Denbeaux, Mark - Interview master file
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Transcript
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Interviewer | Good afternoon. | 0:05 |
- | Good afternoon. | 0:07 |
(clears throat) | 0:08 | |
- | We are very grateful to you | |
for participating in the Witness to Guantanamo project. | 0:09 | |
We invite you to speak of your experiences and involvement | 0:13 | |
with detainees who were held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. | 0:16 | |
We are hoping to provide you | 0:20 | |
with an opportunity to tell your story in your own words. | 0:21 | |
We are creating an archive of stories. | 0:25 | |
So people in America and around the world | 0:27 | |
will have a better understanding | 0:30 | |
of what you and others have observed. | 0:31 | |
And what you have contributed | 0:34 | |
and what you have experienced. | 0:37 | |
Future generations must know what happened at Guantanamo. | 0:40 | |
And by telling your story, you're contributing to history. | 0:43 | |
We appreciate your courage and willingness to speak with us. | 0:47 | |
If at any time during the interview, | 0:50 | |
you'd like to take a break, | 0:52 | |
please tell us. | 0:53 | |
And if | 0:55 | |
we asked you a question | 0:57 | |
and you rather not answer it, that's fine too. | 0:58 | |
And if you do answer it and then, wanna to retract it, | 1:00 | |
just let us know and we can remove it. | 1:03 | |
We would like to begin with some general background | 1:07 | |
as to who you are, including your name, | 1:09 | |
your hometown, your birthday and age, | 1:12 | |
nationality. | 1:15 | |
Maybe we could start with that, Mark, | 1:16 | |
and a couple other questions. | 1:18 | |
- | Sure. | 1:19 |
I'm Mark Denbeaux, born July 30th, | 1:20 | |
1943 in Gainesville, Florida. | 1:21 | |
I grew up in new England, outside Boston.(clears throat) | 1:24 | |
I live in New York and New Jersey. | 1:27 | |
I teach at Seton Hall Law School. | 1:30 | |
Interviewer | And you're married? | 1:33 |
- | Yeah, I'm married. | 1:35 |
My wife, Marcia, We have three children. | 1:36 | |
Interviewer | And your education? | 1:38 |
- | I went to College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio. | 1:40 |
I went to NYU law school. | 1:43 | |
Interviewer | And currently in? | 1:46 |
- | I'm a professor at Seton Hall Law School. | 1:48 |
Interviewer | Okay. | 1:50 |
I like to begin | 1:51 | |
(clears throat) | ||
by talking about how you became involved | 1:52 | |
in Guantanamo issues. | 1:55 | |
Maybe we could start with that and see where that goes. | 1:58 | |
- | Yeah, I became involved through my son, | 2:00 |
Joshua. | 2:04 | |
Joshua asked me | 2:05 | |
sometime after Rasul. | 2:07 | |
What I thought about Guantanamo. | 2:10 | |
This was in 2004 and I said, | 2:11 | |
"I hadn't thought much about it." | 2:13 | |
And he said, "Do you think they have the right guys there?" | 2:15 | |
I said, "Well, probably." | 2:18 | |
And he said, | 2:20 | |
(tongue clicks) | 2:22 | |
"You think so?" | ||
And so, "I haven't really thought about it." | 2:23 | |
And then he said, "What would grandpa think?" | 2:24 | |
My father was a chaplain with Patton in World War II, | 2:27 | |
from basically | 2:32 | |
D-Day on | 2:34 | |
'til | 2:36 | |
I guess the summer | 2:38 | |
of '45. | 2:41 | |
And he said, "Well, what would grandpa have said | 2:43 | |
about the Third Army's ability | 2:45 | |
to figure out who were the good German civilians | 2:47 | |
from the bad German civilians?" | 2:50 | |
I said, "My father would have thought | 2:52 | |
they didn't have a clue in figuring that out." | 2:53 | |
(clears throat) | 2:56 | |
I said, "All they wanted to is | 2:57 | |
find German soldiers and fight them." | 2:59 | |
And I said, "But of course, Josh, | 3:03 | |
my father wouldn't have cared either." | 3:05 | |
He said, "Why?" | 3:08 | |
I said, "Because they didn't think there were | 3:09 | |
any good German civilians. | 3:10 | |
So it didn't matter to him at all." | 3:11 | |
My son who loved my father | 3:13 | |
is still angry with me about this story. | 3:15 | |
And doesn't want me to tell it | 3:17 | |
because he thinks that demeans my father. | 3:19 | |
In fact, I've always appreciated | 3:21 | |
my father's position, have chosen to share it. | 3:24 | |
And as my life has gone on, | 3:27 | |
I think my father also would have enthusiastically | 3:30 | |
supported criticizing Americans as to how they handled it. | 3:32 | |
Just as he thought German | 3:36 | |
should have been criticizing Germans. | 3:37 | |
Interviewer | And why was Josh even | 3:40 |
asking you that question? | 3:41 | |
(clears throat) | 3:42 | |
- | Well, I guess we'd done a lot of work | 3:44 |
in various times in my life in the civil rights movement. | 3:46 | |
He'd been quite involved in that, | 3:49 | |
he's following up on that. | 3:51 | |
It was mostly over from his purpose, I mean, he's 40. | 3:53 | |
And I think he was probably getting interested | 3:57 | |
in doing something about Guantanamo. | 4:00 | |
As a result of that conversation, | 4:04 | |
when I got done saying that | 4:07 | |
my father thought there were no good Germans, | 4:09 | |
he said, "Well, isn't that | 4:13 | |
the whole point about Guantanamo?" | 4:14 | |
And I thought, okay. | 4:17 | |
And between us, we decided | 4:19 | |
to become involved and represent people. | 4:20 | |
So it started in the summer after Rasul. | 4:23 | |
Interviewer | And how did you go about | 4:26 |
(clears throat) | 4:27 | |
finding someone to represent? | ||
- | Wasn't hard. | 4:29 |
I think we called CCR, | 4:30 | |
ended up speaking to Barbara Olshansky. | 4:33 | |
Actually, I first called John Gibbons, judge Gibbons, | 4:35 | |
who had argued the case. | 4:38 | |
And he said, I should call Barbara Olshansky. | 4:39 | |
I did. | 4:41 | |
There were some back and forth | 4:43 | |
where I'm gonna call the usual CCR, confusion and chaos. | 4:46 | |
And as a result of that, | 4:50 | |
I eventually was invited to be trained. | 4:52 | |
They had a training program in Washington | 4:55 | |
I think it was at the Covington & Burling. | 4:57 | |
(inhales, clears throat) | 5:00 | |
And we went down there. | ||
A man named, Brent Mickum, | 5:03 | |
said he knew two people who, detainees, who wanted lawyers. | 5:05 | |
They're both Tunisian. | 5:10 | |
And it was reported they were father and son. | 5:12 | |
And people thought that would be kind of cute, | 5:15 | |
if Josh and I would represent a father and son team there. | 5:18 | |
So we were given their names. | 5:21 | |
And of course, as with all the information, | 5:23 | |
they weren't fathers or sons, | 5:25 | |
they weren't related, | 5:27 | |
they didn't know each other, | 5:28 | |
but they were from Tunis. | 5:29 | |
Although one had gone to Italy | 5:31 | |
and one had gone to Germany, years apart. | 5:32 | |
So, that's how we were sort of assigned those cases. | 5:35 | |
Interviewer | So you handled them together? | 5:40 |
- | Yes. | 5:42 |
Interviewer | And could you take us from there? | 5:43 |
What happened next? | 5:44 | |
- | Yeah. Josh (clears throat) and I | 5:47 |
went to that training session. | 5:49 | |
We were given the names of, | 5:50 | |
it was Rafiq Alhami and then, Mohammed Abdul Rahman. | 5:52 | |
We went and filed habeas corpus petition, | 5:58 | |
which itself was kind of bizarre | 6:01 | |
'cause we were filing habeas corpus petitions | 6:02 | |
on behalf of people who not only hadn't | 6:05 | |
asked us to be their lawyers, | 6:07 | |
didn't know that we were their lawyers. | 6:09 | |
didn't ask us to file habeas, | 6:11 | |
and we're just taking the fact that there was | 6:12 | |
a scrap of paper somebody wrote down | 6:14 | |
with a name and a number on it. | 6:16 | |
And we said, "We're their lawyers and filed it." | 6:18 | |
But after you file it, | 6:20 | |
then you have to get security clearance. | 6:21 | |
So we had to go through that. | 6:24 | |
We filed it in February, I think, '05, | 6:25 | |
maybe early March. (clears throat) | 6:30 | |
And we got security clearance the end of July. | 6:32 | |
And we went down there in August of '05. | 6:35 | |
Interviewer | Could you describe | 6:39 |
what security plans entailed? | 6:40 | |
(thuds) | ||
- | Well, it was actually a lot easier | 6:43 |
for | 6:45 | |
me than it was for | 6:46 | |
Josh | 6:48 | |
because it turns out he had to explain every job | 6:49 | |
you'd ever held for the last 10 years, | 6:50 | |
every place you'd ever lived. | 6:52 | |
And so, if you are a 30-year-old man who has | 6:54 | |
had a bunch of different educational schools, | 6:58 | |
addresses, different jobs, | 7:00 | |
then you have to get names and addresses | 7:02 | |
to all the other things. | 7:05 | |
I did the same job for 35 years. | 7:06 | |
Lived in the same house for 35 years. | 7:09 | |
But you have to give all that. | 7:11 | |
Give names, birth dates, family, relatives, | 7:12 | |
and fill out a form. | 7:17 | |
And then the FBI interviews people, yourself and others. | 7:18 | |
Interviewer | There was no resistance? | 7:22 |
There was no problems in getting the clearance? | 7:23 | |
- | No, it was just dilatory. | 7:25 |
There was no resistance. | 7:30 | |
Other people did, | 7:31 | |
but I didn't have any. | 7:34 | |
Interviewer | Do you know what other people did? | 7:36 |
- | Oh, I think they asked if you'd ever smoked. | 7:37 |
If you had taken drugs. | 7:39 | |
If people had smoked pot. | 7:41 | |
That was a huge problem. | 7:43 | |
If you weren't born in the United States. | 7:45 | |
That was another problem. | 7:47 | |
There were people who were denied | 7:49 | |
security clearance just for that reason. | 7:50 | |
Interviewer | Hmm. | 7:53 |
Then, when you flew down to Guantanamo in | 7:55 | |
August of '05, you said, | 7:58 | |
- | Mm-hmm. | |
Interviewer | and your clients | 8:00 |
didn't know you were coming, right? | 8:01 | |
- | Right. | 8:02 |
Interviewer | So could you describe what happened? | 8:03 |
- | Yeah. (laughs) | 8:05 |
We came down in August of '05. | 8:06 | |
Unbeknownst to us, it was the beginning | 8:07 | |
of the hunger strike, | 8:09 | |
but we'd gone to a Middle Eastern market | 8:11 | |
in Patterson, New Jersey, | 8:13 | |
and produced huge quantities of food, which we hauled in. | 8:15 | |
(clears throat) | 8:19 | |
You weren't allowed to leave the food to them. | 8:21 | |
You can only eat it with them. | 8:22 | |
So we put this spread out on the table | 8:23 | |
and they're looking at us. | 8:26 | |
And we didn't know there was a hunger strike | 8:29 | |
or that they were hunger striking. | 8:30 | |
They took them. | 8:33 | |
It took many visits before they realized | 8:35 | |
we really were lawyers. | 8:37 | |
And I don't think they were | 8:39 | |
very impressed with lawyers, anyway. | 8:40 | |
I mean, these were Middle Eastern people whose view | 8:42 | |
of lawyering is quite different from the | 8:44 | |
Western world and American adversary system. | 8:48 | |
But I always remember that that was an unfortunate thing | 8:53 | |
because no one knew the hunger strike | 8:57 | |
was going on at the time. | 8:58 | |
Interviewer | Well, could you describe | 9:00 |
exactly what happened? | 9:01 | |
What made you think of bringing food | 9:03 | |
and what happened when you first met them? | 9:04 | |
- | Well, the food was simply... | 9:07 |
We had all heard that they were hungry | 9:10 | |
and their food is boring. | 9:12 | |
And so, we also wanted to sit there | 9:14 | |
and try to have a more informal conversation. | 9:16 | |
So, we'd get dates and nuts and various candy and cookies. | 9:19 | |
People would always bring food too. | 9:24 | |
You'd go to McDonald's on the way in. | 9:26 | |
And you would get an egg McMuffin with no meat | 9:28 | |
in the morning. | 9:32 | |
Other times, they liked sweets, various things. | 9:33 | |
That was the rumor. | 9:37 | |
But when I came in that time, | 9:38 | |
nobody ate anything (chuckles) the whole time. | 9:40 | |
And- | 9:42 | |
Interviewer | Did you know? | 9:44 |
Did they tell you they want a hunger strike or- | 9:44 | |
- | No. | 9:46 |
I didn't learn that for two years. | 9:47 | |
Interviewer | But what did you think | 9:48 |
was going on when you were | 9:49 | |
bringing all the food | 9:51 | |
- | Oh, I was- | |
and they were just staring at it? | 9:52 | |
- | Oh, it was pretty clear to me, | 9:54 |
they didn't like me. | 9:55 | |
Interviewer | Did they not believe you were a lawyer? | 9:57 |
- | Oh, let's put it this way, | 9:59 |
I think they had serious doubts about it. | 10:01 | |
I don't think there was ever a time where | 10:04 | |
they were communicating in a way that was | 10:06 | |
informative or open. | 10:08 | |
I don't think they liked this. | 10:10 | |
I don't think they trusted us. | 10:12 | |
I don't think they believed we could help them. | 10:13 | |
I don't think they saw any reason to trust us | 10:16 | |
or to get their hopes up or anything else. | 10:18 | |
It was a pretty much a | 10:20 | |
dead conversation. | 10:23 | |
Interviewer | Did you have a translator with you? | 10:25 |
- | Oh, yes. | 10:27 |
Interviewer | And the translator | 10:28 |
wasn't able to convey that you were legitimate lawyers? | 10:29 | |
- | Well, the interrogators have translators too. | 10:34 |
Interviewer | So what did they think you were? | 10:38 |
- | Well, it's kind of funny. | 10:42 |
They all thought... (clears throat, gulps) | 10:43 | |
I never could tell exactly. | 10:45 | |
And I still, to this day, don't really know | 10:47 | |
and I'm not sure they are introspective enough | 10:49 | |
or interested enough to try to reconstruct | 10:52 | |
what they thought, five years ago when we were there. | 10:55 | |
But | 10:58 | |
life is so complicated. | 11:02 | |
We were very lucky | 11:03 | |
in the | 11:05 | |
selection of | 11:07 | |
an interpreter | 11:09 | |
because our interpreter was probably | 11:11 | |
the worst possible interpreter you could have. | 11:12 | |
He was terrible. | 11:15 | |
He was (chuckles) in fact, | 11:18 | |
a Unitarian minister who had | 11:19 | |
security clearance in the Air Force | 11:20 | |
and had been taught Arabic (clears throat) in the army. | 11:23 | |
And so, he came down there trying to brush up on Arabic. | 11:27 | |
He came down with dictionaries. | 11:31 | |
He didn't know any of the legal terms. | 11:33 | |
He had all sorts of translation problems (inhales) | 11:35 | |
and pretty soon, somebody had come up | 11:38 | |
and he would be looking at his Araic-English dictionary | 11:39 | |
with one of the detainees, whichever is, | 11:42 | |
either Rafiq or Mohammed, trying to figure it out. | 11:44 | |
They'd be writing it down and going through the whole thing. | 11:47 | |
And it slowed things up. (clears throat) | 11:50 | |
(gulps) | 11:54 | |
At the end of that time, | 11:54 | |
I think it was Mohammed said, | 11:56 | |
next time bring a real translator. | 12:00 | |
Our interpreter agreed completely that he was over his head. | 12:05 | |
But, Rafiq refused to see us for our second visit that trip. | 12:08 | |
We thought there had been some bullying of him | 12:14 | |
by Intelligence people and other things | 12:16 | |
because nobody knew what punishments were being afflicted | 12:19 | |
for detainees who spoke to lawyers. | 12:22 | |
And certainly the detainees expected some. | 12:24 | |
So there was a very ugly fight with Josh | 12:27 | |
and | 12:30 | |
somebody that Josh refers to as | 12:31 | |
Lieutenant Commander feces cocktail. | 12:33 | |
'Cause this was the man who would keep telling us, | 12:36 | |
"When you go in there, they're gonna throw | 12:38 | |
a feces cocktails on you." | 12:39 | |
Josh and he didn't get along real well. | 12:45 | |
Finally, | 12:48 | |
Rafiq wouldn't come out, | 12:51 | |
but Josh really just a shitstorm of his own, | 12:52 | |
and he got to go in to talk to him without a translator. | 12:57 | |
It was Rafiq. | 12:59 | |
And Rafiq understood enough English so they could talk. | 13:01 | |
And they were in there for 45 minutes. | 13:04 | |
I'm outside with feces cocktail | 13:05 | |
and our interpreter and other staff. | 13:07 | |
And I said to the guy, | 13:09 | |
"We think you've interfered with him." | 13:14 | |
He said, "Absolutely not. I promise you we've done nothing." | 13:15 | |
And I said, "Well, what about, | 13:18 | |
the Military Intelligence, the Intelligence people?" | 13:20 | |
"This is not my lane. | 13:24 | |
I have nothing to do with that. Not my lane." | 13:25 | |
Which of course reinforced our belief | 13:28 | |
that there had been some | 13:29 | |
interference. | 13:31 | |
I was still not sure whether it was true or not. | 13:33 | |
But the one thing that happened was | 13:36 | |
Josh is saying to Rafiq. | 13:37 | |
He said, "Look, if you were involved | 13:40 | |
in the 9/11, | 13:43 | |
you know, you're screwed. | 13:47 | |
There's nothing I can do for you." | 13:48 | |
And he said, "What's 9/11?" | 13:49 | |
and Josh says, "9/11, the World Trade Center." | 13:52 | |
And he said, "What's World Trade Center?" (inhales) | 13:56 | |
And then Josh says, "Oh, he says the tall towers!" | 13:59 | |
"Yes, yes," he said. | 14:02 | |
"I had nothing to do with that." | 14:03 | |
He said, "I have nothing to do with that." | 14:04 | |
Josh said, "Well then maybe, you shot at an American soldier | 14:07 | |
in which case, you'll do five years | 14:09 | |
and you've done part of it already. | 14:11 | |
And we can help you." | 14:12 | |
"I didn't shoot any American soldiers either." | 14:14 | |
And then Josh says, "Okay." | 14:16 | |
And he said, "But I don't think you can help me. | 14:18 | |
So thank you for coming. But don't bother coming back." | 14:21 | |
And Josh said, "Well, do you think we're interrogators?" | 14:25 | |
As he says, "No. No, interrogator or whatever. | 14:28 | |
Bring an interpreter as terrible as your interpreter." | 14:30 | |
So it turns out that one of the clever, clever inspired acts | 14:35 | |
on our part was to bring in an interpreter who is so | 14:39 | |
grotesquely incompetent that the detainees knew | 14:42 | |
he couldn't possibly be part of an undercover operation. | 14:45 | |
So we're pretty clever. | 14:50 | |
Interviewer | But why did he tell you not to come back | 14:52 |
If he knew that you weren't interrogators? | 14:53 | |
- | Because he said, "You can't help me." | 14:56 |
Interviewer | Because? | 14:57 |
- | Well, we had a long Civics lesson, | 14:59 |
it was like a 8th Grade Civics. | 15:01 | |
I guess they don't teach Civics anymore, | 15:03 | |
but we'd come in and say, "Okay, we're here to help you." | 15:06 | |
"And why?" | 15:08 | |
I said, "Well, we're going to court." | 15:09 | |
He says, "The court have an army? | 15:10 | |
They have an air force? | 15:13 | |
What does the court gonna get me? | 15:14 | |
Are they gonna be George Bush? | 15:15 | |
Are they gonna be the US army? | 15:17 | |
What can they do? | 15:18 | |
And if you can't, they can't. | 15:19 | |
What can you do?" | 15:20 | |
And he said, "Look, thank you very much for coming. | 15:21 | |
I appreciate the effort." | 15:24 | |
"Well, let me explain to you. | 15:26 | |
There's three branches of government. | 15:27 | |
There's the judicial branch. | 15:30 | |
There's the executive (chuckles) branch. | 15:30 | |
The legis are drawing circles and there's this." | 15:32 | |
He says, "So if the court's so good, | 15:34 | |
and they ruled for me | 15:36 | |
a year ago, | 15:39 | |
why am I still here?" | 15:41 | |
"Well, that's the problem." | 15:42 | |
So we keep trying to explain to him why. | 15:43 | |
And finally he said, "Look, | 15:45 | |
after one lawyer has gotten stung, | 15:47 | |
accomplished one thing for a single detainee, just one, | 15:49 | |
then I will let you represent me. | 15:54 | |
Can you name one?" | 15:56 | |
I said, "No." | 15:58 | |
He said, "If I weren't a Muslim, will I be here?" | 16:00 | |
I said, "No." | 16:04 | |
He said, "Joshua. That's a Jewish name, isn't it? | 16:06 | |
Are you Jewish?" | 16:08 | |
I found that an awkward question | 16:09 | |
because you didn't want to say, "Hell no! I'm not Jewish." | 16:12 | |
On the other hand... | 16:14 | |
So I said, "No, I'm not Jewish. | 16:15 | |
I'm the son of a Presbyterian minister." | 16:17 | |
"But Josh was an Old Testament name." | 16:19 | |
I said, "Well, that's part of our..." | 16:21 | |
"Oh." He said, "Okay." | 16:23 | |
I said, "Would you have let me | 16:25 | |
represent you if I were Jewish?" | 16:26 | |
He said, (chuckles) "If you're a lawyer, | 16:28 | |
you could help anybody. | 16:29 | |
I don't care what religion you are." | 16:30 | |
But he said, "I don't care who you are. | 16:32 | |
You can't help anybody." | 16:33 | |
And the reason that was tricky was, | 16:37 | |
you could go down | 16:40 | |
and say you're representing somebody without being retained, | 16:42 | |
but you had to get a signed retainer | 16:47 | |
after the second visit or you couldn't go back. | 16:51 | |
So he refused to sign the first time. | 16:55 | |
So it got complicated because lawyers weren't sure | 16:58 | |
they could continue to represent somebody | 17:03 | |
as long as they didn't go back. | 17:05 | |
As long as they never went back | 17:08 | |
and refused to be signed, then they're off the case. | 17:09 | |
So there were lawyers who never went a second time | 17:11 | |
because they were sure | 17:13 | |
they wouldn't get a resigned retainer. | 17:15 | |
So rather than do that, they continued litigating for them. | 17:17 | |
Mohammed did sign him one. | 17:24 | |
So we got one the first time, | 17:25 | |
no, he wouldn't sign it. | 17:27 | |
He agreed to mail it to us | 17:28 | |
if we got it to him in Arabic. | 17:32 | |
He wouldn't say anything in English. | 17:33 | |
We foolishly had not brought down the form in Arabic. | 17:35 | |
And he said it in. So we did represent him. | 17:41 | |
That was sort of the end of that first trip. | 17:47 | |
It was quite bizarre, but that was in August | 17:50 | |
27th, | 17:53 | |
2005. | 17:54 | |
And we were due to leave. | 17:56 | |
And there was a hurricane. | 18:00 | |
I think we were leaving on a Friday or Thursday. | 18:02 | |
The day before a hurricane came | 18:06 | |
between Cuba and hitting into Florida. | 18:08 | |
And we were eager to have to get through a day early, | 18:11 | |
so we could come out and went through. | 18:13 | |
And apparently, hit Fort Lauderdale, did some damage. | 18:15 | |
And we came in the next day | 18:17 | |
and there was a lot of damage there. | 18:18 | |
Then we went and got in our plane | 18:21 | |
and flew up to New Jersey, went to our homes. | 18:22 | |
And two days later, we watched that hurricane | 18:25 | |
hit new Orleans and it was hurricane Katrina. (chuckles) | 18:28 | |
So we were following hurricane Katrina in | 18:34 | |
and then just took off up North. | 18:36 | |
And I remember so well, it was- | 18:38 | |
Interviewer | Couple of questions. | 18:42 |
When you interviewed, when you met your clients, | 18:43 | |
were you and your son together | 18:46 | |
for both clients | 18:48 | |
- | Yes. | |
Interviewer | and that was permissible? | 18:50 |
The government led two lawyers | 18:51 | |
make that thing. | 18:52 | |
- | Yes. | |
Interviewer | And what observations did you have | 18:53 |
with Guantanamo when you arrived that first time? | 18:54 | |
- | That's interesting. | 19:02 |
I think after the first time I came back | 19:03 | |
and told very dramatic stories about it. | 19:05 | |
But I am not convinced that | 19:07 | |
it was anything more than but all. | 19:09 | |
(sighs) | 19:14 | |
I think you're looking at through a lens | 19:15 | |
of some sort of exaggerated quality. | 19:17 | |
Mostly you landed there, | 19:19 | |
they met you at the airport, | 19:20 | |
then, they took you to the barracks | 19:22 | |
which were perfectly Spartan-adequate college student | 19:24 | |
freshmen college student rooms. | 19:29 | |
What I most remember when I was there, | 19:33 | |
and I've been there 15 times, | 19:35 | |
and what I still remember is | 19:37 | |
the absolute feeling of nothingness | 19:39 | |
as there was nothing to do. | 19:42 | |
You'd sit in the barracks, | 19:44 | |
there's a TV. | 19:46 | |
You couldn't use cell phones. | 19:48 | |
In those days, you couldn't even get online. | 19:50 | |
You could use calling cards to call home, | 19:54 | |
but there weren't that many lines and it was tricky. | 19:57 | |
So we would end up sort of sitting around | 20:00 | |
and there was something odd about sitting someplace. | 20:04 | |
You'd bring a book, | 20:07 | |
but if you have absolutely nothing to do, | 20:08 | |
reading didn't seem like a choice. | 20:09 | |
It was all you had. | 20:12 | |
And then you'd get up in the morning | 20:14 | |
and you had to catch the | 20:15 | |
7:43 bus | 20:18 | |
to get to the eight o'clock ferry | 20:19 | |
to get picked up on the other side. | 20:21 | |
And then your armed escort would show up again. | 20:23 | |
Then you'd be escorted wherever you went. | 20:26 | |
And most of those people were pretty decent, | 20:28 | |
but there was... | 20:31 | |
It was sort of just nothing. | 20:33 | |
You are being marched around or walked around. | 20:34 | |
You can go to the PX or whatever it was the next. | 20:37 | |
You have lunch at a subway. | 20:41 | |
And then you'd go into the camp. | 20:44 | |
I remember going to the camp, you had a badge. | 20:47 | |
And people would get on the bus with their automatic weapons | 20:50 | |
and go through and look at your tag on your chest | 20:55 | |
with your picture and try to be intimidating and get off. | 20:57 | |
I also remembered that when you went in to the camp, | 21:01 | |
you would drive up the road | 21:04 | |
and there was this auto checkpoint | 21:07 | |
where everybody would have to stop | 21:09 | |
and you'd stop there. | 21:11 | |
And that's when they'd get in and look. | 21:12 | |
They'd wave you on. | 21:13 | |
It was a big hump in the road, the speed bumps. | 21:14 | |
And there were gates across and you had to go through. | 21:17 | |
But when you came out, going back, | 21:21 | |
you'd go by the same checkpoint. | 21:24 | |
Nobody stopped. There were no speed bumps. | 21:26 | |
You go zipping right on by. | 21:28 | |
And I remember saying, "I don't get it." | 21:30 | |
You think people are trying to break into Guantanamo? | 21:31 | |
I would think you'd be very careful | 21:34 | |
to make sure people didn't leave Guantanamo. | 21:36 | |
And nobody cares whether you're doing leaving. | 21:38 | |
They only care who's getting in. | 21:40 | |
And they were a little. | 21:43 | |
They weren't allowed to talk saying so much. | 21:45 | |
Interviewer | Were you able to see | 21:47 |
all these prison cells or what are- | 21:48 | |
- | No. | 21:51 |
I don't know if any lawyer actually saw inside Camp Delta. | 21:53 | |
(gulps) | 21:57 | |
There were camps one, two, three and four. | 21:59 | |
And two, three were really one unit. | 22:01 | |
And you could see on maps, | 22:03 | |
but they would bring people over in vans | 22:04 | |
to what was called Camp Echo. (clears throat) | 22:09 | |
And that was where we would interview them. | 22:11 | |
I've always suspected that the choice of Camp Echo | 22:16 | |
might've had an | 22:20 | |
under occurred | 22:22 | |
amusement if they were in fact... | 22:24 | |
There were cameras in all the rooms watching us. | 22:27 | |
They assured us nobody was listening, | 22:30 | |
but they could see what was happening | 22:33 | |
in the camps at all times. | 22:35 | |
So it occurred to most of us | 22:36 | |
that maybe they were also listening | 22:39 | |
that you couldn't do anything about it. | 22:40 | |
And we thought Echo might be a clue that there was... | 22:42 | |
(chuckles) | 22:44 | |
So, (clears throat) | 22:45 | |
I've been in Camp Five and in Camp Six, | 22:49 | |
because for a while, | 22:52 | |
they didn't want to take the detainees out of those camps. | 22:53 | |
And they were right across the way from Echo. | 22:57 | |
And you just go over there and go into their rooms, | 22:58 | |
the interrogation rooms or interview rooms down there. | 23:02 | |
Interviewer | Do you think it was filmed | 23:07 |
and heard in Five and Six as well? | 23:09 | |
Were you told? | 23:13 | |
- | I'm sure it was... | 23:14 |
They want me to say it was filmed. | 23:15 | |
Interviewer | In Five and Six? | 23:16 |
- | Yeah. | 23:17 |
Interviewer | And did you ever- | 23:19 |
- | Actually, I don't remember. | 23:20 |
They showed me... | 23:21 | |
I assumed it was | 23:23 | |
because the first time you went down there, | 23:24 | |
they'd take you in this little booth, | 23:26 | |
say, here's what you're gonna see. | 23:27 | |
Here's what we're looking at. | 23:29 | |
Looking, you can see a client seated there | 23:30 | |
waiting for you, et cetera, et cetera. | 23:32 | |
Interviewer | And did you ever test to see | 23:35 |
if in fact they were listening? | 23:37 | |
- | How would I have done that? | 23:38 |
Interviewer | I heard some lawyers would | 23:40 |
call them over | 23:43 | |
and not use the speaker | 23:45 | |
like you had access to. | 23:47 | |
And somehow, they would listen | 23:49 | |
on the other side of the wall. | 23:50 | |
If you needed a help, | 23:52 | |
if you wanted a bottle of water, | 23:54 | |
they would call out. | 23:56 | |
- | There's a button there to hit. | 23:57 |
Interviewer | Right, and they wouldn't hit the button | 23:58 |
and they still would be heard. | 23:59 | |
- | I was, seems inconceivable to me. | 24:03 |
First of all, | 24:05 | |
I actually believed that it was such a half-assed operation. | 24:07 | |
I don't believe anyone was paying attention to anything. | 24:09 | |
I am totally convinced it was all a drill. | 24:12 | |
That they needed to pretend these people were dangerous | 24:15 | |
and nobody actually believed they were, | 24:18 | |
but they had to act that way | 24:20 | |
because it was hard to motivate a lot of | 24:21 | |
18, 19-year-old kids to believe. | 24:23 | |
You're watching a lot of people who have been | 24:25 | |
randomly collected, chained and dealt with. | 24:27 | |
I think that may have been true early on, | 24:33 | |
but at some point, it dawned on them | 24:35 | |
that this was a big mistake | 24:37 | |
and they never knew what to do about it. | 24:40 | |
Interviewer | So going back to your | 24:42 |
initial conversation with your son | 24:43 | |
where he asked you, | 24:44 | |
(deep inhales) | ||
what have you thought about people in Guantanamo, | 24:46 | |
did your opinion changed after you met your clients? | 24:48 | |
- | Well, it's interesting. | 24:52 |
After we met our clients, (clicks tongue) | 24:53 | |
Rafiq | 24:56 | |
was in a tan uniform | 24:58 | |
which meant he was intermediate. | 25:00 | |
Orange was discipline problem, | 25:03 | |
white was good. | 25:05 | |
Rafiq was in a tan uniform. | 25:07 | |
We thought Rafiq was very, very smart | 25:10 | |
and very... | 25:13 | |
And you could imagine him being very dangerous, | 25:16 | |
no basis on anything except... | 25:20 | |
We all see people and it's easy to imagine | 25:23 | |
somebody you're looking at | 25:25 | |
being scarier or smarter than you or whatever it is. | 25:26 | |
In 7th Grade, | 25:31 | |
you're trying to figure out who's smarter than you | 25:32 | |
and who isn't being defensive and aggressive. | 25:34 | |
And so, we're all down there trying to figure that out. | 25:37 | |
And Mohammed, we decided he was really stupid | 25:39 | |
and was | 25:42 | |
not very (clears throat) | 25:45 | |
dangerous at all. | 25:48 | |
And I think, | 25:51 | |
Mohammed is one who I used to refer to as veal. | 25:54 | |
When I went to see Mohammed, | 26:00 | |
he has very long face with a very high forehead, | 26:01 | |
very big brown eyes and he was a big guy. | 26:04 | |
And there he was, chained to the floor, unable to move. | 26:07 | |
And I decided that as a gesture to Mohammed, | 26:10 | |
I don't care about veal or pet rights or anything else, | 26:13 | |
but it seemed to me that, | 26:16 | |
my image of him was he was veal, | 26:18 | |
chained to the floor, forced-fed, big brown eyes, long face. | 26:20 | |
So I stopped eating veal. | 26:24 | |
And my wife finds this image | 26:26 | |
to be grotesque and not amusing. | 26:27 | |
But, I don't know if I thought it was amusing, | 26:29 | |
but nonetheless... | 26:31 | |
So we thought of him as a big cow-like guy, not very bright. | 26:34 | |
Time's changed. | 26:38 | |
I think Mohammed's quite bright. | 26:42 | |
And I think Rafiq is also, | 26:46 | |
and I don't think Rafiq is dangerous at all. | 26:48 | |
And maybe Mohammed might be, | 26:50 | |
although I don't think our government thinks so. | 26:51 | |
So it was all those attempts to try to read tea leaves | 26:54 | |
to figure out who was there and who wasn't. | 26:57 | |
Interviewer | But did you get | 26:59 |
a different impression | 27:00 | |
(deep inhales) | ||
in terms of your sense of whether these men were dangerous | 27:01 | |
to the US after that first visit? | 27:05 | |
- | Well, it's an interesting... | 27:09 |
You could sit in the halls | 27:11 | |
of the barracks and talk to people. | 27:14 | |
And it was quite interesting how you'd meet people | 27:16 | |
and they'd say, "Well, | 27:19 | |
I know there's a lot of bad guys here, | 27:22 | |
but I don't, they haven't seen us, my guys really shaky." | 27:23 | |
And I'd say, "You know, that's true for us too." | 27:27 | |
And you'd sort of sit around the table | 27:30 | |
and everybody would be at dinner or something. | 27:32 | |
I'm saying, isn't that odd, there's four of us here. | 27:35 | |
And we all have five clients, | 27:37 | |
none of whom, | 27:39 | |
we think of them, | 27:42 | |
and we're saying, "Well, where are the bad guys?" | 27:43 | |
(clears throat) | 27:46 | |
So, (chuckles) | 27:47 | |
I went back the next time in November, by myself. | 27:49 | |
Josh's practice was becoming | 27:53 | |
a problem. | 27:55 | |
And this time, I came back near the end of Ramadan. | 27:59 | |
I thought it was after Ramadan, | 28:03 | |
but because I thought it was after Ramadan, | 28:06 | |
I showed up once again with a huge basket of food. | 28:08 | |
Now, they couldn't leave the food. | 28:13 | |
You had to eat it with you. | 28:15 | |
They couldn't leave it for them to eat at night | 28:17 | |
because that would be a comfort item. | 28:19 | |
So I'm in there putting food on the table again. | 28:21 | |
There's this infidel offering them food | 28:24 | |
during Ramadan and saying, eat, eat, eat. | 28:26 | |
It didn't help me with Rafiq in the slightest or Mohammed. | 28:30 | |
By that time, they had figured out | 28:35 | |
that I was more clown than I was anything else. | 28:36 | |
(clears throat, gulps) | 28:40 | |
So we had put through various things of that nature. | 28:41 | |
At that point, | 28:47 | |
I had | 28:48 | |
put together a variety of materials. | 28:50 | |
I had gotten Rafiq to agree that he wouldn't sign anything | 28:53 | |
but I could be his lawyer. (inhales) | 28:57 | |
And I wanted him. | 28:59 | |
I went through a whole lot of questions. | 29:00 | |
I said, "I need to ask these questions. | 29:02 | |
I need you to say yes to all of them. | 29:04 | |
And I need you at the end to say, | 29:06 | |
'Yes, I want you to be my lawyer. | 29:08 | |
Please help me as best you possibly can | 29:09 | |
by refused to sign anything.'" | 29:11 | |
So I had these notes. | 29:13 | |
And I was prepared to go to court | 29:16 | |
and say that if somebody asks me | 29:18 | |
to be the formality of signing something, couldn't count. | 29:20 | |
And Rafiq understood that. | 29:23 | |
So he never signed it. Nobody ever checked. | 29:24 | |
Although toward the end, | 29:27 | |
the government was asking me questions | 29:28 | |
about whether I was really authorized. | 29:30 | |
Could I please send it. | 29:32 | |
And I suggested they should look at their files. (chuckles) | 29:34 | |
But at that time, (deep inhales) | 29:44 | |
that was an ugly (exhales) week for me | 29:48 | |
because that was November 5th. | 29:51 | |
And while I was down there, | 29:53 | |
my email was working a little bit. | 29:55 | |
I got up early one morning, | 29:56 | |
turned on, if it was gonna go across | 29:58 | |
and an email saying that, | 30:00 | |
from the son of my college roommate and very close friend, | 30:02 | |
he dropped dead the night before in Montreal. | 30:05 | |
And I'm looking at this thing. | 30:08 | |
I really couldn't absorb it. | 30:10 | |
He was a doctor. I'd tried to get him to come down. | 30:12 | |
And we'd been talking about this and he was dead. | 30:14 | |
It didn't seem possible. | 30:17 | |
And I couldn't get to my wife. | 30:20 | |
The phone systems weren't working. And I was trying. | 30:22 | |
And of course, you can only call from a couple places. | 30:25 | |
So eventually, my son was able to get through to me. (gulps) | 30:28 | |
I finished that day up because I couldn't leave. | 30:34 | |
And when I left, I flew back to Newark. | 30:36 | |
And this was sort of... | 30:40 | |
Because I was asked to give the eulogy. | 30:42 | |
So I landed in Newark. | 30:43 | |
Stayed in a hotel. | 30:45 | |
Fly up to Newfoundland which is where he is. | 30:47 | |
So I go from Cuba to Newfoundland. | 30:49 | |
(sighs) | 30:53 | |
Did the eulogy and did various things. | 30:54 | |
Some of them was very close to his wife. | 30:56 | |
His wife and my wife were college roommates as he and I was. | 30:57 | |
And we all met literally at the same day, | 31:00 | |
although on a different place. | 31:03 | |
So when I came back to the law school, | 31:07 | |
I've missed some more classes. | 31:10 | |
And so, my first year students | 31:12 | |
came up to me and they said, "Can we help?" | 31:13 | |
Whatever my attempt to be, | 31:20 | |
or have a relationship with law students | 31:21 | |
was when I was 29 and they were 24. | 31:23 | |
When I'm 65 and they're at 24, I hate to say this, | 31:26 | |
but I find their lives boring and uninteresting. | 31:30 | |
But I understand why it's important for them | 31:34 | |
that they think I'm interested | 31:36 | |
because nobody wants to be just | 31:39 | |
the great unwashed out there. | 31:40 | |
So I will go ahead pretending they're interesting to us. | 31:42 | |
And they need to come by and show us how | 31:46 | |
important they are. | 31:49 | |
And I don't blame them for that. | 31:51 | |
So they come up and say, "Can we help?" | 31:52 | |
And I'm sitting there looking at this | 31:54 | |
really sweet | 31:55 | |
woman | 31:57 | |
with a thick Southern accent. | 31:58 | |
And I'm saying, that's never done well | 32:00 | |
with me ever since the '60s, | 32:02 | |
I've never had good feelings about the Southern accent. | 32:03 | |
And she's saying, and she's very nice. | 32:07 | |
"Can I help?" | 32:09 | |
"No, you can't help. | 32:09 | |
Because you know, there's nothing you can do." | 32:11 | |
Every class should come up with it. | 32:13 | |
I keep saying, why won't people just leave me alone? | 32:15 | |
(chuckles) | 32:17 | |
How are you gonna help me with this? | 32:18 | |
You don't even... | 32:19 | |
Frankly, you've never even | 32:21 | |
had a baby. | 32:21 | |
I mean, what do you know about this? | 32:23 | |
And then finally she said, | 32:25 | |
and I had just gotten a disc | 32:28 | |
from the Associated Press. | 32:31 | |
No, not a disk. | 32:32 | |
A DVD, I guess it would be. | 32:35 | |
And which, somebody had sent me, the Associated Press' | 32:36 | |
FOIA information | 32:40 | |
in which they had collected all of the, (inhales) | 32:42 | |
as they said, the unclassified summaries | 32:46 | |
of the classified evidence | 32:49 | |
against every single detainee (gulps) | 32:51 | |
in Guantanamo. | 32:54 | |
(gulps) | 32:57 | |
That allowed me to say, "Well, maybe we oughta see | 32:57 | |
what the | 33:00 | |
picture | 33:01 | |
is. | 33:03 | |
If all of us think that maybe | 33:03 | |
our clients are the wrong ones. | 33:05 | |
And so we decided, I said, | 33:08 | |
"Okay. You wanna help? | 33:10 | |
Okay, here. Here's something that you can do." | 33:11 | |
And she got four or five students together | 33:13 | |
and we would talk and we put together a database | 33:16 | |
and they worked through a profile | 33:19 | |
of the detainees based on the government's evidence. | 33:20 | |
Well, we did it the way you would a motion to dismiss. | 33:24 | |
We assumed that everything that | 33:27 | |
the government said was true and reported it. | 33:29 | |
And it was that report that sort of | 33:33 | |
changed the debate on Guantanamo | 33:35 | |
because that report... | 33:37 | |
The debate before that report was sort of | 33:38 | |
a question of process (inhales) | 33:41 | |
and treatment. | 33:43 | |
Give me a hearing and don't torture them. | 33:45 | |
This jet raised the overwhelming evidence | 33:47 | |
that they didn't even have the right people there. (inhales) | 33:50 | |
And that ended up being quoted all over the place. | 33:53 | |
'Cause that's their document that established at 55, | 33:56 | |
according to the government, | 33:59 | |
55% of the people in Guantanamo | 34:00 | |
were not even accused of ever having committed | 34:02 | |
a hostile act against anybody. | 34:05 | |
So as my students referred to them | 34:07 | |
as the lawful enemy non-combatants. (clears throat) | 34:09 | |
And then it turned out that 60% of the people | 34:12 | |
in Guantanamo were associated with the Taliban. | 34:16 | |
And as one of my students said, | 34:20 | |
he said, "The Taliban runs | 34:23 | |
Afghanistan. | 34:26 | |
It's not possible not to be associated with it." | 34:27 | |
So- | 34:30 | |
- | So can we back up, Mark? | 34:32 |
- | Sure. | |
Interviewer | Who sent you this disc? | 34:33 |
- | I think it was somebody that I met in Guantanamo. | 34:36 |
It might've been Clive Stafford Smith. | 34:39 | |
Interviewer | And why would he send it to you? | 34:41 |
Were- | 34:42 | |
- | We were down there and he was talking about it | 34:43 |
and he'd seen it, heard of it or something. | 34:45 | |
Interviewer | Do you know where he got it? | 34:50 |
- | Well, somebody downloaded it from... | 34:52 |
What happened is whenever you, | 34:55 | |
anybody would win a freedom of information act | 34:56 | |
against the Defense Department, | 34:59 | |
in order to make sure nobody got | 35:01 | |
the benefit of the lawsuits, | 35:02 | |
they would immediately publish them. | 35:04 | |
So, somebody downloaded it off | 35:06 | |
the Defense Department website. | 35:07 | |
Interviewer | So do you think someone | 35:09 |
had followed in FOIA AP files? | 35:10 | |
- | Oh, AP had clearly. | 35:12 |
Interviewer | So, this AP had initiated this and- | 35:14 |
- | Yeah. | 35:16 |
Interviewer | And it came to all the lawyers | 35:17 |
and Clive for, because your a professor | 35:18 | |
or why would he send it to you? | 35:21 | |
- | I think, 'cause I was talking to him about who was there | 35:22 |
and he said, "Well, maybe the | 35:25 | |
Associated Press stuff will have it." | 35:26 | |
And I said, "Where would I get that?" | 35:28 | |
And he said, "I got a disc" and he sent it to me. | 35:30 | |
Interviewer | So, the way you're | 35:33 |
describing this as serendipity, | 35:34 | |
he had them together. | 35:37 | |
He sent it to you. | 35:37 | |
You armed up a student around who... | 35:38 | |
- | Yeah. Serendipity of your account, | 35:41 |
My best friend dropping dead. | 35:43 | |
I mean, it's a mixture here in all of this, | 35:45 | |
but yes, it's the usual bringing together of things. | 35:47 | |
It certainly had lots of factors at play | 35:51 | |
and it was quite significant. | 35:54 | |
As one of my students said, "The best part of it is, | 35:58 | |
it's by the time we were done within a few months, | 36:00 | |
everybody cites the statistics and nobody cites us." | 36:03 | |
And as my students said, "That's perfect." | 36:08 | |
He said, "There's no way ever to get rid of it. | 36:10 | |
They can't respond to it | 36:12 | |
once it's out there without attribution, | 36:13 | |
it's a given and nobody could refute it | 36:15 | |
or say we were wrong or anything else." | 36:18 | |
And it turns out to be true. | 36:20 | |
We were right. | 36:22 | |
But... | 36:23 | |
Interviewer | Two things. | 36:26 |
One is this document also detail | 36:26 | |
that people were purchased by the US government? | 36:29 | |
- | Yeah. | 36:31 |
One of the things, (inhales) | 36:32 | |
it was part of the idea of research. | 36:33 | |
It was kind of interesting. | 36:35 | |
The students are looking through their files (clicks tongue) | 36:36 | |
and one of them said, | 36:39 | |
"I haven't gotten anybody picked up by American Forces." | 36:42 | |
And somebody said, "Well, me neither." | 36:46 | |
Somebody said, "I have one." | 36:48 | |
And slowly they're looking around. | 36:50 | |
And I said, "Well, where were they picked up?" | 36:52 | |
And somebody said, | 36:53 | |
"All mine were Afghanistan or Pakistan, | 36:54 | |
law enforcement or local tribal chiefs." | 36:57 | |
And people are looking and we went through it | 37:00 | |
and we discovered that 86% of the times, | 37:02 | |
they identified where they were picked up. | 37:05 | |
It was in those mountainous areas | 37:07 | |
or in the areas where we were dropping the leaflets. | 37:10 | |
And they were being turned over for bounties. | 37:14 | |
Interviewer | Did it say that | 37:17 |
in the data that you received? | 37:17 | |
- | Yeah. | 37:19 |
We in fact got hold of a copy | 37:20 | |
of the little bounties things that were handed out. | 37:22 | |
We published it in there. | 37:29 | |
Interviewer | What did you think of | 37:32 |
what you were looking at | 37:33 | |
and what you were hearing, | 37:35 | |
did that changed your impression of | 37:36 | |
what people were Guantanamo | 37:39 | |
or were you already | 37:41 | |
at that place where you thought the people in Guantanamo | 37:42 | |
we're not necessarily guilty of anything? | 37:45 | |
- | I actually think it was such a confusing time | 37:50 |
that probably none of us had much of a conclusion. | 37:53 | |
It seemed awful and it seemed wrong | 37:58 | |
for them to be, not have a trial. | 38:00 | |
I think | 38:02 | |
one of the reasons it was such an interesting | 38:04 | |
group of people was that (clears troat) | 38:06 | |
it didn't matter what type of practitioner you were, | 38:10 | |
solo or large Wall Street firm. | 38:13 | |
When people are being denied the right | 38:16 | |
to trial, a right to a lawyer, | 38:18 | |
the right to process, | 38:21 | |
every lawyer is offended by that. | 38:22 | |
So I think most of the time, | 38:24 | |
people were after that and not specially interested | 38:26 | |
in whether they had the right people, the wrong people. | 38:29 | |
I really do think process is what drove it. | 38:32 | |
It's just it turned out that | 38:35 | |
we would have been just as upset | 38:36 | |
if it had been processed, | 38:38 | |
denied people who were bad, guilty, terrorists or whatever. | 38:40 | |
But I guess it was even worse. | 38:46 | |
Once people began to realize | 38:48 | |
that each of us thought our clients were innocent, | 38:49 | |
but assumed everybody else's work. | 38:51 | |
I think once it came out, | 38:54 | |
everybody suddenly realized the problem wasn't | 38:55 | |
the isolated thing that | 38:59 | |
each of our people is the wrong one. | 39:01 | |
It was that everybody was the wrong one. | 39:03 | |
Interviewer | When you saw the results of this study, | 39:06 |
when your students had collected it all, | 39:08 | |
did you think this was remarkable? | 39:12 | |
Were you really surprised by it or- | 39:14 | |
- | Oh, yeah. | 39:16 |
I was shocked. | 39:17 | |
It took two months to work through the data. | 39:21 | |
It wasn't like we went from 0 to 60. | 39:23 | |
But, | 39:26 | |
first thing we did was find out | 39:28 | |
what percentage of them had committed hostile acts. | 39:30 | |
And now, there was, what percentage of them were Al-Qaeda. | 39:32 | |
And another one would be, | 39:37 | |
what percentage of them ever had weapons | 39:38 | |
and what percentage of them were there | 39:40 | |
because they had Casio watches, | 39:40 | |
and all of those sorts of things. | 39:43 | |
So the pieces kept coming together. | 39:45 | |
Interviewer | And how did litigators | 39:48 |
obtained this information | 39:50 | |
so they could use it in their cases? | 39:51 | |
- | Oh, everybody used our report. | 39:54 |
Interviewer | How did they know about it? | 39:56 |
- | Oh, well, there's a Listserv. Everybody knew about it. | 39:57 |
And not only that, it was picked up by "The New York Times". | 40:00 | |
It was quoted in a lot of places. | 40:03 | |
All lawyers practice law by plagiarism, right? | 40:09 | |
If somebody has a really good point | 40:12 | |
or a really good authority | 40:15 | |
or really good brief, we all steal it. | 40:16 | |
There's no copyright on a legal argument. | 40:19 | |
I think what happened was, | 40:25 | |
when we published the report, | 40:26 | |
we published it on the center I'm the director of. | 40:27 | |
Has a | 40:30 | |
website. | 40:33 | |
It's a program at the law school and it has its own website. | 40:35 | |
Or I don't even recall it. | 40:40 | |
It has its own place. | 40:41 | |
And we published all our reports there | 40:43 | |
and usually, a press release goes out | 40:45 | |
and the press usually picks it up | 40:47 | |
and then people follow it and it goes on. | 40:49 | |
Interviewer | And you | 40:53 |
didn't get a lot of press publicity | 40:57 | |
or personally did people come to that? | 40:59 | |
- | Oh, yeah. | 41:01 |
Yeah, absolutely. | 41:02 | |
Sure, the Armed Services Committee | 41:04 | |
asked me to testify before them. | 41:06 | |
I guess the Senate Judiciary Committee did also. | 41:09 | |
Lots of Senate Committees used it in evidence. | 41:15 | |
Though, they have been | 41:19 | |
cited published all over the place. | 41:21 | |
Interviewer | How did courts respond to it? | 41:23 |
- | It's interesting. | 41:31 |
(gulps) | 41:34 | |
We kept doing them. | 41:36 | |
We also did a study of | 41:37 | |
the results of the hearings that they were given, | 41:40 | |
these Combatant Status Review Tribunal. (inhales) | 41:43 | |
And we're the ones who are able to demonstrate that | 41:47 | |
(exhales) | 41:50 | |
eventually, every single detainee | 41:51 | |
lost their hearing | 41:54 | |
but we were able to show | 41:56 | |
they had a right to cross examine all witnesses, | 41:58 | |
but the government never called any. | 42:01 | |
They didn't have right to look at the classified evidence | 42:05 | |
or be told what it was, | 42:09 | |
but they could explain their story. | 42:11 | |
But they couldn't rebut the evidence they didn't know about. | 42:13 | |
They're allowed to call witnesses if they were available | 42:16 | |
but none were available unless they were fellow detainees | 42:19 | |
who were disbelieved because of that. | 42:23 | |
They had a right to a personal representative. | 42:28 | |
It could not be a lawyer, | 42:30 | |
but the government had to have a lawyer representing them. | 42:31 | |
We were able to time how many minutes | 42:35 | |
the personal representative spoke with the detainee | 42:37 | |
'cause they had a form filled out | 42:39 | |
in preparation for the hearing. | 42:41 | |
And then how long, | 42:43 | |
a time between that meeting and the hearing | 42:43 | |
and then how long the hearing was. | 42:47 | |
And then how long between the hearing | 42:48 | |
of the detainee leaves the room with the decision. | 42:50 | |
And whether or not the personal representative | 42:53 | |
ever spoke on their behalf. | 42:55 | |
So we could do a whole program on that one. (inhales) | 42:58 | |
And I remember, | 43:00 | |
Josh was looking through the whole thing at one point, | 43:02 | |
and we had discovered there were three detainees | 43:05 | |
who actually won. | 43:07 | |
At one point, Josh wanted to write the report and say, | 43:11 | |
"And despite all this three detainees, | 43:13 | |
actually one that Josh said had a sentence," which said | 43:16 | |
"And then what happened, period?" | 43:19 | |
And then it turned out, | 43:21 | |
they were entitled to a new hearing | 43:22 | |
but the government's policy forbid the detainees | 43:25 | |
from being told if they won. | 43:27 | |
(inhales) | 43:30 | |
So, no detainee could be told they had won, | 43:31 | |
but, because the government gave a new hearing, | 43:35 | |
that would imply that they must have won, | 43:38 | |
so the detainees who had appeared | 43:41 | |
at their first hearing and won, | 43:43 | |
were not allowed to be told over | 43:44 | |
to appear at their second hearing. | 43:46 | |
And two of the three lost their second hearing. | 43:49 | |
One person actually won two in a row. | 43:52 | |
And as Josh would say, "And then what happened?" | 43:55 | |
And then they tried him again. | 43:58 | |
And this time he lost. | 43:59 | |
So, we were able to publish that. | 44:01 | |
That showed up in Court of Appeals' decisions in the sense. | 44:04 | |
It showed up in brief for the Supreme Court | 44:08 | |
on the question of whether or not... | 44:11 | |
The government's trying to claim these proceedings | 44:13 | |
were a substitute for the habeas. | 44:15 | |
And that's where we came in on that. | 44:18 | |
Interviewer | So looking back, | 44:21 |
would you say that this made a difference | 44:23 | |
in terms of Guantanamo litigation? | 44:26 | |
- | You know, | 44:31 |
(deep sighs) | 44:34 | |
(chuckles) | 44:36 | |
I don't know what makes a difference. | 44:39 | |
I'd be perfectly happy to say, it did, | 44:41 | |
but there are so many pieces of things going on. | 44:44 | |
I actually think what ultimately did it, | 44:47 | |
was Joe Margolis once said, | 44:49 | |
he said, | 44:53 | |
"The only way to close Guantanamo down is to open it up." | 44:54 | |
(inhales) | 44:58 | |
And I think he felt having lawyers go down there | 44:59 | |
would be more powerful than anything else. | 45:03 | |
And I think, actually having lawyers | 45:07 | |
go down there was the trick. | 45:10 | |
And many people did many different things. | 45:13 | |
They were lobbying Congress on Law Day. | 45:15 | |
There were committee hearings that people would testify. | 45:18 | |
I think I told you I spoke at a couple. | 45:21 | |
(clears throat) | 45:24 | |
There were newspaper stories. There were editorials. | 45:25 | |
There were lawyers coming back with information. | 45:29 | |
There were NGOs finding out information. | 45:33 | |
It was sort of a crazy time. | 45:37 | |
I don't remember what year it was, | 45:40 | |
but I ended up in a conference in London than in Oxford. | 45:41 | |
And I'm actually at a meeting in a hall | 45:46 | |
somewhere in parliament of all places. (inhales) | 45:49 | |
And one of NGO comes up to me and says, | 45:52 | |
"Well, we found Rafiq's family." | 45:54 | |
As he doesn't have any family, | 45:58 | |
he told me, absolutely, he has no family. | 46:00 | |
So, "No, he has family." | 46:01 | |
I said, "And he told me not to look for them because..." | 46:02 | |
He said, "Well, they didn't tell us not to look for them. | 46:05 | |
And we found them." | 46:07 | |
I said, "Really?" | 46:10 | |
And I'm trying to figure out | 46:12 | |
what to do with this information. | 46:13 | |
"They didn't tell us not to. | 46:16 | |
You want to know what we learned?" | 46:18 | |
I said, "Yeah." | 46:19 | |
He said, "Yep. He's got a brother | 46:21 | |
in Tunisia who's a lawyer." | 46:23 | |
I said, "He's got a brother who's a lawyer in Tunisia?" | 46:28 | |
"Yeah." | 46:33 | |
And I think this part of it, | 46:38 | |
I guess I'd probably wait a while before it goes public | 46:39 | |
'cause I wanna make sure that Rafiq | 46:41 | |
didn't want me talking about that. | 46:44 | |
In fact, I think in this story, I'll tell you, | 46:45 | |
but I don't know how you wanna use it. | 46:48 | |
But I don't think we should include it at this time. | 46:49 | |
Interviewer | That'd be fine. | 46:52 |
- | Because then on that basis, I'll tell you. (inhales) | 46:53 |
So, (clears throat) | 46:55 | |
I was quite stunned because then somebody else came up | 46:58 | |
and said, "We found Mohammed's wife." | 47:01 | |
I said, "Where is she?" | 47:05 | |
They said, "In Sudan." | 47:06 | |
I said, "How'd you do this?" | 47:09 | |
"This is London." | 47:10 | |
And what dawned on me then was, | 47:11 | |
that one of the consequences of Guantanamo | 47:13 | |
in this whole preemptive war | 47:15 | |
and all the other stupid things that were going on, | 47:17 | |
was that the United States had actually created | 47:19 | |
a human rights intelligence network. | 47:21 | |
It was probably vastly better | 47:24 | |
than our national security intelligence network. | 47:27 | |
They could find (chuckles) a Sudanese woman | 47:31 | |
who had married a Tunisian man in Pakistan, | 47:34 | |
who'd been picked up in Afghanistan | 47:37 | |
and had returned from the village | 47:39 | |
she was from in somewhere in Sudan. | 47:41 | |
And she had then relocated with her son | 47:43 | |
who I didn't know they had | 47:45 | |
to somewhere in Khartoum. | 47:47 | |
And then, they found out that Rafiq, | 47:50 | |
who has refused to tell me anything, | 47:51 | |
has a family | 47:54 | |
with a brother who's a lawyer in Tunisia. | 47:56 | |
And then I go, and it turns out | 47:58 | |
he's got a sister who's a lawyer in Tunisia. | 47:59 | |
I'm sitting there sort of saying, | 48:03 | |
"I can't even keep track of all of it." | 48:04 | |
So when you asked me, "Did these reports make a difference," | 48:07 | |
everything made a difference. | 48:10 | |
It would be a mistake for anybody to associate | 48:14 | |
what they did with making a difference. | 48:16 | |
Because as we said, August 28th, 1963, | 48:19 | |
the big slogan was, I was there. | 48:23 | |
And I think, what made a difference was | 48:26 | |
people were there in every different way | 48:29 | |
that they could deal with it. | 48:32 | |
Interviewer | Why would the NGO is looking for family? | 48:34 |
- | Beats me. | 48:36 |
I think everybody went off and did something. | 48:39 | |
One of the big mistakes you have is if you hire, | 48:42 | |
let somebody have a lawyer | 48:44 | |
and then you don't let them do any lawyering. | 48:45 | |
It was like, you had to do something. | 48:48 | |
I stumbled on the Associated Press disk. | 48:50 | |
I don't know what would have happened | 48:53 | |
if Clive Stafford Smith hadn't given me that. | 48:54 | |
(clears throat) | 48:58 | |
So, who knows. | 48:58 | |
Interviewer | When you appeared before Congress, | 49:01 |
what kind of reception did you get? | 49:03 | |
- | Great reception. I was awesome. | 49:05 |
First of all, I was unbelievably... | 49:07 | |
I was smoking. I was so good. | 49:09 | |
They gave me five minutes. | 49:11 | |
I was going after 13 minutes, they didn't stop me. | 49:12 | |
(gulps) | 49:17 | |
I was just on. | 49:18 | |
Interviewer | And why were they giving you all that time? | 49:21 |
- | They didn't mean to. The story was so compelling. | 49:23 |
Interviewer | What story were you telling? | 49:28 |
- | The story that we've just been talking about. (inhales) | 49:29 |
But I was just able to stay (chuckles) on point that, | 49:31 | |
you knew the minute you'd digressed or slipped, | 49:34 | |
they were gonna shut you down. | 49:38 | |
So I had to stay right on the point, | 49:39 | |
but there was a lot to tell. | 49:41 | |
And (exhales) the data we had was irrefutable. | 49:44 | |
They had to get in the record. | 49:48 | |
And- | 49:52 | |
Interviewer | Did you get any feedback | 49:53 |
from Congress members after that? | 49:54 | |
- | Yeah! I got a lot. | 49:56 |
They were very appreciative | 50:00 | |
and the staff was very appreciative. | 50:01 | |
The Republican minority staff came by | 50:02 | |
and actually thanked me for it | 50:05 | |
because they thought it was an important | 50:07 | |
debate-changing issue to make sure people understood | 50:09 | |
that not everybody there was | 50:12 | |
whatever. | 50:15 | |
I don't know if they meant it. | 50:16 | |
Interviewer | Going back to your clients, | 50:19 |
when you went down to Guantanamo continuously, | 50:21 | |
you said 15 times, | 50:25 | |
did you use different interpreters then after that? | 50:26 | |
- | Yeah! Yeah, we didn't bring that interpreter. | 50:28 |
We brought another one for awhile (clears throat) | 50:31 | |
whom I liked a lot, | 50:33 | |
but for whatever reason, after about five trips down there, | 50:35 | |
they took his security clearance away. | 50:37 | |
I couldn't quite understand. | 50:40 | |
Some people came with security clearance | 50:41 | |
because they were working for other agencies. (inhales) | 50:43 | |
And it turned out that if that agency stopped, | 50:47 | |
then the security clearance that came with it, | 50:51 | |
stopped for everybody who had it. | 50:53 | |
So they shut everybody down for awhile | 50:54 | |
and they wouldn't let (gulps) my man back. | 50:56 | |
He had to go through the process again. | 50:59 | |
So, they didn't let him. | 51:02 | |
Interviewer | Who paid for your interpreter? | 51:04 |
- | Well, not the government. | 51:05 |
(tongue clicks) | 51:08 | |
The government never paid a penny to anybody for anything. | 51:10 | |
We had to pay our way. | 51:14 | |
We had to pay our own airfare, airplane stuff. | 51:15 | |
We had to hire our own interpreters. | 51:18 | |
On the other hand, | 51:20 | |
Seton Hall Law School was totally committed | 51:22 | |
and supportive to everything. | 51:25 | |
So they paid for the interpreters. They paid my expenses. | 51:26 | |
They paid Josh's expenses. They did all of that. | 51:29 | |
So it never cost us anything. | 51:33 | |
Interviewer | And were you able to get | 51:37 |
your two men out of Guantanamo? | 51:39 | |
- | One. | 51:41 |
Interviewer | Could you tell us about that? | 51:43 |
And then about the other one? | 51:44 | |
- | Yeah! | 51:45 |
Rafiq is now, | 51:46 | |
somewhere in Slovakia. | 51:49 | |
(gulps) | 51:55 | |
Rafiq wanted, | 52:00 | |
did not wanna go back to Tunisia. | 52:02 | |
The government wanted to send him back. | 52:05 | |
We got an injunction stopping it | 52:08 | |
because the convention against torture forbid it. | 52:09 | |
So they were stuck. | 52:13 | |
Then what happened for Rafiq was, | 52:15 | |
suddenly I got a call, and they said, | 52:19 | |
"Well, we're gonna send... | 52:21 | |
would you call him up and talk to him | 52:23 | |
because he's gonna be interviewed | 52:25 | |
by the Slovakian government." | 52:26 | |
I said, "Sure. But why should I tell him this?" | 52:29 | |
They said, (chuckles) "We'd like you to tell him | 52:31 | |
that this is really an interview | 52:33 | |
by the Slovakian government." | 52:35 | |
I said, "Well, that's interesting." | 52:37 | |
I said, "Well, what on earth would make my client (inhales) | 52:38 | |
be under the impression that there were | 52:42 | |
a bunch of people in there | 52:43 | |
pretending to be Slovakians to interview him, | 52:44 | |
when in fact, they weren't Slovakians? | 52:48 | |
How could that possibly happen?" | 52:50 | |
And the DOJ said, "Cut it out!" | 52:52 | |
So I said, "Well, no! I really, | 52:54 | |
help work with me on this one. | 52:55 | |
Why would anybody have a problem | 52:57 | |
believing that these are Slovakians?" | 53:00 | |
So I called him up and he said, | 53:03 | |
"What can you tell me about Slovakia?" | 53:05 | |
I said, "Not much. I didn't know much." (gulps) | 53:07 | |
Now this was the third time he'd been interviewed | 53:11 | |
because they had this incredibly cruel thing. | 53:14 | |
It's must be like being a model, | 53:16 | |
you get brought in and they say, | 53:19 | |
"Okay, walk across the... | 53:20 | |
Next!" | 53:23 | |
And they do it a hundred times, they get one job | 53:24 | |
and they're doing well. | 53:26 | |
So you gotta be rejected 99 times | 53:27 | |
for what you are to be accepted once. | 53:28 | |
It can't be what you'd think of as especially | 53:32 | |
good formative self-image experience. | 53:35 | |
Well, they would come down and Portugal wanted to see him. | 53:38 | |
I said, "All right, we want it. | 53:41 | |
We'll take three people. We wanna interview 10." | 53:43 | |
Well, that meant seven people | 53:47 | |
we're not gonna make the beauty contest. (inhales) | 53:48 | |
So, Rafiq and Mohammed were both interviewed by Portugal. | 53:52 | |
Both were turned down. | 53:55 | |
I think Belgium came along | 53:57 | |
and Germany wanted to do it | 54:00 | |
but then, Germany got politically difficult, | 54:01 | |
so they didn't do it. (inhales) | 54:04 | |
So, different countries would come along | 54:06 | |
and (tongue clicks) finally, Slovakia. | 54:08 | |
And Slovakia interviews both. | 54:12 | |
And they picked Rafiq. | 54:14 | |
So once again, Mohamed didn't get picked | 54:16 | |
and he ended up in Slovakia | 54:21 | |
and I went over there to see him, | 54:23 | |
well, Josh and I went over there in May, to see him. (gulps) | 54:25 | |
And he had mixed feelings. | 54:28 | |
He was in Slovakia. | 54:31 | |
He was actually not free, | 54:33 | |
but in good conditions, | 54:35 | |
in the sense that there was an old Soviet prison. | 54:37 | |
But they had the entire floor. They had their own rooms. | 54:41 | |
They had their own TV sets- | 54:44 | |
Interviewer | Who's they? | 54:45 |
- | I'm sorry. | 54:46 |
Mohammed, Rafiq and Adel, | 54:47 | |
a third person who was an Egyptian, who was also... | 54:49 | |
The Slovakians took three people | 54:52 | |
and they were teaching them Slovakian. | 54:54 | |
They brought them in and they considered | 54:58 | |
them to be suffering from | 55:00 | |
extreme post-traumatic stress disorder. | 55:03 | |
They were trying to get them food, to get them acclimated, | 55:06 | |
teach them the language, get therapy. | 55:09 | |
And after six months, | 55:11 | |
they were gonna be moved to an immediate place. | 55:13 | |
And then after that, to still another place. | 55:16 | |
Be free. | 55:20 | |
When we went to talk to them, | 55:22 | |
they were not confident that they would be free | 55:24 | |
at the end of July when promised. | 55:27 | |
And as Josh pointed out to the Slovakians, this would... | 55:30 | |
So far, they've been told, they'll be free. | 55:34 | |
This will happen. It's never happened. | 55:36 | |
They still don't think they're free. | 55:38 | |
They're better off, but they're not free. | 55:39 | |
They had phones. They could call their parents. | 55:41 | |
They could talk to their people. | 55:43 | |
It was a lot of differences, but still. | 55:44 | |
Interviewer | What year is this? | 55:48 |
- | This May, just 10 months ago, it's eight months ago. | 55:49 |
Interviewer | 2010 when they got up? | 55:53 |
- | Yup. | 55:54 |
- | And you mentioned Shafiq, | |
but Mohammed, you said- | 55:56 | |
- | Rafiq. | 55:57 |
Mohammed is still there. | 55:57 | |
Interviewer | Rafiq. | 55:58 |
So, it was a different Mohammed who was Rafiq? | 55:59 | |
- | No, Mohammed Abdul Rahman was one client. | 56:02 |
Rafiq Alhami was the other. | 56:05 | |
Rafiq is in Slovakia. | 56:07 | |
Mohammed is still in Guantanamo. | 56:09 | |
Interviewer | Okay. | 56:11 |
Because he didn't pass | 56:12 | |
the beauty contest? | 56:14 | |
- | Yup. | |
- | In fact, I don't even know what to begin to tell him | 56:16 |
because the last beauty contest he failed | 56:18 | |
was for the Cape Verde islands. | 56:20 | |
And I'm trying to figure out what there is | 56:24 | |
after the Cape Verde islands won't pick you. | 56:26 | |
- | So what- | 56:29 |
- | I think it's Elba. | |
My own sense is that the next stop is gonna be Elba. | 56:31 | |
Interviewer | Why do you think these? | 56:35 |
What do you think these countries are looking for | 56:37 | |
when they choose someone? | 56:39 | |
- | That's what Mohammed asked me. | 56:40 |
I asked the Slovakians what Mohammed's problem was | 56:44 | |
because they interviewed him. (deep inhales) | 56:47 | |
And it was sort of unclear. | 56:50 | |
But, when I spoke to Mohammed | 56:54 | |
the last time I went down in July, | 56:56 | |
and I said, "Look." | 56:58 | |
I said, "We have to have a conversation." | 57:00 | |
And this is a conversation that | 57:03 | |
parents have with their 15-year-old kids | 57:06 | |
about job interviews, | 57:08 | |
which is that, "You have to realize something." | 57:11 | |
He said, "Well, I've got to... | 57:13 | |
There are all these bad things | 57:14 | |
in the government record about me." | 57:16 | |
I said, "That can't be the problem. | 57:18 | |
Because long before, | 57:20 | |
they've picked you out to see you. | 57:22 | |
They've picked 10 people up | 57:25 | |
and they'd been through all the files to pick your ten. | 57:27 | |
So when they picked you, to visit you, | 57:30 | |
they already knew | 57:33 | |
all the bad things the US government said about you." | 57:35 | |
So I said, "Why do you think they're coming to see you? | 57:39 | |
It's not to find out about what the US says you've done." | 57:43 | |
(gulps) | 57:48 | |
He said, "I don't know." | 57:49 | |
I said, "It's because they're trying to see if | 57:50 | |
you'll succeed in their country. | 57:52 | |
They wanna find out if they like you. | 57:56 | |
If you like people." | 57:58 | |
(inhales) | 58:00 | |
And I said, "Look, Mohammed, | 58:00 | |
when Josh and I first met you, | 58:01 | |
we thought you were a nice guy, but really stupid." | 58:03 | |
Interviewer | You said that to him? | 58:07 |
- | Yeah. | 58:08 |
I said, "I no longer think you're stupid. | 58:09 | |
So the point is, | 58:12 | |
if I came down to see you and I didn't know anything | 58:13 | |
but I walked in and spent two days talking to you | 58:16 | |
and I thought you were stupid, | 58:19 | |
what do you think the Cape Verde islands people | 58:20 | |
are gonna think? | 58:24 | |
Why wouldn't they conclude the way I concluded?" | 58:25 | |
(agrees in gibberish) | 58:28 | |
I said, "But it's worse than that. | 58:30 | |
Because I brought two students down | 58:30 | |
who had security clearance to see you, | 58:32 | |
they both said, 'That's one scary dude.'" | 58:34 | |
I'm saying, "Well, I didn't think you were scary. | 58:38 | |
So I now know two things, | 58:41 | |
Josh and I thought you were stupid when we met you | 58:42 | |
and my two students think you're scary. | 58:44 | |
No wonder you don't get picked." (inhales) | 58:47 | |
And he said, "What am I supposed to do?" | 58:51 | |
I said, "Well, I learned one other thing. | 58:52 | |
When I was in Slovakia seeing Rafiq." | 58:53 | |
And he said, "What's that?" | 58:55 | |
I said, | 58:57 | |
"Rafiq and Adel, | 58:59 | |
said you were the funniest person in all of Guantanamo. | 59:01 | |
That you made people laugh. You'd stand next to them. | 59:04 | |
Making little comments. | 59:07 | |
People, 'Oh, he started to smile.' | 59:08 | |
I said, 'Is that true?'" | 59:11 | |
I said, "Why don't you smile? That's pretty good." | 59:13 | |
So I had this conversation with a 42-year-old man | 59:16 | |
about how to behave when being interviewed | 59:20 | |
in order to sell himself. | 59:22 | |
And he's, "What was I supposed to do? Dance?" | 59:24 | |
I said, "They'll probably be better." | 59:25 | |
But I said, "The very least you could do | 59:27 | |
is come in and try to be friendly | 59:29 | |
and smile and make them like you." | 59:31 | |
I said, "You known Rafiq." | 59:35 | |
He said, "Yes." | 59:37 | |
"Rafiq can be manipulative. He can be mean. | 59:38 | |
He can be surly. He can be angry. | 59:41 | |
But he can also be friendly. | 59:43 | |
And he can be charming if he wants something." | 59:44 | |
And I said, "I have no reason to believe | 59:47 | |
Rafiq cares about me at all, (inhales) | 59:48 | |
but he knows how to behave to get things he wants." | 59:51 | |
"Rafiq, oh, that's right." | 59:54 | |
"So, why don't you be more like Rafiq?" | 59:56 | |
Interviewer | Did he hit you? | 1:00:01 |
- | Yeah, but he hasn't been interviewed since. | 1:00:02 |
I have to go down and see him and just say- | 1:00:05 | |
Interviewer | Did they win the habeas case | 1:00:07 |
or the government- | 1:00:08 | |
- | No. | 1:00:09 |
The government... | 1:00:09 | |
Well, the big problem that we, | 1:00:10 | |
it's hard to win a habeas case when the government says, | 1:00:11 | |
"We approve your release, | 1:00:13 | |
just, we're trying to find a country for you to go to." | 1:00:14 | |
(inhales) | 1:00:18 | |
The judges aren't interested in trying habeas cases | 1:00:18 | |
of people who are only being held | 1:00:20 | |
because our government's approved them for release. | 1:00:22 | |
(inhales) | 1:00:25 | |
Technically, there probably is one, | 1:00:26 | |
but it's been pointed out that winning a habeas case, | 1:00:28 | |
doesn't put you in a better position. | 1:00:31 | |
And if you were to do it and lose, you could be worse off. | 1:00:33 | |
So you couldn't be better off. | 1:00:37 | |
So I have two clients for whom I failed | 1:00:39 | |
to be able to get a hearing. | 1:00:41 | |
What if- | 1:00:43 | |
Interviewer | You got one out. | 1:00:44 |
- | Well, again, we talked about | 1:00:45 |
who's done what. | 1:00:48 | |
I don't know what got Rafiq out. | 1:00:50 | |
Interviewer | Can do some lawyers go to countries | 1:00:53 |
to try to find a country that would be interested in them? | 1:00:55 | |
- | Well, I don't understand that. I think they do. | 1:00:58 |
Have you ever spoken to Doris Tennant or Ellen Lubell? | 1:01:00 | |
Interviewer | No. | 1:01:04 |
- | You probably have to talk to them. | 1:01:06 |
They are in Newton, Massachusetts. | 1:01:07 | |
And if you look at our book, | 1:01:11 | |
they wrote something in the habeas lawyers, | 1:01:14 | |
quite a neat thing. | 1:01:16 | |
They've done lots of work. | 1:01:19 | |
They actually went to Switzerland. | 1:01:21 | |
I went to the European | 1:01:23 | |
parliament. | 1:01:25 | |
I think they've done lots of things. | 1:01:26 | |
I'm not sure what they all are. | 1:01:27 | |
And I don't know honestly- | 1:01:29 | |
Interviewer | They tried to find homes for their clients? | 1:01:30 |
- | Yes. | 1:01:32 |
- | I think, I don't feel like any of us understand | 1:01:34 |
what everybody else is doing. | 1:01:37 | |
And none of us really know what makes a difference. | 1:01:38 | |
I don't even have an idea | 1:01:42 | |
how to get to the European parliament | 1:01:44 | |
or what that would do, | 1:01:45 | |
or who would I talk to or how that would help. | 1:01:48 | |
My own feeling is, | 1:01:51 | |
that it's all in Hillary Clinton's hands. | 1:01:52 | |
That she has to find places for these people. | 1:01:56 | |
And I think it's hard. (inhales) | 1:01:58 | |
Interviewer | Isn't that Dan Freed's job? | 1:02:00 |
- | Well, | 1:02:02 |
when I say Hillary Clinton, | 1:02:03 | |
I mean, it was the state department. | 1:02:05 | |
Interviewer | Mm-hmm. | 1:02:05 |
I'm not sure whose job it is. | 1:02:07 | |
And I don't think we know. | 1:02:09 | |
They are are different people | 1:02:13 | |
and maybe it is but I've never spoken to him. | 1:02:14 | |
Interviewer | Can I switch to another topic | 1:02:17 |
that you've been instrumental | 1:02:19 | |
and that is with Camp No. | 1:02:21 | |
I wonder if you could tell us how you found out about, | 1:02:24 | |
what you did and tell us what you did find out? | 1:02:27 | |
- | I'm gonna save that for another time. | 1:02:30 |
And with the right time, I will talk to you about that. | 1:02:32 | |
But things are very complicated right now. | 1:02:35 | |
Interviewer | Oh. | 1:02:38 |
- | It's in process. | 1:02:39 |
Interviewer | Is there anything you can say at all? | 1:02:43 |
Just in the background or just- | 1:02:44 | |
(chuckles) | 1:02:46 | |
- | Be in background on camera? | 1:02:47 |
Interviewer | Yeah. I don't have to. | 1:02:49 |
I don't have to put it in- | 1:02:50 | |
- | I'll talk to you later. | 1:02:52 |
I mean, when we're all done. | 1:02:53 | |
You and I can, I can step outside, | 1:02:53 | |
but I don't want it on camera. | 1:02:55 | |
Interviewer | Okay. Okay. | 1:02:56 |
Okay. Well that's too bad. | 1:03:00 | |
But is there- | 1:03:01 | |
(page flips) | ||
- | Well, maybe if we talk about it, | 1:03:03 |
I can tell you, we can talk about some things, | 1:03:04 | |
but | 1:03:06 | |
I wanna figure out first | 1:03:08 | |
what we're gonna talk about before we... | 1:03:09 | |
Interviewer | Okay, well, maybe we could take a break | 1:03:11 |
and just talk | 1:03:13 | |
- | Yeah. Yeah. | |
and see what you could talk about and then come back? | 1:03:14 | |
- | Sure. | 1:03:16 |
Interviewer | Okay. Why don't we do that? | 1:03:17 |
Okay. You can- | 1:03:18 | |
- | We are- | |
Interviewer | So, when you were down in Guantanamo, | 1:03:21 |
representing your clients, did you ever, | 1:03:24 | |
well maybe even when you were back in the States, | 1:03:27 | |
did you ever talked to doctors | 1:03:30 | |
about your clients, about other detainees? | 1:03:32 | |
- | Sure. | 1:03:35 |
Interviewer | Is it something that you can tell us? | 1:03:37 |
(sighs) | 1:03:39 | |
- | Well, (clears throat) | 1:03:40 |
Mohammed | 1:03:42 | |
was a very sick man. | 1:03:44 | |
He had a leaking heart valve | 1:03:48 | |
that was replaced when he was in Italy. | 1:03:49 | |
(belches) | 1:03:52 | |
Excuse me. | ||
It was leaking again when he was there in Guantanamo. | 1:03:53 | |
(clears throat) | 1:03:56 | |
He was not well. (inhales) | ||
He had kidney stones. | 1:03:58 | |
He had heart palpitations. | 1:04:00 | |
He'd also been shot in the head in a, (gulps) | 1:04:03 | |
by a security guard in Italy, somewhere. | 1:04:06 | |
I don't think it led to brain problems, | 1:04:09 | |
but (deep inhales) he had various problems. | 1:04:11 | |
You would imagine he was suffocating in his sleeping, | 1:04:14 | |
which dealt with some questions about | 1:04:16 | |
breathing issues. | 1:04:20 | |
He had huge high blood pressure, (clears throat) | 1:04:22 | |
all sorts of problems. | 1:04:25 | |
And I was trying to get a medical care. | 1:04:28 | |
The interpreter I had at the time, | 1:04:34 | |
was actually a trained medical doctor from Egypt. | 1:04:36 | |
He helped me take a patient history. (clears throat, gulps) | 1:04:41 | |
That patient history turned out to be incredibly useful | 1:04:45 | |
because suddenly, they decided they wanted | 1:04:48 | |
to send Mohammed back to Tunisia. (inhales) | 1:04:50 | |
I had 30 days (exhales) to go talk to him. | 1:04:54 | |
And then, I actually had only a few days to stop it. | 1:04:56 | |
(coughs) | 1:05:02 | |
What I learned was, | ||
after my last day in Guantanamo, | 1:05:04 | |
this is part of that Human Rights Network, | 1:05:06 | |
I got an email from one named, Cori Crider in Reprieve. | 1:05:08 | |
Did you know Cori? | 1:05:12 | |
Interviewer | Yes. | 1:05:14 |
- | Okay. | 1:05:14 |
Cori and I had got along very well in a variety of ways. | 1:05:15 | |
(clears throat) | 1:05:18 | |
She was really neat. | 1:05:19 | |
And she'd been very helpful with me | 1:05:21 | |
when I was at that conference at Oxford. | 1:05:23 | |
And we'd been done at Guantanamo together, | 1:05:25 | |
overlapped a few times. | 1:05:27 | |
And she sent me an email | 1:05:29 | |
and got it | 1:05:31 | |
in the barracks. | 1:05:33 | |
The last night I was there. | 1:05:34 | |
I was flying out the next morning | 1:05:36 | |
after I'd spoken to Rafiq about going back. | 1:05:37 | |
No, to Mohammed. | 1:05:41 | |
And it turned out, when I spoke to Rafiq, to Mohammed, | 1:05:42 | |
I had known Rafiq had been convicted in absentia, | 1:05:46 | |
(clears throat) | 1:05:52 | |
in Tunisia, | ||
and given a 40-year sentence. | 1:05:53 | |
When I was there, I told Rafiq this, | 1:05:58 | |
and (chuckles) Rafiq says, | 1:06:00 | |
"What are you talking about?" | 1:06:02 | |
He said, "Well." He said, "Wait a minute, let me see." | 1:06:06 | |
Rafiq is smart. | 1:06:09 | |
He said, "I've been here for four and a half years. | 1:06:11 | |
I'm five years or whatever. | 1:06:14 | |
No, seven years, trying to get a trial on the evidence. | 1:06:15 | |
And you're telling me I had been convicted | 1:06:19 | |
on the US evidence or I've already had my trial | 1:06:21 | |
and I've lost? | 1:06:25 | |
And it's for violating a law | 1:06:27 | |
that didn't exist before I was here in Guantanamo?" | 1:06:29 | |
So he said, "And now, I'm never gonna have | 1:06:35 | |
a trial on my US evidence. | 1:06:36 | |
I've already been convicted of that evidence. | 1:06:39 | |
And they did it when I was in Guantanamo | 1:06:41 | |
and everybody knew I couldn't be there." | 1:06:44 | |
And he kept repeating, says, "That's what's gonna happen?" | 1:06:45 | |
"Mm-hmm. Yeah, it looks that way. (chuckles) | 1:06:48 | |
Some lawyer you got, huh?" | 1:06:51 | |
(clears throat, gulps) | 1:06:56 | |
We ended up having a | 1:06:57 | |
bit more of a discussion. | 1:06:59 | |
I'm saying, "Well, we'll see what we can do." | 1:07:00 | |
And then, I go speak to Mohammed | 1:07:02 | |
and I'm telling him about the 30-day notice. | 1:07:05 | |
And he said, "Well, I'm not gonna go." | 1:07:07 | |
He said, "I'm not going back to Tunisia." | 1:07:09 | |
And I said, "Well, (exhales) okay. We'll try to stop it." | 1:07:12 | |
And I said, "What do you mean you're not going back?" | 1:07:15 | |
He said, "Well, they give you a paper to sign. | 1:07:19 | |
And if you don't sign, they won't send you back. | 1:07:21 | |
I said, "Mohammed, | 1:07:25 | |
did they ask you to sign a paper to come to Guantanamo? | 1:07:27 | |
He says, "No." | 1:07:30 | |
"Did you want to come to Guantanamo? | 1:07:30 | |
"No." | 1:07:32 | |
I said, "I hate to tell you, | 1:07:33 | |
but I don't believe they're gonna wait | 1:07:35 | |
for you to sign the paper." | 1:07:36 | |
(clears throat) | 1:07:41 | |
Mohammed, it turns out, is bright. | 1:07:42 | |
All this wouldn't be evidence of it. | 1:07:43 | |
This is just hope and | 1:07:44 | |
delusion of being alone and fantasy. | 1:07:48 | |
But I went back (gulps) | 1:07:51 | |
and Josh came running down to Federal Court | 1:07:53 | |
and we filed | 1:07:55 | |
an order to show cause seeking a stay | 1:07:57 | |
of his being sent back. | 1:08:00 | |
And we said, | 1:08:01 | |
"He'd been convicted under what we characterized..." | 1:08:02 | |
It was a little hard. | 1:08:05 | |
All we had was an Arabic language statement | 1:08:06 | |
of what happened. | 1:08:08 | |
But the Tunisian Patriot Act is what we called it, | 1:08:09 | |
which was passed in 2003, | 1:08:12 | |
for which we had a great alibi. (clears throat) | 1:08:16 | |
He was arrested in 2004, | 1:08:18 | |
convicted in 2005 and sentenced. | 1:08:20 | |
And we didn't know about it until 2007. | 1:08:23 | |
(clears throat, gulps) | 1:08:30 | |
We actually succeeded | 1:08:32 | |
in getting an injunction issued | 1:08:36 | |
against the United States government. | 1:08:39 | |
It was the first time any court had ever taken an action | 1:08:41 | |
forbidding the government from doing something | 1:08:45 | |
it wanted to do with a detainee. | 1:08:47 | |
It's hard to boast about that achievement | 1:08:53 | |
because of course, as the judge said, | 1:08:56 | |
"You realize what you're asking us to do is..." | 1:08:58 | |
"Yes, counselor. Yes, judge. | 1:09:01 | |
We're well-aware that what we're asking for | 1:09:04 | |
is the right to keep our client in Guantanamo." (chuckles) | 1:09:07 | |
And (laughs) | 1:09:11 | |
judge said, "Okay." | 1:09:12 | |
But she went through | 1:09:13 | |
and we'd all given his medical history | 1:09:14 | |
and she included the medical history and (clears throat) | 1:09:16 | |
the history, all the rest of it | 1:09:21 | |
and ordered them not to do it. | 1:09:22 | |
It took six months. | 1:09:24 | |
This was during the time when the Supreme Court | 1:09:25 | |
was considering whether to do an appeal, Boumediene, | 1:09:27 | |
granting cert or not granting cert. | 1:09:31 | |
Those are question of court jurisdiction, et cetera. | 1:09:33 | |
Interviewer | So, that case was | 1:09:36 |
not appealed to the Court of Appeals? | 1:09:37 | |
(inhales, sighs) | 1:09:39 | |
- | That's a funny question. | 1:09:43 |
They did not appeal it. | 1:09:44 | |
And it didn't become a final injunction. | 1:09:48 | |
Nobody did anything. | 1:09:50 | |
But, after Kayemba, | 1:09:54 | |
Interviewer | September 1? | 1:09:58 |
- | Yeah. | 1:09:59 |
It's not clear that | 1:10:00 | |
Interviewer | Right. | 1:10:03 |
we have that... | 1:10:03 | |
It would appear the Court of Appeals' decision would, | 1:10:05 | |
if this case was appeared before the Court of Appeals | 1:10:08 | |
have to be reversed. | 1:10:11 | |
- | Right. | |
And I believe what they're going to be doing is... | 1:10:13 | |
(clears throat) | 1:10:15 | |
My own sense is what the government wants to do | 1:10:16 | |
is get rid of the precedent. | 1:10:20 | |
But they really can't send him back to Tunisia | 1:10:22 | |
because the convention against torture. | 1:10:26 | |
So we have a different argument. | 1:10:28 | |
Now, it's not that they can't, | 1:10:30 | |
Interviewer | Do what they want to do? | 1:10:33 |
- | they can't send him to Tunisia. | 1:10:34 |
And I don't think they're trying | 1:10:36 | |
'cause they're also trying to find out other country. | 1:10:37 | |
Interviewer | So you think, | 1:10:40 |
you getting an outside doctor did make a difference? | 1:10:42 | |
- | Well, I didn't get an outside doctor | 1:10:44 |
but I got a very detailed patient history. | 1:10:46 | |
'Cause I had a doctor helped me ask the questions. | 1:10:49 | |
So I took | 1:10:52 | |
a patient history | 1:10:54 | |
asking a series of questions. | 1:10:55 | |
And because of who he was, | 1:10:59 | |
he was able to ask questions that brought out | 1:11:01 | |
the kinds of details that were compelling. | 1:11:04 | |
Interviewer | You never talked to any doctors at one time? | 1:11:08 |
- | Never. | 1:11:13 |
- | You weren't allowed to? | |
Or you just- | 1:11:15 | |
- | They wouldn't see him. | 1:11:16 |
Remember, you couldn't walk around. (clears throat) | 1:11:16 | |
Interviewer | Did you ever talk to any guards | 1:11:22 |
at Guantanamo and- | 1:11:24 | |
- | Sure. | |
Interviewer | Did you ever find something interesting | 1:11:25 |
from those guards that... | 1:11:27 | |
- | Well, one woman guard came up to | 1:11:30 |
and asked how to get a detainee a lawyer. | 1:11:31 | |
Interviewer | Hmm. | 1:11:35 |
And so, "Why don't you just tell us the number | 1:11:36 | |
and we'll get him a lawyer." | 1:11:39 | |
And she said, "I can't do that." | 1:11:41 | |
And then, | 1:11:43 | |
- | Why you couldn't it off- | |
- | she said she couldn't, and she burst into tears. | 1:11:45 |
And at that point, our interpreter at that meeting, | 1:11:49 | |
was also a | 1:11:53 | |
clergy, a Unitarian minister. | 1:11:55 | |
And he went off to talk to her and try to help her. | 1:11:57 | |
But there was nothing they could do with that one. | 1:12:00 | |
The guards weren't allowed to tell you their last name. | 1:12:03 | |
She know that story, right? (clears throat) | 1:12:05 | |
On the other hand, you can weasel their way out of it a lot. | 1:12:08 | |
And talk to them. | 1:12:11 | |
I got a couple to registered to vote, | 1:12:12 | |
lobbying them in different ways. (clears throat) | 1:12:16 | |
And there were some very nice ones. | 1:12:18 | |
There were some very nice escorts. | 1:12:21 | |
I think fairly early on, | 1:12:23 | |
they figured out that escorts with some personality | 1:12:25 | |
and some people skills and aptitude were well worth it. | 1:12:28 | |
Original ones were pretty surly and pretty hostile. | 1:12:34 | |
I think the guards are a different story. | 1:12:38 | |
I don't know if I ever met guards | 1:12:43 | |
who walked the corridors in side Camp Delta, | 1:12:44 | |
but we certainly met guards who were | 1:12:48 | |
managing the detainees. | 1:12:51 | |
And I think they needed to believe | 1:12:54 | |
they were guarding the worst of the worst. | 1:12:56 | |
It's a pretty dreary job. | 1:12:59 | |
You couldn't imagine any more hideous than | 1:13:03 | |
walking up and down the corridor. | 1:13:06 | |
24 people constantly walking, | 1:13:09 | |
trying to make sure they don't escape, (chuckles) | 1:13:13 | |
which is of course an impossibility. | 1:13:15 | |
Interviewer | Did your clients | 1:13:18 |
ever talked to you about whether the guards | 1:13:19 | |
were nice to them or whether anybody was nice to them? | 1:13:21 | |
- | Rafiq's position was he never wanted to complain. | 1:13:31 |
Said, "I'm not a complainer." | 1:13:35 | |
(clears throat) | 1:13:37 | |
Interviewer | So if your clients were beaten or earthed, | 1:13:43 |
I assume they work as most detainees work. | 1:13:47 | |
Do you want to tell us the stories there or is it..." | 1:13:50 | |
- | You'd come by and you'd noticed | 1:13:58 |
that Rafiq was in an orange outfit, | 1:14:00 | |
which meant he'd been raised | 1:14:04 | |
to a new level of non-compliance. (clears throat) | 1:14:06 | |
Mohammed went from white to tan. | 1:14:11 | |
Obviously, they were doing things | 1:14:15 | |
that were causing problems. | 1:14:16 | |
He'd say, "Well, I'm in Camp Five. Now I'm in Romeo block." | 1:14:21 | |
And that seemed to mean something it didn't to me. | 1:14:24 | |
(sighs) | 1:14:32 | |
I filed a torture complaint | 1:14:33 | |
actually it's kind of interesting. | 1:14:35 | |
After Boumediene, there was | 1:14:37 | |
what I referred to as last licks. | 1:14:38 | |
The guards were actually, I think, | 1:14:42 | |
being very aggressive with the detainees, (clears throat) | 1:14:44 | |
knowing that they were heading on their way out. | 1:14:47 | |
And I know that there was mace and things happened, | 1:14:52 | |
some of which happened to Rafiq. | 1:14:55 | |
'Cause I was told it by other lawyers for other detainees. | 1:14:57 | |
So I drafted a complaint. | 1:15:01 | |
Sent it down to Rafiq. | 1:15:04 | |
And when I went to see him, he said, | 1:15:08 | |
"It all happened but not that way. | 1:15:09 | |
It's all that true anymore it is true." | 1:15:11 | |
'Cause I'm trying to figure out what happened. | 1:15:14 | |
"I don't wanna complain, so don't sue." | 1:15:16 | |
Interviewer | Hmm. | 1:15:19 |
But there was pepper spray. There were hemorrhoid issues. | 1:15:20 | |
There were ugly things. | 1:15:23 | |
The pepper spray on toilet paper was a problem. | 1:15:26 | |
Interviewer | You were gonna file a torture suit | 1:15:31 |
while they were still present in Guantanamo? | 1:15:32 | |
- | Yeah. | 1:15:34 |
Interviewer | Had anyone done that? | 1:15:36 |
- | I don't know, | 1:15:38 |
but my thing was different | 1:15:39 | |
because | 1:15:41 | |
I felt there could be a different claim | 1:15:43 | |
if it was | 1:15:46 | |
after Boumediene, | 1:15:49 | |
when they had constitutional rights | 1:15:50 | |
and when they were beating them up. | 1:15:53 | |
It seemed to me you fell into a different category | 1:15:56 | |
in terms of culpability. | 1:15:59 | |
It was one thing when there was no... | 1:16:01 | |
Those are serious question, | 1:16:04 | |
whether you were depriving people | 1:16:05 | |
of their constitutional rights. | 1:16:07 | |
But once they had constitutional rights, | 1:16:09 | |
beating them up seemed to me, a different thing. | 1:16:11 | |
I guess I'm using the word torture loosely. | 1:16:14 | |
I guess it was the 1983 claim really. | 1:16:17 | |
(clears throat) | 1:16:20 | |
Interviewer | Of Bevans? | 1:16:21 |
- | Yeah, it was Bevans. | 1:16:22 |
That's what I filed. | 1:16:26 | |
And then he told me not to. | 1:16:27 | |
Interviewer | This client told you not? | 1:16:29 |
- | Yup. He did. | 1:16:29 |
He said, "Nope." He said, "I don't complain." | 1:16:31 | |
All those things are sort of odd. | 1:16:33 | |
Interviewer | Well, we can close up. | 1:16:37 |
I just thought, | 1:16:39 | |
looking back, | 1:16:41 | |
is there any thoughts you have about | 1:16:43 | |
your work over the last | 1:16:47 | |
five, six years? | 1:16:50 | |
And I have a couple of other questions along those lines. | 1:16:52 | |
If anything positive you would see coming out of your work | 1:16:55 | |
in a way it might have changed your life? | 1:16:58 | |
- | Oh. | 1:17:00 |
Yeah, Rafiq asked me once, he said, | 1:17:01 | |
"Guantanamo, has it been good for you?" | 1:17:04 | |
I said, "Yeah." | 1:17:06 | |
It was very interesting. | 1:17:13 | |
I found the easiest way to talk to them was | 1:17:14 | |
totally honestly. | 1:17:18 | |
It was too complicated for me to be manipulative. | 1:17:21 | |
I couldn't, there were so many | 1:17:24 | |
cultural areas and things that I didn't know. | 1:17:25 | |
He wanted to know if I should have a younger wife | 1:17:29 | |
'cause I was so vibrant. | 1:17:31 | |
I said, "No. | 1:17:33 | |
It doesn't work that way in the United States." | 1:17:35 | |
He said, "Sure does in Germany." | 1:17:37 | |
And (laughs) so, | 1:17:39 | |
we're having these discussions about my wife. | 1:17:43 | |
"So that's gonna end up in the book, isn't it?" | 1:17:45 | |
I said, "Yup." (chuckles) | 1:17:47 | |
I had my translator tell the story, so it was okay. | 1:17:48 | |
But, | 1:17:51 | |
oh | 1:17:56 | |
yeah, | 1:17:57 | |
I think, | 1:17:58 | |
speaking totally honestly, | 1:18:01 | |
Guantanamo has been wonderful for me. | 1:18:02 | |
I don't think I'm the only one. | 1:18:05 | |
I think many of us | 1:18:07 | |
have felt like, you get a chance to touch something. | 1:18:09 | |
And I don't know why, | 1:18:15 | |
because I don't really think significance adds up. | 1:18:16 | |
You help an orphan | 1:18:21 | |
and you probably do as much as anything else | 1:18:22 | |
in terms of the world circumstance or something. | 1:18:24 | |
But it seems more dramatic to be part of | 1:18:28 | |
historically significant events. | 1:18:30 | |
As you and I both know, | 1:18:33 | |
the | 1:18:35 | |
South in the '60s | 1:18:36 | |
was formative in our life and as to what | 1:18:38 | |
the world meant what we should be doing and so forth. | 1:18:42 | |
I don't think I ever expected to have | 1:18:49 | |
another moment where you could be involved | 1:18:53 | |
with something that seemed intense | 1:18:57 | |
and significant and | 1:18:59 | |
mattered. | 1:19:02 | |
I think, this time... | 1:19:03 | |
Well, I never thought I was important in Selma, Alabama. | 1:19:07 | |
All I was was there | 1:19:10 | |
and I really don't think I'm important here. | 1:19:12 | |
I think all I was was there. | 1:19:13 | |
We were there in different ways | 1:19:15 | |
and some people's ways got more recognition than others, | 1:19:16 | |
but that was serendipitous too. | 1:19:20 | |
If my friend hadn't died and AP hadn't done FOIA, | 1:19:22 | |
I've still been representing people, | 1:19:28 | |
but it wouldn't have had the same drama. | 1:19:30 | |
It just happens that way. (clears throat) | 1:19:32 | |
And I think that's true that most people | 1:19:34 | |
found different ways in which | 1:19:36 | |
the experience framed what they were and what they meant. | 1:19:40 | |
And I think that's probably | 1:19:45 | |
true. | 1:19:49 | |
I was laughing. | 1:19:50 | |
I was telling one of the junior faculty members | 1:19:51 | |
at the law faculty who was coming up and he said, | 1:19:53 | |
"It's really good, you know, what you're doing. | 1:19:56 | |
Congratulations." | 1:19:58 | |
And I said, "I'm glad you like it." | 1:20:00 | |
And then he said, "Yeah, no." | 1:20:04 | |
He said, "We're really proud of you." | 1:20:05 | |
I said, "Well, you know, that's true." | 1:20:06 | |
I said, "But you know, I learned something else | 1:20:08 | |
about junior faculty to law school. | 1:20:09 | |
And junior now goes a long way up." | 1:20:11 | |
He said, "What's that?" | 1:20:14 | |
I said, "Junior faculty really, | 1:20:14 | |
there's two things they don't like about senior faculty." | 1:20:16 | |
"So what's that?" | 1:20:18 | |
"As the first, is you don't like | 1:20:19 | |
those of us who are dead wood." | 1:20:20 | |
He said, "Of course, of course." | 1:20:22 | |
I said, "Well, you know what else?" | 1:20:23 | |
He said, "What?" | 1:20:25 | |
"You don't like those of us who aren't! | 1:20:25 | |
(laughing) | 1:20:27 | |
'Cause you want us | ||
to move over, so you can come on. (laughs) | 1:20:28 | |
And now I'm not moving over. | 1:20:31 | |
(laughing) | ||
So, I mean, it's... | 1:20:33 | |
Interviewer | You had said to me a while back | 1:20:34 |
that you saw Guantanamo in human race issue, | 1:20:36 | |
as on some level a logical out-of-code (indistinct) | 1:20:40 | |
civil rights movement? | 1:20:43 | |
- | Well, I don't even see logic anymore. | 1:20:46 |
I probably said that and I probably meant it at the time. | 1:20:48 | |
For me, it's a bracket to my life. | 1:20:50 | |
I certainly didn't believe there was international law | 1:20:54 | |
or international human rights | 1:20:57 | |
struck me as a non-existent concept. | 1:20:58 | |
It was (inhales) more in the area of jurisprudence | 1:21:00 | |
than it was law, in the sense that I think of it. | 1:21:03 | |
But I think that what's really happening is | 1:21:07 | |
international law is | 1:21:10 | |
developing. | 1:21:13 | |
I think the irony is these people, | 1:21:14 | |
who didn't want one world, | 1:21:16 | |
have actually really shrunk the planet quite a lot. | 1:21:19 | |
And they've created a whole lot of standards and stuff that | 1:21:23 | |
will | 1:21:28 | |
lead to the directions they exactly didn't want. | 1:21:30 | |
Which is probably the same thing | 1:21:33 | |
why Sheriff Jim Clark got the worst of what he got. | 1:21:34 | |
The last thing he wanted was what he produced. | 1:21:38 | |
Interviewer | Do you see Guantanamo closing? | 1:21:42 |
- | I think it's closed. | 1:21:47 |
Interviewer | You think it's closed? | 1:21:48 |
- | In the sense that (gulps) | 1:21:49 |
I think Iraq war's over. | 1:21:51 | |
I don't mean there are still people there. | 1:21:54 | |
I always thought Obama was, | 1:21:57 | |
he was the kind of person who you'd wake up some morning | 1:21:59 | |
and no one ever announced the Iraq war's over, | 1:22:01 | |
he'd just say, "What about that Iraq war? Where did it go?" | 1:22:03 | |
And there may still be some soldiers there | 1:22:07 | |
and terrible things happening to them occasionally. | 1:22:08 | |
But the war's over. | 1:22:12 | |
I think, if you actually look at Guantanamo and there's... | 1:22:13 | |
I can never keep track of the number of people. | 1:22:19 | |
It's 120, | 1:22:20 | |
110. | 1:22:22 | |
- | 174 right now. | |
- | What? | 1:22:24 |
Interviewer | 174? | 1:22:24 |
- | No, it's way less than that. | 1:22:25 |
It's way less than that. | 1:22:28 | |
That number was there before my client left. | 1:22:30 | |
I think it's 130 maybe, | 1:22:34 | |
but it's somewhere in that area. | 1:22:36 | |
Maybe 140, | 1:22:39 | |
maybe 125. | 1:22:39 | |
But see, nobody knows, | 1:22:42 | |
because | 1:22:44 | |
nobody's really, government doesn't publish it. | 1:22:48 | |
So everybody's trying to figure out. | 1:22:51 | |
I mean, I'll go there... | 1:22:53 | |
I know that when I was there the last time in July, | 1:22:54 | |
is a big plane went out with 10 or 12 people. | 1:22:57 | |
(inhales) | 1:23:01 | |
That brought it well below 174. | 1:23:04 | |
Interviewer | Do you think it's gonna close? | 1:23:06 |
- | Well, as I say, just the way I think | 1:23:08 |
the Iraq war is gonna end. | 1:23:09 | |
There may be troops there. | 1:23:10 | |
I think, if you take it out of the equation, | 1:23:11 | |
the 30, 40, 50, or 60 people, | 1:23:15 | |
the government has approved for release | 1:23:17 | |
and is just trying to find a place for, | 1:23:20 | |
and doesn't want them, | 1:23:22 | |
and would love to return them somewhere | 1:23:23 | |
and would return them... | 1:23:25 | |
If you could took out of there all the people | 1:23:27 | |
that the government can't return home, | 1:23:31 | |
but would like to, | 1:23:34 | |
and if you put aside the 14 high-value detainees | 1:23:36 | |
who don't count as part of this process, | 1:23:39 | |
and then you look at what's left, | 1:23:42 | |
most of them are Yemenis. | 1:23:45 | |
- | Right. | |
- | And the big problem is Yemenis, | 1:23:47 |
it seems to be not that we want | 1:23:49 | |
to hold most of those people, | 1:23:51 | |
we don't know how to get them to Yemen. | 1:23:52 | |
And you can't shove them out of a plane at 20,000 feet. | 1:23:55 | |
And there is no Yemen underneath them. | 1:23:58 | |
And I think that's a burried sea, | 1:24:00 | |
but if you could take care of getting | 1:24:01 | |
a decent place for the ones we want | 1:24:03 | |
that can't go home again, | 1:24:05 | |
and got the Yemeni there, | 1:24:07 | |
you'd have 25, 30, 40 people there. | 1:24:08 | |
Interviewer | Right. | 1:24:11 |
(clears throat) | 1:24:12 | |
Some of whom, I think they probably would like to prosecute. | 1:24:14 | |
Many of whom, I don't think they know what to do with. | 1:24:18 | |
I think there is that area where there are people | 1:24:25 | |
who still believe there are people who we can't convict | 1:24:27 | |
but we should lock up. | 1:24:31 | |
So I'm betting the government believes | 1:24:33 | |
there's 40 or 50 people there who are dangerous. | 1:24:34 | |
And my own guests is that | 1:24:38 | |
if we hadn't gotten politics in it, | 1:24:41 | |
you could have put them in, | 1:24:44 | |
you could have close Guantanamo. | 1:24:45 | |
It might not be better for them to be in Illinois. | 1:24:47 | |
Right? But there goes. | 1:24:51 | |
But it's also worth noting that they've, | 1:24:54 | |
if there's 600 people have been released, | 1:24:57 | |
it'll suppose there's 150 there. (coughs) | 1:25:00 | |
And 60, they want out. | 1:25:04 | |
And I think it's less, all those numbers are a little high. | 1:25:05 | |
(gulps) | 1:25:08 | |
Although we're talking about 90 people, | 1:25:09 | |
many of whom are from Yemen. | 1:25:10 | |
And of that group, | 1:25:11 | |
the government has tried the habeas for 45 or 50. | 1:25:14 | |
And the detainees wins 70% of the time. | 1:25:19 | |
So the ones the government keeps left, who are the (laughs) | 1:25:22 | |
few ones, the worst of the worst. | 1:25:26 | |
The only ones they're holding onto | 1:25:29 | |
and they're batting the average is 25%. | 1:25:31 | |
It's kind of pathetic. | 1:25:34 | |
Interviewer | So, looking back, | 1:25:37 |
over then and is there something else that | 1:25:40 | |
you want to just, | 1:25:43 | |
your thoughts on Guantanamo | 1:25:45 | |
in this last decade, | 1:25:48 | |
in a bigger picture? | 1:25:50 | |
Or your life in a bigger picture, | 1:25:52 | |
your son's life?" | 1:25:54 | |
- | Well, | |
my son's life, you have to talk to him about that. | 1:25:56 | |
I don't think he's interested | 1:25:59 | |
in having me go down in history, describing his life. | 1:25:59 | |
Interviewer | Okay. | 1:26:03 |
(clears throat) | 1:26:03 | |
(gulps) | 1:26:05 | |
I think it was pretty good | 1:26:06 | |
but I think (chuckles) | 1:26:07 | |
he probably has a different view of it. (coughs) | 1:26:08 | |
Excuse me. (coughs) Excuse me. | 1:26:13 | |
Interviewer | Well, let me ask you this, Mark. | 1:26:18 |
Would your father be proud of you? | 1:26:19 | |
- | Oh, yeah. | 1:26:21 |
Oh, yeah. | 1:26:22 | |
- | When you started | |
with your father- | 1:26:23 | |
- | Yup. Yeah, no, this is what my father would have wanted. | 1:26:24 |
Everybody knew my father. | 1:26:27 | |
My mother knew most of it before she died. | 1:26:31 | |
And- | 1:26:34 | |
Interviewer | And why would your father | 1:26:35 |
have been so proud of you? | 1:26:36 | |
- | My father was a minister before he was a theologian. | 1:26:47 |
(coughs) | 1:26:51 | |
Excuse me. | 1:26:53 | |
But he was a big believer in the social gospel. | 1:26:55 | |
That's right. | 1:26:57 | |
He was certainly (gulping) very aggressive. | 1:27:03 | |
He was brought up in an incredibly poor part | 1:27:09 | |
of the St. Louis. (coughs) | 1:27:10 | |
Single mother before there was welfare. | 1:27:15 | |
There were homeless off and on for awhile. (clears throat) | 1:27:20 | |
But I'll tell you, here's the story of, | 1:27:23 | |
maybe the best story of my father. | 1:27:25 | |
Excuse me a second. | 1:27:25 | |
(gulps) | 1:27:27 | |
(coughs) | 1:27:30 | |
Excuse me. | 1:27:32 | |
Do you do any editing on this at all? | 1:27:32 | |
Interviewer | No. | 1:27:35 |
- | Okay. They can watch me hacking. | 1:27:36 |
It's like Doc Holliday in the O.K. Corral. (clears throat) | 1:27:38 | |
All right. | 1:27:42 | |
What I've always remembered, | 1:27:43 | |
was my father, it had to be in 1957 or '58. (clears throat) | 1:27:45 | |
He taught at Wellesley College. | 1:27:50 | |
And he was driving from Wellesley into Boston, | 1:27:52 | |
(clears throat) | 1:27:54 | |
then went through Roxbury. | ||
And he saw a cop beating up a black guy. | 1:27:57 | |
This is 1957. | 1:27:59 | |
So my father asked the cop the precinct. (coughs) | 1:28:02 | |
He went to the precinct. (sniffs) | 1:28:06 | |
He walked up to the desk (sniffs) | 1:28:08 | |
and (clears throat) | 1:28:10 | |
a Sergeant said, "Can I help you?" | 1:28:12 | |
And my father said, "No, I wanna speak to the captain." | 1:28:14 | |
The Sergeant said, "What about?" | 1:28:17 | |
My father said, "I want to report | 1:28:19 | |
an incident of police brutality." | 1:28:20 | |
And the Sergeant said, "Well, he's awfully busy. | 1:28:23 | |
Perhaps I could help you." | 1:28:25 | |
My father said, "I'm sorry, but I have a policy. | 1:28:27 | |
Never speak to the monkey, only the organ grinder." | 1:28:30 | |
(laughing) | 1:28:32 | |
(clears throat) | ||
Interviewer | So your father would be proud of you? | 1:28:40 |
- | Yeah. | 1:28:42 |
Interviewer | You don't deal with monkeys? | 1:28:43 |
- | Well, (chuckles) there are a lot of monkeys out there. | 1:28:47 |
(clears throat) | 1:28:49 | |
(laughing) | ||
Interviewer | Your take on the big | 1:28:50 |
organ grinder, | 1:28:51 | |
- | Right, right. | |
That's for sure, and you're still doing it. | 1:28:52 | |
- | Yeah. | 1:28:54 |
- | So, | |
we might be back someday | 1:28:55 | |
(clears throat) | ||
with- | 1:28:57 | |
- | I would hope to. | |
- | There's obviously a lot more to talk about. | 1:28:58 |
Interviewer | Right. | 1:29:00 |
So, thank you so much for this, Mark. | 1:29:01 | |
I really appreciate it. | 1:29:03 | |
It was really fascinating | 1:29:04 | |
and I didn't know some of this, so it was great. | 1:29:06 | |
- | Good. | 1:29:08 |
- | It's really moving. | |
- | I'm glad you liked it. Yeah, it was moving. | 1:29:09 |
Interviewer | Do you want | 1:29:11 |
(clears throat) | ||
- | some room tone? | 1:29:13 |
Crew | Yeah, let's do that. | 1:29:14 |
Interviewer | We're gonna take about | 1:29:14 |
10, 20 seconds room tone. | 1:29:15 | |
He needs that for, if we do any clips. | 1:29:17 | |
Sometimes, we just need the quiet time to work with a clip. | 1:29:20 | |
Crew | Begin room tone. | 1:29:26 |
End room tone. | 1:29:42 |
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