Savage, Charlie - Interview master file / Witness to Guantanamo / Duke Digital Repository

Interviewer

Okay, good morning.

0:05

-

Good morning.

0:06

-

We are very grateful to you for participating

0:08

in the Witness to Guantanamo project.

0:10

We invite you to speak of your experience and involvement

0:13

with the people who were involved in Guantanamo

0:17

and still are involved in Guantanamo in Cuba.

0:20

We are hoping to provide you with an opportunity

0:24

to tell your story in your own words.

0:26

We are creating an archive of stories

0:29

so that people in America and around the world

0:31

will have a better understanding

0:33

of what you and others have observed.

0:35

And we're very grateful that you came today

0:38

to share your experiences with us.

0:40

-

Thank you for inviting me.

0:42

-

Thank you.

0:43

Future generations must know what happened,

0:45

and by telling your story you contribute to history.

0:47

If you want to take a break, let us know,

0:50

and we're happy to do that.

0:53

And if there's something you say that you'd like to remove,

0:54

we can remove it if you tell us at the end of the interview.

0:56

-

Okay.

0:59

-

Okay, great.

1:00

We'd like to begin, if you wouldn't mind telling us

1:01

your name and occupation, and where you were born.

1:03

A little bit of your background

1:07

including your age and date of birth.

1:08

-

So my name is Charlie Savage.

1:11

I was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

1:13

I'm 41 years old now.

1:15

I work for the New York Times,

1:19

and covering among other things,

1:21

Guantanamo and detention policy issues.

1:23

I went to college, undergrad at Harvard,

1:27

and then worked the Miami Herald for awhile.

1:29

And then went to Yale Law School

1:32

for a master's degree program for journalists.

1:34

And shortly after that joined the Boston Globe in 2003

1:37

and then joined the New York Times in 2008,

1:41

where I've worked ever since.

1:44

-

And when you began with the Miami Herald,

1:46

what year was that?

1:49

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That was right out of college. I graduated in '98.

1:50

And I was sick for a while and so I had a delayed beginning,

1:54

but I started with them in early '99.

1:58

-

And what kind of work did you begin with

2:00

with them before you got involved in Guantanamo?

2:03

-

I began as a total cub reporter,

2:05

so I was out in the distant unincorporated suburbs

2:07

of Miami-Dade County covering zoning board meetings,

2:10

and suburban police issues.

2:13

And gradually worked my way up to small cities,

2:16

and then the Broward County Commission,

2:20

and then the Miami-Dade School Board.

2:22

And it was really then when I took that year off

2:25

for a fellowship at Yale in '02-'03

2:28

that I became more interested in national security,

2:31

and rule of law issues, or more of a specialist in them.

2:34

That was the year after 9/11.

2:37

The sort of the first shock had gone through,

2:40

and people were starting to think about

2:42

all these issues raised by the government's response

2:44

to 9/11 through a legal lens.

2:47

We didn't know yet about warrant-less surveillance,

2:50

and torture, but we did know about Guantanamo, for example,

2:53

and some other things like that.

2:56

And that was a hugely hot topic on the law school campus.

2:57

We had guest speakers coming in,

3:01

professors were building classes

3:02

around ongoing legal disputes.

3:05

For example, in my constitutional law small group class,

3:09

we had to write briefs, and do mock oral arguments.

3:14

And the professor Paul Kahn had chosen

3:18

a pair of appeals court cases in the third and sixth circuit

3:21

about the bulk closure of deportation hearings,

3:24

at the time for these large numbers of Arab men

3:29

who were being arrested and sent out of the country.

3:31

And whether that could be done as a matter

3:34

of the First Amendment and so forth.

3:36

That was the issue.

3:38

And so I came out of that year thinking,

3:39

this was the hot, almost too trivial to say hot.

3:42

This was the great issue of our time was how was

3:45

United States understanding of civil liberties,

3:50

and the rule of law going to change in response

3:52

to the sort of catastrophic threat

3:56

of Al Qaeda-style transnational terrorism?

3:58

Interviewer

Did you go to law school for that purpose

4:03

because you were inspired by what happened post 9/11,

4:04

you felt you'd educate yourself on it?

4:07

-

No, that would be saying too much.

4:10

I was interested in law school and legal issues, generally.

4:12

My older brother is a lawyer,

4:15

and I'd always wanted to go to law school.

4:16

In this fellowship program,

4:18

and I'm covering police issues and court issues.

4:20

I did have some hand as a younger reporter

4:22

covering post 9/11 things.

4:25

At that point, I was covering the Broward County Commission.

4:27

And some of the hijackers had been in Broward County,

4:30

or just North of Broward County

4:33

before in the flight schools.

4:34

And I was sort of chasing the FBI

4:37

around reconstructing their lives

4:38

in these sort of seedy motels where they

4:40

had been staying and so forth.

4:42

And there was a lot of early sort

4:44

of Homeland security jostling

4:46

about what are we gonna do about the sea port?

4:47

Is there too much danger of having these large tanks

4:51

of jet fuel so close to the highway?

4:54

And so that was on my mind,

4:57

but I really, I would have applied for this program.

4:59

In fact, I might even have applied for it,

5:03

I can't remember when that application was due

5:05

before 9/11 happened.

5:07

But once I was there, I was this sort of crucible,

5:11

and that really changed my thinking

5:13

about what I was interested in.

5:15

Interviewer

So when you came back to Miami,

5:17

did you go down to Guantanamo then?

5:19

-

I came back to Miami after that academic year was over,

5:23

so this would be early June of '03.

5:27

And the only other reporter there who was really interested

5:30

in the issues that I was now very interested in

5:33

was Carol Rosenberg, who became my friend.

5:35

And I had a desk near her,

5:39

and we constantly would nerd out over these issues.

5:40

And then very quickly after that she

5:43

was sent to Iraq, in the Iraq war.

5:46

And obviously, the invasion had happened

5:49

in McClatchy, or actually at the time,

5:51

it was the during the Knight Ridder newspaper chain

5:53

was sending a lot of reporters over there.

5:55

And so she, without her there

5:58

the pressure was whether the Miami Herald

6:02

would drop the story of Guantanamo.

6:03

And she and I both very much didn't want that to happen.

6:06

And she lobbied to let me take over coverage of it.

6:08

And in addition, while I was there,

6:12

I had inaugurated, back in '03,

6:14

I inaugurated a new beat, I proposed and created one

6:16

on sort of regional Homeland Security issues,

6:18

which was not one they'd had before.

6:21

Which was also trying to bring

6:23

this terrorism post 9/11 issues into the newspaper.

6:24

I had met, however, at Yale, my now wife,

6:29

and we had become engaged.

6:32

And so I was also trying to get out of Miami,

6:34

because she didn't want to move to Miami.

6:38

She's a Canadian journalist,

6:40

and I didn't want to move to Canada.

6:41

We'd agree, we were gonna converge in Washington.

6:42

And so part of all of that exercise

6:44

was also writing stories, and trying to sort of show

6:47

that I could operate on a national level

6:52

in hopes of getting a job in Washington.

6:54

Interviewer

When was the first time you

7:00

went to Guantanamo?

7:01

What was your sense of it when you first,

7:03

the first day you arrived?

7:05

-

So in, I think it was late July,

7:07

maybe in early August of '03, I went into Guantanamo

7:10

for the first time on behalf of the Miami Herald.

7:13

I didn't quite know what to expect.

7:18

I was flying in on this little strange plane,

7:20

and landing and they didn't,

7:23

you know, it was interesting,

7:27

they didn't check our passports.

7:27

And the next time I went in

7:29

they started checking our passports,

7:30

because they suddenly to get rid of lawsuits,

7:31

they wanted to stress to the courts

7:33

that this was a foreign country.

7:35

But the first time I went in,

7:37

they didn't check our passports,

7:38

because they were treating it like

7:39

an extension of the United States.

7:40

There was a number of reporters on that trip.

7:43

Some from foreign media,

7:47

an Australian film crew, I remember.

7:48

One of the things that was interesting as I was flying in,

7:52

they just let us sit, they assigned to wherever

7:55

in this sort of hopper flight.

7:58

And I was sitting next to someone

7:59

that I struck up a conversation with on the plane,

8:01

who turned out to be an engineer

8:03

for Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton.

8:06

And I asked him, "What are you going in for?"

8:11

And he told me he was going into work on camp five.

8:13

And I was, "Okay."

8:17

The first thing that happens once you get in,

8:19

and you get processed and get your card,

8:21

when you're now herded with the media,

8:23

is they give you a sort of a briefing

8:25

in a old hangar about what are you gonna see?

8:27

What's going on here?

8:30

What exists? What's the history so far?

8:31

And they talked only about camps, one through four.

8:34

And I raised my hand, I said, "What about camp five?"

8:37

And the press people professed

8:39

to not know what I was talking about.

8:41

And then later I got to talk to the commanding,

8:43

the JTF commander, General Jeffery Miller at the time.

8:47

And I asked him about camp five.

8:53

And he said, "How do you know about camp five?"

8:56

And I openly told him.

8:58

And then he openly told me quite a bit about it.

9:00

So camp five was, at this point, they still just

9:02

had these sort of hastily thrown up structures of open air,

9:04

sort of, you know, shipping containers practically.

9:08

And he explained that camp five was gonna be

9:12

a concrete-walled prison that they were building.

9:13

And it was gonna be a much more permanent structure.

9:18

And he told me it was gonna take six

9:21

or eight months to build.

9:22

And then I came back to talk to him a second time,

9:23

and I asked, "Why is it gonna take so long to build

9:25

when these others you were able

9:28

to throw up in a few months?"

9:29

And that's when he really explained this

9:30

is modeled after a prison in Indiana,

9:32

and we have to float in on barges

9:33

all these pre-formed concrete.

9:35

And it's gonna have cameras, and electricity,

9:37

and air conditioning and a control center,

9:40

and it's gonna be a real prison.

9:43

And so that became my first scoop about Guantanamo.

9:46

That this was going to be, basically,

9:49

this sort of ad hoc policy that the Bush Administration

9:52

had created sort of on the fly.

9:56

Because they needed to get all these wartime prisoners

9:59

out of Afghanistan after the uprising at Mazari Sharif

10:02

because they'd had to put them somewhere

10:07

let's put them here.

10:08

But no one, even they didn't expect this

10:10

was gonna be evolved into something permanent.

10:11

And the fact that in the summer of '03,

10:14

they were making plans to build

10:16

a permanent, expensive concrete-walled,

10:18

two-story prison building was the sign

10:22

that they were pouring concrete around, literally,

10:26

around this policy, or figuratively, but almost literally.

10:29

So I wrote that story,

10:34

and I remember that it was picked up by the wires,

10:35

and it was replicated around the world.

10:38

And it was sort of like what, wow,

10:40

there is global interest in this.

10:42

This is not just like writing about the Miami School Board

10:44

where people don't care outside

10:46

of the immediate environments.

10:48

Interviewer

What is your sense of Guantanamo

10:50

simply from that?

10:53

Just the experience you had of walking through it,

10:55

even though it was a guided tour of the camp,

10:58

and the people you saw there?

11:00

-

What was the experience?

11:03

So, we walked through camp,

11:05

camps one through three were similar-

11:08

Interviewer

Was X-Ray still there?

11:10

-

What's that?

11:11

Interviewer

Was Camp X-Ray still-

11:12

-

No, no, Camp X-Ray was gone within a few months.

11:13

That was, that was-

11:15

Interviewer

They didn't take you there.

11:17

-

Well, you went through it, but it was just overgrown

11:18

with weed, because there was no one living there.

11:20

So Camp X-Ray was thrown up in January of '02,

11:23

and by the Summer of '02, everyone had been moved

11:26

into Camp Delta, which is also known

11:29

as camps one through four.

11:31

In camps one through three in Delta were these

11:33

individual cells in these long,

11:36

sort of open air passageways.

11:39

And then camp four was communal living

11:44

where people lived in, the more compliant prisoners lived

11:46

in these sort of huts.

11:49

And eight together and so forth.

11:52

So you couldn't talk to a prisoner.

11:54

To this day, you can't talk to

11:57

a prisoner while you're there.

11:58

And so they would take you through an empty cell block

11:59

of one through three, and you could sort of see

12:02

what the cells looked like.

12:05

It was, whichever one, they would periodically move

12:06

the prisoners around, so they could do maintenance,

12:09

repaint and whatever.

12:12

So you could see what it looked like,

12:13

and here's what's in a typical cell.

12:14

And here's the arrow on the floor that points to mecca

12:16

so they know which way to pray.

12:18

And around you the men in other cell blocks

12:20

knew you were there, and sometimes them would be shouting.

12:24

You couldn't see them, but you could hear that.

12:26

And then in four, which is the communal area,

12:31

you could see the detainees sort of from a distance.

12:34

And they would sort of be looking at you,

12:36

and you'd look at them,

12:38

but there was no way to communicate.

12:39

Interviewer

So after that first piece,

12:42

how soon did you go back to Guantanamo?

12:46

-

So I right after that, and that story helped a lot.

12:49

Actually I did two stories,

12:52

one about the camp five and its significance.

12:53

And one was more of a feature about what

12:56

is life like inside, what's the scene?

12:59

What's the look like, just what is this bizarre place?

13:02

Those two stories, which the Miami Herald

13:07

gave very good play to,

13:09

helped me get a job at the Boston Globe.

13:14

So I then left, I went to on my honeymoon, I got married.

13:18

I thought I was gonna have to come back to Miami,

13:21

even though my future, now wife,

13:25

had already gotten a job in DC.

13:27

And I remember,

13:29

we were on our honeymoon in Banff, in Canada.

13:32

And that was when the Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo,

13:35

James Yee, was arrested and accused of being a spy.

13:39

And what was interesting about that was he was one part

13:44

of the tour that I had just been on.

13:46

So this is September of '03, that was August of '03.

13:49

So you go, you meet the Muslim chaplain,

13:55

and he just tells you, what's it like to interact

13:56

with these detainees.

14:00

And it was a really boring interview at the time.

14:00

But I had it, and the tape of it,

14:04

the transcript of it in my laptop.

14:07

And we're on our honeymoon,

14:10

and suddenly he's arrested for being a spy for Al Qaeda,

14:11

which was not true, but that's moot.

14:13

And suddenly, this seemingly mundane

14:15

discussion of his attitude towards the detainees,

14:20

and how he just tries to help them with Islam,

14:22

and not think about why they're there, or whatever,

14:24

became incredibly interesting.

14:26

And my wife is also a journalist as I mentioned,

14:29

was like, "You've got to write this."

14:31

And so I wrote a story about Jim Yee

14:31

from my honeymoon.

14:37

And then I got all kinds of ribbing

14:38

about that from my colleagues,

14:39

when I got back to the Miami Herald to,

14:40

what a nerd I was.

14:43

But while I was on that honeymoon,

14:44

the Boston Globe called me and offered me a job

14:48

in their Washington bureau,

14:50

covering these sorts of issues along with

14:51

the Department of Justice and Homeland Security.

14:52

So by October, I had moved to the Globe.

14:54

And later that year, the end of '03,

14:58

I went down to Guantanamo again,

15:00

now, on behalf of the Globe to do,

15:02

'cause they hadn't sent someone there before

15:04

to do another sort of big,

15:06

what's up with Guantanamo?

15:09

So that was the second time I went down.

15:12

Interviewer

Were they,

15:14

can I make a quick mic adjustment?

15:15

-

Sure.

15:17

Interviewer

We are up.

15:18

Was the Boston, I shouldn't ask you this, and you can,

15:20

but was the Boston Globe as supportive

15:22

as the Miami Herald in terms of stories about Guantanamo?

15:24

-

Well, yes and no.

15:30

It's sort of hard to give a simple answer to that,

15:33

because the level of news interest in Guantanamo

15:35

in 2003, 2004, might be different

15:39

than '08, '09, 2012, 2016, and ongoing.

15:43

I mean Guantanamo was still a huge story

15:47

when there were 600 or 700 people there,

15:51

and it was still not clear what was gonna happen.

15:53

And the Supreme Court was deciding whether or not

15:55

there was jurisdiction.

15:57

And over time I think, the basic facts of it

15:59

have sort of stabilized,

16:03

there was a different narrative, which was,

16:06

is Obama gonna succeed in closing it, or not?

16:07

By then I'm not at the Globe anymore.

16:10

And that sort of ran its course, as well.

16:11

I think that Miami Herald is unique

16:14

in being willing to invest the resources

16:17

to have Carol, my friend, cover it in person.

16:20

Even though now you can just watch proceedings

16:26

from the military commissions at least remotely,

16:29

without having to go to the expense and trouble

16:31

of getting to the base.

16:32

But wanting to have her there soup to nuts.

16:34

And so she's performing a unique service in that.

16:38

For me, it has been especially,

16:40

well, actually at the Globe, but also the Times as well,

16:43

it's one of many things that I focus on.

16:46

I'm interested in Guantanamo,

16:49

and I periodically check in on it.

16:50

And if something important happens I'm gonna cover it.

16:52

But I'm also working on drones,

16:54

and I'm also working on surveillance,

16:56

and I'm also working on secrecy and leak investigations,

16:59

and all the, and war powers.

17:02

And all these sort of consolation of, to me,

17:03

national security legal policy issues

17:06

that are raised by the post 9/11 world.

17:08

It's not that I'm covering GITMO full stop.

17:10

And I'm not sure that I would want to there.

17:14

I mean, Carol's a saint. It's a grind.

17:16

She spends a huge amount of her life getting to and from,

17:19

and living in a tent down there.

17:23

And a lot of, especially the military commissions coverage,

17:25

it's a system that sort of spins its wheels,

17:31

and nothing really goes off on tangents for long times.

17:33

It's the opportunity cost of focusing on it exclusively.

17:37

It's not just that the,

17:40

the papers I've worked for have been less interested

17:44

than the Miami Herald, but I think that is part of it.

17:46

Part of that is that SouthComm is a local story for Miami.

17:48

But it's also just, you know, what else could you

17:54

be writing about today?

17:57

There's a variety of interesting things happening

17:59

in this space of which Guantanamo's one,

18:01

has sort of been my attitude.

18:03

Interviewer

Well, can you just say how important

18:06

is Guantanamo in the last generation,

18:08

or the last 15 years in terms of waking,

18:10

describing their security issues?

18:13

-

Well, it's a hugely important symbol, first of all,

18:16

of the wrenching changes to international law,

18:21

and the country's sort of image of itself.

18:25

On the other hand, calling the word a symbol,

18:30

and it's hugely important for the men who are there.

18:34

And it's a symbol around the world

18:38

of what the United States evolved into after 9/11.

18:39

On the other hand, far more people

18:42

were held at Bagram Air Base

18:46

under very similar circumstances

18:49

than were ever brought to Guantanamo.

18:51

To say nothing of the various prison camps

18:52

in Iraq at the height of the war there.

18:57

And to say nothing of the more extreme prisons

19:01

with fewer people in them that the CIA

19:04

ran around the world.

19:06

So it depends on how you look at it, I suppose,

19:08

in sort of weighing GITMO versus detention policy,

19:12

interrogation policy,

19:17

terrorism prosecutions policy writ large.

19:19

Interviewer

Well, how do you weigh it?

19:23

Because in our travels we find that people outside

19:25

the country are much more concerned about Guantanamo

19:29

than people inside this country.

19:31

And of course, people inside this country

19:34

know nothing about Bagram.

19:35

So why is that?

19:37

Why is it that it just doesn't weigh

19:39

that heavily in America?

19:41

In fact, I'll just tell you this and you can respond.

19:42

When we reach out people who kind of work with during,

19:45

they often say, "I thought Guantanamo was closed."

19:47

People thought Obama was gonna close it,

19:51

therefore, they felt, they believed he closed it.

19:52

And the result is that Guantanamo's not an issue,

19:56

much of an issue in America,

20:00

and it is much more of an issue

20:01

we'd call a symbol outside this country.

20:03

-

That probably has a lot to do with,

20:07

some to do with media coverage here, versus abroad.

20:09

Certainly, I've been writing about it,

20:13

and Carol's been writing about it.

20:15

But does Joe Average read the New York Times,

20:16

or the Miami Herald, or tune out?

20:19

It's also the case that,

20:23

some of the things that made it extraordinary have...

20:25

The rough edges have been sanded smooth over time.

20:31

The notion that the country could hold people

20:36

there incommunicado, outside of any judicial review,

20:40

without any kind of process, to make sure they were

20:43

who they were claimed to have been.

20:47

That was part of what made, and at the Geneva Conventions,

20:50

humanitarian protections do not apply

20:53

to people who are held there.

20:55

I mean, that's GITMO 2002.

20:57

But that's not GITMO today,

21:01

and that's not been GITMO for awhile.

21:02

The arrival of habeas corpus,

21:05

the proclamation that the Geneva Conventions come

21:08

in Article III has to govern conduct there.

21:11

You know, six from the Hamdam ruling.

21:14

And the sort of arrival of the habeas bar

21:17

to provide a conduit to sort of keep an eye

21:21

on what's going on there.

21:25

And also, the shrinking, the huge reduction,

21:28

if not elimination of the detention population there,

21:31

as Obama has tried to wind it down.

21:35

And Bush before him tried to wind it down,

21:38

has I think, contributed, as well,

21:41

to the outrage that was widely felt in '02.

21:44

Some of the contributing factors to that have been resolved.

21:51

Even though the prison remains open.

21:55

Interviewer

Even Obama says that it's still

21:57

a black stain on America.

21:59

And people see that outside, but yet Americans don't.

22:01

And maybe you're right, not Joe Average doesn't read

22:05

the New York Times, but apparently not many people

22:07

care anyway, whether they leave it or not.

22:11

It's just not an issue.

22:12

But you still feel the need to keep writing about it.

22:15

-

I see that as a subset of a larger question.

22:20

I've written two books about national security,

22:25

and executive power, and the rule of law,

22:27

and civil liberties and so forth.

22:29

I'm very proud of those books.

22:31

But neither of them sells remotely what a flimsy-

22:33

Interviewer

John Grisham, for example.

22:38

-

Or some Ann Coulter or something.

22:39

Even though in terms of, I would say without false modesty,

22:43

that their value is probably greater.

22:47

But why is that?

22:50

It was like someone said to me once

22:51

that no one thinks about executive power

22:53

when they're mowing their lawn.

22:56

To the extent they think about government and policy,

23:00

maybe they think, "Are my taxes going up or down?

23:02

Do I feel safe, or is there crime in my neighborhood?"

23:05

And that's kind of where people stop. Most people.

23:08

But that doesn't mean that all people are that way.

23:12

Some of these very fundamental issues about

23:18

what the country is, and its understanding

23:19

of the rule of law, and so forth,

23:21

is hugely important for the people who make decisions.

23:24

And the people who are engaged in politics and policy.

23:27

And those may not be the random person you stop

23:30

in the street who thinks GITMO's already been closed.

23:33

The random person you stop on the street

23:36

probably can't name the chief justice,

23:37

or the vice president.

23:39

That doesn't mean that you don't cover

23:42

the Supreme Court, or the White House.

23:43

Interviewer

So do you see yourself covering Guantanamo

23:47

in the Trump Administration?

23:50

-

So well, we'll see. Well, yes.

23:53

But the question is, how much is there going to be to cover?

23:55

So Obama, we're having this interview three days

23:58

before Trump's inauguration.

24:01

Just on Monday, yesterday,

24:04

the last big batch of detainees that Obama

24:07

has been trying to get out went to Oman, another 10 guys.

24:09

There's now 45 men left there.

24:12

And I think a few more will go before Friday.

24:16

One more to Saudi Arabia,

24:21

and a couple to the Emirates for sure,

24:22

maybe one to Italy.

24:24

But the upshot of this is that for most

24:25

of the Obama era, there's been two major stories.

24:28

There's been the effort, first to turn off,

24:33

and then turn back on prosecutions

24:38

before a military commission system.

24:40

And although that system has floundered,

24:42

those prosecutions continue.

24:45

And so those, the need to cover them

24:47

will continue in the Trump era.

24:51

And then the other big storyline has been that,

24:53

when Obama came in he instituted a process

24:58

whereby six agencies, career civil service people

25:01

and not political appointees,

25:05

reviewed every single detainee who was left at the prison

25:08

when he took over, the 242 men,

25:11

and sort of racked and stacked them.

25:14

Here's the people we can let go,

25:16

here's the people that we can prosecute,

25:17

here's the people we can neither prosecute,

25:19

but are too dangerous to let go.

25:21

The fact that the list of those who could,

25:24

who were recommended for transfer

25:27

if security conditions could be met in the receiving country

25:29

was a very long list.

25:32

It was huge amounts of Yemenis on them,

25:33

particularly of people from countries

25:36

where they couldn't easily be repatriated.

25:37

Because their home countries lacked a real government,

25:40

or were in chaos.

25:43

So these men then found themselves being stuck

25:46

at GITMO for years, and years and years,

25:48

even though the government had decided

25:50

it did not want to keep holding them.

25:52

Putting aside though, is the prison gonna be closed?

25:55

Because Obama's plan to close it was just

25:58

to take everyone else and move them to a different prison.

26:00

The fact that, which is a very muddy solution

26:03

to closing it, right?

26:05

The fact that the government didn't want

26:07

to be holding these 100 plus guys,

26:09

and years were passing and then we continued to hold them,

26:11

was a very clear, I think sort of,

26:14

moral or governance failure.

26:17

And the efforts to get rid of the people

26:20

that it didn't want to be holding,

26:23

provided an energy to cover it.

26:26

And it sort of proceeded in fits and starts.

26:31

Now it was jammed up, and now the Pentagon was blocking it,

26:34

and now it was unjammed,

26:36

and big batches were going again.

26:37

And where were they going?

26:39

And were they becoming recidivists, or not?

26:40

And that whole narrative.

26:42

So that list now, is very, very short.

26:45

Obama's gonna leave it,

26:47

he's not gonna get all the guys out on that list,

26:49

but we're now into the single digits,

26:51

and will go even smaller.

26:53

And so the whole effort to negotiate new homes

26:54

for people the government didn't want

27:00

to be holding anyway, is a dramatically shrunk story

27:02

heading into the Trump Administration.

27:06

I suspected the alphas of Guantanamo closure,

27:09

the State Department and the Pentagon will be closed,

27:11

not just because Trump doesn't want to close GITMO,

27:14

but because they just won't have much to do.

27:17

There may be one or two guys somewhere

27:18

that occasionally the government decides

27:21

it doesn't need to be holding anymore, but not hundreds.

27:22

That thing, I don't see there being much need

27:28

to cover in the Trump Administration.

27:32

The unanswered question is,

27:35

will Trump start bringing new people there?

27:37

Obama refused to bring anyone to Guantanamo.

27:39

Even though he failed to close it he

27:42

did not add to its population,

27:43

and he chipped away into it.

27:45

And he's gonna leave with a little over 40 guys down

27:47

from the little over 240 that he inherited.

27:49

Will Trump bring someone there?

27:56

Will he do it just because to show that he can, right?

27:58

Or will national security voices around him say,

28:02

"We shouldn't bring anyone there until

28:04

these transfer restrictions are lifted?

28:06

Because why would we tie our own hands operationally

28:07

from what we could do with someone?"

28:10

If he does bring people there will

28:12

the government tell us who they are, by the way?

28:14

Or will it be a big thing that we need

28:17

to figure out, who are these people?

28:19

What are they accused of?

28:20

How are they being treated?

28:21

Are we gonna be back in '02,

28:23

in other words, 2002?

28:25

We don't know yet.

28:27

That could be something that provides

28:29

a great need for journalism.

28:32

Interviewer

What about the forever prisoners?

28:34

Does journalism need to cover them?

28:36

Or are they just basically so much collateral damage?

28:38

-

So your use of the term forever prisoners I think

28:43

is a reference to the men who are neither facing charges

28:46

in the military commission system,

28:50

who are also forever prisoners, by the way,

28:52

KSM is never gonna be set go.

28:54

Interviewer

In theory he's gonna be convicted someday.

28:57

-

Right, but he's still a forever prisoner in that sense.

28:59

The people who are not being charged,

29:02

but also, are not currently recommended for transfer.

29:04

So this population is going to be about two dozen

29:07

by the time Obama leaves office,

29:11

a little bit more than that.

29:13

And then maybe Trump will add to it,

29:14

or maybe he won't.

29:16

So yes, there'll be a need to cover that

29:18

if something is happening.

29:21

Generally, for news, you need something to happen.

29:24

So you know, they are still there,

29:27

is not necessarily a story on Tuesday,

29:29

and Wednesday, and Thursday and Friday.

29:31

But you know, in the past there have been hunger strikes.

29:33

Maybe something like that will happen,

29:37

or Trump will, or will not keep the system

29:39

of parole-like hearings, the Periodic Review Board,

29:42

to give them reviews and see whether

29:45

they still need to be held.

29:48

So what he does with that structure impacts

29:49

whether they ever have a shot at getting out,

29:52

will be something to look at.

29:56

Interviewer

I want to go back to Trump in a moment.

29:58

But were you surprised that Obama never closed the prison?

29:59

-

Was I surprised?

30:04

I covered why he didn't do it.

30:10

So to ask whether I was surprised, you know-

30:12

Interviewer

Why didn't he do it, in your words?

30:15

-

So he came in and he said,

30:17

"We're gonna close it within a year."

30:19

I wrote huge amounts about this in my book.

30:22

He set up an agency, people to think about

30:25

how they were gonna do it, and very quickly,

30:29

I would say maybe it became clear to them,

30:31

that there was a cohort of men

30:34

who could not be prosecuted.

30:36

Because, they hadn't done anything specific

30:39

like blown something up.

30:43

And because, the laws that we generally use

30:46

to lock up dangerous terrorists

30:50

who have not yet done something specific,

30:51

providing material support to terrorism,

30:54

conspiracy, did not apply,

30:55

especially, for the material support law

30:58

to non-citizens abroad, prior to the Patriotic Act,

31:00

which is October of 2001.

31:04

But that doesn't necessarily, in their view mean,

31:10

that if they let this person go,

31:12

he wouldn't immediately go and kill some people.

31:14

And so they were faced with this dilemma,

31:16

with do we let these guys out?

31:18

And knowing that they're gonna go probably

31:21

kill some people, as the war is ongoing,

31:23

when the Supreme Court has said

31:26

it is lawful for us to hold them, or not?

31:27

And they very quickly reached the decision, no.

31:31

If the Supreme Court has says it's lawful

31:32

for us to hold them, essentially as POWs,

31:34

the war continues, they're dangerous,

31:36

we're not gonna let them go.

31:37

And that meant that closing Guantanamo

31:38

did not mean letting everyone go

31:41

who could not be prosecuted.

31:44

It meant that there was still gonna be essentially

31:46

a POW camp somewhere, and closing Guantanamo

31:49

was simply gonna be moving it.

31:52

And so a lot of 2009 was designed around

31:53

where are the options?

31:57

Fort Leavenworth, or Miramar, or Charleston,

31:59

or could we buy this unused prison in Michigan

32:02

in Standish, or Thomson, Illinois?

32:05

They eventually settled on Thomson.

32:09

But by then, over the course of 2009,

32:13

the politics had shifted.

32:17

In 2008 John McCain, and Obama,

32:21

and George W. Bush for that matter,

32:23

all thought Guantanamo should be closed.

32:25

But Republicans in the course of 2009 discovered

32:27

that shifting positions on Guantanamo

32:31

from Bush and McCain's to criticizing

32:33

the Obama Administration for being feckless,

32:36

and making the world more dangerous,

32:39

and so forth, was good politics.

32:40

And then in particular, after the Christmas of '09,

32:44

attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner

32:49

by a branch of Al-Qaeda that was based in Yemen,

32:51

which nearly succeeded.

32:54

There was a great wave of fear,

32:56

a renewed fear that Obama's election, and so forth

33:00

had not ended the war on terror.

33:02

In fact, they were still out,

33:05

they literally were still out there trying to kill us.

33:06

Which was true, they were,

33:08

as the Christmas attack demonstrated.

33:10

So that's when support drains away

33:13

for bringing the military commission cases

33:15

into the normal court system,

33:18

and having the 9/11 trial in New York.

33:20

And that's also when,

33:23

because there was this Yemen branch of Al-Qaeda

33:25

that had launched that attack.

33:27

Obama imposes a moratorium on sending

33:29

any detainees from Guantanamo to Yemen.

33:31

Because a huge number of the detainees

33:33

on the cleared list, cleared,

33:35

meaning recommended for transfer,

33:37

not cleared as in innocent, were Yemenis.

33:38

That meant that there was gonna be

33:42

a large, large number of people who

33:43

were not gonna be transferred in the near future.

33:45

And that was the death knell of the effort to close it

33:47

in the sense that, as part of that politics,

33:52

then Congress imposes a ban on bringing people

33:54

to the United States.

33:57

And that's the end.

33:58

And until Congress lifts that law,

33:59

or if Obama had been willing to violate the law,

34:01

in a George W. Bush like way,

34:05

saying, "I'm the Commander in Chief,

34:07

and the statutes can't bind my decisions

34:08

about war time matters."

34:10

Which Obama and the Left had been

34:12

a huge critic of when Bush did that,

34:14

then he was stuck at that point.

34:16

Go ahead.

34:18

-

Sorry.

-

So in hindsight, and he has said this,

34:19

if he really wanted to close GITMO

34:23

with his planned of relocating these men

34:25

to a different prison,

34:27

he should not have waited.

34:29

And had this sort of slow, carefully, prudent,

34:31

methodical policy analysis of the pros and cons,

34:34

and what are the issues,

34:37

and what do we need to do?

34:38

Will we need to build something here,

34:39

or what legal issues will be raised?

34:41

He could have capriciously ordered

34:43

the military to put them on a plane

34:46

in January of '09 and just bring them

34:48

to Fort Leavenworth, or something.

34:50

And deal with working through the legal issues

34:52

and the fencing issues and stuff later.

34:55

Which would have looked irresponsible in 2009,

34:57

not knowing how this was gonna play out.

35:00

Once it did play out, his hands were tied.

35:02

He whittled it away, and he kept telling,

35:07

asking Congress to lift those restrictions,

35:08

and they were not willing to.

35:11

And that's why he didn't close it.

35:13

Interviewer

I'm sorry to interrupt,

35:15

but he signed those military

35:16

bills that he did that did keep

35:21

the restrictions on him.

35:23

He, of course, could have vetoed them all these,

35:24

done something other than sign those bills, or whatever.

35:28

Reasons that he did sign them,

35:31

he did sign his own restrictions, right?

35:33

-

That's true, he did sign those bills.

35:35

It was not like there was a bill that came

35:38

to him that said, "You can't do this."

35:39

It was 1,000 page bill that said,

35:41

we're gonna keep funding the military,

35:43

and by the way, you're fighting a war

35:45

in Libya, and Afghanistan and Iraq,

35:46

and here's all this other stuff.

35:48

It would have, you know,

35:53

when Congress wants to pass something

35:54

and they're gonna add it to every single bill

35:56

they send you, the question is whether

35:58

that's the thing to go to war over.

36:00

Interviewer

Right, right.

36:02

-

And he chose not to go to war over it.

36:03

Interviewer

Again, and again, right?

36:05

Going back to Trump.

36:08

You said Trump might send men to Guantanamo.

36:10

He also said he might send Americans to Guantanamo.

36:14

I know the law doesn't permit it now,

36:16

but do you see that happening,

36:18

Congress could actually change the law

36:21

for that to happen?

36:23

-

So Trump, what you're referring to is that Trump,

36:24

during the campaign was asked

36:28

about prosecuting terrorism suspects,

36:31

and said that he didn't like

36:34

using civilian courts to do that.

36:36

And that even if an American was a terrorism suspect,

36:38

maybe they should be sent to GITMO

36:41

for a military commission prosecution.

36:42

So that's sort of one of the complexities of this

36:43

is disentangling war time detention without trial,

36:45

at Guantanamo or somewhere else,

36:51

from the use of military commissions,

36:53

as opposed to civilian court to prosecute people.

36:55

And right now the military commissions

36:57

only exist at Guantanamo, so necessarily it means.

36:58

So there's no clear law against sending,

37:02

holding an American in indefinite detention without trial.

37:08

Bush did that twice.

37:11

And two appeals courts came to opposite decisions about it,

37:13

and then before a Supreme Court resolution of that conflict,

37:17

Bush moved that man into the civilian court system,

37:21

and so we have none.

37:24

And there's been this sort of ambiguity floating

37:26

above detention law ever since 9/11

37:28

about whether or not even the intent of Congress

37:31

was to let Americans arrested on domestic soil

37:34

be held as war time detainees.

37:38

And Congress has repeatedly punted,

37:40

rather than trying to clarify what the rules should be

37:42

in sort of a great failure in living up to their role

37:44

of making the law.

37:48

So that's good.

37:52

Congress has clearly said American citizens cannot

37:53

be prosecuted in the military commission system.

37:56

That's one of the actually time bombs sitting

37:58

in the military commission system,

38:00

because to the extent the Constitution applies there.

38:01

Having unequal rules could be something

38:05

that an appeals court could use

38:08

to invalidate any conviction if we ever get

38:09

to a trial at some point.

38:13

So Congress would have to change that.

38:16

The thing about Trump is that,

38:18

he gets asked, or he decides to say something,

38:20

and he just says something off the cuff.

38:25

You don't really know, our experience so far

38:28

in the campaign transition,

38:31

you don't really know, is this really something

38:32

that he really has thought about and thought through?

38:34

Does the right people is behind it,

38:37

and everyone's on board, and this is what they're gonna do?

38:38

Or is it just a thought

38:41

that sort of goes off and then dissipates?

38:43

I haven't seen any sign from the few people I know

38:48

in the transition that they have some well-designed plan,

38:52

or they're even talking about sending Americans down there?

38:56

It's the kind of thing, I guess at some point,

39:00

somebody will be arrested for a terrorism offense

39:02

on domestic soil, and we'll see what they do.

39:06

Maybe that will be the point where

39:08

they actually think about it.

39:09

But so far that looks like that was

39:11

an off the cuff comment that he may not

39:14

have even thought of since.

39:16

Interviewer

Well, you know he brought up Jose Padir,

39:18

a name (unintelligible).

39:20

And I think it's important to understand

39:22

that that is a possibility under Trump,

39:25

that seemingly could be more

39:28

a possibility than under Obama.

39:29

I mean, on a lot of conjecture,

39:32

is that something also, we should think about?

39:34

-

It's certainly true that a core tenant

39:36

of Obama's national security legal policy

39:39

and philosophy has been a consistent one.

39:41

There are places where he came in as an idealist,

39:44

and then compromised in a variety of ways

39:47

under various pressures.

39:51

And this one where he never compromised

39:52

and he stuck with it.

39:54

Which is that military force, military agencies

39:54

should not be used to handle terrorism offenses

39:58

arising on domestic soil.

40:02

The police does not patrol the street,

40:03

the military does not patrol the streets of America.

40:06

So every time a terrorism suspect was arrested inside

40:10

the United States and was read his Miranda rights,

40:15

and prosecuted in civilian court, Republicans

40:18

would attack that decision.

40:21

Going back to that Christmas 2009

40:24

on the bombing attempt,

40:27

and the sort of political fall out of that,

40:27

we saw that sort of hardened into a cycle of,

40:29

because it was very successful in January of 2010 for them.

40:34

It probably led to the election of Senator Scott Brown,

40:37

a Republican in Massachusetts, a very liberal state

40:40

to fill the seat left vacant when Ted Kennedy died.

40:44

But it didn't really have that much of a shift after that.

40:47

That was sort of a unique moment it turns out.

40:52

And Obama stuck to his guns.

40:55

And so you would get these press releases,

40:56

and then life would go on.

40:58

So it will be very interesting to see what

41:01

the Trump Administration does for that.

41:04

I mean, one of the reasons the Obama people

41:05

were invested in the existing law enforcement approach

41:07

to dealing with terrorism cases

41:13

that arose on United States soil,

41:15

rather than sending people to Guantanamo,

41:16

is that as a practical matter.

41:19

It's not just that they were

41:21

human rights idealists,

41:24

as a practical matter,

41:26

the national security professionals found

41:26

that it was very effective.

41:29

That there were in Article III with courts

41:30

they could use various tools available as interrogators

41:35

to induce cooperation without using torture.

41:38

They could offer credit for time served,

41:42

and all kinds of other things

41:45

that aren't available in the military commission system.

41:46

And they could even use the defense lawyer assigned

41:48

to represent someone as an ally to say,

41:52

"You better cooperate, because you know,

41:54

you're really facing some serious situation here.

41:56

Maybe you can improve your situation a little bit."

41:58

And then once someone was convicted,

42:02

the trial happened quickly, compared to Guantanamo,

42:05

the verdict was upheld on appeal.

42:10

The person disappears into the Florence Supermax,

42:12

and never to be heard from again.

42:15

While the sort of circus of an attempt

42:16

to bring even to get through pretrial hearings on a case,

42:20

the commission system continues to be ineffective.

42:24

And so it'll be, there are practical,

42:28

or pragmatic arguments for this let

42:32

the professionals have totally apart

42:35

from the political rhetoric

42:36

about which way was being tougher on terrorism.

42:38

One of the things that will be very interesting

42:40

to watch for is how national security professionals

42:42

in the Trump Administration handle

42:45

these issues as they arise.

42:48

And whether they make such arguments

42:49

and whether they're listened to,

42:51

or whether there's a desire to show a different approach

42:52

that prevails over that kind of an argument.

42:56

Interviewer

I mean if for a really strong argument

42:59

for the rule of law,

43:01

which I've seen you've made many times,

43:02

but it's probably something that not everyone hears.

43:07

Actually, you've totally really upset me here I must say,

43:14

(unintelligible) 'cause to see something like

43:18

that happening again with the Trump Administration,

43:21

as opposed what you described a really well situation

43:24

that seems more successful in obtaining intel.

43:27

You'll write about it.

43:34

Will the national security people under Trump

43:35

think about what you just described

43:38

and understand what you just described,

43:39

and maybe you should write a piece about

43:40

it for them to read.

43:42

Are they as aware as you are

43:45

of what you just described as to-

43:47

-

You're talking about the career

43:49

of national security professionals in the government

43:50

who stay on between administrations

43:52

they are completely aware.

43:54

These are going to be the same people.

43:55

These aren't political appointees.

43:58

Interviewer

Your sense of the future,

44:04

and given all that you've done,

44:06

how do you see that in 15 years,

44:10

and how do you see us going forward?

44:11

In your generation, what have you seen has changed?

44:16

Has a lot changed since 9/11?

44:19

And how's it gonna unfold to you

44:24

from all your work?

44:26

-

You know, that's such a broad question,

44:29

that I don't even know, begin to know

44:31

how to answer it.

44:32

I've written two long books about it,

44:35

so how do I sum that up?

44:38

Interviewer

Well, is it unique?

44:39

Is this a unique period to you,

44:41

because you wrote those two book?

44:43

Are these 15 years unique to you?

44:44

Are they any different from what you know in history?

44:46

Do you think we've really-

44:50

-

Well, yes and no.

44:52

This is our crisis,

44:55

this is our generation's defining dilemmas.

44:56

A lot of it dilemmas, right?

45:01

That's why it's interesting,

45:03

and why it's not resolved is there's

45:04

a lot of things that are not black and white.

45:06

That is not to say that previous generations

45:08

didn't have their own.

45:11

There were equally crises.

45:12

The arrival of the nuclear age, or whatever.

45:16

But this is ours, and this is when I'm alive

45:22

and able to contribute as a journalist,

45:25

so this is what I'm focusing on.

45:27

The future of national security,

45:30

real loss of liberties,

45:33

the structure of separation of powers,

45:36

within the government,

45:39

and the government versus the individual.

45:40

And the United States' role in the world,

45:42

and our approach to adherence to,

45:44

or defiance of international law.

45:46

And not just that, the world's response, as well,

45:49

to the arrival, transnational, international terrorism

45:52

on a scale that was previously unimaginable.

45:58

It's an amazing period.

46:06

If Hillary Clinton had won, I think a lot,

46:07

Obama was leaving a lot of these things

46:12

in what could have been a fairly stable forum.

46:14

Bush did all this stuff in his first term,

46:18

a lot of it lawlessly, based on Commander in Chief claims,

46:20

that a President need not obey statutes.

46:24

By his second term, they were starting to,

46:27

put things on a firmer legal basis,

46:33

they were getting statutory authority for things.

46:34

They were stopping doing certain torture techniques

46:37

that would be impossible to make legal.

46:40

And they were getting court oversight,

46:42

and approval and so forth.

46:46

Obama continued that approach in sort of right-sizing,

46:48

and maybe a balanced, as they saw it at least, approach

46:51

to the threat posed by Al-Qaeda

46:57

and its progeny, like ISIS,

46:59

that seemed to have certain tenants.

47:03

Targeted killings using drones away

47:06

from conventional war zones are okay,

47:08

but only under narrow circumstances,

47:10

and let's have all this process.

47:12

As opposed to willy-nilly bombing,

47:15

but also as opposed to doing nothing

47:17

when there's someone sort of lawless badlands,

47:18

who is plotting an attack,

47:21

and there's not police that can go arrest

47:23

that person on our behalf.

47:24

And we don't have troops on the ground

47:26

to do it for us.

47:27

Or we're not gonna have the military police things

47:28

on domestic soil, but we do accept

47:31

a limited role of military detention.

47:33

Especially for these difficult cases

47:36

of men who are arrested

47:37

before material support for terrorism laws

47:39

were expanded to cover their types of actions.

47:42

Well, let's keep trying to close Guantanamo,

47:45

and so forth, and we're gonna have surveillance, yes.

47:46

With the court overseeing it,

47:50

and statutory authority,

47:52

not just the executive deciding in secret

47:53

that it can do this stuff.

47:55

And you may or may not like that,

47:57

but it seemed much more stable than

47:58

it had been in '02, '03,

48:03

when the sort of immediate chaos after 9/11.

48:05

And I think we would have seen a Clinton Administration

48:08

that would have largely have continued that approach.

48:11

With Trump, of course, coming in,

48:15

all the sort of winding of things down

48:19

could be reversed, or not.

48:22

You know, we just don't know.

48:24

We're all putting a new chapter now,

48:26

in which things that seems like they

48:28

had been settled after a period of dislocation

48:30

may be, once again, up for grabs.

48:34

Maybe what happens in the Trump years

48:38

will cause people to reevaluate what

48:40

had happened in the Obama years,

48:42

and so forth, in hindsight.

48:43

So it's gonna be very interesting.

48:47

Interviewer

I mean, what you're saying

48:48

works on the assumption there won't be

48:50

another 9/11 attack, right?

48:52

Because that'll change the territory very quickly.

48:54

I mean, even under Obama,

49:01

if there was another 9/11 attack,

49:03

would it be different from what you just described?

49:05

-

Well.

49:09

Whether or not, in other words, another attack where

49:12

several thousand people are killed, as opposed to?

49:16

I mean, we had the Boston Marathon,

49:17

we had San Bernadino, we had Orlando.

49:19

Interviewer

You wouldn't equate them to 9/11, right?

49:23

-

No, but they are terrorist attacks on domestic soil

49:25

that killed a lot of people.

49:29

I don't know that I would agree.

49:35

Obviously, it's not like there's one type

49:38

and then the other, there's a sliding scale.

49:40

Yes, so any time there's a terrorist attack,

49:44

even an unsuccessful one,

49:46

people get scared, and the government power increases.

49:50

And then when there's a period

49:54

in which there's not one for awhile,

49:55

people start to think about other equities.

49:56

And that's normal, that's natural.

49:58

Interviewer

Is there something that you want

50:04

to talk about, Charlie, that I didn't ask you?

50:05

Like when you came here you're thinking

50:06

that is important for the world to know?

50:08

-

(sighs) Well, we talked,

50:11

we flicked at the beginning about my visit

50:13

to this guy in Estonia?

50:16

Interviewer

Oh yeah, off camera, sure.

50:18

Have you tell us on camera.

50:20

-

Yeah, there's something interesting

50:21

to say about that, I guess.

50:23

Most of my coverage of Guantanamo

50:25

has been at the policy level.

50:28

I'd go down there from time to time

50:31

and I walk through the prison blocks

50:33

and I talk to the guards, and talk to the warden.

50:35

But part of what I'm doing there is just getting color

50:38

and vivid detail to inform an article

50:41

about the policy decisions

50:45

that are being made here in Washington DC.

50:46

Are we gonna start push harder to let people go,

50:50

or pull it back?

50:53

Are we gonna force feed people,

50:54

or let them starve themselves?

50:55

Are we going to continue to use

50:57

the military commission system and defend it

50:59

and expand it, or try to reduce its size

51:01

and maybe get away from it?

51:04

But that's all very abstract,

51:07

so I go down there and I get color and add to it.

51:08

And because even when you do go there,

51:12

you don't get to talk to detainees.

51:13

You just sort of see them from afar

51:15

through the glass of a door, or something.

51:17

I haven't actually had that much experience

51:22

with the actual human beings who are stuck there.

51:24

And so with the encouragement of my editors last year,

51:28

I decided to do a project where I would go

51:34

track down someone who hadn't talked

51:36

to the media before.

51:38

And that turned out to be, and see what their life was like.

51:40

And not just at Guantanamo, but after Guantanamo.

51:42

And that turned out to be tricky, a little bit.

51:46

I mean, obviously I couldn't go, for safety reasons

51:48

to certain countries.

51:51

And detainees who had, there were a few detainees

51:53

who talk to the media all the time.

51:56

They're kind of media whores,

51:58

and that's not actually interesting

51:59

to talk to them redundantly.

52:00

And then the others ones, you may have found this yourself

52:02

when you were trying to track them down.

52:05

The ones who haven't talked to the media

52:07

have deliberately not done that,

52:08

and they're trying to keep their head down,

52:09

and just want to move on with their lives.

52:11

And the last thing they want to do

52:13

is advertise to their new neighbors

52:14

that they're a Guantanamo detainee.

52:15

Maybe it's not so hard for you,

52:18

'cause you're just making it for the archive.

52:19

But to be on the New York Times and be like,

52:21

"Hey there, everyone, look at me."

52:23

So I identified some candidates who,

52:26

with some help from people who had,

52:29

inside the government who had been involved.

52:31

"Oh, you should try this guy,

52:33

he speaks English well," or whatever.

52:34

The first few turned me down, and then finally,

52:37

one Yemeni named Ahmed Khadr,

52:40

who had went to Estonia a couple years ago.

52:42

When they finally started resettling in Mid East,

52:45

and kind of gave up on Yemen.

52:48

Stabilizing enough that they could repatriate Yemenis,

52:50

agreed to let me come visit him.

52:53

And so I went and I spent sort of a week in Estonia,

52:56

I talked several days, spent all day with him

53:00

in his apartment or riding the bus around town,

53:02

speaking to his friends.

53:05

I went to the mosque with him where he prays,

53:06

a very small mosque in town.

53:09

And sort of getting a sense of his life.

53:11

And he's sort of glad to be out,

53:12

but also the struggles, he's in this strange place

53:14

where he's trying to learn the language,

53:18

he doesn't speak it well enough yet.

53:20

Although, they do speak English there,

53:22

he speaks English that helps.

53:23

That actually may be a crutch for him.

53:25

Very small Muslim community, so hard to get Halal food.

53:26

And he sort of misses his family,

53:32

and hasn't been able to reunite with them and so forth.

53:34

Larger than that his sort of crippling fear,

53:38

as he described it that he will be blamed

53:42

if a bomb goes off somewhere,

53:45

and they don't know who did it.

53:46

"Oh, that ex-GITMO guy must have done it."

53:48

In his mind at least, he was falsely blamed

53:50

even for being involved with Al-Qaeda,

53:52

because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

53:54

And he just sort of has trouble leaving

53:58

his apartment sometimes, because he's just like,

54:02

what if something goes off?

54:04

And he gradually got used to going around Estonia,

54:05

but has not traveled to other countries

54:07

in the EU, even though he's allowed to.

54:09

At least on paper, 'cause it's the Schengen zone.

54:13

Even though he lost his 20s,

54:16

and would kind of like to see the world,

54:18

but what if some bomb goes?

54:20

He likes the fact that he thinks

54:22

he's under surveillance in Estonia,

54:23

because that means they'll know

54:25

if something goes off that he was just, you know,

54:26

having cereal in his apartment when that happened.

54:30

The thing that he...

54:35

So he was a guy who had been sort of a teenager,

54:37

went to Afghanistan before,

54:41

went to Pakistan and then Afghanistan before 9/11.

54:43

Was sort of studying, been kind of drifting around,

54:48

and started having adventures.

54:50

And sort of came into contact with the Taliban.

54:51

There's no accusation that he fought even

54:56

against the Northern Alliance,

54:59

let alone the United States.

55:00

But he sort of had these, he lived in this one house,

55:02

then he was in this guest house

55:05

when there was a raid, and so forth.

55:07

And that was enough.

55:11

They would have gotten rid of him a long time before,

55:12

except he was Yemeni, and there was nothing,

55:15

the Yemenis were all stuck.

55:16

So he ends up spending 13, 14 years of his life

55:18

behind bars in Guantanamo.

55:21

Not really being a significant figure at all.

55:24

But he comes out and he, part of this is his fear

55:29

that I talked about about people will,

55:33

they just hear Guantanamo and this sort of

55:36

being branded as the terrorist.

55:37

And also, which he thinks flows into difficulties

55:40

in getting a job, because eventually the people have

55:44

to know who he is, and so forth.

55:46

What he really wanted was a statement of some exoneration

55:49

from the US Government.

55:55

We held this guy by mistake, he's not a terrorist.

55:56

Even though he lost his habeas corpus case.

56:01

The ties he had to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda

56:03

were deemed sufficient that he was more likely

56:07

than not part of Al-Qaeda says the court.

56:10

After, I'm sure you'll get into it a whole,

56:12

hollowing out of whether the habeas corpus process

56:16

had a meaningful chance of getting out people

56:20

who are being held by mistake.

56:22

So what was interesting about that was his,

56:27

there's two dossiers about him, and most detainees,

56:31

who are still there as of 2009.

56:34

There's one that the military made

56:36

and that became public because Chelsea Manning

56:39

leaked them all through WikiLeaks,

56:42

and are now on the internet.

56:43

Including on New York Times website.

56:45

And so anyone who encounters him, or someone else,

56:47

it's like I wonder what there is to know about him,

56:50

types in their name and up comes this thing.

56:53

And it's full of this, oh, he probably did this.

56:54

And detainee so-and-so said he saw him there,

56:57

and that his role was here, right?

57:00

And some of that stuff is true,

57:03

and some of that stuff is not true.

57:04

And we know that some of the stuff is not true,

57:06

because in 2009 when the six agency task force came in

57:07

and took a second look at all the detainees

57:11

who were still there,

57:14

they took a much more rigorous look at all the evidence.

57:15

And they cross referenced things that different agencies had

57:18

in different filing cabinets

57:20

that had never been put in one place.

57:21

And they came up with assessments, new assessments,

57:23

threat assessments of who this person was,

57:27

and whether this claim that this one detainee said

57:29

when shown 30 photographs.

57:32

And said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah those guys were Al-Farouq.

57:35

Can I have my hamburger now?

57:38

Look how cooperative I'm being."

57:39

Is there a reason to believe that this person actually

57:42

knew what they were talking about?

57:44

Did they say other things that were corroborated?

57:45

And they came up with a group that they thought

57:49

that there was no actual real evidence

57:53

that they had engaged in terrorism

57:56

against the United States.

58:00

Terrorist activity, not just attacks

58:01

on the United States or against its allies.

58:03

And this is one of them, this guy.

58:07

Someone who'd read that dossier told me

58:10

that this line that indicates

58:12

there's no actual evidence of terrorist activity,

58:13

is in his dossier.

58:15

But those dossiers are still secret,

58:16

'cause no one leaked them.

58:18

You know, that's the closest thing

58:21

to what he and surely, lots of others who

58:24

are similarly situation could use.

58:27

Which is this thing that's on the internet

58:28

that Chelsea Manning leaked,

58:31

we, the US Government, don't actually believe seven

58:33

of these 10 things that are said against this person.

58:37

In the United States Government's files

58:41

there is a better dossier

58:42

that more carefully goes through it,

58:44

and explains why they think this stuff is true,

58:45

but this other stuff is not credible.

58:47

And they're not putting it out.

58:49

So we have filed, the New York Times and I have filed

58:50

a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit

58:53

to try to get those second dossiers out.

58:55

It's not gonna help some people,

58:58

because some of it's gonna say,

58:59

we think it's truth that this guy learned

59:00

how to build bombs.

59:02

Or this guy was involved in this plot.

59:03

But for that group that was really the hardest luck cases,

59:05

the wrong place, wrong time people, it could do...

59:08

If the US Government has access to better information

59:14

than what is floating out there,

59:17

not through the fault of the US Government,

59:18

but there it is, anyway,

59:20

and it has these lingering consequences,

59:21

that may make it difficult for these people who are out

59:24

to successfully reintegrate into society,

59:27

which is truly in everyone's interest.

59:30

Just from a national security perspective if nothing else,

59:32

I think that they should make that public.

59:36

And so we're bringing a lawsuit.

59:38

And we'll see whether it works or not.

59:40

But that's another sort of aspect

59:44

of my journalism about Guantanamo that,

59:46

you asked if there's something else I would bring up.

59:48

That's one of them.

59:50

Interviewer

Was it your idea

59:51

to bring that lawsuit?

59:53

-

Yeah.

59:54

Interviewer

And how far has it gone?

59:54

-

So we filed it in the summer.

59:59

In the fall the government said,

1:00:03

this is all withholdable under FOIA, and it's classified.

1:00:07

It's internal, deliberative stuff.

1:00:10

It was written towards the question,

1:00:12

of what should we do with this person?

1:00:13

And deliberative materials, classified materials

1:00:15

are exempt from FOIA.

1:00:18

And I've heard though that they are written

1:00:21

in a way that there's like a factual section,

1:00:25

and then there's a deliberative section.

1:00:27

Here's who we think this guy is,

1:00:32

okay, now, what should we do with him?

1:00:33

Which would suggest that maybe

1:00:35

we have a legal argument that we're,

1:00:37

that we should be able to get this first part disclosed,

1:00:40

if not the second part.

1:00:43

The judge ordered the government to give him, in camera,

1:00:45

in other words, only to him, not to us,

1:00:53

a few, I think a few, randomly chosen ones.

1:00:56

And so the government, just we can sort of get

1:01:01

a sense of it, before the next stage.

1:01:02

And the government has done that now,

1:01:04

that happened in December,

1:01:06

and we're waiting for the next thing.

1:01:08

Interviewer

How long do you think

1:01:12

these FOIA cases take?

1:01:13

-

Oh, they take forever.

1:01:15

If the government fights, they take forever.

1:01:16

The government always has the option of just saying,

1:01:19

"Okay, we'll give you some stuff."

1:01:22

And then that ends the case.

1:01:23

They did that a lot, for example,

1:01:25

I've read a lot of FOIA cases

1:01:26

about surveillance matters after the Edward Snowden leaks.

1:01:27

And we didn't have to litigate like this,

1:01:30

because the government said,

1:01:32

"Let's just pause the case, we will,

1:01:33

we're in fact gonna put this stuff out.

1:01:36

We're just reviewing it now, as opposed to fighting you."

1:01:38

Here so far, they're fighting us.

1:01:42

Interviewer

You know, that reminds me, Charlie.

1:01:45

Why do you think the Obama Administration,

1:01:46

the attorney general's office would challenge

1:01:49

every habeas claim on behalf of the detainees

1:01:52

that was brought,

1:01:56

and they appealed anything that was won

1:01:57

in the district court?

1:02:00

Why do you think, given your understanding

1:02:01

of the Obama Administration,

1:02:03

why they challenged every one of those?

1:02:04

-

I think they really don't...

1:02:07

So the administration is heterogeneous, right?

1:02:09

There are groups within of litigators and so forth

1:02:13

within the Justice Department whose job

1:02:16

is to defend the government against any challenge.

1:02:17

And so they're pushing to,

1:02:20

we have good arguments,

1:02:22

we should make them let the judge decide.

1:02:22

In addition, within the national security community,

1:02:26

the intelligence community, the military,

1:02:29

they have genuine security concerns about some guys.

1:02:35

You put those two together, and the argument

1:02:39

that's made internally is,

1:02:42

we maybe let people go, but it should up to us.

1:02:44

We should be making this based on our expertise,

1:02:49

after our inter-agency deliberations

1:02:52

as a policy choice.

1:02:53

We don't want to cede control to courts

1:02:55

to order us to let people go,

1:02:59

even if there's 10 people they order us to let go,

1:03:00

we're gonna let go eight anyway.

1:03:02

The two that we want to hold onto, we want to hold onto.

1:03:04

Therefore, we have to defend against all 10

1:03:07

to avoid creating a structure in which

1:03:10

the courts have a say,

1:03:13

a broader say in this than they do today.

1:03:16

That doesn't mean that these other eight guys

1:03:20

don't get out anyway,

1:03:22

but they're gonna get out 'cause we say so,

1:03:23

not 'cause they say so.

1:03:24

And I think that's why, with one exception,

1:03:26

they always fought every habeas claim.

1:03:30

They didn't fight the Sudanese guy who was so unhealthy.

1:03:32

Interviewer

Given that your two books,

1:03:40

is that consistent with your understanding

1:03:41

of how the executive powers should prevail

1:03:44

in terms of these executives taking authority here,

1:03:48

when in fact, maybe the courts should be involved?

1:03:52

-

So that's a normative question

1:03:56

about matters that I write about.

1:03:58

So that's not either appropriate for me to weigh in,

1:04:00

or even how I think about it that much.

1:04:03

I'm seeking to understand and explain,

1:04:05

here's the dilemma and the different points of view

1:04:09

coming in to bear on it.

1:04:12

Whereas, opposed to saying what I think,

1:04:13

the answer is X.

1:04:15

Interviewer

Okay.

1:04:16

So you kind of hedged on that,

1:04:20

do you see an administration apologizing someday

1:04:21

for Guantanamo, since you said this gentleman

1:04:25

in Estonia certainly would value that,

1:04:28

and would appreciate that, and feels he deserves it?

1:04:33

-

I'm gonna have to go here in a second.

1:04:36

Interviewer

Okay.

1:04:37

-

You know, I think it was...

1:04:40

There's two different things that he wanted, right?

1:04:43

And he just sort of threw it out.

1:04:45

I don't know even know he had thought through these two.

1:04:46

An apology, a clear statement that it was,

1:04:49

he was not a terrorist after all.

1:04:52

Much, much harder to envision an apology,

1:04:56

especially in a situation where courts

1:04:59

had upheld his detention,

1:05:01

and upheld the idea of detention without trial

1:05:03

in this war time context, POW-style detention.

1:05:07

Maybe, someday, but not in our,

1:05:11

not until these issues are long since settled in history,

1:05:14

rather than current events.

1:05:16

Just like it took so long for

1:05:18

the Japanese, and so forth.

1:05:19

But this is also qualitatively different than the Japanese.

1:05:21

Those were totally innocent American citizens

1:05:23

being discriminated against because of their race.

1:05:26

These are people picked up in a war zone,

1:05:30

that the courts looked at and said

1:05:32

there's a specific reason to hold them.

1:05:34

And that it's lawful as a matter of the laws of war.

1:05:36

In that sense, it's not the same thing.

1:05:39

But I think at least, if the government has already,

1:05:42

and I am willing to say this, I've said it already.

1:05:45

If the government, in its internal files has determined

1:05:47

that guy X was not actually a terrorist,

1:05:51

or at least didn't engage in terrorist activity,

1:05:54

that leaves this ambiguity about whether

1:05:56

maybe they were part of the group

1:05:58

without actually doing anything actively.

1:05:59

There's a greater chance

1:06:08

that it might someday say so publicly.

1:06:09

And it has said so publicly about,

1:06:11

for example, six guys that it sent to Uruguay.

1:06:13

'Cause the president of Uruguay wanted

1:06:16

a statement like that, so they wrote a letter,

1:06:17

and pulled out a line out of the reports.

1:06:19

Knowing that it was unclassified

1:06:23

and that the president of Uruguay

1:06:24

was gonna make it public for domestic consumption.

1:06:25

So why not do that for the rest of them?

1:06:28

Interviewer

So there's precedent to this.

1:06:30

-

That's right.

1:06:31

Interviewer

Well, if there's nothing else,

1:06:32

we need 20, is there something else, Charlie

1:06:35

that you want to say?

1:06:37

-

Nope, nope.

Interviewer

Okay, we need 20 seconds of a room tone

1:06:39

and then we can end this interview.

1:06:41

So Johnny needs that.

1:06:43

Johnny

Okay, so we just all hold tight

1:06:45

for 20 seconds silently.

1:06:46

Begin room tone.

1:06:48

Okay.

1:07:01

Charlie

Is that like you subtract?

1:07:01

Savage, Charlie - Interview master file

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