Walls, Glendale - short clip - Self-PolicingInterrogators
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | By the time we had made it to Afghanistan, | 0:00 |
we'd been briefed that these were Al Qaeda | 0:02 | |
and Taliban fighters. | 0:05 | |
That's when they started telling us | 0:08 | |
about different exceptions. | 0:09 | |
The fact that there... Any prisoners caught, | 0:12 | |
were not considered prisoners of war. | 0:14 | |
They were actually considered persons under US custody. | 0:16 | |
That way they stay out of the Geneva conventions. | 0:20 | |
Walls | And did they tell you what the difference would be | 0:22 |
in terms of how you interrogate them? | 0:25 | |
- | Basically the interrogations would be the same | 0:29 |
as far as questioning. | 0:31 | |
They did let us know that there was a little bit more leeway | 0:33 | |
as far as any kind of handling of the prisoners. | 0:38 | |
Walls | What does that mean? | 0:42 |
- | Basically like, one of the things we were allowed to do | 0:44 |
is we could make them do pushups or something like that, | 0:47 | |
which we wouldn't be able to do with the prisoner of war. | 0:50 | |
We still weren't allowed to like assault the prisoners | 0:54 | |
or anything like that. | 0:56 | |
Like not physically beat them or anything | 0:57 | |
but as far as making them stand up the whole time, | 1:00 | |
or whatever we need to do during the interrogation. | 1:05 | |
Walls | And was there anybody who supervised? | 1:08 |
Like if somebody went too far | 1:11 | |
in the way they treated a prisoner, | 1:13 | |
then was there anybody that would say, | 1:14 | |
you've gone too far in this. | 1:16 | |
- | Well, whenever we did the interrogation, | 1:20 |
it was only two interrogators with an interpreter, | 1:22 | |
and then the prisoner. | 1:25 | |
I know later on, not in Afghanistan | 1:27 | |
but when we did the same job out in Iraq, | 1:31 | |
most of those places have like cameras set up. | 1:35 | |
That way they could see whatever was going on. | 1:38 | |
But that time in Afghanistan, we had... | 1:40 | |
There was nothing higher. | 1:43 | |
It was up to the interrogators | 1:44 | |
to police themselves basically. | 1:46 | |
For example, one of the guys I worked with, | 1:48 | |
basically I had interrogated the guy three times, | 1:51 | |
and at that point, they... | 1:55 | |
I kept saying that he was innocent. | 1:59 | |
Like I felt the guy had nothing to lie to us about, | 2:01 | |
and I was told by my superiors at the time that, | 2:04 | |
"you're being too nice with these guys. | 2:08 | |
"You need to get in there, you need to be harsher, | 2:11 | |
"you need to be rougher." | 2:13 | |
And that was something I definitely wasn't comfortable with, | 2:15 | |
but I tried it, | 2:19 | |
and eventually led. | 2:20 | |
Walls | I can try it. | |
- | One of the things I did was, | 2:24 |
I actually grabbed the guy by his shirt, | 2:26 | |
and then I just kinda walked him around the room. | 2:30 | |
Just kinda let them know, I'm the guy in charge, | 2:32 | |
I'm the one who got to talk to. | 2:34 | |
It's against my nature to be physical with anybody. | 2:38 | |
But, so I tried it and the same results. | 2:42 | |
I mean, I still maintain he's innocent at this point. But.. | 2:46 |
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