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Welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, the Scott Horton Show.
And our guest today is the other Scott Horton, heroic international anti-torture human rights lawyer, former chair of the New York Bar Association's committees on human rights and on international law, a professor of law at Columbia Law School and at Hofstra and contributing.
Well, originally, when this happened on June 9, remember the next morning, it was electrifying news all around the world that three people had died at Guantanamo.
And Admiral Harris, who's now the commander of the Pacific Fleet, you know, went before the press and said this was an act of asymmetrical, an asymmetrical attack on the United States.
That's how he described the alleged suicide.
He said that it was a PR stunt, basically.
Exactly.
Designed to attack the U.S. for the suicides occurred, hanging themselves from the top bars and a wall of the cells and wrapping their hands and their feet with cloth.
And it said that they each had forced a cloth down their throats to muffle their sounds.
Of course, and all the medical examiners, we asked to look at this, who said, nope, not possible.
They all focused on the cloth down the throat, saying that, well, actually, there's a gag reflex that occurs.
Just try and stuff some cloth down your throat.
I mean, you can't do it.
So there's just no way somebody could have done that as an act of suicide.
So it was immediately, you know, flagged by all the medical experts as not plausible.
I was going to say, that's some real discipline on their part.
Yeah, I mean, impossible, basically.
And then we had four NCOs who were on duty that evening, the perimeter guards, come forward.
And this was the basis of my story.
And they said, you know, the starting point for the NCIA narrative is that they committed suicide in their cells.
And, of course, waterboarding and these other techniques were used in connection with that.
And now we have this new document, which is something from the NCIS report done in the first hours after the NCIS came in and started doing their review.
Now, hold it right there, actually, because there's going to be so much to go over in the new document here.
I want to see if I can follow up on just a couple of things to clarify before we move on, because we've got the time here.
Right.
First of all, how certain are you?
Are you completely certain that this Camp Noe and that Penny Lane are the very same thing?
One hundred percent.
OK.
And now I believe that I don't know who all is we, but didn't we all know that CIA had a base there all along?
And I wonder whether did you always know that Camp Noe was the CIA base or there was a discrepancy?
You still weren't sure whether there was a different base that was the CIA one or what's that?
They actually had two bases.
They had another one called Strawberry Fields, which is another facility.
So, yeah, so one of the we did not know before Matt and Adam did their article that Camp Noe and Penny Lane were the same thing and it was a CIA facility.
We had a bunch of sources telling us this was definitely an intelligence facility, but they wouldn't narrow it down to whether it was CIA or defense intelligence or something else.
And so now we know why they closed it.
It was after these suicides, so-called suicides, was why they closed it down back in 06.
I think that's a fair premise, because it's like right after these suicides occurred, the decision was made to shut it down.
Not just that, but it's after these suicides occurred that the National Security Council then takes a decision to shut down the entire black site operation and get the CIA basically out of this special interrogation program, also to change the parameters of the interrogation program.
Of course, it's been suggested that there were, quote, a lot of serious mistakes, close quote, made by the CIA in connection with the program.
And I think now we're looking at one of them.
Well, now, the last time we spoke just a few weeks ago about the Senate report, you said that you suspected that there were many more than just the two that were already official deaths in CIA custody in the black site program, and that you suspected there were quite a few more.
I wonder now if this is what you were referring to, or you think many more than that, perhaps?
Bingo.
No, I think these three definitely can be now very clearly connected directly with the program.
And I think one of the questions is, you know, why such extreme efforts to cover it up and to say it's something other than what it was?
And why these extreme efforts involved the Justice Department?
Well, no, no, no, wait, wait.
We've got to get to the new documents and the cover-up in a second.
I still got a couple more follow-ups here.
There is a broken neck bone story that you had done as a follow-up, too.
I just wanted to mention about the discrepancies over the autopsy.
I don't know if you want to get into that or not, but.
Well, that's right, because, you know, the families of the three requested that their bodies be made available for independent autopsy, and one of the bodies was, in fact, shipped to Switzerland to be reviewed.
And when the doctors, they're very famous pathologists in Switzerland, examined the body, he said, well, wait a minute, this is supposedly a suicide with sort of differing indications about what happened, but the neck has been removed, making it impossible to tell exactly how death occurred.
So the death definitely occurred having to do with the windpipe and asphyxiation, but it was not at all clear that the death occurred as a result of a ligature, that is, a noose being applied.
So that was one of the huge questions, and, you know, the doctor...
Well, and a huge indication of a cover-up there, a whole other primary obstruction there.
Exactly, and the doctor in Lausanne tried to communicate with the Department of Defense saying, okay, you can remove it, that's fine, but you should allow me to examine it, and they refused any communication with him.
And in fact, I know, and I subsequently saw an email sent by the Department of Defense pathologist who was responsible saying, I'm sorry, I know it's professionally correct that I cooperate with you, but I have been ordered not to speak to you or to respond to your requests.
So there were high-level orders given to block, you know, a meaningful check of the pathologist's report.
And under the excuse that, well, he's a foreigner or something, he's outside of their chain of command, so they don't have to.
Well, no, actually, it's a violation of international health and safety rules and a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which actually required them to cooperate.
So it was an illegal move that was done.
All right, now, we're about to have to go on to a break, so let me just ask you real quick, and maybe you won't have time to answer all the way, but what about, I still don't understand how it makes sense that they would kill three guys the same way, what, all at the exact same time, one after the other on one night?
Yeah, well, I would- Now the damn music's playing already.
I'm terrible at timing this thing.
It's a hard break, Scott, and we gotta take it, but- When we come back.
It's the other Scott Horton, everybody, the heroic, anti-torture, international human rights lawyer and journalist from harpers.org, and his case is even more proven than ever before about the murders there at Penning Lane in 06, and we'll be right back after this.
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Listen, if the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong.
That was right there in the memos from Guantanamo Bay.
Try it different next time.
I don't know.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with the real Scott Horton, the other Scott Horton, the heroic anti-torture international human rights lawyer and former chair of the New York Bar Association's Committees on Human Rights and International Law and professor at Hofstra in Columbia and journalist at Harper's Magazine, the oldest magazine in America.
And he's written this article, The Guantanamo Suicides, back in 2010.
Ironic quotes around suicides.
A couple follow up since then and now including a brand new document.
We're going to get to that and the cover up in just a second.
But first, I'm sorry I set you up right before the break there, Scott.
I still don't understand how the hell you suffocate three people with dry rags down their throat all at the same time or all on the same night and get into such trouble if you're a CIA guy out at Penny Lane in the summer of 2006.
Help me understand.
Well, I think we got to start with the word murder because you used it before.
And I would say at this point, we don't know.
We know that there were homicides.
We don't know that there were murders because we don't know all the details of exactly what happened.
I think it's clear that these three people were taken to Penny Lane, that they were subjected to some sort of procedure there, and that they emerged dead or close to death.
But there are issues of intentionality that go here.
And here, I think what happened is that a technique was being applied to them and it was misapplied or not correctly applied in the way the cloth was probably too large in volume and it was probably put in too far.
And so instead of just creating a sensation of asphyxiation, it actually caused them to choke to death or at least two of them.
Because I guess now the news we've got with the third one is that he survived for several hours afterwards.
I mean, that's the big information that comes from this new document.
And with that, I'll just turn my mic off and let you explain.
Which the document is interview notes from a NCIS interview conducted with a military policeman, Master at Arms Denny is his name, done right after the NCIS started its investigation.
And this guy says he was called to escort one of the prisoners to the hospital.
He got to the detainee clinic.
He found the prisoner was already there and said, like, what the hell's going on?
He's not supposed to come to the clinic except through a medical escort.
But this guy didn't have an escort.
So something is strange.
Of course, the response we've got for that as documented in the previous article is that they were never in the cell blocks.
They were dropped at the clinic from Penny Lane.
That's what the guards appear to have seen.
But then he feels the guy's pulse and realizes he's alive.
He's not dead.
And he puts this guy sitting there choking with a noose around his neck and all these other bandages.
No one's attempting to apply, you know, CPR or try to revive him.
You know, they're just standing around watching.
And so he gets very agitated about that.
And he also notices another guard is there wrapping his hands with these bandages.
He says, you know, it's the same bandages that the guy's got around his throat and around his feet.
So, you know, the NCIS report claims that these bandages were applied by the prisoners themselves as they attempted to commit suicide.
Now we have documentation showing that, no, it's one of the guards applying them, obviously trying to stage or create the appearance that the suicide had occurred.
He then starts to escort the guy to an ambulance.
And then he's driven over to the hospital and they apply CPR as he's being moved.
But he still has the ligature, the noose around his neck.
So, of course, applying CPR while that's in place, choking him, it doesn't help him.
It probably makes his physical condition actually worse.
And I'm sorry, Scott.
By this time, we're talking how much later after this guy has found him here and said, hey, what's going on and started working on him?
We're talking more than an hour later.
So this is basically, we're looking at three hours after the time when, according to the military reports, these people were dead, all dead in their cells.
And the guy is not dead.
He's still alive.
At the hospital, he's taken, they began some revival efforts.
But what's going on is the command post is calling, asking over and over again, is he dead yet?
So, you know, it's a surreal, really disturbing scenario that's described here with people standing around waiting for this prisoner, sort of not happy about the fact that this guy is still alive, standing around waiting for him to expire and then expressing relief when he does expire, when he does finally die.
And do most of the time, no efforts being undertaken.
He's surrounded by medical professionals all around in a clinic and in a hospital.
Most of the time, no efforts being taken to revive him.
And then when things are done to revive him, they're actually harmful to him rather than helpful to him.
So it's a very, very disturbing situation that's described.
And then this document was to have been an appendix, Exhibit 25, to the NCIS report.
And when you look at the NCIS report, it says that there is an Exhibit 25 there.
When you go back and see what they've disclosed in Exhibit 25, it's three pages from two different documents, which have nothing to do with the actual Exhibit 25.
And this document is then found in a haystack of other papers.
And when we get the document and start looking at it, it's really some very, very good forensic work by some students at Columbia, excuse me, at Seton Hall Law School.
They get this document.
They think, this is Exhibit 25 and someone has doctored it.
They use Adobe Acrobat and they go in and start removing some of the redaction blockage of text and find underneath, indeed, Exhibit 25, the mark.
I love it when that happens, when they do the redactions wrong and people can just go hit Control-Z on it.
Exactly.
It's another great example of how not to do redaction.
Yeah.
Well, we don't want to give them too much.
Well, I'm sure they took note.
Anyway, yeah, no.
So this is incredible.
I mean, this, I learned this, I was telling the audience earlier, I was born when Gerald Ford was president.
So I've just been raised with my whole life with this wisdom, this conventional wisdom, this kind of just basic truth about life, that it's when you lie about it is when you really get in trouble.
It's the cover up that really gets you in trouble, because now how many different federal prosecutors and U.S. attorneys have a reason to nail somebody to the wall for obstruction of justice?
You just can't go and remove report contents like this.
Isn't that some kind of fraud in a legal case?
Well, I mean, you know, to start with, we've got homicides going on and the homicides are being obscured.
So that's obstruction of justice.
Now, the problem we've got here is who's taking a lead role in the obstruction?
The Department of Justice seems to be taking a lead role in the obstruction.
And that's something else that's going to be coming out in the next few days in the major report that's been done by the students at Seton Hall in which they document how the Justice Department covered up what went on and tried to throw congressional investigators off the scent by giving them false information.
There are a series of letters and there are emails between people inside the Justice Department trying to coordinate misstatements to members of Congress about what happened.
Wow.
Yeah, you know, I know a guy who used to jokingly say that he thought the entire Monica Lewinsky thing was just a stunt to get rid of the independent prosecutor statute, because boy, they hate having those independent prosecutors, you know, and I guess they can still do one in exceptional circumstances.
They sort of got to pass an ad hoc thing to do it rather than having a statute that's supposed to kick in.
Right.
Yeah, well, the attorney general has the discretion to appoint one if he wants to.
What you know, what what happened was previously we had a statute that said if Congress demanded it, they had to do it.
But you know, what we have here is a situation where, you know, it's clear that the Justice Department is a part of the problem, so to speak.
They can't be credibly expected to investigate it.
So anyway, this could be dealt with really would be through the appointment of some sort of independent prosecutor.
Well, and so now Harper's Magazine is a pretty big deal.
I mean, I don't think they can just completely ignore this.
I know it didn't get a whole lot of traction back when the story broke before, but this is some really powerful stuff that you're publishing here in the form of this document in Harper's Magazine.
So I wonder if you think that politics or do you have any signals yet that politics are changing on this question?
Maybe some congressmen are going to take up the issue or anything like that.
Well, this is really right in the heart of this dispute between the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the CIA.
So, you know, that that report is done.
It's awaiting declassification and publication right now.
And the disclosures here go to the CIA's operation at Guantanamo, which we know already from the report surrounding the Senate Committee report is one of the areas where the CIA was pushing back most aggressively and refusing to give information to the Senate investigators.
So I think one of the questions we're going to look at right now is, you know, did the Senate investigators ever get any information about this or were they stonewalled?
And I expect to see that the Senate was stonewalled about this, that they did not get information about it.
So I think we're going to see the stage set for for a follow up inquiry.
All right.
Well, thank you so much for your time and your great journalism on this, Scott.
Hey, it's my pleasure.
Great to be with you.
All right, everybody.
That's the other Scott Horton, heroic anti-torture international human rights lawyer at Harper's dot org.
Check out his blog.
No comment.
And it's in the print issue here.
Follow up a missing document and a new obstruction case.
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