10/09/13 – Jason Leopold – The Scott Horton Show

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Alright.
Next up is our friend Jason Leopold.
Now he's writing for Al Jazeera, and I'm umming as I click on it so I get the URL right, america.aljazeera.com, which is different than, I guess, cutter.aljazeera.com, huh?
It is different in the sense that you can actually get Al Jazeera America here, but you have to, in order to get, you know, cutter.aljazeera, you have to go to the bottom of the America page and look for the link that says, Visit Al Jazeera English, if you can find it and click that.
So I mean, I still actually contribute to Al Jazeera English as well, and in fact I had a story out there, you know, related to Guantanamo just a couple of days ago.
Yeah, which is why I'm angry, because I couldn't find it in the Google News, all it would pull up for me was this one, Human Rights Group says Obama has failed on Guantanamo, which, you know, duh, and everything, we need to talk about that, but no, I wanted to talk about this article that I lost from the other day about how they finally gave you the documents that you'd been suing them for, that they had denied to you previously, they finally fessed up and gave them to you, am I correct?
And they had denied them, saying that you're trying to reveal sources and methods that would help Al Qaeda attack Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
That's right, yeah, they denied it, and that was the argument they made in court, Scott, that, you know, the government and the warden, the commander of the joint detention group, Colonel John Bogdan, you know, they went to court and they said that this information, in the declaration, I was seeking the declaration that he filed in response to a lawsuit revolving around those genital searches, we spoke about it before, and he said that, look, judge, if this is revealed, we don't know what'll happen, Al Qaeda could attack.
And they were very clear about that, they made that the main focal point, and, you know, when you say that and you're a judge, for the most part, they just say, okay, you know, national security's at risk, we really don't want to argue with you, so that's why this was, this is actually kind of a rare victory, because that argument usually holds up and the government often makes these national security type arguments to block the release of information.
Well, not this time.
And two weeks ago, the judge in the case, Judge Royce Lambert, he found in my favor, and he issued an opinion that based, a pretty nice opinion that said that, you know, the government just failed to, you know, demonstrate how this would, you know, actually result in that type of action or threat.
They're simply just making these statements.
And so he ordered that declaration unsealed, and gave the government two weeks to appeal.
And I was actually kind of sure that they would appeal, but the two weeks elapsed, and they didn't, and he unsealed the declaration.
So there's two things, one, I have to say that it's a pretty sweet victory.
A sweet victory for transparency.
And I'm very happy that I was able to sort of, you know, get this unsealed so I can report what these Al-Qaeda threats are, Scott.
And you know, in the story, I lay out what, you know, what the security issues are that could lead Al-Qaeda to attack Guantanamo, and it's pretty serious.
Yeah, I mean, what, they're going to sail their navy and invade the place in spring, everybody, right?
Well, this is basically what was previously redacted.
Prison guards drive, and this is, again, this is the security, you know, issue here.
Prison guards drive Ford C-350 cargo vans.
That's one.
The other is that they are strapped in with seatbelts.
Oh, the vans have, there's no windows in the back.
And then there is, he goes into detail about exactly how that general search is conducted.
So I'm not sure how, you know, Al-Qaeda will actually use that, that explosive info that, you know, was fought three months for, you know, that the government went to court using taxpayer dollars to, you know, block this from coming out.
But that's the info that they were worried about Al-Qaeda using, you know, perhaps mounting an attack.
And the attorneys, you know, who represent the prisoners, who filed a motion in support of, you know, my motion to intervene to get this info, you know, just tore the, you know, tore apart the arguments by the government and the warden.
Yeah, it kind of seemed like they were trying his patience.
This judge actually was, I guess that's the only time you can get them to decide the right thing is if they kind of take personal offense at the shoddiness of the argument deployed by the state, something like that, huh?
Yeah, no, and you know, Royce Lamberth is actually, you know, one of those rare judges out there in D.C. who's actually found or has ruled in favor of not just transparency, but you know, finding that the Guantanamo lawyers have made good arguments.
You know, the way that it works these days, Scott, is that government goes to court and gets everything it wants, certainly as it relates to Guantanamo.
And so it's usually over and done with rather, you know, not necessarily rather quickly, but it's, you know, they go in, they make their arguments, they put it on their seal, we don't get to see it.
And this was just one of those instances where I just felt as a reporter that, you know, I just returned from Guantanamo, they put on this show to show us how well this prison is run, okay?
After I return, I get these documents, these other documents from the Freedom of Information Act request showing in relation to the death of Adnan Lateef, a Yemeni prisoner last September, that there's been a widespread breakdown of safeguards at Guantanamo just across the board.
Every standard operating procedure, you know, apparently has not been followed, and as a result it led to the death of this prisoner.
And then you have this lawsuit, and they're blocking this, and I said, you know, this is one of those times where I have to go beyond the Freedom of Information Act.
What can I do to get this info?
And I mean, I think that this is, you know, what the document shows, you know, in terms of what those unredacted parts are, it's unbelievable that this is what they're blocking, or this is what they, you know, were arguing should remain sealed.
And it obviously raises questions about, well, what else out there is, you know, what else are they concealing that, you know, when you take a look at it, it's like, really?
The Ford C-350 cargo vans you didn't want?
That's what you were, you know, blocking?
Well, no, I mean, that's the whole thing, is what they're keeping secret is the important part lumped in there with all the nonsense.
The nonsense is the excuse to keep secret their policy of patting everybody down, which is just a thin pretext to keep them in their cells away from their lawyers.
Right.
And that's actually what Lambert said in his opinion when he ruled in favor of, you know, the attorneys and actually ordered this policy banned, you know, the government appealed it.
So, you know, now, you know, that this declaration has been unsealed, we get to see exactly what they're doing, how many times they're doing it.
So, you know, I think that this is a, you know, it's very important on many different levels.
It's important, first of all, to have this on, you know, the public record as, you know, documents out there.
It's important for transparency.
It's important for, you know, also, I think, for journalists, other journalists to see, look, you know, there are it's very challenging to do our jobs, particularly as it pertains to Guantanamo.
I can I can call up these spokespeople every day and they're they're great people.
I like them.
I mean, they're genuinely nice people.
I could call them up every day and get a whatever comment, but it's not going to tell me or tell you or tell your listeners or tell my readers what they need to know.
So I think this action is, you know, another way to try and get information.
And you know, that's its own sort of separate, you know, story there.
But it's, you know, it's an important one, because this is sort of the environment that we live in now, where, you know, information is now so closely guarded that everything, you know, is is being protected, you know, for due to, you know, whatever national security threat.
And actually, what we're seeing is that the information isn't, you know, a national security threat.
It's just that they feel like they just don't they don't want to reveal the info because it's embarrassing.
And guess what?
That info that's in the story that you'll see there toward the bottom of the story where I describe, you know, the other things that were in that declaration that was sealed.
So, I mean, you could see why they would feel that it's embarrassing.
They're going through and talking about how they, you know, have to, you know, put a hand near the buttocks and genital groin area, you know, to search.
So they just didn't want anyone to know that.
And I think that that's very, I think that's ultimately what this all came down to.
It's just amazing that they went to court to do it.
Yeah.
Well, and I think more importantly and further than that is they know that whatever percentage of these guys will just absolutely refuse to go along with that and will stay in their cell and not go meet with their lawyer.
And apparently that was what the whole thing was even about.
It wasn't, you know, the the suicide pills or whatever is just a pretext for carrying out this procedure that's meant to keep these people from, you know, refusing to undergo the humiliation required to see their lawyer and plan their defense.
Right.
That's true.
And so what happened at the height of the hunger strike in April, where there were about a hundred prisoners on hunger strike, you know, dozens being force fed and and now that the hunger strike, at least the way the media says it is essentially over, even though there's more than a dozen still on hunger strike, they're apparently not conducting these, you know, these searches that, you know, now that that that majority of the prisoners are back to communal living and attorneys are going down there, they're apparently not, you know, enforcing this or not going through with it.
So that just gets back to what you were saying, that this clearly was a deterrent.
This was a or at least look, I don't have the smoking gun that says it was, but I'll at least go with what the judge said.
Judge Lambert actually said that this was a policy, you know, enacted to to to to block the prisoners access to counsel.
So, you know, that happened in April when all of these stories I mean, this was this these were there were global stories on a global scale pertaining to Guantanamo and the hunger strike and force feeding.
And where were we getting those stories?
I was getting those stories from the attorneys who were sharing their notes from meeting with the prisoners.
So you sort of cut that out and then you no longer have any stories to tell if the prisoners aren't going there.
You aren't meeting with their attorneys now.
It seems that, you know, that the hunger strike has died down, that it's not being covered.
Well, look, you know, this policy is now not really being enforced.
Now, what's the big deal?
What do you expect?
It's communist Cuba.
Right.
Oh, no.
I'm sorry.
We're talking about on the American side of the wall.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I do have a problem with that then.
Anyway, by the way, how many people are still hunger striking down there?
There's 17 hunger strikers and there are 16 who are designated for force feeding.
Poor guys.
They can't even get me to pay attention to them down there.
They're starving themselves to death and it's just old news all over the world.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That was last spring.
Yeah.
No, it's.
Look, the it's been going on for, you know, nine months.
And the a few weeks ago, you know, we received the, you know, the media, you know, received this note from the, you know, the folks over at Guantanamo saying that they're not going to report any more daily hunger strike numbers.
And so they because they were doing that about, I think, around March.
I think they started in March as a hunger strike grew and, you know, they kept getting these phone calls from the media.
How many people are on hunger strike today?
How many people are on hunger strike today?
So what they would do is they sent out to the media every day, sort of this.
This is the, you know, the stats.
These are the hunger strike stats and any of you during the height of the hunger strike, you just watched it sort of increase and increase and increase.
And so a few weeks ago they said, we're not going to, you know, do this anymore.
The number of hunger strikers now, we believe, are part of the sort of long term hunger striking team or group at Guantanamo, which is, you know, there were always a handful that were on hunger strike.
And so they believe that those that are sort of involved in it now, they're just part of a long term hunger striking group.
So the media took that and said the hunger strike is over, you know, is essentially over.
Now, you know, the folks at Guantanamo never said the hunger strike is over.
They just, you know, said that they're not going to report this every day.
And, you know, we can certainly still make phone calls and find out what's happening.
So the media sort of like, you could tell with some of the reporting, they felt like, as you said, hey, this is old news, it's, you know, earlier in the year, not going to do it anymore.
So they sort of, you know, irresponsibly, in my opinion, sort of ended it.
And, you know, again, a couple of weeks ago, I also published it, Al Jazeera America, this first time anything like it has been published.
It's a multimedia guide to 11 years of hunger strikes at Guantanamo.
And what I found, Scott, in reporting this and putting together these, you know, these numbers from literally like, you know, just the first week of prisoners arriving there at Guantanamo is that there was never an end.
So you'd have the hunger strikes being reported, but there was never an end.
There was never a time where the media would just follow it, constantly follow it, until there was a point where you could say that, you know, either there's zero hunger striking or we're going to end it here with five.
So it always fell off.
And that was actually a frustrating part of it is that, you know, in terms of kind of understanding how the media operated, you know, it's as if they only, you know, pay attention when there's, and I understand it, I mean, you know, you have a hundred prisoners hunger striking, it's a very big deal, but it would just sort of, you know, trail off after a while and you wouldn't be able to sort of figure out when did this hunger strike end?
It started in August of 2005.
What's the end date?
What happened?
And so it was, you know, putting that timeline together was difficult, but it was actually, that's what I found.
That's what I learned from, you know, from, from doing it.
I completely missed this when it came out.
I got in front of me now, everybody, it's your keywords here, interactive hunger strikes at Guantanamo at america.aljazeera.com by Michael Keller and Jason Leopold.
And this is really something else.
I can't wait to look at this.
Yeah.
It's, I mean, it's incredible how many have been just hunger striking for, you know, just the past five or six years.
I don't want to divert the whole conversation off on this because it's been a proven fact a million times over and included in interviews between you and I, but the 99% of those guys are completely innocent.
Just the kidnapped.
And then of course it ain't Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Sheikh starving themselves to death, which would be fine with me.
It's the rest of these guys who are, uh, they're that desperate because they're innocent.
And that's why, you know, it's always doing time is always a lot harder on a guy who never should have been there in the first place and somebody who knows he done wrong and got what he deserved.
You know what I mean?
But anyway, so I wanted to ask you about a couple of guys got released back a week or two ago, right?
Or did they just say that?
It was actually at the end of August, the end of August, there were two Algerian prisoners who were clear for release for, for, for years and they were, uh, sent back to Algeria.
All right.
And then do you know much about them, who they were or what they were ever accused of?
Yeah.
I mean, basically, I do know their names are, I mean, their names are out there.
You'll have to forgive me if I don't have it in front of me.
Um, but, uh, they both were at Guantanamo for about a decade and, um, again, just accused of being a member of Al Qaeda, you know, training in these, in, in training camps in Afghanistan, uh, Al Qaeda training camps and, uh, you know, these were men that were more or less sold for bounties.
Uh, so, you know, they were, they were, they were released to Algeria, which in the past when there was another prisoner released to Algeria, though, that was, that prisoner protested, um, fearing that he would be tortured.
Uh, we didn't hear anything about that this time.
And, um, you know, one of the prisoners, uh, his, his family is in France and, uh, you know, I believe he wanted to eventually, you know, go to France to, you know, reunite with his family.
Um, I don't have any confirmation of it, but there have been reports that France is saying that they're not accepting anymore, you know, former Guantanamo prisoners.
Um, so it's, uh, uh, that, that prisoner doesn't seem that, or it doesn't appear that he wanted to, uh, remain in Algeria, but, you know, they're, they are, uh, it's unclear if they're in a rehabilitation program now, if they're, you know, simply just in prison, uh, but they're not walking around freely at this point.
Yeah.
Well, you can see how that'd be scary to be a former Guantanamo inmate sent home to Algeria and everybody looking at you.
Why'd Obama let you go and not anybody else after all this time, right?
You must have a chip in your ass.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, yeah, it's, uh, it, it, it, it, it's sort of a, uh, you know, it's obviously a, must be a difficult life to leave, you know, afterward readjusting.
Crazy.
All right.
And so now, but then also I read that a new bureaucrat has been appointed and this is now finally the beginning of the end of the Guantanamo Gulag.
Right.
Yeah.
Um, you know, Obama made this speech back.
You know, this is what the human rights groups were, were, were really complaining about was, um, you know, Obama made this big counter-terrorism speech back in May, as you recall, and, uh, you know, talking about his drones and, and his plan for Guantanamo going forward.
And what, one thing that he talked about was that he was going to name these two envoys, one of the state department, one of the defense department work alongside each other to, uh, start releasing, repatriating, uh, and, you know, transferring these, these 86 at the time, uh, prisoners who were, have, you know, have been cleared for release for years.
But, um, the, the, they did name a state department envoy, but they never named a defense department envoy.
And, uh, uh, you know, and, and it's funny because the state department position was vacant for, you know, for months and it was only as a result of this hunger strike that they finally filled it.
So then it sort of like reversed and you had the department, uh, defense department position being vacant.
So, you know, he named a, um, uh, a former, uh, house counsel worked on the, you know, for the armed services committee, you've got, you know, decades of experience, uh, uh, a Marine, uh, to start handling, you know, to, to be the point person at the defense department, um, to, uh, you know, to shut down Guantanamo.
But look, I mean, I'll tell you, Scott, I don't believe that Guantanamo will be shut down.
Uh, I think that that's just not, I don't think that's going to happen.
I think that, you know, what we'll see, uh, we've talked about this before, is that they'll start emptying out the, you know, the prison in terms of getting rid of the 80, the 84 now, um, who, uh, have been cleared for release.
But everyone else, I think that, uh, it's, there's going to be at least, you know, a couple of dozen that they're just not going to have anywhere to put them.
It's just, they're, they're, they're not going to be able to shut that thing down.
Yeah.
Well, um, it's funny because it's been, uh, oh geez, six, seven years now since Robert Gates and Colin Powell and all the Republicans came out and said, man, we really need to undo this thing.
This is the second leading cause of terrorism in the world after radical Islam.
Right.
Well, look, nevermind any occupation from anybody's countries that doesn't have anything.
Right.
That has nothing to do with it.
You know, don't even, don't even think about that, Scott, but look, the, this happens every time we, we, we catch a, you know, uh, an accused terrorist, just like we did this weekend.
Uh, the, you know, one of, one of the alleged, you know, uh, planners, uh, involved in the, you know, the, the 1998 embassy bombings in Libya and look, you know, what happens?
Oh, these, he's being held on a, on the USS San Antonio where he's being interrogated by this, uh, you know, secretive high value interrogation group.
And there's calls for, you know, send this guy to Guantanamo.
Don't bring him here to the U S to be, you know, to be prosecuted, even though he was indicted in the Southern district of New York.
So, you know, this happens every time.
And who does it, who do we hear from?
Oh, look, it's Lindsey Graham.
He's saying the same thing again.
So when you have that sort of attitude, when you have that as your typical response and what do you have from the other side?
No, we're not going to send any more people to Guantanamo.
Yeah.
It's just shows that, you know, it's, it's, it's not in the, it's certainly not in the interest of, you know, of one party, you know, to completely shut it down.
And I'll tell you that I know privately that there are, you know, Democrats have, they're not really looking forward to bringing anyone here either.
You know, Diane Feinstein, when she made her big statements this summer about this is what we need to do.
I mean, this is a woman who was just speaking out, you know, senators just speaking out simply because, you know, there was a hunger strike and it was bad publicity for the Democrats.
You know, the same with, you know, with her male counterparts.
No intention to follow through though.
No, because what happens, Scott, is that, you know, one of the reasons that these human rights groups sent this letter out on Monday criticizing Obama for sort of dragging his feet is that what happens now?
The hunger strike is over.
Well, do you think anyone's going to pay attention to Guantanamo anymore?
Probably not.
Will it be a priority?
Unlikely.
It's all Congress's fault anyway.
The Republicans.
Right.
You know, so it's like, you know, they'll sit there and blame, you know, you have the president blaming Congress and look, you know, you're right.
It still is very much a, you know, Guantanamo being used as some sort of, you know, recruiting tool or something to hold up to say, you know, look, but it's just, you know, I think that it's good steps that they have these folks in these positions to start at least getting getting rid of the prisoners that are there.
All right.
Well, we got to leave it there.
Love that theme music, brother.
Yeah.
Get some water to drink there, Jason.
Thanks very much for doing the show.
Appreciate it.
Take care.
All right.
That's the great Jason Leopold.
He's over there at America.
Aljazeera.com.
Check out interactive hunger strikes at Guantanamo and other great pieces of journalism there.
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