Olshansky, Barbara - Interview master file / Witness to Guantanamo / Duke Digital Repository

Interviewer

We are very grateful to you

0:05

for participating in the Witness to Guantanamo Project.

0:08

We invite you to speak of your experiences and involvement

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with detainees and others involving Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

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We are hoping to provide you an opportunity

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to tell you this story, in your own words.

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We are creating an archive of stories of people in America

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and around the world will have a better understanding

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of what you've experienced over the years.

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And future generations must know about Guantanamo.

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And by telling you a story you're contributing to history.

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So we're very grateful that you're tonight.

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And if you'd like to take a break at any moment

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please let us know.

0:50

And if you say something

0:51

and you would like us to remove it, we shall remove it

0:53

if you let us know at the end of the interview

0:56

and we'd like to begin by asking you to tell us your name

0:59

and a little bit background where you were born

1:03

and where you grew up and your education, and then your age

1:06

and then moving into your work.

1:11

-

Well, I should say first I'm grateful

1:16

for this opportunity

1:19

I haven't really had this opportunity

1:23

to explain my experience on the record.

1:25

So my name is Barbara Olshansky.

1:32

I was born in Brooklyn, New York.

1:37

I was raised in the Syrian Jewish community in New York.

1:41

My mother's from was from Aleppo Syria.

1:46

I went to the Eastman school of music

1:52

and the University of Rochester as an undergraduate

1:57

and to Stanford Law School in California.

2:00

And most recently to Johns Hopkins School of Public Health

2:04

for a master's in public health, in humanitarian relief.

2:09

Interviewer

When were you born?

2:15

-

I was born in New York Hospital in 1960,

2:17

which makes me 105.

2:23

No, that's just how I feel, I'm 56.

2:26

Actually I feel a little bit younger these days

2:31

now that there's only 45 people left in Guantanamo.

2:34

With the fewer number.

2:40

I think I get younger.

2:43

It seems to work that way.

2:45

Interviewer

And after you graduated from Law School,

2:47

just briefly what did you do

2:50

just a short period before Guantanamo?

2:54

-

I clerked for the Chief

2:57

Justice of the California Supreme Court

3:00

quite an infamous judge.

3:03

Her name was Rose Elizabeth Bird, the most progressive judge

3:08

and the first woman judge on the court.

3:12

And I clerked with her until the end of her tenure.

3:15

When she wasn't reconfirmed by the voters

3:18

there was a big lobby by the insurance industry against her.

3:23

And then I went to a small law firm

3:29

where I represented blue collar unions.

3:31

And that was my first like practice job.

3:35

I did that for five years, then tried to bridge the gap

3:40

between occupational safety and environmental safety.

3:46

And I went to the Environmental Defense Fund

3:49

a nonprofit environmental advocacy group.

3:52

And I was there for about four years.

3:56

And then I went to the Center for Constitutional rights.

3:59

And that's where-

4:03

Interviewer

What year did you join them in?

4:05

-

It was a very interesting beginning.

4:14

It was in the fall of '96.

4:17

And I started along

4:21

with a good friend of mine, Norma Ramirez.

4:24

We started the day after William Kunstler died

4:26

and we hadn't heard the news

4:31

and we were standing outside pushing the buzzer

4:33

and no one was there

4:37

but we quickly found out

4:40

about the Memorial and our first day ended up

4:42

being this incredible Memorial service

4:45

honoring the life of William Kunstler.

4:51

So it was quite a way to start at CCR.

4:53

Interviewer

And where were you in 9/11?

4:58

-

So at the time I lived on Avenue C in the East Village

5:06

the Center for Constitutional Rights

5:14

is on Broadway at Bleaker.

5:16

So it's just directly straight across the East Village.

5:19

And I was with the man who would become my husband

5:24

who is now my ex,

5:33

but I think that day every minute

5:34

of it will be in my memory.

5:42

It was incredibly sunny, but also cold.

5:44

And we saw smoke on the way to work.

5:47

But we really didn't know what happened.

5:57

And I was supposed to be delivering employment

6:00

discrimination, papers down

6:06

to number seven World Trade Center.

6:08

And as I started walking down Broadway

6:14

we actually could see the second plane hit.

6:18

And we went and before the television stations went out

6:22

we heard some reports and then we just

6:30

my husband and I just took tables out of the building.

6:36

He had his office, he worked

6:40

at another NGO in the same building

6:43

and we took tables outside and water and paper towels.

6:45

And people started streaming up Broadway.

6:52

And we started offering people, water

6:56

use of our cell phones

7:01

and telling people what news we had heard

7:03

and then helping people as much as we can.

7:10

I didn't know, ironically or one man came up

7:19

whose eyes he was having tremendous trouble

7:23

with his eyes, but I guess because of ash

7:28

and I had eyedrops and I brought him in and cleaned his eyes

7:31

and I put in the eye drops and I did it a couple of rounds

7:34

and it turned out that he was the individual

7:39

that ended up being appointed to represent Jose Padilla.

7:45

And so that was one of my entrees into that world.

7:56

He called me cause he knew I was at the Center

8:05

for Constitutional Rights

8:08

and asked me to work on the case with him.

8:09

I hadn't known him before, but to him, I was

8:13

he couldn't remember my name, the girl who saved his eyes

8:17

he said, and he is eccentric.

8:20

Interviewer

Can we move into that?

8:25

But just after that first day

8:27

when you save people and gave them water the next morning

8:30

were you back in business work

8:35

or when did it start where you started worrying

8:37

about people who might be arrested because of the?

8:40

-

It was the next day.

8:43

Some of us went to work.

8:51

Some couldn't for the people

8:52

in our Boroughs couldn't come in.

8:54

And there was a cordon

8:57

that went across the city at 14th street.

9:02

And since I lived below 14th street,

9:05

I was free to move around there

9:09

and the phones were just ringing off the hook

9:14

and there were people calling and it was all women actually.

9:21

I don't remember a man calling.

9:28

And they were saying,

9:30

"They took my husband, my son, my uncle,

9:32

they took all of the male femme members of our family

9:36

that were eating at this restaurant."

9:39

And it was who took them? No names.

9:42

I said, "Any badges, any insignias, any letters?"

9:46

"No." And I said, "What did they tell you?"

9:51

"Agent Mike."

9:53

And that was when we knew

9:55

that people were being rounded up

9:57

and the phones were just running off the hook

9:59

and it just kept going like that.

10:04

And I had done some work on behalf of the Muslim community

10:08

in a discrimination case and working to get a Muslim

10:15

an Imam in the fire department.

10:20

And so a lot of people knew me

10:24

and people just started calling.

10:28

And as week went by,

10:31

I couldn't handle all those phone calls.

10:40

A lot of people spoke Arabic.

10:42

And I was the only one in my office that did.

10:45

So I called my mother and asked her to come down to help.

10:48

Interviewer

Where were the rest of the people at CCR?

10:56

-

Some came into the office.

11:00

Interviewer

Were they doing the same kind of work?

11:01

-

Yeah, they were trying to

11:03

but for people that didn't have much English

11:05

it was really very hard.

11:08

So most of those calls were routed eventually to my mom.

11:11

Interviewer

Who also spoke Arabic?

11:15

-

Well, it was her first.

11:18

It was her native tongue.

11:20

And till the day she passed away,

11:21

she would ask me, what did I hear about this woman

11:27

and her husband or this woman said she remembered all

11:31

of these people that she spoke with.

11:34

And it was actually the first time she said to me

11:38

"I understand now what you do."

11:45

She, wasn't very happy

11:49

with my choice of profession, mostly salary.

11:50

And I think that work with her made a difference.

11:56

-

So, you're telling us for history

12:03

that the day after 9/11,

12:05

on 9/12 U.S. was already rounding up

12:07

Muslims in New York City?

12:10

-

Yeah.

12:12

And there's a backstory to this

12:13

which is that Dick Cheney had been part

12:20

of a group much earlier in the early eighties.

12:27

That was very far to the right

12:33

much further than any Republicans in Congress.

12:37

And I believe it was called the New Century Foundation

12:41

or the, I think it was.

12:48

And they put out a series of white papers

12:50

and draft legislation that they wanted passed

12:54

to strengthen the military state.

13:01

None of those bills, very few ever made it to the floor.

13:06

None of them ever passed Congress, but they sat waiting.

13:12

And on October 26th, why do I remember that?

13:18

The day that the USA Patriot Act

13:24

was passed almost every one of those laws

13:27

and what were white papers turned into legislation.

13:34

We're part of that two foot high law

13:38

that was put on senators and congressmen desks.

13:43

And so already there was an idea

13:49

of what should be happening.

13:56

And the task force that became the joint terrorism

13:58

task force, the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Justice

14:02

and eventually the NSA even agencies

14:09

that were supposed to only look externally came together.

14:13

And so as very quickly, people were being rounded up.

14:18

And what was amazing to us is,

14:26

we we're taking the names down of all these men

14:30

and boys who are gone like just vanished in the middle

14:33

of the night in their underwear, in their pajamas.

14:37

I mean, they were just taken.

14:39

And so what could we do?

14:41

So we started with the local police precinct

14:44

then One Police Plaza, the police headquarters.

14:47

Then we went to the local FBI offices.

14:51

Nobody heard anything, nobody knew anything.

14:55

And then coincidentally, going

14:58

to the Metropolitan Detention Center

15:02

on another case for another man unrelated to this, he said

15:05

"They're bringing Arabs in here.

15:11

And I don't know who they are.

15:14

I don't know their names.

15:16

And they had hoods on them and, or they were bloody."

15:18

And so then we went

15:24

to the court to try and find out no magistrate

15:28

and no judge had any case listed on their docket.

15:32

There was nothing anywhere.

15:36

And it turns out of course,

15:39

that there was an order by John Ashcroft,

15:41

who was then Attorney General

15:44

that none of this should be listed.

15:46

It took us weeks and weeks to find

15:49

out where people were being held

15:52

and the scope of it across the country just

15:53

dawned on us as time went on.

16:01

And we were never able to find out how many people

16:04

the case went up in two different circuits

16:14

for us on the Freedom of Information Act.

16:17

And in one circuit in the sixth circuit,

16:20

Judge, Damon Keith wrote an incredible opinion

16:24

and said, "Yes you get to know this.

16:26

This is America."

16:28

And in the first circuit we lost

16:30

and the Supreme Court refused to take it.

16:32

And so we were never able to find

16:37

out how many we knew from our network

16:40

which was broadening on this issue with American Friends

16:45

Service Committee and groups like that.

16:52

And the Council on American Islamic Relations

16:54

and other groups that we knew

16:58

that there were at least 3000 people that were being held.

17:00

And at the same time, all political prisoners.

17:03

So people who are from like the Black Panther Party

17:09

who were in Angola, like Angola Three

17:12

they were all put on special lockdown, even

17:16

though many of them were in solitary confinement already

17:19

they no longer had privileges.

17:24

And that happened across the country to people

17:25

that were native American rights activists

17:28

that were in Federal prison,

17:31

like the Federal Bureau of Prisons,

17:33

the order came from Ashcroft, which we eventually saw.

17:36

And that case is gonna be argued tomorrow.

17:39

Nancy Chang and I brought that case.

17:44

John Ashcroft ordered them to lie to the lawyers.

17:47

And he said-

17:53

Interviewer

And what were they supposed to say?

17:55

-

"This is a matter of national security.

17:58

You are not allowed to divulge to anyone

18:01

who is in detention,

18:04

who is being held in any prison or jail in any

18:07

of the places that any of these people were."

18:10

And so it became this, what we used to

18:12

joke it was, the cocktail napkin way of finding

18:20

out who's in detention.

18:24

Somebody would say there's a guy Mohammed from Yemen

18:27

and that's how we started to know.

18:34

And the policy was called a hold until cleared policy.

18:37

And it meant no one was charged with any crime,

18:42

none of these people ever were not a single individual.

18:48

And they were supposed to prove themselves clean

18:53

of any affiliation with any terrorist group.

19:00

How do you prove a negative?

19:04

Interviewer

If CCR didn't exist

19:07

was there alternatives at that time?

19:12

-

No.

19:15

Interviewer

And if you weren't

19:16

there were there alternatives?

19:17

-

Well, I mean, it wasn't just me.

19:18

It was me and Nancy and Bill Goodman was a Legal Director.

19:20

Interviewer

But they knew you.

19:22

-

Yes.

19:25

Interviewer

So they wouldn't have know

19:26

where to call if they didn't know you?

19:27

-

I don't know about the Arab American community

19:31

who they would have called.

19:33

I know that I was trusted because of the cases that I did.

19:36

I don't know, actually

19:51

there are other political lawyers that have always been part

19:52

of the the satellite system of CCR.

19:55

Cooperating lawyers like Robert Boyle

20:00

and people who are just, and Michael Deutsch

20:02

from the People's Law Office in Chicago.

20:05

I like to think

20:10

that people would have found their way

20:11

to those folks eventually.

20:13

It was a lot of legwork and a lot of pushing people

20:22

and a lot of like, sort of playing characters.

20:26

Hi, I'm a college student doing survey.

20:31

I mean, just to find out who was where.

20:34

Interviewer

And running parallel to this was,

20:40

I assume Guantanamo or something else,

20:44

because by December there were these other lawyers coming

20:48

to CCR to talk to them about that.

20:52

-

Well so during that first part in September and October

20:54

where we're really working on this hold until cleared case

21:06

'cause people are vanishing right and left

21:09

and preparing the papers for that.

21:14

And then the USA Patriot Act comes out.

21:17

And then the presidential executive order

21:23

that created this fictional category of enemy combatants.

21:29

And that said that the vice-presidents has

21:34

the authority to hold people anywhere in the world

21:37

that he wishes basically without due process of law.

21:40

And that was one of the first little booklets

21:45

like pamphlets that I wrote was an analysis

21:50

of what that meant.

21:52

And fairly soon after we got a call at CCR from actually

21:57

two separate sets of foreign human rights lawyers

22:08

one was, I don't know if you've got

22:12

to meet her Gareth Pierce.

22:15

Interviewer

Yeah we got to meet her.

22:16

-

Who was one of the dearest people in the world.

22:18

And she called us on behalf of two British citizens.

22:23

Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal.

22:28

And Steve, I guess you met Steve also from Australia.

22:32

And he called and said to me,

22:40

"There's some Australian that are gone too."

22:44

And we're hearing very strange things about where they are.

22:48

And so that was our first introduction to the fact

22:52

that people were being rounded up in a similar way

23:01

to what was happening domestically

23:07

outside the United States.

23:08

We didn't have all of the details about where people were

23:10

but we knew some about Shafiq and Asif we knew that

23:15

one of them was getting married

23:24

and he was going to his father's village.

23:26

And so to meet his bride-to-be and the family.

23:28

And so we had some sense

23:32

that things were not happening

23:35

the way they were being described to us.

23:38

And the first thing that we filed actually

23:40

was based on, well, there's an organization

23:49

that I won't name their name.

23:58

They're not illegal advocacy organization,

24:01

but we found out that people

24:05

were being held in Guantanamo, in dog cages

24:11

out in the sun, completely exposed to the elements.

24:15

And they were being bitten by rats and scorpions.

24:22

And they were not being fed.

24:25

They're being only given water.

24:29

And so one of the first pleadings

24:31

that we filed was before the Inter-American commission

24:35

which governs the Southern hemisphere

24:39

and we filed a pleading that said

24:44

you're holding people without due process.

24:49

This constitutes torture cruel

24:55

and inhuman and degrading treatment.

24:58

And of course there was no response from the United States.

25:02

And that was sort of the opening salvo.

25:08

What came next was our request

25:16

for what are called article five battlefield hearings.

25:21

And this is a part of the story

25:26

that people don't really know.

25:28

I think many people think the Center

25:29

for Constitutional Rights just barged in

25:33

and decided to represent people in Guantanamo.

25:35

But actually what we did is they,

25:39

they had started a war and we said

25:43

"If you're detaining people, then you have to

25:46

have an article five hearing under the Geneva Conventions"

25:50

which we had done it with in every war

25:53

even the Kuwait situation we had done it.

25:57

And all you do is you have soldiers ask whether

26:03

are you a civilian or a soldier and make that assessment.

26:07

And if you're a civilian to go home,

26:11

and if you're a soldier, you're a prisoner of war

26:13

and that wasn't happening.

26:15

Interviewer

How did you know that wasn't happening?

26:20

-

We knew from talking to reporters

26:24

who were on the ground,

26:32

eventually we developed a very good relationship

26:36

with a lot of the African reporters.

26:39

And so we knew that

26:45

that wasn't happening and very soon after

26:47

George Bush announced that the people who are being sent

26:53

to Guantanamo were in a legal black hole

26:58

that no law at all applied to them.

27:03

And then we knew,

27:07

he tossed the Geneva Conventions out the window

27:10

and then we were, "Oh, no, okay, now we're here.

27:15

So what do we do?"

27:24

And internally at CCR, it was a rough time.

27:28

There weren't very many of us

27:36

there's many more now than there were then

27:39

but we were split and it was hard.

27:43

It was a number of days

27:45

and probably just three or something, but it felt

27:47

like forever that we were trying to figure

27:50

out what do we bring this suit

27:54

a Federal lawsuit on their behalf or not.

27:58

And CCR has always been different

28:02

from the American Civil Liberties Union.

28:11

CCR's mission has been to work for oppressed peoples

28:17

and people whose politics align with ours.

28:22

And we align with theirs.

28:26

But here we have a president saying,

28:29

"These are the worst of the worst."

28:31

And we didn't know who these people were.

28:33

We didn't really know.

28:34

But then on the other side was this idea

28:41

that you're putting, we are creating a black hole

28:44

where we're putting people

28:50

where anything can be done to them

28:51

and no one can watch.

28:53

And in the end that argument won out. And-

28:56

Interviewer

Can I interrupt for a moment?

29:02

Were people afraid of being unpatriotic?

29:05

Is that why they wouldn't take these cases?

29:07

Or did they not want to represent these worst

29:09

of the worst foreigners?

29:12

Or what was it that caused a split?

29:14

-

I think there was

29:17

the news was overwhelming about, I mean,

29:26

it was so close to the attacks

29:32

the fires are still burning

29:37

at the World Trade Center

29:38

and everyone is repeating what the president is saying

29:43

that these are the worst of the worst.

29:50

Is that who we want to represent?

29:52

That was really the other side.

29:58

I think we don't know who they are.

30:00

And what will it do?

30:08

How can we do this case just us?

30:12

I mean, literally there's like seven people sitting

30:16

in a room and when we decided to do it

30:19

some of us went to our friends at other organizations.

30:31

I went to two friends of mine at the ACLU and I said

30:36

"We are gonna need your help.

30:41

The scope of this is too large," and they couldn't do it.

30:44

They weren't allowed to do it.

30:55

And it was the same, pretty much everywhere.

30:57

Interviewer

Why do you think?

31:01

-

The answer was that it was too hot.

31:05

It was too politically hot

31:08

for them to take it on.

31:16

And I guess still be funded,

31:18

and CCR had been funded by the very old left

31:23

for a long time, to the extent that they were still alive.

31:26

I think it was partly,

31:31

we had a sense that we would be supported.

31:35

And we were also led by people like Michael Ratner

31:37

and Jules Lobel and people who had been fighting

31:44

for political prisoners, their whole lives

31:49

and for whom backing down, wasn't an option.

31:52

And so it became us that that filed the case.

31:58

Interviewer

Can I ask, what you were thinking?

32:07

I mean, what was going on in your head

32:10

and in the energy around you,

32:12

because did you believe in your heart

32:14

that America had in a sense turned overnight

32:17

that now it was taking people

32:21

and putting them in a black hole?

32:24

what were you thinking about?

32:27

-

I think when I first started hearing

32:33

that people were being taken away

32:35

in the middle of the night

32:37

and that the people weren't told

32:39

which agency was taking them

32:42

or the name of the agent

32:44

or officer that had arrested their husband

32:46

or uncle or grandfather,

32:48

and that no one was telling us where people were.

32:55

I think that was when I started thinking,

32:59

well this is not okay.

33:01

And like, there's things that are going on.

33:06

And why is there no listing on any court's calendar?

33:08

Like what is this?

33:14

And, then when the presidential executive order came out

33:17

I guess I spent a few days

33:26

before I wrote that book, "Secret Trials and Executions."

33:28

And it took me a while to absorb like

33:34

what the language meant.

33:37

And it was just a sentence, but it was so broad

33:38

and it was so clear

33:47

that it meant the authorization of disappearing people.

33:49

That by the time we decided

33:55

to file the Guantanamo challenge

33:58

It seemed like maybe even we weren't doing enough

34:04

because even in our papers, in the Federal court

34:07

we were just saying, "Give them a battlefield hearing."

34:11

We weren't saying "You're lying to the whole world."

34:14

We were saying "If this was a war,

34:19

give them a battlefield hearing."

34:20

And so I don't think the full impact of that hit me.

34:22

It didn't take long for it to hit me.

34:33

One of the first meetings we had was at NYU Law School

34:37

and Joe Margulies was there and Michael Ratner,

34:42

and also there were all of five people, I guess

34:54

included one woman and four guys who were from the judge

35:06

advocate General's office from each

35:11

of the different armed forces.

35:13

And these are people who basically gave up

35:14

their military career and volunteer

35:17

to represent people in Guantanamo.

35:19

But for us especially for me to walk

35:23

into a room where everyone's in uniform, it was like, whoa.

35:26

But before that we're walking across

35:31

the park into NYU and the signs outside

35:39

say "Terrorists Lawyer Meeting."

35:44

And there's like an arrow

35:48

and Michael and I both stand back

35:49

and it's like so now they've named us.

35:55

Interviewer

Who wrote that?

35:58

-

Whoever.

36:00

Interviewer

At NYU?

36:01

-

And so every few steps

36:04

was another sign that said that.

36:07

And I thought, well, now we're there.

36:08

And that was when I think I realized,

36:15

I'm the terrorist's lawyer.

36:18

Interviewer

Did you get any death threats or? You did.

36:20

-

Many.

36:25

Interviewer

And why and when?

36:26

-

Well, there were reporters who sit

36:30

at the Federal courts to watch every pleading.

36:37

So it didn't take long after we filed

36:40

for people to see our names, Michael Ratner, mine

36:41

and Stephen Watt, and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

36:46

And it has our phone number.

36:48

And then we're in the New York Times.

36:53

And the press was wow, it was overwhelming.

36:58

The press was overwhelming

37:05

for seven years that I did that work.

37:06

And People knew our address.

37:12

It was on the pleadings and people followed me home.

37:18

I remember looking out the window of another apartment

37:27

and seeing men in brown shirts with baseball bats

37:31

like lined up across the street

37:36

and going out the fire escape

37:38

in the back to go to work the next day.

37:41

People left voicemails that said

37:46

"I know where your office is.

37:50

Eighth floor, third window from the corner."

37:52

Lots of hate mail. Hate email.

37:57

Interviewer

How do you, I mean, this is important

38:02

because we haven't heard this from heard some of this

38:05

but not to the extent you had describing,

38:07

I know I said this before

38:12

but it's important what was going on?

38:13

I mean, you went to withstand all of this.

38:16

What inspired you to stand up to all of this?

38:18

-

The idea that this country

38:35

which was a political refuge for my family.

38:43

Would do these kinds of things to people.

38:53

I don't know to say just wasn't okay.

39:07

And you know what, I was very lucky to be

39:14

in a place where we all felt the same way

39:17

and where we had a strong leader.

39:21

It was an incredibly difficult time.

39:30

A lot of it was a blur.

39:41

Sometimes Michael Ratner would laugh at the death threats

39:43

because he'd spent his whole,

39:45

he's 25 years older than me, and he'd spent his whole life

39:50

having that happen for one struggle or another.

39:55

But I wasn't used to it.

40:00

And for one reason or another, Michael made me

40:03

the upfront spokesperson for a lot of it.

40:11

And so my face was out there

40:14

And it was always a toss up

40:21

when I would go to give a talk somewhere

40:26

about whether like people would throw things

40:30

at me in the audience,

40:33

or whether there would be people who would applaud

40:34

that the effort at maintaining the rule of law in that time

40:40

until we won the Rasul's case, Sahfiq's case

40:49

was an incredibly difficult time.

40:56

And I just remember one night,

41:03

we did a lot of know your rights work in mosques

41:09

around New York city and Bill Goodman

41:13

and Stephen Watt would go into the men's portion.

41:17

And I would go into the women's

41:21

and we would give these talks.

41:22

And one night it was actually a while

41:24

after we finished, we had gone to get something to eat.

41:29

And we were, I guess, just walking back down

41:32

from like Ninth Street or something in the East village.

41:39

And there were all these men with baseball bats and knives

41:42

that were headed towards the Masjid

41:49

like the school on the corner.

41:52

And I remember thinking,

41:55

we don't have anything, call the police

42:00

but who knows how soon they're gonna get in.

42:05

And all of a sudden, somebody just yelled "Make a chain."

42:08

And we made a human chain

42:13

like that went around the Masjid, and eventually they left.

42:15

And I just remember thinking,

42:23

how safe is anyone who's an Arab or Muslim?

42:27

And that was very worrying to us also, like

42:32

what was this gonna look

42:37

like here in addition to what was happening out there?

42:39

And it was a very intense time.

42:43

Interviewer

Were you surprised

42:49

when the U.S. Supreme Court granted sit on Rasul

42:51

and leading up to that did you think that it could happen?

42:54

-

We didn't think that, we lost really badly

42:58

in the courts below really badly.

43:02

Like, you can't lose worse than we lost,

43:04

like if they could have kicked us

43:07

out of the court house, they probably would have

43:08

we didn't think the Supreme Court would take the case.

43:13

And once it took the case

43:18

we certainly didn't think that we would win.

43:19

It was like this incredibly arduous effort

43:25

like writing the briefs

43:29

everyone having like different things

43:31

they wanted to change each little nuance,

43:35

it was gonna make a difference.

43:38

And then the question was, who's gonna argue?

43:41

And it was pretty clear that it couldn't be,

43:45

this radical lawyer

43:51

from the Center for Constitutional Rights

43:53

that was not gonna be in our client's interest.

43:54

And that's when I asked Judge John Gibbons,

43:59

if he would do it.

44:04

Interview

Did all of you finally agree on the briefs or?

44:06

-

Yeah, I mean it was like this very arduous effort.

44:10

But we did.

44:17

Interviewer

And were you afraid ,

44:18

if you thought you won't get a ruling

44:20

were you afraid that further court

44:21

bad law would result in this could make things worse, or?

44:24

-

I think, we didn't let ourselves

44:29

think about what the worst case scenario would be.

44:32

The decision of the Fourth Circuit

44:41

which is what went up to the Supreme Court

44:43

was already bad enough.

44:46

I mean, cementing in anything that they wanted it to.

44:49

And so we didn't really think about it.

44:55

And it was a number of weeks where there

45:01

one of the reporters whose beat was the Supreme Court,

45:09

he would say, "They're in conference now, in your case

45:12

I know that there's gonna be decision on Friday,"

45:15

and Friday would come and go.

45:17

And there was no decision.

45:18

And it happened like probably four times.

45:19

And like maybe three, and on the fourth time,

45:21

and I was like, "Bob, I'm really tired.

45:26

Like, don't I know they didn't decide.

45:28

He goes, "Well, they did."

45:31

And just the way he said, "Well, they did."

45:34

And I thought, okay, we lost.

45:36

And, he goes, "Are you sitting down?'"

45:40

And I remember saying,

45:44

"Yeah I'm sitting down in my office, I'm sitting down."

45:46

And I said, is it that bad?"

45:48

He said, "No, no, no, it's that good.

45:50

And I fainted.

45:55

I just dropped the phone and fell off the chair.

45:58

And, then he's like yelling

46:03

and I'm like, "Yes, I'm here."

46:04

And I don't think I, we couldn't really absorb it.

46:06

He faxed the opinion to us

46:14

and I think we just thought, habeas Corpus

46:16

like the writ of habeas Corpus is going

46:24

to those people in Guantanamo,

46:26

and we weren't thinking logistics or anything.

46:29

We were just amazed.

46:34

And I think we all went out to celebrate.

46:37

And then the next morning I came

46:42

into work and my voicemail had crashed.

46:43

And the voicemail CCR at that time took 40 messages.

46:47

And I was like, "What is this?"

46:53

I was like, "What?"

46:54

And when they rewound the tape and we like, could listen

46:55

to the voicemail messages, it was all these people

47:01

from all these law firms that were volunteering

47:06

to represent people in Guantanamo pro bono.

47:12

And I was amazed, they were people who were

47:16

from these white shoe wall street, law firms,

47:23

and they weren't just anybody.

47:27

They were the managing partners.

47:28

And there were people that I had litigated against

47:30

in employment discrimination cases and race discrimination.

47:32

And they're calling me and asking me if they can volunteer.

47:36

And I just was floored.

47:42

And in a way that was like, incredibly

47:47

I don't know what to say like, sort of uplifting.

47:57

There's people out there who understand

48:01

and who are willing to work on it.

48:05

And that was quite an amazing beginning.

48:11

Interviewer

But they weren't there until

48:17

Supreme Court decided the case or the day before.

48:19

-

Once the decision came down

48:23

and the court said, it's about the rule of law

48:24

and yes then it was the day after.

48:28

After it was announced, yes.

48:31

But even so they didn't know

48:34

who these people were and you still had that repetition

48:37

of the worst of the worst.

48:43

And yet they were stepping out.

48:46

And I do have to say that, that part of the story

48:51

that I think is amazing is that,

48:56

those law firms and those men, they fought,

49:04

and continue to fight.

49:12

And they spent millions of dollars.

49:14

Some of those law firms,

49:18

millions defending people in Guantanamo,

49:20

sending investigators to Afghanistan,

49:22

going to Afghanistan, themselves, going to meet

49:25

with family members and doing everything they could.

49:28

And that to me was an amazing testament

49:38

to who Americans could be.

49:43

Well in the end it was a good thing

49:55

that it was a few weeks

49:57

before our first meeting with anyone.

49:59

Maybe it was actually a few months

50:03

because my hair was magenta and I had a nose ring.

50:06

And I didn't think anyone would listen

50:10

to me if they saw what I looked like,

50:12

and plus I was 30 years younger

50:15

than everyone else who was volunteering

50:17

Interviewer

So CCR then decided

50:24

they would become a clearing house.

50:25

They hadn't thought of that though

50:27

until the blowout of phone calls?

50:28

-

We didn't and it was an incredible effort.

50:31

Because these partners were tax lawyers, bankruptcy lawyers.

50:38

They did mergers and acquisitions.

50:44

They were not human rights lawyers

50:47

although to a person

50:49

they will call themselves human rights lawyers today

50:52

which is to me an amazing thing.

50:55

But they didn't know anything.

50:59

They didn't know what the Geneva Convention said.

51:02

They didn't even know what

51:06

like the writ of habeas Corpus was.

51:07

I mean, this is not part of their life

51:09

and they hadn't ever been none of them.

51:12

I can't remember a single one having ever been

51:19

inside a federal prison,

51:22

no less, a super maximum correction facility

51:26

and Guantanamo was,

51:30

well the newer parts are better than that.

51:37

But in the beginning

51:42

what these men saw was not

51:44

like anything they could have imagined

51:47

that their country would do.

51:49

And so, I spent a lot of time, we created these

51:51

like short courses for them, like a crash course

52:00

in international humanitarian law,

52:04

teaching them the Geneva Conventions

52:07

and in habeas corpus

52:09

what the human rights protections are

52:14

what the human rights treaty say

52:17

how they're enforceable or not,

52:20

that issue of the enforceability of foreign treaties

52:23

in U.S.courts is still being played out now.

52:27

And so this is something

52:31

that they all had to go through

52:35

and then I decided we needed help

52:41

so that when they met their clients

52:44

they would be able to recognize

52:47

and understand what was happening

52:51

for them emotionally and psychologically.

52:53

And I invited some people

52:57

from the Bellevue Center for Survivors of Torture

53:02

to come and be part of the training.

53:05

And even so when people returned from Guantanamo

53:09

I sort of was the the shrink that when people called

53:15

and sometimes they just needed to talk about what they saw.

53:20

It was very, I think jarring startling

53:27

for a lot of these men in the beginning

53:34

it was mostly the managing partners.

53:38

And it was-

53:40

Interviewer

When did you first know or have an inkling

53:41

that there was torture in Guantanamo

53:44

or that the men were mistreated?

53:46

Did you have?

53:48

-

It was when we first heard about dog cages

53:53

and we knew that the most basic things

54:01

that you give to prisoners of war weren't being provided

54:06

and that they were receiving medical treatment

54:10

for rat bites and scorpion bites and things like that.

54:13

And we knew it was bad.

54:16

How much worse it became we learned incrementally over time

54:23

Interviewer

From detainees who were released?

54:33

-

No, well, from detainees

54:36

who in their meetings with their attorneys

54:40

Could sort of intimate a little bit

54:46

about what was happening for them.

54:49

They were all of these meetings

54:51

weren't supposed to be monitored, but they were.

54:53

And all of our thoughts and everything

54:56

that occurred we were supposed to reduce to writing

54:59

which then went through a court security clearance office

55:03

in Crystal City, in the Pentagon.

55:06

And so everything got redacted that they didn't want out.

55:09

And we all signed these protective orders

55:14

like we signed our life away.

55:18

And so it was how much can we put in the papers?

55:23

How much can we say?

55:29

And there were also people Naval officers

55:37

in Guantanamo who couldn't bear to be a part

55:46

of what they were witnessing, who would I assume go home

55:51

or somewhere on leave and call me from a payphone.

55:56

I never knew their names.

56:02

I never asked their names.

56:03

I had a friend in the Pentagon

56:06

I would ask for their number

56:08

their dog tag number and say,

56:12

"I just wanna know if this is a valid number, that's it."

56:15

And friend that's all she would do.

56:18

And so I would know that was a person.

56:22

Interviewer

What would they call you about?

56:26

-

They would call about people being chained

56:35

to the ceiling with their feet off the floor for days.

56:40

They would talk about people being chained hands to foot

56:49

to a stud in the floor

56:54

in like roasting heat and tearing their hair out.

56:58

The most memorable of these phone calls

57:04

came when it's actually sort of half a funny story.

57:07

I never know whether it's okay

57:13

to laugh about Guantanamo or not.

57:15

But I was the way that we arrange representation is

57:17

that law firms were given detainees from one country

57:26

so that if they could make their trips

57:34

to families and they would go to one country.

57:36

And if there was many people

57:40

from that country, like from Yemen

57:41

then it would be two or three law firms working together.

57:43

And during all this time

57:48

we never got the list

57:51

of who was in Guantanamo or where they were from.

57:52

So in order to file, we won the right to file a habeas

57:55

but we couldn't talk to anyone in Guantanamo.

58:00

We had to get a next friend

58:04

a family member to authorize us to bring a habeas petition

58:07

on behalf of the person that they thought was in Guantanamo.

58:11

And so I was working on a case,

58:17

because I did the templates for all of the pleadings

58:27

my name was like in 800 cases or something.

58:31

Anyway I was working on half of the Uyghurs

58:34

who are Chinese Muslims

58:38

from the far Western province in China

58:41

with this very funny man named

58:43

from McCutchen Doyle, named Sabin Willett

58:47

who was a bankruptcy lawyer, his whole life.

58:52

And he wrote mystery novels on the side.

58:54

And it was just a very funny man

58:56

and Sabin never could quite sit still enough

58:58

to go through the training session.

59:04

But I had received a phone call from someone

59:07

on the Naval base in Guantanamo that said that

59:13

that the Uyghurs and of course,

59:21

we didn't know how many there were at that point

59:25

but that the Uyghurs were arrested mistakenly

59:27

by the military that it had been, the Department

59:31

of Defense had acknowledged that it was a mistake.

59:34

And they had been trying to find a place to send them

59:37

because they couldn't go back to China

59:41

because their status as practicing muslims

59:45

made them in trouble in China.

59:50

And so he said, so,

59:53

"They're trying to find other places for them to go."

59:58

And I said "They're innocent.

1:00:01

You just told me that they're innocent."

1:00:04

And he said, "They weren't supposed to be picked up

1:00:06

but they were on some trip,

1:00:09

visiting some cultural site."

1:00:11

And I just was okay, so the next, so I call Sabin and I say

1:00:13

"We have to go to court like right away."

1:00:18

And he like flies down from Boston.

1:00:20

And the next morning we're in court.

1:00:22

And we filed the papers

1:00:27

and the judges that hasn't even had a chance to read them.

1:00:32

And he says, "So what's going on?"

1:00:35

And Sabin is like he disrupts me up front.

1:00:39

And I say, "Your honor

1:00:41

that we have good information that our clients

1:00:42

the Uyghurs are innocent.

1:00:51

And the Department of Defense has found that

1:00:53

and that they are currently

1:00:55

in the process of trying to find a place for them.

1:00:57

And they have to be released if there's no basis

1:01:01

for their detention, they have to be released."

1:01:05

And I will never forget turning to my counterpart

1:01:07

from the Department of Justice

1:01:14

the Senior Trial Attorney Terry Henry,

1:01:15

and the judge saying, "Mr. Henry,"

1:01:19

and trying to say, "Well, your Honor,"

1:01:21

and then he talks to his co-counsel and he goes,

1:01:27

"Well your honor, I have a little bit of an..."

1:01:29

and I did something that is completely out of decorum.

1:01:32

Like you're never supposed to do this.

1:01:35

And I just turned to him and I said,

1:01:37

"Terry Henry you better tell the truth right now."

1:01:39

And the judge like got really mad at me

1:01:43

and he called us all into his chambers

1:01:46

and he actually slammed his desk.

1:01:48

And he said, "Mr. Henry, I just want an answer.

1:01:51

Yes or no?"

1:01:56

And he said, "Yes."

1:01:58

And then he said, "Now you're gonna be back here tomorrow.

1:02:01

And you're gonna tell me what countries

1:02:03

the Department of Defense has approached."

1:02:05

And of course they hadn't approached anyone.

1:02:08

And then we were sort of like off to the races.

1:02:10

And the next thing I knew was I was

1:02:17

on a plane to Geneva where I hadn't really ever lobbied

1:02:19

before the United Nations.

1:02:25

And what I was doing was knocking literally knocking

1:02:27

on the doors of the permanent missions to the United nations

1:02:29

of countries that I thought might be willing to take them

1:02:34

because they were innocent.

1:02:37

And so I went first to Sweden.

1:02:39

I don't know, like I just thought Sweden will help.

1:02:41

And I got the door slammed in my face

1:02:44

and then I went to the UN High Commission

1:02:51

for Refugees and thinking that they could help.

1:02:54

And there was a Frenchman who was very high up and he,

1:02:58

I don't wanna swear, but he said,

1:03:06

"Why the hell should we help you?

1:03:09

This is your mess.

1:03:12

It's your country.

1:03:14

You fix it."

1:03:15

And I didn't know what to say.

1:03:16

And the lunch ended.

1:03:20

Then I went back the next day and I said,

1:03:21

"I'd like you to take you to lunch again."

1:03:22

And then he said something equally gruff.

1:03:25

And I was crying into my salad literally.

1:03:29

And then he said, "Oh, don't cry.

1:03:32

Can't bear it when women cry."

1:03:33

And, then he proceeded to help me find countries

1:03:37

that he thought might be immunable,

1:03:43

since the Department of Defense would say they

1:03:47

were innocent, except they would never say that.

1:03:51

They would say, they're no longer an enemy combatant

1:03:54

or they're not an enemy combatant.

1:03:58

They wouldn't say "We made a mistake

1:04:00

picking up sightseers in Pakistan."

1:04:02

They didn't say that.

1:04:04

Interviewer

And they didn't help you find a country?

1:04:05

You had to do it 'cause later on

1:04:08

they did have ambassadors.

1:04:11

But at that point it was you, who was doing that.

1:04:13

-

Yeah, it was.

1:04:15

And it was just crazy.

1:04:16

I mean, when I think of it now, I think what kind

1:04:18

of nut was I knocking on the doors

1:04:21

of all these different embassies,

1:04:24

but no there wasn't.

1:04:28

And what we were finding, as time went on is that,

1:04:29

there were these kind of trumped up hearings

1:04:40

that they were holding on Guantanamo.

1:04:42

And even in those, it became clear

1:04:44

that they didn't have anything on people

1:04:46

that they rounded up people.

1:04:50

And I think we started finding out more

1:04:53

from people after we learned about

1:05:04

Camp Iguana for the children.

1:05:10

And that I think, interestingly, even though I told it

1:05:17

to the New York Times, they didn't print it.

1:05:22

It was Vikram Seth from the UK Guardian

1:05:25

that printed the story about how they were

1:05:30

children as young as four in Camp Iguana.

1:05:35

Interviewer

Four?

1:05:37

How did the four year olds get to (indistinct).

1:05:40

-

Well according to one JAG officer,

1:05:43

when they would round up people

1:05:50

no one spoke Dari or Pashto or Urdu,

1:05:51

and they would round up all these people

1:05:55

and there'd be a child just sitting there

1:05:58

and they would just take them too

1:06:01

and when we thought we had gotten them all out

1:06:03

I said something not very good to Alberto Gonzalez

1:06:13

on the telephone, but it turns out that there were

1:06:17

many more children than they admitted to.

1:06:23

And so the seven that were released

1:06:26

without us having to go to court, I might've told him

1:06:31

that I would bite him in the back of his leg and not let go

1:06:35

until they went home.

1:06:38

Like, I don't know.

1:06:40

I think sometimes I got a little possessed.

1:06:42

Interviewer

So Barbara I'm trying to understand.

1:06:43

So a lot of the information you've got

1:06:45

was somewhat secretive in this,

1:06:47

and it wasn't official that you couldn't really use

1:06:49

in a court because you had no witness to testify to that?

1:06:52

-

Well, it was also under the protective order.

1:06:55

And so we could file sealed papers

1:06:59

but sealed papers would go

1:07:04

through the court security office and be redacted.

1:07:05

And a lot of the information we were getting

1:07:11

was the cocktail napkin method

1:07:14

and whatever somebody could sort of glean

1:07:18

from a meeting with their detainee

1:07:24

and whatever made it through

1:07:27

into the mail that went

1:07:34

through the international committee of the Red Cross.

1:07:35

Interviewer

So why did the court believe you

1:07:37

if you had really no substance, you had nobody

1:07:40

that you could point and say, "I got this from so-and-so."

1:07:43

-

You know, about the Uyghurs.

1:07:47

I don't think Terry Henry was willing to lie.

1:07:59

I think it was really clear that,

1:08:04

and what had been said to me is a few days after they were

1:08:08

in Guantanamo, they realized they made a mistake.

1:08:13

And this was many months afterwards.

1:08:15

Interviewer

(indistinct)who called you to tell you that?

1:08:17

-

And I never asked for names.

1:08:21

I didn't wanna know names.

1:08:23

And there's a very unhappy piece of this

1:08:25

with someone who did send me a list

1:08:34

of people's names

1:08:38

from Guantanamo (crosstalk) you did Matthew Diaz.

1:08:42

I don't think I'll ever get over that.

1:08:51

So he sent me these, the second kind of shrunken list

1:08:59

in a Valentine's day card.

1:09:03

What had happened is there was a piece

1:09:06

of legislation that was coming in called

1:09:09

The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.

1:09:11

That was gonna strip everyone

1:09:15

of the rights of habeas Corpus.

1:09:17

And I filed a class action, habeas Corpus case.

1:09:19

There'd only been one before

1:09:27

in the history of the United States.

1:09:29

And in an effort to grandfather everyone in.

1:09:33

So where we could we would ask a detainee

1:09:37

who else do you know?

1:09:44

Mohammed X, Ibraheem Y from so-and-so.

1:09:45

And that's how I wrote the papers.

1:09:49

And then that case got filed before judge.

1:09:55

It was like a new habeas petition.

1:10:00

And it was before the judge who we were originally before

1:10:03

in the first case,

1:10:07

but she was following the rule of law.

1:10:08

So she accepted the case.

1:10:12

And we said, we should get to go

1:10:15

to Guantanamo to get the list and meet everyone.

1:10:16

And they said, no national security you can't.

1:10:20

And we said, "You pick whoever you want,

1:10:25

you pick the most, pick John McCain

1:10:28

pick anyone that you want to go to and get this list.

1:10:32

No. And, but I did know that we had gotten everyone

1:10:34

in under the protection of like the class action, habeas.

1:10:41

Not long, that was in January, I filed it.

1:10:49

And in February I got this Valentine at work

1:10:52

and it was actually stamped on the outside JTF GTMO

1:10:55

and it was handwritten and handwritten to me.

1:11:02

And I thought, it's gotta be a joke.

1:11:05

I have like too many wise guy friends,

1:11:07

like I dunno how I like,

1:11:10

and somebody else in the office, another lawyer,

1:11:13

she thought I don't know if you met Maria Lahood or no?

1:11:19

Interviewer

Never interviewed her.

1:11:21

-

She thought it was a trap.

1:11:24

And that if we opened it

1:11:26

and it had information to which we weren't entitled

1:11:31

that they would go after us.

1:11:35

And, I opened it and inside was this list of names.

1:11:40

And so it was in these little cards

1:11:45

and it had like columns and the rows and the name.

1:11:48

And then it would say, I think it would say age internal,

1:11:53

it had like codes, but like their intern

1:12:01

their internee number language.

1:12:05

And then there was

1:12:09

like a series of columns with alphanumeric codes.

1:12:09

And we didn't know what they were, and we did try

1:12:12

and match them with the names that we had

1:12:17

that far through the cocktail napkin method.

1:12:20

And we couldn't match them.

1:12:25

And I now know that that was

1:12:28

because the Department of Defense

1:12:30

was doing a terrible job at understanding Arabic

1:12:34

and understanding dialects and understanding people's names.

1:12:38

And I had this one conversation with someone

1:12:41

and she said, "Well, we're using modern standardized Arabic.

1:12:45

And I said, "That's for writing."

1:12:50

And, she said,

1:12:53

"Well you don't know what you're talking about."

1:12:55

And I'm like, "Well, yes, I do.

1:12:56

It's my language.

1:12:59

It's my family's language."

1:13:01

And I said, "And we don't all understand each other

1:13:02

I speak Levantine Arabic.

1:13:06

If you're from Lebanon or Jordan or Syria, we're cool.

1:13:09

If you're from Morocco, I don't understand

1:13:13

what you're saying for the most part."

1:13:15

And she's like

1:13:17

"Everyone understands modern standardized Arabic."

1:13:19

And then I said, "Most of the people there don't read

1:13:21

and write, so how are you doing that?"

1:13:24

And so we did get to give them a notice

1:13:28

that was translated into Arabic,

1:13:32

and that was read to them in Arabic.

1:13:35

But when we tried to match the names

1:13:39

from the cards we couldn't

1:13:43

and so it was like what is this?

1:13:45

And Michael Ratner just wanted to give it straight

1:13:49

to the New York Times, like the Pentagon papers.

1:13:52

But people were worried

1:14:00

because there was people like Maria

1:14:01

that thought it was a trap.

1:14:04

And so I went,

1:14:06

a bunch of the lawyers got together.

1:14:08

And it was decided I would ask outside counsel.

1:14:11

And I went to a law firm that I had worked

1:14:14

with on as a pro bono partner in other cases.

1:14:16

And they put together this amazing team

1:14:21

of a former U.S. attorney and a whistleblower expert

1:14:24

a white collar crime, criminal expert.

1:14:31

I mean, it was an incredible team.

1:14:33

And they said, the chances are

1:14:35

that this is top secret level material

1:14:37

that since Bush has called it a war

1:14:42

even if we didn't think it was a war

1:14:45

that under The Alien and Sedition Act

1:14:48

holding the paper in your hand constitutes treason

1:14:53

you don't have to publish it.

1:14:57

You're not entitled to have it.

1:15:00

And they say, you have to give it

1:15:02

in to the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

1:15:04

And I didn't want to do that.

1:15:07

It was somebody's handwriting on the front.

1:15:11

And so I said, okay, how about this?

1:15:13

How about if I asked the judge, Judge Kohler Kotelly

1:15:17

if she holds it in escrow, in her court chambers

1:15:21

and if we win the right to their names

1:15:25

then she unseals it for us.

1:15:28

And so the lawyers, Michael Ratner

1:15:31

and Joe Margulies and another lawyers finally

1:15:33

they all said, "Okay, all right, all right."

1:15:36

So I called the judge's chambers

1:15:38

Terry Henry wasn't even interested in being on the phone.

1:15:42

I just thought it was ridiculous.

1:15:44

And she said like, I'm talking

1:15:46

to her law clerk and I hear a law clerk repeating it to her.

1:15:54

So she's in the background.

1:15:57

And the judge says really loud, "There is no way

1:15:59

in hell that I am keeping those

1:16:03

documents in my court room."

1:16:05

And it was just like, "Oh, okay."

1:16:07

So then I asked her, "Will you issue an order

1:16:11

for it to be held in escrow in the court security office

1:16:16

in Crystal City and for them to lock it away.

1:16:20

And you will, if we win the rights to their names

1:16:24

then your order can be issued unsealing it."

1:16:27

She said, "That's fine."

1:16:30

And we called, and I'll say her name

1:16:32

Christine Campbell agreed

1:16:35

and said she would obey the court's order.

1:16:38

And after five o'clock, she called me that day.

1:16:41

And she said, they decided

1:16:44

they couldn't obey the court's order.

1:16:45

And a Federal agent would be at my office

1:16:47

at 6:00 AM the next morning to take everything

1:16:50

that they thought was necessary.

1:16:56

Interviewer

That includes the letter and anything else?

1:17:00

-

And I don't know what happened that day.

1:17:05

I was really a klutz coffee spilled all over the envelope.

1:17:10

You couldn't really read the handwriting anymore

1:17:13

and this guy, so I'm at my office really early.

1:17:20

And I didn't know the office at that time looked

1:17:25

like it had been in office since the Civil Rights era,

1:17:30

like cigarette burns and gum all over.

1:17:33

I mean, it just.

1:17:35

And I there's like nobody around

1:17:37

and the buzzer rings and I opened the door

1:17:40

and there's a guy in a black trench coat.

1:17:42

And I just, like I said, "Really" I tried.

1:17:45

And I just thought

1:17:49

and he was like, not smiling at all.

1:17:51

And he puts on the gloves and he goes, "Let's go."

1:17:54

And I said, "Here it is."

1:17:57

And he goes, "Well, how many people have handled that?"

1:17:59

And I'm like "A whole lot."

1:18:01

And he goes, "Well

1:18:04

then they're all gonna have to be interrogated."

1:18:05

And I thought, I was like, "No, it came to me.

1:18:08

And I just showed it to people in my office."

1:18:12

And he goes, "I'm sorry."

1:18:15

And, we gave him the copies

1:18:23

well all the copies that I knew about at least.

1:18:24

And then I didn't hear anything for a long time.

1:18:29

And I came back

1:18:34

from doing work in Southern Africa in Namibia

1:18:38

And there were Naval police waiting for me at the airport.

1:18:44

They took me into custody

1:18:53

and I was held in Norfolk Naval base.

1:18:56

Interviewer

Really?

1:18:59

-

Yeah. They took my phone and my laptop.

1:19:02

Interviewer

Were you told, you were a prisoner?

1:19:09

What were you told?

1:19:11

-

I was a material witness

1:19:12

and then that Matthew Diaz, who, I didn't know who that was.

1:19:14

Interviewer

Really?

1:19:19

-

And I know that he was not any person that ever called me.

1:19:22

I didn't recognize his voice.

1:19:26

And I never asked for names.

1:19:27

We had some orders that like,

1:19:30

rules that we operated under and no, I had no idea.

1:19:34

And so he's like, "You're here as a material witness."

1:19:39

And I'm like, "I don't know, what are you talking about?"

1:19:43

And he said, "There's gonna be, a court martial,

1:19:45

and for your friend, Matthew Diaz."

1:19:49

"What friend, Matthew Diaz, what are you talking about?"

1:19:54

And they had asked us all a lot of questions

1:19:58

but none of us knew anything.

1:20:05

It just came in the mail as a Valentine.

1:20:09

That's all we knew.

1:20:11

So it didn't go anywhere.

1:20:12

And all of a sudden, I'm held on the Naval Base

1:20:16

and somebody took pity on me and gave me a cell phone.

1:20:23

And I called someone

1:20:32

who is now a really dear friend of mine.

1:20:35

He was on that panel at the law firm

1:20:37

that helped us think through the issue.

1:20:39

His name is Sheldon Krantz.

1:20:43

And I called him and I said, "I'm in trouble.

1:20:45

I'm in Norfolk Naval base.

1:20:48

And I need a lawyer and I don't know what's going on.

1:20:51

And, I have to go 'cause I don't have a phone."

1:20:55

And that's still is like I think the besides,

1:21:01

having clients of mine,

1:21:11

die the day before they were supposed to be released

1:21:14

were being tortured,

1:21:20

my role in what happened

1:21:23

to Matthew Diaz is something I will never get over.

1:21:25

I asked him so many times would left me file a request

1:21:34

for a pardon with Obama.

1:21:42

And he wouldn't.

1:21:46

I don't know that Obama would have granted that.

1:21:52

I don't know.

1:21:55

Interviewer

And Mathew wouldn't let you

1:21:56

file a pardon on his behalf?

1:21:58

Do you know why he wouldn't?

1:22:00

-

No. What happened in the cases I'd never been

1:22:03

in a court martial proceeding so I didn't

1:22:11

but the guy who was Matthew's defense lawyer

1:22:16

didn't really know what to do.

1:22:20

And I just said, "You take me as your witness in the middle

1:22:21

of the prosecutor's case so that I can say,

1:22:28

that we already had all

1:22:37

of this information when it came that it wasn't anything new

1:22:38

that it was," and he did that.

1:22:42

And so I got to testify really

1:22:49

for Matthew during the proceeding.

1:22:52

They charged him with five counts of treason

1:22:56

which in time of war are punishable by the death penalty.

1:22:59

They hadn't said that they were seeking it

1:23:04

but they hadn't said they weren't yet.

1:23:06

And at the end of the case, I petitioned the judge

1:23:09

to be able to make a victim impact statement

1:23:17

as part of the American public.

1:23:22

I was shocked when he left me.

1:23:26

And I spoke for 45 minutes about Matthew Diaz

1:23:28

being a hero of the most traditional American kind.

1:23:31

Like a true Patriot who believes in the rule of law

1:23:37

and who's position actually,

1:23:41

the founding fathers wrote about in the Federalist papers.

1:23:46

And instead of a life sentence, five times over

1:23:49

he got six months in a minimum security facility,

1:24:00

but they stripped him of his pension.

1:24:05

And then they went after his license to practice law.

1:24:08

And I tried to intercede in that

1:24:15

the bar wouldn't let me.

1:24:17

Interviewer

Did you ever speak to Matt

1:24:22

once he was released?

1:24:25

-

Oh, oh yeah.

1:24:27

I spoken to him quite a number of times.

1:24:28

I was a big past about the pardon thing

1:24:31

but I think in the end it was probably more

1:24:35

for me to feel better than maybe for him.

1:24:38

If history is written the right way.

1:24:46

It will say about him

1:24:48

what I said about what he is.

1:24:50

He's too humble, a person to openly play that role

1:24:55

but it needs to be said.

1:25:02

Interviewer

I'm so glad you said it

1:25:04

because obviously he didn't say that to us

1:25:06

that's not what he would do.

1:25:07

I just want to

1:25:11

I think this adds to the impact of your history.

1:25:12

How long were you in the Naval prison at Brigg

1:25:15

and what exactly got you out of that?

1:25:19

-

Not it wasn't until a few days after

1:25:22

the judge ruled and the jury ruled

1:25:31

in the court marshal that I was given leave

1:25:34

to exit the base.

1:25:47

Interviewer

So how long were you in the base?

1:25:48

-

Probably like a month.

1:25:56

Interviewer

A month?

1:25:57

-

I'm a little bit sure it's a month.

1:25:58

Interviewer

You were held there.

1:25:59

You had to an attorney presumably during that time?

1:26:02

-

Well, after someone lend me their phone

1:26:06

and I called Sheldon yeah.

1:26:08

Interviewer

And then he came to down.

1:26:09

-

He came to visit.

1:26:10

Interviewer

But you were in a cell?

1:26:11

-

No, I mean, I was in a room like this with an iron door

1:26:13

I couldn't go out anywhere.

1:26:29

They had my laptop and my cell phone.

1:26:37

I wasn't allowed to have a TV or radio.

1:26:40

And the prosecutor showed me that he had an indictment

1:26:45

in my name for the same five counts of treason.

1:26:53

And so it started out with a threat,

1:26:58

and then when I was leaving he grabbed my arm

1:27:04

hard enough to make a bruise.

1:27:13

And he just said, "Don't forget professor Wells chance.

1:27:15

We're watching you all the time, wherever you go.

1:27:19

And whatever you do."

1:27:22

Interviewer

And you were released.

1:27:29

Can you tell us exactly when you were

1:27:31

and why you were finally released?

1:27:33

-

Well, I was being held as a material witness

1:27:35

for that court martial.

1:27:37

I think they waited until they had decided which facility

1:27:42

they were gonna send Matthew to.

1:27:46

And until he was gone and his family was gone.

1:27:48

When his family, like when his wife, like we were

1:27:57

all sequestered and so I wasn't supposed to see anybody

1:28:02

but I would say I have to go to the bathroom

1:28:07

and his wife would be in the bathroom.

1:28:09

So I would sort of-

1:28:10

Interviewer

Sure. She was also in the Naval Base?

1:28:11

-

No she was just there for the court martial again.

1:28:14

And they were so nice to me, despite what I did.

1:28:18

Interviewer

The family was?

1:28:24

But the Federal government kept you in the Naval base

1:28:29

for a month because you received this letter.

1:28:32

What did they want you to do with that letter?

1:28:36

They didn't know what to do with it.

1:28:38

What did they charge you

1:28:40

with those five or threatened to charge you?

1:28:41

-

I think they thought I was

1:28:48

I would guess that they thought I was lying on the stand

1:28:49

that I did know Matthew Diaz

1:28:51

that he did call me or, but I wasn't.

1:28:53

I didn't, he didn't.

1:29:03

His response was a reflexive response

1:29:04

to our lawsuit and he sent it

1:29:08

to me cause I filed that class action habeas.

1:29:11

I filed it, and I said, we need to have the names.

1:29:16

And I filed it,

1:29:19

with like Muhammad X, like 500 people.

1:29:20

And so there was no conspiracy

1:29:28

there was nothing like that.

1:29:35

It was a person taking a heroic step

1:29:37

to do the right thing.

1:29:45

And I guess nobody believed that.

1:29:49

That's my guess about why it went down that way.

1:29:52

Interviewer

Why don't we take a five minute break?

1:30:01

John is that okay?

1:30:06

John

That's fine.

1:30:06

Interviewer

Now we back on Johnny?

1:30:07

John

Yeah.

1:30:08

Interviewer

So you were just saying

1:30:09

about your work in Guantanamo.

1:30:12

Did you ever get a break?

1:30:14

-

No, and especially

1:30:17

as time went on and we knew more and more

1:30:24

about what was happening in terms of torture.

1:30:26

It was actually almost from the beginning.

1:30:34

It was pretty much 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

1:30:37

Interviewer

How did you manage that?

1:30:40

-

No, I don't know.

1:30:43

It's all a blur.

1:30:47

I mean, there were press calls from Australia

1:30:49

at three in the morning.

1:30:52

And then being off at six to make sure

1:30:54

that we had papers in the court by nine.

1:30:57

And it just, I suppose, that's why I'm not married anymore.

1:31:01

It was very hard.

1:31:12

And we were trying to match strategies

1:31:14

against a huge operation.

1:31:21

I had never heard

1:31:27

of the Defense intelligence Agency before then

1:31:28

and the Defense Department,

1:31:34

and the Justice Department look at the resources they had.

1:31:36

And, so even when the judge said that the Uyghurs

1:31:42

were supposed to be released,

1:31:46

the Justice Department they immediately appealed

1:31:50

and they filed the appeal and it's Friday, late afternoon.

1:31:54

And the appeal is supposed to be heard

1:31:59

in the Court of Appeals on Monday morning.

1:32:01

And I'm in the office on Saturday.

1:32:04

And all of a sudden I learned

1:32:07

that the Uyghurs are on a plane to Tirana Albania.

1:32:09

And that there's no reason for us to have the hearing

1:32:18

in the Court of Appeals because they've released them

1:32:21

to some country they've never heard of

1:32:24

never been to have no resources.

1:32:27

And we don't have the ability to contact them

1:32:40

or arrange anything for them.

1:32:43

And so this game of every time we make a gain in the courts

1:32:48

and it's recognized

1:32:55

that this is what the law says, something new occurs.

1:32:56

There's some new kind of hearing that they create.

1:33:02

And even though we're supposed to have access

1:33:07

to all of the information about the person

1:33:11

before that hearing happens, oh, there's yet another file

1:33:14

or there's somebody new to testify.

1:33:18

And it was this game of like, trying to catch up

1:33:20

when you're walking in, somebody has a race car.

1:33:29

It was really just an unbelievable thing.

1:33:34

And the experience of the Uyghurs

1:33:37

in Albania during that time was horrific.

1:33:40

There was a very strong Uyghurs American community here

1:33:46

and they had this great advocacy group

1:33:48

that was working really hard for them, wonderful people.

1:33:50

And through them, I heard a lot

1:33:55

of what they were trying to do in terms of raising money.

1:33:59

And I worked on some fundraisers with them.

1:34:03

And then we learned that

1:34:06

that announcement that was done by the U.S. government

1:34:12

of them being in Tiran Albania, prompted the

1:34:16

Chinese government to send teams of diplomats, to Albania

1:34:19

to seek their extradition.

1:34:29

So they could stand on trial

1:34:30

for being enemies of the state and China.

1:34:33

And all of a sudden were in this mess, trying to talk

1:34:35

to the Chinese government about

1:34:41

how these people were sent there against their will.

1:34:44

And it was just, and then-

1:34:50

Interviewer

Could you talk to them?

1:34:54

-

No, not really.

1:34:57

I mean, they know their English.

1:34:59

One of them spoke a little bit of English

1:35:02

but no one we knew spoke Uyghur

1:35:05

and they didn't speak Arabic.

1:35:09

And what we did have was in the beginning

1:35:18

a woman in the Albanian government who decided that

1:35:21

that it wasn't okay that they were hung

1:35:26

out to dry by the U.S. government.

1:35:28

And she hid them.

1:35:30

Interviewer

When they first arrived?

1:35:32

-

When they first arrived

1:35:34

and I spoke with her, she spoke some English

1:35:35

and she told me the different places

1:35:40

that she could take them

1:35:43

but that she was gonna eventually run out of places.

1:35:44

And she didn't know how much she could evade the entreaties

1:35:47

that were happening by the Chinese Government.

1:35:53

And I just was always waiting to hear,

1:35:58

that they were somehow kidnapped

1:36:03

and taken back to China or, and it-

1:36:05

Interviewer

How did the Albanian Government

1:36:09

finally stop powerful Chinese?

1:36:12

-

I don't know what happened in those negotiations.

1:36:16

I know that eventually the U.S Government

1:36:21

gave some money to the Albanian government, I guess

1:36:25

as payment for taking them.

1:36:31

But what a life to be put in the middle of a country

1:36:36

that is nothing like you've ever experienced

1:36:42

where you don't know the language, you don't know a soul

1:36:47

you don't know how to earn a living.

1:36:51

You don't know.

1:36:52

Interviewer

The Uyghurs went to Palau

1:36:57

well it's the same story

1:36:59

but it was even worse for them

1:37:00

'cause they didn't even know the tropics

1:37:01

came from a cold climate.

1:37:03

-

And really that place, that country

1:37:06

as a place to go came out of a joke by Gita that,

1:37:15

at one point she just said, "Well

1:37:21

if the government ever comes after me, tell them

1:37:23

I'd like to go to the tiny island nation of Palao."

1:37:25

And it was a joke, but it was like our inside kind of joke.

1:37:29

Interviewer

You think the government had heard that joke

1:37:36

and you think that's what it's?

1:37:39

-

No, I don't really know.

1:37:41

Interviewer

You used to say that before?

1:37:42

-

It was definitely

1:37:46

it was like our, like, it was her joke.

1:37:47

Like everyone's like, "Gita where is Palau

1:37:50

you don't even know where Palau is.

1:37:53

Interviewer

And that was before they were sent there?

1:37:54

-

Because the first besides Shafiq and Asif.

1:38:00

They were released in March before.

1:38:10

But besides them the Uyghurs being sent

1:38:18

to Albania was like the first grouping shipped off

1:38:22

by the Defense Department.

1:38:27

And that was because,

1:38:29

their cover was blown and we knew they were innocent.

1:38:32

And so they got sent to Albania.

1:38:36

I actually think that I found this out first

1:38:45

through a friend who now sits

1:38:47

on the African court of human rights, but was working

1:38:53

for the Southern African Development Community SADC

1:38:57

which is a regional body in Southern Africa.

1:39:03

And he told me that United States had approached

1:39:06

several Sub-Saharan African countries with payments to try

1:39:13

and convince them to take Guantanamo detainees.

1:39:21

So they tried with the government of Gabon and Togo

1:39:26

and I can't remember the third country

1:39:33

each of those countries said, "No

1:39:34

we're not gonna be a party to what you're trying to do."

1:39:36

And that was their first efforts to find a place

1:39:46

for the Uyghurs

1:39:49

they were gonna send them to Gabon.

1:39:51

And then eventually they settled, I guess, on Albania

1:39:53

which was willing to take the money.

1:39:56

And for a very long time

1:40:02

they really weren't trying,

1:40:05

the Uyghurs were an exception

1:40:07

because they'd been found out.

1:40:08

But once we knew that people that had been found

1:40:13

to be no longer enemy combatants, we knew

1:40:19

that we could get the courts to get them ordered out

1:40:23

if we had a place.

1:40:28

And that's when I started knocking

1:40:30

on the doors of the embassies.

1:40:31

Interviewer

But did you continue that,

1:40:34

after the Uyghurs went to Albania?

1:40:38

Did you still look for other countries?

1:40:40

-

Yeah. The judge who heard the Uyghur case

1:40:43

Judge Robertson compelled Terry Henry, the Government

1:40:48

to offer proof of where, of countries

1:40:54

that they had approached.

1:40:58

And so he came with this letter to Sweden

1:41:00

like that was the only letter that he brought.

1:41:05

And I had already spoken

1:41:07

to the Swedish ambassador to the UN.

1:41:11

So I just, I was like, "You're such a faker,"

1:41:13

and the Judge wasn't having any of it,

1:41:19

he like looked at both sides

1:41:22

of the letter and he said, "Is that all you have?"

1:41:23

And he said, "The next time we have a meeting

1:41:27

you better have more.

1:41:30

So they would come with letters that were like to

1:41:32

whom it may concern literally.

1:41:34

And so they really didn't care

1:41:38

for the authority of the courts either.

1:41:45

It was whatever the executive ordered.

1:41:51

And so, I kept going back

1:41:55

to Geneva and knocking on doors.

1:42:00

Interviewer

Can I switch topics for a moment?

1:42:05

We can go back to that.

1:42:07

But you met since I don't wanna forget

1:42:08

about Jose Padilla, since you said that you,

1:42:11

met the lawyer Andy for-

1:42:17

-

Andrew Patel.

1:42:19

Interviewer

Patel so is there something in that story

1:42:20

I don't wanna spend too much time on Jose

1:42:23

'cause it's not really part of our project

1:42:25

but we did interview his mother.

1:42:26

-

Oh you did?

1:42:28

Interviewer

So I would like to, if there's something

1:42:29

if there's a story there and your involvement with him

1:42:32

I wouldn't mind having it

1:42:36

on tape if otherwise we can move on.

1:42:37

-

Well, so Jose Padilla story is important

1:42:42

for a number of reasons.

1:42:52

One is it happens early on and he's an American citizen

1:42:54

and he's originally taken into custody

1:43:02

as a material witness under the material witness statute.

1:43:09

And unfortunately for him, the judge who he is

1:43:15

before Judge, Michael Mukasey.

1:43:20

And when they take them as a material witness,

1:43:24

they take them in such a way that he is unavailable to us.

1:43:32

We can't speak to him.

1:43:37

We're not allowed to see him.

1:43:41

And it comes huge effort to get

1:43:43

Andy Patel or Donna Newman or me

1:43:49

or anyone to have access to him.

1:43:51

So he is completely isolated in solitary confinement.

1:43:55

No one's talking to him.

1:43:58

He has no idea what's going on.

1:44:00

They are creating the story around him.

1:44:05

Eventually it becomes clear

1:44:13

that he's just a guy that converted to Islam prison.

1:44:14

But he magically changes

1:44:23

from being a material witness to a defendant.

1:44:29

And so what we realize is that this is

1:44:36

first of all, they're holding an American citizen.

1:44:42

And now this category that was applied

1:44:48

to people outside the United States.

1:44:50

So the enemy combatant, well now

1:44:52

an American citizen can be an enemy combatant.

1:44:56

And under that presidential executive order

1:44:59

they can be held to anywhere without access

1:45:03

to a quarter council and without charge indefinitely.

1:45:06

And so then it becomes

1:45:10

like this incredible effort to get access to him

1:45:12

because if he is being called an enemy combatant

1:45:17

and he's put in that category, we'll never see him again.

1:45:23

And that's where we first start to understand

1:45:27

that these categories are not gonna just be

1:45:32

for people that had a gun on the field.

1:45:40

Which they didn't want to call them a soldier

1:45:44

because then the Geneva Conventions come into play.

1:45:47

So we're gonna call them something

1:45:50

that never existed in international law.

1:45:51

And so we were battling that categorization the whole time

1:45:55

but now we have Jose Padilla and he's an American citizen.

1:45:59

And so now it comes clear

1:46:05

that an American citizen can be treated the way

1:46:09

the people have been treated that went to Guantanamo.

1:46:16

And the thing is that we could never make

1:46:20

that like penetrate to the public.

1:46:29

I think people were so scared that,

1:46:36

those things they didn't hear.

1:46:42

Interviewer

So CCR was involved

1:46:45

as one, the attorneys for Jose?

1:46:47

-

Yeah.

1:46:51

Interviewer

And people were scared

1:46:53

because the U.S. made him scary or ?

1:46:55

-

Well, I think,

1:46:57

they just put him in the category

1:47:00

of every Muslim Arab man is a terrorist.

1:47:02

Interviewer

When you were in the Naval break.

1:47:15

And so I'm not faulting youth think

1:47:18

of Jose while you were there.

1:47:21

And I know that Andy was there.

1:47:23

-

I remember Andy Patel like having met

1:47:31

so Andy got to meet Jose Padilla and they were

1:47:35

in court when they came and designated him

1:47:40

as a material witness and took them away.

1:47:44

And I remember Andy saying that he was,

1:47:47

just a regular guy who never got

1:47:54

to too much schooling,

1:47:56

who, was like comforted by and felt a part

1:47:57

of something when he converted in prison.

1:48:03

And he said

1:48:08

he's not gonna survive being locked away forever

1:48:10

with no one to talk to ever again.

1:48:16

And, I just remember thinking,

1:48:22

okay, we can't we gotta do something.

1:48:27

And eventually Andy got access to him

1:48:31

and the government had no proof of their story

1:48:38

that he had a dirty bomb,

1:48:43

that it's so far from who we understood who he was

1:48:46

and what kind of guy who was that it was just crazy.

1:48:51

But, it did make me very worried about,

1:48:56

who else is at risk of being designated in that way?

1:49:09

How many people do we not know about?

1:49:13

And all during the time that we're doing this work

1:49:17

we're hearing about prisons and other places.

1:49:22

And so that's when

1:49:28

the so-called black sites start becoming an issue.

1:49:29

And, that was very worrisome.

1:49:39

Who's in there?

1:49:40

How many people are in there?

1:49:42

How many places do we have like that?

1:49:43

And what are we doing to people there?

1:49:45

Now, once June, 2004 happened, and we won the Rasul Case

1:49:50

Bush stopped sending people to Guantanamo.

1:49:59

So they were going somewhere else.

1:50:02

And we knew some of them were going to Afghanistan

1:50:04

'cause we knew about the terrible old Soviet prisons

1:50:07

that were there, that they were

1:50:12

using the salt box and all of those places.

1:50:14

And they're horrible.

1:50:20

I mean, I've seen them, they're just horrible.

1:50:21

And then we started hearing about Diego Garcia

1:50:23

and maybe Poland and so all of a sudden

1:50:29

I'm like finding out about,

1:50:38

so somebody calls me a whistleblower, who is one

1:50:46

of these people that does the weather and flight plans

1:50:51

for commercial airlines or people that you hire.

1:50:55

And they tell you, the weather is gonna be great in the UK.

1:50:58

When you land at Heathrow blah, blah, blah.

1:51:01

Here's, these runways will be open and all of that.

1:51:03

And it's this guy who calls me

1:51:07

from Texas completely out of the blue.

1:51:09

And he says, "I have some information for you."

1:51:11

And I say, "I don't think we should talk on the phone."

1:51:16

He comes to New York.

1:51:19

And he spends a few days telling me

1:51:20

that he arrange the flights Forever Green Airlines

1:51:25

which is the CIA airline that is sending packages,

1:51:32

which are people to all of these places.

1:51:39

And that he has the records

1:51:43

of the flights and the tail numbers

1:51:50

of the planes and the places.

1:51:53

he told me there's this runway at Heathrow

1:51:58

that's the refueling stop

1:52:02

before they go to the black sites and other parts of Europe.

1:52:03

And he had all of this information.

1:52:05

And I knew that there was a Swiss Senator who was part

1:52:09

of the council of Europe,

1:52:13

a body that I've never heard about here.

1:52:17

And this guy, Dick Marty, who was a hero of mine

1:52:20

and he was starting to put together the flight plans.

1:52:24

And I just packed up everything this guy said

1:52:28

and I sent it to Senator Marty.

1:52:31

And we spent I don't know how many days

1:52:33

weeks putting together the flight plans

1:52:38

and the tail numbers

1:52:41

and try figure out who was going, where

1:52:44

and where they were stopping.

1:52:46

And eventually he did this incredible report

1:52:47

about Europe's complicity in extraordinary rendition.

1:52:51

And we were sending people

1:52:57

to third countries for interrogation under torture

1:53:01

and then they'd either go to Guantanamo or Bagram Airbase

1:53:04

or Diego Garcia or wherever else we were sending them.

1:53:07

And, the work just kept expanding.

1:53:12

And that at all of these points

1:53:19

that there were people who said, "I can't stand it."

1:53:26

And Daniel Ellsberg came forward

1:53:31

and came with the information

1:53:40

or sent the information is how we were able

1:53:42

to put the pictures together or help other people

1:53:47

like Dick Marty put the pictures together.

1:53:51

Interviewer

The person in Texas you don't have to

1:53:53

tell us it goes,

1:53:56

because then you found out his name, obviously.

1:53:57

-

Yes.

1:53:59

We had lots of conversations

1:54:02

before he made the decision to really talk about all

1:54:04

of this information, because he knew that it was,

1:54:11

he couldn't be in that industry anymore.

1:54:13

There's like, it's very small group

1:54:15

of people that does this kind of planning.

1:54:17

And so he knew that

1:54:19

and he was concerned about his family

1:54:22

and what kind of retaliation would be subject to?

1:54:26

And CCR didn't have any resources to,

1:54:32

we couldn't do anything.

1:54:39

And so I couldn't tell them we could do anything.

1:54:40

The best I could do is say

1:54:46

"You and your family can come stay with us,

1:54:48

if you want to relocate here,"

1:54:52

it just was, and in the end,

1:54:55

he made the decision to do it.

1:54:58

Interviewer

Do you know,

1:55:02

what happened to him afterwards?

1:55:03

-

I know that he left that job and he was looking

1:55:05

for other jobs, other positions in the aviation industry.

1:55:09

I didn't talk to him much longer after that.

1:55:15

Interviewer

So one of the things

1:55:17

that you brought up today

1:55:18

which is remarkable and heroic is the word you used is

1:55:20

that there these people out there in America,

1:55:24

who just kind of reached out on their own.

1:55:27

-

Unprotected, like just there was somebody else

1:55:31

in this small town called Waterloo, Louisiana,

1:55:39

you couldn't make it up.

1:55:47

Who's calling me and telling me

1:55:51

that there's something strange going on

1:55:53

because there's all of these planes

1:55:56

that are leaving in the middle of the night.

1:55:59

And it's like the least used airport

1:56:01

in like the entire United States.

1:56:05

And all of a sudden

1:56:07

all these flights are going in and he can't help

1:56:08

but think that it's the CIA.

1:56:10

And it's the kind of thing where CCR always had a lot

1:56:14

of conspiracy theorists that,

1:56:18

and everyone always thinks that if you work at CCR

1:56:20

you must be a conspiracy theorist.

1:56:23

Except this time there was a conspiracy.

1:56:24

So, and he's like laughing because that can't be right.

1:56:27

And I'm like, "Oh, actually it can be right."

1:56:31

And then what we found out was

1:56:35

that people that had been rounded up

1:56:38

in the days immediately after 9/11

1:56:43

many of them were sent back to their country

1:56:47

of origin through these night flights

1:56:51

that left from Waterloo, Louisiana.

1:56:55

And we found that out because people would call us

1:56:57

from Amman and they would say, "Do you remember me?

1:57:02

I can't reach my wife I'm in Amman."

1:57:07

And all of a sudden we,

1:57:12

and what we also found out is

1:57:15

they weren't very careful

1:57:18

that who they are either arrested or sent back

1:57:20

because there were people who had won political asylum

1:57:24

in the United States and were citizens

1:57:28

that they had sent into the middle east,

1:57:31

and they were terrified.

1:57:35

And so we worked the best that we can.

1:57:38

I actually asked airlines

1:57:42

to give people free flights back to the U.S.

1:57:44

Like, I don't know where I got the nerve to do that,

1:57:49

but it was crazy.

1:57:52

And it was all

1:57:55

because some guy thought it was really strange

1:57:56

about all these flights coming

1:57:58

out of this airport in Waterloo, Louisiana.

1:58:00

And I thought-

1:58:05

Interviewer

And you said, when you said to some,

1:58:09

that man in Texas

1:58:11

that you shouldn't talk to on the phone

1:58:12

did you think your phones were tapped?

1:58:14

-

Well, we knew at that point,

1:58:15

there was that lawsuit against the NSA

1:58:18

extensively on the roving wire taps,

1:58:24

but there were all these,

1:58:26

so all of the people CCR were named plaintiffs, in part,

1:58:29

because I thought, well,

1:58:38

at least we'll be famous

1:58:40

if the NSA is tapped us

1:58:42

and as the case went forward,

1:58:46

the court did force them to say

1:58:47

whether we were being wiretapped.

1:58:49

And so we then all knew we were.

1:58:53

And what all we could do was ask the court to try

1:58:56

and force the NSA

1:59:01

to give us a way to be delisted some process

1:59:02

by which we could petition to be delisted.

1:59:07

Some administrative process,

1:59:09

some due process, no, there wasn't.

1:59:12

Interviewer

But your lawyers and clients,

1:59:22

how did they justify?

1:59:24

-

They taped attorney client meetings in Guantanamo.

1:59:28

They taped attorney client meetings

1:59:32

in all the prisons that we were in.

1:59:35

The Sixth Amendment wasn't there either

1:59:41

along with the Fifth Amendment or the 14th

1:59:43

or pretty much any of them.

1:59:46

It's funny because I've been looking

1:59:53

for a job since I graduated

1:59:59

from public health school and I've done some consulting work

2:00:01

for like the World Health Organization.

2:00:07

I've been working on a tax on health care

2:00:11

and healthcare workers in hospitals around the world.

2:00:15

And so I applied for a couple of jobs

2:00:23

that I thought I was really qualified for

2:00:27

and I didn't even get an interview.

2:00:30

And so I called a man who used to be on the board of CCR.

2:00:31

Who's very involved for a long time.

2:00:36

And who does career placement

2:00:38

for law students at CUNY law school?

2:00:39

And I said, "Okay, Franklin so what's the deal?

2:00:42

Why am I like not getting an interview with like the

2:00:49

for this ACLU prison project position in Berkeley?"

2:00:53

And he goes, "What do you think?"

2:00:59

And I said, "I don't know, Frank,"

2:01:01

Then I've been a law professor.

2:01:02

Then I went to public health school, like no one

2:01:04

knows who I am anymore.

2:01:06

And he said "Wrong."

2:01:08

And he goes so now that you know that like that,

2:01:18

this is gonna be who you are.

2:01:23

So you regret anything that you did?"

2:01:26

And I said, "Well, no, of course not."

2:01:30

And he goes, "Okay, so what bothering me for?"

2:01:33

But for a long time I did tell people

2:01:40

that I was subject to a roving wiretap

2:01:45

because the way that that worked is by meeting with you

2:01:49

the wiretap attached to you.

2:01:54

And we all had to tell.

2:01:58

Interviewer

Every person?

2:02:03

-

Yeah and I lost friends that way.

2:02:04

There were people that said, I can't do this,

2:02:09

that worked for the United nations

2:02:13

or agencies where it wasn't gonna be okay.

2:02:16

Interviewer

Well I wanna get back to that.

2:02:30

I think it was a question I was going to end with

2:02:32

but wanna just put in a few other questions

2:02:35

before we go to that.

2:02:37

And that is, I assume you've been to Guantanamo a number

2:02:39

of times or not at all?

2:02:42

And was that deliberate

2:02:44

you didn't want to go or?

2:02:45

-

I was never granted security clearance.

2:02:46

Interviewer

Did you apply?

2:02:50

-

Oh, yes many times.

2:02:51

And the irony is that before 9/11, I had worked

2:02:55

on a case against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

2:03:00

as part of my regular civil rights case.

2:03:03

It was on behalf of a native American nation.

2:03:06

And there was a plan to put,

2:03:12

a spent fuel facility on the land that border Mexico

2:03:23

in that was part of native American reservation.

2:03:35

And they wanted me to challenge the decision to do that.

2:03:40

And I had to get top secret security clearance

2:03:46

to get access to those plans.

2:03:51

And of course,

2:03:54

they were gonna build it on a fault line

2:03:56

which I thought was problematic and convinced the judge.

2:03:58

But I had four months before 9/11

2:04:01

I had top secret security clearance.

2:04:06

After 9/11 I didn't anymore.

2:04:09

And I couldn't get it.

2:04:13

Interviewer

But the other people at CCR did get,

2:04:14

so why did they get and you didn't?

2:04:16

-

I don't know if it was my background,

2:04:23

my mother's father was originally from Aleppo.

2:04:30

My mother's mother was Palestinian.

2:04:35

I don't know if it had to do with that.

2:04:38

I don't know if it had to do with like

2:04:40

what they saw as my role.

2:04:44

I don't know.

2:04:48

Interviewer

Wow. Did you regret it?

2:04:50

Would you have liked to go to Guantanamo?

2:04:57

-

Yeah. In the beginning I felt like, everyone's going,

2:05:00

but I knew it didn't take long

2:05:05

for me to know what every inch of that place looked like.

2:05:12

Down to the six point restraint chair

2:05:21

that they used when they were

2:05:24

putting the nasal gastric tube up people's noses.

2:05:26

Interviewer

You've mentioned off camera

2:05:36

and I don't know as much, but just

2:05:38

because you had such a good impression of Feroz Abbasi

2:05:41

is there something you'd like to tell us on camera?

2:05:44

Cause we did an interview with him

2:05:46

and I have a couple of the questions and we can-

2:05:49

-

So Feroz Abbasi, he's a

2:05:52

I think a person of tremendous resilience

2:05:59

and courage after he was released

2:06:03

and Musab was also released around the same time

2:06:08

and Musab wrote the book.

2:06:16

Feroz, we spoke and he wanted to know more about like

2:06:19

what's the training that we're giving people

2:06:27

who are going to represent people in Guantanamo.

2:06:30

And, I was talking

2:06:33

about the difficulty of conveying to people

2:06:34

what they might see in their client

2:06:40

like how their client might feel or behave.

2:06:47

And he said, "I will do that."

2:06:50

Interviewer

How?

2:06:51

-

And he made a video.

2:06:53

I don't know if you've seen that video?

2:06:57

Interviewer

No.

2:06:58

-

The video. It's an incredible thing.

2:07:01

I would assume that CCR has it.

2:07:07

Interviewer

What a shame?

2:07:10

-

Or I can just describe to you

2:07:13

The video is

2:07:16

it's just Feroz talking at a camera

2:07:20

and he talks about how he was treated.

2:07:23

But that's not the part that is unbelievable

2:07:34

is him talking about being

2:07:38

in solitary confinement for so long.

2:07:40

And having the sense that he, and being aware

2:07:49

that he was losing his sanity

2:07:53

and that he was outside of himself

2:07:56

and watching his body make small circles

2:08:02

inside his cell walking

2:08:07

and seeing the body talking and having,

2:08:10

a separate consciousness watching over

2:08:16

and knowing that he was thinking

2:08:21

that he was losing his mind.

2:08:24

Interviewer

He, was certainly one

2:08:27

of the brightest people.

2:08:29

-

It was the most astounding things that he did.

2:08:32

(crosstalk) and it galvanized everyone

2:08:40

and made everyone all of a sudden

2:08:46

saw someone who was clearly extremely bright

2:08:48

and extremely articulate and so willing

2:08:51

and able to describe what was happening to him

2:08:58

that it was every time I saw it,

2:09:02

when we ran one of those training sessions,

2:09:05

it would like knock me back

2:09:09

on my heels every time,

2:09:11

because it was all of a sudden in human form,

2:09:13

like in front of you

2:09:24

what we were doing to people,

2:09:26

and there was no escaping it.

2:09:29

Sometimes people would try and say,

2:09:33

"Well maybe the U.S. didn't mean to blur,"

2:09:34

or lots of ways that people try

2:09:37

and not the cognitive dissonance

2:09:40

comes in all different ways.

2:09:44

But when you watched Feroz Abbasi

2:09:47

talk about that there was nothing else.

2:09:51

That was what we were and what we did.

2:09:56

And he's amazing person that he was willing to do that.

2:10:03

I think it made a lot of people

2:10:15

very dedicated to doing that work.

2:10:18

Interviewer

He's inspiring.

2:10:23

You left because since you had told me

2:10:30

you we're doing 24/7, did you burn out

2:10:33

is that why you left or did you leave for another reason?

2:10:36

-

No, I left.

2:10:40

That just sounds so prosaic.

2:10:43

I left because my husband said,

2:10:44

he couldn't really live with me doing.

2:10:49

Interviewer

That's not prosaic that's life.

2:10:54

-

And he thought I was gonna just whittle away.

2:11:00

Interviewer

Well, how'd you feel

2:11:08

about the way you were ready to you think?

2:11:10

-

No, I mean I don't know

2:11:12

when I would've decided to leave

2:11:24

but it was hard leaving that work.

2:11:28

But in part what I told myself,

2:11:37

which I do believe is that I had been

2:11:39

at CCR for 12 years and Nancy Chang, who was one

2:11:43

of the CCR lawyers who did a lot of this work with me.

2:11:51

She had left and we had had a long conversation

2:11:59

about making room

2:12:05

for the next generation of people's lawyers.

2:12:10

And CCR never had a lot of money.

2:12:13

We made nothing.

2:12:18

And, there weren't a lot of spots there.

2:12:22

And she was a bit older

2:12:27

than me about maybe 10 years older.

2:12:30

But when we were talking about it

2:12:34

it made sense to me, you know, she said,

2:12:39

"Well so what happens when we die

2:12:42

if there's not the next group?"

2:12:45

And I really believe that. I'm I'm really glad.

2:12:47

And as I left CCR, we got these huge grants,

2:12:58

they would just tell me to go and talk to a bunch of people.

2:13:07

And I would just talk

2:13:10

about the work we were doing and what I believed in.

2:13:11

And they would just write these huge checks anyway.

2:13:13

So there's a lot of people's lawyers at CCR

2:13:16

which is a great thing.

2:13:20

And because I had started the International Justice Network

2:13:23

the other NGO that work for a while,

2:13:28

I was doing parallel to CCR.

2:13:35

So I was doing both.

2:13:37

And it was hard because I was flying

2:13:39

to Kabul three times a year.

2:13:42

And we were doing,

2:13:47

the same case that we did for Guantanamo,

2:13:51

we did for Bagram Base.

2:13:53

And I did it as a clinic with law students at Stanford.

2:13:58

I don't think they loved that so much, but we did win.

2:14:02

And so I was still doing that work for well until I went

2:14:09

to public health school.

2:14:14

And so it sort of still continued, but just not at CCR

2:14:18

and with a population that CCR couldn't

2:14:24

at that time afford to represent.

2:14:27

Interviewer

Well, could you just for the viewer

2:14:30

when you started public health school

2:14:34

what happened to the program?

2:14:38

-

Tina foster, who was my partner in starting

2:14:40

the International Justice Network.

2:14:43

We actually enlisted some Guantanamo lawyers

2:14:46

whose clients were released

2:14:52

to represent people in Afghanistan.

2:14:54

And so they're still doing that.

2:14:57

And I still have a little role

2:15:01

and I have to decide

2:15:06

whether I'm gonna go back to working more on that.

2:15:06

Since the U.S. transferred the prison

2:15:14

to the government there

2:15:19

we have less of, we can use the U.S. courts less frequently

2:15:23

but we have built a network of activists, journalists.

2:15:29

And there's the Afghan Human Rights Organization

2:15:37

which is just one lawyer at the top and 25 doctors.

2:15:40

And so it's still that work sort of still continues.

2:15:46

And part of the reason for going to public health school

2:15:55

was in the hope that I would be able to get,

2:16:00

health professionals to come and provide some services

2:16:06

to former detainees, whatever people were open to,

2:16:12

even if it was a medical exam for the whole family

2:16:19

or some starting some basic community

2:16:23

health worker program there.

2:16:30

And, now that I officially have my degree,

2:16:35

I haven't given up on that idea.

2:16:40

Interviewer

I mean the Guantanamo detainees

2:16:41

certainly could use your help.

2:16:43

And there's some people who would probably

2:16:45

be able to give you access to some of them.

2:16:48

When you have all your connections.

2:16:51

Looking back what can you tell us

2:16:55

about your experiences at CCR and about America?

2:16:59

I know that's a huge question

2:17:03

but I think you have a good read

2:17:05

on it all now that you've been away from it for a while.

2:17:09

And you were so in the trenches, if you will

2:17:12

I'm curious to know how you see it.

2:17:16

-

Oh wow (crosstalk) well I mean, obviously,

2:17:30

I tried very hard to get a job

2:17:41

at CCR when the executive director who hired me

2:17:45

Ron Daniels, he say, I was like a bad penny.

2:17:51

I kept turning up until they hired me.

2:17:55

I wouldn't have traded my time there

2:18:03

for anything in the world.

2:18:06

I think the people that I got to know and work with

2:18:09

whether they were lawyers or anyone working

2:18:15

at CCR on the board, or part of that satellite group

2:18:20

of People's Lawyers there, they were really all my heroes.

2:18:24

Despite the fact that and I think for a long time

2:18:34

people thought CCR was this throwback to another time.

2:18:39

CCR was the bedrock of the country when no one

2:18:46

was willing to stand up and say this isn't right.

2:18:54

And that's an amazing thing.

2:19:01

There are times I wish, like I could say,

2:19:09

to the world that this little place

2:19:13

is a place that did that.

2:19:19

I don't think I ever anticipated

2:19:30

that I would be in front of judges,

2:19:32

having spent hours memorizing the Federalist papers

2:19:37

so that I could say, "This is what Madison said,"

2:19:45

arguing to a very conservative judge.

2:19:52

"If you decide against us, you're deciding

2:19:57

against what the founding fathers said."

2:20:01

I never thought I would be the person standing

2:20:06

on the Federalist papers in the constitution

2:20:10

telling judges "This is the heart

2:20:13

of what our country is,

2:20:21

and you can't fight against the rule of law.

2:20:24

You can't fight against us."

2:20:30

For me, that was shocking.

2:20:36

I grew up with an older sister

2:20:45

who at 16 joined the Black Panther Party,

2:20:47

and I was a little kid

2:20:50

and she was playing Bob Dylan

2:20:53

the "Times They Are a-Changin'."

2:20:58

And she told me I shouldn't stand

2:21:02

for the Pledge of Allegiance.

2:21:05

And so I got suspended in first grade.

2:21:07

But I think I couldn't have imagined

2:21:15

that there would be people in the highest offices

2:21:20

in our government that would be doing

2:21:27

such terrible things to people.

2:21:31

I think I'm still shocked.

2:21:44

One of the people that I represented fairly recently

2:21:51

or a few years ago was Anwar al-Awlaki

2:21:57

that American citizen who was assassinated by drone.

2:22:05

His father called from Yemen.

2:22:11

His father was minister of agriculture

2:22:13

and asked me to represent him.

2:22:16

And I filed what it's called a confidential complaint

2:22:19

with the UN special repertoire

2:22:25

on extra judicial killing.

2:22:27

'Cause it was announced in the New York Times

2:22:29

that he was on the list of the assassinated.

2:22:31

And I just couldn't imagine that we were gonna

2:22:35

kill an American citizen without charge or trial.

2:22:44

And I understand the arguments

2:22:54

about why we use drones for killing people.

2:23:06

It's so hard for me to believe that.

2:23:17

I guess I just wonder

2:23:24

when does the pendulum swing back

2:23:28

to the time where we really believed in human rights

2:23:32

and civil rights and it doesn't look like

2:23:42

that's gonna be anytime soon.

2:23:49

And I think that's it's hard knowing that,

2:23:53

it may never be back,

2:24:05

in any time that I'll ever see it.

2:24:10

That the country was changed so drastically

2:24:13

that we're gonna be suffering

2:24:25

and causing other people to suffer for a long time.

2:24:29

Interviewer

Well, your work is not done, obviously.

2:24:35

So is there something, or might say one more thing

2:24:38

but is there something you've probably answered it

2:24:41

but that you were thinking when you came here

2:24:44

that you knew you wanted to say, and that I didn't ask you?

2:24:47

-

No, not really.

2:24:52

I mean, I think, people always ask me

2:25:04

how did I do that work?

2:25:08

Why do I think about going back to do that work?

2:25:10

And somehow I think I still believed

2:25:13

that there is that basic goodness

2:25:25

that we're all born with, I guess

2:25:35

a very Buddhist idea, but

2:25:37

and I don't think I could do this work if I didn't believe

2:25:41

that there was a way to reach people.

2:25:44

And the difficulty is it's hard

2:25:54

to tell this story to people.

2:26:02

People have a hard time hearing it.

2:26:08

They don't really wanna hear it.

2:26:11

And so it becomes something

2:26:17

that you don't really wanna tell anymore.

2:26:17

For me it's there all the time.

2:26:22

And so it wasn't something that I did wanna

2:26:30

say so much as, talking

2:26:33

saying it out loud makes it very real again.

2:26:39

Interviewer

Well, you do think people should hear it.

2:26:44

And so-

2:26:48

-

I do.

2:26:49

Interviewer

Future people will hear it.

2:26:50

And you are an important part of it.

2:26:53

We need to take a 20 seconds of room tone before we can end.

2:26:56

So we'll do that.

2:27:01

And then we're done.

2:27:03

-

What's room tone?

2:27:07

John

It's where we all sit very quietly 20 seconds.

2:27:08

Okay begin room tone.

2:27:13

Olshansky, Barbara - Interview master file

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