. | 1:41:15 | |
I mean, that was obviously insane to be doing that. | 1:41:17 | |
Peter | Why does it make no sense | 1:41:20 |
to read them their rights? | 1:41:22 | |
And just so that people who are watching this | 1:41:24 | |
will understand? | 1:41:25 | |
- | I'm not saying that doesn't make... | 1:41:28 |
I'm saying it makes no sense to have the same person | 1:41:28 | |
interviewed for intelligence purposes, | 1:41:32 | |
and then later that same person be interviewed | 1:41:36 | |
for potential criminal investigative purposes | 1:41:38 | |
and have their rights read, | 1:41:41 | |
because you're creating a dysfunctional situation, | 1:41:42 | |
the next day then the intelligent guy comes up, | 1:41:47 | |
he says, well, I've been told, | 1:41:49 | |
I have a right not to tell you anything. | 1:41:50 | |
And then the intelligence guys go, who's told you that? | 1:41:53 | |
Well the FBI guy who was here yesterday, | 1:41:55 | |
you know, so-and-so. | 1:41:57 | |
So, I mean, that's crazy. | 1:41:58 | |
That's why it makes it... | 1:42:00 | |
And the reason you don't get your rights read to you | 1:42:01 | |
when you are in an interrogation | 1:42:03 | |
for military intelligence combat war purposes | 1:42:05 | |
is because it doesn't apply. | 1:42:09 | |
The constitution doesn't apply to that kind of environment | 1:42:12 | |
nor does article 31 (b) of the Uniform Code | 1:42:14 | |
of Military Justice. | 1:42:17 | |
Peter | So, I mean, you've said it several times | 1:42:19 |
and other people have said it as well | 1:42:22 | |
that everything was chaotic in the beginning. | 1:42:24 | |
And it was almost like the seat of your pants. | 1:42:26 | |
People were just day to day-- | 1:42:28 | |
- | We were building cages that were being filled up | 1:42:30 |
the next day as people were flying in. | 1:42:33 | |
- | Right. | 1:42:36 |
- | We went from zero to, | 1:42:37 |
I don't even know what the number was, | 1:42:39 | |
500 or something like this. | 1:42:40 | |
Peter | Why do you think your interrogations | 1:42:44 |
didn't start until March? | 1:42:45 | |
- | Like I said, there was questioning by intelligence people | 1:42:47 |
as soon as they arrived, | 1:42:53 | |
there was questioning by law enforcement people, | 1:42:54 | |
as soon as they arrived, | 1:42:56 | |
but like I said, there was a... | 1:42:57 | |
It was not coordinated. | 1:43:00 | |
It was not uniform in matter. | 1:43:01 | |
It didn't take long. | 1:43:04 | |
I mean, again, that may have only been going on | 1:43:05 | |
I don't know, for two weeks, something like that, | 1:43:08 | |
but it just seemed like a long time | 1:43:09 | |
because in my life that was a lot of hours | 1:43:11 | |
I spent on that issue. | 1:43:14 | |
And so we worked hard with General Leonard and his staff | 1:43:16 | |
and our staff at SOUTHCOM to figure out a way | 1:43:18 | |
to have combined teams | 1:43:21 | |
to where there would be representation | 1:43:23 | |
of both law enforcement, as well as intelligence people | 1:43:25 | |
on the same team so that you're doing it | 1:43:28 | |
in a coordinated fashion. | 1:43:30 | |
Peter | And just because you were down there so often, | 1:43:33 |
- | I was only down there three times. | 1:43:37 |
Peter | Three times, but you were so in touch with it | 1:43:39 |
obviously rumors were coming out about mistreatment. | 1:43:42 | |
Did you hear those rumors? | 1:43:44 | |
Was that something that you were in charge to look into? | 1:43:46 | |
- | You said obviously, | 1:43:51 |
but it wasn't obvious. | 1:43:52 | |
And I would tell you that any concerns about mistreatment | 1:43:54 | |
I don't recall any of those kinds of concerns | 1:43:57 | |
until you know, March, April, May, June timeframe of 2002. | 1:44:02 | |
That's when they first started surfing it. | 1:44:08 | |
At this point in time, we had not... | 1:44:09 | |
And General Leonard had made it very clear | 1:44:12 | |
to the military police who were doing the detention mission | 1:44:13 | |
that, you know, there will be none of that. | 1:44:17 | |
And if anybody does, they would be investigated. | 1:44:19 | |
Peter | But you were still there. | 1:44:23 |
So in April, May, June, when it started coming out, | 1:44:25 | |
were you responsible to looking into it? | 1:44:28 | |
- | Okay, I mean, yes. | 1:44:32 |
I had a level of responsibility, | 1:44:33 | |
but everybody has a level of responsibility. | 1:44:34 | |
Again this is the military. | 1:44:36 | |
So that at each layer, whether you're at the tactical layer | 1:44:37 | |
at the tactical level or at the operational level | 1:44:41 | |
where I was or at the strategic level, | 1:44:44 | |
everybody has a responsibility obviously. | 1:44:45 | |
So yes. | 1:44:48 | |
Any concerns about, you know, mistreatment | 1:44:49 | |
or something along those lines, if it wasn't resolved, | 1:44:52 | |
in terms of coming up with some, you know, | 1:44:55 | |
if the ICRC, for example had a concern or whatever, | 1:44:57 | |
and brought it up, | 1:45:00 | |
if it wasn't resolved at a tactical level, | 1:45:01 | |
it would eventually get to our level. | 1:45:02 | |
And then we would look into it. | 1:45:04 | |
To put this in context, | 1:45:10 | |
we started off with JTF 160, General Leonard, | 1:45:12 | |
Marine one-star, | 1:45:15 | |
who I believe his background was engineering. | 1:45:18 | |
And yeah, because it was an engineering unit, | 1:45:22 | |
actually a logistics engineering unit | 1:45:25 | |
that went down there to do this mission. | 1:45:28 | |
And we had a lot of MPs who, | 1:45:29 | |
military police from the army | 1:45:30 | |
and air force communicators and all kinds of peoples. | 1:45:34 | |
It was a joint operation, but his charter, | 1:45:38 | |
and the charter of JTF 160 was detention operations. | 1:45:43 | |
That's why, you know, intelligence people coming in | 1:45:48 | |
to talk to them or law enforcement people coming in | 1:45:51 | |
to talk to them. | 1:45:53 | |
We're not really a part of that JTF, | 1:45:54 | |
nor their mission. | 1:45:57 | |
He kind of brought it in or some sort of control | 1:46:00 | |
to kind of have it be coordinated. | 1:46:02 | |
You know, there were concerns about, you know, | 1:46:07 | |
what do we do to protect our own troops | 1:46:10 | |
so that the detainees don't make false accusations | 1:46:13 | |
of being mistreated. | 1:46:16 | |
And so, you know, but logistically it became very difficult. | 1:46:17 | |
We had these little wooden huts basically | 1:46:21 | |
where the detainees were being taken from Camp X-Ray. | 1:46:24 | |
I mean, they were adjacent to Camp X-Ray, | 1:46:27 | |
it was literally just walked out the gate, | 1:46:29 | |
and, you know, for these interviews, you know, | 1:46:30 | |
eventually when Camp Delta was built, | 1:46:34 | |
you know, they put cameras in all the interview rooms | 1:46:37 | |
so that there would be a visual record | 1:46:39 | |
of whatever was going on. | 1:46:42 | |
We were, you know, we were concerned about that as well | 1:46:44 | |
for the protection of our own troops | 1:46:45 | |
so that they wouldn't be accused of something. | 1:46:48 | |
Or, and for the protection of the detainee | 1:46:50 | |
in case one of our guys, you know, | 1:46:52 | |
got angry or lost control, and then did abuse somebody. | 1:46:55 | |
So it was really for everybody's protection. | 1:46:59 | |
JTF 170, I don't know. | 1:47:04 | |
I can't recall exactly when that was created. | 1:47:06 | |
I want to say that again, | 1:47:09 | |
it seems like it was much further down the road. | 1:47:10 | |
It was probably March, you know, | 1:47:13 | |
and that had the specific mission | 1:47:16 | |
of intelligence collection. | 1:47:18 | |
And that was the guy in charge of that | 1:47:21 | |
was a Major General Dunn Levy, Army Reservist | 1:47:24 | |
and a lawyer from New York and military intelligence officer | 1:47:28 | |
and all that kind of thing. | 1:47:33 | |
There were a number of issues, | 1:47:37 | |
a lot of issues, but basically, you know, | 1:47:41 | |
the mission of 160 to detain. | 1:47:45 | |
General Leonard was basically trying to sort of | 1:47:48 | |
keep the peace and just keep, you know, | 1:47:51 | |
keep things under control, if you will. | 1:47:52 | |
And General Dunn Levy, | 1:47:54 | |
who was trying to extract information. | 1:47:56 | |
Now, I am not an intelligence officer. | 1:47:59 | |
I trust that our intelligence officers | 1:48:01 | |
know what they're doing and are going to follow | 1:48:05 | |
our own U.S. military policies and regulations | 1:48:08 | |
and so on and so forth, | 1:48:13 | |
whatever was current at the time. | 1:48:14 | |
And I know that over the last 11 years, you know, | 1:48:16 | |
there've been a lot of changes | 1:48:18 | |
to those policies and those regulations, | 1:48:20 | |
but at the time that's what we had, | 1:48:22 | |
which by the way was still essentially focused | 1:48:24 | |
on a more conventional traditional kind of | 1:48:28 | |
combat environment, | 1:48:30 | |
fighting the military of a foreign nation | 1:48:32 | |
for an enemy nation, | 1:48:35 | |
like something similar to what we had | 1:48:37 | |
during the first Gulf War or something like that. | 1:48:38 | |
So it did not take long before there were some clear | 1:48:42 | |
friction between the two task forces | 1:48:49 | |
because the mission in many ways | 1:48:52 | |
was perceived to be, you know, naturally, | 1:48:55 | |
to some degree in conflict with each other. | 1:48:59 | |
When you're trying to do this, you know, | 1:49:05 | |
when you're you're trying to stir things up, | 1:49:07 | |
and all that kind of thing. | 1:49:10 | |
So, you know, we had each one of those task forces | 1:49:11 | |
had their own JAGs, | 1:49:14 | |
you know, at lower level. | 1:49:17 | |
And the way the JAG Corps in the military works | 1:49:18 | |
is they report to their commander, that's their boss. | 1:49:21 | |
I am their operational boss, | 1:49:24 | |
technical boss, let me put it that way. | 1:49:27 | |
I'm the technical boss. | 1:49:28 | |
He is there, or she is their actual boss. | 1:49:29 | |
So for any kind of legal issues and stuff like that | 1:49:33 | |
they're supposed to go up the technical, the chain, | 1:49:36 | |
the same way that their commander | 1:49:40 | |
would go up to our commander at SOUTHCOM. | 1:49:42 | |
And, you know, the friction between the missions, | 1:49:45 | |
which then translated into friction | 1:49:50 | |
between the two commanders, | 1:49:51 | |
which then translate into friction between the JAGs, | 1:49:53 | |
and everybody else, | 1:49:55 | |
caused a great deal of angst at SOUTHCOM | 1:50:00 | |
because both those task forces in theory anyway, | 1:50:06 | |
reported to SOUTHCOM. | 1:50:08 | |
And so, you know, on these trips, | 1:50:11 | |
I would go down there and literally have the two JAGs, | 1:50:14 | |
one from each, one from 160, one from 170, | 1:50:16 | |
and we sit in a room and say, | 1:50:18 | |
okay how are we going to resolve this issue? | 1:50:19 | |
And I can't even remember right now, | 1:50:22 | |
there was many. | 1:50:25 | |
And when I'd go down, we would hit, you know, | 1:50:27 | |
five, six, seven a dozen issues all at once, | 1:50:30 | |
of things that had popped up, | 1:50:33 | |
where I'd be getting a call from one | 1:50:35 | |
complaining about the other one or vice versa. | 1:50:36 | |
So it was really a frustrating time. | 1:50:39 | |
Peter | But when you heard, | 1:50:46 |
I don't want to go into too much more, | 1:50:47 | |
when you heard about mistreatment, | 1:50:49 | |
because you obviously did, | 1:50:50 | |
you didn't have much... | 1:50:53 | |
That wasn't really your responsibility. | 1:50:55 | |
You said everyone has a responsibility. | 1:50:57 | |
- | Well yeah. | 1:50:58 |
If I heard about it and you know, | 1:50:59 | |
if the ICRC or somebody's came or something had popped up | 1:51:03 | |
then I would go back to the JAG on the ground | 1:51:08 | |
and say, what the hell is going on? | 1:51:10 | |
What is this about? | 1:51:11 | |
What have you done? | 1:51:12 | |
Have you done investigation? | 1:51:13 | |
Have you interviewed these people? | 1:51:14 | |
Would, you know, what's going on | 1:51:15 | |
Because those are the questions I'm going to get | 1:51:17 | |
from the joint staff. | 1:51:18 | |
Jane's going to call me up and say, | 1:51:19 | |
what's going on about this? | 1:51:20 | |
Because it's hit the media, it's on the press or whatever, | 1:51:21 | |
what's going on? | 1:51:23 | |
So yeah, I mean, I certainly, | 1:51:24 | |
if my boss or even if my boss didn't ask me, | 1:51:27 | |
if I heard about something, I didn't want to get blindsided. | 1:51:31 | |
So I would try and find out what was going on | 1:51:33 | |
and I would go back. | 1:51:35 | |
I'm not there, so I have to go back to the people | 1:51:37 | |
that I have on the ground to say, tell me what's going on. | 1:51:38 | |
Peter | And have they told you, we did this, | 1:51:41 |
we actually did this? | 1:51:44 | |
Did they acknowledge it, is it? | 1:51:45 | |
- | Well, yeah. | 1:51:48 |
There was no case where I recall, | 1:51:51 | |
where other than for example, you know, | 1:51:55 | |
some guard maybe, and I don't recall. | 1:51:58 | |
I actually do not recall any case | 1:52:02 | |
where something like that came up, | 1:52:04 | |
but I suspect that it is probable, | 1:52:04 | |
that at some point somebody said, | 1:52:07 | |
hey, this guard you know lost his temper | 1:52:09 | |
and he, you know, pushed this guy or knocked him down | 1:52:11 | |
or something like that, you know, | 1:52:14 | |
in sort of a non-systemic way, | 1:52:16 | |
it's just somebody losing their temper kind of thing. | 1:52:21 | |
or just because he's a bad soldier, | 1:52:23 | |
who maybe has done this more than once. | 1:52:28 | |
I'm like, all right, get him out of there. | 1:52:30 | |
I mean, but in terms of the systemic government policy | 1:52:32 | |
of abusing detainees, | 1:52:39 | |
and mean I'll jump to that, | 1:52:42 | |
but that was later on in '02, | 1:52:45 | |
I think we were still in '02 | 1:52:52 | |
I think it was either late Summer or Fall | 1:52:53 | |
or something like that, where a memo came up | 1:52:56 | |
from the joint staff legal, I'm sorry, from the JTF. | 1:52:58 | |
Well, by now there have been changes. | 1:53:03 | |
I mean, they had replaced General Leonard at some point. | 1:53:05 | |
I remember when, I wanna say maybe March or thereabouts | 1:53:10 | |
and they put in a General Bacchus, a one-star in charge. | 1:53:14 | |
That did not help, or that did not solve matters. | 1:53:18 | |
So, because General Bacchus is a national guardsman one-star | 1:53:22 | |
and General Dunn levy were having many problems | 1:53:26 | |
and issues with each other. | 1:53:31 | |
In continuation, and actually in my view, | 1:53:33 | |
it was even more aggravated than before | 1:53:36 | |
the friction became worse. | 1:53:42 | |
And so at some point General Bacchus | 1:53:44 | |
was also relieved of command. | 1:53:48 | |
And I believe that, I can't remember well, | 1:53:53 | |
at some point that they combined the two joint task force | 1:53:59 | |
in just to one, but I don't remember if that was... | 1:54:03 | |
At this point, this was still two separate task forces. | 1:54:06 | |
And so, the 170, General Dunn Levy's lawyer, sent this memo | 1:54:09 | |
Peter | That's Colonel Beaver. | 1:54:17 |
- | Yes. | 1:54:18 |
Lieutenant Colonel Beaver sent the memo that up | 1:54:19 | |
for our review, that had a a sort of | 1:54:21 | |
three different categories. | 1:54:25 | |
I'm sure I know this is all been declassified now, | 1:54:26 | |
at the time it was classified. | 1:54:29 | |
Three different categories of what they were calling | 1:54:31 | |
"enhanced interrogation techniques." | 1:54:34 | |
And, you know, I got it. | 1:54:37 | |
I gave it to my staff to look at. | 1:54:40 | |
Colonel Farrell, Captain Evans, | 1:54:41 | |
Mark Gengras, Wendy, Stafford. | 1:54:44 | |
They all looked at it. | 1:54:47 | |
We all got together and talked about it. | 1:54:48 | |
And, you know, the consensus amongst us was that, | 1:54:51 | |
you know there was stuff in the first category, | 1:54:57 | |
and I don't remember what they called it, | 1:54:59 | |
but whatever that first category was, | 1:55:00 | |
that quite frankly we really didn't object to. | 1:55:02 | |
And if the intelligence guys were saying | 1:55:04 | |
that this would help, then, you know, so be it. | 1:55:07 | |
Then in the second grouping of things, | 1:55:11 | |
there were some things in there | 1:55:13 | |
that were maybe caused more for concern. | 1:55:15 | |
And, we're past February 7th now. | 1:55:20 | |
Remember that was a magic date, | 1:55:23 | |
when the memo came out from the president saying, | 1:55:24 | |
they are detainees, the Geneva Conventions do not apply. | 1:55:26 | |
And I'm sure you've had people explain to the details | 1:55:30 | |
of that memo in terms of how they arrived at that | 1:55:31 | |
but nevertheless, I may personally disagree | 1:55:34 | |
with that conclusion, | 1:55:37 | |
but it is a reasonable legal interpretation. | 1:55:39 | |
One that I didn't share at the time. | 1:55:45 | |
And no one on my staff shared. | 1:55:47 | |
No one, but you can't say this is clearly illegal. | 1:55:49 | |
Who's to say? | 1:55:54 | |
I mean, this was all | 1:55:55 | |
where we were in uncharted territory here. | 1:55:56 | |
There was no case law. | 1:55:58 | |
There was no precedence, there was nothing. | 1:56:00 | |
And so it was based on some rational argument | 1:56:02 | |
even though, you know, maybe not the best one. | 1:56:05 | |
Alright so fine. | 1:56:07 | |
They're not POW's. | 1:56:09 | |
So if they're not POW's, | 1:56:12 | |
then these enhanced interrogation techniques | 1:56:14 | |
in category number two, | 1:56:16 | |
which would probably be violative of the Geneva convention | 1:56:18 | |
for a POW, well, you know, | 1:56:22 | |
I've already been told they're not POWs. | 1:56:25 | |
So legally then these things don't apply. | 1:56:28 | |
And that whole thing about, you know, | 1:56:31 | |
principles of Geneva. | 1:56:34 | |
We were past that now because the president said | 1:56:36 | |
here's actually what they are. | 1:56:38 | |
All right. | 1:56:40 | |
Then that got us to category three. | 1:56:42 | |
And within category three, | 1:56:43 | |
there were some things in there that, | 1:56:44 | |
we're a lot like category two stuff. | 1:56:50 | |
In other words, that, yeah, they were POW's | 1:56:52 | |
I'd say this is definitely not good, | 1:56:54 | |
but otherwise I can't say it's illegal, in my view. | 1:56:56 | |
But there were other things in category three | 1:57:00 | |
that I thought, hey, you know | 1:57:02 | |
forget the Geneva conventions. | 1:57:04 | |
Let's just talk about U.S. law. | 1:57:06 | |
You know, this violates U.S. law. | 1:57:08 | |
So we, you know, | 1:57:13 | |
I expressed that opinion to RJ2, | 1:57:17 | |
to our chief of intelligence, | 1:57:21 | |
and I expressed it to our commander | 1:57:24 | |
who by now, we had gotten... | 1:57:26 | |
So I guess timing wise, | 1:57:31 | |
while General Hill was now in command. | 1:57:32 | |
So whenever General Hill got there | 1:57:35 | |
and I think it was late Summer. | 1:57:36 | |
So this had to be sometime in the late Summer, early Fall, | 1:57:39 | |
this event, | 1:57:41 | |
maybe you could help me out with the date, | 1:57:44 | |
but whatever it was. | 1:57:45 | |
So I expressed it to him. | 1:57:47 | |
He looked at it and said, | 1:57:50 | |
yeah, I agree that, I'm troubled by some of these things. | 1:57:52 | |
I think, I don't remember exactly | 1:57:58 | |
which one kind of jumped out, | 1:58:00 | |
but I remember he even said I'm particularly troubled, | 1:58:01 | |
maybe it was the, you know, using dogs, | 1:58:03 | |
military dogs, you know, tact dogs to intimidate | 1:58:05 | |
obviously not to actually turn them loose, but to intimidate | 1:58:08 | |
with the barking and growling and all that. | 1:58:10 | |
I don't know. | 1:58:12 | |
But this was the list that contained that, | 1:58:14 | |
and it contained the waterboarding, | 1:58:16 | |
it contained a number of other threats to life | 1:58:17 | |
the rest of the lives of your family, things like that. | 1:58:19 | |
And so he asked me to put a memo together, which I did, | 1:58:22 | |
and you know, the way you work on that stuff, | 1:58:28 | |
is you put the memo, | 1:58:29 | |
and in those days you use a floppy disc | 1:58:30 | |
so that they can make, so that his staff, | 1:58:32 | |
his immediate, you know personal staff | 1:58:35 | |
can make whatever edits he wanted to the thing. | 1:58:37 | |
So I put the hard copy in there. | 1:58:39 | |
I put the floppy disc in there and send it up. | 1:58:41 | |
And then he ultimately sent a memo. | 1:58:44 | |
It had been modified somewhat from what we gave him | 1:58:47 | |
but basically he sent it back to the chairman saying | 1:58:49 | |
I am concerned with some of the interrogation techniques | 1:58:52 | |
that are enhanced interrogation techniques. | 1:58:57 | |
And, you know, it left the operational, | 1:59:00 | |
it left the task force level to us, | 1:59:06 | |
it left the operational level | 1:59:08 | |
went up to the strategic level. | 1:59:09 | |
And then that's where it got into the realm | 1:59:10 | |
of you know, the politics of it to some degree. | 1:59:13 | |
Now, as I mentioned to you | 1:59:16 | |
we have the different levels, | 1:59:18 | |
and so I feel confident that I could go | 1:59:20 | |
to the judge advocate general of the army, | 1:59:23 | |
and at the time was Major General Tom Romig | 1:59:25 | |
and the deputy judge advocate general of the army, | 1:59:31 | |
General Marshawn. | 1:59:38 | |
And to one of my mentors that I had known | 1:59:40 | |
for a very long time in the army JAG Corps, | 1:59:42 | |
who was really a real knowledgeable | 1:59:44 | |
experienced international law guy, | 1:59:49 | |
who've been doing it for many, many decades actually | 1:59:51 | |
and go to them and say, hey I just sent this memo up | 1:59:56 | |
on this issue, which is really troubling. | 1:59:59 | |
So, you know, heads up be on the lookout. | 2:00:02 | |
And here's what I said. | 2:00:06 | |
Or here's what we said, here's what the boss said. | 2:00:08 | |
I mean, I may have dropped. | 2:00:12 | |
And they said, okay, you know, | 2:00:13 | |
we'll be on the lookout for it. | 2:00:17 | |
And it was, I was actually more concerned about that | 2:00:19 | |
than the whole thing about inviting ICRC. | 2:00:26 | |
Because when that happened, it was all, | 2:00:27 | |
it was also fast, first of all, | 2:00:30 | |
and second I did to some degree I guess, | 2:00:31 | |
I was ignorant of what was happening back in Washington | 2:00:34 | |
in terms of what people were thinking and planning. | 2:00:38 | |
And I didn't know. | 2:00:40 | |
So, but this, by this time, | 2:00:42 | |
I was very concerned because it was obvious | 2:00:45 | |
what they wanted to do. | 2:00:47 | |
And, you know, I went home, you know, my wife is here, | 2:00:48 | |
and I went home and I told her, I said, you know | 2:00:53 | |
I didn't go into any details obviously | 2:00:56 | |
because it was classified information. | 2:00:57 | |
But I just said, you know, today, you know, | 2:00:59 | |
an issue came up having to do | 2:01:00 | |
with the treatment of these guys | 2:01:01 | |
and you know, we sent a memo forward, | 2:01:02 | |
but you know, my point to her was, you know, | 2:01:06 | |
I don't know how this is going to play out, | 2:01:11 | |
but if it plays out the bad way, then you know | 2:01:12 | |
I think it's time to retire and, you know, | 2:01:18 | |
find something else to do. | 2:01:21 | |
You know, fortunately, fortunately, | 2:01:23 | |
it took a long time and I was not privy | 2:01:26 | |
to what was happening in Washington, | 2:01:29 | |
but I do know that the uniformed judge advocate generals | 2:01:31 | |
not just the army one, but the Air Force | 2:01:35 | |
and the Navy and the Marine, | 2:01:36 | |
you know, the senior uniformed lawyers | 2:01:38 | |
as well as Mr. Maura, | 2:01:41 | |
who was the Navy General Counsel at the time, | 2:01:45 | |
all engaged with the DOD General Counsel's office | 2:01:49 | |
and with the inter-agency with justice, | 2:01:53 | |
with state department | 2:01:55 | |
and ultimately whatever was happening, | 2:01:57 | |
which I was not privy to in Guantanamo, | 2:02:02 | |
they I believe were successful at ultimately, you know | 2:02:09 | |
putting a stop to it, | 2:02:13 | |
at least by the military people, you know, | 2:02:15 | |
whatever the military forces were were being ordered to do. | 2:02:18 | |
I certainly don't know what was being done | 2:02:23 | |
by any other agencies or what was being done. | 2:02:25 | |
You know, there were some detainees | 2:02:28 | |
that were transferred out of Guantanamo, | 2:02:31 | |
that I know because, you know, | 2:02:33 | |
we were concerned about... | 2:02:38 | |
We weren't told where they're going, | 2:02:41 | |
but we were concerned, | 2:02:42 | |
I mean, in my staff, we were concerned about, | 2:02:43 | |
well what if they're going someplace where, you know, | 2:02:45 | |
they may not be treated well or something like that. | 2:02:48 | |
I mean, tortured. | 2:02:50 | |
And so we actually developed a document that you know, | 2:02:53 | |
when we the military were handing custody over, | 2:02:58 | |
it's like a chain of custody, if you will, | 2:03:01 | |
for these people, that whoever, | 2:03:03 | |
to whatever, you know, other U.S. government agency | 2:03:07 | |
or foreign government, whatever, | 2:03:12 | |
anybody that was taking physical custody | 2:03:13 | |
and responsibility for these people, you know, | 2:03:17 | |
that we prepared a document that basically said | 2:03:20 | |
you understand that there's a responsibility | 2:03:23 | |
to maintain these people and you know, protect them | 2:03:26 | |
and so on and so forth. | 2:03:28 | |
So, yeah. | 2:03:31 | |
Peter | Two quick questions. | 2:03:33 |
One is, do you know if John you worked on that memo | 2:03:34 | |
with Diane Beaver? | 2:03:37 | |
Do you know if she was influenced? | 2:03:37 | |
- | I do not know. | 2:03:39 |
That's a very good question. I don't know. | 2:03:41 | |
Peter | And with General Miller, when did he come down? | 2:03:42 |
Did you interact with him? | 2:03:46 | |
- | A little, not as much as with General Dunn Levy, | 2:03:47 |
General Leonard or General Bacchus, | 2:03:51 | |
but General Miller showed up. | 2:03:53 | |
If I recall the sequence, I think General Bacchus left | 2:03:55 | |
and then shortly thereafter, I don't know, | 2:03:59 | |
two weeks, something like that, | 2:04:03 | |
but at some point then General Dunn Levy left | 2:04:05 | |
and then General Miller came in | 2:04:07 | |
and he took unitary command so that the two task forces | 2:04:09 | |
were blended into one. | 2:04:12 | |
Before he went down there, I know he came by SOUTHCOM | 2:04:14 | |
and I remember he came by my office and we talked | 2:04:19 | |
and I basically tried to explain to him, you know | 2:04:23 | |
everything I've been telling you now | 2:04:26 | |
in terms of some of the frictions that had occurred | 2:04:27 | |
and competing interests and so on and so forth | 2:04:29 | |
and that, you know, you'll have your own lawyer | 2:04:33 | |
but we're here obviously to support you. | 2:04:35 | |
And clearly, I mean, this is come out quite a lot | 2:04:38 | |
that one of the issues with JTF 170 | 2:04:44 | |
which under General Dunn Levy, | 2:04:47 | |
is that he had direct access to DOD | 2:04:48 | |
and you know, in the military, | 2:04:53 | |
we're very much about following the chain of command. | 2:04:56 | |
And so by going directly to DOD | 2:04:59 | |
he was bypassing the operational command of SOUTHCOM | 2:05:01 | |
and he was bypassing joint staff | 2:05:05 | |
because we then sent stuff up to the joint staff. | 2:05:06 | |
So that created enormous angst and consternation | 2:05:09 | |
and problems all the way around. | 2:05:15 | |
And so that was, I think one of the things that General Hill | 2:05:18 | |
made it a very strong point to General Miller is, you know, | 2:05:24 | |
you got to follow down, | 2:05:27 | |
Now General Hill has got four stars. | 2:05:27 | |
It was a very different dynamic, you know, | 2:05:29 | |
when he got there, | 2:05:32 | |
in terms of being able to have more influence, I guess | 2:05:34 | |
directly over General Dunn Levy. | 2:05:38 | |
And then, you know, the General Miller... | 2:05:42 | |
I'll be honest with you, | 2:05:44 | |
I didn't have much interaction with General Miller | 2:05:46 | |
personally, other than like I said | 2:05:48 | |
that particular visit to my office | 2:05:51 | |
and then maybe a few others here and there. | 2:05:52 | |
I think I may have gone down to Guantanamo once | 2:05:56 | |
when he was down there. | 2:05:57 | |
I don't recall exactly, | 2:05:58 | |
but his lawyer who I can't remember right now, the name, | 2:05:59 | |
but he replaced... | 2:06:04 | |
I mean, General Diane Beaver left, | 2:06:08 | |
and then somebody else came in and, you know, | 2:06:09 | |
we communicated fairly well with that lawyer. | 2:06:13 | |
Peter | Were you still in SOUTHCOM | 2:06:19 |
when the information came out about our detainee 63, | 2:06:23 | |
the person who is considered the 20th highjacker | 2:06:32 | |
and how he was treated? | 2:06:35 | |
Do you know that Time Magazine issued the log | 2:06:37 | |
to show his treatment? | 2:06:40 | |
And I can't remember what exactly when that was | 2:06:42 | |
if you were so present then? | 2:06:44 | |
- | I was not personally involved in any kind of discussions | 2:06:47 |
about, you know, this particular detainee. | 2:06:51 | |
I will tell you that within my staff, Mark Gengras, | 2:06:53 | |
Lieutenant Colonel by now, Mark Gengras, | 2:06:57 | |
I kind of made him... | 2:07:00 | |
Because like I said, we had other stuff going on | 2:07:02 | |
and we could not all focus on Guantanamo. | 2:07:04 | |
So Mark became sort of the lead within our office | 2:07:07 | |
for Guantanamo issues. | 2:07:10 | |
And he developed a very close relationship with RJ2, | 2:07:12 | |
our intelligence people. | 2:07:16 | |
There are certain classifications | 2:07:19 | |
of intelligence information, you know, | 2:07:21 | |
that are on a need to know basis, a top secret. | 2:07:25 | |
Now I hold, or at the time I held | 2:07:26 | |
a top secret security clearance that doesn't... | 2:07:30 | |
But that just means that I was eligible | 2:07:32 | |
to be read into certain activities and certain programs. | 2:07:34 | |
In order to not diffuse that kind of information too much, | 2:07:39 | |
our policy or the intelligence policy was that, you know, | 2:07:43 | |
within the JAG, you only needed one person to do this. | 2:07:48 | |
So I had other programs that had nothing to do | 2:07:52 | |
with Guantanamo, that I had to do | 2:07:54 | |
because it required somebody of a more senior rank | 2:07:57 | |
or required the staff judge advocate. | 2:08:00 | |
But for this, you know, Mark had developed | 2:08:03 | |
a very good relationship with RJ2 at SOUTHCOM. | 2:08:06 | |
And I trusted him and I still do that, you know | 2:08:11 | |
that he was going to do the right thing. | 2:08:13 | |
And so he had a lot of interaction with them. | 2:08:15 | |
With regard to detainees 63 or what may have happened. | 2:08:17 | |
Like I said, I feel, I don't know for a fact | 2:08:21 | |
but I feel pretty comfortable in thinking that | 2:08:25 | |
at some point once that, | 2:08:29 | |
when that enhanced interrogation technique memo came up | 2:08:30 | |
and we sent it up, my boss ended up basically saying, | 2:08:36 | |
Hey I have problems with this, you know, | 2:08:39 | |
I think from what I have been told, | 2:08:42 | |
not that I know firsthand | 2:08:44 | |
but from what I've been told them, what I've read that. | 2:08:45 | |
In fact, somebody up there made a decision | 2:08:47 | |
to begin to implement that. | 2:08:50 | |
I know there was a lot of pressure to begin, | 2:08:53 | |
even though we were being, | 2:08:55 | |
and I was being specifically pointed out | 2:08:57 | |
for being a roadblock on some of this stuff, | 2:08:59 | |
but that some of this stuff I've subsequently learned, | 2:09:02 | |
you know, were started. | 2:09:06 | |
And the judge advocate generals as well as Mr. Maura, | 2:09:07 | |
and I don't know who else, | 2:09:14 | |
but we're also led to believe | 2:09:15 | |
that there was going to be a commission | 2:09:17 | |
or some sort of study or working group or something | 2:09:20 | |
to figure out what we were going to do. | 2:09:23 | |
And in the meantime, | 2:09:25 | |
none of this was going to be implemented, | 2:09:27 | |
when in fact I think, the order had been given | 2:09:29 | |
to begin to implement it. | 2:09:32 | |
And maybe it was on this guy, on detainees 63, | 2:09:33 | |
whereas the rest of us all thought that, | 2:09:36 | |
that it wasn't happening. | 2:09:39 | |
And then it somehow came out that, | 2:09:40 | |
Hey, you know this really is happening. | 2:09:43 | |
And then those guys with all the stars on their shoulders | 2:09:45 | |
and Mr. Mauro as the senior Navy counsel all said, | 2:09:48 | |
Hey, timeout, you know, this is... | 2:09:52 | |
And then that's when things... | 2:09:55 | |
At least from the military uniform | 2:09:58 | |
interrogation thing changed. | 2:09:59 | |
So what that time period was, I don't know. | 2:10:03 | |
I don't think it was very long where, | 2:10:05 | |
and whatever, you know, whatever was going on, | 2:10:07 | |
this guy, if it's what I think you're thinking about it | 2:10:12 | |
and I've read the same articles you have with regards to, | 2:10:15 | |
you know, waterboarding or something like that, | 2:10:17 | |
you know, we were not made privy to that. | 2:10:20 | |
And you know what I've learned, | 2:10:27 | |
I've learned after the fact that, you know | 2:10:28 | |
when I read about it in the press. | 2:10:30 | |
Peter | Yeah, so I mean, I think, | 2:10:34 |
I don't know how much more we have, | 2:10:36 | |
but looking back from your perspective today | 2:10:37 | |
I mean, you probably see a very different picture | 2:10:40 | |
of Guantanamo from what you were in, | 2:10:42 | |
when you were so involved in other items too, | 2:10:45 | |
like you said, Columbia and such, | 2:10:49 | |
and so much chaos was going on and things are moving so fast | 2:10:51 | |
and it's a need to know as well. | 2:10:54 | |
So at some level, now you have a much better view | 2:10:57 | |
of what happened and then you did there. | 2:11:01 | |
- | In all honesty, I have not made it a point to become | 2:11:04 |
like a, you know, by reading a lot on this, | 2:11:07 | |
or, you know, some of it is I suppose, | 2:11:11 | |
I mean, obviously it's by choice, | 2:11:21 | |
but from there, I got very busy, as I said, you know, | 2:11:23 | |
going to school or being a XO of the Army General Counsel | 2:11:26 | |
or being a senior lawyer in Afghanistan | 2:11:31 | |
where I had other detainees issues to deal with | 2:11:32 | |
at Bagram and other places. | 2:11:35 | |
And where we did have some instances of abuse, | 2:11:37 | |
well we did prosecute the people who were involved | 2:11:39 | |
in that abuse, abuses if it happened more than once, | 2:11:41 | |
but then you know, but then when I retired, | 2:11:45 | |
you know I did not make it sort of a point in my life | 2:11:49 | |
to stay informed if you will. | 2:11:57 | |
So to answer your question, I guess is, | 2:12:00 | |
in the 18 months basically from January of '02 | 2:12:03 | |
until the time I left in July of '03, | 2:12:08 | |
there was a lot of change that took place. | 2:12:13 | |
I mean, already within that timeframe | 2:12:15 | |
from absolute chaotic, | 2:12:17 | |
oh my God, all these people are coming, | 2:12:19 | |
where are we going to put them, you know | 2:12:21 | |
to at the end, one of the things that, | 2:12:23 | |
my legal staff was pushing for, | 2:12:28 | |
and that I was lobbying for, | 2:12:30 | |
not in concert with, | 2:12:36 | |
but certainly with the support of the ICRC, | 2:12:37 | |
with the support of others was | 2:12:39 | |
look, it became obvious after some time | 2:12:42 | |
after a few months, actually, not even weeks | 2:12:45 | |
that some of these guys shouldn't be there, you know, | 2:12:48 | |
that they just shouldn't be there. | 2:12:50 | |
They had no business being there. | 2:12:51 | |
They were at the wrong place at the wrong time, | 2:12:55 | |
and it ended up there. | 2:12:56 | |
Or somebody ratted them out, | 2:12:57 | |
because they had a vendetta against them, or God knows what | 2:12:58 | |
but the point is they shouldn't be there. | 2:13:00 | |
All right. | 2:13:03 | |
Well, you know, once you have these guys | 2:13:04 | |
under these circumstances, | 2:13:05 | |
it's not so easy to put them back | 2:13:06 | |
depending on the nation they're coming from. | 2:13:08 | |
And, you know, the wiggers was a huge mess, you know | 2:13:12 | |
what are you gonna do with them? | 2:13:13 | |
And so now we had built Camp Delta, | 2:13:14 | |
which was the, you know, | 2:13:22 | |
we went from X-Ray fairly quickly into Camp Delta | 2:13:23 | |
which was a kind of a maximum security prison, | 2:13:24 | |
essentially were each detainee had their own cell, | 2:13:31 | |
which, you know had their own bunk and toilet | 2:13:32 | |
and running water and stuff like that. | 2:13:36 | |
And there were some cells that were, you know | 2:13:39 | |
isolation cells where they couldn't communicate with others | 2:13:40 | |
but most of them were open where they could talk to | 2:13:41 | |
at least the guy at the next cell and the guy and the other | 2:13:47 | |
on the other side, but they were individual. | 2:13:50 | |
And, but it was still very, very manpower intensive | 2:13:51 | |
because to get anybody out of the cell to go exercise | 2:13:52 | |
for example, or to go take a shower, | 2:14:00 | |
was always, you know two guards was the protocol | 2:14:01 | |
and the handcuffs and the whole thing. | 2:14:01 | |
And then one guy, one on each side and you escort him down | 2:14:05 | |
and blah, blah, blah. | 2:14:08 | |
Very manpower intensive. | 2:14:09 | |
And it limited the amount of time they could exercise | 2:14:10 | |
or shower or anything, | 2:14:15 | |
and the food was brought to them, | 2:14:16 | |
so it was intensive to... | 2:14:18 | |
All right, now from a legal standpoint, | 2:14:20 | |
the intelligence people, the criteria was, | 2:14:23 | |
if they no longer have intelligence value, | 2:14:27 | |
and if they're no longer a threat to the United States | 2:14:29 | |
I.e, we don't really believe that these guys | 2:14:32 | |
are going to go back on the battlefield | 2:14:34 | |
based on everything. | 2:14:36 | |
Again not my call, Intel guys. | 2:14:37 | |
If they meet those two criteria, then it's like, | 2:14:40 | |
all right, how do we get them out of here? | 2:14:42 | |
How do we get them home? | 2:14:43 | |
And in many cases, like I said, it was very difficult | 2:14:45 | |
to get them home and it was gonna take a long time. | 2:14:48 | |
So I talked to, | 2:14:51 | |
I think General Dunn Levy was certainly still there, | 2:14:54 | |
maybe General Bacchus was there still. | 2:14:58 | |
So this would have been sometime still in late '02 | 2:15:00 | |
or mid '02, something like that. | 2:15:03 | |
I think it was mid '02, | 2:15:07 | |
because we had already started to figure out | 2:15:08 | |
that all of these guys shouldn't be here. | 2:15:09 | |
Well, | 2:15:12 | |
remember the bubble chart with the green, yellow, red? | 2:15:14 | |
Well, if these guys really are not a threat to us anymore | 2:15:16 | |
and if they don't have any intelligence value anymore | 2:15:19 | |
then why don't we build a traditional, more traditional, | 2:15:22 | |
not entirely, not exactly, | 2:15:26 | |
but much more traditional facility for them | 2:15:27 | |
that they could be in | 2:15:31 | |
because that would be more consistent | 2:15:34 | |
with Geneva Conventions and all that. | 2:15:36 | |
We pushed that for, | 2:15:37 | |
or we argued that for a while | 2:15:40 | |
and didn't make much headway. | 2:15:43 | |
I have all the documentation on this. | 2:15:45 | |
I mean, not somewhere, I guess, I don't know, | 2:15:47 | |
but eventually, sometime by early '03, I changed approach | 2:15:52 | |
or I changed the way that I was advocating for this | 2:15:58 | |
from a, you know, | 2:16:02 | |
I should've put a legal principle position, | 2:16:05 | |
which it is, | 2:16:10 | |
but more from the practical standpoint of look, | 2:16:11 | |
if we build a facility where they can basically, you know, | 2:16:14 | |
where they live, like in a barracks, you know, | 2:16:19 | |
kinda like things tall, like 17, | 2:16:21 | |
if they live in a barracks, you know, | 2:16:22 | |
you put a big wire around it | 2:16:24 | |
so that if they want to be outside, they can be outside. | 2:16:26 | |
If you want to be inside, they're inside. | 2:16:28 | |
Think of it, and at this point, you know, | 2:16:30 | |
we were pretty... | 2:16:32 | |
Everybody knew we were going to kick... | 2:16:35 | |
The war was going to start in Iraq | 2:16:36 | |
and we were going to be really short of people | 2:16:39 | |
because last time we fought in Iraq | 2:16:41 | |
the one thing we didn't have was enough MPs, | 2:16:42 | |
so they're real limited commodity. | 2:16:45 | |
So think about how much of a savings that is, | 2:16:47 | |
if you can just have these guys basically on mingling around | 2:16:50 | |
and say, and you put a little boho, a little hut, | 2:16:53 | |
you know where they can sit under the shade, | 2:16:56 | |
play backgammon and kick a soccer ball around, | 2:16:57 | |
we don't care. | 2:16:58 | |
We're still not going to give them a kitchen. | 2:17:01 | |
We're still not going to give them knives. | 2:17:03 | |
But when we bring the food, we bring in one big pot | 2:17:04 | |
and just later lay it all out, it's a lot faster | 2:17:07 | |
than making individual little airplane meals, | 2:17:09 | |
you know for these guys. | 2:17:11 | |
So I made the argument that | 2:17:13 | |
it was going to be saving a huge amount of manpower. | 2:17:15 | |
And that was, that was big. | 2:17:18 | |
That got a lot of attention. | 2:17:21 | |
And then the other one was, | 2:17:23 | |
if you guys are going to... | 2:17:25 | |
If these guys are still in the same location | 2:17:26 | |
with everybody else in their same individual little cells | 2:17:29 | |
and they talk amongst themselves, so they know, | 2:17:31 | |
and they know why the hell is this guy here? | 2:17:34 | |
He's not really with us. | 2:17:37 | |
I mean, you know, he's wrong place at the wrong time. | 2:17:40 | |
Why is he still with us and all that? | 2:17:43 | |
Or the guy who's marginal | 2:17:45 | |
who was just maybe a trigger puller and really, | 2:17:46 | |
yeah, okay, he was involved with the Taliban | 2:17:49 | |
or he was involved with, but he was a very low guy. | 2:17:51 | |
And if you don't give them some sort of a goal | 2:17:54 | |
some sort of a, hey there's a light | 2:17:58 | |
at the end of the tunnel kind of thing, | 2:18:01 | |
then what's the incentive to talk? | 2:18:04 | |
So the Intel guys agreed that, | 2:18:06 | |
all right if we create this other facility | 2:18:08 | |
which is clearly better and more comfortable to be in | 2:18:10 | |
and it's seen as sort of a halfway house | 2:18:14 | |
to being released, | 2:18:17 | |
then that might actually incentivize some of these guys | 2:18:20 | |
with not a stick, but with a carrot that, you know | 2:18:23 | |
it behooves you to cooperate. | 2:18:27 | |
Ultimately the bottom line is they built Camp Four, | 2:18:30 | |
that's what's what they called it. | 2:18:32 | |
And that was basically one big wire | 2:18:36 | |
and they had four, you know, | 2:18:38 | |
four barracks like at each corner. | 2:18:40 | |
And then it was like subdivided | 2:18:42 | |
so that people would stay in their barracks, | 2:18:43 | |
but each barrack would have a time | 2:18:46 | |
that where they could be outside and all that kind of stuff. | 2:18:47 | |
And, you know, from what they were told me | 2:18:50 | |
I never actually witnessed this happening. | 2:18:53 | |
But from what I was told is that | 2:18:54 | |
when somebody had sort of crossed the threshold | 2:18:57 | |
to where we're going to put them in Camp Four, | 2:18:59 | |
it became like a ceremony where they would take, you know, | 2:19:01 | |
they would change their orange jumpsuit to a white robe. | 2:19:03 | |
And all the other detainees would applaud | 2:19:08 | |
as this person would be escorted by just one MP, you know | 2:19:11 | |
to the new facility and all that kind of thing. | 2:19:16 | |
Peter | And so it was your idea. | 2:19:21 |
- | Well, you know, our idea in my office was | 2:19:24 |
why are we still keeping these people here, | 2:19:29 | |
when all along we were going | 2:19:31 | |
with the green, yellow, red thing. | 2:19:33 | |
If these guys should be basically having | 2:19:35 | |
a bunch of green bubbles all the way across the board | 2:19:37 | |
because they don't belong here anymore, | 2:19:38 | |
or it was a mistake they have them here in the first place | 2:19:40 | |
or whatever, | 2:19:42 | |
not our call, their call. | 2:19:43 | |
Our Intel guys are saying, | 2:19:44 | |
we don't want this guy here anymore. | 2:19:46 | |
Then, why not grant them the kind of benefits and privileges | 2:19:47 | |
that are as similar as possible to the Geneva conventions. | 2:19:53 | |
So it started with kind of a principled legal view, | 2:19:58 | |
but in order to to have it resonate to some degree, | 2:20:04 | |
there had to be some sort of practical advantages | 2:20:06 | |
to it as well. | 2:20:10 | |
Not because people were resistant to it, | 2:20:11 | |
it was just like, you know, | 2:20:13 | |
everybody's busy and there's stuff going on. | 2:20:14 | |
And it's like, no, don't... | 2:20:16 | |
Peter | Did you deal with people | 2:20:19 |
who on hunger strikes and the force feeding ? | 2:20:21 | |
- | Yeah, I mean, you know, | 2:20:25 |
I didn't go down there and do it myself, | 2:20:27 | |
but I mean, the issue came up to us. | 2:20:28 | |
What are we gonna do with these guys? | 2:20:29 | |
And so the legal question came up | 2:20:31 | |
can we do force feeding? | 2:20:33 | |
And our answer was, yes. | 2:20:36 | |
Peter | Did you know about the Tokyo convention | 2:20:38 |
which kind of said what it is, | 2:20:43 | |
I don't think the years of salary | 2:20:45 | |
but which we says that maybe you can't force feed people | 2:20:47 | |
if they want to choose to die by not eating that's okay? | 2:20:51 | |
- | Well, like, as you mentioned, | 2:20:55 |
we were not signatories to that, number one, | 2:20:57 | |
number two, you know what, again, | 2:20:59 | |
from if the intelligence guy is telling me | 2:21:01 | |
this guy is important and we need to have his information, | 2:21:05 | |
you know, can we keep you know, | 2:21:08 | |
no I'm talking about torturing him, basically. | 2:21:11 | |
Can we keep him from killing himself? | 2:21:13 | |
From you know, intelligence, operational perspective, | 2:21:16 | |
this this isn't about just a normal prison someplace. | 2:21:20 | |
That's not what we're talking about here. | 2:21:24 | |
It's not, you know, it's not San Quentin, it's not Alcatraz. | 2:21:26 | |
These are people that our intelligence people | 2:21:32 | |
believed had valuable information | 2:21:36 | |
vital to the national security of the United States. | 2:21:38 | |
So, no, we were not gonna let these guys die. | 2:21:42 | |
Peter | Did you ever speak to a detainee on your own? | 2:21:48 |
- | No. | 2:21:51 |
I mean, not in Guantanamo, | 2:21:56 | |
I mean, in Afghanistan, I did. | 2:21:58 | |
Peter | And I guess I'll just ask you the EARTH program. | 2:21:59 |
Was that also through your position | 2:22:05 | |
in terms of you have to approve that or is that a term | 2:22:08 | |
where they would, if some detainee didn't act in a way | 2:22:11 | |
that some military person wanted them too, | 2:22:16 | |
they would bring in six men in riot gear | 2:22:19 | |
and pull them out of their cell? | 2:22:23 | |
Mason, pull them out of the cell and apparently beat him. | 2:22:26 | |
At least that's what we were told by detainees | 2:22:29 | |
what happened if they didn't do | 2:22:31 | |
whatever they were asked to do. | 2:22:34 | |
The emergency reaction force. | 2:22:37 | |
- | Yeah, | 2:22:39 |
but an emergency reaction force, is there to, | 2:22:40 | |
like if there was some sort of riot, | 2:22:43 | |
if there was some sort of physical altercation | 2:22:45 | |
where a detainee could not be controlled | 2:22:47 | |
let's say by one or two of the Mps, | 2:22:50 | |
then yeah, these guys go in. | 2:22:53 | |
But to say that they were then to be beaten, | 2:22:54 | |
no, I totally disagree with that. | 2:22:58 | |
If you have any evidence of then show it to me. | 2:22:59 | |
Because I'm not aware that the policy | 2:23:02 | |
now that's not to say that people weren't, | 2:23:04 | |
if a scuffle took place, | 2:23:06 | |
but you're implying, which I totally disagree with that. | 2:23:08 | |
There was a policy in place. | 2:23:12 | |
Peter | I don't know if there was policy | 2:23:14 |
I know detainees told us that what happened to them. | 2:23:15 | |
And I was just asking if-- | 2:23:17 | |
- | Did you ask them if they kicked any of the MPS | 2:23:19 |
in the groin? | 2:23:22 | |
Or did you ask him if they tried to choke anybody? | 2:23:24 | |
I mean-- | 2:23:27 | |
Peter | Well they said no. | 2:23:28 |
I mean, right. | 2:23:29 | |
- | Okay. | 2:23:30 |
- | But, okay. | 2:23:31 |
So yeah, I just, | 2:23:32 | |
I thought I'd get it from your viewpoint because clearly-- | 2:23:33 | |
- | I was aware that there was a quick reaction force | 2:23:35 |
as you would have at any such facility, you know | 2:23:37 | |
but there're rules of engagement or like anybody else's, | 2:23:42 | |
it's basically to come in with overwhelming force | 2:23:45 | |
to quickly put down any kind of disturbance | 2:23:49 | |
that might be starting to happen. | 2:23:51 | |
And, you know, to say that then, okay. | 2:23:55 | |
So I mean, that's what their purpose is. | 2:24:00 | |
If they went beyond that or if there's any particular case | 2:24:01 | |
where anything went beyond that was not justified, | 2:24:03 | |
then I would presume that there was, you know | 2:24:07 | |
some sort of witnesses or video or something of that, | 2:24:11 | |
and then we would have done something about it. | 2:24:13 | |
During my watch when I was there, | 2:24:15 | |
I don't recall ever having any accusation, | 2:24:17 | |
And again, I'm not saying that it didn't happen. | 2:24:22 | |
I'm just saying, it never got to our level | 2:24:24 | |
where there was an accusation made | 2:24:26 | |
that this quick reaction force was going in | 2:24:28 | |
and somehow designed to beat or abuse of anybody. | 2:24:31 | |
Peter | Good. | 2:24:37 |
You know, I have to say you've been incredibly valuable | 2:24:40 | |
and just in what you've been giving us | 2:24:43 | |
because we haven't gotten | 2:24:45 | |
a lot of what you've been telling us. | 2:24:47 | |
This has been great. | 2:24:48 | |
This is something I have, | 2:24:50 | |
I might have a few more questions | 2:24:51 | |
but there's certainly a lot to pull the work | 2:24:52 | |
that you want to address before. | 2:24:54 | |
Because I kind of... | 2:24:57 | |
Excuse me for one minute, Johnny how's that time? | 2:24:59 | |
Johnny | We have 25 minutes. | 2:25:01 |
Peter | Okay. | 2:25:02 |
- | No, you know, it was just, again, | 2:25:03 |
just really reiterating what I've said before. | 2:25:06 | |
There were a lot of complexities to this. | 2:25:10 | |
I mean, even things like, you know, | 2:25:13 | |
if an attack is coming from the sea, you know, | 2:25:14 | |
then law of the sea questions, | 2:25:16 | |
I spent a fair amount of time on the very interesting case | 2:25:17 | |
of Guantanamo and the fact that it has | 2:25:20 | |
a very different perimeter in terms of, you know | 2:25:22 | |
most places you have a 12-mile territorial, | 2:25:26 | |
while in Guantanamo it was actually three. | 2:25:28 | |
And then because of the treaty with the Cubans | 2:25:30 | |
and just dealing with the Cubans and you know, | 2:25:32 | |
those kinds of things. | 2:25:35 | |
Peter | That's really important that you emphasize that, | 2:25:36 |
I'm glad you did, that in fact, | 2:25:39 | |
people were really worried about that. | 2:25:41 | |
- | Oh yes. | 2:25:43 |
Oh yeah, you know, | 2:25:44 | |
whether it was from airborne or seaborne attack | 2:25:45 | |
that was a very serious concern, you know | 2:25:49 | |
the issues about what happens if somebody dies, you know | 2:25:56 | |
the mortuary affairs, what are we gonna deal? | 2:26:00 | |
How are we gonna deal with that? | 2:26:03 | |
Peter | Did suicides come up? | 2:26:06 |
- | Yeah, of course. | 2:26:07 |
I mean, the potential suicide to making sure | 2:26:08 | |
that they didn't, that's just did. | 2:26:10 | |
Keeping them from having a sharp instrument | 2:26:12 | |
was not just because of the potential of attacking our guys. | 2:26:13 | |
It was potential of attacking each other. | 2:26:16 | |
These are people from all different parts of the world | 2:26:19 | |
and there was... | 2:26:22 | |
Or from just killing themselves. | 2:26:24 | |
The suicide was basically, the hunger strike | 2:26:26 | |
you know, there was one detainee that was very, very old. | 2:26:30 | |
God knows how old he was, but he was very old. | 2:26:33 | |
And, you know, we feared, | 2:26:35 | |
he might just pass away of natural causes. | 2:26:36 | |
I'm sure you've heard that most of them, | 2:26:39 | |
the majority of them gained a fair amount of weight | 2:26:40 | |
because they weren't doing anything. | 2:26:42 | |
And they were getting a lot of, you know, good diet. | 2:26:43 | |
We modified the diet to be less, you know, | 2:26:46 | |
based on complaints that they were giving the ICRC | 2:26:49 | |
we modified the diet to be less, you know, health conscious | 2:26:52 | |
and more what they wanted. | 2:26:56 | |
You know, the questions about prayer. | 2:27:00 | |
And there were a lot of issues concerning | 2:27:02 | |
the chaplain, the Muslim chaplain that we had down there. | 2:27:05 | |
We had several, but I mean, the first one that came in | 2:27:09 | |
and they were, you know, there were issues about that. | 2:27:11 | |
Peter | Were you involved in that GMC issues? | 2:27:13 |
- | I'm sorry, what issues? | 2:27:15 |
Peter | GMC, right? | 2:27:17 |
- | Yeah. Yeah. | 2:27:18 |
To some degree, but I mean that quickly became... | 2:27:20 | |
That got elevated to to the political level | 2:27:22 | |
slash strategic level. | 2:27:24 | |
But initially, you know, the questions about confidentiality | 2:27:26 | |
between a chaplain and a detainee | 2:27:31 | |
and what is his role? | 2:27:33 | |
Is he there really as primarily an advisor to the commander | 2:27:35 | |
or a religious person for the detainees? | 2:27:38 | |
I mean, there were a lot of inherent conflicts and friction | 2:27:42 | |
in a lot of this stuff, because it was all new. | 2:27:47 | |
This is not, you know, World War II. | 2:27:49 | |
This was not even the Gulf War | 2:27:54 | |
where we had fairly clear understanding of how you engage | 2:27:55 | |
how you deal with prisoners of war | 2:28:01 | |
from a nation that is engaged in a war with you. | 2:28:03 | |
Peter | I'm sorry, please. | 2:28:10 |
- | No, no, I'll stop there. | 2:28:12 |
Otherwise I could-- | 2:28:13 | |
Peter | No, yeah. | 2:28:14 |
Well, I'm just thinking about the chaplain. | 2:28:15 | |
So what was his role? | 2:28:16 | |
- | His primary role was, | 2:28:19 |
he went down there to be an advisor to the commander | 2:28:22 | |
on matters concerning Islam and the detainees. | 2:28:26 | |
And he was told that, | 2:28:31 | |
several times, | 2:28:33 | |
by several people | 2:28:34 | |
including me, | 2:28:36 | |
within bounds, of course, | 2:28:41 | |
I mean, you know, don't be getting into stuff with detainees | 2:28:43 | |
don't go down that road | 2:28:48 | |
if you don't want to have to disclose it. | 2:28:50 | |
So it's, you know, use your common sense, | 2:28:51 | |
and that's the thing. | 2:28:53 | |
These guys were kind of young. | 2:28:54 | |
Peter | So interesting. | 2:28:57 |
Okay. Is there something else? | 2:28:59 | |
- | No, I'll answer any other questions | 2:29:01 |
but I think that's, you know, those natural frictions | 2:29:03 | |
between the military and civilian intelligence | 2:29:06 | |
versus the law enforcement community upfront | 2:29:09 | |
at the beginning, | 2:29:11 | |
and then later on sort of that conflict | 2:29:12 | |
between the military legal community, | 2:29:14 | |
the senior judge advocate general's | 2:29:16 | |
and the civilian legal folks. | 2:29:18 | |
Peter | Did you ever sit in on an interrogation? | 2:29:23 |
- | No. | 2:29:26 |
Peter | And when the inches came down, | 2:29:29 |
that you had no control over what agencies would come down | 2:29:30 | |
right, I mean, they could-- | 2:29:33 | |
- | I wouldn't even know. | 2:29:34 |
Peter | You didn't even know. | 2:29:35 |
And when people were transferred, I mean, again | 2:29:37 | |
if the people above you did that, you had really no say? | 2:29:42 | |
- | That's correct. | 2:29:46 |
At the very beginning, I remember we prepared the document | 2:29:47 | |
that was supposed to be executed, that transferred custody | 2:29:50 | |
and it, you know, I mean, I was trying to be, | 2:29:55 | |
I was trying to the extent that it... | 2:29:59 | |
To some extent, and by this time, by this time, you know | 2:30:02 | |
whatever potential innocence or naivete I may have had, | 2:30:06 | |
you know, had pretty much evaporated. | 2:30:10 | |
So this document was intended within what we could | 2:30:12 | |
to try and protect the detainee to some degree, | 2:30:17 | |
but also it was a matter to protect us as well. | 2:30:20 | |
You know, that in bias I mean, U.S. Southern command | 2:30:22 | |
my boss saying, look, you know, | 2:30:26 | |
you're saying that you're going to take | 2:30:30 | |
good care of these guys. | 2:30:32 | |
So, you know, but I remember preparing the form | 2:30:34 | |
and I think I remember maybe one or two being executed | 2:30:39 | |
actually executed, but then after that | 2:30:42 | |
it all just, I don't remember any more after that. | 2:30:43 | |
I mean, so I don't know if they just stopped doing it, | 2:30:46 | |
or if it was at a time when I had left | 2:30:48 | |
and moved on to my next assignment, I don't know. | 2:30:52 | |
Peter | You ever on any of the flights | 2:30:54 |
that took these men to-- | 2:30:55 | |
- | No, no. | 2:30:57 |
Peter | And when you mentioned the weakers before | 2:30:59 |
why was that early on? | 2:31:01 | |
People realized that weakers are really not-- | 2:31:05 | |
- | No, that I'll be honest with you | 2:31:07 |
that I didn't really, to me personally, | 2:31:08 | |
I didn't realize that it became an issue | 2:31:11 | |
until I got to Afghanistan. | 2:31:13 | |
Peter | And when now they came that was | 2:31:17 |
you were already up from Guantanamo., | 2:31:18 | |
because that was-- | 2:31:20 | |
- | I was at the school. | 2:31:21 |
I was at the National War College. | 2:31:22 | |
Yeah. | 2:31:24 | |
Peter | So looking back, Colonel, | 2:31:25 |
if, you know, did you expect Guantanamo was gonna be closed | 2:31:30 | |
at some point? | 2:31:33 | |
Did you think that this was a short term operation? | 2:31:34 | |
- | No. Short-term no. | 2:31:37 |
Someday closed, yes. | 2:31:40 | |
I remember at the very, towards the very beginning | 2:31:43 | |
of this thing, back in January of '02, | 2:31:46 | |
we were given the mission to design a courthouse | 2:31:48 | |
for the the trials. | 2:31:52 | |
And so the engineer and I were told, you know, | 2:31:55 | |
you're the lawyer you figure out what you need | 2:32:01 | |
in a courthouse. | 2:32:02 | |
You're the engineer, you figure how to make it happen. | 2:32:03 | |
So the two of us, we went to his room and his office | 2:32:06 | |
there had a conference table | 2:32:08 | |
and we were got a piece of paper | 2:32:09 | |
and we started sketching things out. | 2:32:10 | |
And I do remember thinking, I said, | 2:32:13 | |
I told this guy, I said, | 2:32:17 | |
I'll retire before these guys ever get prosecuted. | 2:32:19 | |
It turned out to be true. | 2:32:22 | |
I mean, actually, you know | 2:32:24 | |
to have a final sort of con... | 2:32:26 | |
And my point being that, you know, | 2:32:29 | |
we're still trying to figure out, | 2:32:30 | |
you're still busy building cages | 2:32:32 | |
and I'm still busy trying to figure out their status. | 2:32:34 | |
And, and we're being tasked to, you know | 2:32:36 | |
get ready for the trials. | 2:32:39 | |
It just seemed like it was premature a lot by a lot. | 2:32:41 | |
We did anyway. | 2:32:46 | |
I mean, we drew it out and ultimately, you know | 2:32:48 | |
ultimately that was, that's what was built | 2:32:50 | |
Peter | But some people were being held early on | 2:32:54 |
for military tribunals. | 2:32:57 | |
So there was some thinking | 2:32:59 | |
- | Oh yeah, no, from the very beginning, | 2:33:00 |
of course we captured people who we believed | 2:33:01 | |
had been responsible for the attacks and so on and so forth. | 2:33:04 | |
And so at some point there would be a trial | 2:33:08 | |
a military tribunal, whatever, they hadn't even decided | 2:33:12 | |
what they were going to do yet. | 2:33:14 | |
I mean, I'm talking January of '02. | 2:33:15 | |
So it just seemed very premature, | 2:33:17 | |
to be talking about building a structure | 2:33:19 | |
to conduct these hearings, | 2:33:22 | |
but we did. | 2:33:24 | |
Peter | Looking back to, I think I know your answer. | 2:33:28 |
I think it'd be interesting for our viewers, | 2:33:31 | |
if you were in charge, would you have given them status | 2:33:34 | |
or did you think we actually did the best we could | 2:33:37 | |
given that it was a new type of war? | 2:33:40 | |
- | I would have conducted article five tribunals | 2:33:45 |
and on a case by case basis, you know, | 2:33:48 | |
determined whether or not | 2:33:51 | |
or what kind of status they would deserve. | 2:33:52 | |
I mean, to sort of in a blanket way, | 2:33:57 | |
just throw everybody paint everybody | 2:34:01 | |
with the same paintbrush | 2:34:03 | |
didn't seem at the time. | 2:34:06 | |
And, I'm more convinced of it now | 2:34:09 | |
to have been the most prudent way to proceed. | 2:34:11 | |
I think if we'd had done, | 2:34:14 | |
if we'd have taken the time and trouble | 2:34:15 | |
to have done the hearings | 2:34:17 | |
which ultimately later the Supreme Court said | 2:34:18 | |
you got to do them anyway, you know, | 2:34:18 | |
but if we'd had done those upfront | 2:34:22 | |
then perhaps some of those guys would have, | 2:34:25 | |
who clearly shouldn't have been there in the first place | 2:34:27 | |
could have immediately been ejected | 2:34:28 | |
and sent back home without the difficulty | 2:34:30 | |
of having been in Guantanamo for a few months | 2:34:33 | |
and then being sent home, which now is much more difficult. | 2:34:35 | |
So, and yeah, | 2:34:39 | |
I suspect we would've found some that, | 2:34:41 | |
Hey, you know what, | 2:34:43 | |
this guy was just basically a trigger puller. | 2:34:44 | |
You know, he's appealed obviously. | 2:34:46 | |
This other guy here, okay, | 2:34:47 | |
maybe he is a POW, but he committed, you know | 2:34:49 | |
these work he committed, | 2:34:52 | |
or he's suspected of having committed these war crimes | 2:34:53 | |
while engaged in combat, you know | 2:34:57 | |
against the Mujahideen or against the whoever. | 2:35:00 | |
I mean, the point is some sort of a triage | 2:35:03 | |
kind of initial screening of people | 2:35:06 | |
so that you're not throwing them | 2:35:09 | |
all into Camp X-Ray initially, | 2:35:11 | |
and then into this maximum security cell system | 2:35:13 | |
which was, you know, costly | 2:35:16 | |
in terms of manpower and resources and everything else | 2:35:18 | |
Peter | Any other, did you think Obama | 2:35:23 |
and his team is gonna close Guantanamo, | 2:35:24 | |
or if he was going to succeed? | 2:35:27 | |
- | I thought it was gonna take him some time, | 2:35:30 |
but yeah, I thought he would. | 2:35:32 | |
I was surprised, I guess, | 2:35:38 | |
maybe disappointed at the lack of political will | 2:35:40 | |
to shut it down and actually put these guys, | 2:35:45 | |
bring them into a maximum security facility | 2:35:49 | |
in the United States. | 2:35:52 | |
I know that there were at the time | 2:35:53 | |
that this debate was going on | 2:35:55 | |
and there were arguments about, | 2:35:57 | |
well these guys are just too dangerous. | 2:35:58 | |
I'm thinking really, you know, come on, | 2:36:00 | |
I would put, you know, | 2:36:05 | |
five of our most regular dangerous people | 2:36:07 | |
against the, you know 20 of these guys. | 2:36:11 | |
And I mean, that seemed to be somewhat | 2:36:14 | |
of a disingenuous argument by both sides. | 2:36:16 | |
I'm not saying I'm not picking political sides here. | 2:36:19 | |
I'm just saying there was a political consensus | 2:36:21 | |
that we're not going to bring these guys | 2:36:24 | |
to the United States for many reasons. | 2:36:25 | |
And I think that's unfortunate | 2:36:29 | |
because the stigma of Guantanamo in and of itself | 2:36:31 | |
and here we are talking Guantanamo. | 2:36:38 | |
There were many many more issues I think | 2:36:41 | |
and many more people at Bagram, | 2:36:43 | |
nobody talks Bagram. | 2:36:45 | |
You know, it's just that this has become | 2:36:48 | |
the you know the cause celeb, if you will, to talk about. | 2:36:51 | |
And as a result of that, | 2:36:56 | |
I think it would be healthy for the United States | 2:36:58 | |
and for the rest of the world, | 2:37:00 | |
if we were to in fact be able to just shut it down | 2:37:03 | |
entirely and move on. | 2:37:05 | |
Peter | You know, Bagram is outside | 2:37:08 |
the scope of this project, | 2:37:10 | |
and people do know how much bigger it is and such. | 2:37:12 | |
And I'm sure you can compare this to say that , | 2:37:16 | |
but perhaps people could understand why Guantanamo | 2:37:20 | |
became the essence since it was right after 9/11. | 2:37:22 | |
- | Yes, and I hope people can, | 2:37:26 |
again try and put themselves back in the timeframe | 2:37:28 | |
of December '01, January, February March of '02, | 2:37:30 | |
in terms of the chaos that we were trying to deal with | 2:37:35 | |
never having experienced anything like this | 2:37:42 | |
dealing with people. | 2:37:44 | |
Yes, we were told that these guys were highly dangerous | 2:37:45 | |
and you know what I mean, | 2:37:47 | |
there was evidence to believe that | 2:37:48 | |
and it took some time to segregate | 2:37:50 | |
and put them in a, you know centrifical force machine | 2:37:53 | |
that kind of separated them out | 2:37:57 | |
into the various different kinds. | 2:37:59 | |
And some of them in fact are really dangerous people | 2:38:01 | |
and deserve to be prosecuted | 2:38:02 | |
to the maximum extent of the law. | 2:38:06 | |
And other guys, like I said, were, you know, | 2:38:08 | |
the wrong place at the wrong time, | 2:38:11 | |
and then there's everybody in between . | 2:38:12 | |
But it took some time to get that kind of clarity. | 2:38:14 | |
Everything was not in focus. | 2:38:17 | |
And when it's not, you would be foolish, | 2:38:18 | |
irresponsible and criminally negligent. | 2:38:22 | |
If you didn't treat everybody initially | 2:38:25 | |
as if though they are a major threat, | 2:38:27 | |
and then you have responsibility, | 2:38:31 | |
I think to immediately begin to try and speed up the process | 2:38:32 | |
of figuring out who's there, | 2:38:35 | |
that's where the article five tribunals would have helped. | 2:38:37 | |
It should have actually been conducted in Afghanistan | 2:38:42 | |
before they even got to Guantanamo, I mean, | 2:38:44 | |
the article five tribunals I'm talking about. | 2:38:47 | |
It should have been held over there. | 2:38:48 | |
Peter | Right. | 2:38:50 |
- | Well, at least under, just common sense, you know, | 2:38:53 |
don't... | 2:38:56 | |
Peter | Looking back at, listening to you, | 2:38:58 |
I'm thinking, did you like change | 2:39:02 | |
as a result of your experiences in Guantanamo? | 2:39:03 | |
What did you change? I should say. | 2:39:09 | |
- | I don't know. That's a good question. | 2:39:15 |
I suppose, I'd have to ask my wife. | 2:39:16 | |
Peter | Well, do you see the world differently | 2:39:20 |
You think after? | 2:39:22 | |
- | I have been very privileged to have, you know | 2:39:25 |
through my military career and just because I | 2:39:29 | |
when I was younger traveling and whatnot | 2:39:31 | |
but I've been to 61 different countries around the world. | 2:39:33 | |
I've been, like I said, I was involved in this, | 2:39:35 | |
I was helping the Philippine Army and their insurgency | 2:39:38 | |
in the late eighties, | 2:39:41 | |
the Peruvian army in the mid nineties, | 2:39:42 | |
the Colombians in 2000 | 2:39:43 | |
and aside from insurgencies and other conflicts | 2:39:45 | |
and stuff like that, | 2:39:48 | |
disaster relief missions and all over the place. | 2:39:49 | |
So my point is, I guess that I don't think that it | 2:39:52 | |
I don't think that Guantanamo radically opened my eyes | 2:39:55 | |
to something that, oh my God, I'd never... | 2:40:00 | |
No, but it certainly gave me additional data points | 2:40:02 | |
and a more nuanced approach. | 2:40:06 | |
And certainly with regards to the interaction | 2:40:09 | |
our civilian political leaders | 2:40:12 | |
and their interaction with uniformed leaders | 2:40:18 | |
that I had not experienced before. | 2:40:22 | |
That was new. | 2:40:25 | |
And it became a valuable lesson when I went to Afghanistan, | 2:40:27 | |
I had already had that lesson in my belt. | 2:40:31 | |
So I believe that it made me more effective | 2:40:32 | |
when I got to Afghanistan, having already been through it. | 2:40:35 | |
And, oh, by the way | 2:40:37 | |
it was the same group of people for the most part | 2:40:39 | |
Peter | At least now you knew what | 2:40:44 |
had the lay of the land. | 2:40:46 | |
- | I had a better idea of what was happening | 2:40:47 |
Peter | Well, Colonel if there's anything else | 2:40:51 |
that I didn't ask that you want to say, | 2:40:53 | |
we'll probably be almost out of tape. | 2:40:55 | |
- | Nope. Thank you very much for this opportunity. | 2:40:57 |
I applaud your efforts | 2:41:00 | |
and University of San Francisco Law School's efforts | 2:41:03 | |
to document all this. | 2:41:06 | |
And again, just cautioning that folks need to | 2:41:10 | |
listen to all of these interviews | 2:41:13 | |
and the context of putting themselves | 2:41:15 | |
in the emotional and intellectual frame of mind | 2:41:17 | |
that existed back then, and not now, | 2:41:21 | |
and you know that that would make it for a more complete | 2:41:24 | |
and accurate understanding of what happened. | 2:41:30 | |
Peter | And so people, 50 years to now | 2:41:34 |
who are watching this, | 2:41:36 | |
do you want to just emphasize | 2:41:38 | |
that they might not be aware of how we felt that day or not? | 2:41:40 | |
- | I suspect that there are many, many, many more pointed | 2:41:46 |
and emotional evidence that will be preserved forever | 2:41:51 | |
far more than mine. | 2:41:57 | |
And so I'm not going to try and add to that. | 2:41:59 | |
So many of the family members who lost, you know | 2:42:03 | |
their husbands wives, children. | 2:42:06 | |
So my points are, would pale in comparison to that. | 2:42:08 | |
I would say though, that at the end of the day, | 2:42:12 | |
you know, having confidence in, and again | 2:42:15 | |
in the U.S. military U.s. government, military included | 2:42:17 | |
we only swear allegiance to the constitution | 2:42:20 | |
of the United States. | 2:42:22 | |
That's it. | 2:42:23 | |
We don't swear allegiance to a king, queen, flag, a nation. | 2:42:24 | |
We don't, it's only the constitution | 2:42:29 | |
and the principles in that constitution. | 2:42:30 | |
And I would just say that the vast majority, | 2:42:33 | |
the vast majority of people who were engaged | 2:42:36 | |
in all of this Guantanamo stuff, | 2:42:40 | |
even those who did things that maybe I disagree with | 2:42:42 | |
believed that they were doing precisely that. | 2:42:44 | |
And it's really just a matter of degree. | 2:42:48 | |
We all believe in the same thing. | 2:42:50 | |
We're all trying to preserve the national security | 2:42:51 | |
of the United States and the constitution | 2:42:54 | |
and the values and the principles. | 2:42:55 | |
And then it boils down to a question of the balance | 2:42:57 | |
between tilting too far towards | 2:43:00 | |
the security side of it, if you will, | 2:43:03 | |
and versus on the other side, | 2:43:06 | |
maybe protecting certain values and principles, | 2:43:09 | |
knowing that if you degrade them too much, | 2:43:12 | |
that creates more of a risk than not. | 2:43:15 | |
And that's what we disagreed on. | 2:43:19 | |
It wasn't really on the end state, | 2:43:21 | |
it was on how to achieve the same common goal. | 2:43:23 | |
And so I don't fault any body at all | 2:43:27 | |
for things that they did or didn't do | 2:43:30 | |
that in retrospect, you know, I may disagree with. | 2:43:34 | |
It was their view at the time. | 2:43:39 | |
And, you know, mine was different | 2:43:41 | |
and, you know, doing certain things like either, you know | 2:43:42 | |
calling ICRC or, you know, pushing back on that memo | 2:43:47 | |
on the enhanced interrogation memo, you know, | 2:43:52 | |
you just do it and, and feel like, | 2:43:56 | |
at the end of the day, you got to feel comfortable with it. | 2:43:59 | |
You don't want to just roll over | 2:44:01 | |
and just do what you're being told. | 2:44:03 | |
You have your own individual responsibility to... | 2:44:04 | |
I swore allegiance to the constitution. | 2:44:08 | |
And when it gets to that point, you know | 2:44:10 | |
where you really feel, then that's what you do. | 2:44:12 | |
And I think that the vast majority people did exactly that | 2:44:14 | |
and would've done the same thing, you know | 2:44:17 | |
under the same circumstances. | 2:44:19 | |
Peter | That was great. | 2:44:22 |
To be able to end Johnny needs 20 seconds | 2:44:23 | |
of quiet time, room tone. | 2:44:25 | |
- | Okay. | 2:44:29 |
Johnny | Begin room tone. | 2:44:32 |
End room tone. | 2:44:48 |
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