Bryson, Jennifer - Interview master file
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Interviewer | Okay, good morning. | 0:05 |
- | Morning. | 0:06 |
Interviewer | We are very grateful to you | 0:08 |
for participating in the Witness to Guantanamo project. | 0:09 | |
We invite you to speak of your experiences | 0:13 | |
and involvement at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. | 0:15 | |
We are hoping to provide you with an opportunity | 0:19 | |
to tell us your story in your own words. | 0:22 | |
We are creating an archive of stories | 0:26 | |
so that people in America | 0:29 | |
and around the world will have a better understanding | 0:30 | |
of what you and others have experienced and observed. | 0:33 | |
Future generations must know what happened at Guantanamo, | 0:38 | |
and by telling your story, | 0:41 | |
you're contributing to our history. | 0:43 | |
And we appreciate your courage | 0:45 | |
and willingness to come to speak with us today. | 0:47 | |
If at any time during the interview, | 0:51 | |
you'd like to take a break, just let us know. | 0:52 | |
And if there's anything you say you'd like us to remove, | 0:54 | |
please let us know and we can remove it. | 0:56 | |
And I'd like to begin with some basic questions | 0:59 | |
such as your name and where you were born, | 1:02 | |
your birth date and age. | 1:06 | |
I mean, start with that. | 1:07 | |
- | My name's Jennifer Bryson. | 1:09 |
I was born in Oakland, California, | 1:11 | |
and grew up in the Eastern part of the San Francisco Bay. | 1:14 | |
And I... | 1:18 | |
Interviewer | Your birthday. | 1:20 |
- | I was born in 1967. | 1:21 |
Interviewer | The month? | 1:24 |
- | I was born on August 6, 1967. | 1:25 |
Interviewer | And that makes you how old? | 1:28 |
- | So I am now 44. | 1:30 |
Interviewer | Whoops. | 1:34 |
And what languages do you speak? | 1:40 | |
- | I speak Arabic and German, | 1:44 |
and read several dead languages. | 1:47 | |
Interviewer | And could you give us a little bit back | 1:50 |
on your education? | 1:51 | |
- | As an undergraduate, | 1:53 |
I majored in political science at Stanford University. | 1:54 | |
While I was an undergraduate | 1:59 | |
during my sophomore year of college, | 2:01 | |
I studied Marxism Leninism for one year in Leipzig | 2:02 | |
at the Karl Marx University when it was still East Germany. | 2:06 | |
And that actually later became relevant | 2:10 | |
when I was at Guantanamo | 2:15 | |
because I experienced very intense ideological movements | 2:17 | |
when I was in East Germany. | 2:23 | |
So at Stanford University, | 2:25 | |
my focus in political science was international relations | 2:28 | |
and I'd considered | 2:32 | |
maybe working for the US government someday. | 2:33 | |
But then after college, | 2:36 | |
I did my master's degree in Medieval European History | 2:38 | |
at Yale University, | 2:41 | |
and had a chance to study the history of philosophy, | 2:43 | |
and in studying the history of philosophy, | 2:47 | |
especially philosophy of creations, | 2:50 | |
studying St. Augustine and Aquinas | 2:53 | |
and Bonaventure and Albertus Magnus, | 2:55 | |
I was exposed to the intellectual works | 2:57 | |
that were translated from Arabic into Latin. | 2:59 | |
And this got me interested in the medieval world | 3:02 | |
of philosophers writing in Arabic. | 3:07 | |
So after that I left graduate school for two years | 3:10 | |
for language study to learn Arabic. | 3:13 | |
I wanted to be able to use Arabic in graduate school, | 3:15 | |
not take language classes. | 3:18 | |
So I went to Egypt for two years only for language study. | 3:19 | |
And then I came back to Yale | 3:23 | |
and did a PhD in | 3:24 | |
the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations | 3:26 | |
in the field of Arabic and Islamic Studies. | 3:29 | |
Interviewer | I guess I just want | 3:34 |
a couple of basic questions. | 3:36 | |
where you live now and what your current occupation is, | 3:37 | |
and we'll go back to what happened | 3:39 | |
after you completed your studies. | 3:41 | |
- | I live now in Princeton, New Jersey, | 3:43 |
and I work at a think tank | 3:45 | |
as the Director of their Islam and Civil Society project. | 3:49 | |
And the think tank is called the Witherspoon Institute. | 3:52 | |
Interviewer | So maybe we could begin by | 3:55 |
what happened when you completed your PhD. | 3:57 | |
- | At the end of graduate school in the late '90s, | 4:01 |
around '99, 2000, | 4:04 | |
I was very interested | 4:06 | |
in going to work for the US government. | 4:07 | |
I loved the academic research, | 4:08 | |
but I was interested in work | 4:11 | |
that was a little more engaged in the world. | 4:12 | |
However, I was not able to find a job in the US government, | 4:15 | |
and was told that I was over-educated with a PhD | 4:18 | |
and that I'd studied something irrelevant. | 4:22 | |
And I tried many different agencies, | 4:26 | |
and so I ended up going into journalism for a year, | 4:28 | |
which was fantastic experience, internship with CBS News. | 4:31 | |
And then my first job after graduate school | 4:35 | |
was as a desk assistant at the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. | 4:37 | |
And then after 9/11, | 4:41 | |
I had a freelance job | 4:42 | |
reporting on how Al Jazeera was covering | 4:44 | |
the war on terrorism, the very first weeks after 9/11. | 4:48 | |
Interviewer | And how did that lead you | 4:53 |
into going back to the Department of Defense? | 4:54 | |
- | Well, I then renewed my job applications | 4:57 |
with the government after 9/11, | 5:01 | |
and started out in December, 2001, in a job, | 5:03 | |
for a year as a contractor to the Department of Defense, | 5:09 | |
doing strategic outreach | 5:12 | |
with media and civil society elements. | 5:15 | |
And I was placed in the embassies in Egypt and Yemen. | 5:19 | |
It was fantastic job. I loved it. | 5:21 | |
And worked with the State Department. | 5:24 | |
And then, I went to work for the Defense Intelligence Agency | 5:26 | |
starting in January, 2003. | 5:32 | |
Interviewer | And how did that transition happen? | 5:35 |
You went into intelligence. | 5:39 | |
- | I was applying for jobs in different fields. | 5:41 |
With my academic background, | 5:47 | |
intelligence seemed like a potentially good fit | 5:50 | |
because it involved seeking answers and research | 5:54 | |
and trying to understand complex things at many levels. | 5:58 | |
And so, through a friend of a friend of a friend, | 6:03 | |
I was put in touch with the Defense Intelligence Agency | 6:11 | |
and had accepted a job with them | 6:15 | |
before I went overseas for a year as a contractor, | 6:17 | |
but the processing of the job | 6:21 | |
and security clearance took time, so... | 6:22 | |
Interviewer | And did you know what you were getting into? | 6:25 |
Did you know what kind of work | 6:26 | |
you'd be doing with telephones? | 6:27 | |
- | I had some ideas. | 6:30 |
In the job interview process, | 6:33 | |
I had been offered a job at a higher level as an analyst, | 6:35 | |
and I turned that down | 6:39 | |
in order to take a job in human intelligence collection | 6:41 | |
because I thought it sounded so fascinating. | 6:44 | |
It led me in directions I hadn't really thought I would go, | 6:49 | |
but it did prove certainly to be fascinating. | 6:54 | |
Interviewer | And what kind of training did you get then | 6:58 |
when you started working for the DOD? | 7:00 | |
- | Initially, and it's important | 7:04 |
to keep in mind the timeline here, | 7:07 | |
that I started working for the Defense Intelligence Agency | 7:10 | |
in January, 2003, | 7:13 | |
And in the very first months after 9/11, | 7:15 | |
there was such a surge in intelligence activity, | 7:18 | |
that there was also a surge in demand | 7:22 | |
on opportunities for training. | 7:24 | |
And the demands to send new personnel to training | 7:26 | |
were at first larger | 7:30 | |
than the training opportunities that were available. | 7:31 | |
So, people often had went many months to get into training. | 7:35 | |
So initially they just sent me to work at an office | 7:39 | |
without much training. | 7:43 | |
But that also meant there were certain things I couldn't do | 7:45 | |
until I had more training. | 7:48 | |
Interviewer | And when did that occur, | 7:52 |
when did they train you? | 7:53 | |
- | They had initially sent me to an office in 2003, | 7:57 |
which as it turned out, | 7:59 | |
really didn't have a use for me to be there. | 8:00 | |
I found this completely unacceptable | 8:03 | |
and I told them I would resign | 8:06 | |
if they weren't going to send me | 8:09 | |
to a job where they actually needed me to do something. | 8:11 | |
And especially at this point, | 8:15 | |
not only are we as a country in the post 9/11 phase, | 8:16 | |
but also the US has gone into Iraq. | 8:20 | |
And here I was sitting in an office doing nothing, | 8:23 | |
reading newspaper articles | 8:25 | |
claiming that the Department of Defense | 8:26 | |
didn't have any Arabists. | 8:28 | |
And this was very frustrating. | 8:30 | |
So, somebody higher up in management at DIA had the idea, | 8:32 | |
which I only found out about later, | 8:38 | |
to send me to Guantanamo. | 8:40 | |
And in August, 2003, | 8:43 | |
when I went to meet with this person | 8:45 | |
to find out what new assignment they had found for me, | 8:47 | |
he informed me of this | 8:50 | |
and through a great deal | 8:52 | |
of bureaucratic difficulty on his part, | 8:55 | |
I really owe a big thanks to him, | 8:57 | |
he had found a way to get me sent to training, | 8:59 | |
for interrogation. | 9:04 | |
So I went to Fort Huachuca in September, 2003, | 9:05 | |
to begin interrogation training. | 9:11 | |
Interviewer | Well, before we talk about | 9:13 |
how you were trained, | 9:14 | |
it sounds to me like you are unusual. | 9:16 | |
Would you say as an interrogator | 9:18 | |
with that kind of background and... | 9:20 | |
- | Yes. | 9:23 |
Most of the interrogators, | 9:24 | |
including the Army Reserve unit that I trained with, | 9:26 | |
were military enlisted | 9:30 | |
or the contractors who were there as civilians, | 9:32 | |
had previously been in the military | 9:36 | |
and had been interrogators in the military. | 9:39 | |
At the time, there was not a systematic training program. | 9:41 | |
There was not a training program | 9:45 | |
for civilians like myself | 9:47 | |
to turn them into interrogators. | 9:51 | |
And some in the training bureaucracy said, | 9:53 | |
"No, we usually just hire people | 9:56 | |
"who were former interrogators." | 9:57 | |
And I said to them, "Will be much less expensive for you | 9:59 | |
"to hire somebody with my education | 10:03 | |
"that you don't have to pay for. | 10:05 | |
"And just send me to interrogation training | 10:08 | |
"than to have somebody who was formerly an interrogator | 10:10 | |
"and then have you pay to send them | 10:14 | |
"to the education I had in culture and language." | 10:16 | |
So it was new and it took, | 10:21 | |
as I said, somebody at a high level in the bureaucracy | 10:25 | |
to finally say, "No, we are going to make this happen." | 10:28 | |
Now, in the months after that, | 10:30 | |
certainly by later 2004 and into 2005, | 10:33 | |
then there were established training programs | 10:37 | |
for civilians with very interesting backgrounds, | 10:40 | |
which is ideally what you need for a team of interrogators, | 10:44 | |
to be trained to be interrogators. | 10:47 | |
Interviewer | Did they assume | 10:50 |
that you would not need an interpreter | 10:51 | |
because you were fluent in Arabic? | 10:53 | |
- | They thought that was a possibility. | 10:56 |
I mean, certainly having language helped. | 10:59 | |
But that didn't really matter either way, | 11:02 | |
because at Guantanamo, | 11:05 | |
there were interpreters available if needed | 11:06 | |
and some detainees spoke English. | 11:08 | |
What I find very interesting in hindsight | 11:11 | |
was that in the summer of 2003, | 11:14 | |
they made a point of finding an employee they had, | 11:17 | |
who had an education in culture, history and religion | 11:19 | |
and language training, | 11:23 | |
and made a point of sending me to interrogation | 11:24 | |
when if what they really wanted was brutality, | 11:27 | |
they never would have gone to find me and chosen me | 11:32 | |
and made the effort to put me through interrogation. | 11:35 | |
Interviewer | But it sounds like | 11:38 |
only one person made the effort to find you, | 11:39 | |
other people, you went off everyone else's radar. | 11:41 | |
- | But I watched as the months went by, | 11:45 |
that also down to the level | 11:47 | |
of the human resources recruitment, | 11:49 | |
they were no longer recruiting | 11:52 | |
just by code words put into a computer system, | 11:54 | |
which meant with these keywords, | 11:58 | |
that if you were a trained army interrogator | 12:01 | |
in your previous military work, | 12:03 | |
and you put in the names of the, | 12:06 | |
specialized names of these training, | 12:08 | |
the computer would pick you up | 12:09 | |
for the Defense Intelligence Agency. | 12:10 | |
Whereas before 9/11, | 12:12 | |
I was completely off of the radar screen | 12:15 | |
for these human resources officers, | 12:17 | |
because I had such a strange background | 12:19 | |
relative to what they did. | 12:22 | |
Whereas in the years immediately after 9/11, | 12:24 | |
they really did start to go out | 12:27 | |
and recruit people with humanities educations, | 12:28 | |
with personal experience living in a variety of cultures | 12:31 | |
with foreign language ability. | 12:34 | |
But, by the time that started to become regularized, | 12:36 | |
that was some years later, | 12:42 | |
whereas I happen to already be there by 2003. | 12:44 | |
Interviewer | So can you tell us a little | 12:49 |
about the training you got before you went? | 12:50 | |
- | Initially I had training in an interrogation course. | 12:53 |
One of my distinct memories | 12:57 | |
is on the very first day of the class. | 12:59 | |
After we had had an introduction that was very formal, | 13:02 | |
from an officer at the base, | 13:07 | |
all of us walked over | 13:10 | |
to where our training classes would be. | 13:11 | |
And on the way, | 13:13 | |
a Marine who was an administer for the program, | 13:14 | |
he wasn't an interrogator himself, | 13:17 | |
he said to me, "You're a woman. | 13:19 | |
"They're not gonna speak to you. | 13:21 | |
"There's no point in you getting this training." | 13:22 | |
And I thought, "Hthat's sort of a discouraging start, | 13:25 | |
"but I'm not gonna believe him." | 13:30 | |
And in deed he proved to be wrong. And- | 13:32 | |
Interviewer | Were you the only woman | 13:36 |
in that group of people who went into training? | 13:37 | |
- | No. There were women in the unit. | 13:39 |
And it was very unusual way to train a civilian. | 13:42 | |
There was an Army Reserve unit that was an intelligence unit | 13:46 | |
that was going through training | 13:50 | |
and they simply inserted me in with the unit. | 13:51 | |
It was great. I got two classes for the price of one. | 13:54 | |
I got interrogation training and Army 101. | 13:57 | |
I learned a lot about working together with the military | 14:00 | |
and who's serving in the military. | 14:03 | |
The interrogation training was structured | 14:06 | |
so that we had a few weeks that were first just lecture. | 14:08 | |
And the lectures, | 14:14 | |
this interrogation class was a special one | 14:16 | |
that was catered | 14:18 | |
to interrogators who were going to fight | 14:19 | |
in global war on terrorism assignments. | 14:22 | |
And it was new that they were offering this class. | 14:25 | |
They had found in the first year that interrogators | 14:28 | |
who had been in trade only in interrogation, | 14:32 | |
but who didn't understand anything about the culture, | 14:34 | |
religion, history of the people they were interrogating, | 14:37 | |
had a great deal of difficulty. So... | 14:39 | |
Interviewer | In accessing information | 14:42 |
or what difficulties? | 14:44 | |
- | Yeah. Yeah. | |
In accessing information | 14:47 | |
and connecting with the detainees in being interrogators. | 14:48 | |
So our interrogation training actually began | 14:52 | |
with courses on introduction to Islam. | 14:56 | |
We also had courses providing a brief history | 14:59 | |
of what was known about the terrorist movements. | 15:02 | |
So we had lectures in those areas | 15:06 | |
before we moved to interrogation training. | 15:08 | |
Interviewer | Since you were a scholar in that area, | 15:13 |
were they accurate to you? | 15:15 | |
- | They actually were quite good. | 15:18 |
And just recently, | 15:20 | |
I found my training notes from that class | 15:21 | |
and was rereading the introduction to Islam. | 15:24 | |
And, I was really pleased | 15:27 | |
to see that it was quite fair and accurate. | 15:31 | |
And we were trained upfront | 15:34 | |
to understand that Islam is very large and diverse, | 15:37 | |
that the terrorists that we would be meeting | 15:42 | |
were a particular ideological movement within Islam, | 15:45 | |
but there were many Muslims themselves | 15:49 | |
who disagreed with them. | 15:51 | |
And I know I've heard through news media, | 15:54 | |
there've been training classes | 15:56 | |
and other government agencies | 15:58 | |
that unfortunately didn't reflect | 15:59 | |
this fairness and accuracy, | 16:01 | |
but ours was quite decent. | 16:03 | |
Now, keep in mind, it was very brief. | 16:04 | |
They had to pack a lot of different topics | 16:07 | |
into a short amount of time, | 16:09 | |
but under the circumstances, | 16:10 | |
I thought they did a good job. | 16:11 | |
Interviewer | This was the DOD? | 16:12 |
- | This was Department of Defense. Yep. | 16:13 |
At Fort Huachuca in Arizona. | 16:16 | |
Interviewer | You said that | 16:18 |
the terrorists you'll be interviewing, | 16:19 | |
was there an assumption | 16:20 | |
that everybody you'll be interviewing was a terrorist? | 16:22 | |
- | Yeah, as I was saying that just now, | 16:26 |
I was kind of thinking like, | 16:29 | |
well, I'm not sure that's what I meant. | 16:30 | |
The assumption was that for the most part, they would be. | 16:35 | |
Also something that came out later | 16:40 | |
in our interrogation training, was that interrogation, | 16:41 | |
there would be prioritization of who we'd be interrogating. | 16:44 | |
And with a limited number of an interrogators | 16:48 | |
and a limited number of time, | 16:51 | |
we would most likely be spending time | 16:52 | |
on those were thought to have actually been most involved. | 16:55 | |
So in looking at it as going to interrogate terrorists, | 16:59 | |
it doesn't mean | 17:01 | |
that we were necessarily talking to everybody. | 17:02 | |
I knew that my assignment would not be until 2004. | 17:06 | |
So by this time at Guantanamo, | 17:10 | |
we knew that they already were starting | 17:12 | |
to get a better understanding of who was there, | 17:14 | |
and sorting them out. | 17:17 | |
But definitely in the interrogation training, | 17:19 | |
part of the training was training systematically | 17:23 | |
how to let go of our own assumptions | 17:26 | |
and how to become aware of our own assumptions. | 17:28 | |
Interviewer | Can you elaborate on that? | 17:31 |
- | Sure. | 17:34 |
The types of topics | 17:35 | |
that interrogators are trained to ask about | 17:37 | |
are the topics that the analysts, | 17:39 | |
the intelligence analysts have determined | 17:41 | |
we need to ask about. | 17:43 | |
Interrogators don't just walk in and talk about | 17:45 | |
whatever they feel like asking about that day. | 17:47 | |
So already that was one level | 17:51 | |
at which the interrogators themselves had to let go | 17:53 | |
of what they themselves might want to ask about. | 17:55 | |
Interviewer | It was scripted? | 17:59 |
- | No, never scripted. | 18:00 |
You can't be, | 18:02 | |
because an interrogation is | 18:03 | |
constantly changing in ways, | 18:08 | |
every single moment, that you can never predict. | 18:10 | |
But we were given particular areas to ask about. | 18:13 | |
And another way in which we were trained | 18:19 | |
to learn to set aside our own assumptions, | 18:21 | |
was also included a recognition that sometimes, | 18:24 | |
in military conflict, | 18:29 | |
units would not always be entirely sure | 18:32 | |
who they had picked up and detained. | 18:34 | |
And the first part of interrogation, | 18:36 | |
especially if it's in a battle situation, | 18:39 | |
the very first part of interrogation that they train | 18:45 | |
is simply trying to get a basic idea | 18:48 | |
and sort out who is there, | 18:52 | |
which meant you couldn't assume upfront | 18:54 | |
that you actually knew. | 18:56 | |
Interviewer | Can you go on about the training? | 19:00 |
- | So after we had some lectures | 19:02 |
on history, culture, religion, | 19:04 | |
various ideologies that we might find among the detainees, | 19:09 | |
in that training, I should point out, | 19:14 | |
the analysts and the interrogators were all together | 19:16 | |
in this unit. | 19:19 | |
And then they split the analysts and the interrogators | 19:20 | |
and put us into more specialized training. | 19:23 | |
In the interrogation training, | 19:26 | |
they focused the training entirely | 19:28 | |
on the Army Field Manual for interrogation, | 19:31 | |
which is the formerly approved guidelines for interrogation. | 19:34 | |
And our trainers were themselves former interrogators, | 19:39 | |
which was very important. | 19:45 | |
They had experience doing this, | 19:47 | |
and only after they felt | 19:51 | |
that people understood the lecture part | 19:53 | |
of the interrogation, | 19:56 | |
then we went into practical exercises. | 19:57 | |
Interviewer | Contractors pretended they were detainees | 20:01 |
and you would interrogate them? | 20:04 | |
- | Yep. | 20:06 |
Interviewer | And would there be observers | 20:08 |
who would critique your work? | 20:09 | |
- | Yes. | 20:12 |
There were observers who would critique our work. | 20:13 | |
Also the contractors | 20:15 | |
who were themselves former interrogators, | 20:17 | |
would critique our work. | 20:19 | |
In addition, the interrogators were learning | 20:22 | |
not just from their individual practice sessions, | 20:25 | |
but collectively. | 20:27 | |
And one example that I remember of this very clearly, | 20:29 | |
was one day in an interrogation practice session, | 20:32 | |
one of the interrogators in training | 20:36 | |
was getting upset with the "detainee" | 20:41 | |
and threw a cup of water on him. | 20:44 | |
And his session was immediately stopped. | 20:47 | |
Every single practice interrogation session was stopped. | 20:49 | |
Keep in mind, | 20:53 | |
we were under tremendous time pressure at this point. | 20:53 | |
They stopped everything. | 20:55 | |
They took all of us out of the facility | 20:57 | |
where we were doing the practice interrogations | 20:59 | |
and back to the lecture room. | 21:01 | |
And they gave us a lecture | 21:03 | |
that in absolutely no uncertain terms were we there | 21:05 | |
to abuse the detainees. | 21:07 | |
We were there to build rapport with them. | 21:09 | |
This was the atmosphere in the training | 21:12 | |
and also having experienced interrogators | 21:17 | |
who had interrogated detainees | 21:20 | |
in different types of military conflicts, | 21:21 | |
and that also meant they were interrogators | 21:24 | |
who had worked with detainees | 21:27 | |
from different cultures and different religious backgrounds | 21:28 | |
and different ideological backgrounds, | 21:31 | |
I felt like we really were getting some good, | 21:35 | |
authentic professional advice | 21:38 | |
about what actually works in interrogation. | 21:40 | |
And constantly everything was brought back | 21:42 | |
to the Army Field Manual. | 21:46 | |
Interviewer | This might be obvious, | 21:48 |
but just for the record, | 21:49 | |
can you tell us what the goal of the interrogations were? | 21:50 | |
- | To gain information. | 21:54 |
That was needed. | 21:57 | |
Interviewer | About? | |
- | Information about, | 22:02 |
this is where the analysts were vitally important. | 22:03 | |
The analysts were the ones who were determining | 22:06 | |
what the Department of Defense | 22:09 | |
and the US government had a need to know. | 22:11 | |
Interviewer | So you would gather certain information | 22:13 |
and then the recording would be given to an analyst | 22:15 | |
who would then determine what was heard? | 22:17 | |
- | The, well, I should note, | 22:24 |
another part of interrogation training | 22:28 | |
that's extremely important is writing. | 22:29 | |
And it's up to the interrogator | 22:34 | |
to provide the written record of the interrogation. | 22:36 | |
The interrogator needs background information ahead of time, | 22:41 | |
about who, what is known about the subject, | 22:45 | |
and what information we think we might be able to seek. | 22:49 | |
But initially it's the responsibility of the interrogator | 22:55 | |
to write this down. | 22:59 | |
And something that bothers me very much | 23:00 | |
about the movie versions of interrogation | 23:02 | |
and also the TV show "24," | 23:05 | |
which I think is absolutely incredibly terrible | 23:07 | |
inaccurate representation of what interrogation is, | 23:10 | |
we never sees the interrogators writing, | 23:13 | |
'cause writing might be boring. | 23:15 | |
But if one talks to a person | 23:17 | |
and doesn't learn to accurately, | 23:19 | |
fairly and clearly share that information with others, | 23:21 | |
it's like the conversation never happened. | 23:26 | |
Interviewer | Don't you engage better with a subject | 23:29 |
if you're not writing, | 23:31 | |
if you're just looking at the person? | 23:33 | |
- | Different interrogators found different ways to do this, | 23:36 |
but note taking was really important. | 23:41 | |
They taught note taking | 23:45 | |
because they emphasize the responsibility | 23:48 | |
to provide a factual account of what happened, | 23:51 | |
and note taking can be such an important part of that, | 23:55 | |
especially because the questioning | 23:58 | |
can get very, very detailed. | 24:00 | |
And the detainees that I have interrogated, | 24:02 | |
in my experience, they know why the interrogator is there. | 24:07 | |
So, I mean, if the interrogator is taking notes, | 24:12 | |
it's no surprise. | 24:16 | |
And in fact, I've had detainees be somewhat offended | 24:17 | |
if interrogators weren't paying close enough attention, | 24:24 | |
'cause some of the detainees were very proud | 24:27 | |
of what they were talking about | 24:29 | |
and wanted to make sure the details were there correctly. | 24:30 | |
An interrogator has to learn to maintain human connection | 24:34 | |
and eye connection and take notes. | 24:38 | |
And in some circumstances, | 24:40 | |
an analyst is able to listen | 24:41 | |
to the interrogation in a separate room | 24:43 | |
and take a second set of notes. | 24:45 | |
That can be very helpful. | 24:47 | |
But facilities and manpower to do that | 24:48 | |
are not always available. | 24:51 | |
Interviewer | Well, I wanna go back to training, | 24:52 |
but just as an offshoot on this, | 24:54 | |
were interrogations audio or video taped? | 24:56 | |
- | No. | 24:59 |
Interviewer | They weren't? | 25:00 |
- | Nope. | |
Interviewer | So you weren't dependent on them? | 25:01 |
Interviewer | Just a couple more questions. | 25:03 |
Interviewer | Okay. | 25:04 |
Interviewer | Doing the training as a civilian, | 25:06 |
were you treated any differently? | 25:09 | |
Was the expectation of the civilian identical | 25:11 | |
to that of a military? | 25:14 | |
Interviewer | When you answer, look at the audience. | 25:17 |
- | Okay. | 25:18 |
The expectations were the same | 25:19 | |
and also the standards | 25:21 | |
to which we were trained were the same. | 25:22 | |
And the level we were expected to reach | 25:24 | |
in order to be qualified, were the same. | 25:27 | |
A person was not allowed to be deployed for interrogation, | 25:30 | |
just if they attended the class, | 25:35 | |
they had to pass the class. | 25:36 | |
However, I did have an interesting experience | 25:38 | |
in the training, | 25:41 | |
as a civilian who was new to this environment, | 25:43 | |
and also in a training environment | 25:46 | |
that was designed specifically | 25:48 | |
only for an army enlisted unit. | 25:51 | |
During our exercise interrogations, | 25:54 | |
I had had an exercise asking a detainee | 25:57 | |
who was posing as an Afghan, some things about Afghanistan. | 26:01 | |
It was fascinating. | 26:03 | |
And afterwards, when I was writing it down | 26:05 | |
and writing my report, | 26:07 | |
I was talking to one of the trainers | 26:08 | |
and I was thinking about it | 26:09 | |
and thinking about the implications | 26:11 | |
and trying to understand it | 26:12 | |
and was asking the trainer some questions. | 26:13 | |
And the trainer looked at me and said, | 26:17 | |
"We don't ask questions here." | 26:19 | |
And I laughed 'cause I thought that was really funny. | 26:21 | |
'Cause I thought she was kidding. | 26:25 | |
And she looked at me | 26:27 | |
and it was clear that she wasn't kidding. | 26:29 | |
So I had to adjust to an environment | 26:32 | |
that was a bit more formal | 26:37 | |
than what I was used to as a civilian, | 26:38 | |
however, an important side note on that, | 26:40 | |
the interrogators themselves, | 26:44 | |
when we had breaks between formal sessions, | 26:45 | |
were available and I was constantly asking them questions. | 26:49 | |
Any moment we had a break, | 26:53 | |
I made a beeline to experienced interrogators. | 26:55 | |
And, I mean they were open | 26:58 | |
to individuals who were full of questions. | 27:01 | |
Interviewer | And also you mentioned | 27:05 |
that most of the people who were getting trained | 27:06 | |
were for international work. | 27:09 | |
The experience you had | 27:13 | |
about not abusing the person who is being interrogated, | 27:15 | |
was that your understanding | 27:20 | |
that no matter where they were in the world, | 27:22 | |
these would be the rules that would apply? | 27:24 | |
- | We were all training to work | 27:28 |
for the Department of Defense. | 27:30 | |
The other interrogators, | 27:32 | |
as I've mentioned, were military personnel. | 27:33 | |
So our training was entirely | 27:35 | |
for foreign subjects for interrogation. | 27:37 | |
And that could be anywhere in the world. | 27:40 | |
And we were also trained that in the event that we realized | 27:43 | |
somebody we were talking to might be a US citizen, | 27:47 | |
that we needed to notify somebody. | 27:51 | |
So with Department of Defense interrogation, | 27:53 | |
the training was for military interrogation during conflict, | 27:55 | |
which would be foreign subjects. | 27:59 | |
And the standards were the same. | 28:01 | |
We knew that we were all deploying to Guantanamo, | 28:04 | |
but the way the army trains, | 28:07 | |
both because of the laws of our country, | 28:11 | |
the treaties which we have signed, | 28:14 | |
the army training doctrines | 28:16 | |
about what interrogation actually is, | 28:18 | |
you're trained in a way | 28:21 | |
that you were prepared once you're qualified | 28:23 | |
to interrogate anywhere where the Department of Defense | 28:25 | |
is doing military interrogation. | 28:29 | |
Interviewer | And was there any FBI involvement | 28:31 |
in the training at all? | 28:33 | |
- | The only FBI involvement in the training | 28:35 |
was in the early part of the lecture sessions. | 28:38 | |
We had an Arab American who worked for the FBI | 28:41 | |
who came to give us one of our lectures | 28:46 | |
on cultural awareness, | 28:49 | |
but his lecture didn't have anything to do | 28:50 | |
with the FBI's actual mission. | 28:52 | |
And the only other contact we had with FBI | 28:55 | |
and other departments and agencies during the training, | 28:58 | |
was to increase our awareness | 29:01 | |
that different departments and agencies | 29:03 | |
of the US government have different missions. | 29:05 | |
And so that we would be aware | 29:07 | |
that others had other missions than we had. | 29:08 | |
Interviewer | Is there anything else about the training | 29:16 |
that would be helpful to understand | 29:17 | |
before we talk about the transition to Guantanamo? | 29:19 | |
Did you ever play the role of a detainee? | 29:24 | |
- | Not in the basic level interrogation training. | 29:28 |
And I did have additional training later in 2005. | 29:33 | |
And I think that it's very important to talk about that, | 29:39 | |
but if you wanna follow more of a timeline, | 29:42 | |
I can wait on that. | 29:44 | |
Interviewer | Sure. | 29:45 |
When you finished the training session, | 29:47 | |
were you apprehensive | 29:50 | |
about what you were gonna be actually doing | 29:52 | |
or what did you think you were gonna be doing | 29:54 | |
and who did you think you're gonna be seeing? | 29:56 | |
- | I thought it was going to be tremendously challenging. | 30:02 |
I expected that we would be doing | 30:07 | |
what they had trained us to do. | 30:10 | |
And right when I arrived at Guantanamo, | 30:15 | |
there was one significant disconnect | 30:18 | |
between the training and what was going on, so- | 30:23 | |
Interviewer | Do you want to tell us that | 30:26 |
or do you wanna wait? | 30:27 | |
- | Why don't we wait. | 30:28 |
Interviewer | Okay. | |
- | And, also with the training, | 30:30 |
I was fortunate to the army unit that I trained with | 30:34 | |
left at that point to go to Guantanamo. | 30:37 | |
And I had the very fortunate opportunity | 30:39 | |
to stay at Fort Huachuca for several more weeks | 30:41 | |
to attend another course that focused on information, | 30:44 | |
human information collection and writing, | 30:49 | |
and also better understanding | 30:52 | |
how our US government intelligence system works, | 30:54 | |
and the training was tremendously helpful, | 30:57 | |
all of the training ones. | 31:00 | |
Interviewer | So going back to my question | 31:02 |
about being apprehensive, | 31:04 | |
were you apprehensive? | 31:05 | |
Did you fear, did you have any fears | 31:06 | |
before you went to Guantanamo, | 31:08 | |
of the people you'd be meeting or? | 31:10 | |
- | One of the things during the interrogation training, | 31:15 |
and as I mentioned, this was interrogation training | 31:17 | |
which was specifically for a unit | 31:20 | |
that was preparing to go to Guantanamo. | 31:23 | |
So during the later part of the training, | 31:25 | |
several people who were working at Guantanamo, | 31:28 | |
interrogators and analysts, | 31:30 | |
flew up to the US and visited us at Fort Huachuca. | 31:33 | |
So we had a chance to talk to them. | 31:37 | |
And I was aware at that point | 31:39 | |
of the work of the guard force, | 31:43 | |
of security precautions | 31:46 | |
that were taken to protect interrogators. | 31:47 | |
So I had the impression | 31:52 | |
that I'd be going into a fairly orderly environment. | 31:53 | |
And I also had to be very open | 31:59 | |
to realizing this was gonna be something new | 32:02 | |
and I was going to have to be willing to learn | 32:04 | |
and not go in assuming I would know what was going on. | 32:07 | |
Interviewer | At this point, | 32:11 |
the fact that you are a woman, did that still matter? | 32:12 | |
- | No. | 32:16 |
It was really just this one very distinct memory | 32:18 | |
from the beginning, and the interrogators in our group, | 32:21 | |
as well as the experienced US Military interrogators | 32:26 | |
who were training us were men and women. | 32:29 | |
Interviewer | So when you arrived in Guantanamo, | 32:32 |
can you tell us how it unfolded? | 32:33 | |
- | When I arrived in Guantanamo, | 32:38 |
the pace of operations was very rapid. | 32:41 | |
On my first day there already, | 32:45 | |
I was picked up by a staff Sergeant | 32:50 | |
who would be my assistant, | 32:53 | |
and the person whose position I was filling | 32:55 | |
as a team chief of one of the teams, | 33:00 | |
the team that was interrogating Saudi detainees, | 33:03 | |
he had already left a week or two before, | 33:06 | |
so there was no opportunity for handoff. | 33:08 | |
And I immediately had to jump in and participate. | 33:12 | |
My first encounter with a detainee | 33:18 | |
was when the non-commissioned officer, | 33:20 | |
who would be my assistant, had an interrogation scheduled | 33:23 | |
and the interpreter had to cancel. | 33:26 | |
Instead of canceling the interrogation, I said to him, | 33:28 | |
"Well, you wanna bring me with you | 33:31 | |
"and I'll be your interpreter?" | 33:32 | |
And so that was my first introduction | 33:36 | |
to meeting one of the detainees, | 33:38 | |
spending time with them, | 33:40 | |
learning how interrogation happened right there in person. | 33:41 | |
And also right away, | 33:45 | |
I was brought into the weekly briefings | 33:47 | |
of the commanding general for the Joint Task Force | 33:50 | |
and the team chiefs for each of the teams. | 33:53 | |
And by teams, I mean, they were teams of interrogation | 33:57 | |
and interrogation support analysts | 34:00 | |
focused on specific groups of detainees. | 34:01 | |
The team chiefs would brief. | 34:04 | |
During the first week, | 34:06 | |
I listened to my assistant give the briefing, | 34:07 | |
and one week later I had to prepare and give the briefing. | 34:11 | |
So it moved very, very quickly. | 34:15 | |
Interviewer | Were you assigned to the Saudis | 34:18 |
for any reason or? | 34:19 | |
- | No. And it was actually sort of funny | 34:21 |
that I found out when I was in Washington DC, before I went, | 34:25 | |
that I was going to be assigned to be the team chief | 34:30 | |
for interrogating detainees from Central Asia. | 34:33 | |
Now, I was told that this was one of the first times | 34:36 | |
they were sending an interrogator down there | 34:38 | |
who knew Arabic. | 34:40 | |
And of all groups of detainees for them to assign me to, | 34:42 | |
I didn't think this entirely made sense, | 34:47 | |
but it was a bureaucracy | 34:49 | |
that was trying to fill holes quickly | 34:51 | |
and that was the next position that was opened, | 34:53 | |
but at the last minute I got sent in Washington in the US | 34:56 | |
to some additional training, not for interrogation, | 35:00 | |
but for a possible future assignment | 35:03 | |
that delayed my arrival. | 35:05 | |
And by the time I arrived, | 35:07 | |
it just so happened | 35:08 | |
that the next opening was for Saudi detainees. | 35:09 | |
Interviewer | And why did they select you as a team chief | 35:12 |
when you had no experiences in interrogating? | 35:15 | |
- | That's a very good question. | 35:17 |
And I actually had more experience | 35:20 | |
than the other incoming team chiefs, | 35:22 | |
which is kind of mind boggling. | 35:24 | |
But the army some time ago made a decision | 35:28 | |
to relegate interrogation only to the enlisted level. | 35:31 | |
And so what this had resulted in was that | 35:36 | |
officers who were in charge of interrogation units | 35:40 | |
were intelligence officers, | 35:43 | |
but they were not trained interrogators. | 35:46 | |
And there are several different fields of intelligence. | 35:48 | |
Some officers may have some experience | 35:51 | |
in human intelligence, | 35:53 | |
some may have more experience in analysis, | 35:55 | |
others, their intelligence work might be in codes | 35:57 | |
and electronic and computer work. | 36:01 | |
And so they were putting officers | 36:05 | |
in charge of the interrogation units | 36:09 | |
who only learned about interrogation from being there. | 36:11 | |
And I think a really important lesson that has been learned | 36:17 | |
and I'm really pleased to see now being applied, | 36:20 | |
is one of the changes in training that's been developed | 36:23 | |
is the military is now offering training | 36:25 | |
in interrogation management. | 36:29 | |
Interviewer | So what was your role as the chief? | 36:32 |
- | And one other note | 36:34 |
about why I was put in the position of being the team chief, | 36:35 | |
instead of just a line interrogator, | 36:39 | |
was because as a civilian employee | 36:41 | |
of the Department of Defense, | 36:45 | |
the level I was at | 36:47 | |
had a rank equivalent to being an officer, | 36:48 | |
and also contractors were never put | 36:53 | |
in the position of team chief. | 36:56 | |
The leadership units were only | 36:59 | |
for Department of Defense personnel, | 37:01 | |
whether military or civilian. | 37:03 | |
Interviewer | And what exactly what was your role | 37:06 |
as a team chief? | 37:07 | |
- | As a team chief, | 37:09 |
I was both an interrogator | 37:10 | |
and also I supervised interrogators | 37:12 | |
and interrogation analysts. | 37:16 | |
I'd like to explain what I mean by interrogation analyst. | 37:18 | |
This was something somewhat unusual at Guantanamo. | 37:21 | |
And I thought, was really a great practice they developed. | 37:24 | |
Traditionally, in a lot of settings, | 37:28 | |
analysts work quite distant from an interrogation setting, | 37:30 | |
and they just read the written reports | 37:34 | |
that the interrogators provide. | 37:35 | |
At Guantanamo, they developed a system | 37:39 | |
of pairing a single intelligence analyst | 37:41 | |
with a single interrogator to work as a team. | 37:44 | |
And so these analysts came | 37:48 | |
to understand more about interrogation | 37:51 | |
and also developed more reasonable expectations | 37:53 | |
of what interrogation actually can and can't do. | 37:56 | |
And that's important 'cause it can be very hard | 37:58 | |
to explain why interrogation can have such limitations. | 38:01 | |
Also the interrogators who were working | 38:06 | |
came to understand more about who their detainees were | 38:11 | |
because they had a personal assistant | 38:15 | |
who was working as an analyst. | 38:17 | |
And the interrogators I worked with | 38:19 | |
who were paired up | 38:21 | |
in this one interrogator, one analyst system, | 38:22 | |
also came to understand more | 38:26 | |
about why they were being asked | 38:27 | |
to pursue the types of questions they were asked to pursue. | 38:30 | |
Interviewer | And your role? | 38:33 |
- | So my role was to supervise them | 38:34 |
and supervising them included, | 38:37 | |
right away, one of the first things was, | 38:41 | |
for an interrogator to conduct an interrogation, | 38:45 | |
the interrogator had to have permission of the team chief | 38:48 | |
and the deputy or the senior person | 38:52 | |
who was in charge of the whole interrogation unit. | 38:55 | |
So the team chiefs and their assistants, | 38:58 | |
I had one assistant, | 39:00 | |
spent quite a bit of time | 39:03 | |
going through requests to interrogate. | 39:04 | |
The request to interrogate included | 39:07 | |
who the detainee would be, | 39:09 | |
which approaches the interrogator planned to use, | 39:11 | |
and also some of the areas | 39:17 | |
that the interrogator hoped to inquire about. | 39:20 | |
And there were other responsibilities | 39:24 | |
that I'll get to in a moment, | 39:29 | |
but I just wanna comment on this experience I had | 39:30 | |
when I very first arrived | 39:34 | |
and had to start deciding yes or no, | 39:36 | |
whether interrogators could go into the booth, | 39:40 | |
as we called it, meaning the interrogation room, | 39:43 | |
and interrogate the detainee, | 39:47 | |
using the methods that they'd asked to use. | 39:49 | |
Almost all of my interrogators were asking | 39:54 | |
to use methods that were, | 39:56 | |
of course, I would hope, | 39:58 | |
straight out of the Army Field Manual. | 39:59 | |
I had one interrogator, however, | 40:02 | |
who was asking for permission to, | 40:04 | |
what I'm going to talk about right now | 40:08 | |
has already been out in the newspapers, | 40:09 | |
this isn't brand new news, | 40:11 | |
to bring in detainee into a room | 40:13 | |
that would be darkened with strobe lights | 40:17 | |
and extremely loud music. | 40:20 | |
That was what we might call kind of headbanger music. | 40:22 | |
And I remember the requests said, | 40:26 | |
the music will only be up to such and such decimal | 40:29 | |
and research has shown | 40:32 | |
that this level cannot harm the hearing. | 40:33 | |
And I was absolutely disturbed and baffled and perplexed | 40:36 | |
because this had absolutely nothing to do | 40:41 | |
with how I had been trained. | 40:44 | |
This had absolutely nothing to do | 40:45 | |
with what the army had taught us was allowed. | 40:47 | |
This had absolutely nothing to do | 40:50 | |
with what experienced interrogators, | 40:52 | |
who years of interrogation had taught me | 40:54 | |
and told me with many specific stories, works. | 40:58 | |
It was extremely uncomfortable for me. | 41:02 | |
And it was also uncomfortable because I was coming in | 41:06 | |
as the first time there'd been a civilian team chief. | 41:10 | |
I was the first female team chief. | 41:14 | |
They also knew that I had a PhD from Yale, | 41:17 | |
which in that environment, | 41:20 | |
isn't necessarily looked at with enthusiasm. | 41:24 | |
And I had to make clear who was in charge, | 41:29 | |
establish my credibility, | 41:34 | |
all at the same time | 41:36 | |
as I'm immediately being faced with this decision. | 41:37 | |
And it just seemed wrong | 41:42 | |
and I could not rationally imagine how this would work | 41:44 | |
and something that I was very, very fortunate with, | 41:47 | |
was when I had made a decision | 41:52 | |
that I was going to say no to this, | 41:53 | |
I went and talked to another team chief who was there, | 41:58 | |
a military officer who was a Reservist. | 42:02 | |
And this is one of the great things | 42:05 | |
about the reservists in the US Military, | 42:06 | |
is that they bring such a rich mix | 42:09 | |
of civilian work experience. | 42:11 | |
In his civilian work experience, | 42:13 | |
he was a homicide detective in a major US city. | 42:15 | |
And he was amazing as an interrogator. | 42:18 | |
I had already seen him in action | 42:22 | |
and we had had many discussions | 42:24 | |
and I went to him and I said, | 42:27 | |
"I want to not approve this." | 42:30 | |
And everybody around me assumed | 42:34 | |
that this would just keep going on. | 42:36 | |
And he was amazing. | 42:38 | |
He said, "Thank God, finally, | 42:40 | |
"somebody, you're absolutely doing the right thing." | 42:41 | |
Interviewer | Are you saying that up till your presence | 42:46 |
that was going on? | 42:49 | |
We know that it was going on, but that, I mean... | 42:51 | |
- | When I arrived, it was assumed that I would just say yes. | 42:55 |
I don't know how long this had been going on | 43:00 | |
and I can only speak to my experience when I was there. | 43:02 | |
But- | 43:06 | |
Interviewer | What reaction did you get when you said no? | 43:07 |
- | Some anger and opposition, | 43:12 |
but when I said no, I said no, | 43:14 | |
and there was going to be no choice. | 43:16 | |
Interviewer | Were there places above you? | 43:18 |
- | It was very interesting. | 43:21 |
The person above me, | 43:24 | |
who was the deputy of interrogation unit at the time, | 43:25 | |
said to me, "I'm really glad you said no, | 43:29 | |
I'd been wondering about this." | 43:32 | |
So I realized I had some other support. | 43:35 | |
And another thing, while I was not there before that time, | 43:40 | |
later on as I was there for more and more weeks and months, | 43:45 | |
I began trying to track | 43:49 | |
to see if one could find a correlation | 43:52 | |
between types of interrogation and success. | 43:54 | |
And the interrogator who had been using this, | 43:57 | |
was having zero success. | 44:02 | |
And my interrogators who were learning | 44:05 | |
to really develop rapport-based interrogation, | 44:09 | |
developing a human connection with the detainee, | 44:11 | |
were having success. | 44:14 | |
So when I went back through some records a ways back... | 44:16 | |
Interviewer | Two quick questions. | 44:24 |
One is, about how many interrogators were in Guantanamo | 44:25 | |
at any one time? | 44:30 | |
- | I would rather not comment | 44:33 |
on a specific operational detail, | 44:35 | |
but I will note that it varied greatly | 44:37 | |
and that the number of interrogators | 44:40 | |
that we were assigned to have, | 44:42 | |
according to the personnel manifest, | 44:47 | |
it was very seldom | 44:51 | |
that we actually had that number of interrogators. | 44:52 | |
And sometimes we had to operate with, | 44:56 | |
even, I would say as low as 55, 60%, | 45:01 | |
of the interrogators we were supposed to have. | 45:04 | |
When for whatever reasons there were personnel shortages, | 45:07 | |
there was difficulty finding contractors, | 45:10 | |
there would be delays in arrival of a new unit, | 45:12 | |
that the number of interrogators we were assigned | 45:16 | |
was really more of an ideal than a reality, but we got by. | 45:18 | |
Interviewer | Did you ever have rogue interrogators? | 45:24 |
'Cause I could see someone, you say you disapprove, | 45:27 | |
but they go ahead and do it anyway, | 45:30 | |
thinking that there's really no consequence. | 45:32 | |
- | No, not that I'm aware of. | 45:35 |
And one of the lessons from Guantanamo | 45:37 | |
that I think is valuable to learn, | 45:40 | |
is that both the physical design | 45:43 | |
of the facility for interrogation, | 45:46 | |
as well as the way they assigned personnel, | 45:48 | |
allowed for several levels of checks and balances. | 45:52 | |
So each interrogation room | 45:55 | |
had a sort of two way mirror window. | 45:59 | |
And at any time, | 46:03 | |
a team chief, more senior officer could walk by | 46:06 | |
and randomly observe interrogations. | 46:10 | |
Usually there were analysts observing interrogations. | 46:13 | |
And in addition to that, | 46:18 | |
the interrogations were watched on video, but with no audio, | 46:19 | |
in one central room, | 46:25 | |
where enlisted personnel from the guard force | 46:27 | |
would have video of all the interrogations. | 46:32 | |
Interviewer | Can you tell us | 46:37 |
what buildings these interrogations were held in? | 46:38 | |
- | These interrogations were held in trailers, | 46:40 |
and another form of reinforcement | 46:43 | |
to preventing an isolated, | 46:50 | |
what you called rogue interrogator, | 46:55 | |
was that each trailer had several interrogation booths. | 46:57 | |
And so if one interrogator | 47:02 | |
who'd been denied permission to use this loud music, | 47:04 | |
I don't even wanna call it a technique, | 47:08 | |
whatever it was, other people would hear. | 47:11 | |
Interviewer | And when the DOD interrogated a detainee, | 47:16 |
were there CIA or FBI interrogators present as well, | 47:21 | |
more than one interrogator in any one interrogation? | 47:26 | |
- | It was unusual. | 47:29 |
Also, but we worked together with the FBI, | 47:31 | |
but we didn't work with the CIA. | 47:38 | |
Department of Defense was, yeah, its own thing. | 47:41 | |
When we did collaborate with the FBI, | 47:44 | |
that always worked best | 47:49 | |
when the FBI agents were there for long periods of time. | 47:51 | |
When I first arrived, | 47:54 | |
the FBI agents would kind of fly in and out | 47:55 | |
every two, three months, | 47:57 | |
and there's no human connection you can develop. | 47:58 | |
And the detainees come to completely distrust | 48:00 | |
the next new person coming in, | 48:03 | |
saying, "You're just gonna leave." | 48:05 | |
And the FBI changed this to their credit | 48:07 | |
and began sending agents down for one year at a time. | 48:09 | |
Not only did this improve their own interrogations, | 48:12 | |
but also the collaboration | 48:15 | |
between the Department of Defense and the FBI, | 48:17 | |
because I knew the people I was working with | 48:19 | |
and they knew me. | 48:22 | |
And in a tense, bureaucratic environment, | 48:24 | |
and this was a problem the US government had at Guantanamo, | 48:27 | |
where we have departments and agencies | 48:29 | |
with very different missions, | 48:31 | |
the differences in interests, | 48:34 | |
even conflict between the departments and agencies, | 48:38 | |
can get pretty intense. | 48:41 | |
So having solid working relationships | 48:42 | |
over long periods of time was really helpful. | 48:44 | |
Now, most of our collaboration with the FBI | 48:47 | |
was sharing information for analysts. | 48:49 | |
And if their interrogators were going to see a detainee, | 48:53 | |
I could provide background information, | 48:56 | |
but most of their work was separate from ours | 48:58 | |
and they had some different interests. | 49:01 | |
Also their role in relationship to us, | 49:02 | |
was that if we ever came across anything | 49:06 | |
that was relevant to the United States or to a US citizen, | 49:09 | |
I immediately knew who to contact. | 49:13 | |
Interviewer | Maybe this is a good time, | 49:17 |
though I have many more questions, | 49:18 | |
to just describe an interrogation, | 49:20 | |
where the questions came from | 49:23 | |
and then how the process worked. | 49:25 | |
- | Can we take one break? | 49:27 |
Interviewer | Oh, of course. | |
Let's take a break. Sure. | 49:28 | |
- | Okay. I'm just thirsty. | |
Interviewer | Sure. Okay. | 49:30 |
So why don't we going into how the process of interrogation | 49:33 | |
and where the questions came from, | 49:37 | |
then into the process itself. | 49:38 | |
- | Right away, the first step is preparation. | 49:42 |
Preparation, preparation, preparation. | 49:45 | |
And this includes for the interrogator, | 49:48 | |
trying to understand background information | 49:50 | |
about the detainee, | 49:52 | |
both what their role may have been, | 49:53 | |
as well as aspects of their personality, | 49:57 | |
personal interests, personal values. | 50:00 | |
And this information comes both from intelligence reports | 50:03 | |
and also from previous interrogator notes. | 50:06 | |
And analysts contribute in very important ways | 50:12 | |
to this preparation. | 50:16 | |
And in that preparation is also prioritizing | 50:19 | |
which detainees a person is even going to spend time with. | 50:23 | |
And for me, as a team chief, | 50:25 | |
I played a role in working with the interrogators | 50:27 | |
to try to prioritize who we needed to spend time with. | 50:30 | |
The preparation also includes | 50:34 | |
trying to identify areas of knowledge of a detainee, | 50:38 | |
and then find out | 50:43 | |
what it is the US government might need to know | 50:44 | |
about what that area is. | 50:46 | |
Interviewer | And then how does the process work? | 50:49 |
- | Then what? Guantanamo, next came scheduling. | 50:51 |
We had limited resources. | 50:57 | |
This included a limited number of rooms, | 50:59 | |
limited number of interpreters, | 51:01 | |
limited number of guards to move detainees. | 51:02 | |
So the interrogators | 51:06 | |
would put in their requests for coming week | 51:07 | |
and they might not always get exactly what they hoped for. | 51:09 | |
We all had to work as part of a team | 51:15 | |
and accept that sometimes some of us would have to forgo | 51:17 | |
a session we had hoped to have | 51:22 | |
so that somebody else could have access. | 51:23 | |
And that was just part of the rhythm. | 51:25 | |
Interviewer | Can I interrupt you? | 51:28 |
How many interrogations would been interrogated | 51:29 | |
during a week? | 51:31 | |
- | That varied dramatically. | 51:32 |
That varied dramatically, | 51:34 | |
depending which types of detainees they were seeing. | 51:35 | |
An interrogator might see a few detainees | 51:38 | |
for very long periods of time. | 51:40 | |
An interrogator in one week | 51:43 | |
might spend more time on preparation | 51:44 | |
and do more interrogations the next week. | 51:46 | |
The work days, in 2004, when I first arrived, | 51:49 | |
the work pace was more intense | 51:54 | |
and we all worked six days a week, sometimes six and 1/2. | 51:55 | |
Generally, maybe 10-hour days. | 52:00 | |
As time went on and it really became clear | 52:06 | |
that it seemed we would be there | 52:09 | |
for a longer period of time, | 52:10 | |
the commanding general made clear to us | 52:12 | |
that he wanted us to maintain a sustainable pace | 52:14 | |
for our own wellbeing, | 52:18 | |
and our own wellbeing included | 52:21 | |
keeping ourselves fit and healthy | 52:23 | |
so we could do our jobs in a sensible professional way. | 52:24 | |
So, it varied over time. | 52:30 | |
Interrogation is extremely exhausting. | 52:35 | |
It is exhausting in ways that are completely different | 52:39 | |
than anything I had ever done in my life. | 52:42 | |
Coming out of an intense interrogation session | 52:44 | |
for several hours, | 52:47 | |
it really felt like | 52:48 | |
somebody had put my brain in a blender on crush. | 52:49 | |
And so it really wasn't feasible for interrogators | 52:56 | |
to do a lot of interrogations back to back. | 52:59 | |
And as team chief, | 53:01 | |
another role I had was making sure | 53:02 | |
interrogators were pacing themselves, | 53:04 | |
so that they'd be going into each interrogation | 53:06 | |
with a clear mind. | 53:09 | |
Interviewer | So can you describe the interrogation? | 53:12 |
- | So after this preparation, | 53:15 |
figuring out who one was gonna see and scheduling, | 53:17 | |
next would come very specific preparations. | 53:21 | |
If it was an environment to which an interrogator | 53:24 | |
was gonna be bringing food or drinks, | 53:27 | |
planning what those would be and purchasing. | 53:29 | |
I drank a lot of tea when I was at Guantanamo. | 53:34 | |
And then the time of the interrogation, | 53:38 | |
coordinating with the guard force | 53:41 | |
to make sure the detaining would be there, | 53:43 | |
going over topics again with the analyst, | 53:45 | |
arranging whether or not the analyst would be coming along | 53:49 | |
to listen in, which was very common. | 53:52 | |
And there were some analysts | 53:55 | |
who would sit in the booth with the interrogator | 53:57 | |
and the detainee knew the two as a team. | 53:59 | |
That was up to the individuals | 54:02 | |
to determine what they would do. | 54:03 | |
Then the day of the interrogation for me also, | 54:07 | |
I would consider what I was going to wear. | 54:11 | |
Interviewer | Why? | 54:14 |
- | I worked with Saudi detainees. | 54:15 |
I was a woman. | 54:18 | |
I made a point always of dressing modestly | 54:19 | |
and being a professional. | 54:21 | |
I tried to dress professionally for my job, of course, | 54:23 | |
but I knew on days when I was going to interrogation | 54:26 | |
that I spent a little bit of extra time | 54:29 | |
aware of everything that was gonna be creating an atmosphere | 54:32 | |
in the interrogation room. | 54:36 | |
Interviewer | Would you wear a headscarf? | 54:38 |
- | I never wore a headscarf. | 54:40 |
The detainees knew I was not Muslim. | 54:41 | |
They didn't expect me to, | 54:43 | |
but I wore long sleeves | 54:44 | |
and long skirts or long loose fitting pants. | 54:46 | |
That was a personal choice. | 54:50 | |
And it also was very important | 54:52 | |
in my relationship with the detainees. | 54:55 | |
And then for the interrogation itself, | 54:57 | |
it was vital that each one start out with, | 55:00 | |
"Hello, how are you?" | 55:04 | |
I would always greet them in Arabic. | 55:06 | |
Salaam-Alaikum. Peace be upon you. | 55:08 | |
I conducted my interrogations in Arabic. | 55:11 | |
That was my own personal choice | 55:16 | |
and it worked out with the detainees that I had. | 55:18 | |
Other interrogators would also coordinate | 55:20 | |
with bringing an interpreter. | 55:22 | |
The best interrogators, and as a team chief, | 55:25 | |
one role I had was to train my interrogators, try to, | 55:28 | |
in how to work with interpreters. | 55:31 | |
The best interrogators | 55:35 | |
would always treat the interpreters with respect. | 55:37 | |
Perhaps tell the interpreter some orientation | 55:40 | |
about who they were going to see | 55:43 | |
and some of the types of topics that might come up | 55:44 | |
because the interpreter would have to be thinking | 55:46 | |
in terms of vocabulary. | 55:48 | |
And it was... | 55:52 | |
Then in the actual interrogation session after the greeting, | 55:53 | |
my detainees and I would always start with, | 55:58 | |
checking in on how each other was doing, | 56:02 | |
day to day life, any concerns. | 56:04 | |
It was important for me | 56:09 | |
to let the detainee know I was interested in | 56:10 | |
where the detainee was at at that particular moment, | 56:15 | |
how things were going. | 56:17 | |
Also if you think about it | 56:20 | |
in just basic human common sense term, | 56:21 | |
if a stranger walked in the room | 56:24 | |
and just started asking you questions, | 56:25 | |
I mean, think about it. | 56:28 | |
I think you'd say, "Who on earth are you, | 56:29 | |
"and why on earth would I talk to you?" | 56:32 | |
We almost always started, | 56:35 | |
we really always started with chitchat | 56:36 | |
and if it was a new detainee I was seeing | 56:38 | |
for the first time, | 56:40 | |
I usually would not have an expectation | 56:41 | |
moving into intelligence questioning. | 56:43 | |
That the detainee just wanted to talk. | 56:47 | |
And if the detainee didn't want to talk, as happened too, | 56:51 | |
there were different approaches of talking, changing topics. | 56:55 | |
I also would sometimes tell stories. | 57:01 | |
And in changing topics, | 57:07 | |
at least seeing what topics the detainee might react to, | 57:09 | |
or have an interest in. | 57:12 | |
There were other detainees | 57:14 | |
who would respond by talking in chitchat | 57:15 | |
and they wouldn't stop talking, (chuckles) | 57:20 | |
as a way to prevent the discussion from going forward, | 57:22 | |
but it's part of human interaction. | 57:25 | |
It was really essential to build a foundation. | 57:28 | |
And this is one thing that I think was so valuable. | 57:31 | |
Now, the platform we had at Guantanamo, | 57:34 | |
is that we had interrogators and detainees there | 57:37 | |
for longer periods of time on, | 57:39 | |
and especially with some of the higher priority detainees. | 57:41 | |
Once we, in the case of the Saudi team, | 57:43 | |
started to do our job better | 57:48 | |
and understand how to do it well, | 57:50 | |
building a foundation of a relationship was very important. | 57:53 | |
And we also really needed interrogators there | 57:56 | |
on longer assignments. | 57:58 | |
Hopefully at least two years, | 58:01 | |
because it was so based on individual relationship | 58:04 | |
and there had to be a foundation | 58:07 | |
about some kind of personal connection | 58:09 | |
before really anything could move forward. | 58:11 | |
Without trust, at least the tiniest amount of trust, | 58:13 | |
things didn't work. | 58:20 | |
And as a team chief | 58:21 | |
observing several different interrogators, | 58:23 | |
I had opportunities to watch | 58:25 | |
quite a few different types of interrogators at work | 58:28 | |
and also track over many months | 58:31 | |
and eventually over a few years, | 58:33 | |
the records of what was actually making progress | 58:34 | |
and what wasn't. | 58:38 | |
Interviewer | So you went with the flow, if you will, | 58:41 |
and the fact that you were a woman, | 58:44 | |
did you get some resistance from the detainees? | 58:46 | |
Got that? | 58:48 | |
- | No. | |
But however, I think that a reason | 58:50 | |
that I did not get resistance, | 58:53 | |
is that I always dressed modestly | 58:55 | |
and I always treated the detainees | 58:58 | |
with a great deal of respect. | 59:00 | |
I had spent time in several different Arab countries. | 59:02 | |
At that point I'd been studying Islam for almost 15 years. | 59:05 | |
And I'd been studying different parts of Arab culture. | 59:10 | |
I considered head of time in interrogation, | 59:15 | |
what was important to these detainees regarding women. | 59:19 | |
I knew that women in their culture | 59:23 | |
were really very important, | 59:25 | |
but often important within a family context. | 59:27 | |
I would describe the role that I played | 59:31 | |
generally that of perhaps being an aunt to a detainee, | 59:34 | |
a cousin, a daughter, a little sister, | 59:38 | |
depending on the age of the detainee, | 59:42 | |
and what felt appropriate with that detainee. | 59:45 | |
And that meant there was an inherent distance. | 59:48 | |
And, as I mentioned, I dressed modestly, and, | 59:51 | |
I think there were detainees who were certainly surprised | 1:00:00 | |
to have a female walk in, | 1:00:02 | |
especially a female in civilian attire, | 1:00:04 | |
was initially somewhat unusual, but became more common. | 1:00:06 | |
When I walked in as a female speaking Arabic | 1:00:12 | |
and I'm Caucasian and blue eyes, and, | 1:00:16 | |
there was definitely a great deal of surprise. | 1:00:20 | |
But I sense that some of the detainees appreciated | 1:00:24 | |
that I was trying to understand them. | 1:00:27 | |
And with detainees with whom I spent more and more time, | 1:00:29 | |
with one in particular, | 1:00:32 | |
he would help me with my Arabic, | 1:00:35 | |
this became part of our relationship. | 1:00:37 | |
And I would try to improve the next time | 1:00:39 | |
on a mistake I had made. | 1:00:42 | |
I would appreciate his help | 1:00:44 | |
or ask him grammatical questions, for example, | 1:00:45 | |
maybe in a text we both read. | 1:00:48 | |
Interviewer | In the room, was the detainee chained? | 1:00:52 |
- | Almost all the time. | 1:00:56 |
This was at the discretion of the interrogator. | 1:00:59 | |
There were some times, for example, | 1:01:04 | |
if there had been an attack | 1:01:07 | |
on an interrogator by a detainee, which had happened, | 1:01:08 | |
the general expectation was | 1:01:13 | |
that the detainee would at least have an ankle chain. | 1:01:14 | |
Because I was a female | 1:01:19 | |
and often in the room alone without an interrogator, | 1:01:20 | |
the detainee was chained at the ankle. | 1:01:24 | |
However, if necessary to take a break, | 1:01:27 | |
for example the detainee needed to use a restroom, | 1:01:30 | |
then usually I would, | 1:01:34 | |
what I would do is leave the room | 1:01:36 | |
and I would go to get one of the guards | 1:01:38 | |
and the guards would come to unchain the detainee, | 1:01:40 | |
walk the detainee down the hall, | 1:01:42 | |
and we would take a break and then proceed. | 1:01:44 | |
Interviewer | Were there ever people | 1:01:47 |
from foreign consulates | 1:01:49 | |
involved in your interrogations present? | 1:01:50 | |
- | Not in my interrogations, no. | 1:01:54 |
Interviewer | Did you know of those situations? | 1:01:56 |
- | There were foreign delegations who visited, | 1:02:00 |
but in our case with our detainees, | 1:02:03 | |
they were not involved in our interrogations. | 1:02:06 | |
Interviewer | And how did you know when, | 1:02:09 |
this might seem obvious, | 1:02:11 | |
but how do you know when to terminate an interrogation? | 1:02:13 | |
- | No, I mean, it's actually a really great question. | 1:02:16 |
And part of the interrogation training | 1:02:19 | |
that the army provides, | 1:02:21 | |
one segment of it is termination. | 1:02:22 | |
It's partially a scheduling thing. | 1:02:28 | |
If you only have the room for a certain amount of time | 1:02:30 | |
and you know somebody else is coming, that sets it. | 1:02:32 | |
More often, though, | 1:02:36 | |
it really is on the intuition of the interrogator. | 1:02:37 | |
If, once the interrogation... | 1:02:41 | |
If the detainee just seems worn out or tired, | 1:02:43 | |
that's actually not helpful for the interrogation. | 1:02:51 | |
And that's a good time to kind of wind down. | 1:02:54 | |
If the topic has been somewhat exhausted. | 1:02:57 | |
Another reason to terminate is that the interrogator | 1:03:02 | |
is just trying to maintain control of the session, | 1:03:05 | |
and some of these sessions can be very difficult. | 1:03:10 | |
And if the interrogator is at a point where they feel | 1:03:12 | |
all of that could be done has been done for that day, | 1:03:16 | |
the interrogator would terminate. | 1:03:19 | |
Termination also needed to be handled very carefully, | 1:03:21 | |
to terminate gradually, | 1:03:27 | |
let the detainee know, | 1:03:30 | |
"If you have any additional information you want, | 1:03:31 | |
"you send me a message through the guard force | 1:03:34 | |
"and I can come meet with you, | 1:03:37 | |
"if you wanna request a meeting. | 1:03:38 | |
"And I hope to see you again." | 1:03:39 | |
You don't just ask questions and walk out of the room. | 1:03:41 | |
I mean, that simply is rude. | 1:03:43 | |
We would sort of close down for the day, | 1:03:46 | |
say farewell, and then close. | 1:03:47 | |
Interviewer | Even if you see resistance from the detainee | 1:03:50 |
where he was not interested | 1:03:53 | |
in having that kind of conversation, | 1:03:54 | |
you still would try to close it the way you just described? | 1:03:57 | |
- | I would, I felt it was vital, | 1:04:01 |
and this was something I had learned | 1:04:04 | |
from experienced military interrogators, | 1:04:05 | |
to close every session | 1:04:08 | |
in a way that the door was open to the next conversation. | 1:04:10 | |
There was nothing to be gained | 1:04:13 | |
by being rude or impatient or frustrated. | 1:04:14 | |
Interviewer | Some of the detainees who we interviewed | 1:04:19 |
told us that they were not able to get medical help, | 1:04:21 | |
or see a doctor or a dentist or extra comfort items | 1:04:24 | |
without the approval of the interrogator. | 1:04:28 | |
- | This is not true. | 1:04:32 |
And I would have two comments on this. | 1:04:33 | |
One is, when I was there, | 1:04:37 | |
we had a system set up, | 1:04:40 | |
and this is again, another valuable lesson, | 1:04:42 | |
I think from Guantanamo | 1:04:44 | |
that could be used elsewhere in detention settings. | 1:04:45 | |
The interrogators did not have any contact | 1:04:49 | |
with the medical personnel, | 1:04:51 | |
and we had no access to medical records | 1:04:53 | |
and the medical personnel | 1:04:55 | |
did not have contact with the interrogators, | 1:04:56 | |
at least professionally. | 1:04:59 | |
In a tiny island and setting, | 1:05:01 | |
you might run into one at a restaurant, | 1:05:02 | |
but we had no professional contact with them | 1:05:04 | |
in either direction. | 1:05:06 | |
There was an army officer | 1:05:08 | |
who was in between the medical unit | 1:05:10 | |
and the interrogation unit, | 1:05:15 | |
and that army officer usually had enlisted assistance. | 1:05:16 | |
And that was the office | 1:05:21 | |
to which the interrogators could pass any information | 1:05:24 | |
or questions that had to do with medicine. | 1:05:28 | |
So for example, | 1:05:31 | |
I used to bake for the detainees sometime | 1:05:32 | |
before I would go see them. | 1:05:34 | |
And if I was going to see detainees, | 1:05:35 | |
I would want to ask if a detainee had food allergies, | 1:05:37 | |
to know ahead of time. | 1:05:40 | |
If a detainee complained of a scratch from a soccer game, | 1:05:42 | |
my job was just to pass along the information. | 1:05:49 | |
It's up to the medical personnel to determine what to do. | 1:05:53 | |
And also I had a particularly interesting conversation | 1:05:56 | |
with a Saudi detainee, | 1:05:58 | |
somebody who had been involved in planning an attack | 1:06:00 | |
that you would have heard of, | 1:06:03 | |
so real, serious supporter of the whole al-Qaeda movement. | 1:06:05 | |
Somebody who was no fan of Americans. | 1:06:09 | |
And he said to me one day, | 1:06:12 | |
"I've noticed that you Americans are providing medical care | 1:06:15 | |
"for all the detainees, | 1:06:21 | |
"including the ones who don't talk." | 1:06:22 | |
And the detainees knew a huge amount amongst themselves | 1:06:24 | |
about who was doing what. | 1:06:28 | |
It was pretty amazing. | 1:06:29 | |
And he said, "I have to admit that in my country, | 1:06:30 | |
"I don't think we would do that. | 1:06:34 | |
"I respect you for this." | 1:06:36 | |
And also in the training that we had | 1:06:39 | |
in the basic level of treatment for detainees | 1:06:44 | |
under the Geneva Conventions, | 1:06:50 | |
as trained interrogators, | 1:06:54 | |
you can't withhold any medical care | 1:06:55 | |
for intelligence purposes. | 1:06:57 | |
Interviewer | I wonder why the detainees told us | 1:07:00 |
that several did. | 1:07:01 | |
- | I think there were detainees | 1:07:04 |
who often had impressions about how things were working | 1:07:05 | |
and they were trying to make sense | 1:07:09 | |
of why things were working. | 1:07:10 | |
It was important to understand that the guard force | 1:07:12 | |
and the interrogation unit were extremely separate, | 1:07:14 | |
and had sometimes different priorities, | 1:07:17 | |
and had different ways of working. | 1:07:20 | |
And how the detainees were treated in their cells, | 1:07:22 | |
depend on the guard force. | 1:07:27 | |
And the levels of rewards that a detainee had, | 1:07:29 | |
mostly depended on behavior. | 1:07:32 | |
So for example, a detainee who would throw feces on a guard, | 1:07:35 | |
as would happen, | 1:07:38 | |
was not allowed the highest level of comfort items. | 1:07:41 | |
They tried to create incentives for good behavior. | 1:07:44 | |
That was a detention force, guard force issue. | 1:07:47 | |
That was not an intelligence issue. | 1:07:51 | |
Now, I mean, detainees who would talk with us | 1:07:55 | |
when things were going well, | 1:07:59 | |
interrogators could, for example, | 1:08:01 | |
request a book for a detainee from the detainee library. | 1:08:02 | |
However, other detainees, also in general, | 1:08:05 | |
had access to requesting books from the library. | 1:08:09 | |
What we could do that made a difference | 1:08:13 | |
was really in the interrogation room. | 1:08:14 | |
If a detainee was cooperative and things were going well, | 1:08:16 | |
we could offer rewards in the interrogation room, | 1:08:20 | |
for example, such as watching a movie together. | 1:08:22 | |
Interviewer | And how do you know | 1:08:25 |
if they were telling you the truth? | 1:08:26 | |
- | It's difficult. | 1:08:31 |
It's not a perfect science. | 1:08:32 | |
This is where training ahead of time is important. | 1:08:37 | |
This is where having interrogators | 1:08:41 | |
with a lot of actual experience is helpful. | 1:08:43 | |
There's some training for interrogators | 1:08:47 | |
on understanding body language, | 1:08:49 | |
on understanding how narrative discourse happens, | 1:08:51 | |
what research is showing us | 1:08:55 | |
about how people talk about truth and falsehood, but, | 1:08:57 | |
the interrogator's role is not to assess | 1:09:04 | |
the validity of the information. | 1:09:08 | |
The interrogator's role is to collect | 1:09:10 | |
and record the information. | 1:09:12 | |
The function of assessing the information | 1:09:14 | |
belongs to the analyst. | 1:09:18 | |
And this was very important in the training | 1:09:19 | |
for learning to write | 1:09:21 | |
that even if something sounded absolutely bizarre to us, | 1:09:22 | |
we were trained, you write it down. | 1:09:25 | |
Your job is to provide a record of what the detainees said. | 1:09:28 | |
Now, at some point during the interrogation, | 1:09:31 | |
I mean, if detainees were telling me | 1:09:35 | |
that they had training units on the planet Mars, | 1:09:36 | |
I mean, there's a level of common sense that sets in | 1:09:39 | |
and I would not pursue questioning along those lines. | 1:09:42 | |
But, for the most part, | 1:09:46 | |
it's a whole combination of factors. | 1:09:49 | |
And again, at Guantanamo, | 1:09:51 | |
one of the great things | 1:09:53 | |
was having a longer-term access to detainees | 1:09:54 | |
for intelligence collection. | 1:09:56 | |
We had opportunities to talk to a detainee | 1:09:57 | |
and go back to the analyst, | 1:10:00 | |
compare other information, and go back. | 1:10:01 | |
Interviewer | And did you- | 1:10:06 |
- | We did the best we could. | |
Interviewer | Did you supervise other interrogators | 1:10:07 |
within your unit as to their work | 1:10:09 | |
and give them feedback then? | 1:10:11 | |
- | Yes. | |
And I read the reports that they wrote | 1:10:14 | |
and actually before their reports | 1:10:16 | |
for their interrogation sessions. | 1:10:18 | |
And then if intelligence was collected, | 1:10:20 | |
specifically intelligence reports, | 1:10:23 | |
went into the system, | 1:10:26 | |
either my assistant or I would read them. | 1:10:27 | |
And, so I had many opportunities | 1:10:31 | |
to work with interrogators on issues of writing, | 1:10:35 | |
and also how they were pursuing | 1:10:41 | |
different types of questions. | 1:10:43 | |
Interviewer | I wonder why they didn't audio tape them. | 1:10:46 |
Seems to be a much more efficient way | 1:10:49 | |
of guaranteeing that the interrogator is listening | 1:10:50 | |
to the actual words being said by the detainee. | 1:10:54 | |
- | I don't know who would ever have time | 1:10:58 |
to actually go through audio tapes. | 1:11:02 | |
The pace at which we were working | 1:11:04 | |
was so breakneck as it was, | 1:11:06 | |
just simply doing interrogation. | 1:11:09 | |
I know of no tradition | 1:11:11 | |
in US Military interrogation, of recording. | 1:11:12 | |
The training is on the assumption | 1:11:19 | |
also that sometimes you're gonna be working | 1:11:23 | |
in perhaps a battlefield situation | 1:11:25 | |
without a lot of technology. | 1:11:27 | |
And the training with the note taking, | 1:11:29 | |
also we had training specifically in listening | 1:11:34 | |
and really trying to teach interrogators | 1:11:37 | |
the difference between hearing and listening, | 1:11:39 | |
assumes that you have one chance to talk to that person | 1:11:42 | |
and you need to learn to record it carefully. | 1:11:45 | |
Interviewer | That's a real skill of silver. | 1:11:49 |
Could you tell us about any of the questions asked | 1:11:56 | |
or is that too amorphous because it depends on the detainee? | 1:11:58 | |
- | Well, I wouldn't talk about specific questions | 1:12:02 |
asked a specific detainee, | 1:12:05 | |
for issues of classification. | 1:12:07 | |
However, in a very general sense, | 1:12:11 | |
some of the categories that we were interested in | 1:12:15 | |
were to understand the detainees' training. | 1:12:18 | |
When one understands the training some have had, | 1:12:20 | |
one might be able | 1:12:23 | |
to better predict potential types of attacks, | 1:12:24 | |
because there were many that the detainees had trained with | 1:12:28 | |
who we had not captured. | 1:12:31 | |
We were also very interested in how they had become attached | 1:12:34 | |
to this ideology, | 1:12:38 | |
and who were expressing their support | 1:12:41 | |
for this ideology with violence. | 1:12:43 | |
I wish we had even been more interested | 1:12:48 | |
in that than we were. | 1:12:51 | |
I think sometimes we were coming out of a system, | 1:12:52 | |
perhaps from the Cold War, | 1:12:56 | |
that was much more focused | 1:12:57 | |
on sort of the technicalities of military situation, | 1:12:59 | |
and we had brought interests. | 1:13:02 | |
We were interested in people they had known | 1:13:04 | |
and I experienced interrogation | 1:13:06 | |
as a nonviolent way to prevent future violence. | 1:13:09 | |
Interviewer | If you determined | 1:13:13 |
that one of the people you're interviewing | 1:13:15 | |
is actually "innocent" or at least not a threat, | 1:13:17 | |
what did you do about that? | 1:13:20 | |
- | Well, we, | 1:13:22 |
it's important to remember | 1:13:25 | |
that the Guantanamo mission evolved over time. | 1:13:27 | |
And so as by 2004 and then into 2005 and 2006, | 1:13:31 | |
the reality of some detainees going back home | 1:13:38 | |
was more and more imminent. | 1:13:40 | |
And so as time went on, | 1:13:42 | |
we had more inquiries from our leadership | 1:13:45 | |
to try to assess the detainees. | 1:13:49 | |
Assess them as to level of intelligence they might have, | 1:13:52 | |
and also assess them | 1:13:57 | |
in terms of the level of threat they might pose | 1:13:59 | |
to American and American interests. | 1:14:01 | |
And something that was an important development | 1:14:04 | |
was initially these assessments were done | 1:14:06 | |
by the interrogation teams with the interrogation analysts, | 1:14:09 | |
but they were already working full time, | 1:14:12 | |
doing interrogations. | 1:14:14 | |
And also those analysts were mostly enlisted personnel | 1:14:17 | |
or contractors who had formerly been army enlisted. | 1:14:20 | |
By, I don't remember the exact timing, | 1:14:27 | |
but I think it was the later part | 1:14:30 | |
of my first assignment in 2004, | 1:14:32 | |
the intelligence unit developed an assessment section. | 1:14:34 | |
And so they had analysts, | 1:14:39 | |
including some of the best analysts that we had, | 1:14:41 | |
devoted full-time to assessment | 1:14:43 | |
so that we could do higher quality assessments. | 1:14:46 | |
So that really was a job of the analyst, | 1:14:51 | |
but it had an impact on the types of questions we asked, | 1:14:53 | |
because if analysts in the assessment unit | 1:14:58 | |
had significant uncertainties | 1:15:02 | |
or questions or wanted verifications, | 1:15:04 | |
sometimes that would shape the types of questions we asked. | 1:15:07 | |
Interviewer | At some point, and maybe | 1:15:12 |
it came in later on, but I'd still like | 1:15:13 | |
to stay in the early time. | 1:15:15 | |
Did it seem like there's more intel | 1:15:16 | |
you could obtain cause... | 1:15:18 | |
- | No. | 1:15:21 |
Interviewer | (indistinct) | 1:15:22 |
- | And this is a question that we were often asked, | 1:15:29 |
especially as visitors would come to | 1:15:31 | |
the Joint Task Force Guantanamo, | 1:15:33 | |
whether journalists or government personnel. | 1:15:35 | |
No, there was a great deal of intelligence there. | 1:15:39 | |
And also the questions that we had, | 1:15:42 | |
information that we needed changed over time. | 1:15:45 | |
So you consider 2002, some detainees are brought there. | 1:15:49 | |
These detainees had been training up into 2001 | 1:15:55 | |
with a whole varieties of other supporters | 1:15:58 | |
of their movement. | 1:16:01 | |
Now those supporters of their movement were sometimes | 1:16:03 | |
lower and mid-level, but as the war in Afghanistan went on, | 1:16:05 | |
some higher level leaders were removed. | 1:16:11 | |
New leadership began emerging and rising up. | 1:16:14 | |
And these were people out in the field | 1:16:16 | |
that nobody had heard of. | 1:16:18 | |
Well, our detainees had trained with them | 1:16:20 | |
and knew them personally. | 1:16:21 | |
And so right in 2002 when the detainees got there | 1:16:23 | |
one wouldn't have known to ask about person X, | 1:16:27 | |
but suddenly two to three years later, | 1:16:30 | |
there is a great need for information about this person. | 1:16:34 | |
Also, as the war on terrorism went on, | 1:16:38 | |
I noticed the analysts getting a bit more sophisticated | 1:16:41 | |
in the questions they were asking. | 1:16:44 | |
And we had the unusual situation in Guantanamo, | 1:16:45 | |
which they did not have in Bagram, | 1:16:48 | |
of more time available. | 1:16:51 | |
So we could start asking some of the strategic level | 1:16:53 | |
questions to better understand how individuals | 1:16:56 | |
get attached to radical ideologies and choose | 1:17:00 | |
to pursue violence. | 1:17:04 | |
And those were questions of long-term importance. | 1:17:07 | |
Interviewer | Did you ever, listening to you, | 1:17:12 |
I think I know your answer, but I'll ask it anyway. | 1:17:15 | |
Did you ever get a sense that maybe most of the people | 1:17:17 | |
you interviewing really caught the wrong people? | 1:17:19 | |
- | I only interrogated Saudi detainees and my entire team | 1:17:24 |
only worked with Saudi detainees. | 1:17:27 | |
With the Saudi detainees, for a Saudi to be in Afghanistan | 1:17:29 | |
in August, September, October, 2001, | 1:17:35 | |
they weren't there growing pear trees. | 1:17:41 | |
With our detainees, even at the lowest level, | 1:17:45 | |
they had experience in the training camps. | 1:17:49 | |
What I did experience with them, | 1:17:52 | |
especially with some of the younger detainees | 1:17:53 | |
was we had detainees who had gone there | 1:17:56 | |
tremendously idealistic and committed, | 1:17:59 | |
who were somewhat disillusioned with this movement | 1:18:02 | |
and could see that their own personal future | 1:18:06 | |
was gonna be in a different direction. | 1:18:09 | |
Interviewer | I don't know if you can answer this, | 1:18:12 |
but did you ever interview al-Qahtani? | 1:18:13 | |
- | I can't comment on specific detainees I interviewed. | 1:18:17 |
Interviewer | Okay. | 1:18:21 |
My wife had mentioned off camera about the fact that | 1:18:26 | |
there were stories about provocation | 1:18:31 | |
from women interrogators. | 1:18:34 | |
Can you talk to that at all? | 1:18:36 | |
- | There were no provocations that I saw, | 1:18:39 |
but I did hear stories about this | 1:18:42 | |
and by provocation what I mean is I heard stories | 1:18:44 | |
of female, some female interrogators, | 1:18:47 | |
trying to dress in a manner that they consider | 1:18:51 | |
perhaps sexually provocative. | 1:18:55 | |
I only heard of trouble coming from these situations. | 1:18:58 | |
I never heard of it leading to intelligence. | 1:19:02 | |
Also it was completely counter to the training | 1:19:05 | |
that I had at Fort Huachuca. | 1:19:08 | |
In addition to that, the most important thing | 1:19:10 | |
in interrogation is the detainee and what the world | 1:19:12 | |
looks like through the eyes of the detainee. | 1:19:15 | |
And as I mentioned with the detainees I had | 1:19:18 | |
when a female went in dressed modestly, | 1:19:21 | |
treating the detainee with absolute respect, | 1:19:23 | |
when a female interrogator behaved | 1:19:28 | |
with integrity and dignity, | 1:19:29 | |
this was what the detainees felt comfortable with. | 1:19:32 | |
And I did have one female interrogator | 1:19:37 | |
who was having some difficulty, have some officers | 1:19:41 | |
suggest to her that she come talk with me. | 1:19:45 | |
And one of the first pieces of advice I gave her | 1:19:48 | |
was dress and attire. | 1:19:50 | |
I wore long sleeved button down shirts | 1:19:53 | |
with a collar and longer skirts. | 1:19:55 | |
Interviewer | Other than food, were there other techniques | 1:19:59 |
that you, or that your staff used that would help | 1:20:01 | |
encourage the detainees to talk? | 1:20:06 | |
- | I think creating an over and all comfortable environment. | 1:20:08 |
I for example would bring, | 1:20:13 | |
I went and bought teacups made of China | 1:20:15 | |
at the store on the base instead of using throwaway cups. | 1:20:18 | |
I wanted to create an environment | 1:20:21 | |
that was serious and respectful. | 1:20:23 | |
Food was very, very, very important | 1:20:28 | |
for many of the interrogations. | 1:20:32 | |
As I mentioned, sometimes as a reward, | 1:20:35 | |
we would watch movies together. | 1:20:36 | |
Interviewer | What kind of movies would you watch? | 1:20:39 |
- | Variety of movies, preferably not violent | 1:20:44 |
knock and rock and soccer movies, | 1:20:48 | |
but rather Disney movies were often good. | 1:20:49 | |
Interviewer | And they enjoyed those? | 1:20:53 |
- | Yeah, it was a break. | 1:20:55 |
Some of them were fascinating. | 1:20:58 | |
I watched, "Monsters, Inc" with a detainee | 1:20:59 | |
who was absolutely fascinated by the creativity of the film. | 1:21:03 | |
And we also had discussions about the narrative of the film, | 1:21:07 | |
because the detainee loved the main character of Sulley | 1:21:11 | |
who's strong, who stands up and does the right thing. | 1:21:14 | |
And, in that film, the counter character to Sulley | 1:21:19 | |
is a young little girl who laughs. | 1:21:25 | |
And the detainee sort of associated me | 1:21:28 | |
with that little girl, I think. | 1:21:31 | |
And, also though the film had a great narrative that | 1:21:33 | |
kindness and laughter are more powerful than harshness. | 1:21:40 | |
So it was a reward for the detainee | 1:21:44 | |
and also something that we talked about | 1:21:47 | |
for some time to come. | 1:21:49 | |
Interviewer | Listening to you, can you describe | 1:21:52 |
any breakthroughs that occurred | 1:21:55 | |
in any of the interrogations? | 1:21:57 | |
- | I can describe an overall breakthrough | 1:22:00 |
that happened with the Saudi team. | 1:22:04 | |
When I arrived in 2004, the Saudi team | 1:22:07 | |
was not having a great deal of success. | 1:22:13 | |
And there still seemed to be an environment. | 1:22:18 | |
I wasn't there to see what was going on before, | 1:22:21 | |
but an environment of opposition to the detainees. | 1:22:23 | |
While many of them were our adversaries, | 1:22:29 | |
I think many of them would have been thrilled to kill us. | 1:22:33 | |
I had a detainee express such joy and delight | 1:22:37 | |
about the 9/11 attacks. | 1:22:41 | |
But this was also a detainee that I could talk to | 1:22:44 | |
and watch movies with. | 1:22:47 | |
So there was opposition to what many of them stood for | 1:22:50 | |
and wanted but that didn't mean that we had to have | 1:22:54 | |
a constantly oppositional posture, | 1:22:59 | |
because there was also this tremendous human side | 1:23:02 | |
to every single detainee. | 1:23:05 | |
So when I arrived at Guantanamo | 1:23:07 | |
and things weren't going well, | 1:23:09 | |
the team was not collecting intelligence, | 1:23:11 | |
I was really trying to figure out why this was going on. | 1:23:13 | |
And so one afternoon I had all the interrogators | 1:23:17 | |
take a break from interrogation | 1:23:20 | |
and I had all the interrogators and only the interrogators, | 1:23:22 | |
no analysts come together. | 1:23:24 | |
And I invited our FBI partners | 1:23:26 | |
who were interrogating Saudi detainees. | 1:23:29 | |
And this was at a time when there was almost always conflict | 1:23:31 | |
between different departments and agencies, | 1:23:35 | |
but these guys were now gonna be there for a whole year. | 1:23:37 | |
I thought we only have something to win | 1:23:40 | |
by helping each other. | 1:23:43 | |
And so with the FBI agents, | 1:23:45 | |
and then my team of interrogators, | 1:23:49 | |
we sat down with a huge whiteboard | 1:23:51 | |
and I asked the interrogators what works. | 1:23:53 | |
And on another section on the whiteboard, | 1:23:57 | |
I asked what doesn't work. | 1:23:59 | |
And the interrogators sat and shared lessons learned, | 1:24:01 | |
it was very powerful. | 1:24:05 | |
I learned from interrogators, also the consistency | 1:24:07 | |
on both sides of the chart, what works and what doesn't. | 1:24:12 | |
Interviewer | Can you tell us some of each. | 1:24:15 |
- | What works was, building a relationship, | 1:24:17 |
treating detainees with respect, establishing rapport first, | 1:24:21 | |
listening to what's important to the detainees | 1:24:26 | |
and not worrying about what's important to us individually. | 1:24:28 | |
Also something that came out of that, | 1:24:32 | |
that I then used later in interrogation | 1:24:34 | |
was the importance of stories. | 1:24:36 | |
Whether it would be a story that a detainee | 1:24:39 | |
would be given to read or to talk about stories. | 1:24:42 | |
Sometimes we would be able to talk | 1:24:45 | |
about characters and narratives somewhat abstractly | 1:24:47 | |
before moving into specific questioning. | 1:24:51 | |
And also it was a chance to learn about the humanity | 1:24:54 | |
of each other and how each of us reacted to stories. | 1:24:58 | |
Also in what doesn't work was middle of the night, | 1:25:02 | |
what doesn't work. | 1:25:06 | |
And I later was able to go through records and find | 1:25:08 | |
the hours that we were collecting intelligence was | 1:25:12 | |
generally about 6:00 AM to 10:00 PM. | 1:25:15 | |
Except during Ramadan, when we sometimes would go later | 1:25:18 | |
at the request of the detainees who would prefer | 1:25:21 | |
nighttime interrogations instead of day, | 1:25:23 | |
but that was at their request. | 1:25:25 | |
Also what doesn't work was as I said, | 1:25:27 | |
this harsh adversarial attitude. | 1:25:31 | |
So we took these lessons learned. | 1:25:34 | |
I came up with finally a single PowerPoint slide, | 1:25:38 | |
distilling all of this information that we learned. | 1:25:42 | |
We began working with each other and trying to implement | 1:25:44 | |
the things that worked. | 1:25:47 | |
There was an absolute 100% consistency | 1:25:49 | |
on the what worked side of the chart | 1:25:52 | |
with the army field manual. | 1:25:54 | |
It was basic approaches that are based on | 1:25:56 | |
very basic human emotions. | 1:26:01 | |
And from that, and over time and also me creating | 1:26:03 | |
an environment where the interrogators knew | 1:26:09 | |
what I expected of them, | 1:26:11 | |
which was this positive environment. | 1:26:15 | |
We had Saudis start talking to us. | 1:26:19 | |
Interviewer | I just wanna clarify something | 1:26:23 |
when you said the FBI also did interrogation, | 1:26:25 | |
did they do them ever with the DOD in the same room | 1:26:27 | |
or were they always separate? | 1:26:31 | |
- | It was very rare that we would do something together. | 1:26:32 |
And if we did something together, it would be, for example, | 1:26:35 | |
if the department of defense interrogator had | 1:26:39 | |
a very close positive relationship with a detainee, | 1:26:40 | |
and we wanted to introduce the detainee | 1:26:44 | |
to a new FBI interrogator often just for introductions. | 1:26:46 | |
Anything that my team could do to help I felt | 1:26:52 | |
to help the other departments and agencies | 1:26:56 | |
was really gonna be a win for all of us. | 1:26:58 | |
And if we did something together, | 1:27:00 | |
it might be about specific issues the FBI wanted, | 1:27:02 | |
but otherwise their work was very separate from ours. | 1:27:05 | |
Interviewer | So why would they interrogate | 1:27:08 |
the same person separately? | 1:27:10 | |
What was their goal compared to yours? | 1:27:11 | |
- | Their goal, had to do with the mission of what the FBI is | 1:27:15 |
and in criminal investigations that involve | 1:27:22 | |
Americans and American interests. | 1:27:25 | |
Whereas our interests were intelligence issues | 1:27:26 | |
of interest to the department of defense | 1:27:32 | |
and other departments and agencies | 1:27:33 | |
that could submit questions. | 1:27:36 | |
So it was just best to keep it separate. | 1:27:38 | |
And they also reported through separate channels. | 1:27:41 | |
Interviewer | Was the information shared? | 1:27:44 |
- | For the most part, our information was always | 1:27:51 |
instantly available to them. | 1:27:53 | |
Their information, they had to submit back to the US | 1:27:57 | |
before it could become available to us, | 1:28:01 | |
which was a frustration at times, | 1:28:03 | |
but we learned to live with it. | 1:28:06 | |
Johnny | Eight or 12 minutes on this card. | 1:28:09 |
Interviewer | Okay, thank you. | 1:28:11 |
Did you ever meet General Miller? | 1:28:15 | |
- | General Miller was at the very end of his term | 1:28:17 |
when I arrived. | 1:28:20 | |
So I was there only for very tail end. | 1:28:21 | |
Interviewer | And could you tell us a little bit | 1:28:25 |
of how you would unwind after all this intense interrogation | 1:28:28 | |
and how other interrogators would unwind? | 1:28:33 | |
- | It was essential that we did unwind. | 1:28:37 |
Walking was very, very important to me. | 1:28:42 | |
There were a few little hiking trails | 1:28:45 | |
on the very small space where we lived. | 1:28:48 | |
Sometimes watch television. I read a lot of novels. | 1:28:53 | |
We had an APO address and fortunately | 1:28:58 | |
I could order novels online. | 1:29:00 | |
For me, I read a lot of novels. | 1:29:02 | |
Physical exercise was vital, to maintain a clear head | 1:29:05 | |
and energy and health. | 1:29:11 | |
Also learning to pace ourselves. | 1:29:12 | |
My first assignment a few times, | 1:29:15 | |
I tried to work seven days a week that didn't work. | 1:29:16 | |
Taking a day off was important. | 1:29:19 | |
Interviewer | And did you make friends, | 1:29:22 |
did you have the opportunity to make friends there? | 1:29:24 | |
- | There was quite a tight-knit community, | 1:29:27 |
and it was a very small space. | 1:29:30 | |
It was, I think, statistically impossible | 1:29:33 | |
for me to go to the grocery store | 1:29:34 | |
without running into somebody I knew. | 1:29:36 | |
Interviewer | Did you go through the camps too. | 1:29:38 |
Were you allowed to do you and did you | 1:29:41 | |
and what did you observe? | 1:29:42 | |
- | We weren't allowed as interrogators to just kind of | 1:29:46 |
walk all over wherever. | 1:29:49 | |
But, we could, under certain circumstances | 1:29:51 | |
go visit a detainee in a cell block. | 1:29:55 | |
For example, a detainee could request us to stop by. | 1:29:58 | |
But that was certainly by 2004 and on more unusual. | 1:30:03 | |
We were not allowed to go into the medical facility. | 1:30:11 | |
But I did visit various types of cell blocks. | 1:30:15 | |
Also in my social life, as well as | 1:30:18 | |
my professional life there, | 1:30:20 | |
I knew a lot of people working on the guard force. | 1:30:22 | |
Interviewer | Why wouldn't you be allowed | 1:30:28 |
to go into the medical facility? | 1:30:29 | |
- | Because, the leadership had made a decision to keep | 1:30:31 |
interrogation and medical treatment separate. | 1:30:37 | |
The only time for us this created a problem | 1:30:39 | |
is if a detainee, for example, had to be at a hospital | 1:30:42 | |
for a few days, sometimes the detainees, | 1:30:45 | |
would want a friend to come visit | 1:30:48 | |
and the detainees would send a request | 1:30:49 | |
for an interrogator to visit. | 1:30:51 | |
And it was hard to have to send somebody | 1:30:53 | |
to explain we can't. | 1:30:56 | |
But I think it was in order to | 1:30:58 | |
just ensure absolute separation. | 1:30:59 | |
Interviewer | Just before we stop the tape | 1:31:03 |
and switch tapes, going back to General Miller, | 1:31:05 | |
did you say you met him cause he was at the end | 1:31:07 | |
of your tour? | 1:31:10 | |
- | I did meet him and his leadership was winding down | 1:31:11 |
to the end of his term. | 1:31:17 | |
And for the most time I worked under General Jay Hood. | 1:31:19 | |
Interviewer | And did either general give you instructions | 1:31:23 |
or directions as to what kind of interrogations | 1:31:26 | |
you should pursue? | 1:31:30 | |
- | I think that's too big an answer for a few minutes. | 1:31:33 |
Interviewer | Okay then we'll save that the next one. | 1:31:36 |
Why don't we take a break then we can go back to that. | 1:31:38 | |
Okay, thank you. | 1:31:39 | |
Interviewer | Ready? | 1:31:42 |
Johnny | Yeah. | |
Interviewer | Okay, so going back to your meeting | 1:31:44 |
with General Hood and General Miller | 1:31:46 | |
and whether they gave you any direction | 1:31:49 | |
or instructions as to interrogations. | 1:31:51 | |
- | Regarding the commander of the Joint Task Force, | 1:31:54 |
as I mentioned I worked just briefly under General Miller | 1:31:58 | |
at the end and then most of the time in both tours | 1:32:00 | |
under General Jay Hood, I think it's important to understand | 1:32:03 | |
that the commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo | 1:32:06 | |
is supervising a whole bunch of different parts | 1:32:08 | |
of the mission all at once and that interrogation | 1:32:11 | |
is only one part of that. | 1:32:12 | |
There was also the guard force, the medical team, | 1:32:14 | |
relations with other government agencies, | 1:32:17 | |
and also in the US military leadership structure | 1:32:21 | |
tries to push decision-making to the lowest level possible, | 1:32:25 | |
which is one reason that the military places | 1:32:29 | |
so much emphasis on training because they know | 1:32:31 | |
they will be sending individuals out who are | 1:32:34 | |
gonna be entrusted with decision-making. | 1:32:36 | |
So in neither case was a commanding general involved, | 1:32:40 | |
regularly in specific interrogations | 1:32:45 | |
and issues of interrogation techniques. | 1:32:48 | |
There was one time when General Miller | 1:32:51 | |
wanted us to interrogate Saudi detainees at night. | 1:32:53 | |
And there was a particular context around that let's say, | 1:32:58 | |
and I had already experienced at that point | 1:33:05 | |
that annoying people was not helpful. | 1:33:09 | |
And I spent a great deal of time in addition | 1:33:14 | |
to my regular team chief duties, | 1:33:17 | |
when questions like this would come up, | 1:33:19 | |
trying to go through the records that we had and gather data | 1:33:21 | |
because I thought data is gonna be my best friend | 1:33:26 | |
in making my case and try to show that, | 1:33:29 | |
the interrogations from which we are gathering information | 1:33:35 | |
are during such and such hours. | 1:33:38 | |
So that was a little bit of a challenge. | 1:33:42 | |
And at that point, the Saudi interrogation team | 1:33:45 | |
was really strongly working together. | 1:33:49 | |
All of us on rapport based interrogation | 1:33:52 | |
and was experiencing that it worked at that point. | 1:33:55 | |
I also had canceled the night shift for the Saudi team, | 1:33:58 | |
when I arrived to be team chief, | 1:34:02 | |
there was a shift in the middle of the night. | 1:34:03 | |
These middle of the night shifts were initially, | 1:34:06 | |
had some to do with lack of facilities and space. | 1:34:09 | |
We often had to work in shifts and we almost always | 1:34:13 | |
had two day shifts simply in order to have | 1:34:16 | |
enough space for the interrogators and analysts | 1:34:18 | |
to have interrogation room access, | 1:34:21 | |
and also for them to have office space access. | 1:34:24 | |
We usually would have people sharing computers | 1:34:28 | |
at different hours of the day. | 1:34:29 | |
But I canceled the night shift because we didn't have | 1:34:31 | |
enough personnel to have supervision | 1:34:37 | |
during the middle of the night. | 1:34:39 | |
And I wasn't comfortable with any reasons why | 1:34:41 | |
the interrogator wanted to be there | 1:34:48 | |
in the middle of the night. | 1:34:49 | |
This was a time when our team was working only | 1:34:53 | |
during daytime, which was early morning to early evening. | 1:34:56 | |
And also that corresponded with a time when | 1:34:58 | |
we were starting to have success. | 1:35:03 | |
Had I gone back to my team and made them work | 1:35:05 | |
in the middle of the night, even when I raised | 1:35:08 | |
the issue with them and told them, | 1:35:10 | |
you have to be aware of what I'm fighting right now, | 1:35:12 | |
I was facing an insurgency on my hands | 1:35:15 | |
from the interrogators. | 1:35:17 | |
They knew that working during the daytime | 1:35:19 | |
was what worked best. | 1:35:21 | |
They were very professional, they cared about their work. | 1:35:23 | |
They wanted to succeed. | 1:35:26 | |
They also knew it was the right way to treat the detainees. | 1:35:27 | |
Interviewer | Did you prevail? | 1:35:32 |
- | One has to pick one's fights. | 1:35:36 |
I was only able to prevail to the point of realizing | 1:35:39 | |
that what counted in these statistics | 1:35:44 | |
as a nighttime interrogation was anything from 7:01, | 1:35:47 | |
I think it was 7:01 PM to 6:59 AM. | 1:35:51 | |
So I got all the interrogators together in a room | 1:35:55 | |
and I said look, I have fought and fought for you. | 1:35:58 | |
This is the best that we can do at this point. | 1:36:03 | |
So we shifted all the interrogations to start | 1:36:06 | |
either around 6:45, 6:50 AM, or to end by 7:15 PM, | 1:36:10 | |
so that for this very brief window we could, | 1:36:17 | |
finally meet the demands. | 1:36:23 | |
This wasn't a major intervention and decisions about | 1:36:24 | |
what methods were going to be used, | 1:36:30 | |
belonged to the interrogator and the team chief | 1:36:31 | |
and the head of the interrogation unit. | 1:36:34 | |
As I mentioned, for every single interrogation, | 1:36:35 | |
the interrogator had to ask, request permission | 1:36:37 | |
and explain what they were going to do. | 1:36:40 | |
And that decision rested down at the level | 1:36:43 | |
of the team chief and the officer and his assistant | 1:36:44 | |
who were in charge of all the team chiefs. | 1:36:49 | |
It was interesting though, to note that when | 1:36:51 | |
General Jay Hood arrived, he had a meeting | 1:36:54 | |
with all of the intelligence leadership, | 1:36:57 | |
and I remember it very explicitly. | 1:36:59 | |
He's quite an intense man. | 1:37:02 | |
He made clear to us, he said, | 1:37:04 | |
"I am not an intelligence professional." | 1:37:06 | |
I believe he said his background is artillery | 1:37:09 | |
and he said, I need you to teach me. | 1:37:11 | |
I need you to teach me what we do and why. | 1:37:15 | |
And he was constantly asking questions. | 1:37:18 | |
Also his manner of leadership, | 1:37:21 | |
when he met with the Joint Task Force leaders in general, | 1:37:25 | |
he gave us a few principles of leadership | 1:37:28 | |
that were important to him. | 1:37:31 | |
And one of them was be there. | 1:37:33 | |
And I really learned from this and I saw him | 1:37:36 | |
do this in action. | 1:37:38 | |
And he would sporadically just show up | 1:37:39 | |
at various parts of the camp. | 1:37:43 | |
So sometimes an interrogator would come out | 1:37:45 | |
of the interrogation room, finishing an interrogation | 1:37:47 | |
and go in to see the analyst. | 1:37:50 | |
And there was the commanding general who would just stop by. | 1:37:52 | |
I would occasionally run into him | 1:37:55 | |
walking down the hallway in the trailers. | 1:37:57 | |
So he created an environment in which he was president | 1:38:02 | |
and he expected all of his leaders to be present. | 1:38:06 | |
And we knew it. | 1:38:09 | |
Also from this, he would occasionally see things | 1:38:10 | |
going on and he would ask, | 1:38:14 | |
why is somebody playing chess with a detainee? | 1:38:17 | |
Why do you do what you do? | 1:38:22 | |
How were you trained with a field manual | 1:38:26 | |
and his approach of constantly wanting to learn, | 1:38:29 | |
was really great leadership to work under. | 1:38:36 | |
And I would add to that, that he faced any questions | 1:38:41 | |
from officials in Washington, DC, | 1:38:46 | |
about what was going on at Guantanamo. | 1:38:48 | |
He wanted to understand, what we were doing and why. | 1:38:50 | |
He also made clear that he expected us to follow | 1:38:56 | |
at least the spirit of the Geneva Conventions. | 1:39:00 | |
This was before that became official. | 1:39:02 | |
And of course we had been trained to the standards | 1:39:05 | |
of the Geneva Conventions in training. | 1:39:07 | |
So this was for us at that point second nature. | 1:39:09 | |
And when General Hood was asked to bring a team | 1:39:12 | |
from Guantanamo to testify before the House and Senate, | 1:39:16 | |
he asked me to come as his interrogator. | 1:39:21 | |
And he was very interested in what I was continually | 1:39:25 | |
explaining to him about why rapport based interrogation | 1:39:28 | |
is how professional interrogation actually works. | 1:39:30 | |
It's the right thing to do. It's also what the army teaches. | 1:39:33 | |
I went with General Hood and a few others. | 1:39:37 | |
Somebody from the guard force, | 1:39:39 | |
somebody from the medical unit to Washington DC. | 1:39:40 | |
The team of General Hood, the person from the medical unit | 1:39:44 | |
and the guard force testified in an open hearing. | 1:39:47 | |
And then separately, there was a closed hearing | 1:39:51 | |
that I participated in on the House side | 1:39:54 | |
and then a closed hearing on the Senate. | 1:39:56 | |
So General Hood really valued what the interrogators | 1:39:58 | |
had to say about what interrogation is. | 1:40:04 | |
Interviewer | Did the- | 1:40:07 |
Johnny | Just be conscious of your verbal responses. | 1:40:08 |
Interviewer | Me? | 1:40:13 |
Johnny | Yeah. | |
Just when you say. | 1:40:14 | |
Johnny | We're cutting that out. | 1:40:17 |
Interviewer | Okay, thank you, sorry. | 1:40:18 |
Did the intel rise above the analyst? | 1:40:20 | |
Was he or she required to submit it | 1:40:23 | |
to the chain of command, up the chain of command? | 1:40:27 | |
- | Well this system was set up so that | 1:40:31 |
intelligence that was collected went into | 1:40:35 | |
an established system that the US government has | 1:40:40 | |
that the department of defense participates in. | 1:40:45 | |
And so professionally the way intelligence collection works, | 1:40:47 | |
it would be wrong for a supervisor to intervene and say, | 1:40:52 | |
you can't say that, because in intelligence collection, | 1:40:56 | |
the job is, as I've said to collect what | 1:41:00 | |
the source is telling you, | 1:41:04 | |
and to leave the evaluation to others. | 1:41:06 | |
In addition, the US government was constantly improving | 1:41:08 | |
after 9/11 in information sharing. | 1:41:11 | |
And it was very important that information we had | 1:41:14 | |
was going into the system that was available | 1:41:18 | |
to those who had a need to know | 1:41:21 | |
and had appropriate clearance access. | 1:41:22 | |
However the team chief did brief once a week | 1:41:26 | |
to the commanding general on what we were finding. | 1:41:28 | |
Interviewer | Okay, it sounds like in other units, | 1:41:31 |
besides the Saudis interrogators could have done something | 1:41:36 | |
that was perhaps other than what you did, | 1:41:40 | |
that's possible, right? | 1:41:47 | |
That another team chief might have allowed someone to | 1:41:48 | |
save for a water detainee | 1:41:51 | |
or might've allowed loud music. | 1:41:53 | |
- | The time I arrived I think it's important to realize | 1:41:56 |
that Guantanamo was becoming | 1:42:00 | |
a more and more orderly operation. | 1:42:02 | |
And as I've mentioned, the various checks that were in place | 1:42:06 | |
structurally for oversight that for example, | 1:42:09 | |
first the team chief had to approve. | 1:42:14 | |
And the team chiefs knew that the methods that were approved | 1:42:16 | |
were the army field manual methods. | 1:42:20 | |
In addition the analysts who were interrogating | 1:42:23 | |
knew that we were, who were, I'm sorry, I misspoke. | 1:42:27 | |
In addition the analysts who would observe interrogations | 1:42:33 | |
knew that we were expected to abide at least | 1:42:37 | |
by the spirit of the Geneva Conventions. | 1:42:39 | |
And they also knew because they specifically supported | 1:42:41 | |
interrogation what the approved methods were | 1:42:45 | |
in the army field manual. | 1:42:47 | |
And in addition to that, as I've mentioned, | 1:42:49 | |
you had a guard force member observing video with no audio. | 1:42:51 | |
And also as the Saudi team began to have more success | 1:42:57 | |
and also other teams were having success. | 1:43:02 | |
And the other teams that were having success, | 1:43:05 | |
were having success on rapport based interrogation, | 1:43:07 | |
because we were briefing weekly. | 1:43:10 | |
Also when General Hood was asking us, what is interrogation? | 1:43:12 | |
How does it work? What do you do? | 1:43:15 | |
There was information sharing across the teams | 1:43:18 | |
and across the team chiefs. | 1:43:21 | |
The team chiefs had at least a weekly meeting | 1:43:22 | |
with just the team chiefs | 1:43:25 | |
and the head of the interrogation unit. | 1:43:26 | |
And then also as time went on, we began to have team chiefs | 1:43:29 | |
sometimes who were officers who had gone through | 1:43:35 | |
the basic interrogation course, this only came later. | 1:43:38 | |
Interviewer | So you hadn't heard of other teams | 1:43:43 |
having behavior of their interrogators that is | 1:43:49 | |
something you wouldn't approve of? | 1:43:52 | |
- | No, and I also was aware that when questions arose | 1:43:55 |
about past things that were alleged to have happened | 1:43:58 | |
in interrogation, that there were a lot of investigations. | 1:44:02 | |
And when those investigations happen, | 1:44:06 | |
all of us were expected to search for information | 1:44:08 | |
to whatever the question was. | 1:44:12 | |
And so that also created an environment of | 1:44:14 | |
here are your standards and you will abide by them. | 1:44:19 | |
In addition to that, the other team chiefs | 1:44:22 | |
were very dedicated to their work | 1:44:25 | |
and they wanted to succeed. | 1:44:26 | |
And it was a consistent fact | 1:44:29 | |
that rapport based interrogation was what was successful. | 1:44:30 | |
Interviewer | Did you ever interrogate juveniles? | 1:44:34 |
- | I can't comment on specific detainees I interrogated, | 1:44:39 |
other than to say I just interrogated Saudis. | 1:44:44 | |
Interviewer | Had you heard of something | 1:44:49 |
called frequent flyer where men were moved from cell to cell | 1:44:50 | |
every three hours and done supposedly | 1:44:57 | |
to weaken them before interrogation? | 1:45:01 | |
- | I had heard of this as a past practice that had happened. | 1:45:03 |
Interviewer | But it wasn't present when you were there. | 1:45:09 |
- | No. | 1:45:11 |
Interviewer | Good. | 1:45:12 |
So are you saying pretty much that by the time you came, | 1:45:14 | |
things began to be a little more orderly and organized | 1:45:17 | |
as you described. | 1:45:21 | |
- | Some of the interrogators and interrogation team chiefs | 1:45:23 |
who'd been there for a while commented to me, | 1:45:26 | |
they'd been there long enough to have seen | 1:45:29 | |
the mission evolve, and they did credit General Miller | 1:45:32 | |
with bringing an environment of a great deal of order. | 1:45:36 | |
And so yes, by the time I got there, | 1:45:41 | |
we abided by the field manual, | 1:45:49 | |
except for the situation I mentioned with the interrogator | 1:45:50 | |
would ask permission to use this middle of the night, | 1:45:53 | |
loud music, strobe lights. | 1:45:57 | |
And I really just don't understand where that came from. | 1:45:58 | |
And I hope there will be more investigations | 1:46:03 | |
into the history of the mission because something went wrong | 1:46:05 | |
and we need to understand what went wrong | 1:46:09 | |
and how to prevent it in the future. | 1:46:11 | |
Interviewer | Great. | 1:46:13 |
You had no real relationship with the CIA. | 1:46:15 | |
You haven't mentioned them at all. | 1:46:18 | |
Is that true? Did they do their own thing on the base? | 1:46:19 | |
Totally separate from you? | 1:46:22 | |
- | I was there with the department of defense. | 1:46:23 |
Interviewer | And if the CIA interviewed or interrogated | 1:46:25 |
the same person you did, would you even know about that or? | 1:46:28 | |
You don't have to answer this, okay? | 1:46:40 | |
Did you ever interview, again this is high level detainees, | 1:46:45 | |
or I know we're gonna talk about training | 1:46:50 | |
for the second time, but did you ever deal with people | 1:46:52 | |
at a higher, you know, there was said number 15 | 1:46:55 | |
high level detainees were they part of your interrogation? | 1:46:58 | |
- | There were certain particularly high value detainees | 1:47:02 |
that my team did not interrogate. | 1:47:07 | |
We had detainees who were in our pool of detainees | 1:47:11 | |
who had quite a bit of value, who were quite significant, | 1:47:15 | |
but they weren't some of the well-known, | 1:47:20 | |
particularly famous cases. | 1:47:24 | |
And I have found in public questions | 1:47:26 | |
that I've received about Guantanamo, | 1:47:29 | |
a great deal of confusion about this, | 1:47:30 | |
that people have heard about a few high level detainees. | 1:47:32 | |
I've also been asked now that people know | 1:47:35 | |
I was a Guantanamo interrogator about detainees | 1:47:37 | |
who are thought to have been overseas at CIA black sites. | 1:47:41 | |
And I'm very perplexed and say no | 1:47:45 | |
I was with the department of defense at Guantanamo | 1:47:47 | |
and we had hundreds of other detainees. | 1:47:50 | |
So our job was really the general pool of detainees. | 1:47:53 | |
Interviewer | I wanna go to your second training session, | 1:47:58 |
but I have one more question. | 1:48:00 | |
There have been stories about the detainees | 1:48:02 | |
being sold for ransom to the US, | 1:48:05 | |
did you ever hear any of those stories? | 1:48:08 | |
Could you tell us about the second training sessions | 1:48:14 | |
that you had? | 1:48:17 | |
- | I was sent for additional training back in the US | 1:48:18 |
while I was an interrogator at Guantanamo. | 1:48:23 | |
And one of those courses, one aspect that I thought | 1:48:29 | |
was really important that I learned a lot from in content. | 1:48:31 | |
And also I learned really important lessons from | 1:48:36 | |
in how I think we should train interrogators. | 1:48:39 | |
In that class, we had lectures | 1:48:42 | |
on the history of the Geneva Conventions. | 1:48:45 | |
The lectures were not just on the content. | 1:48:48 | |
A lot of Geneva Conventions briefs I've heard | 1:48:51 | |
have been given by lawyers on the content, | 1:48:54 | |
do this, don't do that, and that's important. | 1:48:56 | |
But we also had one trainer who knew quite a bit | 1:48:59 | |
about the history of the conventions | 1:49:02 | |
and the circumstances under which the various conventions | 1:49:04 | |
had come into being and how terrible | 1:49:07 | |
some of those circumstances were. | 1:49:10 | |
And that really gave me a much even deeper appreciation | 1:49:12 | |
for the importance of having these conventions | 1:49:16 | |
and a strong conviction the alternative is not a place | 1:49:21 | |
I want my country to go. | 1:49:26 | |
Also we had training in the UN convention against torture. | 1:49:28 | |
They wanted the interrogators to understand | 1:49:33 | |
that this was a treaty to which the US was a signatory. | 1:49:34 | |
We learned some about the content of it. | 1:49:38 | |
We had to pass a written examinations | 1:49:41 | |
on the Geneva Conventions before we were allowed | 1:49:43 | |
to attend and take part in the practical part | 1:49:46 | |
of the training. | 1:49:50 | |
And it was clear that if you didn't pass the written exam, | 1:49:51 | |
you would not be allowed admission to the practical part. | 1:49:54 | |
I thought that set a great tone of seriousness, | 1:49:57 | |
and it was a serious exam. | 1:50:00 | |
I mean, I had to study for it. | 1:50:01 | |
And I really was baffled to think back | 1:50:04 | |
on my undergraduate education in political science | 1:50:07 | |
and international relations that I had heard | 1:50:09 | |
of the Geneva Conventions, but how had I graduated | 1:50:12 | |
from an American university with a degree | 1:50:16 | |
in political science and international relations | 1:50:20 | |
and I didn't know much about the Geneva Conventions. | 1:50:22 | |
I would love to see history courses taught | 1:50:25 | |
in US universities to make information | 1:50:28 | |
about the conventions and their history | 1:50:33 | |
and why they matter a wider part of our education system. | 1:50:35 | |
Interviewer | Why do you think the training changed | 1:50:39 |
from the first to the second? | 1:50:42 | |
- | This was simply a matter of time | 1:50:44 |
and the structure of the course. | 1:50:45 | |
I was in a very unusual situation in 2003, | 1:50:49 | |
as a civilian going to interrogation training. | 1:50:53 | |
As I mentioned, there were not courses available at the time | 1:50:56 | |
for basic interrogation. | 1:50:59 | |
And I am the only interrogator that I know of | 1:51:01 | |
that went through this. | 1:51:05 | |
So I, in September 2003 was sent to a course | 1:51:08 | |
that was actually advanced interrogation training. | 1:51:12 | |
And the army unit I trained with had previously been | 1:51:15 | |
through the basic interrogation course, | 1:51:18 | |
however, they were all reservists and some of them | 1:51:19 | |
had had that training years ago. | 1:51:22 | |
And so the course was a condensed replication | 1:51:25 | |
of the basic course to provide a refresher. | 1:51:30 | |
So it was good and it was sufficient, | 1:51:34 | |
but as time went by and the regulations | 1:51:37 | |
at Guantanamo and also the overall US government regulations | 1:51:39 | |
for interrogation in detention facilities | 1:51:43 | |
became tighter, it was required that every interrogator | 1:51:47 | |
have completed the certification course | 1:51:51 | |
for basic interrogation. | 1:51:54 | |
And so after I was already into my second tour | 1:51:56 | |
of Guantanamo, they sent me back to attend that. | 1:51:59 | |
And I always had something new to learn. | 1:52:02 | |
I mean, it was still worthwhile. | 1:52:04 | |
Interviewer | Was your second tour any different | 1:52:06 |
from your first, how did it change? | 1:52:07 | |
Did the questions change? | 1:52:12 | |
Did the process change. | 1:52:13 | |
- | For the second tour, I received a phone call | 1:52:17 |
and was asked to go back and said, okay, I'll go. | 1:52:19 | |
And so the second tour was for a longer period of time. | 1:52:24 | |
I actually moved down there to live. | 1:52:27 | |
And for the second time I was there for 18 months | 1:52:30 | |
and the mission had changed some. | 1:52:34 | |
Become more bureaucratic, not always in good ways, | 1:52:37 | |
but I think that's the nature of a large organization. | 1:52:42 | |
The types of questions we were asking had changed | 1:52:47 | |
as was appropriate, as the needs changed. | 1:52:51 | |
It was interesting for me having been there for six months | 1:52:55 | |
and then having been back in the US for several months, | 1:52:58 | |
and then going back, to see that the general thrust | 1:53:01 | |
and momentum were going in the direction | 1:53:06 | |
that I had seen really take root in 2004. | 1:53:09 | |
We had skilled interrogators who were really conducting | 1:53:13 | |
rapport based interrogation. | 1:53:17 | |
And my absolutely best interrogators | 1:53:18 | |
were not necessarily the ones who had | 1:53:22 | |
any specialized education in Islamic studies | 1:53:25 | |
or culture history. | 1:53:28 | |
They really were the interrogators who just had | 1:53:30 | |
an incredible human sensibility. | 1:53:32 | |
And some of them were remarkable | 1:53:35 | |
and their talents crossed genders, ethnicities. | 1:53:37 | |
There was no certain package | 1:53:43 | |
that worked other than this sort of | 1:53:47 | |
(speaking in foreign language) human sensibility. | 1:53:49 | |
Interviewer | Did you ever interrogate people | 1:53:56 |
who were on hunger strikes? | 1:53:58 | |
- | Only at a very limited level and I didn't, | 1:54:02 |
but I had interrogators who did, | 1:54:05 | |
however the medical personnel had to clear detainees | 1:54:08 | |
for interrogation if they were on hunger strike. | 1:54:14 | |
So detainees who were some of the more | 1:54:16 | |
hardcore hunger strikers further along, | 1:54:19 | |
were not allowed to go to interrogation. | 1:54:22 | |
And also, as I mentioned, there was a liaison | 1:54:26 | |
between the interrogation and the medical unit. | 1:54:29 | |
And if a detainee was hunger striking, | 1:54:32 | |
but then ate during interrogation | 1:54:35 | |
we would let the medical personnel know | 1:54:39 | |
because they wanted to have accurate records | 1:54:41 | |
in taking care of the detainees. | 1:54:45 | |
And this was an interesting dynamic | 1:54:47 | |
because there were detainees out on the block | 1:54:49 | |
who are all solidarity but who at heart really | 1:54:52 | |
didn't want a hunger strike | 1:54:55 | |
and didn't wanna be part of this. | 1:54:56 | |
And in their private relationship with their interrogator | 1:54:58 | |
was sometimes a chance to break hunger strike. | 1:55:01 | |
And this was an example where we received | 1:55:05 | |
through the liaison advice from the medical personnel | 1:55:07 | |
to be aware not to bring in very heavy foods | 1:55:12 | |
for a detainee suddenly eat if they'd been hunger striking, | 1:55:16 | |
and just to be conscious of what's happening | 1:55:19 | |
to a body that's been fasting for long periods of time. | 1:55:21 | |
Interviewer | That's interesting, did you find a different | 1:55:25 |
kind of situation in terms of information | 1:55:27 | |
you would get from someone who is on hunger strike? | 1:55:30 | |
- | No, just a different overall environment | 1:55:36 |
at the time of the hunger strikes. | 1:55:43 | |
Interviewer | You knew of suicides that had happened | 1:55:47 |
while you were present I think, | 1:55:48 | |
given the years you were there. | 1:55:50 | |
I don't know, you probably can't talk to that, | 1:55:53 | |
but is there anything you... | 1:55:55 | |
- | I wasn't present personally or any suicides, | 1:55:59 |
even if things happened while I was on island, | 1:56:06 | |
but not present in the sense of being there, | 1:56:08 | |
and I wouldn't have any comment other than to refer you | 1:56:11 | |
to the existing investigations. | 1:56:14 | |
Interviewer | Were you ever in Camp Seven? | 1:56:23 |
- | I don't know what that is. | 1:56:25 |
Interviewer | Okay. | 1:56:26 |
I guess, as Johnny asked maybe you could talk a little about | 1:56:31 | |
your motivation as to why you were interested | 1:56:34 | |
in getting involved in this from the beginning. | 1:56:38 | |
- | I was interested in work that involved | 1:56:43 |
defending the country. | 1:56:47 | |
I really enjoy living in a constitutional democracy. | 1:56:49 | |
As I mentioned early on in the interview, | 1:56:54 | |
during my sophomore year of college, | 1:56:56 | |
I lived in Former East Germany. | 1:56:58 | |
I lived under dictatorship. | 1:57:00 | |
I lived in the foreign students dorm | 1:57:01 | |
and was with students from some very brutal dictatorships | 1:57:03 | |
around the world and learned a lot about | 1:57:07 | |
some very crushing human stories under these dictatorships | 1:57:11 | |
and came back really valuing the freedom and openness | 1:57:15 | |
that we have here. | 1:57:19 | |
So I was very passionate about that, | 1:57:21 | |
and that actually became important later on, | 1:57:26 | |
as I began to hear public voices saying | 1:57:28 | |
that we needed cruelty and torture | 1:57:31 | |
in order to protect the country. | 1:57:33 | |
And I was working at the time trying to put all my energy, | 1:57:37 | |
personal resources and hopefully my education to work | 1:57:44 | |
to protect the country in my own small way that I could. | 1:57:46 | |
And the reason I was doing it was because I thought | 1:57:50 | |
we had a country worth protecting. | 1:57:52 | |
And I was deeply concerned and didn't understand | 1:57:55 | |
the point of, if you add cruelty and torture | 1:57:58 | |
as a systematic, officially approved, | 1:58:03 | |
part of what we do, it's not a country I'd wanna defend. | 1:58:05 | |
And it was also completely counter | 1:58:11 | |
to the training that I had. | 1:58:14 | |
It was completely counter to military interrogators | 1:58:16 | |
I had talked, and that was counter to | 1:58:19 | |
my experience as an interrogator. | 1:58:22 | |
Interviewer | And you have written that you look back, | 1:58:26 |
this is this most significant part of your life, | 1:58:28 | |
is that why the way you're describing it or is it... | 1:58:30 | |
- | I think it's so far been the most significant part | 1:58:33 |
of my professional life. | 1:58:35 | |
I felt the work was very meaningful. | 1:58:39 | |
I was proud of the work that my team did | 1:58:41 | |
both in adhering to humane standards | 1:58:45 | |
and also success in intelligence collection. | 1:58:50 | |
As I mentioned before, I experienced interrogation | 1:58:52 | |
as a nonviolent way to prevent future violence. | 1:58:55 | |
Also personally, the human encounter with our adversaries | 1:59:00 | |
at such an individual personal level | 1:59:05 | |
was tremendously eye-opening. | 1:59:10 | |
Every single person, even people who want to kill is, | 1:59:14 | |
individuals are human, and also how tremendously diverse | 1:59:18 | |
the detainees were. | 1:59:21 | |
Each one had their own individual stories and motivations | 1:59:23 | |
about why they were there. | 1:59:27 | |
As I admit, I'd been in at that point, | 1:59:31 | |
Islamic studies for 15 years, | 1:59:33 | |
and knew that Islam was very diverse and huge. | 1:59:34 | |
But in addition to that, when we were studying | 1:59:37 | |
the ideologies, the very terrorist movements, | 1:59:40 | |
the ways in which those ideologies intersected | 1:59:42 | |
individual life stories, motivations, passions, bitterness, | 1:59:46 | |
varied greatly from individual to individual. | 1:59:53 | |
And it was the experience of spending time | 1:59:57 | |
with these men individually, that helped me to see that. | 1:59:59 | |
Interviewer | Do you train interrogators today | 2:00:05 |
or did you do training after you left in '06? | 2:00:06 | |
- | No. | 2:00:11 |
Interviewer | Do you think Guantanamo should be closed? | 2:00:13 |
- | No. | 2:00:18 |
Interviewer | Why not? | 2:00:19 |
- | I can understand that a country in war time | 2:00:20 |
detains those captured in the battlefield. | 2:00:24 | |
However, I do see that we've entered an era | 2:00:28 | |
of warfare and conflict that has changed dramatically | 2:00:32 | |
from when some of those initial guidelines were set up, | 2:00:36 | |
and I think there is a role for questioning and discussing | 2:00:41 | |
those as we look to the future, | 2:00:44 | |
both inside of our country as Americans, | 2:00:47 | |
and also together with foreign partners. | 2:00:49 | |
In addition to that, I experienced Guantanamo | 2:00:52 | |
as being very orderly, safe, and clean. | 2:00:56 | |
And also even in the Geneva Conventions themselves, | 2:00:59 | |
the warring partner who has captured detainees | 2:01:03 | |
has an obligation to remove the detainees from danger | 2:01:09 | |
and as far from the battlefield as possible | 2:01:13 | |
in order to be able to care for them well | 2:01:16 | |
and I feel that we've been able to do that at Guantanamo. | 2:01:19 | |
It is an environment in which we can provide | 2:01:26 | |
safe and humane treatment for the detainees who are there. | 2:01:29 | |
However I do see going forward that we're going to have | 2:01:35 | |
to find new ways forward. | 2:01:41 | |
And when I worked at Guantanamo, I wished passionately | 2:01:42 | |
and there were others there that I worked with, | 2:01:46 | |
and when we would have time for conversations | 2:01:49 | |
outside of work, we would discuss this. | 2:01:51 | |
I really wish that from early on, | 2:01:54 | |
there had been a program of de and counter radicalization. | 2:01:57 | |
Because it became clear that many of these individuals | 2:02:01 | |
were going to be going home at some point. | 2:02:04 | |
And we should have recognized that more openly upfront. | 2:02:07 | |
In addition to that, we were often interrogating | 2:02:12 | |
detainees who had been in leadership positions. | 2:02:17 | |
Granted some of those leadership positions | 2:02:21 | |
may have involved training others to build bombs. | 2:02:23 | |
But these were individuals who were smart and capable | 2:02:27 | |
as human beings and the human capacity | 2:02:32 | |
that I encountered there in the intelligence | 2:02:37 | |
of some of the detainees, in their self-discipline | 2:02:40 | |
and their hard work, if there would only be a way | 2:02:43 | |
to help channel that human capacity into positive things, | 2:02:46 | |
especially as these detainees or some have already gone home | 2:02:51 | |
and more will go home. | 2:02:55 | |
I wish we would have more of an eye to that. | 2:02:58 | |
Interviewer | Did some detainees say to you | 2:03:01 |
that they loved America and we disappointed them, | 2:03:03 | |
because of the way they'd heard how we responded? | 2:03:07 | |
- | I Actually experienced the opposite. | 2:03:11 |
I had detainees who hated Americans, | 2:03:14 | |
who then after they had been with us, | 2:03:17 | |
they saw us providing medical care. | 2:03:22 | |
I had a detainee who had willingly gone to Afghanistan | 2:03:25 | |
to train in terrorist camps to fight America and its allies. | 2:03:31 | |
He actually cried when he left, | 2:03:36 | |
'cause he had to say goodbye to his interrogator. | 2:03:38 | |
And he had said, | 2:03:40 | |
"I didn't know that they were Americans like you." | 2:03:41 | |
Something that I emphasized to my interrogators, | 2:03:45 | |
by which I mean the interrogators I supervised | 2:03:47 | |
from the beginning is probably all of these detainees | 2:03:49 | |
at some point are going home and when they're home | 2:03:53 | |
and they think American, and if let's say an idea comes up | 2:03:55 | |
to attack an American hotel, they're gonna think of you. | 2:03:59 | |
Leave with them an impression of a human being | 2:04:04 | |
who has treated them respectfully. | 2:04:09 | |
Interviewer | Were you ever on a flight | 2:04:18 |
when the detainees were sent back home? | 2:04:20 | |
Did you ever go on one of those flights? | 2:04:22 | |
- | No. | 2:04:24 |
Interviewer | And you're not in touch with detainees | 2:04:26 |
once they leave, you don't keep | 2:04:28 | |
relationships with them. | 2:04:30 | |
- | No. | |
However, one of the Saudi detainees | 2:04:31 | |
and somebody who was connected to some pretty bad people | 2:04:35 | |
you would have heard of, | 2:04:39 | |
he invited me over to his house someday for dinner | 2:04:42 | |
and if there would ever be an opportunity | 2:04:45 | |
and if it could be done under the circumstances | 2:04:51 | |
that were safe and secure, who knows what the future holds? | 2:04:54 | |
But I have no contact with the detainees | 2:04:58 | |
and especially having been there as an interrogator, | 2:05:01 | |
it's just a bit more sensitive and I had not spoken | 2:05:05 | |
publicly about having been an interrogator | 2:05:09 | |
until the fall of 2011. | 2:05:11 | |
And I am aware there may be certain risks | 2:05:14 | |
with being publicly identified | 2:05:17 | |
as an interrogator so I'm not. | 2:05:20 | |
Interviewer | What caused you to speak out then? | 2:05:22 |
- | In the spring of 2011 when Osama Bin Laden was killed, | 2:05:25 |
I watched a resurgence in public support | 2:05:31 | |
for cruelty and torture and interrogation. | 2:05:34 | |
And the implication that torture was what | 2:05:36 | |
got us information we needed for Bin Laden, | 2:05:40 | |
and that therefore it was just fine | 2:05:43 | |
and it was something we needed to have | 2:05:45 | |
for US national security. | 2:05:47 | |
And I was so repulsed and frightened | 2:05:49 | |
and frustrated to see this. | 2:05:53 | |
And especially those who are advocating this | 2:05:56 | |
were not interrogators. | 2:05:57 | |
They weren't people who would actually know | 2:05:59 | |
what interrogation is. | 2:06:01 | |
And I also found it morally repulsive as a human being | 2:06:03 | |
and as an American. | 2:06:06 | |
And I finally realized that to the extent interrogators can, | 2:06:08 | |
for example, those like me who are no longer working | 2:06:11 | |
in the field, to the extent we interrogators | 2:06:13 | |
can speak publicly, I think interrogators themselves need | 2:06:16 | |
to be part of the public discussion | 2:06:20 | |
to witness to how the US actually does train interrogators, | 2:06:22 | |
what we're expected to do, | 2:06:27 | |
what it is legal and regulated for us to do, | 2:06:28 | |
and also what works. | 2:06:31 | |
During my interrogation training, | 2:06:34 | |
when I so consistently heard the same story | 2:06:36 | |
from military interrogators, | 2:06:38 | |
that rapport based interrogation is what worked, | 2:06:39 | |
I became very interested in the history of interrogation | 2:06:41 | |
and began asking these experienced military interrogators, | 2:06:44 | |
especially some from the Vietnam war were amazing, | 2:06:48 | |
"Has anybody written this down, | 2:06:51 | |
"where can I find out more about these histories?" | 2:06:52 | |
And they began pointing me to some, | 2:06:55 | |
and I began scouring resources for books | 2:06:57 | |
from used bookstores and finding some of these accounts | 2:07:01 | |
from the Vietnam war and World War II. | 2:07:04 | |
And I realized personally that the voices | 2:07:07 | |
of these interrogators from those conflicts | 2:07:11 | |
who had made their work known and consistently | 2:07:14 | |
rapport based interrogation and being humane | 2:07:18 | |
was what had worked, | 2:07:20 | |
that I thought to the extent possible, | 2:07:23 | |
I want to at least try to be part of the discussion | 2:07:26 | |
to offer the experiences that I had had. | 2:07:30 | |
Interviewer | You were a little bit in fear of pushback. | 2:07:33 |
Did you get any pushback since you came out publicly? | 2:07:35 | |
Interviewer | I have been surprised | 2:07:40 |
that I have been approached | 2:07:43 | |
by some individuals who keep trying | 2:07:45 | |
to push me into a corner to allow for cruelty and torture | 2:07:49 | |
with sort of obscure what if questions. | 2:07:54 | |
That's disturbing to me, but much more than that, | 2:08:00 | |
I've received a lot of encouragement | 2:08:04 | |
and what was interesting the week after | 2:08:07 | |
my very first public article came | 2:08:10 | |
out about being an interrogator | 2:08:12 | |
and about how humane treatment is what we do | 2:08:13 | |
and it's what works in interrogation, | 2:08:17 | |
I received a lot of emails and most of them were positive. | 2:08:18 | |
And by far the most passionate positive thank yous | 2:08:22 | |
I received were from US Army officers who said, | 2:08:25 | |
"Thank you for telling it like it really is, | 2:08:30 | |
"thank you as an American citizen." | 2:08:32 | |
It was really striking to me. | 2:08:34 | |
Interviewer | Is there something else that you'd like | 2:08:38 |
to share with us just overall and for the public | 2:08:40 | |
and for people years going forward, | 2:08:44 | |
policymakers, and historians, and archivists looking back | 2:08:47 | |
at this period and your role and what you saw, | 2:08:51 | |
or what you observed? | 2:08:54 | |
- | I would just summarize the most important lesson I learned | 2:08:57 |
that all of us who are involved in situations | 2:09:01 | |
like a detention situation are human beings, | 2:09:05 | |
and that includes the detainees who are there. | 2:09:07 | |
We have to start from that. | 2:09:10 | |
And regarding interrogation, cruelty and torture are wrong | 2:09:13 | |
and counter effective. | 2:09:18 | |
Interviewer | Johnny did you wanna say something? | 2:09:24 |
Johnny? | 2:09:27 | |
Johnny | Well, I guess maybe on a more personal level, | 2:09:27 |
as you reflect back on that two years, | 2:09:32 | |
it sounds like you spent there, | 2:09:34 | |
and your own set of expectations going in | 2:09:38 | |
and looking at it now, what comes to mind? | 2:09:40 | |
- | I was at Guantanamo for total of two years, | 2:09:44 |
spread over two different tours. | 2:09:47 | |
And I think the question about expectations, | 2:09:51 | |
that's very interesting, | 2:09:54 | |
but I don't remember back to very specific expectations. | 2:09:55 | |
It was all so dramatically new to me | 2:10:01 | |
that I really went into it with an attitude | 2:10:07 | |
of I'm going to have to adapt to whatever this is. | 2:10:10 | |
It was also important for me going into it | 2:10:15 | |
that I knew that if there was something I was opposed to | 2:10:17 | |
that I could leave. | 2:10:21 | |
I didn't have to be there. | 2:10:26 | |
And the main expectation I had going into it | 2:10:31 | |
was that it would reflect the training | 2:10:35 | |
that the army had provided. | 2:10:37 | |
And these field manuals that the army has, | 2:10:38 | |
they are developed over years of time with experts, | 2:10:41 | |
with tremendous experience who go into writing them. | 2:10:45 | |
So not only is the field manual the official guidance | 2:10:50 | |
for me it also carried a weight | 2:10:55 | |
of others shoulders I could stand on. | 2:10:59 | |
I had expected that that was what we would be doing. | 2:11:04 | |
So, as I said, it was a bit jarring at first, | 2:11:09 | |
when there was some variation to this | 2:11:12 | |
but we were able to correct course and move on. | 2:11:15 | |
Personally, I think I'm still making sense | 2:11:19 | |
of the time I spent there. | 2:11:22 | |
It was a very profound human experience | 2:11:25 | |
with the individual detainees I got to know, | 2:11:28 | |
and got to know them while having to maintain | 2:11:32 | |
an emotional distance as an interrogator. | 2:11:34 | |
And I also am thankful for the Americans | 2:11:39 | |
who have served there and have tried to make it | 2:11:43 | |
an orderly and humane operation, | 2:11:46 | |
because I think having some of these individuals | 2:11:49 | |
out of the battlefield and not being a threat to others, | 2:11:52 | |
and also some of the intelligence | 2:11:56 | |
we were able to collect there, | 2:11:58 | |
some Americans who worked very hard there | 2:12:01 | |
and who did good work. | 2:12:03 | |
Interviewer | Well, unless there's anything else | 2:12:08 |
you wanna add, I think we're completed. | 2:12:10 | |
So Johnny needs 20 seconds of room tone, | 2:12:11 | |
where he's just, this gonna be silent. | 2:12:14 | |
Johnny | Begin room tone. | 2:12:18 |
End room tone. | 2:12:35 |
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