Corsetti, Damien, interview 1 - Interview master file / Witness to Guantanamo / Duke Digital Repository

Johnny

Okay, rolling.

0:05

Interviewer

Okay. Good morning!

0:06

-

Good morning.

0:07

-

We are very grateful to you

0:08

for participating in the Witness to Guantanamo project.

0:09

We invite you to speak of your experiences and involvement

0:13

with issues revolving around Guantanamo and Afghanistan,

0:17

where you worked.

0:23

We are hoping to provide you with an opportunity

0:24

to tell your story in your own words.

0:28

We are creating an archive of stories

0:32

so that people in America and around the world

0:34

will have a better opportunity to understand,

0:38

what happened to you and what others experienced.

0:42

Future generations must know

0:47

what happened at Guantanamo and Afghanistan.

0:48

And by telling your story,

0:51

you're contributing to history.

0:53

We appreciate your courage

0:56

and willingness to speak with us today.

0:57

If at any time you'd like to take a break,

1:01

just let us know and we're happy to provide that.

1:03

And you say anything and you'd like us to remove it,

1:05

we can remove it as well, if you just let us know.

1:08

And we'd like to begin

1:11

with some basic information about you,

1:13

including your name and where you grew up,

1:17

and perhaps where you're living now,

1:21

and your birthday and age, maybe you can just see if.

1:25

-

My name's Damian Corsetti,

1:28

I was born October 25th, 1979, Fairfax, Virginia.

1:29

suburb outside of DC.

1:33

I currently reside in the American Southeast.

1:36

Interviewer

About how old are you now, then?

1:40

-

I'm now 33.

1:42

Interviewer

And...

1:44

A little bit about your education.

1:49

-

I have a few years of college.

1:52

Interviewer

And could you tell us a little bit

1:56

about how you got involved in the military?

1:57

How that happened?

1:59

-

I was living back in Washington, DC.

2:01

I wanted to go work for a three letter agency.

2:03

College really wasn't for me.

2:06

I didn't have the discipline for it at the time.

2:08

And the only other way to get a good job

2:10

in the intelligence community was to get the clearance.

2:13

And so I joined the military to get a security clearance.

2:16

Interviewer

When did you join them?

2:20

-

I joined the military in September of 2000.

2:21

-

And where were you in September of 2001?

2:25

-

September, 2001, I was in a hanger

2:29

getting ready to board a plane

2:34

in Airborne School, here in Fort Benning, Georgia.

2:36

Interviewer

And what,

2:40

could you tell us what happened then?

2:41

Where were you going and what where you...

2:43

-

We were, it was our third week of jump school.

2:45

It was our second jump of the week.

2:49

It was a Tuesday morning.

2:51

We were sitting in the parachute shed

2:54

with our parachutes on, which are very uncomfortable.

2:56

And after about two hours of them delaying us

3:00

getting on the planes

3:04

and we could obviously tell something was wrong,

3:05

the instructors at Airborne School told us

3:08

that two planes had hit the World Trade Centers,

3:11

and that one was on its way for Washington DC.

3:14

And that we would not be loading the planes

3:18

until this was all resolved

3:21

and that America was under attack.

3:22

Interviewer

What were you thinking?

3:24

-

Well, my whole family worked in DC at the time.

3:27

So it was, of course I was worried about their safety

3:30

and the general.

3:34

We hadn't seen anything on television,

3:37

we had no idea how bad it was.

3:39

So it was just a general, general panic

3:43

that was going through my mind at the time

3:46

of my family being okay.

3:48

What's going on?

3:49

What an uncertainty.

3:50

Interviewer

And what happened next?

3:52

Did you finally take off to go somewhere

3:54

or did you just stay at Fort Benning?

3:57

-

They took us back to our unit that night.

3:59

We didn't do our jumps that day.

4:03

They took us back to the barracks area,

4:05

where they gave us a further briefing

4:08

on what was going on

4:09

and they set up a guard duty roster.

4:10

And, I think we were doing guard duty

4:14

with baseball bats and cans of mace that night.

4:16

And then after that, I did about three days

4:20

of pretty serious drinking to deal with it.

4:24

Interviewer

What were you afraid of? Why?

4:27

-

I wasn't afraid.

4:31

It was that I knew,

4:32

everybody there at that point knew, you know,

4:36

this was 2001 and we really hadn't been

4:38

in serious conflict for quite some time.

4:41

And it was one of those things,

4:44

you join the military but knows that

4:45

it's a possibility something,

4:47

contingency operations might happen,

4:48

but that was so unknown to us at that time.

4:50

That something like that was even possible of happening.

4:55

And you just knew at that point, okay.

4:57

Like I knew that day, I'm gonna go,

4:59

I'm gonna be going to war soon.

5:01

Interviewer

And can you tell us how you did go to war?

5:03

What happened?

5:06

-

From there, I went to Fort Bragg, North Carolina,

5:08

where I was assigned

5:13

to the 525th Military Intelligence Brigade,

5:14

as a counter-intelligence agent

5:18

and human intelligence collection.

5:19

From the day I got to the unit,

5:23

they were telling us it's not if, but when,

5:25

it's not if, but when,

5:27

well, when came and we went to Louisiana

5:29

and did a train up down there for about two weeks

5:33

waiting to catch a plane to Afghanistan from there.

5:35

Flew to Germany and then Afghanistan,

5:40

landed in Bagram, Afghanistan, July 29th of 2002.

5:42

Interviewer

And what did,

5:47

did you know what you're gonna be doing

5:48

when you got to Afghanistan?

5:50

-

I knew, yes.

5:51

I knew about two weeks prior

5:52

that I was not gonna be doing counter intelligence,

5:53

human intelligence collection,

5:56

that I would be doing interrogation operations

5:58

in the prison with high-value detainees.

6:00

Interviewer

And how did, how did that happen?

6:02

You weren't trained to be an interrogator, where you?

6:04

-

That is correct, I was not.

6:06

I was trained in counter intelligence,

6:08

which is overt espionage.

6:11

And sorry,

6:14

what happened is, when September 11th happened,

6:18

a lot of the rules went out the door,

6:21

as far as how intelligence collection occurs

6:23

and who does it.

6:26

And the problems that they were running into

6:27

is that the interrogators,

6:30

there weren't enough of them to begin with,

6:32

much less interrogators didn't have,

6:33

didn't carry top secret clearance,

6:35

which was required for a lot of the imagery

6:37

and voice intercept that we would have

6:39

as far as information pertaining to the specific prisoners.

6:42

They weren't allowed to go

6:45

to a lot of the briefings on the raids and things like that.

6:46

So there was four counter intelligence agents

6:48

that they augmented the interrogation platoon with.

6:52

And that's how I ended up over there.

6:55

And I was trained briefly for about two weeks

6:57

and running basically interrogation approaches

7:00

and things like that,

7:02

which weren't too far off from how you collect intelligence

7:03

through counterintelligence activities.

7:06

Interviewer

Who trained you in those two weeks?

7:08

-

Different chief warrant officers

7:11

that were assigned to my unit at the time

7:13

and a few non-commissioned officers

7:16

that had some prior experience

7:18

in the Balkans with interrogation.

7:20

Interviewer

Did they talk about

7:22

the rules of interrogation?

7:23

-

Not, not a great deal.

7:25

We were versed more in the Law of Land Warfare

7:27

than we were Geneva.

7:29

However, Geneva was emphasized.

7:32

It was, you know, I can't specifically remember

7:36

if we were ever told, you can't strike a prisoner,

7:39

but it does stick out in my head is,

7:40

you can't strike a prisoner,

7:43

you're not allowed to hit the prisoner.

7:44

And that was pretty much the limits of it.

7:45

Interviewer

Were you, did you feel competent

7:48

after two weeks of training,

7:51

that you could be an interrogator?

7:52

-

Well, I mean, to some extent, you know,

7:55

I think a 22 years old sitting in a room

7:57

with number five on the blacklist was a little, you know,

8:00

of course I sat in that room myself saying

8:04

what am I doing in here?

8:06

Surely our government has somebody more qualified

8:07

than myself to be sitting here collecting this information.

8:09

However, interrogation is more of a mental chess game

8:13

and you either have a knack for it or you don't.

8:17

And I had a knack for interrogation, I guess.

8:20

Interviewer

Well, could you describe

8:23

your first interrogation or one of your early ones

8:25

and how it worked?

8:28

And was this some operating procedure you followed, or?

8:29

-

The basic protocol when we got there

8:33

was that interrogations basically take,

8:35

they're blocked off in two hour segments.

8:37

You have a packet on your detainee

8:41

that you're supposed to read up on your detainee

8:44

and come up with a questioning outline

8:47

that you get approved by your,

8:49

by the non-commissioned officer in charge,

8:50

or from the officer in charge at the time,

8:52

as well as any other questions that might be generated

8:55

through outside agencies or other government organizations,

8:58

for you to ask the prisoner.

9:02

And you'd try to stick with your questioning outline

9:06

as much as possible.

9:09

However, that didn't always happen.

9:10

Sometimes you'd have to go with the flow of the prisoner.

9:11

It's always the first few times you talk to them,

9:14

there's always a direct approach,

9:16

you don't use any approaches on them besides that.

9:18

And it's kinda get a base of,

9:22

are they telling the truth, where were the inconsistencies

9:24

in their story?

9:27

Prior to my first interrogation,

9:31

I observed about six hours of interrogation

9:34

with my first prisoner,

9:37

and, you know, I was a 22 year old kid,

9:38

I was very intimidated at the time.

9:43

Here were these hardened terrorists, the enemy,

9:44

and I didn't know what to expect.

9:47

And I still remember the exact face

9:50

of my first prisoner and everything was,

9:55

he was very innocent.

9:58

He was a farmer who was picked up

9:59

by one of the local warlords and sold to us.

10:01

Interviewer

How do you know, you used

10:05

the term hardened terrorists,

10:06

what made you think he was a hardened terrorist?

10:07

-

Well, at the time Bagram only held,

10:11

I think 98 prisoners was its capacity,

10:14

and you had another prison in Kandahar,

10:17

where they had thousands.

10:20

And Bagram was supposed to be

10:21

the high value detainee prison.

10:22

Cause we had the capability

10:25

for constant, 24 hour interrogation cycles

10:27

to take place at Bagram,

10:29

to really get the tactical intelligence exploited,

10:31

that we needed to get.

10:35

So we were told when we got there,

10:39

this whole thing, hey, this is Bagram.

10:41

This is the big leagues,

10:43

and you know, there's a lot of confusion in war though,

10:45

and you do get a lot of innocent.

10:49

When we first got to Bagram,

10:50

they were mainly hardened terrorists that were there

10:52

and Taliban fighters, which, you know,

10:55

that's up for debate

10:58

if they should've been grouped together but...

10:59

Towards the end of our time there,

11:03

the quality of prisoner got less and less because well

11:05

pretty much all the good ones had already been captured

11:08

or killed at that point.

11:10

Interviewer

So you said they were purchased

11:12

or sold to us.

11:16

Did you know that for a fact or?

11:17

-

Oh yes.

11:19

There's a, you have what is called

11:20

intelligence contingency funds.

11:22

And those are used to basically pay off bribes

11:24

to local officials, to warlords and things like that.

11:28

And we would give rewards for prisoners,

11:32

just like we would give rewards for showing us

11:35

where a cache of weapons was or anything like that.

11:37

It allows access to give bribes to the locals.

11:39

Interviewer

Do you have any idea

11:44

how much you might've paid?

11:45

-

No, I don't.

11:46

Interviewer

So the first time,

11:47

when you observed the prisoner during those six hours,

11:49

did you have any sense of who this man was

11:52

and how you might approach it when your turn came up?

11:55

-

Well, I knew that I was gonna use a direct approach

12:00

as this was gonna,

12:02

when we first got there,

12:03

there was two weeks of overlap with us

12:04

and the unit that was there before.

12:06

And it was for us to observe them doing,

12:09

how they did things,

12:12

and for us to tweak anything that we thought

12:13

would suit our needs better.

12:15

And so I went in there with the plan of a direct approach

12:17

and I think that's all I did use with him.

12:20

However, the idea of even the possibility

12:22

of him being innocent,

12:26

didn't pop into my mind until, you know,

12:27

over a month after talking to this guy later, you know,

12:29

I was really convinced, true believer,

12:32

these people wronged us

12:34

and the mentality that I had at the time was, you know,

12:36

it was very easy for people to forget

12:40

of people holding up signs,

12:42

calling for revenge after September 11th happened,

12:44

here we are, 2013, is very easy for everybody to say,

12:48

how could you? How could you?

12:51

Well, you were calling for revenge

12:53

and me and the group of people I was sent with

12:55

were the ones you sent to do it.

12:57

And so we got that revenge,

12:59

and that was more the mentality.

13:01

These are the enemy, they are guilty.

13:05

And I really don't care

13:07

if I have to trample on 100 of their rights

13:09

to find one guilty one,

13:11

it's worth it to save an American life.

13:12

And that was my mentality at that time.

13:14

Interviewer

Did you think they were lying to you?

13:16

-

Of course.

13:18

Everything, I mean, it was just natural to think

13:18

that they were lying and it wasn't until

13:21

a lot of experience in talking with people,

13:23

and you can sit in a school house and people can say,

13:25

well, here's a telltale sign of somebody

13:27

when they're lying to you.

13:29

Well, not really.

13:30

It doesn't always work

13:31

and nothing's 100% like that.

13:32

Kinesics is very subjective to who you're talking to

13:34

and who's asking the questions and how you're asking them.

13:38

So you really have to get an individual feel

13:42

for each person.

13:43

Interviewer

And what kind of questions would you ask?

13:45

Do you remember any of them?

13:48

-

Would always start off with fairly basic biographical,

13:49

your name, where you're from?

13:53

Are you married?

13:56

How many kids do you have?

13:57

And then get into a little more detailed

13:58

towards military aspects of, you know,

14:00

what foreign languages do you speak?

14:03

What kind of weapons do you know how to use?

14:04

Did you fight in the jihad against the Soviets?

14:06

Have you been fighting in the civil war here?

14:10

Who were you aligned with?

14:11

And then from there,

14:13

what I used to like to do was

14:14

just give them a pencil and a piece of paper

14:17

and have them, if they could write,

14:19

which with the Arabs, they could write,

14:21

but the Afghans more than not they couldn't.

14:23

And just having them write their story down

14:26

about the day they were captured

14:28

and the events that they see surrounding it.

14:29

And I would compare that with what we had

14:30

about why they were captured.

14:33

And then I would go back in the second time

14:34

and have them do that again.

14:36

And then I would take those two stories,

14:37

have them translated and compare

14:39

the differences between them.

14:41

And it's never, when you're interrogating,

14:43

no one knows what the truth is,

14:47

but you definitely know what the truth is not.

14:49

So that's kind of how that works and all, you know,

14:51

kinda gives you an avenue, say, okay,

14:54

here's where I need to exploit the questioning,

14:56

here's where they're lying to me.

14:57

Interviewer

Did someone supervise you

15:00

or train you along the way, or give you some guidance?

15:02

-

Not for the most part, no.

15:06

I mean, at that time you had the interrogation backgrounds

15:08

of most of the interrogators in the military,

15:13

who have a very short lifespan.

15:15

Anybody in the intelligence community

15:17

in the military is very short lifespan,

15:19

cause they get recruited by contractors

15:20

or other government agencies to get work for them.

15:22

So, you know, you're talking maybe six to 10 years

15:26

in the military for people that don't make it a life.

15:29

And then they're out making good money,

15:31

and doing bigger and better things.

15:33

So the interrogation experience was mainly

15:36

people that had been to the Balkans,

15:39

and this is towards, you know,

15:40

we're talking '98, '99 in the Balkans,

15:41

when there really wasn't any more genocide going on.

15:43

And so their interrogation experience was with people

15:46

who were willing prisoners,

15:50

which was much different than where we were at that point.

15:52

Interviewer

So are you telling us that is basically

15:56

by a series of pass

15:59

that you went through these interrogations?

16:00

-

At first yeah. Yeah, it was,

16:03

it was pretty much some on the job.

16:05

I learned a lot more on the job

16:07

than I did any formal training I had through the military.

16:09

Interviewer

And how'd you feel after an interrogation,

16:12

your first one or two?

16:16

What thoughts did you take with you after that?

16:18

-

I honestly don't remember.

16:22

Interviewer

And did you work

16:25

with another interrogator in tandem?

16:26

-

I did.

16:29

You were always in there with a,

16:30

there was always two interrogators

16:31

and one interpreter and the interpreter,

16:32

if you were speaking,

16:35

we didn't have any Pashtun or Farsi.

16:36

Well, I think we had a few Farsi speakers,

16:39

but no Dari speakers.

16:41

So as far as communicating with the Afghans

16:42

in their native tongue,

16:45

that didn't really happen,

16:46

unless we had an Afghan civilian interpreter from the US,

16:48

we would converse in Russian.

16:53

Most of them spoke Russian.

16:55

So we had a few Russian linguists

16:57

that we would converse with the Afghans in Russian.

16:59

And some of them spoke Arabic,

17:01

we had Arabic linguists,

17:02

we were able to converse like that.

17:03

Interviewer

And what was the role

17:06

of having two interrogators?

17:07

-

So that you could catch if somebody missed a question

17:10

or an avenue to exploit or something like that.

17:14

And sometimes you would have people that were better,

17:16

for myself, I was mainly used

17:19

in the psychological aspect of getting them to talk.

17:22

And then you would always be paired up

17:25

with somebody that covered your weaknesses.

17:27

And like, you know, I would have a,

17:28

my partner would normally be somebody

17:30

who was pretty proficient in asking questions

17:32

in a patterned way

17:34

that wasn't so scatterbrained like myself.

17:35

Interviewer

And did you and the other interrogator then

17:38

leave your notes at the end of the session?

17:40

-

We did, you would compare your notes

17:43

and then you would go back

17:45

and debrief your non-commissioned officer in charge

17:45

or your officer in charge,

17:48

and you would write internal memos that were labeled

17:50

as interrogator notes,

17:52

which would take maybe a half hour,

17:56

just a little half hour summary report

17:58

of what took place during those two hours of interrogation.

18:00

And if any, the whole purpose of interrogation

18:03

is to answer what's called a PIR,

18:06

priority intelligence requirement,

18:08

which is issued at different levels

18:10

through the secretary of defense,

18:12

through the theater, through the specific region

18:14

that you're in from the different commanders.

18:17

And if you answered a priority intelligence requirement

18:18

throughout your interrogation,

18:21

then you would have to go

18:23

and write an intelligence information report,

18:24

which would answer the bigger questions for people.

18:28

Interviewer

And if you got pushback from the detainee,

18:34

if say he didn't speak back to you at all,

18:38

he just yelled back at you or he started crying,

18:40

or he basically, he was not just reacting "normally",

18:43

just responding to your questions.

18:49

How would you react to that?

18:50

-

Myself, I would immediately put them on their knees,

18:52

with their hands over their head

18:54

and leave them that way for at least 30 minutes.

18:56

Interviewer

For what purpose?

18:59

-

Without questioning them there or anything.

19:00

To punish them.

19:02

They were called safety positions, stress positions.

19:03

I don't know what the word of the day is.

19:07

I don't know, under this current administration,

19:10

what they use for justifying it,

19:11

but it's not torture, they say, but it does,

19:13

it definitely inflicts physical pain.

19:17

It's your knees on the ground back,

19:20

straight up hands in the air

19:23

with a double set of shackles on your hands.

19:26

And after about five minutes, it's excruciatingly painful.

19:28

And I mean, I would leave people like that

19:31

for up to four or five hours at a time.

19:33

Interviewer

For what purpose?

19:38

-

Just to elicit information from them.

19:40

Interviewer

And would that be successful?

19:44

-

Sometimes.

19:46

It definitely took their resistance down,

19:51

cause at the time they're more focused on the pain

19:53

than giving you a line of crap.

19:55

But did it give,

20:00

I don't know necessarily that it gave good information.

20:02

Interviewer

And if they still didn't "break"

20:06

after four or five hours, what would happen after that?

20:09

-

Yeah. Well, most people wouldn't,

20:13

most people don't break.

20:16

They use that term of breaking a prisoner,

20:18

most prisoners bend like a palm tree in a hurricane,

20:21

they'll bend and then they bounce back

20:25

when the wind dies down,

20:28

and they'll put their resistance back up.

20:30

And it's a constant reinforcement of your approach

20:31

to keep them bent and to keep the information flowing.

20:34

It was, you know, and after a point,

20:41

after doing this to them for so long,

20:43

and sometimes it would take weeks

20:46

to get somebody to finally start being truthful with you

20:49

and giving you information that you want him to give you,

20:51

you would be so frustrated that sometimes

20:54

you would put them in stress positions

20:56

just to punish 'em.

20:57

Not for any other reason, you know, missed time.

20:59

I wouldn't ask questions sometimes.

21:02

Sometimes I'd sit there and play cards in front of 'em,

21:04

while they were in one of those positions

21:06

and laugh at them,

21:07

and pull their shirt pocket out

21:08

and use it as an ashtray,

21:10

and really dehumanize the prisoner.

21:12

Was a lot of the main point of that too,

21:16

to say, hey, I'm in charge and you don't,

21:18

you don't run things here.

21:20

Interviewer

Did anybody give you guidance

21:22

as to do the kinds of things you--

21:25

-

The stress positions were already being used

21:28

and were in protocol by the group before us.

21:30

And they were continued to be used through,

21:33

you know, years afterwards,

21:37

stress positions were continued to be used.

21:38

These are things that they teach

21:40

in the interrogation schoolhouse.

21:41

I don't know if that's the case any longer,

21:45

but it used to be.

21:47

And then once Dilawar died and Habibullah died,

21:50

Interviewer

Could you just tell us who they were,

21:55

just so that--

21:56

-

Habibullah and Dilawar were two Afghans

21:58

that died from blunt force trauma within,

22:00

I think within a week of each other, they both died.

22:04

And after that happened,

22:07

we had to stop calling them, they changed the name of it,

22:08

from stress position to safety position.

22:11

And we had to tell the prisoners that we found

22:13

that people that lie to us are a threat to us,

22:16

so we need to put you in this position

22:18

for our safety and yours.

22:19

Excuse me.

22:24

Interviewer

So when you were frustrated,

22:26

that's how you responded

22:29

by basically putting them in these.

22:30

-

I mean, there was different things

22:32

that people would do.

22:34

I mean, some people,

22:35

there was no water boarding per se

22:37

or anything like that used to take place,

22:40

we never had an inclined bench to lay prisoners on,

22:43

however, they had black hoods that were caught in hoods,

22:46

that had a cinch that we could cinch down

22:50

around their neck,

22:52

saturate the hoods with water

22:54

and put them under halogen lamps

22:55

to where it would really heat up

22:57

and make it very difficult for them to breathe.

22:59

I did work with some elements of our government

23:02

that did forcibly put water down the throats

23:05

and faces of prisoners.

23:07

But, again, that was not something

23:11

that was policy at the prison.

23:14

And it was definitely not something that we had

23:15

any special apparatus for.

23:17

It was just more or less

23:18

liter bottles of San Benedetto that we used.

23:19

Interviewer

And that was at your initiative,

23:23

or you decided that this person

23:25

needed to be treated like that?

23:27

-

Yeah, it was pretty much at the interrogator's discretion.

23:30

Interviewer

And same for the hoods?

23:34

-

The hoods, they actually came up from,

23:36

Bagram was set up where the interrogation booths

23:39

were on a second floor over the,

23:41

that overlooked the pens that the prisoners were in.

23:44

And they came up to us

23:48

with two sets of shackles on their hands,

23:49

one on their feet and a hood over their head,

23:53

with goggles over the hood is how they showed up

23:55

in the interrogation room.

23:57

And it was, everybody had a handcuff key,

23:59

so it was up to you if you wanted to take

24:01

your prisoner's handcuffs off,

24:03

if you wanted to take the hood off

24:04

and, you know, you normally do,

24:05

you wanna build a rapport with them,

24:06

you definitely, I don't want to make it sound

24:07

like we were this way to every prisoner, we weren't.

24:10

For the most part,

24:12

you're very direct with your questioning

24:13

and not kind but at the same time,

24:16

not cruel to the prisoner.

24:18

And so you wanted to take the handcuffs off.

24:22

You wanted to give him cigarettes,

24:25

you wanted to give them food.

24:26

You wanted to, you know,

24:27

do whatever you could to make their lives a little easier

24:28

and give them incentive to talk to you that way.

24:30

Sure, definitely get better information that way,

24:32

and you know that,

24:34

if somebody wants to talk to you.

24:36

But, you know, every now and then

24:38

you'd get a stubborn person or somebody who

24:40

may have genuinely really not know anything.

24:43

In our outlook of it there in that case is we,

24:46

once we started realizing that we had people

24:49

that were maybe arrested,

24:51

but for things not what they say, you know,

24:52

they maybe didn't do what they were there for.

24:54

The way that it is over there it's so

24:57

these attacks happen in such isolated places,

25:00

and the crazy thing about it is

25:03

you always know when you're getting ready to get attacked

25:04

because all the locals disappear, they know.

25:06

And so then you go to this mentality of,

25:09

okay, you might not know what we think you know,

25:13

but you know something.

25:16

Everybody knows something, you know,

25:17

give me who the fighters are in your area.

25:20

Interviewer

And how long did you,

25:25

were you an interrogator for how long?

25:29

-

In Afghanistan or?

25:32

Interviewer

In Afghanistan.

25:33

-

In Afghanistan for seven months.

25:34

Interviewer

And I wanna go into some more specifics

25:37

but over those seven months that you see it evolve

25:40

the way you're describing sounds like that evolved.

25:42

-

Yeah, it definitely, the treatment for the prisoners

25:46

definitely got worse over time.

25:49

Interviewer

Why do you think?

25:51

-

I mean, you know, it's really hard

25:56

to describe to somebody who's never been to combat

25:59

of your personal mentality,

26:03

of the us versus them mentality that you have

26:06

when you're there.

26:08

And it really just perpetuates itself.

26:09

And once you start dehumanizing somebody,

26:11

it's really hard to start humanizing them after that.

26:13

And to just start being nice to them at a point.

26:16

Maybe with the prisoners that spoke English,

26:19

maybe I was a little nicer to them

26:22

because I could actually communicate with them.

26:24

But for the most part,

26:26

you don't even look at these people as human.

26:27

You don't call them by their names.

26:29

You refer to them by their number only.

26:31

And I think that it was just the overall,

26:34

it was a process, a systematic process

26:38

of dehumanization that eventually wore on everybody there,

26:40

to the point where you don't look at these people

26:44

as your equals on Earth.

26:45

Interviewer

Did you know you were dehumanizing them?

26:47

-

Yeah. Yeah.

26:50

I definitely did.

26:51

Interviewer

And did you ever think

26:54

you got some good intel from these?

26:55

-

I mean I definitely got good intelligence

26:58

while I was there.

27:00

I saved, at the time, you know,

27:01

immediately through direct action

27:03

of intelligence I gathered,

27:05

I know I've saved lives.

27:07

I know I've saved US lives.

27:08

I know I've saved lives

27:09

outside of the United States as well.

27:11

However, what I do with now is did my actions to

27:14

get that information, you know, over a four year span

27:17

in the recruitment of terrorists done

27:22

by my actions is in the end cause more lives.

27:26

Interviewer

Hmm. You, I assume you can't tell us

27:32

the kinds of things you got that save lives.

27:34

-

No, as far as specifics on intelligence gathering,

27:39

I really am not too free to discuss anything.

27:43

Interviewer

I had read somewhere

27:47

about something called the submarine.

27:49

It's might've been what you said.

27:51

-

That's not gonna look good on film.

27:53

That was with Pablo Pardo,

27:56

and there was a lot of stuff

27:58

that maybe I put a little too much trust into him

28:00

when I was speaking with him,

28:03

and he really took some liberties with my words,

28:04

and I'd never have used the term submarine

28:08

or anything like that.

28:11

And no, that's not accurate.

28:12

Interviewer

Okay.

28:15

Do you know what he's referring to or?

28:16

-

No, I think he was just trying,

28:19

I don't know if you're familiar with

28:21

Spanish newspaper journalism,

28:23

but it's very sensational,

28:25

kind of like a current affair inside edition. (laughs)

28:26

And so that's Spanish journalism from my understanding,

28:29

and I think he really just sensationalized a story

28:34

that probably didn't need to be sensationalized anymore

28:36

than it already was.

28:38

Woman

Who was your boss?

28:41

Who was your direct supervisor while you were there?

28:44

What position was that?

28:47

-

My direct supervisor was...

28:49

Oh man, what was his name?

28:54

He testified against me.

28:55

Alex...

28:56

Woman

What was his ranking or his position?

28:59

-

He was a sergeant, E-5, out of the Utah National Guard.

29:01

He didn't know anything.

29:07

He was a complete...

29:10

I don't think too much of him.

29:13

I mean, he really didn't belong there

29:14

any more than I did,

29:15

but he especially didn't belong there,

29:17

spent most of his time playing video games

29:18

and not really observing interrogations.

29:20

Woman

And was it his decision?

29:23

Whose decision was it how often you saw the prisoners

29:24

and brought them back for interrogation?

29:27

Was it your call?

29:29

-

I don't know who was giving the directive of,

29:32

you must talk to this person,

29:37

we definitely where we'd show up every day

29:39

and there was a whiteboard that would have the list

29:40

of interrogations done.

29:44

It would have the booth numbers,

29:45

the prisoner numbers were in time slots

29:46

for the booths, going on a 24 hour cycle, 12 hour shifts.

29:48

And so you would go in

29:53

and see the booth that you were working

29:54

and the prisoners that were going to be there

29:57

and the times.

29:58

And I know that those were put there

29:59

by our officer in charge,

30:00

but as far as who she was receiving direction through,

30:02

cause she was only a captain in the army, which is not much.

30:05

And so surely she was getting direction

30:09

from higher than her about that.

30:11

Woman

Did you have relations,

30:14

did you know CIA folks who were there at the time?

30:15

-

As far as the specific use of acronyms

30:19

with government agencies, all I'm allowed to refer

30:26

to them as other government agencies,

30:29

I can't put a acronym with an action

30:31

or even confirm that the CIA

30:34

was in Afghanistan at that time.

30:36

Woman

Got it.

30:39

Interviewer

Did interrogators ever resist from--

30:39

-

Surely.

30:43

Interviewer

How did they resist?

30:44

-

Surely, we immediately

30:45

upon seeing what was going on there

30:50

and our basic understandings

30:53

of the Law of land Warfare and Geneva conventions,

30:55

we knew that, hey, this isn't entirely okay,

30:58

and this isn't exactly what they had in mind

31:01

when they told us to go interrogate people.

31:04

We raised concerns to our officer in charge

31:08

and our non-commissioned officer in charge,

31:11

who in turn raised those questions

31:12

to the core G2 out there,

31:14

which is the intelligence officer that oversees

31:18

all the theaters' intelligence.

31:20

That gentleman's name was Lieutenant Colonel Stallings.

31:23

And he got us some JAG officers that were in theater,

31:29

there in Afghanistan, to come and talk to us

31:32

and explain to us why it was legal for us to do

31:35

the orders that were being given to us.

31:39

So soldiers, at that point,

31:40

you just have the choice of, okay,

31:42

I've been told that this is a legal order.

31:43

I do this, or I go to jail.

31:46

That's that's then your choice.

31:47

And I'm not sure what would've happened if we said no.

31:51

Nobody went against it.

31:54

Nobody said, no, we're not gonna do this.

31:56

And I'm not quite sure what would have happened

31:59

if somebody did that.

32:01

It would've certainly been

32:01

the end of their career in the military,

32:02

but as far as punitive and criminal--

32:06

Interviewer

And when you say this,

32:09

do you mean like the safety positions or?

32:11

-

Not just the safety positions,

32:13

actually our first concern was with the Afghans themselves,

32:16

because there is a clause in Geneva,

32:21

called "levee en masse", which says that

32:23

they don't need to wear a uniform,

32:28

they don't need to fight for a flag,

32:29

if there's a popular uprising

32:32

with the mass populous there,

32:34

if they decided to uprise against a foreign entity

32:36

that's occupying their country,

32:40

there actually is protection for them as EPW's in Geneva.

32:42

And that was our original concerns,

32:48

as well as the four hours of uninterrupted sleep,

32:50

that we believe is what the spirit of Geneva was,

32:53

was that they get four hours of uninterrupted sleep.

32:56

Whereas we were taking that

33:00

and giving them 15 and 30 minutes of sporadic sleep,

33:01

broken up with four to five hours

33:05

of interrogation in between.

33:07

So we didn't feel

33:11

that we were following the spirit of Geneva.

33:12

And we asked the JAG lawyers,

33:14

and they basically explained to us why we had to do,

33:16

why it was perfectly legal for us

33:20

to receive the orders we were receiving at that time.

33:23

Interviewer

Were you conflicted by the fact that

33:27

the way you understood Geneva was different from

33:28

what the JAG office would tell you?

33:31

-

Yeah, I mean, and at that point it's like, well,

33:33

it wasn't because I had any love for Afghans

33:40

or the Arabs that were there.

33:42

It was more or less on a philosophical level of

33:44

as Americans, should we be extending our way of life

33:48

to the people that we're fighting to really hold

33:52

that higher ground?

33:54

I grew up in the Reagan era

33:56

and that was what we always had,

33:57

was the higher ground.

33:58

And when you lose that and you lose this,

34:00

again, you can't really fight terrorism with bullets.

34:02

That's not, you can't fight theology with weapons.

34:06

You have to fight it winning hearts and minds.

34:10

And the way to do that is not through waterboarding

34:12

and stress positions,

34:15

and 15 minutes asleep here and there,

34:16

that's not really great.

34:19

Interviewer

Can you describe the secret probation

34:21

that you're referring to?

34:23

-

Well, there was many different ways

34:27

in which they would use to keep prisoners awake.

34:30

We had, specifically, we had an isolation section

34:33

of the prison, which was eight cells.

34:36

And we had the newer prisoners would go there

34:41

because even though they weren't allowed to,

34:45

these prisoners they had to sit on a six by six blanket

34:47

for 24 hours a day, not talking.

34:50

That was their life.

34:54

And of course they would still whisper

34:55

under their breath to each other.

34:57

And so when you would get a prisoner in,

34:58

the general rule of thumb was right off the bat,

35:01

48 hours, no sleep.

35:04

They stayed up for 48 hours.

35:07

And that was to break down, again,

35:09

break down the resistance that they might have

35:11

as well as instill the shock of capture,

35:13

still you wanna keep that going as long as possible.

35:15

That's when they're most vulnerable to tell you,

35:17

excuse me,

35:19

to tell you pertinent information,

35:21

to what you wanna know is right when they get captured.

35:23

So you wanna really keep that going as long as possible.

35:25

Now it was up to the individual interrogator

35:27

who was assigned the prisoner,

35:29

if they wanted to let them sleep during that first 48 hours.

35:32

Most people would say, hey, it's beyond my control.

35:35

In that way you don't look like the bad guy,

35:37

and they still don't get to sleep.

35:39

And then after that, you had to get permission

35:42

to sleep dep people.

35:45

The longest I ever saw it almost for about three weeks,

35:47

somebody was sleep dep and

35:50

Interviewer

What would that entail?

35:52

You cannot sleep for three weeks?

35:53

-

Well, again, they would let them get,

35:55

besides the first 48 hours,

35:58

and the way that they would do that,

36:01

most of the time was just have them stand up for two days.

36:02

And they would be brought in for interrogations

36:05

maybe two hours a day for each one of those.

36:07

And, I'm sorry, I got lost.

36:11

Interviewer

Well, then how could you do

36:15

sleep deprivation for three weeks?

36:16

How would you?

36:18

-

Well, at that point, that's gonna start involving,

36:18

you would have in the main cages,

36:21

you would have airlocks to get into the cage,

36:23

each cage held about a little less than 20 prisoners.

36:25

And then there was an airlock going into it that was

36:29

surrounded by triple strand concertina wire,

36:31

razor wire.

36:35

And they would be shackled up to the,

36:36

the top of the cage.

36:39

Interviewer

Would their feet be on the ground?

36:42

-

The feet would be on the ground.

36:44

And I mean their arms weren't fully extended

36:45

to where you had to worry about their lungs collapsing,

36:47

but maybe elbows about here,

36:49

hands in front of them,

36:52

hood on their head, goggles over the head,

36:53

earmuffs over the ears, completely sensory deprived as well.

36:55

Interviewer

And how long would you hold them like that?

37:00

-

On average, I would say people were held like that

37:04

for anywhere between three to five days,

37:06

but sometimes it did, you know, depending on

37:09

how long the interrogator wanted to let it happen,

37:12

if medical personnel felt that it was okay to do,

37:15

and if you could get permission to do it.

37:18

Interviewer

Who were medical personnel,

37:21

were they actual MDs or?

37:23

-

There was one MD that would visit the prison.

37:25

However, for the most part, they were field medics

37:29

which, about the training, like an EMT.

37:33

Interviewer

And these people decided

37:38

whether the detainees could be held like that for?

37:39

-

Well, it wasn't that they got asked.

37:43

It was that if they didn't think,

37:45

if they thought there was a physical problem

37:47

going on with the prisoner,

37:49

they would tell us, hey, I think this guy's getting ready

37:50

to have some issues.

37:52

Maybe you guys should lighten up on him a little bit.

37:54

Interviewer

We had a detainee who we interviewed

37:57

who said he was hung by his wrist for five days.

37:59

Is that?

38:03

-

That's very possible.

38:04

Interviewer

It is?

38:05

-

Yes.

38:06

Interviewer

Could he be hung

38:07

without having his feet touch the ground?

38:08

-

I don't, I never saw that happen.

38:10

And I really, I don't see where that's possible.

38:11

Interviewer

He said he also blacked out

38:15

after a few days.

38:16

Is that possible?

38:17

-

I would imagine so.

38:18

The way that we would use sleep deprivation,

38:20

with allowing prisoners the little bits of downtime

38:23

that actually really disrupted their internal clocks,

38:26

so some of them after about five days of sleep deprivation,

38:29

the prisoner might think they'd been there for a month.

38:31

You know, it really wears down the psyche.

38:34

And then you start having...

38:37

That when you're sleep deprived,

38:44

you get delirium.

38:45

Interviewer

Hallucinations.

38:47

-

Yeah, the hallucinations from the delirium

38:48

would start kicking in and they,

38:50

eventually, like the guy that I remember

38:52

that was sleep dep for three weeks,

38:54

he was pretty worthless after about a week.

38:55

I mean, it's kinda like we were doing it

38:58

just out of punishment at that point.

39:00

Interviewer

So you're conflating sleep deprivation

39:03

with being hung.

39:05

Is there a reason why those two

39:06

seem to be in the same context?

39:08

-

Because normally, after two or three days

39:10

you couldn't get the person to stand there anymore.

39:13

So you had to, the MPs would truss 'em up

39:17

on the chicken wire that was over the cages.

39:20

Interviewer

And if they start falling asleep

39:23

while they're hanging, would you wake them up?

39:24

Would you throw water on them?

39:26

-

I don't know what, the MPs would keep them up

39:27

somehow, some way.

39:30

Woman

When you asked,

39:34

you said you needed to ask permission to do that,

39:34

to whom would you ask?

39:38

-

We would normally go to whoever the highest ranking person

39:40

in the office was at the time.

39:43

Woman

Would that be like a captain?

39:45

-

Sometimes we would bring things to the captain.

39:49

Other the times there was lieutenant, colonels,

39:52

and majors that were in the office as well.

39:54

Pretty much what you would do

39:57

is you would have like a plan

39:59

for your prisoner, what you wanna do with them.

40:02

And you would write that up

40:04

and then it would either get say, okay

40:06

or no, you can't do this anymore.

40:08

Interviewer

Did interrogators ever talked to each other

40:12

and say, you know, we don't like what we're observing?

40:14

-

All the time.

40:16

At the beginning, I mean, towards the end, we realized

40:18

that this is pretty much the way it's gonna be

40:20

and there's nothing we're gonna do to stop it.

40:23

Woman

Would you say there would be anybody working

40:26

in that prison who didn't know what was going on?

40:29

-

I mean, it depends.

40:34

I don't know because I know for a fact

40:40

that there's people that worked in interrogation

40:42

that if those weren't practices that they

40:45

and their interrogation partner used,

40:48

that they probably would never have come

40:50

into contact with it.

40:51

The MPs didn't know what was going on

40:54

in the interrogation booths any more than we knew

40:56

what was going on once they went back to their cells,

40:58

unless we happen to be walking by

41:01

and see something happening.

41:02

You're working 12 to 18 hour days

41:05

when you're over there.

41:07

So you're very wrapped up into what you're doing.

41:11

And you don't really have too much time

41:14

to observe the goings on everybody else.

41:16

And, you know, it might seem to people,

41:19

well, you don't remember these things,

41:23

they seem like it would be a pretty important thing,

41:27

but when you're doing those types of things

41:29

every day, all day, they really don't seem so,

41:30

they don't stand out so much anymore

41:34

than anything else does.

41:35

Interviewer

You said two hour interrogations

41:37

but you kept people in distressed positions for five hours.

41:39

-

Sometimes you could continue your interrogation

41:43

past where you wanted to.

41:46

And in the cases where I would use

41:48

five hour stress positions

41:50

and things like that,

41:52

I would bring a book in with me

41:53

and just sit there and read the book and watch him.

41:54

Interviewer

And so you, could you go on

41:57

for a 25 hour interrogation if you wanted?

41:58

-

They did have a process,

42:00

that was a 72 hour interrogation cycle used with about,

42:02

you would use about eight interrogators.

42:07

And that would also be the only time where

42:10

you would not necessarily have three people in the room.

42:12

Sometimes you could have one person in the room

42:15

at that point, depending on what,

42:16

and it was like a well orchestrated play

42:18

of here's what's gonna go on this hour,

42:21

here's what's gonna go on this hour,

42:22

and it had to be written out and it was 72 hours straight.

42:24

They never went back to their cell.

42:27

They stayed in the interrogation booth.

42:29

Woman

So all of that was in writing.

42:32

-

I don't believe it was in writing.

42:34

Woman

So there was no written procedure.

42:35

-

No, there was intentionally very little written down there

42:37

that was made for permanent storage.

42:41

Interviewer

What happened to the notes

42:45

that you did take?

42:46

-

We burned them all.

42:47

Interviewer

Under orders or?

42:49

-

Under suggestion.

42:52

It was told unless we wanted (makes shooting sound)

42:53

Mr. Senator, unless we wanted one of those things to happen,

42:57

that we should probably burn our notes.

43:01

And well, it still happens.

43:04

(laughs)

43:06

Interviewer

Is there any kind of physical

43:09

or sexual abuse that you haven't told us about,

43:12

that is worth telling us about?

43:14

-

No, I mean, there was forced nudity of prisoners.

43:17

Interviewer

For what purpose?

43:21

-

Humiliation, to soften them up.

43:23

But it was used for humiliation to soften them up.

43:28

Interviewer

I had read somewhere about

43:31

some of the women soldiers dressing in burkas

43:33

and pretending they were the wives of some of the,

43:37

is that true?

43:40

-

I don't, I never saw,

43:41

I never really tried to get into too complex.

43:43

I've read that.

43:45

And I know the person that they're saying

43:47

that it occurred with,

43:49

and that seems a little too complex

43:52

to go into trying to do that for an interrogation

43:53

because the only thing,

43:56

once you lose your credibility with the prisoner,

43:57

they'll never give you good information.

43:59

So to do something like that

44:01

really jeopardizes you losing your credibility

44:03

with that prisoner.

44:05

Interviewer

How did you unwind at night

44:08

or whenever you did?

44:09

-

We smoked a lot of hash and played,

44:11

gambled a lot and smoked a lot of hash.

44:13

Woman

Can I ask you,

44:20

if you thought someone was innocent?

44:21

What happened then?

44:24

-

Well, I mean, it really depends on the time period

44:27

that you're talking about, the fastest,

44:31

we had a prisoner come in one time who was guesstimating,

44:34

he didn't know how old he was,

44:39

and that might seem odd

44:40

but Afghans really don't keep up with such things.

44:42

And I would say he was probably about 70 years old and

44:45

for an Afghan that's really old.

44:48

And as soon as I pulled his hood off of him,

44:51

when he got off the helicopter,

44:53

I knew this guy shouldn't be here.

44:55

And it was basically one of those things where

44:57

he was the village elder.

44:58

And when the operational detachment that picked him up,

45:00

basically went into the house,

45:05

they had room for one person on the helicopter

45:07

and they had a target.

45:09

And they said, who's in charge?

45:10

Thinking that their target would be

45:11

the one everybody says in charge,

45:13

they pointed the village elder and brought him in.

45:14

I remember looking at him and seeing how, you know,

45:20

Afghans are already frail

45:22

and seeing how old and frail this man was.

45:23

And so, innocent from day one.

45:26

We never approached him like he was a hostile prisoner.

45:29

We always were in his corner just to, okay,

45:33

let's go ahead and get this guy back before he dies.

45:35

And it still took us about a month and a half

45:38

to get him sent home to where he was still kept

45:41

under those, no talking on the blanket.

45:44

Interviewer

But they heard you.

45:47

What's interesting about the story is they heard you,

45:49

they trusted your advice

45:51

and they were going to release him based on your assessment.

45:53

-

I mean, it wasn't just my assessment.

45:58

In order to vet somebody out of that prison,

46:00

they had to go through about

46:03

10 different interrogation teams,

46:04

for everybody saying, oh yeah, they're good, they're good,

46:06

and then if anybody, some west point lieutenant

46:08

had some idea of, oh, you need to go in there

46:12

and ask him this cause he probably knows it,

46:15

it really takes a while to get somebody out

46:17

because there's always somebody

46:20

that wants to ask this guy another question.

46:21

Interviewer

You mentioned Omar Khadr to me,

46:27

it was after these first seven months that you--

46:32

-

Yes.

46:36

Interviewer

Could you describe how that happened

46:37

and what you saw?

46:38

-

Omar Khadr arrived,

46:40

I believe the same day I did in Afghanistan,

46:42

he arrived at the hospital,

46:45

the field hospital at Bagram.

46:46

And I went in there to see him the next day.

46:48

I didn't take part in the interrogation.

46:52

I was just observing.

46:54

It wasn't too much of an interrogation

46:56

in the field hospitals,

46:57

more gathering biographical information

46:58

and seeing who he was

47:00

and how cooperative he was gonna be.

47:01

He was brought to the prison probably

47:03

about three weeks later, still confined to a stretcher.

47:05

And he was on that stretcher

47:09

for probably two months after he was there.

47:11

We gave him the nickname,

47:14

we called them all Bobs.

47:15

Interviewer

Why?

47:18

-

The prisoners thought it was

47:19

cause the bad odor boys

47:20

but it was because their prison uniforms were made

47:22

by Bob Barker Industries.

47:24

So we called them Bobs,

47:26

and like Moazzam Begg was english Bob,

47:28

and Omar Khadr, we called him buckshot Bob.

47:31

And this goes to a little bit of the dehumanizing of it,

47:34

he was a 15 year old kid who...

47:37

I don't know how he lived.

47:42

I mean, he was probably the worst off I've ever seen

47:43

anybody live through combat wounds.

47:45

But he was just completely peppered in buckshot

47:49

from shrapnel and whatever else they hit him with.

47:53

Had a big hole in his chest and, you know,

47:58

it's sad to see a 15 year old kid,

48:01

I look at it now and it's very sad.

48:03

At the time I didn't, screw it, it's the enemy.

48:04

So we called him buckshot.

48:07

Interviewer

Did you know he was 15 then?

48:09

-

Yes.

48:11

Interviewer

Did it bother you that he was that young or?

48:12

-

It bothered me that he killed a delta medic

48:14

more than anything else that I thought he did.

48:17

Now that I look at the circumstances surrounding his case,

48:19

I think there's seriously doubt as to

48:22

if he actually did it or not.

48:23

But at the time, all I knew was that

48:25

a delta force medic had died

48:26

and he was the one they were blaming for it.

48:28

So I, he wasn't my prisoner.

48:30

I never interrogated Omar.

48:32

It was one of those things that,

48:34

because he spoke English,

48:36

over the time of him being there,

48:37

I got to be very conversational with him.

48:39

Interviewer

Informally? Since he wasn't your prisoner.

48:43

-

Yeah, informally.

48:46

I mean, I never talked to him in an interrogation setting.

48:46

It was always through the wire,

48:49

and he happened to be in the same cage with Moazzam Begg,

48:50

who was probably like my,

48:53

I would converse with him probably more

48:55

than any other prisoner.

48:58

Interviewer

How did that happen?

48:59

How did, was he also a prisoner of yours?

49:00

Moazzam Begg?

49:03

-

No, he was, I think I might've questioned Begg one time

49:04

about another prisoner, wasn't about anything he did.

49:07

He was being exploited by other government agencies.

49:10

At that time, the military was done interrogating him

49:13

and his previous military interrogator had just

49:16

asked me to watch out for him after he left.

49:20

He was on the first group of people that were there.

49:22

And his first interrogator was a member of my unit.

49:24

So we knew each other prior to Afghanistan.

49:27

And he told me just to keep an eye out for Begg

49:31

and watch out for him, you know,

49:32

get him little drinks and food every now and then,

49:34

because he had cooperated

49:36

and to kind of keep that going for him.

49:38

Interviewer

And did Omar cooperate too?

49:42

Is that why you got to talk to him?

49:44

-

No, I don't.

49:46

I don't know the deal with Omar.

49:48

He was in Begg's pen, in the same big pen with Begg,

49:49

and so I eventually got to the point where I felt bad

49:54

bringing a Coke to Begg and not one for him.

49:58

It was probably because they both spoke English

50:00

that, you know, it's very hard to dehumanize somebody

50:04

when they're sitting there talking to you.

50:08

Interviewer

So did you feel that maybe

50:10

they weren't terrorists over time?

50:12

Like as you got to talk to them?

50:15

-

No, cause at this point,

50:17

by the time I really got conversational with Omar,

50:19

I had gotten a much better view on how things really worked,

50:21

that yeah, there might be terrorist Taliban,

50:26

but they're still, they're really not so different from us,

50:30

(laughs) like in the way that, in their basic wants,

50:35

they want better for their family,

50:38

for their country, you know.

50:39

And then dealing with Omar after talking to him

50:43

through just basic conversation,

50:48

he didn't want to talk about,

50:50

he wanted to talk about basketball,

50:50

and PlayStation, stuff like that.

50:54

That's what he was interested in,

50:56

what a 15 year old kid's interested in.

50:57

So he was a little different in that.

51:00

And again, from a legal view of it,

51:03

getting in the Geneva, he was a child soldier.

51:06

He shouldn't have been there.

51:08

And that was the bottom line with him,

51:10

is that he just should have never been there

51:12

because of his age.

51:13

Interviewer

So I just wanna clarify,

51:15

did your opinion of Omar change

51:17

as you got to know him better?

51:19

-

No. No, I don't think so.

51:25

They asked me at his trial if I was his friend

51:28

and I made sure I corrected them and said,

51:31

I'm not his friend.

51:33

He was a prisoner and I was an interrogator,

51:35

and I just, I probably treated him a little better

51:38

just for the sole fact that he was young,

51:42

and he spoke English and that was probably it.

51:44

Interviewer

I wanna follow up on Omar later

51:48

but were any other English speaking detainees

51:50

in that little pen besides Moazzam Begg and Omar Khadr?

51:53

-

Not in that particular pen, but there were no,

51:57

there were a few English speaking detainees.

52:01

Interviewer

Do you remember who they were?

52:03

-

One's name was Jamal,

52:05

and then we had a former Taliban solicitor

52:08

that spoke fluent English,

52:15

that we would actually use him for interrogation sometimes.

52:17

And his name I'm not allowed to divulge.

52:21

Interviewer

Did you meet Feroz Abbasi,

52:24

who was also English?

52:25

-

If he was there while I was there, I'm sure I met him.

52:27

I tried to make it a point

52:31

to talk to the English speaking detainees

52:32

as much as possible,

52:34

just to get a better understanding

52:35

of their perspective on the war at that time.

52:36

Interviewer

As long as we're talking about Khadr,

52:42

could you tell us how you interacted with him again

52:46

later on when you went to Guantanamo,

52:49

then we can come back to this.

52:51

-

Certainly.

52:52

Well, when I went to Guantanamo,

52:53

I went there to testify for his defense.

52:55

Interviewer

In what year was that?

52:58

-

That was, when was that, 2008?

53:00

I went there two days before president Obama's inauguration,

53:05

and I left the day after.

53:09

Interviewer

And why were you there

53:11

to testify in his defense?

53:13

How did that happen?

53:14

-

I think Moazzam Begg had spoken to William Keebler,

53:17

who was his first military attorney

53:21

and had passed my name along

53:24

as somebody who might be able to help them.

53:26

And I really had no interest in helping any of the prisoners

53:29

except for him, because he was 15

53:32

and it goes against the very ideals

53:33

of American justice to put him on trial.

53:35

And so I wanted to try to help him out of that situation.

53:39

And it's through that,

53:41

that I gained an understanding of

53:43

maybe he didn't do it either,

53:45

but that's really besides the point,

53:47

the point is that he was 15.

53:48

And so I went to testify just based on that.

53:50

And then they stopped, you know,

53:55

President Obama stopped the trials at that point.

53:57

And then I think about a year later,

54:00

I ended up testifying via Polycom at his trial.

54:01

And I really don't know what,

54:08

I think he ended up taking a plea deal anyway.

54:10

So I really don't know that it did any good.

54:12

Interviewer

What kind of testimony did you give?

54:14

-

You know, I don't remember.

54:17

It was a very stressful thing having to testify,

54:18

it was the first time I'd ever been in court

54:21

since my own trial.

54:23

And so I don't really remember

54:25

too many of the specifics of it.

54:28

I remember that the prosecution objected

54:29

to a lot of the questioning,

54:31

questions that I was getting

54:33

to where I couldn't even answer most of the questions

54:35

that the defense wanted me to answer.

54:37

Interviewer

Maybe you could tell us

54:40

about your own trial.

54:43

Why did you have a trial?

54:44

-

I had a trial.

54:46

I had a trial for the same reason

54:48

that Oli North ended up in front of the Senate,

54:50

is because they're gonna blame it on

54:52

whoever the lowest ranking person is

54:54

that the public will take accountability for.

54:56

And that's the way it,

54:58

same reason we're doing this film is

54:59

cause that's how we that's how America rolls.

55:00

(laughs)

55:03

Interviewer

Why do you think it's like that?

55:05

-

Nobody wants to admit who made the decisions

55:08

and the people who did make the decisions

55:12

had enough padding from the actual operational aspect of it,

55:14

that they could never have anything directly

55:18

tied back to them.

55:20

It had to do with overzealous prosecutors

55:22

who maybe wanted to be a US attorney one day

55:25

after they got out of the JAG

55:27

and thought they were gonna make their career

55:28

on my back, but that wasn't gonna happen.

55:30

And I think it was basically just a scapegoat

55:33

in railroad investigation there.

55:37

It was actually the third investigation

55:39

that sent people to trial.

55:41

They did two prior to that,

55:42

both of which found that it was policy issues.

55:44

And I'm sure that as a professional you understand

55:46

that after you do two investigations

55:49

and your boss says, nope, that's not what I wanna hear,

55:51

well then maybe the third time you're gonna

55:53

come back to him with what he wants to hear.

55:54

And so it went from nobody charged,

55:56

nobody charged to 36 people charged, so.

55:58

Interviewer

What kind of people

56:02

were charged besides you?

56:03

-

There was only four or five intelligence personnel

56:04

that were charged,

56:07

the rest were all MPs.

56:08

Interviewer

All from Afghanistan?

56:10

-

All from Afghanistan, yeah.

56:12

And they, most people didn't go to trial.

56:13

Most people pled out.

56:16

And I just refused to,

56:18

I refused to because I knew that from a legal aspect,

56:19

maybe on a moral level,

56:24

I did a lot wrong, in an ethical level, I did a lot wrong,

56:25

but on a legal level,

56:27

I didn't feel that I did anything wrong.

56:28

And I still don't know if legally I did anything wrong

56:30

but definitely from a moral and ethical view I did.

56:34

But I wasn't gonna take the blame

56:37

for what they were doing there.

56:40

I certainly didn't make the decisions.

56:43

I didn't invent stress positions and waterboarding.

56:45

I wasn't trained, I wasn't trained in such things.

56:48

Interviewer

But, well,

56:52

there wasn't waterboarding anyways.

56:53

-

No, there was the use of water just without the board.

56:55

(laughs)

56:59

Interviewer

Okay. And how did you feel,

57:00

did your opinion about the government change

57:02

when you were being prosecuted?

57:05

-

Oh yeah. I mean, you know,

57:07

I said I joined to get the clearance.

57:08

I don't care who you are in the military.

57:10

Nobody joins the military if you don't have

57:12

just the slightest little bit of patriotism and,

57:14

I mean, I really love, I still love this country.

57:16

I love the potential of this country.

57:20

I really hate what it's become but...

57:21

It definitely, definitely made me very jaded

57:26

and I felt very betrayed by our government.

57:30

Woman

Going back to Bagram,

57:35

did you ever go to Kandahar?

57:36

-

No, I never went to Kandahar.

57:40

Woman

Do you know if similar things

57:42

were happening in Kandahar?

57:43

-

I know persons that,

57:45

cause Kandahar was the first prison

57:47

and I know somebody that was on the initial deployment there

57:49

and it would just be from what he was telling me

57:54

when on there,

57:55

but it was basically the same thing.

57:57

Stress positions, use of water, use of the sun.

57:59

Cause at Kandahar,

58:03

they were actually an outside environment.

58:04

Interviewer

Can you describe, actually you started to,

58:07

but just so that it's clear for us,

58:09

what Bagram looked like back when you were there?

58:10

-

Just the prison?

58:14

Interviewer

Just the prison itself, yeah.

58:16

-

It was a old Soviet MiG aircraft facility

58:18

and it was a giant warehouse type of space,

58:21

probably a 100.000 square foot warehouse, huge,

58:26

and had, it was two levels,

58:31

but through most of it, it was just one,

58:35

there was kind of like a catwalk on the outside,

58:37

on one half of it that had rooms in it,

58:41

that we used for the intelligence offices

58:44

and for interrogation purposes.

58:46

And I think the isolation booth was up there too.

58:47

And the rest of it was five large pens that were,

58:51

with about 15 to 20 feet high of razor wire,

58:54

around all sides.

58:58

And then there was a catwalk that was built

59:00

on back of them that had a Roman guard

59:02

with a shotgun pointed at the prisoners.

59:04

Each cell had an air lock that went into it,

59:07

which was about a six by three area,

59:11

that was also used to isolate prisoners

59:15

and punish prisoners in that area.

59:18

You know, besides that it was a bombed out prison,

59:21

there was a giant hole in the roof and under the hole

59:24

was an unexploded 500 lbs bomb.

59:27

And it was...

59:29

It was very Soviet.

59:33

Industrial, is what it looked like.

59:35

Interviewer

What kind of food were the prisoners given?

59:38

-

(laughs) The prisoners were actually given kosher meals,

59:42

cause we didn't have any halal food for 'em specifically,

59:46

and I think they can eat kosher

59:49

because kosher can't eat halal, I think that's the case.

59:50

So we had these kosher meals that we fed them

59:55

but we took all the fruit out,

59:58

and again they justified it by saying

1:00:02

we don't want them to make wine,

1:00:04

and it's like with what? (laughs)

1:00:06

You're watching them all day.

1:00:08

But no, I think it was just so they wouldn't have fruit.

1:00:09

Interviewer

Were they under surveillance

1:00:12

all day by video or?

1:00:15

-

No, there was no video or audio recording allowed

1:00:16

in that prison period, when I was there.

1:00:19

That was a big no-no.

1:00:22

Interviewer

Do you know why?

1:00:24

-

(laughs) Well, I mean, even when interrogation's done

1:00:25

by protocol and what we've used in the past,

1:00:29

for somebody to watch an interrogation,

1:00:31

actually we can think Omar Khadr's

1:00:34

with the Canadian intelligence officers that spoke with him,

1:00:37

people were absolutely appalled.

1:00:39

It just how callous they were towards him.

1:00:41

They weren't cruel, but they were very callous

1:00:44

and well that's interrogation.

1:00:47

You're not sitting there rubbing them on the leg

1:00:48

and patting them on the back,

1:00:51

feeding them Godiva, you know, it's an interrogation,

1:00:52

that's what you're there to do.

1:00:54

It's not pleasant.

1:00:55

And so for people that aren't trained in interrogation,

1:00:57

to see it happening, even in the proper way,

1:00:59

it's kind of hard on the stomach to witness it.

1:01:04

Interviewer

And their cells weren't videoed either,

1:01:08

so you didn't know what they were doing in the cells.

1:01:12

-

No, they just, well, you could step out

1:01:14

from the overwatch and observe prisoners,

1:01:18

which a lot of interrogators would do,

1:01:20

cause after you interrogate your prisoner,

1:01:22

you put them back down in the cell

1:01:24

and then you'd wanna see, okay,

1:01:25

who were they whispering up?

1:01:26

Cause you couldn't hear 'em,

1:01:28

but you could kind of see them tilt in their heads, and...

1:01:29

Interviewer

And, could you describe the isolation booth?

1:01:34

-

The isolation booths were made out of plywood

1:01:37

and they were roughly six by six

1:01:41

and they had chicken wire over top,

1:01:45

that was used for when you wanted to sleep dep,

1:01:47

when the guards would normally truss 'em up

1:01:49

on the chicken wire with a set of long shackles.

1:01:51

But that actually didn't happen too much

1:01:55

in the isolation booth.

1:01:57

Normally the airlocks were used for that.

1:01:58

There were special prisoners that were there.

1:02:02

There was an isolation booth that was held for one prisoner

1:02:05

that I can't go into his name,

1:02:09

where the agency that was holding him there.

1:02:11

But he stayed there for quite a long time,

1:02:13

and he was later released on a prisoner exchange.

1:02:16

Interviewer

How long was quite a long time?

1:02:19

-

He was trussed up,

1:02:22

the only way I ever remember seeing him

1:02:24

was with his hand, he actually was trussed up differently,

1:02:27

instead of like this, he was out like that,

1:02:31

which this was not common.

1:02:35

this was the common, this was very uncommon.

1:02:36

They had two sets of short shackles

1:02:38

keeping him in a crucifixion stance.

1:02:41

And he was that way for five, six months.

1:02:43

Interviewer

Did they drop them to feed him?

1:02:49

Would they fed him by hand?

1:02:50

-

I saw him in an interrogation booth a few times,

1:02:52

but besides that I never remember him any other way

1:02:56

than trussed up.

1:02:59

Interviewer

Did people ever comment

1:03:02

that maybe that's extreme?

1:03:03

-

Well, that prisoner in particular

1:03:05

was given the prisoner number

1:03:08

of a prisoner who had died from a heart attack or something

1:03:10

many, many months before that.

1:03:14

So that in case when the Red Cross came in,

1:03:16

if they ever saw the number on a board,

1:03:18

they could easily explain it away,

1:03:20

but he was one of the prisoners that was not on the books

1:03:22

as being there.

1:03:25

Interviewer

So were there other people like that

1:03:27

who were not on the books,

1:03:29

or when the Red Cross came in

1:03:30

they never knew they were there?

1:03:31

-

He was the only one that had

1:03:33

a pretty permanent presence there,

1:03:34

but there were people brought through Bagram sporadically,

1:03:36

that were not on the books.

1:03:39

And I still don't know if our government

1:03:42

acknowledges the capture of some of them.

1:03:44

Interviewer

You were aware of at the time

1:03:47

that these people were not on the books?

1:03:48

-

Yes, yes I was.

1:03:50

Interviewer

Did the Red Cross ever speak to you

1:03:53

when they came through?

1:03:54

-

No. No.

1:03:55

I intentionally would not talk to the Red Cross

1:03:56

(laughs) or I would avoid them at all costs.

1:03:59

Interviewer

Were you instructed to avoid them or?

1:04:01

-

No. No, it was just my choice that...

1:04:04

Interviewer

If someone had told the Red Cross

1:04:07

that there were some people there who were off the books,

1:04:09

what do you think would have happened?

1:04:12

-

That actually did happen with this one prisoner,

1:04:14

and one of the MP officers let them know,

1:04:19

oh, by the way, we've got this guy up here,

1:04:22

if you wanna talk to him.

1:04:24

And the government agency that was in charge

1:04:26

of this prisoner came in and got him

1:04:29

and moved him to another location within 30 minutes.

1:04:32

Interviewer

So the Red Cross never found him?

1:04:36

-

No.

1:04:38

Interviewer

How many people died in Bagram

1:04:39

while you were there?

1:04:42

-

Two prisoners died while I was there.

1:04:44

Dilawar and Habibullah.

1:04:48

Interviewer

And were you involved with them at all?

1:04:49

-

No, I spoke to Habibullah, maybe.

1:04:51

At that point, I was the screener,

1:04:54

which was the person who,

1:04:58

I would end process the prisoners

1:05:00

when they'd come in off the helicopters,

1:05:03

get their basic biographical data,

1:05:06

put together the packages and the folders for them,

1:05:07

assign them to interrogator,

1:05:10

help assign them to interrogator,

1:05:11

put them on the sleep dep, assign them to a cell,

1:05:13

and I spoke to Habibullah and processed him

1:05:16

maybe two weeks before he died.

1:05:18

Interviewer

What did he die of?

1:05:20

-

Blunt force trauma.

1:05:22

Both him and Dilawar, both died from blood clots.

1:05:23

I think one went to their heart

1:05:28

and the other one went to their brain.

1:05:29

Interviewer

And do you know what caused

1:05:32

the blunt force trauma?

1:05:33

-

I believe they determined it was from perennial strikes,

1:05:35

administered by the MPs.

1:05:38

Interviewer

In interrogation

1:05:40

or outside of interrogation?

1:05:42

-

Outside. MPs were not present

1:05:43

during interrogation, with mine ever.

1:05:45

Interviewer

Why would an MP strike these people?

1:05:48

-

They were compliant, I never...

1:05:50

it wasn't something I ever asked them about

1:05:56

as to why they did it.

1:05:58

I only know from hearing what they've said since then,

1:05:59

that these common perennial strikes,

1:06:03

I think that's what they call called them,

1:06:06

and I think that they were used in US prisons.

1:06:07

We had two groups of MPs,

1:06:10

the first group was from North Carolina.

1:06:12

The second group was from Ohio and Kentucky.

1:06:14

And they did things completely different.

1:06:17

You might see one of the North Carolina,

1:06:20

the North Carolina guys were actually very nice

1:06:23

to the prisoners.

1:06:25

The Ohio-Kentucky group were very rough on them

1:06:27

and they were prison, most of them were prison guards

1:06:29

in their civilian lives.

1:06:33

They were reservists.

1:06:36

And that it was,

1:06:37

apparently it was something that they use

1:06:38

here in the States.

1:06:39

And I was pretty appalled when I heard

1:06:40

that we do that to our prisoners.

1:06:43

Interviewer

What kind of strike?

1:06:44

-

It is a knee to the inner thigh,

1:06:47

near the groin,

1:06:49

and they do it to get compliance out of the prisoner.

1:06:51

Interviewer

And that can lead to...

1:06:55

-

I think they determined that there was over 100 strikes

1:06:57

on the inside of Dilawar's legs,

1:07:02

from where it was done to him so much.

1:07:04

I think that the coroner's autopsy said

1:07:07

his legs were pulpified.

1:07:09

Interviewer

Were some of these MPs also prosecuted?

1:07:12

-

Yes.

1:07:14

Interviewer

And you were not aware

1:07:16

of that at the time until these men died?

1:07:17

-

No, I may have seen 'em doing it to a prisoner,

1:07:20

but again it's not something that sticks out

1:07:23

in my head that I remember seeing,

1:07:26

and it's not really something I would've questioned seeing

1:07:27

down there, because again, I, you know,

1:07:30

humanity is very rare in a combat zone

1:07:33

and I'm definitely not spending any of it on the enemy.

1:07:36

That's not where my humanity is gonna go to.

1:07:39

Interviewer

How come you left after seven months?

1:07:44

-

The buildup for the Iraq war was happening.

1:07:48

And we were asked when we were there,

1:07:54

they said do you guys wanna stay here?

1:07:56

Or do you want to go to Iraq?

1:07:58

And we all said, well, we'd rather stay here.

1:07:59

You know, we were in civilian clothes,

1:08:01

we had beards, good hash.

1:08:03

And you know, it was a pretty cush job,

1:08:05

and we didn't want to go through another war.

1:08:09

So, you know, battle war, stay here.

1:08:11

Well, they sent us back and we were in Fort Bragg

1:08:14

for four and a half weeks,

1:08:17

and then we got back on a plane and went to Iraq,

1:08:18

or we went to Kuwait for the invasion of Iraq.

1:08:20

Interviewer

I wanna just finish up on Afghanistan,

1:08:24

but did you do interrogations in Kuwait and Iraq too?

1:08:26

-

No, I didn't do any interrogations in Kuwait,

1:08:30

I did quite a few interrogations in Iraq.

1:08:32

I did, I actually got to do my job in Iraq, too.

1:08:35

I got to do counter-intelligence operations

1:08:38

for most of the time while I was there,

1:08:41

but occasionally they would pull me in like in...

1:08:43

oh man, I'm tryna...

1:08:50

It's near Babel,

1:08:57

but anyway, we took a break

1:08:58

and set up our first prison in this place.

1:09:00

And I can't, for the life of me,

1:09:02

think of the name of it,

1:09:03

but I did interrogations at the very beginning.

1:09:04

And then we set up a prison at the Baghdad airport,

1:09:06

after that was set up,

1:09:09

I ended up going and doing counter-intelligence operations.

1:09:10

Then they pulled me off of my intelligence team

1:09:13

and brought me back to interrogation,

1:09:16

so that we could set up Abu Ghraib.

1:09:19

Interviewer

Well, I might wanna just

1:09:22

say a few words about that,

1:09:23

but it's not really part of this project.

1:09:24

Woman

Can I step back from--

1:09:26

Interviewer

Yeah, I wanna step back too, so go ahead.

1:09:27

Woman

When you say you all knew

1:09:29

that the Iraq war was going to start,

1:09:32

what timeline are we talking about?

1:09:36

Two months prior?

1:09:38

-

Well, we knew because we had,

1:09:40

I can say we had some Iraqi prisoners that were there,

1:09:43

and they were Iraqi prisoners that had,

1:09:47

that definitely had placement and access,

1:09:51

which are two things that you want in intelligence,

1:09:54

is placement and access what they have knowledge too.

1:09:56

And they were definitely willing to cooperate with us.

1:09:59

And from the amount of time that was being spent

1:10:03

on these two prisoners through another government agency,

1:10:05

it was pretty obvious to us that, wow, you know,

1:10:08

why are they always in here talking to these guys?

1:10:10

They're only Iraqis.

1:10:12

And then it was known

1:10:13

before we ever stepped foot in Kuwait,

1:10:18

that we were going to invade Iraq,

1:10:19

that the forces were in motion for that to happen.

1:10:22

And there was nothing that was gonna stop it.

1:10:25

Interviewer

What year is this?

1:10:28

-

This is late 2002.

1:10:30

Interviewer

You saw it coming?

1:10:32

-

Oh yeah, we realized in late 2002

1:10:35

that it was gonna happen.

1:10:38

It wasn't gonna be like '98

1:10:40

with Clinton doing a show of force.

1:10:41

It was, we were going to invade Iraq.

1:10:43

Interviewer

Can I go back to Afghanistan?

1:10:51

The men that you interrogated and the men who were there

1:10:53

and you said relatively few,

1:10:55

did all of them pretty much go on to Guantanamo

1:10:57

or do they go to other--

1:11:00

-

The parameters to send prisoners to Guantanamo

1:11:02

changed and evolved over time.

1:11:06

When we first got there,

1:11:08

all they had to do was meet one of any number of criteria

1:11:09

that number one being, did they speak a western language,

1:11:13

and just for them having the knowledge

1:11:16

of speaking a western language

1:11:19

used to be a criteria to send them to Guantanamo.

1:11:21

Interviewer

Why? Why would that matter?

1:11:25

-

That was way above my pay grade. (laughs)

1:11:27

I thought it was kind of senseless,

1:11:30

as most people do speak English or French,

1:11:31

if for nothing else, business reasons.

1:11:34

And so a lot of people met those criteria

1:11:36

and a lot of people were sent to Guantanamo just by that.

1:11:40

If you were trained in a certain camp there,

1:11:44

if you had knowledge of certain weapon systems,

1:11:47

if you were unfortunate enough to have the same name

1:11:50

as somebody else, you know,

1:11:54

there wasn't any number of physical reasons

1:11:57

to send somebody to Guantanamo.

1:11:59

Interviewer

So even before

1:12:01

the interrogation cycle was completed,

1:12:02

they might decide to send that person on to Guantanamo.

1:12:05

-

They would not send somebody to Guantanamo

1:12:08

until they were fully tactically exploited.

1:12:11

Cause that was our number,

1:12:14

no matter what the priority intelligence requirements were

1:12:16

that were sent down to us,

1:12:19

our number one focus was

1:12:21

who's killing US soldiers here in Bagram,

1:12:23

and then who's killing US soldiers

1:12:25

in this province of Afghanistan,

1:12:28

then who's killing US soldiers period.

1:12:29

And that's our priority, is a soldier.

1:12:32

The whereabouts of Osama bin Laden

1:12:35

are in the back of your mind at that point,

1:12:38

you're more worried about who's supplying,

1:12:41

who's supplying these motors,

1:12:43

where are they storing them and things like that.

1:12:44

And that's what's important to us.

1:12:48

So once they're tactically exploited,

1:12:49

they could go to Guantanamo

1:12:51

and have their strategic exploitation begin at that point.

1:12:52

Interviewer

And where else would they go

1:12:56

besides Guantanamo after their complete ordeal?

1:12:57

-

I definitely can't answer that. (laughs)

1:13:02

Woman

What was your sense of Guantanamo?

1:13:07

What did you think about it?

1:13:09

-

Well, at the time, when I was first there,

1:13:11

they were keeping them in basically dog kennels.

1:13:14

This was before the--

1:13:18

Interviewer

And you knew that.

1:13:19

-

Yeah. I mean, there were just large dog kennels

1:13:20

is all they kept 'em in.

1:13:24

Been no different than going to the pound here.

1:13:25

Woman

How did you know that?

1:13:27

-

We had people that had spent time

1:13:29

in Guantanamo already.

1:13:32

We'd seen photographs of what the prison was like there,

1:13:33

and the setup of it.

1:13:35

And then after I went to Guantanamo, you can, I don't know,

1:13:37

you can take the Guantanamo tour (laughs)

1:13:40

and they take you by the old camp and then I'd see it,

1:13:45

I'd be like, oh, okay.

1:13:47

Now it's all overgrown, the jungles kinda,

1:13:49

why do I say jungle, but the Cuban foliage has taken over

1:13:51

that old part of the prison.

1:13:57

But it was still there few years ago.

1:13:58

And yeah, looked like a large dog kennel.

1:14:04

Interviewer

Have you ever heard

1:14:07

of the dog prison in Kabul?

1:14:09

Did you know about that?

1:14:11

-

There are black sites,

1:14:14

many of them throughout the world that are used,

1:14:19

but as far as like specific locations

1:14:23

of anything like that, I don't really think--

1:14:25

Interviewer

Were you aware of them?

1:14:28

-

Yes, yes. Definitely.

1:14:30

Interviewer

Can I ask you,

1:14:34

were you aware that the people who were sent

1:14:35

to these black sites were perhaps possibly treated worse

1:14:37

than anything you saw in Bagram?

1:14:41

-

I'm sure.

1:14:43

I'm sure that that went on.

1:14:45

I didn't think, you know,

1:14:47

it's not something I really concerned myself with.

1:14:48

Interviewer

Have you heard rumors of that?

1:14:51

It might've been (mumbles)

1:14:53

-

No. I mean, it's one of those things that

1:14:57

you really don't.

1:15:01

In the intelligence community,

1:15:02

you know, everybody stays pretty tight lipped

1:15:04

about what goes on and unless you're there to see it happen,

1:15:08

you really don't hear about it.

1:15:11

Interviewer

When you left Afghanistan

1:15:13

and went to Iraq, did you begin to think maybe

1:15:14

what happened in Afghanistan was what you just

1:15:17

described earlier today as immoral and unethical?

1:15:21

Did you realize that once you left Afghanistan?

1:15:25

You could just look back from a different vantage point.

1:15:29

-

Yeah. I mean, definitely before,

1:15:31

before any interrogations took place in Iraq,

1:15:34

once the invasion happened, it was a few of us that went

1:15:38

to our commander at the time were like, you know,

1:15:41

we don't think we can do this.

1:15:43

You know, these Afghans and the Arabs

1:15:44

that were in Afghanistan,

1:15:46

I wanna clarify that there's lots of people will say

1:15:49

they went to Afghanistan on religious pilgrimage.

1:15:53

Bullshit, you're a fucking terrorist

1:15:55

if you're in Afghanistan, that's just the bottom line.

1:15:58

And, you know, just cause you're a terrorist,

1:16:01

hey, I don't think you're a bad person necessarily.

1:16:02

That's the way you choose to conduct warfare

1:16:05

against overwhelming force that we have,

1:16:07

but the Iraqis did nothing to us.

1:16:11

And, you know, it was like, hey, we can't do this

1:16:13

to these people.

1:16:16

They didn't wrong us, you know?

1:16:17

And up until that point, you know,

1:16:20

at that point, most of us,

1:16:21

even though we realized we were gonna invade Iraq,

1:16:23

we had never like, well, I won't say never, but like

1:16:25

you know, since Spanish American war,

1:16:29

we hadn't unprovoked attacked a country before.

1:16:32

So, you know

1:16:36

it wasn't something that we really thought was possible.

1:16:37

Interviewer

So that changed your orientation

1:16:42

or your sense on America,

1:16:44

or you sense on interrogation,

1:16:46

or what exactly did it do to you?

1:16:48

-

I was, you know, at this point I had

1:16:51

besides the four and a half week break that we

1:16:53

got to spend cleaning our equipment to go to Oregon,

1:16:57

I was really in a different place then in my life as far as

1:17:00

I was pretty detached from normal human emotion

1:17:04

and thought it was more of a, you know,

1:17:08

I'd been at war now, nine, 10 year and a half straight.

1:17:11

And it really, it really messed my mind up

1:17:16

and got me in a place where,

1:17:18

where I had this more of a warrior mentality

1:17:20

and a survivalist mentality of I really didn't care

1:17:24

what I had to do, but my mom wasn't getting a letter home.

1:17:26

And that's all I really cared about at that point.

1:17:30

Woman

Why?

1:17:33

-

Any sense of what I was doing was for the greater good

1:17:36

was definitely out of the door by that point.

1:17:41

And I really saw what we're doing as kind of,

1:17:45

it was just pointless and us even being there,

1:17:48

like as interrogators for what they wanted us,

1:17:50

you know, we've, we've been spying on the Iraqis

1:17:54

since the '70s,

1:17:56

we know all their little secrets inside and out.

1:17:57

They didn't need to send a bunch of spies in there

1:18:00

to figure anything else out.

1:18:03

Woman

When you came home

1:18:05

for those four and a half weeks,

1:18:06

did you visit your family?

1:18:07

-

I visited my family for about a week, I think.

1:18:09

Woman

And how was that?

1:18:12

-

It was awkward.

1:18:14

Just, you know, going from Afghanistan,

1:18:16

especially Afghanistan is truly biblical

1:18:21

in the appearance and the society, you know,

1:18:25

forget electricity in your house,

1:18:31

there's no electricity for hundreds of miles.

1:18:34

There's no running water in the village.

1:18:37

They're living out of these houses

1:18:40

made out of mud and clay and straw.

1:18:44

You go from that to DC.

1:18:49

I mean, it's, I don't know that you could really have

1:18:53

more opposite places on earth.

1:18:56

Maybe Pompeii and Antarctica.

1:18:59

That'd be a good way to describe it (laughs)

1:19:01

Interviewer

Did you describe to your family

1:19:03

what you had observed?

1:19:05

-

No. No.

1:19:08

I remember my mom kept telling me, you know,

1:19:09

you're back now.

1:19:11

You're back now.

1:19:12

And at the time I was like, whatever, you know,

1:19:13

leave me alone.

1:19:14

(laughs)

1:19:16

I was more interested in meeting women

1:19:17

and going to bars during that week

1:19:21

than I was anything else.

1:19:23

Cause I knew I was headed right back,

1:19:24

right back to Oregon,

1:19:26

so I was just trying to let loose and blow off steam.

1:19:27

Woman

So you didn't share anything that you had done?

1:19:32

-

No. No.

1:19:34

I still haven't talked to my family

1:19:36

about what I've done.

1:19:40

That's, I don't think that'll ever happen.

1:19:42

I don't think they care to know.

1:19:44

Woman

Cause it would be too hard for them?

1:19:47

-

Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm the baby boy

1:19:49

and nobody wants to hear,

1:19:51

yeah, had this son of a bitch

1:19:56

trussed up in a cage for two weeks, you know,

1:19:58

that's not something you talk to your mom about.

1:20:01

I don't think she really reads up on me too much so.

1:20:07

Interviewer

Do you have, what regrets do you have

1:20:12

from looking back...

1:20:16

this time?

1:20:21

-

I do kind of regret

1:20:23

maybe not raising more of an objection,

1:20:24

I try not to ask myself why,

1:20:29

why just leads to more why?

1:20:32

And I do wonder a lot what would have happened

1:20:34

had I raised more objection and been a little

1:20:37

more defiant towards the orders that I was given.

1:20:39

And at the same time,

1:20:44

I don't want to blame it all on orders.

1:20:45

I mean, I do have a certain amount of accountability too,

1:20:48

after being there, I went along with it,

1:20:51

I freely

1:20:55

and willingly took part in that,

1:20:58

I was not forced to by anyone.

1:21:00

And so, I mean,

1:21:03

it was a decision that I made to do these things

1:21:04

and to take, I didn't have to take it as far as I did.

1:21:07

I didn't have to sleep dep somebody for three weeks,

1:21:09

I could have said no, let him go to sleep and just go home.

1:21:12

Interviewer

Do you think being a 22 year old

1:21:16

was part of the reason you did it?

1:21:17

-

Oh, I think it was a huge maturity issue.

1:21:19

I mean, a 22 years old.

1:21:21

I had no business being in there.

1:21:22

I mean, just on a maturity level,

1:21:24

you can't know, it was a combination of that,

1:21:27

and I mean, I was drunk on the power that I had there.

1:21:31

The power that I had at 22 years old was disgusting.

1:21:34

I mean, I was really responsible for the lives

1:21:37

of 20 human beings and you know,

1:21:40

they couldn't go take a piss or shit,

1:21:43

unless I said it was okay.

1:21:45

And it's a lot of power to give somebody

1:21:47

when they're 22 years old.

1:21:49

Interviewer

And the other interrogators,

1:21:54

where they also young like you?

1:21:56

-

Yeah. I mean our officer in charge

1:21:58

was probably the oldest person,

1:22:01

I would say at the time she was probably 32.

1:22:05

Interviewer

Do you think women

1:22:10

had a different perspective

1:22:12

on what they were observing from the men?

1:22:13

-

Hit 33, I still don't really understand

1:22:19

the female perspective on life.

1:22:21

So it would be very difficult to,

1:22:22

for me to to guess what they thought.

1:22:25

I could say that some of the harsher treatment

1:22:26

that I saw was given by females over there.

1:22:30

They were right up to the level of

1:22:33

cruel and nasty behavior as the men were.

1:22:37

Interviewer

Could you talk to the women at the downtime

1:22:41

as well as to the men when you just need it?

1:22:44

You said you did talk to the community to kind of see.

1:22:46

-

Yeah, I mean, we were all really close.

1:22:49

I mean, you have, any group of people that you put

1:22:52

whether you like them or not on a personal level,

1:22:55

if you put somebody in that environment

1:22:58

for a year and a half of combat,

1:23:01

you're gonna grow close to each other,

1:23:04

you're gonna have loyalty to each other.

1:23:06

Of course you're gonna be conversational with them.

1:23:09

Interviewer

In Iraq, I don't wanna spend much time

1:23:17

in Iraq, but is there anything that you did review

1:23:19

in your interrogations there that might be

1:23:23

interesting to compare to what happened in Afghanistan?

1:23:25

-

No. I think Afghanistan

1:23:30

pretty much just laid the groundwork

1:23:31

for everything to happen.

1:23:32

And in the abuses that took place there,

1:23:34

as far as allowing non interrogators

1:23:37

to interact with prisoners on the level that they did

1:23:40

at Abu Ghraib, that was all based

1:23:42

in Afghan doctrine that allowed that to happen.

1:23:45

Woman

Were you at Abu Ghraib?

1:23:50

-

Yes. Yes.

1:23:52

Interviewer

Were you aware of what was going on

1:23:55

in Abu Ghraib?

1:23:57

-

No, I worked in 1A,

1:23:58

which was that ward where all the photos were taken

1:24:00

and I worked on the day shift

1:24:04

and apparently that was happening at night.

1:24:06

And I remember making it halfway down the hallway,

1:24:08

seeing the prisoners in female underwear

1:24:12

before I realized, oh,

1:24:15

all the prisoners are wearing panties.

1:24:17

I turned around and asked the guard

1:24:20

and he just told me they were out of male underwear

1:24:21

and, you know, at 110, 120 degrees

1:24:23

like it was inside that prison,

1:24:26

they had to have something or they were gonna be naked.

1:24:28

And so that's why they justified that.

1:24:31

That was just a really creepy place in general.

1:24:35

I mean, Abu Ghraib was synonymous with torture

1:24:39

before Americans ever got there.

1:24:42

That was Saddam's torture chambers.

1:24:43

And that's why we picked that prison was

1:24:45

for the infamy of Abu Ghraib with the Iraqi people.

1:24:48

Interviewer

Did you know the man who took the photos?

1:24:52

-

No, no, no.

1:24:55

I don't.

1:24:57

Interviewer

And you didn't know any of the people

1:24:58

who work, the ones at night?

1:24:59

-

I knew one of the interrogators that ended up

1:25:01

pleading guilty to, I think throwing a football

1:25:03

at the head of one of the prisoners,

1:25:06

I think is what he pled to.

1:25:08

I don't know.

1:25:10

You know, again,

1:25:12

without having firsthand knowledge of what happened,

1:25:14

it all looked like a bunch of fraternity high tricks

1:25:17

taken way to an extreme,

1:25:20

that's what it appeared to me.

1:25:21

I don't think they were trying to get information,

1:25:23

look like they were just blowing off steam,

1:25:26

but you know, no, I'm not trying to justify it.

1:25:28

Interviewer

You think that it came from the top down?

1:25:31

-

No, no, there was things done there, at Abu Ghraib,

1:25:34

like prisoners dying and being thrown in taxi cabs and,

1:25:40

you know, sent down the road dead.

1:25:45

But that wasn't from a military angle.

1:25:49

Those were all outside agencies doing stuff like that.

1:25:51

Woman

So in Afghanistan,

1:25:57

what group do you think was the leader?

1:26:00

Which American agencies?

1:26:06

Interviewer

He can't say.

1:26:08

-

Yeah, I can't really.

1:26:09

I can say that the...

1:26:10

secretary of defense's office

1:26:14

was very hands-on with the Bagram,

1:26:16

Afghanistan interrogation facility.

1:26:19

We would receive calls from the people

1:26:21

identifying themselves with secretary of defense's office

1:26:26

would call our phone,

1:26:29

our DSN number right there at the prisoners direct line,

1:26:31

with specific questions for specific prisoners,

1:26:34

as well as guidance on how to treat them.

1:26:38

Woman

Guidance on how to treat them, as well?

1:26:41

-

Yeah, as far as the allowing of dogs,

1:26:43

the allowing of nudity,

1:26:45

the allowing of the sleep deprivation

1:26:46

and all of that came from secretary of defense level.

1:26:51

Interviewer

From the high level.

1:26:56

-

Yes.

1:26:57

Interviewer

How were dogs used?

1:26:58

-

Dogs were used,

1:27:01

the Arabs have a natural,

1:27:03

well I guess who doesn't have a fear

1:27:05

of a large barking animal,

1:27:07

but the Arabs are particularly sensitive to dogs

1:27:08

and we would have the military shepherds,

1:27:12

sometimes two of them,

1:27:16

but normally at least one when they came in,

1:27:18

and they would come in with some type of,

1:27:20

their eyes were, they couldn't see,

1:27:24

whether it was a sandbag that was duct taped

1:27:26

around their neck or a, or a black cloth hood they had,

1:27:29

or goggles, they had something

1:27:34

over their eyes and they couldn't see

1:27:36

and they couldn't see how close the dogs were to them,

1:27:37

but they were close enough.

1:27:39

The snarling growling dog was close enough

1:27:41

that the prisoners could feel the dog breath on their hands.

1:27:44

So they knew they were there.

1:27:48

They could hear them.

1:27:49

You know, they put them on high alert.

1:27:50

I don't know if you've had any experience

1:27:52

with working dogs like that,

1:27:53

you can put them on alert and they basically just sit there

1:27:55

in one jaw and their chain growling and snarling.

1:27:57

And we used them in that way.

1:28:04

Interviewer

And did they have any success in getting--

1:28:05

-

That was all, I mean,

1:28:08

it's really hard to say,

1:28:11

it all goes in with that shock of capture,

1:28:12

again, with the loud music, with the dogs,

1:28:15

with the 48 hours of no sleep.

1:28:17

And, you know, somebody being mean, yelling

1:28:20

at you the whole time you're there.

1:28:22

You're really just trying to instill that shock

1:28:25

of capture to keep their defenses down.

1:28:27

Interviewer

What kind of loud music would you play?

1:28:29

-

Oh, I mean, it started off where we would play them

1:28:31

like Panthera and stuff like that, originally.

1:28:34

And then, you know, after a while we just started using it

1:28:39

so that they couldn't talk to each other.

1:28:42

So we'd have Frankie Valli turned up all the way

1:28:43

and, you know, just crank it so that they couldn't whisper

1:28:47

to each other on the bench and get their story straight.

1:28:49

Cause we realized, you know, the music's stupid,

1:28:51

you wanna torture 'em, play country.

1:28:54

Interviewer

And did you ever take a phone call

1:28:58

from the defensive propping when they called?

1:29:01

-

I took a call one time, said office secretary of defense

1:29:03

for the OIC, and that was it.

1:29:08

Interviewer

And they gave you directions

1:29:10

on what to do with a particular--

1:29:12

-

No, I just got my OIC in here to do the final.

1:29:13

(laughs)

1:29:16

I didn't wanna talk to those people.

1:29:19

Interviewer

When Obama became president,

1:29:24

what'd you think?

1:29:28

-

(laughs) I was ecstatic.

1:29:29

I was just happy George Bush wasn't president anymore.

1:29:33

And I was really happy

1:29:36

with the decisions they immediately made.

1:29:37

I felt that, you know, hey we needed to repair

1:29:39

our relationships internationally.

1:29:42

We needed diplomacy versus the sword.

1:29:44

We needed the pen right now.

1:29:48

And I think it was definitely

1:29:50

a lot of hope in that change.

1:29:53

(laughs)

1:29:56

Interviewer

So four years later now,

1:29:58

what you're thinking?

1:30:00

-

I think he doubled down on Bush's policies.

1:30:02

And you know...

1:30:04

I can't wrap my mind around that

1:30:08

a US citizen can be assassinated.

1:30:10

That blows my mind.

1:30:13

That that's even possible.

1:30:15

When I was in the military,

1:30:16

I kept a copy of the constitution in my pocket.

1:30:18

Every day I served, from the time I enlisted

1:30:20

until the time I got out,

1:30:22

I kept a copy of the constitution in my pocket.

1:30:23

And it goes against everything that

1:30:26

that document says to assassinate anybody

1:30:28

much less a US citizen.

1:30:31

That's not what I fought for.

1:30:34

Interviewer

So why did you talk to us today?

1:30:41

-

Because this is, like I said, I've turned down

1:30:46

a lot of interviews over the years

1:30:49

and this one being that it's being

1:30:51

done from a legal perspective,

1:30:53

I think that we're just now getting our legal branch

1:30:56

our third branch of government that everybody forgot about.

1:30:59

The judicial is just now starting to get its,

1:31:02

its cojones back to it and take some authority and say,

1:31:05

oh wait a minute, we have an equal say in this.

1:31:09

And no, these things aren't okay.

1:31:11

It needs to be documented, what happened.

1:31:14

So it doesn't happen again, hopefully.

1:31:20

What was it they did in South Africa after apartheid,

1:31:29

what was the reconciliation?

1:31:31

Interviewer

Truth and reconciliation.

1:31:34

-

Truth and reconciliation,

1:31:35

something like that's not gonna happen from this,

1:31:36

but there definitely needs to be reconciliation

1:31:38

between us and the people that we've wronged.

1:31:41

And even if we were wronged first, you know,

1:31:45

an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind,

1:31:48

and you need to,

1:31:51

how we expect to solve our problems

1:31:52

if we're not willing to sit down?

1:31:55

The very fact that we're not willing to sit down

1:31:56

at the negotiation table with the Taliban

1:31:59

should tell you how our policy is.

1:32:00

I mean, we expect to end a war with these people

1:32:03

and not even acknowledge their existence or talk to 'em.

1:32:05

That's asinine, and so...

1:32:09

Interviewer

Would you want to apologize

1:32:13

for, either yourself or for America, at this point?

1:32:16

-

I mean, I can't apologize for America.

1:32:18

I can apologize for myself and say that

1:32:20

it was a very personal thing for me

1:32:24

and that people that lived the same experience I did

1:32:26

maybe not exactly as I did, but they were there

1:32:31

at the same time doing the same thing,

1:32:33

feel completely the opposite of how I do.

1:32:35

And I totally understand and think they're justified

1:32:37

in feeling that they're right in their actions.

1:32:41

I personally feel that I was wrong in my actions.

1:32:43

I don't feel that what I did went along

1:32:45

with the spirit of Geneva, with the spirit

1:32:47

of the US constitution and with the American,

1:32:49

the America I grew up with.

1:32:51

What I did was not in the spirit of that.

1:32:54

I mean, as bad as I feel and

1:33:03

I certainly do apologize for the people

1:33:06

that I wronged at the same time,

1:33:08

it's my place to say that.

1:33:12

And it's my place to say I was wrong

1:33:13

and I don't really feel

1:33:16

that it's anyone else's to say that I was wrong.

1:33:17

I don't really feel that until you've put yourself

1:33:20

in that situation,

1:33:24

you really don't know what you would do.

1:33:25

You would like to think you could rise above it

1:33:28

but you don't know until you're put there to do it.

1:33:30

Interviewer

Well, looking at yourself today,

1:33:37

are you sorry you were in that position at all?

1:33:39

-

No, cause I mean,

1:33:45

I look back on my life then, at 22

1:33:47

and who really is happy with who they were at 22,

1:33:50

but I definitely wasn't.

1:33:52

And if it wasn't for this series

1:33:53

of unfortunate events that occurred in my life,

1:33:57

I don't think I'd be who I was today.

1:34:01

I'm pretty pleased with who I am today.

1:34:02

I'm pretty pleased with the way I look at the world

1:34:05

and the way that I treat other people.

1:34:06

And I don't think that I would be this way,

1:34:09

had I not walked the path that I did.

1:34:10

Interviewer

And are there any issues going forward

1:34:14

that you wanted to talk about at all?

1:34:19

-

No.

1:34:27

Interviewer

For America or for...

1:34:28

-

For America, I mean, it's just...

1:34:30

We continue to behave in the country yet.

1:34:37

I think that I just

1:34:39

I don't understand our behavior as a country.

1:34:41

We need to look at it and say,

1:34:43

is this what you would tell your children?

1:34:44

Is this how you would tell your children to

1:34:46

conduct themselves?

1:34:47

Would you tell them to turn the other cheek

1:34:48

or would you tell them to lob missiles?

1:34:50

I definitely think we need to,

1:34:55

in order to protect our way of life,

1:34:56

I forget the exact quote from Lincoln,

1:34:58

but it was basically about compromising,

1:35:00

compromising your constitutional rights,

1:35:03

and who you are as a people to protect your security.

1:35:06

And that is it really worth it?

1:35:09

And do you end up winning in the long run when you do that?

1:35:10

And I don't think we do.

1:35:13

And I think that that's something we need to come

1:35:15

to the realization of,

1:35:17

we basically did not treat these people as Americans,

1:35:18

but as human beings,

1:35:22

we did not treat these people like human beings.

1:35:23

We treated those dogs that we were using to scare them

1:35:25

and intimidate them are treated better

1:35:30

than they were as humans.

1:35:31

And there is a serious problem with that.

1:35:33

And you can't win a war with,

1:35:36

you can't fight a theology with bullets.

1:35:38

You can only fight a theology with support

1:35:42

and dignity and trying to find equality

1:35:44

and fight poverty and all the other things

1:35:47

that lead up to why we have terrorism

1:35:49

and as a people,

1:35:52

we have no problem doubling our defense budget every year,

1:35:54

but the first thing we wanna do is slash foreign aid.

1:35:57

And well, you can build a school or you can build bombs

1:36:01

but the school last longer and does a lot more good.

1:36:04

Woman

Do you feel that,

1:36:09

I know this is contrary to USI deals,

1:36:12

did you feel that the US, this was relatively unique

1:36:16

in how US governments

1:36:21

addressed war and conflict?

1:36:25

Or did you think we're just more aware of transgressions?

1:36:27

-

I think that most Americans

1:36:34

have forgotten where their minds were

1:36:38

in July of 2002,

1:36:43

and how they personally felt about Afghans and Arabs

1:36:45

at that point in their lives.

1:36:49

Again, I think it's very easy 12 years after the fact

1:36:52

for everybody to say, oh, that was wrong.

1:36:54

And well, think about what was going through your head then.

1:36:56

And on this 24 hour news cycle that we live in,

1:37:01

everybody forgets how they, how they personally felt then.

1:37:04

And I really don't feel

1:37:08

that there's many Americans that drop

1:37:10

and in that same situation.

1:37:11

wouldn't do the exact same thing I did.

1:37:13

And, you know, it's very easy

1:37:16

for everybody to say, oh, no, not me.

1:37:18

It's not possible.

1:37:20

Go there, go there, go there.

1:37:21

And don't go there now,

1:37:23

go there when there was 8,000 and 13,000 troops

1:37:24

in Afghanistan and start sticking up for the enemy

1:37:28

and see how well that goes over,

1:37:32

(laughs)

1:37:34

It was...

1:37:37

I don't think a lot of what was done was out of cruelty.

1:37:40

I think it was just done out of vengeance and anger.

1:37:43

And just like any other time in your life,

1:37:47

you don't make the best decisions out of anger.

1:37:49

You need to calm down before you make

1:37:51

any kind of commitment,

1:37:54

especially when it involves people's lives,

1:37:56

you need to calm down and really assess the situation

1:37:58

and ask yourself, you know, is this worth it?

1:38:03

What are we gonna get out of this?

1:38:06

And what the hell have we gotten out of it?

1:38:07

The Russians got a pipeline,

1:38:09

and that's about it.

1:38:13

Interviewer

How has your life changed?

1:38:17

-

Well, besides being one of the most hated

1:38:21

American soldiers, out of this whole thing...

1:38:25

Woman

Why are you hated?

1:38:28

-

I guess cause I'm fucking king of torture, I don't know.

1:38:31

Woman

Are you hated for talking about it

1:38:35

or having done it?

1:38:37

-

Both, both, I get.

1:38:38

(laughs)

1:38:40

Yeah, I have groups that hate me cause I did it,

1:38:42

I have groups that hate me because I talk about it

1:38:44

and you know, I mean,

1:38:47

I try to do what I think is right.

1:38:47

And I tried to atone for the sins that I feel I've done.

1:38:49

I'm not, again, I'm not here to apologize

1:38:53

to the US government or any other US soldier,

1:38:55

that's up for them to do,

1:38:58

this is a determination had you asked me five years ago,

1:39:00

I would've told you, no,

1:39:05

I don't think I did anything wrong,

1:39:05

but it's taken a lot of introspective thought

1:39:07

with myself, spending a lot of time with myself,

1:39:11

and reliving the events in my life before I finally came

1:39:14

to the determination that what I did, might've been wrong.

1:39:16

And I think even though I disagree

1:39:22

with people that think they were right,

1:39:24

I totally, I understand their point.

1:39:25

I shared that point with them for a long time.

1:39:28

And I think it is a very valid point.

1:39:31

It's just, I personally disagree with it.

1:39:33

Woman

And their point is that it was effective?

1:39:37

-

That the ends would justify the means.

1:39:40

Woman

Okay.

1:39:42

-

The safety of Americans is paramount and,

1:39:45

or you can take the idea

1:39:49

that the American ideals are paramount,

1:39:51

that we should, that's what America is.

1:39:53

America's a bunch of ideas.

1:39:56

America's not people, it's not land.

1:39:58

It's the idea of it.

1:40:00

Should we extend that to everybody

1:40:05

we come into contact with?

1:40:07

I know my mother told me to treat others

1:40:10

as I want them to treat me, it's how I was raised.

1:40:14

And well, we don't really do that as a country though.

1:40:17

Yeah.

1:40:21

Interviewer

And you feel better

1:40:24

for having been so reflective about it,

1:40:25

like in the last 12 years?

1:40:28

-

Yeah. I mean, I've come to peace with what I did

1:40:30

and there's no taking it back

1:40:34

and there's no,

1:40:36

I've apologized, now continue to apologize.

1:40:38

People say, well, I've done it and I'm done with.

1:40:42

Bullshit.

1:40:44

No, you need to continue to apologize

1:40:45

until nobody needs to hear it anymore.

1:40:46

And right now there's still people

1:40:50

I think that need to hear that I'm sorry.

1:40:51

And that I do regret what I did,

1:40:54

and that I do recognize them as human beings

1:40:56

and as my equals on this earth with a right to exist

1:40:58

and be happy just as much as I do.

1:41:01

Interviewer

Well, we need 20 seconds

1:41:06

of quiet time with Johnny, just has to roll the camera

1:41:11

and then we can end the interview,

1:41:15

unless there's anything else you'd like to say

1:41:16

that I haven't asked you before we do that?

1:41:17

-

I can't think of anything.

1:41:22

I think we've satisfied everything.

1:41:24

Interviewer

Yeah.

1:41:27

Johnny, you wanna do it?

1:41:32

Johnny

Okay. Begin room tone.

1:41:33

Okay, end room tone. That was wonderful.

1:41:48

Corsetti, Damien, interview 1 - Interview master file

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