Buehn, Bob - short clip - The Mayor of Guantanamo

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-	The community was really worried about all this.	0:18
	You know, first picture, a little American town	0:20
	of 2,500 people and they get the word that this is coming.	0:23
	And there was some corporate memory there	0:28
	that when the mass migration occurred, that the dependents,	0:31
	the family members were moved out of the base and sent back	0:34
	to the States, mostly because it had 40,000 Cubans	0:38
	and Haitians, and they just couldn't support.	0:42
	Logistically, the families too.	0:44
	So they got sent away.	0:47
	So there were two groups, there were families	0:48
	who were afraid they were gonna get sent away	0:51
	because of this and there were families	0:52
	that afraid they weren't gonna get sent away.	0:54
	They were afraid they were scared to stay.	0:55
	So this, we had a couple of town hall meetings right away.	0:58
	As Base Commander, and I was as much a mayor	1:02
	as I was a Military Commander	1:05
	because I had probably more civilians that I was	1:07
	dealing with than people in uniform.	1:09
	People in uniform are easy	1:11
	but I had to deal with the civilian.	1:13
	So it was really like being a small town mayor.	1:14
	And we would have, we had a couple of venues	1:17
	where we had public meetings and General Winner came with me	1:19
	and we tried to calm everybody and say, "You know what?	1:21
	First of all, don't worry.	1:25
	Your security is gonna be fine.	1:26
	We don't know yet if you're gonna stay or go	1:29
	but we think you're gonna be able to stay."	1:31
	And, you know, we just tried to communicate.	1:32
	And he was great about that too, by coming on as well.	1:35
	So the community knew about as much as they could know,	1:39
	we tried to pass to them.	1:43
	So it was no surprise when the arrival came	1:45
	and everybody saw this bus go by,	1:48
	they knew what was going on.	1:50

Item Info

Title:

Buehn, Bob - short clip - The Mayor of Guantanamo

Date:

October 22, 2011

Interviewer:

Honigsberg, Peter Jan

Interviewee:

Buehn, Bob

Role:

Military

Description:

This interview may include descriptions of violence.
Base Commander, Guantanamo Bay
Bob Buehn, male, age 60, was commander of the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base from 2000 to 2003, and helped establish the Joint Task Force Guantanamo.
Description was provided by Witness to Guantanamo.

Subject:

United States

Format:

oral histories

Language:

English

Extent:

2:06:38

Digital Collection:

Witness to Guantanamo

Source Collection:

Witness to Guantanamo Video Collection, 2009-2017

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Rights Note:

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

Identifier:

31c200857dd8b11213d3b6a4867042ef
witnesstoguantanamo
ark:/87924/r49g5q01r
2b6265e0-26c9-4dcf-8fda-c467cd24fd21

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r49g5q01r

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Buehn, Bob - short clip - The Mayor of Guantanamo

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