Mallow, Brittain - Interview master file / Witness to Guantanamo / Duke Digital Repository

Interviewer

Okay, good afternoon.

0:06

-

Hi.

0:08

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We are very grateful to you

0:10

for participating in the Witness to Guantanamo Project.

0:11

We invite you to speak of your experiences

0:15

and involvement with issues concerning Guantanamo

0:17

and also boggled with conduct.

0:21

We are hoping to provide you

0:24

with an opportunity to tell your story,

0:25

in your own words.

0:27

We are creating an archive of stories

0:29

so that people in America

0:31

and around the world will have a better understanding

0:33

of what you and others have observed and experienced.

0:36

Future generations must know what happened at Guantanamo

0:42

and by telling your story, you are contributing to history

0:45

and we're very grateful for your coming with us today.

0:49

If at any time you want to take a break

0:53

please let us know and we can take a break.

0:56

And if you do say something

0:58

that you feel you'd like us to remove,

0:59

we can remove it, if you tell us.

1:01

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Okay.

1:04

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I'd like to begin

1:05

if you wouldn't mind telling us your name

1:06

and hometown, where you were born

1:07

and birthday and age, perhaps.

1:10

-

Okay.

1:13

So, my name is Brittain Mallow.

1:14

I was born in Japan

1:17

to an army family,

1:19

1956,

1:21

and I...

1:23

Interviewer

Can you say how old you are today?

1:24

-

I am 58 now

1:26

and we traveled a lot.

1:28

So I don't really have a hometown

1:29

but I spent the longest time in Virginia of any one place.

1:31

And that's where I joined, joined the army from.

1:34

Interviewer

And we'll ask you, when you joined the army,

1:37

could you tell us a little about your education?

1:40

-

Sure.

1:43

I went to Virginia Tech

1:44

and I was in the Reserve Officer Training program there.

1:45

So I graduated from,

1:49

from Tech in 1977, Degree in Sociology

1:51

and entered onto active duty with the US Army from there.

1:56

Interviewer

Can you tell us a little bit about how that

2:01

how that work from then on just as to going up to 9/11?

2:04

Just a little background?

2:08

-

Sure.

2:10

So my specialty in the army was,

2:11

as a military police officer,

2:13

so I traveled and had assignments within US and overseas.

2:16

And,

2:22

later in my career, somewhere around the mid '80s,

2:22

I also was sent to graduate school

2:26

and to language school for a second specialty

2:28

as a foreign area officer in the Middle East.

2:32

And so, as I was telling you,

2:34

I went to a Lentil Language School

2:36

and the Naval postgraduate school down in Monterey.

2:38

And then I traveled over in the Middle East

2:41

for several years where I...

2:43

went to a military school in Jordan

2:46

and then traveled around

2:49

to different parts of the Arab world.

2:50

I had several assignments after that in the Middle East.

2:52

And then,

2:56

also some other military police assignments in Europe

2:56

and back in the US.

3:00

Interview

Can you tell us a little bit

3:02

about the kind of work you did in the Middle East or?

3:03

-

Sure.

3:05

The,

3:07

in the early assignments that I had over there,

3:08

I worked with...

3:10

the army and defense attaché's office in Jordan

3:12

and traveled around in the Lavant

3:16

and in the Gulf and in North Africa.

3:18

And then,

3:21

later assignment during the, the first desert storm period,

3:22

I was assigned in Saudi Arabia

3:26

as a host nation liaison officer.

3:30

So I worked with the liaison activities,

3:32

between the US forces

3:35

and the Saudi Armed Forces in Dhahran and Riyadh

3:36

and around different parts of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.

3:41

Interviewer

Before you did that,

3:44

what exactly what you're doing when you were in Jordan

3:46

and in the Middle East?

3:50

What exactly was your role?

3:51

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Well, the first time I was in Jordan,

3:54

I was a student as part of this program.

3:54

Later, later, short assignments that I had there,

3:58

I worked with the attaché's office.

4:01

So it was civil military relations between the countries

4:03

and between with a...

4:06

military exchange programs and so forth.

4:11

Interviewer

And after the Iraq war,

4:14

where did you go next?

4:17

-

After, after desert shield, desert storm period,

4:20

then I went back and I, I served a term in Germany,

4:22

as a military police officer,

4:27

came back to the United States

4:28

and after some schooling,

4:30

I went to Fort Lewis, Washington

4:32

where I was a battalion commander

4:36

for military police battalion.

4:38

We deployed our battalion down to Haiti

4:40

when we had the operations down there in Haiti,

4:42

in the, in the early '90s or mid '90s.

4:46

So, had some experience with that.

4:50

Following that assignment, I came back to Washington DC

4:51

where I worked as the,

4:55

as a commander in the criminal investigation command

4:57

for the US Army.

5:00

That's the army's detective bureau.

5:01

So we do all of the investigations

5:02

for felony crimes across the army.

5:05

Interviewer

So were you,

5:10

can you tell us on tape

5:11

what a language you learned when you were in Monterrey

5:14

and was that helpful in the work you just described?

5:16

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Sure.

5:20

I was, I went to school for Arabic, Arabic language

5:20

which was a year long program in Monterrey.

5:23

And that was of course, part of my preparation to go

5:26

to the Middle East for, for my assignments over there.

5:29

It became useful later on after 9/11

5:32

when we were dealing, of course, with, with issues

5:35

across the middle East and, and the detainees and so forth.

5:38

So that was part of the...

5:41

the progress that led me into, to my involvement.

5:43

Interviewer

But before 9/11,

5:47

how valuable was your Arabic language?

5:49

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Oh, very valuable.

5:51

If you remember,

5:53

there's, there was so many things that we were involved

5:53

within the Middle East before and after desert storm

5:55

and, you know,

5:59

our relations with the Arab-Israeli conflict,

6:00

our, our relations with the countries in the Gulf,

6:03

both before and after the conflicts,

6:05

there have been, you know,

6:07

they have required a lot of folks who've had that expertise.

6:09

So it was very useful.

6:12

Interviewer

Were you a student of those nations as well

6:16

in terms of learning their cultures?

6:18

Not just the language?

6:19

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I was.

6:21

So the, the graduate program

6:22

that I was in at the Naval Post-graduate School was called

6:24

National Security Affairs

6:27

but it was really Middle East studies.

6:29

So I spent quite a bit of time

6:31

with regional issues, international relations,

6:33

economy, business operations, like history, the culture,

6:38

and so forth.

6:42

And then the, the time that I spent in the Middle East

6:43

a good portion of that was traveling around

6:45

to learn more about the region and the countries.

6:47

Interviewer

Were you aware of tourist activities

6:50

back then?

6:52

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Of course, yeah.

6:53

The,

6:54

the first time that I was over

6:55

in the Middle East was in the mid '80s.

6:57

And if you recall, that was,

6:59

you know, we had the red brigades,

7:01

there were operating in Europe

7:03

but we also had the PLO

7:04

and the different factions PFLP and, and, you know

7:06

all of these different,

7:11

different terrorist groups that were operating

7:12

across the Middle East and in Europe.

7:14

So I was heavily involved in, in that.

7:16

And one of my other jobs later in,

7:19

after I left the Middle East the first time,

7:21

was as a anti-terrorism coordinating planning officer

7:23

for, for the US Army in Europe.

7:27

Interviewer

What did that mean?

7:30

-

Planning the security operations

7:31

across all of our installations in Europe.

7:33

At that time, we had, you know,

7:35

600 installations across Europe for, for the US Army.

7:38

So we had a lot of security operations in the,

7:42

in the light of the terrorist threats in those days.

7:45

Interviewer

Did you get any sense at all

7:47

that something like 9/11 could have happened

7:49

while you were looking at terrorist organizations?

7:51

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You know, I don't think we anticipated anything

7:55

on that sort of scale,

7:57

but we were in,

7:58

we were...

7:59

experiencing all of those different things.

8:01

You know, the Pan Am bombing had taken place

8:02

during that time, the...

8:05

the bombing in Beirut,

8:08

the discotheque bombing and in Europe,

8:09

the smaller scale operations that we'd seen across the,

8:12

across the world.

8:15

So had some experience with that

8:16

and the intelligence leading up to it

8:18

but we had no sense of, you know,

8:20

exactly what we would be facing in the coming years.

8:22

Interviewer

Did Ben Lyons' name come up

8:26

while you were involved in these?

8:27

-

Not for me.

8:30

I mean, I,

8:30

I read about it mostly later

8:31

and, and I saw some

8:34

of the intelligence reporting later on,

8:35

but in the, in the

8:37

the lead up to 9/11 period,

8:38

I was involved in criminal investigations,

8:41

not so much in, in the counter-terrorism side of things

8:44

until after 9/11.

8:46

Interviewer

Were you involved in the USS (indistinct)?

8:48

-

I was not, I was not.

8:50

So I was aware of it,

8:52

but was not involved in that investigation.

8:53

-

So, where were you on 9/11?

8:55

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On, 9/11, I was the, as I said, the deputy commander

8:58

for the Army's criminal investigation command.

9:01

And that was located in Fort Belvoir, Virginia

9:04

which is about 10 miles south of, of the city.

9:07

And so that morning we were,

9:12

we were in our headquarters at Fort Belvoir,

9:14

just doing our morning routine,

9:17

which was to look across all the crime reports,

9:18

things that had gone on over the last 24 hours in the army.

9:21

So we, we watched everything unfold on...

9:25

on the news screens like everybody else.

9:29

But we also had some of our own staff were in the Pentagon,

9:32

performing security duties for the Secretary of Defense

9:36

and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and so forth.

9:40

We have people in security operations there.

9:42

So very quickly when, when events took us to the Pentagon,

9:44

we were, we were involved there.

9:48

And then the aftermath of the 9/11 attack,

9:50

particularly in the Pentagon was an investigative mission

9:54

for all of the, the criminal investigative organizations,

9:58

including ours.

10:01

So we had agents involved in that, as well.

10:02

Interviewer

And where, what was, what was your role

10:05

at that point?

10:07

-

So as the deputy,

10:08

I worked for the commanding general

10:11

of the Criminal Investigation Command.

10:13

So I was the number two.

10:14

-

Who was number one?

10:16

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Number one was General Writer, General Don Writer.

10:17

And so,

10:20

at that time,

10:21

you know,

10:23

I helped to supervise all the investigations

10:24

that we did across the army

10:26

for, for all criminal offenses.

10:27

Interviewer

So post-9/11, did you do any investigation

10:31

as to the tax on the Pentagon?

10:34

-

So we were involved,

10:36

we had several of our offices involved

10:38

in the joint investigation

10:40

that, that encompassed the Navy, the Air Force, the Army,

10:42

the Federal Bureau of Investigation,

10:45

and other jurisdictions collecting evidence

10:47

at the, at the Pentagon

10:51

and to lead into the broader investigation there.

10:53

It was not until...

10:56

October,

11:00

of 2011,

11:01

When we received a notification

11:03

that we were gonna take on a brand new mission.

11:06

And the army was going to be assigned the mission

11:09

to stand up an investigative organization

11:11

that would serve to investigate any persons

11:14

that were captured in the military operations

11:18

that were then beginning over in the Middle East.

11:21

So we, we were tasked as a

11:24

as the army's Criminal Investigation Command

11:26

to create a new investigative organization.

11:28

And we were also tasked to reach out to the Air Force

11:33

and the Navy and the Army Intelligence Community

11:36

and civilian law enforcement agencies, as well,

11:39

in order to put together this, this organization,

11:43

which came to be called,

11:46

the Criminal Investigation Task Force.

11:47

Interviewer

And what was your role in that?

11:50

-

So I was, I was appointed as the commander

11:52

for the, for the task force.

11:56

And so we began our work military order

11:58

that tasked us to create this,

12:01

took place in November of 2001,

12:03

and the,

12:07

on the 1st of February,

12:09

we stood up our our Criminal Investigation Task Force,

12:11

and we had members from all, all the services

12:15

that were involved in that.

12:18

So I was the commander for three and a half years.

12:19

Interviewer

Did you go to Afghanistan that, you know,

12:23

in November or December?

12:26

-

No, my first trip, actually,

12:29

my first trip to, to Guantanamo was in January...

12:30

of 2002.

12:37

And then my first trip to Afghanistan was in, I believe,

12:39

late February or March of 2002,

12:44

because we had, we had investigators that were already

12:47

on the ground over there.

12:52

So I went to visit that.

12:53

Interviewer

And what, what was your purpose

12:54

in going to Guantanamo?

12:56

-

So when we,

12:59

as we stood up this new organization,

13:01

we needed to establish our investigators on the ground.

13:03

So at that time, they had already started

13:07

to begin to bring some detainees to Guantanamo.

13:10

Some were still in

13:14

in Afghanistan,

13:16

in Kandahar, and in Bagram.

13:17

And so we had an investigative team in Guantanamo

13:21

and I went down to establish them and get them started.

13:24

And then we also had a smaller investigative team

13:28

in Bagram.

13:30

So I went over to visit them

13:31

and connect them with the...

13:34

with the right people,

13:36

so they could begin their mission there.

13:37

Interviewer

Well, what, what exactly was your role

13:39

in terms of supervising thIS investigative team?

13:42

What was their role and what was your role?

13:45

Not quite sure.

13:48

-

So, as a commander,

13:49

I was responsible for all of our investigators.

13:50

So we had a team in Guantanamo

13:53

that was about two dozen strong.

13:55

And then I had about eight or 10 investigators in Bagram.

13:58

So each one of those teams had someone in charge

14:03

of that particular team

14:07

and then they worked for me.

14:08

So their role in the,

14:10

in the early days was to get established

14:11

and get connected

14:14

with the military operations in Afghanistan,

14:15

so that they would understand

14:18

how the detainees were being brought in.

14:19

They would cooperate with the other agencies

14:22

and the other military investigators

14:25

and intelligence personnel who were conducting

14:27

the early interviews of the detainees

14:29

to try to determine what their status was

14:33

and who they were and so forth.

14:35

And then down at Guantanamo, similarly,

14:36

our investigative teams worked with others

14:39

to conduct the initial baseline interviews

14:41

for the persons that were brought there.

14:44

Interviewer

Were you investigators trained?

14:47

-

All of our investigators had come through

14:49

either the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center

14:52

in Georgia,

14:55

or the Army,

14:56

the Army Criminal Investigative School

14:57

at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.

14:59

So all of our investigators were trained through

15:02

the Military Investigative Organizations Training program.

15:05

So they were trained as law enforcement investigators.

15:08

Interviewer

Could you describe just briefly

15:12

what that kind of training consisted of?

15:14

-

Sure.

15:16

The,

15:17

all of the programs that our persons went through,

15:18

were, anywhere from 12 to 24 weeks in duration

15:21

and these are intensive law enforcement training programs

15:27

that encompass everything from, you know,

15:30

physical training and apprehension techniques

15:33

and all, of those kinds of things

15:36

to interviews and interrogations

15:37

using standard law enforcement procedures,

15:39

to investigative techniques

15:43

and collection of evidence

15:45

and how to interview witnesses

15:46

and how to put together cases for prosecution.

15:48

So all of our investigators were very much steeped in

15:51

that law enforcement, investigative culture and training.

15:55

Interviewer

Did they speak Arabic?

15:59

-

Very few of our investigators had any background

16:01

in Middle East languages.

16:04

We did have, we do have some people that worked

16:06

with us who were Arabic linguists investigators,

16:09

particularly from the FBI and a couple of other agencies.

16:13

Most of our investigators, though, were English speakers.

16:16

There were some that had some European languages

16:20

and so forth, which also proved valuable

16:22

because some detainees spoke

16:24

other than, other than Arabic and Middle Eastern languages.

16:26

Interviewer

You didn't do any interrogation yourself?

16:32

-

I did not.

16:35

No.

16:36

-

And what kind of...

16:37

training

16:40

or what kind of sense did you give your people

16:41

as to what to expect when they go to Guantanamo?

16:44

Did you even know what to expect?

16:46

-

(chuckles) Well, it was, it was a discovery.

16:49

It really was.

16:50

The...

16:51

the initial atmosphere,

16:52

the initial environment down at Guantanamo

16:55

when, when detention operations started was...

16:57

I won't say it was disorganized,

17:02

but it was a little chaotic, as you might expect, you know?

17:03

This was a mission

17:06

that was put into place very quickly.

17:07

And when there was a decision made

17:10

to, to house detainees at Guantanamo,

17:12

there, there was not already, already ready-made...

17:16

set of facilities down there.

17:20

So I had been involved in detention operations

17:22

for the Cuban and Haitian migrants back in the mid '90s

17:25

when I was a military police battalion commander.

17:29

So I had to had units deployed down to Guantanamo before.

17:31

And at that time,

17:35

there were...

17:36

on the, on the one airfield in, in Guantanamo,

17:38

they had set up all this whole tent city

17:41

and that was a big detention center

17:43

for most of the migrants.

17:45

And it was, what I would call medium security,

17:46

I mean, there were fences around the outside,

17:49

but inside the fences, there were tents

17:50

and it was open, open bays for the, for the migrants

17:52

and so forth.

17:55

There was another detention facility,

17:57

slightly further away called Camp X-Ray.

18:00

And that was a detention facility

18:03

where they put the known criminals

18:05

and the troublemakers, if you will,

18:07

the people who were,

18:09

who had been violent at some point.

18:10

And so Camp X-Ray consisted of relatively...

18:12

Spartan conditions as well, but there were,

18:18

there was more fencing up there.

18:21

There were actual enclosures

18:23

where people could be, could be segregated

18:24

into smaller groups

18:27

or individually grouped individual cells and so forth.

18:28

And so the, the initial flux of, of detainees

18:32

into Guantanamo, the only existing facilities they had,

18:36

which was out that Camp X-Ray.

18:39

And so, that's where they started

18:42

with some of the detention operations

18:44

while they plan to build an, a new facility.

18:46

-

[Man In The Background] Can we stop for just a second?

18:51

Okay, go ahead.

18:53

Interviewer

Did you know the detainees were gonna be

18:54

enclosed in Camp X-Ray before you came down?

18:56

-

I had heard about that.

19:00

And of course, I, having been familiar

19:01

with what the layout was down there,

19:03

I kind of expected that we would see that initially.

19:05

So I wasn't surprised,

19:07

but it, it was difficult.

19:10

I mean, they're, you know,

19:11

they're coming in with, with all of these folks

19:14

under the tightest security you can imagine

19:15

'cause they wanted to be very careful.

19:18

Most of the detainees, as they were brought there,

19:20

we had very little form of information

19:22

about who they were or what their background was

19:25

or whether they were telling us anything of the truth.

19:28

There were, there were very few identity documents

19:30

or, or things that we could use to, to verify that.

19:33

So that also contributed to this sort of chaotic environment

19:36

that the investigators,

19:40

the people who were in charge of security,

19:41

the processing, and so forth

19:43

had very little knowledge about the detainees

19:45

other than what they were told about their capture

19:48

and what the detainees would would provide themselves.

19:51

So it was a very,

19:54

it was an interesting period

19:56

because, you know, you really didn't know whom you had

19:58

and you didn't know what was,

20:01

what were the nature of the threats there,

20:02

whether these people were dangerous or not

20:05

and which ones were, and which ones were not.

20:07

So really, we had a lot,

20:10

very little to go on with,

20:11

with the initial tranche and detainees.

20:13

Interviewer

Did, did...

20:16

Were you informed by the military

20:17

or by perhaps...

20:20

Government,

20:22

personnel

20:23

that these people were dangerous

20:24

and that,

20:26

we should be very careful?

20:28

-

I think we, we all operated under that assumption

20:30

and,

20:33

because we didn't know about all of them

20:34

but most of the detainees, especially,

20:37

in the early days had been captured along with...

20:39

either suspected or known Taliban

20:43

and Al-Qaeda personnel.

20:46

There was a strong likelihood that we were gonna,

20:48

we were having some folks that were

20:50

that were going to be dangerous to us.

20:52

And there were many of them who acted out,

20:53

with a great deal of hostility when they were first captured

20:57

and brought into the operations down there.

21:00

So the assumption had to be made

21:02

from a security point of view

21:04

that these were dangerous people.

21:05

And so we, we operated with that.

21:06

I think we had some, you know,

21:08

pretty good assumptions there,

21:10

but, you know, did that apply to everybody?

21:12

Probably not, of course.

21:15

Interviewer

Did you know about the leaflets dropped

21:16

over Afghanistan,

21:19

where the US is offering

21:21

to purchase some of the detainees?

21:22

Have you heard of that?

21:26

-

I had not heard about that.

21:27

I knew about,

21:29

there were a number of operations,

21:29

psychological warfare operations,

21:32

where they use leaflets and other, other ways

21:34

to try to identify...

21:37

where Al-Qaeda

21:40

and other threat personnel were

21:41

and get the local people to turn them in

21:43

and to tell us about them.

21:46

But I never actually saw any of those leaflets

21:47

or got the particulars on that.

21:50

-

If you didn't know that,

21:52

the story is that we've purchased a lot of these men.

21:53

You haven't heard of that?

21:56

-

Later on, I,

21:58

what I heard about was that there were deals made

21:59

with some of the...

22:01

the Northern Alliance,

22:03

tribal leaders in Afghanistan

22:06

and when they captured some Taliban and other personnel

22:09

that we made deals with them

22:14

and that part of those exchanges might've involved cash

22:15

and so forth in order for us to, to take custody of them.

22:18

I mean, Afghanistan is, was a warlord community,

22:21

and you know, the way business was done there was, you know,

22:25

you provide something in order to get something back.

22:29

So it's not a surprising thing that that took place.

22:33

Interviewer

So,

22:37

I know you described it as somewhat chaotic

22:39

but when you walked in there,

22:41

what else were you thinking in terms of what you saw

22:42

and what what you saw with the men in Camp X-Ray?

22:45

Do you have any other memories or just the?

22:48

-

Well, you know,

22:52

it was not an ideal circumstance

22:54

for us to have detainees there.

22:56

And we, and we kind of knew that, I mean,

22:57

these were small enclosures for, for people.

22:59

They were not out in the weather all the time,

23:03

because they were, they were covered over

23:05

in the mild, mild climate down there.

23:07

It doesn't make it too hard to, to sit out.

23:09

And our security personnel were in very light conditions.

23:11

They were sleeping in tents,

23:16

right next to the, the detainee operations.

23:18

So there weren't,

23:20

there wasn't a whole lot of difference

23:21

but it certainly wasn't ideal.

23:23

And the, the initial interrogation operations took place

23:24

in plywood huts that were adjacent

23:28

to the detainees' enclosures.

23:31

And there wasn't a lot of privacy,

23:34

there wasn't a lot of it,

23:36

wasn't a very sophisticated,

23:37

it wasn't climate-controlled.

23:38

It wasn't, it wasn't really comfortable for anybody.

23:40

So it was, it was certainly not an ideal operation

23:43

but the,

23:45

the sense of urgency that we had,

23:46

and this goes across virtually all the operations,

23:49

following 9/11.

23:52

The sense of urgency that all of us had was

23:53

that we were absolutely expecting another attack.

23:56

And I really think that it's important

23:59

for folks to understand that that permeated the attitudes

24:01

of just about everybody who was involved in this

24:06

from the intelligence personnel,

24:08

to the security people,

24:09

the soldiers on the ground overseas,

24:11

you know?

24:14

The law enforcement community back here in the States,

24:15

everybody expected that there would be some

24:17

other form of attack.

24:20

And so there was a great deal of urgency

24:21

that built up behind,

24:24

well, is there any way that we can prevent that?

24:25

And about the only...

24:28

one of the few things that we could do other

24:31

other than intelligence operations worldwide

24:33

was to try to seek information

24:36

from the people that we've captured.

24:38

And so that became a very central focus

24:40

for all of the operation.

24:45

Can we prevent the next attack?

24:46

And what can we do considering

24:48

that we have some captured persons here,

24:51

who we believe likely were involved

24:53

in some of these operations?

24:56

What can we find out from them

24:57

that will help us to prevent the next attack?

24:59

It was, as I said, it, it permeated the environment

25:01

across the entire military and intelligence community.

25:05

Interviewer

Listening to you,

25:09

I'm wondering why did people think

25:10

there's gonna be another attack?

25:12

-

I think we just,

25:15

we expected that that would not be the end of it.

25:16

You know, that this was,

25:20

that the...

25:21

our terrorist adversaries would not be satisfied

25:24

with just the attacks that they, that they had made.

25:28

That there was bound to be more,

25:31

and that their...

25:34

their goal was not just to get attention

25:35

by a couple of small attacks.

25:37

The scale of the attacks

25:39

that we had experienced indicated to us

25:40

that they wanted more.

25:43

They wanted to continue.

25:44

They wanted to dispose a very large threat to our country.

25:45

And it was the first time on that scale,

25:50

that, that a non-state actor threat had perpetrated

25:53

that kind of damage to, to our society.

25:57

Interviewer

Do you think we,

26:01

I know the interrogators have worked for you

26:02

followed they're training,

26:05

but do you think even in those very early days

26:07

that some interrogators,

26:09

because they were under this pressure

26:11

to get the information

26:13

from he fact they were afraid of an attack

26:14

might have even in the very early days,

26:16

gone off,

26:21

line in terms of the way they interrogated?

26:24

-

Absolutely.

26:27

I think for a couple of reasons,

26:28

first of all, there's this urgency

26:29

and the,

26:31

the desire to try to get results.

26:33

So when, when Guantanamo was organized

26:36

and its principles,

26:40

principle mission were to secure the detainees

26:42

and to obtain intelligence.

26:45

And obtaining intelligence became as important

26:48

as securing the detainees.

26:50

And in the early days,

26:52

and when I said that things were chaotic,

26:54

it wasn't just logistically chaotic.

26:56

It wasn't, it wasn't just chaotic

26:58

from the standpoint of what we didn't know.

27:00

But the...

27:02

The military and intelligence personnel who were there,

27:04

I firmly believe didn't know what they were doing.

27:08

Our investigators were trained

27:12

to do law enforcement interrogations, interviews,

27:13

and gather information for criminal investigations.

27:16

And there, that's a,

27:19

that's a very protocol rich set of training.

27:20

The other interrogators who were there

27:24

for the large part had not had any experience

27:26

in actual interrogations.

27:29

There were a few,

27:31

in the intelligence community who had participated

27:32

in prisoner of war interrogations in desert storm.

27:35

Those were not adversarial interviews.

27:38

Those were voluntary...

27:41

interviews where people would give up information quite,

27:44

quite readily.

27:47

So very few of the interrogators

27:48

beyond the criminal investigators had any experience

27:50

with adversarial interrogations.

27:54

There were some,

27:56

that came from other law enforcement agencies

27:57

or had a law enforcement background

27:59

or an intelligence background

28:01

where they, where they might've had some experience

28:03

with, with suspected terrorists and so forth.

28:06

But they were the vast minority.

28:08

They were very, very small group.

28:11

Almost all of the others had no experience

28:13

with face-to-face interrogations.

28:16

They'd been in training.

28:18

The training...

28:20

I didn't know all of this

28:22

until, as, as things developed,

28:24

but the training for our intelligence,

28:26

military intelligence interrogators was based on doctrine

28:28

that grew out of World War II

28:32

and, and just barely beyond.

28:34

It was based on a CIA manual called the KUBARK Manual.

28:37

It was based on conjecture and theory

28:41

about how you could change people's behavior

28:44

and how they would react to different stimulus.

28:46

And so in the early days,

28:49

you asked me if people crossed the line?

28:51

I think it was routine that people were experimenting.

28:53

They were trying whatever they thought would work.

28:57

And you had a turnover of new people coming in there

29:00

and everyone who came in there felt they had a new idea.

29:02

And so they would try different things.

29:05

I found it,

29:07

it was very chaotic from that standpoint, as well.

29:08

Whereas our investigators,

29:11

who are not perfect, had a protocol to follow.

29:13

There was also another problem.

29:17

You know, our investigators of...

29:19

for our task force and for our mission,

29:21

their...

29:25

principle purpose was to discover

29:26

what was the involvement of each individual

29:29

in some sort of criminal acts?

29:31

War crimes or criminal acts that could be prosecuted.

29:33

On the intelligence side,

29:38

the principle purpose was not to determine

29:40

what this individual's involvement was so much

29:42

as what did they know about others

29:45

that we haven't captured yet.

29:47

And what was going to happen next?

29:49

So the questioning,

29:51

it was in different directions.

29:53

Our, our investigators were actually asking more

29:55

about the individual and what their involvement was

29:57

and what their knowledge was of other people's involvement

30:01

so that we could put it into an investigation.

30:03

The intelligence interrogators, if you will,

30:06

were really focused on,

30:09

well, where are the other terrorists

30:11

that we need to capture?

30:13

What are the plans?

30:14

What do you know about other plans?

30:15

And so forth.

30:17

So the questioning was different.

30:18

The purpose was different.

30:19

The methodology, but was, was very different.

30:21

Our, our investigators used

30:24

what they had been trained to do.

30:27

Many of the intelligence interrogators, I believe,

30:29

were not fully trained for this mission at all.

30:32

Interviewer

So when you saw this,

30:35

where I'm gonna use the term freeform interrogation

30:37

where they could kind of decide at the moment

30:40

what they were going to do at each one

30:43

and wanted to try something new,

30:44

who was supervising them?

30:45

-

They had a series of supervisors

30:48

some of whom came from...

30:49

the Military Intelligence community,

30:52

Defense Intelligence Agency, and others.

30:54

The Military Intelligence in the army,

30:57

the intelligence branches of the Navy

30:59

and the Air Force and so forth.

31:02

So there were, there were supervisors there

31:04

who had nominally been in positions to supervise this

31:06

but very few of them had the experience, as well.

31:10

Most of their experience, if you think back,

31:13

the last time

31:16

that we really had adversarial prisoner interrogations

31:17

where you go all the way back to, you know,

31:22

conflicts of the Korean War

31:24

and, and maybe a little bit in Vietnam

31:26

but we didn't do as much of it there

31:28

because we didn't maintain the prisoner of war camps.

31:30

So their experience was almost as sparse as that

31:32

of their junior interrogators.

31:36

Interviewer

So no one was watching the ship,

31:40

if you will?

31:41

There was just no one, or maybe that was the message.

31:42

We don't, we're not going to watch it.

31:46

You can do what you want.

31:48

-

You know, I think the chain of command felt like

31:48

they were, they were supervising

31:50

but they too were not very experienced.

31:52

So even the most senior officers in charge

31:56

of the interrogation operations

31:59

at Guantanamo had not a great deal of experience.

32:01

They had this great pressure upon them to produce results.

32:05

So they, I think, were not,

32:08

it wasn't the message wasn't "Do anything you want,"

32:10

but it was, "Find me something that works."

32:13

In other words, I want you to go to the next level down.

32:17

I want you to go

32:20

and work with your, your soldiers, your sailors,

32:21

and airmen, and so forth.

32:23

And I want you to find out

32:24

what's gonna work with these detainees.

32:26

And so it was,

32:28

it wasn't a total free for all, if you will.

32:30

But I think there was a great deal

32:33

of frustration among them.

32:35

Let's find something that works.

32:37

And the boundaries were not clear as to what those...

32:40

what those things could be.

32:44

There was, there was very little...

32:46

explicit instruction for the interrogators

32:50

on the, on the intelligence side

32:53

as to exactly what they could and couldn't do.

32:56

And there where, there were obviously some limits

32:58

but I don't think they were very clear about everything.

33:01

Interviewer

Did your interrogators think

33:04

that maybe they weren't going to do as well

33:08

because they were working

33:09

within the protocol that they had been trained in?

33:10

-

I never experienced with our investigators any frustration

33:14

about the fact that they couldn't do anything different.

33:19

Our investigators all had experienced at some degree

33:22

with doing criminal investigations.

33:26

So they were not,

33:29

they didn't come to us

33:31

and say, "Well, we wish we could do more."

33:32

They were frustrated

33:34

because they would see other people doing

33:35

what they thought was crazy.

33:38

You know?

33:39

Why are they playing loud music?

33:40

You know, why are they trying to embarrass this guy?

33:41

What, what, what, what, what are they doing there?

33:44

Because our criminal investigators had been trained.

33:46

That the way that you conduct interviews,

33:49

the way you conduct interviews,

33:51

even adversarial interviews and interrogations,

33:52

you have to establish a rapport

33:55

and you have to make some sort of a connection

33:58

with the person you're talking with.

34:00

It may be that they hate your guts

34:02

and they may, they may want to, you know, choke you

34:03

but you have to be able to communicate

34:06

on some sort of a human level.

34:08

And, you know,

34:10

trying to manipulate the environment

34:12

with crazy things is, you know

34:14

just was not in their repertoire,

34:16

our, our folks' repertoire.

34:18

Interviewer

Could you describe what either you

34:19

or your people observed that early on

34:21

in terms of what you described as crazy things?

34:24

-

Some of the things

34:29

that, that I think fall into that category,

34:30

stress positions,

34:33

people being asked to stand up

34:34

or squat down or bend over, or, you know

34:36

in uncomfortable positions for a long period of time,

34:39

keeping people awake for a long period of time,

34:43

changing the environmental conditions,

34:47

making it very cold or very warm in the room

34:49

to try to make someone uncomfortable.

34:51

Threats.

34:54

Interviewer

What kind of threats?

34:56

-

Threats that,

34:58

you know, they would never see the light of day,

34:59

threats that they,

35:01

that their families might be, might be hurt or captured

35:02

or dealt with,

35:05

that something had already been done to them.

35:07

Threats that, that they might be physically harmed.

35:09

All of those kinds of things

35:13

that playing of loud music are part

35:14

of the environmental manipulation and so forth.

35:16

Embarrassing questions and statements about people.

35:19

And,

35:22

you know,

35:23

the stuff that that our investigators thought, you know,

35:24

this is, this is just absolutely counterproductive.

35:26

Interviewer

How about nudity?

35:31

-

Saw some that,

35:33

I didn't see that,

35:33

but our investigators saw quite a bit of that.

35:34

And that was,

35:37

that was couched in the terms that this was

35:38

to embarrass the subject

35:41

and to make them more vulnerable

35:43

and to make them feel more vulnerable.

35:44

So,

35:46

you know, if you put somebody in that kind of position

35:47

you take, you take away their clothing,

35:49

you take away their, their dignity, if you will,

35:51

that, that will somehow make them more willing

35:54

to provide information.

35:57

And again, that just,

35:59

it seemed ludicrous to our, to our investigators.

36:00

They saw that, you know

36:03

that other folks thought this was gonna work

36:05

but they didn't see any productive results coming from it.

36:07

And they also thought this is, you know,

36:10

this is just gonna make things worse for us later.

36:12

Interviewer

How about dogs?

36:15

Did you see dogs in there?

36:16

-

Not in, in the interrogation environment

36:18

did we see much of that.

36:22

There were dogs that were used

36:24

in the, in the security operations,

36:25

but I think most of the stories

36:28

about the use of dogs in terms of interrogating,

36:30

or intimidating the detainees took place in other locations.

36:33

So, did not see or hear many reports

36:38

about that kind of thing taking place.

36:41

There were dogs that were in the detention operations,

36:43

and there were times that dogs were used to,

36:47

you know, to make a detainee cooperator

36:50

or be less less aggressive and so forth.

36:53

But I never saw them brought into the...

36:56

the interrogation operations themselves.

36:58

Interviewer

In those very early days,

37:01

was there isolation?

37:03

Did any detainees put in isolation?

37:05

-

Well, almost all of the detainees

37:08

in the early days were kept in individual cells.

37:10

-

But they could talk to a neighbor?

37:13

-

Some could talk to a neighbor.

37:15

It depends on,

37:16

they would vary the conditions.

37:18

They were,

37:20

in Camp X-Ray, they were physically separated,

37:21

but within earshot of each other.

37:23

There were some that were further removed.

37:25

So they could be isolated somewhat further.

37:27

Once the new detention operations were...

37:30

the buildings were built and so forth,

37:33

there were individual cells

37:35

but then there were some that were completely isolated.

37:38

So there was no communication

37:40

between, between the...

37:42

the detainees.

37:44

Interviewer

Do you have any thoughts

37:45

about how isolation was used when you were there?

37:46

Or what the term?

37:50

-

I mean, I saw, I saw

37:53

that they did have a number of detainees

37:54

that were, that were kept completely isolated from others.

37:56

And so that was, that too was seen as a as a mechanism

37:59

to, to provide information.

38:03

And I mean, even in criminal investigation,

38:05

sometimes you do separate, you know,

38:07

subjects and detainees and so forth.

38:10

So they can't collaborate on their stories.

38:11

And so that you can, you know, can speak to them separately

38:13

and, and, you know not have that kind of thing.

38:16

So it's not unknown,

38:18

but we saw that was done quite a bit.

38:20

And that was another one of the techniques

38:23

that different folks used.

38:25

Interviewer

Did your men ever want to speak out

38:27

or did you always speak out

38:30

to say, "Look, this isn't working,

38:30

maybe you should use a rapport-based interrogation"?

38:33

-

(smirks) All the time.

38:37

From the lowest level, all the way

38:39

up to the chain of command within the Pentagon.

38:41

So our,

38:45

our investigators told that to their counterparts.

38:46

Our supervisors of our, of our investigators told that

38:50

to the supervisors on the other side.

38:53

We told that to the chain of command down at Guantanamo,

38:56

all the way up to the commanding general.

38:58

We talked with his, his staff

39:00

and I personally was in numerous briefings

39:03

to the Secretary of the Army

39:07

and the DOD general council to tell them

39:08

that we disagreed with the interrogation methods

39:12

that were being used.

39:15

Interviewer

What kind,

39:17

Who was the commanding general there?

39:17

-

General Mike Dunleavy was the,

39:20

well, the first commanding general

39:22

for detention operations was a Marine

39:24

by the name of General Leonard.

39:26

He was there for only a short period of time.

39:29

Then General Dunleavy came in,

39:32

and he was the commanding general

39:35

for the good portion of the first several years there.

39:36

So he was, he was a commanding general in, in Guantanamo.

39:41

Interviewer

So what kind of response did you get

39:44

when you spoke to the generals

39:45

and to the...

39:47

I think you said the attorney for?

39:52

-

The DOD General Counsel in the army.

39:54

-

What response did you get from those people?

39:57

-

Well, on the ground in Guantanamo, we got very little.

39:59

I mean, it was, you know, you do your thing and we'll

40:03

you know, don't, don't tell us how to do our business.

40:05

We know what we're doing.

40:08

And that was the story in the early days,

40:10

that changed later on when, when,

40:12

if you, if you look at some of the, some of the interviews

40:14

and so forth of, of people who were in charge,

40:16

they will tell you that later on,

40:19

they, yes, of course,

40:21

they went to a rapport-based techniques and so forth.

40:22

Interviewer

Is that true?

40:24

-

That's not true.

40:25

It may have been true much later because it doesn't,

40:26

it didn't work for them.

40:29

So there was a great deal of criticism

40:31

of our investigative procedures,

40:34

because we didn't cooperate

40:37

with the intelligence interrogators.

40:39

-

From whom did you get that criticism?

40:43

-

From the commanding general down there,

40:45

and from the chain of command

40:47

on, on the grounding in Guantanamo.

40:48

Not so much with our investigators overseas,

40:51

because we were, we were pretty much separate over there.

40:55

But again, the, our methods were seen as...

40:59

too slow,

41:04

too nonproductive,

41:05

and, and not gonna serve the purposes

41:07

of the intelligence community.

41:09

Interviewer

So did both commanding generals

41:12

that you mentioned tell you that they prefer

41:13

if you used other methods?

41:17

-

Not so much that they would prefer that we use them

41:19

but they disagreed with our criticisms of their methods.

41:21

If you will.

41:27

I did not deal too much with General Leonard,

41:28

but I dealt with Joe Dunleavy,

41:30

and...

41:33

general followed him.

41:35

So,

41:36

the, the questions that we had from them

41:37

weren't so much about, "Why don't you do what we do,"

41:40

but it's more that, "Well, you guys can do what you want

41:43

but it's not gonna work," and, "Leave us alone."

41:46

You know, "You don't need to worry about what we're doing."

41:48

And of course, we did,

41:50

because anything that takes place with, with one detainee

41:52

the next interview that we have to conduct with them,

41:56

we're dealing with the aftermath

41:58

of whatever took place before.

41:59

So, you know, our, our side of the story was, you know,

42:01

if you keep this guy awake for three days

42:04

and he's scared to death,

42:07

how are we ever gonna make

42:09

any, any headway in our questioning with this individual?

42:10

Interviewer

So just to clarify, I know people know this

42:14

but,

42:17

maybe you could help us anyway

42:18

the same detainee would be interviewed or interrogated

42:20

by different segments of the...

42:24

-

Yes.

42:27

-

Target.

-

Could you explain why that happened and how that works?

42:28

-

Well, part of it was because of these different missions.

42:30

(Brittain clearing throat)

42:33

-

So you had the intelligence interrogators

42:34

whose mission was to find out

42:37

as much information as they could

42:39

to produce what they would consider actionable intelligence

42:41

something they could take action on.

42:44

Where did they find the next guy and so forth.

42:46

Our investigators, different mission,

42:48

try to discover what was the role of this detainee

42:50

in terrorist activities, war crimes, and so forth.

42:54

So different focus.

42:57

That's one reason.

42:58

The second reason was different chains of command

43:00

for the different entities that conducted interrogations.

43:02

You had civilian intelligence agencies,

43:06

whose focus was different from the military.

43:09

They were looking for specific people

43:11

and specific questions to be asked.

43:14

So they did their own separate.

43:15

The military interrogators who were looking

43:17

for actionable intelligence that they could pass

43:19

to the, their military counterparts.

43:21

We did have foreign entities that came in

43:24

and conducted interviews for their own purposes.

43:26

And then we had our criminal investigators

43:29

who asked questions.

43:31

And at different times,

43:33

the criminal investigators varied, as well.

43:35

So we had our criminal investigation task force.

43:37

We also had FBI agents who were down there

43:41

and sometimes their focus was very specific

43:44

to a particular investigation

43:46

of a, of a known terrorist identity and so forth.

43:48

But for most of the time,

43:52

the FBI's investigators and ours worked very closely.

43:54

And even if we didn't conduct the same exact interview,

43:57

we were coordinating in their interviews.

44:00

Interviewer

This,

44:03

if the military and the CIA

44:04

or other MCs had done it right,

44:07

in terms of using rapport-based interrogation,

44:10

would it make sense to have...

44:13

several different MCs interrogate the same person?

44:15

Is that a logical if it was done?

44:18

-

You know, I think, ideally,

44:21

what we would have liked to have seen,

44:23

would be to get the various agencies

44:26

or the representatives of various agencies who wanted

44:29

to talk to a particular detainee to sit down together

44:32

and say, "This is what I want to ask this guy about."

44:35

"Well, I want to ask him about this."

44:38

"Here's what I know about him."

44:40

"Well, wait a minute.

44:42

Well, I know that, but I also know this about him."

44:43

So, you know, if you compare notes and,

44:45

the more, you know, as an interrogator,

44:47

the more I can, I know about you, your background

44:50

and I know what you know,

44:53

then I can ask more intelligent questions.

44:55

And the more I know about you,

44:57

I might phrase those questions differently

44:59

and I might approach you differently.

45:00

And, you know, if I know your,

45:03

if I know something about your, your background

45:04

or your make-up,

45:06

then I may be able to tailor my approach to you.

45:08

I think had there been more of a collaborative approach,

45:10

I think we might have gotten in some cases better results.

45:16

Interviewer

Is that what you would recommend

45:20

if someone asked you what you do next time around?

45:21

Is that how you would?

45:24

-

You know it,

45:25

if at all possible, I think that's the ideal approach.

45:26

And there's a lot of things that interfere with that.

45:29

You know, the fact,

45:31

that different agencies have different agendas

45:32

different chains of command.

45:34

My chain of command was totally separate

45:36

from General Dunleavy's.

45:38

I did not work for him

45:40

and I didn't work for the people that he worked for.

45:41

My chain of command was up to General Writer and the army

45:44

and the Secretary of the Army to the Secretary of Defense.

45:47

So,

45:50

you know,

45:52

those sorts of structural relationships always

45:52

make a difference,

45:55

but ideally, you'd want to be able

45:56

to make a consolidated approach.

45:58

And then afterward,

46:00

you'd want to be able to compare the information

46:01

that you received

46:03

and try to determine whether or not

46:05

that, that made any sense.

46:06

And finally,

46:08

one of the most important things that particularly

46:10

in a rapport-based interrogation environment is,

46:12

I might be able to talk to you

46:16

and we get along famously and you talk to me all the time

46:18

but somebody else comes in and you know what?

46:22

You just don't like the way they look.

46:24

They just, you know, they just hit you wrong.

46:26

Maybe they talk funny and you don't have that relationship.

46:28

So you want to take advantage of who has that relationship,

46:31

who among your people that contact the subject

46:35

has the best connection

46:40

and take advantage of that

46:41

and do it smart.

46:43

Now, the other dynamic

46:44

that's involved here is we were frequently working

46:46

through interpreters.

46:48

And that, too is a, is a whole different environment.

46:50

I can talk to you and we understand each other.

46:53

We understand our, you know, the body language

46:55

the facial recognition of, of, of things and so forth.

46:58

When, when I have to talk to an interpreter

47:03

and I'm dealing across a culture

47:05

and with another language involved,

47:07

you know, it's, it really complicates things.

47:10

And do you respond to the interpreter

47:12

who's asking you the question?

47:14

Or do you respond to me?

47:15

How do I interpret what your response is?

47:17

Because it's gonna be filtered through a third person.

47:19

So that too, is a, was a dynamic

47:21

that was very, very difficult.

47:24

And each of the different agencies that went in,

47:25

different entities that went in to conduct interrogations

47:29

in many cases, had their own interpreter.

47:31

Interviewer

Could you trust the interpreter?

47:34

-

You know, that's, that's a question too.

47:36

You know?

47:38

I think most of the time,

47:39

we felt pretty comfortable with that,

47:40

but some interpreters were better than others.

47:42

And if you know anything about Middle Eastern languages,

47:44

there's a lot of dialects involved.

47:47

So, you know, if I'm speaking Pashto,

47:49

but I'm not from that part of the...

47:52

the country of the region,

47:57

I might have a slightly different dialect

47:58

from, from somebody else.

48:00

So if the interpreter,

48:01

he could misinterpret both the questions and the answers

48:03

and the response of the detainee.

48:07

So that's, that's the dynamic in there as well.

48:09

So just all of those things thrown together

48:12

makes it very complicated

48:14

and the more consolidated approach of sitting down

48:15

and, and you know, working it all together,

48:19

would make a lot more sense,

48:22

but it's quite difficult to do.

48:24

Interviewer

Did anybody ever suggest that?

48:25

-

There were times we, we...

48:27

we went through an approach

48:30

where they had what we call Tiger Teams.

48:31

So this was an initiative by the chain of command

48:34

at Guantanamo to try to bring together different entities

48:37

that wanted to interrogate the same detainee.

48:41

It was, I think, pretty short lived.

48:45

And part of it was this sort of dynamic tension

48:48

between different missions,

48:51

different approaches.

48:53

"Well, we want to do this with the guy."

48:54

"Well, that doesn't make any sense."

48:55

"Don't do that."

48:57

"Well, we're going to do it anyway.?

48:57

"Okay, that's the end of the team."

48:58

Interviewer

What year was that?

49:01

The Tiger Teams?

49:02

-

I think that started in late 2002,

49:03

more into 2003.

49:07

-

If the Secretary of Defense

49:08

couldn't say your defense,

49:10

organize what you calling collaborative interrogations,

49:13

is there one person or the president

49:18

who could make this happen?

49:20

I mean, or that there's just too much friction

49:22

among the different entities that it could never happen?

49:24

-

Honestly, I don't know.

49:29

There's just, there's so much difference between...

49:31

there's so many different complexities to this,

49:34

the different missions, different organizations.

49:36

I'm not sure if it could,

49:40

we could have had that ideal approach.

49:41

I think we could have at the tactical level, though.

49:42

At the, at the individual,

49:46

at least between the military intelligence personnel,

49:47

and our investigators that could have been done much better.

49:51

We could have probably done better

49:54

if we, if we had convinced the command at Guantanamo

49:56

to go with our approach better.

50:01

I mean, we could have probably done a better job

50:03

of convincing them

50:05

and had they had the, the urgency,

50:06

the stressful environment of producing results,

50:09

not been so extreme,

50:11

that might have worked a little bit better.

50:13

Could it have been done on a national level?

50:16

That's like saying, you know, could you get all

50:18

of the intelligence agencies, all 17,

50:21

in the same room and get them to agree on, you know?

50:23

Chapter and verse of the next thing they were going to do.

50:27

And that would probably be pretty difficult.

50:29

Interviewer

But the commanding general could make it,

50:32

could've made a difference.

50:34

-

Could have made a difference there.

50:35

There were...

50:37

the other agencies that were involved

50:39

in Guantanamo outside of the military,

50:41

had different autonomy,

50:44

than the...

50:47

The commanding general, theoretically,

50:48

had control of the detainees

50:50

and everybody who had access to them.

50:51

I think, in most cases,

50:53

they deferred to the civilian intelligence organizations

50:55

when they wanted to do something different.

50:59

I was not involved in those discussions,

51:01

but that's my, my sense is that,

51:04

when, when someone else another agency came down

51:05

and said, "Well, we want to take this guy

51:08

off in the woods and talk to them differently."

51:09

The CG let it happen.

51:12

Interviewer

CG is?

51:14

-

Commanding General, I'm sorry.

51:15

-

The general counsel for the Secretary of Defense.

51:18

Is that who you said, you also went up to her?

51:22

-

Yes.

51:25

-

Can you tell us his response?

51:26

Is that Haynes?

51:27

-

Yeah.

51:29

Jim Haynes and his, his several deputies

51:30

that we briefed on a regular basis.

51:32

We, on several occasions,

51:35

well, actually, we met with their representatives

51:37

about every week or two weeks, regularly,

51:40

at some level.

51:44

And then we personally briefed my, either myself or my boss

51:46

or someone from my task force was involved in briefing.

51:50

The,

51:53

either Jim Haynes or one of his deputies

51:53

on about a quarterly basis.

51:56

Their response to our objections, if you will,

52:00

was pretty much non-committal.

52:04

We understand, we understand your position and so forth.

52:07

But it was not, you know, it wasn't,

52:10

there was no outrage there.

52:13

There was no, "Well, we'll get this fixed immediately."

52:14

Interviewer

Did they believe you... that?

52:17

-

I don't know whether they did or not.

52:20

I mean, it's kind of hard to say

52:21

but I think some of them did.

52:23

But on the other hand, I,

52:25

I was confronted

52:28

in some of those briefings by folks who said,

52:29

"We don't know what you're talking about."

52:31

So,

52:34

you know, I have my doubts.

52:36

Interviewer

Did you speak to...

52:38

Alberta Moore?

52:40

Was he, he wasn't within your chain?

52:42

-

No, he, Moore was the general counsel for the Navy.

52:43

-

Right.

52:47

-

So,

52:48

I spoke to his counterpart on the army side,

52:49

principal, the principal deputy general counsel

52:53

for the army was a guy named Tom Taylor.

52:56

And he worked for the army general counsel,

53:00

who was more as counterpart.

53:03

So I talked frequently with the army general counsel chain.

53:04

I did not speak ever with, with Mr. Moore,

53:08

his, his source of his information came

53:11

from the Naval criminal investigative agents

53:14

who were working with me.

53:17

I know...

53:20

Mark Fallon, who was my deputy.

53:22

He and several,

53:24

several of the senior NCIS agents were asked to go

53:26

and speak to Mr. Moore and tell them what they knew.

53:28

So that was his, his information.

53:31

Interviewer

Why do you think Mr. Moore

53:33

had more impact than anyone before him,

53:35

if in fact,

53:39

Jim Haynes and others had of heard this from you,

53:40

the way you're describing it.

53:43

Jim Haynes had heard this many times

53:44

before Alberta Moore came to him.

53:46

-

I think just the, the gravitas of

53:49

of a more senior defense department lawyer came to them.

53:51

The army general counsel's office was supportive

53:56

of our position,

53:59

but the army general counsel himself

54:01

did not have the gravitas that Mr. Moore did,

54:04

nor did he have the determination

54:06

to take this to a higher level.

54:08

So I think there were a number of senior attorneys,

54:10

in the general counsel side,

54:13

which is sort of the civilian attorneys

54:15

that work for the secretaries.

54:16

And then the TJAGS, The Judge Advocate Generals,

54:19

because there was a very supportive judge advocate general

54:23

set of, of officers there,

54:27

across the services who also felt likewise.

54:29

And I think it, I think what happened

54:31

with, with Moore is he kind of got, got the ball rolling

54:34

and he sort of garnered the support of the others.

54:38

And he had the gravitas

54:42

to maybe have a little bit more impact,

54:44

but it wasn't, it still wasn't successful.

54:47

It still wasn't enough to, to change things around.

54:50

Interviewer

Where were General Writer in this?

54:53

-

General Writer was my immediate supervisor

54:55

and he reported to the Secretary of the Army.

54:58

So he and I went and briefed the army general council

55:01

and the Secretary of the Army several times.

55:04

And so, and that chain of command was very supportive

55:08

but again, not, they were not as deeply involved

55:12

at the secretary level as...

55:14

as we might could have been.

55:18

Interviewer

When you said that the...

55:22

some, some of the higher commanders would say

55:27

that they changed to a rapport-based interrogation,

55:31

but in fact they didn't change it,

55:35

the time they did, it was much later.

55:36

Could you give us some years as to

55:39

when they said they did it,

55:41

but in fact, when he really didn't?

55:41

-

Yeah, I'm not sure

55:43

if I have all of the dates exactly correct.

55:45

But particularly my discussions with, with Joe Dunleavy

55:47

in the early days,

55:52

his, his attitude was pretty much,

55:53

"Well, you mind your own business,

55:55

we'll do what we need to do."

55:56

And,

55:58

in the late,

55:59

I would say probably late 2002, early 2003,

56:00

when people that talked to him,

56:03

his story at that time was, "Oh, yes.

56:05

Well, we, we did move

56:06

to an rapport-based interrogation strategy."

56:08

But it was, to me, it wasn't true.

56:11

I mean, we were still, they were still fooling around

56:13

with the special interrogation plans

56:15

for, for several individuals into 2003.

56:18

Interviewer

Were you involved with the person

56:22

who is probably 20th hijacker, al-Qahtani, at all?

56:25

-

al-Qahtani, yes.

56:28

To the, to the extent

56:30

that our investigators had conducted interviews

56:32

with, with Qahtani,

56:35

we were also privy to the FBI's interrogators

56:37

who'd had contact with Qahtani.

56:41

We were directly involved in the early stages

56:44

when they started to develop a new plan

56:47

for the approach to Qahtani.

56:49

Our, our personnel objected to the plan.

56:52

And we specifically sent several representatives

56:57

from our task force down to Guantanamo

57:01

to provide input directly on the fact

57:04

that this needed to be changed.

57:08

Interviewer

What was their plan?

57:10

-

Their plan was to, to use progressively

57:11

more aggressive measures,

57:15

including, you know,

57:18

solitude,

57:21

including intimidation, if you will,

57:22

role-playing and more psychological pressure

57:25

and so forth, and threatening.

57:29

And we, we totally disagreed with that.

57:31

And we thought that that was gonna be counterproductive.

57:33

Interviewer

And their response to you?

57:35

-

Mind your own business.

57:38

As a matter of fact,

57:40

the, the commanding general at that time,

57:40

at one point told me,

57:45

"Well, if you're not on the team with us,

57:46

then you don't, you don't wear the jersey,

57:49

hit the sidelines."

57:52

In other words,

57:53

you don't get the benefits of whatever happens here.

57:54

You don't, you're not on the team with us.

57:56

You mind your own business.

57:59

Interviewer

How do you react to that?

58:02

-

Told him he was wrong.

58:04

And I strenuously objected.

58:04

I said, you know, "We're gonna have,

58:06

this is going to come back to us.

58:07

This, you know, this, this approach, and the fact

58:10

that we're doing this this way is not gonna work.

58:12

And it's going to come back to us.

58:14

Interviewer

Did you meet Diane Beaver

58:18

when you were down there?

58:19

-

I knew Diane Beaver, sure.

58:20

-

Do you have any thoughts about her memo

58:22

as to what behavior was acceptable?

58:26

-

Yeah.

58:30

Well, I had a,

58:31

my counterpart (clears throat) attorney,

58:32

at that time worked with Diane Beaver.

58:35

So she was the attorney advisor for the Guantanamo...

58:37

Commanding general.

58:42

I had my own...

58:44

attorney on the ground in Guantanamo who was involved

58:46

in those discussions

58:49

and,

58:51

he strenuously objected to what Beaver had, had written.

58:52

And so that was in writing.

58:57

-

He wrote to her in writing?

58:59

-

He wrote to me,

59:00

and so, and we provided that information back.

59:02

So there was, there was a record of our...

59:04

our objections to that.

59:07

-

How did she respond to your objections?

59:09

-

Well, she took that, but it was

59:12

it was not acted upon by the commanding general there.

59:14

-

Who was your attorney?

59:17

Do you remember the name?

59:19

-

I do.

59:20

I'm not sure you've interviewed him

59:21

so I don't want to provide you the name on him.

59:22

-

Oh, okay.

59:24

(Brittain smirking)

59:26

Interviewer

Um, do you?

59:27

-

I'm not sure he would want to be this point.

59:28

-

Did she give responses to, like,

59:30

she's getting orders from up above

59:33

and she doesn't really want your input?

59:34

-

Pretty much.

59:36

That was pretty much the approach.

59:37

-

Did you get the impression

59:39

that she basically was just doing what she was told

59:41

and that it wasn't necessarily her thoughts?

59:44

-

You know, I, I can't

59:47

I can't really tell you if that's true or not.

59:49

I mean, that, it seems to be appropriate

59:50

but I can't tell you what was in her mind.

59:52

I don't know if she truly believed that, you know

59:55

that what she, what she was,

59:57

what her position was or if she was bowing

59:59

to the pressure of others.

1:00:01

It's hard to say.

1:00:03

-

So are you getting more and more frustrated down there

1:00:05

in terms of, as things went on,

1:00:07

it sounds to me like you were right in the middle,

1:00:10

you were seeing it from all sides

1:00:12

and you, 'cause you bang up against superiors

1:00:13

and,

1:00:17

perhaps, you know,

1:00:18

people at the same level and they were pushing back to you.

1:00:20

-

Our, our entire organization was very frustrated.

1:00:23

And from myself and even,

1:00:26

and General Writer

1:00:29

and the others that I talked too, as well

1:00:31

they were very frustrated about this.

1:00:32

And it, it was, it was at that point, it was like

1:00:34

it was out of our control

1:00:38

that the DOD chain of command had countenanced exactly

1:00:39

what they were going to do

1:00:43

and we've kind of been pushed aside.

1:00:45

And as many times as we objected,

1:00:47

we were not listened.

1:00:50

We were not listened to.

1:00:52

So it was extremely frustrating.

1:00:53

Our personnel on the ground in Guantanamo

1:00:55

and elsewhere did the best that they could

1:00:58

to continue with our way of doing the interviews,

1:01:01

conducting the investigations as best we could,

1:01:06

gathering the information as best we could.

1:01:08

We got into the business of...

1:01:11

making recommendations about

1:01:14

which detainees would, should be released,

1:01:15

or transferred.

1:01:18

And we tried to do that as, as carefully as we could.

1:01:19

Later we became involved

1:01:23

in the Combatant Status Review Tribunals,

1:01:24

which were basically reviews

1:01:29

for habeas decisions and so forth.

1:01:31

We did the best that we could, but our investigators

1:01:34

and our chain of command was very frustrated,

1:01:37

with the approach that the other side was taking,

1:01:40

with the sort of stonewalling that we received and so forth.

1:01:42

It was, it was a very tough time.

1:01:46

Interviewer

You said earlier that you saw

1:01:48

that this could lead to...

1:01:53

effects that could really harm the US going forward

1:01:57

in terms of what we were doing at that moment.

1:02:01

Did you really see it that early?

1:02:04

Was that early?

1:02:06

You could have you already knew

1:02:06

that this had long-term effects?

1:02:08

Is that apparent?

1:02:10

-

You know, I, I don't think we were particularly prescient

1:02:11

about all of this.

1:02:14

We, we firmly felt, and I'm talking about myself

1:02:15

people like Mark Fallon and others,

1:02:18

we really felt like this was gonna,

1:02:20

this was gonna continue to turn out badly.

1:02:22

It was going to,

1:02:24

it was, in the long run,

1:02:25

it was gonna be seen as illegal, immoral

1:02:27

and unproductive at the very least.

1:02:30

And at worst that it would produce the opposite results,

1:02:33

that it would create greater antagonism and so forth.

1:02:37

But I don't think we saw that perfectly in those days.

1:02:41

We, we just felt very strongly, again,

1:02:44

that it was not gonna produce results

1:02:48

and that it was illegal and improper to do this,

1:02:50

this way.

1:02:54

-

Did you begin to see,

1:02:55

since you said that you realized some

1:02:57

of these detainees should be released or transferred,

1:02:59

did you begin to get a sense

1:03:01

that maybe many of these men were,

1:03:03

shouldn't have been captured or brought here

1:03:05

in the first place?

1:03:08

Or did you get any?

1:03:09

-

I think we did,

1:03:10

relatively early,

1:03:12

I would say within the first year,

1:03:13

it became clear that we had a number of very low level...

1:03:15

personnel.

1:03:21

People who had been involved

1:03:22

at some level as a foot soldier,

1:03:23

or they'd been pressed into service

1:03:25

or maybe they'd just been rounded up

1:03:27

with others at the same, under the same circumstances.

1:03:28

And I think all of us, even the Guantanamo Chain of Command,

1:03:32

recognized relatively early

1:03:35

that we had some less than fully valuable detainees there,

1:03:38

in terms of intelligence,

1:03:42

in terms of, you know,

1:03:44

how we were going to prosecute them and so forth.

1:03:46

There was a, there was a question early on,

1:03:48

for us as investigators is,

1:03:51

to, to the the military commission process.

1:03:54

We're trying to decide what's the level below

1:03:57

which you're not going to prosecute somebody.

1:04:00

You know, if we assume

1:04:02

that that we're gonna use the rules of land warfare,

1:04:03

you know,

1:04:07

that's gonna be the basis of our, of our prosecutions

1:04:09

that you violated the rules of law.

1:04:12

Then at what level are we going to do that?

1:04:14

Is someone who, you know, planned an attack

1:04:16

on the United States, clearly, all right.

1:04:19

That's, that's, that's above the line,

1:04:22

but what about someone who supported that guy?

1:04:24

What about the guy that cooked for that guy?

1:04:27

What about the guy that just happened

1:04:29

to be in the same camp,

1:04:30

in the same location with him?

1:04:31

What about the one that was on the battlefield

1:04:33

and was captured next to him,

1:04:35

but may not have even been involved with it?

1:04:36

What level do you want to make that cut line on?

1:04:38

We had a great deal of difficulty deciding how

1:04:40

we were gonna apply the military commission process.

1:04:44

And that hurt us in not being able to decide early on.

1:04:47

Well, you know, anyone who is just a foot soldier,

1:04:50

we're gonna cut them loose.

1:04:53

But the other thing,

1:04:55

the more difficult decision was how do you know?

1:04:56

You know, this guy looks like a foot soldier,

1:05:01

he smells like one,

1:05:03

he acts like one

1:05:04

everyone says he's one.

1:05:06

How do you know?

1:05:08

And, you know, we used to, we had kind of had a...

1:05:09

a mantra that when we were putting

1:05:12

together these recommendations,

1:05:13

He said, you know, "You have to consider

1:05:15

for every individual that we look at,

1:05:17

this is a human being.

1:05:20

This is a person."

1:05:22

And we're actually gonna decide

1:05:23

what about their future life?

1:05:25

Are we going to keep them in captivity?

1:05:26

And continue to...

1:05:28

suppress them

1:05:31

and repress them in this sort of an environment

1:05:32

and assume that they're a bad person

1:05:35

but you have to weigh that against the possibility

1:05:37

that their DNA is going to be splattered

1:05:40

on a US target someday.

1:05:41

And what happens if that guy

1:05:44

that we thought was a foot soldier, is really, you know,

1:05:46

somebody more important.

1:05:50

How do you, how do you make that decision?

1:05:51

And, and what is the, what is the evidence for it?

1:05:53

The evidence is pretty thin.

1:05:55

So we had to make our determinations based

1:05:57

on good old fashioned investigative techniques

1:06:00

and the best things that we could gather.

1:06:03

And sometimes we were wrong.

1:06:05

We, as a country, were wrong in keeping some people there.

1:06:08

And frankly, we were wrong in some of the people

1:06:12

we turn loose because some of them,

1:06:14

we didn't think we had anything on them.

1:06:17

And they turned out to, to go back

1:06:18

and it turns out they really had been involved.

1:06:20

And then, of course, we had the ones

1:06:22

that weren't involved before

1:06:24

but when we sent them back,

1:06:25

now they're more motivated to do so.

1:06:26

Interviewer

Why?

1:06:28

-

Because they they've had this experience

1:06:29

and they go back into that warlord environment.

1:06:31

And now they're recruited

1:06:33

and they're, you know, you're, you're a hero now.

1:06:34

You spent two years in, in the Guantanamo prison.

1:06:37

Now we'll make you a captain

1:06:40

in our, in our Taliban organization.

1:06:42

So a lot of complexity there

1:06:45

but our decisions were very, very difficult.

1:06:47

I know for a fact

1:06:50

that we, we, we recognized early on

1:06:52

that we had collected a lot of chaff with the wheat,

1:06:55

if you will.

1:07:00

And that's, you know, probably not the best way

1:07:00

to categorize people

1:07:02

but we had, we'd gathered a lot of people

1:07:03

that were not fully involved.

1:07:05

How do you make those decisions

1:07:07

and how do you do it quickly and effectively?

1:07:09

Interviewer

Well, if you were on the ground floor there

1:07:11

maybe you can tell us why did we really release anybody

1:07:13

if we weren't sure we always had that inkling

1:07:16

that maybe we were wrong?

1:07:18

-

I think there was political pressure to do so.

1:07:20

If you look at some of it,

1:07:22

and you've probably interviewed

1:07:24

some of the, some of the detainees.

1:07:25

We had some, some detainees who were released

1:07:27

for purely political reasons.

1:07:29

Their home governments,

1:07:32

or the pressure, or the public pressure,

1:07:33

particularly from, from home governments

1:07:35

to turn some people loose.

1:07:37

And some of them were clearly involved in activities.

1:07:39

In terrorist planning activities.

1:07:42

There's no doubt whatsoever.

1:07:44

They, some of them have admitted to it.

1:07:45

So I think we had a, we had a great deal of difficulty

1:07:47

trying to decide that.

1:07:51

And some of the people

1:07:52

that we did release were for practical reasons.

1:07:53

We wanted them to go back and perhaps, you know,

1:07:58

operate in such a way that we could observe them,

1:08:01

and others, we turned them loose

1:08:05

for political reasons because it was expedient.

1:08:06

And some of them were just flat made mistakes about.

1:08:08

And others are still sitting in Guantanamo

1:08:11

and maybe shouldn't.

1:08:14

Today.

1:08:16

Interviewer

Did...

1:08:18

You're kind of indicating, and I

1:08:19

and we've had detainees telling that

1:08:21

or maybe you could confirm,

1:08:23

that are you saying

1:08:24

that some of the men were sent back to be spies?

1:08:25

-

I think we had the expectation that some of the detainees

1:08:28

that were returned might be,

1:08:32

might turn and help us,

1:08:35

in, in the next, you know,

1:08:37

in the next part of the future.

1:08:39

I can't tell you about anything specific there

1:08:42

but I think the sense was

1:08:44

that for some of them, if they were released,

1:08:45

they might serve as sources of information in the future.

1:08:47

Interviewer

You mentioned earlier

1:08:54

that foreign entities came in

1:08:55

and interviewed their own personnel from this citizens.

1:08:57

Do you know any specifics about that?

1:09:02

And was that common?

1:09:04

-

Relatively common for, for some

1:09:06

of our allied intelligence organizations.

1:09:08

I couldn't tell you all the specifics of who they were,

1:09:11

but you can, you can imagine

1:09:13

that some of them are currently involved

1:09:15

in, in our intelligence operations, internationally.

1:09:19

And so some of their representatives did come

1:09:21

to, to Guantanamo and do interviews.

1:09:23

-

Were Americans present when they did that?

1:09:26

-

Some cases, yes.

1:09:28

In some, no.

1:09:30

Our agents were not present

1:09:30

in a foreign investigative interviews.

1:09:33

-

You would deliberately kept out, or?

1:09:36

-

It just, they weren't, they weren't for the same purpose.

1:09:39

So we weren't invited in.

1:09:41

-

what was the purpose?

1:09:43

-

In many cases, they were for their own investigations.

1:09:44

I don't, I mean, I don't know what took place

1:09:48

behind all those doors,

1:09:50

but what I understand was that some

1:09:51

of those foreign entities came in

1:09:53

because they had their own questions

1:09:55

that they wanted to ask.

1:09:56

Some of them, because they also wanted to know

1:09:58

whether or not this individual was gonna end up

1:10:00

back in their country.

1:10:03

And they wanted to have something to say about that.

1:10:04

And sometimes they just had their own,

1:10:06

their own purposes that we weren't aware of.

1:10:08

-

Did you ever speak to a detainee yourself

1:10:11

when you're done?

1:10:13

-

Not really much more than just, just courtesy.

1:10:15

I mean, I interacted with a few of them

1:10:18

in the detention operations, but nothing substantial.

1:10:20

-

And,

1:10:24

As time went on,

1:10:26

did you observe a difference

1:10:27

in the way they were treated?

1:10:29

Separately from the interrogations,

1:10:31

just in the, where they were housed

1:10:32

or like, were you around

1:10:34

when they did hunger strikes or, you know?

1:10:36

-

I heard about some of that and I saw some of that

1:10:41

when it was, when it took place.

1:10:43

I didn't personally witness any, any of that,

1:10:45

other than the fact that some were segregated.

1:10:48

And I was told that this one or that one was not,

1:10:50

it was not eating and so forth.

1:10:54

So I wasn't there for any of the follow-up.

1:10:55

-

Did you know aby of the suicides

1:10:58

that took place in Guantanamo?

1:10:59

-

Only tangentially.

1:11:00

I wasn't present for any of the, you know,

1:11:01

I didn't see any of that firsthand.

1:11:04

-

Did you know that,

1:11:08

did you finish his warrant applicable

1:11:09

to Guantanamo from the beginning?

1:11:12

Were you aware of that?

1:11:14

-

That the?

1:11:15

-

The Geneva Conventions were not applicable to Guantanamo?

1:11:15

-

Well, the,

1:11:19

one of the first questions

1:11:21

that came up was how are we going to make determinations

1:11:22

about...

1:11:28

what detained,

1:11:30

what a person's captured,

1:11:31

how they would be treated

1:11:33

and so forth, would be maybe treated

1:11:34

as prisoners of war and so forth.

1:11:35

And so the initial guidance was

1:11:37

that they would be treated as if they were prisoners of war.

1:11:39

So in, in accordance with the Geneva Conventions,

1:11:42

however, there were some exceptions.

1:11:45

One of the exceptions was we were not going to do

1:11:47

the...

1:11:50

the article tribunals in country to determine

1:11:52

whether someone was a combatant,

1:11:55

illegal combatant or or not.

1:11:57

I think that was a mistake.

1:11:59

I think we should have at least nominally done that.

1:12:00

That would have been a pretty simple process.

1:12:03

It would have avoided the later habeas arguments

1:12:06

that, that came up before the court and so forth.

1:12:08

So I think that was a mistake but the initial guidance

1:12:12

that we were given was that...

1:12:15

that the detainees were going to be treated

1:12:17

as if they were prisoners of war with those exceptions.

1:12:18

They were not going to be categorized in country.

1:12:21

That that would be determined later on

1:12:26

as a function of investigations

1:12:27

and other information that was gathered.

1:12:29

Interviewer

But when you,

1:12:32

did you notice later on that, in fact,

1:12:33

the US government was not really adhering

1:12:35

to Geneva Conventions,

1:12:38

even in the form that you just described?

1:12:40

-

Well, I have kind of mixed feelings about this

1:12:46

because the Geneva Conventions,

1:12:50

if you read them and I'm sure you have,

1:12:51

they are, first of all, quite outdated.

1:12:53

I mean, they were written,

1:12:56

World War I timeframe.

1:12:57

So if you read through them

1:12:59

that there are parts of that make no sense whatsoever.

1:13:00

You're gonna pay the detainees

1:13:04

the prisoners for their, for their daily work

1:13:05

and you're gonna provide them cooking materials.

1:13:08

And, you know, all the, all the sorts of things

1:13:10

that were, that were built around prisoners of war

1:13:12

back in the you know,

1:13:15

the pre-World War II, World War I date.

1:13:16

So there's things in there that just don't make sense.

1:13:19

So were are we complying with all this?

1:13:21

And of course not.

1:13:23

The parts of it that I think we we made a big mistake about

1:13:25

were not doing those tribunals at the point of capture.

1:13:29

That was an important distinction that I think we could have

1:13:33

at least made some effort toward.

1:13:37

The actual treatment, again, if you read the Conventions,

1:13:40

they're quite vague about

1:13:44

what constitutes proper treatment and improper treatment.

1:13:45

And so some of them we clearly did comply with

1:13:51

and other, depends on your interpretation.

1:13:54

I think the decision, sort of a blanket decision,

1:13:56

that we were not going to apply the Conventions at all

1:14:00

except in the most general sense.

1:14:04

It was a mistake.

1:14:06

But there were always going to be some specific things

1:14:08

that we gonna do differently.

1:14:10

Does that make, does that make sense?

1:14:12

Interviewer

I mean, a lot of people do think

1:14:15

that we needed a new Geneva Convention

1:14:15

to deal with the 21st Century wars.

1:14:17

-

I mean, the Rules of Land Warfare are very different

1:14:23

when you're dealing with non-state actors and you know...

1:14:25

Interviewer

Jordans?

1:14:29

-

What's the equivalent of combatants and non-combatants

1:14:31

in today's world?

1:14:34

You know, how do you, how do you distinguish that?

1:14:35

People don't wear uniforms

1:14:37

and don't respond to a, to an identified chain of command.

1:14:38

Those, those rules were all written in, in days of a more,

1:14:42

if you could say, so civilized warfare.

1:14:46

It just doesn't apply.

1:14:49

Interviewer

Did you ever have any connection

1:14:52

with John Walker Lindh?

1:14:55

-

I did not.

1:14:57

The only contact that...

1:14:57

the only information that came across from Lindh was

1:15:00

when he was captured.

1:15:03

The information that our,

1:15:06

the approach that was used with him and I,

1:15:08

and our investigators were not involved with him.

1:15:10

When he made plea agreements

1:15:15

to provide additional information,

1:15:17

some of that information came back to us.

1:15:18

Interviewer

I see.

1:15:22

And, how about Jose Bedia?

1:15:23

-

Again, we did not have any direct involvement

1:15:25

with hearing, we heard about it.

1:15:28

It was, it was relevant

1:15:29

to how the commissions were gonna play

1:15:30

but we did not get personally involved in his case.

1:15:32

Interviewer

I might go back to Guantanamo,

1:15:35

but we kind of skipped over Bagram and Kandahar.

1:15:36

-

Okay.

1:15:40

-

Do you mind telling us what you observed there and...

1:15:41

-

Sure.

1:15:43

-

You know.

1:15:44

-

Sure, I was never in Kandahar.

1:15:45

I had agents who were down there early on

1:15:47

but relatively early, I would say within...

1:15:50

three or four months of our beginning operations.

1:15:53

So by the summer of 2002,

1:15:57

almost all of the detention operations were shifted

1:16:00

to Bagram.

1:16:04

So I had agents who had been on the ground in Kandahar

1:16:06

but even the few detainees that were processed,

1:16:10

through Kandahar after that,

1:16:13

they weren't there very long.

1:16:15

So we moved our operations, consolidated it to Bagram.

1:16:17

So I never went to Kandahar.

1:16:20

I went to Bagram probably,

1:16:22

in the course of three and a half years,

1:16:25

I probably was there a dozen times?

1:16:26

Eight or 10 times, at least.

1:16:29

And so I saw the detention operations there in Bagram.

1:16:31

Our investigators were embedded in the operations in Bagram.

1:16:35

As a matter of fact, our,

1:16:40

our agents sat in a a building right adjacent

1:16:42

to the detention facility for almost all of our time there.

1:16:45

So we were involved in the initial operations there.

1:16:49

I think from a standpoint of a field detention operation,

1:16:53

it was fairly well-run,

1:16:59

in terms of how to keep the people secure and so forth.

1:17:01

The interrogation operations were, I think,

1:17:05

almost as chaotic though,

1:17:07

as they were at Guantanamo

1:17:09

in terms of how the, how they were operated.

1:17:10

The difference being that that Bagram was seen as

1:17:13

and in reality was more of a combat theater operation.

1:17:17

So as you might expect,

1:17:22

it was more focused on the tactical questions

1:17:24

and the tactical information that could be provided

1:17:26

from the detainees.

1:17:29

So the interrogators there,

1:17:31

the military interrogators,

1:17:32

military intelligence interrogators were more focused on,

1:17:34

you know, what had happened in the last few days.

1:17:39

And so if it went beyond that,

1:17:42

to people who appeared to be more...

1:17:44

heavily involved in operations, terrorist operations,

1:17:48

and planning and training and so forth,

1:17:52

those were the people

1:17:53

that were relatively soon identified to go to Guantanamo.

1:17:54

So there were some that were kept there in Bagram either

1:17:59

because the Afghans,

1:18:02

there was some consideration with them,

1:18:04

or there was some tactical information

1:18:06

that they were providing.

1:18:08

But most of the detainees that were there in Bagram

1:18:10

either provided some tactical information

1:18:13

or if they were further involved, they were...

1:18:17

they were identified for potential transfer to Guantanamo.

1:18:21

Interviewer

Did...

1:18:25

your interrogators do any interrogation

1:18:27

while they were there?

1:18:29

-

We did.

1:18:31

And the, the main focus of our interrogations there was

1:18:31

to try to determine,

1:18:34

make some initial determination

1:18:36

as to whether the person should be transferred back

1:18:38

and potentially prosecuted later.

1:18:40

So really it was about,

1:18:43

sort of that screening process of determining who should,

1:18:45

who would make a good candidate to come back

1:18:49

and be part of the commission process.

1:18:51

And so our input was taken along with that of other agencies

1:18:53

and other entities there in Bagram

1:18:57

in making the determination to send folks back.

1:19:01

So we had a vote, if you will, in that process.

1:19:04

Interviewer

Was the military,

1:19:08

the military interrogators pretty much on their own?

1:19:09

They were, again, the same freeform

1:19:11

where they could do whatever they wanted,

1:19:13

more or less, to interrogate?

1:19:15

And there was nobody really supervise them?

1:19:18

-

There was a supervisory chain

1:19:20

and the operation in Bagram was much smaller

1:19:21

than Guantanamo.

1:19:25

Detainees are all in pretty much...

1:19:27

with a few exceptions,

1:19:30

they were, they were in a...

1:19:31

a single facility.

1:19:34

So there was a close, there was closer supervision, I think.

1:19:36

So it wasn't quite the same as Guantanamo

1:19:39

where you had the big operation

1:19:42

with a lot of others involved.

1:19:43

However, I think there still was this sort

1:19:45

of disorganized approach of find something

1:19:48

that's gonna work, you know,

1:19:51

find something that's gonna get us the information

1:19:53

that we need.

1:19:55

So it was, it was no more sophisticated,

1:19:56

even though it was a smaller

1:19:58

and more closely...

1:20:00

viewed operation.

1:20:03

I don't think it was any more effective

1:20:05

that what was done elsewhere.

1:20:07

Interviewer

Some people have said to us

1:20:11

that because the detainees were first brought

1:20:12

to Kandahar or Bagram and then to Guantanamo,

1:20:14

they were more likely to be mistreated physically abused

1:20:17

in Afghanistan.

1:20:21

And that Guantanamo is more of a psychological prison,

1:20:22

even though detainees were physically abusing

1:20:25

in Guantanamo, too.

1:20:28

But did you get a sense of that,

1:20:29

that maybe there was more physical mistreatment

1:20:30

in Afghanistan and Bagram and?

1:20:33

-

I...

1:20:36

I disagree with that a little bit

1:20:37

because I think that,

1:20:39

I think a lot of what would be characterized

1:20:40

as physical abuse took place very early on

1:20:43

during the capture and the initial,

1:20:45

when, when the combat,

1:20:48

the combat units first captured detainees,

1:20:50

there's great deal of room for physical...

1:20:53

Maltreatment, if you will.

1:20:57

I don't know, you just come over the hill

1:20:59

and you take a gun away from the guy,

1:21:00

the likelihood that someone's gonna smack them

1:21:03

in the head and knock him to the ground

1:21:05

and be rough with him is pretty high.

1:21:08

And that's where a lot of the,

1:21:10

the initial contact took place.

1:21:12

And the initial interrogations took place

1:21:14

under combat conditions.

1:21:16

I think a lot of things there,

1:21:18

grounded to physical.

1:21:20

I think the detention facility in Bagram

1:21:22

because it wasn't a combat environment,

1:21:26

probably could have lent to more of that physical abuse.

1:21:28

I think there also were cases where the...

1:21:32

the security personnel made huge mistakes

1:21:35

and this carried on all the way over to Abu Ghraib.

1:21:39

I think we had security personnel who were operating

1:21:43

with less than full training and less than,

1:21:46

than full supervision as they should.

1:21:50

And so there was, there was some...

1:21:52

it was mistreatment that was really a function

1:21:56

of lack of discipline on the part of some of our,

1:21:58

some of the security personnel

1:22:01

and some of the, the interrogators as well.

1:22:03

So some of it was, was just, you know

1:22:05

they were just acting badly.

1:22:08

It wasn't really for the purpose,

1:22:09

so much of obtaining information is,

1:22:10

they were just abusing people.

1:22:12

So that did take place,

1:22:14

in some of those,

1:22:15

some of those environments.

1:22:16

Interviewer

While they were abusing him past,

1:22:18

because they were just angry at them

1:22:19

for what happened right?

1:22:22

-

There is a lot of that, you know,

1:22:24

that initial aggression that comes out of,

1:22:26

you've just captured this guy

1:22:28

and you know, that he's, he's killed some of your friends.

1:22:29

So yeah, there,

1:22:32

I think some of that did take place

1:22:33

and that's more, that sort of thing is more likely

1:22:35

to take place on the front end.

1:22:37

The environment being,

1:22:40

in the combat environment there,

1:22:42

I think some of,

1:22:43

some of that aggression was there.

1:22:44

You had soldiers and, and other military personnel

1:22:46

who had been in combat units

1:22:49

and now they're handling detainees.

1:22:51

They're likely to be more rough.

1:22:53

I think some of the interrogators there suffered

1:22:55

from the same frustration

1:22:58

that, that others did elsewhere.

1:23:00

And so their frustration leads to,

1:23:01

to there, you know, crossing the line, if you will, as well.

1:23:04

Interviewer

And security personnel you think they did it

1:23:08

just because they were also angry at these men for?

1:23:09

-

Some,

1:23:14

and some because they were poorly trained and poorly led.

1:23:15

A lot,

1:23:18

I firmly believe that a lot of the abuse

1:23:19

that took place particularly in Iraq,

1:23:22

in Abu Ghraib was a function of indiscipline

1:23:24

and poor training

1:23:28

and poor supervision and, or no supervision.

1:23:29

And it made me very angry

1:23:33

because I came from that community of Nortech police.

1:23:35

And that's one of the missions that our, that our people do.

1:23:37

And the fact that they didn't do it right,

1:23:41

and that they allowed some of this to take place.

1:23:43

It wasn't,

1:23:45

a lot of that wasn't about producing intelligence.

1:23:46

That was just people being mean.

1:23:49

And that was because they weren't properly led.

1:23:52

Interviewer

Do you believe

1:23:55

that the people who abused the detainees in Abu Ghraib

1:23:55

it really was at the low-level

1:24:01

and they,

1:24:03

and that the commanding officers supervisors were not

1:24:03

informed of what was going on?

1:24:06

-

Largely, I think that's right.

1:24:09

I think a lot of it was low-level

1:24:11

and it was a function of their chain of command

1:24:13

not being there

1:24:15

and letting them do their own thing.

1:24:16

I think there was some subtle...

1:24:18

suggestions that the whole idea that, you know,

1:24:21

the security personnel should soften up the detainees,

1:24:24

for, for the interrogator.

1:24:28

I think there was some of that

1:24:29

but I think most of what took place, at least, at Abu Ghraib

1:24:31

was a function of indiscipline and poor leadership.

1:24:35

There was, there was that sort of environment, though,

1:24:38

that, well, it's okay to be rough with these guys

1:24:41

because we need to get them, you know,

1:24:44

we need to get information from them.

1:24:46

So I don't think that was directed abuse.

1:24:48

I think that was undisciplined more than anything else.

1:24:50

Interviewer

So, then in Bagram in or in Guantanamo,

1:24:55

was that ever directed abuse

1:24:58

or was it also just non-discipline of the internal?

1:25:00

-

I think you had less of the indiscipline.

1:25:05

I think you had more of the...

1:25:07

misguided approaches to interrogation.

1:25:10

And so I wasn't, it wasn't intended to be abuse.

1:25:14

It was intended to be an interrogation strategy.

1:25:16

It was just,

1:25:20

it was just poorly guided.

1:25:22

It hadn't, it made no sense.

1:25:23

Interviewer

Listening to you,

1:25:25

sounds like Abu Grhaib became,

1:25:27

also interrogation strategy in a way,

1:25:29

you said the softening them up for interrogation.

1:25:32

So even in 2004 was still going on, at least in Iraq.

1:25:34

-

I think there was a,

1:25:40

there was still this sort of subtle pressure, if you will,

1:25:41

or again, largely growing

1:25:46

from frustration of the interrogators.

1:25:49

He said, "Well, you can be as rough as you want

1:25:51

with these guys because they're not giving us the results.

1:25:52

So, you know, don't treat them too good."

1:25:55

But the,

1:25:58

some of the actual things

1:25:59

that took place were a of no leadership being there.

1:26:00

And low-level soldiers deciding to, you know,

1:26:05

have some fun with, with people

1:26:09

that were under their control.

1:26:10

And it's inexcusable.

1:26:12

-

[Man In The Background] Peter, we have 13 minutes

1:26:14

on this card.

1:26:15

Interviewer

Okay, thank you.

1:26:16

In Bagram, did,

1:26:17

we interviewed and interrogated in Bagram

1:26:18

who felt that he basically was free to do what he wanted

1:26:20

that...

1:26:25

and what he felt he did was inexcusable, but he could do it.

1:26:27

So, it sounds to me like that was true in Bagram,

1:26:30

as well,

1:26:35

I mean, they pretty much had,

1:26:36

what he said his own imagination is what stopped him

1:26:38

from going in further.

1:26:41

-

Well, I think that's it.

1:26:42

It comes down, like I said,

1:26:43

get me something that's gonna work.

1:26:45

And so, it wasn't at a high-level,

1:26:47

that was a decision made.

1:26:49

Well, let's, let's play loud music on everybody and do this.

1:26:50

It was kind of like, "All right, well, you could,

1:26:54

you guys can try whatever you think is gonna work."

1:26:56

Within some vague generalities of limits.

1:26:58

And again, it, it made no sense.

1:27:03

Interviewer

We need to take a break

1:27:06

so Johnny can change the card.

1:27:07

-

Okay.

1:27:09

-

And then we'll go back.

1:27:10

We don't have a whole lot more

1:27:11

but I think this is a good time.

1:27:11

-

Okay.

1:27:13

-

Thank you.

-

Sure.

1:27:14

Interviewer

I want to go back to Guantanamo

1:27:15

and actually, I thought of him because he was also in Bagram

1:27:17

and that's Omar Khadr.

1:27:20

Did you have any reactions with him at all?

1:27:22

Either in, either...?

1:27:26

-

Well, I knew more about the investigation

1:27:27

with, with Khadr than in some of the others.

1:27:29

So,

1:27:32

I mean, that was a very difficult circumstance.

1:27:35

And here was this very young guy that was captured

1:27:38

but there was very, very good evidence

1:27:42

that he had been directly involved in...

1:27:45

the murder or the, the death of a US person

1:27:50

and the injury of others.

1:27:53

And so he was, he was clearly a combatant.

1:27:54

He was clearly part of the,

1:27:59

the Taliban associated with, with Al Qaeda folks.

1:28:03

So the evidence of his direct involvement in hostilities

1:28:06

against the American troops was indisputable.

1:28:11

We had a wonderful case there, of course,

1:28:14

but it's complicated by the fact

1:28:16

that here's this very young guy,

1:28:17

here's someone that clearly was caught up in

1:28:20

that sort of warlord...

1:28:23

environment and was recruited into this, this thing.

1:28:26

But then on top of everything else,

1:28:29

he has connections with,

1:28:30

his family is, is connected elsewhere.

1:28:32

So his is a very interesting case.

1:28:34

(Brittain clearing throat)

1:28:37

-

And so,

1:28:39

we had folks that were involved in interviews with him

1:28:40

and we made our case pretty, pretty easily.

1:28:43

Then the decision was, well,

1:28:47

what are they gonna do with him

1:28:49

when they bring him to Guantanamo?

1:28:50

You put this boy in with the men

1:28:51

or do you separate them out?

1:28:55

So they came up with this sort of...

1:28:56

separate detention facility,

1:28:58

where they put him,

1:29:01

where he was separated from the main population,

1:29:02

because they felt like, well

1:29:06

it just seemed like, know, needed to be done.

1:29:08

But on the other hand,

1:29:10

you had your there's indisputable evidence

1:29:11

that he was involved in the combat operation.

1:29:13

So are we going to prosecute someone

1:29:15

who was relatively low-level,

1:29:17

but was clearly, clearly involved

1:29:19

and we have the evidence against them?

1:29:21

So,

1:29:24

I mean, I...

1:29:25

I can see the arguments on both sides

1:29:27

but I clearly don't think

1:29:29

that he should have been turned loose, indiscriminately.

1:29:31

He was clearly involved.

1:29:35

Did he,

1:29:37

was he really a someone

1:29:38

that we wanted to bring a large case against

1:29:39

and he's not a mastermind criminal or whatever,

1:29:43

but what do you do with someone like that?

1:29:45

So, you know, ultimately, (clears throat)

1:29:48

he ends up getting sent back to,

1:29:50

to Canada.

1:29:52

It's a very difficult circumstance,

1:29:54

but you know, you talked before about the fact

1:29:56

that many people say we need to...

1:29:58

modify the, the Geneva Conventions

1:30:02

or the Laws of Land Warfare and so forth.

1:30:04

What do you do with underage combatants?

1:30:06

You look in Africa at the, the child warriors

1:30:09

that are being recruited into these,

1:30:12

these gangs or these, these militias

1:30:14

and these active, and they're doing horrible things.

1:30:17

What do you do with them?

1:30:19

You just, well, we're gonna set up a special reform school

1:30:21

or something for those guys?

1:30:24

You can't put them into foster homes.

1:30:25

You can't send them loose.

1:30:28

It's, it's really, really a tough circumstance.

1:30:29

And, and Omar Khadr is a great example of...

1:30:32

how we tried to deal with that.

1:30:36

And probably didn't, didn't do it extremely well.

1:30:37

But I'm not sure what we could have done differently.

1:30:41

I probably could have done a lot of things differently.

1:30:45

I'm not sure what we should have done with him.

1:30:47

A really difficult circumstance.

1:30:50

Interviewer

Did you actually meet him?

1:30:52

-

I did not.

1:30:53

I saw him, but I never talked to him.

1:30:54

-

We have other juveniles in Guantanamo, too.

1:30:58

Were you aware of that?

1:31:00

-

Mh-mm.

1:31:01

When they were all put in that special detention facility,

1:31:02

separate from the others.

1:31:05

-

So did, did the...

1:31:07

administration or the military personnel

1:31:10

or the people that you engage with,

1:31:12

did they suffer over the fact

1:31:14

that we had these young boys and in quite know...?

1:31:16

-

You know, I,

1:31:19

I think there was,

1:31:20

there was a lot of consternation about that.

1:31:21

And, you know, what do you,

1:31:23

what do you do with these underage people?

1:31:24

I mean, they were, they were clearly involved in stuff

1:31:27

but what do you do with them?

1:31:29

I'm not sure what the right answer is for that, honestly.

1:31:32

But there, yeah, there was a lot of talk

1:31:36

and consideration about that.

1:31:38

What should be done with them?

1:31:40

Interviewer

Did you understand

1:31:43

that he was mistreated, too, by the military?

1:31:44

Did you see it?

1:31:46

-

I didn't see any evidence of that.

1:31:47

I mean, he was injured at the time he was captured.

1:31:49

-

Right.

1:31:52

-

He was injured when he threw the grenade.

1:31:53

I mean, he'd already had an injury at that point.

1:31:55

So he was, you know, so there...

1:31:57

there was probably injuries pre-capture and post-capture,

1:31:59

but I'm not aware of anything

1:32:01

that took place once he was in detention operations,

1:32:03

particularly in Guantanamo.

1:32:06

Interviewer

Did you ever need or engage

1:32:07

with his brother who's also there for a short time?

1:32:10

-

No, I'm not.

1:32:12

-

And how about David Hicks?

1:32:14

Did you have any interactions with David Hicks?

1:32:15

-

Saw him.

1:32:18

Saw him when he was down there.

1:32:19

You know, our...

1:32:22

vernacular for him as he was, he was a guy wanted to be

1:32:26

on the front page of Soldier of Fortune magazine.

1:32:28

And, you know, he saw himself as this great warrior

1:32:31

and sold himself into this, into this warrior mentality

1:32:35

and everything else.

1:32:39

And, and...

1:32:40

just wasn't particularly smart for doing so

1:32:41

but again, here's a guy who was a relatively low-level guy

1:32:44

but he was foreign fighter.

1:32:47

They got caught up and clearly was involved.

1:32:49

There was, there's no, you know,

1:32:52

there's no evidence to the contrary.

1:32:54

He was clearly involved in, in operations and so forth.

1:32:55

But what do you do with this guy?

1:32:58

You know, he's, he's certainly not a mastermind,

1:33:00

especially if you, I don't know if you interviewed him,

1:33:02

but he's not a mastermind of anything.

1:33:04

Interviewer

So did other people begin

1:33:09

to get your sense of of what was down there?

1:33:10

I mean, you know,

1:33:13

did any, do you see anybody,

1:33:15

obviously the people who you work with there,

1:33:17

but did you see people change their minds?

1:33:19

And people who were seeing this as red meat, originally,

1:33:20

all of a sudden began to think,

1:33:25

"Oh, maybe it's not quite what they say."

1:33:26

Did you see people transform at all?

1:33:29

While you we're down there?

1:33:31

-

You talking about are our personnel or others?

1:33:33

-

Yeah, yeah but not just from your agency or organization,

1:33:35

but you know, from others.

1:33:38

-

Yeah, I think, I think in the early days, as I said,

1:33:41

this incredible pressure to...

1:33:44

prevent the next attack.

1:33:47

To stop what was going on,

1:33:49

to capture the bad guys,

1:33:52

to, you know, to bring justice to the situation

1:33:53

and so forth.

1:33:57

Incredible pressures.

1:33:57

And that, that affected a lot of people.

1:34:00

So I mean, everybody from...

1:34:03

you know, the highest level people,

1:34:05

all the way down to, to people in our organization

1:34:07

and others.

1:34:09

They were all very fired up about this mission.

1:34:10

And we would tell them, you know,

1:34:12

when they came into our task force,

1:34:14

we would say, you know, if on 9/11 you were angry

1:34:16

or you were shocked, or you were...

1:34:19

you were appalled at what took place

1:34:22

and you just wanted to do something about it?

1:34:24

We told them when they came up,

1:34:27

this is your chance to do that.

1:34:28

This is your chance to do something right.

1:34:29

To, to really make a difference.

1:34:32

And your mission in our organization, as an investigator,

1:34:34

or someone supporting the investigations

1:34:38

your mission is very important.

1:34:40

We wanted to make them feel like they're doing something

1:34:42

very, very important for their country.

1:34:44

And so they were fired up about going in

1:34:47

and doing the right thing.

1:34:49

Now, I think we did a pretty good job

1:34:50

of keeping our people grounded in what their protocols were,

1:34:52

what their rules were, stick to your training.

1:34:56

Don't go beyond what you were trained to do, and, you know,

1:34:59

do your job.

1:35:02

I think they were very fired up about that.

1:35:03

I think it didn't take too long

1:35:05

for some of our investigators to come to the conclusion

1:35:07

that, well, not everybody down there is as bad

1:35:10

as we thought.

1:35:12

And it's simply a function of reality.

1:35:14

When you gather up all of these,

1:35:16

all of these people, you're going to,

1:35:18

you're gonna get people that weren't quite as involved.

1:35:20

You know, we described our investigative mission

1:35:23

as being upside down.

1:35:26

In a normal criminal investigation,

1:35:30

you go to a crime scene

1:35:33

where a crime has been committed

1:35:35

and you interview victims and witnesses and so forth

1:35:37

and you get some gathered up some physical evidence

1:35:42

and you get some testimonial evidence from them.

1:35:44

And you use that evidence to go try

1:35:47

to narrow down who your subject is.

1:35:49

And then you make an arrest,

1:35:52

and you bring that subject in and you talk to them

1:35:55

and you gather more evidence and you put it all together

1:35:57

and you decide if you have a case

1:35:59

and then you take the case to the prosecutor.

1:36:00

Well, in this case,

1:36:03

we were given a large group of people

1:36:04

and someone said, "These are your possible subjects.

1:36:08

They've done something bad.

1:36:12

Go figure it out."

1:36:14

So, now we're starting from, you know, the, the subjects.

1:36:16

And we're trying to determine who among them was involved

1:36:19

in that crime or that crime or that crime

1:36:22

or that crime a few years ago in Yemen

1:36:24

or that crime a few years ago in New York.

1:36:27

You know?

1:36:29

How do you do that?

1:36:30

It's an upside down investigation.

1:36:31

You're starting from the subject

1:36:33

instead of from the, from the crime scene and the evidence.

1:36:34

And by the way,

1:36:38

the crime scenes have all taken place over years.

1:36:38

The evidence is, you know, monumental.

1:36:41

The testimony is hard to believe.

1:36:44

None of the people

1:36:47

that are in your subject pool can tell you

1:36:47

who they really are,

1:36:49

with any degree of certainty or your, or believability.

1:36:50

None of them have ID cards or passports

1:36:54

but solve this problem for us.

1:36:57

Really, really difficult mission.

1:37:00

And so I think as time went on,

1:37:01

our people very much so changed their views

1:37:03

and said "We gathered up a bunch of subjects.

1:37:06

There's probably a bunch of them

1:37:10

that have no business being here.

1:37:11

There's a bunch here that we know we got something on

1:37:13

and there's a bunch of here.

1:37:17

We have no idea yet."

1:37:18

And how do we figure that out?

1:37:19

So it was a, it was an interesting mission.

1:37:21

Interesting problem.

1:37:25

We didn't solve it.

1:37:27

We didn't solve the problem,

1:37:28

for most, in most of our cases, but we did,

1:37:30

I think our minds did evolve over time.

1:37:32

And I think, not just our personnel,

1:37:35

but others came to different conclusions

1:37:37

about how could we have better done this?

1:37:40

What did, what did we do wrong?

1:37:43

I think, and I'm sure you've interviewed a lot of people

1:37:45

whose minds changed over time.

1:37:47

Maybe in right ways.

1:37:50

Maybe not so.

1:37:52

Interviewer

Did yours?

1:37:53

-

I think I expected...

1:37:55

I expected more from our process.

1:38:01

And I've talked to some of the people

1:38:04

that I worked with back then.

1:38:07

And I said, you know,

1:38:08

I really think we made some very fundamental errors,

1:38:09

organizationally.

1:38:13

I think I would have done some things differently.

1:38:14

(Brittain clearing throat)

1:38:18

-

The tribunals from a legal standpoint

1:38:19

I think we could have done some things differently.

1:38:21

I think had we proceeded

1:38:23

with some of the military commission trials earlier?

1:38:25

I think we would have

1:38:29

either made or broken some of the cases.

1:38:30

I think there were some individuals

1:38:33

for whom we were prepared to go to trial relatively early.

1:38:36

And I think had we taken some of those cases

1:38:39

to a commission process.

1:38:42

It would have fleshed out the process and made it better,

1:38:44

without all of the latent controversy that came beyond.

1:38:47

I think it would have either proven or disproven the cases.

1:38:52

And then we might have actually had a useful tool

1:38:55

to help sort out who were the ones

1:38:58

that really needed to be put away.

1:39:01

And we might've been able to then sort

1:39:04

through the population of are our detainees better.

1:39:06

So I think there's a lot of things

1:39:10

that we, that we learned in the process

1:39:11

and a lot of minds changed over time.

1:39:13

Interviewer

Will that learning...

1:39:16

be acknowledged today overnight?

1:39:21

What will happen tomorrow?

1:39:23

Would we do better?

1:39:24

-

I'd love to think so.

1:39:28

And I think we probably would do some things differently.

1:39:29

I think we,

1:39:33

strangely enough,

1:39:35

we've gathered some experience out of this process,

1:39:36

even in terms of how we did things like interrogations

1:39:39

and how we did detention operations

1:39:42

and how important it is for us to do them right.

1:39:44

I think the fact that we failed in some respects

1:39:47

would help us to succeed later

1:39:52

because we would be more careful about certain things.

1:39:54

I remember we went to a,

1:39:57

soon after 9/11,

1:40:00

I went to a war game,

1:40:02

sort of academic exercise up in Carlisle, Pennsylvania,

1:40:03

the Army War College.

1:40:07

And they talked about a military operation

1:40:08

where we were gonna capture a bunch of people.

1:40:10

And the,

1:40:13

the question that I posed is,

1:40:14

what's our end game for the people that we capture?

1:40:17

Do we intend to put them in jail?

1:40:20

Do we intend to investigate them

1:40:22

and try them by some process?

1:40:25

Do we intend to just lock them up

1:40:27

for the duration of hostilities is

1:40:28

as you know, Geneva Convention would, would apply?

1:40:31

Does that make sense?

1:40:34

I said, that's gonna be a fundamental question

1:40:35

for any operation that we take on.

1:40:37

Turned out, I was probably right on that one.

1:40:40

What we decide to do

1:40:42

with the people that we, that we become involved

1:40:43

with as a function of our, you know, global reach

1:40:47

and military operations is a critical, critical question.

1:40:50

Interviewer

What was the answer you got

1:40:55

when you asked that question?

1:40:56

-

They didn't get a good answer on that one.

1:40:57

We didn't get to that answer.

1:40:59

I mean, it was, it was one of those,

1:41:00

"Yes, that's a great, great question.

1:41:02

We'll put in, in our, in our after action report."

1:41:04

And we didn't solve it.

1:41:06

There are many other things we had to talk about it.

1:41:08

Interviewer

Do you hope that you would be a consultant

1:41:13

if ever something like this happen again?

1:41:15

Do you think...

1:41:16

they'd be smart to come to people like you

1:41:18

who have experienced it and ask you?

1:41:20

-

I'd love to, to have the opportunity to be involved.

1:41:22

And fortunately, there are some people,

1:41:25

like my friend Mark Fallon,

1:41:28

who are still involved in some of these operations

1:41:29

or some of the things that follow

1:41:33

on interrogation operations and so forth.

1:41:35

So yeah, I would love to, to have the chance

1:41:38

to provide that kind of information,

1:41:40

whether I would ever be asked, who knows.

1:41:43

You know?

1:41:44

But it's, I think there's a lot that we could have learned.

1:41:45

And there have been some, some intelligent dialogues

1:41:48

about everything from,

1:41:52

you know,

1:41:54

preventive detention to the legal process,

1:41:55

to the Rules of Land Warfare,

1:41:59

to, you know, eliciting information.

1:42:01

There've been studies.

1:42:04

Some of the things

1:42:05

that grew out of this experience have been positive

1:42:06

in the standpoint of they have opened a dialogue.

1:42:10

And they've gotten behavioral scientists have now

1:42:13

become fully engaged in how do you...

1:42:16

morally and legally elicit information

1:42:20

from somebody in an adversarial role.

1:42:22

And what are the, what are the, there's a lot more talk now

1:42:26

about what do you do with international criminal violations?

1:42:29

What do you do with, with...

1:42:33

war criminals?

1:42:36

And does war, do war crimes apply both

1:42:38

to the antagonist and the protagonist?

1:42:40

You know, can you equally apply those?

1:42:43

How does that really work?

1:42:45

How do you make that fair?

1:42:46

How do you make that realistic?

1:42:47

So there have been some good dialogues

1:42:49

that have, that have grown out of it.

1:42:51

And I hope we would learn some of those lessons

1:42:52

and do things better.

1:42:54

Interviewer

Do you think they will, might go

1:42:56

to the ways side again,

1:42:58

if there's another 9/11,

1:43:00

and then people react with emotion and fear

1:43:01

rather than the law?

1:43:04

-

I think that's the natural tendency.

1:43:05

I think there is enough...

1:43:08

energy that has been created by this.

1:43:12

I hope there's enough energy that we would have

1:43:15

that conversation before we go down that path.

1:43:17

I mean, I went and did training for...

1:43:21

for law enforcement officers

1:43:24

and you know,

1:43:25

what our experiences were in setting up this task force

1:43:27

and what's it like, and, and I would always say, you know

1:43:30

there's all the things that we can talk about.

1:43:32

I put all these different things on the board

1:43:34

and always put torture way up

1:43:35

in the corner in small letters

1:43:37

and say, what substance would you like to talk?

1:43:38

Oh, we want to talk about torture.

1:43:41

So we would talk about, you know,

1:43:43

all right, how does that work?

1:43:44

And, and how, what, first of all, what is torture?

1:43:46

How, what, what crosses the line to be truly torture?

1:43:50

Is it, you know, talking mean to somebody?

1:43:52

Is it, you know, putting handcuffs on them?

1:43:55

Is it put them in a room by themselves

1:43:57

for how long, you know,

1:44:00

making somebody uncomfortable,

1:44:01

telling them they might go to jail.

1:44:03

All of those things are, you know,

1:44:04

psychological and physical forms, you know?

1:44:07

So how do you, where do you draw that line?

1:44:10

And then,

1:44:12

how do you, how do you predict how someone is gonna react

1:44:13

to different stimulus?

1:44:15

To hit one guy with a hammer?

1:44:17

Is he going to act the same as the other guy over here?

1:44:18

Because if you really believe in physical torture

1:44:21

as a way to get information,

1:44:24

you have to be able to predict how someone's gonna react.

1:44:26

So how does that work?

1:44:29

And the cops are,

1:44:30

they, that resonates with them.

1:44:33

They think about that stuff.

1:44:34

And they also think about, you know,

1:44:36

what kind of information do you get

1:44:37

when you put somebody under physical or mental pressure?

1:44:40

And can you depend on that information?

1:44:43

Would you bet your life on that information?

1:44:44

Will you send a squad of soldiers or cops

1:44:47

into that room over there

1:44:50

where the bad guy says the bomb's sitting

1:44:52

and really trust that he's given you the right information

1:44:55

because you hit him on the knee.

1:44:57

You know, because maybe the bomb's not there.

1:44:59

it's, you know, at the front door.

1:45:01

You know, it's those kinds of conversations,

1:45:04

I think, you know, we've, we've thought about some of that.

1:45:06

And I'd like to think

1:45:09

that we've learned some, some valuable lessons

1:45:10

from some of that.

1:45:13

Interviewer

Should Obama close Guantanamo?

1:45:15

-

We have to close it.

1:45:18

And we can't,

1:45:19

I mean, I think at one time had we,

1:45:20

had we gone through the commission process

1:45:24

and we had legitimately, or, at least at some point,

1:45:26

legitimately gone through a legal process

1:45:30

and convicted a certain number of people

1:45:32

and said they need to serve time.

1:45:34

We might've been able to keep Guantanamo

1:45:35

as a detention facility for that purpose,

1:45:37

because frankly, it's much better to keep them there.

1:45:40

And, then to bring them into the,

1:45:43

the politics of the United States

1:45:45

and the local politics of, you know,

1:45:47

correctional facilities and all that kind of stuff.

1:45:49

So realistically, that could have happened.

1:45:52

I think at this point, it's, it's beyond the pale.

1:45:54

So we have to find some way to...

1:45:57

You know,

1:46:01

dispose of, or make disposition of the remaining people

1:46:03

that we have down there.

1:46:07

And if there are some that have to serve some time,

1:46:08

maybe there'll be some that'll serve some time there,

1:46:11

but ultimately, our goal should be to close it.

1:46:14

Interviewer

Why?

1:46:16

-

Well, it's become a symbol.

1:46:18

It's become a symbol of our failures

1:46:20

to, to conduct things, at least in the eyes,

1:46:23

of, of the international population conduct things fairly.

1:46:26

Somewhat wrongly, but somewhat rightly as well.

1:46:30

It has also become logistically a mess.

1:46:34

I mean, it's, cost us a fortune to maintain

1:46:37

that, that operation down there.

1:46:40

And it's not,

1:46:42

what's the benefit for doing so?

1:46:44

We're just

1:46:45

you know, we're just locking up a few people.

1:46:46

You have to find a better way to do it.

1:46:48

But I think the likelihood is that when we do that,

1:46:51

we will first, whoever closes Guantanamo,

1:46:55

face great political pressure

1:46:58

to do so or not do so.

1:47:01

And so the decision will be made for political purposes

1:47:03

rather than anything else.

1:47:06

And I think we will ultimately make some

1:47:07

other serious mistakes as well.

1:47:09

We will probably turn loose someone who will end up

1:47:11

involved in a future act against us.

1:47:14

Maybe because they were all along,

1:47:17

or maybe because they've now been convinced

1:47:19

that that's what they want to do for the rest of their life.

1:47:22

Interviewer

One person we interviewed said that,

1:47:26

he,

1:47:28

he says even if that happens, we need to close Guantanamo

1:47:29

because it just, it's just staying,

1:47:32

we need to just do the right thing, no matter what.

1:47:35

-

Well, we have to do something with the people.

1:47:38

That's my, my point is I, I agree we have to close it

1:47:40

but we have to find some way to deal

1:47:43

with the remaining people that we have down there.

1:47:45

So some of them, if we, the problem is,

1:47:48

if you bring them to the States and put them in facilities,

1:47:50

you become involved in a legal quagmire.

1:47:54

If, if not already, it becomes even worse.

1:47:56

If you turn them loose,

1:48:00

even with conditions to certain other countries,

1:48:03

it's almost inevitable

1:48:05

that some will be involved in other things.

1:48:06

The de-radicalization programs.

1:48:09

I don't have a whole lot of faith in,

1:48:11

and I've seen some of that work and so forth.

1:48:14

I'm just not sure it works.

1:48:17

So you, you got to find some way to deal with the people

1:48:21

and they are people.

1:48:24

You, you can't you can't just say that, you know

1:48:25

we, categorically, are gonna take them offshore

1:48:28

and let them disappear.

1:48:30

Interviewer

Did he, did you observe the Saudi Arabia

1:48:34

devout compensation program?

1:48:38

-

Not personally, but I've, I've read about it.

1:48:40

And I've talked to people who were, you know,

1:48:42

I've seen, I've seen some of the studies

1:48:45

about, about effectiveness and so forth.

1:48:47

I don't think it's a bad idea,

1:48:50

but I, I'm not convinced that it works.

1:48:51

Interviewer

Do you understand why Obama claims

1:48:54

that he can't release the men back to Yemen?

1:48:56

Most of the people left in Guantanamo are Yemeni,

1:48:58

is that true?

1:49:02

Is that correct?

1:49:03

-

Yemen is a huge problem.

1:49:03

I mean, it's really a dysfunctional,

1:49:05

it's kind of like Somalia.

1:49:07

It's...

1:49:09

with a few differences, obviously,

1:49:10

but you know,

1:49:12

it's a dysfunctional government.

1:49:12

So,

1:49:15

about every other month,

1:49:16

someone escapes from, from one of their own prisons

1:49:17

and goes off and does crazy things.

1:49:21

And of course, we're flying around trying

1:49:23

to identify bad guys there as well.

1:49:25

It's,

1:49:28

I've been in Yemen

1:49:29

and Yemen is the Wild Wild West of the Middle East.

1:49:30

It is,

1:49:34

maybe similar to Somalia,

1:49:35

but it's, even in the 1980s and '90s,

1:49:37

you could, you could walk the streets of the capital, Sana'a

1:49:41

and see people with gut leaves on one shoulder

1:49:45

and a loaded collision of cuff on the other,

1:49:47

and a Khanjar knife in the middle of their belt.

1:49:49

And these were just normal people going to work.

1:49:52

That was their,

1:49:56

that was their uniform.

1:49:57

And that was their...

1:49:59

blue suit.

1:50:00

It's crazy.

1:50:02

It's a crazy world.

1:50:03

And Yemen is not a place that you can really be assured

1:50:04

that, what the future is gonna bring.

1:50:08

Interviewer

Well, then they have some,

1:50:13

they have to be sent somewhere else.

1:50:14

Is that what you're saying?

1:50:16

They can't go back to Yemen

1:50:17

or would you be willing to send them back to Yemen?

1:50:17

-

I think we,

1:50:19

unless, unless the situation

1:50:20

with the government in Yemen stabilizes,

1:50:22

I don't think you can just send them there.

1:50:24

At least, many of them.

1:50:26

There are some, the probably could make arrangements for,

1:50:27

and they're low-level enough

1:50:30

that maybe it won't make much of a difference.

1:50:32

There are others that we probably have

1:50:35

to find some other way of detaining them

1:50:36

or getting somebody else to agree to detain them

1:50:38

in with some degree of certainty

1:50:41

that they'll stay...

1:50:43

safe and secured.

1:50:45

-

Well, so, on some level, Guantanamo, we'll never close.

1:50:48

-

No, I, I think we'll probably ultimately

1:50:52

find some accommodation

1:50:54

or we'll just give up and turn some of them loose.

1:50:55

Realistically.

1:50:59

I think we will close it.

1:51:00

-

And you think Obama is gonna close it

1:51:03

when you said he would back in '08 or '09?

1:51:05

-

I had my doubts all along

1:51:08

because I just didn't think it would be practical to do so.

1:51:09

I think it would be,

1:51:12

I always said it was gonna be very difficult.

1:51:12

You can't just declare it closed

1:51:14

without dealing with the residual effects.

1:51:17

Interviewer

Is there something I didn't ask you

1:51:22

that you've been thinking about it before you came

1:51:24

or during this conversation that you want to share with us?

1:51:27

-

There is.

1:51:31

We talked about all of the,

1:51:33

all of the negatives and so forth,

1:51:35

but there is, I think you,

1:51:37

you asked me if we were,

1:51:39

if we ever had to face something like this again,

1:51:40

we'll be do it differently.

1:51:43

We'll be, do it better.

1:51:44

And, and part of my reason for being somewhat optimistic

1:51:45

about that is I think we've learned some lessons.

1:51:48

The other thing is, is I think there is an incredible...

1:51:51

success in terms of the people

1:51:57

that were not involved in abuse.

1:52:00

The people that didn't do the wrong thing,

1:52:02

the people that did the right thing,

1:52:04

not, not just the whistleblowers,

1:52:06

but the people that just,

1:52:08

after 9/11 rose to the flag,

1:52:10

defend their country,

1:52:14

to do what they felt was right

1:52:15

and went and did their right job.

1:52:16

There's millions of those folks

1:52:18

who are in uniform and out of uniform,

1:52:20

you know, on the streets of San Francisco,

1:52:24

wearing a blue uniform

1:52:26

and wearing camouflage uniforms,

1:52:28

in other countries to this day.

1:52:30

Investigators that worked for me,

1:52:32

people that went and did the right thing,

1:52:35

and when it came to detention operations,

1:52:38

treated the detainees

1:52:40

with the best respect they could did.

1:52:41

Did the, their job correctly

1:52:44

and, and succinctly,

1:52:47

and with good conscience.

1:52:49

And we need to, we need to be proud of them.

1:52:51

There are a lot of people who really,

1:52:54

they, they are Patriots

1:52:57

and they're not just Patriots to our country,

1:52:58

but to our culture, as well,

1:53:00

that had had did the right thing in the face of adversity.

1:53:01

So I think we should,

1:53:04

not say that the whole experience of Guantanamo

1:53:06

or the Wars of the last, you know, 10, 15 years,

1:53:10

we're all about this one single issue.

1:53:14

It's an important issue.

1:53:17

It's one that we need to, to fix

1:53:18

and, and continue to talk about and work on.

1:53:20

But we also need to be proud of the fact

1:53:23

that, that our citizens

1:53:25

and citizens in other countries stood up to this threat

1:53:27

and do so still today,

1:53:30

and do so with moral courage to not do the wrong thing.

1:53:32

Interviewer

Where they...

1:53:37

I appreciate that a lot.

1:53:38

And no one's said that before, so I really appreciate it.

1:53:39

Were there any people that really struck,

1:53:42

stuck out in your telling us this

1:53:46

or were the people that you saw, you know,

1:53:48

just really did stand up in ways

1:53:50

that surprised you?

1:53:53

Or I know that generally people just do their jobs

1:53:54

and that in itself is very commendable

1:53:58

and we need to respect that and acknowledge it.

1:54:01

But is there anybody that you thinking

1:54:05

of that maybe you want to just share with us?

1:54:07

Somebody who really did stand up?

1:54:10

-

So I'll tell you without telling you their name.

1:54:13

-

Okay.

1:54:15

-

If that's okay.

-

In our task force, we had army investigators,

1:54:18

we had Navy, Air Force and so forth.

1:54:21

At one point, we were getting ready

1:54:24

to take on some new special agents

1:54:27

from the different services to work in our task force

1:54:31

and to send some down to Guantanamo.

1:54:33

And one of the special agents that came to us,

1:54:36

she came out of the Air Force.

1:54:39

She was a female enlisted special agent

1:54:40

which means she was like a Sergeant.

1:54:43

And she, she'd gone through her special agent training.

1:54:46

She was relatively junior.

1:54:48

And she was sent to us

1:54:50

and she had no experience really,

1:54:51

as she'd done some criminal investigations

1:54:53

but she had no experience with counter-terrorism.

1:54:56

She had no experience with, with folks in the Middle East

1:54:58

or detainee operations and so forth.

1:55:02

So she went through our orientation, our training program,

1:55:05

and we sent her down to Guantanamo

1:55:08

and she worked with other investigators

1:55:12

for a certain period of time.

1:55:14

And then she became one of the interrogators

1:55:16

for one of our cases.

1:55:19

And if you can imagine, a female interrogator

1:55:20

talking to someone from the Middle East,

1:55:25

there's the cultural divide there

1:55:27

there's the gender situation.

1:55:29

There's, there's all the, all the things that come into fact

1:55:31

she doesn't speak Arabic.

1:55:34

She's working through a translator.

1:55:35

And she made the most amazing connection,

1:55:38

with this one detainee.

1:55:42

And it wasn't...

1:55:45

magical.

1:55:47

It was her...

1:55:48

personal...

1:55:50

intuition about how to make a connection with it.

1:55:52

She,

1:55:55

initially went in

1:55:56

and the guy wouldn't even look at her.

1:55:57

He wouldn't talk to her through the translator.

1:55:59

He kept telling the translator,

1:56:01

he wouldn't have anything to do with a female,

1:56:02

let alone, you know,

1:56:05

a female law enforcement officer, whatever.

1:56:06

And she talked for days,

1:56:08

she went in and she talked to him

1:56:10

and she just talked to him about his family.

1:56:11

And she had studied about what the differences

1:56:15

between individualist culture

1:56:19

and the, and the group culture

1:56:21

that makes up a big part of the Middle Eastern culture.

1:56:23

And,

1:56:27

the shame versus guilt mentality

1:56:28

that's slightly different in different cultures.

1:56:31

And she kept talking to him about his family and, you know

1:56:33

what's this, what's this, what's his family doing now?

1:56:36

And how are they missing him?

1:56:38

And, you know, what did they think about this?

1:56:40

And, and what would they think about, you know,

1:56:42

how when he explained to his children about how to,

1:56:45

what took place on 9/11 and so forth?

1:56:46

Because we had pretty good evidence

1:56:49

that this guy had been knowledgeable of some of the events

1:56:50

and it took weeks and weeks and weeks

1:56:54

but eventually this guy started talking to her.

1:56:57

First, he would just make comments

1:56:59

to the translator about, you know,

1:57:00

"I don't like her talking about that."

1:57:02

And could you, is this, was this psychological manipulation?

1:57:04

Well, maybe it was,

1:57:07

but after a while, she got into an actual dialogue with him

1:57:09

about how important his family was

1:57:12

and how he really felt that, you know,

1:57:15

he was doing the right thing at one point,

1:57:20

but maybe, maybe he got off track at some other point.

1:57:21

And he started to tell her some things

1:57:24

that built into some of our other cases

1:57:26

about some other detainees.

1:57:28

As some people would say, well,

1:57:30

that was psychological manipulation

1:57:31

and it was wrong and so forth.

1:57:33

I thought it was, it was an incredible insight

1:57:35

by this young investigator on how to make a connection

1:57:39

and how to get somebody to communicate with them

1:57:44

and tell them things that would be useful.

1:57:46

Interviewer

How'd you hear the story?

1:57:50

-

Well, I knew her, of course,

1:57:52

she, she worked in our command

1:57:54

and I heard this from some of her supervisors.

1:57:55

And then I went down,

1:57:58

I actually observed her talking to,

1:57:58

in later stages, talking to the detainee

1:58:02

and the connection that she had made.

1:58:04

And she was also always very proper and so forth.

1:58:06

Like when she spoke to the detainee,

1:58:08

she would sit in front of, but she maintained distance.

1:58:11

She would, she would talk directly to him, the translator,

1:58:14

she did all the right things

1:58:17

in terms of how you do an interrogation

1:58:18

or how you do an interview.

1:58:20

And I was just so impressed

1:58:22

with how she took on this mission,

1:58:23

very difficult mission,

1:58:25

cross-cultural communication.

1:58:27

And she learned how to and make it work

1:58:30

and she, she did it well.

1:58:31

there are a lot of heroes like that,

1:58:34

who did the things right.

1:58:35

Interviewer

Did you ever...

1:58:39

express what you just told us to her?

1:58:40

Or did other people?

1:58:43

-

We did.

1:58:43

Yeah, we did.

1:58:44

So we recognized what a great job she had done.

1:58:45

And I have to say it took a mental toll on, on her.

1:58:49

She, this was a very difficult,

1:58:52

she never showed it in front of other people,

1:58:53

but this, she, she went through, she went through a lot.

1:58:56

Interviewer

Do people have therapy?

1:59:04

Do people go through therapy?

1:59:07

I mean, the agencies, did they need therapy?

1:59:09

Did people have PTSD and...?

1:59:12

-

Not so much our agents,

1:59:14

And we had some that, I mean,

1:59:15

we had some of our agents that went,

1:59:16

what we call down range

1:59:19

that went out with the combat units

1:59:20

particularly in Afghanistan, later in Iraq,

1:59:21

with, with some of the special operations soldiers

1:59:24

and others.

1:59:29

So they were actually involved in combat operations

1:59:30

but...

1:59:32

during the time that I was the commander,

1:59:34

we never had anyone who...

1:59:36

had severe problems like that.

1:59:38

I'm sure there were some who were psychologically affected.

1:59:40

I mean, think we all were,

1:59:43

from, from the attacks on, I mean,

1:59:44

all of us have changed a little bit

1:59:46

in, in how we how we look at things and so forth.

1:59:48

Interviewer

You think some people became

1:59:52

more compassionate out of this?

1:59:53

-

Maybe.

1:59:56

I think, you know, having, having experienced

1:59:57

that particularly the investigators who did a lot

1:59:59

of the face-to-face interviews and so forth,

2:00:02

I think they probably got a greater appreciation.

2:00:05

Many of them had never spoken to somebody

2:00:08

from that part of the world before.

2:00:10

And by the end of time, they learned quite a bit.

2:00:12

They learned quite a bit.

2:00:17

So maybe it enhanced their...

2:00:17

their appreciation for the other culture,

2:00:21

even if it was just the negative side of it.

2:00:22

Because I mean, some of, some of our folks would come back

2:00:24

and say, you know, they just felt like

2:00:27

they had, they had looked into the face of evil,

2:00:29

you know, some of the, the aggression and the attitudes

2:00:31

that they faced were so...

2:00:36

recalcitrant

2:00:38

that it really, really impressed upon them

2:00:39

how bad things were and yet others made a connection.

2:00:42

Interviewer

Well, is there something else

2:00:48

that maybe you also want to share with us?

2:00:50

I mean, 'cause I think,

2:00:52

it's been really powerful listening to you

2:00:53

and I wonder if there's any anything else

2:00:55

that maybe you thought about

2:00:56

before you come in this interview?

2:00:58

-

No, you know, I, I guess I would echo what you've probably

2:00:59

heard from so many of the other interviewees,

2:01:02

at least the ones who are on...

2:01:05

the US side and that is that,

2:01:10

how we treated the detainees

2:01:12

and that's the function,

2:01:15

the biggest focus of your study here.

2:01:16

That really does, it really did,

2:01:20

and it really does have long ranging implications.

2:01:23

And so I, I really, really think it's important for us

2:01:26

to think about,

2:01:29

what, what do we really intend to do with the human beings

2:01:32

that come out of a conflict?

2:01:35

Whether they're the victims,

2:01:37

or whether they are the perpetrators

2:01:39

and how are we going to deal with that.

2:01:41

And how we deal with that, term,

2:01:43

in terms of how we detain people

2:01:46

and the circumstances under which we do it,

2:01:49

how do we question them,

2:01:51

how do we use that information,

2:01:53

And then ultimately,

2:01:54

how do we,

2:01:55

what disposition do we give to them.

2:01:56

That is,

2:01:58

if it's not the most important thing,

2:02:00

it's not the only thing,

2:02:02

but it is a critical component

2:02:03

of how we resolve human conflict.

2:02:05

How are you going to deal with the people.

2:02:08

Interviewer

Well, I want to thank you.

2:02:13

We need to take 20 seconds of,

2:02:14

so Johnny can collect room tone

2:02:17

and then we can close the interview.

2:02:19

-

Okay.

2:02:21

-

[Man In The Background] We get room tone.

2:02:24

I will tell you.

2:02:44

Mallow, Brittain - Interview master file

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