Xenakis, Stephen - Interview master file
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Interviewer | Anytime okay, you ready? | 0:06 |
Okay. Good morning. | 0:08 | |
- | Hey morning. It's good. | 0:09 |
Interviewer | We are very grateful to you | 0:11 |
for participating in the witness | 0:12 | |
to Guantanamo project. | 0:13 | |
And we invite you to speak of your experiences | 0:16 | |
and involvement with detainees | 0:19 | |
who were held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. | 0:21 | |
We are hoping to provide you with an opportunity | 0:24 | |
to tell your story in your own words. | 0:26 | |
We creating an archive of stories | 0:29 | |
so that people in America and around the world, | 0:32 | |
will have a better understanding | 0:35 | |
of what you and others have observed and experienced. | 0:36 | |
Our future generations must know | 0:41 | |
what occurred in Guantanamo. | 0:43 | |
And by telling the story, | 0:45 | |
you're contributing to history. | 0:46 | |
We appreciate your courage | 0:49 | |
and willingness to speak with us. | 0:50 | |
- | Oh, thanks, my pleasure. | 0:52 |
Interviewer | If any time during the interview, | 0:53 |
you'd like you take a break, please let us know | 0:55 | |
and if anything you say you'd like us to remove | 0:57 | |
let us know and we can. | 0:59 | |
- | Okay. | |
Interviewer | And I'd like to begin | 1:00 |
with basic background information | 1:01 | |
like your name and your date of birth | 1:03 | |
and hometown and age. | 1:07 | |
- | I'm Stephen Nicholas Xenakis. | 1:10 |
I was born July 5th, 1948 in Washington, D.C. | 1:13 | |
Spent many years in the military. | 1:18 | |
My father was in the military, | 1:20 | |
so I moved around for most of my life. | 1:21 | |
And now I live in Arlington, Virginia. | 1:25 | |
I'm married to Marianne Xenakis Mezak. | 1:29 | |
I was widowed, I have two children | 1:33 | |
from my first marriage, Nick and Leah | 1:35 | |
and I have a stepdaughter Joya, so. | 1:39 | |
- | And could you describe your current, of your education | 1:43 |
a little bit about your education? | 1:47 | |
- | I went to college at Princeton University, | 1:48 |
I graduated in 1970. | 1:51 | |
And then I went to medical school | 1:53 | |
at the University of Maryland, graduated in 1974. | 1:55 | |
I did an internship, a residency and a fellowship | 1:59 | |
at Letterman Army Medical Center in Presidio, | 2:03 | |
San Francisco from 1974 to 1980. | 2:06 | |
And a part of that time as a fellowship, | 2:09 | |
at the University of California, San Francisco. | 2:12 | |
After that, I had a variety of assignments | 2:16 | |
and retired from the army in 1998 | 2:18 | |
as a brigadier general. | 2:21 | |
Interviewer | And what would you describe | 2:24 |
is your current occupation? | 2:25 | |
- | I'm currently in a clinical practice. | 2:26 |
It's actually also, I'm a founder | 2:30 | |
of a nonprofit research organization. | 2:32 | |
We do research on a variety of ailments | 2:36 | |
that we think are particularly affected the veterans | 2:41 | |
and soldiers on PTSD, blast concussion | 2:45 | |
and other illnesses and injuries that they have. | 2:48 | |
And I also do some consulting | 2:52 | |
and act as a defense expert as a forensic expert, | 2:55 | |
much of its defense for Guantanamo detainees | 3:00 | |
and others who have been charged. | 3:05 | |
Interviewer | You didn't use the word psychiatrist. | 3:10 |
But would you define | 3:11 | |
yourself-- | 3:12 | |
- | I'm a psychiatrist | |
an adult and general, and a child psychiatrist. | 3:13 | |
Interviewer | So I'd like to begin then | 3:17 |
with some general information | 3:20 | |
as to how you ended up, of being in Guantanamo. | 3:23 | |
How did that happen? | 3:26 | |
I believe you did some studies | 3:28 | |
of some of the people Guantanamo. | 3:31 | |
Maybe you could lead us into that-- | 3:33 | |
- | Yeah, you know I have to just start, | 3:35 |
I never expected to be doing this kind of work. | 3:38 | |
And it was just a sort of serendipity that I was involved. | 3:43 | |
And in 2004, I had been nominated, consideration | 3:50 | |
for a very senior position | 3:57 | |
in the Department of Defense, | 3:59 | |
in the office of health affairs. | 4:02 | |
While I was interviewing for those jobs, | 4:06 | |
one of the interviewers from the White House | 4:10 | |
asked me about the Abu Ghraib scandal | 4:12 | |
that had just made the news a couple months before. | 4:16 | |
And I was very adamant that the medic personnel | 4:19 | |
had certain ethical guidelines | 4:25 | |
and professional guidelines | 4:29 | |
that they had to subscribe to, | 4:30 | |
no matter what the other people involved, | 4:33 | |
what the interrogators felt | 4:37 | |
or what the war fighters felt | 4:39 | |
that we as medics have a professional imprimatur | 4:41 | |
that really is important to us | 4:48 | |
as military medical people. | 4:51 | |
And this goes back to my years of service | 4:53 | |
and particularly starting off during the Vietnam era. | 4:56 | |
For a number of reasons that job did not work out, | 5:01 | |
and I was newly married. | 5:06 | |
My wife suggested, who was a journalist who said, | 5:08 | |
"This is an important story | 5:11 | |
"and what you're saying is very important | 5:13 | |
"in the context of the conversation now | 5:16 | |
"about 9/11 and the war in Iraq | 5:19 | |
"and Afghanistan and what we should do | 5:24 | |
"how we should handle these prisoners. | 5:27 | |
"And I think you should write something." | 5:31 | |
And I did, and it appeared | 5:32 | |
in the Washington Post Outlook | 5:34 | |
and unhealthy, they called it, | 5:37 | |
they gave it the title, | 5:40 | |
"Unhealthy Silence from the Medics." | 5:41 | |
Much to my surprise, | 5:44 | |
I found myself getting calls from a number | 5:45 | |
of people from human rights organizations | 5:49 | |
and from a number of attorneys | 5:52 | |
who were defending Guantanamo detainees. | 5:54 | |
And I had no idea about this. | 5:57 | |
I'm not a forensic trained psychiatrist. | 5:59 | |
I'm a general psychiatrist who did a number | 6:01 | |
of things in the course of my career. | 6:05 | |
And they asked me if I would get involved. | 6:08 | |
And despite my reservations, not feeling | 6:12 | |
that I was fully trained and capable to do this, | 6:16 | |
they convinced me that I should put some time | 6:20 | |
and attention to it | 6:25 | |
and that I could add something. | 6:28 | |
And I said, "Well, I will look into it." | 6:31 | |
I don't know what my opinions are gonna be, | 6:37 | |
I'm gonna go into this with as open mind as I can, | 6:39 | |
but I will start looking into it. | 6:44 | |
And one thing led to another, | 6:46 | |
and I was asked about individuals | 6:49 | |
and problems that were happening at Guantanamo. | 6:53 | |
We had first started a discussion | 6:55 | |
about the hunger strikers there, | 6:58 | |
and what should be the policies, | 6:59 | |
and I started to look into that | 7:01 | |
and think about what I thought | 7:03 | |
was there should be the guidelines | 7:05 | |
and how we as military medical people | 7:08 | |
should approach hunger strikers | 7:11 | |
and what would be in everyone's best interest. | 7:14 | |
And then I was approached by the defense attorneys | 7:19 | |
for Omar Khadr and as a particularly important case | 7:23 | |
because Khadr, when he was apprehended, | 7:30 | |
he was 15 years old. | 7:36 | |
So he was an adolescent, | 7:37 | |
had suffered some severe injuries. | 7:38 | |
And defense attorneys had not been able | 7:41 | |
to at all find a psychiatrist | 7:44 | |
or a neuropsychiatrist or physician | 7:48 | |
who would assist him | 7:51 | |
and I felt that that was not right. | 7:53 | |
That with our legal system, | 7:56 | |
both in the military and in the federal government | 8:00 | |
means everyone gets a fair hearing and a fair trial. | 8:05 | |
And I said, "Well, I will help you as best as I can." | 8:07 | |
And that's really, once I got involved in that case, | 8:12 | |
I found that then there were other cases that followed. | 8:16 | |
Interviewer | Well, let's back up | 8:20 |
before we go to that case. | 8:21 | |
Just generally can you tell me what concerns | 8:23 | |
you had about the medical profession at Abu Ghraib. | 8:26 | |
It's not really part of this project, | 8:29 | |
but I think it's helps inform who you | 8:30 | |
are and where you were going | 8:33 | |
with what happened in Guantanamo. | 8:34 | |
If you just give a little background on you. | 8:36 | |
- | What had concerned me as, and as I | 8:37 |
was hearing the reports of Abu Ghraib, | 8:41 | |
was that the news media disclosed incidents of abuse | 8:45 | |
and torture and cruel treatment of these detainees. | 8:54 | |
What I wondered and asked if that's the case, | 9:00 | |
and there were evidence or marks | 9:06 | |
of that injurious treatment and handling of these detainees, | 9:08 | |
was that not evident to the medical people? | 9:14 | |
And if that was evident to the medics, | 9:18 | |
then they're obligated | 9:21 | |
to report that and take action. | 9:23 | |
There's no way either from our professional training | 9:28 | |
and/or our understanding of the Geneva Conventions, | 9:32 | |
that we can condone torture, cruel, inhuman | 9:38 | |
and degrading treatment of anyone. | 9:41 | |
We are obligated to treat everyone according | 9:44 | |
to these very high standards. | 9:47 | |
And it's fundamentally important | 9:50 | |
because in uniform or out of uniform, | 9:53 | |
we need to be anchored as medical people | 9:57 | |
in our ethical principles. | 10:01 | |
Because day to day, | 10:03 | |
everyone we treat is according to those principles. | 10:04 | |
And so I felt that, that it would be inconceivable | 10:11 | |
that the medics did not have some evidence of this. | 10:18 | |
And if that's the case, | 10:23 | |
then that had to go all the way up the chain | 10:24 | |
of the medic of the commander | 10:27 | |
for the medics and that had to be addressed. | 10:29 | |
Interviewer | And is that what you said to the people | 10:33 |
when you interviewed? | 10:34 | |
- | Yes, I mean-- | 10:36 |
Interviewer | And what was their response? | 10:36 |
- | Well, their response was, | 10:38 |
"We've got to get the intelligence. | 10:40 | |
"We've got to do this and the interrogators | 10:42 | |
"and the other people who are detaining | 10:45 | |
"these individuals feel that these are measures | 10:49 | |
"they need to take." | 10:52 | |
Interviewer | They told you that? | 10:54 |
- | Sure. | 10:55 |
Interviewer | I don't know | 10:56 |
if you can reveal who might've said that-- | 10:57 | |
- | I can't tell you. | 10:58 |
Interviewer | Okay. | |
So when you left that meeting, what did you think? | 11:01 | |
- | I felt that, I didn't know. | 11:04 |
Perhaps I had a bit of naivete. | 11:22 | |
I mean, irrespective of being a senior, | 11:25 | |
having been a senior officer and a general, | 11:26 | |
I always felt that as a senior officer, | 11:31 | |
most important in many different ways | 11:39 | |
was my responsibility to the constitution | 11:43 | |
and my responsibility to what this country stands for. | 11:48 | |
And that responsibility also was going | 11:52 | |
to being that I had day-to-day a responsibility | 11:55 | |
as particularly as a physician | 12:00 | |
to my fellow soldiers and the people | 12:01 | |
that I was taking care of. | 12:03 | |
And that at all times we as a country, | 12:05 | |
had to uphold the highest standards we could. | 12:09 | |
And I did, I hoped, I was still hoping | 12:14 | |
that a principled straight-forward position | 12:20 | |
and one that was open to being discussed | 12:25 | |
would be entertained by our senior leadership. | 12:30 | |
So I wasn't sure if that meant | 12:35 | |
that I had been there for now, from that point on | 12:38 | |
there was no chance of me working | 12:42 | |
as in the position that I was being considered. | 12:44 | |
Interviewer | So you didn't know how much | 12:47 |
the world might've evolved or changed | 12:50 | |
from the way you understood, | 12:52 | |
when you left that meeting, | 12:54 | |
you didn't know if that-- | 12:56 | |
- | No. | |
Interviewer | And when you wrote the editorial, | 12:57 |
the op-ed piece, were you hoping | 13:00 | |
that would draw in conversations as to-- | 13:02 | |
- | Yeah. I was hoping that there would be other, | 13:11 |
senior officers, generals and admirals | 13:14 | |
that have been in the Medical Corps | 13:17 | |
and other senior government officials | 13:18 | |
who would speak up and affirm those principles. | 13:21 | |
I mean, they may disagree specifically | 13:27 | |
with the way that I stated them, | 13:29 | |
but at least affirm basically those principles | 13:32 | |
and re-reinstate them as part | 13:35 | |
of what was our position as a country. | 13:40 | |
Now, interestingly, what followed was, | 13:45 | |
so this article was published in February, 2005, | 13:50 | |
by the fall, a human rights organization called, | 13:54 | |
Human Rights First, had decided to convene a groups | 13:58 | |
of retired generals and admirals. | 14:03 | |
And there were, who really were going to speak | 14:06 | |
up against torture and those practices. | 14:10 | |
And this was a very respected | 14:14 | |
well-known group of people. | 14:18 | |
And most of them, there was one other medical officer | 14:19 | |
in this group who I had been able to recruit | 14:24 | |
and unfortunate, very good, | 14:29 | |
a great doctor who unfortunately passed away. | 14:31 | |
No other medics, but the others were, | 14:34 | |
infantry men and had a number of lawyers, | 14:39 | |
a number of other senior appointees, | 14:43 | |
and a former chairman of the joint chiefs, | 14:45 | |
all of whom had come together | 14:49 | |
and been very outspoken that how these practices, | 14:51 | |
how this torture and treatment | 14:58 | |
of these people undermines what we're doing. | 14:59 | |
And I was very pleased to see | 15:02 | |
that group work together | 15:04 | |
and I've worked with them then | 15:06 | |
for a number of years after that. | 15:08 | |
Interviewer | When you wrote that op-ed piece | 15:10 |
did you get any support from people you didn't expect? | 15:12 | |
'Cause you said you had gotten comments immediately | 15:16 | |
from defense lawyers and human rights organizations. | 15:19 | |
Did you get it from the other side too saying, | 15:22 | |
"You're right, we need to get back on track?" | 15:23 | |
- | I didn't, no. | 15:26 |
I was dismayed that I didn't hear very many people | 15:27 | |
who really endorsed that. | 15:33 | |
Interviewer | And you fear you were left hanging | 15:35 |
in the wind at that point? | 15:37 | |
- | I did. Yeah, it was very uncomfortable. | 15:38 |
Yeah. I wondered, "What am I doing here?" | 15:41 | |
You know, so. | 15:44 | |
Interviewer | And so when you started looking | 15:47 |
into it further with people | 15:48 | |
from human rights organizations in Guantanamo | 15:50 | |
and started contacting you, | 15:52 | |
what did you start thinking | 15:54 | |
in terms of the way you saw the world opening | 15:56 | |
up in front from what you knew before? | 16:00 | |
- | Well, one of my first reactions | 16:03 |
was there certainly had not been a lot | 16:05 | |
of thinking about what was finally decided | 16:08 | |
on the policies and practice. | 16:14 | |
And it looked to me to be a saying, | 16:15 | |
we kind of said in the army, had a hip shoot. | 16:18 | |
And I didn't think | 16:21 | |
that there had been very good research | 16:25 | |
into what other would have been relevant practices | 16:30 | |
or circumstances, and that the various ideas | 16:33 | |
and what ended up being the policies were staffed. | 16:39 | |
And that there was the kind of debate, | 16:43 | |
very constructive debate that can go on, | 16:47 | |
in a very sophisticated organization, | 16:49 | |
like the Department of Defense | 16:52 | |
and respectively, like the army | 16:53 | |
and the army medical department | 16:56 | |
that would finally articulate what the policies were. | 16:57 | |
And that, to me, I was dismayed | 17:01 | |
with that because these are serious things | 17:04 | |
that we're doing. | 17:06 | |
I mean, and they've got lots of second, | 17:08 | |
third, order consequences over time. | 17:10 | |
And I felt that maybe what I could do | 17:13 | |
as someone who was now more on the outside | 17:17 | |
than the inside was at least begin | 17:22 | |
to stimulate that conversation. | 17:26 | |
And I could ask the questions | 17:29 | |
and I could point out | 17:31 | |
what might be the various sides | 17:32 | |
of the arguments here and considerations. | 17:37 | |
And I was surprised that it was so closed. | 17:40 | |
There was no very little interest | 17:44 | |
and being able to dived in into the details here | 17:47 | |
and think about what might be the implications | 17:55 | |
of our policy and so. | 18:01 | |
Interviewer | Did you reach out to people you knew | 18:05 |
right then and they would rebuff you | 18:09 | |
or they ignore you or-- | 18:11 | |
- | Yeah, I did. | |
Well, no, I was counseled, | 18:13 | |
so I reached out to colleagues, | 18:17 | |
some have been very senior people in army medicine, | 18:22 | |
generals and other senior people who said, | 18:27 | |
"We're not going to get involved." | 18:31 | |
Interviewer | Did they give everything? | 18:35 |
- | Yeah, they said our bosses, even | 18:37 |
the most senior person in the army and army | 18:40 | |
medicine's a three-star and there's one three-star, | 18:42 | |
and then number of two stars and one stars. | 18:46 | |
And, you know, the senior people running | 18:49 | |
the army are four stars | 18:51 | |
and other political appointees. | 18:53 | |
They said, "Our bosses have said | 18:54 | |
"this is what we should do. | 18:56 | |
"And we're gonna take the orders of our bosses." | 18:57 | |
And I said, "We don't do that." | 18:59 | |
We are irrespective of our rank, | 19:02 | |
irrespective of wearing the uniform, | 19:06 | |
we are physicians and it's our responsibility | 19:09 | |
to give our bosses the best counsel that we have | 19:13 | |
and tell them from our standpoint, professionally | 19:18 | |
what we think is correct. | 19:22 | |
And we're responsible. | 19:23 | |
I'm no longer in uniform, but in uniform, | 19:26 | |
we're responsible for everything that happens | 19:29 | |
in the medical area, in the army. | 19:31 | |
And I think we have an obligation to stand up | 19:36 | |
and speak and I was told, | 19:39 | |
"Well, we all know that that's what you do Steve." | 19:42 | |
(chuckles) You tend to speak up. | 19:45 | |
Interviewer | Were they afraid of losing their jobs or? | 19:47 |
- | I didn't want to think that. | 19:51 |
And you know there is a problem | 19:53 | |
that the retired military physicians, | 19:55 | |
senior officers end up working either | 19:58 | |
for the Department of Defense | 20:03 | |
or for defense contractors meaning | 20:06 | |
there is an Alliance there | 20:08 | |
and it very well could have been that they felt | 20:11 | |
that they might somehow may implicate their jobs. | 20:15 | |
Interviewer | Did anyone from the administration | 20:23 |
personally contact you and say, | 20:24 | |
"You know what, this is not your concern." | 20:27 | |
- | No, I don't think I got a call | 20:34 |
from the administration. | 20:36 | |
The only meetings I had had to do with | 20:37 | |
as I was being interviewed for these jobs. | 20:41 | |
Interviewer | Well, why don't we go on, | 20:48 |
I might have other questions | 20:50 | |
but at just watching this whole thing unfold, | 20:51 | |
the role of a physician transcends | 20:54 | |
the ranking of a general. | 20:57 | |
That's what you're telling us right? | 21:00 | |
- | Yeah, there is, it transcends the... | 21:02 |
I think actually, it frames the role. | 21:07 | |
One of the lawyer friends of mine said that, | 21:14 | |
you know in the military, we have lawyers, doctors, | 21:18 | |
fighter pilots, submariners, infantry men, | 21:22 | |
we each felt that we could serve best | 21:27 | |
by doing our professional job, the best. | 21:34 | |
That was our responsibility | 21:39 | |
and because the military is such a diverse organization | 21:41 | |
and there are many people on the team | 21:45 | |
to get the mission job, it's the responsibility | 21:48 | |
of all of us to do our element of that, | 21:51 | |
the best that we can. | 21:55 | |
And that's slight shade different than saying | 21:57 | |
I'm a physician, or I'm a soldier. | 22:03 | |
Some people have talked about dual loyalty, | 22:06 | |
that it's hard to be both a doctor and a soldier. | 22:10 | |
Where does your allegiance lie? | 22:13 | |
And, you know, I hope I'm not fooling myself. | 22:17 | |
I mean, I think that when one speaks out as I do, | 22:20 | |
one has to have a healthy sense of being able | 22:25 | |
to, of a healthy skepticism and continually question, | 22:27 | |
"Am I doing the right thing here?" | 22:32 | |
Because that's the only way you'll ever ascertain | 22:34 | |
and be able to be confident that you are. | 22:37 | |
I'd like to think that it's not an issue of dual loyalty. | 22:40 | |
I mean there are certain principles here | 22:44 | |
that we have subscribed to, | 22:46 | |
and they were laid down because of the Nuremberg trials. | 22:48 | |
They were laid down because physicians, | 22:54 | |
we took physicians to trial | 22:56 | |
who failed to exercise their professional oath. | 22:58 | |
And we said, this is fundamental | 23:03 | |
to what we do as a nation and as an army. | 23:05 | |
And that's why we can speak up | 23:10 | |
and say that we do things | 23:14 | |
with a certain moral imperative. | 23:17 | |
I mean, that's how the just war doctrine came around. | 23:21 | |
'Cause there are principles, there's a reason to do this. | 23:24 | |
And it is for a good, irrespective of the harm | 23:28 | |
and injury that may occur for it. | 23:32 | |
Overall, it is for a good that we're trying to achieve | 23:35 | |
and what we're trying to do for our country. | 23:38 | |
And I think that's what should guide a military doctor. | 23:41 | |
Interviewer | That's great. Okay, let's take it | 23:50 |
from there then. | 23:52 | |
So when you started being contacted | 23:54 | |
by human rights organizations, | 23:57 | |
before we get into the defense attorneys for Khadr, | 23:59 | |
was there any work you did | 24:02 | |
for the human rights organizations in terms | 24:04 | |
of counseling them or giving them some advice before Khadr? | 24:06 | |
- | They did. I mean, the one that first contacted me, | 24:10 |
and I was very pleased to meet them as physicians | 24:14 | |
for human rights and their executive director | 24:17 | |
at that time, Len Rubenstein, | 24:20 | |
just an excellent individual. | 24:22 | |
And he said he was looking into, | 24:24 | |
they felt that their charter was to look | 24:26 | |
into the interrogation practices. | 24:30 | |
And at that time, they specifically were looking | 24:34 | |
into the involvement of psychiatrist, | 24:38 | |
psychologist and other physicians | 24:41 | |
on the interrogation teams at Guantanamo, | 24:44 | |
and there had been in Afghanistan | 24:48 | |
they're called, the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams, | 24:49 | |
called you know the "biscuits," as they say | 24:52 | |
and they wanted to know, | 24:54 | |
how does the military decide? | 24:59 | |
What are the policies, what should doctors do? | 25:01 | |
Should the doctors be involved in this | 25:04 | |
and that kind of thing? | 25:06 | |
So we started off with looking at that. | 25:06 | |
I had, you know, it was not open public information. | 25:10 | |
And I said, "Well, let's look at it. | 25:15 | |
"I mean, let's think it through, | 25:18 | |
"I mean this is an important question." | 25:18 | |
Interviewer | Why is it important to know | 25:20 |
that doctors are involved in the interrogation team? | 25:23 | |
What was important to you? | 25:26 | |
- | Well, we had never done that before. | 25:27 |
I mean, there had always been a more or less a firewall. | 25:29 | |
So that the interrogators and the detained people, | 25:34 | |
the military police, really worked separately | 25:37 | |
from the medics and that we would not as medics | 25:40 | |
be involved directly in the interrogations | 25:46 | |
and for very good reasons. | 25:49 | |
I mean interrogations are not a treatment, | 25:51 | |
you know, kind of endeavor, | 25:55 | |
they're inherently coercive, | 26:02 | |
and their principles also said | 26:05 | |
then we would not be involved. | 26:06 | |
The question that came up was, | 26:08 | |
"But we don't know how | 26:11 | |
to interrogate these people, right?" | 26:13 | |
We had gone through a long period, | 26:16 | |
probably since the end of the Cold War, | 26:20 | |
where what we call human intelligence | 26:22 | |
where kind of face to face stuff had been degraded. | 26:25 | |
And we didn't have the capability | 26:30 | |
and didn't have experts who knew how | 26:32 | |
to in fact question these people | 26:35 | |
and they needed to bring some experts in | 26:40 | |
and they thought the idea was to bring in | 26:41 | |
the psychiatrist and psychologist. | 26:44 | |
And how do you do that? | 26:46 | |
How do you in fact improve your ability | 26:49 | |
to do interrogations | 26:54 | |
when you haven't had that ability before | 26:56 | |
and you need to do it very quickly. | 27:00 | |
And if you're gonna tap into, | 27:03 | |
so-called professional people who do questioning right, | 27:05 | |
'cause as a psychiatrist, we question people, | 27:09 | |
are they the right people to be involved? | 27:12 | |
Interviewer | So, were you were you shocked | 27:17 |
that that part of the medical profession | 27:18 | |
being brought into it? | 27:21 | |
Or did you think well, maybe there is some kind | 27:22 | |
of need or what were you thinking initially | 27:25 | |
when you heard that? | 27:27 | |
- | I wasn't shocked, I could see there was a need | 27:28 |
because the human intelligence | 27:30 | |
had been so degraded, | 27:32 | |
and I could see why they went | 27:34 | |
to the behavioral science people | 27:36 | |
including the psychiatrist | 27:37 | |
to try and figure that out. | 27:39 | |
And I felt that there probably was some role in it. | 27:43 | |
In fact, I was glad that I did this one | 27:49 | |
for a colleague who said, | 27:53 | |
"Hey look, you, you probably are underestimating | 27:54 | |
"how easy it is for people to in fact, | 28:00 | |
"get coerced and how easy it is for the young doctors | 28:05 | |
"to get coerced. | 28:08 | |
"We really need to draw a very distinct line here." | 28:09 | |
And as I thought about it, | 28:15 | |
I realized he was absolutely correct | 28:18 | |
that the medics, | 28:20 | |
and particularly since they were gonna | 28:22 | |
be mid-level officers, majors, and lieutenant colonels, | 28:24 | |
really should not get involved in any way | 28:27 | |
that they might get coerced, intimidated, | 28:30 | |
pressured, to do things that really aren't within | 28:32 | |
our professional rules and guidelines. | 28:36 | |
Now, was there a role in the planning | 28:42 | |
and the training and doing research and teaching, | 28:45 | |
there could be a role there. | 28:50 | |
It's because there's no direct contact, | 28:52 | |
it's really kind of nicely laid out | 28:54 | |
and you could bring in a doctor and say, | 28:57 | |
"You know, here's what we know, | 28:59 | |
"here's what you don't know." | 29:01 | |
But the other thing is that there are in fact | 29:02 | |
the usual psychiatrists | 29:05 | |
who we train to treat people right, | 29:06 | |
to see what problems people have. | 29:09 | |
Our job and we do not approach patients to exploit them. | 29:14 | |
I mean, inherently interrogations are exploitive, | 29:17 | |
and that's not what we should be doing in any way. | 29:21 | |
And nor are we trained to do that. | 29:26 | |
There are other people that really | 29:28 | |
are the experts for that. | 29:31 | |
And those are the folks that they needed to pull in. | 29:33 | |
So I began to over time and I mean, | 29:36 | |
this was weeks and months, I said to myself, | 29:40 | |
"This looks a little too haphazard for me." | 29:43 | |
And we don't have somebody who's again, | 29:48 | |
really thought this through and said, | 29:52 | |
"Well, wait, let's build a program here. | 29:55 | |
"And let' bring in everyone we need to | 30:00 | |
"and understand that, even though | 30:03 | |
"we need to do it quickly, | 30:05 | |
"we need to do it the most awfully that we can." | 30:07 | |
Interviewer | Given that America was somewhat lost | 30:13 |
when 9/11 happened and they were caught off guard | 30:16 | |
and they just needed this information right away. | 30:19 | |
Obviously that's why it happened. | 30:23 | |
But could you perhaps understand that maybe | 30:25 | |
they just did the best they could to try to interrogate? | 30:27 | |
'Cause you said that it had been diluted. | 30:31 | |
They didn't have the skill any longer | 30:34 | |
and this is what they had to do | 30:36 | |
in order to give the Intel, they felt the needed? | 30:38 | |
- | Well, you know, that gets back | 30:41 |
to what the impact was of 9/11. | 30:43 | |
And I have to say that from the beginning, | 30:49 | |
I was in private conversations, | 30:53 | |
cautioned my friends and colleagues | 31:00 | |
that we needed not to get seduced by the fear factor. And-- | 31:08 | |
Interviewer | Where were you at 9/11? | 31:15 |
- | In 9/11, I was in Augusta Georgia, | 31:16 |
where I'd retired. | 31:20 | |
In fact, I was in the emergency room | 31:22 | |
that day with an emergency gastrointestinal problem. | 31:24 | |
But I was watching as I'm lying there in great pain, | 31:31 | |
I thought I was going to be going to surgery. | 31:36 | |
And I was watching, I probably had | 31:38 | |
what's called a volvulus or twisted intestine. | 31:43 | |
And I was watching this repeated | 31:46 | |
kind of shows of the World Trade towers falling | 31:52 | |
and I thought to myself, "Ooh, this is horrible." | 31:57 | |
But let's not put the whole country | 32:04 | |
in a state of trepidation and fear. | 32:09 | |
And then, 'cause that will send us off | 32:12 | |
with all sorts of policies and in ways | 32:15 | |
that are not gonna be good for us. | 32:20 | |
I mean, those of us who were in school in the 50s, | 32:22 | |
remember the Red Scare. | 32:28 | |
I remember, I mean, as ridiculous as it sounded, | 32:32 | |
we were diving under desks | 32:34 | |
because of a nuclear bomb riddle | 32:37 | |
and I was one of those kids that said, | 32:40 | |
"I'm not sure how this bomb's gonna protect me | 32:42 | |
"from nuclear radiation, | 32:45 | |
"but I'll dive under this desk | 32:46 | |
"'cause my teacher told me to do it." | 32:48 | |
And I certainly, wasn't gonna be thinking here in 2001, | 32:51 | |
that there's a terrorist behind every bush. | 32:58 | |
That's the last thing that we need to do as a country. | 33:01 | |
We had had problems with terrorism for decades. | 33:04 | |
We had gone through the coal bombing, | 33:09 | |
we'd gone through the Khobar Towers. | 33:12 | |
It's not like our senior military and our senior | 33:13 | |
intelligence officials should have really been surprised. | 33:21 | |
We find out later on that there was plenty | 33:25 | |
of conversation, right? | 33:29 | |
There had already been a cell, | 33:30 | |
finally, the news discloses that by 1998, | 33:32 | |
there'd been a cell tracking Bin Laden. | 33:36 | |
So the government, the people making the decisions | 33:37 | |
in my view, should not have been surprised. | 33:42 | |
Now were they caught off guard? | 33:45 | |
Was the Secretary Rumsfeld coming in at that time | 33:47 | |
and feeling like the Department of Defense | 33:50 | |
needed to really make some major changes? | 33:53 | |
And he was trying to make those changes. | 33:57 | |
I mean, you know, paradoxically, as you recall | 33:59 | |
before 9/11, there were I think | 34:02 | |
there was even a front page story in Time Magazine | 34:05 | |
that he was gonna get pushed out | 34:07 | |
because he was trying to make some big changes | 34:09 | |
in the Department of Defense. | 34:12 | |
He was probably trying to do the right thing, | 34:13 | |
because these kinds of issues and these kinds | 34:16 | |
of problems had not been given the priority | 34:21 | |
that they had been given. | 34:24 | |
And so we were short, but, he's an experienced folks, | 34:25 | |
there were other experienced folks | 34:29 | |
that may have needed to have some people fired, | 34:31 | |
but we didn't need to do things | 34:35 | |
in a haphazard way and totally reactive. | 34:38 | |
I mean, there was plenty of opportunity | 34:42 | |
to do this in a much more thoughtful manner | 34:45 | |
than had been done. | 34:48 | |
And what I expected, we'll focus, | 34:50 | |
I expected us to put money and assets to this, | 34:53 | |
I did not expect it to be done in a sloppy way. | 34:57 | |
Interviewer | Were you involved in any of the planning | 35:00 |
or the policy at that time since you were retired? | 35:03 | |
- | Not since I was retired. | 35:06 |
While I was active duty, | 35:08 | |
I'd had some jobs that indicated... | 35:10 | |
I could see where we in fact had really fallen short | 35:12 | |
in our ability to look at these things. | 35:18 | |
Interviewer | While you were-- | 35:20 |
- | on active duty yeah. | 35:22 |
Interviewer | When was that? | 35:23 |
- | By '95, '96. | 35:24 |
Interviewer | Okay, let's go back forward. | 35:29 |
So after the human rights people met with you | 35:31 | |
and the physicians met with you, what happened | 35:36 | |
then defense attorneys started coming to you? | 35:39 | |
- | And then I was involved, | 35:42 |
we would convene some meetings and some conferences, | 35:44 | |
and the Human Rights First group started to meet | 35:48 | |
and it was in fact at a conference | 35:52 | |
at George Washington University, | 35:56 | |
that the attorneys for Omar Khadr were there. | 35:58 | |
And they approached me about getting involved with a case. | 36:02 | |
Interviewer | Could you give us a little background | 36:07 |
of that case, just so that viewers | 36:08 | |
will know a little bit about that? | 36:12 | |
- | So Omar is a Canadian born, young man | 36:14 |
of Egyptian-Palestinian parents | 36:20 | |
and whose father was probably involved in funding | 36:25 | |
and supporting Osama Bin Laden, | 36:30 | |
had moved the family back and forth | 36:33 | |
from Canada to Pakistan and Afghanistan. | 36:37 | |
In spring of 2002, the father ordered Omar | 36:42 | |
who was then 15 years old, to live | 36:50 | |
with Libyans in Afghanistan | 36:53 | |
who were training local Pashtuns to build IEDs. | 36:56 | |
And these were grown men, the Libyans, | 37:03 | |
and of course they were local grown men. | 37:06 | |
And Omar who has a facility with language, | 37:09 | |
was translating for the Libyans | 37:13 | |
who only spoke Arab into the local Pashtun | 37:15 | |
and to train them on how to make the IEDs. | 37:20 | |
The compound where this was occurring | 37:23 | |
was attacked by our special forces, | 37:26 | |
and it was bombed. | 37:30 | |
And there was a firefight ensued for several hours. | 37:33 | |
All the Libyans were killed. | 37:42 | |
Omar was severely wounded at the outset, | 37:45 | |
of the firefight and very severely blinded, | 37:48 | |
but he had survived. | 37:54 | |
At the end of the firefight, | 37:58 | |
a special forces medic was mortally wounded. | 38:00 | |
Omar was shot through the back, | 38:06 | |
but was the only survivor. | 38:09 | |
He was charged with, this medic died | 38:13 | |
after seven to 10 days | 38:18 | |
and he was charged with the murder of the medic. | 38:19 | |
He was apprehended from the firefight, | 38:24 | |
went to Bagram, spent time at Bagram, | 38:29 | |
and then went to Guantanamo. | 38:32 | |
And while at Bagram, and then while at Guantanamo | 38:34 | |
was tortured and subsequently, a number of different ways. | 38:38 | |
I mean, in terms of being held in | 38:44 | |
very uncomfortable painful positions, | 38:46 | |
denied medications, and you know, | 38:49 | |
there was just a whole setting with such isolation, | 38:55 | |
all those kinds of various kinds of ways that he was. | 39:00 | |
Interviewer | And why were you brought in on this? | 39:05 |
- | Because the issue, I mean, there are a number | 39:09 |
of questions, one, he was an adolescent at the time, | 39:11 | |
and you have all the questions | 39:14 | |
of what is the responsibility and competence | 39:15 | |
of an adolescent. | 39:18 | |
And both at the time that the incident occurred, | 39:21 | |
he was right at the outside of the firefight, | 39:26 | |
was blinded, suffered a head injury. | 39:30 | |
I know something about blast concussion | 39:32 | |
and head injuries. | 39:34 | |
What was his state of mind | 39:35 | |
through the rest of the firefight? | 39:36 | |
He was tortured, treated cruel, | 39:39 | |
was he suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder | 39:40 | |
and other psychiatric problems? | 39:44 | |
Could he participate in his defense? | 39:45 | |
So there was just a number | 39:48 | |
of questions that come up. | 39:51 | |
Interviewer | And just to reaffirm what you said earlier, | 39:53 |
and the defense attorneys were not able | 39:56 | |
to find anyone else who could be an expert witness, | 39:59 | |
who's a doctor medic, | 40:03 | |
who could be an expert witness, somebody-- | 40:05 | |
- | I knew the military | 40:07 |
and had a secret Top Secret clearance. | 40:08 | |
Interviewer | Oh, and why was all that necessary? | 40:12 |
- | Well, because he was in Guantanamo | 40:13 |
and everything was very classified there. | 40:15 | |
And every expert witness in the military commissions | 40:19 | |
is reviewed and approved | 40:25 | |
by the convening authority. | 40:29 | |
And so they needed to find someone | 40:31 | |
with the qualifications. | 40:33 | |
Interviewer | What was your first initial reaction | 40:37 |
when you heard this story about him, | 40:39 | |
just generally before you-- | 40:41 | |
- | Well, I mean, my first story | 40:43 |
was he's 15 years old. | 40:45 | |
I mean, we should have a completely different policy | 40:46 | |
and approach to how we handle children and adolescents. | 40:52 | |
We don't subscribe | 40:57 | |
and we don't endorse child soldiers, right. | 41:02 | |
We think it's a crime to bring children in | 41:05 | |
and what can be gained, | 41:07 | |
I could not discern what we were gaining as a country, | 41:10 | |
or as a military from holding | 41:17 | |
a person who was a teenager. | 41:19 | |
Why would we do this? And-- | 41:21 | |
Interviewer | Did you get an answer | 41:23 |
from anyone in the military about that? | 41:25 | |
- | Well, the answer was the way he was prosecuted. | 41:26 |
In this country, that prosecutor, in fact | 41:30 | |
as we were going trial said to me, | 41:32 | |
"We prosecute teenagers all the time for murder, | 41:34 | |
"and we prosecute them as adults." | 41:37 | |
And I said, "Yes, I know that."(chuckles) | 41:41 | |
Interviewer | But it's still an issue for us | 41:47 |
- | Right, or for us. | 41:49 |
I mean, we had a murder, | 41:51 | |
we had a person killed, | 41:52 | |
and it did not look rational to me. | 41:54 | |
Interviewer | And what else concerned | 42:00 |
you about his situation? | 42:02 | |
- | I was just appalled that there had been | 42:05 |
anything that would insinuate cruel | 42:07 | |
and inhuman treatment and torture. | 42:10 | |
I mean, just appalled and appalled that that would happen | 42:13 | |
to an individual who was severely wounded. | 42:19 | |
I mean, he's now blind in his left eye. | 42:21 | |
And at the time of the firefight | 42:24 | |
was probably totally blind | 42:26 | |
and suffered and had been suffered | 42:28 | |
all these injuries, a bit was lucky. | 42:32 | |
I mean, it's a credit to our medical people | 42:34 | |
that his life was saved | 42:38 | |
'cause he had two serious wounds shot | 42:39 | |
through the back of the chest | 42:43 | |
and just missed his his heart and major blood vessels. | 42:44 | |
Interviewer | When you said he had head trauma, | 42:48 |
what do you know about that, | 42:50 | |
and why is that important to understand | 42:52 | |
what happened immediately after he was captured? | 42:54 | |
- | Well, the head trauma, | 42:56 |
I mean, as our soldiers are now, we're saying | 42:58 | |
with those who have suffered a number | 43:01 | |
of blasts due to the IED explosions, | 43:02 | |
really leaves you dazed | 43:06 | |
and really immediately at the time, | 43:10 | |
I mean, many people have short term memory loss | 43:13 | |
and just inability to think, | 43:18 | |
and to just do simple tasks. | 43:20 | |
So he early on with a concussion | 43:23 | |
from the, I think the eight, 10 bombs, | 43:26 | |
had suffered this blast concussion | 43:32 | |
and I know it's a question of | 43:35 | |
was he able to function, at all? | 43:36 | |
Interviewer | Well, when you raised these issues, | 43:43 |
were their responses to it? | 43:46 | |
I mean, the way you describe it, | 43:48 | |
there's really no response. | 43:51 | |
- | There was, I mean the government | 43:53 |
was going to adamantly follow through | 43:54 | |
with its prosecution of this boy | 43:57 | |
and it was all in the backdrop | 44:03 | |
that we had 800, remember in those days, | 44:11 | |
830 people on Guantanamo | 44:13 | |
and they were the worst of the worst. | 44:15 | |
And I had no basis to know | 44:18 | |
what these people were like. | 44:21 | |
But the more that I saw, | 44:24 | |
the more that I began to question that in fact, | 44:27 | |
these people were the dangerous threats | 44:31 | |
that they had been advertised to be. | 44:35 | |
Interviewer | When is the first time | 44:39 |
you went to Guantanamo? | 44:40 | |
- | 2008, December, 2008. | 44:41 |
Interviewer | And that was to interview Khadr? | 44:44 |
- | Right. | 44:45 |
Interviewer | And could you tell us | 44:46 |
what you first observed and experienced, | 44:47 | |
how that was like when you landed | 44:50 | |
before you even got to see him | 44:52 | |
just sort of what it was like, | 44:54 | |
when you-- | 44:55 | |
- | It's a remote place. | |
I mean, it's dry, it's on the Eastern end of Cuba. | 44:57 | |
I'd never obviously been to Cuba before, | 45:01 | |
and was surprised to see what that part, | 45:08 | |
the sort of the environment and the vegetation, | 45:15 | |
there were huge cactus. | 45:19 | |
I felt like I was in Texas or Arizona | 45:20 | |
when I got there. | 45:22 | |
But it's a military post | 45:24 | |
and it was quickly built up. | 45:25 | |
So I was familiar with that way, | 45:30 | |
and it's a prison setting and it's got everything | 45:32 | |
that you get when you go to a prison setting. | 45:34 | |
Interviewer | And who brought you to see him? | 45:38 |
Was it the defense attorneys. | 45:40 | |
- | The defense attorneys yeah. | 45:42 |
Interviewer | And were you treated with respect | 45:43 |
by the military there when you came in or? | 45:45 | |
- | You know, in a courteous way? | 45:50 |
Even though I'm a retired general, | 45:53 | |
In fact, one individual told me, | 45:56 | |
since you're not a general down here | 45:58 | |
and I said, "Okay, I see | 46:01 | |
"that this is a different place (laughs) so--" | 46:05 | |
Interviewer | You don't lose your ranking | 46:10 |
when you retire, do you? | 46:11 | |
- | No, you're just retired. | 46:12 |
I mean, you're always, once a general, | 46:13 | |
you're always the general. | 46:14 | |
And so, I was kinda surprised. | 46:15 | |
Interviewer | And what did you think | 46:19 |
of the cell where you saw Khadr | 46:20 | |
and what was your sense when you just walked in and-- | 46:23 | |
- | Well, I first met him in the areas | 46:27 |
where all the interrogations that occurred. | 46:28 | |
And so these are makeshift buildings, | 46:30 | |
in a kind of quickly clapboard buildings put up | 46:32 | |
but they've got, the iron beds, everything inside. | 46:37 | |
Like we get in a lot of prison settings here in the US. | 46:41 | |
He's shackled all the time, | 46:45 | |
with his foot to an eye bolt | 46:50 | |
on the ground, cameras. | 46:51 | |
And perhaps I shouldn't have been, | 46:56 | |
but I remember the best way | 47:00 | |
to tell you how I felt was | 47:02 | |
after meeting him for the first, | 47:05 | |
He's a very nice young man. | 47:06 | |
I mean, just a nice, decent young person. | 47:09 | |
And after meeting him and spending time | 47:14 | |
with him and talking with him, | 47:17 | |
a devout young man. | 47:19 | |
But he feels the faith, | 47:21 | |
I mean, he feels it in his soul. | 47:23 | |
I remember walking out, | 47:26 | |
I did the with the interview | 47:28 | |
with a psychologist who had been down | 47:29 | |
there before on another case. | 47:32 | |
And we walked out, we had a little break | 47:35 | |
and I started walking around | 47:39 | |
and she started watching me. | 47:43 | |
She said, "Well, I think I can't talk to you." | 47:46 | |
I said, "No, I've just got to walk around and think." | 47:50 | |
She says, "I call this, 'the Gitmo goo'. | 47:53 | |
"You've been gooed. | 47:57 | |
"This whole feeling will come over you. | 47:59 | |
"And it is a shock of what have we done here? | 48:03 | |
"Why are we doing this." | 48:09 | |
Now, it was very much a reaction to him | 48:11 | |
because I've interviewed others, | 48:17 | |
other detainees, but subsequently, | 48:23 | |
but it was a very much a reaction to Omar | 48:28 | |
because he's a really decent young boy. | 48:31 | |
And by 2008, he was 22 years old. | 48:35 | |
So he had been in detention for seven years. | 48:42 | |
And I'm a father and he's a year younger | 48:47 | |
than my youngest child. | 48:58 | |
And I'm saying, I can't imagine | 49:00 | |
that my children would have been kept | 49:03 | |
in a situation like this for seven years. | 49:08 | |
And I was so surprised to see how, | 49:11 | |
what a nice person he was, | 49:14 | |
what a good person he was, | 49:17 | |
what kind of faith he had. | 49:18 | |
Interviewer | What did you expect? | 49:20 |
- | I didn't know what to expect. | 49:21 |
I mean, I was thinking, | 49:23 | |
I mean I had been doing over the years | 49:25 | |
of irrespective of all the administrative work, | 49:27 | |
I'd always done clinical psychiatry | 49:30 | |
and done a lot of adolescent psychiatry | 49:33 | |
and worked in a lot of residential treatment centers, | 49:35 | |
where children had been sent, teenagers had been sent | 49:38 | |
and I've seen a lot of angry, | 49:41 | |
and out of control adolescents. | 49:44 | |
And I wondered if I was gonna see this kind of angry | 49:48 | |
and potentially just combative young man, | 49:54 | |
and I didn't. | 49:59 | |
Interviewer | What do you think | 50:02 |
of an adolescent being held in that environment | 50:03 | |
for his whole adolescence? | 50:07 | |
- | I can't justify it. | 50:09 |
I can't justify it in any way. | 50:12 | |
I just, even as a soldier, | 50:18 | |
I just don't see why we would at all, keep that, | 50:27 | |
a person who is a teenager, | 50:37 | |
doesn't make sense in terms | 50:40 | |
of what we're trying to do. | 50:42 | |
It doesn't make sense the way | 50:44 | |
we want our Americans to be treated. | 50:45 | |
Therefore, we shouldn't treat others that way. | 50:49 | |
It doesn't make sense if we're thinking it, | 50:50 | |
by that point, we had barely formulated | 50:54 | |
the counterinsurgency strategy. | 50:56 | |
But, you know, frankly, | 50:59 | |
we've been talking about these ideas for years. | 51:00 | |
Remember we had been talking | 51:03 | |
about nation building after the first Gulf war. | 51:04 | |
It was part of a Vietnam. | 51:07 | |
It's not like this is all nuclear physics, | 51:08 | |
discovering new particles. | 51:12 | |
These are ideas that have come around for some time. | 51:15 | |
And finally someone says, | 51:19 | |
"Yes, they're the right idea." | 51:20 | |
So what are we gaining | 51:21 | |
by holding a teenager like this over time? | 51:23 | |
What are we doing to him? | 51:27 | |
And if we're gonna send him out afterwards | 51:29 | |
and he's gonna go back into society, | 51:31 | |
we want him to think well of America. | 51:35 | |
We want him to think well of the Western world. | 51:38 | |
We should be treating him | 51:40 | |
and the other people who really aren't dangerous | 51:43 | |
in a decent humane way, | 51:46 | |
so they'll be ambassadors for us. | 51:49 | |
I didn't think it made sense militarily, | 51:52 | |
I didn't think it made sense strategically, | 51:56 | |
because I mean, this case has all sorts | 51:59 | |
of notoriety across the world. | 52:02 | |
I mean, it's being used in all sorts of ways | 52:05 | |
and I just didn't think it made sense | 52:07 | |
in sort of human for human decency purposes. | 52:08 | |
Interviewer | Well, you know he was accused of murder | 52:14 |
and I don't know whether, you know | 52:17 | |
whether he did it or not, | 52:19 | |
but if you were in charge | 52:21 | |
what would you do with someone | 52:24 | |
like that other than what happened to him? | 52:27 | |
- | Well, I would have gotten him out | 52:32 |
of that environment quickly. | 52:33 | |
And I would have brought him, | 52:36 | |
I would have probably brought him, | 52:41 | |
he was captured in Afghanistan, | 52:46 | |
I cannot say why we sent him to Guantanamo. | 52:49 | |
He was a child, we had some real problems | 52:52 | |
and that once we knew who he was, | 52:58 | |
we realized that his father was financing, Osama bin Laden. | 53:01 | |
And so we needed to figure out | 53:05 | |
what was the right thing to do by him, | 53:09 | |
recognizing that his father | 53:12 | |
was dangerous in terms of our interests. | 53:14 | |
His mother and family were in Canada. | 53:19 | |
And I think we needed to figure out | 53:23 | |
with the Canadian government, | 53:25 | |
and what was the right thing to do | 53:27 | |
in terms of where we would send him. | 53:29 | |
And in order to then put him in the kind | 53:31 | |
of the right protective setting, | 53:36 | |
where he could go to school | 53:38 | |
and to be involved with other people | 53:42 | |
and you know, in fact become a decent citizen. | 53:45 | |
And that's probably the way | 53:49 | |
I would've gone about then. | 53:50 | |
Interviewer | How often did you go to visit with him? | 53:53 |
- | I've spent months down there, | 53:59 |
I saw him quite a bit. | 54:01 | |
Interviewer | Did anything change along the way, | 54:04 |
you know, in terms of your interactions | 54:06 | |
with him or your observations of him? | 54:08 | |
- | Well no, I mean I affirmed what my first reactions | 54:11 |
was in terms of what a decent person he was. | 54:16 | |
Interviewer | And what was your purpose | 54:19 |
in interviewing and meeting with him so often? | 54:20 | |
- | I mean, a lot of it was to help the defense attorneys | 54:25 |
as they were getting ready for the trial. | 54:27 | |
And then once the decision was made, | 54:30 | |
that there would be a plea agreement, | 54:35 | |
then I was involved in helping them with the sentencing. | 54:38 | |
Interviewer | And what would the defense attorney's | 54:43 |
asking you, What do they want from you, | 54:45 | |
when you said you were there to help him? | 54:48 | |
How would that help him? | 54:51 | |
- | Well, I mean, and then as time went on, | 54:52 |
of course this ends up, I mean | 54:59 | |
people can criticize me for being unprofessional, | 55:01 | |
because I'm there in the role of a forensic psychiatrist. | 55:04 | |
So I'm there in the role specifically | 55:07 | |
to answer their questions about his quote competence, | 55:11 | |
at the time that the incident occurred. | 55:15 | |
His competence to participate in the trial, | 55:18 | |
and the preparation, to review the medical records, | 55:21 | |
to see is there evidence either psychologically | 55:25 | |
or medically of his having been tortured and abused, | 55:28 | |
but, once you've spent hundreds of hours, | 55:32 | |
with an individual and you are a doctor, | 55:35 | |
you end up having a therapeutic relationship with somebody. | 55:39 | |
And I think that he probably feels | 55:43 | |
that the psychologist and I | 55:47 | |
are some of the few people that can help him. | 55:50 | |
I mean, he trusts us, I believe he would say that. | 55:54 | |
Interviewer | Did he see any psychiatrist | 55:57 |
and psychologist before you came down? | 56:00 | |
Did he need that kind of assistance? | 56:02 | |
- | He did need the assistance, | 56:05 |
and there are teams down there | 56:07 | |
so there's a medical facility, | 56:11 | |
within the detention facilities there | 56:14 | |
and there are behavioral health people assigned | 56:18 | |
to those as well as general physicians | 56:20 | |
others assigned to that medical facility. | 56:23 | |
And there he was seen by them | 56:27 | |
and he was treated by them over time. | 56:30 | |
He also saw a psychiatrist | 56:35 | |
that the prosecution brought down | 56:37 | |
as well as right before the sentencing. | 56:40 | |
One of the problems is, and I mean it's very tricky | 56:43 | |
to provide medical services in prisons, | 56:47 | |
or detention facilities and not uncommonly. | 56:51 | |
You know, I think it's, you have as he felt, | 56:55 | |
detainees don't really trust the medical people. | 57:00 | |
And it's not surprising that detainees there, | 57:03 | |
different cultural background, | 57:07 | |
different ethnic background circumstances | 57:08 | |
that they're being held really don't trust | 57:11 | |
the medics there. | 57:13 | |
Interviewer | But you had different cultural background | 57:16 |
but he trusted you. | 57:18 | |
- | Yeah, I think over time, | 57:19 |
I mean, perhaps because I was brought in by the defense, | 57:21 | |
perhaps because of what personal qualities that I had. | 57:26 | |
Interviewer | Did the psychiatrist | 57:38 |
for the government disagree with your assessment? | 57:41 | |
I mean, if it's panned the way | 57:45 | |
you're describing yourself panned | 57:46 | |
then the young boy, man had a real issues. | 57:47 | |
How could one disagree with that? | 57:52 | |
- | Oh, well, it was in fact, I also wrote another op-ed | 57:55 |
for the Washington Post section | 57:58 | |
because the psychiatrist for the government | 58:00 | |
and I are in total disagreement about Omar. | 58:02 | |
And this psychiatrist who did testify. | 58:08 | |
I did not end up testifying, | 58:15 | |
because of the decisions that the attorneys made | 58:17 | |
for their own tactical reasons, | 58:20 | |
essentially proposed that Omar | 58:26 | |
was dangerous and continued to be dangerous | 58:30 | |
as a representative of radical jihadism | 58:33 | |
and that his devout Islamic faith and his conduct, | 58:40 | |
and the relationships he had are all really contributed | 58:50 | |
to a picture of him being a dangerous person | 58:56 | |
who when released would continue | 58:59 | |
to be a opposing force to both Canada | 59:03 | |
and the United States. | 59:09 | |
And he and that doctor and I | 59:10 | |
are in absolute disagreement about everything. | 59:16 | |
And I felt absolutely that he failed to diagnose, | 59:19 | |
I felt he failed to in fact conduct | 59:24 | |
what I would consider just a standard, | 59:27 | |
clinical interview and examination. | 59:30 | |
I did not think that he properly formulated | 59:32 | |
what the conditions were of his medical | 59:38 | |
and psychiatric conditions | 59:42 | |
and I felt that accordingly, | 59:43 | |
the conclusions that he had arrived at, | 59:47 | |
were just not substantial. | 59:52 | |
Interviewer | Could it be that we, | 59:55 |
the way you describing we mistreated him so badly | 59:57 | |
that maybe he will hover anger at us in the future? | 59:59 | |
Something you didn't want to happen? | 1:00:05 | |
- | Yeah, I mean, that's always a possibility. | 1:00:07 |
I mean, you always have that problem | 1:00:09 | |
with people who've been abused and tortured | 1:00:11 | |
in terms of how they feel about things. | 1:00:14 | |
I mean, there, I think | 1:00:15 | |
that over the years in the 70s, | 1:00:17 | |
I saw a number of POW's | 1:00:21 | |
and I've seen our POW's | 1:00:26 | |
and I've interviewed them subsequently. | 1:00:29 | |
I think, you know, these people have suffered, | 1:00:33 | |
and they'll suffer for the rest of their life. | 1:00:35 | |
And you just don't know | 1:00:37 | |
with what their mood changes are gonna be, | 1:00:39 | |
or if something else happens and they get symptomatic | 1:00:42 | |
that they might get reactive | 1:00:47 | |
and act in ways that are aggressive. | 1:00:50 | |
But I don't think that's gonna be, | 1:00:54 | |
if I were on the stand and you asked me, | 1:00:56 | |
I don't see that in this young man, yeah. | 1:01:01 | |
Interviewer | Was he mistreated in Guantanamo too? | 1:01:05 |
- | Yes, absolutely. | 1:01:07 |
Interviewer | Can you tell us? | 1:01:08 |
- | Well, there's a very public videotape | 1:01:10 |
of the mistreatment and in fact, | 1:01:13 | |
Canadian interrogators came down. | 1:01:18 | |
And he was put on the frequent flyer program, | 1:01:21 | |
which is the sleep deprivation program. | 1:01:25 | |
And people are not allowed, | 1:01:28 | |
the detainees were not allowed to sleep | 1:01:30 | |
more than a couple hours at a time. | 1:01:32 | |
And thinking that over time, by stressing them | 1:01:35 | |
with less and less sleep that somehow | 1:01:40 | |
or other they'd be more likely to disclose the truth. | 1:01:43 | |
Totally unfounded. | 1:01:47 | |
And in fact, I have a couple other articles | 1:01:50 | |
that I've written about it. | 1:01:53 | |
I mean, there's no basis for that. | 1:01:55 | |
Interviewer | Have you heard of that approach | 1:01:56 |
before you heard that it was done to him? | 1:01:58 | |
That had happened in the military or? | 1:02:00 | |
- | That had been looked at. | 1:02:02 |
It turns out that there had been even some studies | 1:02:04 | |
that I had seen in the 70s, | 1:02:05 | |
and been introduced to people. | 1:02:08 | |
The idea of sleep deprivation had been studied carefully | 1:02:10 | |
and did in fact help, | 1:02:14 | |
get info, breaking people down that way. | 1:02:18 | |
And that data had been acquired and examined, | 1:02:22 | |
and it was generally regarded | 1:02:28 | |
that it was not useful | 1:02:31 | |
when it comes to interrogations. | 1:02:33 | |
Understand that it's not like you can do a double blind, | 1:02:37 | |
randomized controlled trial | 1:02:40 | |
of sleep deprivation, right, but-- | 1:02:44 | |
Interviewer | The idea of the frequent flyer program, | 1:02:46 |
had you heard of that particular? | 1:02:48 | |
- | I heard that word used for it, | 1:02:50 |
but I knew that those kinds | 1:02:54 | |
of things were going on. | 1:02:55 | |
Interviewer | (murmurs) moved every three hours. | 1:02:56 |
Have you heard of that before? | 1:02:57 | |
- | Yeah. | 1:02:59 |
Interviewer | My understanding is other juveniles | 1:03:02 |
also were given the frequent flyer program. | 1:03:03 | |
Had you heard that? | 1:03:06 | |
- | Yes. | 1:03:07 |
Interviewer | Was it only juveniles? | 1:03:08 |
- | No, I think it was used on a number of people. | 1:03:09 |
Interviewer | Okay. Did you meet any other juveniles | 1:03:12 |
while you were in Guantanamo or? | 1:03:15 | |
- | No, I did not. | 1:03:17 |
Interviewer | Did you hear about | 1:03:18 |
the juveniles being there? | 1:03:19 | |
- | Yeah I did, the psychologist I was working | 1:03:20 |
with was involved with another case of a juvenile. | 1:03:22 | |
Interviewer | Did you have any thoughts | 1:03:26 |
about the fact that there were any number | 1:03:27 | |
of juveniles in Guantanamo? | 1:03:30 | |
- | Yeah, I did, and I just could not imagine | 1:03:31 |
why we were doing this. | 1:03:33 | |
I mean, it just, it did not look right to me in any way. | 1:03:35 | |
You know, for all the other reasons | 1:03:40 | |
I said before, I mean militarily | 1:03:40 | |
or just decently human decency. | 1:03:42 | |
Just couldn't think of why we would at all. | 1:03:45 | |
Interviewer | Would juveniles mix | 1:03:49 |
with the general population | 1:03:50 | |
when you were down there or had you heard that-- | 1:03:52 | |
- | No, then they were initially, | 1:03:53 |
and then in fact the ones that were very young, | 1:03:55 | |
'cause there were, I've not seen the actual records | 1:03:58 | |
of that but I've read reports, | 1:04:02 | |
there are juveniles as young as 12 that were there. | 1:04:05 | |
And so that there were grouped from 12 to 15 | 1:04:09 | |
and they had been then moved out | 1:04:14 | |
of the general population into a separate camp. | 1:04:17 | |
Omar was 16, he was moved after he was 16. | 1:04:20 | |
And I think that was done specifically | 1:04:24 | |
because then after 16, you not uncommon, | 1:04:27 | |
you can have people that were kept | 1:04:31 | |
in the general population and-- | 1:04:34 | |
Interviewer | So you're saying he was kept | 1:04:36 |
in a general population when he was 16 years. | 1:04:37 | |
- | Yes. | 1:04:39 |
Interviewer | Did he have friends there in the prison? | 1:04:40 |
- | Well, yeah, he's a very sociable, | 1:04:43 |
very sociable young man. | 1:04:46 | |
And he ended up making friends | 1:04:47 | |
with most of them, older men, | 1:04:51 | |
so he made friends with a number of people. | 1:04:55 | |
Interviewer | So he wasn't isolated in that-- | 1:04:57 |
- | He was not isolated and clearly | 1:04:59 |
there were people looking out for him. | 1:05:03 | |
There was a period of time | 1:05:06 | |
that his brother was there as well. | 1:05:07 | |
He didn't see, have interactions with his brother. | 1:05:10 | |
His brother would then left, | 1:05:13 | |
but yeah certainly he was,-- | 1:05:14 | |
Interviewer | Did you meet his brother? | 1:05:16 |
- | I did not, I've not met any of his other, | 1:05:16 |
any other family members. | 1:05:18 | |
Interviewer | And could you just tell us | 1:05:21 |
for the audience, what after he plea bargain | 1:05:23 | |
what's gonna happen now? | 1:05:27 | |
- | Well, it was an eight-year sentence, | 1:05:29 |
and so a year of it, this sentence | 1:05:33 | |
was imposed on October 31st, of 2010. | 1:05:37 | |
So we're coming up to the year. | 1:05:45 | |
After the year, the agreement | 1:05:47 | |
was that he would be very seriously considered. | 1:05:49 | |
We're all very hopeful he would be sent | 1:05:52 | |
to Canada where he would then, | 1:05:55 | |
the Canadian authorities would decide | 1:05:57 | |
about how he would serve the remainder of his sentence. | 1:06:00 | |
The rules are in the military prisons | 1:06:04 | |
that he was in pre-trial confinement before. | 1:06:08 | |
So he was kept with the other detainees once convicted. | 1:06:11 | |
He was moved to a cell block with other detained, | 1:06:15 | |
other individuals who had been convicted, | 1:06:19 | |
kept in segregation, isolation for a good deal | 1:06:23 | |
of time and is in fact, does see the other detainees, | 1:06:26 | |
but for all intents and purposes really is segregated. | 1:06:30 | |
And is for this year living by himself. | 1:06:34 | |
Interviewer | Would you say that's worse | 1:06:39 |
in terms of his experience, to what-- | 1:06:41 | |
- | Sure. Yeah, I think so. | 1:06:43 |
I think that it aggravates their mental symptoms | 1:06:45 | |
and medical conditions and-- | 1:06:48 | |
Interviewer | Have you seen him since he was segregated? | 1:06:51 |
- | I've not seen him. | 1:06:54 |
Interviewer | And why do you and others hope | 1:06:55 |
that he's released to Canada? | 1:06:58 | |
- | I mean, I think he should. | 1:07:01 |
I think he wants to live in Canada. | 1:07:02 | |
He wants to go to school and work. | 1:07:06 | |
His mother and siblings are there, | 1:07:09 | |
and I think he can go on and have a good life. | 1:07:13 | |
Interviewer | Let me go back to, can I ask you, | 1:07:20 |
did you ever hear of interrogators | 1:07:24 | |
going in, getting access to medical records, | 1:07:29 | |
doing interrogations, not necessarily | 1:07:33 | |
of Khadr, but of other-- | 1:07:35 | |
- | Yes. | 1:07:36 |
Interviewer | Is there any violation of-- | 1:07:38 |
- | Yes, absolute violation. | 1:07:41 |
I mean those medical records, | 1:07:43 | |
there's no basis for nonmedical people | 1:07:45 | |
to have access to medical records. | 1:07:49 | |
Interviewer | How did they get access? | 1:07:52 |
I mean I've not been able | 1:07:53 | |
to really nail that down. | 1:07:56 | |
I just assume that as the biscuits, | 1:08:00 | |
the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams | 1:08:03 | |
were working and they had medical people, | 1:08:06 | |
that those medical people had medical information | 1:08:08 | |
and that it was probably kept | 1:08:11 | |
in some file was accessible to the interrogators. | 1:08:13 | |
Interviewer | And why would they use | 1:08:17 |
that medical information? | 1:08:18 | |
How would they use it? | 1:08:20 | |
- | I think they would, if it was particularly done | 1:08:21 |
by if some of that medical information | 1:08:23 | |
had the medical records, | 1:08:26 | |
had information that psychiatrists and psychologists, | 1:08:29 | |
had gotten from their interviews, | 1:08:32 | |
then it had points | 1:08:35 | |
about what were their vulnerabilities, | 1:08:38 | |
with their fears, what would make them anxious, | 1:08:40 | |
what their state of mind was, | 1:08:44 | |
were they were depressed, | 1:08:46 | |
those who were depressed and might be suicidal, | 1:08:48 | |
interrogators could use that | 1:08:51 | |
to impact pressure on the subject. | 1:08:53 | |
Interviewer | We want to take a break for just a moment, | 1:09:00 |
and then have some water | 1:09:02 | |
and then come back on it. | 1:09:04 | |
I wanna go, to something you said earlier | 1:09:07 | |
about hunger strikers. | 1:09:09 | |
What do you know about that and did you ever, | 1:09:13 | |
interact with any people like that or? | 1:09:17 | |
Why was that of a concern to you? | 1:09:20 | |
Who brought that up to you? | 1:09:21 | |
- | So there were defense attorneys | 1:09:23 |
who were representing one of the hunger strikers | 1:09:25 | |
in Guantanamo who contacted me in 2005. | 1:09:29 | |
This was the case of El Odo. | 1:09:36 | |
And they just wanted some advice about | 1:09:39 | |
what would be good procedures | 1:09:46 | |
for treating or handling hunger strikers. | 1:09:49 | |
And I tried to help them | 1:09:54 | |
as best as I could at the time. | 1:09:59 | |
Interviewer | Can you give some background why El-Odo, | 1:10:01 |
is it because his lawyers came to you? | 1:10:04 | |
- | Yes, his lawyers came to me. | 1:10:07 |
There were other hunger strikers there. | 1:10:08 | |
You know over time there, | 1:10:10 | |
the number is varied widely. | 1:10:12 | |
I think there was even a point in time | 1:10:14 | |
there were 130 of the 830 or 50 | 1:10:15 | |
who had been on quote-unquote, "hunger strikers," and-- | 1:10:18 | |
Interviewer | You didn't meet El Odo | 1:10:22 |
'cause you weren't there-- | 1:10:24 | |
- | No, I did not. | 1:10:25 |
I was not given permission to examine him. | 1:10:27 | |
Their lawyers had wanted me to go down and examine him. | 1:10:28 | |
I raised, I felt that there were sort of, | 1:10:32 | |
realistically, there are certain procedures | 1:10:40 | |
we should go through, | 1:10:42 | |
if we've got a person on hunger strike | 1:10:43 | |
having to do of, he needs to be examined. | 1:10:46 | |
Is this a real hunger strike? | 1:10:51 | |
Is it in the sense that it's a political action | 1:10:52 | |
or a political military action? | 1:10:54 | |
As some people classically think about what happened | 1:10:56 | |
in Northern Ireland or is this person on hunger strike | 1:10:59 | |
because they've got a medical problem? | 1:11:03 | |
or they've got a psychiatric problem. | 1:11:05 | |
Over the years, I've watched patients go | 1:11:08 | |
on quote-unquote, "hunger strikes," | 1:11:11 | |
who've been frankly psychotic. | 1:11:13 | |
And in fact they weren't on hunger strikes. | 1:11:16 | |
They just felt that everything | 1:11:19 | |
that was given to them was poison. | 1:11:21 | |
And you had to treat the psychosis, | 1:11:23 | |
in order to get them to eat. | 1:11:27 | |
And so there, I felt | 1:11:30 | |
that there were just some standard practice here | 1:11:34 | |
that we needed to walk through and ascertain the motivation | 1:11:38 | |
and the intent and the state of mind. | 1:11:44 | |
And I asked the lawyers, | 1:11:48 | |
I suggested to them that they inquire about that. | 1:11:50 | |
Are there procedures in place to do that? | 1:11:54 | |
And do they have any information | 1:11:57 | |
from the officials that those procedures have been followed? | 1:12:00 | |
As I recall in 2005, | 1:12:05 | |
those procedures were not in place | 1:12:08 | |
and they had not laid out, SOPs, | 1:12:10 | |
standard operating procedures | 1:12:13 | |
which are what we use a lot | 1:12:15 | |
in the military to guide what we do | 1:12:17 | |
and we didn't have them for-- | 1:12:21 | |
Interviewer | And what did you do next, | 1:12:22 |
or suggest next when you heard | 1:12:25 | |
there were no procedures in place? | 1:12:26 | |
- | I suggested that we then go and look at reference | 1:12:28 |
for what have been established procedures. | 1:12:32 | |
And the International Red Cross | 1:12:36 | |
has very good procedures how to do that. | 1:12:37 | |
They had pulled them from lessons | 1:12:39 | |
from the Ireland experience and others, | 1:12:41 | |
and go back to the Department of Defense | 1:12:44 | |
and suggest that these are procedures | 1:12:46 | |
that should be put in place, | 1:12:49 | |
particularly with this individual | 1:12:51 | |
and that weren't a consideration in a broader way. | 1:12:52 | |
Interviewer | Did the Department | 1:12:56 |
of Defense listen to this? | 1:12:57 | |
- | Overtime, and we had many meetings and after that, | 1:12:58 |
the physicians for human rights got involved | 1:13:01 | |
with the hunger strikes because the DOD, | 1:13:05 | |
even before they put these procedures in place decided | 1:13:13 | |
that they were going to impose force-feedings | 1:13:18 | |
on all the hunger strikers. | 1:13:21 | |
And so that if an individual | 1:13:23 | |
was deemed to be a hunger striker, | 1:13:26 | |
then they would be force-fed | 1:13:29 | |
by a nasal gastric tube by tube through the nose | 1:13:31 | |
and into the stomach | 1:13:34 | |
and be given liquid nutrition. | 1:13:36 | |
In general according to the established procedures endorsed | 1:13:37 | |
by the International Red Cross, | 1:13:44 | |
that's not endorsed. | 1:13:46 | |
A force-feeding for a recognized | 1:13:49 | |
and acknowledged hunger striker, | 1:13:53 | |
does not conform to international law or regulations. | 1:13:57 | |
Interviewer | What would you do instead? | 1:14:03 |
- | I mean that you do what you can in order | 1:14:04 |
to they're voluntarily to take liquids | 1:14:10 | |
or nutrition, and this is a political act | 1:14:14 | |
or a military act by the individual | 1:14:20 | |
for the purposes that they have | 1:14:23 | |
a particular military act or goal there. | 1:14:25 | |
And obviously what happens | 1:14:28 | |
is that the authorities that are holding them end up | 1:14:31 | |
in an exchange with that person | 1:14:34 | |
for what their grievances. | 1:14:36 | |
And I think that's in this case, | 1:14:39 | |
what was going on. | 1:14:40 | |
Interviewer | So are you saying you would recommend | 1:14:42 |
that instead of force-feeding, | 1:14:44 | |
you would have consultations | 1:14:46 | |
with the detainees to see what their issues are? | 1:14:48 | |
- | What their issues are. | 1:14:51 |
Interviewer | And that's how you address-- | 1:14:52 |
Yeah that's what I think. | 1:14:53 | |
Interviewer | And if the issue is, | 1:14:54 |
"Get me out of here." | 1:14:55 | |
- | Well, I mean they clearly, they wanna be out | 1:14:56 |
but they're also, at that time, | 1:14:59 | |
there were the issues of do they have habeas rules | 1:15:01 | |
or charges being made you know, | 1:15:03 | |
is there a recognized procedure? | 1:15:05 | |
Is there some sense | 1:15:07 | |
that there are international organizations? | 1:15:09 | |
Is the US gonna be subject to International law? | 1:15:13 | |
I mean, I think there are a lot of pieces here | 1:15:15 | |
that we needed to have taken on very directly. | 1:15:17 | |
Interviewer | Had you heard in detail | 1:15:24 |
how the force-feeding was applied | 1:15:27 | |
and did you have any thoughts about that? | 1:15:30 | |
- | You know, I had clearly been informed | 1:15:34 |
and briefed on how the force-feedings were done. | 1:15:37 | |
And then I had been told about these chairs | 1:15:41 | |
that were specifically manufactured | 1:15:45 | |
and sent down there. | 1:15:49 | |
I'd not seen one of the chairs. | 1:15:50 | |
I've not been allowed to meet with the hunger strikers. | 1:15:53 | |
Interviewer | Even though they could be a client | 1:16:00 |
in a sense, if you were brought in | 1:16:02 | |
by his lawyer, wouldn't you have the right | 1:16:06 | |
to then see him? | 1:16:10 | |
- | I would. | |
But again, the convening authority has to approve | 1:16:11 | |
of each expert, for each detainee. | 1:16:16 | |
And at this point there was only one, | 1:16:20 | |
there was one issue and actually one set of clients | 1:16:26 | |
that I had been proposed to | 1:16:31 | |
and I was not approved. | 1:16:33 | |
Interviewer | Do you know why? | 1:16:36 |
- | I think, actually, they ended up getting another | 1:16:38 |
psychiatrist who probably was better, | 1:16:40 | |
had more experience. | 1:16:43 | |
So I think they picked a better person | 1:16:44 | |
for the consultation. | 1:16:47 | |
Interviewer | Well, from your knowledge | 1:16:49 |
and it's not a firsthand on how they were force-fed, | 1:16:52 | |
do you have any thoughts about the application, | 1:16:54 | |
how it was done besides the fact | 1:16:58 | |
that whether it should have been done at all? | 1:17:00 | |
- | I think that it's aggravating. | 1:17:02 |
it's clearly a confrontive oppositional relationship | 1:17:06 | |
and we're holding people there under circumstances | 1:17:14 | |
that don't make for trust. | 1:17:19 | |
But I think there are a number of things | 1:17:25 | |
that really could be done here very differently | 1:17:29 | |
about how we deal with these people | 1:17:33 | |
and how we accordingly dispose of them. | 1:17:37 | |
Interviewer | And do you know what the military's response | 1:17:41 |
was when people, like you said to them, | 1:17:43 | |
instead of doing force-feeding, | 1:17:46 | |
you might want to engage them | 1:17:48 | |
on the issues that they concerned about? | 1:17:51 | |
- | The military's response is, | 1:17:54 |
"This hunger strike is an act | 1:17:56 | |
"of asymmetrical warfare, | 1:17:59 | |
"it is meant to harm the country | 1:18:02 | |
"and it is their mission. | 1:18:04 | |
"And we're not gonna in any way, condone it." | 1:18:08 | |
Interviewer | And did they say why | 1:18:13 |
they wanna keep them alive? | 1:18:15 | |
Did the military ever explain that? | 1:18:16 | |
- | Because the death of one of these people | 1:18:17 |
on hunger strike would in fact | 1:18:20 | |
reinforce the enemy and give them greater purpose. | 1:18:22 | |
Interviewer | So do you feel like you're bumping | 1:18:30 |
your head against the wall? | 1:18:33 | |
- | Look, I'm part of a bureaucracy (laughs) | 1:18:35 |
I'm an expert of bumping my head against the wall. | 1:18:38 | |
This is not the only, | 1:18:42 | |
it is not the only mission I have in life. | 1:18:44 | |
I'm a psychiatrist, this is what we do. | 1:18:48 | |
Interviewer | How about suicides? | 1:18:52 |
Did you have any interaction with people | 1:18:53 | |
who either were going to commit suicide, | 1:18:54 | |
or maybe did and the lawyers came to you and any of these? | 1:18:57 | |
- | Yes, I mean, I had. | 1:19:02 |
Interviewer | Could you describe? | 1:19:03 |
- | I've interviewed a number | 1:19:04 |
of detainees who made suicide gestures | 1:19:06 | |
and had suicidal intent. | 1:19:09 | |
I had been contacted by lawyers about the detainees, | 1:19:14 | |
some of whom who killed themselves | 1:19:20 | |
and what their conditions were | 1:19:23 | |
and what their state of mind-- | 1:19:26 | |
Interviewer | Can you give us some anecdotes | 1:19:28 |
so that you don't have to give names | 1:19:29 | |
if you don't want to, if you do, that'd be great. | 1:19:31 | |
But just to get some sense-- | 1:19:32 | |
- | I think the sense that one that's fairly graphic | 1:19:34 |
is a man who had been tortured, abused-- | 1:19:40 | |
Interviewer | In Guantanamo? | 1:19:47 |
- | In Guantanamo and frequent flyer program, | 1:19:48 |
the use of food as an inducement, | 1:19:55 | |
the walling, you know about the human mop, | 1:20:03 | |
where they end up being hydrated | 1:20:07 | |
and then having to force to urinate | 1:20:11 | |
and then to clean up the urine | 1:20:13 | |
with their own clothes and themselves | 1:20:16 | |
in their clothes to clean up the urine, | 1:20:19 | |
and a being held in the uncomfortable positions. | 1:20:23 | |
And this man as I reconstruct his history | 1:20:27 | |
and look at his record, | 1:20:33 | |
seemed to have a psychotic episode-- | 1:20:36 | |
Interviewer | Subsequent to his treatment-- | 1:20:40 |
- | To the treatment, the detention, | 1:20:41 |
the deprivation, all the circumstances. | 1:20:44 | |
And while he was both lapsing | 1:20:48 | |
into the psychotic episode, | 1:20:51 | |
as well as in the middle of it, | 1:20:53 | |
he was coming out, he had intended to kill himself | 1:20:55 | |
and made a gesture. | 1:20:58 | |
Interviewer | And what could you do about, | 1:21:00 |
you met with him? | 1:21:02 | |
- | I met with him, but many years after he did this. | 1:21:03 |
Interviewer | What stopped him | 1:21:06 |
from committing suicide? | 1:21:07 | |
- | He finally decided that it was contradictory | 1:21:10 |
to the principles of Islam, as some have felt | 1:21:18 | |
that they cannot continue on hunger strikes | 1:21:22 | |
as they understand the Quran. | 1:21:27 | |
Interviewer | And why would you meet | 1:21:32 |
with him years later? | 1:21:33 | |
- | There are still issues of his state | 1:21:34 |
of mind and statements he made during this period | 1:21:37 | |
of time that would be used in prosecution, | 1:21:41 | |
and/or be used in deciding | 1:21:46 | |
if he's gonna be released from Guantanamo, | 1:21:48 | |
this particular, I mean, there are still a number | 1:21:52 | |
of habeas cases there that are ongoing. | 1:21:55 | |
Interviewer | Is the government's intention | 1:21:58 |
to mistreat people like this | 1:22:00 | |
and get them to the verge of suicide | 1:22:01 | |
to get certain testimony from them | 1:22:03 | |
or certain statements for them | 1:22:06 | |
they can use against them? | 1:22:08 | |
- | Well, first I think all this has stopped. | 1:22:09 |
I mean, I think that we're not seeing | 1:22:12 | |
this kind of treatment going on | 1:22:14 | |
within the Department of Defense, which is good. | 1:22:17 | |
And, back to why would I beat | 1:22:19 | |
my head against the wall? | 1:22:21 | |
I think that all this has made a difference. | 1:22:22 | |
I think we've done better, | 1:22:25 | |
and we are doing better, | 1:22:27 | |
both in theater and in Afghanistan, Iraq, | 1:22:30 | |
and in Guantanamo. | 1:22:33 | |
Interviewer | You've gotten more sophisticated | 1:22:35 |
or more intelligent-- | 1:22:36 | |
- | And I think, yeah, I think | 1:22:38 |
we've gotten smarter about it. | 1:22:39 | |
And I think we realized | 1:22:40 | |
that we shouldn't violate rules | 1:22:41 | |
and we shouldn't buy these kinds | 1:22:44 | |
of conventions that we supposedly stand up for. | 1:22:45 | |
So all this has made a difference | 1:22:50 | |
and that's a good thing. | 1:22:52 | |
And it's a good commentary on us, on the military. | 1:22:53 | |
I think early on they thought | 1:22:58 | |
that by pressuring these people psychologically, | 1:23:00 | |
that they were gonna get the information they needed. | 1:23:03 | |
And I think it was an errant idea and uninformed. | 1:23:08 | |
Interviewer | Did you know anybody who was ERFed? | 1:23:15 |
- | Yeah, sure and a number | 1:23:18 |
of these detainees have been ERFed. | 1:23:19 | |
Interviewer | Is there anything that is important, | 1:23:21 |
were doctors present at the ERF? | 1:23:24 | |
So we're doctors did... | 1:23:26 | |
And when you spoke really about the abuse of people | 1:23:27 | |
in Abu Ghraib and that any doctor | 1:23:30 | |
would have seen that abuse, | 1:23:31 | |
did doctors in Guantanamo see abuse and the ERF | 1:23:33 | |
and did they respond, or you know | 1:23:36 | |
could you just talk about working out ERF? | 1:23:39 | |
- | These teams that are specifically trained | 1:23:44 |
to go in to detainee cell to extract them | 1:23:47 | |
for what the purposes are in whatever the meeting | 1:23:54 | |
or whatever's going on. | 1:23:58 | |
And so the medics from what I can tell | 1:24:00 | |
are not directly involved members of those teams. | 1:24:04 | |
There're standard procedures. | 1:24:08 | |
I don't know if a medic | 1:24:11 | |
I don't think of what we call licensed practitioner | 1:24:15 | |
which would be a physician assistant, | 1:24:21 | |
or a physician, examines a detainee | 1:24:22 | |
each time after they've been ERFed. | 1:24:27 | |
And I really don't know what the... | 1:24:29 | |
I've seen some medical records that indicate | 1:24:33 | |
that there have been notations | 1:24:37 | |
of what might've been injuries from the ERFing itself. | 1:24:41 | |
And my recollection is though | 1:24:46 | |
that even those notations made me sort of assessed | 1:24:49 | |
that they were benign. | 1:24:54 | |
Interviewer | What about notations after an interrogation? | 1:24:57 |
Did you see any of those? | 1:25:00 | |
- | I did not see any of those. | 1:25:02 |
Interviewer | Do you know if there were medical records | 1:25:03 |
that indicated somebody might've been mistreated | 1:25:06 | |
during an interrogation? | 1:25:08 | |
- | I've looked very closely | 1:25:10 |
at those and colleague Vince Sarcopenia | 1:25:13 | |
and I published an article in the Public Library | 1:25:18 | |
of Science, I guess earlier this year, April, | 1:25:23 | |
where from our review of medical records, | 1:25:30 | |
we saw notations that we felt were indicative | 1:25:34 | |
of cruel abusive treatment. | 1:25:40 | |
And that we thought those notations | 1:25:43 | |
should have been acted on. | 1:25:46 | |
Interviewer | So meaning that medical personnel | 1:25:48 |
would have seen these doc, | 1:25:53 | |
but did they write them themselves | 1:25:55 | |
or they would have seen the-- | 1:25:57 | |
- | No, they wrote the notes. | 1:25:58 |
We felt that they examined a detainee | 1:26:00 | |
and they saw symptoms or saw signs | 1:26:03 | |
that they should have reasonably determined | 1:26:10 | |
were the evidence of abuse. | 1:26:17 | |
Interviewer | And they didn't follow up. | 1:26:21 |
- | We cannot tell from the records | 1:26:24 |
that those were followed up or reported. | 1:26:26 | |
Interviewer | Could they have, and maybe | 1:26:30 |
just not in the record? | 1:26:32 | |
- | They could have, and it would not have been | 1:26:34 |
because then it could have been in separate records. | 1:26:36 | |
It would not have been in that detainee's medical record, | 1:26:38 | |
it would have been in an administrative file, | 1:26:41 | |
and that would have gone up the chain of command. | 1:26:45 | |
And that was never made available to us. | 1:26:47 | |
Interviewer | Your educated guess is? | 1:26:53 |
- | Nothing happened. | 1:26:55 |
Interviewer | Do you blame the doctors for that? | 1:26:58 |
The medical personnel, I mean | 1:27:00 | |
the medical personnel has an obligation, | 1:27:03 | |
why didn't they do that? | 1:27:04 | |
- | I do in part, you know, and I think that they probably | 1:27:08 |
needed to be a lot more vocal. | 1:27:10 | |
I think the senior officers needed | 1:27:13 | |
to be a lot more vocal. | 1:27:15 | |
It's hard for me to be too judgmental | 1:27:18 | |
of them irrespective of that, | 1:27:23 | |
because I think almost, my instinct | 1:27:24 | |
is that those who did speak up, | 1:27:29 | |
found that their careers probably were affected. | 1:27:33 | |
And so, I mean, it takes courage to do that. | 1:27:38 | |
I believe that's we're responsible | 1:27:41 | |
to show that courage. | 1:27:44 | |
I'm dismayed that in fact, | 1:27:46 | |
the very senior leadership would take retribution | 1:27:50 | |
against a promising senior officer | 1:27:54 | |
because he or she spoke up | 1:27:57 | |
on their moral conviction but-- | 1:28:01 | |
Interviewer | You don't know if that happened. | 1:28:06 |
- | I don't know for a fact, I believe that. | 1:28:08 |
Interviewer | You believe some people spoke up, | 1:28:11 |
You've heard that. | 1:28:14 | |
- | Absolutely. | 1:28:15 |
And I can put together enough | 1:28:16 | |
of their personal career history to see it now. | 1:28:19 | |
Interviewer | What is that? | 1:28:26 |
Do you think that's always coming in the military? | 1:28:28 | |
that's not necessarily symptomatic | 1:28:31 | |
of even the last 10 years | 1:28:35 | |
but in fact it might always-- | 1:28:37 | |
- | It's common in any large organization of bureaucracy. | 1:28:39 |
I mean, you get it in corporate America, | 1:28:42 | |
you get it in universities. | 1:28:44 | |
And so you're gonna get it in the military. | 1:28:49 | |
I mean these are behemoth groups | 1:28:52 | |
and there's a culture and there's kind | 1:28:57 | |
of a if you wanna get promoted, | 1:28:59 | |
you know, you've got to do | 1:29:01 | |
you got to go along | 1:29:02 | |
with what you gotta do. Yeah, | 1:29:04 | |
Interviewer | There was a detainee | 1:29:10 |
we spoke to who said in the interview, | 1:29:12 | |
he said, "Look at me, if you looked at me, | 1:29:14 | |
"you wouldn't see a scar on me. | 1:29:16 | |
"You would think I had a fine experience in Guantanamo. | 1:29:17 | |
"There's no scars, but there was mental | 1:29:21 | |
"and psychological abuse | 1:29:25 | |
"and that you'll never see." | 1:29:26 | |
And he said that's to make Guantanamo | 1:29:29 | |
he said more of a psychiatric prison | 1:29:31 | |
than an abusive, brutal prison. | 1:29:36 | |
And other people have said similar things, | 1:29:39 | |
is that your take on-- | 1:29:42 | |
- | That's my take. | 1:29:44 |
And I think that's why I get involved. | 1:29:44 | |
I mean, cause I think that the psychological impact | 1:29:47 | |
on these people is obviously a concern | 1:29:50 | |
to the defense side. | 1:29:54 | |
Interviewer | Do you think that the government, | 1:29:55 |
at some point figured out that would be a better way | 1:29:58 | |
to when Guantanamo to avoid some of the harsh, | 1:30:01 | |
brutal views that people can point to instead, | 1:30:04 | |
making more psychological like, frequent flyers and-- | 1:30:08 | |
- | Yeah, I I mean, it's not like they still work | 1:30:11 |
in this sort of systematic planned way. | 1:30:20 | |
I mean, you know, yeah. | 1:30:23 | |
~I think they have figured that out. | 1:30:25 | |
And I think they've realized that physical abuse | 1:30:26 | |
and physical kinds of interventions on their part | 1:30:29 | |
really don't do what they want | 1:30:36 | |
and probably reflect badly. | 1:30:39 | |
I think there's a lot | 1:30:42 | |
of people who still feel that, that population | 1:30:42 | |
even the 170 that we have down there | 1:30:46 | |
are potential enemies and threats, | 1:30:49 | |
and they're bad people | 1:30:53 | |
and we can't be softhearted and cuddle them | 1:30:55 | |
and we've got to confront them and take them on. | 1:30:59 | |
And there's this whole way of how you do that. | 1:31:02 | |
Interviewer | Well, I'm almost I think through this | 1:31:09 |
I have a couple of just more general questions. | 1:31:13 | |
Are you involved in any of the Guantanamo issues | 1:31:15 | |
that I haven't raised that maybe-- | 1:31:17 | |
- | Well, we were as a group of generals and admirals | 1:31:21 |
for Human Rights First have publicly stated | 1:31:23 | |
we feel Guantanamo should be closed. | 1:31:28 | |
Interviewer | Why? | 1:31:30 |
- | Because we think it's a black mark on the United States. | 1:31:32 |
We think it did discredits us | 1:31:36 | |
in terms of our European allies and discredits us | 1:31:40 | |
in the allies that we want to have in the Middle East. | 1:31:45 | |
And we don't, if we're gonna have credibility | 1:31:51 | |
with these people, | 1:31:55 | |
and if we're gonna say that justified in what we do, | 1:31:56 | |
we shouldn't do things that in any way, | 1:32:00 | |
engender the enmity and the disillusionment | 1:32:05 | |
that with our country. | 1:32:10 | |
Interviewer | What did you think when Obama announced | 1:32:12 |
that he was gonna close Guantanamo | 1:32:15 | |
right after he was elected back then, | 1:32:17 | |
did you think he would? | 1:32:18 | |
- | We all were excited. | 1:32:20 |
And most of my friends were in the Oval Office. | 1:32:22 | |
I happened to be in Guantanamo at the time. | 1:32:27 | |
We all got this call a day or two, can you come? | 1:32:30 | |
I said, "It's gonna be hard. | 1:32:33 | |
"'cause we're about to go to trial for Omar Khadr." | 1:32:35 | |
And all my other friends were in the Oval Office | 1:32:38 | |
and they were all so excited, | 1:32:40 | |
and they all were very optimistic. | 1:32:42 | |
Interviewer | What kind of friends are these | 1:32:45 |
in the Oval Office? | 1:32:47 | |
- | These are the generals and admirals. | 1:32:47 |
So that President Obama invited my colleagues | 1:32:49 | |
from Human Rights First. | 1:32:54 | |
So you see the picture of him signing | 1:32:56 | |
that and behind him are these retired generals | 1:32:58 | |
and admirals right there in the Oval Office. | 1:33:01 | |
Interviewer | So anyone believed it was gonna-- | 1:33:05 |
- | They were all very optimistic. | 1:33:08 |
Interviewer | So what are you thinking now, | 1:33:10 |
two years later? | 1:33:13 | |
- | You know, do some second guessing here, | 1:33:16 |
it was a tough decision, | 1:33:23 | |
I think it was the right decision | 1:33:25 | |
but the institution wasn't ready to carry it out. | 1:33:28 | |
I mean, if you're gonna really make such | 1:33:31 | |
a dramatic shift in an organization, | 1:33:34 | |
you better prepare for it. | 1:33:37 | |
And by preparing for it, | 1:33:41 | |
it's getting the people who are gonna carry it out on board. | 1:33:43 | |
And I think in fact, | 1:33:49 | |
it probably wasn't prepared for. | 1:33:51 | |
Interviewer | The admirals and generals | 1:33:53 |
who you knew were with him, | 1:33:55 | |
where are they now? | 1:33:57 | |
Were they in the administration? | 1:33:59 | |
- | No, this was all the group | 1:34:01 |
that was working with Human Rights First. | 1:34:03 | |
Interviewer | And do you know | 1:34:06 |
what their attitude is today? | 1:34:07 | |
- | I think they're all disappointed | 1:34:09 |
that that has not happened. | 1:34:11 | |
And I think they all still feel strongly. | 1:34:12 | |
And I know that one of them, | 1:34:16 | |
particularly General Nash, | 1:34:18 | |
who's spoken up publicly about it. | 1:34:20 | |
A very articulate, man, still feels strongly | 1:34:22 | |
that we should close it. | 1:34:25 | |
I've not talked to him about what I think | 1:34:29 | |
the likelihood is and what's gonna happen. | 1:34:30 | |
Interviewer | What do you think likely-- | 1:34:32 |
- | I think it's very slim. | 1:34:33 |
And we have a problem of moving the detainees | 1:34:35 | |
that we're going to take to trial to the United States | 1:34:39 | |
and put them in prisons here | 1:34:44 | |
which is perfectly safe and perfectly feasible. | 1:34:46 | |
But if the Congress is going to oppose it, | 1:34:51 | |
then I think it's unlikely. | 1:34:56 | |
Interviewer | Just two more questions then we're done. | 1:35:00 |
Did you ever meet or have any engagement at all | 1:35:02 | |
with John Walker Lindh or Jose Padilla? | 1:35:07 | |
- | No. | 1:35:10 |
Interviewer | And did you ever do anything | 1:35:12 |
in Naval Brig in South Carolina? | 1:35:14 | |
Did you ever do any work | 1:35:15 | |
with some of the people we held there? | 1:35:18 | |
- | Not recently, not since now. | 1:35:20 |
Interviewer | Is there anything else | 1:35:24 |
that I'm not asking you that you wanna | 1:35:26 | |
just share with everyone? | 1:35:28 | |
Been a long interview but just. | 1:35:30 | |
- | I think it goes back to what we as generals and admirals | 1:35:34 |
had the privilege of speaking | 1:35:42 | |
to any presidential candidate in 2008, | 1:35:46 | |
who would agree to meet with us | 1:35:50 | |
to talk about Guantanamo torture, | 1:35:53 | |
interrogations and treatment of detainees. | 1:35:56 | |
As a psychiatrist, and then my colleagues, | 1:36:02 | |
actually two of them wrote a nice op-ed. | 1:36:06 | |
I felt strongly from the beginning that we need | 1:36:10 | |
to as much dissolve the exploitation | 1:36:14 | |
of fear and the fear factor in these conversations. | 1:36:21 | |
Fear and emotionality, and the kind | 1:36:27 | |
of bias that goes with it doesn't make | 1:36:33 | |
for good political international strategy. | 1:36:38 | |
Doesn't make for good military strategy or tactics | 1:36:43 | |
and doesn't help us in what we're doing. | 1:36:47 | |
And we need to, as a nation | 1:36:50 | |
recognize that there are certain dangers | 1:36:53 | |
there are clear dangers in the world that we live in. | 1:36:57 | |
There've always been dangerous in the world. | 1:37:01 | |
We're a strong, capable country, | 1:37:04 | |
and we need to be smart about what we do. | 1:37:07 | |
And we need to be clear on what our attempt is to do, | 1:37:13 | |
but we don't need to be incited | 1:37:16 | |
by fear or other emotions. | 1:37:20 | |
And I'd like to kind of close with that. | 1:37:23 | |
And that's the world I come from. | 1:37:28 | |
And as a physician, as a psychiatrist | 1:37:30 | |
who at all times is balancing the emotionality | 1:37:34 | |
of an issue and the impressionistic aspects of an issue | 1:37:43 | |
with sort of the logical deductive scientific ways | 1:37:47 | |
of handling it. | 1:37:51 | |
And there needs to be an integration | 1:37:53 | |
and a balance. | 1:37:54 | |
- | I'd like to see that in our national policy. | 1:37:56 |
Interviewer | That was great | 1:38:01 |
and before we close Johnny needs 20 seconds | 1:38:02 | |
of quiet time, just the sound check so. | 1:38:05 | |
[Johnny] Begin room tone. | 1:38:09 | |
[Johnny] End room tone. | 1:38:25 | |
Interviewer | That was amazing and I know. | 1:38:26 |
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