Wolosky, Lee - Interview master file
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Transcript
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| Interviewer | Okay, good afternoon. | 0:05 |
| - | Good afternoon. | 0:07 |
| Interviewer | We are very grateful to you | 0:08 |
| for participating in the witness to Guantanamo project. | 0:09 | |
| We invite you to speak of your experiences | 0:14 | |
| and involvement with detainees | 0:16 | |
| and others involved in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. | 0:18 | |
| - | Sure. | 0:21 |
| Interviewer | We're hoping to provide you an opportunity | 0:22 |
| to tell your story in your own words, | 0:23 | |
| we are creating an archive of stories | 0:26 | |
| so people in America and around the world | 0:28 | |
| will have a better opportunity to understand what happened. | 0:31 | |
| Future generations must know what happened in Guantanamo | 0:36 | |
| and by telling your story, you're contributing to history. | 0:39 | |
| If there is any time you wanna take a break, | 0:42 | |
| please let us know. | 0:44 | |
| And if you say something that you'd like us to remove, | 0:45 | |
| we can remove it if you tell us | 0:49 | |
| at the end of the interview. | 0:49 | |
| - | Sure, thank you. | 0:51 |
| Interviewer | Thank you very much. | 0:52 |
| And I'd like to begin by asking you | 0:53 | |
| if you can tell us your name | 0:55 | |
| and some background as to where you were born | 0:56 | |
| and how old you are and where you went to school. | 0:59 | |
| - | Sure, Lee Wolosky. | 1:02 |
| I was born in New York in July 17, 1968. | 1:04 | |
| Went to school in New York City first | 1:10 | |
| and then Harvard College and Harvard Law School. | 1:14 | |
| Interviewer | And from there? | 1:18 |
| - | From there, I practiced law at a law firm in New York, | 1:19 |
| Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. | 1:24 | |
| And from there, I became a fellow | 1:27 | |
| at the council on foreign relations. | 1:29 | |
| And from there, I went to serve | 1:32 | |
| on Bill Clinton's national security council staff. | 1:35 | |
| I carried over to president George W. Bush's | 1:38 | |
| national security council staff | 1:43 | |
| until July of 2001. | 1:46 | |
| And then I found my way back up to New York | 1:50 | |
| to rejoin the legal profession. | 1:54 | |
| And I joined a firm where I currently am | 1:56 | |
| in where we are setting | 1:58 | |
| Boies, Schiller and Flexner practice law | 2:00 | |
| here from 2001 until July of 2015. | 2:04 | |
| When I took a leave of absence from Boies, Schiller | 2:09 | |
| and began my tenure as president Obama | 2:12 | |
| special Envoy for Guantanamo closure. | 2:17 | |
| And I served in that position from July 5th, 2015 | 2:20 | |
| until the end of the president's term, | 2:24 | |
| January 20th, 2017. | 2:27 | |
| Interviewer | Could you tell me a bit about | 2:30 |
| how that opportunity, that president Obama hired you? | 2:31 | |
| - | I was actually hired by John Kerry at the state department | 2:39 |
| which is where I sat and served, | 2:43 | |
| but I had served in democratic administrations previously | 2:49 | |
| as I said, a moment ago | 2:56 | |
| and was | 2:58 | |
| Interviewer | John Kerry knew you and | 3:01 |
| - | No I mean I would prefer not to get into the details | 3:03 |
| of how I came to be hired into the job, | 3:07 | |
| but what I will say is that, | 3:10 | |
| I think that enough | 3:13 | |
| I actually didn't really know John Kerry very well | 3:14 | |
| although I did support and sort of helped out his campaign | 3:17 | |
| for the presidency in 2004. | 3:20 | |
| But I certainly knew a number of people | 3:22 | |
| who were in a position to help make | 3:26 | |
| senior staffing decisions on priorities to the president | 3:30 | |
| as he sort of finished out his term. | 3:35 | |
| And one of those people asked me | 3:37 | |
| if I was interested in this job, | 3:41 | |
| meaning the special Envoy for Guantanamo job, | 3:45 | |
| that job, I should probably say. | 3:48 | |
| And after thinking about it for a period of time | 3:50 | |
| and talking to a number of people about it, | 3:54 | |
| I decided to, sort of throw my hat in the ring for it | 3:57 | |
| and then was asked to do it | 4:03 | |
| in the spring of 2015. | 4:06 | |
| Interviewer | Did you foresee any difficulties | 4:09 |
| in that kind of work | 4:12 | |
| did you know what you were walking into? | 4:14 | |
| - | Yeah, I foresaw a lot of difficulties | 4:15 |
| and I had a number of people telling me | 4:17 | |
| that it was a somewhat crazy thing to do | 4:21 | |
| cause I have a pretty decent life | 4:23 | |
| in New York practicing law. | 4:26 | |
| And I also had a number of people who told me | 4:30 | |
| that I would not succeed in doing it, | 4:33 | |
| but nonetheless, I decided to do it for a number of reasons. | 4:36 | |
| One of them was a desire to serve again just generally. | 4:42 | |
| And I had actually passed up a couple of opportunities | 4:46 | |
| to join the Obama administration earlier in 2015, | 4:50 | |
| there was sort of a (indistinct) to sort of a good time | 4:55 | |
| for me in terms of what some of the work | 4:58 | |
| I was finishing off here at Boies Schiller at the time. | 5:02 | |
| And it was obviously the last opportunity I was gonna have | 5:06 | |
| with at the time, less than two years to go | 5:10 | |
| in the president's term. | 5:14 | |
| Another thing I liked about it is that | 5:15 | |
| it provided a very clear metric for success. | 5:18 | |
| In other words, at the time I came into the government | 5:23 | |
| I think we had something like 116 detainees at Guantanamo. | 5:26 | |
| I forget how many were approved for transfer | 5:32 | |
| but it was very... | 5:34 | |
| I sort of liked being in situations where | 5:37 | |
| they're a little less morphous than | 5:39 | |
| can you do Asia policy? | 5:42 | |
| And there were some successes and some failures, | 5:44 | |
| this either we were going to succeed | 5:47 | |
| in getting people out of Guantanamo or we weren't. | 5:49 | |
| I will say that by the time I came into office, | 5:53 | |
| there was a sense in part | 5:56 | |
| because of a restriction in U S law | 5:59 | |
| that we may not actually succeed in closing it | 6:02 | |
| but that we had to reduce the population in Guantanamo | 6:05 | |
| very substantially for a variety of reasons. | 6:12 | |
| One was because it was the right thing to do | 6:14 | |
| and consistent with the president's policy. | 6:15 | |
| But also because if we were going to have | 6:18 | |
| a final shot at getting the Congress to change the law | 6:21 | |
| and to remove the transfer ban that prevented, | 6:24 | |
| that purported to prevent the president | 6:28 | |
| from moving (indistinct) war detainees | 6:30 | |
| into the United States | 6:32 | |
| then the best case that we were gonna make | 6:34 | |
| was for a very small number | 6:36 | |
| or a small of a number of detainees as possible. | 6:38 | |
| So quite independent of our interest in closing Guantanamo | 6:41 | |
| and quite independent of our interest | 6:46 | |
| in reducing the population | 6:50 | |
| because it was the right thing to do. | 6:52 | |
| We also sort of conceived | 6:55 | |
| a final push to get the law changed | 6:57 | |
| as one that was going to be best made | 7:02 | |
| with a small of a population as possible. | 7:05 | |
| Interviewer | What you said at one point | 7:09 |
| was your goal to actually shut down Guantanamo | 7:11 | |
| was that part of it? | 7:14 | |
| - | Well that was the president's goal | 7:15 |
| from before he was president? | 7:16 | |
| So yes, I mean the goal was definitely to close Guantanamo | 7:20 | |
| and the way to achieve that goal | 7:24 | |
| was really through the release of individuals | 7:26 | |
| out of U S custody who were approved for transfer | 7:30 | |
| and then working on | 7:35 | |
| possibly some foreign prosecutions for others | 7:38 | |
| but really then taking what we referred to as | 7:41 | |
| the irreducible minimum | 7:46 | |
| those individuals who were not going to be released | 7:48 | |
| from U S custody during president Obama's term either | 7:51 | |
| because they were subject | 7:55 | |
| to military commission proceedings, | 7:57 | |
| or because we weren't gonna release them for other reasons | 7:59 | |
| but to have that population, | 8:05 | |
| which is around 35 people currently | 8:07 | |
| to get the number down as far as possible. | 8:12 | |
| So we were intending to close Guantanamo from day one | 8:15 | |
| as the president made clear, | 8:19 | |
| but the mechanism to get it closed | 8:22 | |
| was to release those that we could release | 8:24 | |
| and thereby reducing the population | 8:27 | |
| so that when we were in a position | 8:29 | |
| of moving this irreducible minimum | 8:32 | |
| to a secure facility in the United States | 8:34 | |
| it would be as small as possible. | 8:37 | |
| Interviewer | So your challenge was to socially | 8:39 |
| transfer out all those people. | 8:42 | |
| So you only have this | 8:44 | |
| what you call very small number of people left? | 8:45 | |
| If that, that was your challenge. | 8:50 | |
| - | Yeah and that was my primary responsibility | 8:53 |
| because I was the lead diplomat for getting that done. | 8:56 | |
| So it was my primary responsibility | 9:00 | |
| was in negotiating the transfer of detainees | 9:03 | |
| who were approved for transfer to other countries | 9:07 | |
| subject to a package of security assurances | 9:11 | |
| which is something that my office | 9:14 | |
| also was responsible for negotiating. | 9:17 | |
| Interviewer | Could you explain how that process worked? | 9:20 |
| And when you say your office, what that means? | 9:22 | |
| - | Well, I had an office at the state department and | 9:26 |
| Interviewer | With peoples assistance? | 9:32 |
| - | yeah, I had a professional staff | 9:33 |
| and my office was the, as I said, | 9:36 | |
| sort of the the chief diplomatic focal point | 9:38 | |
| for negotiating the transfer of detainees | 9:43 | |
| who were approved for transfer | 9:48 | |
| either for purposes of repatriation, | 9:49 | |
| if they would be going back to their countries of origin | 9:52 | |
| or for resettlement if they were not going to be able | 9:56 | |
| to go back to their country of origin. | 10:00 | |
| So there was an office at the state department that I led | 10:03 | |
| that was responsible for that diplomatic outreach. | 10:08 | |
| Interviewer | Did you have connections | 10:15 |
| with these foreign countries that you convinced | 10:16 | |
| or I'm not sure how to process the word, | 10:19 | |
| to take a man of transfer if they weren't repatriated | 10:21 | |
| - | you mean personal connections | 10:26 |
| Interviewer | Or how did you find these countries | 10:27 |
| that have- | 10:29 | |
| - | Well, the United States certainly did. | 10:31 |
| And I was the president's special Envoy | 10:32 | |
| and senior state department official. | 10:37 | |
| And so we would do the things that we do in the government | 10:40 | |
| to decide where we were going to engage in the world. | 10:45 | |
| My office was part of the office of the secretary. | 10:53 | |
| So it was an opportunity to really be able to have | 10:56 | |
| a sort of a bird's eye view on U S diplomacy. | 11:02 | |
| So it positioned us well to be able to | 11:05 | |
| look around the world and sort of see | 11:09 | |
| where we thought we might have opportunities, | 11:11 | |
| but I certainly wasn't the only one, | 11:15 | |
| making diplomatic asks, | 11:17 | |
| president did that personally, | 11:19 | |
| secretary Kerry did that personally. | 11:21 | |
| I did it personally. | 11:24 | |
| Either in the first instance or following up something | 11:28 | |
| that the president or the secretary Kerry, | 11:31 | |
| may have set in motion. | 11:33 | |
| Interviewer | And Were there incentives given | 11:36 |
| to these countries to take these men? | 11:41 | |
| - | No, if you mean financial incentives, no. | 11:43 |
| We, in some cases would provide a small amount of money | 11:47 | |
| to reimburse certain costs. | 11:53 | |
| In the case of resettlement's in particular | 11:56 | |
| where a detainee was not going to his home country | 11:58 | |
| and might require the expenditure certain money | 12:02 | |
| like for renting a place to live, | 12:06 | |
| language training if he doesn't speak the language, | 12:10 | |
| vocational training, and the United States would provide | 12:13 | |
| small amounts of money to enable us to work | 12:17 | |
| on these resettlement's so that our partner countries | 12:24 | |
| were not having to foot the bill for that. | 12:27 | |
| Interviewer | Well, what did the countries find? | 12:30 |
| Why did the countries agree to take these men? | 12:34 | |
| - | I'd say for many different reasons | 12:40 |
| depends on the country and the nature of the relationship | 12:42 | |
| the United States had with the country in question. | 12:46 | |
| But I would also say that | 12:47 | |
| a lot of them shared the goal of closing Guantanamo | 12:49 | |
| and they understood that we needed help in order to do that | 12:53 | |
| in part because we were unable | 12:57 | |
| to bring these people into the United States. | 12:59 | |
| And in some cases we were unable to send them home. | 13:01 | |
| So we did rely on our friends and partners | 13:03 | |
| to help us get it closed and many, or try to get a closed. | 13:08 | |
| And in many cases they cooperated | 13:12 | |
| with us because they shared the goal. | 13:15 | |
| Interviewer | Have they ever asked you | 13:17 |
| why the U S wouldn't take detainees? | 13:19 | |
| - | Yes, it was, it was a good question I frequently got, | 13:22 |
| Interviewer | How do you answer it? | 13:25 |
| - | The truth, which is it's prohibited | 13:27 |
| that the Congress put in a provision of law | 13:30 | |
| that prevents us from taking them into the United States. | 13:34 | |
| Interviewer | And they accepted that. | 13:38 |
| - | Yeah, well | 13:40 |
| (chuckles) | ||
| yeah and some of them would say | 13:41 | |
| but you want us to do it and we'd say, yes. | 13:43 | |
| So- | 13:47 | |
| Interviewer | And when you talk about security concerns | 13:48 |
| what does that mean? | 13:50 | |
| - | Well, I think what I said was security assurances. | 13:51 |
| So the secretary of defense is the person in the government | 13:53 | |
| who ultimately makes the decision to release a detainee. | 13:59 | |
| And he's vested with that responsibility by law. | 14:03 | |
| And there's a statutory standards | 14:08 | |
| that he needs to certify as being met. | 14:10 | |
| And the standard is that steps are being taken | 14:13 | |
| to substantially mitigate the risk | 14:17 | |
| that the detainee might pose to the United States | 14:20 | |
| after his transfer or to the I believe it says | 14:23 | |
| to the security of our, | 14:26 | |
| the risk to our friends and allies or something like that. | 14:28 | |
| But the standard is substantial mitigation of risk. | 14:31 | |
| It's not that there is no risk | 14:34 | |
| and it's not elimination of risk. | 14:36 | |
| So the way that we implemented the statutory standard | 14:38 | |
| is described actually in some detail | 14:43 | |
| in the president Obama's February, 2016 closure plan | 14:46 | |
| and it really had four elements. | 14:51 | |
| One was monitoring. | 14:53 | |
| We asked our former foreign partners to monitor transferees, | 14:57 | |
| former detainees. | 15:01 | |
| The second is travel restrictions. | 15:03 | |
| We asked them to limit or restrict travel | 15:07 | |
| for a fixed period of time. | 15:10 | |
| The third is through information sharing | 15:13 | |
| with the United States | 15:14 | |
| about the activities of the former detainee. | 15:16 | |
| And then the fourth is integration planning, | 15:19 | |
| sort of what I was talking about a moment ago, | 15:21 | |
| language training if applicable, | 15:25 | |
| vocational training, sometimes family reunification, | 15:27 | |
| really having a plan for that. | 15:32 | |
| Interviewer | Did the U S follow up on issues | 15:35 |
| of the security issue? | 15:39 | |
| Like did the U S and this is no reflection idea. | 15:41 | |
| We're just curious did the U S check back in to see | 15:44 | |
| if in fact the men were getting counseling | 15:46 | |
| or getting vocational training. | 15:49 | |
| - | Absolutely. | 15:50 |
| Interviewer | it did? | 15:51 |
| - | Yes, absolutely. | |
| Interviewer | How would it do that? | 15:52 |
| - | You know there are mechanisms for, | 15:57 |
| what I will say is that the United States | 15:58 | |
| has a very strong interest in the activities | 16:01 | |
| of former detainees. | 16:05 | |
| That is something that we track very closely. | 16:07 | |
| The security assurances that I just described | 16:10 | |
| are a mechanism that helps us track the activities | 16:14 | |
| and monitor the activities of our former detainees. | 16:18 | |
| But one of them was information sharing that I said. | 16:21 | |
| So we would not transfer a detainee | 16:24 | |
| to a place where we did not think | 16:27 | |
| that there would be a very clear line of communication | 16:30 | |
| with the receiving country. | 16:34 | |
| So we definitely did and it was my office that did this. | 16:35 | |
| We sort of made sure we have strong interest in making sure | 16:40 | |
| that our resettlement's are success. | 16:42 | |
| And part of that is following up on all elements | 16:45 | |
| of the package, the diplomatic package. | 16:48 | |
| So both the security stuff and the non-security stuff. | 16:51 | |
| In fact, many of us viewed the integration planning | 16:54 | |
| and implementation of that planning | 16:58 | |
| to be part of the security package | 16:59 | |
| because if you have families that are reunified | 17:01 | |
| if you have detainees who have access to education, | 17:05 | |
| to vocational training, to language training that reduces, | 17:08 | |
| it's been proven that | 17:12 | |
| that reduces the risks of re-engagement. | 17:13 | |
| And so we had a strong interest in making sure | 17:17 | |
| that our partners did what they actually told us | 17:20 | |
| they were going to do both | 17:22 | |
| because it was the best thing for our security. | 17:25 | |
| And it was the best thing for these individuals. | 17:28 | |
| We never make apologies. | 17:31 | |
| We didn't make apologies for the detention | 17:33 | |
| of any of the people who we ended up releasing | 17:36 | |
| but at least from my perspective, | 17:40 | |
| we tried to make sure that they had the ability | 17:42 | |
| to move on with their lives after many years of detention | 17:49 | |
| by the United States. | 17:54 | |
| And that meant all the things that I talked about | 17:56 | |
| putting them into an environment where they could succeed | 17:59 | |
| they could make good constructive life choices | 18:03 | |
| for themselves and for their own benefit | 18:06 | |
| and also to keep them away from bad things. | 18:09 | |
| Interviewer | when you say we'd never make apologies | 18:14 |
| is that a government protocol, | 18:17 | |
| is that a government policy | 18:20 | |
| or where's that come from, we don't make apologies? | 18:22 | |
| - | The basis for the detention | 18:27 |
| of the individuals in Guantanamo | 18:29 | |
| was litigated by the courts. | 18:32 | |
| And it's been settled law | 18:34 | |
| that we had the authority to detain the people | 18:38 | |
| who we detained in Guantanamo. | 18:41 | |
| There've been multiple habeas and other legal challenges | 18:43 | |
| to that detention authority in the United States | 18:47 | |
| with very few exceptions has defended in court | 18:50 | |
| the relevant legal authorities. | 18:54 | |
| So there are a few cases | 18:56 | |
| where there was more likely than not | 19:00 | |
| that there were fundamentally cases of mistaken identity. | 19:02 | |
| And those are sort of separate cases. | 19:06 | |
| They're extremely unfortunate cases | 19:07 | |
| that perhaps are deserving of apology | 19:09 | |
| and more than an apology | 19:12 | |
| but with respect to the other group who were detained | 19:14 | |
| because they were in Afghanistan or Pakistan | 19:19 | |
| or pass through safe houses, et cetera | 19:24 | |
| our policy was to detain them at a certain period of time. | 19:28 | |
| And then our policy was to release them | 19:33 | |
| subject to the security assurances | 19:36 | |
| at another period of time. | 19:38 | |
| And that was our policy. | 19:39 | |
| Interviewer | So | 19:42 |
| - | which is different | |
| from saying that they shouldn't have been in Guantanamo. | 19:45 | |
| Okay, so I'm not defending Guantanamo | 19:47 | |
| I'm defending the legal authority of the United States | 19:51 | |
| of people who were picked up | 19:54 | |
| under the circumstances that many of the detainees | 19:58 | |
| were picked up under. | 20:00 | |
| Again that's also not to defend the length of the duration | 20:01 | |
| the length of the detention, | 20:05 | |
| because clearly a lot of these people | 20:07 | |
| should have been released a long time ago. | 20:10 | |
| Interviewer | So people like the Uyghurs, | 20:14 |
| are you familiar with the Uyghurs? | 20:15 | |
| - | I'm familiar with them, | 20:17 |
| but they were before my time. | 20:18 | |
| Interviewer | Because they clearly, | 20:20 |
| everyone believes that they were clearly innocent there. | 20:22 | |
| - | I think that's right. | 20:25 |
| Interviewer | So that would be an example | 20:26 |
| of someone who maybe someday should get an apology. | 20:27 | |
| Is what you're saying or | 20:30 | |
| - | I don't know enough about their cases | 20:32 |
| but my understanding is consistent with what you just said | 20:34 | |
| which is that they never should have been there. | 20:37 | |
| Interviewer | Do you think | 20:41 |
| I'm sure you, I don't know what you can tell us | 20:42 | |
| but do you think president Obama lose the fact | 20:44 | |
| that he never was able to close Guantanamo? | 20:48 | |
| Did you ever get that just as you were leaving (indistinct) | 20:50 | |
| - | I think he's spoken about that publicly | 20:54 |
| about his frustration | 20:57 | |
| in not being able to get Guantanamo closed. | 20:58 | |
| And I think he's also spoken publicly | 21:03 | |
| about his sense and retrospect | 21:05 | |
| that maybe he would have done a couple of things differently | 21:07 | |
| at the beginning of his term, | 21:09 | |
| if he had the benefit of where things would end up. | 21:13 | |
| Interviewer | If you had more time | 21:16 |
| do you think you could have even gotten more men out? | 21:17 | |
| - | I think we could have, | 21:22 |
| I think that there's you know, | 21:24 | |
| fundamentally there's a problem with releasing the people | 21:26 | |
| who were trying to convict for the 9/11 attacks | 21:29 | |
| and the USS Cole | 21:33 | |
| or serving sentences in the military commission system. | 21:36 | |
| And that's a group of 10. | 21:39 | |
| We did get it down to 41 | 21:41 | |
| which is a pretty small number | 21:44 | |
| and all but five of those are not approved for transfer | 21:45 | |
| meaning that no matter how much time I had | 21:49 | |
| I wasn't gonna be able to get them out | 21:55 | |
| unless they were either re designated | 21:57 | |
| as approved for transfer or someone prosecuted, | 22:00 | |
| meaning either U S tribunal | 22:05 | |
| or conceivably a foreign tribunal. | 22:08 | |
| Interviewer | Can you tell us | 22:11 |
| why the other five didn't get out? | 22:12 | |
| - | Each one of them had a complication | 22:17 |
| associated with them. | 22:20 | |
| One thing I will say it doesn't cover all five. | 22:22 | |
| Is that the process that I ran | 22:26 | |
| and that I described a little bit of | 22:28 | |
| which involved having detainees go to foreign countries | 22:30 | |
| that are not their home country | 22:35 | |
| requires their cooperation. | 22:38 | |
| So they have to | 22:40 | |
| Interviewer | agree to go to that country | 22:43 |
| - | They have to even just agree to meet in the first instance | 22:45 |
| with representatives of that country | 22:47 | |
| that may come to visit them | 22:49 | |
| for the purpose of determining whether | 22:51 | |
| the country wants to issue an invitation | 22:53 | |
| and a number of our detainees | 22:56 | |
| decided that they didn't want to cooperate in that process. | 23:00 | |
| Which really limits our ability to try to get them out | 23:03 | |
| if they're not gonna cooperate. | 23:07 | |
| Even in one case, an individual | 23:09 | |
| who didn't wanna go back to his home country | 23:12 | |
| and refuse to cooperate. | 23:15 | |
| So there are a few cases like that. | 23:17 | |
| And then there were a couple of cases | 23:21 | |
| that we just were not able to get done in time. | 23:22 | |
| Interviewer | Why would they not want to cooperate? | 23:26 |
| - | I don't know. | 23:29 |
| Interviewer | And do you see things changing | 23:32 |
| under the Trump administration? | 23:37 | |
| - | So far we haven't seen too much change. | 23:39 |
| I don't think that there are any active efforts though, | 23:42 | |
| to get people out. | 23:44 | |
| And there are at least two cases where I think, | 23:47 | |
| they probably could get out. | 23:50 | |
| We didn't finish it, | 23:53 | |
| but it's largely it is the diplomatic arrangements | 23:54 | |
| were largely concluded by the time I left office | 24:00 | |
| there's a 30 day congressional notification period. | 24:05 | |
| So my deadline was actually around | 24:08 | |
| December 19th, December 20th, | 24:11 | |
| it was not January 20th. | 24:13 | |
| So there was still activity on the diplomatic front, | 24:15 | |
| in that one month. | 24:18 | |
| And I think that there are a few, | 24:19 | |
| just a couple of probably | 24:23 | |
| I could think of two, that probably could move now | 24:24 | |
| if the new administration decided | 24:28 | |
| that they wanted to do that | 24:31 | |
| I have no belief that they are pursuing | 24:33 | |
| those types of transfers though at the moment, | 24:37 | |
| although as we speak and it's March 9th | 24:40 | |
| or something like that 2017, | 24:42 | |
| the periodic review board process is still going on. | 24:45 | |
| So that is the process that looks at these | 24:49 | |
| individuals who are not approved for transfer, | 24:51 | |
| 36 of them now. | 24:54 | |
| And reevaluate whether | 24:57 | |
| they may be re-designated for transfer. | 25:00 | |
| So as of today at least the Trump administration | 25:05 | |
| has not stopped that process. | 25:09 | |
| That is an ongoing government bureaucracy | 25:11 | |
| that continues to to do what it's been doing | 25:14 | |
| for the past several years. | 25:17 | |
| Now, if someone is approved for transfer, | 25:19 | |
| there's a question as to whether or not | 25:21 | |
| the Trump administration will engage | 25:23 | |
| in the diplomatic efforts | 25:26 | |
| that the Obama administration engaged in | 25:27 | |
| to actually move that person out of Guantanamo. | 25:29 | |
| All questions that we don't know that the answer to. | 25:33 | |
| Interviewer | So you're saying two people, | 25:35 |
| some country or two countries | 25:37 | |
| are going to take those two people if Trump was willing? | 25:38 | |
| - | Yeah, I think that there are two | 25:41 |
| that could probably go out based on where we left things. | 25:43 | |
| Interviewer | Are there some challenges that you had | 25:50 |
| that were somewhat unique | 25:52 | |
| or interesting that would be worth telling | 25:53 | |
| for history that I didn't ask you about | 25:55 | |
| between those two years? | 25:57 | |
| - | You know it wasn't always the easiest job | 26:00 |
| to get foreign countries to take in people | 26:02 | |
| who were labeled as terrorists, | 26:05 | |
| and labels are very potent. | 26:09 | |
| And in fact a lot of the people who we had detained | 26:12 | |
| when I took my job were hardly hardcore terrorists. | 26:19 | |
| They were in many cases, | 26:24 | |
| people who were in Yemen one day, | 26:28 | |
| 19, 20 years old, or even younger. | 26:31 | |
| And someone told them that if they went to Afghanistan | 26:34 | |
| and this is all pre 9/11 | 26:39 | |
| very few people who we had in Guantanamo | 26:41 | |
| who were detained after, | 26:45 | |
| who went to Afghanistan after 9/11, | 26:47 | |
| these are the low level people. | 26:50 | |
| They generally ended up there either because, | 26:53 | |
| because of religious conviction | 26:57 | |
| or because of economic conviction | 26:59 | |
| they have no economic prospects in Yemen. | 27:01 | |
| So they were told that if they went to Afghanistan | 27:04 | |
| the Taliban would pay them a couple hundred bucks | 27:07 | |
| and you can get a wife too. | 27:10 | |
| So for a lot of people, | 27:11 | |
| the attraction to end up in Afghanistan was economic, | 27:13 | |
| lack of prospects. | 27:21 | |
| In some cases it was to make common cause with Taliban, | 27:24 | |
| in very few cases it was actually to take up arms | 27:28 | |
| against the United States. | 27:30 | |
| Because as I said, a lot of these people | 27:32 | |
| who I ended up helping to get out, | 27:34 | |
| almost all of them maybe all of them | 27:38 | |
| were people who went to Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks. | 27:41 | |
| So I think that you asked about how to, | 27:46 | |
| you know, the challenges. | 27:51 | |
| And so the challenge is explaining all that | 27:53 | |
| when all that our foreign partners might be reading | 27:56 | |
| about in the paper is how Obama is releasing terrorists. | 28:00 | |
| Now, some people who I talked to on the hill | 28:05 | |
| actually believed that if you went | 28:09 | |
| and did exactly what I just said, | 28:11 | |
| you went and you went to Afghanistan pre 9/11, | 28:12 | |
| and you pass through an Al Qaeda training camp | 28:15 | |
| that you were a terrorist | 28:18 | |
| and you were always going to be a terrorist. | 28:20 | |
| And I understand that position | 28:21 | |
| but then the question is, okay | 28:24 | |
| if this person really never did much of anything | 28:26 | |
| except pass through a training camp when he was 18 | 28:29 | |
| does that mean he needs to be held in U S custody | 28:34 | |
| for decades without charging him with any crime? | 28:37 | |
| And so these are the discussions that we had | 28:40 | |
| with our foreign partners. | 28:42 | |
| And it's always good to actually talk | 28:43 | |
| about specific cases, specific individuals | 28:46 | |
| not just label everyone. | 28:49 | |
| Oh, those are the baddest dudes. | 28:50 | |
| You know, there are a bunch of terrorists, | 28:52 | |
| there are some terrorists there | 28:55 | |
| and there's some dangerous people. | 28:57 | |
| And the Obama administration was never gonna | 28:58 | |
| release people who we thought fit into that category. | 29:01 | |
| Then there were a lot of people who fit into the category | 29:04 | |
| that I'm talking about | 29:06 | |
| and it's in those people where you really have to engage. | 29:07 | |
| And I tried to do this consistently | 29:12 | |
| with members of Congress. | 29:13 | |
| I tried to do it with our foreign partners and say, okay | 29:14 | |
| I know what you're reading. | 29:17 | |
| I know what you're being told | 29:19 | |
| but let's talk about a particular individual, Okay? | 29:20 | |
| Here's this guy, we'll tell you | 29:23 | |
| we'll share all of our intelligence about this guy | 29:26 | |
| and we're not gonna hide anything. | 29:29 | |
| We're gonna tell you exactly what we think he did | 29:31 | |
| and then we'll have a discussion about | 29:33 | |
| whether we think he needs | 29:37 | |
| to spend the rest of his life in Guantanamo | 29:39 | |
| or whether he should be released subject | 29:41 | |
| to a very controlled environment, | 29:43 | |
| at least at the outset to see where his mind is | 29:45 | |
| and to watch him carefully. | 29:47 | |
| And so these are the discussions that we had to have | 29:49 | |
| with our foreign partners. | 29:53 | |
| We also tried to have them with our adversaries on the hill | 29:55 | |
| in order to try to get them to change the law | 29:59 | |
| and to otherwise support our policy. | 30:01 | |
| Because it's very important to remember | 30:02 | |
| that closing Guantanamo was a bi-partisan policy | 30:04 | |
| until just the past few years. | 30:09 | |
| President Bush released over 500 people from Guantanamo | 30:13 | |
| without the security insurances that we put in place | 30:18 | |
| and that I described here today. | 30:20 | |
| He concluded by the end of his second term | 30:23 | |
| that and he wrote this in his memoirs decision points | 30:26 | |
| that it was important to close Guantanamo | 30:29 | |
| because it was a recruitment tool | 30:32 | |
| for people who were inciting hatred | 30:35 | |
| against the United States, | 30:37 | |
| and it was a distraction for our allies, | 30:38 | |
| that's basically what he wrote. | 30:41 | |
| So it was his policy to close Guantanamo. | 30:42 | |
| McCain, John McCain, during the 2008 presidential election, | 30:46 | |
| said that he was in favor of closing Guantanamo. | 30:50 | |
| Obama said that he wanted to close Guantanamo. | 30:52 | |
| So it's only been in the past several years | 30:55 | |
| that closing Guantanamo has become a political hot potato. | 31:00 | |
| So we talked about all these things | 31:06 | |
| with our friends and partners, | 31:07 | |
| and fortunately we were able to move a lot of people | 31:09 | |
| out of Guantanamo with their cooperation and assistance. | 31:15 | |
| Interviewer | I mean, very impressively. | 31:20 |
| You were very impressive in that, | 31:21 | |
| but you raised something that I hadn't thought of. | 31:22 | |
| Did you convince any of the people on the hill | 31:25 | |
| to change their mind? | 31:28 | |
| - | Not enough no. | 31:30 |
| It was hard. | 31:32 | |
| Unfortunately Guantanamo became one | 31:34 | |
| of these political lightening rods | 31:38 | |
| where it was very hard to have the type of discussion | 31:40 | |
| that I'm now having at least in a public forum | 31:44 | |
| in private Yes, I would be able to occasionally | 31:48 | |
| get members of Congress to say, | 31:51 | |
| you know, all you're really doing is saying | 31:54 | |
| we should evaluate each detainee on a case by case basis. | 31:56 | |
| And I would say exactly, | 31:59 | |
| that's all I'm asking you to do. | 32:01 | |
| You know there may be ones that we could conclude, | 32:03 | |
| both conclude shouldn't be going anywhere | 32:06 | |
| 'cause they're dangerous. | 32:08 | |
| Maybe there'll be people who don't fit into that category | 32:09 | |
| and we could both conclude, should be transferred. | 32:13 | |
| But I think that | 32:15 | |
| even if you're able to have these discussions in private, | 32:17 | |
| when the lights were on and the cameras were rolling | 32:20 | |
| some of those same people would | 32:24 | |
| in open congressional testimony, say | 32:26 | |
| why are you releasing these terrorists? | 32:28 | |
| They're gonna harm the American people. | 32:30 | |
| And I was thinking, well | 32:31 | |
| don't you remember that conversation we had in private | 32:32 | |
| where you agreed that some of them were probably bad, | 32:35 | |
| but some of them weren't | 32:37 | |
| and it's always good to look at people individual basis | 32:38 | |
| but I didn't say that in public, maybe I should. | 32:42 | |
| Interviewer | Right. | 32:45 |
| (laughing) | ||
| Well, how much of a diplomat are you? | 32:47 | |
| - | Well, I mean I'm from the Bronx initially. | 32:50 |
| So it's not in my blood so, | 32:52 | |
| Interviewer | And did you ever, | 32:56 |
| looking back, do you have any regrets | 32:57 | |
| that maybe you could have done something | 32:59 | |
| differently that might've been more successful? | 33:01 | |
| Doesn't sound like it but | 33:02 | |
| - | Well, during my tenure | 33:04 |
| We moved 75 detainees out of Guantanamo, | 33:06 | |
| which accounts for about 38% of all of the detainees | 33:11 | |
| who moved out of Guantanamo | 33:15 | |
| during the president's eight year term. | 33:17 | |
| So we did that in a final push in the last 16 months or so | 33:20 | |
| of the president's time in office | 33:25 | |
| between September, 2015 | 33:28 | |
| which was when I did my first one or first one on my watch | 33:30 | |
| and January 20th. | 33:35 | |
| And we were doing them right to the end | 33:36 | |
| of the president's term. | 33:38 | |
| We did almost 40% of all of the ones | 33:40 | |
| that's September, 2015 | 33:44 | |
| to January 20th, 2017. | 33:45 | |
| So we had a fair amount of activity there towards the end. | 33:49 | |
| Interviewer | Did you ever speak | 33:52 |
| to the detainees yourself? | 33:54 | |
| - | I've only, not really. | 33:57 |
| I mean, I was present on one occasion | 33:59 | |
| when a foreign government went down to Guantanamo | 34:04 | |
| to conduct an interview. | 34:08 | |
| What I described earlier, | 34:10 | |
| where they got to ask questions | 34:12 | |
| and decide whether they wanted to take the person. | 34:15 | |
| So because of the nature of the delegation | 34:20 | |
| that the foreign government in question | 34:25 | |
| brought to Guantanamo, | 34:28 | |
| it was thought appropriate that I go to. | 34:30 | |
| So I went and I watched I didn't question | 34:33 | |
| but I watched our partner country conduct this process. | 34:37 | |
| So I was able to observe it close, | 34:42 | |
| Interviewer | Was that revealing to you? | 34:44 |
| - | Very revealing, yeah. | 34:46 |
| I mean, in many different ways, | 34:47 | |
| because, it's a scary at first to be face-to-face | 34:50 | |
| with people who are so vilified in many respects | 34:59 | |
| in the public consciousness. | 35:11 | |
| And certainly it's not a very, | 35:15 | |
| the environment that you're doing this in | 35:17 | |
| does suggest to you that they are very dangerous people. | 35:20 | |
| A lot of them, and I sort of sat through | 35:25 | |
| maybe five interviews, something like that. | 35:28 | |
| And they are all over the map. | 35:32 | |
| I mean there are people who will say, | 35:33 | |
| detainees would say, yeah I hate the United States. | 35:35 | |
| I wanna destroy the United States. | 35:38 | |
| And then there are people who say, | 35:40 | |
| of course I don't hate the United States. | 35:42 | |
| I just wanna, you know, | 35:43 | |
| I just want to find a wife | 35:45 | |
| and have kids and move on with my life. | 35:47 | |
| So it really is all over the map | 35:49 | |
| which I guess it goes back to my point | 35:51 | |
| that yet you really have to view these | 35:53 | |
| on a case by case individual by individual basis. | 35:55 | |
| And it's always dangerous to make generalizations in life | 35:58 | |
| but it's particularly dangerous | 36:01 | |
| when you're dealing with a population like this | 36:04 | |
| where ultimately you're deciding | 36:08 | |
| the future of these people's lives. | 36:11 | |
| Interviewer | I'm sure it was really important | 36:14 |
| for you to see these people in the flesh | 36:14 | |
| so you know who you were really... | 36:17 | |
| - | Yeah, it was. | 36:19 |
| And I was at Guantanamo twice during my tenure. | 36:20 | |
| And the first time was basically just an introductory tour. | 36:24 | |
| There wasn't a lot of reason for me to go to Guantanamo. | 36:27 | |
| I was mostly traveling around the world | 36:29 | |
| trying to negotiate arrangements | 36:31 | |
| to get people out of Guantanamo. | 36:35 | |
| So I did go down soon after I was appointed | 36:37 | |
| just to be exposed to the facility at that time. | 36:40 | |
| I didn't really interface with detainees directly | 36:46 | |
| But the second time I went down, | 36:50 | |
| which was a couple of months after that first time, | 36:52 | |
| as I said I was able to sit in a room with them | 36:54 | |
| and our foreign partners who were coming to interview them. | 36:59 | |
| Interviewer | And is there anything else and challenging | 37:06 |
| in terms of the conversations you had | 37:08 | |
| with other countries that might be worth | 37:10 | |
| for history to know about? | 37:12 | |
| - | No I just think it's important to, | 37:13 |
| we moved a lot of people out 75 people | 37:16 | |
| and one thing that does concern me | 37:19 | |
| is since I'm sitting up here in New York | 37:22 | |
| and there was no mechanism really in the U S government | 37:24 | |
| to monitor that work, the resettlement's | 37:28 | |
| monitor the monitoring. | 37:31 | |
| Monitoring the implementation of the arrangements | 37:33 | |
| that we put in place to govern the transfer | 37:36 | |
| of these individuals. | 37:39 | |
| I think it's important to | 37:41 | |
| for there to be some sustained follow-up | 37:43 | |
| whether that's through U S government ideally | 37:45 | |
| or if not through other sources | 37:48 | |
| Interviewer | I'm sorry are you saying | 37:51 |
| that the Trump administration is not following up | 37:51 | |
| on monitoring the way you had set it up? | 37:55 | |
| - | Well, what I'm saying is I don't really | 37:58 |
| I don't really know what they are doing and aren't doing | 37:59 | |
| but I know that my office really isn't doing that work. | 38:02 | |
| At least I'm not doing that work. | 38:06 | |
| And my office has really been, | 38:07 | |
| there's no one really working in my office at the moment. | 38:13 | |
| It's still is in place | 38:16 | |
| and there still are one or two people who were there, | 38:18 | |
| but not only do we do transfers | 38:21 | |
| and negotiate arrangements diplomatically, | 38:25 | |
| but we also as I said earlier, | 38:28 | |
| we were charged with basically policing | 38:31 | |
| the diplomatic arrangements that were put in place | 38:33 | |
| with foreign countries. | 38:37 | |
| So what I am saying is, | 38:38 | |
| I don't know if that's being done. | 38:39 | |
| I don't know who's doing it. | 38:40 | |
| In my view, I feel very strongly | 38:43 | |
| it should be done by this administration | 38:45 | |
| because they could either agree or disagree with the policy | 38:48 | |
| that we pursued. | 38:51 | |
| But the fact is we transferred a lot of people out | 38:52 | |
| and particularly at the end, | 38:56 | |
| and they should be concerned about making sure | 38:57 | |
| that the arrangements that we struck | 39:02 | |
| which has proven to have had | 39:04 | |
| a very low rate of re-engagement | 39:07 | |
| it's, eight people, | 39:10 | |
| it's less than 5% of the people we transferred | 39:13 | |
| that those arrangements will continue to be enforced | 39:16 | |
| because they have proven to be effective | 39:23 | |
| in making sure that | 39:26 | |
| we didn't make a mistake in releasing someone. | 39:27 | |
| So they could disagree with the policy we pursued, | 39:30 | |
| but we pursued it. | 39:35 | |
| So the responsible thing to do one could argue is | 39:36 | |
| to make sure that the arrangements that were put in place | 39:40 | |
| to make sure that we didn't make a mistake | 39:43 | |
| to make sure that the American people would be kept safe. | 39:45 | |
| And the people of our partner countries would be kept safe | 39:49 | |
| and (indistinct) put in place to make sure | 39:52 | |
| that the resettlement would be successful | 39:54 | |
| are being followed and enforced. | 39:56 | |
| So that is a question you would need to ask | 39:59 | |
| to the Trump people. | 40:02 | |
| Cause I don't know whether they're doing it or not doing it | 40:03 | |
| Interviewer | A couple more questions one is, | 40:06 |
| most of the men or not most | 40:08 | |
| but in many of the men that we've interviewed | 40:10 | |
| don't even have refugee status. | 40:12 | |
| Is that an issue that you thought about | 40:15 | |
| or other people thought about when they settled? | 40:18 | |
| - | We did in many cases, | 40:20 |
| in all cases we paid attention to the legal status | 40:24 | |
| that they would have and when and under what circumstances | 40:27 | |
| they would be eligible for becoming residents, | 40:31 | |
| permanent residents things of that sort. | 40:35 | |
| And so we generally didn't send to people | 40:38 | |
| people of the countries where there was no prospect | 40:40 | |
| of that happening. | 40:42 | |
| Interviewer | So the country promised you on some level | 40:44 |
| I know you can't always enforce it | 40:47 | |
| and certainly not now but promise you | 40:49 | |
| at some level that would be a process | 40:51 | |
| leading to some status? | 40:54 | |
| - | Well there was a possibility. | 40:55 |
| I mean, I think that it was a legal possibility. | 40:57 | |
| So it wasn't a promise that necessarily | 41:01 | |
| that the person would become a resident of Senegal | 41:04 | |
| or Serbia or wherever | 41:08 | |
| but that there was a way to do it. | 41:09 | |
| Given the legal status that the person had arrived under. | 41:12 | |
| Interviewer | Did countries ever call you your office | 41:15 |
| after someone arrived and said, | 41:18 | |
| we made a mistake, we shouldn't take them | 41:21 | |
| - | Yeah, yeah. | 41:23 |
| (laughing) | ||
| You know, and that did happen. | 41:25 | |
| And then it'll also happen that | 41:28 | |
| countries would call us and say, | 41:30 | |
| this has worked out pretty well. | 41:31 | |
| Do you wanna send us more? | 41:33 | |
| We liked those calls a lot better | 41:35 | |
| but look, I mean, it's always hard. | 41:38 | |
| I mean, it's frequently hard when you take | 41:40 | |
| someone who is Yemeni say | 41:42 | |
| and then they spent 14 or 15 years at Guantanamo | 41:45 | |
| and then you put them in a place like Uruguay | 41:48 | |
| or Slovakia or Serbia and everything is foreign. | 41:52 | |
| And that's hard under the best of circumstances. | 41:55 | |
| And what we try to do is stay on it | 41:59 | |
| and work with work with the country involved | 42:04 | |
| teach them the lessons of our experience. | 42:09 | |
| 'cause certainly by the time I came around | 42:11 | |
| we had done it many many times | 42:13 | |
| in many, many different countries. | 42:15 | |
| And we knew things that worked | 42:17 | |
| and we knew things that didn't work. | 42:18 | |
| And so the transfer was not the end | 42:21 | |
| of the diplomatic engagement. | 42:26 | |
| Interviewer | Oh, that's good. | 42:27 |
| So you might even come back | 42:28 | |
| and then get involved again in the former detainee | 42:29 | |
| - | Oh, we could, yeah. | 42:31 |
| I have like five more minutes if that's okay. | 42:33 | |
| Interviewer | You could get back involved in that | 42:37 |
| or former detainees. | 42:38 | |
| - | Well, I mean, we would get involved with the country. | 42:39 |
| I mean, we wouldn't get involved with the detainee | 42:41 | |
| there are a lot of lawyers who represented detainees | 42:44 | |
| when they were in Guantanamo. | 42:49 | |
| And certainly one of the things that they would do | 42:50 | |
| in many cases was continue to, | 42:52 | |
| if they had developed a strong relationship, | 42:55 | |
| continue to talk to the former detainee | 42:58 | |
| once he was transferred. | 43:01 | |
| And then they would try to, | 43:03 | |
| those lawyers at that point, weren't doing legal work. | 43:06 | |
| They were just advocating for their client | 43:08 | |
| or former client's interests. | 43:11 | |
| And we would get calls that said, | 43:12 | |
| well he still isn't in that computer science program | 43:15 | |
| and if the country had promised to provide | 43:19 | |
| that type of training, which generally | 43:22 | |
| they would have cause it was important to us | 43:26 | |
| that that type of integration plan was put in place. | 43:29 | |
| We would intervene and say, | 43:33 | |
| why isn't he, in the computer science class? | 43:35 | |
| And we did that because | 43:39 | |
| we wanted our resettlement's to succeed | 43:41 | |
| because we thought it was in the interest | 43:44 | |
| of the United States that our resettlement's succeeded. | 43:45 | |
| And so at one point there were people | 43:51 | |
| who were doing that in the U S government | 43:54 | |
| in the interest of making sure | 43:57 | |
| that the resettlement's were successful. | 43:59 | |
| Interviewer | Well then last question leading in that is | 44:01 |
| is there something I didn't ask you | 44:03 | |
| that you thought you might wanna share with us? | 44:05 | |
| - | Not that I can think of as I sit here yeah. | 44:07 |
| Interviewer | We need 20 seconds | 44:10 |
| that I hope you can give to us a room tone | 44:11 | |
| before we can close down | 44:13 | |
| to room tone just with silent for 20 seconds, | 44:16 | |
| and then we can end the interview | 44:19 | |
| - | Sure | 44:20 |
| Man | Begin room tone. | 44:22 |
| Interviewer | Okay, great. | 44:34 |
| Man | Thank you. | |
| Interviewer | That was a really great interview. | 44:35 |
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