Buehn, Bob - Interview master file
Loading the media player...
Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Johnny | Okay we're rolling. | 0:04 |
Interviewer | Okay, good morning. | 0:05 |
- | Good morning. | 0:07 |
Interviewer | We are very grateful to you | 0:08 |
for participating in the Witness to Guantanamo project. | 0:10 | |
We invite you to speak | 0:14 | |
of your experiences and involvement at Guantanamo bay, Cuba. | 0:15 | |
We are hoping to provide you | 0:21 | |
with an opportunity to tell you the story in your own words. | 0:22 | |
We are creating an archive of stories | 0:27 | |
so that people in America | 0:29 | |
and around the world will have a better understanding | 0:31 | |
of what you and others have observed and experienced. | 0:33 | |
Future generations must know what happened at Guantanamo | 0:39 | |
and by telling your story, you contributing to history. | 0:42 | |
We appreciate your willingness, courage to speak with us. | 0:45 | |
If at any time during the interview | 0:49 | |
you want to take a break, | 0:51 | |
please let us know. | 0:51 | |
- | I'll do. | |
Interviewer | And if anything you say you like | 0:52 |
to have us remove you just let us know | 0:54 | |
and we can remove it. | 0:56 | |
And I'd like to begin | 0:57 | |
with just some general information such as your name | 0:58 | |
and hometown and birthday and age, you can start that. | 1:01 | |
- | Sure, My name is Bob. | 1:05 |
I go by Bob it's, Robert Buehn and I'm 60 years old. | 1:06 | |
I was born September 1st, 1951, and I grew | 1:12 | |
up on the East Coast of Florida near Cape Canaveral, | 1:15 | |
went to University of Florida and joined the Navy in 1978. | 1:18 | |
Interviewer | And where do you live now? | 1:22 |
- | I live in a suburb of Jacksonville | 1:24 |
Florida called Fleming island. | 1:27 | |
Interviewer | And do you have a family? | 1:28 |
- | I do, my wife is a of 30 plus years | 1:31 |
and my son, I have two sons, | 1:35 | |
one, both of whom are in the Navy. | 1:38 | |
One is a Lieutenant JG and one's a midshipman. | 1:41 | |
Interviewer | Well happy birthday. | 1:43 |
- | Oh, thanks yeah, just turned 60. | 1:45 |
Interviewer | Can you give us a little background just | 1:48 |
on how you got into the military | 1:50 | |
and what kind of work you did in the military? | 1:53 | |
- | Sure, I was, although I didn't go | 1:55 |
into the military directly out of University of Florida | 1:57 | |
I got a degree in journalism and actually worked | 2:00 | |
on a newspaper for a period of time, which I enjoyed | 2:02 | |
but I'd always been fascinated by flying. | 2:05 | |
I had an uncle who was an Air Force pilot | 2:07 | |
who was an inspiration to me | 2:09 | |
and grew up around the Space program. | 2:12 | |
So, aviation was always nearby and I | 2:14 | |
got my private pilot's license down in Stuart, Florida | 2:17 | |
and really enjoyed that and looked around and realized | 2:21 | |
that military was probably the best place to go to fly. | 2:24 | |
And if you wanted to fly some high-performance aircraft | 2:27 | |
and not have to pay for it yourself. | 2:29 | |
So I joined the Navy | 2:32 | |
in a program called Aviation Officer Candidate school | 2:34 | |
'cause I already had it my degree. | 2:37 | |
So I went to Pensacola and in a three month period of time | 2:39 | |
got a commission and then went to flight school. | 2:43 | |
And so that was 1978. | 2:46 | |
Interviewer | when was that. | |
- | I joined in 1978 and I got jet training and train | 2:48 |
carrier qualified to what we do to fly jets | 2:55 | |
and I was assigned to the S3, at the time S3A Viking | 2:58 | |
which is a twin jet carrier based aircraft. | 3:01 | |
It was fairly new at the time | 3:05 | |
in 1980 inside of the inventory now, | 3:08 | |
like most of the ships that I served on, but so I | 3:11 | |
for the first, nearly 20 years of my career, it was centered | 3:15 | |
around aviation and flying off of aircraft carriers | 3:18 | |
and also all the progression that you do that go | 3:22 | |
to the fleet deploy. | 3:25 | |
I came back was a flight instructor. | 3:27 | |
I also had a subspecialty as a landing signals officer. | 3:30 | |
So I was when not flying. | 3:33 | |
I was the one on the radio | 3:35 | |
at the standing at the back end of the ship | 3:37 | |
helping the other pilots in grading their approaches. | 3:39 | |
So everything was real | 3:43 | |
and I let carry that through to the command of a squadron | 3:45 | |
which was the ultimate | 3:48 | |
for an aviators to have command had command of the VS32 | 3:50 | |
at Cecil field in Jacksonville and Naval air station | 3:53 | |
master jet base that is now closed. | 3:57 | |
But so, and once I get that past that point | 4:00 | |
then your career begins to change. | 4:03 | |
You're no longer in the operational world as much | 4:06 | |
and you do a variety of things. | 4:09 | |
I went to be the executive officer | 4:11 | |
of an aircraft carrier, not flying, but running the ship | 4:12 | |
and then from there a variety of billets | 4:16 | |
and wound up screening for what was called major command | 4:20 | |
and that turned out to be Guantanamo bay, | 4:23 | |
U.S. Naval base Guantanamo bay. | 4:26 | |
Interviewer | Did it sounds were you overseas | 4:27 |
with some of these. | 4:30 | |
- | We deployed overseas? | 4:32 |
I was always based at either the aircraft, I flew | 4:33 | |
were only in San Diego and in Jacksonville. | 4:36 | |
So we went back and forth coast to coast a few times | 4:38 | |
and, but I deployed on ships | 4:41 | |
from both coasts and pretty much | 4:44 | |
covered circled the globe a few times with deployments. | 4:45 | |
And then the first overseas posting | 4:49 | |
we had was at Guantanamo. | 4:51 | |
Interviewer | And how did it happen? | 4:52 |
And when did it happen | 4:55 | |
that you were posted to Guantanamo? | 4:55 | |
- | Well, it was after | 4:57 |
I was executive officer of the carrier and they | 4:59 | |
the need the way the military does it is there | 5:03 | |
have screening boards at certain points in your career | 5:05 | |
to select who's gonna have command at the next level. | 5:08 | |
So I had already had command at the commander level | 5:12 | |
as an 05 or a commander and that was the squadron | 5:14 | |
and I was selected four 06 commander as a captain | 5:18 | |
and that could be a variety of things, but in my case | 5:23 | |
I was directed towards the shore, a shore installation | 5:26 | |
and I had actually had quite a bit of knowledge of | 5:30 | |
Guantanamo through my years of flying, | 5:32 | |
I had been down there a number of times | 5:34 | |
on a counter drug flights | 5:36 | |
or when the mass migration was going on, | 5:39 | |
I flew some people down there. | 5:42 | |
So I'd been in Guantanamo three or four times over my | 5:43 | |
20 plus years in the military and I was fascinated by it | 5:48 | |
it was a great place | 5:52 | |
and so when I screened for this Shore command | 5:54 | |
as major Shore command, one of the options, | 5:58 | |
one of the places that was available was Guantanamo bay. | 6:00 | |
So I think people who didn't know about it | 6:03 | |
shied away from it, but I actually chose it | 6:06 | |
as my first choice because I knew it was my kind of place. | 6:08 | |
I mean I'm an outdoors man I love to fish and dive and boat | 6:11 | |
and I knew that was there and also knew | 6:16 | |
there was a it was a flying billet. | 6:20 | |
So there was a couple of helicopters | 6:21 | |
and a twin engine aircraft down here | 6:23 | |
and it just seemed to fit for us | 6:26 | |
and so we said, we could pick a stateside base | 6:28 | |
but we wanted to overseas adventure | 6:31 | |
and my wife was in agreement and my boys too. | 6:34 | |
So we said, well, take Guantanamo bay. | 6:37 | |
Interviewer | What year was that? | 6:39 |
- | That was 99, that I made those decisions | 6:41 |
and I actually took command in spring of 2000. | 6:46 | |
So no one had, there was no thought of 911 coming | 6:50 | |
at that point, it was a different world. | 6:53 | |
Interviewer | So what did you think your job | 6:55 |
in Guantanamo would entail before it? | 6:57 | |
- | Well, I was gonna be the base commander | 6:59 |
so I knew even it was appealing as, at the time | 7:01 | |
I was gonna be the senior military presence on the base. | 7:04 | |
And so I, my assumption was I would run, | 7:10 | |
oversee running the whole thing | 7:14 | |
and I knew it wasn't, | 7:16 | |
there were political reasons that the U.S. | 7:19 | |
and the Navy kept Guantanamo bay. | 7:22 | |
It really wasn't a necessary base. | 7:24 | |
I mean, it's an old, it's 100 years old. | 7:27 | |
The history is, it was a coaling station. | 7:29 | |
It was important when ships had to | 7:31 | |
find a place to go to pick up fuel or coal, | 7:33 | |
we didn't really need it | 7:36 | |
and I'm sure the Navy | 7:39 | |
was trying to spend as little as possible down there | 7:41 | |
but of course we were not gonna return it back | 7:44 | |
to the Castro regime. | 7:46 | |
But so my assumption was we were gonna | 7:49 | |
fulfill the requirements to keep the base open | 7:52 | |
and honestly expected it to be kind of a quiet tour | 7:56 | |
down there, one that I can enjoy with the family | 7:59 | |
and just be in command and enjoy | 8:03 | |
all that entails the leadership that entails. | 8:07 | |
Interviewer | And the school for your sons? | 8:09 |
- | And the school there, their department | 8:11 |
defense schools on the base | 8:12 | |
and so when we got down there, | 8:14 | |
my younger son was in the elementary school | 8:16 | |
and my older son was in high school, | 8:18 | |
which was a nice connection for us to the community | 8:20 | |
because right away my wife got to know everybody | 8:23 | |
in both schools | 8:26 | |
and it's Guantanamo is we used to call it Mayberry | 8:27 | |
in the Caribbean. | 8:32 | |
It's a very much a small little American town | 8:33 | |
sitting on this island within an island. | 8:37 | |
It's 45 square miles | 8:40 | |
but really the base itself proper is less than that | 8:42 | |
and it's just a little American community. | 8:47 | |
Interviewer | Was there a detention center there | 8:48 |
when you were? | 8:51 | |
- | There was not, | 8:52 |
there was a remnants of this camp x-ray | 8:54 | |
which had been used during the mass migration | 8:56 | |
because some of the people that were picked | 8:59 | |
up at sea were criminals or felons, | 9:01 | |
and they used it very briefly as a place to keep people, | 9:04 | |
in it's on the road to the North East gate | 9:08 | |
which is the only connection | 9:10 | |
to the other side from the base | 9:12 | |
and so it was there | 9:16 | |
because some of these people were repatriated back to Cuba. | 9:17 | |
The ones that were not ones that they wanted to bring | 9:22 | |
into the U.S. during the 90s, the big migration. | 9:25 | |
So that was there, but all of our ground with vines | 9:27 | |
and you can hardly see it, it was just sort of | 9:31 | |
out of sight, out of mind, but there was no, | 9:34 | |
we had a brig for sailors, which could hold six people. | 9:37 | |
We never had anybody in the brig while I was there. | 9:41 | |
Interviewer | Okay, well then take us to a 911 where | 9:44 |
you were that day and going forward, what happened? | 9:48 | |
- | I was in my office, a Bulky hall is the name | 9:54 |
of the headquarters where the base commander's office is | 9:56 | |
and it's a beautiful view over the port of Guantanamo | 10:00 | |
there's a small port there, | 10:04 | |
and you have the blue, Caribbean water of the bay | 10:05 | |
for a backdrop, and we were just doing the day's business | 10:09 | |
and it was, kind of mid-morning | 10:13 | |
and I do recall having CNN on a TV with the sound off | 10:15 | |
in the corner, and I was kind of aware of smoke coming | 10:20 | |
out of one of the World Trade Center towers, | 10:23 | |
and but not really paying attention. | 10:25 | |
And then, it became clear what was going on, | 10:27 | |
there was an attack | 10:29 | |
and we didn't know, all the military bases | 10:30 | |
in the world got these orders from our headquarters | 10:35 | |
and my boss was in Jacksonville. | 10:39 | |
Who's an Admiral in Jacksonville | 10:40 | |
who oversaw at what was called Navy Region Southeast. | 10:42 | |
So we were part of about 20 bases | 10:45 | |
known as Navy Region Southeast. | 10:49 | |
So they sent out some immediate | 10:51 | |
once things became clear on what was going on | 10:53 | |
they sent out a defense condition | 10:56 | |
for all the basis to go into. | 11:00 | |
And of course, Stateside basis, it was very chaotic. | 11:01 | |
I mean, they closed gates. | 11:05 | |
They, and when you have a base | 11:06 | |
like for example, Naval Air Station, Jacksonville, | 11:08 | |
which is on a busy highway and a thoroughfare people come | 11:10 | |
and go all the time, cause big traffic backups. | 11:14 | |
Well, we get Guantanamo is always one of a kind place | 11:18 | |
and we didn't have that because no one ever left the base. | 11:22 | |
you live there you worked there | 11:25 | |
and we didn't have a front gate. | 11:26 | |
So, we tried to comply with a lot of these the orders, | 11:29 | |
they were doing searches of cars | 11:35 | |
at the front gates of bases state side, for example | 11:37 | |
and ID checks, extreme just worried about more attacks, | 11:39 | |
very understandably. | 11:44 | |
And we really had nowhere to do that | 11:46 | |
and we did Institute checking IDs, | 11:48 | |
which within about eight hours, we realized, | 11:52 | |
well this is ludicrous. | 11:54 | |
We all know each other. | 11:56 | |
And we all, there's only one store the Navy exchange | 11:56 | |
and commissary, there's only one place | 11:59 | |
so that it didn't even last a day checking IDs | 12:01 | |
because it seemed just silly | 12:05 | |
and so that was about the impact at the time. | 12:06 | |
It wasn't much, of course we were, everyone was concerned. | 12:11 | |
Everybody was trying to get the news | 12:14 | |
and find out what was going on nationally. | 12:16 | |
But at that instant, the impact was very, very minor. | 12:19 | |
Interviewer | You didn't see anything forthcoming | 12:25 |
as to how Guantanamo? | 12:27 | |
- | We did not and in fact I had, | 12:29 |
that's a lot of the sailors that worked for me | 12:31 | |
in one way or another, | 12:35 | |
I recall them coming up in the ensuing days and saying, | 12:36 | |
skipper I don't want to be stuck here. | 12:40 | |
I want to go do something about this. | 12:42 | |
There was a lot of patriotic fervor. | 12:45 | |
They wanted to serve in some way. | 12:47 | |
They wanted to strike back in some way. | 12:50 | |
And they were asking me, hey I want to transfer to a ship | 12:53 | |
and I wanna get out of here, we're in this backwater. | 12:57 | |
We're not gonna play a part in this thing. | 13:00 | |
And I said, well, first of all | 13:02 | |
we can't let everybody transfer. | 13:04 | |
We have a job to do here | 13:06 | |
and I said, we, you don't know | 13:07 | |
we might have a role that kind of envisioned | 13:10 | |
maybe there might be a support role here for us. | 13:11 | |
We might help get ships underway or training or something. | 13:14 | |
I was trying to be a good leader | 13:19 | |
and encourage them that we had a mission | 13:20 | |
which we did have a mission to do down there. | 13:23 | |
Interviewer | I wanna get into how you got involved. | 13:25 |
Guantanamo became more important, but just as background | 13:29 | |
you've mentioned the Navy Region Southeast | 13:31 | |
but how does that compare to SOUTHCOM? | 13:34 | |
- | Navy Region Southeast is a command of, | 13:38 |
they oversee the installations | 13:41 | |
and SOUTHCOM is a combatant command that, | 13:44 | |
so you really have to, we had two chains of command | 13:47 | |
and there was some chain of command that went to SOUTHCOM, | 13:50 | |
but my day to day boss was in Jacksonville | 13:57 | |
and Navy Region Southeast | 14:00 | |
and they oversaw the operation of the bases | 14:01 | |
and in essence the Joint Task Force | 14:05 | |
became a tenant of the base. | 14:07 | |
It just so we were supporting them. | 14:09 | |
Interviewer | Did SOUTHCOM | 14:11 |
just because I hear that term so often | 14:13 | |
have more of a role as the Joint Task Force? | 14:15 | |
- | They did. | 14:19 |
The Joint Task Force commander did not answer | 14:19 | |
to the Admiral that was Navy Region Southeast. | 14:23 | |
The Joint Task Force answered to SOUTHCOM. | 14:26 | |
Interviewer | Okay good. | 14:27 |
- | And SOUTHCOM was one of those combatant commands that | 14:29 |
are the what we call today, the war fighters | 14:32 | |
they're the ones who have regions of the world | 14:35 | |
and they actually execute the operational plans. | 14:37 | |
Interviewer | And they existed at that time, | 14:40 |
but they were very small at that time | 14:42 | |
and they grew? | 14:45 | |
- | They did SOUTHCOM was in existence. | 14:46 |
It had been in Panama and moved to Miami. | 14:49 | |
It's certainly has grown since then. | 14:51 | |
Interviewer | I see, so let's go into | 14:53 |
when you first started getting some inklings | 14:58 | |
that maybe there's gonna be a bigger role for Guantanamo | 15:00 | |
how dd that happen? | 15:03 | |
- | Well, yeah, as I said, we kind of backed off | 15:04 |
from the few security measures that we had instituted | 15:06 | |
because it just didn't seem to make sense. | 15:08 | |
And my chain of command was far more worried about | 15:11 | |
the U.S. basis than us down there over the horizon | 15:15 | |
and there was no reason to think that | 15:19 | |
we were gonna have any attacks on our bases. | 15:21 | |
It was hard enough to get it | 15:23 | |
for people who were authorized to be there. | 15:25 | |
so we were just going along pretty | 15:28 | |
much back the way things were | 15:32 | |
and we did begin to get questions though. | 15:34 | |
This was, of course, that was in September, | 15:37 | |
starting in late October probably | 15:40 | |
we started to get inquiries | 15:42 | |
from up the chain of command about our capabilities, our | 15:44 | |
what we had in terms of housing and infrastructure | 15:47 | |
and what we could support. | 15:50 | |
And then certainly by November, we knew we were gonna, | 15:53 | |
we were being considered, but we also heard | 15:55 | |
that there were a lot of places in the Pacific and Tinian | 15:58 | |
and Guam and other places like being considered | 16:01 | |
as a place to keep these detainees. | 16:05 | |
Interviewer | So you, as early as even October, | 16:08 |
someone spoke to you and said, | 16:15 | |
is it possible that you can ask? | 16:16 | |
- | I think it was more just to sort of inventory | 16:19 |
and what our capability was down there | 16:22 | |
and that was through the Navy chain of command. | 16:24 | |
They I'm guessing they probably were getting questions | 16:25 | |
from higher up, but it wasn't posed to us quite that way. | 16:28 | |
But by November it was and by November, | 16:31 | |
we were aware that there was, there were lists | 16:34 | |
or maybe not a physical list, but there were thoughts | 16:38 | |
of places to put these battlefield prisoners | 16:41 | |
and that Guantanamo was being considered | 16:45 | |
and actually, we were a little confused | 16:48 | |
because Guam was on the list | 16:50 | |
and that there was often confusion between | 16:51 | |
Guam and Guantanamo | 16:53 | |
because they both begin with the same three letters. | 16:54 | |
But we did think so, but I just never, | 16:57 | |
I didn't take it seriously at first, | 17:02 | |
I thought, well they're just looking | 17:03 | |
at a dozen places around the world. | 17:04 | |
It's just trying to, but at that point | 17:06 | |
I didn't think it was gonna happen, | 17:10 | |
but then it grew, the questions grew | 17:11 | |
and then it became pretty clear | 17:14 | |
that they're seriously considering | 17:16 | |
say by Thanksgiving that | 17:19 | |
they're seriously considering Guantanamo | 17:21 | |
and we eventually did get the word | 17:24 | |
right around Christmas time. | 17:27 | |
Interviewer | Did civilian leaders come down | 17:28 |
to check it out? | 17:32 | |
- | Not too many civilian leaders at that point | 17:34 |
they certainly came right after the thing was established | 17:36 | |
but general Leonard came down. | 17:39 | |
Well, once he came, by the time he came down | 17:42 | |
it was a done deal. | 17:44 | |
We knew it was gonna happen at that point. | 17:45 | |
But mostly we were sending data up | 17:47 | |
through our chain of command to what was called then | 17:49 | |
known as U.S. Atlantic fleet. | 17:51 | |
And that was, it doesn't exist anymore, | 17:55 | |
but that was the chain of command that the Navy was | 17:58 | |
funneling this information through. | 18:01 | |
Interviewer | So sometime in December, | 18:03 |
you were informed that? | 18:04 | |
- | Admiral Guadio Who was the Navy Region Southeast, | 18:06 |
my administrative boss called and said, | 18:09 | |
essentially he said, be ready, | 18:12 | |
you need to be ready to take 300 prisoners in three weeks. | 18:13 | |
And that sort of, that was the starting gun | 18:18 | |
and then it was scrambled. | 18:22 | |
Well we thought we got a lot of work to do | 18:24 | |
because we had not done any preparation | 18:27 | |
and it became obvious when general Leonard came down | 18:30 | |
and he knew he was gonna be assigned | 18:33 | |
at the start of the thing. | 18:35 | |
And when he- | 18:37 | |
Interviewer | As could you | |
describe just so that, what was he assigned? | 18:37 | |
- | Breeder general Mike Leonard Marine Corps | 18:41 |
who I had this previous relationship | 18:44 | |
with at the Naval war college | 18:46 | |
was in the second fleet service support group, | 18:49 | |
a Marine, it was really a Marine Corps organization | 18:53 | |
that supported combat troops | 18:57 | |
and they were engineers really in it | 18:58 | |
and he had been involved in the 90s | 19:00 | |
with the big mass migration effort | 19:02 | |
dealing with that at Guantanamo. | 19:05 | |
So he knew, Guantanamo, | 19:07 | |
he knew how to do big logistics | 19:08 | |
but he was going to be assigned | 19:12 | |
as the first Joint Task Force commander to stand it up | 19:14 | |
and I don't think there was ever a thought | 19:17 | |
that he was gonna do it for more than about 90 days | 19:19 | |
which is what turned out to be the fact, | 19:21 | |
but he came down and we agreed, | 19:24 | |
he did walk the base with us. | 19:27 | |
We literally walked on if I could back up for a second | 19:29 | |
Gitmo is divided, the mouth of the bay divides the base. | 19:34 | |
So there's two sides. | 19:37 | |
There's Leeward, which is where the airfield is | 19:38 | |
and Windward, which is where the bulk of the people live | 19:41 | |
and is the main part of the base. | 19:43 | |
So, but there's capabilities and facilities on both sides. | 19:45 | |
So we walked over a period | 19:50 | |
of a couple of days when he came down | 19:51 | |
which was right around Christmas time | 19:53 | |
all the possible places where we could put this | 19:56 | |
300 in three weeks, how do we do this? | 19:59 | |
And it became clear that this camp x-ray | 20:03 | |
which despite the fact that it was overgrown with weeds | 20:05 | |
and was just an outdoor chain-link holding pen | 20:08 | |
with cement foundation was the only place that we | 20:13 | |
could get ready in time and knowing that | 20:17 | |
that was not gonna be permanent, but | 20:20 | |
we got this marker out there 300 in three weeks. | 20:23 | |
That was the only place to do it | 20:28 | |
and it still needed a lot of work | 20:29 | |
and it needed to be expanded, but that was the call | 20:30 | |
and he made the call | 20:33 | |
that it was the only choice, really. | 20:34 | |
So given that we went to work right after | 20:38 | |
right at Christmas time, the 26th of December | 20:41 | |
and I remember 'cause my executive officer is, | 20:44 | |
the number two, your right-hand man really | 20:47 | |
had been worried about this | 20:51 | |
and he wanted it. | 20:53 | |
He was the most diligent and faithful executive officer, | 20:54 | |
but he'd been debating | 20:59 | |
about going up to the states on Christmas leave. | 21:00 | |
And I said, oh yeah, go ahead. | 21:02 | |
I mean, he hadn't been up there in over a year. | 21:03 | |
I said, go ahead nothing's gonna happen over Christmas. | 21:07 | |
I think it was like the day after he left | 21:09 | |
is when it all came down. | 21:10 | |
So he ended up coming back early, | 21:12 | |
but I that's how I recall | 21:17 | |
that was right around Christmas time | 21:18 | |
and so we got to work on cleaning that thing up | 21:19 | |
and just getting started | 21:22 | |
and it really was a tremendous effort of, | 21:23 | |
we had some a few CBs that were assigned to the base. | 21:26 | |
We had a lot of contractors, the base was really run | 21:29 | |
by contractors and they employed what we call TCNs | 21:32 | |
or Third Country Nationals, mostly Filipinos | 21:36 | |
but there were a smattering of Indians | 21:40 | |
and just what you typically find overseas in a workforce, | 21:42 | |
and they were all great. | 21:47 | |
Many of the Filipinos had been at the base for decades | 21:49 | |
and there they were patriotic. | 21:52 | |
They took 911, just as hard as the Americans did. | 21:54 | |
So they, it became almost a competition to clean up | 21:57 | |
and expand this camp x-ray and materials are a problem | 22:01 | |
in Guantanamo because there you just don't get to go | 22:07 | |
outside the gate and find a Lowe's | 22:09 | |
and buy what you need or home Depot? | 22:11 | |
So everything had to come | 22:14 | |
by barge from the states or by air | 22:15 | |
and you can't carry a lot of heavy material by air. | 22:18 | |
So barge was the primary | 22:21 | |
and we had these barges that normally came twice a week | 22:24 | |
or twice a month, I'm sorry, twice a month | 22:27 | |
and those really became loaded up with all kinds of stuff, | 22:29 | |
and I'm talking about chain link | 22:33 | |
and pipe and cement, those kinds of basic things. | 22:34 | |
And they were a creative though, | 22:38 | |
I know we had an on the Windward side | 22:40 | |
there was an abandoned airfield that had a fence around it | 22:42 | |
and we were scrounging everything we could | 22:46 | |
and I one day, I drove out to the to the beach area, | 22:47 | |
along that fence line and I, something looked different | 22:51 | |
and I realized the whole fence was gone | 22:53 | |
and these guys had gone CBs and the Filipino guys | 22:55 | |
had gone down and cut off the fence pipe | 22:58 | |
and welded it all back together, out at camp x-ray. | 23:01 | |
So they're almost competing to see who could, | 23:03 | |
who could build their section faster. | 23:06 | |
And we put, there were lights out there | 23:08 | |
round the clock operation to get this thing ready | 23:12 | |
and in the end 300 didn't come in three weeks. | 23:15 | |
I mean, they came in increments of about 30. | 23:19 | |
So it, when the three-week mark came | 23:21 | |
we didn't get 300 people at once we got 30. | 23:24 | |
Interviewer | So January 11th, did they tell you, | 23:27 |
when did you find that January 11th | 23:29 | |
of the first day of arrival? | 23:31 | |
- | Probably in early January | 23:33 |
and we knew General Leonard came down | 23:35 | |
I think on the 7th with his group, the January. | 23:36 | |
So he we'd been built, he'd been back and forth. | 23:40 | |
We'd been building x-ray | 23:44 | |
and there've been planning going on for, or what's next. | 23:46 | |
I mean, x-ray not gonna, can't be permanent | 23:48 | |
and one of the interesting things about camp x-ray is | 23:52 | |
literally over a small rise is a very American looking | 23:56 | |
housing area for family housing. | 24:00 | |
So these people were well later when we did the call | 24:02 | |
to prayer through loudspeakers | 24:05 | |
these people could sit in their base housing | 24:07 | |
with their families and hear the call to prayer if we, | 24:10 | |
so it was too close to the community too, | 24:12 | |
it was so it wasn't gonna be a permanent spot. | 24:16 | |
So planning was going on for a more permanent facility | 24:19 | |
as well at that time. | 24:23 | |
Interviewer | So you knew that these men | 24:24 |
wouldn't just be here short term, if you were ready? | 24:26 | |
- | Well, that I didn't know that, | 24:29 |
we didn't have any idea how long you were gonna be there | 24:32 | |
but we knew they weren't gonna be in | 24:34 | |
that we couldn't keep a large group | 24:36 | |
in camp x-ray for a year or something like that. | 24:38 | |
It's just, they're just facilities just weren't there. | 24:41 | |
Interviewer | So you began thinking | 24:43 |
about planning even before the first arrival. | 24:45 | |
- | There was a large area down on the coast | 24:50 |
the sea front of the base called Radio range, | 24:54 | |
which was had been already used in the past | 24:57 | |
for the mass migration to set up tents and have large areas. | 25:00 | |
And that was pretty quickly decided upon | 25:03 | |
and this is where going, whatever we're gonna do | 25:06 | |
it's gonna have to be down here | 25:09 | |
because it was over a little sort | 25:10 | |
of the Mount small range of Hills from the base. | 25:12 | |
It was fairly isolated | 25:16 | |
and it was already cleared in flat and available | 25:17 | |
and some of the infrastructure that had | 25:21 | |
supported the migration was there too. | 25:22 | |
Interviewer | So where there construction at that site | 25:24 |
even before the first group of men came? | 25:27 | |
- | No, I don't think so. | 25:30 |
I think it started after, but it started pretty quickly | 25:31 | |
'cause in that 90 to 100 days. | 25:34 | |
Well, by May, I believe it was May, the move had been | 25:36 | |
made out of x-ray, | 25:41 | |
x-ray was only used from January 11th | 25:42 | |
to some date in early May. | 25:45 | |
Interviewer | And by then all the men had been moved? | 25:47 |
- | By then everyone had been moved | 25:49 |
and so there was, again, it wasn't a completely | 25:51 | |
it was a temporary facility | 25:54 | |
but more permanent than camp x-ray was | 25:55 | |
the thing incremental and I haven't been back, but | 25:58 | |
I understand there's a much more permanent | 26:01 | |
building there now. | 26:04 | |
Interviewer | What was that second facility called? | 26:05 |
- | Camp Delta, Camp Delta, which is still | 26:08 |
I think the, kind of the main area that's used now. | 26:12 | |
Interviewer | And so camps one and two | 26:16 |
would be part of camp Delta or? | 26:19 | |
- | Under that umbrella yes. | 26:22 |
I mean, all of that is out in what was called Radio range | 26:24 | |
and its now behind its own gate | 26:27 | |
and you drive the road out there | 26:30 | |
and it's like a base within a base. | 26:32 | |
So, but in this early going | 26:34 | |
it was right there by the playground for the kids | 26:36 | |
which was a crazy thing to go out there at three | 26:40 | |
the morning we had big lights | 26:43 | |
and you have these crews working | 26:44 | |
and you could just look over to your right | 26:45 | |
and see what looked like fairly modern U.S. housing. | 26:47 | |
It just was a real juxtaposition of amazing. | 26:51 | |
Interviewer | Were you told anything | 26:54 |
about the men who were gonna report there before they came? | 26:55 | |
- | Well we knew they were battlefield | 26:59 |
that had been taken on a battlefield | 27:01 | |
and not much more than that. | 27:03 | |
We did hear that an Al I worked with Al Shimkus | 27:07 | |
Captain Shimkus on this with, | 27:11 | |
that some had battlefield injuries | 27:12 | |
and so there was a lot of concern about that, but, | 27:14 | |
and yeah, I think we, I don't recall exactly | 27:18 | |
how we heard it, but I know there was a lot | 27:22 | |
of talk about these are really bad guys | 27:24 | |
from the battlefield. | 27:27 | |
Interviewer | Were you there the first day | 27:29 |
when they arrived? | 27:32 | |
- | I was the first, the very first flight I was in. | 27:33 |
We had a little ops center on the Windward side | 27:37 | |
and I was there because my boss Admiral Gaudio | 27:40 | |
he wanted to know as soon as the airplane touchdown. | 27:43 | |
So I was on the phone with him and we were observing it | 27:45 | |
and then later I was right | 27:48 | |
at the aircraft when they would offload the passengers | 27:51 | |
and in one by my overriding memory of that is | 27:54 | |
after all the buildup to this, | 27:59 | |
of course precautions were beyond really an amazing amount | 28:03 | |
of security and positive control. | 28:08 | |
And so when they C141, the cargo plane opened | 28:11 | |
and the first ones came out | 28:16 | |
the overriding impression I had was how | 28:18 | |
small the individuals were, | 28:20 | |
'cause, I think we had just built our | 28:22 | |
in our minds that these must be | 28:24 | |
10 feet tall people coming out. | 28:26 | |
And they're very small, | 28:29 | |
they're five foot, four 98 pounds | 28:30 | |
and they looked so small compared to | 28:34 | |
all the security around them. | 28:36 | |
Interviewer | Did that give you a different sense on? | 28:39 |
- | It did I immediately thought that this is not | 28:42 |
gonna be the that I don't think our fears about | 28:46 | |
rampaging breakouts are gonna happen | 28:50 | |
and many of them were injured. | 28:53 | |
I mean, limping and in, I mean, that's where our medical, | 28:54 | |
I feel good about what the medical people | 28:58 | |
immediately took care of some of these injuries | 29:00 | |
and I'm sure Al talked about that, | 29:04 | |
but there was a lot to be done. | 29:06 | |
Interviewer | So they came off the transport | 29:08 |
and they were what happened next? | 29:12 | |
- | They were carried, this of course, | 29:15 |
it's on the Leeward side where the airfield is. | 29:18 | |
So now to get them to do the camp x-ray | 29:21 | |
you had to cross the bay. | 29:25 | |
So this was quite a logistics set up. | 29:27 | |
There were buses, school buses that were modified | 29:31 | |
and so they would be loaded on the school bus | 29:35 | |
at the aircraft, and then bust very short distance | 29:37 | |
just down to the ferry landing. | 29:41 | |
And we had auto fairies where you actually drive vehicles | 29:43 | |
on them that crossed the bay | 29:46 | |
all the time on the base. | 29:48 | |
And of course this was, that special | 29:50 | |
everything else was shut down. | 29:52 | |
It was just for this operation, | 29:53 | |
drive the buses onto the ferry, | 29:56 | |
ferry would cross the bay and drive off | 29:58 | |
and then right through the base | 30:00 | |
past the McDonald's and there's no other way to go. | 30:02 | |
There's only one road and to camp x-ray | 30:05 | |
and then into a process, we're sort of a medical check | 30:08 | |
and then showers and then into the facility after that. | 30:13 | |
Interviewer | And did you follow along? | 30:15 |
- | I did In the first one or two, | 30:17 |
I did for sure, the first one | 30:20 | |
and I'm thinking I probably did. | 30:22 | |
Interviewer | The first one meeting. | 30:24 |
- | The first arrival of the first detainees. | 30:25 |
Although I was at this, what we used to be a control tower | 30:28 | |
at the airfield to watch it, once it got | 30:31 | |
onto the Windward side of the base, then I followed along. | 30:34 | |
So I was there when they offloaded the first group | 30:38 | |
and got a close up look. | 30:40 | |
And I do, I'm certain that my memory is a little hazy | 30:43 | |
that I was standing very close | 30:48 | |
to the photographer who took the famous photograph | 30:50 | |
of them still being in the orange jumpsuits | 30:53 | |
and kind of kneeling down in that one holding area | 30:57 | |
the photograph that caused so much controversy later. | 31:00 | |
'Cause I know I was there when they were in that facility. | 31:04 | |
Interviewer | Whose idea was it for them | 31:07 |
to be kneeling like that? | 31:09 | |
How did that happen? | 31:10 | |
- | That was the guards, I'm not sure | 31:11 |
I didn't actually witness | 31:15 | |
what the discussion was, but they didn't have him kneel | 31:17 | |
and photographed it and then released the photograph. | 31:20 | |
Interviewer | And was Colonel Leonard | 31:24 |
is it Colonel Leonard, right? | 31:29 | |
- | Brigadier General. | 31:30 |
Interviewer | Brigadier General. | 31:31 |
Is he now in charge at this point? | 31:32 | |
- | He was he had been his to park up his group | 31:34 |
arrived in five big transports | 31:38 | |
on the January 7th, 7th or 8th. | 31:40 | |
So they were there were several days before | 31:43 | |
and I do recall going over to meet him | 31:46 | |
in the evening on the Leeward side | 31:48 | |
and having the Marines March out of these airplanes | 31:50 | |
and it was very impressive and it was good to see him | 31:53 | |
and they immediately went over and they set | 31:57 | |
up their living quarters right next to the camp. | 31:59 | |
X-ray they did not go into barracks | 32:02 | |
or into any of the other facilities we had, | 32:04 | |
he was a believer that he wanted his troops to be in there | 32:07 | |
right there in the same place, same conditions. | 32:12 | |
So they were intense and they didn't have air conditioning | 32:14 | |
and we did cobble together some outdoor sinks | 32:17 | |
and showers for them, but it was rugged conditions | 32:21 | |
for the Marines and it's hot in Guantanamo. | 32:24 | |
So, but they didn't have any of the air conditioning. | 32:27 | |
So they'd got their set all that up | 32:30 | |
and then they went through the drills to practice | 32:33 | |
and decide how we're gonna do this transfer | 32:36 | |
of the detainees in those days | 32:40 | |
and then when the 11th came, they were already in place so. | 32:44 | |
Interviewer | And did you tour the camp | 32:47 |
and after the men were placed? | 32:50 | |
- | I did and I was in there with General Leonard | 32:53 |
a number of times as that, as it filled up as it, | 32:56 | |
'cause as I say, despite all the talk about | 33:00 | |
300 in three weeks, it was incremental. | 33:03 | |
Interviewer | And what were your observations | 33:06 |
early in those early days? | 33:09 | |
- | Well, I remember telling my wife | 33:10 |
we had the conversation and I think I said | 33:14 | |
we were gonna use camp x-ray temporarily | 33:18 | |
and I remember commenting to her | 33:20 | |
it really, it looks, I mean, it's chain link fence. | 33:23 | |
It looks very, it looks like a dog kennel, | 33:26 | |
and but I knew it wasn't gonna be permanent, | 33:29 | |
but aside from that, it was pretty | 33:33 | |
the atmosphere was pretty calm out there when | 33:38 | |
in the first few weeks and I think | 33:41 | |
of course these detainees were probably still stunned | 33:43 | |
from this whole expedition of traveling across the world. | 33:47 | |
They didn't know that, I don't know | 33:51 | |
that they knew where they were. | 33:52 | |
I don't think they knew they were in Guantanamo bay, Cuba, | 33:54 | |
but some did speak English and maybe they picked up on it. | 33:59 | |
I'm not sure about that, but you know mostly it was, | 34:01 | |
they were sitting quietly | 34:04 | |
and they could talk, they could all see each other | 34:07 | |
and they they were communicating | 34:10 | |
and General Leonard right from the beginning. | 34:12 | |
I saw him many times sitting cross-legged | 34:15 | |
talking with the detainees. | 34:19 | |
I mean, he immediately engaged and tried to understand, | 34:22 | |
it was a great example I thought of what to do. | 34:26 | |
Interviewer | I don't know if you can, | 34:30 |
but can you describe what, | 34:31 | |
how their flight was from Afghanistan to Guantanamo | 34:33 | |
if you can? | 34:36 | |
- | No I knew roughly when they left. | 34:37 |
I mean, they were long flights. | 34:40 | |
I just think they had an intermediate stop, | 34:42 | |
but even with that, | 34:44 | |
they in-flight refueled the aircraft. | 34:45 | |
And on I'm sure there was sensitivity | 34:48 | |
about where do you, where can you land? | 34:50 | |
So, I mean, some countries would, | 34:52 | |
so I don't even know to tell you the truth where | 34:53 | |
but I do know there was talk | 34:55 | |
about inflight refueling along the way, | 34:57 | |
which is a capability that the air force certainly has | 34:59 | |
and I do know they had heavy security on the aircraft. | 35:03 | |
Interviewer | A guard told us that one of the planes | 35:07 |
had a second level where the security would be | 35:11 | |
looking down with guns, is that? | 35:14 | |
- | That's possible and I do know they had security | 35:18 |
Air Force security teams on the airplanes. | 35:21 | |
They called them Raven teams and they would, they didn't | 35:24 | |
once the aircraft arrived in the beginning, | 35:27 | |
when the Marines took the detainees off | 35:30 | |
the air force team stayed on the airplane. | 35:34 | |
So they didn't go any farther than that. | 35:36 | |
But we were aware that they were there. | 35:38 | |
Interviewer | And could there have been a second level | 35:40 |
of security that would have made? | 35:42 | |
- | Oh, I don't know about two levels in a C141, | 35:44 |
but there'd be ways that they could certainly be observing. | 35:46 | |
Oh yeah, oh yeah. | 35:52 | |
And I think from what I saw the detainees were, | 35:53 | |
they had hearing their ear muffs | 35:56 | |
they had blacked out goggles. | 36:00 | |
So there, they weren't getting a lot | 36:02 | |
of cues from what was around them? | 36:04 | |
I mean I'm sure they were realized they were in an airplane. | 36:07 | |
Interviewer | And when did the second flight arrive? | 36:09 |
Do you remember the date of that? | 36:12 | |
Do you remember how soon that felt? | 36:14 | |
- | No, I don't, it was soon after I would think | 36:14 |
a couple a day or two. | 36:17 | |
Interviewer | And by then you think there was a routine | 36:18 |
at that point already | 36:22 | |
you kind of knew what you guys were doing? | 36:23 | |
- | Well the transfer was each time they did it, | 36:25 |
it became more institutionalized. | 36:29 | |
How that worked. | 36:31 | |
They modified the bus. | 36:32 | |
The first and my wife could tell you about this better | 36:34 | |
but the first, I think the very first transferred, | 36:37 | |
these were buses, that school buses | 36:40 | |
that there had been sent down on the barge from Florida | 36:42 | |
and they still, the first transfer | 36:46 | |
I think of the bus was still yellow. | 36:49 | |
I still looked like a school bus. | 36:51 | |
And, but later they had arranged the bus | 36:52 | |
so that they could be handcuffed to rings. | 36:58 | |
So they wouldn't be able to get off the bus | 37:01 | |
but they didn't, I don't think the bus even had seats in it. | 37:03 | |
I never rode on the bus, but they later were painted | 37:05 | |
in sort of a drab color and looked more military | 37:08 | |
but in the beginning it was, it looked just like, | 37:10 | |
and a lot of the folks from the town | 37:13 | |
including my wife, went to the, we knew they | 37:16 | |
everybody knew and in the community when the flight arrived | 37:18 | |
and they knew when the ferry arrived | 37:21 | |
'cause you could see it. | 37:23 | |
So a lot of people were along the route just to see it. | 37:24 | |
They just, they didn't, just either parked in their cars | 37:27 | |
or sat in a parking lot and watched the bus go by | 37:30 | |
because there were Humvees and there was armed escort | 37:33 | |
and it was quite a convoy. | 37:35 | |
So, but it was, to see that it was restored. | 37:39 | |
Interviewer | Were they allowed to go to camp x-ray | 37:40 |
and see there? | 37:43 | |
- | No, they could, you could see it from a distance, | 37:44 |
but there was a point beyond which you could go. | 37:46 | |
Interviewer | What about the housing that was nearby, | 37:47 |
Was that still being used? | 37:50 | |
- | It was, it was. | 37:51 |
Interviewer | So people from there could look over. | 37:52 |
- | They can look over | 37:53 |
and they could see just sort of in the distance | 37:55 | |
the complex that could see the lights at night | 37:58 | |
they could hear the call to prayer when that started. | 37:59 | |
It would have been hard to see individuals, | 38:03 | |
but it was close and it was less than half a mile away. | 38:06 | |
Interviewer | And how about food for the detainees there | 38:09 |
in those early days? | 38:13 | |
- | We general Leonard and we dealt with food early on | 38:16 |
and we found we didn't have the appropriate food. | 38:20 | |
And so almost immediately, and this was part | 38:23 | |
of my job as the, running the logistics | 38:25 | |
and the support was we got the | 38:28 | |
what were called halal meals that were | 38:33 | |
that were appropriate. | 38:35 | |
And in general- | 38:37 | |
Interviewer | Where did you get them from? | 38:38 |
- | They were through the supply officers | 38:39 |
got them through the system. | 38:41 | |
They're actually available through the military system, | 38:44 | |
and it was more rice | 38:49 | |
and vegetables and that kind of thing | 38:51 | |
and so that we got into that right away. | 38:53 | |
and then all along with that is when general Leonard got | 38:56 | |
had the Koreans brought them in too. | 39:00 | |
I mean, he realized right away, | 39:03 | |
we needed to make some of those changes. | 39:04 | |
Interviewer | Did he consult with you? | 39:05 |
I mean, these are his decisions its sound like? | 39:07 | |
- | We talked about them and certainly | 39:10 |
I just executed we would through the Joint Task Force | 39:13 | |
and our supply chain we got him what he needed. | 39:18 | |
Interviewer | And so how did your duties change | 39:22 |
as these days went on? | 39:24 | |
- | Well, it, I and at his recommendation. | 39:27 |
I was actually named the joint task | 39:29 | |
or the deputy Joint Task Force commander for support. | 39:31 | |
When a Joint Task Force has a wiring diagram | 39:35 | |
like every military organization, it's got a commander | 39:38 | |
it's got a deputy and, or multiple deputies | 39:40 | |
and I was named at his request, the deputy for support | 39:43 | |
and it just, it gave us a more of a direct line. | 39:48 | |
I would have, we would have done it anyway | 39:53 | |
but it was a way to institutionalize in a military sense | 39:55 | |
that relationship between the Joint Task Force and the base. | 39:59 | |
As base commander, most of the other commands on the base | 40:04 | |
were tenants of the base. | 40:08 | |
They didn't directly work for Al Shimkus his Naval hospital | 40:09 | |
was a base tenant, so we supported them | 40:13 | |
and they took care of the medical | 40:17 | |
and just the way those things are done. | 40:19 | |
So the JTF was really in end became a big tenant | 40:21 | |
of the base and so we supported them, | 40:25 | |
but by being the deputy for support, I was able to | 40:28 | |
or I was invited to sit in on the meetings, | 40:32 | |
the regular meetings and have a little more awareness. | 40:36 | |
And that way we can serve not only the detainees, | 40:39 | |
but the troops. | 40:42 | |
That was really our biggest logistics was | 40:43 | |
we had them and we went from a base | 40:46 | |
of about 2,700 people to over 6,000 nearly overnight | 40:48 | |
and it's the impact | 40:53 | |
and the challenges of that were enormous. | 40:55 | |
Interviewer | Were they sending more troops? | 40:56 |
- | They, well, that was the joint. | 40:59 |
That was the size of the Joint Task Force. | 41:01 | |
That's what they sent down | 41:03 | |
the general had brought his group, | 41:05 | |
initial group was probably 150 strong. | 41:09 | |
And, but as the thing grew there just | 41:12 | |
kept sending more and more troops. | 41:15 | |
So just housing and transporting | 41:17 | |
and taking care of the water demands around the base, | 41:19 | |
the base is self-sufficient. | 41:23 | |
So even something as simple as water | 41:24 | |
doesn't come from the Cuban side, | 41:26 | |
we had desalinization plant | 41:28 | |
or actually we went to reverse osmosis | 41:31 | |
but we made our own water out of seawater. | 41:34 | |
And so if you double your water demand overnight | 41:37 | |
or nearly overnight, that's a challenge too | 41:40 | |
and so all those things had | 41:42 | |
and just for perspective, we had been | 41:44 | |
in my first 18 months there, we had actually been | 41:46 | |
on a Navy mandated campaign to really reduce | 41:48 | |
the footprint of the base. | 41:55 | |
The deal was keep the, | 41:57 | |
maintain the requirements of the lease | 41:59 | |
because there is actually a lease with Cuba, | 42:02 | |
don't do anything to jeopardize the lease | 42:04 | |
but just keep the lights on and get that | 42:06 | |
and we were taking down old buildings. | 42:09 | |
We were trying to reduce the footprint of any utilities | 42:11 | |
and really making the base small, or what we | 42:14 | |
in those days was known as go to minimum pillar. | 42:17 | |
So you had the minimum to do the four or five missions | 42:20 | |
that were defined for us. | 42:23 | |
So we went from declining resources | 42:24 | |
and trying to make the base small and not very expensive | 42:27 | |
to all of a sudden, we had to go the other direction. | 42:33 | |
And of course they threw a lot of money at it too. | 42:36 | |
Interviewer | Did you ever interact with | 42:39 |
the people on the ground like the prison guards or so, | 42:42 | |
and get a sense on what their perspectives were | 42:46 | |
in those facilities? | 42:48 | |
- | Mostly it was with the leadership | 42:50 |
I didn't, I saw the Marines when they were | 42:54 | |
in camp right next to camp x-ray, but as time went along now | 42:57 | |
that they weren't really in my chain | 43:01 | |
and I didn't talk to individuals that much | 43:03 | |
I dealt with the general, usually | 43:06 | |
and with Captain Shimkus, when it came to medical issues. | 43:10 | |
Interviewer | You deal with translators | 43:13 |
or how did they find translators or did they not? | 43:15 | |
- | They didn't in the beginning. | 43:19 |
I think that was part of the problem. | 43:20 | |
Was there were not, and they really didn't understand | 43:21 | |
the range of languages that were being spoken by the group. | 43:26 | |
I mean, when we had, I recall specifically | 43:29 | |
when the Uyghurs came, the Uyghurs is from | 43:31 | |
the extreme Western China, | 43:33 | |
nobody had a clue how to talk to them | 43:36 | |
and it took a while to find a Uyghurs translator, | 43:38 | |
but a lot of the translators were contractors | 43:41 | |
and civilians that they came in and then when we got- | 43:43 | |
Interviewer | Who was it to look for translators | 43:46 |
is that your job or? | 43:48 | |
- | No, and that was not | 43:49 |
that was the Joint Task Force, all that | 43:50 | |
and it started out the Joint Task Force | 43:53 | |
was general Leonard alone | 43:57 | |
and then we got into this split | 43:59 | |
and I don't know how much you know | 44:00 | |
about JTF 160 and 170. | 44:02 | |
There was a period of time when the JTF was split | 44:04 | |
and then came back together as one under JTF Gitmo. | 44:10 | |
Well, JTF after general Leonard left | 44:15 | |
which was about 100 days | 44:19 | |
he was there about 100 days | 44:21 | |
and it was when the move to the new facility was made. | 44:23 | |
The, and I don't know where this decision was made | 44:28 | |
but there, it became JTF 160 and 170, | 44:32 | |
160 was tasked with the detention. | 44:37 | |
170 was tasked with interrogation. | 44:41 | |
And you had a one-star national guard general | 44:44 | |
from Rhode Island, General Baccus who was | 44:48 | |
in charge of 160 | 44:51 | |
and you had a two-star army reserve intelligence | 44:52 | |
general named Don Levy, who was in charge of 170. | 44:56 | |
So as an adjunct professor with the Naval War college | 45:00 | |
now it's a study in disunity of command. | 45:04 | |
It's not a good way to do business and it didn't work | 45:07 | |
but that was the way it went for awhile. | 45:10 | |
Interviewer | Whose idea was that? | 45:12 |
- | It must have come from either the Pentagon | 45:14 |
or through SOUTHCOM. | 45:18 | |
It was not, we didn't understand it Baccus came first | 45:19 | |
and relieved General Leonard | 45:23 | |
and then this next layer came in | 45:25 | |
and they were just at natural odds with each other | 45:28 | |
detain and interrogate | 45:31 | |
and the other disadvantage was a two-star and a one-star. | 45:35 | |
So, who would win the arguments | 45:38 | |
and eventually shortly, or it that lasted | 45:42 | |
I want to say about a year or less | 45:45 | |
because it it got changed while I was still there | 45:48 | |
and SOUTHCOM, I think said once SOUTHCOM got | 45:51 | |
a three-star general hill came in | 45:57 | |
and that's another thing they were working | 45:59 | |
under sort of a temporary commander at SOUTHCOM | 46:02 | |
but once he came in, he recognized right away | 46:06 | |
that this wasn't working and he said | 46:08 | |
we need to get a regular army | 46:10 | |
two star in here and make it one command | 46:12 | |
and that's when General Miller, Jeffrey Miller came in. | 46:14 | |
Interviewer | Well, let's back up a little bit. | 46:16 |
Why is there a conflict between detention interrogation? | 46:19 | |
What kind of conflict? | 46:22 | |
- | Well, I think General Baccus, he was tasked to detain | 46:23 |
and he wanted just to security only | 46:27 | |
when the integrated break that security and take them out | 46:31 | |
of the detention and do whatever it was they were doing. | 46:34 | |
And then there was the question of if they were doing this | 46:38 | |
at all hours of the day and night, from what I understand | 46:42 | |
once it got to that point and it was down there | 46:46 | |
we were not involved much anymore and except for | 46:48 | |
to continuing to support, but I'm trying to think | 46:53 | |
of some examples of, and really, it just | 46:57 | |
needed to be one person in charge you could still have. | 47:00 | |
They always had what they called the JDOG | 47:04 | |
or the Joint Detention Operations Group | 47:05 | |
who were just involved, they were the jailers essentially. | 47:08 | |
And then the interrogation group was a variety | 47:12 | |
of agencies and people and there was really no need to | 47:16 | |
have the split Joint Task Force like they did | 47:20 | |
and I don't know where that came from, | 47:24 | |
but we knew instinctively from the beginning, | 47:26 | |
It just didn't make any sense. | 47:28 | |
Interviewer | So if you saw other agencies down there then | 47:29 |
if there's interrogation, right? | 47:32 | |
- | We did oh, yeah | 47:34 |
and I didn't get to interact with them | 47:35 | |
but we knew there were all kinds of other agencies | 47:36 | |
that from the federal government that were there | 47:40 | |
not just the military. | 47:43 | |
Interviewer | And they had their own housing. | 47:44 |
You didn't have to provide housing? | 47:47 | |
- | We did provide housing for them. | 47:48 |
It all came under the JTF umbrella, | 47:49 | |
but we provided housing and there was an influx | 47:52 | |
of vehicles to support them | 47:56 | |
and a lot of that, they brought themselves | 47:57 | |
they just used our infrastructure. | 48:00 | |
They came through our shipping systems | 48:01 | |
and all that sort of thing, but it did put, | 48:03 | |
and like always with housing and people | 48:07 | |
with various rank, there's always, somebody thinks | 48:10 | |
that our house should be better than somebody else's house | 48:14 | |
and we just didn't have that kind of option down there. | 48:16 | |
So we did a lot of that dealing | 48:19 | |
with trying to get the right people in the right houses. | 48:21 | |
Interviewer | You build new housing too? | 48:23 |
- | We did not in the time I was there, | 48:25 |
they have since, but we did not. | 48:27 | |
In fact, we were, we just barely stopped demolition | 48:29 | |
of housing that we ended up needing. | 48:32 | |
Interviewer | You were able to supply housing | 48:34 |
for the 4,000 additional troops plus all these other? | 48:36 | |
- | We were 'cause we had some like two and three bedroom | 48:40 |
units that had been well back Camp Gitmo | 48:44 | |
in the mid nineties and earlier was supported about | 48:46 | |
10,000 people just for the base populous, because there was | 48:51 | |
a lot of fleet training down there in those days | 48:54 | |
all the East coast fleet | 48:57 | |
did all the training from Guantanamo. | 48:58 | |
So there was a big ship repair facility. | 48:59 | |
There was a big training organization down there, | 49:01 | |
so that all was still there, but we were starting to | 49:04 | |
tear it down, but a couple of housing areas that were | 49:07 | |
not occupied, but we're slated for demolition. | 49:10 | |
We quickly ramped back up and we were putting six troopers | 49:13 | |
in a three bedroom townhouse, something like that | 49:18 | |
those kinds of things | 49:20 | |
and so we were able to we've, we fortunately had it | 49:21 | |
if another year had gone by | 49:25 | |
we wouldn't have had those places and so. | 49:26 | |
Interviewer | We go back to general Leonard for a moment. | 49:29 |
He knew when he came down | 49:32 | |
that he'd be leaving in 100 days? | 49:34 | |
- | He did I think, I don't know if he knew exactly the day | 49:35 |
but all along, we knew he wasn't gonna stay in his well | 49:39 | |
partly his unit was already slated to go to Kuwait | 49:43 | |
from that for the rest of the conflict | 49:46 | |
but the nature of the engineering group was to | 49:50 | |
just get things set up and then go, | 49:54 | |
I mean they were not intelligence officers. | 49:57 | |
I mean, he had intelligence officer assigned to him as part | 49:59 | |
of the JTF, but his unit was not designed | 50:02 | |
to do what was gonna be done there in the longterm. | 50:05 | |
Interviewer | And so when Baccus came, | 50:08 |
did you know him before? | 50:11 | |
- | I didn't know him. | 50:13 |
He was a national guard from state of Rhode Island | 50:14 | |
and we had a little kinship there | 50:17 | |
because I had lived there in Newport | 50:19 | |
and we had some Rhode Island guard folks over to the house | 50:22 | |
but I didn't know him before. | 50:26 | |
Interviewer | Did you see a change when he took over | 50:27 |
before Don Levy came? | 50:29 | |
- | I did, I did. | 50:31 |
Interviewer | what kind of change? | 50:32 |
- | Well he was and Rick Baccus was a good officer. | 50:33 |
He was trying to do the right thing. | 50:37 | |
He, his style general Leonard was always | 50:38 | |
managed by walking around. | 50:45 | |
He was always out there. | 50:46 | |
General Baccus | 50:48 | |
and he may have gotten some direction, | 50:49 | |
but his style was the managed by policy memos. | 50:51 | |
He was trying to manage everything by | 50:54 | |
he changed the headquarters. | 50:57 | |
We set up our old dental building for | 50:59 | |
as a new headquarters for the JTF. | 51:02 | |
Anyhow general Leonard I guess I should say he knew, | 51:04 | |
if he knew he was only gonna be there a few months. | 51:08 | |
He wasn't worried about having a big headquarters building | 51:10 | |
and so General Baccus didn't know how long | 51:14 | |
he thought probably a year | 51:16 | |
at least he was gonna be there. | 51:17 | |
So I understand why he was more concerned about that. | 51:19 | |
He tried to institutionalized that it was more | 51:21 | |
I guess from the hip with general Leonard | 51:26 | |
but he also didn't get much direction. | 51:29 | |
He asked for direction and was, it was slow coming. | 51:31 | |
Interviewer | And why was Don levy sent down there? | 51:34 |
Who was thinking that? | 51:37 | |
- | Well, he is background was intelligence. | 51:38 |
So I think the view was that | 51:41 | |
he would manage the interrogation and try | 51:42 | |
and we knew that the Pentagon | 51:45 | |
and Rumsfeld wanted information | 51:48 | |
they wanted actionable information. | 51:51 | |
They thought that was gonna be the | 51:53 | |
what they were gonna get out of this thing. | 51:55 | |
So there's pressure to produce actionable intelligence. | 51:56 | |
Interviewer | And were you in on the meetings with them | 52:02 |
or were you? | 52:05 | |
- | I began to, although I, I'm trying to remember, | 52:06 |
I was not as much, not nearly as much engaged | 52:11 | |
and the meetings, it wasn't the same kind of structure | 52:14 | |
but later when general Miller came in | 52:18 | |
I sort of was brought back in a little more | 52:20 | |
and I think general Hill | 52:23 | |
who I got to know pretty well was happy | 52:25 | |
with what the base was doing to support the whole thing. | 52:27 | |
Wasn't happy with the disunity | 52:31 | |
of command that he had seen | 52:32 | |
and general Miller brought me back | 52:34 | |
in kind of in the fold in the sense of support. | 52:38 | |
Once again, I mean, I just had no role when it came | 52:40 | |
to the intelligence collection or anything like that. | 52:43 | |
Interviewer | And when Miller came | 52:45 |
he replaced both Don Levy | 52:47 | |
and Baccus? | 52:49 | |
- | Right. | |
- | But Baccus went first | 52:50 |
and I've lots respect for him | 52:52 | |
and I think he essentially was just fired | 52:55 | |
out of the job. | 52:59 | |
Interviewer | Do you now when that was? | 52:59 |
- | Boy the months I'd have to reconstruct that it was | 53:04 |
it was, I know that he left first | 53:08 | |
and it was pretty quick. | 53:11 | |
It was like overnight, he was gone and Don Levy remained | 53:12 | |
for another, I think it was November | 53:17 | |
Interviewer | Of 02. | 53:21 |
- | Of 02, | |
somewhere in that October, November | 53:24 | |
and Don Levy though left within 10 days to two weeks also | 53:26 | |
and that's when Miller came in and took over the whole thing | 53:32 | |
and it was renamed JTF Gitmo or JTF Guantanamo. | 53:34 | |
Interviewer | Did you know Don Levy | 53:38 |
was gonna be leaving 10 days after that? | 53:40 | |
- | All right I don't think so, | 53:42 |
we knew that it was gonna change | 53:45 | |
to one command structure, but I wasn't sure how long. | 53:47 | |
We were pretty sure he was not gonna be | 53:53 | |
the JTF commander though, that he wouldn't stay. | 53:56 | |
Interviewer | And did you know the decisions being made | 53:58 |
from the top was Roseville kind of running this? | 54:01 | |
- | Well I think that, we're my understanding that SOUTHCOM | 54:05 |
made a decision about going back to one Joint Task Force. | 54:08 | |
I think the other did come from the Pentagon to split them, | 54:13 | |
but I'm not sure about that. | 54:17 | |
Interviewer | And did you now general Miller before? | 54:18 |
- | No, no, but I got to know him later on | 54:20 |
and his wife admired him, | 54:22 | |
I really admire him and he was an operational army general | 54:25 | |
who had been in Korea and been doing operational army. | 54:30 | |
So he understood and when he came in | 54:33 | |
things began to improve immediately. | 54:36 | |
I mean, because he did recognize | 54:38 | |
that you need to have one chain of command | 54:42 | |
and he communicated well, and he, for at least | 54:44 | |
from my point of view, brought the base back in | 54:48 | |
not so much to make decisions | 54:51 | |
but to keep us aware of what was going on | 54:53 | |
so we could serve the needs of his troops better. | 54:55 | |
It was just a more, much more transparent command | 54:59 | |
and he, I could tell immediately that, | 55:03 | |
he was a regular army, no nonsense, but you know | 55:05 | |
just straight up and you could trust what he told you. | 55:08 | |
Interviewer | And he came around December of 02? | 55:11 |
- | I think so November, December, and he came from Korea | 55:15 |
and he was a close personal friend of general Hill | 55:19 | |
who was SOUTHCOM by then and it was really obviously | 55:21 | |
a case of two old buddies he called him and said, | 55:24 | |
I need your help, | 55:29 | |
I need you need you to come straighten this mess out | 55:31 | |
in Guantanamo and that's what he did. | 55:32 | |
He came in there. | 55:34 | |
Interviewer | And he wasn't there for that long | 55:35 |
neither though right? | 55:39 | |
- | No it wasn't I left before he did. | 55:40 |
So I left in March of 03, | 55:43 | |
I had my change of command as per the normal schedule. | 55:45 | |
I was slated to be there three years. | 55:49 | |
I was there for three years and I mean | 55:50 | |
I would've been happy to stay longer. | 55:53 | |
I really enjoyed my time in Guantanamo. | 55:55 | |
Although that the second half was very stressful | 55:58 | |
and a lot of it was we were working seven days a week, | 56:01 | |
I mean, it was like being deployed, | 56:05 | |
but he left after I did, | 56:08 | |
but it wasn't too much longer after I did. | 56:11 | |
Interviewer | Had you by that time | 56:13 |
started hearing rumors about miss treatment at all, | 56:15 | |
was there ever? | 56:18 | |
- | No, I didn't hear rumors about it, | 56:19 |
but I always felt like | 56:22 | |
if there were things later when I did hear about it | 56:24 | |
I always felt like if anything happened, it was | 56:28 | |
during that time when you had this split and | 56:30 | |
it was unclear who was in charge and who was doing what. | 56:33 | |
Interviewer | And you wouldn't have you wouldn't here just | 56:36 |
'cause you were somewhat removed from the JTF. | 56:40 | |
- | I didn't at the time. | 56:42 |
Yeah, I just, we were we just didn't get briefed in | 56:44 | |
on those kinds of things. | 56:48 | |
I never, I saw where it, | 56:49 | |
some of the buildings that were used for interrogation | 56:52 | |
and this was after they were more established | 56:56 | |
and they had video cameras and that, | 56:59 | |
but I never saw one underway. | 57:02 | |
Interviewer | You never watched any. | 57:03 |
- | I never watched one | 57:05 |
and there was no reason for me too, they didn't | 57:06 | |
it wasn't in my need to know that kind of thing. | 57:08 | |
I mean, as long as they were getting fresh water | 57:10 | |
and we were hauling the trash out | 57:12 | |
that's all they cared about from my point of view. | 57:14 | |
But I was, I was interested in it | 57:18 | |
and I have a stake still today | 57:20 | |
in the U.S. Naval base, Guantanamo bay | 57:22 | |
having been the base commander, | 57:26 | |
and I just, I want the people to understand that | 57:28 | |
what went on there and what, | 57:33 | |
and I'm sure it wasn't all good, but there, the base | 57:35 | |
the people of the base that were there before | 57:38 | |
stepped up when they were called upon | 57:42 | |
by the the nation to do this | 57:44 | |
and that was it going back to the sailors | 57:46 | |
I mentioned who wanted to transfer | 57:48 | |
that they came back later and said, wow, skipper | 57:50 | |
we didn't know what you meant about this, | 57:52 | |
but and that really still, wasn't what they want to do. | 57:56 | |
They want her to be go right out | 57:59 | |
on the front lines and try to strike back. | 58:00 | |
But it turned out to be somewhat prophetic | 58:04 | |
that we might have a role to play. | 58:06 | |
Interviewer | And you said your wife knew about the bus. | 58:08 |
what did your wife know that you didn't know? | 58:14 | |
- | Well she the whole community knew that was the day | 58:17 |
they were gonna arrive and in fact, this may recall this, | 58:22 | |
but they, we did not have the media on, | 58:28 | |
at the base or on the airfield side when they arrived | 58:32 | |
but it was live on CNN because on the Cuban side | 58:35 | |
they had a camera CNN managed to get a camera | 58:39 | |
on a guard tower | 58:42 | |
and showed the airplane airborne and landing and taxing | 58:43 | |
and now where we had unloaded, it was beyond there. | 58:47 | |
It was over a hillside | 58:49 | |
and that was chosen for that very reason | 58:50 | |
but it was shown live. | 58:53 | |
I actually watched it live on from my own base | 58:54 | |
from a Cuban, from a camera on the Cuban side | 58:57 | |
there's guard towers all around on both sides. | 59:00 | |
So everybody knew, that was the day | 59:05 | |
and it's easy to see the ferry, when it came over. | 59:07 | |
So the community | 59:11 | |
and we had backing up a little bit from that. | 59:13 | |
The community was really worried about all this | 59:15 | |
you first picture a little American town of 2,500 people | 59:17 | |
and they get the word that this is coming | 59:22 | |
and there was some corporate memory there | 59:24 | |
that when the mass migration occurred, that the dependents | 59:28 | |
the family members were moved out of the base | 59:31 | |
and sent back to the states | 59:34 | |
because mostly because it had 40,000 Cubans and Haitians | 59:35 | |
and they just couldn't support | 59:39 | |
the logistically the families too. | 59:41 | |
So they got sent away. | 59:44 | |
So there were two groups, | 59:45 | |
there were families who were afraid | 59:47 | |
they were gonna get sent away because of this | 59:48 | |
and there were families that afraid they weren't | 59:50 | |
gonna get sent away. | 59:51 | |
They were afraid, they were scared to stay. | 59:52 | |
So this, we had a couple of town hall meetings right away | 59:55 | |
as base commander I was as much a mayor | 59:59 | |
as I was a military commander | 1:00:02 | |
because I had probably more civilians that I was dealing | 1:00:04 | |
with than people in uniform. | 1:00:06 | |
People in uniform were easy | 1:00:08 | |
but I had to deal with the civilian. | 1:00:10 | |
So it was really like being a small town mayor | 1:00:11 | |
and we would have, we had a couple | 1:00:14 | |
of venues where we had public meetings in general Leonard | 1:00:15 | |
came with me and we tried to calm everybody and say | 1:00:18 | |
you know what, first of all, don't worry | 1:00:21 | |
your security is gonna be fine. | 1:00:23 | |
We don't know yet if you're gonna stay or go | 1:00:25 | |
but we think you're gonna be able to stay | 1:00:27 | |
and, just tried to communicate | 1:00:29 | |
and he was great about that too, by coming on as well. | 1:00:32 | |
So the community knew about as much | 1:00:36 | |
as they could know, we tried to pass to them. | 1:00:39 | |
So it was no surprise when the arrival came | 1:00:42 | |
and everybody saw this bus go by, | 1:00:45 | |
they knew what was going on. | 1:00:47 | |
Interviewer | And your wife would have known | 1:00:48 |
because she was active in the community? | 1:00:49 | |
- | Very active and she, they just kind of by tradition | 1:00:51 |
the CEO's wife is first lady and the base. | 1:00:57 | |
And she, my wife was very engaged with the community. | 1:01:00 | |
We had, our boys were one in elementary school | 1:01:03 | |
one in high school. | 1:01:05 | |
So she knew all those people and they just naturally turn | 1:01:06 | |
to her for leadership? | 1:01:10 | |
And she would tell you | 1:01:12 | |
that when this all first came out | 1:01:14 | |
she was thinking about, well, | 1:01:16 | |
I guess we'll go back to the states, we'll leave here | 1:01:19 | |
and somebody in one of these town meetings stood up | 1:01:21 | |
and said, well, if Debbie Buehn is staying | 1:01:23 | |
and were all staying and she's realized, oh, well | 1:01:25 | |
I guess I'm staying then, because, | 1:01:26 | |
(both laughing) | 1:01:28 | |
but she'll maybe be able to tell you that story, | 1:01:29 | |
but no, she played an important role in | 1:01:32 | |
with the families to both sharing information | 1:01:35 | |
and make them feel also more comfortable | 1:01:40 | |
with what was going on. | 1:01:41 | |
Interviewer | Would she also have met | 1:01:42 |
with some of the women's service members, | 1:01:45 | |
is that something she did? | 1:01:49 | |
- | No, she didn't deal with the people in uniform no, | 1:01:50 |
there was enough to do with the school kids | 1:01:53 | |
and the teachers and the community yeah, right. | 1:01:56 | |
Interviewer | And so you said there was some military | 1:02:00 |
and civilian leaders who came down to the base, could you? | 1:02:03 | |
- | There were, we had of course it was all military folks | 1:02:06 |
and during the standup in this thing | 1:02:11 | |
but as soon as I'm trying to think of the dates | 1:02:12 | |
if January 11th was the arrival of the first group | 1:02:16 | |
within a week, we had a contingent of Pentagon folks, | 1:02:18 | |
some attorneys, Alberto Gonzales | 1:02:25 | |
who was forgotten his title, | 1:02:28 | |
but I think you've interviewed him, haven't you? | 1:02:32 | |
Interviewer | No I haven't, He was the attorney for Bush | 1:02:33 |
and then became the attorney general. | 1:02:37 | |
He was first a lawyer for Bush but. | 1:02:39 | |
- | Right and in that group | 1:02:41 |
there were pentagons lawyers, Haynes | 1:02:43 | |
a gentleman named Haynes was a Pentagon lawyer | 1:02:45 | |
and they came down and pretty quickly | 1:02:47 | |
secretary Rumsfeld came down | 1:02:51 | |
and a number of congresspeople Jane Harman was there, | 1:02:53 | |
Diane Feinstein came and we had a steady stream | 1:02:57 | |
and media as well, media from all over the world. | 1:03:01 | |
So we went from sleepy hollow to, | 1:03:03 | |
we developed this general Leonard | 1:03:07 | |
and we kind of developed our as we would call it | 1:03:09 | |
in the military dog and pony show | 1:03:12 | |
where they would arrive on the Leeward side | 1:03:13 | |
and these are for the high ranking folks | 1:03:16 | |
and we would greet them | 1:03:20 | |
and of course we had all this logistical travel time. | 1:03:22 | |
You had to get them to the ferry. | 1:03:25 | |
The ferry has to go over to the other side | 1:03:26 | |
then you bus them to the camp X-ray. | 1:03:28 | |
So you got to do something, all this. | 1:03:31 | |
So we developed and it was useful I think, | 1:03:33 | |
a kind of a program we're on the boat ride over. | 1:03:36 | |
I had a big map of the base, and I would point | 1:03:39 | |
out things that you could see from the bay | 1:03:42 | |
and try to give them the lay of the land of the base. | 1:03:44 | |
'Cause people, it was confusing to them to have two sides | 1:03:46 | |
separated by the mouth of the bay. | 1:03:50 | |
And then also on the bus ride through town | 1:03:53 | |
I would point out, all the little things | 1:03:56 | |
what we had, ranging from ordinance bunkers | 1:03:58 | |
to the McDonald's and the chapel, | 1:04:02 | |
and the downtown Lyceum, that kind of thing. | 1:04:04 | |
And then the general would take over | 1:04:07 | |
and begin to do the transition of talking | 1:04:09 | |
into the camp X-ray. | 1:04:11 | |
So we did that over and over and over | 1:04:13 | |
I don't know how many times | 1:04:15 | |
how many groups we traveled back | 1:04:17 | |
and forth with but it consumed our days. | 1:04:18 | |
Interviewer | And what kind of questions would people | 1:04:20 |
like Jim Haynes and Gonzales ask you? | 1:04:23 | |
- | Well, they would usually, I get | 1:04:26 |
how many people live on the base? | 1:04:28 | |
What is it like working with the Cubans? | 1:04:31 | |
What are relations like with the Cubans | 1:04:33 | |
those kinds of things | 1:04:35 | |
and they didn't ask me questions about the detainees, | 1:04:36 | |
'cause they knew that wasn't my role | 1:04:40 | |
and then I would usually drop off at the point of going in | 1:04:44 | |
for the camp tour most of the time | 1:04:49 | |
and then I would go back | 1:04:50 | |
and sometimes there was another group to pick up. | 1:04:51 | |
I mean, it was very busy and that's long logistics. | 1:04:53 | |
I mean, from picking up someone up | 1:04:57 | |
at the air terminal to get him to camp x-ray | 1:05:01 | |
even if you had everything timed, right. | 1:05:04 | |
It still was 45 minutes to get all that done. | 1:05:06 | |
So, and then run back and do it again. | 1:05:09 | |
Interviewer | So what were your impressions | 1:05:12 |
with all these people coming down? | 1:05:14 | |
Did you have sense on that? | 1:05:16 | |
- | The impression? | 1:05:21 |
Yeah It was hard to say, | 1:05:22 | |
mostly they were taking it all in, | 1:05:24 | |
I didn't really didn't, | 1:05:27 | |
I just didn't get a lot of questions. | 1:05:29 | |
I mean, they seem interested, | 1:05:30 | |
they were some, I mean, secretary Rumsfeld | 1:05:31 | |
reminisced about, he was a Navy pilot | 1:05:34 | |
and he flew, he was telling me how he flew to Guantanamo | 1:05:36 | |
from Pensacola before Castro, before the gate closed | 1:05:40 | |
and when it was open, you could, he said we would fly | 1:05:43 | |
down and this was in the fifties and land | 1:05:46 | |
and visit and go into town, into Guantanamo city | 1:05:48 | |
and so he actually had memories | 1:05:54 | |
of the base and recognized some of the landmarks. | 1:05:56 | |
Interviewer | So you never got a sense on that. | 1:06:01 |
There might be something untold happening | 1:06:05 | |
in Guantanamo would never, I mean | 1:06:08 | |
cause you were far enough- | 1:06:10 | |
- | No well, I mean I knew it was, | 1:06:11 |
there was already controversial. | 1:06:14 | |
The fact that we were holding him there | 1:06:16 | |
and this theory that had kind of precipitated | 1:06:18 | |
the whole thing that well, this isn't U.S. soil | 1:06:22 | |
you know that, I mean, I knew people would question | 1:06:26 | |
that because I mean, it's not, yes it is. | 1:06:28 | |
We do have at lease on a base. | 1:06:31 | |
Yes, it's not U.S. soil, but we had complete control. | 1:06:32 | |
There was no tenant relationship with Cuba other than | 1:06:35 | |
we did now there were provisions. | 1:06:39 | |
We had to keep that the channel there's a channel that went | 1:06:41 | |
through the base and actually went to the Cuban part | 1:06:43 | |
of the bay. | 1:06:45 | |
So Cuban ships would come right through our base | 1:06:46 | |
and go through a Watergate to the Northern part of the bay. | 1:06:48 | |
We had to keep the fence line. | 1:06:52 | |
We had to, we actually had to pay a small amount | 1:06:53 | |
of money every year to the Cuban. | 1:06:55 | |
But as long as we did all those things, | 1:06:58 | |
we were okay | 1:07:01 | |
and but they had no control over what we did there. | 1:07:02 | |
We did have relations with the local military Cuban military | 1:07:06 | |
and I met with them once a month. | 1:07:09 | |
And in fact, we briefed them when the camp, | 1:07:11 | |
when this was all coming, we had a special meeting | 1:07:13 | |
and told the Cubans that were gonna do it, | 1:07:17 | |
'cause they would've known anyway. | 1:07:19 | |
Interviewer | And with any health issues, | 1:07:20 |
I know this is Shimkus okay, | 1:07:23 | |
but did you get involved in any of that? | 1:07:25 | |
- | For the detainees? | 1:07:28 |
Interviewer | Yeah. | 1:07:29 |
- | Not, not, no he did all that. | 1:07:30 |
We just tried to accommodate when he, I remember he needed | 1:07:32 | |
it was all just plywood and canvas in the beginning, | 1:07:35 | |
and we tried to build a decent medical exam facility | 1:07:38 | |
for him there and I recall | 1:07:43 | |
lots of eyeglasses being produced | 1:07:46 | |
for the first time for some of the detainees. | 1:07:48 | |
Interviewer | What about medications | 1:07:49 |
was that your job too? | 1:07:51 | |
- | No, he took it. | 1:07:52 |
That was all through the Naval hospital | 1:07:53 | |
and then they brought, eventually got a fleet hospital | 1:07:55 | |
which is a deploying unit down there as well | 1:07:58 | |
and a guy named Pat Alford was part of that. | 1:08:01 | |
I don't know if he's at a chance, | 1:08:04 | |
he's a Navy officer too, was a medical type. | 1:08:05 | |
Interviewer | Did you have a receive | 1:08:11 |
delegations from other nations coming down? | 1:08:12 | |
- | I saw, well, the very first | 1:08:15 |
was the international committee on the red cross came | 1:08:17 | |
and we actually had them over to our house | 1:08:20 | |
the first night they were in town or on the base. | 1:08:23 | |
Interviewer | Do you remember when there was? | 1:08:25 |
- | It was probably the first within the first week, January, | 1:08:28 |
somewhere between January 11th and January 20th, | 1:08:33 | |
I would say. | 1:08:36 | |
And I remember this is working closely | 1:08:37 | |
with general Leonard again he said, | 1:08:40 | |
I'd really like to have host them | 1:08:41 | |
in a friendly way when they get here. | 1:08:45 | |
And so we, I had, our home was beautiful. | 1:08:48 | |
It was on the end of the Peninsula is a gorgeous home built | 1:08:51 | |
for flag officers in World War II. | 1:08:53 | |
And so we could host a nice little gathering | 1:08:56 | |
and they came over | 1:08:59 | |
and we wanted to make them feel welcome. | 1:09:00 | |
Interviewer | Did they ask many questions? | 1:09:03 |
- | That was more social | 1:09:05 |
but they did ask a lot about the base and there were four | 1:09:06 | |
four representatives and they immediately set up | 1:09:10 | |
at the camp x-ray we gave them a place where they | 1:09:14 | |
because they wanted to interview all the detainees | 1:09:18 | |
and that was one I recall helping sort of marginally | 1:09:20 | |
with this was, there was a lot of confusion | 1:09:25 | |
about who was, who in the first few shipments of detainees | 1:09:27 | |
they had numbers, they didn't have names | 1:09:30 | |
and there was, like a Manila folder full | 1:09:34 | |
of stuff and a number | 1:09:37 | |
and you, I don't think, I think in some cases they | 1:09:38 | |
weren't even matched up right with the right people | 1:09:40 | |
in the beginning. | 1:09:42 | |
So, but a guy named Manny Superville who was | 1:09:44 | |
a judge advocate, general co-lawyer, | 1:09:47 | |
Navy lawyer working at SOUTHCOM. | 1:09:50 | |
If I remember right, he had invited them | 1:09:54 | |
and he got in some hot water for doing that, | 1:09:56 | |
but he did it thinking, | 1:09:59 | |
hey, we should get him in on this early | 1:10:01 | |
and I think it was the right thing to do | 1:10:04 | |
and general Leonard thought it was right. | 1:10:05 | |
I think that's why we wanted to make them | 1:10:07 | |
feel welcome there in the beginning. | 1:10:08 | |
Interviewer | Who would he be in hot water with? | 1:10:10 |
- | With his chain, with SOUTHCOM and above and I think these | 1:10:14 |
the Pentagon lawyers were not happy that the ICRC was there. | 1:10:18 | |
Interviewer | Did the ICRC interview all the men. | 1:10:23 |
- | They did far as I know we had another one of these | 1:10:26 |
this is all in the early days that we had another one | 1:10:30 | |
a little plywood deal set up for them. | 1:10:33 | |
So they could had a desk in a place | 1:10:35 | |
where they could interview and talk to them. | 1:10:38 | |
Interviewer | And do you know anything | 1:10:39 |
about the ability to bring mail or send mail | 1:10:41 | |
through the detour? | 1:10:46 | |
- | They would, they arranged for that. | 1:10:47 |
As far as I know they did and comfort items | 1:10:50 | |
I remember them mentioning comfort items. | 1:10:53 | |
They were happy that were already on the trail | 1:10:55 | |
of halal meals and the Qur'an, those kind of things | 1:10:57 | |
a general Leonard in lieu of guidance | 1:11:00 | |
from above just immediately fell back | 1:11:03 | |
on his experience as a military officer | 1:11:06 | |
and pretty much did | 1:11:09 | |
what you would do under the Geneva convention | 1:11:12 | |
and he, I recall clearly he asked a number | 1:11:14 | |
of times for guidance and it wasn't forthcoming. | 1:11:18 | |
So he just, he said, we're just doing it this way | 1:11:22 | |
until somebody tells me different and that's how he did it. | 1:11:25 | |
Interviewer | What comfort items are we talking about? | 1:11:27 |
- | It was like towels and small toiletries | 1:11:31 |
and clothing, pieces of clothing | 1:11:33 | |
and I think the Korean was part of that. | 1:11:37 | |
Interviewer | Did you ever talk to any detainees | 1:11:38 |
when you worked for him. | 1:11:40 | |
- | No I was with general Leonard a couple of times | 1:11:41 |
when he did, but I didn't, other than sort | 1:11:44 | |
of just brief acknowledgement | 1:11:47 | |
I didn't have a conversation back and forth with them. | 1:11:48 | |
Interviewer | And he did. | 1:11:50 |
- | He did. | |
Oh yeah, he did often. | 1:11:52 | |
Interviewer | Do you recall any off those conversation? | 1:11:53 |
- | He asks about what do you need? | 1:11:55 |
How do you feel? | 1:11:59 | |
I mean, as bad as Guantanamo is a very mild climate | 1:11:59 | |
and I honestly don't think they were too uncomfortable | 1:12:05 | |
there were shade and there was a breeze | 1:12:09 | |
and I think in some ways they were probably more comfortable | 1:12:11 | |
at least psychologically more comfortable | 1:12:16 | |
in camp x-ray then once they got | 1:12:18 | |
down into these individual cell, like structures down there. | 1:12:21 | |
So, but I would never I would never say it was a good deal | 1:12:26 | |
'cause who wants to be closed up in anything. | 1:12:29 | |
But I do think that these were people | 1:12:31 | |
who were they're tough they grew up, | 1:12:33 | |
they they lived outdoors essentially in Afghanistan. | 1:12:35 | |
So to be outdoors it was very comfortable for the | 1:12:39 | |
very natural for them. | 1:12:43 | |
And the other thing about camp x-rays | 1:12:44 | |
they could all see each other and they could all talk. | 1:12:46 | |
So I think the isolation was probably | 1:12:48 | |
something they didn't like later. | 1:12:51 | |
Interviewer | What could you describe | 1:12:53 |
what camp Delta look like when it was first built? | 1:12:54 | |
- | The first iteration, which I was the most familiar | 1:12:57 |
with were 40 foot containers. | 1:13:00 | |
the steel shipping containers that you see | 1:13:03 | |
on decks of ships | 1:13:05 | |
with one side cutout and subdivided | 1:13:09 | |
and I trying to think it must have been | 1:13:12 | |
about maybe eight feet. | 1:13:15 | |
So there were probably four segments in each one of those | 1:13:18 | |
and those were not | 1:13:24 | |
we knew those weren't gonna last very long either | 1:13:25 | |
'cause you're down there and right | 1:13:27 | |
on the ocean salt environment, and these were not | 1:13:28 | |
but they were subdivided into four cells | 1:13:31 | |
and then all kind of put together | 1:13:36 | |
with a roof over the walkway in between. | 1:13:38 | |
Interviewer | Was it a separate isolations? | 1:13:42 |
- | They were separate, they were there | 1:13:45 |
they had a window of slips like window in them, | 1:13:47 | |
but they were walls. | 1:13:49 | |
Yeah, they were separate. | 1:13:52 | |
Interviewer | No, but where they're separate | 1:13:52 |
isolation cells apart from these. | 1:13:54 | |
- | Oh, not that I know of in the beginning no | 1:13:56 |
they were all individual cells, | 1:14:00 | |
but you can look across through a window to see somebody | 1:14:03 | |
on the other side, but they didn't, | 1:14:06 | |
you couldn't communicate like in camp x-ray. | 1:14:07 | |
Interviewer | And what about children, | 1:14:10 |
were their children their when you were there? | 1:14:12 | |
- | As detainees? | 1:14:14 |
Interviewer | Yeah. | 1:14:15 |
- | There was toward the end of my time there, | 1:14:16 |
we actually set up a separate house | 1:14:19 | |
which was down right by the beach, | 1:14:21 | |
had been like a recreation facility for somebody | 1:14:25 | |
who they determined was a teen, a young teen, like somewhere | 1:14:28 | |
between 13 and 15, something like that. | 1:14:32 | |
So that became a separate facility, | 1:14:34 | |
which we did a little work on and put that together. | 1:14:36 | |
Interviewer | That wasn't until later I was still there, | 1:14:38 |
so it was sometime before the Spring of 2003, | 1:14:41 | |
but it was a little bit later. | 1:14:45 | |
Yeah, and I, and if I recall, | 1:14:47 | |
there were no birth certificates or anything for these folks | 1:14:50 | |
and that they didn't even know themselves. | 1:14:53 | |
And it seems to me, it was that an x-ray of the bones | 1:14:55 | |
in his hands. | 1:14:59 | |
That is a way that you can age a per you can determine | 1:15:01 | |
an age on a young person, so that, I think that's how | 1:15:05 | |
they thought that was interesting. | 1:15:09 | |
Well, that was the only one I knew about at the time. | 1:15:11 | |
Interviewer | Did you know who he was? | 1:15:13 |
- | No I don't know that I don't know the name | 1:15:16 |
or anything like that, but I do know | 1:15:18 | |
we set up this separate facility for that person. | 1:15:21 | |
Interviewer | And you didn't with, | 1:15:26 |
did the CIA have a separate trailer or something | 1:15:30 | |
on the base that they just worked in on their own? | 1:15:37 | |
- | I'm sure they did somewhere. | 1:15:41 |
I don't, there's not wasn't one that said CIA on it | 1:15:43 | |
but there were just a lot of people | 1:15:47 | |
as time went on that didn't wear uniforms | 1:15:49 | |
who drove SUV's like we never had there before on the base | 1:15:52 | |
and they just showed up and we they lived in housing. | 1:15:57 | |
You didn't know what agency they were from. | 1:16:02 | |
Interviewer | And you had no control over those, | 1:16:04 |
even though the base commander? | 1:16:07 | |
- | No I had no control over those people. | 1:16:08 |
Interviewer | How does that I just curious, | 1:16:09 |
how does that make you feel? | 1:16:11 | |
- | Well, I say that I would have control over on them | 1:16:12 |
if you know they were driving under the influence on | 1:16:14 | |
and, ran into a light pole | 1:16:18 | |
or something then on my security would deal with them. | 1:16:20 | |
But in terms of whether they got to come there or not, | 1:16:22 | |
or any of that, no. | 1:16:26 | |
Interviewer | Who makes those decisions | 1:16:27 |
the agencies, themselves? | 1:16:29 | |
- | The Joint Task Force and Joint Task Force commander, | 1:16:32 |
and their chain of command were the ones | 1:16:34 | |
they you had to have authorization to come | 1:16:36 | |
to the base at all, but, and we accommodated that | 1:16:39 | |
as you would like an airline, the logistics | 1:16:45 | |
of getting those people from a flight | 1:16:48 | |
through processed and in | 1:16:50 | |
but they would have already had approval paperwork | 1:16:52 | |
that came from through SOUTHCOM or the Joint Task Force. | 1:16:54 | |
They set up a logistics group that just in the beginning | 1:16:58 | |
did all that for both the media and for people coming down. | 1:17:02 | |
Interviewer | How did the media come down and what kinda? | 1:17:06 |
- | They flew on what we have, what we call a rotator flight | 1:17:10 |
which is the regularly scheduled flight | 1:17:14 | |
that supported families in the base | 1:17:16 | |
and people coming and going Tuesdays | 1:17:17 | |
and Saturdays that used to come down it's charter flights. | 1:17:20 | |
And look, they look like just | 1:17:24 | |
regular airliners that it would be some, | 1:17:25 | |
it varied it was ATA or Pan Am, | 1:17:28 | |
and they still have those flights to this day. | 1:17:32 | |
And those are just bid out | 1:17:35 | |
and the airlines bid on them and they fly. | 1:17:37 | |
It's just like flying on an airliner | 1:17:40 | |
but the media would come on those. | 1:17:42 | |
But then there was a group set up | 1:17:44 | |
with the Joint Task Force to handle the media | 1:17:47 | |
that came there and they stayed on Leeward side. | 1:17:49 | |
There was a bachelor officer quarters over there | 1:17:52 | |
which served as that's where they stayed | 1:17:55 | |
and then they were controlled when they came | 1:17:59 | |
over to the other side, they were always escorted. | 1:18:01 | |
Interviewer | But that wasn't your job to escort them. | 1:18:03 |
- | I did get involved that a little bit | 1:18:06 |
and I got to know some Carol Rosenberg | 1:18:08 | |
who with the Miami Herald, I got to know real well | 1:18:10 | |
and I've even stayed in touch with her | 1:18:12 | |
and I did get to, because some | 1:18:15 | |
of what they wanted to know was just about the base. | 1:18:18 | |
So I would always brief them on that | 1:18:20 | |
and some came back over and over again | 1:18:22 | |
if you recall a CNN reporter named Bob Franken | 1:18:25 | |
who I don't think is, I think he may be retired now, | 1:18:28 | |
but he was down there a lot and I get to know him. | 1:18:30 | |
Interviewer | And did these reporters ever | 1:18:33 |
give you a hard time ever want more | 1:18:35 | |
information than you give? | 1:18:37 | |
- | They would love to have gotten more, | 1:18:39 |
but we got along pretty well | 1:18:41 | |
and I, again, general Leonard I remember one time | 1:18:43 | |
we invited in three or four of them | 1:18:46 | |
including Carol Rosenberg to the club, | 1:18:47 | |
to what used to be the officer's club | 1:18:50 | |
and we said this, we just want to have an | 1:18:52 | |
off the record with you | 1:18:54 | |
and he just intuitively knew | 1:18:56 | |
we shouldn't stone all these people | 1:19:01 | |
but he wanted to have an off the record session | 1:19:03 | |
and just have talk what he could | 1:19:05 | |
and I thought it went a long way | 1:19:08 | |
to build good relationships. | 1:19:10 | |
I'd love to if you could talk to Carol | 1:19:12 | |
and she I'd like to know her thoughts on it | 1:19:15 | |
she continued to follow Guantanamo through the years. | 1:19:16 | |
Interviewer | What is off the record mean? | 1:19:19 |
- | It's kind of on background | 1:19:22 |
that they wouldn't use it in a story, but it would be | 1:19:23 | |
there were things he thought were important | 1:19:26 | |
for them to know, and really what he started was | 1:19:28 | |
he wanted to know, | 1:19:31 | |
what your frustrations were, | 1:19:32 | |
how's it going? | 1:19:35 | |
I mean, they were not happy being kept on the other side. | 1:19:35 | |
They were not happy with being an escort, | 1:19:39 | |
of course any reporter would love to | 1:19:42 | |
just roam free around the base, but it was a pretty | 1:19:43 | |
controlled circumstance, but I thought he was | 1:19:47 | |
within the limits of what he had, | 1:19:50 | |
He was pretty candid about it all. | 1:19:51 | |
Later it was even less so though, | 1:19:53 | |
it was, but in the beginning, | 1:19:56 | |
considering we nobody knew we were down there. | 1:20:00 | |
When I first got down there, we served became the media | 1:20:02 | |
center of the world for a while there. | 1:20:04 | |
I mean, we were descended upon by international media | 1:20:06 | |
and it was almost overwhelming in the beginning | 1:20:09 | |
and just the sheer numbers | 1:20:12 | |
of people that wanted to come in here. | 1:20:16 | |
Interviewer | I want to go to general Miller for a minute. | 1:20:18 |
I've heard some really good things about general Miller | 1:20:21 | |
for some people that I've also heard less than | 1:20:23 | |
superb comments about general Miller. | 1:20:28 | |
Do you know where that was coming from? | 1:20:30 | |
- | Well I'm guessing that, I mean, | 1:20:33 |
and I have a high opinion of general Miller. | 1:20:36 | |
I liked the way he righted the ship to the degree | 1:20:37 | |
it could be when he came in, | 1:20:41 | |
but I know he got kind of a black eye over it | 1:20:44 | |
along with the elbow gray thing | 1:20:48 | |
because he had gone over there and maybe gave some advice. | 1:20:50 | |
I'm not sure I was gone by the time that happened | 1:20:54 | |
but I was sad to see | 1:20:55 | |
I think it hurt his ultimate promotion | 1:20:57 | |
and retirement a little bit, but so I think | 1:21:00 | |
that may be what you're talking about | 1:21:03 | |
and, but he was, but I think he did a great job | 1:21:05 | |
in trying to salvage things and get it back right plane. | 1:21:10 | |
Interviewer | And did you ever see him | 1:21:13 |
do any interrogation work while you were there? | 1:21:14 | |
- | No no, I didn't see him. | 1:21:16 |
We would have the JTF headquarters were kind of on the, | 1:21:21 | |
at that time and the main part of the base. | 1:21:25 | |
So I would go there for meetings and we would | 1:21:26 | |
my part would be to find out | 1:21:29 | |
are we supporting you are the logistics | 1:21:31 | |
you getting what you need and that kind of thing | 1:21:33 | |
and they didn't talk about that | 1:21:34 | |
kind of stuff in those meetings. | 1:21:36 | |
Interviewer | And did you know Diane Beaver? | 1:21:37 |
- | I recall her from meetings with JTF 170 | 1:21:40 |
and I do know who she is. | 1:21:44 | |
She was a Lieutenant Colonel lawyer who | 1:21:47 | |
at one point and I wasn't at the meeting when it, | 1:21:52 | |
but I think she did come out with a memo | 1:21:54 | |
that sort of set the stage | 1:21:57 | |
for some of the things that went on. | 1:21:59 | |
But I recall who she was. | 1:22:02 | |
Interviewer | You won't, yeah, that wouldn't be | 1:22:03 |
part of your domain? | 1:22:06 | |
- | No, but I saw her in the open meetings, | 1:22:07 |
she would be there as part of the staff | 1:22:10 | |
and then I saw her around. | 1:22:12 | |
You couldn't help, but see people on the base | 1:22:13 | |
you know what I mean just 'cause there are only a couple | 1:22:15 | |
of places where people went to eat. | 1:22:16 | |
So I knew who she was yeah. | 1:22:19 | |
Interviewer | Did your wife ever tell you, | 1:22:22 |
maybe she didn't know so much about the military people | 1:22:26 | |
but there were probably a few women on the base right. | 1:22:28 | |
Did that? | 1:22:31 | |
- | Few military women? | 1:22:32 |
Interviewer | Yeah. | 1:22:33 |
- | There weren't very many | 1:22:34 |
like there's just the normal percentage I would say. | 1:22:35 | |
I mean we had women might base the base lawyer. | 1:22:38 | |
I had a lawyer assigned to me | 1:22:42 | |
from the base was a female Lieutenant | 1:22:43 | |
and we had, one of the people in ops was a female. | 1:22:46 | |
So we had plenty of female officers | 1:22:50 | |
that belong to the base and enlisted. | 1:22:52 | |
But overall, as an overall percentage of the population | 1:22:56 | |
there weren't that many. | 1:22:59 | |
Interviewer | Do you think the women felt comfortable | 1:23:00 |
in that environment? | 1:23:02 | |
Lets I'm thinking about Diane Beaver. | 1:23:05 | |
- | Yeah well, she seemed comfortable when I saw her | 1:23:07 |
I don't know what it was like behind closed doors, | 1:23:11 | |
but she seemed to be professional in the meetings | 1:23:15 | |
and that kind of thing, but I don't know | 1:23:19 | |
what kind of pressure she was under and this whole | 1:23:22 | |
getting actionable intelligence and that kind of thing. | 1:23:26 | |
I don't know. | 1:23:28 | |
Interviewer | So did you, | 1:23:29 |
you knew you were leaving | 1:23:31 | |
when you were living right, Baccus? | 1:23:32 | |
- | I did I knew, well, when you come in | 1:23:33 |
and you're gonna be just, you can plan three years, | 1:23:36 | |
so plus, or minus a little and one of the factors usually is | 1:23:40 | |
what's your next job? | 1:23:44 | |
Why was I had been chosen to be chief of staff | 1:23:45 | |
for a battle group, which was back to Sea | 1:23:48 | |
on USS Enterprise and working for a flag officer | 1:23:50 | |
who's was just really great Navy leader. | 1:23:54 | |
Who's now a four-star, | 1:23:58 | |
but he had interviewed me and said, hey, | 1:23:59 | |
I want you to come up. | 1:24:02 | |
So I'd certainly even in April | 1:24:04 | |
which would have been exactly three years | 1:24:05 | |
I left at the end of March. | 1:24:06 | |
And part of that was to do trading with this | 1:24:08 | |
into the next job. | 1:24:10 | |
But so I knew sure, | 1:24:12 | |
I knew I was gonna leave | 1:24:15 | |
that three years would be the max. | 1:24:16 | |
Interviewer | Did you know who was gonna replace you? | 1:24:18 |
- | I did by well, six months or so prior | 1:24:21 |
I got the name and then he came down | 1:24:25 | |
and we visited and did the normal turnover? | 1:24:27 | |
Interviewer | Did you know him? | 1:24:28 |
- | No, I didn't know him. | 1:24:29 |
He was a helicopter pilot spent most of his time | 1:24:30 | |
on the West Coast and his name was Les McCoy | 1:24:32 | |
and I didn't know him from before. | 1:24:35 | |
Interviewer | Was he there for three years too? | 1:24:37 |
- | He was there for about a little less than three years | 1:24:39 |
and now it has been, I think there's | 1:24:42 | |
we're probably gonna fourth or fifth CEO since I left | 1:24:45 | |
but I've been back down there about four times and got | 1:24:48 | |
I've stayed in touch with the succeeding CEOs | 1:24:51 | |
partly 'cause I'm in a good place to do it in Jacksonville | 1:24:53 | |
and they still report to the CM. | 1:24:56 | |
Interviewer | Have you seen any changes | 1:24:57 |
in the different times you have come over? | 1:24:59 | |
- | I was there in June of this year of 2011 | 1:25:00 |
and the base looked pretty much. | 1:25:03 | |
I'd say it look better in sense of | 1:25:06 | |
there had been some new signage and you know what I mean | 1:25:10 | |
it was when I first got down there | 1:25:13 | |
because of the status that they were putting us in. | 1:25:15 | |
I mean, there were literally goats on the crossing | 1:25:17 | |
the street and chickens running around. | 1:25:21 | |
I mean, it was a very kind of a dried up place | 1:25:23 | |
and now it looked a little better they had | 1:25:28 | |
kind of cleaned up things and made some improvements. | 1:25:31 | |
So I think the base looked fine, it looked good. | 1:25:34 | |
Interviewer | What did you think | 1:25:36 |
when President Obama said he wanted to close the base? | 1:25:37 | |
- | Yeah, I think, well first because of my having been there | 1:25:41 |
I was sure he didn't mean close the base, | 1:25:44 | |
he meant close the Joint Task Force | 1:25:48 | |
and so I spent a lot of time telling people | 1:25:50 | |
now he's not gonna close the base | 1:25:51 | |
because that's a whole different issue. | 1:25:53 | |
The base you wouldn't want to do that | 1:25:54 | |
and revert it back to the regime that's there now, | 1:25:57 | |
but close the JTF that now that is what he meant to say | 1:26:00 | |
or that's what his intent would be | 1:26:05 | |
and I thought, well, I actually thought he would do it | 1:26:07 | |
and I thought he would do it. | 1:26:09 | |
Interviewer | Did your colleagues also think | 1:26:11 |
he would do it? | 1:26:13 | |
- | Well, of course I was long gone at that point, | 1:26:15 |
but had I was back down there after that, | 1:26:17 | |
he made that comment | 1:26:20 | |
and I asked him, he said, well so are you | 1:26:22 | |
gonna close and they said at that time, | 1:26:25 | |
and this was maybe a year after that, | 1:26:27 | |
or it was less than that they said, no, we're funded. | 1:26:30 | |
Everything that they had was good | 1:26:34 | |
for the next two to two and a half years. | 1:26:35 | |
So they felt like they were not seeing | 1:26:37 | |
there was a misalignment of that message. | 1:26:40 | |
They were hearing that, but what they were seeing | 1:26:41 | |
in the resourcing was that they were gonna be there. | 1:26:43 | |
And which of course doesn't mean | 1:26:46 | |
they couldn't just cut that off | 1:26:47 | |
but that's what they said. | 1:26:48 | |
So I came back thinking, well, maybe, maybe not | 1:26:51 | |
if they don't think they're gonna close | 1:26:53 | |
and they said, we haven't talked | 1:26:55 | |
to anybody about alternatives we don't know. | 1:26:57 | |
So they just didn't see it happening | 1:27:00 | |
'cause they said, we would have been | 1:27:02 | |
already planning for something different. | 1:27:03 | |
So as it has turned out there right. | 1:27:06 | |
Interviewer | Do you know if Obama ever went | 1:27:09 |
down to Guantanamo? | 1:27:11 | |
- | I don't think so. | 1:27:11 |
I don't think he's ever been there. | 1:27:12 | |
I know Bush never came | 1:27:13 | |
and Cheney never came while I was there. | 1:27:16 | |
The highest ranking person who came was Rumsfeld. | 1:27:17 | |
Interviewer | Did Addington ever come down here? | 1:27:19 |
- | Who? | 1:27:22 |
Interviewer | David Addington? | 1:27:23 |
- | Was he one of the lawyers? | 1:27:24 |
Interviewer | He was a lawyer for Cheney. | 1:27:25 |
He was chief of staff for Cheney. | 1:27:27 | |
- | He may have been, I mean, I didn't know every group | 1:27:29 |
of if they weren't in uniform, I didn't | 1:27:31 | |
I wasn't sometimes wasn't clear on who they were. | 1:27:33 | |
I knew all the Congress people were | 1:27:36 | |
and but the protocol was a little hazier | 1:27:37 | |
on the ones that were just wearing a suit. | 1:27:40 | |
I wasn't sure who they were. | 1:27:42 | |
I didn't know Alberta Mora came down, he came down | 1:27:44 | |
and I actually recall having a conversation | 1:27:47 | |
with him and we knew who he was because he was. | 1:27:51 | |
Interviewer | Did you know David Brandt, | 1:27:53 |
the NCIS director, was he at that time? | 1:27:55 | |
- | No I don't know him. | 1:27:57 |
Interviewer | 'Cause apparently he told Albert Mora about | 1:27:58 |
the mistreatment down there. | 1:28:04 | |
So I assume Albert Mora didn't know | 1:28:06 | |
that when it came down to speak to you | 1:28:10 | |
and so that we didn't know that. | 1:28:11 | |
- | He came down pretty early on | 1:28:12 |
and I'd say in the first or probably | 1:28:14 | |
while they were still in camp x-ray yeah, it's kind of | 1:28:17 | |
in my mind, it's kind of divided up, the 300 days | 1:28:20 | |
in camp x-ray and then from May of 2002, until I left | 1:28:22 | |
it was the work going on at camp Delta. | 1:28:28 | |
And I haven't the last two times I was down there | 1:28:32 | |
I didn't get to go out through the gate and see the thing | 1:28:34 | |
but I understand it's a brick and mortar building now, | 1:28:37 | |
that's nothing like what the last thing I saw was | 1:28:40 | |
and I knew that. | 1:28:44 | |
Interviewer | Did you go by camp x-ray | 1:28:44 |
when you were down there. | 1:28:46 | |
- | I did, I could see it. | 1:28:47 |
It's all grown over again. | 1:28:49 | |
It's like(chuckles) it's back the way it was when we, | 1:28:50 | |
it's just, back to being abandoned. | 1:28:53 | |
Interviewer | And do you think the JTF will be closed? | 1:28:56 |
- | Boy, well, I, yeah, I would say | 1:29:02 |
the purpose as a military guy, Joint Task Force | 1:29:05 | |
it's not supposed to be forever. | 1:29:08 | |
You know what I mean that's why they call it that | 1:29:09 | |
and so the real purpose of the Joint Task Force is to | 1:29:12 | |
come together perform some mission and then disband. | 1:29:15 | |
Otherwise they would have a permanent command | 1:29:21 | |
but it's certainly become, it seems like it's | 1:29:24 | |
and now it's Navy Admirals it's transition it was all army | 1:29:28 | |
and that was early on Army was listed, | 1:29:32 | |
Army is considered among core competencies | 1:29:34 | |
handling POWs is an army core competency. | 1:29:38 | |
So I think that was the thinking in the beginning | 1:29:41 | |
but it's migrated now and I think the last four | 1:29:44 | |
or five JTF commanders have been Navy Admirals one-star | 1:29:46 | |
and they go for one year, it's become a real rotation | 1:29:50 | |
and I've met several, last few | 1:29:54 | |
and it's much more of a Navy JTF now. | 1:29:56 | |
Interviewer | Why do you think? | 1:29:59 |
- | Because I think because they, one, | 1:30:01 |
because it's a Navy base | 1:30:04 | |
and two, because I think they are just holding now, | 1:30:05 | |
there's no more, I don't think they're doing much in a way | 1:30:09 | |
of interrogation and then numbers are down. | 1:30:12 | |
What, how many people are there now? | 1:30:14 | |
Interviewer | 171. | 1:30:15 |
- | 170 okay so I knew it was under 200 | 1:30:16 |
and so it's much smaller, | 1:30:18 | |
It's different and it's just a maintenance sort of thing. | 1:30:21 | |
So it makes sense to have, | 1:30:25 | |
they send a temporary additional duty, | 1:30:28 | |
a one-star goes down there. | 1:30:30 | |
The numbers of security people I think have shrunken | 1:30:31 | |
and it's a lot of Navy people too | 1:30:35 | |
and it, because it's the Navy base keeps it all | 1:30:37 | |
in the Navy chain of command | 1:30:39 | |
and I think it just works out that way, | 1:30:40 | |
but and I may be wrong about maybe there are still | 1:30:43 | |
asking questions down there, but I don't think so. | 1:30:46 | |
Interviewer | Could they ever send you back there | 1:30:50 |
as a commander or once you've done that you don't? | 1:30:52 | |
- | No well, no and I'm retired now from, | 1:30:54 |
I mean I've reached 30 years and I retired | 1:30:58 | |
so they wouldn't, I could go back and work there, | 1:31:00 | |
civil service, people that work on the base | 1:31:05 | |
but it would be having been base commander. | 1:31:08 | |
It's pretty hard to go back and do anything else | 1:31:10 | |
work at the marina or something probably wouldn't, | 1:31:12 | |
but I'd love to, I do enjoy going back | 1:31:15 | |
and I've gone back three times | 1:31:18 | |
as to be guest speakers at different things. | 1:31:19 | |
I think I had a real good relationship | 1:31:21 | |
with the whole community down there | 1:31:24 | |
and I've been invited back by the firefighters | 1:31:25 | |
who were all Jamaicans, to speak at their ball | 1:31:28 | |
and I've spoken at Cuban-American friendship day | 1:31:30 | |
which is another group | 1:31:33 | |
and then also at the Jamaican independence day. | 1:31:34 | |
So there's, it's like the UN downer | 1:31:38 | |
you have all these people from all over | 1:31:40 | |
and they all work together on the base. | 1:31:42 | |
And then the last time I went | 1:31:44 | |
down was just to visit and with my son. | 1:31:45 | |
So we still maintain good connections | 1:31:48 | |
with people down there | 1:31:50 | |
and it's people, the group that's down there | 1:31:50 | |
they love Guantanamo. | 1:31:56 | |
It's a nice little community | 1:31:57 | |
and it's been through, it's 100 years old. | 1:31:58 | |
It's been through a lot of different things | 1:32:01 | |
and this is just another one of them seems like. | 1:32:03 | |
Interviewer | Well, I think I'm pretty much done, | 1:32:08 |
is there something that I didn't ask you | 1:32:10 | |
that you just want to share with everyone is to, | 1:32:11 | |
'cause obviously you gave many impressions over. | 1:32:13 | |
- | There were some things along the way that | 1:32:16 |
when we were talking that I thought would be interesting in | 1:32:18 | |
as we conversed it, yeah. | 1:32:23 | |
Interviewer | Like Hill or? | 1:32:26 |
- | General Hill was yeah, he was, I enjoyed working with him. | 1:32:30 |
I saw a change when he took SOUTHCOM too | 1:32:34 | |
and I think the general Hill | 1:32:36 | |
in general Miller were a good combination | 1:32:38 | |
and I don't know what kind of guidance they got from above, | 1:32:40 | |
but they were no nonsense kind of career army people | 1:32:43 | |
who wanted to make everything right. | 1:32:47 | |
One thing I would say | 1:32:49 | |
and I've spoken a little bit to groups about | 1:32:50 | |
my experience in Guantanamo is that, | 1:32:53 | |
it was kind of a study to me and general Leonard | 1:32:57 | |
as an example and maybe I'm prejudiced | 1:33:00 | |
'cause he I consider him a friend, but you know | 1:33:03 | |
watching him operate without guidance | 1:33:05 | |
and being a Marine, he was not going to fail. | 1:33:08 | |
I mean, he was gonna do the mission | 1:33:14 | |
but he asked for guidance and guidance didn't come | 1:33:15 | |
and he didn't ring his hands about it. | 1:33:18 | |
He just said, here's how we're gonna do this. | 1:33:20 | |
And I really feel and I'm not the only one | 1:33:22 | |
that the way he started things was in the right direction | 1:33:26 | |
and he, I recall seeing him sitting cross-legged with his | 1:33:29 | |
he would always take his hat off and speaking right up close | 1:33:34 | |
with the detainees | 1:33:39 | |
and he understood in that short amount of time, | 1:33:40 | |
he understood them better than I think they were understood | 1:33:43 | |
for maybe even to this day, he also brought in | 1:33:46 | |
and this is a good point to make the Islamic chaplain | 1:33:50 | |
a Navy chaplain named Saif, who was a great help. | 1:33:55 | |
But later was caught in this the middle of as Al Shimkus did | 1:34:00 | |
as well, being used, being coerced | 1:34:06 | |
or pressured to use what he learned as a chaplain | 1:34:09 | |
on the intelligence side | 1:34:14 | |
and the same with the medical folks in that | 1:34:15 | |
and that presented a dilemma | 1:34:17 | |
for those people that I didn't have to face | 1:34:19 | |
but the medical people have their ethical code | 1:34:21 | |
and the chaplains do too | 1:34:24 | |
and I think they all had to deal with this pressure. | 1:34:27 | |
Interviewer | How did they deal with it? | 1:34:30 |
- | Well, the, I know Cap Shimkus just refused to cooperate. | 1:34:32 |
I mean, I think there was | 1:34:37 | |
an effort to use psychiatric exams, | 1:34:39 | |
the information from those on the intelligence side | 1:34:42 | |
and the best of what I know that they never did that. | 1:34:45 | |
Interviewer | And what kind of discipline | 1:34:48 |
could happen to them? | 1:34:50 | |
- | Well, it was, it turned there was no official discipline. | 1:34:51 |
I mean, there were, | 1:34:55 | |
I'm sure that the people asking weren't unhappy, | 1:34:56 | |
but they knew they couldn't really do anything | 1:34:58 | |
official about it because | 1:35:01 | |
it would turn into some sort of investigation | 1:35:04 | |
and then and Saif once general Leonard, | 1:35:07 | |
who was he pretty much was doing top cover for Saif. | 1:35:12 | |
He wanted him to do what to, find out what was going on | 1:35:15 | |
and it served these people and he wanted to know, | 1:35:21 | |
but not from the intelligence standpoint | 1:35:26 | |
he wanted to know, so he could keep peace in the camp | 1:35:28 | |
and keep, just his job was just keep the lead | 1:35:31 | |
on the whole thing. | 1:35:35 | |
So, but once he left he didn't have that covering anymore. | 1:35:36 | |
So I think it got real difficult for him. | 1:35:39 | |
He'd be a great one to interview. | 1:35:42 | |
I don't know where he is these days. | 1:35:43 | |
Interviewer | He's still in the military. | 1:35:45 |
- | So he'd probably wouldn't be reluctant to talk, | 1:35:46 |
but I thought he was a great, | 1:35:49 | |
it was a great idea to bring him in. | 1:35:52 | |
Interviewer | You met him? | 1:35:53 |
- | Oh yes I knew Saif and he also had the language skill, | 1:35:54 |
he could speak. | 1:35:59 | |
So that helped a lot. | 1:36:00 | |
Interviewer | How did general Leonard know him? | 1:36:01 |
- | I think he just went back. | 1:36:05 |
He didn't know him beforehand I don't believe, | 1:36:06 | |
but he went back up the chain of command and said, | 1:36:08 | |
find me a Muslim chaplain | 1:36:10 | |
and we already, even when we were at the Naval war college, | 1:36:12 | |
I know that there was one a Muslim chaplain there. | 1:36:16 | |
So we had had them for decades, but there weren't very many. | 1:36:18 | |
So, we had to shop around and find Saif wherever he was | 1:36:21 | |
and got him sent down there for that job | 1:36:26 | |
and he did a great job. | 1:36:29 | |
So those were all things that he did without direction | 1:36:31 | |
from anybody and the ICRC, which I know general supported | 1:36:35 | |
and I'm sure he was in on that. | 1:36:39 | |
He's saying, let's get this right up front | 1:36:41 | |
so we have that transparency. | 1:36:43 | |
Interviewer | And who put the pressure | 1:36:45 |
on Saif again from the chain of command going up? | 1:36:46 | |
- | After general Leonard left | 1:36:50 |
I think it was the JTF 170 folks | 1:36:51 | |
the ones who were tasked with interrogation. | 1:36:53 | |
I don't know specifically who, but there, | 1:36:57 | |
and these are all military people | 1:37:01 | |
who are even the agency people | 1:37:03 | |
they're given a task or do this | 1:37:05 | |
they're gonna go out there and do all they can to do it. | 1:37:07 | |
That's their focus. | 1:37:09 | |
Interviewer | And then when it was mergers | 1:37:12 |
was without numbers just the JTF? | 1:37:14 | |
- | It became JTF Guantanamo. | 1:37:17 |
They just use the name Guantanamo. | 1:37:18 | |
Interviewer | Where the numbers come from does that? | 1:37:19 |
- | Oh, there's a system in the military | 1:37:22 |
for numbering task forces and it's based on mission | 1:37:24 | |
and who's subordinate to who, and there's probably | 1:37:30 | |
a contingency plan on the shelf at SOUTHCOM that has, | 1:37:34 | |
there 100 and then they have these subservient numbers | 1:37:37 | |
that go with it's just a, it's a numbering system. | 1:37:40 | |
Interviewer | One more question you reminded me | 1:37:44 |
you mentioned the Uyghurs is did you know Yusef Abbas | 1:37:47 | |
who was a translator for the Uyghurs she thing down? | 1:37:49 | |
- | No, but I did meet with it when the delegation | 1:37:53 |
from China came to talk about the Uyghurs. | 1:37:56 | |
We met with them I remember we had a dinner at the club. | 1:38:00 | |
We hosted them | 1:38:04 | |
and I even, I have a unique hat that's | 1:38:05 | |
from that culture that they presented to me | 1:38:09 | |
I think we gave him a ball cap | 1:38:12 | |
it said Naval base, Guantanamo bay | 1:38:13 | |
and they gave us a little hat, which I still have at home. | 1:38:16 | |
Interviewer | What did the Chinese say to you | 1:38:18 |
about the Uyghurs? | 1:38:21 | |
- | They, well, I think they were talking | 1:38:23 |
they were talking with the JTF | 1:38:26 | |
about disposition of these folks. | 1:38:27 | |
So our ours was more social | 1:38:29 | |
and I was just telling them about the base | 1:38:31 | |
and we were all through translator. | 1:38:32 | |
So that was it wasn't kind of a labored conversation | 1:38:34 | |
but I remember having | 1:38:38 | |
a pleasant enough social experience with them. | 1:38:39 | |
Interviewer | And do you know how the interview | 1:38:41 |
went with the Uyghurs? | 1:38:44 | |
- | No, except they, I believe they're in Bermuda now. | 1:38:46 |
Aren't they? | 1:38:50 | |
Didn't they go to Bermuda. | 1:38:51 | |
Yeah, yeah, I saw them and I remember thinking, wow, that's | 1:38:51 | |
that worked out okay to go to Bermuda. | 1:38:57 | |
Interviewer | Well that some are in the Bermuda. | 1:38:58 |
- | Yeah, yeah right. | 1:38:59 |
Interviewer | And some are in Albania. | 1:39:01 |
So they are not toward Switzerland so that. | 1:39:03 | |
- | There was, I guess there was, and I just | 1:39:08 |
this is just from reading open press | 1:39:12 | |
but China didn't want to take them back. | 1:39:13 | |
Is that right? | 1:39:16 | |
Interviewer | I trust they did want them? | 1:39:17 |
- | Oh they did want to back | 1:39:18 |
but we didn't want to you back. | 1:39:19 | |
Interviewer | To execute them general wanted to that- | 1:39:20 |
- | Okay so that was it we didn't want to give them back. | 1:39:22 |
Okay, yeah, yeah. | 1:39:25 | |
Interviewer | Yeah, I mean, | 1:39:27 |
but you saw other nations too, coming down | 1:39:29 | |
not just China, right? | 1:39:31 | |
- | There were others yeah and I try to think. | 1:39:33 |
Interviewer | Did Russia come down? | 1:39:35 |
- | The Russian did | 1:39:37 |
I don't even remember meeting with them in particular, | 1:39:38 | |
but these were all parts of the groups | 1:39:40 | |
that we would be, we would get them on the base | 1:39:42 | |
and get them over to where they needed to be | 1:39:45 | |
and then we would say goodbye and go back and get some more. | 1:39:47 | |
So, I wasn't in on the meetings, but we did have | 1:39:50 | |
many nationalities coming through and agencies and media. | 1:39:54 | |
Interviewer | Did you now why they came through? | 1:39:58 |
- | I think in some cases they wanted to interview | 1:40:01 |
the people that were there, from whatever their country. | 1:40:04 | |
But, and I don't know if they were working | 1:40:09 | |
with the ICRC or whether it was some allied thing. | 1:40:12 | |
I'm not sure, but no I just didn't get involved | 1:40:16 | |
in that part of it. | 1:40:21 | |
Interviewer | And the CIA agents or agents wouldn't come | 1:40:22 |
to these meetings with you either I guess. | 1:40:25 | |
- | No, they would maybe have a representative there | 1:40:27 |
but they didn't. | 1:40:31 | |
No, we didn't deal with them | 1:40:32 | |
all the JTF was all divided into this | 1:40:34 | |
it had ops and logistics and an Intel. | 1:40:37 | |
And so if I was doing, if we were doing air movements | 1:40:39 | |
of people, we just worked with the logistics folks | 1:40:43 | |
and so we didn't know there was no need to go beyond that. | 1:40:45 | |
And that there were quite a few over time | 1:40:48 | |
there were flights that were beyond our scheduled flights, | 1:40:51 | |
there were airplanes. | 1:40:54 | |
I mean, Pentagon airplanes came down and FBI airplanes. | 1:40:56 | |
So we, it got to be a busy place for a while | 1:40:59 | |
there a lot of air traffic | 1:41:01 | |
and when we used to have maybe five, | 1:41:02 | |
six flights a day we maybe have 25 | 1:41:04 | |
and I don't know if that's still going. | 1:41:08 | |
Interviewer | You ever see tension | 1:41:10 |
between the CIA and the FBI? | 1:41:11 | |
- | No, I didn't because I couldn't even tell you who was who, | 1:41:13 |
I mean I just knew that they were the guys | 1:41:17 | |
in the polo shirts and but other than that | 1:41:18 | |
they didn't wear anything that identified | 1:41:21 | |
and maybe I didn't even get to know them | 1:41:24 | |
from the neighborhoods or socially | 1:41:27 | |
and who they were and more and more | 1:41:30 | |
and I think this is true today, | 1:41:32 | |
the JTF is they're stay out there where the whole thing | 1:41:33 | |
the whole camp of most of this | 1:41:39 | |
the troops that are involved with it live there | 1:41:41 | |
and they've developed | 1:41:43 | |
at a point where all the recreation, gym | 1:41:45 | |
all that kind of stuff is movies are out there. | 1:41:49 | |
So there, they didn't come into what we call town, | 1:41:52 | |
like in the beginning, we were doing all that at the | 1:41:55 | |
all the facilities we all shared. | 1:41:58 | |
So we saw them a lot more | 1:42:00 | |
and I noticed when I was there in June | 1:42:01 | |
you wouldn't even know there was a Joint Task Force there | 1:42:03 | |
cause they're over the hillside | 1:42:05 | |
and they have all the facilities over there | 1:42:07 | |
and they don't have transportation. | 1:42:08 | |
So there really isn't much | 1:42:09 | |
motivation for them or ability for them to come over there. | 1:42:12 | |
They certainly can do it if they want to but. | 1:42:16 | |
Interviewer | What do you mean, | 1:42:18 |
they don't have transportation? | 1:42:19 | |
- | Well, they don't have individual cars. | 1:42:20 |
There's a bus system, probably that kind of thing. | 1:42:22 | |
But I mean, when does the troops go down there? | 1:42:24 | |
The guards, they don't bring a car with them or anything. | 1:42:27 | |
They just at it. | 1:42:30 | |
So, you can go to the gym that's 50 steps away, | 1:42:31 | |
or you can ride a bus over to the main part of the base | 1:42:35 | |
and go to the gym there. | 1:42:38 | |
why would you do that? | 1:42:39 | |
So you just don't see him like he did in the beginning | 1:42:39 | |
and we used to see Humvees parked | 1:42:41 | |
at the commissary all the time, | 1:42:44 | |
and that isn't happening | 1:42:47 | |
'cause they have galleys and everything out there. | 1:42:49 | |
So it's just changed, | 1:42:51 | |
it went from standing it up | 1:42:53 | |
like kind of this BoomTown thing | 1:42:56 | |
and then now it's institutionalized | 1:43:00 | |
and it's behind its own gate and it's up | 1:43:01 | |
it just runs along like any other tenant of the base. | 1:43:05 | |
So, that's what 10 years, it's been 10 years go by, | 1:43:09 | |
they've institutionalized quite a bit. | 1:43:13 | |
- | Well, I guess one more question, Bob, and then I guess | 1:43:16 |
unless you want to add one more thing | 1:43:18 | |
but if there was another 911, you think, | 1:43:20 | |
Guantanamo it could be used again in the same way of was. | 1:43:22 | |
- | Boy, I don't think | 1:43:25 |
I don't know what administration would do that. | 1:43:30 | |
I mean, just seeing what's going on and I mean | 1:43:33 | |
honestly, personally, I've gone back and forth | 1:43:36 | |
through the years after I left about how I feel about it. | 1:43:39 | |
I went through a period of time when I thought | 1:43:43 | |
we should just absolutely close it | 1:43:45 | |
as quickly as possible | 1:43:47 | |
and then I think about the huge Investment | 1:43:49 | |
that's been there. | 1:43:52 | |
But I will tell you general Leonard who I was with in | 1:43:54 | |
I think it was February of 2010 | 1:43:58 | |
the National Conflict Resolution Center, awarded him, | 1:44:00 | |
it's called a Peacemaker Award | 1:44:05 | |
for his time in the beginning | 1:44:07 | |
and I went to the dinner in San Diego | 1:44:09 | |
and so did Al Shimkus | 1:44:10 | |
we kind of had a reunion | 1:44:12 | |
and because we wanted to see him get this award | 1:44:13 | |
and he said, and he's been adamant | 1:44:15 | |
that he thinks they should close it. | 1:44:18 | |
And he's been that, he said that since the first time | 1:44:21 | |
we talked about it | 1:44:24 | |
and he's continues to this day, says, | 1:44:25 | |
we should absolutely close it as quickly as possible | 1:44:28 | |
and as the guy who started it | 1:44:32 | |
so I respect his opinion. | 1:44:34 | |
Interviewer | Did he say why? | 1:44:35 |
- | I think he just thinks it was a black eye for the country | 1:44:37 |
and he just wants to stop the damage that it has done. | 1:44:41 | |
I think he views it that way. | 1:44:47 | |
I think he started off on the right foot, but it may, | 1:44:50 | |
I don't know maybe it was gonna be doomed no matter what | 1:44:54 | |
just by its very nature, I don't know. | 1:44:56 | |
But I do know he gave it the best shot | 1:44:59 | |
for success in the beginning. | 1:45:02 | |
He just wasn't there long enough, | 1:45:04 | |
and that wasn't based on, here's an engineer | 1:45:07 | |
this is not his feeling we've said many times | 1:45:11 | |
there's no textbook for what we're doing here. | 1:45:14 | |
When we got started, we were making this up every day | 1:45:16 | |
get up and figure out | 1:45:18 | |
what are we gonna make up today that we're gonna do? | 1:45:20 | |
There's just no manual to go to for that kind of thing. | 1:45:22 | |
Interviewer | Kelly Rosenberg said that, | 1:45:26 |
what do you think of that? | 1:45:28 | |
I mean is that, has that happened in other places? | 1:45:29 | |
Are there times where it just becomes | 1:45:32 | |
by the seat of your pants? | 1:45:35 | |
- | It is I honestly think that's one thing | 1:45:37 |
military is very good at is taking chaos | 1:45:40 | |
and making some sense out of it | 1:45:42 | |
and 'cause we've done that before many times | 1:45:45 | |
as much as you try to have policies | 1:45:48 | |
and prescribed tactical procedures | 1:45:51 | |
or to cover all the bases, it seems like every time | 1:45:53 | |
there's something new and we the military is very good | 1:45:56 | |
at adapting and coming up with solutions, | 1:45:59 | |
because it's just mission, | 1:46:03 | |
it's a mission oriented organization | 1:46:04 | |
so we're gonna get this done and yeah | 1:46:06 | |
we might break some chain along the way, | 1:46:09 | |
but we're gonna get it done. | 1:46:11 | |
So I was never | 1:46:13 | |
I never had any doubt we were gonna succeed. | 1:46:14 | |
I just wasn't sure how we were gonna do it, | 1:46:16 | |
but working alongside general Leonard | 1:46:18 | |
it was very comfortable feeling | 1:46:21 | |
and I knew it'd be, it would be okay. | 1:46:23 | |
I didn't feel that way later. | 1:46:25 | |
I felt nervous about it later | 1:46:27 | |
so I have a mixed legacy there. | 1:46:31 | |
Interviewer | Did you trust him. | 1:46:31 |
- | Yeah, yeah, yeah I did. | 1:46:33 |
I mean, there's just so much | 1:46:35 | |
it was just a very interesting time | 1:46:38 | |
and I do think that that's part | 1:46:40 | |
of it in the very beginning, in the first few months, | 1:46:42 | |
I mean, it was people who think about it | 1:46:44 | |
think about the time for the country and how, I mean | 1:46:46 | |
this is at the same time we were doing this | 1:46:50 | |
we had us Navy cruisers off of New York city, off Manhattan | 1:46:52 | |
because we thought we'd have to shoot down | 1:46:57 | |
some more airliners. | 1:46:58 | |
We didn't know what was coming next. | 1:47:00 | |
So, and we went through that down there. | 1:47:01 | |
We thought we would be attacked | 1:47:05 | |
once the first he east got there. | 1:47:07 | |
We thought there was a real good chance of some sort | 1:47:09 | |
of a guerrilla attack or an air attack, just symbolic | 1:47:12 | |
even if it, was not completely successful | 1:47:17 | |
but just in some way to make a strike there. | 1:47:21 | |
So we spent a lot of time worrying about security | 1:47:24 | |
from the sea and from the air | 1:47:27 | |
and or even just something hit our power plant | 1:47:30 | |
or my commanding officer's house. | 1:47:35 | |
It was a big house on the end of a point, | 1:47:37 | |
it was a great target. | 1:47:39 | |
It sat out there | 1:47:40 | |
and Debbie would tells a story that first morning | 1:47:42 | |
after 911, she came outside to let the dog out back | 1:47:45 | |
and there were Marines, armed Marines in our backyard | 1:47:47 | |
and 'cause they didn't know | 1:47:50 | |
we just didn't know what was coming so. | 1:47:52 | |
Interviewer | Is it still like that do you think? | 1:47:54 |
- | In Guantanamo no, I don't. | 1:47:57 |
No I don't think there's a feeling like that at all | 1:47:58 | |
and over time we felt less that way because it's | 1:48:01 | |
logistically it would be a big effort to strike just because | 1:48:05 | |
of the distance and the isolation of the base. | 1:48:08 | |
I mean, and we do have aircraft, we know what's | 1:48:11 | |
flying around, you could see something coming | 1:48:14 | |
but it just was in the beginning. | 1:48:17 | |
I mean, if they were able to do what they did on 911 | 1:48:19 | |
who knew so I think we probably | 1:48:21 | |
went overboard in some ways, but it was, you'd just | 1:48:24 | |
always have to go back to the context of the time | 1:48:26 | |
and it they pulled off bringing down the World Trade Center | 1:48:29 | |
how hard would it be to fly an airplane | 1:48:34 | |
into the CEO's house? | 1:48:37 | |
And at least symbolically, do something there. | 1:48:38 | |
So of course that would, that was after that | 1:48:42 | |
it was announced that we were gonna be the place | 1:48:44 | |
but people have trouble finding Guantanamo | 1:48:47 | |
much less attacking it. | 1:48:49 | |
It's way down there. | 1:48:50 | |
Interviewer | Well, you feel | 1:48:52 |
like it was a good experience for you is worth it. | 1:48:54 | |
- | Being the CEO down here yeah, it was and I do worry | 1:48:56 |
about the legacy of the name Guantanamo bay | 1:49:01 | |
people it's starting with being a Coaling station | 1:49:03 | |
after the Spanish American War, | 1:49:09 | |
it's got a long history | 1:49:11 | |
but the current history is I think people have | 1:49:12 | |
a negative connotation when you think of it | 1:49:15 | |
and I have such a separate view, a different view. | 1:49:17 | |
I try to take every opportunity that I can | 1:49:20 | |
to talk to people about the base and the people there | 1:49:22 | |
and try to alter the view a little bit. | 1:49:25 | |
But, I'm guessing I'm not gonna change too many opinions. | 1:49:28 | |
Interviewer | I'm glad you said that. | 1:49:32 |
I think that's important. | 1:49:34 | |
- | Yeah, I just, you had to be there, | 1:49:37 |
I guess it's one of those things you had to be there | 1:49:40 | |
and but I'm not gonna argue with the result | 1:49:41 | |
in way it came out, | 1:49:43 | |
that we'd have to face up | 1:49:45 | |
if they're bad things went on there that too | 1:49:47 | |
but it's trying to separate the people I saw trying to | 1:49:50 | |
do a mission for their country | 1:49:53 | |
and do all the right things from that in the end yeah. | 1:49:56 | |
Interviewer | Well, 'cause that's a great way to end | 1:50:01 |
and less, you can figure something out. | 1:50:04 | |
- | I could talk about Gitmo all day | 1:50:05 |
but I think it's probably enough. | 1:50:07 | |
I would need to take a break if we are gonna | 1:50:09 | |
go on anyway. | 1:50:11 | |
Interviewer | Well its up to You. | 1:50:11 |
- | Well, I mean, I'll take a break. | 1:50:13 |
If you think of anything else | 1:50:15 | |
you want to talk about, I'm happy to do it, but. | 1:50:16 | |
Interviewer | I think you've covered what I really wanted. | 1:50:18 |
- | Let me ask you, did you have, are you | 1:50:21 |
I asked Kathleen this yesterday | 1:50:23 | |
a book called "The Least Worst Place" by Karen Greenberg. | 1:50:25 | |
Are you familiar with that? | 1:50:29 | |
Interviewer | You spoke to her? | 1:50:30 |
- | I did sure she actually visited Jacksonville | 1:50:31 |
came to my house and we, she. | 1:50:34 | |
Interviewer | Yeah, several other people | 1:50:37 |
mentioned that book too | 1:50:42 | |
and I think it's a very important book | 1:50:43 | |
in the literature and Guantanamo. | 1:50:46 | |
- | Yeah, I think so and she, I mean, | 1:50:48 |
I kind of has a theory or advances | 1:50:52 | |
or thesis in that book a little bit that, | 1:50:55 | |
again general Leonard started things out in a different way | 1:50:58 | |
and it might come out differently. | 1:51:02 | |
Interviewer | Well, you mean that he started out | 1:51:06 |
on the right foot is that what you're saying? | 1:51:08 | |
- | Yeah as much as you could in the circumstance. | 1:51:09 |
Yeah, well and using his instincts | 1:51:11 | |
which really led him to try the Geneva convention | 1:51:13 | |
he essentially just did what he knew he needed to do on that | 1:51:17 | |
by providing as rough as a conditions where | 1:51:21 | |
providing the Koreans, the right food | 1:51:24 | |
talking, medical care, the bringing in the ICRC | 1:51:28 | |
or trying to be more transparent about the whole thing. | 1:51:32 | |
Interviewer | I will say that many military people | 1:51:33 |
we've talked to have all felt | 1:51:39 | |
that they always want to do the right thing | 1:51:40 | |
and some maybe didn't buy many best | 1:51:43 | |
for a long time, but because they feel like | 1:51:48 | |
it put a stamp on the military, | 1:51:52 | |
the military is always trying to do the right thing. | 1:51:53 | |
- | Yeah and that's a good point | 1:51:55 |
'cause we for the most part | 1:51:56 | |
military people are certainly at the level we were, | 1:51:58 | |
we're not policymakers, | 1:52:01 | |
we execute policy or civilian control | 1:52:04 | |
of the military and so you do the best you can | 1:52:07 | |
in thinking you're doing what the civilian | 1:52:12 | |
people want you to do. | 1:52:13 | |
But I do now looking back on it, I mean | 1:52:16 | |
I think that there were, I mean, | 1:52:18 | |
it was the Rumsfeld group that, | 1:52:22 | |
they maybe it was for the right intentions | 1:52:25 | |
to get actual intelligence | 1:52:28 | |
but the trickle down effect was | 1:52:29 | |
that people got treated in ways they shouldn't have been | 1:52:31 | |
I think that's, even though I didn't see it | 1:52:34 | |
I have no doubt that that happened. | 1:52:37 | |
Interviewer | You've heard enough from. | 1:52:39 |
- | Since then sure, yeah. | 1:52:42 |
I've heard enough and it wouldn't all come out that way | 1:52:44 | |
and it's pretty much as much been admitted to it | 1:52:46 | |
and in the various things that were allowed | 1:52:50 | |
that would be, and I've as a Naval aviator, I went | 1:52:53 | |
through what we call SERE school when I was first | 1:52:56 | |
getting started where we, and I was waterboarded | 1:52:59 | |
we'd got waterboarded as part of our training. | 1:53:03 | |
Some of us, not everybody, but I did, we got | 1:53:05 | |
into survival and evasion exercise and you end up | 1:53:08 | |
in the end, they put you in a POW camp | 1:53:11 | |
and I was at Mortar Springs, California here | 1:53:13 | |
and I got waterboarded in that | 1:53:16 | |
it's not a pleasant experience I know. | 1:53:17 | |
So when you talk about waterboarding, I know something | 1:53:19 | |
about it 'cause it was a very memorable. | 1:53:21 | |
Interviewer | Did you think you were gonna die? | 1:53:24 |
- | I thought I was gonna choke, yeah | 1:53:26 |
and this was in a controlled circumstance | 1:53:28 | |
with other military people in a training environment | 1:53:31 | |
and I still thought that I was about | 1:53:33 | |
that close to blacking out. | 1:53:36 | |
It was not a happy thing. | 1:53:38 | |
Interviewer | Can you describe what it was? | 1:53:39 |
- | Well, you lay on your back | 1:53:42 |
they put a towel over your face | 1:53:45 | |
your nose and mouth and pour water in to your mouth | 1:53:46 | |
and it goes into your nose | 1:53:50 | |
and so pretty quickly you can't take a breath, | 1:53:51 | |
you can't you're gasping | 1:53:54 | |
and then all of a sudden you can't take a breath | 1:53:55 | |
and you're just, you're choking | 1:53:57 | |
it's a terrible feeling your suffocating. | 1:53:59 | |
Interviewer | Did they tell | 1:54:00 |
this was what they were gonna do. | 1:54:01 | |
- | Oh, we knew about waterboarding, | 1:54:03 |
yeah, we sure did | 1:54:04 | |
and, but I hadn't experienced it, but there were a lot | 1:54:05 | |
of Naval aviators in their training have gone through that. | 1:54:09 | |
And so you recover quickly, | 1:54:12 | |
but it's not a good experience | 1:54:16 | |
and if you didn't know you were in a training environment | 1:54:18 | |
it would be terrifying, | 1:54:20 | |
you would because it happens as quick as, | 1:54:21 | |
being held under water and it's like that. | 1:54:26 | |
Interviewer | What was the point of doing that? | 1:54:30 |
- | It was part of our training was one was to | 1:54:34 |
for the individual to have experienced it. | 1:54:38 | |
But also it was part of a larger scenario | 1:54:41 | |
in this whole role-playing thing that they did | 1:54:44 | |
at this SERE school. | 1:54:47 | |
So the others saw it too. | 1:54:49 | |
So there was impact on both both sides. | 1:54:51 | |
And there are other people who had to go | 1:54:53 | |
through other things, as we all were in this | 1:54:55 | |
it was more of a, and this is 1978 that I did this or 79 | 1:54:57 | |
and so more reminiscent of a Vietnam era | 1:55:02 | |
Hanoi Hilton kind of scenario is | 1:55:05 | |
because that was the experience at the time. | 1:55:08 | |
But we all went through that | 1:55:10 | |
and it was just supposed to help you understand that | 1:55:12 | |
where you might break or where | 1:55:17 | |
how you would react under these conditions. | 1:55:19 | |
It was, I viewed it, oh | 1:55:21 | |
I still do today as valuable training. | 1:55:23 | |
You learn something about yourself in an extreme place. | 1:55:25 | |
So I thought it was good. | 1:55:30 | |
I thought of something else | 1:55:32 | |
we were just, we were talking, I don't want to extend | 1:55:33 | |
but there was something you asked a question | 1:55:36 | |
and I thought, oh, I should mention this | 1:55:38 | |
and now it's gone. | 1:55:41 | |
Interviewer | So you wanna take a break | 1:55:42 |
and then we will review. | 1:55:43 | |
- | Yeah, let me make a head call here and then. | 1:55:44 |
Yeah the thought was the tribunals for those of us | 1:55:50 | |
Who were involved, but not totally on the inside, | 1:55:54 | |
it was a frustration in that we heard almost weekly | 1:55:58 | |
about tribunals starting next week. | 1:56:02 | |
It was, it got to be a running joke | 1:56:04 | |
and even as late as March of 03 | 1:56:06 | |
when I was getting ready to leave | 1:56:09 | |
and we typically have a ceremonial change of command | 1:56:12 | |
and I wanted to do that | 1:56:15 | |
and it's a big event | 1:56:17 | |
and at one of the meetings, | 1:56:20 | |
I told the general in the group | 1:56:22 | |
while I think March 23rd or whatever the date was | 1:56:25 | |
it's gonna be my change of command | 1:56:28 | |
and somebody said, well, we might start tribunals that week. | 1:56:29 | |
And I mean, I just, at that point | 1:56:34 | |
I'd been hearing this now for over a year. | 1:56:35 | |
I just laugh because, you guys have been saying | 1:56:37 | |
you're gonna start tribunals next week for 18 months now | 1:56:39 | |
and I just don't believe it | 1:56:43 | |
and of course they didn't | 1:56:45 | |
and what did happen on the day of my change command | 1:56:46 | |
was an invasion of Iraq, | 1:56:49 | |
which was, which didn't affect the change of command any, | 1:56:51 | |
but that was what viewing it from where I was, | 1:56:54 | |
I was frustrated and I thought that one of the, | 1:56:59 | |
and I don't know how general Leonard feels about this, | 1:57:03 | |
but one of the things we need to do is | 1:57:05 | |
let's get on with this. | 1:57:06 | |
I mean, charge these people with something | 1:57:07 | |
and what was frustrating was the lack of any movement, | 1:57:09 | |
we were holding people but there was no resolution. | 1:57:15 | |
Interviewer | Why do you think? | 1:57:19 |
- | I think I guessing, and I think it was | 1:57:22 |
because they weren't sure that they weren't sure | 1:57:25 | |
how to approach it. | 1:57:27 | |
They didn't know how to, I know there was talk of | 1:57:28 | |
there's not evidence. | 1:57:32 | |
These people were on the battlefield, so they can't treat it | 1:57:33 | |
like a trial with them evidence, | 1:57:36 | |
but it seemed to me, there ought to be some way to either | 1:57:39 | |
by now, everybody had invented over and over again. | 1:57:43 | |
They had to know what, who they had and by then we had | 1:57:45 | |
some people had already been set back. | 1:57:51 | |
I mean, it was clear, there were people there | 1:57:52 | |
that were just caught up in the net | 1:57:54 | |
and didn't need to be there | 1:57:56 | |
and even before I left, some had been sent back. | 1:57:58 | |
So if you know anything about the rest, I mean, you have to | 1:58:02 | |
it's gotta be tough to be sitting there | 1:58:07 | |
and not charged with something and tell me | 1:58:08 | |
what is it I'm here for? | 1:58:11 | |
And at least do that and move forward. | 1:58:12 | |
And I even had, there were people who I talked to | 1:58:14 | |
and I think some were lawyers. | 1:58:17 | |
I don't remember who they were exactly | 1:58:19 | |
We say we ought to just get on with this | 1:58:20 | |
and if the case has failed, they fails fine, | 1:58:23 | |
but at least we were moving forward | 1:58:26 | |
and other people say, we'd be better off to take | 1:58:28 | |
everybody back and just let them go | 1:58:30 | |
and try again on the battlefield or something. | 1:58:33 | |
But, it's just not, I think there's a | 1:58:35 | |
lot of frustration over that. | 1:58:38 | |
Not getting, not moving the cases forward. | 1:58:39 | |
Interviewer | This the people in Guantanamo saying | 1:58:41 |
what you just said? | 1:58:44 | |
- | Yes, Yeah there's people who in our, | 1:58:45 |
I mean I know I was frustrated. | 1:58:48 | |
I thought, if you know who you got | 1:58:49 | |
and you have something on them | 1:58:53 | |
then charge him with it and then there | 1:58:56 | |
I don't know what the fear was of that that's | 1:59:00 | |
that was my, I just didn't, I'm not a lawyer right | 1:59:02 | |
and I'm sure there were reasons for it | 1:59:05 | |
but I didn't understand that to just as whole people | 1:59:07 | |
and I know it was while the conflict still going on. | 1:59:10 | |
So then that always leads you back to, | 1:59:13 | |
well then they're like prisoners of war | 1:59:16 | |
if the war still going on, but that wasn't | 1:59:18 | |
you didn't call them that | 1:59:20 | |
you don't call them prisoners of war, | 1:59:21 | |
you call them detainees. | 1:59:23 | |
So it just seemed a bit that | 1:59:25 | |
the circle just didn't make sense to me. | 1:59:27 | |
Interviewer | Did you know that people claim they were | 1:59:31 |
sold to the Americans that a lot of them? | 1:59:35 | |
- | No, I didn't I did not know that no. | 1:59:38 |
Interviewer | You had never heard that. | 1:59:39 |
- | No not sold no. | 1:59:41 |
I mean I think I certainly heard it where people that | 1:59:44 | |
were brought to the, as prisoners | 1:59:48 | |
and I didn't hear about Pitt getting paid for that, but. | 1:59:51 | |
Interviewer | And if they've been militant tribunals | 1:59:55 |
would you've been involved in those in all. | 1:59:58 | |
- | No, well, I was involved in a sense that | 2:00:00 |
and we already did this was we built courtrooms. | 2:00:02 | |
We took an operations building that we had | 2:00:05 | |
on the Windward side | 2:00:08 | |
and put a lot of money into it, rehabilitated it | 2:00:10 | |
and I recall going into some detail with the planners to say | 2:00:13 | |
here's what the courtroom needs to look like. | 2:00:21 | |
This has to be this big seat, these many people. | 2:00:22 | |
and we did those things. | 2:00:25 | |
We built those things | 2:00:26 | |
and some of that was underway when I left | 2:00:27 | |
but the facilities were there to do those things | 2:00:30 | |
and again, it was because, well, we gotta get this | 2:00:33 | |
done because they're gonna start next week | 2:00:34 | |
and they never did. | 2:00:36 | |
And how many have there been to today? | 2:00:38 | |
Have there been any, I mean, a couple of trials. | 2:00:40 | |
Interviewer | Half a dozen. | 2:00:42 |
- | Yeah, very few. | 2:00:43 |
So there was a lot of facilities and put together | 2:00:44 | |
and a lot of people working on that | 2:00:48 | |
and it just, I guess military people want to get on with it. | 2:00:50 | |
Let's do something. | 2:00:56 | |
It's either get this mission done | 2:00:57 | |
or abandoned it one of the two? | 2:01:01 | |
So that was a frustration | 2:01:04 | |
and it, particularly when he hit me, | 2:01:05 | |
when I said this was when | 2:01:07 | |
I was gonna do the change of command | 2:01:09 | |
and they threw that out there again, | 2:01:10 | |
it was always the reason we couldn't do | 2:01:11 | |
something on the base. | 2:01:13 | |
Well, you don't want to do that | 2:01:14 | |
because we're gonna start tribunals next week. | 2:01:14 | |
It just didn't hold water after awhile | 2:01:18 | |
and that was up until I left | 2:01:20 | |
and I'm sure it went on for years after that. | 2:01:22 | |
Interviewer | Do you remember whose tribunal | 2:01:25 |
that was gonna be here? | 2:01:27 | |
- | No they never, it wasn't a name attached to it. | 2:01:29 |
It was just, the tribunals are gonna start and all that. | 2:01:31 | |
so but one I was frustrated with that being a reason, | 2:01:35 | |
always that there was we had to not do something on the base | 2:01:40 | |
and two I just thought we should do it get started. | 2:01:43 | |
Let 'em do it, if he got somebody else to do it, if not | 2:01:46 | |
and you got to let them go. | 2:01:48 | |
And that's just a layman view | 2:01:54 | |
but it seems to me it's, it's instinctively right. | 2:01:56 | |
it just makes sense. | 2:01:59 | |
Interviewer | Well, like you said, | 2:02:00 |
militaries do operations. | 2:02:01 | |
- | Right Yeah this just appeared to be going nowhere. | 2:02:03 |
And I mean, so I don't know | 2:02:07 | |
if they've resolved that or not at this point, | 2:02:13 | |
but I did want to make that point about that 'cause there | 2:02:14 | |
in the beginning, we actually did defer doing things | 2:02:17 | |
because of that reason | 2:02:20 | |
and but after a while, we began to just ignore it | 2:02:23 | |
because it's it wasn't credible anymore. | 2:02:25 | |
Interviewer | That's interesting. | 2:02:28 |
- | And the little community went back to kinda | 2:02:31 |
the way it was | 2:02:35 | |
and there are still people that are today that are working | 2:02:36 | |
running a base and running the port and the airfield | 2:02:38 | |
and doing all the logistics, | 2:02:41 | |
the real missions of the base, which continue today | 2:02:44 | |
besides supporting this particular Joint Task Force | 2:02:47 | |
or support the counter-drug operations | 2:02:49 | |
of coast guard is in their lot with, for refueling ships | 2:02:52 | |
and the contingency for mass migration still exists | 2:02:54 | |
and I know they've had to change | 2:02:59 | |
some of the locations for that, but it still exists there. | 2:03:02 | |
If there was another Haitian | 2:03:05 | |
or Cuban mass migration that contingency plan exists | 2:03:06 | |
for Gitmo and then a forward presence as we always say | 2:03:11 | |
and then the logistics just a base. | 2:03:15 | |
So those core missions have been the same for a long time. | 2:03:17 | |
This is just one added onto it. | 2:03:21 | |
Interviewer | That was really interesting 'cause | 2:03:23 |
just giving them background was really interesting. | 2:03:26 | |
- | Yeah, there's so much history at the base. | 2:03:28 |
I mean, it goes, it really is very interesting place | 2:03:30 | |
and the whole relationship with the Cubans | 2:03:33 | |
and if you give me two more minutes, I'll tell you that | 2:03:36 | |
and then I promise I'll quit. | 2:03:39 | |
But the even before the Joint Task Force | 2:03:41 | |
this relationship existed sanctioned by the state | 2:03:44 | |
department where the base commander met once a month, | 2:03:47 | |
third Fridays of the month with the Cuban | 2:03:50 | |
and in my case, it was a Brigadier general | 2:03:53 | |
from the Frontiera brigade or the Eastern army | 2:03:55 | |
and he had been a Castro guy | 2:04:01 | |
as a revolutionary in his twenties | 2:04:04 | |
and so he was not real inner circle | 2:04:06 | |
but that's how he got to be a general in the Cuban army. | 2:04:09 | |
And we were at the Northeast gate | 2:04:12 | |
which is that only connector | 2:04:13 | |
I talked about that to get through to the other side, | 2:04:15 | |
we would meet and we alternate one month | 2:04:19 | |
it was on our side next month other side | 2:04:22 | |
and we only walked a few steps on each side | 2:04:23 | |
but we actually walked out the gate and went there | 2:04:25 | |
and he came on our base always with inside of the gate | 2:04:27 | |
and I had a state department, Tom girth | 2:04:32 | |
the state department representative was always with us. | 2:04:34 | |
We had translators and we just talked about | 2:04:36 | |
we called them fence line issues, only things that no policy | 2:04:38 | |
from Washington or Havana, it was just local things. | 2:04:43 | |
Brush fires the channel the things we could deal with there | 2:04:45 | |
at one time, our we had a radio station on base | 2:04:50 | |
FM music radio station, and signal was | 2:04:54 | |
they were hearing it up at one time in a city | 2:04:57 | |
and he wanted us to cut back the signal. | 2:04:58 | |
So we did, we worked together on a company | 2:05:01 | |
good relationship like your neighbor to neighbor, | 2:05:03 | |
even though that they had minefields on their side | 2:05:05 | |
and we would sometimes have Cuban swim into the base | 2:05:09 | |
or get onto the base, somehow looking for refuge | 2:05:12 | |
and most of the time, the immigration | 2:05:14 | |
folks would review their case. | 2:05:17 | |
Most of the time they would just go back, but occasionally | 2:05:18 | |
they would get to stay | 2:05:21 | |
and they'd be repatriated somewhere else. | 2:05:23 | |
But all that kind of thing with the Cubans went real well | 2:05:24 | |
and even during | 2:05:28 | |
and after the Joint Task Force came same thing. | 2:05:29 | |
I mentioned that we met with him a special meeting. | 2:05:32 | |
We told them we were gonna put the camp there, | 2:05:34 | |
Of course they already knew. | 2:05:36 | |
And, and they were very, they said, fine. | 2:05:38 | |
we'll appreciate you telling us | 2:05:42 | |
and they never made any more comments about it | 2:05:44 | |
and that continues to today with these meetings | 2:05:46 | |
the general has retired there was a Colonel they meet with, | 2:05:48 | |
but very interesting aspect of being base commander | 2:05:51 | |
is this small slice of diplomacy that you get to do, | 2:05:54 | |
which I enjoyed very much. | 2:05:58 | |
Interviewer | I'm sure its interesting. | 2:05:59 |
- | Yeah, yeah. | 2:06:00 |
Interviewer | Well, I do wanna I thank you, | 2:06:02 |
Johnny needs to do | 2:06:04 | |
20 seconds of- | 2:06:05 | |
- | Okay. | |
a silent time where he just a room tone | 2:06:08 | |
where we just- | 2:06:10 | |
- | Okay. | |
Johnny | Begin room tone. | 2:06:12 |
End room tone. | 2:06:27 |
Item Info
The preservation of the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections and the Duke Digital Repository programs are supported in part by the Lowell and Eileen Aptman Digital Preservation Fund