Padmanabhan, Vijay - short clip - MovingBeyondGuantanamosEarlyDays

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-	One of the things that happened in the second term	0:00
	of the Bush administration was it was a realization	0:03
	that the first term had failed in terms	0:05
	of explaining to the world what's the legal framework.	0:08
	Why are we holding these people?	0:11
	Why are there detainees at Guantanamo?	0:12
	What's the future of the policy?	0:16
	And so during the second term, there was a real effort to	0:18
	in the state department and in the defense department to	0:21
	get our message across globally and use all	0:25
	of our public diplomacy officers stationed globally	0:27
	and surrogates to go out and explain	0:30
	to allies what it is we're doing and why we're doing it.	0:32
Interviewer	What was the message?	0:35
-	Well, it's a message I feel very comfortable in,	0:39
	and continue to share today, which is that, you know	0:41
	when people talk about the problem	0:43
	of Guantanamo Bay, I think they're two very	0:45
	distinct issues that unfortunately got conflated.	0:48
	On one hand, there's the issue of treatment of detainees.	0:51
	Where there is very clear international law	0:54
	and from publicly available reports.	0:57
	It appears that those standards that	0:59
	are set in international law	1:02
	and domestic law were exceeded at Guantanamo Bay.	1:03
	And there were violations with respect to treatment.	1:06
	Now, by the time I was working	1:08
	on the policy in 2006,	1:10
	those treatment issues had are actually already	1:11
	been resolved at Guantanamo.	1:14
	And so what we were working	1:16
	on was a second set of issues	1:18
	which I think people conflated with the first set of issues	1:20
	which is what do you do when you pick somebody up	1:22
	who you think has connections	1:26
	to an enemy organization with which you're	1:27
	at war like Al-Qaeda or the Taliban and the appropriateness	1:30
	of detaining those individuals as enemy combatants.	1:34
	And I think that the frustration or the difficulty is	1:37
	that people have conflated those two issues they've said	1:40
	well, because we treated people badly at Guantanamo Bay.	1:43
	That must mean that holding them there at all is illegal.	1:46
	And a lot of what we would do is explain, in fact,	1:49
	that's actually not correct.	1:52
	That you know, we can posit that there were some mistakes	1:54
	that were made with respect to treatment	1:57
	but at the same time, even taking that as true	1:58
	it doesn't change the fact that a government has to deal	2:01
	with very dangerous people that are being picked	2:04
	up that intend to harm Americans.	2:06
	And what do we do with those people?	2:08
	And I think that, and as we go into the discussion	2:11
	we'll talk a little bit more about the Obama administration	2:13
	but I think that's a significant part	2:15
	of why Guantanamo is still open	2:16
	because there's a common shared understanding	2:18
	between president Bush and president Obama	2:20
	across republican and democratic administrations.	2:22
	And in Congress that there is a need to be able to	2:25
	detain individuals indefinitely without criminal trial	2:28
	because of the threat that they pose.	2:31

Item Info

Title:

Padmanabhan, Vijay - short clip - MovingBeyondGuantanamosEarlyDays

Date:

April 14, 2012

Interviewer:

Honigsberg, Peter Jan

Interviewee:

Padmanabhan, Vijay

Role:

Government

Description:

This interview may include descriptions of violence.
State Dept. Chief Counsel
Vijay Padmanabhan, male, age 34, worked in the U.S. State Department (2003-2008) as lead counsel on law of war litigation, collaborated with the Justice Department on Supreme Court cases, and led an inter-agency policy coordination committee on U.S. detention policy in the conflict with al Qaida.
Description was provided by Witness to Guantanamo.

Subject:

United States

Format:

oral histories

Language:

English

Extent:

1:25:23

Digital Collection:

Witness to Guantanamo

Source Collection:

Witness to Guantanamo Video Collection, 2009-2017

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Rights Note:

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

Identifier:

da359e38ed7e8cea61e6e6269e3da486
witnesstoguantanamo
ark:/87924/r4cv4kb1m
4bc9eb55-f034-4fda-908f-bdff5dd566d1

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4cv4kb1m

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Padmanabhan, Vijay - short clip - MovingBeyondGuantanamosEarlyDays

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