Ratner, Michael - Interview master file / Witness to Guantanamo / Duke Digital Repository

-

Aggressive I mean for me

0:06

it's just the best you could have.

0:07

Who is a grassroots activist.

0:08

-

[Male Interviewer] Right, right.

0:10

-

And you enter the Center once you start the Guantanamo

0:11

you're behind a desk all the time.

0:13

And we needed to get our lawyers back in the streets

0:15

so not all of them, but you know some of them,

0:17

so Bill is, that's what he comes from so.

0:19

-

[Male Interviewer] That's right yeah.

0:21

-

And that's what we started as.

0:22

-

[Male Interviewer] So it's good.

0:24

-

So it's great no, no, I'm thrilled.

0:24

I mean, we went into the R20, SOA stuff, everything so.

0:26

-

[Male Interviewer] Oh, great good.

0:31

-

So.

0:32

-

[Male Interviewer] Well we can talk about that after

0:33

but okay so good afternoon.

0:33

We are very grateful to you for participating

0:38

in the witness to Guantanamo project.

0:40

We invite you to speak of your experiences

0:43

representing CCR Guantanamo detainees

0:46

and your involvement in the legal issues

0:50

that concerned Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

0:52

We are hoping to provide you with the opportunity

0:55

to tell your story in your own words.

0:57

We are creating an archive of stories

1:00

so that people in America and around the world

1:02

will have a better understanding what you

1:05

and others have contributed.

1:07

Future generations must know what happened

1:10

and by telling your story you're contributing to history.

1:13

We appreciate your courage and willingness to speak with us.

1:16

If at any time during the interview you wanna take a break

1:20

just let us know and we can stop.

1:22

And if any time you say something you'd like to pull back

1:24

just let us know and we can reverse that.

1:26

So I'd like to begin by having you introduce yourself,

1:29

telling us your name and a little background,

1:33

what you've done before you started with CCR

1:37

and maybe just your title now and anything else

1:39

that will help the viewer understand who you are.

1:42

-

I'm Michael Ratner, I'm an attorney

1:45

and I'm president of the Center for Constitutional Rights

1:47

in New York which is a non-profit litigation organization.

1:49

I graduated in probably early 70s, late 60s from Columbia

1:53

during the tumultuous 1968 years.

1:57

I then went to clerk for the most progressive judge

2:01

I could find who was Constance Baker Motley

2:03

the first and only African-American woman judge

2:05

when I clerked.

2:08

And then from then on I really between working at the Center

2:09

or teaching has been most of my career.

2:12

Tremendous activism around Cuba, Central America,

2:16

wars, civil liberties, Alien Tort Statute cases

2:20

suing dictators for torture and then being involved

2:24

in both what I call Guantanamo I in Guantanamo II,

2:27

Guantanamo I, being the Haitian cases

2:31

when the Haitians were taken to Guantanamo

2:34

in the early 90s and Guantanamo II of course being

2:36

the so-called post-911 Guantanamo.

2:40

-

[Male Interviewer] We might wanna talk

2:44

a little bit about Haitian but I'd like to begin

2:44

with how you and CCR got involved

2:46

in the post-911 Guantanamo issues.

2:49

-

Well you know CCR is only a mile or so

2:53

from the World Trade Center probably.

2:56

And on that day in September 11th, 2001

2:59

I was actually jogging past the World Trade Center.

3:01

So I saw everything that happened.

3:04

I saw the planes go in, I stayed there

3:07

while the second plane went in

3:09

and we were so naive at that point

3:11

I thought when I saw the second plane come up and over

3:12

I thought it was examining the damage

3:15

or gonna drop water on the building

3:17

and of course then took a nose dive right into the building.

3:19

At that point, I ran home,

3:22

my children are both in schools downtown

3:24

you know the whole thing

3:27

and then of course New York City for that period of time

3:28

was essentially a huge tomb.

3:31

I mean there was pictures of people's missing parents

3:33

all over the walls and you know

3:36

it was a very, very difficult, sad situation for all of us.

3:38

At the same time, almost immediately at the Center

3:43

which is on Broadway nearby, we started getting calls

3:45

from particularly Muslim families

3:49

who couldn't find their brothers, their fathers,

3:52

their sisters, people who were picked up after 911

3:56

just in broad sweeps that were taking place

4:01

throughout the country which they were picking up

4:03

non-citizen Muslims.

4:05

And so we began by starting to try and find those people

4:09

and represent them and of course that's not the story here

4:12

but that's, we began to funnel our work into post-911 work.

4:14

This is, you know by middle September already.

4:19

And then of course you heard the president's speech

4:22

on whatever it was, the 15th or the 18th,

4:24

you know it's them and us basically the crusade speech

4:26

and we all looked at that really

4:29

and we were just sort of, we were really shocked

4:31

by the reaction not obviously 911 was completely serious

4:34

and we were all of us utterly upset by it,

4:38

but I certainly for myself had a reaction of saying

4:42

if this is what war is I don't wanna see another war

4:46

started because of this.

4:48

And we immediately took the position

4:50

we wanted to treat these as criminal acts

4:51

and not as war at acts which of course

4:53

is still a central theme

4:55

going through the Guantanamo litigation today.

4:57

-

[Male Interviewer] Can you explain that a little bit?

4:59

-

Well we looked at the attack on the World Trade Center

5:00

as a whatever you wanna call it a terrorist act or whatever,

5:03

but it was murder, it was a crime, it was a,

5:08

you could call it an international crime

5:14

a crime against humanity, but it was a crime

5:16

and the perpetrators of a crime in our view

5:18

should be picked up, arrested, captured,

5:21

however that's done and tried in a criminal court.

5:24

And we did not believe it was started by a state

5:27

which would make it more like an act of war

5:32

and that therefore it should not be treated as a war

5:34

but the entire framework should be a criminal prosecution

5:37

framework and not stretch it out so it's essentially a war

5:41

of the US against at that point it was both the Taliban

5:45

and Al-Qaeda and Muslims in general

5:49

it got extended to certainly in Central Asia.

5:51

So that we began very quickly at my office

5:54

in our theoretical thinking about

5:58

what should be the result of the attack?

6:00

How should it be dealt with?

6:04

-

[Male Interviewer] Well, could you tell us a little bit

6:06

about the, what CCR's philosophy is

6:07

and exactly who you've defended in the past

6:11

just to get a sense of the organization that you?

6:13

-

Yeah, I mean CCR came out of a Southern

6:17

civil rights movement and the philosophy was generally

6:20

that we would defend groups, social groups,

6:23

political groups, we're trying to make social change

6:28

in a progressive direction.

6:30

And we would not necessarily represent people

6:32

whose aims we didn't agree with.

6:35

So with that for example the ACLU would represent

6:37

not to its discredit, but you know not the neo-Nazi

6:40

or monitor a march through Skokie.

6:46

It wasn't that person shouldn't be defended

6:47

or the first amendment shouldn't be defended in that case

6:50

it's just not the work I wanted to do

6:52

coming out of law school,

6:53

it's not the work CCR was founded for.

6:54

So the people we would represent were,

6:57

the day I got to the Center we represented,

6:59

I represented people in the Attica rebellion in 1971.

7:01

We represented Vietnam war soldiers

7:05

who were resisting the war in all kinds of ways.

7:09

We represented all kinds of,

7:13

all the Puerto Rican liberation movement in this country

7:16

ranging from Puerto Rican Socialist Party

7:19

to the alleged people in what was called the FALN.

7:21

So a wide variety of really political groups

7:25

believing the lawyer's role was essentially

7:28

to help political groups that were trying

7:32

to make social change, believing that social change

7:34

doesn't come through the courts

7:36

but comes through people on the streets.

7:38

And that's where we came from.

7:40

Guantanamo represents something different for us

7:42

and that made it difficult.

7:45

-

[Male Interviewer] While we get to Guantanamo

7:47

were you thinking,

7:49

when you saw the planes crash into the buildings

7:51

did you think they were cases coming out of this?

7:55

Did you think that CCR might be involved

7:57

and you know at that point?

7:59

-

No, not at that point.

8:02

I had no idea what was really going on there.

8:03

I mean, none.

8:05

I mean really none.

8:07

I mean, the first cases I said came in

8:08

were with the Muslim pickups

8:11

which some of those cases are still going on.

8:12

-

[Male Interviewer] And what do you think or did you feel

8:15

CCR should get involved in that

8:16

and you thought that's all that was going happen?

8:17

-

Well there was a lot going on very rapidly I mean,

8:20

you know you have a sequence of events

8:23

you have the pickups, you have the then the fingerprinting

8:24

of all non-citizen males from 19 or 18 countries,

8:27

big pens being set up, you had the Patriot Act

8:32

passed within six weeks,

8:35

you know with hundreds of page Act with no one reading it.

8:37

So you had a series of events before the November 13th,

8:39

military order that I, in my view lead, led to Guantanamo.

8:45

-

[Male Interviewer] And were you ready to go on board?

8:50

And were you looking at pretty soon CCR

8:53

was gonna have to stop defending these people?

8:54

-

Well you know CCR wasn't set up

8:58

really as a defense counsel organization,

8:59

we don't, we didn't have criminal defense attorneys.

9:02

So we never thought of ourselves

9:05

as criminal defense attorneys.

9:06

Some of our founders had been criminal defense attorneys,

9:08

some of us could do it,

9:11

but it's not what we founded ourselves as.

9:13

So we saw ourselves as Patriot Act,

9:14

challenging provisions of the Patriot Act

9:19

including the broadening wiretap provision,

9:20

the definition of terrorism, things like that

9:23

national security letters in the Patriot Act

9:26

we found ourselves wanting to represent the people

9:28

in the prisons throughout the country

9:30

who were being treated as terrorists,

9:32

who were being beaten and we have actually recovered

9:34

judgments on behalf of a number of those people

9:37

who subsequently were deported many of them,

9:39

but we did, we were able to.

9:41

So our, we never saw ourselves as actually

9:43

representing someone who was going to be indicted

9:46

for conspiracy to fly a plane into the World Trade Center.

9:48

That was not what we saw.

9:53

And we certainly nothing about Guantanamo happened

9:54

until the earliest note about Guantanamo was late December.

9:57

I mean we had an earlier military order

10:01

which is the key moment for the Center,

10:04

but we didn't know about Guantanamo until later.

10:05

-

[Male Interviewer] That November 13th order,

10:11

why was that important to you?

10:14

-

Yeah, I think that was for me

10:16

and I was already even before that order

10:18

I had written an article called I think "Fortress America"

10:20

or something about, you know each of these issues

10:24

that we've just discussed.

10:27

The Patriot Act and wire tapping and the roundups.

10:28

I hadn't entered the military order was November 13th, 2001.

10:32

And so the first notice I had of it really was November 14th

10:36

picked up the paper and there it was and I went to the,

10:40

I read it and I went to the office I said,

10:44

let's, we're gonna have to do something about this

10:46

and the key things in the act just really stuck out

10:48

one it was called at that point,

10:52

it was called Military Order Number One.

10:54

So what do you say to yourself

10:56

that they're issuing a military order

10:57

after a yes, a heinous attack on the World Trade Center.

10:59

But to call it a military order

11:04

which meant essentially that the country is being taken over

11:06

by the military and the president's looking at himself

11:09

as commander-in-chief not as the civilian president

11:12

although he of course has both functions

11:16

but for this purpose just looking at himself for that.

11:17

So that's always, it remains shocking to me today.

11:20

It's now called Executive Order Number One

11:22

or whatever it's called

11:24

but it originally said Military Order Number One.

11:25

And underneath that of course it had a couple of provisions

11:28

some which weren't as noticeable as the others.

11:31

It's interesting.

11:33

The first thing people notice of course is the abolition

11:34

of habeas corpus.

11:36

That's what I noticed at least.

11:37

The taking away of person's right to go into court

11:39

and challenge their detention, which has every,

11:43

I mean if you go to law school for anything

11:47

that's one you learn.

11:49

That this is fundamental,

11:50

it came out of, you know, England out of it goes back to,

11:51

you know, conceivably to 1066 or 10,

11:54

what's the year of the Magna Carta 1215,

11:58

1215 is time immemorial how could I forget it?

12:01

But anyway, it goes back to the Magna Carta

12:03

and then on through a series of challenges

12:05

that happened during that period.

12:09

So that's fundamental and of course it followed

12:10

interestingly enough the Roosevelt Order

12:12

during the Second World War.

12:15

But of course parts of that Roosevelt Order were later-

12:17

-

[Male Interviewer] Could you tell us

12:20

what the Roosevelt was, what you mean by that?

12:20

-

The Roosevelt, there was a Roosevelt Order issued

12:23

I think after the Nazi saboteurs came into the country

12:25

about how to try them.

12:30

And I guess the administration,

12:32

even though there'd been many intervening events

12:34

between 19 whatever year that was, it was,

12:36

I forgot what year it was, but in the 40s

12:39

and today including the new Geneva Convention,

12:41

they just copied it.

12:44

And even though some parts of that order

12:45

had been held illegal they just copied it and said,

12:47

we're gonna do it that way.

12:50

Anyway so the lack of habeas corpus.

12:51

And to me and what I said then

12:53

is when you don't have habeas corpus

12:56

you essentially have the trappings of a police state.

12:57

So a police state is one in which the executive

13:00

can take a person by the scruff of his neck

13:02

and toss him into prison and never hear from them again,

13:05

never give them a chance to go to court

13:07

and make the decision totally as an executive decision.

13:09

Yes, you can do that for 24 hours,

13:13

you can do it for 48 hours,

13:14

sometimes you can do it for three days,

13:16

but can you do it indefinitely or forever?

13:18

So in my view, that's the idea

13:20

that you can test your detention in a court

13:22

is a critical democratic right

13:24

and it comes out of our structure of government

13:27

but it is a critical democratic right.

13:30

The other two provisions, which were,

13:33

the most noticeable one, the one that got the most attention

13:37

at that moment was the military commissions.

13:39

And that was a huge issue in the country actually

13:43

in fact even as I recall the times

13:46

right one guy who recently died

13:48

came out against the way that was provisioned.

13:50

And that's the one that normally there's two sets of,

13:54

there's two ways to try people.

13:56

There's a regular criminal trial,

13:58

or there's a military court-martial

14:01

and both have a set of rules,

14:04

they both have all kinds of due process,

14:06

protections, et cetera.

14:09

And then this one order set up what I would call a Third Way

14:10

which is called the military commission,

14:13

it's essentially a rum tribunal.

14:15

It's one in which the rules are made up after the fact,

14:17

after the acts, after the arrest

14:20

and they're made up for the occasion.

14:23

And whenever you have ad hoc rules,

14:24

what you have is of course rules made by

14:27

essentially the prosecutor and the executive

14:30

and then they're very slanted in favor of prosecution.

14:32

And military commissions hadn't been used in the country

14:36

for 60 years, 50 years by then

14:39

again it was the Ex Parte Quirin

14:42

it was a case coming out of the Second World War

14:43

just after the war.

14:46

And there've been a lot of human rights law

14:48

between Ex Parte Quirin and today and a lot of Supreme Court

14:50

and other decisions that made military commissions

14:54

really limited.

14:56

They were already limited then, really limited now.

14:57

So it looked to me like they were first denying

15:00

the writ of habeas corpus,

15:03

then they were setting up if they picked someone up

15:04

a military commission for trying them

15:07

and then of course it had incredibly draconian

15:10

secrecy provisions and that had a death penalty

15:12

and it had execution without a majority

15:16

of the even handpicked military jury.

15:18

So the scenario which wasn't fanciful

15:21

was that people could be picked up,

15:25

tried secretly in the military commission,

15:28

sentenced to execution, executed and tossed off,

15:30

you know some aircraft carrier.

15:34

So essentially it was a completely secret system of justice

15:36

that went against everything certainly

15:41

not just that we've been taught in American law schools

15:44

but everything in international law,

15:46

everything on the Geneva Conventions,

15:47

everything in really I mean,

15:49

you know you could almost say it's time immemorial.

15:51

I mean, it's just was unheard of.

15:53

The provision that was not noticed as much

15:55

was what I would call the indefinite

15:59

preventive detention issue.

16:02

People focused heavily on the trials

16:03

and heavily on habeas as did we at the Center

16:06

although we were aware of the other one

16:08

and what the order actually said is the president

16:10

as commander-in-chief can direct the secretary of defense

16:13

to pick up any non-citizen later applied to citizens

16:16

but any non-citizen anywhere in the world

16:20

and hold them indefinitely forever

16:23

until the president decided they would either go to trial

16:29

or just be held.

16:31

In other words they never had to be tried.

16:32

So even though there's this trial quote trial system

16:34

is a system in which they're held forever.

16:37

So it's a long, it's forever detention without habeas again.

16:40

So you're talking about, I've described it as essentially

16:44

a coup d'etat in America.

16:48

Which is to say it was the complete takeover

16:50

of any kind of due process or judicial system

16:53

or protection of a human being's

16:56

or individual rights by one single person

16:57

and that was the precedent and it just overthrew,

16:59

you know certainly 200 years of our own constitution

17:03

and hundreds of years before then.

17:06

-

[Male Interviewer] What were you thinking

17:08

if that's what you saw that day, what were you thinking?

17:09

-

You know, now it's, unfortunately now today,

17:13

you know some parts of that order have become accepted,

17:16

but then it looked completely outside.

17:19

It still looks that way to me,

17:22

but it then looks so far outside

17:23

that it looked like we just had a dictator

17:26

taking over the country with the military to me.

17:27

It was completely outside of any,

17:30

I mean just the military order part itself

17:31

was outside of anything for me.

17:33

But the military commissions,

17:35

I mean I thought I was living in another world.

17:37

I just had no sense, you know and I'm not a naive person

17:39

about this stuff I'm very skeptical of my government.

17:43

And I just thought it was completely of anything

17:46

I had seen and was utterly, utterly shocked by it.

17:50

Now you have to understand

17:53

the country was utterly shocked by 911 as were we all.

17:54

And you know, I, my guess is it was felt

17:58

that a lot could be gotten through

18:01

by a president who wanted to,

18:02

you know conceivably use 911

18:05

as a means of increasing his own power

18:06

or the power of the executive

18:09

and that shocked to essentially do it

18:12

and that's what I think we saw happening.

18:15

So that means that that was our,

18:17

so that was on the 14th of November.

18:20

And you know we had a legal director there

18:24

a wonderful guy named Bill Goodman, who my age lawyer

18:26

out of Detroit now back in Detroit

18:30

and quite a good, wonderful radical lawyer

18:31

and Bill and I met about it and said,

18:35

we're gonna, we just agreed we're gonna challenge it.

18:37

And remember the times came by maybe the next day

18:40

and they did an interview about it

18:43

and it's still it's in there about saying

18:44

we're gonna find the client to challenge it.

18:46

And we raised it at the Center and, you know, first of all

18:48

there was a big difference for us at the Center

18:52

because the Center represents people

18:53

who it's in general agreement with

18:56

and obviously or not obviously but it seemed at that point

18:59

particularly that the people who were to be picked up

19:03

under this order were not people who stood for the values

19:05

of progressive change that the Center was established for.

19:08

And so that, you know, that became a somewhat

19:11

I wouldn't say controversial would be too strong a word

19:15

but it became an issue.

19:17

And then the second thing was of course

19:19

when you're in a nonprofit, how do you deal with the fact

19:21

you may be very well and we had to assume

19:24

we weren't gonna be representing

19:25

some of the co-conspirators who were involved

19:28

in setting up the plan, assuming it was that

19:30

to fly planes into the World Trade Center.

19:33

And one did we wanna be representing them?

19:37

And secondly, what was gonna happen to our funding

19:40

if we did that? And at the same time we also weren't sure,

19:42

at that point it wasn't representing them in criminal cases.

19:47

At that point the challenge that we had to undertake

19:49

was getting them the right to habeas corpus

19:52

and getting them at least the right to go to a court

19:56

and say you can't pick me up like this

19:59

and challenging the military order.

20:00

It's not clear, well I don't think we drew a public division

20:02

between us representing people as defense counsel or not,

20:06

but certainly I think that was in our minds

20:10

that it wasn't what we were not that I don't think we,

20:12

some people would have objected to that

20:15

I just think that's not what we were thinking.

20:16

We said we're losing fundamental democratic rights.

20:18

The right to habeas is just, you just can't do that

20:21

and this military commission stuff

20:24

and then of course the preventative detention stuff.

20:25

So we decided after some debate we're gonna do it

20:27

and my contribution to the debate was actually interesting.

20:31

Bill Kunstler one of our founders

20:34

the well-known civil rights lawyer

20:36

had written an autobiography before he died on

20:38

the case called the Central Park jogger case.

20:41

That case had come and it was a concerned

20:43

as quote wilding rape in Central Park

20:45

by five or so young black men

20:49

of a white woman in Central Park.

20:52

And everybody assumed they were guilty.

20:55

It took place in the 70s.

20:57

And Donald Trump put a full-page ad in the paper saying

20:58

give them the death penalty and Bill wound up representing

21:01

on his own one of the young men Yusef Salaam.

21:04

And he brought the case to the Center and the Center

21:08

I don't think I was there at the moment,

21:10

but turned down the case.

21:12

Either because we didn't do criminal defense,

21:14

it's not clear or because the guilt

21:16

was just so well established that they weren't gonna do it.

21:17

And Bill writes in his book how disappointed he was

21:21

in the Center at that point

21:24

which he founded not taking this case

21:25

and Bill was ultimately sentenced to contempt on it,

21:27

the kid was a juvenile, so he eventually got out

21:29

at a reasonable age, but of course, you know,

21:33

10 years after bill died the Central Park joggers

21:36

were completely exonerated, false confessions,

21:39

the whole business.

21:41

So I took the pages of Bill's book

21:42

and I circulate it to the staff at the Center

21:44

and to the board probably

21:45

and I said we're not making this mistake again.

21:47

This is even, this is fundamental,

21:51

we have to represent the first people,

21:53

we have to represent and fight this order.

21:57

And so that's how the Center started

21:59

and from that little start, somehow,

22:01

we started to put together a conference call

22:04

around the country because there was a death penalty

22:08

and there still is in Guantanamo,

22:10

for Guantanamo for the violation of the laws forward

22:11

and the way the US has looked at it.

22:15

And so we picked up some death penalty lawyers

22:17

who you know, death penalty lawyers are different

22:20

than the Center.

22:23

I mean, we would represent people on a death penalty

22:24

but they, they don't you know,

22:26

they're the people who you know a guy goes in

22:28

and slaughters a family they're against the death penalty,

22:30

they're gonna represent them, their defense counsel.

22:33

And so for them the issue that came up at the Center

22:35

about the politics of it are not important.

22:38

So they came out, you know and good conference call

22:40

and Joe Margolis was one, Clive Stafford Smith

22:42

who ran the death penalty project in Louisiana

22:46

was the second.

22:48

And those were the, those were the core

22:49

eventually became Joe, Clive and myself at the Center

22:53

were the three earliest

22:59

and then there were people on the side,

23:01

Eric Friedman came in as a habeas expert,

23:02

Tom Wilner came in a few weeks later with the Kuwaitis,

23:05

the conference call consisted of a broader group for awhile,

23:10

people who were expert on the death penalties,

23:13

people from LDF Legal Defense Fund, some other places,

23:14

but ultimately it came down to Joe

23:18

who had criminal experience,

23:21

death penalty experience and habeas,

23:23

Clive who obviously had huge death penalty experience

23:24

and Eric who had huge habeas experience.

23:27

And there were series of meetings

23:30

that started at the Center primarily

23:32

about how to do these cases.

23:34

There wasn't a case yet, we didn't have a case.

23:36

-

[Male Interviewer] So if I'm understanding you

23:39

you brought these other men in that in fact,

23:41

Clive and Joe hadn't really been thinking about this

23:44

and you call them up.

23:47

-

I don't think that's correct no, no.

23:48

I think they had independently been thinking about it.

23:49

And probably when, whoever we brought in

23:52

somehow knew about them thinking about it,

23:55

or they probably read the article in the Times actually.

23:56

Because that came out within a couple of days of the order.

24:00

So, no I think Joe and Clive

24:03

were already on this without us.

24:05

I never knew Joe and Clive, I mean Clive I knew vaguely but,

24:07

no, no I think they were there.

24:09

-

[Male Interviewer] And they left their jobs

24:12

to join with you is that correct?

24:14

-

Well Clive kept this job for a long time

24:15

at the Louisiana Death Penalty Project.

24:17

And Joe who sort of had an independent civil rights

24:20

practice kept that.

24:23

I mean, whatever he did with it

24:25

he had a practice in Minneapolis.

24:26

So he kept going on that and you know,

24:28

the first couple of years were very intense work by,

24:30

you know by that group more or less,

24:34

I mean Clive tended to be less of a,

24:36

Clive doesn't, I don't think, courts are not his thing.

24:38

I mean they're his thing in a way, but not writing briefs.

24:41

Joe likes to write briefs, Joel likes to do all that.

24:44

But Clive lead us really and do a lot of that.

24:47

Joe taking a very important role in that.

24:51

You know Clive's a trial guy

24:55

and a very good, I mean amazing we all,

24:57

so we all learned a lot and then we had

24:58

you know a group of experts and we didn't have a client.

25:00

So if you want me to talk about that I can.

25:05

-

[Male Interviewer] I do so you saw yourself

25:06

creating a corps thinking your client

25:08

would be coming in your door soon.

25:10

I mean essentially that's-

25:13

-

Right we got out the word we put out the Times piece

25:14

and some other things and, you know we didn't know,

25:17

we had no idea who was gonna be picked up first.

25:20

We didn't know, we thought it would probably wind up more

25:23

as representation in front of a military commission

25:26

and maybe on a habeas maybe we didn't,

25:29

you know, we weren't really focused on preventive detention

25:32

if that's what they call it or whatever

25:34

then it wasn't called that in the order

25:36

but then the long-term detention without trial.

25:37

-

[Male Interviewer] You we're preparing for something

25:42

and you had this corps.

25:44

-

Right and we started, when we read the cases

25:45

we started off with the,

25:47

you know when we had some of the people on the phone

25:49

they said you don't have a chance.

25:50

I mean you read Eisentrager you don't have a chance.

25:51

I mean you can read it, it's a very broad case

25:53

and we all had 18 different ways to talk about it,

25:55

but it's a strong case against us.

25:58

And so Eisentrager was very bad,

26:02

I mean Quirin wasn't great,

26:04

so we and you have an environment that was very bad.

26:07

I mean, you know I mean, you know when we got out the word

26:13

I mean, I don't know whether I started doing interviews

26:15

before we had a client or after,

26:17

but certainly with within a few weeks

26:20

of our getting a client

26:22

or you know between that period of November

26:24

and January 11th when Guantanamo opened of 2002,

26:26

I had hundreds of Hayden Miles I mean literally hundreds.

26:30

Oh no it was like extreme,

26:34

you know take your children to Afghanistan

26:36

and let the Taliban eat them.

26:42

I mean, you know or go be a guard yourself

26:44

whatever it is there were just hundreds.

26:46

Oh sure, sure, tons of it, hundreds of them.

26:49

And every, within every minute of a TV appearance

26:54

there was you know, I would have a Blackberry with me

26:58

and there'd be emails coming in just saying,

27:00

you know kill you and all this kind of stuff.

27:03

So, no it was a period in the country

27:05

that this was a real uphill battle.

27:07

And an interesting part of this is of course

27:09

we tried to get other human rights groups.

27:12

I mean that's why I sort of mentioned

27:14

the death penalty guys.

27:15

Other human rights groups wouldn't touch this thing.

27:16

This is part of a and it's become public now

27:18

so I don't mind talking about it

27:20

but we tried to get the ACLU and they wouldn't do it.

27:22

And that became a big controversy among the board

27:24

and others at the ACLU.

27:27

And I remember going to a meeting with a friend of mine

27:28

from the ACLU and we had a big audience up at Columbia

27:31

maybe a year after the cases.

27:33

And we talked about why they didn't take it

27:35

and they said there were two reasons,

27:37

They said we thought we were gonna create bad precedent

27:38

because there was no way you could win it

27:41

and secondly our funding.

27:43

And I remember a Muslim woman getting up and saying,

27:45

you know thank God for you guys

27:48

because while our doors are being torn down

27:50

they're worried about bad precedent.

27:52

I mean ACLU was terrific now it's as good

27:54

or aggressive as we are,

27:56

but they had an early rough period on this,

27:58

you know partly conceivably Anthony was new,

28:00

he was only there a few months

28:03

and you know it was not so easy to take these cases.

28:05

So if I feel really good about one decision

28:08

the Center made it was that one, but no other groups,

28:10

I forgot who else we contacted would come

28:14

and so we got death penalty lawyers,

28:17

which you know you would expect.

28:19

-

[Male Interviewer] Did you feel isolated in the community?

28:21

So did you feel like you, you know you had a mission

28:23

and you were just gonna-

28:26

-

Well we were isolated, we were isolated

28:27

I think probably we got, no, I'm not saying we lost,

28:30

we may have lost some funding in the beginning,

28:35

we got certainly phone calls about it from funders.

28:37

You know compared to where we started

28:43

to where it's become today is, you know night and day,

28:44

it's become you know it's now like it's

28:47

big firm work now you know.

28:50

-

[Male Interviewer] I wanna go into how you got involved

28:52

in the actual Guantanamo litigation

28:54

but just as an aside that John Walker Lindh's family

28:56

come to you at all?

28:59

-

No John was going on right during that period.

29:00

-

[Male Interviewer] I know, I'm just wondering why

29:03

they didn't go to you.

29:05

-

You know, I don't know they, well they had Brosnahan

29:06

out in California who's you know,

29:08

he's one of the most important California attorneys,

29:11

they're a California family so,

29:14

you know I presume and they also probably

29:17

wanted to play it straighter than the Center.

29:18

The Center is a left-wing organization

29:21

so I'm not sure that would have wanted

29:23

to come to the Center.

29:25

-

[Male Interviewer] So could you go on Michael

29:28

and tell us then how you moved into Guantanamo then.

29:29

-

I think there were two sets of cases coming.

29:33

The first case that we got was David Hicks from Australia.

29:37

And we read in the paper one day,

29:45

I don't remember what day, whether it was late December,

29:49

that he was picked up

29:53

and you know they had a bad picture of him

29:54

with a rocket launcher on a shoulder and he was picked up

29:56

and I mean that picture was from Afghanistan,

29:59

from Bosnia when he was actually fighting

30:01

on the same side as the US.

30:04

But it was a bad picture and they picked it

30:06

and he was known as I guess he was called a Turkey skinner

30:09

or something kangaroo skinner.

30:12

So we see this guy David Hicks, we know nothing about him

30:15

except he's Australian,

30:19

but they mentioned the name of his attorney,

30:21

I have to cut the name I know him really well,

30:24

the guy in Australia a good friend of mine.

30:27

Now he's a friend of mine but, anyway I'll get it.

30:29

Anyway so I see the name of the attorney in the newspaper

30:31

and I just I find his address in Melbourne

30:35

and I just give him a ring

30:39

and I say we'd like to represent David Hicks.

30:40

I mean I talked to Joe and say

30:42

it's like Joe I'm gonna call him

30:43

and I would to represent Hicks.

30:44

And he asks us who we are and what we do

30:47

and what we're planning to do on habeas

30:50

and all this kinda stuff.

30:51

And I explained it to him and everything like that

30:53

and then he, you know the Center has by that point

30:55

is that I had decent reputation on this kinda work.

30:57

So he agrees basically that we can represent

31:01

Hicks on a habeas case.

31:08

So that's the first case.

31:10

Now, at that point we're still thinking

31:12

I don't know how much detail you want,

31:14

we're still thinking that Hicks is held

31:15

under the Military Order or Executive Order,

31:17

Military Order Number One

31:20

and they actually sent a note to the,

31:22

Americans had sent a note to the Australian Embassy

31:24

that they had David Hicks an Australian citizen

31:30

and he was being held under Military Order Number One.

31:32

We drafted the papers

31:35

as if it was under Military Order Number One,

31:36

it was in the side eventually they just said, no, no

31:38

forget about the military order

31:41

and that's of course why he got Americans picked up

31:43

and everything this is just under the president's power

31:45

to fight a war I mean period.

31:48

This is not about orders or anything,

31:50

the president has inherent constitutional power

31:53

to pick up you know enemy combatants,

31:55

as whatever they call them at that point

31:57

but enemy combatants.

31:59

So that was David and that was,

32:01

so that would be January 11th he was taking to Guantanamo

32:03

so within a few days of that we were representing David.

32:06

And then Clive actually because of his English connections,

32:09

his English lawyers as well as American

32:13

had a couple of other English people

32:16

picked up very soon thereafter which were Rasul and-

32:17

-

[Male Interviewer] Asif

32:23

-

Asif right, they were three of them,

32:24

right three of them picked up.

32:25

And so that was the beginning of the case.

32:28

And we drafted, you know we were thinking of how to draft

32:31

the habeas papers and what to do about it

32:34

and you know we had all kinds, I don't know,

32:36

illegally you're interested in all this stuff,

32:39

but you know these questions

32:41

about whether you make it a habeas

32:42

or whether you make it as Tom said,

32:43

we don't wanna make it a habeas

32:45

we wanna make a straight direct litigation

32:46

and to what extent international law would come in

32:48

and Geneva and you know that kind of thing.

32:51

And because that was my area more was Geneva

32:54

and arbitrary detention and all that so

32:57

I probably drafted that part and how we eventually

32:59

and who we decided would be lead plaintiff of course

33:02

we didn't want, we I don't know who but we,

33:04

I'm tending to be less worried about this

33:07

but Hicks was not the name plaintiff

33:09

that's why it's called Rasul,

33:10

because we didn't want a picture of a guy

33:12

with a rocket launcher as the lead plaintiff.

33:14

So there were all kinds of decisions made like that

33:16

and one interesting part of that,

33:20

just to jumping in for a second we could not,

33:23

I had trouble getting a, we had a file in Washington

33:25

which is where you can file these kinda cases.

33:28

There were lots of little issues like we couldn't,

33:32

we didn't know, David Hicks never knew anything about us,

33:34

we couldn't contact him,

33:36

we weren't allowed to communicate.

33:37

He's at Guantanamo with no idea,

33:39

so we represent his father who is called the next friend

33:41

you're allowed to do that in habeas.

33:43

But so he never knew about the litigation

33:45

unless it got snuck to him somehow by a guard

33:47

or something we don't think he did.

33:49

So we have a father and then we have to decide

33:52

what was the point I wanted to make there,

33:56

anyway so that, so we had to get a local counsel

33:59

to file in Washington.

34:01

Joe is not a local counsel,

34:01

I'm not a local counsel and neither is Clive.

34:03

And so I try and get a local counsel

34:05

from the National Lawyers Guild.

34:08

I didn't try a lot of people

34:09

but I tried a few and I couldn't get one.

34:10

It was because it was so, the case was so controversial.

34:12

And that's, you know people are afraid

34:15

of attracting all this negative publicity.

34:17

And finally, Joe knew somebody

34:20

I think Barry Boss was his name

34:21

was sort of straight criminal lawyer, good one.

34:22

We went down and we did that.

34:25

But we also had, during this period

34:27

is when Tom Wilner and Sherman Sterling

34:28

also got involved which you know in retrospect

34:32

is quite remarkable.

34:35

I mean you know it was the Kuwaitis

34:36

and maybe there were all kinds of things,

34:39

you know connections because of,

34:40

you know Tom's representation of,

34:42

I think he represented either OPEC or something

34:45

some oil stuff at some point so maybe there was some reason

34:47

but it was not easy for Tom I would not say that at all.

34:51

I think you know it was probably a quite a courageous act

34:55

in that period.

34:58

And we had our first meeting that Joe and I and Clive

35:00

and I don't know who else came down

35:04

but the three of us and maybe Eric

35:05

went down to their office in Washington

35:07

and of course you know my office is okay

35:09

I mean it's a linoleum you know carpet

35:11

and you know low ceilings

35:13

and you know Celotex or whatever they call it.

35:16

Their office of course is all marble

35:19

from the first minute you get in.

35:20

And they're sitting there with Tom

35:22

and another couple of lawyers

35:24

and about five young lawyers in a big conference room

35:26

and here's, you know Clive look scruffy completely,

35:29

Joe looks a little better and I look, you know in between.

35:32

And you know and they obviously didn't know anything

35:37

about this area at all.

35:39

Nothing, nothing about habeas,

35:41

nothing about the Alien Tort Statute,

35:42

nothing about international law, nothing about Geneva

35:44

and so they really needed us.

35:46

I mean, they had no idea there's some,

35:49

I mean Tom is smart enough and aggressive enough

35:53

he was gonna figure it out, but no idea.

35:55

So it turned out to be actually a very good meeting.

35:57

I mean, partly 'cause they really just tried to

36:00

you know pump us for all our information

36:03

and of course there was this issue about the fact

36:05

whether you could really bring habeas

36:07

after Eisentrager and that's when Tom

36:09

came up with this theory I'll call it something else.

36:11

I mean, I think Tom would make that decision

36:13

probably no matter what right now,

36:18

but I thought it was ridiculous.

36:20

I mean, I'm an experienced litigator

36:21

and the idea that you think you could trick the court

36:23

by putting a different label on the papers

36:25

I thought it was just and then of course,

36:27

as soon as the oral argument happened

36:29

it was over in like two seconds.

36:30

But it was an idea and why not there're two papers?

36:32

And we decided to file separately

36:35

although they were gonna be joint cases and-

36:37

-

[Male Interviewer] What was the mood among all of you?

36:42

What kinda, what was the mood? Was it upbeat?

36:45

Was it just serious lawyering?

36:46

What were people thinking that early post-911

36:48

you know litigation?

36:52

-

It was, I think, I don't, you know it's interesting

36:53

what Tom felt might be different than what others felt.

36:56

Certainly, I think most of us felt was hopeless.

36:59

Most of us thought that there was no way

37:03

certainly the district court judge

37:08

was gonna distinguish Eisentrager.

37:10

And particularly a circuit judge is unlikely

37:13

and the Supreme Court I think most people

37:17

were very pessimistic.

37:18

I don't, you know i wanna speak for Joe

37:20

who was more optimistic once we,

37:22

on the cert. grant than I was.

37:24

And Tom I, Tom just saw this thing,

37:27

you know as sort of black and white,

37:30

how did they mean they can't have been an attorney?

37:31

You know this is like crazy.

37:32

So I probably coming, that I think, to that extent

37:34

my long political experience probably was not helpful.

37:39

That it probably made me more cynical

37:42

of ever getting anywhere in this case

37:44

than perhaps Joe or Tom, it's possible I don't know.

37:47

-

[Male Interviewer] If you thought it is hopeless

37:51

given your belief in the American system

37:53

and the rule of law and you so fervent about it,

37:55

what does that mean to you that at that point

37:59

you're thinking, you know you said earlier

38:01

that you thought maybe

38:03

there was a military dictatorship forming

38:04

with this November 13th order.

38:06

I mean is that still kind of the mood going on?

38:09

-

I mean I think things have fundamentally changed

38:14

since 911.

38:16

I mean, I think, you know I think certain democratic rights

38:17

have been destroyed and I don't see them coming back.

38:22

I mean, the idea that we can treat it as an act of war,

38:26

that we can use preventive detention,

38:30

that we can set up military commissions,

38:32

I find it abominable, I can't even like,

38:34

I don't even, I can't,

38:36

I don't even know what to say about it.

38:38

I can't and I don't understand

38:39

how it's been allowed to continue.

38:42

I just it's completely alien to me

38:44

and I don't and with no purpose.

38:48

So I really feel, you know you can put it

38:50

into a broader analysis of declining empire

38:52

and all this, but whatever the analysis is,

38:54

something has changed fundamentally

38:57

about our judicial system.

38:59

And, you know I always used to mouth

39:01

and I don't know if it'll be true or not

39:02

but they're reading about the Irish

39:04

you know in the Diplock courts and all that

39:05

and Helena Kennedy stuff, you know to what extent

39:07

that will then creep into the regular system of justice

39:10

we have whether and you know so if you combine

39:13

a preventative detention military commission's,

39:16

you know state secrets, you know these all torture

39:19

which has been allowed to flourish without,

39:24

I mean you've talked about a real significant,

39:26

a fundamental change in American liberties

39:28

and not one that will quote pendulum swing back,

39:31

it's not happening.

39:35

You have Obama now, nothing is sworn at all

39:36

and I you know maybe do we wait 30 years

39:39

like in Pinochet I don't know.

39:42

And if you look at Garzon in Spain it's still from the,

39:44

anyway but the point is that I think I would say

39:47

that there's been a fundamental shift.

39:49

On the other hand the fact that we were able to

39:52

keep a toehold of habeas is quite significant.

39:55

I mean I, that was 2000, Boumediene was 2000,

39:58

I mean Rasul was 2004 and that's only,

40:01

you know roughly what two and a half years afterwards.

40:05

And that was significant.

40:09

-

[Male Interviewer] Well, going back to the spring of '02

40:11

then it sounds to me like you were still determined

40:13

to go forward and even if you were thinking

40:16

there was a sea change going on

40:22

you were gonna fight for, you know for what you believe,

40:23

you know shouldn't be happening.

40:27

-

Yeah but I still think the role of progressive lawyers

40:28

is to fight for fundamental democratic rights.

40:30

I mean, that's one of the,

40:33

I mean there's a number of aspects of it

40:35

but that's one of them.

40:37

And you use all the legal means you can.

40:38

I mean what that's you try every niche.

40:43

I mean you try, the first thing we did actually in,

40:44

by February of 2002 so we represented Rasul,

40:47

we represented, you know Hicks, the others,

40:51

we filed with the Inter-American Human Rights Commission

40:54

because we knew we had a problem,

40:57

because we knew we had a big problem with Eisentrager.

40:59

And we filed at the Inter-American Human Rights Commission

41:02

for preliminary, for precautionary measures.

41:03

And we got an incredibly good ruling

41:06

on roughly March 12th, 2002.

41:08

Saying, this is like to me ringing testimony of,

41:11

ringing a statement.

41:15

Every human being is a person under law,

41:16

every single person has to have a legal status,

41:18

every single person has to have a body of rights

41:21

attached to that legal status.

41:23

And we basically said we urge the demand the United States

41:25

hold hearings immediately to determine the legal status

41:28

of the people at Guantanamo.

41:32

And I don't remember the famous German philosopher

41:33

but who talks about legal status or not

41:37

and the idea that you could have a group of human beings

41:40

with no legal status and no legal protections

41:45

you might as well be talking about you know,

41:50

whatever you know cave men or something.

41:52

I mean, it goes back and so that's what was at stake.

41:54

And to me, you know in some way we've lost

41:58

a lot of those issues, we've, it's not as bad

42:00

as it was that day, it's worse in some way

42:03

'cause I think it's now dug deeper

42:05

into the soul of the society

42:07

that it's okay to have preventive detention

42:09

or okay to leave people at Guantanamo that are innocent.

42:11

You know or okay to have military commissions.

42:14

But on the other hand, you at least have a right

42:17

to get those people into courts

42:18

so they're not disappeared people.

42:19

So you've changed some of it

42:21

although you know the have Bagram sitting out there

42:22

and other places.

42:24

But it's still, it's chilling stuff.

42:26

-

[Male Interviewer] Could you tell us

42:29

what the Eisentrager said

42:30

because I think people that are watching

42:32

might not know and before you do that,

42:34

I just need to make a quick.

42:36

-

Okay.

42:37

-

[Male Interviewer] Yeah so let's talk about that,

42:39

okay we're rolling.

42:41

So could you just tell us what Eisentrager is about?

42:42

So people who are watching this can understand the context.

42:45

-

I don't think I wanna say it.

42:48

Eisentrager concerned Germans who were working in China

42:56

after the Armistice with Germany was agreed to.

43:01

And they were there for looked at

43:06

as people who were violating the laws of war.

43:09

And they were put on trial by the United States in China

43:12

on the grounds that they were essentially war criminals

43:16

of some sort.

43:20

And the case, the people who represented,

43:21

the people who represented the Germans filed a case

43:27

with the Supreme Court eventually

43:30

and the issue they claimed

43:32

was that they had a right of habeas corpus

43:35

the right to test their detention in the Supreme Court

43:37

because they had various legal reasons

43:40

why either they claimed it was not a war crime

43:41

was the main one or some others.

43:43

And the Supreme Court in relatively what I would say today

43:46

is careless language but at that time

43:48

was looked at as the law,

43:50

the Supreme Court said that an enemy alien,

43:53

I would say these people were aliens

43:56

and there were quote enemies of the United States,

43:58

an enemy alien has no right to go into an American court

44:00

and litigate his status

44:04

particularly the right of habeas corpus.

44:06

So if you look at the case in a certain way,

44:08

which is relatively broadly but it has language

44:11

like I'm saying that it meant that if you were picked up

44:15

overseas by the United States,

44:18

tried in a military commission

44:20

and you filed a writ of habeas corpus

44:23

to get your case reviewed in the Supreme Court.

44:25

Just don't worry about the technical terms

44:28

to get your reviewed in the Supreme Court

44:30

the Supreme Court said nope the door is closed

44:32

to anybody who is an enemy alien of the United States.

44:35

So it's a very broad ruling.

44:39

So if you apply it to Guantanamo people,

44:40

David Hicks, he's picked up outside the United States

44:43

he's considered by the United States

44:47

and that's an important, this is an important distinction

44:49

as an enemy alien, if files a writ of habeas corpus,

44:51

the government sites Eisentrager

44:55

and says the doors to the courthouse are closed period.

44:56

So that case was the main part of the litigation

45:00

for the first couple of years.

45:05

And getting how to distinguish that case,

45:08

how to get overcome it and of course it's hard

45:10

to get the court to say we are overruling another case,

45:14

they always have to find distinctions.

45:18

Without going into it there was many distinctions

45:20

of course lawyers is confined distinctions in anything

45:22

but these were actually relevant distinctions.

45:24

-

[Male Interviewer] So can you take this a little further

45:27

as to how did CCR then hired additional lawyers

45:28

or what CCR did next in terms of going forward

45:33

with these cases?

45:37

-

Well it depends on what period you wanna bring us up to.

45:39

-

[Male Interviewer] The one after your meeting

45:42

with Tom Wilner.

45:43

-

Oh, we didn't need additional lawyers at that point.

45:44

At that point the case is not so big.

45:47

I mean, you know, you had me,

45:48

you had a woman named Barbara Olshansky at my office.

45:50

Then she didn't get involved probably

45:53

until the Court of Appeals but you know you have a habeas,

45:55

there's not a lot going on, you have some research,

45:58

you have a couple of people at the Center, Joe,

46:00

you have you know Clive a little bit,

46:02

Eric was an expert on habeas

46:04

and it's and I had Beth Stevens I think

46:06

professor at Rutgers helped me

46:08

on some of the international law stuff, arbitrary detention.

46:09

I forgot who we consulted possibly on Geneva,

46:13

I think I probably was the person on Geneva at that point

46:15

although my knowledge today is much less

46:18

than some other people.

46:20

So we put together a habeas case and some briefs.

46:22

So it wasn't, really the real expansion of these cases

46:26

started happening after Boumediene,

46:29

I mean, after Rasul after 2004.

46:31

Before then, you know eventually picked up

46:34

you know I think both Heifetz and Gita were at,

46:37

you know it was at the New Jersey firm.

46:41

And so they started I forgot how, what,

46:45

when they started, well Gita may have started early

46:48

'cause she was a friend of Joe's

46:51

and worked at the Center and for Joe

46:52

and so I think Gita may have come in a bit earlier,

46:55

you know, quite early.

46:58

-

[Male Interviewer] So there was a very small

46:59

core of attorneys who were involved in these cases

47:01

and in the litigation.

47:03

-

It was tiny in the beginning, yeah there were-

47:05

-

[Male Interviewer] 'Cause you can I think.

47:08

-

Oh I think, you know, I may not be remembering

47:09

of any perfectly and there were some lawyers in England

47:12

who Clive knew but they were,

47:14

you know and eventually by the Supreme Court

47:17

then you had a bigger court, it wasn't huge,

47:19

but the Supreme Court in Rasul,

47:21

but then you had people Wishnie they doing a habeas brief

47:23

and you know, you had experts in certain areas

47:26

doing history of habeas and all this other stuff

47:29

but certainly it was quite, quite small going up.

47:31

And there was, you know the courtrooms weren't filled

47:36

in the beginning.

47:38

You know so and so the Center didn't at that point

47:41

didn't really need much help.

47:45

It was the explosion happened after,

47:46

really after 2000 and June, 2004.

47:48

-

[Male Interviewer] So when the, when your cases

47:50

were granted cert. in the fall of 2003,

47:52

that change your mood, attitude at all?

47:55

-

Well you know Joe and I remember we had dinner one night

47:58

on some city we were giving this speech

48:01

and I was really pessimistic.

48:03

I couldn't, I mean I said it has all the attributes

48:05

of a case the court shouldn't take.

48:09

It's during a court what the government refers to as war,

48:11

it is still going on, it's two and a half years afterwards,

48:14

you're in the face of Eisentrager,

48:17

you've lost in the Court of Appeals,

48:19

you have a relatively a better court then

48:21

than we have today, but you know you still have a moderate

48:23

to conservative court and you have guys

48:27

sitting at Guantanamo.

48:30

I mean, so you'll have both on as a textual matter,

48:32

as a political matter, why would they touch this case?

48:38

And I tried to recall what happened during the Japanese

48:43

concentration camp cases.

48:49

And as I recall, they didn't do much during that period.

48:51

It wasn't until afterwards that they really exonerated

48:55

or they really went after the issue.

48:58

So I in my own mind I compared it to that

49:00

and I said and then we had trouble always thinking

49:02

there was one issue that we still

49:05

don't have a real answer for which is,

49:06

you know there were 450,000 German prisoners of war

49:09

in the United States during the Second World War

49:12

or some number like that.

49:14

And we kept asking ourselves, did they file habeas corpus?

49:16

What if they picked up some little Jewish shopkeeper

49:19

in Berlin as a Nazi soldier and brought him here

49:21

would never write the habeas, but we couldn't find one.

49:24

I mean they may have filed them

49:27

but we couldn't find any that were decided.

49:28

So we're sitting there, well, what do,

49:31

this has never happened,

49:32

what's gonna happen here?

49:34

And of course then tactically

49:35

maybe you've already talked about people with Amsterdam

49:37

and when we met with him to work out our strategy

49:39

in the Supreme Court, but that's a separate thing.

49:41

But in any case at this point I was pessimistic.

49:44

Partly I was pessimistic I think

49:49

while we win a fair number of cases at the Center

49:52

we do so many cases that take on the edge politically

49:54

and legally that we lose a lot.

49:58

And I think Jules Lobel and I filed probably 14 cases

50:00

against various wars in Central America

50:04

and lost every one of them.

50:06

And Jules has a book even called "Success Without Victory,"

50:08

talking about using the law

50:12

as a means of raising consciousness whatever.

50:13

So I was pessimistic about it during that period

50:17

and Joe, I got to talk to Joe but he was certainly

50:21

you know much more optimistic than I was about it

50:25

and of course he was right.

50:27

-

[Male Interviewer] Do you think if you lost

50:30

in the Supreme Court it would be worse?

50:31

-

If we, if they had denied cert.?

50:34

-

[Male Interviewer] Or even if you had gone

50:36

to the Supreme Court and lost in the Supreme Court both.

50:38

-

Well my theory has always been, I'm not,

50:41

you know when we talked about why the ACLU

50:44

didn't take these cases for bad precedent

50:46

I generally disregard that as an issue.

50:48

Because I think my view is if you have clients

50:51

who need to test their detention,

50:53

you have to test it in every way

50:56

and you can't worry about creating a bad precedent

50:58

it's human freedom that's at stake

51:00

and you can't mess around.

51:01

So I don't, I rarely think about precedent

51:03

and I rarely think it's gonna make it worse.

51:07

So I, that would almost never be an issue for me.

51:10

It's an issue for some other lawyers, although less so,

51:12

you know the ACLU has come a long way on that issue.

51:15

I mean look at the cases they brought,

51:18

they brought a case against the Rumsfeld in the end,

51:19

the criminal, attempt to criminal prosecution.

51:22

You know were in a civil certainly.

51:25

So, you know people have come,

51:28

I think what happened in the Bush period

51:30

is people began to have a very different view

51:32

of how to think about litigating these legal issues.

51:34

Because it was and it was just going so far beyond

51:39

anything we had experienced that people said

51:42

we just have to do this.

51:45

We have to use every form we can.

51:47

-

[Male Interviewer] Did you do any public speaking

51:49

during that time too to try to raise consciousness

51:51

that you just mentioned that I mean,

51:53

since you are a public speaker?

51:56

-

I think during this period

51:57

I was probably a very active public speaker.

51:58

I tended certainly at this period to be less,

52:00

although in the beginning I was very involved

52:03

in the legal issues but during the,

52:05

up through the Supreme Court

52:06

but after that I became much less involved.

52:07

But I was a very active public speaker on this issue

52:10

everywhere and writer as well.

52:13

-

[Male Interviewer] Did you feel a need to do that

52:16

even more than you usually do?

52:18

-

Yes, I, this was really an issue

52:19

we had to go out there on.

52:21

You know one thing that's just an aspect of this

52:22

one interesting part is whether any of us realized

52:24

that torture was going on during this period.

52:27

And again I don't think we did.

52:29

I mean I think a lesson that was learned

52:33

and again I would have to see what Joe and Tom thinks

52:36

and whether they really remember

52:39

but I remember writing a chapter of a book

52:40

and having read what was happening,

52:42

it was an early couple of pieces in the post

52:45

the things that resulted in the "Taxi to the Dark Side"

52:47

the killings there, the torture killing.

52:49

and having said well, maybe this was going on in Guantanamo

52:52

and then putting in a couple of paragraphs in a book saying

52:54

and there may well be torture going on in Guantanamo

52:56

here's what happened here and they took it out

52:59

because I didn't really have the evidence of it.

53:02

I did interestingly had the first evidence

53:04

'cause I interviewed Rasul they were let out

53:07

before the Supreme Court.

53:09

I interviewed him in February,

53:10

Clive had a conference in England in February, 2002 I think

53:12

where the three came together in a room

53:17

and I was there with, I don't know if Joe was there

53:19

but I was there and Clive was there

53:21

and that was a wonderful thing.

53:23

I mean, they like great, but then they,

53:24

that's when they described, before anything had happened

53:27

about torture they described what had happened to them.

53:30

And it was pretty stunning for me to hear that

53:33

but I think we were naive about it.

53:36

And I think one lesson is that incommunicado detention

53:38

is generally gonna be about torture.

53:41

That's what it's for.

53:43

I mean, why, that's why,

53:45

I mean yeah there may be other reasons

53:46

but the basic reason is you wanna be able

53:47

to mistreat people.

53:49

And that's what this was from the beginning.

53:51

So that was where we were all of us I would say,

53:54

naive although we may have had this undercurrent

53:58

of being upset or uneased because of incommunicado

54:00

detentions but you realize that's what goes on.

54:05

So Joe was at least, the bottom of it is Joe

54:09

was much more optimistic bucketing cert. than I was.

54:11

-

[Male Interviewer] And after the Rasul decision

54:14

was released did your mood, attitude change,

54:16

did you think like maybe this is the end

54:22

and maybe things will go back

54:24

to the way it was before 911?

54:26

-

I mean and what was amazing about the Rasul decision,

54:28

I mean two things one is that

54:30

it was six to three of course

54:32

but secondly, that it was so one-sided really,

54:33

I mean, it was clear we were gonna win

54:41

when we walked out and just as an anecdote

54:44

it was clear we were gonna win by the next week

54:47

because I don't know if you call it happened the next week

54:49

it was either in both Hamdi and Padilla were argued

54:51

the next week and that's when they got the famous question

54:54

from Justice Ginsburg to the acting solicitor

54:57

I forgot his name now but he became a solicitor

55:01

was all out of the blue Justice Ginsburg says,

55:03

you mean to say we can't do anything

55:05

about what's going on at Guantanamo.

55:07

We could have with Hamdi or Padilla whichever one

55:09

or not even in Guantanamo

55:12

and it's not our business,

55:14

and you know he kept saying this is a war

55:15

and then she says what if there's torture going on?

55:17

And there'll be no evidence of torture publicly

55:19

other than the couple of little disregarded pieces

55:22

in the post.

55:25

And then the solicitor says,

55:28

don't worry there's no torture going on,

55:30

nothing like that and then Ginsburg pushed and said,

55:32

well there's a little bit of torture

55:34

and it's run by the executive.

55:35

And he says, there isn't, but in the end

55:37

you have to trust us.

55:39

And he says, trust us and that's either April 23rd

55:40

or whatever the day is of 2002

55:43

and that night CBS puts on the hypocrite photos.

55:46

At that point in my view

55:49

I don't care what the arguments were,

55:50

the cases are over because the court is saying

55:52

you know because they're saying,

55:58

the government is saying trust us

56:00

which is the whole thing that's going on

56:01

from the beginning here

56:03

where Bush is doing whatever he wants

56:04

and then they're saying

56:08

the court you mean if there's torture going on

56:09

we still can't look at this?

56:11

So that was really, I think that that would have,

56:12

had we not, I think we're gonna win anyway,

56:15

but I think that really shifted things

56:17

it's on that issue.

56:21

-

[Male Interviewer] So then with that

56:25

and then with the decision Rasul

56:27

were you feeling more positive

56:29

about the rule of law ultimately in America?

56:32

You think it still could go back to way it was pre-911?

56:35

-

I was hopeful, I certainly was hopeful because,

56:40

you know he quoted, I mean Justice Stevens

56:43

right as I recall now, Justice Stevens,

56:45

he quoted from the dissent in the case called Mezze

56:47

which is not that interesting for the listeners here

56:50

but it's the dissent in which it goes back to

56:52

the Magna Carta and talks about the anathema

56:55

that executive detention is

56:59

which is where we had begun.

57:01

I mean we began with saying you just can't have a system

57:02

of executive detention.

57:05

That's a pretty strong quote.

57:07

I mean to go back and understand

57:08

that this is the basics of our law.

57:10

So we were pretty hopeful on that.

57:13

Now of course the decision was,

57:15

had two different ways of looking at it.

57:17

Was it Guantanamo based or was it habeas based?

57:19

And that ensued another four years of litigation

57:22

until we could get the habeas part out of the thing,

57:24

but or into the thing.

57:27

But sure we were optimistic although,

57:29

you know, I mean Joe was much more optimistic.

57:32

This is where Joe was more optimistic.

57:35

Joe and I had a phone call and Joe said to me,

57:37

Michael we should be moving on to Bagram

57:39

because we're gonna have this place closed

57:41

in a year or two.

57:42

And I said, Joe, I've been against this government too long

57:44

and too often, we're not gonna have this place closed.

57:48

And very quickly you saw how,

57:52

the government didn't react as fast

57:56

as it probably should have considering.

57:58

It took them six weeks to get there

58:01

or four weeks to get themselves together.

58:03

We knew what was going on by that time,

58:04

Joe, all of us did.

58:06

Even our Joe felt much more optimistic than I was.

58:08

I, you know, but to the credit of the team

58:10

and I think again Joe in particular but all of us

58:17

we felt that the main thing that had to happen next

58:21

was to file habeas petitions

58:23

on behalf of every single person at Guantanamo.

58:25

Get them into federal court as fast as possible

58:28

'cause we suspected that the government

58:31

would wanna do some kind of administrative procedure

58:33

in Guantanamo and you know get back finding down there

58:35

with their own sort of people

58:40

and we wanted it up in federal courts.

58:41

And then they would wanna treat it

58:43

if technically they wanna be like as if it's this habeas

58:45

from a state court going up to a federal court

58:48

where the facts are essentially agreed.

58:51

We wanna treat it like a federal habeas period.

58:53

And so there, then there was

58:56

and they were a little slow, but not that slow

58:58

it didn't make any difference

59:00

they are sort of do what they want

59:02

but at that point is when the litigation began to explode

59:03

because by that time we probably had,

59:07

I don't know how many names we had.

59:10

I mean, they're getting names,

59:12

we had filed subsequently filed cases for names

59:13

and everything but we probably had

59:16

I don't know they're at 50 names or a 100 names

59:18

of people at Guantanamo.

59:19

And you know then what would happen is,

59:22

you know the, I don't know, how did we get the names?

59:26

Oh Rasul came, you know, those guys,

59:29

we got names from different people, all kinds of sources

59:30

plus the families would get in touch with us 'cause it was,

59:33

at that point, we put out a call

59:36

to various bar associations at other places

59:37

to get habeas attorneys.

59:40

And of course, most people

59:42

that don't know anything about habeas.

59:43

I mean, most law firms don't have any idea.

59:44

And while it wasn't, I wouldn't say

59:47

it wasn't the easiest thing in the world getting attorneys,

59:48

it wasn't exactly impossible.

59:51

And by and very quickly we had probably a 100 attorneys

59:53

who were willing to represent Guantanamo attorneys

59:56

and then at the Center was looked at

1:00:00

'cause it was the only institution

1:00:02

it was looked at as the core place to organize it.

1:00:03

And that's when the Center worked with,

1:00:06

working again with Joe and Clive and et cetera

1:00:07

began trainings of habeas attorneys, set up the network,

1:00:10

that's when the Center started to hire people,

1:00:14

that's when probably the first grant came into the Center

1:00:16

which was Ford Foundation.

1:00:19

The Center would never normally have gotten money from Ford

1:00:21

or we did for our voting rights work but not generally.

1:00:23

And Ford took a, you know even for Ford that was a,

1:00:27

not even for Ford Ford is a pretty,

1:00:30

it's a liberal foundation

1:00:31

but it's not where we would normally get money from.

1:00:32

But they gave us a grant to begin

1:00:36

that setting up of the network, to hire,

1:00:38

you know all the Guantanamo people, I don't know when,

1:00:41

you know when exactly when Gita got on board

1:00:44

but it was not long after that and some others.

1:00:46

-

[Male Interviewer] So yeah strikes me as a CCR

1:00:50

was instrumental in being the clearing house

1:00:52

for all Guantanamo lawyers,

1:00:55

habeas lawyers post-2004 they pretty much all

1:00:57

were trained by CCR.

1:01:02

-

Well, CCR, Joe and Clive, yeah that's correct.

1:01:03

That was the main, it was the only clearing house.

1:01:07

Occasionally there was a, you know an outlier lawyer

1:01:09

but not really.

1:01:12

They were all, they still are almost all,

1:01:13

they're much more independent today

1:01:16

but they were all on,

1:01:18

they're still all on our network,

1:01:18

we run the network and we still have a number of clients

1:01:20

and at that point there were model pleadings,

1:01:24

model habeas pleadings, there were trainings,

1:01:25

you know people didn't know, you know and people

1:01:27

even, nobody knew how do you run a habeas hearing

1:01:30

I mean in this kinda case where there's all kinds of issues?

1:01:33

And there were all kinds of protective orders

1:01:35

and secret evidence and of course the government meanwhile

1:01:37

is running CSRTs.

1:01:39

-

[Male Interviewer] Can you tell us what they are.

1:01:41

Well CSRTs are, what the government tried to do is set up

1:01:42

an alternative system for fact-finding at Guantanamo.

1:01:48

And because they didn't want the fact finding to happen

1:01:53

in Washington DC in front of a federal judge,

1:01:57

they wanted to control the fact-finding.

1:02:00

And so they set up CSRTs or Combatant Status Review

1:02:02

Tribunals and they're staffed by essentially military people

1:02:06

not necessarily lawyers and the person doesn't get a lawyer

1:02:10

the person gets a quote rep the detainee at Guantanamo

1:02:13

gets a yeah it's called a personal representative

1:02:16

and any and it's not like there's any confidence

1:02:20

so if you were my personal representative

1:02:23

and I say, well look at, you know I wasn't in Afghanistan

1:02:24

but I was in Pakistan when I was at this madrasa

1:02:28

but not that madrasa.

1:02:30

You have an obligation as my personal representative

1:02:32

to tell the tribunal everything I tell you.

1:02:35

So there's no personal confidence.

1:02:38

So there's no consulting at all,

1:02:39

there's nothing it's like.

1:02:40

And then there's no, while they say there's an ability

1:02:41

to call witnesses, there isn't any,

1:02:44

I don't think at any Combatant Status Review Tribunal

1:02:45

there's been one witness called.

1:02:48

All the evidence is you know secret essentially

1:02:50

that's most of it that's any good

1:02:54

that you might wanna see.

1:02:56

And of course there's classic statements

1:02:57

about a guy says well you're accused of associating

1:02:59

with somebody from Al-Qaida

1:03:01

and then the poor detainee says well, who's that?

1:03:03

Or they say did you associate

1:03:07

and the guy say well I don't know

1:03:09

until you tell me who it is.

1:03:10

Well, we can tell you that's classified.

1:03:11

So that's just Kafka.

1:03:13

So these tribunals essentially create a factual record

1:03:14

that allows the people to be kept in Guantanamo

1:03:20

while the government claims that that's all they need to do.

1:03:22

And they don't even, they even tried to feed habeas

1:03:27

with that, they said that's all we need to do.

1:03:30

And in the extent they got the habeas

1:03:32

they tried to say that's the record.

1:03:33

So it was a complete rum bullshit system

1:03:35

there's no other thing to say about it

1:03:38

it was just, but again the government,

1:03:39

you know I mean the people

1:03:42

who were the Guantanamo attorneys going down there

1:03:43

just, you know, it's half Mickey Mouse it's half terrible,

1:03:46

you know from protective orders it's not a way

1:03:50

any lawyer ought to practice law.

1:03:52

I remember one of my lawyers at the Center said

1:03:54

they gave him the one of the early protective orders

1:03:56

about what they couldn't say,

1:03:58

you can tell if your client's tortured,

1:04:00

you can't make it public,

1:04:01

basically it hides everything bad the government's done.

1:04:03

And the lawyers are put to this choice

1:04:06

of can I represent, they litigated of course

1:04:08

but you don't get anywhere.

1:04:11

Do I represent the person under these draconian conditions

1:04:12

where I can't tell if,

1:04:15

you know it sounds like the Catholic church and abuse

1:04:17

I can't tell if my client's been tortured.

1:04:19

Nothing I can't do anything publicly.

1:04:23

You represent your clients under these conditions

1:04:26

where there's a video camera there all the time,

1:04:28

where your notes are given to somebody right away

1:04:30

and they go up to Washington and you have to work

1:04:34

in a secure facility in murderous conditions.

1:04:36

Do I do that or do I simply not represent the client?

1:04:39

And you're in an impossible situation.

1:04:42

And you know it the stuff is very seriously,

1:04:44

taken very seriously by the government

1:04:49

even if most of it is BS.

1:04:50

And if you violate that stuff

1:04:52

disbarment, you could go to jail I mean it's serious stuff.

1:04:54

So it's a, so if we, when we talk about what's changed

1:04:57

in preventive detention,

1:05:02

what's changed in military commissions,

1:05:05

we should also and it's not for me to talk about it

1:05:09

but it's 'cause the details are the lawyers

1:05:12

who were going to Guantanamo,

1:05:15

but I think there's been a shift

1:05:17

in what in the role of the defense attorney,

1:05:19

and the role of the attorney end and what's allowable

1:05:22

and what's not.

1:05:26

What's going on at Guantanamo and the restrictions

1:05:27

put on defense attorneys should never be allowed

1:05:29

in the system in which you have vigorous defense counsel.

1:05:31

It should never and that's changed,

1:05:34

that's a change and that's a draconian change.

1:05:35

-

[Male Interviewer] Did lawyers ever talk to you about

1:05:39

their own attitudes with this change

1:05:43

and how shocked they were that they were restricted

1:05:45

like that?

1:05:48

Do you have any stories about lawyers who went down there?

1:05:49

-

Well, sure I mean our lawyers at the Center

1:05:51

who represent people and you know when you read

1:05:53

about torture and what's going on

1:05:56

and what's in the newspapers,

1:05:58

I mean they are under these restrictions

1:06:00

where even though their clients may well have been tortured,

1:06:02

may well have been subjected to even waterboarding,

1:06:05

they cannot talk about it.

1:06:09

And they write papers to the Courts of Appeals

1:06:11

where they're under, no one can see them

1:06:13

they're all under restrictions

1:06:15

and they can't come out in the Courts of Appeals

1:06:17

they'll sit there for months or years

1:06:19

sitting on the fact that this guy was waterboarded

1:06:21

or tortured and they find it utterly frustrating.

1:06:23

And sometimes sure people wanna say

1:06:26

I just wanna go out and let them disbar me,

1:06:29

let him do this but of course he represent clients

1:06:31

and the question is how do you continue to do that

1:06:34

and represent clients?

1:06:37

So it's a terrible dilemma and you know one day

1:06:38

if those attorneys can ever talk will be remarkable.

1:06:43

But I don't know if they'll ever be able to.

1:06:48

And if you look at what happens to the,

1:06:50

you know, there's now that of course in the US

1:06:51

there's this thing called SAMs

1:06:53

put on people's special administrative measures

1:06:55

attorneys are restrictive, are restricted in the same way

1:06:57

as Guantanamo attorneys were being restricted

1:07:00

or models for each other.

1:07:02

And so you're getting an, if you really look at it

1:07:04

even though we have this few minutes

1:07:06

of being in the public in a habeas hearing

1:07:08

when even the habeas hearing is not closed

1:07:12

or is not, you know classified evidence

1:07:15

it's basically the entire process is like an iceberg

1:07:20

where seven eighths of it is underwater

1:07:24

and no one sees it except the attorneys if they're lucky,

1:07:26

the client often doesn't see a lot of it

1:07:29

and the US attorney.

1:07:32

So you're running an entire system of justice

1:07:33

you know that's underwater in the country.

1:07:36

-

[Male Interviewer] How did your attorneys

1:07:38

handle if their clients didn't wanna see them

1:07:40

or were they ever told that the government,

1:07:42

or did the government would try to interfere

1:07:47

with CCR attorneys meeting the clients with-

1:07:49

-

Well, these are, I mean Wilner has stories

1:07:52

about you know telling clients

1:07:55

that their lawyers are Jewish

1:07:56

and in fact the number of the lawyers

1:07:59

I mean, Joe, I and, Joe and I were Jewish,

1:08:00

Wilner is Jewish, so you know Clive claims

1:08:04

he's somewhat Jewish so I don't know, maybe he is or isn't.

1:08:08

So that was an issue that yeah their clients get-

1:08:10

-

[Male Interviewer] How was that an issue?

1:08:12

-

Well, because the guards would tell the clients

1:08:14

you don't wanna be represented by these people

1:08:19

they're Jewish, or the only way you're gonna get outta here

1:08:20

is if you don't have an attorney,

1:08:23

those stories are not uncommon.

1:08:25

And of course the lawyers that were women

1:08:29

had sometimes problems with you know with Muslim men

1:08:30

who didn't necessarily want women attorneys,

1:08:34

but they eventually worked out.

1:08:38

I mean some, I've heard, I heard stories where a lawyer

1:08:40

one of our, one of the lawyers went down 10,

1:08:43

almost for 10 months in a row

1:08:45

before the client would turn around and face her.

1:08:47

So these are hard jobs.

1:08:50

These are, these lawyers I mean, went 10,

1:08:51

20 times to Guantanamo.

1:08:54

And you know I'd been to Guantanamo a few times

1:08:56

in the Haitian cases and I would never go back.

1:08:59

I mean I was so, I mean I guess you could call it

1:09:02

a form of post-traumatic stress

1:09:06

but I just can't even think about it.

1:09:08

It was so awful, it was just so awful.

1:09:09

And so the lawyers, you know, Joe, Gita,

1:09:12

the ones who've gone, Tom that gone 10, 20, 30 times,

1:09:15

you know everything from the flight,

1:09:19

to how you're treated, to the Mickey Mouse stuff,

1:09:20

to the security, to seeing people who are innocent

1:09:23

just locked away, it's devastating stuff, devastating.

1:09:26

-

[Male Interviewer] Were, do you have any of the stories

1:09:32

as to you know how the lawyers were when they,

1:09:37

the shot they took when they went down and what they saw,

1:09:40

not just how they're treated by the government

1:09:43

but just what they saw with their clients

1:09:45

or how they met with their clients

1:09:48

in their you know these little rooms?

1:09:50

-

Those are all, you know you can get those stories

1:09:54

from each of the lawyers right?

1:09:55

I mean they're all pretty clear what happened

1:09:56

so mine are second-hand stories.

1:09:58

I mean, you're right the rooms are these small rooms,

1:10:01

the client is you know locked to the floor essentially.

1:10:03

I mean, you have a million stories like this,

1:10:06

you have David Remes' clients who you know, cut his wrist,

1:10:08

you know the blood under the table and throwing it on David.

1:10:12

I mean, you have a million stories

1:10:15

of the utter frustration of the clients.

1:10:17

And you know I remember a story from my Haitian experience

1:10:20

when I first went and this happened,

1:10:23

this is not probably this is analogous to what happens.

1:10:25

When I first went down to see the Haitian clients

1:10:29

who were the refugees in the HIV camp,

1:10:30

who were locked behind barbed wire,

1:10:33

they yelled and screamed at us saying

1:10:35

we don't want you to represent us,

1:10:37

maybe if you were getting paid you'd be better,

1:10:39

you're pro bono lawyers, we want paid lawyers

1:10:41

who can get us out of here.

1:10:44

And so what happens after a period of time,

1:10:45

that's an attitude.

1:10:50

What happens after a period of time

1:10:52

it probably gets worse because there they are

1:10:53

this is eight years for some of these people

1:10:56

and they have to say to themselves and it's going on now,

1:10:58

we don't wanna see the lawyer anymore.

1:11:01

It's not any point.

1:11:02

And of course, some of them,

1:11:03

you know probably have done things to themselves

1:11:04

to draw attention or to just say

1:11:08

they're frustrated completely.

1:11:09

They can't take it, so they throw their lawyers out

1:11:12

and sure we've had a lot of lawyers

1:11:14

who they go through all this work, they get the clearance,

1:11:15

they get on the airplane, they fly from Miami,

1:11:19

they get on the ferry, it's exhausting

1:11:21

and then the client doesn't even tell them,

1:11:24

like I'm talking to you,

1:11:27

they put in the notice to see the client

1:11:29

and they get a note back saying the client won't see you

1:11:30

and there's nothing they can do.

1:11:33

They can't communicate with the client,

1:11:35

they can't talk to the client,

1:11:37

they can't pick up a phone.

1:11:39

So what do they do? They wait there for two or three days,

1:11:41

they send a note in and then I go home.

1:11:43

And the government, every note is monitored,

1:11:45

you don't have, there's nothing confidential

1:11:49

you can give, attorney-client nothing.

1:11:51

They supposedly have a team that

1:11:53

going through the prosecution that looks at this,

1:11:55

that looks at this, but I think if you were to measure

1:11:57

the restrictions on the lawyers right now

1:12:00

it would be, it just, you know in another environment

1:12:04

it would be so shocking as to be unbelievable.

1:12:06

So it's one of the most, I mean we have lawyers

1:12:10

who've worked for years and then all of a sudden

1:12:14

the client just says what am I doing here?

1:12:16

Why do, why would I do this?

1:12:17

And now think about it who've been both,

1:12:19

even these stupid CSRT procedures

1:12:22

the Combatant Status Reviews

1:12:24

some people have been found to be innocent under that

1:12:26

or at least not enemy combatants as the term.

1:12:29

Some people who have been found innocent

1:12:32

or many in the habeas corpus.

1:12:34

And so the lawyer does all that,

1:12:36

thinks he's gonna get their person out

1:12:37

and the person sits there and can't get them out.

1:12:38

So some people think they're better without lawyers.

1:12:41

Why do I have a lawyer? What do I need a lawyer for?

1:12:43

And I know it's what are you gonna say,

1:12:46

these people who've been there eight years,

1:12:48

they have a right to determine their own lives at some point

1:12:49

and say that's it I can't do this anymore.

1:12:53

It's gotta be heartbreak,

1:12:55

I mean it's heartbreaking work there's no.

1:12:57

And of course when they get transported,

1:12:59

if you ever talk to any of the people that transported them

1:13:01

in jail or others who've gone back with their clients

1:13:04

the clients chained all the way,

1:13:06

even though they've been so-called free,

1:13:07

found innocent, et cetera, found not enemy combatants

1:13:10

and the country is willing to take them

1:13:13

until they get off the plane after a 10, 12, 15, 20 hours

1:13:15

in Palau or more, you know they're chained to the,

1:13:19

they're chained in the plane.

1:13:23

So the thing is, I mean Kafka

1:13:24

didn't have a correct description of it.

1:13:27

Someday someone will write the novel but yeah.

1:13:28

-

[Male Interviewer] But you're not giving up you're-

1:13:32

-

Well I have to say this is not a good period.

1:13:34

You're not talking to us in a good period.

1:13:37

I'd be interested in, I haven't really talked enough

1:13:38

to my attorneys at the Center or others,

1:13:40

but this is like scraping on hard pebbles right now.

1:13:43

Because here you have a situation where

1:13:46

there's still a number of innocent people,

1:13:48

majority at Guantanamo probably

1:13:51

but number who have been found not enemy combatants

1:13:52

by the federal court and they're still there.

1:13:55

And there's bureaucracy hanging it up,

1:13:58

there's all kinds of other things hanging it up

1:14:00

and this is a way after a year after Obama promised

1:14:02

to close it, you're seeing now

1:14:05

that there might be as many as 50 people going to trial,

1:14:07

many of them before military commissions,

1:14:12

which I consider you know kangaroo courts and unauthorized.

1:14:14

Many of them held in preventive detention possibly.

1:14:18

So you're talking about us

1:14:22

and you have innocent people there after eight years,

1:14:23

you know what? I've never stood a couple of things

1:14:25

one is, I've had clients put into jail

1:14:28

here in New York for various reasons.

1:14:30

And if they spend an extra day in jail

1:14:34

we lift heaven and earth and it's an outrage.

1:14:38

Like if they get picked up and they don't get brought

1:14:41

before a court in 24 or 48 hours,

1:14:43

that's considered to be, I mean crazy.

1:14:46

I've had, you know, particularly clients in demonstrations

1:14:48

and others where we lift heaven and hell to do it.

1:14:51

And it's not that we haven't lifted

1:14:54

that for the Guantanamo clients,

1:14:55

but the idea that you could one day decide,

1:14:57

okay, well we're not ready to send this guy out

1:15:00

or he's innocent and then diddle around year after year

1:15:02

while you have an innocent person there

1:15:05

and not think that human freedom deprived for one day

1:15:07

is an outrage, I don't know,

1:15:10

I don't, I don't, I actually don't understand it.

1:15:12

I just it's unclear to me how it could happen.

1:15:16

It's not like these people have been convicted of anything,

1:15:19

it's completely you know, I mean I've done habeas corpuses

1:15:23

before federal judges on a Sunday

1:15:28

in churches where the federal judge lives upstate.

1:15:30

I did one, almost my earliest case at the Center

1:15:33

and he held a hearing and he handed me the writ

1:15:36

and I went to the prison and I got the guy out.

1:15:38

One extra day.

1:15:41

-

[Male Interviewer] Will Obama make changes over time?

1:15:49

-

I think it's unlikely.

1:15:56

Yeah, I mean I think I, what are all the causes?

1:15:59

I couldn't say.

1:16:02

I mean, but I think it's, I mean he's,

1:16:04

you know, I mean every time an issue comes up,

1:16:08

it just, I mean for either reasons of he has other issues,

1:16:10

he needs other votes or the right wing is just too strong

1:16:14

and pushing him around or it's not important enough.

1:16:17

Whatever reasons we wanna say.

1:16:21

If you look at I mean preventative detention,

1:16:22

the I mean the compromises on preventive attention

1:16:25

and you know, they're doing it

1:16:28

not even from the same basis I am are saying,

1:16:29

well at least we're not gonna get a statute.

1:16:32

We're just gonna have a, so you don't get a statute

1:16:34

is the same as Bush.

1:16:36

I mean a statute is probably worse they're thinking,

1:16:37

because it's true probably going to this Congress

1:16:39

you're gonna have you and I in preventative detention

1:16:41

before we're finished.

1:16:43

But, so they're just doing sort of,

1:16:45

and of course Obama claims he's different

1:16:48

because he's relying on the AUMF

1:16:50

the Authorization for Use of Military Force

1:16:53

and Bush was aligning on inherent constitutional authority.

1:16:54

But for the guy in prison, it doesn't make any difference

1:16:59

it's the same result.

1:17:02

And military commissions to me I just, I,

1:17:04

it can only be explained as saying

1:17:07

that we don't have enough evidence to convict these people

1:17:10

in a regular court with due process protections

1:17:13

and therefore we're gonna convict them

1:17:15

by a bastardized form of justice.

1:17:16

I don't know what to say to that.

1:17:19

You know, I mean it's just the whole system

1:17:21

it's gotten completely corrupted.

1:17:23

And I don't think there's a way out.

1:17:25

I'm not convinced there's way.

1:17:28

Yeah we're fighting and we're only seeing,

1:17:29

as I said, even in the trials but even what's going on

1:17:31

we don't look at background

1:17:34

look at the prisons in Afghanistan,

1:17:36

I mean, you know why shouldn't those people

1:17:39

have a right to habeas? This is, you know, at least,

1:17:42

you know this is actually an important part

1:17:44

of the discussion I don't know if you've come to it

1:17:46

when we were talking with Tony Amsterdam

1:17:48

about what we're gonna do in Rasul,

1:17:50

Tony is the NYU professor who's the expert on Supreme Court.

1:17:52

And we had a debate,

1:17:56

do we just argue Rasul as habeas,

1:17:58

the right to go to court because you're in Guantanamo

1:18:02

which is a kin to the United States.

1:18:04

It's owned essentially by the United States

1:18:06

and it's leased in perpetuity, it's like an American city

1:18:09

and therefore you should have a similar rights

1:18:12

to the Americans or as some of our

1:18:14

you know as we said last time in court,

1:18:16

it's actually has more federal jurisdiction

1:18:18

'cause in a state you have the federal,

1:18:20

you have the state, you have the city, you have the,

1:18:22

you know the council.

1:18:23

So, or should we argue that you got the right to habeas.

1:18:26

whenever a person is in US custody anywhere in the world?

1:18:29

And there was a big debate in the room,

1:18:33

only a half a dozen of us listening

1:18:34

you know Joe, me, Tom and at that point

1:18:35

everybody thought, not everybody but some of us thought

1:18:40

it was ridiculous, you can't argue habeas

1:18:43

everywhere in the world that we're never gonna win that.

1:18:44

I thought we had to do that.

1:18:47

Tony said what you'd never wanna do,

1:18:49

Tony Amsterdam you never wanna cut the court off

1:18:52

from jurisdiction of a case and that's the torture case

1:18:54

because at least the court

1:18:56

even if it's gonna rubber stamp the habeas

1:18:58

and say well he's classified as a prisoner of war

1:19:00

we're not gonna look at it on the merits,

1:19:01

you don't want a court ever cut off

1:19:03

from being able to test a person's custody.

1:19:05

And that's right.

1:19:08

And now we're, so we've won Guantanamo

1:19:09

and we've won it, even now on Kennedy's,

1:19:12

you know three-step process

1:19:15

for getting there, practicality and all that.

1:19:17

But what about Bagram? What about Iraq?

1:19:20

I mean, why should a person be in custody

1:19:23

without being able to test their detention

1:19:26

and my view is they never should.

1:19:28

I mean, even if the court's going to eventually say,

1:19:29

well this is in the middle of the shooting war,

1:19:31

we're not gonna do it now,

1:19:33

they're held as a prisoner of war,

1:19:35

they're under conditions that are internment,

1:19:36

but you know, if you look at Guantanamo

1:19:38

what it really is it's an interrogation camp.

1:19:39

I mean, that's, it's not, this is all,

1:19:42

it's all junk about all the rest of it.

1:19:44

Basically it's an interrogation torture camp

1:19:46

or was originally a torture camp and now it's,

1:19:48

and now it's, whatever it is

1:19:50

but and that's what it was set up for and those were,

1:19:52

and that's why it was done.

1:19:55

And they'd been illegal

1:19:56

you know certainly since the last set of Geneva Conventions

1:19:58

it's what the Germans did even before the last conventions.

1:20:00

And they're not supposed to be interrogated,

1:20:04

that's what Geneva is all about.

1:20:06

So they had to come up with some category

1:20:07

in which was our earliest point

1:20:10

that you have to have a legal status

1:20:12

and they didn't give them any legal status.

1:20:13

They just picked and chose whatever

1:20:15

and I wouldn't say rights whatever disabilities

1:20:18

they wanted to give them.

1:20:20

-

[Male Interviewer] And is Bagram

1:20:22

another interrogation camp?

1:20:23

-

Oh I think it is.

1:20:25

We know, we don't know much about it

1:20:26

and of course the only habeas that has been won there

1:20:27

has been for non-Afghanis

1:20:30

which former Center attorneys have done you know Tina

1:20:33

and Tina Foster and Barbara Olshansky.

1:20:35

-

[Male Interviewer] So if CCR didn't exist

1:20:38

where would we be today?

1:20:40

-

Well you know we'd have Joe and Tom and Clive

1:20:42

and they're, you know, they were pretty devoted

1:20:45

to this stuff.

1:20:48

And I think the problem would have been

1:20:49

getting this big mass together

1:20:50

and how would it have been done particularly that early.

1:20:52

Yeah today if you went to a foundation

1:20:55

and said fund us to do this,

1:20:56

but I don't think early on you could

1:20:58

that wouldn't have happened.

1:20:59

So I think it played an absolute crucial role

1:21:01

in not just pushing the litigation

1:21:03

but putting a human rights organization behind it

1:21:05

and also developing the infrastructure to do it.

1:21:09

So, you know it's certainly a critical piece of work

1:21:12

you know that the Center was involved in.

1:21:15

-

[Male Interviewer] And looking back Michael

1:21:18

since you've been involved in this

1:21:19

for you know 30, 40 years do you think the last 10 years

1:21:21

your life has changed a lot more than the previous

1:21:24

20 or 30 years? There's been,

1:21:28

a different in how you see the world?

1:21:32

-

Well, I think that, you know I think on these issues

1:21:35

that we've, I hate to be pessimistic about it,

1:21:39

but I think it's a more permanent loss

1:21:41

than I sustained in the past on these issues,

1:21:44

on the issues of what I call on fundamental issues

1:21:48

of human liberty or freedom.

1:21:50

And it's, yeah I mean it's not a great feeling about that.

1:21:53

I mean I've, I don't wanna speak

1:21:56

for everybody in my office,

1:21:58

but I was with a Congressman the other day actually

1:22:01

talking about these national security issues

1:22:04

and he basically said we've lost.

1:22:05

I mean we've lost that and state secrecy

1:22:08

Obama comes in saying he's gonna do better on state secrecy

1:22:10

and we're getting the same opposition, the same rulings.

1:22:12

What's interesting about that period is,

1:22:15

you know the courts are only gonna do so much

1:22:17

and of course we have a certain popular,

1:22:19

you know in some way what the Center's done

1:22:22

and I think it's a great thing has created a movement

1:22:24

around the issue of Guantanamo and the habeas.

1:22:26

And it's one I was not familiar with in my experience

1:22:30

because it's a movement of lawyers that had began

1:22:33

as a movement of lawyers particularly

1:22:35

and then it spread out but what

1:22:36

and so that gave me some one, that gave me some hope here

1:22:41

is that we took a whole bunch of lawyers who,

1:22:45

you know were trained as lawyers

1:22:47

who hadn't, didn't have my politics at all,

1:22:49

some are Republican, some are,

1:22:51

certainly a lot are just straight Democrats,

1:22:52

you know, a lot or nothing you know

1:22:55

and they actually moved, you know tremendously

1:22:56

and a lot of those people change their careers

1:22:59

and their lives because of Guantanamo.

1:23:01

I mean, they became, you know, they left the big practices,

1:23:03

they became professors, they became litigators.

1:23:06

So you know, that the chances of social transformation

1:23:09

are not small on this and the fact that we won that much

1:23:12

in Guantanamo is incredible.

1:23:15

But it's also an example to me

1:23:18

of how outrageous the practice was gonna be.

1:23:20

And we still, we've not just lost on what I call

1:23:23

these preventive detention issues and secrecy

1:23:25

and we've lost that I think is the core issue

1:23:27

of how you treat an act of terrorism.

1:23:30

Whether you can use the rubric of this as a war

1:23:33

even though my Obama calls it although he's moved again

1:23:37

toward the war paradigm more, we've lost that.

1:23:39

And once you start con being able to treat it as a war

1:23:43

and not as essentially a crime

1:23:48

you have the power on the presidency,

1:23:52

the power, the shift, the rigorousness

1:23:54

with which due process is applied is a shift.

1:23:58

And there's no doubt we've lost that battle.

1:24:01

We've lost that battle, we've lost some of these others

1:24:03

and, you know we've probably lost the torture debate

1:24:05

in the country so you know and it is well.

1:24:08

So it's not, you know it's not a great feeling right now,

1:24:11

you know although we have a lot of people,

1:24:14

look and 900 people went through Guantanamo,

1:24:15

I can't tell you the number probably Denbeaux can,

1:24:18

but you know the number that are actually walking

1:24:20

the streets as free men is probably, you know,

1:24:23

it might be 600 or more and you know,

1:24:25

how much that would have happened

1:24:28

without the work of this core of attorneys?

1:24:29

I mean I think we stopped the rampant lawlessness.

1:24:32

So at least there's some accountability

1:24:35

and some they have to justify.

1:24:37

Obama can't stand up there and say

1:24:39

I'm just the president I can do it,

1:24:41

he has to tell us why he's gonna do it

1:24:43

and he has to make an intelligent argument

1:24:45

to the American people.

1:24:47

So that's a shift, that's a positive shift.

1:24:48

But boy, I'm I just think it's been a rough eight years

1:24:52

I'll put it that way.

1:24:58

-

[Male Interviewer] I don't have much more to say,

1:24:59

but I, you know I'd like to just talk a little bit about,

1:25:00

I kept it for the end about CCRs involvement

1:25:03

in international issues because I thought CCR was unique

1:25:05

in filing lawsuits against Rumsfeld and other officials

1:25:10

and because nothing is going on today with Obama's decision

1:25:15

I thought maybe you could talk a little about

1:25:18

how you got involved in it, where you see that going.

1:25:20

-

Well, you know, international law played a huge role

1:25:23

in the beginning of Guantanamo and still today.

1:25:27

I remember when we drafted our first habeas petition

1:25:30

as I said my job, at least part of it

1:25:32

apart from some of the constitutional law

1:25:34

was adding arbitrary detention,

1:25:36

prolonged arbitrary detention

1:25:39

as well as the Geneva Conventions.

1:25:40

And even understanding that, you know,

1:25:43

the issues around self execution

1:25:45

and enforceability of some of those,

1:25:47

although we actually had a claim,

1:25:49

this, we had an Alien Tort Claim in the habeas petition

1:25:51

which is to say we had a petition saying

1:25:55

that the detention at Guantanamo violates the international,

1:25:57

customary international law and norm

1:26:02

of prolonged arbitrary detention

1:26:04

and we can sue on that directly.

1:26:07

We represent aliens the Guantanamo people,

1:26:08

against the US officials who are violating

1:26:11

international law.

1:26:15

And what's amazing in the result opinion,

1:26:16

the court held that there was jurisdiction under 1350

1:26:19

which is the Alien Tort Statute to use international law.

1:26:23

Now that provision goes back to the very origins

1:26:26

almost the origins of the Center

1:26:30

but particularly remarkable person

1:26:31

and Peter Weiss at the Center.

1:26:33

Who from the day I got to the Center in '71 or 2 or 3

1:26:35

or whatever right in there,

1:26:38

said I want you guys to put an international law claim

1:26:39

in every single complaint you file.

1:26:42

And one day we will get there and where we got there

1:26:45

the first big case was 1981

1:26:48

or '80 with the Filartiga case which said that US,

1:26:52

that aliens could sue officials from all over the world

1:26:56

when they came to the United States

1:27:02

for violations of customary international law.

1:27:03

And from that of course a whole,

1:27:06

that now you sue oil companies for, you know torture,

1:27:08

for moving, you know for all kinds of disappearances

1:27:12

you sue, I've sued the Haitians,

1:27:15

I've sued the Guatemalan torturers, you know everybody

1:27:18

we've done it and it directly went into Guantanamo.

1:27:20

And of course we then moved

1:27:26

as we got into the torture things in the last few years,

1:27:28

those of course are international law.

1:27:31

I mean yes they're domestic law

1:27:33

because the US has adopted those

1:27:35

you know parts of the treaties under its law

1:27:37

has implemented it, but when we saw really early on

1:27:39

that there was a failure to investigate and prosecute,

1:27:43

really the word is hold accountable US officials

1:27:47

for it was absolutely clear torture

1:27:49

and we tried everything we could.

1:27:52

I mean, we tried, we have still have pending civil cases

1:27:54

in this country, you know we of course went

1:27:57

to the commission but that doesn't have any-

1:27:59

-

[Male Interviewer] What commission?

1:28:01

-

Inter-American Commission

1:28:02

but that's not, it's not obligatory

1:28:03

but we tried civil cases here,

1:28:05

we still have a bunch of those, tried congressional stuff,

1:28:07

everybody we tried everything.

1:28:10

And then we decided we'd go to,

1:28:12

you know basically universal jurisdiction

1:28:14

or what, or cases in Europe under the national laws

1:28:16

of various countries in Europe

1:28:19

that coming out of the Second World War

1:28:21

have laws that say you and Geneva itself has it

1:28:22

that say you, if there's a crime of genocide

1:28:26

or it's a genocide convention or if there's

1:28:29

you know torture or similar kinds of activities

1:28:32

you can bring those cases anywhere in the world

1:28:36

and actually Filartiga case said you had this great language

1:28:41

saying the torturer is like a pirate

1:28:44

and can be brought to justice

1:28:46

wherever found or wherever in the world.

1:28:48

So that's when we started going after Rumsfeld

1:28:50

and others in Germany.

1:28:52

And we brought two cases in Germany

1:28:53

and then I'm actually going on Sunday,

1:28:57

a week from Sunday to Berlin again

1:28:59

and we're meeting with the Spanish attorneys

1:29:02

to work on our intervention in the Spanish cases

1:29:04

against the what are called the Bush Six

1:29:07

which are the lawyers who formulated the torture policy

1:29:09

as well as the Guantanamo issues

1:29:13

and it's not wild stuff because Spain actually has a link

1:29:15

with the Guantanamo cases

1:29:19

because four of the Guantanamo detainees

1:29:20

had either Spanish nationals, Spanish citizens

1:29:23

or passed through Spain.

1:29:26

So we're looking at those cases

1:29:28

partly for justice on their own,

1:29:30

but partly 'cause there's nothing happening

1:29:32

in the United States.

1:29:33

And of course Obama is saying he was looking forward

1:29:35

and not backward, to me that's crazy.

1:29:37

I mean, looking forward is looking to a world

1:29:40

without torture and you do that by looking back

1:29:44

by prosecuting and holding accountable torturers in the past

1:29:47

even for those that are currently in government.

1:29:51

So we have a huge involvement with international law

1:29:53

in fact I taught it for years and that's,

1:29:56

I have a book called "International Human Rights

1:29:58

Litigation in US Courts."

1:29:59

-

[Male Interviewer] What kind of press do you get

1:30:01

for filing your international cases against Rumsfeld?

1:30:03

-

Well we did pretty well actually in the beginning.

1:30:06

In the European, in the German cases

1:30:08

the second filling I brought Janis Karpinski over with me,

1:30:11

who was the Brigadier General who was disciplined

1:30:14

and tossed out really for what happened in the prisons

1:30:17

in Abu Ghraib, who was willing to testify

1:30:20

before the Germans about Rumsfeld's role

1:30:23

and the signs that were put up in all that,

1:30:25

the Germans because of political reasons

1:30:27

ultimately dismissed the case

1:30:29

and so Janis never testified, but that press,

1:30:31

in Berlin we had a couple hundred people

1:30:34

or press in the room and it actually had a full page

1:30:35

in the Times.

1:30:38

German, Spain is interesting because even though they try

1:30:40

and say this is all symbolic

1:30:43

and Rumsfeld is never gonna go to jail

1:30:44

in fact, it Garzon now and there's two judges

1:30:46

Garzon and Velasko there's two companion cases in Spain,

1:30:50

but they have a right to issue arrest warrants in Spain

1:30:53

and warrants to testify and right now even as we speak

1:30:56

those cases have been opened

1:31:01

or at least one of them has been opened

1:31:02

and there may be for all I know

1:31:04

arrest warrants already issued for Rumsfeld and others

1:31:06

which means that they cannot safely

1:31:10

and they probably have not gone

1:31:12

the what are called the Schengen countries

1:31:13

which are 26 or 27 countries that make up the EU

1:31:15

European union and the trading block.

1:31:18

So it's not true that these are symbolic.

1:31:21

These guys are already in deep

1:31:23

and of course look what happened to the CIA in Italy,

1:31:27

you know the CIA kidnapped Egyptian cleric from the streets

1:31:29

and an incredible judge investigating judge actually

1:31:32

indicted them and they were convicted

1:31:36

and you know one the guy lost his house in Italy

1:31:38

and they can't go, they can't move around at all

1:31:42

and they know the names of a bunch of them.

1:31:45

So there's some, you know there's some shift going on

1:31:47

of course there's a fight back,

1:31:50

there's always a fight back by the governments

1:31:51

and others that say change the law, get rid of it,

1:31:53

but I think the torture stuff, even though Europe had

1:31:56

you know a dual role on some of the stuff at ransom

1:31:57

at the secret prisons, particularly Poland, Romania,

1:32:01

I think Lithuania as well, I think they're pretty upset

1:32:05

on a certain level by the torture stuff, really upset by it

1:32:10

and there're, you know because, I think after the war

1:32:13

they'd just decided enough of the war stuff,

1:32:17

enough of this let's do something else

1:32:18

and they have a little more rule of law stuff

1:32:20

than we do I think that has worked to their benefit.

1:32:22

So I think it's gonna continue and it took 35 years

1:32:24

to get Pinochet and I don't think it'll take that long

1:32:28

to get these guys but we'll see.

1:32:30

-

[Male Interviewer] You think we would get them one day?

1:32:32

-

I'm hopeful, we'll see what happens

1:32:34

with the Spanish cases are our best hope right now.

1:32:36

And I'm really, I was more enthusiastic

1:32:39

before their attempts to get rid of Garzon

1:32:42

but 'cause he would have not stopped at this.

1:32:45

So we'll have to see what politics,

1:32:48

I mean to the extent there's countries in Europe

1:32:49

Italy and Spain are the two where the investigating judges

1:32:51

are independent of a judicial,

1:32:54

of a political judicial system.

1:32:56

Germany is a unified system

1:32:58

and so we were bound to lose in Germany.

1:32:59

We came close, but we were probably gonna lose.

1:33:03

-

[Male Interviewer] You knew probably in France too.

1:33:06

-

Yeah we lost, that was ridiculous

1:33:07

how we lost in France I have no idea.

1:33:08

Again it's a unified system because France,

1:33:10

you know France is, like we had Rumsfeld in Paris,

1:33:13

which when you have the torturer in the country,

1:33:17

that's everywhere in the world

1:33:21

that's not even universal jurisdiction

1:33:22

that's just the torturer is there

1:33:23

that's the Torture Convention and we filed the case,

1:33:25

Rumsfeld gave his talk and then he walks out the back door

1:33:29

into the embassy and escapes the country

1:33:32

but then the case gets dismissed.

1:33:34

So I can't explain it, yeah I can explain it but not well.

1:33:36

-

[Male Interviewer] Well.

1:33:40

-

Okay good.

1:33:41

-

[Male Interviewer] Do you have a, do you wanna close

1:33:42

with anything Michael? Anything that I didn't ask you?

1:33:43

-

No I think you did, I think it's-

1:33:45

-

[Male Interviewer] I think it was great

1:33:46

you know really fascinating in terms of

1:33:47

I didn't know a lot of that.

1:33:49

-

No well you must have known.

1:33:50

-

[Lady Interviewer] Did you get signed statements?

1:33:53

-

Yeah I gave him one.

1:33:55

-

[Lady Interviewer] Right, 'cause there were a couple

1:33:56

of quotes that would be great snippets

1:33:57

on their website.

1:34:00

-

Whatever you want.

1:34:01

-

[Lady Interviewer] Yeah that I was taking.

1:34:02

-

Just not one in which I criticize somebody.

1:34:03

-

[Lady Interviewer] No nothing personal.

1:34:06

-

That's what I mean.

1:34:08

-

[Lady Interviewer] I know, but the piece

1:34:09

where you kinda talk about 911

1:34:11

and then sort of the hysteria.

1:34:13

-

Oh that's fine all that stuff I don't mind.

1:34:16

-

[Male Interviewer] There's another really good quote

1:34:18

that Michael gave that was more recent

1:34:19

in the last 15, 20 minutes that I thought was great

1:34:21

I was gonna watch the video.

1:34:24

I'll send you a copy of the video

1:34:26

if we do it but I was gonna grab that

1:34:27

'cause it was something really powerful I thought.

1:34:29

-

[Lady Interviewer] Well I think also the quotes

1:34:31

about the restrictions that the lawyers

1:34:33

I don't think we have anything on that.

1:34:36

The fact that the lawyers have such limited access

1:34:38

is another really important bit.

1:34:42

-

It's really, it's.

1:34:43

-

[Male Interviewer] Right I know, no, you really did,

1:34:45

the reason why I asked you, I might know the answer

1:34:47

but the reason why I asked you that

1:34:49

it's 'cause you're the one talking

1:34:50

and you know and when I asked you

1:34:51

to find those for lawyers you just told me

1:34:53

because I think people need to see the breadth

1:34:54

of lawyers were you know really confined by the government

1:34:57

that it wasn't just the, you know people in Guantanamo

1:35:00

the fact is they did everything they can

1:35:05

to stop I mean the lawyers

1:35:06

-

It's still going on it's just terrible.

1:35:07

-

[Male Interviewer] Yeah it's still going right

1:35:09

and you know I think it's also important

1:35:11

and I, you know for you to talk about how Obama

1:35:13

has disappointed these other people have too

1:35:16

but I think, you know in the future people need to know

1:35:17

because everybody will have thought of Obama

1:35:20

as this godsend and it's important to hear that-

1:35:22

-

No it's been really, you know,

1:35:26

I'm sure that, it's so similar

1:35:27

to our first Guantanamo experience with Clinton

1:35:29

it's just like, you could write it,

1:35:31

you could write the script and we have,

1:35:33

I have a book, what's it called?

1:35:35

I wrote a Harvard lawyer, some lawyer article

1:35:37

where I talked about.

1:35:39

Ratner, Michael - Interview master file

Transcript

Item Info

Human Rights Archive

More Info & Options