Adams, John - Interview master file
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Honigsberg | Okay, good morning. | 0:05 |
- | Good morning, professor. | 0:07 |
Honigsberg | We are very grateful to you | 0:08 |
for participating in the witness to Guantanamo project, | 0:09 | |
we invite you to speak of your experiences and involvement | 0:14 | |
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, | 0:18 | |
and we are hoping to provide you with an opportunity | 0:20 | |
to tell you a story in your own words. | 0:23 | |
- | Thank you, professor Honigsberg, | 0:27 |
it's really a privilege to meet you | 0:28 | |
and to work with you on this project. | 0:30 | |
Honigsberg | Thank you, honored to have you here today. | 0:32 |
We are creating an archive of stories, | 0:36 | |
so that people in America and around the world | 0:38 | |
will have a better understanding of what you | 0:41 | |
and others have experienced and observed. | 0:44 | |
Future generations must know what happened at Guantanamo | 0:49 | |
and by telling your story you're contributing to history. | 0:53 | |
And if there's anything that you say | 0:57 | |
that you'd like us to remove let us know | 0:59 | |
and if you'd like to take a break at any time | 1:01 | |
let us know and we're happy to do that as well. | 1:04 | |
And we'd like to begin by just asking you | 1:07 | |
some personal questions, like your name, | 1:09 | |
and your hometown and your birth date and age, | 1:12 | |
maybe we can begin with | 1:14 | |
- | Sure. | 1:16 |
My name is John Adams, | 1:18 | |
my hometown is Tucson, Arizona, | 1:20 | |
I was born on July 15, 1954, and I'm currently 58 years old. | 1:23 | |
Honigsberg | And your marital status? | 1:30 |
- | I'm married. | 1:33 |
Honigsberg | And, oh, I'm sorry. | 1:34 |
- | No I'm happily. | 1:36 |
Honigsberg | Your education. | |
- | I'm sorry. | 1:39 |
Honigsberg | Your education. | 1:39 |
- | I am a PhD candidate at the school of government | 1:40 |
and public policy at the University of Arizona. | 1:44 | |
I have three master's degrees, | 1:46 | |
one in English from the University of Massachusetts, | 1:49 | |
one in international relations from Boston University, | 1:53 | |
and one in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College. | 1:57 | |
Honigsberg | And maybe you can just briefly tell us | 2:01 |
your previous occupation and your current occupation. | 2:02 | |
- | I served in the United States army on active duty | 2:06 |
from 1976, until 2007. | 2:09 | |
I retired as a Brigadier general in September, 2007. | 2:13 | |
Honigsberg | And You currently. | 2:18 |
- | Currently I am a PhD candidate | 2:19 |
which is an occupation in and of itself, | 2:22 | |
but I also run a consulting business | 2:25 | |
for national security and defense related issues. | 2:28 | |
Honigsberg | And did you say where you live probably? | 2:34 |
- | I live in Tucson, Arizona. | 2:35 |
So I think you asked where is my hometown? | 2:37 | |
Honigsberg | Yes. | 2:40 |
- | I immediately thought, well, I live in Tucson, Arizona, | 2:41 |
but I was born in Washington DC. | 2:44 | |
Honigsberg | Thank you. | 2:47 |
Okay well, we'd like to begin | 2:48 | |
with when you joined the military | 2:50 | |
and why did you join the military? | 2:53 | |
Just a little background there. | 2:54 | |
- | Sure. | 2:55 |
Well, I joined the military in December, 1976, | 2:56 | |
I was a student in fact I have a bachelor's | 3:01 | |
in economics from the North Carolina State University | 3:05 | |
and while I was at the university | 3:08 | |
I was in the reserve officer training Corps program | 3:10 | |
and was commissioned as a second Lieutenant the same day | 3:13 | |
as I graduated from college. | 3:15 | |
I had always wanted to join the military | 3:19 | |
I think because and there was a couple of reasons one, | 3:21 | |
my dad was in the military during world war II. | 3:25 | |
He worked in the defense department after that. | 3:28 | |
And so it I saw working for the defense department | 3:32 | |
and being in the military as an honorable profession, | 3:37 | |
and still do of course, but it was something | 3:40 | |
that I grew up with and felt comfortable | 3:43 | |
in fact, I thought I believed then and still do | 3:46 | |
that it was a privilege to serve our country | 3:49 | |
and serve our constitution. | 3:52 | |
Honigsberg | Just briefly could you give us | 3:55 |
a little background as to what work you did | 3:56 | |
between 1976 and say the year 2001? | 3:59 | |
- | Sure. | 4:03 |
I began as most newly commissioned officers do, | 4:05 | |
as a second Lieutenant, | 4:09 | |
I was commissioned in the military intelligence Corps, | 4:11 | |
my first assignments though were in the field artillery | 4:14 | |
as a second Lieutenant. | 4:18 | |
I then after a couple of years | 4:20 | |
I went to army flight school where I flew helicopters | 4:22 | |
and also flew fixed wing aircraft, | 4:25 | |
for several years up until the mid 1980s. | 4:29 | |
And then I went, I was sent back | 4:33 | |
to military intelligence jobs | 4:36 | |
when I was assigned to NATO headquarters | 4:38 | |
in Brussels in 1983, | 4:41 | |
I was there for three years as a very junior officer | 4:44 | |
at this very high level headquarters | 4:48 | |
but it was a real education. | 4:50 | |
And I was there again for three years, | 4:52 | |
working at NATO headquarters and made my share of coffee, | 4:54 | |
but, I also had the chance to learn from and observe | 4:58 | |
senior leaders who were working | 5:03 | |
at a very different, higher level of responsibility | 5:05 | |
than I could I'd ever seen before. | 5:07 | |
And then I went to West Point to teach English | 5:10 | |
after earning a master's degree in English | 5:14 | |
at University of Massachusetts. | 5:18 | |
I taught English at West Point for a bit over two years, | 5:20 | |
and in 1991, I went to Desert Storm, | 5:25 | |
worked in battle damage assessment and targeting, | 5:30 | |
in CENTCOM headquarters there, | 5:34 | |
and then after that experience in Desert Storm, | 5:37 | |
I went to, an infantry division in Germany for three years, | 5:40 | |
in intelligence, military intelligence assignments, | 5:45 | |
tactical military intelligence. | 5:47 | |
And when I finished that in 1994, | 5:49 | |
I became what the army refers to as a foreign area officer. | 5:52 | |
These are officers who are trained in language, | 5:56 | |
culture and regional experience | 5:59 | |
to serve in assignments that require working | 6:03 | |
with other countries, either in, | 6:06 | |
from a standpoint of being an advisor | 6:10 | |
to army units or from the standpoint | 6:12 | |
of being in political military organizations | 6:15 | |
as advisors or staff officers. | 6:19 | |
In my case, I became an attache, | 6:24 | |
which is a little bit more specialized | 6:27 | |
in the sense that you don't work in an army organization, | 6:29 | |
you actually work in an embassy. | 6:32 | |
And so I was assigned as a foreign area officer | 6:34 | |
as an attache in Belgium, in Croatia, | 6:37 | |
and in Korea over the course of the next decade. | 6:43 | |
In between my assignment in Croatia, | 6:48 | |
and I have to say I was also temporary duty in Rwanda | 6:51 | |
in 1996 to, augment the U.S. embassy there in Rwanda. | 6:55 | |
And that proved pretty stressful time. | 7:01 | |
I had an assignment between my time in Croatia and in Korea | 7:05 | |
in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, | 7:10 | |
and that was in 2001, September 11th, 2001. | 7:12 | |
I was assigned to the Office of the Secretary of Defense | 7:16 | |
in the Pentagon on that day. | 7:18 | |
Honigsberg | Well, I'll ask you about that in a moment, | 7:21 |
I just want to know what languages were you trained in? | 7:22 | |
Do you speak other languages besides English? | 7:25 | |
- | Yes, although I have to say I would be arrogant to say | 7:28 |
that my language skills are, are very good, | 7:32 | |
but no, I can get by pretty well | 7:35 | |
in French Dutch, German and Croatian. | 7:38 | |
Honigsberg | And were you trained in the cultures | 7:41 |
of these nations that you served in as well? | 7:43 | |
Did you have any actual training? | 7:46 | |
- | I had school in Croatian language | 7:49 |
and it was a lot of cultural training as well, | 7:53 | |
prior to my assignment and in Croatia in 1998. | 7:58 | |
And, I think there's a certain amount of cultural background | 8:03 | |
that you get from living in a country, | 8:06 | |
so I had, I had lived in Belgium for, | 8:09 | |
but, I'd already lived there for three years | 8:13 | |
by the time I became an attache at our embassy in Brussels, | 8:16 | |
when I was assigned to NATO headquarters, | 8:20 | |
and lived in Belgium. | 8:22 | |
And so, you know, I'd learned, I spoke the language | 8:25 | |
French, and Dutch. | 8:27 | |
I was able to get by pretty well, and that helped a lot. | 8:30 | |
And then just being, living in the, in Western Europe | 8:33 | |
I mean, I was what is called a European foreign area officer | 8:37 | |
and someone who lives in Europe and has taken courses | 8:43 | |
in language, or has learned a language from in other ways | 8:47 | |
or has an advanced degree in this case | 8:50 | |
in international relations really helped a lot | 8:53 | |
to bridge that cultural gap | 8:57 | |
between being an American guy from, you know, | 8:59 | |
Maryland, Washington DC area, | 9:03 | |
and somebody who has to live work and, | 9:05 | |
really to understand the people and the organizations | 9:08 | |
and the way of life in Western Europe. | 9:13 | |
Honigsberg | And just really briefly, | 9:17 |
how long were you in Rwanda when you were there? | 9:19 | |
- | I was there for a month. | 9:22 |
Honigsberg | Okay. | 9:23 |
- | So a brief period of time. | 9:24 |
Honigsberg | Can you tell us how it was for you at 9/11, | 9:27 |
exactly where you were and how you reacted | 9:30 | |
or what was the reaction around you. | 9:33 | |
- | Sure. | 9:35 |
Well, it was a bad day for everybody. | 9:37 | |
And I think the further away, or the further you get, | 9:42 | |
or the closer you get to, you know, the, | 9:44 | |
in this case the crash site at the Pentagon | 9:47 | |
or to ground zero in New York, | 9:49 | |
the more intense and the more traumatic the experience, | 9:52 | |
and I take nothing away | 9:55 | |
from people that have family there at all, | 9:56 | |
'cause it's obviously massively traumatic for them as well. | 9:58 | |
But I was about 100 meters away from the crash site | 10:02 | |
where the plane actually entered the building. | 10:08 | |
My, you know, I know no one from my office | 10:11 | |
was killed or injured, thank God, | 10:15 | |
but there were roughly 120 of our brothers and sisters | 10:19 | |
who were some of whom I knew. | 10:24 | |
And, you know, I just, you know, describe the scene briefly. | 10:28 | |
It was, you know, just a few minutes before nine, | 10:33 | |
and some of us, I was the deputy director of European policy | 10:36 | |
in the Office of Secretary of Defense, | 10:40 | |
and we, a number of us would watch split-screen CNN, | 10:42 | |
or I don't know maybe other people | 10:47 | |
were watching other things, but usually it was CNN, | 10:48 | |
and CNN was on shortly before nine o'clock, | 10:51 | |
and I distinctly remember one of our, my office colleagues, | 10:54 | |
an air force Colonel in this case said, | 11:00 | |
"Whoa, some plane just hit, you know | 11:03 | |
one of the World Trade Center towers." | 11:06 | |
Well, that's remarkable under any circumstances | 11:08 | |
but then as soon as some of us came in to join him | 11:11 | |
watching the scene, another plane hit the building | 11:14 | |
and it was much clearer that this was not a Cessna | 11:17 | |
from the local airport, that it was a jetliner, | 11:22 | |
and so it was pretty clear to everybody at that point | 11:26 | |
this was not, it's not one, not a coincidence | 11:29 | |
and two it's a tragedy of massive scale. | 11:32 | |
So, it was disturbing to say the least. | 11:35 | |
The leadership in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, | 11:39 | |
and this is about at nine o'clock, | 11:43 | |
my boss, who was the deputy assistant secretary | 11:46 | |
for Europe and NATO was in a meeting with his boss, | 11:49 | |
or in this case, her boss who was the assistant secretary | 11:54 | |
of defense, or one of the assistant secretaries of defense, | 11:58 | |
and that meeting would normally last 10 or 15 minutes | 12:01 | |
from nine to 9:10 or 9:15. | 12:04 | |
Well, it didn't, it lasted another five or so, | 12:06 | |
because there was this huge problem | 12:08 | |
that although that office could not do much about it, | 12:10 | |
it certainly sparked a great deal of discussion | 12:15 | |
about what is going on and what should we do. | 12:17 | |
And so in this case, my, she, my boss | 12:20 | |
the deputy assistant secretary-- | 12:24 | |
Honigsberg | What's her name? | 12:25 |
Can you tells us her name. | 12:26 | |
- | Lisa Bronson and as I mentioned her name | 12:27 |
I will mention her with great respect | 12:30 | |
because she was an excellent leader that day, | 12:32 | |
she did, I mean, really I was proud to work | 12:36 | |
with and for her, on that day and days after, | 12:40 | |
because of her leadership skills and because of her, | 12:44 | |
really her devotion to not only taking care of our country | 12:47 | |
but taking care of the people that she worked with. | 12:51 | |
She was, she's really a hero. | 12:54 | |
And she's one of the most, | 12:56 | |
and I think her comportment that day was remarkable, | 12:58 | |
and I'll get to that in just a second. | 13:02 | |
But she came back from the meeting with her boss | 13:04 | |
the assistant Secretary of Defense, | 13:06 | |
and it was clear we had a problem, | 13:08 | |
but we'd only started our meeting | 13:10 | |
which our meeting was supposed to, | 13:12 | |
and I think start at 9:20, | 13:13 | |
and it was just a few minutes later, | 13:15 | |
and there was an army major general | 13:16 | |
who was her deputy there, | 13:19 | |
and he was an air defense officer, | 13:21 | |
very astute gentlemen in all situations, | 13:23 | |
but he said, "We should get some fighter combat air patrol | 13:27 | |
up over the Pentagon." | 13:30 | |
Which good idea, unfortunately, less than a minute later, | 13:32 | |
things don't happen from that quickly, | 13:36 | |
and probably there were others astute as he, | 13:39 | |
who were thinking the same thing, | 13:42 | |
clearly there were, we know from history | 13:44 | |
that that's what happened, | 13:45 | |
but, it was there wasn't fighter combat air patrol | 13:46 | |
of the Pentagon and the plane hit the building. | 13:50 | |
So for us, it was already a great deal | 13:53 | |
of wondering what's going on, | 13:57 | |
but then the term, the thoughts turned to how are the people | 14:00 | |
with whom we work? | 14:03 | |
Because it was a loud explosion | 14:05 | |
that we didn't have any damage to our office, | 14:07 | |
but it was clear as soon as we left the room | 14:10 | |
and went into the hallway that there had been a fire | 14:14 | |
and explosion and it was ongoing. | 14:17 | |
So-- | 14:19 | |
Honigsberg | You know it was a plane at that time? | 14:20 |
- | No, I didn't. | 14:21 |
I think we surmised that it might be | 14:23 | |
if only because we'd seen the two planes | 14:26 | |
hit the World Trade Center, | 14:28 | |
but it was, we didn't at the time know that it was a plane. | 14:31 | |
I think a lot of us thought it was probably a plane, | 14:34 | |
but we didn't know, we didn't know | 14:36 | |
when we got outside though. | 14:38 | |
We went outside and we formed, | 14:39 | |
the military officers, not just officers, | 14:44 | |
but I mean everybody who was there in uniform, military, | 14:48 | |
formed, and at least to me as an army Colonel, | 14:52 | |
so, I mean, there's a whole pair number of army colonels | 14:57 | |
who were assigned to the Pentagon at any one time, | 15:00 | |
to me as an army Colonel, it was almost, | 15:05 | |
I mean we didn't have somebody barking orders | 15:08 | |
to anybody at that point. | 15:10 | |
We, sort of, and I think it was more a question of, | 15:13 | |
there are people in the building, | 15:17 | |
we need to get in there and help them. | 15:19 | |
We need to go in and try to organize ourselves | 15:21 | |
to evacuate casualties | 15:24 | |
and, you know, at least begin first aid of some sort, | 15:27 | |
'cause it was clear that there was a crash | 15:30 | |
at the side of the building. | 15:32 | |
We could see parts of the plane around. | 15:33 | |
So at that time at that point we knew it was an aircraft. | 15:37 | |
But, and we formed into four-man teams and we'd lined up, | 15:39 | |
which I was, you know, in retrospect | 15:43 | |
I'm glad we got to that level of organization, | 15:46 | |
but it wasn't very long after that, | 15:50 | |
and this all happens in about 15 minutes. | 15:51 | |
So we're not talking about a long period of time. | 15:54 | |
The, side of the building literally collapsed. | 15:57 | |
So there was a hole in the building, | 16:00 | |
when we first went out there was a hole in the building | 16:01 | |
where the aircraft went through the side of the building, | 16:03 | |
and the first couple of floors, | 16:06 | |
the first two or three floors were gone, | 16:08 | |
but there was a sort of an archway, | 16:09 | |
so the top floors were not gone, | 16:13 | |
the plane went in and made a big hole, | 16:15 | |
and there was a fire and explosion, | 16:17 | |
but the real fire and the real explosion | 16:20 | |
and the much larger one took place about 15 | 16:22 | |
to 20 minutes after the initial crash. | 16:24 | |
And that dropped the side of the building. | 16:27 | |
So as you may have seen from pictures, | 16:30 | |
you know there're picture taken immediately after the crash, | 16:34 | |
then you'll see this hole, | 16:36 | |
and if you see a picture taken later, | 16:38 | |
there's really almost a cut in the side of the building. | 16:41 | |
And it got larger because there was more fire | 16:44 | |
more destruction and so forth. | 16:46 | |
So, some people would went in, but not too many. | 16:48 | |
And, then, and so we stopped going in, | 16:53 | |
but we did spend the rest of the day, | 16:56 | |
there was probably, you know, several 100 to 1000 | 16:59 | |
or so military who stayed until roughly four or 4:30 | 17:03 | |
that afternoon, so about six hours I guess, | 17:08 | |
just making IV bottles. | 17:11 | |
I mean, rescue squads | 17:14 | |
from all over the Northern Virginia area in DC | 17:16 | |
came to provide the, you know | 17:18 | |
the initial response to a mass casualty. | 17:20 | |
And so we set up cots and set up IV bottles | 17:24 | |
and treated the casualties as they were available to, | 17:29 | |
as we could get them out of the building. | 17:34 | |
I didn't go into the building, | 17:36 | |
I had, you know, I just didn't go in, | 17:37 | |
I mean, it was, again, we were lined up | 17:40 | |
and there was a huge fire after about 20 minutes, | 17:41 | |
but it was a very disturbing day. | 17:44 | |
But we, stayed there till again about four, 4:30, | 17:49 | |
and, then the battalion that was a stationed there, | 17:53 | |
the old guard, which is the same soldiers | 17:58 | |
who guard, a team of the (indistinct) soldier | 18:03 | |
is an army infantry unit, | 18:07 | |
and they arrived on the scene around three 3:30 as a unit, | 18:10 | |
and then they took our places and we left. | 18:15 | |
Honigsberg | Well, was anyone thinking about what reaction | 18:20 |
the U.S. should take at that time, | 18:23 | |
or people were just thinking of saving lives? | 18:24 | |
- | You know, it's hard to know, | 18:28 |
I think most of us were just thinking | 18:31 | |
about saving lives at that point. | 18:34 | |
I mean, there was people, we were angry, absolutely. | 18:36 | |
Honigsberg | Did you know or you didn't. | 18:40 |
- | I didn't know. | 18:41 |
Honigsberg | You were just angry. | 18:42 |
- | No, we didn't know, we were angry that somebody would-- | 18:43 |
Honigsberg | Were you afraid too? | 18:44 |
You think were people afraid? | 18:46 | |
- | Yeah, absolutely. | 18:47 |
I mean I remember thinking this maybe is, | 18:48 | |
this is maybe it for me, who knows? | 18:51 | |
It might be. | 18:53 | |
Honigsberg | You are expecting another plane | 18:55 |
going into the Pentagon? | 18:57 | |
- | I didn't, but I, but the reason, | 18:58 |
but that didn't say it does, | 19:01 | |
but that's an interesting question in the sense that, | 19:02 | |
you know, for, for the rest of the afternoon, | 19:04 | |
there were F-16s flying low over the building. | 19:07 | |
And it was interesting I mean, especially in retrospect | 19:13 | |
at the time it wasn't interesting, it was disturbing, | 19:17 | |
but in retrospect of what would happen, | 19:20 | |
I mean, again you've got maybe 1000 | 19:23 | |
or more people outside at a certain level of organization. | 19:25 | |
And I have to say the other, | 19:30 | |
I wanna talk about Lisa Bronson since we mentioned her, | 19:32 | |
I wanna give honor to her, | 19:34 | |
but let me talk about some other group of people | 19:36 | |
that really deserves a great deal of respect and credit | 19:39 | |
for how they behaved and how they comported | 19:42 | |
themselves that day. | 19:43 | |
Were the paramedics from the various | 19:45 | |
first responder units and civilians, | 19:48 | |
but working for fire departments and rescue squads | 19:51 | |
who came in from, you know, wherever, | 19:53 | |
Northern Virginia, Maryland, DC, to help out | 19:57 | |
because of who they are. | 20:01 | |
And they were fantastic, | 20:03 | |
because all of us have some | 20:06 | |
rudimentary knowledge of first aid, | 20:07 | |
I mean, we can do first aid and combat lifesaving | 20:09 | |
and things like that, that we're all trained to do, | 20:13 | |
but I mean, we don't have the skill sets | 20:15 | |
to really organize a mass casualty scenario. | 20:19 | |
And, but these guys did, and they took charge. | 20:23 | |
And it wasn't a question of rank. | 20:28 | |
There were privates there, and there were, | 20:32 | |
I remember seeing a good friend of mine | 20:34 | |
who was a Lieutenant general | 20:36 | |
that I'd worked for at one point, and he showed up. | 20:37 | |
And I don't think he was assigned in the Pentagon, | 20:40 | |
but he came there because he knew | 20:42 | |
that that's where his duty station needed to be. | 20:44 | |
And we're all doing the same thing. | 20:47 | |
And the guys we were listening to, were the paramedics | 20:48 | |
who spoke with authority and competence | 20:52 | |
about how to organize, | 20:55 | |
to handle taking care of the casualties | 20:57 | |
and behaving in a way that would facilitate | 20:59 | |
getting professionals in there to do what they do, | 21:03 | |
put the fire out, identifying and evacuate the casualties, | 21:07 | |
and then treat them and get them to the hospital. | 21:11 | |
So we were just trying to be helpful. | 21:13 | |
I don't think it was a, from my perspective, | 21:16 | |
we would, we were thinking about the guys | 21:20 | |
who were hurt that day. | 21:23 | |
We were also thinking about our families, you know? | 21:25 | |
I mean-- | 21:27 | |
Honigsberg | Did you call home? | 21:28 |
- | I tried, but we, the phones weren't working that day, | 21:30 |
the cell phones just didn't work. | 21:34 | |
They were, I mean, it was a couple of hours | 21:36 | |
before I got through. | 21:39 | |
You know, at first couple of times | 21:43 | |
you're like, "No, okay, it's not working," | 21:44 | |
and everyone else has got the same problem, | 21:45 | |
so you don't spend a lot of time doing that. | 21:47 | |
But I mean, it was a matter of hit or miss, | 21:49 | |
and I think after three, four hours, there was enough, | 21:51 | |
I don't know if the word is bandwidth | 21:54 | |
but enough telecommunications space | 21:56 | |
for us to actually get through, | 22:00 | |
and we had, I had a conversation with my wife | 22:01 | |
and that was a very important conversation. | 22:04 | |
My kids, well, let me get back if may, | 22:08 | |
you asked about the aircraft. | 22:11 | |
We, F-16s would be flying over and I'm not kidding, | 22:13 | |
it was really a mass movement away from the building | 22:16 | |
when the F-16s would come in. | 22:21 | |
Because I think it was, you know, we're all adults | 22:23 | |
and you know, we're also human adults, | 22:26 | |
and we'd already seen one aircraft or felt one aircraft, | 22:30 | |
and we could see the results | 22:33 | |
of one aircraft flying in the building, | 22:34 | |
we didn't know what, whether it was an F-16, | 22:36 | |
or there's another aircraft, you know, | 22:38 | |
who knows who this is? | 22:40 | |
People would literally run away from the building. | 22:41 | |
So it was every time a big airplane would come, | 22:44 | |
or an airplane, we go, "Okay, let's get away from this," | 22:46 | |
who knows what's gonna happen next? | 22:48 | |
And we were really, it was really a movement | 22:50 | |
back and forth across the lawn, outside the Pentagon. | 22:52 | |
Very interesting. | 22:55 | |
But I was gonna say, and I don't know, | 22:56 | |
do you want me to continue to talk about this? | 22:59 | |
Honigsberg | Well, what else, what we're gonna say? | 23:01 |
- | I was gonna say about my kids, | 23:02 |
I was really proud of my daughters. | 23:04 | |
My oldest daughter was in, they were both in school, | 23:10 | |
and to be in Northern Virginia is a lot of kids | 23:13 | |
who have come from military families, | 23:16 | |
and so the fact that you'd have a mother or father | 23:17 | |
who worked at the Pentagon is not unusual, you know, a lot, | 23:21 | |
but I remember and this is what my daughter told me, | 23:25 | |
but knowing her I can totally see her doing this. | 23:28 | |
She's strong. | 23:31 | |
And, the teacher told the kids, | 23:33 | |
"Ah, there's been a an accident that Pentagon, | 23:36 | |
so stay right here." | 23:39 | |
And she said, "No, I'm gonna go home." | 23:42 | |
And I thought when I heard that story | 23:46 | |
I was like, "That"-- | 23:48 | |
Honigsberg | How old was she? | 23:49 |
- | Let's see, she would have been 15, strong girl. | 23:51 |
She didn't, and the rest of the kids | 23:56 | |
said the same thing when they heard her say that, | 23:58 | |
they were like, "okay, Joel has, we're going home too." | 24:00 | |
But, she, her first thought was, "I gotta get home to mom, | 24:03 | |
and I get home to dad." | 24:07 | |
I'm sorry. | 24:09 | |
Honigsberg | It's okay. | 24:10 |
- | But yeah, real proud of her. | 24:11 |
Honigsberg | Well, can you tell us | 24:15 |
what happened that evening or the next day, | 24:17 | |
you must have been called to, | 24:19 | |
do you wanna take a break? | 24:21 | |
Are you okay? | 24:22 | |
- | I'm okay. | 24:23 |
Honigsberg | As to, you must have been called | 24:24 |
to do something more than saving lives, you know | 24:26 | |
with your position and your knowledge and skillset. | 24:30 | |
- | Well, the first thing we did is we got back to work | 24:34 |
the next day. | 24:37 | |
Honigsberg | In the pentagon? | 24:39 |
- | Yeah, we did. | 24:40 |
I mean, and this is again, let me get back to Lisa Bronson. | 24:41 | |
I mean, one of her first things was, | 24:44 | |
"You know we need to be strong, | 24:46 | |
we need to come back to work, | 24:47 | |
we need to get busy with what we need to do, | 24:48 | |
'cause our mission was to, | 24:50 | |
we had both the multilateral relationship with NATO | 24:52 | |
which was huge, and as you may remember, | 24:56 | |
the next day NATO declared | 24:58 | |
that an attack on the United States is attack on whole NATO | 25:00 | |
which is the first time they ever did that, | 25:03 | |
I mean, it's the core of the North Atlantic treaty | 25:04 | |
is the attack on one is attack on all. | 25:06 | |
And, it was reassuring certainly to me, | 25:08 | |
as somebody who had worked at NATO and felt strongly | 25:12 | |
that the Alliance was a good thing | 25:15 | |
that in fact it lived up to that core | 25:16 | |
of its own ethics, so to speak, but they did, | 25:20 | |
and, but our job, it was not only the, | 25:24 | |
the job of relating to our European allies | 25:28 | |
to North Atlantic treaty organization | 25:30 | |
but also the bilateral relationship. | 25:32 | |
So the challenge really from that point on, | 25:34 | |
for the next months was to focus on, | 25:38 | |
what can we do to harness this sense of unity | 25:44 | |
among our Alliance, and also the sense of, | 25:50 | |
the bond between us and our bilateral European allies, | 25:53 | |
to appropriately respond | 25:58 | |
to this attack on the United States. | 26:00 | |
Honigsberg | At hat time, that morning, | 26:02 |
did you know that Al Qaeda was involved? | 26:04 | |
- | No, no. | 26:08 |
I think that came out only in the next few days. | 26:09 | |
My recollection is, and there may have been others | 26:12 | |
who were more astute than me, | 26:14 | |
but I mean, I was pretty much in the loop | 26:16 | |
so I suspect that it was, it did take a few, | 26:19 | |
it took some time before it was clear who was responsible. | 26:21 | |
But if I recall it was a matter of days | 26:27 | |
before it was crystal clear that Al Qaeda | 26:30 | |
was responsible for the attack. | 26:34 | |
Honigsberg | And did the Secretary of Defense | 26:36 |
or anyone from his office come through | 26:39 | |
to talk to your office about policy | 26:42 | |
or what you might be doing going forward? | 26:45 | |
- | Not directly, but I know in the case of my boss, | 26:48 |
the deputy assistant secretary for defense, | 26:54 | |
I mean she had clear guidance from Secretary Rumsfeld | 26:56 | |
in this case to work closely with NATO, | 27:00 | |
and with our bilateral European allies | 27:03 | |
to harness, not only the Goodwill, | 27:06 | |
but frankly the real capabilities that our European allies | 27:09 | |
both multilaterally and bilaterally have, | 27:13 | |
for the common objective of, | 27:16 | |
"How do we approach or how do we address this attack? | 27:22 | |
Who did it, let's let's attack them, let's eliminate them, | 27:29 | |
and let's do we can to try to prevent any further attacks," | 27:34 | |
I mean, that was really the objective. | 27:37 | |
So, not with me personally, | 27:38 | |
but I know I have absolutely no doubt | 27:41 | |
that she had, she Lisa Bronson had a personal contact | 27:43 | |
with the secretary almost immediately. | 27:47 | |
In fact, again, to her credit, | 27:50 | |
and not everyone did what she did, | 27:53 | |
but because she was very competent and because she had, | 27:55 | |
she was a good leader, | 27:58 | |
she was one of the senior officials in the Pentagon | 28:00 | |
in the days, following who really stood on duty | 28:03 | |
almost 24 seven, and she really worked hard, | 28:09 | |
and we could tell it was her, | 28:11 | |
and that meant a lot to us. | 28:14 | |
I mean, here's someone who really cares, | 28:15 | |
and someone who again cares about the United States | 28:19 | |
but also cares about the people she works with. | 28:22 | |
It was inspirational. | 28:24 | |
Honigsberg | So as time went on, | 28:26 |
and since this project is about Guantanamo, | 28:27 | |
did you hear about Guantanamo early on | 28:30 | |
while you were working, | 28:33 | |
I assume you were still in the Pentagon, | 28:35 | |
did that word go through, | 28:37 | |
it would not have gone through your office. | 28:38 | |
- | No, we didn't handle a Guantanamo per se, | 28:41 |
but because there were many European nationals | 28:46 | |
who found themselves detained in Guantanamo, | 28:49 | |
we got involved in the bilateral issues | 28:55 | |
between France and Spain and the U.K., | 28:58 | |
because they all had nationals at Guantanamo. | 29:04 | |
Honigsberg | Can you explain how, what that means, | 29:07 |
how you got involved. | 29:10 | |
- | Well our, each of our office was organized | 29:11 |
so that, again, my, I was the deputy director | 29:14 | |
of European policy, so that the officers | 29:16 | |
and civilians who worked in my office, | 29:19 | |
each of them were responsible for one or more, | 29:21 | |
European countries, bilateral defense relationships. | 29:25 | |
So, and you know, let's imagine that Spain for example, | 29:29 | |
we had an officer or a civilian, | 29:35 | |
I think it was actually a Navy captain | 29:37 | |
who had responsibility for Spain, | 29:39 | |
but in any case, his portfolio was to work | 29:41 | |
on all aspects of the bilateral defense relationship. | 29:49 | |
And where we had, Spanish nationals in Guantanamo, | 29:52 | |
he would be the point of contact for the Spanish embassy | 30:00 | |
to talk to the Office of the Secretary of Defense | 30:06 | |
about Guantanamo issues. | 30:09 | |
So those issues would cross his desk. | 30:10 | |
Same with the UK, same with France, | 30:14 | |
same with other European countries | 30:18 | |
that happened to have nationals detained at Guantanamo. | 30:20 | |
So, that was our involvement. | 30:23 | |
And it was in, although it wasn't a matter of, you know | 30:26 | |
there was no sense of, that officer | 30:30 | |
or our office supervising the detainee | 30:32 | |
in Guantanamo, those were military corrections officers | 30:37 | |
who were actually doing the work at Guantanamo itself, | 30:43 | |
but in terms of the of handling the various issues | 30:47 | |
that would come up between the embassy, | 30:50 | |
that had an interest in their national in Guantanamo, | 30:53 | |
they would be, our office and that particular officer | 30:57 | |
who had that country's portfolio | 31:01 | |
would be the one to handle those relationships. | 31:02 | |
Honigsberg | What would be an issue that would come up? | 31:05 |
- | Access primarily. | 31:07 |
Ability to check on the welfare, | 31:10 | |
the ability to visit and talk, just like-- | 31:12 | |
Honigsberg | And your office would set that up. | 31:15 |
- | We, we would definitely set that up. | 31:16 |
We would be the ones to coordinate that access. | 31:19 | |
Honigsberg | And in that process, did you ever hear, | 31:22 |
or did any of the men and women who were involved | 31:25 | |
in that hear of complaints that maybe some of these men | 31:27 | |
had been mistreated? | 31:31 | |
Is that, did that come up in these conversations? | 31:32 | |
- | You know what I heard, and I'll only say | 31:35 |
what I know was that, | 31:39 | |
that it was difficult to gain access, | 31:41 | |
or that in the case of the country involved, | 31:46 | |
and I wish I could give you specific examples, | 31:49 | |
but I remember clearly discussions | 31:52 | |
of the difficulty to gain access. | 31:54 | |
There were some countries who had trouble | 31:57 | |
or their perspective was that, | 32:00 | |
the process of gaining access to their nationals | 32:03 | |
was burdensome. | 32:06 | |
And, so they felt as if they were being, | 32:08 | |
themselves there was a hindrance to the kind of access | 32:15 | |
that they thought they needed to do | 32:19 | |
to get in order to check on the welfare of their nationals. | 32:21 | |
Which, you know, I think history has told us | 32:25 | |
that, that in fact happened. | 32:28 | |
Some of that is just pure bureaucracy. | 32:30 | |
And, so, but if you, if you are concerned | 32:34 | |
about your citizen, and you can't get access, | 32:38 | |
it's not important to you why, | 32:41 | |
you just realized that the person to whom | 32:44 | |
you would like to, not just talk to, | 32:46 | |
but again the whole objective is to verify | 32:48 | |
the health and the welfare of the national. | 32:51 | |
And the more you hear about the fact that the national | 32:55 | |
is there with no charges, | 32:58 | |
the more you hear about the fact that the nationals there | 33:00 | |
on a period of undefined period of time, | 33:04 | |
the more concerned you become, | 33:09 | |
and I can appreciate that. | 33:11 | |
And I think that was the real sense of, | 33:12 | |
yeah, the bureau, whether it's bureaucracy | 33:16 | |
or intentionally trying to hinder access, | 33:19 | |
the result is the same in terms of your concern | 33:22 | |
about your citizens. | 33:24 | |
Honigsberg | Well could you describe if the liaison | 33:26 |
was trying to smooth the waters between | 33:29 | |
the nation that is interested | 33:31 | |
like Spain as you use before and access, | 33:35 | |
what would the liaison do, | 33:38 | |
would he go up the chain of command to try to get access | 33:40 | |
and be pushed back? | 33:43 | |
- | Well, there was, you know there are different levels | 33:45 |
of course of complaint, | 33:48 | |
if let's say, I mean, just take a-- | 33:51 | |
Honigsberg | Yeah. | 33:53 |
- | I wanna use, I say the word hypothetical, | 33:54 |
but, again I don't have the records, | 33:55 | |
but what I remember is that there were instances | 33:59 | |
where it was clear that one of the, | 34:02 | |
one or more of the European countries | 34:07 | |
was concerned that they didn't have the level of access | 34:09 | |
that they felt comfortable with. | 34:12 | |
And so it would become elevated beyond our office, | 34:14 | |
because we were at the entry level for the embassy, | 34:19 | |
one of the embassy, let's say the political officer | 34:22 | |
from the European embassy would contact, | 34:25 | |
or the defense attache, or somebody from the embassy | 34:28 | |
who related with the Office of the Secretary of Defense | 34:32 | |
would contact our office, | 34:34 | |
and if we, they didn't get the satisfaction that they wanted | 34:36 | |
if they were unsuccessful in gaining access, | 34:39 | |
or arranging a visit, then it would be elevated | 34:42 | |
to another level up to, you know, | 34:45 | |
I don't recall any specific conversation with the secretary, | 34:48 | |
but of course that could have happened. | 34:52 | |
Honigsberg | But you didn't have, | 34:55 |
or your office didn't have authority to provide access. | 34:56 | |
- | No, we had to try to arrange it. | 34:59 |
Our, job was to facilitate, | 35:02 | |
our job was to facilitate it as to the extent | 35:04 | |
that we had guidance to facilitate it. | 35:09 | |
And I, my sense, and I, again, this is only my sense, | 35:12 | |
my sense is that there was not a great deal of interest | 35:17 | |
in facilitating access, if only because | 35:20 | |
there were other things that we wanted to do. | 35:25 | |
And that's, I think from a standpoint | 35:27 | |
of gathering intelligence and isolating the prisoner, | 35:30 | |
bureaucracy would tend to be something | 35:35 | |
that we would like to have to make it more difficult | 35:37 | |
for others outsiders to gain that. | 35:42 | |
Honigsberg | What time period are we talking about? | 35:46 |
Are we talking about early 2002 or later? | 35:48 | |
- | Well you know the time period | 35:52 |
that I'm thinking of is early 2002, | 35:53 | |
when it really reached a head about that period. | 35:56 | |
Honigsberg | And what were you thinking during that time, | 35:59 |
the way you described it, you must use, | 36:02 | |
you've seen this blocking of access essentially | 36:05 | |
or this pushback on access, | 36:07 | |
did you have any thoughts about what might be going on, | 36:10 | |
or did you think that was probably a good idea | 36:12 | |
because that you were looking for intel | 36:14 | |
or the government's looking for Intel? | 36:17 | |
What were your thoughts during this (indistinct)? | 36:19 | |
- | Well our mission was to try to build a good relationship | 36:20 |
and build cooperation with European countries. | 36:24 | |
So, and, you know there are many different strands | 36:28 | |
working towards ultimately the goal of increasing | 36:33 | |
or helping the national security in the United States, | 36:36 | |
and we just part of that. | 36:38 | |
But from, but our our part was to build | 36:40 | |
a stronger relationship, and frankly, to identify | 36:42 | |
and harness those capabilities that our European allies | 36:46 | |
would wanna contribute to the common defense. | 36:51 | |
And, so I do actually remember thinking to myself, | 36:54 | |
that you know, at least in this case | 36:58 | |
where we have on the one hand, created the perception | 37:00 | |
of a difficulty of gaining access in the country, | 37:04 | |
and at the same time as we're essentially | 37:10 | |
asking them to help us, | 37:12 | |
either financially or with military capabilities, | 37:14 | |
that's working across purposes. | 37:18 | |
And it was, we had discussions about that, | 37:20 | |
how to manage that tension. | 37:22 | |
I'm not sure you can avoid that tension, | 37:24 | |
but it was there and we had to deal with that. | 37:26 | |
Honigsberg | Was it ever resolved or as time went on? | 37:30 |
What unfolded? | 37:34 | |
- | You know, and I feel at a loss | 37:37 |
to give you specific examples, | 37:40 | |
so these are my impressions. | 37:42 | |
Honigsberg | Yes that would be fine. | 37:43 |
- | You know, I think a lot of the way it was resolved | 37:45 |
was that, we move beyond the need | 37:48 | |
to work specific capabilities issues as time went on. | 37:56 | |
Afghanistan was occupied. | 38:00 | |
There were different issues that we needed to address, | 38:05 | |
at as you remember, as we know in the spring of 2002, | 38:10 | |
the focus turned from Afghanistan to Iraq, | 38:15 | |
a different set of issues. | 38:19 | |
And in some cases, a different set of reasons | 38:21 | |
to detain people, you know, as the war went on. | 38:24 | |
So in some cases, the tension worked itself out over time. | 38:29 | |
In other cases, I think it caused some difficulties, | 38:37 | |
especially with some of the countries | 38:41 | |
that were allied with it really couldn't understand | 38:43 | |
why we wouldn't give access to their nationals | 38:46 | |
in Guantanamo. | 38:50 | |
And so it became a sticking point that lasted. | 38:52 | |
And I didn't know that because we know that from history | 38:55 | |
that that was in fact the case. | 38:58 | |
Honigsberg | And we understood from speaking to detainees | 39:00 |
that, at cliches or diplomats | 39:02 | |
or whomever from that countries did interview | 39:06 | |
or interrogate them at some point | 39:10 | |
while they were in Guantanamo, | 39:12 | |
so clearly some people did have access. | 39:14 | |
- | Clearly they did. | 39:19 |
Honigsberg | And do you know who those people were? | 39:20 |
Were they essentially investigating offices | 39:21 | |
who were trying to seek more information? | 39:24 | |
- | The people that I am familiar with trying to gain access | 39:26 |
were representatives of the government who were concerned | 39:30 | |
with verifying the health and welfare that are nationals, | 39:35 | |
as opposed to trying to gather information. | 39:38 | |
And there that may have happened as well, | 39:40 | |
I'm not, I don't, that's not my recollection. | 39:42 | |
Honigsberg | And that wouldn't have gone | 39:46 |
through your office then? | 39:47 | |
The investigative side. | 39:49 | |
- | If there were an attempt to interrogate, | 39:51 |
we wouldn't know that. | 39:56 | |
That would not be something that we would clear. | 39:58 | |
But then we might not know if let's say, | 39:59 | |
a diplomat from country like Spain | 40:04 | |
was also a Spanish intelligence officer, | 40:08 | |
I mean, they don't wear a badge, | 40:11 | |
so it's, a matter of, you just know | 40:13 | |
that this this country's diplomat once access, | 40:17 | |
and for, and you entertain the request based on protocol | 40:21 | |
like anything else. | 40:27 | |
And you can either operate, | 40:28 | |
I mean, there's just the, this is a bureaucracy part. | 40:30 | |
I mean, again, if you are a demander, | 40:33 | |
and you don't get what you want, | 40:36 | |
you don't care why, you just don't get what you want. | 40:39 | |
And so that's really what we're talking about | 40:42 | |
from their perspective, from the perspective | 40:44 | |
of the embassy requesting access, | 40:46 | |
then you can't, they can't get it fast enough | 40:49 | |
and they, and there's only one measure of success is, | 40:52 | |
"I got access." | 40:56 | |
And iF anything else is, "I didn't get access | 40:57 | |
and I'm not happy." | 41:00 | |
And that's what we heard. | 41:02 | |
So, but we don't know whether the access in the end | 41:03 | |
was desired in order to interrogate | 41:07 | |
or to gather intelligence, or as we were told to understand, | 41:10 | |
and I, again, I had no reason at the time, | 41:17 | |
and although I can understand why a country | 41:21 | |
might wanna interrogate their national, | 41:23 | |
at the time the issue that was presented | 41:26 | |
as far as I remember was to gain access | 41:28 | |
to the detainee in order to verify the health and welfare. | 41:31 | |
Honigsberg | Did the ICRC go through your office too? | 41:35 |
- | Not to my recollection, no. | 41:38 |
We didn't work with the ICRC. | 41:41 | |
Honigsberg | And did you continue in the role | 41:43 |
you described to us for several years? | 41:45 | |
- | I was assigned to the Office of the Secretary of Defense | 41:49 |
from July of 2001 until August, 2002. | 41:52 | |
I began getting prepared for my subsequent assignment in, | 42:00 | |
I think, April or may, | 42:04 | |
I was assigned to be the defense attache in South Korea, | 42:07 | |
and I proceeded there in September. | 42:11 | |
So I had a couple of months | 42:13 | |
to go through the requisite training | 42:14 | |
and preparation for that new assignment. | 42:16 | |
Honigsberg | Before you went to Korea | 42:20 |
did you have a chance to go to Guantanamo? | 42:21 | |
- | I did not. | 42:23 |
Honigsberg | Were you interested, | 42:25 |
would you been able to have you to, had you? | 42:26 | |
- | You know, I don't know, | 42:28 |
I didn't, it wasn't, it wouldn't have been | 42:29 | |
in my portfolio to do that. | 42:31 | |
And I don't recall having thought to myself, | 42:35 | |
"I want to go there." | 42:39 | |
Honigsberg | Is there anything else about that period | 42:40 |
before you left for Korea that I didn't ask you | 42:42 | |
that might be interesting | 42:45 | |
in terms of issues with Guantanamo? | 42:46 | |
- | I think I've described it as best I can | 42:57 |
on my recollection. | 43:00 | |
Honigsberg | So after Korea, how long were you in Korea? | 43:01 |
- | I was there for, I went there in September | 43:05 |
and I returned in May the following year. | 43:09 | |
Honigsberg | And what did you do when you returned? | 43:11 |
- | I was assigned as the assistant deputy chief of staff | 43:13 |
on the army G2, which is the army intelligence staff | 43:18 | |
in the army staff. | 43:22 | |
Honigsberg | For what purpose? | 43:24 |
- | I was the senior, we had a three-star army general | 43:25 |
who was the G2, the army intelligence officer, | 43:31 | |
we had a civilian senior executive service civilian | 43:36 | |
who was the, who was an assistant deputy chief of staff, | 43:41 | |
civilian and I was the military | 43:45 | |
assistant deputy chief of staff. | 43:47 | |
So it was a one-star assignment | 43:48 | |
but I was a Colonel on the list to be promoted, | 43:51 | |
so that was my assignment. | 43:54 | |
Honigsberg | What was your role? | 43:56 |
What exactly was you job? | 43:57 | |
- | I was the, essentially the number two military officer | 44:00 |
in the G2. | 44:04 | |
So the G2 of the army is responsible for, | 44:05 | |
all matters related to intelligence and security for-- | 44:10 | |
Honigsberg | World wide? | 44:14 |
- | For the United States army. | 44:15 |
And of course it's organized in the sense | 44:17 | |
that the army staff is a staff organization, | 44:18 | |
so it's not a command, | 44:22 | |
but the army staff organization is develop, | 44:23 | |
or is the senior headquarters, the senior representative | 44:28 | |
in the headquarters of the army for, | 44:33 | |
a different for everything from, I mean, | 44:36 | |
there's a senior official who's responsible for personnel | 44:38 | |
and administration. | 44:42 | |
There's a senior officials responsible for intelligence. | 44:44 | |
Senior officials responsible for operations and logistics. | 44:47 | |
And so there's different staffs that do different things | 44:52 | |
in our case, our office was responsible | 44:55 | |
for all intelligence matters. | 44:58 | |
Honigsberg | So did you, | 45:01 |
clearly Iraq was going on at that time, | 45:02 | |
so you must've been very involved in that, | 45:04 | |
but were you involved in intelligence in Guantanamo | 45:06 | |
at that point? | 45:09 | |
- | Not directly, although of course there, | 45:11 |
we had army intelligence activities in Guantanamo and-- | 45:15 | |
Honigsberg | What does that mean? | 45:22 |
- | Well interrogations. | 45:23 |
Honigsberg | About how intelligence | 45:25 |
would pursue on their own. | 45:26 | |
- | No in cooperation with the joint task force that was there | 45:29 |
but there we had, we certainly had personnel there, | 45:33 | |
and conducted intelligence activities there, | 45:37 | |
interrogations and so forth. | 45:40 | |
Honigsberg | Would you be involved in gathering | 45:42 |
or hearing intelligence they obtained | 45:44 | |
and I dunno, maybe taking it to another level | 45:48 | |
or reviewing it yourself, or? | 45:52 | |
- | We had other agencies that would do that, | 45:54 |
and in fact that didn't directly flow through our office, | 45:56 | |
although we would find out some of the intelligence | 46:03 | |
that was gathered, because it became intelligence | 46:06 | |
that we needed to provide to the rest of the army. | 46:09 | |
So-- | 46:12 | |
Honigsberg | Why is that and? | 46:13 |
- | Well anything, I mean not just Guantanamo, | 46:15 |
but worldwide, if there was let's say intelligence | 46:19 | |
that one of our units obtained, | 46:24 | |
or that pertain to the army, | 46:27 | |
then it's important for us to make sure | 46:30 | |
that everybody in the army gets that information, | 46:32 | |
so dissemination of intelligence | 46:37 | |
so it's just part of our job. | 46:39 | |
Honigsberg | And in that period, did you ever hear | 46:41 |
any words about an abuse of prisoners | 46:44 | |
or anything of harsh treatment | 46:48 | |
or anything along those lines, when you were-- | 46:50 | |
- | In this assignment in Guantanamo? | 46:54 |
I did not, I did not hear that. | 46:56 | |
I think where we, where the army was thrust | 47:01 | |
into the issue of detainees, | 47:05 | |
and how to properly handle them | 47:09 | |
really came to a head in late 2003 and early 2004, | 47:13 | |
so I had been there in the Pentagon for a number of months. | 47:19 | |
I got there in, actually, I really joined the staff in July | 47:26 | |
of 2003. | 47:33 | |
But it was it was several months before | 47:35 | |
the issues that happened at Abu Ghraib became notorious. | 47:38 | |
And we, and so that I spent a good deal of my time | 47:44 | |
on the army staff, in the office of the G2, | 47:50 | |
dealing with that in one way or another. | 47:54 | |
But it was related to, but again | 47:58 | |
we were not in charge of Abu Ghraib | 48:02 | |
nor were we in charge of Guantanamo, | 48:05 | |
nor in charge of Bagram, | 48:07 | |
or any of the other places where detainees were held. | 48:09 | |
But in terms of, and I just go to where I got intimately | 48:14 | |
involved was is the, was an officer | 48:19 | |
really the head of a task force was designed | 48:23 | |
to make sure that the way that the army | 48:27 | |
handled detainees was done according to army values, | 48:33 | |
and that our army values were reflected | 48:38 | |
in our procedures for all different | 48:42 | |
military operational specialties. | 48:45 | |
Honigsberg | When did that happen | 48:48 |
and how did you get involved in that? | 48:49 | |
- | I was as the assistant deputy chief of staff G2 | 48:51 |
asked to work with in this case, the provost marshal | 48:53 | |
of the army or the provost marshal of the army, | 48:56 | |
who's also the head of the army | 49:00 | |
criminal investigation command, | 49:02 | |
provost Marshall is just as the army G2 | 49:04 | |
is responsible for all matters related to intelligence | 49:08 | |
on the army staff, the Provost Marshall | 49:11 | |
was responsible for all matters related to military police | 49:13 | |
on the army staff. | 49:17 | |
And so he, who was a two star general | 49:18 | |
and I was just a one-star, | 49:23 | |
he was the overall director of this task force | 49:25 | |
and I was his action officer since I signed from the G2. | 49:29 | |
Because so much of the handling of detainees | 49:33 | |
is a really a collaborative work | 49:37 | |
between in this case, military police and intelligence. | 49:40 | |
So it made sense to, made sense for us to work together. | 49:46 | |
And, the result of our work together | 49:50 | |
was to take, the army has a term called | 49:52 | |
DOTMLPF, doctrine operations, training, | 49:57 | |
material leadership and education personnel, and facilities. | 50:02 | |
And the whole point of doing, | 50:07 | |
of putting all those together | 50:09 | |
is because if you are looking at a problem of some sort, | 50:10 | |
a larger problem of some sort, then you have to have the, | 50:16 | |
the capabilities in all those areas | 50:21 | |
in order to address the problem comprehensively. | 50:24 | |
And so what we did was we took, | 50:26 | |
all of the military operational specialties, | 50:32 | |
for example, military corrections, | 50:36 | |
military police, tactical military police, | 50:40 | |
army human intelligence collector, army interrogator. | 50:43 | |
I mean, there's, you know, you could put cooks | 50:48 | |
and chaplain's assistants and everything else | 50:50 | |
and I think we actually did, | 50:51 | |
we took every military operational specialty | 50:53 | |
that we thought would be involved in any way with detainees, | 50:57 | |
I mean, it was a comprehensive list, | 51:02 | |
and their tasks what tasks do these specialties have? | 51:04 | |
And then cross and make a matrix across walk | 51:08 | |
of the DOTMLPF, across this whole range | 51:12 | |
of capabilities that we need to make sure we have. | 51:16 | |
And it was, and I'll be honest with you, | 51:19 | |
I mean, the colonel who was working on this project, | 51:21 | |
much smarter than me, and he really, | 51:26 | |
I wish I remembered the gentleman's name, | 51:30 | |
I don't remember his name, but he really was a very good | 51:32 | |
at putting this whole matrix together, | 51:35 | |
but we, our team was successful in taking army procedures | 51:38 | |
which on the whole were pretty good, | 51:43 | |
but needed to be tightened up, | 51:48 | |
and it had to be tightened up | 51:50 | |
in order to make sure we didn't have any abuse. | 51:52 | |
The spark for our taskforce | 51:54 | |
was the documented cases of abuse at Abu Ghraib. | 51:58 | |
It also addressed all places where the army | 52:03 | |
would conduct any detainee operations, | 52:06 | |
detainee operations task force | 52:10 | |
was the name of our task force. | 52:11 | |
Honigsberg | When did that? | 52:13 |
- | We stood up if I recall it was in April or may of 2004. | 52:14 |
After the completion of a couple of different | 52:21 | |
investigations, there was an investigation | 52:24 | |
by General Taguba, who looked very closely | 52:27 | |
at the conduct of military police at Abu Ghraib, | 52:31 | |
and in fact, as a result of that investigation | 52:37 | |
and subsequent investigations | 52:39 | |
there were seven army military policemen | 52:40 | |
who were actually put on trial for misconduct at Abu Ghraib. | 52:43 | |
And then General's Fay and Jones, | 52:47 | |
Lieutenant General Jones and Major General Fay, | 52:52 | |
General Fay was from our office, | 52:55 | |
conducted another investigation | 52:57 | |
specifically looking at the, in this case | 52:59 | |
the two of fifth military intelligence brigade | 53:01 | |
which was responsible for the detainee operations in Iraq. | 53:02 | |
And there were, if I recall correctly, | 53:07 | |
roughly 28 military intelligence soldiers | 53:09 | |
who were ultimately put on court martial | 53:12 | |
or somehow punished for their misconduct. | 53:17 | |
And to be honest, again, I think the major failure | 53:21 | |
that was documented by this work, | 53:26 | |
I mean, clearly some misconduct | 53:30 | |
by some of the army corrections officers | 53:34 | |
and corrections personnel who did bad things. | 53:42 | |
And clearly some misconduct | 53:46 | |
by some of the army military intelligence personnel | 53:48 | |
did bad things, but the real reason, | 53:50 | |
and this is my, what I believe, | 53:52 | |
but it's also I think born out in the investigation, | 53:55 | |
none of this would happen, would have happened | 53:58 | |
had we had strong leadership | 54:00 | |
that looked at the detainees as they should have, | 54:04 | |
as human beings and not allowed abuses | 54:08 | |
of our own regulations. | 54:13 | |
And a part of it is just pure, you know | 54:15 | |
lack of supervision, an approach, | 54:19 | |
a really ineffective approach to duty, at different levels | 54:22 | |
but at the, at sometimes at the senior level | 54:26 | |
a lack of supervision and a lack of concern | 54:29 | |
for what the subordinates are doing. | 54:31 | |
You can take a soldier or or any other person | 54:34 | |
in any walk of life, and if a leader | 54:39 | |
doesn't give that person the training | 54:43 | |
and the supervision, then you will pay | 54:46 | |
because that person with lack of experience, | 54:50 | |
a lack of knowledge, a lack of a proper supervision, | 54:54 | |
they don't know what they're doing. | 54:59 | |
And we had a number of problems in, | 55:01 | |
and I speak about what I know | 55:03 | |
because we took a hard look at Abu Ghraib, | 55:06 | |
and I, but I know this problem was one that was shared | 55:08 | |
with Guantanamo to a certain extent. | 55:12 | |
I also know from my own observation | 55:15 | |
it was shared in Bagram, I did visit Bagram in 2004, | 55:18 | |
which had some of the same problems. | 55:24 | |
But one of the problems that they had in Abu Ghraib | 55:27 | |
specifically was they first they took over a prison | 55:30 | |
that had been part of the former regime, | 55:37 | |
Saddam Hussein regime, that held, | 55:40 | |
I mean they probably had people | 55:42 | |
that shouldn't have been there | 55:44 | |
but they also had criminals, | 55:45 | |
hard criminals people that probably would be in prison | 55:47 | |
no matter what country for all kinds of reasons, | 55:50 | |
and they put, then you take people off the battlefield | 55:53 | |
for a variety of reasons, sometimes poor reasons, | 55:57 | |
and put literally 1000s of people in a facility | 56:01 | |
that probably should only hold a few 100. | 56:06 | |
At one point in late 2003, they had 7,500 detainees | 56:09 | |
in a facility that probably should have handled | 56:15 | |
less than 2000 people. | 56:17 | |
And so you also had a shift in the war, | 56:20 | |
and in the expectations and in the personnel assigned, | 56:26 | |
I mean, and this is where problems come with, | 56:29 | |
there's no, excuse, I'm not excusing it, | 56:35 | |
but this is the context within which problems can occur, | 56:37 | |
the expectation that certainly in Iraq | 56:43 | |
that our forces had was that after the invasion | 56:46 | |
we would reach some semblance of stability. | 56:51 | |
That the war would be, that we would shift to stability | 56:56 | |
and operations as opposed to actually fighting a war. | 57:01 | |
And certainly the combat was different a sword, | 57:05 | |
and combating insurgents | 57:10 | |
rather than combating organized units, | 57:12 | |
or work large organized units. | 57:14 | |
But, it didn't work out like that, | 57:17 | |
it was not stability operations | 57:20 | |
or trying to conduct stability operations | 57:22 | |
when there is no census stability is fruitless. | 57:24 | |
So, we had our troops being mortared, | 57:28 | |
people who were doing corrections jobs or interrogation jobs | 57:32 | |
or working in a prison where you've got hard criminals | 57:37 | |
as well as detainees, where you're getting attacked | 57:40 | |
by mortars and effecting, I mean, | 57:44 | |
a mortar knows no, I mean it's just gonna blow, | 57:47 | |
and so it's hitting the, it's hitting our guys, | 57:51 | |
it's hitting their guys, | 57:54 | |
and it was just a tremendous amount of chaos. | 57:55 | |
And at the same time you've got a lot of people | 58:00 | |
who are mobilized for duty | 58:02 | |
who have not had years of experience in the military. | 58:06 | |
So, we like to think, and, I think we should think, | 58:10 | |
that our military operates according | 58:15 | |
to the highest set of values. | 58:17 | |
And certainly that's what we aspire to. | 58:20 | |
We don't always, but that's the aspiration. | 58:22 | |
But it's hard to operate according to those values | 58:25 | |
with people who've not been raised in those values. | 58:28 | |
And they're motive, they're good young Americans, | 58:31 | |
but the, you know, two months before | 58:36 | |
they may have been primarily working in you know, a store, | 58:38 | |
and that's not the same thing | 58:43 | |
as taking someone who has steeped in the military values | 58:44 | |
'cause they've spent a career learning them, | 58:48 | |
and living by them. | 58:52 | |
And so we had problems with that. | 58:53 | |
Honigsberg | So there's two questions | 58:55 |
that come out that general-- | 58:57 | |
- | Please, sure. | |
Honigsberg | One is you seek to say the leadership failed | 58:58 |
in not supervising the people below them, | 59:01 | |
is that what I'm hearing? | 59:05 | |
- | That certainly was the case in several instances. | 59:07 |
Honigsberg | And you know there was-- | 59:10 |
- | And they were responsible for that. | 59:11 |
Honigsberg | They were? | 59:13 |
- | Yes, there were-- | 59:14 |
- | I mean I know Janis Karpinski was, but-- | 59:15 |
- | She was, and I don't wanna to tarnish her record at all | 59:17 |
but I just, you know, refer to the record. | 59:21 | |
Honigsberg | But I do, I've also heard | 59:24 |
and you've heard, and many people I've heard that | 59:26 | |
in fact, some of this behavior might've come top down | 59:28 | |
that when General Miller came to Iraq | 59:33 | |
he might have directed some of this behavior | 59:36 | |
that we saw in that the reason | 59:39 | |
why those people on the ground were arrested | 59:42 | |
and convicted of those crimes of abusing the prisoners, | 59:45 | |
might've been a direction of a higher ops | 59:49 | |
as opposed to just when you call it chaos, | 59:51 | |
where they just had no discipline | 59:54 | |
and just behaved as thugs. | 59:56 | |
- | I can't say that. | 1:00:02 |
And I, that was not my recollection. | 1:00:04 | |
My recollection was that, General Miller, when he came, | 1:00:07 | |
actually made the situation better not worse, | 1:00:14 | |
because he's disciplined. | 1:00:19 | |
And I served with him, you know, years before, | 1:00:21 | |
when I was a Lieutenant, he was a captain, | 1:00:25 | |
and he was a hard guy, but he was dedicated. | 1:00:27 | |
And, he was dedicated as a captain. | 1:00:31 | |
We were all very convinced | 1:00:34 | |
that he was gonna do well in the army. | 1:00:37 | |
And he did, but I sense that when he actually came | 1:00:39 | |
as the, to supervise detaining operations in Iraq, | 1:00:43 | |
that one of the things he brought was, | 1:00:48 | |
this sense of discipline and education, | 1:00:51 | |
or discipline, dedication to his job, | 1:00:53 | |
so I, my recollection and I, you know | 1:00:55 | |
I haven't had a chance to speak with him about this, | 1:00:59 | |
but I suspect that if I did | 1:01:01 | |
it would be a conversation where I would say, | 1:01:03 | |
"I appreciate what you did," | 1:01:06 | |
'cause we did, we had real problems, | 1:01:08 | |
and what we needed was strong leadership. | 1:01:10 | |
That was in my mind, that was the real problem, | 1:01:12 | |
is we didn't have strong leadership | 1:01:14 | |
that was doing the kind of supervision. | 1:01:16 | |
And frankly, not just supervision, | 1:01:18 | |
I think that's part of it, | 1:01:20 | |
but the real part of it is, I mean | 1:01:23 | |
you can't take a young soldier or anybody who's trying, | 1:01:24 | |
who's put in a position, | 1:01:29 | |
a very stressful difficult position, | 1:01:30 | |
and just let them flail around, that's just crazy. | 1:01:32 | |
You have to support him, | 1:01:35 | |
and part of being part of being supportive | 1:01:36 | |
is not to coddle them, but to tell him, | 1:01:38 | |
"Well, this is what I expect you to do, | 1:01:40 | |
and I'm gonna give you the tools to do it," | 1:01:41 | |
and if you can't do that, you need to go up | 1:01:43 | |
and stand up as a leader and say, | 1:01:45 | |
you know, "I can't, you're, I need to support my guys," | 1:01:48 | |
and I don't think there was enough of that going on | 1:01:53 | |
at Abu Ghraib. | 1:01:55 | |
Honigsberg | Who would think to do | 1:01:56 |
what those people did on the ground, | 1:01:57 | |
I mean, it seems to me, someone, it just seemed too strange | 1:01:59 | |
to have that many people behave like that, | 1:02:05 | |
and nobody's watching and nobody-- | 1:02:08 | |
- | It is strange and it was shocking, | 1:02:10 |
and it shouldn't have happened. | 1:02:12 | |
No doubt. | 1:02:15 | |
I really think that when, and again, | 1:02:17 | |
supervision is a broad term, | 1:02:21 | |
but it really includes supporting | 1:02:23 | |
and taking care of your soldiers, | 1:02:26 | |
and taking care of the detainees. | 1:02:28 | |
I mean, you have somebody under your control | 1:02:30 | |
though the term of our, in early 2004 | 1:02:32 | |
was persons under control. | 1:02:35 | |
you've probably heard that term, PUCs. | 1:02:37 | |
If you have responsibility for somebody, | 1:02:40 | |
whether they're yours, in other words, your soldiers, | 1:02:42 | |
or their detainees, you've got responsibility for them, | 1:02:46 | |
it's an ethical charge. | 1:02:50 | |
In my mind, and I think for, you know, our leaders, | 1:02:53 | |
those that took their responsibility seriously, | 1:02:57 | |
and did it well, that's how they thought of it. | 1:03:01 | |
And, but we had someone who did not, | 1:03:04 | |
for whatever reason, and I mean, there's not, | 1:03:07 | |
I'm not, again I'm not excusing, | 1:03:09 | |
or I'm not, I don't wanna throw rocks at somebody, | 1:03:10 | |
especially I wasn't in his or her position, | 1:03:15 | |
so I can't, you know, I would be the last person to do that. | 1:03:20 | |
But, I'm just speaking as a professional, | 1:03:24 | |
you know my first charge as a professional | 1:03:27 | |
is to not to take care of the guys above me, | 1:03:29 | |
but to take care of my people. | 1:03:33 | |
That's what comes to mind first. | 1:03:35 | |
And if you've got somebody who's doing misconduct, | 1:03:37 | |
who works for you, you're not taking care of them. | 1:03:41 | |
You're not doing what you're supposed to do as a leader. | 1:03:44 | |
And I think that was where the real, we had the real fault | 1:03:47 | |
in Abu Ghraib, both in the MP side, | 1:03:50 | |
with non-commissioned officers who should have known better, | 1:03:53 | |
and officers who should have known better, | 1:03:56 | |
and on the military intelligence side | 1:03:58 | |
where we had soldiers and officers, NCOs, | 1:04:00 | |
all didn't know, | 1:04:03 | |
either didn't take their responsibilities seriously, | 1:04:05 | |
or should have known better than to allow abuses to occur. | 1:04:07 | |
So we try, we were, I don't think anybody, | 1:04:12 | |
I mean, I don't know anybody in the army | 1:04:16 | |
who I knew at any level who felt anything | 1:04:21 | |
other than shock and dismay that these things occurred. | 1:04:25 | |
Honigsberg | Did you ever talk to General Miller | 1:04:31 |
after Abu Ghraib? | 1:04:32 | |
- | No, I'd really like to, | 1:04:34 |
But I have never had the opportunity. | 1:04:35 | |
Honigsberg | And do you think the same description | 1:04:37 |
that you just gave us applies to Guantanamo too? | 1:04:40 | |
Since you know, you also did some investigation there? | 1:04:44 | |
- | I think that, you know, I've heard enough about it | 1:04:47 |
from other sources, not again, | 1:04:52 | |
we looked at primarily Abu Ghraib, | 1:04:55 | |
and I had my own personal experience at Bagram, | 1:04:59 | |
and I think Bagram is probably a better comparison | 1:05:04 | |
than Abu Ghraib, better than Bagram | 1:05:09 | |
and it still exists, it's still a joint facility | 1:05:12 | |
between us and the Afghanis, | 1:05:15 | |
although it was supposed to turnover I guess two weeks ago. | 1:05:16 | |
What I saw at Bagram was disturbing, | 1:05:23 | |
and again, I'm speaking about what I saw at Bagram | 1:05:27 | |
not at Guantanamo, so two different things. | 1:05:30 | |
But I think that both facilities operated | 1:05:33 | |
along much the same lines and where you've got a tension | 1:05:38 | |
between, gathering intelligence or preventing someone | 1:05:42 | |
from returning to the battlefield, | 1:05:48 | |
which is another strong reason to, or justification | 1:05:50 | |
not just, it's not the right word, rationale, | 1:05:55 | |
purported rationale for keeping people | 1:05:59 | |
in indefinite detention is to keep them off the battlefield. | 1:06:02 | |
You've got a tension between that | 1:06:06 | |
and everything that our country | 1:06:08 | |
stands for in terms of equal treatment under the law, | 1:06:12 | |
and human rights. | 1:06:15 | |
There will be, I mean that tension | 1:06:19 | |
is gonna be resolved sometimes | 1:06:21 | |
in a way that's on the side of abuse. | 1:06:22 | |
And I believe that certainly what I saw at Bagram | 1:06:27 | |
told me that. | 1:06:31 | |
Honigsberg | What did you see at Bagram? | 1:06:32 |
- | I saw prisoners there who were clearly, | 1:06:33 |
I mean, and I was, I was just there for one day, | 1:06:39 | |
but it seemed to me that the sort of behavior | 1:06:42 | |
that was going on with some of the prisoners | 1:06:46 | |
was brutal and inappropriate, and it was shocking. | 1:06:48 | |
Honigsberg | By whom? | 1:06:53 |
- | By the people who ran the facility, | 1:06:55 |
and they were-- | 1:06:57 | |
Honigsberg | They weren't afraid to hide it from you, | 1:06:59 |
knowing you were-- | 1:07:01 | |
- | They showed me, | 1:07:02 |
I was taking a, essentially to look at the facility | 1:07:03 | |
to see what it was like. | 1:07:06 | |
And, I know they, just to give you a couple examples | 1:07:08 | |
there is, she may have been the worst person | 1:07:11 | |
in the world possible, I don't know, | 1:07:16 | |
I mean, here I am making a judgment based | 1:07:20 | |
on personal observation at one point in time, | 1:07:22 | |
but I, it just struck me as odd that this would occur. | 1:07:26 | |
There was a woman who maybe she was 30, I don't know, | 1:07:31 | |
but she looked like she was 90 and she was frail, | 1:07:34 | |
clearly frail, clearly not in good health, | 1:07:38 | |
and she was just cowering in the corner. | 1:07:41 | |
Just sobbing and weeping in the corner, | 1:07:45 | |
in a cell that was empty except for her. | 1:07:48 | |
And she was wearing clothes, | 1:07:51 | |
it wasn't like she was naked or anything, | 1:07:52 | |
but dirty, filthy this really very, very unsanitary. | 1:07:53 | |
I know that was unsanitary, | 1:08:02 | |
I could see results of the lack of sanitation. | 1:08:04 | |
I could, tell it was rags. | 1:08:07 | |
And she was looked to be a very old frail woman, | 1:08:10 | |
sobbing in the corner, and one of the guards | 1:08:14 | |
was like smacking on the door and yelling at her. | 1:08:16 | |
And I thought, "Really, how can this be?" | 1:08:18 | |
That doesn't make sense to me. | 1:08:24 | |
Honigsberg | Did you say anything? | 1:08:26 |
- | No, I didn't. | 1:08:28 |
Honigsberg | And what else? | 1:08:32 |
You said you had another example. | 1:08:33 | |
- | I saw prisoners shackled to the floor | 1:08:35 |
with their hands behind their back, | 1:08:38 | |
and I don't know how long they'd been there, | 1:08:40 | |
but there was 50 or 60 on one concrete slab, | 1:08:42 | |
all shackled to the floor by their wrists, | 1:08:46 | |
their legs folded in front of them. | 1:08:49 | |
Again, maybe they were there for five minutes, | 1:08:51 | |
maybe I doubt it, | 1:08:53 | |
they were probably there for a lot longer. | 1:08:56 | |
Honigsberg | And, did, people didn't try to explain to you | 1:08:58 |
how they were running the prison, or? | 1:09:02 | |
- | They said these were dangerous people, | 1:09:04 |
persons under control, | 1:09:06 | |
I know at the time the issue was, if they're released | 1:09:08 | |
then the Afghanis would turn lose, and they probably would, | 1:09:11 | |
but they need to be off the battlefield. | 1:09:17 | |
Honigsberg | Did you, write a report | 1:09:21 |
about what you observed and-- | 1:09:23 | |
- | Yes. | 1:09:25 |
Honigsberg | In that did you also suggest better ways | 1:09:27 |
of treating these, the people that we captured? | 1:09:31 | |
- | Yes. | 1:09:33 |
Honigsberg | And did anybody read your report? | 1:09:34 |
- | I don't know. | 1:09:36 |
Honigsberg | Who was your report supposed to be for? | 1:09:38 |
- | I reported to the G2 the army. | 1:09:41 |
Honigsberg | And did you ever have a conversation | 1:09:46 |
with the G2 as to what you observed? | 1:09:47 | |
- | I don't recall. | 1:09:50 |
Honigsberg | Well, do you thoughts change | 1:09:53 |
after you went to Bagram and saw this? | 1:09:55 | |
Did you know, firsthand? | 1:09:58 | |
- | It was disturbing, but to me, | 1:10:01 |
and I wasn't entirely sure what to make of it | 1:10:04 | |
other than what I saw was disturbing. | 1:10:08 | |
But I also understood that the rationale | 1:10:11 | |
was that these were dangerous people | 1:10:14 | |
that needed to be detained. | 1:10:15 | |
And again, I have no knowledge either then or since then | 1:10:19 | |
of the specific individuals that I saw. | 1:10:25 | |
I'm simply describing what I saw. | 1:10:29 | |
And, so there, again | 1:10:32 | |
maybe these were really dangerous people, | 1:10:35 | |
but I mean I had no doubt that they were there | 1:10:39 | |
for some reason, but I don't know what that was. | 1:10:41 | |
And nor do I know if perhaps they were released the next day | 1:10:45 | |
because maybe they didn't, | 1:10:48 | |
they weren't supposed to be there. | 1:10:49 | |
I don't know that, but I wasn't there, | 1:10:50 | |
honestly, I wasn't there to conduct an investigation | 1:10:54 | |
of that facility, that was not the mission I was on. | 1:10:58 | |
Honigsberg | What was the mission? | 1:11:03 |
- | The mission was to look at, to examine the threats | 1:11:05 |
to our force flow, our transfer of units | 1:11:12 | |
to and from Afghanistan and Iraq, | 1:11:17 | |
to and from the United States. | 1:11:20 | |
And to look at force protection issues. | 1:11:22 | |
Honigsberg | After you observed the two situations | 1:11:25 |
you just told us about, did you talk to anybody | 1:11:28 | |
have a conversation with anybody about what you observed | 1:11:32 | |
and whether they reinforced what you felt or saw? | 1:11:34 | |
- | Yeah, I mean at the time the discussion | 1:11:38 |
was why are these people here? | 1:11:41 | |
And the answer, which honestly in the context | 1:11:45 | |
of what we were doing in Afghanistan, | 1:11:48 | |
which may had a certain degree of sense to it, | 1:11:51 | |
and still has a certain degree of sense to it, | 1:11:56 | |
is that there are people who we pick up on the battlefield | 1:11:58 | |
either in combat or in other operations, | 1:12:02 | |
or who were provided given to us by Afghan, | 1:12:05 | |
or by other units, by other countries units, | 1:12:09 | |
who are who need to be interrogated, | 1:12:12 | |
who need to be secured because they're conducting | 1:12:16 | |
insurgent operations. | 1:12:20 | |
And of course we want to do that. | 1:12:22 | |
It, we would be profligated | 1:12:26 | |
if we didn't treat them carefully. | 1:12:28 | |
But again, there are specific rules for handling detainees, | 1:12:31 | |
which is exactly what we took back to our project. | 1:12:39 | |
Again, I was there for another mission, but believe me, | 1:12:45 | |
we took that experience back to our project, | 1:12:47 | |
and we said, "Okay, so this is how we should treat detainees | 1:12:50 | |
at each different military occupational specialty, | 1:12:58 | |
and across these capability levels. | 1:13:01 | |
Let's make doctrine for the corrections NCO, | 1:13:06 | |
that he conducts his corrections operations a certain way. | 1:13:11 | |
Let's give him tasks that he has to perform | 1:13:17 | |
that will tell him these are the standards | 1:13:20 | |
that you have to perform, let's provide the, | 1:13:24 | |
I mean the doctrine is one thing, | 1:13:27 | |
let's give him the, | 1:13:28 | |
let's make the organization robust enough | 1:13:29 | |
to provide for effective and ethical treatment of detainees. | 1:13:33 | |
Let's, train them to do that. | 1:13:38 | |
Let's give them the leadership to do that." | 1:13:41 | |
And so that's the way we organized our task force | 1:13:43 | |
is to take a look at each of the specialties | 1:13:47 | |
that would have any contact or dealings with detainees, | 1:13:49 | |
and then go through this crosswalk as it were, | 1:13:53 | |
to make sure that our doctrine and our organization, | 1:13:59 | |
our training, our material | 1:14:02 | |
we have to have the right equipment, | 1:14:04 | |
our leadership and education, and our personnel | 1:14:05 | |
are the right people and our facilities | 1:14:08 | |
are the right facilities. | 1:14:10 | |
Because if you don't do that | 1:14:12 | |
then you'll fix part of the problem, | 1:14:13 | |
but the rest of the problem gets ignored. | 1:14:14 | |
So, we took that experience, not just mine, of course, | 1:14:16 | |
but then we took the experience | 1:14:19 | |
of all of us who had some experience | 1:14:21 | |
or observation of detaining operations | 1:14:24 | |
and produced a, what I think was a pretty effective | 1:14:26 | |
change to army doctrine. | 1:14:29 | |
Honigsberg | So two questions, | 1:14:31 |
one is other people observed similar instances | 1:14:32 | |
like you described to us. | 1:14:36 | |
- | Sure. | 1:14:38 |
Honigsberg | And, that the program that you design | 1:14:39 |
was it implemented? | 1:14:43 | |
- | Yes, yeah, and it was not, again, | 1:14:44 |
I don't wanna I mean I was part of a team, | 1:14:46 | |
so it's not me personally, | 1:14:51 | |
it was the team, the task force. | 1:14:52 | |
And with support from the army leadership | 1:14:55 | |
who were genuinely concerned | 1:14:57 | |
that we needed to make sure that our detaining operations | 1:14:59 | |
were done effectively and ethically. | 1:15:02 | |
But yes, it was implemented. | 1:15:05 | |
There were changes that we made to the army | 1:15:07 | |
the way we handle detainees based on that report. | 1:15:09 | |
- | So isn't it, I know Guantanamo it's a team effort | 1:15:12 |
of all branches of the military in the detention centers, | 1:15:15 | |
so if the army has a new protocol | 1:15:22 | |
in terms of how it treats prisoners, | 1:15:25 | |
what happens to the Navy and the Marines, | 1:15:30 | |
do they lock into that same step | 1:15:32 | |
or do they have a different protocol? | 1:15:35 | |
- | Well, the army was charged as the let's call it, | 1:15:36 |
we'll call it the executive agent for the military | 1:15:39 | |
to come up with the doctrine and procedures | 1:15:42 | |
to handle the trainees. | 1:15:44 | |
Honigsberg | Oh, okay. | 1:15:45 |
And that would be follow then by the branches? | 1:15:46 | |
- | Yes, yes. | 1:15:47 |
Honigsberg | And your protocol | 1:15:49 |
also would apply to Guantanamo-- | 1:15:51 | |
- | For military operations, absolutely. | 1:15:54 |
Honigsberg | And when was it implemented? | 1:15:57 |
- | In late 2004. | 1:15:59 |
Honigsberg | Huh, and so did you know of, | 1:16:04 |
or did you ever go to Guantanamo? | 1:16:07 | |
- | No. | 1:16:09 |
Honigsberg | Did you know of, or do you ever hear or see | 1:16:10 |
that in fact there were significant changes | 1:16:13 | |
in the operations of detainees in achievement | 1:16:15 | |
of detainees following your protocol | 1:16:19 | |
that was implemented in late 2004? | 1:16:22 | |
- | As I understand it, the military | 1:16:25 |
changed its procedures rather quickly, | 1:16:29 | |
and that all military operations involving detainees | 1:16:33 | |
had to conform with our view of detainee procedures. | 1:16:37 | |
Honigsberg | Just-- | 1:16:42 |
- | Whether it Guantanamo or wherever it was-- | 1:16:43 |
Honigsberg | Throughout the world. | 1:16:45 |
- | Correct | 1:16:46 |
Honigsberg | Just generally, I don't wanna get | 1:16:47 |
into too many details and specific | 1:16:48 | |
'cause people could always read those procedures | 1:16:50 | |
they're public obviously-- | 1:16:52 | |
- | Yeah. | 1:16:53 |
Honigsberg | But just generally | 1:16:54 |
can you tell us what significant changes | 1:16:55 | |
were made in your procedures that caused the difference? | 1:16:58 | |
- | You know, I think our main focus was ensuring | 1:17:04 |
that detainee operations had the right training, | 1:17:07 | |
and had the right leadership, | 1:17:12 | |
so that there was supervision | 1:17:16 | |
at all levels of what detaining, | 1:17:17 | |
of any detaining operations. | 1:17:20 | |
Because that was the real problem, | 1:17:22 | |
that we identified as having looked at the way | 1:17:25 | |
we did things wrong, especially Abu Ghraib, | 1:17:29 | |
it was a question of training and supervision. | 1:17:32 | |
Honigsberg | So did you create or did the army create | 1:17:34 |
new training programs specifically in response to-- | 1:17:37 | |
- | Yes. | 1:17:39 |
Honigsberg | Your protocol? | 1:17:40 |
- | Yes, they did. | 1:17:41 |
And it was done very quickly | 1:17:42 | |
to make sure we didn't have any more problems. | 1:17:45 | |
Honigsberg | Did you hear from people on the ground | 1:17:48 |
that in fact they did see a change following your protocols? | 1:17:50 | |
- | You know, I don't know that they would say | 1:17:54 |
that they saw a change based on those protocols, | 1:17:55 | |
but that it was very clear that the army took, | 1:17:59 | |
effective and ethical, which I would argue | 1:18:05 | |
are closely related, effective and ethical | 1:18:09 | |
detainee handling very seriously and continue to. | 1:18:12 | |
I'll just give you a personal example. | 1:18:17 | |
I, after I retired, our military intelligence interrogators | 1:18:19 | |
are trained at Fort Huachuca Arizona | 1:18:28 | |
a place I've known and love | 1:18:31 | |
'cause it's not far from where I live, | 1:18:33 | |
but that's where that's the home of military intelligence | 1:18:36 | |
and that's where they're trained. | 1:18:38 | |
And I spent some time, a couple of years | 1:18:41 | |
after I retired, with one of the classes of interrogators | 1:18:46 | |
and had a chance to speak | 1:18:50 | |
with some of these NCOs in this case, mostly NCOs, | 1:18:52 | |
usually junior NCOs, who were going through | 1:18:56 | |
interrogator training. | 1:18:58 | |
And it was clear to me that they had gotten it, | 1:18:59 | |
because they understood that their responsibility | 1:19:04 | |
was both for their soldiers and also for their detainees. | 1:19:07 | |
And what's a sense of responsibility | 1:19:10 | |
that they took very seriously. | 1:19:13 | |
Which was our, exactly our point. | 1:19:14 | |
You know, you have responsibility | 1:19:18 | |
for people under your charge. | 1:19:21 | |
Doesn't, of course you have response, | 1:19:23 | |
you know, because you wear the same uniform | 1:19:26 | |
you have responsibility for your soldiers, | 1:19:28 | |
but if that's the extent you're missing half of the problem. | 1:19:31 | |
You also have responsibilities for these others | 1:19:34 | |
who don't wear the uniform, | 1:19:37 | |
who have not been charged with a crime, | 1:19:38 | |
who may be just in the wrong place at the wrong time, | 1:19:42 | |
you're responsible for them too. | 1:19:45 | |
But these guys got it, I mean, it's be hard | 1:19:47 | |
to take a, you know, a group of 100 guys | 1:19:50 | |
and, you know, young leaders and say, | 1:19:52 | |
"well you all understand it exactly the same way," | 1:19:54 | |
but spend a few minutes with them | 1:19:56 | |
and it was pretty clear that was where they were focused. | 1:19:59 | |
And they were focused on not only that, | 1:20:01 | |
but they were focused on serving our constitution. | 1:20:03 | |
And I came away inspired by that. | 1:20:05 | |
And I think that was the change I really do. | 1:20:07 | |
Honigsberg | So General, listening to you | 1:20:10 |
it makes me wonder, tough me to imagine that the army | 1:20:11 | |
who I respect and the military respect, | 1:20:14 | |
would not have had something in place | 1:20:17 | |
the way you described it prior to your involvement | 1:20:20 | |
in these protocols. | 1:20:24 | |
I would think that it always was a disciplined organization | 1:20:25 | |
with a leadership that was strong and with, | 1:20:29 | |
somewhat a caring understanding of who's under your control. | 1:20:33 | |
So, I guess I just wanna clarify-- | 1:20:38 | |
- | Yeah, sure. | 1:20:41 |
Honigsberg | You're telling me that prior to 2004 | 1:20:42 |
the army did not have that. | 1:20:44 | |
And if they didn't why not? | 1:20:46 | |
- | And I'm not excusing any misconduct at all, | 1:20:49 |
that's not my point. | 1:20:55 | |
But I think we have to look at the context. | 1:20:57 | |
And I'll just give an analogy, because we, you know | 1:21:00 | |
we did in Vietnam, we fought an insurgency, | 1:21:06 | |
to debatable level of success, but we fought an insurgency. | 1:21:11 | |
And then we trained for other types of conflict | 1:21:16 | |
specifically fighting the Warsaw Pact, | 1:21:20 | |
that was the focus, maneuver warfare, tanks and combat arms, | 1:21:23 | |
you know, not an insurgency, for the next 20 years. | 1:21:29 | |
And then we go to Iraq and we first fight a conventional war | 1:21:34 | |
and defeat the army of Iraq pretty quickly. | 1:21:40 | |
But, when Baghdad Bob said, | 1:21:44 | |
"We will fight you in the streets, | 1:21:48 | |
and we'll fight you in the villages," | 1:21:51 | |
we all laughed because he was a joker, but he was right, | 1:21:52 | |
because that's exactly what happened. | 1:21:56 | |
And we were not prepared. | 1:21:58 | |
We were not expecting that. | 1:22:01 | |
We thought we'd beaten the army, we're here, | 1:22:03 | |
I think a lot of people thought they were gonna love us, | 1:22:07 | |
I mean, there was a tremendous number of misconceptions | 1:22:11 | |
about what we would face in Iraq | 1:22:14 | |
that were actually strengthened by our initial success. | 1:22:16 | |
And easy success breeds overconfidence and complacency, | 1:22:23 | |
and lack of preparation for future challenges. | 1:22:29 | |
So again, not excusing the misconduct, | 1:22:33 | |
but I think from a human standpoint, | 1:22:35 | |
and we are after all humans, | 1:22:38 | |
we were overconfident and over, | 1:22:41 | |
we expected again, stability operations. | 1:22:45 | |
We thought, "Okay, we just have to get through that, | 1:22:49 | |
we can actually, we'll fire all those Iraqi soldiers, | 1:22:51 | |
we'll just send them away, we don't need them." | 1:22:55 | |
It's, a peaceful country, they love us here. | 1:22:58 | |
And I was, I mean I don't need to go on | 1:23:01 | |
with the absurdity that, but I think | 1:23:03 | |
that was a big part of it. | 1:23:06 | |
And at the larger level, of course | 1:23:07 | |
we see it from the national level, | 1:23:09 | |
it's, you know, that was clearly | 1:23:10 | |
tragic for the United States. | 1:23:15 | |
But at the smaller level which frankly concerns me more | 1:23:17 | |
because these are my soldiers in there, | 1:23:21 | |
they're us, they're our kids at the smaller level, | 1:23:24 | |
down at the smaller unit level, | 1:23:28 | |
at the private and specialists level. | 1:23:29 | |
What we're doing is we're taking kids off American streets | 1:23:33 | |
and telling them, "You go over there | 1:23:35 | |
and we'll put you in a stability operations, | 1:23:37 | |
you kids that were two months ago, you were, you know | 1:23:41 | |
you were trained as reservists for national guard, | 1:23:43 | |
and maybe you got two more, two weeks a year training, | 1:23:46 | |
and now your job is to go over there and fight in a war | 1:23:50 | |
against people that want to kill you, | 1:23:53 | |
and want to mortar you, and do things | 1:23:56 | |
that you can't, you've never done before, | 1:23:58 | |
or you've done a little bit of it," | 1:24:00 | |
and those are the kids that we we sent to Abu Ghraib. | 1:24:02 | |
Now, whose responsibility is that? | 1:24:06 | |
Honigsberg | And what about the people | 1:24:08 |
we send to Guantanamo, were they same kind? | 1:24:09 | |
Do you think that explains (indistinct)? | 1:24:12 | |
- | You know I think and I don't know this, but I suspect | 1:24:13 |
that we had a higher level of training and experience | 1:24:16 | |
of the personnel that we sent to Guantanamo, | 1:24:19 | |
if for no other reason that they were usually handpicked. | 1:24:22 | |
And, although I'm sure they were very competent reserve, | 1:24:26 | |
reserve personnel there, | 1:24:31 | |
in fact, I know there were a lot of reserve personnel there, | 1:24:32 | |
I suspect that they were there for, | 1:24:35 | |
because they'd been hand selected to go. | 1:24:38 | |
I don't know that, but I suspect that that's the case, | 1:24:40 | |
Honigsberg | So you don't think, | 1:24:43 |
oh, so you didn't have necessarily | 1:24:43 | |
the same personnel sent to Guantanamo | 1:24:44 | |
as the ones you described on Abu Ghraib? | 1:24:46 | |
- | No, but let's again, I'm just you, I will take the Liberty | 1:24:48 |
of speaking with professional speculation. | 1:24:55 | |
You know, I think to a certain extent, | 1:25:01 | |
the operations at Guantanamo, we're breaking | 1:25:04 | |
the same sort of new ground that we broke in Iraq. | 1:25:07 | |
Where you know suddenly, you know | 1:25:10 | |
I think in our distant past we've probably had situations | 1:25:14 | |
where Americans are responsible for the detention of, | 1:25:17 | |
prisoners or detainees, large numbers | 1:25:23 | |
for an extended period of time. | 1:25:28 | |
Where the rules didn't appear to be clear. | 1:25:32 | |
The difference with Guantanamo in my opinion, | 1:25:37 | |
is that not only were the rules not clear, | 1:25:42 | |
that it wasn't only that they were not clear, | 1:25:45 | |
is that they were designed not to be clear. | 1:25:48 | |
I mean, where in the world is it that you actually take, | 1:25:52 | |
not talking about the issue of sovereignty of Cuba here, | 1:25:58 | |
but this is not the United States of America. | 1:26:03 | |
It is Cuba, and it is neither on our territory | 1:26:07 | |
because, well it's not, and so our laws don't apply, | 1:26:12 | |
and Cuban law doesn't apply. | 1:26:17 | |
So what law does? | 1:26:19 | |
Why is it so vague? | 1:26:22 | |
Well, I think it's not just accidental, | 1:26:25 | |
it's, that's why it's there. | 1:26:28 | |
It just happens to be a very useful condition. | 1:26:30 | |
It doesn't belong to the United States, | 1:26:35 | |
it does belong to Cuba, | 1:26:37 | |
but Cuba doesn't have authority over it, | 1:26:38 | |
so whatever we wanna do, we can do, | 1:26:40 | |
and that's what we do. | 1:26:43 | |
Now I'm taking a military guy, | 1:26:45 | |
and I'm making him work there, | 1:26:48 | |
and all of a sudden, I've gotta explain to him | 1:26:50 | |
why is it that we don't have U.S. law | 1:26:52 | |
when you are a U.S. military person, | 1:26:57 | |
you're a soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine, | 1:27:00 | |
who works here, with these people are not, | 1:27:02 | |
they're not, we're not gonna treat them | 1:27:06 | |
like they're in the United States, | 1:27:07 | |
but they're under United States control. | 1:27:09 | |
I mean, my head hurts | 1:27:10 | |
I mean, it's really an unbelievable to me | 1:27:12 | |
that we would be able to justify that. | 1:27:15 | |
Again, personal opinion, I'm just saying, | 1:27:18 | |
I guess this is not just professional | 1:27:22 | |
it's also as an American, it bothers me. | 1:27:23 | |
So that, but, and that's having seen | 1:27:26 | |
how I think it should work, | 1:27:30 | |
where clearly we're gonna make mistakes in an operation | 1:27:31 | |
because we've never done it before. | 1:27:35 | |
But our determination should always be in my mind | 1:27:37 | |
to try to ground whatever we do in the future | 1:27:41 | |
in both effectiveness and ethics. | 1:27:43 | |
And we have, we know how to do that. | 1:27:48 | |
We are a, we pride ourselves on being a nation of law, | 1:27:50 | |
we pride ourselves in our constitution, | 1:27:54 | |
and should pride ourselves in our constitution, | 1:27:57 | |
and grounding our laws in the constitution | 1:28:00 | |
when we conduct ourselves in a way, | 1:28:03 | |
I don't care where it is in the world, | 1:28:06 | |
we conduct ourselves in a way that rides against that, | 1:28:07 | |
then we should be ashamed of ourselves. | 1:28:11 | |
Honigsberg | You're not a lawyer, right? | 1:28:14 |
- | No. | 1:28:16 |
Honigsberg | Were you familiar with the Geneva conventions | 1:28:19 |
since you did some studying of international law? | 1:28:21 | |
- | Yes. | 1:28:24 |
Honigsberg | So how did it strike you when you heard | 1:28:25 |
that the Geneva conventions wouldn't be followed | 1:28:27 | |
in Guantanamo? | 1:28:29 | |
- | It's really disturbing, | 1:28:31 |
you know, I think we should. | 1:28:33 | |
I don't think, I think, you know, | 1:28:35 | |
I, first of all I'm concerned | 1:28:38 | |
that when we don't follow the conventions | 1:28:39 | |
that we ourselves have signed up to, | 1:28:42 | |
that we encourage others who have signed up | 1:28:46 | |
to it to disregard them as well. | 1:28:50 | |
We also encourage those who have not signed up to them | 1:28:53 | |
to avoid signing up to them, because why would they? | 1:28:56 | |
It's, you know, every, there's no incentive | 1:29:01 | |
for a person under control who's being treated | 1:29:06 | |
without any, just without any distinction, | 1:29:11 | |
without any regard to Geneva convention | 1:29:14 | |
or any other standard of justice, | 1:29:17 | |
there's no regard for that person to respect | 1:29:20 | |
any standard of justice. | 1:29:21 | |
Honigsberg | Were you thinking this back | 1:29:23 |
in your early years, were you aware of this? | 1:29:24 | |
That we weren't following the Geneva convention, | 1:29:27 | |
and this could have an effect around the world? | 1:29:30 | |
- | Yes. | 1:29:34 |
Honigsberg | Did you ever have conversations | 1:29:35 |
about other people about that? | 1:29:36 | |
- | You know, I don't recall. | 1:29:39 |
Honigsberg | Did you ever hear about suicides | 1:29:42 |
in Guantanamo? | 1:29:44 | |
- | Yes. | 1:29:46 |
Honigsberg | For the detainees. | 1:29:47 |
- | Yes. | 1:29:48 |
Honigsberg | Were you ever involved in looking into those? | 1:29:49 |
- | No, I was not. | 1:29:50 |
Honigsberg | And force-feeding and hunger strikes | 1:29:52 |
were you involved in looking into that at all? | 1:29:57 | |
- | I was not, no, I had heard about that, but-- | 1:30:00 |
Honigsberg | So now that was part of your, | 1:30:02 |
mission in terms of the investigation that you were doing | 1:30:06 | |
you know for-- | 1:30:09 | |
- | Well, clearly we did, if we had found, | 1:30:10 |
every, I mean, now the, when specifically I know, | 1:30:13 | |
because I know and respect General Fay, | 1:30:18 | |
one of the things that he found, what, | 1:30:21 | |
I mean, one of the things that he did was, | 1:30:24 | |
he had played a very stringent, | 1:30:25 | |
very stringent criteria to the term abuse. | 1:30:29 | |
You know, he was, you know | 1:30:31 | |
they looked into everything, | 1:30:33 | |
and just knowing General Fay, I mean, he's a very, | 1:30:34 | |
very careful guy and he did great work, | 1:30:38 | |
The Fay Jones report, | 1:30:43 | |
in my mind was an excellent report, and he did great work. | 1:30:44 | |
And one of the things, one of the hallmarks of it, | 1:30:47 | |
was that they looked at specific allegations | 1:30:48 | |
or, suspected incidents of abuse, | 1:30:51 | |
and it, I mean, it really had a low bar. | 1:30:54 | |
So if it was something that could be anybody think | 1:30:59 | |
of it as abuse, they would document it. | 1:31:01 | |
That same bar doesn't seem to have applied | 1:31:05 | |
at all at Guantanamo. | 1:31:09 | |
You know, our objective was again to get back to effective | 1:31:12 | |
and ethical treatment of detainees. | 1:31:15 | |
And as far as the military goes, | 1:31:18 | |
I think we reached that objective, our guys, our military, | 1:31:21 | |
the army interrogators that I met in 2009 | 1:31:25 | |
were charged and proud of the fact | 1:31:28 | |
that they were gonna uphold the highest standards of ethics | 1:31:31 | |
and effectiveness as interrogators. | 1:31:34 | |
They weren't interested in doing anything. | 1:31:36 | |
They, you brought up Abu Ghraib | 1:31:38 | |
and they'd be the first people to just go, | 1:31:41 | |
"We don't do that," | 1:31:45 | |
absolutely and I think that's probably applies | 1:31:46 | |
to most 99% of the people in the army in 2002 as well, | 1:31:49 | |
or 2003. | 1:31:54 | |
But I don't, know that the environment at Guantanamo | 1:31:55 | |
was the same as it wasn't in Abu Ghraib. | 1:31:59 | |
Or that we, that the army, the military | 1:32:01 | |
doesn't have the same level of controls it does. | 1:32:03 | |
Honigsberg | Why wouldn't it be at the same level? | 1:32:06 |
Why, you don't know, why wouldn't it be the same, | 1:32:10 | |
what's the difference? | 1:32:13 | |
Why do you see a difference? | 1:32:14 | |
- | Well, for one thing, it's the issue of Guantanamo | 1:32:16 |
is neither in the United States | 1:32:20 | |
nor under authority of another government. | 1:32:22 | |
So, I mean, it's deliberately vague. | 1:32:27 | |
Honigsberg | So do you think if there were another war | 1:32:31 |
in the future, that same event could occur | 1:32:35 | |
a place like Guantanamo, again, | 1:32:39 | |
being in limbo, neither here, the way you see it | 1:32:41 | |
neither here nor there, you think the same problem, | 1:32:44 | |
or do you think your protocols would protect the detainees | 1:32:47 | |
the next time around? | 1:32:51 | |
- | I would like to see as an American citizen, | 1:32:53 |
the same concern for effectiveness and ethics | 1:32:57 | |
and taking care of detainees that the military has adopted | 1:33:02 | |
by the United States government. | 1:33:06 | |
I would like to see our leaders, | 1:33:10 | |
at all levels dedicate themselves to that. | 1:33:13 | |
I would have liked to see our detention facility | 1:33:19 | |
in Guantanamo closed within days | 1:33:23 | |
after the election of president Obama. | 1:33:27 | |
I would like to have seen opposition from media | 1:33:32 | |
and political opponents approached with the same dedication | 1:33:37 | |
as we've approached other national priorities, | 1:33:43 | |
and that we would, we could have closed that facility. | 1:33:48 | |
And I don't think we should ever have another one | 1:33:52 | |
like that again. | 1:33:53 | |
Now that's just me, but I was very happy | 1:33:55 | |
at the pledge to close Guantanamo, | 1:34:01 | |
and very dismayed that we did not. | 1:34:04 | |
And I think I just, it really bothers me | 1:34:06 | |
that we did not do that. | 1:34:11 | |
Honigsberg | You think Obama would be able to, | 1:34:12 |
or would even try after the election, if he were elected? | 1:34:15 | |
- | You know, I don't know that there's enough | 1:34:19 |
of a constituency, and unfortunately we have to speak | 1:34:20 | |
about it in those terms, if the constituency that, | 1:34:23 | |
you know, and you know it is, our American politics | 1:34:28 | |
is what it is. | 1:34:33 | |
If there's not a political constituency | 1:34:34 | |
that's strong enough to advocate for a policy change, | 1:34:36 | |
then it's unlikely to happen. | 1:34:41 | |
And I think, unfortunately I'm skeptical | 1:34:44 | |
that that constituency is strong enough to do it. | 1:34:47 | |
You know, I really think that we had a chance to do that | 1:34:50 | |
in 2009. | 1:34:53 | |
You know, I happen to know the person | 1:34:55 | |
who was put in charge of detainee affairs | 1:35:01 | |
in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, | 1:35:06 | |
after president Obama became the president. | 1:35:09 | |
And he spent six months there, | 1:35:14 | |
he was an attorney really, really good guy. | 1:35:17 | |
Very dedicated to doing everything he could | 1:35:22 | |
to close Guantanamo. | 1:35:25 | |
And he left six months later | 1:35:28 | |
because he just couldn't get anywhere. | 1:35:29 | |
Honigsberg | Did he tell you that? | 1:35:32 |
- | No, I know it, I was, I do, I know him, he's a great guy. | 1:35:33 |
And I know he was completely sincere | 1:35:37 | |
about what he wanted to do, | 1:35:40 | |
and he had, he had charge make it happen. | 1:35:43 | |
He didn't make it happen. | 1:35:47 | |
Honigsberg | Can you tell us his name? | 1:35:48 |
- | I'd rather not. | 1:35:49 |
Honigsberg | Okay. | 1:35:50 |
And so he was disappointed and that's why he left. | 1:35:51 | |
- | Well, it was big part of it, yeah. | 1:35:54 |
He just didn't, he couldn't do what he came there to do. | 1:35:56 | |
And he believed very strongly | 1:35:59 | |
that that was the right thing to do, | 1:36:02 | |
and it wasn't possible for him. | 1:36:04 | |
There was a lot of opposition. | 1:36:06 | |
It's hard, closing Guantanamo is hard, | 1:36:09 | |
but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it. | 1:36:15 | |
It's important for us to, for all good reasons, | 1:36:17 | |
not just for our relationship with other countries | 1:36:20 | |
and all that it's important, | 1:36:22 | |
but because of who we are. | 1:36:24 | |
Guantanamo was a stain of America, | 1:36:26 | |
and the fact that we play this game, | 1:36:29 | |
Oh it's not really in America, that makes me ill. | 1:36:32 | |
That's, childish, that doesn't to me justify anything, | 1:36:37 | |
except it means that the people who would make that argument | 1:36:43 | |
are really, they take us all for fools. | 1:36:46 | |
We know what the truth is. | 1:36:51 | |
The truth is that it's convenient to do that, | 1:36:52 | |
because we can do whatever we want. | 1:36:55 | |
And it's not because it's dangerous to move prisoners | 1:36:56 | |
to try them in the United States. | 1:37:00 | |
You know, it's a false dichotomy to train, | 1:37:02 | |
okay, so if we don't put, | 1:37:06 | |
if they're not in Guantanamo then we have to try them, | 1:37:07 | |
you know, within blocks of the World Trade Center, | 1:37:10 | |
we don't, that's ridiculous. | 1:37:12 | |
But that's the false dichotomy that they throw out. | 1:37:15 | |
"Oh, we don't wanna try them | 1:37:17 | |
in the World Trade Center area." | 1:37:18 | |
Okay, try them in Nebraska. | 1:37:20 | |
And, the notion that we can't take a dangerous person, | 1:37:22 | |
and bring them to the United States | 1:37:28 | |
and put them on trial for crimes, | 1:37:30 | |
and give them the opportunity to, for justice is ridiculous. | 1:37:32 | |
Of course we can, we do it all the time, | 1:37:39 | |
with all kinds of crazy bad people. | 1:37:42 | |
And, we do it well. | 1:37:45 | |
Honigsberg | Were you involved, | 1:37:47 |
just a couple of questions, | 1:37:49 | |
in the military break in South Carolina? | 1:37:50 | |
Was that year within your domain at all? | 1:37:53 | |
When we held a few people in the military breaks | 1:37:56 | |
in South Carolina? | 1:37:58 | |
- | I don't know about that. | 1:37:59 |
Honigsberg | You don't know about that. | 1:38:00 |
Do you, are you disappointed in president Obama? | 1:38:02 | |
In terms of not closing Guantanamo? | 1:38:05 | |
- | Yes, I am. | 1:38:07 |
Honigsberg | And... | 1:38:11 |
- | I mean, it's not just him. | 1:38:15 |
I'm disappointed that we, all of us and many many people | 1:38:16 | |
that I know who frankly worked hard to get him elected, | 1:38:21 | |
who believed that this was something we could do. | 1:38:27 | |
I'm disappointed that we couldn't do it. | 1:38:30 | |
So it's not just one man, it's all of us. | 1:38:33 | |
And we didn't do it. | 1:38:39 | |
All of us share responsibility for that. | 1:38:41 | |
It's not just him. | 1:38:43 | |
So, yeah, I'm disappointed, | 1:38:45 | |
I'm also disappointed in me. | 1:38:46 | |
I couldn't do it. | 1:38:48 | |
We couldn't do it, and it's wrong and we should have. | 1:38:50 | |
But, and there's a lot of people who complete disagree | 1:38:54 | |
and say, "Oh, we, why are we, it's working fine." | 1:38:57 | |
Yeah, it's working fine | 1:39:00 | |
unless you look at the constitution of the United States, | 1:39:01 | |
and you take it seriously, then it's not working fine. | 1:39:04 | |
And I like to live under the rule of law, | 1:39:08 | |
and I happen to like our set of laws. | 1:39:11 | |
I prefer that. | 1:39:14 | |
Honigsberg | Well, General two more questions, | 1:39:15 |
one is, did you like change the way you're talking, | 1:39:17 | |
your life change after 9/11 | 1:39:19 | |
in terms of how you see the world, | 1:39:22 | |
and how you see the military or politics, any of those, | 1:39:23 | |
all the above? | 1:39:28 | |
- | Yes, I think it really did. | 1:39:30 |
And I'll just give you a couple examples. | 1:39:33 | |
One of them is real positive. | 1:39:37 | |
The things I saw on the lawn and the Pentagon | 1:39:39 | |
and the behavior I saw, people like Lisa Bronson, | 1:39:43 | |
and that Lieutenant general that showed up, | 1:39:46 | |
and friends that I'd known for years | 1:39:50 | |
who were with me on the line, made me proud. | 1:39:51 | |
And I'll never forget that feeling. | 1:39:55 | |
That was important for me. | 1:39:57 | |
That was good, and again, I'll never forget that, | 1:39:59 | |
and I'll come back to that again. | 1:40:03 | |
I don't wanna have a good experience like that again, | 1:40:06 | |
but that is not something that makes me proud. | 1:40:08 | |
But I also have been disappointed by, | 1:40:12 | |
policies and actions of my country | 1:40:17 | |
that don't live up to our own standards. | 1:40:22 | |
And I've seen numerous examples of that. | 1:40:26 | |
It bothers me when leaders who are intelligent adult, | 1:40:28 | |
competent people, do things which they know very well | 1:40:36 | |
are against our constitution, and against our way of life | 1:40:42 | |
and our rule of law. | 1:40:45 | |
It bothers me, and I, that's hard for me to forget too. | 1:40:47 | |
Is I see that as an American, as a breach of trust. | 1:40:52 | |
I'd like to think that I'm wrong, but I don't think | 1:41:00 | |
that I am having seen it now for about 11 years. | 1:41:04 | |
And that doesn't mean that I've given up hope, | 1:41:10 | |
but it does mean that I am skept, more, much more skeptical | 1:41:12 | |
and maybe even cynical than I was before. | 1:41:16 | |
And I'd like to, I really, really would like to think | 1:41:20 | |
that I don't need to be, and I'm not just saying this, | 1:41:23 | |
and you probably take this off the tape, | 1:41:28 | |
but it's exactly people like you | 1:41:30 | |
that give me the hope that we can get through this. | 1:41:34 | |
And what you're doing with this project | 1:41:36 | |
is very very helpful to our country. | 1:41:39 | |
We need, more truth tellers, | 1:41:43 | |
and we need a lot of people that can participate | 1:41:47 | |
in events like this, in efforts like this, | 1:41:50 | |
to document what happened, I mean, I don't know | 1:41:53 | |
if I've said what you wanted me to say, | 1:41:57 | |
I've just told you what I think. | 1:41:58 | |
But I think that we will identify, you know, | 1:42:01 | |
you know my little strand | 1:42:03 | |
and all the other strands that you've heard | 1:42:05 | |
that I don't have access to, | 1:42:06 | |
although I liked your website, | 1:42:08 | |
I wanna do, I wanna listen more, | 1:42:12 | |
but I think when we put this all together | 1:42:14 | |
we'll have something we can all be proud of. | 1:42:16 | |
America doesn't always get it right, | 1:42:20 | |
But what you can depend upon I think is that | 1:42:23 | |
most of us know right when we see it, | 1:42:28 | |
and we try to go there. | 1:42:32 | |
And we stumble and we fall down, but we always get up. | 1:42:34 | |
And that gives me hope. | 1:42:38 | |
Honigsberg | That was wonderful. | 1:42:41 |
I usually ask people who's anything else you wanna add, | 1:42:42 | |
but I think you just added it, | 1:42:45 | |
but I will ask you that anyway, | 1:42:46 | |
and before we close it, if there's something else | 1:42:48 | |
that you I'd like to. | 1:42:52 | |
- | I can't really think of anything. | 1:43:01 |
Honigsberg | I think you ended on a beautiful note | 1:43:02 |
I wouldn't see any nails, but. | 1:43:04 | |
- | I wanna do honor to you and justice to your work, | 1:43:08 |
and so if there's something you want me to speak to | 1:43:13 | |
I'm happy to do it. | 1:43:15 | |
I don't, can't think of anything off the top of my head. | 1:43:17 | |
Honigsberg | You said very, | 1:43:18 |
you were very kind in your words | 1:43:19 | |
and I'm very grateful for that. | 1:43:21 | |
- | I mean it. | 1:43:24 |
Honigsberg | Appreciated it. | 1:43:25 |
- | I mean it. | 1:43:26 |
Honigsberg | Well, Johnny needs 20 seconds of room tone | 1:43:28 |
where the room is quiet before | 1:43:32 | |
he can turn off the tape, so-- | 1:43:34 | |
- | Okay. | 1:43:36 |
Honigsberg | He's gonna, okay. | 1:43:37 |
- | Sure. | 1:43:38 |
Johnny | Begin room tone | 1:43:39 |
End room tone. | 1:43:55 |
Item Info
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