Berg, Thomas - Interview master file
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Transcript
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Interviewer | Okay, good afternoon. | 0:06 |
We are very grateful to you for participating | 0:09 | |
in the Witness to Guantanamo project. | 0:11 | |
We invite you to speak of your experiences and involvement | 0:14 | |
with detainees and others who were in Guantanamo bay, Cuba. | 0:18 | |
We are hoping to provide you with opportunity to | 0:23 | |
tell your story in your own words. | 0:25 | |
We are creating an archive of stories | 0:29 | |
that people around the world and in America | 0:30 | |
will have a better understanding of what you | 0:34 | |
and others have experienced and observed. | 0:36 | |
Future generations must to know what happened | 0:39 | |
in Guantanamo and by telling your story, | 0:42 | |
you are contributing to history | 0:44 | |
and we appreciate your willingness to speak with us today. | 0:46 | |
If at any time during the interview | 0:50 | |
you'd like take a break just let us know | 0:51 | |
and if you say something that you'd like us to remove | 0:53 | |
we can do that if you let us know as well. | 0:56 | |
So we'd like to begin with just personal information | 0:58 | |
your name, your hometown, your date of birth and age. | 1:00 | |
Maybe we could start with that. | 1:03 | |
- | My name is Tom Berg. | 1:06 |
I'm 60 years old. | 1:07 | |
I live currently in Houston, have since 1970 | 1:08 | |
I was born in Washington DC, | 1:12 | |
raised in Mexico City Mexico, | 1:14 | |
went through primary and secondary school there | 1:16 | |
and then came back to Houston, | 1:19 | |
which is where my family's from | 1:20 | |
to go to university in law school. | 1:22 | |
Interviewer | Your date of birth? | 1:25 |
- | March 19th, 1952. | 1:26 |
- | And did you go to college | 1:28 |
or university and law school here in Houston? | 1:31 | |
- | Yes, I did. | 1:33 |
Rice University for undergraduate | 1:34 | |
and then the University of Houston law school. | 1:36 | |
Interviewer | And what's your current occupation? | 1:39 |
- | I am a criminal defense lawyer. | 1:41 |
Interviewer | So maybe you'd give us a little background | 1:43 |
on how you first got involved | 1:45 | |
with the military pre 9/11, or were you? | 1:48 | |
- | I joined the army reserve in 1986. | 1:53 |
I was direct commission as a Lieutenant | 1:56 | |
in the JAG Corps back in 1986, | 1:59 | |
that consisted of one weekend a month | 2:02 | |
eating donuts and reading newspapers. | 2:05 | |
The reserves were not very active in those days. | 2:07 | |
That was the late stages of the cold war | 2:11 | |
when things were winding down. | 2:13 | |
That changed, I was mobilized first for the Gulf War | 2:17 | |
and then subsequently served a tour of active duty | 2:22 | |
in Bosnia. | 2:25 | |
Then after 9/11, I was mobilized to work | 2:26 | |
first on the judge advocate | 2:30 | |
general of the armies program | 2:31 | |
for military commissions in November of 2001. | 2:33 | |
And then later I was detailed to be the staff judge advocate | 2:38 | |
for detaining operations in Guantanamo, Cuba in 2002. | 2:42 | |
Interviewer | Okay, let's go back to right after 9/11, | 2:46 |
where were you on 9/11 | 2:50 | |
and how did it happen | 2:52 | |
that they selected you to be the advisor in November? | 2:54 | |
- | I was Houston on 9/11 driving | 2:58 |
from Houston to Brazoria county to go attend court | 3:01 | |
when I heard over the radio | 3:03 | |
that the towers had been brought down. | 3:06 | |
I figured that that would implicate me shortly. | 3:08 | |
And it did. | 3:11 | |
The army lawyer, the active duty lawyer | 3:13 | |
who was put in charge of the military commissions project | 3:15 | |
at that early stage was a Colonel | 3:18 | |
by the name of Larry Morris. | 3:19 | |
And I had known Colonel Morris | 3:21 | |
since my activation for the Gulf war | 3:24 | |
and later served directly under him in Bosnia. | 3:26 | |
So he knew that I was a criminal law practitioner. | 3:29 | |
He was assembling a team of people | 3:32 | |
with experience in criminal law | 3:34 | |
to come up with rules and procedures and definitions | 3:35 | |
for crimes related to what took place on 9/11. | 3:37 | |
And so he asked me if I would come on active duty | 3:41 | |
and under the circumstances I could not say no. | 3:44 | |
Interviewer | And can you tell us a little bit | 3:47 |
about how that process worked | 3:48 | |
when you when you joined his team? | 3:51 | |
- | We had offices in the Pentagon directly adjacent | 3:53 |
to the area that had been blown up | 3:57 | |
by the impact of the aircraft that hit the Pentagon. | 3:58 | |
So we worked with the smells and with mold | 4:02 | |
and everything else that was related | 4:05 | |
to the damage in the place. | 4:07 | |
As we were trying to grind out, I guess, | 4:10 | |
do the groundwork | 4:12 | |
of developing rules and procedures using primarily resources | 4:14 | |
from the uniform code of military justice | 4:19 | |
and experience based on the Nuremberg trials | 4:21 | |
cause we read transcripts of a number of those cases | 4:26 | |
and talked with some of the surviving lawyers | 4:28 | |
to try and come up with a process | 4:31 | |
we thought would look fair in 50 years. | 4:34 | |
That was our goal was to create something | 4:38 | |
that was transparent and fair. | 4:40 | |
We were naive because we didn't appreciate | 4:44 | |
how political the process really was | 4:47 | |
and who was ultimately calling the shots. | 4:51 | |
We thought the army would have the lead. | 4:53 | |
We had lots of interference from civilians | 4:55 | |
and department of defense from the white house, | 4:58 | |
from department of justice who ultimately took control | 5:00 | |
of the process. | 5:03 | |
Interviewer | Could you give us some details | 5:05 |
on how that happened? | 5:06 | |
How you had interference? | 5:07 | |
- | Well, we would do a lot of work. | 5:10 |
Our leadership would go meet with this collection | 5:16 | |
of individuals from various agencies to discuss what | 5:20 | |
they want to do, whether they would be things | 5:23 | |
like a presumption of innocence, | 5:24 | |
a burden of proof on the government, | 5:26 | |
whether hearsay was admissible. | 5:28 | |
Some of the fundamental issues | 5:30 | |
for what we thought was a fair trial, | 5:33 | |
because we were basing our experience | 5:34 | |
on the uniform code of military justice | 5:36 | |
and things that would look a lot like a court martial, | 5:37 | |
a system that we are proud of and we've been inculcated with | 5:40 | |
for a long time. | 5:43 | |
And we found out that they didn't necessarily agree | 5:45 | |
with that though. | 5:48 | |
Interviewer | How did you find that out? | 5:49 |
- | Well because our leadership came back pretty battered | 5:50 |
from those meetings with the civilians. | 5:52 | |
They would report to us that that things | 5:54 | |
were not going well. | 5:57 | |
Interviewer | Well could you give us some specifics | 5:59 |
what would happen | 6:01 | |
at a meeting that caused them to feel battered? | 6:02 | |
- | Yeah, they just get criticism, | 6:07 |
people like Haynes | 6:10 | |
from Pentagon would tell them, | 6:13 | |
no we're not doing it that way. | 6:17 | |
There was a sense that the trials that they wanted | 6:19 | |
were essentially show trials | 6:22 | |
where the outcome was a foregone conclusion. | 6:24 | |
They didn't want acquittals under any circumstances. | 6:28 | |
Interviewer | How did you feel about that? | 6:32 |
- | Pretty uncomfortable. | 6:34 |
All of us grew up with due process. | 6:35 | |
We're all American lawyers and we understand | 6:37 | |
our culture in the law. | 6:40 | |
And again, our point of departure | 6:43 | |
was the uniform code of military justice | 6:46 | |
which is very due process oriented, | 6:48 | |
even more so perhaps than the civilian federal practice | 6:49 | |
and Nuremberg. | 6:53 | |
Like I said, we wanted this to look fair | 6:56 | |
and transparent after we were gone. | 6:57 | |
And it was evident | 7:01 | |
that not everybody agreed with our premise. | 7:03 | |
- | And why do you call yourself an IDU? | 7:06 |
- | Because we went in there with a great deal of enthusiasm. | 7:09 |
I think a sense of patriotism thinking | 7:11 | |
that this was going to be an opportunity for America | 7:13 | |
to show the world how it was truly great, | 7:15 | |
that we would rise | 7:19 | |
above what had happened to us, do the right thing. | 7:20 | |
And it was clear that some people wanted | 7:24 | |
immediate political gain out of this | 7:25 | |
as opposed to long-term perspective. | 7:27 | |
Interviewer | Did your committee disband then when you... | 7:33 |
- | It continued, but in February I was sent down first | 7:36 |
to Guantanamo. | 7:40 | |
That was my first trip to Guantanamo | 7:41 | |
was really a site visit | 7:42 | |
to see if there was a suitable place to set up | 7:44 | |
a court martial facility or a military commissions facility. | 7:46 | |
Cause because by then | 7:50 | |
the secretary of defense had decided that Guantanamo | 7:52 | |
was the place where the prisoners would be coming. | 7:54 | |
And then in early March, I was then designated | 7:59 | |
by the judge advocate general to be the staff judge advocate | 8:03 | |
for detaining operations there in Guantanamo. | 8:06 | |
- | So could you describe your first visit | 8:10 |
to Guantanamo in February? | 8:12 | |
What that was like? | 8:14 | |
- | It was surprising. | 8:16 |
My only experience with Guantanamo | 8:17 | |
as it was with many people | 8:18 | |
was a bad movie called "A Few Good Men" | 8:19 | |
and the real Guantanamo bears no resemblance | 8:22 | |
to anything that you see in that movie. | 8:26 | |
Interviewer | What did you see when you went down there | 8:28 |
the first time? | 8:30 | |
- | It was arid, there were iguanas, protected iguanas, | 8:31 |
wandering about the place and banana rats, | 8:36 | |
nasty critters. | 8:39 | |
- | Did you see the detainees? | 8:41 |
- | I saw the detainees they'd camp Camp X-ray. | 8:43 |
At the time they were living in conditions | 8:47 | |
not too dissimilar from the guards that were detaining them. | 8:49 | |
The guards were in some rather old GP medium tents, | 8:53 | |
canvas tents, directly adjacent to the facility | 8:56 | |
where they were being kept. | 9:01 | |
They've been portrayed, I think in the media, as dog cages | 9:03 | |
but they'd been detention pens | 9:05 | |
that had been originally built to hold | 9:07 | |
Haitian and Cuban immigrants who had come ashore | 9:11 | |
in the 1990s during one of the various floods | 9:14 | |
of immigrants who tried to gain access | 9:17 | |
to the United States through Guantanamo. | 9:19 | |
So the conditions they'd look worse than they actually were. | 9:25 | |
One of the advantages of living | 9:29 | |
in those open cells was that people could see your condition | 9:31 | |
and it made you less subject to abuse. | 9:36 | |
What goes on in the night and undercover | 9:40 | |
of darkness in closed steel rooms is much different | 9:42 | |
than what can happen in transparent cages. | 9:45 | |
Interviewer | So you weren't that upset | 9:49 |
at that point as to what you observing? | 9:52 | |
- | No, of course we didn't know | 9:55 |
that they would be people there 10 years later, either. | 9:56 | |
The notion that we had at the beginning | 10:01 | |
is this was temporary. | 10:03 | |
There was a sorting out process | 10:05 | |
that was required because we didn't know who we had. | 10:07 | |
We really didn't. | 10:10 | |
We were gathering people up off the battlefield | 10:11 | |
and they were not being effectively screened there. | 10:13 | |
They could not be effectively screened there. | 10:16 | |
And so determinations we thought would be made later | 10:19 | |
and then there'd be a sorting process | 10:23 | |
and those who turned out | 10:25 | |
not to be the worst of the worst would then be sent out. | 10:26 | |
Interviewer | And had you heard anything about | 10:32 |
the way the men have been treated in Afghanistan | 10:34 | |
before they came to Guantanamo by that early date? | 10:36 | |
- | No, no. | 10:41 |
We didn't have any information about abuse at that point. | 10:42 | |
Interviewer | And at that point, did you understand | 10:46 |
that all the men you will looking at were dangerous? | 10:48 | |
- | We had been told that when we saw them | 10:53 |
we were probably more dubious. | 10:56 | |
Interviewer | Why? | 10:58 |
- | Well, some of them were ancient, | 10:59 |
a few were non-campus. | 11:01 | |
Interviewer | Were what? | 11:04 |
- | Non-campus meant as they were | 11:05 |
a couple of them were simply out of their mind. | 11:07 | |
We had one guy that was referred to it was half dead Bob. | 11:11 | |
A number who had been shot, | 11:16 | |
shot in the rear. | 11:19 | |
We could tell that they were simply | 11:21 | |
the last guys down some foxhole. | 11:22 | |
Interviewer | Well, why was half dead pop called that? | 11:26 |
- | Well, because when he arrived he was literally half dead. | 11:29 |
He managed to survive | 11:32 | |
Interviewer | From fire? | 11:34 |
- | From gunfire, yeah. | 11:36 |
Interviewer | And he wasn't in the clinic? | 11:39 |
- | No, we did have a full Naval clinic there. | 11:41 |
We had a Naval hospital | 11:45 | |
and ultimately we established an auxiliary clinic | 11:46 | |
adjacent to the camp. | 11:51 | |
Interviewer | But the half dead Bob was he in the clinic? | 11:54 |
was he in one... | 11:56 | |
- | No he wasn't in the clinic. | 11:57 |
Interviewer | Did you get to talk to the detainees | 11:59 |
when you first came down that first time in February? | 12:01 | |
- | There was no real occasion to do so. | 12:04 |
I wasn't there to interview or interrogate them out. | 12:07 | |
Just looking at that first trip, | 12:10 | |
again looking for a site | 12:13 | |
where we could set up a court facility. | 12:14 | |
And then afterwards, when I was in charge | 12:17 | |
of detention operations | 12:19 | |
I would pass through, I would observe them | 12:21 | |
but it wasn't my job to talk with them, for example. | 12:24 | |
Interviewer | Well, let's go to that second time | 12:28 |
when you came down in March, | 12:29 | |
that's when you were in charge of detention operation, | 12:30 | |
what exactly did that entail? | 12:33 | |
- | At the time there were two separate task forces. | 12:35 |
One was detention operations | 12:38 | |
which was a military police function | 12:39 | |
run a prisoner of war camp. | 12:41 | |
The other one was an intelligence gathering operation. | 12:43 | |
Our operation was under the command of a one-star general. | 12:48 | |
Interviewer | Who was? | 12:52 |
- | That would have been General Baccus. | 12:53 |
Rick Baccus from the Rhode Island National Guard. | 12:55 | |
And then the intelligence gathering operation | 12:59 | |
was under a Major General Dan Levy. | 13:00 | |
Mike Dan Levy who was an army reserve general. | 13:03 | |
Interviewer | And what was your role? | 13:09 |
- | My role, I was the legal advisor to General Baccus. | 13:11 |
Interviewer | What did that entail? | 13:14 |
- | That entailed everything has to have | 13:16 |
judge advocate generally does from criminal justice issues | 13:19 | |
with maintenance of discipline with the troops | 13:22 | |
to legal opinions on a variety of, I guess, | 13:25 | |
relatively benign issues. | 13:29 | |
We had unique issues. | 13:31 | |
We had to anticipate. | 13:32 | |
What if one of our detainees dies? | 13:34 | |
How do we conduct a burial? | 13:36 | |
How do we establish a Muslim burial ground there? | 13:37 | |
Even if it's temporary. | 13:39 | |
So that's consistent with the religious mores | 13:41 | |
of the people we've got. | 13:43 | |
I was also liaison to the red cross. | 13:45 | |
Interviewer | What does that entail? | 13:48 |
- | That required frequent communication | 13:49 |
with the representative of the international committee | 13:51 | |
of the red cross. | 13:55 | |
They'd been invited in by a Colonel Manny Superville | 13:55 | |
who was the staff judge advocate in Florida | 13:59 | |
our higher command. | 14:02 | |
Interviewer | When the red cross was there | 14:05 |
we had heard from some detainees that most of the letters | 14:08 | |
if they received them at all were redacted. | 14:12 | |
There's hardly anything on the letters | 14:14 | |
going both out and coming in. | 14:16 | |
Is that your experience? | 14:18 | |
- | They were subject to some censorship, but I don't know | 14:21 |
that they were totally redacted. | 14:23 | |
We know that many of them got to their destinations. | 14:24 | |
Interviewer | Did you ever see any of the letters? | 14:29 |
- | I did. | 14:31 |
Interviewer | Did you ever see lush flag? | 14:32 |
- | No. | 14:34 |
Interviewer | Pause no. | 14:36 |
Most of the letters were not that blackened out. | 14:37 | |
Do you recall? | 14:40 | |
- | They were. | |
- | Had you heard any inklings | 14:42 |
in these early days? | 14:44 | |
How long were you the advisor to? | 14:46 | |
- | I was there through August. | 14:49 |
Interviewer | Of 02. | 14:51 |
- | Of 02. | 14:51 |
Interviewer | during that six month period, | 14:53 |
had you heard any talk about possibly | 14:54 | |
using more harsh interrogation | 14:57 | |
in the intel side of things? | 15:01 | |
- | We were always alert to that possibility. | 15:03 |
Interviewer | Why? | 15:06 |
- | Because it was our responsibility | 15:08 |
as the detention operation to ensure the security | 15:10 | |
of the people we were charged with protecting. | 15:15 | |
When you do detention operations | 15:17 | |
you have responsibility for the welfare of your prisoners. | 15:20 | |
And that could put us in conflict with the Intel side | 15:24 | |
if they wanted to do things that would constitute torture. | 15:28 | |
Interviewer | So had you heard any chatter | 15:32 |
about that possibly occurring in the interrogations? | 15:34 | |
- | We heard suggestions of it. | 15:38 |
Like I said, we were alert. | 15:42 | |
There were some people who were in a special category | 15:43 | |
of detention who were held in the Navy brig | 15:46 | |
and the red cross did not have access to them initially. | 15:49 | |
And this was justified by the Intel operation to us. | 15:53 | |
And we were concerned what was going on with that. | 15:58 | |
Interviewer | You talked about | 16:02 |
the Naval brig in Guantanamo? | 16:03 | |
- | Right, the Naval brig in Guantanamo | 16:04 |
which was just a nasty old block house. | 16:06 | |
- | And what could do about them? | 16:08 |
- | Well, two stars trumps one star. | 16:11 |
- | Which means? | 16:15 |
- | Which means that general Dan Levy could put his foot down | 16:15 |
and he had his lines of communication | 16:18 | |
through self common to the Pentagon. | 16:23 | |
Interviewer | So if you heard, how did you hear | 16:27 |
that there might be something that is untold | 16:31 | |
going on in the interrogation. | 16:35 | |
- | There was an active effort | 16:37 |
by the Intel side to co-op some of our guards. | 16:39 | |
- | What does that mean? | 16:43 |
- | To get them to become intelligence gatherers for them? | 16:43 |
As an MP doing it | 16:48 | |
for example a prisoner of war operation | 16:51 | |
you have a responsibility to gather passive information. | 16:52 | |
If you observe something, you report it | 16:56 | |
but you do not become an active intelligence gatherer. | 16:58 | |
You don't have the training and you don't have the job | 17:01 | |
and your charges are going to be much more difficult | 17:04 | |
for you to manage if they perceive that | 17:07 | |
you are working contrary to the general interest | 17:09 | |
of just maintaining them in custody. | 17:13 | |
So we had this inherent conflict. | 17:16 | |
We were trying to give a pretty clear guidance | 17:17 | |
and rules to the young soldiers | 17:20 | |
who were performing the guard duties. | 17:23 | |
And the other entity on the on the base | 17:26 | |
was trying to utilize them in a different fashion. | 17:29 | |
So we had a lot of conflict generated | 17:32 | |
between the two commands over those issues. | 17:35 | |
Interviewer | What did you do if you heard | 17:39 |
that some guard was or several guards | 17:44 | |
were being approached by the intel? | 17:47 | |
- | My lines of communication | 17:50 |
were to general Dan Levy's lawyer | 17:51 | |
to voice complaints and of course | 17:54 | |
to keep my commander informed | 17:55 | |
and then they would meet as well, | 17:58 | |
general Dan Levy and Baccus. | 17:59 | |
They were pretty much oil in water | 18:02 | |
most of the time. | 18:03 | |
They did not get along. | 18:04 | |
General Baccus as I explained to them, | 18:09 | |
the law of torture | 18:12 | |
is defined even in title 18 United States code. | 18:13 | |
So we could be criminally liable | 18:18 | |
for anything that happened under our watch | 18:20 | |
that we acquiesced in | 18:21 | |
and that because many of the interrogators were nameless. | 18:23 | |
If anybody ever looked | 18:27 | |
they'd looked for the people who actually had names | 18:28 | |
and that would have been him. | 18:30 | |
So he was cautious based on my legal advice | 18:32 | |
and he tried to conform his activity to that. | 18:35 | |
Interviewer | But it sounds like he just bumped up | 18:42 |
against a wall | 18:45 | |
and he just had no say | 18:46 | |
in reducing the Intel side from approaching your staff | 18:48 | |
or from otherwise interfering thing with your work | 18:55 | |
- | Well the normal way you resolve problems | 19:00 |
when you can't resolve them at your level | 19:02 | |
is to bump it to the next level | 19:04 | |
which would have been SOUTHCOMM. | 19:05 | |
And we raised a lot of these legal issues | 19:08 | |
to the next higher level | 19:10 | |
but they refused to give a significant guidance. | 19:11 | |
In other words, they wanted us to work it out | 19:14 | |
on the ground so that they didn't have to be responsible | 19:17 | |
for it or they didn't have to go to the Pentagon | 19:20 | |
and then face the heat | 19:22 | |
from the political powers who would come after him | 19:24 | |
for bringing these issues to them. | 19:26 | |
Interviewer | Do you think they suspected that | 19:31 |
or did you suspect anybody suspect | 19:32 | |
where this was coming from | 19:35 | |
this idea of using harsh interrogation | 19:36 | |
with who was actually behind this very. | 19:40 | |
Was it coming from Dan Levy or come from above? | 19:44 | |
- | It was coming from above, | 19:47 |
Dan Levy I don't think you would have come | 19:48 | |
up with this himself | 19:49 | |
but there was a tremendous amount | 19:52 | |
of frustration over the lack of results. | 19:54 | |
Again, we gathered a bunch of people off the battlefield | 19:56 | |
the secretary of defense had declared | 19:59 | |
they were the worst of the worst. | 20:00 | |
And so in the perception of the minds | 20:02 | |
of American and many in the military, we had the bad guys | 20:04 | |
and then you get to the truth on the ground there | 20:08 | |
and yeah, you do have some really bad guys | 20:11 | |
but you got a whole bunch | 20:13 | |
of people who know little or nothing, | 20:14 | |
and they're worthless | 20:16 | |
but you can't get rid | 20:17 | |
of them because you've already declared | 20:18 | |
that they're the worst of the worst. | 20:19 | |
And we're still trying to get rid | 20:20 | |
of many of those people. | 20:22 | |
Look at the wiggers | 20:23 | |
and the trouble we've gone through | 20:24 | |
to try and send them somewhere. | 20:26 | |
I think we've got some tending golf courses | 20:29 | |
in The Bahamas now | 20:32 | |
and we just sent some to central America. | 20:33 | |
It's been a bizarre journey for them. | 20:35 | |
Interviewer | Do you think Dan Levy | 20:39 |
believed in this harsh interrogation? | 20:40 | |
- | It's hard to say. | 20:45 |
He certainly drank more of the Kool-Aid | 20:46 | |
than I think he should have. | 20:49 | |
He was a bully. | 20:55 | |
I think everybody who met him down there | 20:57 | |
realized he was a bully | 20:58 | |
and he threw his weight around, | 21:01 | |
he threw his rack around. | 21:02 | |
And it's consistent with being a bully | 21:04 | |
that he would permit those kinds of activities | 21:07 | |
to take place like harsh interrogations. | 21:12 | |
Interviewer | When you spoke to the guards, | 21:16 |
Hey you and no longer participate with Intel | 21:19 | |
or did some of them disobey you and continue | 21:22 | |
to participate with Intel? | 21:25 | |
- | I don't know whether they continued to participate | 21:28 |
because they wouldn't have told me | 21:31 | |
had they continued to do that, but we were very clear | 21:32 | |
in our training about what their roles were | 21:35 | |
and what their roles were not | 21:38 | |
in order to maintain discipline. | 21:40 | |
Interviewer | And were you frustrated | 21:45 |
with the fact that SOUTHCOM would not assist you? | 21:45 | |
- | Very. | 21:49 |
- | Is there anything else that you could have done? | 21:50 |
- | No, I mean that was our chain of command | 21:52 |
and we had to work within our chain of command. | 21:55 | |
So it was very frustrating to try and elevate issues | 21:57 | |
to the chain of command only to have them pushed back | 22:00 | |
down on us because there was no resolution our level, | 22:02 | |
they were telling us the Geneva conventions didn't apply. | 22:08 | |
I know as a lawyer that | 22:14 | |
approval of the Geneva conventions was an act of Congress. | 22:17 | |
It's a treaty signed by the United States. | 22:20 | |
Not even the president can abrigate them. | 22:21 | |
And of course the Supreme Court a few years later | 22:25 | |
confirmed that that was indeed the case, | 22:26 | |
but we were in an atmosphere where other lawyers | 22:29 | |
were saying, yes, he did | 22:32 | |
and you're not being very patriotic | 22:34 | |
by taking the different position. | 22:35 | |
Interviewer | So is there any incident you can tell us | 22:39 |
about between February or March and August | 22:43 | |
that might be interesting for viewers | 22:46 | |
50 years now to represent what you're describing? | 22:48 | |
- | There was one circumstance that I recall | 22:53 |
very close to the time I left, where general Dan Levy and I | 22:56 | |
at camp Delta, went into one of the buildings | 23:01 | |
at the request of the red cross, because there was a rumor | 23:05 | |
that someone was being mistreated. | 23:09 | |
And one of the detainees was held naked in a detention cell | 23:13 | |
which is all steel, | 23:19 | |
and the temperature had been dropped. | 23:21 | |
I think about 60 degrees with the air conditioning | 23:22 | |
and the windows had been obscured. | 23:25 | |
So there was no daylight. | 23:28 | |
Those are collectively violations of the law of war | 23:31 | |
because those are prohibited actions. | 23:34 | |
You have to have daylight, you have to have clothing, | 23:36 | |
you have to be kept properly warmed. | 23:39 | |
And he turned on the lights and he reported back to me | 23:44 | |
that he turned on the lights and what he saw | 23:50 | |
and that we could then not assure the representative | 23:52 | |
of the ICRC that he was now okay. | 23:55 | |
Interviewer | Did you report that to anyone else? | 24:00 |
- | I report to the general and he's the one | 24:05 |
who has to report it on. | 24:08 | |
Interviewer | You to know what he did? | 24:11 |
- | So I don't know whether he pursued that or not. | 24:12 |
He probably pursued it with Dan Levy. | 24:15 | |
And then again, SOUTHCOM was like sending it | 24:18 | |
into a black hole. | 24:21 | |
- | But you actually observed this? | 24:22 |
- | I was with general Baccus when he went in | 24:25 |
and he told me what he saw. | 24:28 | |
Interviewer | But you didn't see yourself. | 24:30 |
- | I didn't see it myself. | 24:31 |
Interviewer | But he told you... | 24:32 |
- | But he told me after we went in | 24:33 |
and then I relayed that information | 24:35 | |
to the representative of the ICRC. | 24:37 | |
Interviewer | So at that point, | 24:42 |
what were you thinking in terms of | 24:43 | |
all that you had brought to the military | 24:45 | |
and your belief in the rule of law | 24:50 | |
at that point, when it was starkly clear to you | 24:52 | |
that we weren't adhering to what you had understood | 24:57 | |
to be the proper Geneva convention approach | 25:01 | |
to prisoners of war, | 25:04 | |
did you think it was time for you to leave or? | 25:07 | |
- | I didn't think it was time | 25:10 |
for me to quit the JAG corps and quit the army. | 25:11 | |
No, I thought it was probably time | 25:13 | |
to double down on our adherence to due process. | 25:15 | |
When I came back and I talked with army lawyers | 25:19 | |
I told them what had happened, what I'd seen | 25:23 | |
and that we were in for a long fight, | 25:26 | |
not just with the enemy but with ourselves, | 25:28 | |
but it was certainly not a time to quit. | 25:31 | |
Cause then you're giving into the dark side | 25:33 | |
as opposed to resisting it. | 25:35 | |
Interviewer | Did any of the army lawyers listen to you | 25:37 |
and pursue it? | 25:40 | |
- | Yeah. | 25:41 |
Well our judge advocate general at the time | 25:42 | |
General Romig was certainly aware of the difficulties | 25:45 | |
and he along with the other judge advocate generals | 25:48 | |
when they spoke to Congress expressed their concerns. | 25:51 | |
Interviewer | Why did you leave in August? | 26:01 |
- | I was a reservist, had been mobilized | 26:04 |
and they could only keep me so long. | 26:06 | |
They asked me if I would stay longer | 26:10 | |
but I was pretty worn out from six months of fighting | 26:12 | |
on the ground in Gitmo and I was ready to come back home | 26:16 | |
and resume practicing law and be a civilian for awhile. | 26:19 | |
It was clear that the military commission project | 26:23 | |
that we had started out with was not going to take fruit, | 26:25 | |
and we were not gonna be trying any court martials | 26:28 | |
anytime soon down there or any military commissions. | 26:30 | |
Interviewer | Why was that clear? | 26:33 |
- | Because the process had completely stalled. | 26:35 |
Interviewer | Why is that? | 26:38 |
- | Because the politicians had taken it over | 26:41 |
and they were in conflict with | 26:44 | |
the judge advocate general over how to do it. | 26:45 | |
They wanted to use military commissions. | 26:48 | |
They wanted to use military people in them. | 26:50 | |
The military was resisting the civilian pressure | 26:53 | |
to make these into simply kangaroo courts. | 26:58 | |
And in order to have trials, you've got to have evidence | 27:03 | |
and you've got to have suitable defendants | 27:06 | |
and they were having trouble developing sufficient evidence | 27:10 | |
to even bring forward | 27:12 | |
in a kangaroo trial to present something. | 27:13 | |
Interviewer | I want to go back to that, | 27:17 |
so in August did you go home then? | 27:18 | |
- | So I came back. | 27:21 |
Interviewer | And did you stay home or did you go back? | 27:22 |
- | I made a couple of visits to Gitmo | 27:25 |
later on but they were semi-official. | 27:29 | |
I was mobilized for Afghanistan in 2003, | 27:34 | |
and I went with a civil affairs unit | 27:39 | |
and I spent a tour there | 27:41 | |
and then I went to Iraq in 2008, 2009. | 27:42 | |
Interviewer | Could you tell us about | 27:46 |
the subsequent visits Guantanamo? | 27:48 | |
Why you went and what you saw then? | 27:50 | |
- | In some respect, | 27:52 |
I was assigned to a reserve unit, | 27:53 | |
which was still supporting | 27:56 | |
the rump military commission process | 27:57 | |
along with like three other lawyers. | 28:00 | |
And so for my annual training | 28:02 | |
I was able to get a trip down there. | 28:04 | |
Interviewer | And what did you see | 28:08 |
that was different from what you had experienced? | 28:09 | |
- | Well, by then Camp Delta was well-established. | 28:11 |
We were coordinating with Syda, | 28:15 | |
which was the the CID task force. | 28:17 | |
In addition to these military task force, | 28:22 | |
you had a collection of law enforcement agencies | 28:24 | |
that were trying to develop evidence | 28:27 | |
with the idea that there might be civilian trials. | 28:29 | |
And so they were trying to gather and preserve evidence | 28:32 | |
and develop intelligence that could be used | 28:37 | |
for criminal prosecutions | 28:39 | |
as opposed to military prosecutions. | 28:40 | |
And we still had an advisory function to them. | 28:44 | |
So I did some of that. | 28:47 | |
Interviewer | What did you do exactly? | 28:49 |
- | Provided basic legal advice | 28:52 |
to some of the sidif agents on the ground | 28:54 | |
from the various elements. | 28:57 | |
There was army, CID, Navy, NCIS. | 28:59 | |
FBI was there. | 29:03 | |
Interviewer | What did you think one time | 29:06 |
when we went back those two times or three times | 29:07 | |
after you left it, | 29:11 | |
could you describe how it looked different? | 29:13 | |
You said that kept after. | 29:15 | |
What else did you notice? | 29:17 | |
- | Well, of course by then Camp X-ray had been abandoned. | 29:24 |
It was just overgrown with weeds | 29:27 | |
and everything was contained | 29:29 | |
within a much less transparent area. | 29:31 | |
The significant thing when I went back | 29:37 | |
was that the detention task force had actually been merged | 29:39 | |
into the Intel task force and became subordinate to it | 29:42 | |
under the command of still at that time general Dan Levy. | 29:45 | |
Interviewer | What did you think of that? | 29:49 |
- | I thought that was a terrible idea. | 29:50 |
Interviewer | Because? | 29:53 |
- | Because that's a fox in the hen house. | 29:53 |
As difficult as the tension was | 29:58 | |
during the time we were there | 30:00 | |
I think it was healthy that there'd be resistance | 30:01 | |
to those intelligence operatives | 30:04 | |
who were willing to bend the rules, to take the gloves off | 30:06 | |
as I think it was Dick Cheney said. | 30:10 | |
And when you lost that, then you lost accountability | 30:14 | |
and and you lost any kind of dialectical process | 30:19 | |
for decision-making. | 30:22 | |
Interviewer | What kind of people were in target | 30:24 |
is that you saw? | 30:26 | |
- | There were a variety. | 30:30 |
You might find some people who were | 30:32 | |
military intelligence MI, | 30:33 | |
interrogators who'd had standard training. | 30:35 | |
Then we had people who I guess | 30:38 | |
they were certainly non-military. | 30:45 | |
There were other governmental agencies OGAs. | 30:47 | |
Interviewer | Did you see CIA agents down there? | 30:50 |
- | Well I wouldn't know what that they were CIA | 30:53 |
but I would assume that they were CIA or other DIA. | 30:55 | |
One of the many acronyms for other governmental agencies | 31:01 | |
and some were probably contractors. | 31:05 | |
Interviewer | Did you ever speak to any detainee | 31:10 |
who was interrogated? | 31:12 | |
- | No. | 31:14 |
Interviewer | You never did speak to detainees at all? | 31:17 |
Did you ever have a chance to speak to the detainees? | 31:19 | |
- | I would speak to them briefly walking through, | 31:21 |
one of the things that we did | 31:25 | |
that distinguishes Gitmo from Abu Ghraib for example, | 31:27 | |
is we did random checks | 31:32 | |
at odd hours to make sure things weren't going wrong. | 31:34 | |
General Baccus would show up at two o'clock in the morning, | 31:39 | |
for example something which wasn't going on | 31:41 | |
in Abu Ghraib later. | 31:43 | |
And I would do that from occasion to occasion as well. | 31:45 | |
And so I'd have casual contact | 31:48 | |
walking up and down a hallway with detainees. | 31:51 | |
And those that could speak English could say something, | 31:55 | |
but other than that casual chat | 31:58 | |
I wasn't going to get into intelligence gathering either, | 32:01 | |
that wasn't my job and I knew better. | 32:04 | |
Interviewer | Did you ever see any people | 32:07 |
from other nations present in Guantanamo? | 32:11 | |
- | You mean like are the interpreters? | 32:16 |
Interviewer | No, perhaps the diplomats | 32:19 |
or maybe interrogators or agents | 32:21 | |
from the countries who would interrogate the detainees? | 32:27 | |
- | I knew that they were , | 32:30 |
that they'd gotten country clearance to come in. | 32:31 | |
Did I see them in action? | 32:33 | |
No, but did I know that they were there? | 32:34 | |
Yes. | 32:36 | |
Interviewer | Why would they tell you they were there? | 32:38 |
- | Well, we just learned about them coming in | 32:41 |
because in order to come in to get mail, | 32:44 | |
you had to get country clearance | 32:45 | |
and you had to come through the Navy. | 32:47 | |
And so that's not exactly a super secret. | 32:48 | |
Interviewer | Any thoughts about those visits? | 32:53 |
What do you think about it back then? | 32:56 | |
- | If they were allied nations trying to gather information | 32:59 |
I don't know that that triggered anything suspicious. | 33:02 | |
Interviewer | Did you see any juveniles | 33:07 |
while you were in Guantanamo? | 33:08 | |
- | I'm thinking we sent back a juvenile. | 33:12 |
Once we found out he was a juvenile | 33:16 | |
and of course we found an American citizen too | 33:17 | |
and he'd been born in Louisiana | 33:21 | |
and once we determined that | 33:25 | |
we had to get him out of there pretty quickly too. | 33:28 | |
Interviewer | Why there? | 33:30 |
- | Well, because our rules | 33:31 |
provided that American citizens | 33:32 | |
wouldn't go to Guantanamo. | 33:33 | |
Interviewer | So were you actually | 33:35 |
the one who discovered he was an American citizen? | 33:37 | |
- | No, I wasn't the one that discovered it | 33:39 |
the folks conducting I guess general admission | 33:41 | |
found out about that. | 33:47 | |
And then it came to my desk and I said, | 33:48 | |
well, he's an American citizen. | 33:51 | |
That's the end of that. | 33:53 | |
We have to do something else. | 33:54 | |
Interviewer | And did you follow along | 33:57 |
when he was sent to the Naval brig in South Carolina, | 33:59 | |
were you aware of that? | 34:03 | |
- | Yes. | 34:05 |
Interviewer | And did you have any input | 34:06 |
or any understanding what was going on in that brig? | 34:08 | |
- | In the beginning I did. | 34:14 |
They were asking how we did certain things. | 34:16 | |
What did we provide? | 34:19 | |
What could we provide the detainees for amusement? | 34:20 | |
Books, cards, games, whatnot. | 34:26 | |
And so at that superficial level of general | 34:31 | |
how do you hold them? | 34:34 | |
Yeah, I did talk with the detainee officials at the brig. | 34:37 | |
Now, what happened later? | 34:42 | |
That I don't know. | 34:44 | |
Interviewer | You had no idea? | 34:45 |
- | I had no idea if he was held in isolation | 34:46 |
for a prolonged period of time | 34:48 | |
once that got going, no. | 34:50 | |
Interviewer | You would have no jurisdiction that area. | 34:52 |
That's was not something | 34:54 | |
General Baccus would have had any jurisdiction. | 34:55 | |
- | No, we were at Gitmo and that was it. | 34:57 |
Interviewer | You went back, you said a couple of times | 35:02 |
to Guantanamo, | 35:05 | |
the next time we went back | 35:06 | |
was it any difference against | 35:07 | |
any incidents you can describe to us | 35:09 | |
that might help people understand | 35:11 | |
what you observed and what you were thinking? | 35:13 | |
- | At that time the relationship between the task force | 35:17 |
and the Naval base had broken down significantly. | 35:19 | |
There was hostility, | 35:22 | |
when we were there it was a collaborative effort, | 35:24 | |
but by then I think the Navy had realized | 35:28 | |
that they had something ugly on their hands | 35:31 | |
and it was not a good thing be associated with. | 35:35 | |
And so it was a more complex social environment | 35:38 | |
for the people serving down there. | 35:43 | |
Dan Levy had worn out his welcome in a big way | 35:46 | |
and so things were tense. | 35:49 | |
Interviewer | And you could pick that up. | 35:54 |
You knew that when you came down. | 35:55 | |
- | Yeah, I had been on good terms | 35:56 |
with the Naval personnel | 35:58 | |
and I'd had dinner with | 35:59 | |
the commander of the base and Navy captain | 36:01 | |
and with the head of the hospital as well. | 36:04 | |
And so I developed a social relationship with them | 36:08 | |
and so when I came back | 36:11 | |
and I visited not talk with him, | 36:12 | |
we saw how things had played out | 36:14 | |
once the detention operation had been subsumed | 36:16 | |
by the Intel operation. | 36:21 | |
The hospital was resisting providing medical records | 36:23 | |
to the Intel people, because they perceived that | 36:26 | |
in violation of their mission under the | 36:28 | |
I guess like HIPPA, disclosing down unauthorized people. | 36:32 | |
They didn't think they had the authority | 36:37 | |
to give medical records to this group. | 36:38 | |
And they didn't think it was | 36:41 | |
in compliance with the Geneva conventions | 36:42 | |
which everybody was still trying to adhere to. | 36:45 | |
When the president said Geneva didn't apply | 36:48 | |
but it would be Geneva like, | 36:50 | |
of course, that was the end | 36:51 | |
of the guidance that we got. | 36:52 | |
What's Geneva like. | 36:53 | |
My legal opinion at the time was | 36:57 | |
the president didn't have the authority | 36:59 | |
to abandon the Geneva convention in the first place. | 37:00 | |
And that was what the task force lived with | 37:02 | |
while I was there. | 37:04 | |
Interviewer | Did you see any people | 37:06 |
on hunger strikes while you were there? | 37:09 | |
- | Yes. | 37:11 |
Interviewer | Could you describe that? | 37:11 |
- | When they went on hunger strikes, | 37:14 |
they were taken to the hospital and they would be fed. | 37:16 | |
If they refuse food, then they would be fed | 37:20 | |
through a hose system that would go through their nose. | 37:22 | |
Interviewer | Did you see that? | 37:25 |
- | I saw the implements of it and I'm familiar with it | 37:27 |
because it's been used as well in the bureau of prisons. | 37:30 | |
That was a practice that was used | 37:32 | |
in the bureau of prisons that got transferred down there. | 37:34 | |
I was not overly offended by it. | 37:38 | |
I know that it's uncomfortable, | 37:41 | |
but I also know that a detainee who wants to die | 37:43 | |
is doing that for a political reason generally. | 37:48 | |
And we don't have to give into his political reasons | 37:53 | |
and certainly we are responsible for their care. | 37:57 | |
We should not be letting them die. | 37:59 | |
So I know there was conflict between the people | 38:00 | |
who thought that that was torture. | 38:04 | |
In my opinion, it was not, it was unpleasant | 38:05 | |
but it was an unpleasantness that was provoked | 38:09 | |
by decision of the detainee | 38:12 | |
not to eat. | 38:14 | |
Interviewer | Were you present in Guantanamo | 38:16 |
whenever the detainees tried to commit suicide? | 38:18 | |
- | No. | 38:21 |
Interviewer | You hadn't heard any of those? | 38:23 |
- | I had not heard about that. | 38:24 |
Interviewer | Did you ever go through the clinic? | 38:26 |
Were ever in the clinic? | 38:28 | |
And see some of the detainees in the clinic? | 38:29 | |
- | Yes. | 38:31 |
Interviewer | You could you describe | 38:32 |
how they were treated in the clinic? | 38:33 | |
- | In the clinic they were treated like everybody else. | 38:34 |
There was no distinction made between them | 38:37 | |
and American soldiers or sailors. | 38:38 | |
Interviewer | Were they shackled? | 38:41 |
- | They were shackled. | 38:42 |
I mean, I guess there is that distinction | 38:44 | |
that they're not getting off | 38:45 | |
their gurney and wandering around, | 38:47 | |
but other than restraints to keep them in place, | 38:49 | |
the level of medical care was the same. | 38:52 | |
Interviewer | Who replaced General Baccus | 38:56 |
and General Dan Levy? | 38:57 | |
- | Of course Baccus once he left his function was subsumed. | 39:03 |
So there was no real replacement for him at that point. | 39:08 | |
I'm trying to remember the name of the major general | 39:12 | |
who came down and replaced Dan Levy. | 39:15 | |
Cause he was the one who later made the trip over to Iraq, | 39:18 | |
and we knew Iraq was about to happen. | 39:23 | |
Interviewer | You mean General Miller? | 39:25 |
- | General Miller, Jeff Miller. | 39:25 |
That's right. | 39:27 | |
Interviewer | When you say you knew, | 39:28 |
what did you know about Iraq? | 39:29 | |
- | When we got down there, we had a lot of active duty forces | 39:32 |
in terms of our guard force, active duty MPs. | 39:35 | |
Even though we had also a large contention of reservist | 39:38 | |
and the command was actually a national guard | 39:41 | |
but they started pulling the active duty forces. | 39:45 | |
We didn't have the A team down there | 39:47 | |
in terms of the personnel that we were getting. | 39:50 | |
And we could tell that things were gearing up for | 39:53 | |
Iraq and that's why our resources... | 39:57 | |
Interviewer | You saw that coming? | 40:00 |
- | That was no secret, we had people. | 40:02 |
I remember talking with some interrogators | 40:05 | |
in the mess hall who were convinced | 40:07 | |
that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. | 40:09 | |
And they were gonna be the ones who found it. | 40:13 | |
They were very proud of that. | 40:15 | |
And I thought they were a wacko, | 40:17 | |
but there was no secret that's what they were | 40:18 | |
affirmatively looking for those links in the interrogation. | 40:22 | |
Interviewer | In Guantanamo. | 40:26 |
- | In Guantanamo in early 2002, in order to support a claim | 40:27 |
that Saddam Hussein was connected to it. | 40:32 | |
Interviewer | So you think they were ordered | 40:34 |
to look for that connection? | 40:36 | |
- | Well, I can't speculate as to whether they were ordered. | 40:38 |
They certainly seemed highly motivated to try and find it. | 40:41 | |
Of course there wasn't one | 40:44 | |
but not for their lack of looking. | 40:45 | |
Interviewer | And do you think General Miller | 40:49 |
continued or perhaps even intensified | 40:55 | |
the harsh interrogation and then brought it to Abu Ghraib? | 40:59 | |
That's some people have said, | 41:03 | |
do you know anything about that? | 41:04 | |
- | I don't know how much cross-pollination there was | 41:05 |
based on his trips there and what advice he provided. | 41:10 | |
Technically the Iraq incursion | 41:17 | |
was entirely under the Geneva conventions. | 41:23 | |
It was a war between nations. | 41:25 | |
And so our detention operations | 41:29 | |
should have been in complete compliance with | 41:31 | |
the Geneva conventions. | 41:35 | |
Interviewer | Had you heard rumors about General Miller | 41:37 |
in Guantanamo | 41:40 | |
and perhaps intensifying the hush interrogations | 41:41 | |
post Dan Levy? | 41:44 | |
- | I had not heard rumors of that. | 41:47 |
Interviewer | So looking back at just that bit | 41:51 |
before we go on, | 41:56 | |
if you were in charge, | 41:58 | |
how would you have done it differently? | 41:59 | |
- | I wouldn't have put it in Guantanamo to start. | 42:10 |
Interviewer | Why? | 42:12 |
- | I think Guantanamo was selected. | 42:14 |
It was a fallacious reason. | 42:17 | |
One of the reasons that was given | 42:18 | |
was that it was technically not US territory | 42:20 | |
therefore US federal courts would have no jurisdiction | 42:23 | |
over it. | 42:25 | |
That's pretty cynical to prevent legal oversight. | 42:27 | |
The other reason if you've ever been in Washington DC | 42:33 | |
in January, it's miserable, | 42:37 | |
how nice it is to take a tropical trip. | 42:40 | |
And we had so many official government tourists | 42:43 | |
come down to Guantanamo, and then they get these tours | 42:46 | |
and they get a little ball cap | 42:50 | |
that said that they'd been at Guantanamo | 42:51 | |
and they got to see real Taliban in cages and whatnot. | 42:53 | |
Part of it was convenience | 42:58 | |
for that kind of official nonsense. | 42:59 | |
And we had quite the director of health | 43:01 | |
and human services come down. | 43:03 | |
He had no connection with what was going on | 43:05 | |
but he was one of the official tourists as well. | 43:07 | |
So by being so close, it became a tour destination | 43:11 | |
for Republican officials. | 43:14 | |
Interviewer | Where should the men have been taken | 43:17 |
that we captured if it was not Guantanamo. | 43:18 | |
- | If we were concerned about security | 43:21 |
one of the places we were looking at | 43:22 | |
back in November of 2001 was Tinian | 43:24 | |
the island out in the Pacific | 43:29 | |
where we'd taken off the drop the atomic bombs | 43:31 | |
because it was easy to secure and it was isolated. | 43:35 | |
Interviewer | Why didn't we use that do you think? | 43:43 |
- | Well I think Guantanamo offered convenience | 43:45 |
and this false premise | 43:49 | |
that there was no federal jurisdiction | 43:52 | |
because it was technically Cuba's. | 43:54 | |
Interviewer | And is there something else | 43:58 |
that you would have done differently | 43:59 | |
besides not going to Guantanamo? | 44:00 | |
- | Well, out of adherence strictly | 44:04 |
from the very beginning to the Geneva conventions | 44:07 | |
as we tried to do. | 44:09 | |
Interviewer | Why is that important to you? | 44:12 |
- | Why is that important to me? | 44:13 |
I was raised with due process of law and fairness | 44:14 | |
and we're Americans, we're supposed to be better than that. | 44:18 | |
And we weren't, and it still troubles me | 44:24 | |
that we weren't, that we couldn't see past the calamity | 44:30 | |
that 9/11 certainly was, | 44:35 | |
the tragedy that it would be twisted into a pretext | 44:39 | |
for the invasion of Iraq. | 44:44 | |
When I served in Afghanistan in 2003, 2004, | 44:49 | |
we were in a position | 44:55 | |
where we could have concluded operations | 44:56 | |
and essentially left victorious. | 45:00 | |
But for the fact that all the resources got sucked away | 45:02 | |
to Iraq, and now we're still stuck in Afghanistan. | 45:05 | |
That's a direct result of a lot of those decisions | 45:11 | |
that were made | 45:14 | |
and a lot of the hubris that was involved | 45:15 | |
in making those stupid decisions. | 45:18 | |
Interview | How'd you feel when Obama was elected? | 45:22 |
Did you think he was gonna make a difference? | 45:25 | |
- | Yeah. | 45:28 |
I actually met him in Baghdad when he was a candidate | 45:29 | |
and he came for a tour. | 45:30 | |
He'd been challenged by Senator McCain | 45:32 | |
because he'd not visited the troops in the war zone. | 45:34 | |
So he came and he was very popular with the troops. | 45:36 | |
And I had a chance to meet, | 45:40 | |
talk with him for like five minutes. | 45:41 | |
Interviewer | Really? | 45:43 |
Because of your position he gave you... | 45:44 | |
- | I was working in the embassy | 45:47 |
as a liaison in the rule of law section | 45:48 | |
and I worked directly with the Iraqi judiciary. | 45:51 | |
Even at that time | 45:54 | |
we were trying to give back to them | 45:55 | |
the thousands of people we were holding | 45:58 | |
in detention in Iraq. | 46:00 | |
I got stuck in detention operations again, over in Iraq. | 46:01 | |
Interviewer | Can you tell us | 46:07 |
about your conversation with him? | 46:08 | |
- | I mean it was superficial as can be of course, | 46:09 |
we weren't talking shop just a general visit. | 46:12 | |
It was immensely charming, really a rockstar. | 46:15 | |
There was a stage set up in the embassy | 46:19 | |
and he and the ambassador | 46:21 | |
and a couple of US senators got up on the stage. | 46:25 | |
It was like a rock show. | 46:27 | |
I've still got a video I recorded of that. | 46:28 | |
They just charmed the crowd. | 46:35 | |
It was fun. | 46:36 | |
- | Did he make any statements about Iraq or Afghanistan, | 46:37 |
that you recall? | 46:39 | |
- | No. | 46:40 |
No, he avoided over controversy with that | 46:41 | |
because he was aware of where he was. | 46:45 | |
Interviewer | And when he announced that day after | 46:48 |
he became president that he was going to close Guantanamo | 46:53 | |
what did you think? | 46:56 | |
- | I thought great. | 46:57 |
I thought we could try those people in civilian courts. | 46:58 | |
We didn't need military commissions to do it. | 47:01 | |
We didn't have that many people we could try anyway, | 47:03 | |
based on the evidence that had been gathered. | 47:05 | |
Interviewer | Did you think he would be able | 47:09 |
to shut it down? | 47:10 | |
- | Well, he needed Congress to go along to do it. | 47:12 |
He can have all the will in the world as the executive | 47:15 | |
but he can't act entirely on his own in our country. | 47:17 | |
And in this instance, the politicians who set | 47:23 | |
out to make him fail, | 47:26 | |
were successful in thwarting that effort | 47:28 | |
to shut down Guantanamo. | 47:30 | |
- | Well, would you have gotten rid of all the men lefting | 47:33 |
Guantanamo if you should shut it down. | 47:35 | |
- | (Tom Laughs) That's something I would have certainly | 47:37 |
done different from the beginning, | 47:41 | |
because I think there were 17 or 18 | 47:43 | |
different people who I had to vote | 47:45 | |
in agreement to release anybody | 47:47 | |
from different groups and agencies | 47:49 | |
and no one wanted to be responsible if they let someone out | 47:51 | |
and it came back that the person resumed combat operations | 47:54 | |
in Afghanistan or did something horrible. | 47:57 | |
And so that froze them in place. | 48:00 | |
And that kept us holding people | 48:03 | |
that we wanted to get rid of for years. | 48:04 | |
There was no mechanism to let them go | 48:09 | |
when you found out they didn't have useful intelligence | 48:11 | |
or they had not committed crimes against the United States. | 48:14 | |
Interviewer | You think that fear factor | 48:20 |
is true for judges also? | 48:21 | |
That they wouldn't wanna decide in favor of a detainee | 48:23 | |
for fear that they might also release that person? | 48:27 | |
- | No, most judges that's not a factor. | 48:34 |
Interviewer | But it was a fact that made people | 48:37 |
that you work with? | 48:38 | |
- | The political agencies, yeah. | 48:40 |
People have to run for office are always afraid | 48:42 | |
of blow back from any decision they make | 48:44 | |
and that paralyzed them. | 48:47 | |
Interviewer | What do you think today | 48:52 |
now that Guantanamo is still open | 48:53 | |
and 69 people still live there and do you see a future? | 48:55 | |
What are you seeing next 10 years going forward? | 49:03 | |
- | Until Congress changes, we can't close it. | 49:10 |
So it probably just dangles along | 49:13 | |
costing a whole lot of money. | 49:16 | |
People that we're holding will, as time goes on, | 49:20 | |
either be removed in onesies and twosies | 49:24 | |
or they'll die there and repatriate their bodies. | 49:28 | |
Are there some people there who should never be let out? | 49:33 | |
Yeah, I know that there are because they will kill Americans | 49:36 | |
and they would've killed Americans before they were there. | 49:43 | |
And it's not that they were turned | 49:45 | |
into American haters by their experience in Guantanamo. | 49:46 | |
They are really dangerous. | 49:51 | |
But many, many are not | 49:54 | |
and we simply can't get rid of them. | 49:59 | |
It's the irony of it | 50:01 | |
by painting them all with that initial label | 50:02 | |
of the worst of the worst, we got stuck with them. | 50:05 | |
Interviewer | Have you been following the KSM | 50:10 |
and trial of the five men | 50:13 | |
who just went through hearings | 50:16 | |
and when she have a trial I've been following? | 50:19 | |
- | I have been following that. | 50:21 |
I know a number of the players. | 50:22 | |
I served with the General Martins in Iraq | 50:25 | |
when he was a General Patraeus and staff judge advocate. | 50:27 | |
I know the judge | 50:31 | |
because I was seven years a military judge myself. | 50:31 | |
Interviewer | So what are your thoughts | 50:35 |
about the trial today? | 50:36 | |
- | I'm curious to see how the evidence will be presented. | 50:42 |
Obviously the big issue is | 50:47 | |
how does the government dance around the fact | 50:48 | |
that he was objected to waterboarding | 50:50 | |
and what evidence is not tainted by that process? | 50:54 | |
- | What would you have done instead? | 50:58 |
Would you have done a federal trial or a court martial. | 50:59 | |
- | I would have opted for a civilian trial over | 51:04 |
a commissions trial | 51:07 | |
but I can tell you that the rules in place now | 51:09 | |
for the commissions are much closer to a court martial | 51:11 | |
than what the administration wanted in 2003. | 51:15 | |
Interviewer | Meaning do you think this is going | 51:21 |
to be a fair trial? | 51:23 | |
- | I think it will be a fair trial. | 51:24 |
It will be mostly transparent. | 51:27 | |
I realized that there are certain classified things | 51:28 | |
that would not be disclosed there. | 51:30 | |
They would not be disclosed | 51:33 | |
in a federal trial either because if they're classified | 51:34 | |
then the judge is going to make a determination | 51:38 | |
to clear the courtroom for that kind of evidence. | 51:39 | |
- | Is there something I didn't ask you that | 51:45 |
maybe you wanted to just tell us that | 51:49 | |
that you were picking, | 51:50 | |
that you'd like the world to know about your experiences | 51:51 | |
and what you've observed in the last 12 years | 51:55 | |
just before 9/11 and going up to today? | 51:58 | |
- | Our country knows what's right and what's wrong. | 52:07 |
I think we know it instinctively, | 52:11 | |
we've got it in our charter, in our founding documents. | 52:12 | |
And I think we know when we go astray of that knowledge | 52:20 | |
of what is right. | 52:26 | |
We always regret it later. | 52:29 | |
Why it is we don't stop and think at the time | 52:31 | |
I don't know whether it's just the impulsiveness | 52:34 | |
of our national character, | 52:36 | |
the willingness to take a shortcut, | 52:39 | |
if that's a flaw in America too. | 52:42 | |
What we did in Guantanamo and what we did in Abu Ghraib | 52:46 | |
and what we've subsequently done in smaller scale | 52:52 | |
and other places are disgraceful things | 52:54 | |
that hurt us in the world, | 52:58 | |
that actually cost soldiers' lives later on. | 52:59 | |
We polled the detainees and we had like 25,000 detainees | 53:05 | |
in Iraq at one time in some of our institutions. | 53:09 | |
Every one of them had been exposed to the imagery | 53:13 | |
from Abu Ghraib, | 53:16 | |
the guy who was spread out | 53:17 | |
with wires and a hood over his head | 53:19 | |
they'd all seen that, we made that | 53:21 | |
and our soldiers died | 53:25 | |
and a lot of Iraqis died because that was done. | 53:26 | |
It was utterly unnecessary. | 53:29 | |
So yeah. | 53:33 | |
Interviewer | Has America learned that lesson yet? | 53:37 |
- | I think our current president knows it, | 53:42 |
but I don't know that as a country | 53:46 | |
we completely accepted our responsibility | 53:49 | |
or acknowledged our guilt | 53:52 | |
for some of the things that were done in our name. | 53:54 | |
There's one political party | 53:58 | |
that refuses to acknowledge that. | 53:59 | |
And the other ones that brought that war. | 54:04 | |
Interviewer | Johnny is there anything you wanna ask? | 54:10 |
Johnny | No. | 54:13 |
Interviewer | I don't have anything else | 54:15 |
I need to ask you currently unless there's something | 54:17 | |
else that you want to talk about that I overlooked, | 54:21 | |
given your what background I just don't know | 54:25 | |
if there's something else I missed. | 54:28 | |
- | Scuba diving was great. | 54:31 |
Life under the water in Guantanamo | 54:32 | |
was better than life above. | 54:33 | |
Interviewer | My understanding from several | 54:36 |
of the prison guys we interviewed | 54:38 | |
was that they all went out drinking every night | 54:40 | |
or scuba diving or whatever | 54:41 | |
in order to not have to confront what they were seeing. | 54:44 | |
Otherwise it was just too hot for them | 54:48 | |
and this is a way of just burying their emotions | 54:50 | |
and feelings from not having to address them. | 54:55 | |
You had heard anything like that? | 54:58 | |
- | No, we did go diving every night after work. | 55:00 |
It wasn't to escape the turmoil. | 55:06 | |
Of course I was, I guess, lucky | 55:09 | |
that I didn't really make that many moral compromises | 55:11 | |
while I was down there that I had to avoid thinking about. | 55:14 | |
Cause I stuck to my guns | 55:18 | |
and then just got shipped home | 55:19 | |
and it I wasn't sure what would happen | 55:23 | |
in my career later as a result of the positions I took | 55:25 | |
but it had no adverse effect on me. | 55:28 | |
I got promoted again and got good jobs. | 55:30 | |
Interviewer | Did General Baccus get promoted? | 55:35 |
Or id he retire after? | 55:38 | |
- | He was abused? | 55:40 |
The administration let leak that he was soft on terrorism | 55:44 | |
because he had addressed the terrorists as prisoners | 55:49 | |
in the campus, the commander of the camp. | 55:52 | |
He was certainly entitled to do that, | 55:54 | |
entitled to address their grievances. | 55:56 | |
But they attempted to portray him as weak | 56:00 | |
and soft on terrorism. | 56:04 | |
Part of the process of getting rid of the detention | 56:08 | |
operation as a separate entity. | 56:11 | |
So he was treated unfairly by the administration. | 56:14 | |
It was in the press. | 56:18 | |
I wrote a letter to the Army Times | 56:19 | |
that they published in his defense after that came out, | 56:21 | |
because I thought that was particularly unfair. | 56:23 | |
Interviewer | How was he treated unfairly? | 56:25 |
- | Well, they attempted to force him to retire as a Colonel | 56:26 |
and they came up with some pretexts | 56:30 | |
over how he failed to address some soldiers problem. | 56:32 | |
But it was all around the fact that he had been resisting | 56:35 | |
Dan Levy who was really a proxy | 56:39 | |
for Secretary Rumsfeld in the department of defense though. | 56:41 | |
The neo-cons who were trying to drive this abusive train | 56:47 | |
in the treatment of detainees. | 56:52 | |
Interviewer | So what did happen to him at the end? | 56:55 |
- | He persisted and in the end, | 56:58 |
he retired as a brigadier general. | 57:00 | |
He didn't get promoted again. | 57:01 | |
So it was the end of his career | 57:02 | |
and I guess he was an avid distance runner. | 57:06 | |
So he's probably still running up in Rhode Island. | 57:08 | |
He'd been working, I think at a VA cemetery, | 57:11 | |
in a civilian job. | 57:17 | |
And I think that's where he ended up. | 57:18 | |
Interviewer | You didn't stay in touch with him? | 57:19 |
- | I did for a couple of years afterwards | 57:21 |
but he was out of the army | 57:24 | |
and I was still in and I was getting deployed again. | 57:25 | |
And so I lost contact with him. | 57:28 | |
Interviewer | Did you ever meet Haynes | 57:32 |
the chief counsel in the Pentagon? | 57:37 | |
Jim Haynes. | 57:40 | |
- | I saw him. | 57:41 |
I never was formally introduced to him | 57:42 | |
at the time I was a major and then just very briefly, | 57:44 | |
I had pinned on like two days | 57:47 | |
before I went to Guantanamo as Lieutenant Colonel. | 57:50 | |
So I would have been beneath his vision. | 57:52 | |
Interviewer | And I assume you never met with Rumsfeld. | 57:56 |
Did he come down to Guantanamo while you were there? | 57:59 | |
- | I don't recall that he came there. | 58:02 |
Alberto Gonzales made a trip there | 58:04 | |
and like I said there was a whole string of... | 58:07 | |
Interviewer | When Gonzalez came, did you speak to him? | 58:09 |
- | No. | 58:11 |
Interviewer | Did Addington come down? | 58:13 |
- | Yeah. | 58:15 |
Interviewer | Did you speak to him? | 58:16 |
- | No. | 58:17 |
I didn't get to talk with any of those folks. | 58:17 | |
Interviewer | You were too low. | 58:19 |
- | Other than the tour guides provided by the task force, | 58:24 |
they were getting their briefings | 58:27 | |
from the Intel side | 58:28 | |
not from the detention operation | 58:29 | |
and they probably wouldn't have wanted to hear | 58:32 | |
from me anyway, because I didn't think well of him. | 58:33 | |
Interviewer | The counsel to Dan Levy, | 58:38 |
do you know what happened to him? | 58:41 | |
Were you able to communicate well with him | 58:44 | |
or you had trouble with him too? | 58:46 | |
- | I'm trying to remember the guy's name now. | 58:49 |
He was a slime ball. | 58:50 | |
He could not be trusted. | 58:51 | |
We'd come to agreements and then he would renege on them. | 58:52 | |
Boom, boom, boom. | 58:55 | |
Part of it was the pressure from Dan Levy | 58:56 | |
who I think was miserable because Diane Beaver | 58:58 | |
also worked with him once he was there solo. | 59:01 | |
Interviewer | Him meaning. | 59:06 |
- | Dan Levy. | 59:08 |
And I know she had a very difficult time. | 59:10 | |
She came between Dan Levy and me | 59:13 | |
when we nearly came to fisticuffs at the bar on the base | 59:14 | |
cause he'd been drinking | 59:18 | |
and he came and he told me | 59:19 | |
that I was the biggest asshole on the island, | 59:21 | |
and that's pretty big Cuba with Fidel there | 59:24 | |
and he picked me as the biggest irritant | 59:26 | |
and was ready to go at it. | 59:31 | |
And he's a huge guy. | 59:32 | |
He was like I don't know 230, 240 pounds. | 59:33 | |
You can see I'm slight in comparison. | 59:37 | |
And she separated us. | 59:42 | |
Interviewer | Really? | 59:45 |
- | Yeah. | 59:45 |
Interviewer | Why did he think that of you? | 59:47 |
- | Because I wouldn't agree with his worldview. | 59:50 |
I wasn't gonna change the legal advice | 59:56 | |
I was giving my commander just because he disagreed with it. | 59:57 | |
In civilian life he was I believe a juvenile court judge | 1:00:03 | |
in Pennsylvania and the lawyer as well. | 1:00:08 | |
So he thought he could just buddy buddy | 1:00:10 | |
and then as a tyrannical judge | 1:00:12 | |
coerce other lawyers to do what he thought. | 1:00:14 | |
And it wasn't the case, | 1:00:18 | |
he was despised universally. | 1:00:19 | |
And so we had nothing to do with them socially. | 1:00:23 | |
We avoided it. | 1:00:25 | |
Studiously, we'd have little bar association meetings | 1:00:26 | |
and not invite him and so we had bad relationship. | 1:00:29 | |
Interviewer | Did you get along with Diane Beaver? | 1:00:38 |
- | I did. | 1:00:40 |
Interviewer | Were you there when she wrote her memo? | 1:00:42 |
- | No, that was afterwards. | 1:00:44 |
Interviewer | Do you know anything about that? | 1:00:46 |
Why she wrote it? | 1:00:48 | |
- | Well, I really don't know why she wrote it | 1:00:50 |
unless it was Dan Levy's direction, | 1:00:56 | |
and she may have been trying to actually to mitigate | 1:00:58 | |
some of the harsher things | 1:01:01 | |
that they were proposing by compromising there. | 1:01:02 | |
The trouble is that scenario where you can't compromise. | 1:01:06 | |
Interviewer | Do you think she ever regretted | 1:01:10 |
writing that memo? | 1:01:11 | |
- | Yeah. | 1:01:13 |
Interviewer | Why do you think that? | 1:01:14 |
- | Because in hindsight she probably knows | 1:01:17 |
that some of the things that were recommended were wrong. | 1:01:19 | |
Interviewer | You think she felt the pressure | 1:01:23 |
to write that and maybe like you said | 1:01:25 | |
compromise she didn't have much choice. | 1:01:26 | |
- | Well, you always have a choice. | 1:01:29 |
And the problem is there there was compromise | 1:01:31 | |
where there shouldn't have been. | 1:01:35 | |
And so she's probably troubled by that | 1:01:36 | |
because I think basically a decent person, | 1:01:39 | |
she was looking at retiring from there | 1:01:42 | |
and her reputation suffered as a result. | 1:01:46 | |
Interviewer | Did she not retire after that? | 1:01:53 |
- | I think she got a job | 1:01:56 |
in the department of defense. | 1:01:57 | |
She did retire from the army. | 1:01:58 | |
And I think she was employed | 1:02:01 | |
in the department of defense for a while | 1:02:02 | |
but I don't know what's happened to her | 1:02:03 | |
since then. | 1:02:04 | |
Interviewer | And you knew the director of the clinic, | 1:02:11 |
Albert Shimkus. | 1:02:15 | |
- | Yes. | 1:02:17 |
Interviewer | And did guys get along? | 1:02:18 |
- | We got along great. | 1:02:19 |
We saw eye to eye on how the detainees needed to be treated. | 1:02:21 | |
I had a secret stash of medical records | 1:02:25 | |
that I didn't share with the Intel side. | 1:02:27 | |
There were two sets, his set and my set. | 1:02:30 | |
Interviewer | Really? | 1:02:32 |
How did you manage to have your own set? | 1:02:33 | |
- | Well, we thought there needed to be two sets, | 1:02:35 |
but not one that was disclosed to the Intel side | 1:02:37 | |
of the house. | 1:02:40 | |
So we kept things separate. | 1:02:41 | |
Interviewer | And your set, what was in your set | 1:02:44 |
that wasn't in the set that went to Intel. | 1:02:46 | |
- | We didn't give Intel medical records. | 1:02:49 |
Treatment records of the doctors were not | 1:02:52 | |
supposed to be turned over to them. | 1:02:54 | |
So we just wanted to. | 1:02:57 | |
Interviewer | So you had a second set? | 1:02:58 |
You still in touch with Shimkus? | 1:03:04 | |
- | Not for years, but I thought well of him. | 1:03:06 |
Interviewer | Well, I guess colonel, | 1:03:11 |
I don't have any other questions | 1:03:14 | |
unless there's something else you still wanna add. | 1:03:15 | |
I think we've pretty much covered | 1:03:17 | |
your work in Guantanamo. | 1:03:19 | |
You never saw a Camp Seven. | 1:03:21 | |
You never heard of Camp Seven? | 1:03:23 | |
- | No. | 1:03:25 |
Interviewer | And Camp Noah, | 1:03:26 |
have you ever heard of that? | 1:03:27 | |
- | No. | 1:03:28 |
Interviewer | So is there anything else | 1:03:31 |
that you just remember | 1:03:32 | |
that maybe you wanna add or otherwise? | 1:03:33 | |
- | No, it's 10 years now so my memory is faded a bit. | 1:03:38 |
You might wanna go back to that frontline interview | 1:03:43 | |
if there's something I said then when it was closer in time. | 1:03:44 | |
Interviewer | I don't you did that we didn't cover. | 1:03:48 |
I think you pretty much told us, I mean your own words, | 1:03:50 | |
a different perspective than work. | 1:03:56 | |
You sit in the front line. | 1:03:59 | |
You never had any dealings | 1:04:10 | |
with a John Walker Lindh, right? | 1:04:12 | |
- | No. | 1:04:15 |
The so-called Johnny Taliban guy? | 1:04:16 | |
No. | 1:04:19 | |
That was handled entirely in a federal court. | 1:04:21 | |
Interviewer | And did ever meet General Miller? | 1:04:26 |
- | I did meet him once. | 1:04:29 |
Interviewer | In what context was that? | 1:04:31 |
- | I'd made one of those trips | 1:04:33 |
down to Guantanamo and I think I just met him in passing. | 1:04:35 | |
Interviewer | Did he know your background | 1:04:40 |
and how you saw it? | 1:04:43 | |
- | Probably not. | 1:04:47 |
I have no idea what he knew about me | 1:04:48 | |
and I didn't know that much about him at the time. | 1:04:52 | |
Interviewer | Well, I guess then I really wanna thank you. | 1:04:56 |
Johnny needs 20 seconds of room tone | 1:04:58 | |
before we quit just of silence. | 1:05:01 | |
So he's gonna do that and then we can end the interview. | 1:05:03 | |
- | Okay. | 1:05:07 |
Interviewer | Okay, thank you. | 1:05:08 |
Johnny | Can we get a room tone. | 1:05:09 |
End of room tone. | 1:05:28 |
Item Info
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