Hamlin, Janet - Interview master file
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Transcript
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Interviewer | Okay, good morning. | 0:05 |
- | Good morning. | 0:06 |
Interviewer | We are very grateful to you | 0:07 |
for participating in the Witness to Guantanamo project. | 0:09 | |
We invite you to speak of your experiences | 0:13 | |
in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. | 0:15 | |
And we hope we provide you an opportunity to tell the world | 0:17 | |
and Americans your story of your work down in Guantanamo. | 0:20 | |
We are creating an archive of stories of people in America | 0:25 | |
and around the world who have a better understanding | 0:29 | |
of what Guantanamo is and what has happened down there. | 0:31 | |
And future generations must know | 0:35 | |
what happened in Guantanamo by telling your story | 0:37 | |
you're contributing to history. | 0:40 | |
And we're very grateful for you coming today. | 0:42 | |
And if you wanna take a break at any point | 0:44 | |
just please let us know and we can stop. | 0:46 | |
And if there's something you say | 0:48 | |
that you realize you probably shouldn't have, | 0:49 | |
if you tell us, we can remove it in time as well. | 0:52 | |
- | Okay, thank you, well, I really appreciate | 0:56 |
that you're doing this. | 0:58 | |
Interviewer | Oh, thanks very much. | 0:59 |
And we'd like to begin if you wouldn't mind | 1:01 | |
telling us your name and a little bit about your background | 1:02 | |
including your military prep. | 1:06 | |
- | Sure. | 1:08 |
- | Where you were born | |
and also where you lived in, | 1:10 | |
how old you are and what you do. | 1:12 | |
- | Sure, sure. My name's Janet Hamlin. | 1:15 |
I was raised in a military family. | 1:19 | |
My father was an air force pilot. | 1:21 | |
I was born in Mountain Home, Idaho, | 1:23 | |
which is an air force base, I believe, | 1:25 | |
And grew up until the age of 16 | 1:28 | |
on various air force deployments and bases | 1:33 | |
throughout, including Germany and England. | 1:37 | |
I'm 56. | 1:40 | |
I was living in Brooklyn during the 9/11 attacks. | 1:42 | |
For years I have been a freelance illustrator. | 1:47 | |
And the way that I got involved with the court sketching | 1:52 | |
is the associated press was a client of mine | 1:57 | |
and started sending me to sketch in court trials. | 2:00 | |
At the first one being | 2:03 | |
the Martha Moxley Skakel trial in Connecticut. | 2:04 | |
And then they sent me to Fort Bragg and then Omar Khadr | 2:08 | |
was going to be seen in court for hearing. | 2:11 | |
And they wanted to send somebody to sketch him in 2006. | 2:16 | |
So this is five years after the 9/11 attacks. | 2:23 | |
Interviewer | Even at your first trial | 2:27 |
you were sent to Guantanamo. | 2:28 | |
- | It was in April of 2006. | 2:29 |
Interviewer | Could you describe | 2:31 |
before we talk about the illustrating | 2:32 | |
for that particular trial, can you describe | 2:35 | |
what it was like for you to go into Guantanamo? | 2:37 | |
What you expected and what you found? | 2:40 | |
- | Yes, so the first time there's this kind of mythology | 2:42 |
or this typical vision we all have | 2:49 | |
of Guantanamo's camp x-ray photos. | 2:54 | |
And, so I didn't quite know what to expect. | 2:58 | |
But when we landed, I looked around | 3:03 | |
and I saw what looked very familiar to me | 3:05 | |
because it is a base. | 3:09 | |
It's now, it's always been a military base | 3:10 | |
for different factions, no joint task force now. | 3:15 | |
And so when I first landed, I thought, well, | 3:19 | |
this looks very familiar, it almost looks like home | 3:21 | |
only with palm trees | 3:24 | |
And navigating through it was not that unfamiliar. | 3:28 | |
The only difference being, or the biggest difference | 3:34 | |
is that we have camp x-ray over the hills | 3:36 | |
and the various encampments and the court system. | 3:39 | |
But there are families that are stationed there | 3:43 | |
that have nothing to do with it. | 3:45 | |
So it felt oddly familiar. | 3:47 | |
Interviewer | And, then were you escorted | 3:50 |
into a particular area where the trial was being held? | 3:53 | |
Can you describe how that was? | 3:57 | |
- | It's changed quite a bit in the years | 3:59 |
that I've been going. | 4:01 | |
Interviewer | Maybe the first trial. | 4:02 |
- | The first time was definitely the most intimidating | 4:04 |
because there are, and continue to be many, many rules | 4:08 | |
as to what you can and cannot draw, | 4:13 | |
what you can and cannot photograph. | 4:16 | |
But at the time it was in some ways less, | 4:19 | |
more and less restrictive. | 4:21 | |
Initially, I was not allowed to draw the faces | 4:25 | |
of the detainees. | 4:29 | |
There was a Geneva convention rules cited about, | 4:32 | |
there could be no unflattering image of a detainee | 4:35 | |
put out there. | 4:40 | |
It could be considered humiliating or something. | 4:41 | |
So flat out, couldn't draw features. | 4:45 | |
But the courtroom that we were in was up on the hill | 4:50 | |
and there was no barrier. | 4:53 | |
It was an open courtroom with a very intimate setting. | 4:56 | |
And so I was sitting fairly close | 5:00 | |
and had pretty good visual access. | 5:04 | |
But the difference was that I had to erase | 5:09 | |
and ghost out his features. | 5:11 | |
But I also avail myself to draw another detainee on trial. | 5:14 | |
So every time I go down there, | 5:19 | |
I try to draw inside and outside the court at every moment | 5:21 | |
because it's quite a bit to get there. | 5:26 | |
We have to fly out of Andrews. | 5:29 | |
We have to go through security, | 5:30 | |
make sure we've been vetted for travel, have our passports, | 5:33 | |
get tagged, get into our residence. | 5:37 | |
At that time, we were staying on the other side of the Bay, | 5:40 | |
and so we had to ride a ferry across. | 5:43 | |
And then I have to go through two levels of security. | 5:47 | |
We all do to get into the courtroom and out. | 5:50 | |
So with all that. | 5:55 | |
Interviewer | Can we just back up just so that, | 5:58 |
- | Sure. | 6:00 |
- | For history who paid you | |
to go down there? | 6:02 | |
Why were you sent there? | 6:04 | |
- | Initially, the associated press sent me down | 6:05 |
to sketch for the pool. | 6:09 | |
Initially | And just for history too, | 6:13 |
no photographs were allowed | 6:15 | |
and that's why they needed a sketch artist? | 6:17 | |
- | Yeah. | 6:19 |
No, they allow photographs outside of the courtroom. | 6:21 | |
And even those are very restricted. | 6:28 | |
But no photographs of any personnel. | 6:30 | |
And there are a lot of people involved that are in service | 6:35 | |
who don't wanna be identified. | 6:41 | |
And there are a lot of elements inside the courtroom | 6:44 | |
that they don't want sketched are drawn, | 6:46 | |
whether they're the soldiers, the troops lining, | 6:50 | |
security detail, and any kind of exit | 6:53 | |
and certain translators or people like that | 6:59 | |
can opt out on having their features drawn. | 7:01 | |
But at the time it was expressly forbidden | 7:04 | |
to draw Omar Khadr or anybody else | 7:07 | |
who was a detainee being tried. | 7:11 | |
Initially | So you could sketch the faces | 7:15 |
of the prosecutor or some of the other personnel, | 7:17 | |
the defense lawyers? | 7:20 | |
- | Yes. | 7:21 |
They all are allowed to, if they choose, | 7:23 | |
review it or opt out. | 7:26 | |
And every sketch that I do has to be reviewed | 7:29 | |
by the security officer. | 7:32 | |
Who's the same fellow that can now currently censor | 7:34 | |
any kind of verbal exchange. | 7:39 | |
He can press a button and wipe out what we hear currently. | 7:42 | |
But he's also the security detail. | 7:46 | |
So he will come and review my sketches | 7:48 | |
before I can leave the environment. | 7:51 | |
And he has to sign off and he has occasionally, | 7:53 | |
whoever is the security office at the time | 7:57 | |
has asked me to erase or smudge out. | 7:59 | |
They might feel that I've put in Omar's face, | 8:04 | |
maybe I've put like a socket or an indication of a shadow. | 8:09 | |
So it wasn't just blank. | 8:12 | |
And he'd say, "Smudge that out more." | 8:14 | |
So it was kind of challenging. | 8:19 | |
And there was another detainee that I drew | 8:22 | |
where I drew him holding up the word con, this is a con, | 8:26 | |
and he was holding it up to us | 8:32 | |
and it was reflected in the monitor. | 8:34 | |
And so I drew that and they got very agitated. | 8:38 | |
"Are you trying to get a face in there?" | 8:42 | |
It was no, | 8:44 | |
for me, it was just anything that's really interesting. | 8:45 | |
And I feel it's my job with the limitations | 8:48 | |
of what I can draw. | 8:52 | |
The biggest tell is body language. | 8:53 | |
What are people doing? | 8:56 | |
How are they positioned? | 8:57 | |
What are they gesturing or holding up? | 8:58 | |
Where are they? Seated? | 9:01 | |
There's symbolism a lot with the 9/11 accused. | 9:05 | |
Khalid Shaikh is in the front because his accusations | 9:10 | |
and charges are of the highest order. | 9:15 | |
And then the five sit based kind of on that. | 9:18 | |
So there are many, many details that I try to capture. | 9:22 | |
So that first trip, I couldn't draw Omar, | 9:27 | |
but the second time I went was a year later for David Hicks. | 9:30 | |
And I was told there was a possibility | 9:35 | |
that I could draw his face | 9:37 | |
and the military does try to work with me. | 9:40 | |
"How can we help you do your job?" | 9:44 | |
And so I was given the choice of a seat. | 9:49 | |
We have assigned seatings. | 9:52 | |
I said, well, if I sit at this angle, | 9:53 | |
I can really get him and the people behind. | 9:55 | |
So the next day when I came in, | 10:00 | |
instead they had me sitting directly behind him | 10:02 | |
and he had long hair and I was so frustrated. | 10:06 | |
I said, "I'm gonna be drawing | 10:10 | |
what looks like cousin Ed. | 10:14 | |
From behind with this long hair, | 10:17 | |
it's not beneficial to anybody. | 10:19 | |
Can I move over? | 10:22 | |
And I hit a wall with them. | 10:24 | |
And at the time, Jackie Northam | 10:27 | |
and some other people were sitting. | 10:31 | |
Interviewer | Who's Jackie Northam? | 10:32 |
- | She's with MPR. | 10:33 |
She was sitting over where some of the other media was. | 10:35 | |
And she said, "I'm gonna be vacating." | 10:39 | |
So at some point maybe you can take my seat or in this area. | 10:42 | |
So I said, "Can I speak to somebody?" | 10:47 | |
And I ended up saying, going up the chain of refusal, | 10:49 | |
and finally saying, "If I can't do my job, | 10:54 | |
then I might as well just leave. | 10:58 | |
There's no point in me being here." | 11:00 | |
So that's it. | 11:02 | |
And I'm gonna have to go back with just this. | 11:05 | |
And at that point, it was a really interesting, they said, | 11:09 | |
"Okay, we'll let you move. | 11:11 | |
But you can't have your table. | 11:15 | |
You're gonna have to sit with all your things in your lap." | 11:16 | |
And so I did. | 11:19 | |
And then my escort, we're always escorted. | 11:22 | |
My escort at the time- | 11:26 | |
Interviewer | Military, I guess. | 11:27 |
- | Military, J. D. Gordon said, "Just draw his face | 11:28 |
because they're telling me it's allowed." | 11:32 | |
I said, okay. | 11:36 | |
And so I went ahead and I thought, well, why not? | 11:37 | |
Because I can always smudge it out or erase it. | 11:40 | |
And so I sketched everything I could | 11:43 | |
with with everything in my lap. | 11:46 | |
And Jackie said, "Well, I'm gonna head out." | 11:49 | |
And he said, "Oh, take the sketch." | 11:52 | |
And I said, "Well, it hasn't been signed off." "Take it." | 11:54 | |
So she rolled it up and took it. | 11:57 | |
And I continued to stay and sketch. | 11:59 | |
And literally 25 minutes later, | 12:03 | |
I was surrounded by many angry people saying, | 12:07 | |
you've broken the rules. | 12:11 | |
You allowed this to happen. | 12:12 | |
It's out in the media without the sign off. | 12:14 | |
And everybody behind me thankfully said, no, | 12:20 | |
she resisted and she was assured that it was okay. | 12:23 | |
And so now that the horse was out of the barn | 12:27 | |
that kind of opened it up | 12:29 | |
where I could draw the features from then on out. | 12:31 | |
- | Yeah. 'Cause it- | 12:35 |
Interviewer | So all the other detainees going forward? | 12:37 |
- | Yeah, it was, I think, on the edge, | 12:39 |
and maybe the escort realized that, | 12:41 | |
hey, once it's out, it's out. | 12:43 | |
And it ended up being a big deal. | 12:46 | |
Because at that time we thought it was just a hearing | 12:48 | |
and it ended up that they had a plea deal in place | 12:51 | |
and we ended up staying | 12:55 | |
and they flew in the first ever jury | 12:57 | |
that's comprised of officers from different factions | 13:02 | |
who came in and it was a full trial. | 13:07 | |
So it went from what was gonna be a three day | 13:10 | |
to an extended visit. | 13:13 | |
And so the next time I saw David Hicks, | 13:14 | |
he had a short haircut, he had a suit on, | 13:17 | |
he stood up, he pled guilty. | 13:21 | |
I was able to draw a featureless, | 13:24 | |
but at least indicate hair and uniform of the jury. | 13:27 | |
And that went out and it was the opening to that. | 13:33 | |
And then, as will happen in every courtroom, | 13:40 | |
but in Guantanamo, especially, I can no longer draw, | 13:44 | |
I could no longer draw jury when it came to Omar Khadr. | 13:47 | |
So I was forced to draw numbers. | 13:51 | |
So I'm kind of jumping forward, but I'm just saying, | 13:53 | |
with David Hicks, I have all these drawings | 13:56 | |
of what's really interesting. | 14:00 | |
You've got all these different service members. | 14:02 | |
And now with Omar Khadr, I had to resort | 14:07 | |
to drawing giant numbers, | 14:11 | |
indicating the jury number person. | 14:13 | |
I had to draw something and that's what I came up with. | 14:16 | |
Because everybody addresses the jury. | 14:18 | |
They all look at, they present evidence to. | 14:21 | |
So that was an odd work around. | 14:25 | |
Interviewer | Before, I know you turned back and forth, | 14:30 |
but I just wanna go back to Khadr for a moment. | 14:32 | |
When you walked into that tribunal and watched that, | 14:35 | |
what kind of feelings do you have? | 14:39 | |
What were you thinking when you saw this experience? | 14:42 | |
You had an experience that a few people had. | 14:44 | |
- | Oh yeah. | 14:46 |
I was thinking, he reminded me of a big Labrador. | 14:50 | |
He a teenage kid, and then he had his civilian clothes on, | 14:53 | |
but the shoes like, tennis shoes like a kid. | 14:59 | |
And then the next year when I saw him, his hair grown out, | 15:05 | |
he was in a khaki, for, like a khaki garb the detainees were | 15:08 | |
and he was very angry and frustrated looking. | 15:16 | |
So he went from this sort of civilian look teenager | 15:19 | |
to the next year, angry and frustrated. | 15:24 | |
And then the following. | 15:29 | |
And in the entire series of hearings, | 15:31 | |
'cause that was the most comprehensive. | 15:37 | |
Yeah, Canada was constantly going and covering this, | 15:40 | |
Michelle Shepherd, Global Mail, all the Canadian media. | 15:46 | |
And so I was there for a lot, | 15:51 | |
almost all the pretrial and the trial complete. | 15:52 | |
Whereas with Hom Don and some of the others, | 15:57 | |
it was sort of just the beginning and sometimes in between | 16:00 | |
or rarely was it ever an ending. | 16:05 | |
With Omar though, | 16:09 | |
you saw all these different people speaking. | 16:10 | |
And so I was able to get the most visual, | 16:13 | |
comprehensive telling from that first time in 2006. | 16:16 | |
- | Did you know anything about Omar and Guantanamo | 16:23 |
before you went down there? | 16:25 | |
- | I really didn't initially know. | 16:27 |
But over all the hearings and all the the conversation I had | 16:30 | |
with various people and just watching him, | 16:36 | |
I got more of a sense about. | 16:39 | |
And I didn't know what to think | 16:43 | |
and how much was this nature, how much of it is nurture? | 16:45 | |
What chances a kid have? | 16:51 | |
When is this his father saying you have to be | 16:53 | |
a part of my gang more or less. | 16:55 | |
And then you're thrown in with people | 16:58 | |
that you either sink or swim with. | 17:01 | |
What do you do? What do you say? | 17:06 | |
I think at the time I was just doing everything I could | 17:10 | |
to show what he was doing | 17:14 | |
and let what he's what was being shown | 17:18 | |
and what people were saying visually kind of inform that. | 17:21 | |
But to me, he just looked like a kid, a teenager | 17:26 | |
who was growing into a young adult in that environment. | 17:31 | |
Interviewer | And you also sketched the prosecutor. | 17:36 |
You said, did you see changes in that aspect | 17:39 | |
in terms of prosecutors and defense counsel all the way? | 17:42 | |
- | Yeah, one of the things that the detainees can do | 17:45 |
is they can fire their teams of lawyers. | 17:50 | |
And Omar had a lot of distrust and went through, | 17:52 | |
I wanna say like, two or three | 17:57 | |
different iterations of counsel. | 17:59 | |
And he's not the only one, | 18:02 | |
but so we had a changing of the guard | 18:05 | |
and that was setting things back. | 18:08 | |
And it was a little bit of a mobius loop, | 18:11 | |
it almost felt like. | 18:15 | |
So that I also sketched all the different legal counsel | 18:18 | |
from Keebler to Coby Flowers, to finally Jackson, | 18:23 | |
who, I was there when he collapsed. | 18:29 | |
He was by himself almost at that time | 18:33 | |
with just some helpers. | 18:35 | |
And he literally collapsed in court one day. | 18:39 | |
Fell to the ground and they ended up air backing him out | 18:45 | |
and sending us home, and then we returned later, | 18:47 | |
but a month or so later. | 18:50 | |
So I've seen a lot of that. | 18:54 | |
I've seen the prosecution. | 18:55 | |
We have, Mark Martin's very, very bright. | 18:59 | |
With 9/11 we have it's death penalty. | 19:07 | |
So we have learned counsel. | 19:09 | |
So there's all these different people coming and going. | 19:11 | |
And many people who retire, or in one case, | 19:14 | |
if they didn't want to do something, | 19:20 | |
they ended up leaving service. | 19:22 | |
There are all these different rules that affect end of... | 19:27 | |
Interviewer | Did you have to know background | 19:30 |
of the cases in order for you to just sketch? | 19:33 | |
Did that make a difference? | 19:36 | |
- | It helps to understand. | 19:38 |
But I'm far from being... | 19:43 | |
It would be nice if I knew I understood law | 19:50 | |
and the repercussions of it, but in some ways | 19:53 | |
maybe it's better that I don't, | 19:57 | |
because I'm just getting what I see and understand. | 19:59 | |
And that's for better or worse. | 20:03 | |
I think it's what all of America, all of the world | 20:07 | |
is going to see and understand too. | 20:12 | |
I've come over time to really understand more | 20:15 | |
just from the exposure of it. | 20:19 | |
But yeah, I try to at least know why they're there, | 20:23 | |
what their charges are. | 20:29 | |
I try to have, I love having conversations | 20:33 | |
with people from both sides to try to understand | 20:36 | |
why do you do this, or how do you feel about it, | 20:38 | |
or what's your experiences with this person? | 20:41 | |
Just for my own wanting to understand. | 20:43 | |
Interviewer | Does the military | 20:48 |
hold these illustrations too? | 20:50 | |
Or are they just for the APA, the media? | 20:52 | |
- | Well, I have them all. | 20:55 |
Interviewer | You kept a copy of them all? | 20:57 |
- | I have all the originals. | 20:59 |
I've provided the military with them and the media has them | 21:03 | |
the images for news reporting and things like that, | 21:08 | |
but I've not sold or done anything with the originals | 21:11 | |
because I think, I didn't realize this was gonna happen. | 21:15 | |
I never went down there thinking, | 21:19 | |
I was gonna continue doing this. | 21:20 | |
I thought it was, I'm just going once, | 21:22 | |
okay, I'm going twice. | 21:24 | |
I'm going a dozen times. | 21:26 | |
And when I realized that it was a sequential telling | 21:29 | |
which usually in court art that doesn't happen. | 21:31 | |
On the mainland court artists come and go | 21:35 | |
and they'll grab sound bites, or visual bites | 21:38 | |
of the opening or closing, but rarely are you going | 21:42 | |
through the whole thing or the same person following it. | 21:46 | |
So I have a visual documentation | 21:49 | |
that I think at some point I would try to make it | 21:53 | |
to I think, Library of Congress | 21:58 | |
has expressed interest or something. | 22:00 | |
I think it's more important as a collective, | 22:02 | |
University of Richmond did have a showing | 22:06 | |
and anytime people can learn from it. | 22:08 | |
It's what I've hoped. | 22:13 | |
Interviewer | Where do you store it? | 22:16 |
- | I have it in these museum boxes | 22:17 |
and out of daylight and sort of temperate dry area. | 22:21 | |
Interviewer | And do you have backups | 22:28 |
if something happened to them in terms of? | 22:29 | |
- | Yeah, they're all digitally archived. | 22:31 |
So, there was also Carol and Rosenberg, Michelle Shepherd, | 22:34 | |
Jane Sutton, many of the journalists | 22:45 | |
and other people involved wrote essays | 22:47 | |
and helped me put together a book. | 22:51 | |
So a book was published from 2006 to 2013. | 22:53 | |
So all those are scanned and archived as well. | 22:59 | |
There's just a few years of drawings | 23:03 | |
that haven't been scanned like that. | 23:07 | |
So yeah. | 23:10 | |
Interviewer | And did you find that some people | 23:11 |
were more difficult to draw than others | 23:14 | |
in terms of who they are or how they moved around? | 23:16 | |
I mean, trying to capture... | 23:19 | |
- | Yeah, once they built the other courtroom | 23:22 |
expressly for the 9/11 hearings | 23:27 | |
and we moved out of the more intimate setting | 23:30 | |
that Omar Khadr hummed on and a few other people, | 23:34 | |
Hicks were tried through. | 23:38 | |
The new courtroom has seating in the back | 23:42 | |
behind soundproof glass. | 23:46 | |
And over time the glass is kind of fogged. | 23:49 | |
So you've got like this, a little bit of a haze, | 23:53 | |
almost like a car window of fog. | 23:56 | |
So you've got a little bit of a hazy, three pane, | 23:58 | |
these windows and you're sitting in the back. | 24:03 | |
And so, now I'm drawing these guys who are seated | 24:05 | |
in the main courtroom with Khalid Shaikh Muhammad | 24:10 | |
or whoever the accused is, sitting in the far front | 24:15 | |
at the end of the table. | 24:18 | |
So I've got obstacles of sound, delayed sound, fade, | 24:19 | |
glass, and distance. | 24:26 | |
And as the case has mounted, literally books have mounted, | 24:28 | |
amazing documentation, racks and racks of books | 24:33 | |
started piling up. | 24:36 | |
So I sometimes have to stand | 24:38 | |
just in order to see Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, | 24:41 | |
or I've opted to sit in the top farthest away seat | 24:44 | |
just to get to see him. | 24:48 | |
The other thing I try to do is negotiate a way | 24:54 | |
to see their faces from the front. | 24:57 | |
And I sent in a pitch to the Pentagon, | 24:59 | |
how about if I sit where the jury would sit | 25:04 | |
with soundproof headphones and you can have two guys | 25:06 | |
by me and they can watch everything I sketch | 25:08 | |
and you guys can sign off on it, | 25:12 | |
but I won't have any barriers and it helps you and me | 25:15 | |
because you'll have this great, better recording. | 25:20 | |
Look at the differences with Omar Khadr, | 25:23 | |
and now look at what I'm able to do here. | 25:25 | |
And I was just gonna, and they said, | 25:27 | |
"No way, that's not gonna happen. | 25:29 | |
We're not gonna give you that kind of clearance." | 25:30 | |
Plus what am I gonna see in their papers | 25:33 | |
and whatnot that are visual. | 25:37 | |
So instead they came up with, how about, | 25:39 | |
we'll send you to a room with monitors | 25:42 | |
and the monitors will be statically pointing at them | 25:45 | |
and you can draw from a monitor. | 25:48 | |
So ironically, I'm going back to the old courthouse building | 25:51 | |
called AV 134, where all the court reporters archive, | 25:58 | |
they listen, two sets of court reporters. | 26:03 | |
Some who archive what's inside | 26:05 | |
and some who archive the edited feed. | 26:07 | |
So, I'm in that building with them, | 26:11 | |
drawing from monitors, get faces, so... | 26:13 | |
Interviewer | How is that, is that better for you? | 26:17 |
- | It's better in terms of being able to draw faces, | 26:19 |
but it's frustrating, | 26:24 | |
'cause I'm getting a closed view of it. | 26:25 | |
So somebody off cameras lifting up their shirt | 26:30 | |
to show scars, which has happened, | 26:33 | |
I might not see it. | 26:37 | |
If somebody drops something or whatever, | 26:38 | |
I'm not gonna see that. | 26:41 | |
And it's delayed. | 26:43 | |
It's also at a 40 second delay. | 26:45 | |
So there's... | 26:47 | |
Interviewer | When you mentioned that sound, | 26:51 |
I mean, you can't hear sound | 26:54 | |
when you have three panes of glass between you | 26:54 | |
and the people being prosecuted. | 26:58 | |
Why does sound matter to you? | 26:59 | |
- | Because it's a cue to what's happening in the court. | 27:01 |
I'm doing a lot of drawing like this, blind contour, | 27:06 | |
but I've still got to look down | 27:10 | |
and make sure that I'm getting it in the right place. | 27:12 | |
And when you're looking down, you can't rely, on your ears. | 27:16 | |
By the time we hear, all rise, | 27:21 | |
people literally already sat down in the courtroom. | 27:23 | |
Interviewer | Proving a 40 second delay. | 27:26 |
- | Yeah. | 27:27 |
When we hear all rise, the judges long entered, | 27:28 | |
everybody stood up and said, | 27:32 | |
that's the kind of delay. | 27:34 | |
So a lot of times I'm opting out to stay in the courtroom. | 27:38 | |
So I can just look and see what's going on. | 27:42 | |
And then occasionally there are five monitors up | 27:45 | |
with the closeup shots that I can occasionally look up | 27:49 | |
and see whatever they're looking at. | 27:53 | |
But it flicks to whoever's speaking | 27:54 | |
Interviewer | Who's interested | 27:57 |
in your drawings these days? | 27:58 | |
Are they still published in newspapers? | 28:00 | |
- | They run archived. | 28:03 |
Interviewer | People are paying you to go down there | 28:06 |
and just to do drawings that are archived? | 28:08 | |
- | No, they have them in archives. | 28:10 |
So wires do, and the media that. | 28:12 | |
Whenever they send me down there, I cover my own travel. | 28:16 | |
It's come down to that. | 28:23 | |
Because after the AP didn't wanna keep sending a pool person | 28:25 | |
and nobody wanted to bear the burden | 28:30 | |
of the expenses for a pool person. | 28:32 | |
I said, look, if I can have at least five | 28:36 | |
or more media outlets buy-in to the rights, | 28:39 | |
then I can afford, I'll take the money out of that | 28:44 | |
to fly down. | 28:47 | |
And I pared it down so I could continue to cover it. | 28:50 | |
Because I found it really personally satisfying | 28:52 | |
to be able to capture this, to use my skills to do that. | 28:58 | |
Because as an illustrator from many years, | 29:03 | |
I'd do something and it was a fun career. | 29:08 | |
But today's illustration is in tomorrow's recycling. | 29:11 | |
And nothing against it, it's all wonderful career. | 29:19 | |
And it's been great. | 29:23 | |
But to have gone through 9/11, | 29:25 | |
to understand the importance of being able to use, | 29:31 | |
being allowed and being a part | 29:37 | |
of using my illustrative skills | 29:40 | |
in a way that I can actually archive this visually | 29:41 | |
is really gratifying. | 29:47 | |
And it's an honor. | 29:48 | |
And so, I decided I'm gonna start trying to figure out ways | 29:52 | |
to keep myself involved. | 29:56 | |
And, so I started kind of throwing out lines. | 29:58 | |
Carol would say, "Look I want you to go." | 30:01 | |
So let's try to figure out how we can work this out | 30:03 | |
so that media can continue to have coverage of it | 30:08 | |
but it won't burden them. | 30:13 | |
So, but there's been less and less interest | 30:15 | |
because this has been going on and on and on. | 30:22 | |
The 9/11 pre-trial hearings are, | 30:26 | |
there's not a lot visually that's changing, | 30:29 | |
rarely have I gone down and not felt | 30:32 | |
like I'm drawing the same thing over and over again. | 30:35 | |
It's almost like Groundhog Day. | 30:37 | |
Until there's something that's changed | 30:40 | |
other than Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's appearance, | 30:43 | |
which has radically changed. | 30:46 | |
I mean, people have gained and lost weight, | 30:47 | |
but he started dying his beard, he's wearing the camo, | 30:49 | |
these kinds of things are important to show. | 30:53 | |
'Cause that's telling. | 30:58 | |
But I'll hopefully be going down there | 31:01 | |
when we do get witnesses, when we do go to trial | 31:05 | |
and I would like to capture all that. | 31:10 | |
I mean, in the back of my mind, I feel like all of this | 31:13 | |
is being archived on video right now, anyway. | 31:16 | |
But it's not being made public. | 31:22 | |
So until it is, there will be this. | 31:25 | |
Interviewer | Are you the only one, if you weren't there, | 31:28 |
there'd be no outside illustration or photo? | 31:31 | |
Well, no photos at all, but nothing at all visually, | 31:36 | |
if you weren't there is, that true? | 31:40 | |
- | Well, the international Red Cross does have the photos | 31:42 |
that they take. | 31:46 | |
Interviewer | They take photos during those hearings? | 31:47 |
- | Not during the hearings. | 31:49 |
So to be clear, they'd take them of the detainees. | 31:50 | |
So of detainees, there's only those photos. | 31:53 | |
Of the hearings, since 2006, prior to that, Arlene went, | 31:58 | |
he's a Supreme Court court artist, | 32:05 | |
but I've been the only one covering | 32:10 | |
for media consistently since 2006. | 32:12 | |
There were two other artists that went, | 32:16 | |
one for Vice, one for Harper's. | 32:18 | |
But it was more about the environment itself, | 32:20 | |
not necessarily the courts. | 32:25 | |
So yeah, two. | 32:28 | |
Interviewer | So if you hadn't voluntarily gone, | 32:31 |
like you said, you you'd have to pay your own flight, | 32:33 | |
even though you've got five media organizations | 32:35 | |
to support you, no one would be there presumably. | 32:37 | |
- | Right, at this time, yeah. Right. | 32:40 |
I've, that's exactly right. | 32:45 | |
I have pitched going and not enough people | 32:48 | |
have been able to say, there's only one or two of us going. | 32:51 | |
And so I haven't been able to go. | 32:56 | |
Because I do other work too, and I've picked up other work. | 33:00 | |
So I have to now jog that as well. | 33:07 | |
It was, one time it was never expected to be, | 33:10 | |
or intended to be something that I would make a career or. | 33:13 | |
In fact, if anything, I was concerned that | 33:20 | |
I didn't wanna look like a predatory person | 33:22 | |
trying to profit off this tragedy. | 33:25 | |
It's more that I wanted to archive it. | 33:30 | |
Interviewer | So someone fell again, | 33:33 |
like you described earlier or a detainee, | 33:34 | |
there'd be no visual image of that | 33:38 | |
if you weren't present to illustrate it. | 33:40 | |
- | Right. Yeah. | 33:44 |
Interviewer | And the fact is the military | 33:46 |
could still take it from you even if it were... | 33:47 | |
- | Well that actually, that's the other things | 33:50 |
that have happened. | 33:52 | |
A couple of times, I've had to negotiate. | 33:56 | |
There was a time with David Hicks. | 33:58 | |
There was a time with- | 34:01 | |
Initially | Can you tell us the time with David Hicks? | 34:02 |
- | With David Hicks where I mentioned | 34:04 |
that I couldn't draw the face and I had to, | 34:05 | |
threatened to leave. | 34:07 | |
There was the time when I sketched Khalid Shaikh Mohammed | 34:09 | |
for the first time and I didn't have a lot of time to do it. | 34:13 | |
And so I drew his face really fast, | 34:18 | |
but I knew it wasn't very good. | 34:22 | |
But there were still five men to draw. | 34:24 | |
And it was a sentencing, which here in the mainland | 34:26 | |
could be 15 minutes if you're lucky. | 34:29 | |
And I have 100 people, if you count everybody there almost, | 34:31 | |
but the other thing an artist, court artist has to do | 34:36 | |
is visually edit without taking it out of context, | 34:40 | |
or at least that's my goal. | 34:43 | |
How can I pair this down | 34:45 | |
so that's the essence of the visual information? | 34:48 | |
But, so I'm getting these five guys, | 34:51 | |
and as it turned out, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad stood up | 34:54 | |
and started chanting. | 34:57 | |
And I had him sitting down. | 34:58 | |
So I just drew over with pastel. | 34:59 | |
You can do that. | 35:02 | |
But when it came time to leave, they said, well, | 35:04 | |
we've got to show this to his lawyers. | 35:07 | |
And he rejected it. | 35:09 | |
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed said, "I don't like this. | 35:10 | |
I don't want it to go." | 35:15 | |
And I actually saw him through the glass, | 35:17 | |
'cause I went back to pick up something from the media room | 35:19 | |
and I saw him shaking his head. | 35:23 | |
And I literally had to go back without the drawing | 35:25 | |
and getting an FBI printout, | 35:29 | |
go back through, of a photograph, a pre-existing photograph | 35:31 | |
of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's face, | 35:37 | |
go back to where the drawing was being held | 35:39 | |
in a secure a skiff, a secure facility, | 35:44 | |
with the security details surrounding me | 35:48 | |
while I changed Khalid's nose and features | 35:52 | |
and made them more accurate. | 35:57 | |
And once they determined it was accurate, it was signed off. | 36:00 | |
And then I was able to bring it back | 36:04 | |
down to the media center and move it out. | 36:05 | |
And it made a huge fear that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed | 36:08 | |
could basically edit or direct the sketch. | 36:13 | |
So that became sort of its own issue. | 36:18 | |
The other time is Majeed Khan is somebody who was accused. | 36:22 | |
He was a Baltimore educated person now there. | 36:28 | |
And he's in his hearing or his arraignment or whatever. | 36:35 | |
I sketched him. | 36:40 | |
And then they took them back and he didn't realize | 36:41 | |
he was being sketched | 36:44 | |
and didn't want any drawings to be moved. | 36:44 | |
And they weren't going to give them to me. | 36:47 | |
Or they were gonna have me cut him out or black him out. | 36:50 | |
And I said, well, this opens the door | 36:54 | |
to the last transparency being now thrown into the ground. | 36:56 | |
Like you're now saying | 37:02 | |
"If he doesn't wanna be sketched, I can't?" | 37:04 | |
I said, "Well, nobody in any court can do that." | 37:07 | |
So that means if I'm coming down here, | 37:10 | |
I don't know if I'm gonna be allowed | 37:14 | |
to draw that person or not, | 37:17 | |
there'll be no point in sending anybody. | 37:18 | |
And I literally said, I'm not leaving | 37:21 | |
until I see that rule in black and white. | 37:23 | |
And the security officer said, | 37:26 | |
"Well, I'm trained and you're not." | 37:27 | |
And I said, "Well, then show me your training." | 37:28 | |
And it took four hours of me doing a sit in. | 37:31 | |
And I thought, "What can I do here? I can't curse." | 37:33 | |
I'm gonna have to do what Martin Luther King | 37:43 | |
or Gandhi would do. | 37:45 | |
And just sit and wait for a reasonable explanation. | 37:46 | |
And I ended up calling the commander | 37:51 | |
who was helping the media and she came up | 37:53 | |
and work the phones and all the security was looking madly | 37:56 | |
for this black and white rule. | 37:59 | |
And there was none. | 38:01 | |
The judge wouldn't listen to me. | 38:03 | |
The lawyers would, they said, | 38:05 | |
"I have no dog in this fight." | 38:06 | |
Lawyers said, "Why don't you wait 24 hours | 38:08 | |
until he's eaten and slept, | 38:10 | |
and maybe he'll change his mind." | 38:12 | |
I said, "24 hours is 24 hours too late. " | 38:14 | |
So it took four hours for them to reach the right person | 38:18 | |
who has said, "There is no court order. | 38:22 | |
There's no protective order that says you can't | 38:25 | |
and there never will be." | 38:29 | |
So then I said, "I need reassurance | 38:31 | |
that the the media, that we all need this reassurance | 38:33 | |
that that's not gonna change." | 38:36 | |
So there was that. | 38:39 | |
There has been a few other times too, but... | 38:43 | |
Interviewer | So that meant going forward | 38:46 |
you could have always illustrated | 38:47 | |
and the detainees had no say on the illustration at all. | 38:49 | |
- | They have a say on the illustration, as we know, I mean, | 38:52 |
they can decide if they like the way it looks or not, | 38:55 | |
but myself or anybody covering this, | 38:59 | |
a sketch artist can draw them. | 39:05 | |
Interviewer | But if they don't like it, | 39:09 |
can you still publish it? | 39:10 | |
- | Well, as demonstrated, not until if there's something, | 39:13 |
a feature or something they don't like | 39:20 | |
that could be altered apparently. | 39:22 | |
At least in my experience that seems to be, | 39:25 | |
things change though. | 39:30 | |
I mean, I had these plastic stadium glasses that I bought. | 39:31 | |
I have no metal on them that kind of help you magnify. | 39:36 | |
And I bought those so I could get a better view | 39:40 | |
and use them for years. | 39:43 | |
And then there was one time when there was an artist | 39:45 | |
for bias who came and they had asked me to tell her, | 39:48 | |
okay, "What should you bring?" | 39:52 | |
And I said, well, just bring some kind of stadium glasses, | 39:54 | |
something plastic or whatever. | 39:59 | |
Well, she brought these little binoculars | 40:00 | |
and they said, "No, you can't bring that." | 40:04 | |
And then the question arose, | 40:09 | |
"Oh, well she can't then why can she?" | 40:12 | |
Interviewer | They took them away from you? | 40:18 |
- | No, they said no more. | 40:19 |
They didn't physically take them away, but they said | 40:21 | |
"You must put those away and you cannot use them." | 40:23 | |
No ocular enhancement devices. | 40:26 | |
Interviewer | There is no rule. | 40:29 |
I'm sure there was no rule that said that. | 40:30 | |
- | There is now. | 40:32 |
No ocular enhancement devices are allowed. | 40:34 | |
And the next thing I knew there was a color xerox | 40:37 | |
of stadium glasses. | 40:42 | |
And also at the time that Google had | 40:46 | |
some kind of glass, Google Glass. | 40:49 | |
So they specifically put, made a sign and you know more. | 40:52 | |
So after years of it not being an issue. | 40:59 | |
Interviewer | So we've heard over and over again people | 41:06 |
that are rules were pretty much | 41:08 | |
made by the seat of the pants. | 41:11 | |
Is that what you're telling us? | 41:12 | |
- | That one seemed to be because it was, when things... | 41:15 |
I think when things unexpected happen | 41:21 | |
they try to determine what kind of, | 41:24 | |
is there going to a threat to security, to intelligence? | 41:31 | |
I think that the idea was, | 41:37 | |
if she has ocular enhancement devices, | 41:39 | |
she's gonna be able to read classified documents. | 41:42 | |
There was a time I try to avail myself | 41:46 | |
of every visual opportunity I've gone. | 41:51 | |
I've always, | 41:54 | |
other than the resistance, it's always been polite, | 41:56 | |
it's I think, | 41:58 | |
negotiating, understanding the military and the civilian | 42:02 | |
and trying to find the middle ground. | 42:06 | |
I did go on a trip to see what the wiggers were saying. | 42:09 | |
And I had a camera with me at the time. | 42:13 | |
And we were taking pictures. | 42:17 | |
The wiggers came out. | 42:21 | |
We weren't allowed to talk to them, | 42:22 | |
but they use their drawing pads to draw protest signs. | 42:24 | |
Interviewer | The wiggers did? | 42:28 |
- | The wiggers did. We need to freedom. | 42:29 |
You are double Hitler in your behavior, things like that. | 42:32 | |
So we started taking pictures and they, "Whoa, whoa." | 42:37 | |
"How are we gonna react to this? | 42:43 | |
We need to shut this down." | 42:46 | |
So they said, "Okay, the tour is over." | 42:47 | |
We went back and they said, | 42:50 | |
"We need to review everybody's photos." | 42:51 | |
Well, people were afraid that things | 42:56 | |
are gonna get scrubbed. | 42:57 | |
And I said, well, take, take my desk. | 42:58 | |
'Cause I just was there for curiosity. | 43:02 | |
And so they reviewed mine. | 43:06 | |
It was the same as everybody else's and nothing was scrubbed | 43:09 | |
but nothing was allowed out for while they decided. | 43:12 | |
And so it was delayed till hours, many hours later. | 43:17 | |
And I ended up, Al Jazeera ended up using mine. | 43:22 | |
But there's that instance of how do we deal | 43:27 | |
with this unexpected and how does this affect, | 43:31 | |
how can we be transparent, but also not lose our security. | 43:36 | |
That's my get best sense of what is going on. | 43:42 | |
I tried to follow the rules, but at the same time, | 43:50 | |
if they seem unreasonable | 43:53 | |
and I'm not allowed to do my job then, | 43:55 | |
explain to me why. | 43:58 | |
Why are we gonna not do this? | 44:00 | |
Interviewer | You said you have a good relation | 44:06 |
with Carol Rosenberg of all these years, | 44:07 | |
the journalist for the Miami Herald. | 44:10 | |
Could you tell us how that really worked for you | 44:12 | |
and why that was helpful? | 44:14 | |
- | Yeah, well, she was one of the people | 44:17 |
that we call the Dean. | 44:22 | |
She's been going down there. | 44:25 | |
A lot of media will go down there | 44:30 | |
but she has been assigned, that's her beat. | 44:31 | |
She's the one person who's consistently going | 44:34 | |
when almost nobody else can consistently | 44:38 | |
or will consistently go. | 44:41 | |
And she shares her information because to her, | 44:43 | |
my census, it's so important | 44:46 | |
that whatever anybody is writing is right. | 44:48 | |
So there's a board up there and she'll write down | 44:52 | |
who's a commander now or who had a promotion | 44:55 | |
or who's the prosecution and it's a cheat sheet | 44:58 | |
or it's a help sheet. | 45:01 | |
So the first thing she did is sit next to me and say, | 45:03 | |
is there anything I can do to help you out | 45:08 | |
with the sketches? | 45:12 | |
And I said, well, yeah. | 45:13 | |
I mean, I need to know who's who and what's what. | 45:14 | |
And she did. She sat down and said, "You know this? | 45:18 | |
And she said, well, why don't you sketch us watching this?" | 45:21 | |
And I've started polling people saying, | 45:24 | |
if there's anything you'd like to see they haven't seen yet, | 45:28 | |
let me try to negotiate it because otherwise | 45:33 | |
it's gonna be the same thing over and over. | 45:37 | |
And that's what I'll do is, I'll push for, | 45:39 | |
"Hey, can I stand by the victim family members | 45:42 | |
and draw their perspective?" | 45:44 | |
Yeah, I was able to negotiate moving around | 45:48 | |
and getting different perspectives from within the range. | 45:53 | |
Just watching, thinking about how would a photographer, | 45:58 | |
a journalist wanna cover this. | 46:01 | |
They try to look behind every stone | 46:02 | |
or find another facet on the diamond, another viewpoint. | 46:04 | |
How can I make this as rich a visual prop, | 46:10 | |
storytelling as possible. | 46:13 | |
I've gone to the far side of the court from the NGO views | 46:17 | |
as much as possible, | 46:22 | |
anything to capture it. | 46:24 | |
There've been times when all five of the accused, | 46:26 | |
they have the right to not attend after the first day | 46:30 | |
where I've sketched their seats empty, | 46:34 | |
but all the other people present. | 46:37 | |
Because that tells something too. | 46:39 | |
It tells us that they don't have to be there, | 46:42 | |
but all these people are. | 46:45 | |
So there's a lot of different things | 46:48 | |
that I try to keep in mind. | 46:52 | |
Interviewer | Can you describe those illustrations | 46:53 |
so that somebody who sees them | 46:55 | |
knows what you're trying to do? | 46:57 | |
- | Sure. I brought the one. | 46:59 |
Interviewer | I'd like you to show us then. | 47:01 |
Would you describe actually, so if someone looks | 47:02 | |
at an illustration with, let's say four members | 47:05 | |
of the being questioned that are not present today, | 47:07 | |
do you actually put a subtitle? | 47:10 | |
- | Not always. I've tried to write the date, | 47:13 |
morning of this date, or this is what the hearing is. | 47:18 | |
Sometimes if I can get, | 47:22 | |
if there's family members who allow me to draw them, | 47:24 | |
because some of them don't wanna be drawn. | 47:27 | |
If they want their names, I'll write their names under them. | 47:30 | |
I'll take little notes on the drawings. | 47:34 | |
But I don't always get as much as I wish I did. | 47:38 | |
Interviewer | So it's possible to see | 47:44 |
one of your illustrations and not know exactly | 47:45 | |
what you're illustrating? | 47:47 | |
- | Somebody might. | 47:50 |
They'll say, well, I date them all. | 47:51 | |
So they can refer to that. | 47:53 | |
They always know if they look back | 47:56 | |
what's on the docket and yeah. | 47:58 | |
And I always write what it's about or who, | 48:02 | |
that's for me along with everybody else. | 48:06 | |
But sometimes I'll have several drawings going at once, | 48:11 | |
'cause things are changing. | 48:13 | |
So I might have a closeup started, | 48:16 | |
but then something happened here | 48:17 | |
or a full view of the entire scene. | 48:19 | |
'Cause there's no timeline for me. | 48:24 | |
Things can stop on a dime. | 48:27 | |
So I'll kind of have a wishlist in my mind | 48:30 | |
about what I wanna get that day. | 48:34 | |
And once I've gotten one, two or three on that, | 48:37 | |
then I'll start kind of branching out on other things. | 48:41 | |
I mean, I've done as few as two | 48:45 | |
or as many as 13 drawings a day. | 48:47 | |
Interviewer | You have a full table? | 48:49 |
- | No, I only use that board. | 48:51 |
Interviewer | Okay, why don't you show us | 48:54 |
some of the illustrations and we can go back | 48:55 | |
to have some more questions, | 48:57 | |
but as long as we're talking about. | 48:59 | |
- | Sure, sure. | 49:00 |
I just brought the one full sized sketch | 49:01 | |
and then I have my sketchbook too. | 49:04 | |
So this cardboard board is my table | 49:11 | |
and I balanced it on a chair | 49:14 | |
and all my drawings are done on this surface. | 49:16 | |
Because we have to go through metal detectors and all that. | 49:20 | |
I have to pre sharp everything that I bring in, | 49:24 | |
because I can't bring any sharpening devices for my pencils | 49:27 | |
or tools because and even this gets scanned. | 49:30 | |
My drawing kit gets scanned twice before I go in. | 49:35 | |
And I do pastel on a... | 49:40 | |
Here we go. | 49:50 | |
So you can see sort of the scale of this. | 49:52 | |
And this can kind of show you, | 49:57 | |
this is where I sat behind the victim family members. | 49:59 | |
And there's the security sign off. | 50:03 | |
And I always make sure that's prominent. | 50:09 | |
You can see some of the notes | 50:10 | |
Interviewer | But could you read that to us? 'Cause- | 50:14 |
- | Sure. | 50:15 |
It says 9/11 pre-trial hearings, April 15th, 2014. | 50:16 | |
With its signature of the security officer | 50:23 | |
and that's him there. | 50:25 | |
And that red light flashes if he omits sound. | 50:28 | |
These are the monitors I mentioned earlier | 50:33 | |
that zoom in on whoever's speaking, | 50:35 | |
the judge or whoever's addressing him, the court officers. | 50:39 | |
You can see very vaguely the security detailed | 50:45 | |
indicated carefully so that you don't see features, | 50:49 | |
but you can see that there are people | 50:54 | |
or somebody standing there. | 50:56 | |
Interviewer | So is Khalid Shaikh Mohammed | 50:58 |
in the front there? | 51:00 | |
- | Yes, that's Khalid Shaikh Mohammad in the front | 51:01 |
with, speaking with his counsel. | 51:04 | |
I can't, sometimes without meaning to, I omit some people | 51:09 | |
because they just simply don't have the time or the focus. | 51:14 | |
But you can see some of the defense dresses | 51:18 | |
and modest attire, indifference to... | 51:23 | |
Interviewer | Their clients? | 51:27 |
Janet | Yeah. | 51:28 |
Interviewer | And, is that all one courtroom | 51:29 |
or is the far on the right, another version of... | 51:32 | |
- | It's all the one courtroom through the windows. | 51:35 |
So this is where the, that's Mark Martins, | 51:39 | |
a Brigadier General prosecutor and his staff. | 51:42 | |
And then on this side we have translators | 51:46 | |
and paralegals and lawyers and death penalty experts | 51:50 | |
who are all representing the detainees. | 51:57 | |
And then you have all the five flags of the service | 52:02 | |
or six, well, US flag and family members. | 52:05 | |
Interviewer | And these people allow you | 52:09 |
to illustrate them? | 52:11 | |
They sign off? | 52:14 | |
- | They did, they signed off on this. | 52:15 |
But sometimes I'll get their faces, | 52:20 | |
but this viewpoint worked | 52:24 | |
and it's a little bit skewed to fit. | 52:26 | |
I mean that's the other challenge is how can I compose this? | 52:30 | |
A lot of times, they'll try to think about | 52:34 | |
how can I get the most out of something, | 52:37 | |
somebody can zoom in pan and scan, | 52:39 | |
or tell five stories by parsing out visual information. | 52:41 | |
So I'm trying to make it as telling as possible. | 52:46 | |
But this one's all about the distance and the barrier. | 52:51 | |
It's even zoomed in a little bit. | 52:56 | |
I mean, there's more things and more people | 52:57 | |
between me and him or them. | 53:00 | |
Interviewer | So for the viewer, could you describe, | 53:03 |
there are three windows, and what is that? | 53:06 | |
- | There's actually five windows. | 53:09 |
There's more to the left, a few more windows. | 53:10 | |
I happened to be behind the victim family members | 53:15 | |
and they see it them first. | 53:18 | |
And then they see media further over in the front | 53:20 | |
and then going back, NGOs. | 53:25 | |
And then finally just people who are interested, observers. | 53:29 | |
Depending on the limit how many people can go in, | 53:33 | |
I think it's seven or eight and it's all assigned seating. | 53:37 | |
But in this case, I was able to negotiate after a few days. | 53:45 | |
Interviewer | And is that a cement barrier with windows | 53:49 |
or is that a wooden barrier? | 53:52 | |
- | It's all portable and this whole courtroom | 53:54 |
can be taken apart and moved. | 53:56 | |
But it's a sturdy barrier with this all being soundproof. | 53:58 | |
And it's a little distorted. | 54:05 | |
These windows are in fact actually more rectangular, | 54:06 | |
but again, I had to distort a bit | 54:09 | |
and take some license with perspective and things | 54:13 | |
to get it all in there. | 54:18 | |
So, and you can see, I use a brown line | 54:20 | |
to sort of blueprint it out and then put color in. | 54:24 | |
'Cause there's just not a lot of time. | 54:27 | |
Interviewer | And is there a reason | 54:31 |
why you use a brown background | 54:31 | |
as opposed to white background? | 54:34 | |
- | Yeah, actually, you can build up a scene faster. | 54:35 |
Courtrooms are primarily a brown. | 54:39 | |
If you can't fill something in, doesn't look as empty. | 54:42 | |
You can pull highlights and darks out of it faster. | 54:47 | |
So it's just a neutral ground to built out of. | 54:51 | |
Yeah, yeah, so, it's... | 54:57 | |
Interviewer | And you said you'll do anywhere from three | 55:02 |
to 13 drawings a day? | 55:03 | |
- | Right. In a typical day, it's probably about four. | 55:06 |
Two in the morning, two in the afternoon, | 55:11 | |
maybe more if I get like, if somebody is at a stand, | 55:14 | |
and they're only there for a minute. | 55:17 | |
I might get one officer or a little shots like that. | 55:19 | |
Interviewer | And the media is entitled | 55:22 |
to license any of the drawings that you do, | 55:24 | |
the ones that pay you to? | 55:27 | |
- | Yes. Yeah. | 55:29 |
I have, if there's a school doing a lecture, | 55:31 | |
things like that, I'll say, | 55:34 | |
here's a JPEG, you know what I mean? | 55:35 | |
Yeah, so you don't have to pay me for that. | 55:37 | |
If you're using this for a teaching tool, that's important. | 55:39 | |
I mean, I want future generations to have access. | 55:44 | |
Interviewer | Schools have contacted you for? | 55:50 |
- | They have, yeah. | 55:52 |
Universities, people have done lectures, who were involved. | 55:53 | |
And I said, sure, yes. | 56:01 | |
The military commissions, if you want to have this up there. | 56:04 | |
I just need to cover my travel over there and make sure that | 56:11 | |
I can afford to do this, I suppose, not to sound. | 56:18 | |
I mean, the main is that I find this very important. | 56:22 | |
So if I'm able to, if I find my work schedule is free, | 56:26 | |
and this is happening and it's important, | 56:32 | |
then yes, I'm gonna try to go, so... | 56:35 | |
Interviewer | Do you have plans to go soon? | 56:38 |
- | Not anytime soon, because I think everything's sort of in, | 56:41 |
is right now all paperwork cycle, | 56:44 | |
the pre-trial hearings are all pretty, | 56:47 | |
there's not a lot of visual for me, | 56:52 | |
visual change to pick up. | 56:56 | |
Interviewer | Have you noticed how do you know | 56:58 |
when there is a change? | 57:00 | |
- | Well, Carol might know that there's something coming up | 57:02 |
or media will contact, they'll say, | 57:06 | |
"This is a really important thing. | 57:08 | |
And we wanna send a sketch artist. | 57:11 | |
Are you able to go?" | 57:13 | |
So then that's how the outreach works. | 57:15 | |
When this does finally go to, if it does, | 57:20 | |
and that could change, but if it does, | 57:23 | |
I would definitely like to try to be there. | 57:26 | |
Interviewer | Could we see your sketchbook? | 57:32 |
- | Sure, sure. | 57:33 |
So the other thing I do is whenever I'm there, | 57:37 | |
I try to warm up because this is all, | 57:41 | |
this is all sort of the stretching before the race. | 57:45 | |
It's visual sprints. | 57:48 | |
So I keep this little sketchbook | 57:50 | |
and I just sketch when Martins will come in | 57:52 | |
and talk to the media about what's coming up, | 57:58 | |
just try to do these little warmups. | 58:01 | |
Interviewer | Hmm. Are those also | 58:03 |
viewed by the military before? | 58:06 | |
- | Yeah, because I don't want anybody to think | 58:08 |
I'm trying to pull anything. | 58:12 | |
I don't wanna lose any kind of trust I have | 58:14 | |
with either people. | 58:17 | |
I wanna make sure I'm respecting everybody's boundaries, | 58:20 | |
but also, looking out for my own, | 58:24 | |
make sure I'm able to do what I do. | 58:27 | |
So these are just a few of the sketches in the press room | 58:31 | |
of people that I may not have that kind of proximity to. | 58:34 | |
So I'll do studies to familiarize myself with them. | 58:38 | |
But I've also been able to go into the camps. | 58:41 | |
And so I did bring this | 58:46 | |
because it's kind of an interesting view | 58:47 | |
of the main media in a camp environment talking. | 58:51 | |
Oh, it's an iguana that came up behind. | 58:59 | |
This also was interesting to me as, | 59:03 | |
when, at the time they were allowing us to tour the camps | 59:07 | |
during a trial, but now during hearing times, | 59:12 | |
but now they separate that out. | 59:15 | |
But before, they did take us to tour the hospital, | 59:18 | |
and so this is the enteral feeding display. | 59:21 | |
Interviewer | Louis, get a good shot of that. | 59:25 |
They let you do that? | 59:28 | |
- | Yeah, well there's photographs of this. | 59:29 |
I'm sorry, I'm gonna move my pencil. | 59:33 | |
Yeah, so this is the doctor talking about that. | 59:36 | |
Interviewer | And you had to wipe out the doctors' face? | 59:42 |
Or is a... | 59:44 | |
- | Yes. Yeah. | |
You can't show any, I'm gonna just put this down, | 59:46 | |
medical, any personnel who are speaking with us. | 59:50 | |
'Cause they're all service members. | 59:55 | |
And I thought that was interesting. | 59:58 | |
It said, at no time will a detainee remain unrestrained | 59:59 | |
in medical and this is at a psych facility. | 1:00:05 | |
So, and this is an eye test. | 1:00:10 | |
This is inside camp five. | 1:00:13 | |
So I'm just pushing myself. | 1:00:15 | |
Oh, sure. | 1:00:18 | |
That was a fellow sitting at a table | 1:00:23 | |
and I just thought, oh, he's, | 1:00:27 | |
I can't remember if this is during a class, | 1:00:29 | |
sometimes they'll hold art classes or they'll hold like. | 1:00:31 | |
Interviewer | So that's a detainee? | 1:00:34 |
Janet | Yeah, through a two-way glass. | 1:00:35 |
So you're not supposed to show faces. | 1:00:38 | |
So it was an opportunity to get his face covered. | 1:00:47 | |
I did a quick rubbing of camp five. | 1:00:51 | |
I thought that was kind of interesting. | 1:00:56 | |
Interviewer | That was actually gonna make... | 1:00:59 |
Janet | It says established may of 2004, | 1:01:00 |
and that was camp five when it was built. | 1:01:02 | |
Camp five items provided to detainees. | 1:01:09 | |
We have photos of these, | 1:01:12 | |
but I still like to challenge myself here and there. | 1:01:13 | |
This is some of the acoustic ceilings | 1:01:17 | |
over the cells in camp five. | 1:01:19 | |
And then I was taking notes | 1:01:28 | |
about how much the holding cells were. | 1:01:29 | |
Courthouse was 3 million. Anyway. | 1:01:32 | |
Interviewer | Could you move from transpose | 1:01:36 |
some of these sketches onto a larger piece? | 1:01:38 | |
- | I probably could, but then I would be doing it. | 1:01:45 |
It's a little rule in myself. | 1:01:53 | |
Once I leave a courtroom, and it's been signed off to me, | 1:01:54 | |
it's frozen in time. | 1:02:00 | |
The only thing I can do is remove smudges. | 1:02:01 | |
But I don't feel that morally I should alter it. | 1:02:05 | |
It's been approved that way. | 1:02:11 | |
It's frozen that way. | 1:02:12 | |
And I fell sort of, maybe I'll enhance these a bit, | 1:02:15 | |
because they're for my own personal exercise, | 1:02:19 | |
but they've become sort of valuable, | 1:02:24 | |
because in some ways I've been able to capture things | 1:02:25 | |
that aren't as. | 1:02:28 | |
I am edited, I am under the same rules as a camera. | 1:02:31 | |
But I can fade something | 1:02:36 | |
and I can show a person and fade it. | 1:02:40 | |
And it doesn't look like a headless horseman. You know? | 1:02:42 | |
Interviewer | You must have piles of those sketchbooks. | 1:02:49 |
Janet | I do have several. | 1:02:54 |
This was one that I grabbed because I thought, | 1:02:56 | |
wow, I've got actually got some of the camp in here. | 1:03:01 | |
Now I'm not getting that as much because it's not allowed. | 1:03:04 | |
Interviewer | What's not allowed? | 1:03:11 |
- | When I go down for a hearing, | 1:03:13 |
we're not doing camp tours anymore. | 1:03:15 | |
I'm not going to be going there, | 1:03:18 | |
unless, I went specifically to fly to see the camps. | 1:03:19 | |
You have to go separately for that now. | 1:03:24 | |
(inaudible) | 1:03:26 | |
- | I could ask, but I wouldn't expect. | 1:03:30 |
I have asked this too. | 1:03:34 | |
I do rent a bike when I go there and I do bike around. | 1:03:36 | |
Interviewer | Without an escort? | 1:03:41 |
- | But within the areas in which we're allowed to go, yes. | 1:03:43 |
I can cross out of our compound | 1:03:47 | |
but I have to make sure I have my media pass with me. | 1:03:51 | |
And I try not to. | 1:03:57 | |
I just, I don't try to shake the nest at all. | 1:03:58 | |
I don't wanna poke unreasonably, but I do want to | 1:04:03 | |
to go see where I'm at | 1:04:08 | |
and not try to take advantage of that sketch | 1:04:10 | |
whatever I can without breaking any rules. | 1:04:14 | |
Interviewer | Have you ever sketched the prison guards | 1:04:16 |
when they're off duty? | 1:04:19 | |
- | No, I don't think I'd have access | 1:04:22 |
and I don't, think they'd want that. | 1:04:28 | |
They might. I never thought to ask. | 1:04:31 | |
I think that there's, since it's a duty thing for them | 1:04:35 | |
I don't know if that would be allowed. | 1:04:39 | |
Interviewer | Do you pay for your housing? | 1:04:44 |
- | No, we had in the past, | 1:04:45 |
when we were staying in the bachelors quarters, | 1:04:49 | |
but the tent camp justice compound is all free. | 1:04:51 | |
We do have to pay, I have to pay for internet. | 1:04:56 | |
So when I get there, I have to pay the $150 | 1:04:59 | |
for the week to be able to move sketches | 1:05:02 | |
and things like that. | 1:05:06 | |
And it used to be that a photographer would go down, | 1:05:09 | |
but I've become that person. | 1:05:11 | |
So I will literally go up sketch, come back, | 1:05:12 | |
And while I'm eating lunch, I'm photographing the work | 1:05:17 | |
and writing the cut lines and sending it out to media. | 1:05:20 | |
And then going back through security | 1:05:24 | |
and going up for the second round. | 1:05:25 | |
That's sort of, I've become sort of a one man band at times, | 1:05:29 | |
depending on who's there what's their resources. | 1:05:35 | |
Interviewer | July, do you have some questions? | 1:05:39 |
July | I have a general question about your... | 1:05:40 |
- | Oh sure. | 1:05:45 |
July | When you draw, | 1:05:47 |
you called it visual storytelling, | 1:05:50 | |
Is your goal to be as objective as possible | 1:05:53 | |
or to take an assessment and to try to project | 1:05:57 | |
what you think the audience needs to see? | 1:06:01 | |
- | I really battle with that. | 1:06:05 |
It's so important to me that I treat it like a journalist | 1:06:09 | |
and try to impart the information as objectively | 1:06:16 | |
but truthfully as possible. | 1:06:20 | |
I mean, that to me is the most important thing as emotional | 1:06:22 | |
as I might feel here and there, | 1:06:27 | |
I don't want that to alter what I'm showing | 1:06:29 | |
unless it can put a humanity to it. | 1:06:34 | |
I don't want it to just be a cold Polaroid. | 1:06:40 | |
So I might show movement or I might draw | 1:06:43 | |
the eye here or there with a thicker line, | 1:06:46 | |
or a darker area or more detail or a little color. | 1:06:48 | |
But my goal is to try to approach this in the way | 1:06:55 | |
of not putting myself other than my training to task. | 1:06:59 | |
Like, how can I tell this as truthfully as possible | 1:07:08 | |
and let whoever's looking at it to take away what they see? | 1:07:12 | |
Like I said, the body language, | 1:07:20 | |
I'll take every visual opportunity I can | 1:07:23 | |
to tell it from all sides, | 1:07:26 | |
whether it's a family member | 1:07:30 | |
who might be holding up a picture of somebody they lost | 1:07:31 | |
or a detainee pointing out something that happened to them | 1:07:35 | |
or standing up to make a point | 1:07:40 | |
or coming in restraint, because they can't walk. | 1:07:44 | |
Or prosecution pointing something out | 1:07:49 | |
that's an important image. | 1:07:54 | |
Like if there's anything being projected | 1:07:56 | |
that's visual evidence, I'll draw that as well. | 1:07:59 | |
Because I don't know if that's going to come out. | 1:08:03 | |
So that to me, that's my job is, | 1:08:06 | |
how can I do this without altering it or skewing it? | 1:08:09 | |
So that it's as honest an image as possible, | 1:08:15 | |
but it's not always easy to do that | 1:08:20 | |
for a lot of different reasons, | 1:08:25 | |
but I'm hoping that I do somehow achieve it. | 1:08:30 | |
I hope that answers the question. | 1:08:34 | |
- | I have a second- | 1:08:37 |
- | Could you look at me | |
when you answer? | 1:08:38 | |
- | Yeah, sure, sure. | |
July | I have a second general question, | 1:08:42 |
as a member of the media, | 1:08:43 | |
and I know that the staff socialize at Guantanamo. | 1:08:46 | |
Do you socialize with the people who work at Guantanamo? | 1:08:54 | |
- | Inevitably, you do. | 1:09:01 |
Because of the nature of where you're at. | 1:09:04 | |
It's almost like being on a campus. | 1:09:08 | |
You fly in with family members | 1:09:11 | |
and all the people involved in the court, | 1:09:14 | |
many of the people anyway, | 1:09:17 | |
and then you fly out with many of them. | 1:09:19 | |
And you run into them. | 1:09:22 | |
You might go out for dinner and there's Judge Paul. | 1:09:23 | |
July | So things from them, or are they circumspect? | 1:09:31 |
You talk about Guantanamo when you are with people | 1:09:35 | |
who work there? | 1:09:40 | |
- | Yeah. I have spoken with people from all sides. | 1:09:41 |
I'm curious to know what their perspectives are. | 1:09:46 | |
But they're not going to tell me | 1:09:52 | |
what they don't want me to know too. | 1:09:57 | |
I mean, anybody prosecutors or somebody | 1:09:58 | |
who's working with Khalid Shaikh Muhammad | 1:10:03 | |
isn't gonna tell me their opinions or feelings. | 1:10:07 | |
But I will ask how is it to represent somebody | 1:10:11 | |
that claims to have masterminded this? | 1:10:16 | |
And they'll say, "Well, he's a family man. | 1:10:20 | |
And he has this and that. | 1:10:22 | |
And these are his beliefs. | 1:10:23 | |
And he's very forbid about it and he feels justified." | 1:10:24 | |
And they'll tell me this stuff, and I wanna hear it. | 1:10:27 | |
I won't make in a judgment on them, | 1:10:31 | |
but then I'll hear family members speak. | 1:10:34 | |
We're not allowed to talk to them unless they speak to us. | 1:10:36 | |
We have to stay respectful, but I'll be approached. | 1:10:40 | |
Sometimes I'll be asked, | 1:10:45 | |
can you draw us while we watch this? | 1:10:47 | |
Because we want to see, yeah, to us, this is important. | 1:10:51 | |
And I'll say, well, if I can, I will, yeah, absolutely. | 1:10:56 | |
If you want me to, and I've got time to do that, I will. | 1:10:59 | |
And I've spoken, I've heard testimony | 1:11:04 | |
and I've listened to Omar's past interrogator | 1:11:08 | |
who calls himself the monster | 1:11:13 | |
who regrets what he has done. | 1:11:15 | |
There's a lot of psychological damage I think | 1:11:19 | |
that some service people have gone through in doing service. | 1:11:27 | |
So it's been interesting. | 1:11:32 | |
Like I did have the opportunity to send images | 1:11:33 | |
of my sketches to Hom Don and ask him, | 1:11:37 | |
"How did he feel in these images?" | 1:11:40 | |
I want to know that, I wanna know all sides. | 1:11:42 | |
But I'm also a member and everybody's eyes | 1:11:45 | |
as a media person, so there's a certain guardedness, | 1:11:49 | |
but there are times when I've heard things from both sides. | 1:11:53 | |
And I just make a point of keeping it separate | 1:11:58 | |
and not sharing one with the other. | 1:12:03 | |
July | And I have another last question, | 1:12:06 |
as a child who was in a military family | 1:12:08 | |
and in military barracks, | 1:12:12 | |
what is the sort of general feel for you | 1:12:16 | |
of the Guantanamo experience overall, | 1:12:20 | |
compared to other places where you lived? | 1:12:24 | |
I realize you were a child then, | 1:12:27 | |
but do you get a sense that it's different? | 1:12:29 | |
I know you said it looked familiar, but how does it feel? | 1:12:31 | |
- | Well, yeah, my father used to talk about civilians, | 1:12:34 |
"Oh, the civilians don't understand, | 1:12:40 | |
or the civilians don't get this or that." | 1:12:42 | |
And he was part of silk purse, which is a kind of secret. | 1:12:45 | |
He was a pilot. | 1:12:52 | |
He did mid-air refueling during Vietnam war. | 1:12:53 | |
So he had this viewpoint | 1:12:58 | |
that the civilians just didn't understand the sacrifice | 1:12:59 | |
that the military goes through to keep us all safe. | 1:13:04 | |
So I grew up hearing that, | 1:13:09 | |
but I also became a civilian. | 1:13:10 | |
Isn't it all? | 1:13:15 | |
And lived through, saw the 9/11 attacks | 1:13:17 | |
and worked with the associated press, | 1:13:23 | |
as a graphics journalist. | 1:13:28 | |
And so I feel like I have one foot here and one foot there | 1:13:30 | |
and it's straddling it. | 1:13:37 | |
So I think that helped me when I had to negotiate | 1:13:40 | |
the four hours sit in | 1:13:43 | |
to say I really understand the security. | 1:13:46 | |
I really respect what you're trying to do to serve us. | 1:13:48 | |
But I also know that we have this role, | 1:13:53 | |
and we have this transparency and we need to do that. | 1:13:57 | |
So I think it's really helped me | 1:14:02 | |
negotiate my position a lot to really kind of understand, | 1:14:06 | |
or try to understand and be sensitive to both perspectives. | 1:14:10 | |
I think it's served me that way. | 1:14:16 | |
Interviewer | Johnny, did you have something? | 1:14:23 |
Johnny | Yeah. | 1:14:24 |
Interviewer | As a filmmaker, I'm sure. | 1:14:27 |
Johnny | Well, yeah, but I'm also struck by, | 1:14:28 |
as you tell this story, how much you had to be an advocate | 1:14:32 | |
for yourself in that space | 1:14:35 | |
and that the, is that a new experience | 1:14:37 | |
or how much would you attribute that | 1:14:41 | |
to the complexities of Guantanamo | 1:14:44 | |
and the intensity of the whole environment? | 1:14:48 | |
It seems like you kind of had to step up | 1:14:55 | |
and that actually kept you more engaged. | 1:14:56 | |
- | Yeah, it's extremely uncomfortable, | 1:14:59 |
because I am really not a confrontational person at all. | 1:15:03 | |
I'll do anything I can to avoid conflict. | 1:15:10 | |
But this is the ultimate conflict | 1:15:12 | |
and there's really literally nobody there. | 1:15:14 | |
There's one journalist that'll go to observe. | 1:15:17 | |
And many of the other journalists will stay | 1:15:21 | |
in the mock, the media, back in the hangar where they work. | 1:15:23 | |
'Cause they can watch the video feed and they can tweet, | 1:15:29 | |
'cause otherwise they're only able to write, | 1:15:32 | |
and they've even taken when people have drawn a schematic | 1:15:35 | |
they've taken that away from them. | 1:15:38 | |
So I'm it, I'm the only person representing myself. | 1:15:40 | |
So yeah, the confrontations, the complexities, | 1:15:44 | |
all of it can be scary and daunting | 1:15:50 | |
and I've just, adrenaline. | 1:15:55 | |
And just trying to think, okay, | 1:16:00 | |
how can I swim through this and stay | 1:16:05 | |
with my head and shoulders above the water | 1:16:09 | |
and just get to the other side and resolve it? | 1:16:11 | |
Visually, personally and make sure | 1:16:17 | |
we're all working together. | 1:16:21 | |
So that, I'm trying to do it, | 1:16:25 | |
and it's really, sometimes really, | 1:16:27 | |
it's adrenaline all the way. | 1:16:30 | |
It's exhausting days of navigating that. | 1:16:33 | |
But the pay office, | 1:16:37 | |
I think I get the best that I can possibly get, | 1:16:40 | |
or at least that's what I'm striving for. | 1:16:42 | |
But you just never know when you're going to hit it | 1:16:45 | |
a weird roadblock and it will happen out of nowhere. | 1:16:46 | |
Like the Majeed Khan thing or something like that. | 1:16:50 | |
So yeah, you're kind of ready. | 1:16:54 | |
It's a lot, I mean, any, I think any journalist | 1:16:58 | |
or any camera person | 1:17:03 | |
will probably share the same thing | 1:17:05 | |
that there are all these rules | 1:17:07 | |
and you're just constantly, am I breaking it? | 1:17:09 | |
Is this gonna be scrubbed? | 1:17:13 | |
I mean, is this going to be taken away? | 1:17:16 | |
Is this, how much can I do within this box? | 1:17:19 | |
And is there a wiggle room? | 1:17:26 | |
But, yeah, it's, I guess I hope I've answered it | 1:17:29 | |
1,000 ways right now, but if, yeah, it's a challenge. | 1:17:36 | |
Interviewer | I want to follow up on that because | 1:17:43 |
so did Guantanamo change you? | 1:17:45 | |
- | Change me? | 1:17:53 |
- | I don't know. | |
Are you a different person | 1:17:54 | |
than you were when you first went down in 06 to? | 1:17:56 | |
- | Probably. I mean, I have a better awareness. | 1:17:59 |
I mean, a lot more awareness. | 1:18:05 | |
I didn't know what was going on there, what it was like. | 1:18:07 | |
Interviewer | Well, what kind of awareness did, | 1:18:14 |
if the world became aware of the way you are, | 1:18:16 | |
would things be different? | 1:18:19 | |
I mean, is that kind of where does that all people | 1:18:21 | |
need to have and don't have? | 1:18:22 | |
- | Well, a lot of people, there's things that I know | 1:18:27 |
that are probably, certain things, | 1:18:31 | |
I haven't seen everything. | 1:18:36 | |
None of us have seen everything that's going on, | 1:18:38 | |
or heard everything that's going on. | 1:18:41 | |
It's just a known thing. | 1:18:44 | |
But what I've seen and heard, | 1:18:46 | |
people don't realize it is a working base, | 1:18:49 | |
that they're fenced off or literally, yeah. | 1:18:52 | |
The detention center is literally on the other side | 1:19:00 | |
as far away from where people are living and working. | 1:19:05 | |
People lived and work there for years | 1:19:10 | |
have never had anything to do with it. | 1:19:12 | |
So people don't realize that it's a working base, | 1:19:16 | |
an active base, it always has been, | 1:19:19 | |
it was before, it is still. | 1:19:21 | |
But I've come out understanding much more of the, | 1:19:25 | |
just by exposure to the court environment, | 1:19:29 | |
to the journalist, to all the people involved, | 1:19:35 | |
the military, the prosecutors, just by listening to them, | 1:19:37 | |
I have a much richer sense of what's happening down there. | 1:19:41 | |
And so that's changed. | 1:19:47 | |
I'm educated on that. | 1:19:48 | |
Camp x-ray's overgrown. | 1:19:53 | |
They make sure we all know that. | 1:19:55 | |
It's the one tour I think we do have, | 1:19:57 | |
is, look how overgrown this is. | 1:20:00 | |
But it to see it physically and to see, | 1:20:06 | |
kind of thrown together prison nine month or whatever | 1:20:11 | |
length of detainment, but isn't, Cuba's tough. | 1:20:17 | |
I mean, I can't imagine that being in prison, outside, | 1:20:25 | |
in those little spaces with the limitations that they had | 1:20:33 | |
and, no, it's a good thing it's closed. | 1:20:36 | |
And a lot of the other prisons have closed | 1:20:41 | |
since I've been there at the camps, | 1:20:43 | |
that's where told to call them. | 1:20:45 | |
Everything has an acronym or a different name, | 1:20:46 | |
detainee, camp, different language. | 1:20:49 | |
But yeah, I'm changed from a better understanding | 1:20:54 | |
of just physically what it is and mentally | 1:20:59 | |
what's happening visually. | 1:21:02 | |
Interviewer | I have two more questions | 1:21:08 |
unless something else comes up. | 1:21:09 | |
One is, have you ever gotten criticism | 1:21:10 | |
outside of the military for your illustrations? | 1:21:14 | |
Have people ever said things to you either written to you | 1:21:17 | |
or spoken to you about your work? | 1:21:21 | |
- | Yeah, I mean, I got criticized | 1:21:23 |
in a review of the book saying, | 1:21:28 | |
how could somebody do that and be neutral? | 1:21:31 | |
They were angry that I made it sort of a political | 1:21:35 | |
or whatever, but I felt like that's the goal of the book. | 1:21:40 | |
So I didn't feel it was harsh. | 1:21:46 | |
I mean people have complained that the likenesses are bad, | 1:21:49 | |
and I would tend to agree with them. | 1:21:53 | |
It's not that, some of these drawings are just, | 1:21:55 | |
I cringe, but it's what I did, | 1:22:00 | |
and it's what I did in the time that I had. | 1:22:02 | |
So yeah, there are always gonna be, | 1:22:06 | |
I wasn't that fat, or I wasn't that bald, | 1:22:08 | |
or you left me out, which is horrifying, which happens. | 1:22:10 | |
Or I did, I wasn't quite in that chair. | 1:22:15 | |
Oops. I did move a row, sorry. | 1:22:19 | |
Yeah, there is some human error there. | 1:22:23 | |
So there's plenty of room for, I'm sure, criticism. | 1:22:27 | |
And I'm might even my own harshest critic | 1:22:29 | |
when I walk away from it all, | 1:22:32 | |
'cause you're always hoping to do a little bit better | 1:22:34 | |
than maybe you did. | 1:22:36 | |
Interviewer | And are there are people | 1:22:38 |
who will compliment you and thank you for your work | 1:22:39 | |
because you're the only one who doing it? | 1:22:41 | |
- | They do. And I really appreciate that. | 1:22:44 |
And I've heard it from surprising sources. | 1:22:49 | |
I've heard feedback from apparently detainees | 1:22:54 | |
and their families have appreciated seeing, | 1:22:59 | |
"Oh, somebody is wearing the scarf I sent." | 1:23:03 | |
And I've also heard prosecution say, | 1:23:08 | |
"Oh great, you got us here." | 1:23:10 | |
Or somebody will say, | 1:23:15 | |
"Oh, I was standing on the side | 1:23:18 | |
as one of those anonymous people, | 1:23:20 | |
but it's cool because I can tell my friends | 1:23:21 | |
I was part of that detail." | 1:23:24 | |
Observers, they'll be glad that they're represented. | 1:23:27 | |
NGOs, human rights, military, | 1:23:31 | |
I'm trying to get everybody that's part of it. | 1:23:36 | |
They're all important. They're all part of it. | 1:23:39 | |
And it's my job to try to include them | 1:23:42 | |
and make sure they're represented visually. | 1:23:45 | |
Interviewer | So is this something you are thinking about | 1:23:48 |
talking about that I didn't ask you, and you're... | 1:23:50 | |
- | I think, well, I hope, | 1:23:53 |
I'm sure there'll be 1,000 things later, but if there are, | 1:23:58 | |
I'd be happy to always answer, | 1:24:01 | |
but I think you're pretty comprehensive here | 1:24:03 | |
and I hope that I've given you. | 1:24:07 | |
Interviewer | Do you see yourself going forward | 1:24:10 |
if Trump sends people to Guantanamo? | 1:24:11 | |
Do you see yourself continuing this process? | 1:24:13 | |
- | Well, yeah. | 1:24:16 |
I mean, if he was to send, | 1:24:17 | |
there was a question whether he was gonna send | 1:24:21 | |
some recently detained people, | 1:24:23 | |
he could have, and I think instead they did go federally. | 1:24:28 | |
So if they hadn't, | 1:24:32 | |
I think that would have been really important. | 1:24:34 | |
So, if I'm in a position to be able to go and there's, yeah. | 1:24:37 | |
Who knows, I mean, | 1:24:47 | |
Carol and I and a few other people have joked that | 1:24:48 | |
we could easily be senior citizens | 1:24:53 | |
in the not too distant future, less distant nowadays, | 1:24:55 | |
but this has gone on. | 1:24:59 | |
For me, what is it now? | 1:25:03 | |
- | Almost 12 years. | 1:25:07 |
- | Yeah. | |
Yeah, I mean, I would never have thought. | 1:25:09 | |
It was never occurred to me that it would be. | 1:25:12 | |
But it could easily be one of those things | 1:25:17 | |
that just won't move forward. | 1:25:20 | |
It's very glacial. | 1:25:24 | |
I mean, that's the difference. | 1:25:26 | |
The military commissions are glacial. | 1:25:28 | |
There's just so much stuff that we feel. | 1:25:31 | |
It feels like it takes a lot much longer time | 1:25:35 | |
there than anywhere else. | 1:25:38 | |
And some reasons are clear, | 1:25:41 | |
and some reasons are not so, but... | 1:25:45 | |
Interviewer | Well, we need 20 seconds of room tone | 1:25:49 |
before we can shut down. | 1:25:52 | |
So if you feel, I think you've pretty much answered | 1:25:53 | |
that there's nothing else. | 1:25:57 | |
We'll take the 20 seconds and then end. | 1:25:58 | |
- | Okay. | 1:26:01 |
- | Okay. | |
- | Yeah. Thank you. | 1:26:02 |
Johnny | So we'll sit quietly here for a minute. | 1:26:03 |
Janet | Okay. | 1:26:05 |
Johnny | Begin room tone. | 1:26:07 |
Item Info
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