07/03/13 – Jason Leopold – The Scott Horton Show

Hey y'all, Scott here.
First of all, thanks to the show's sponsors and donors who make it possible for me to do this.
Secondly, I need more sponsors and more donors if the show is to continue.
ScottHorton.org/donate has all the links to use PayPal, Give.org, Google Wallet, WePay.com, and even Bitcoins to make a donation in any amount.
You can also sign up for monthly donations of small and medium-sized amounts through PayPal and Give.org.
Again, that's ScottHorton.org/donate for all the links.
To advertise on the site or the show, email me, Scott at ScottHorton.org.
And thanks.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
ScottHorton.org is the website.
Sign up for the RSS feed there.
Get all the interview archives downloaded right to your watchmajigger.
And also, you can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube at slash ScottHortonShow.
Okay, next up is our friend Jason Leopold, now writing for Al Jazeera.
And first of all, welcome back to the show, Jason.
How are you?
Doing well, Scott.
Thanks for having me back.
Well, you're welcome.
And thank you again for joining us.
Really appreciate it.
By the way, I meant to say that you're the author of the book News Junkie, which people ought to spend money on and read.
Thank you.
Appreciate that.
They ought to also read the book, too.
Yep.
But definitely they should spend money on it, even just if it's for decoration.
Okay, so now I want to make sure that I got it right that Dead Right is the same article as Military Contributes to a Non-Latif's Death.
Is that correct?
This is the brand new one?
Yeah, same.
Just a couple different headlines.
Trying to attract readers to this.
Right.
I just wasn't sure.
I got the advanced copy with your original headline.
I just want to make sure this is the same piece I'm looking at so that I can recommend for people to go and find it.
It's at aljazeera.com, the real aljazeera.com, finally, somehow.
So it's at .net or .com.
Military Contributes to Adnan Latif's Death is the article.
And so go ahead.
You've got free reign for 25 minutes.
Tell us about Adnan Latif and what happened to him and what you learned in this new Department of Defense document, which you've published in full here.
Well, this is a, you know, just to start out on currently, this is a document that I had FOIA'd, the Default Freedom of Information Act request for, last September.
Last September, Adnan Latif, a 36-year-old Yemeni prisoner who was one of the first prisoners brought to Guantanamo in 2002, he died.
He is a prisoner who had suffered greatly.
He had head injuries.
He had mental health problems.
And he just died.
I mean, he had been cleared for release.
And, of course, people had suspected that the military was going to say he committed suicide.
And sure enough, that's exactly what they said.
They said that he had hoarded anti-psychotic medication and collected enough for a lethal dose.
And that they were conducting, you know, after he died, they were going to conduct an investigation, known as a commander's inquiry.
That was conducted by United States Southern Command, which has oversight of the Joint Task Force that operates Guantanamo.
So, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for this report and received it last Friday.
And, Scott, this is a damning, damning report.
There have been a few stories that have surfaced since my report came out in other publications, which go into just a little bit of detail about what the military says in terms of what the investigation found in terms of Lateef's death.
But, you know, to step aside from that for a moment, what this report shows is that there has been a, you know, systemic failures at Guantanamo, violations of policy at every level from the commander, who is more or less, you know, a poor leader, all the way down to the medical staff.
And these systemic failures directly contributed to the death of Adnan Lateef, this Yemeni prisoner who had been cleared by the Bush administration and the Obama administration, cleared for release.
And it's really an indictment of, you know, the Obama administration's policies, you know, with regard to indefinite detention.
It's an indictment of Congress for yet, you know, what appears to be a failure of oversight into the operations at Guantanamo.
It raises a number of questions as to, you know, how did this prisoner obtain these, you know, these medications?
And in addition to that, it shows that in his autopsy, after he was, you know, after his autopsy was conducted, I mean, he had a, basically, a pharmacy in his bloodstream.
I mean, there were numerous, numerous drugs that he was, you know, that he was given that were found in his system.
So, it's just widespread failures.
And here we have now a hunger strike.
And that is entering its fifth month.
It shows no signs of abating.
The number of hunger strikers are increasing.
The number of prisoners who are being force-fed is increasing.
And what this report that I obtained shows is that the hunger strike can be directly linked to the policies that were implemented and enacted in response to the death of Abnab Latif.
So, instead of holding anyone responsible and accountable for the failures to follow what, you know, what are the standard operating procedures at Guantanamo, and there's nearly 200 of them, what they've done is, more or less, you know, taken it out on the rest of the prisoners by implementing the, you know, these across-the-board policies, because, you know, one prisoner supposedly, you know, concealed medications and collected enough for a lethal dose.
And now you have this, you know, this massive hunger strike.
But as I indicated, nobody's been held accountable, which probably is not a surprise to you, Scott, and certainly not a surprise to any of your listeners.
We know that, you know, accountability when it comes to this administration is not too keen to hold anyone accountable for problems and failures such as this, even though the failure to follow a standard operating procedure.
Because this report says that standard operating procedures were not followed, and it would be considered a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
So, it's just a complete breakdown of what's happening at Guantanamo, what's been happening at Guantanamo.
It undercuts and actually just, you know, completely destroys all the statements that I have been told by Pentagon officials, by Guantanamo officials about the way in which, you know, the prison is operated, the way they've run the prison, because this report shows that, you know, the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.
Right.
Well, and the guards don't know what they're doing.
None of them know what anybody's doing.
Yeah, I mean, you quote one guard saying that, I sort of feel like nobody even knows I work here.
I'm not even sure if anybody does know I work here.
That's a direct, yeah, that's a quote that he gave to an investigator.
I mean, can you believe that?
I mean, that is...
All right, now, wait a minute.
Hold on.
Let's make sure everybody's on the same page here for just a second before we delve into some details here.
This guy, Lateef, who is a guy and who, for some reason, was in Guantanamo and somehow died, which we're going to get back to very shortly here.
He was able, according to their version of how he died, he was only able to kill himself by gross negligence and gross failure to obey the standard operating procedures of how these detainees are to be, for example, observed as they take their medicine or checked on when they're supposedly suicidal and that kind of thing.
And that instead of any accountability for the people who failed on the job, according to the original story about what happened here, they went ahead and clamped down on everyone, which is what led to the massive hunger strike.
Right now, people, because they're constantly having their Quran searched for one thing and their parts and other things searched and further clamped down on, they're now trying to kill themselves by starvation rather than suffer this indignity anymore or, at the very least, try to draw attention and make the American people do the right thing.
Yeah, right.
Exactly.
And let me just add that this report that I obtained does not state how Adnan Latif supposedly obtained these medications.
It does not say how he was able to hide it from the guards or from anyone, even though he was subjected to a regular search.
For example, the report says that a day before he died, he was transferred out of the detention hospital and into a punishment wing in Camp 5.
And so what that entails is literally, physically, Scott, getting up and getting your belongings and being shackled and moving.
And the guards said, hey, we searched his belongings and we didn't find anything.
So what the report then adds is that it doesn't come out and state it specifically or it does not say this is what we conclude.
It just says that his Quran was not searched.
And then there's a redacted part in the report which I have a military official who revealed to me that the redacted part also says that his genitals were not searched.
So they're suggesting that he hid this medication in his Quran or in his genital area.
And so then, obviously, people are wondering, oh, why are they searching Qurans?
And, of course, the Guantanamo officials are saying, oh, we've always searched Qurans.
Well, BS, that's not true.
They have not.
They have not always searched it.
They ended that practice back in 2006 after the last hunger strike, after an uprising and a riot took place.
And they implemented policies that more or less said that we're not going to do this anymore.
So they left it to the interpreters and the linguists to search it, but nobody was searching the Qurans.
And these are questions that I've been asking for quite some time.
All right.
And then so now let's get back to what you think, or I guess, first of all, what you know, and then, second of all, what you think about how he died.
Because, you know, as you say, boy, he sure was able to save up a lot of pills in his underwear without anybody knowing, if that's the story they're going with here.
But then so what's the alternative narrative to that if he got one?
Good question, Scott.
First, let me just add that the Naval Criminal Investigative Service is also investigating.
And what they're investigating is, you know, the circumstances behind the death.
They're supposed to go into more or less, you know, many of these questions as to how this happened.
And I should have prefaced that question a little bit too with, as you describe in the article, he was a real pain in the ass.
And there have been times over the years where he was pretty sure that they were sort of kind of trying to encourage him to go ahead and kill himself because they were so sick and tired of him all the time.
And that kind of thing.
That's right.
So that is sort of part of the background of this.
Yeah, it's important background because, one, he had been saying this to his attorneys for years.
And many of the statements that his attorney had copied, taken down verbatim, have proven to be true.
He often talked about that he was drugged.
He was forcibly drugged.
And those allegations were completely dismissed.
You know, what's important to note here is, again, is that you said he was a pain in the ass.
He was, but he was also disturbed, really disturbed.
He was mentally ill.
He suffered a traumatic brain injury.
You know, the report talks about...
And he was just some schmuck who got kidnapped.
He didn't have anything to do with anything, right?
That's the point that people miss in this, too.
And where we should have started this show, really, this interview, is he was in Pakistan looking for a head surgeon because he had a headache that wouldn't quit from an old car wreck.
And that's it.
That's it.
And that really is it.
And there's any one person who really sort of you can hold up as sort of the injustice of Guantanamo and indefinite detention and how, you know, certain prisoners just don't belong there.
And it's Adnan Latif.
This was just a person who was absolutely in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And, you know, the report even says he was almost completely blind in one eye.
I mean, he was a wreck.
He was a physical wreck.
He was a mental wreck.
He was cleared for release.
They kept him there.
Why?
That's actually a question that remains unanswered.
I'm hoping to obtain some information as to, you know, why they tortured him to death.
Because that's ultimately what happened, if you think about it.
It's for Democratic Party politics.
That's what it was for.
They were afraid of death that if they sent a single more Yemeni home that one of them would turn up somewhere and the Republicans would use it as a talking point.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
And they're still afraid of that.
But, you know, to get back to your question about, you know, how this could have happened, it's important to note that, you know, as I indicated in the report, the specific drug that they claimed that he collected, that he hoarded, is a drug that was used to treat schizophrenia.
And he had only been prescribed this medication about three weeks before he died.
So he was taking a couple of daily doses of this medication.
And the way that, you know, the story goes is that, you know, apparently he didn't swallow it.
And nobody watched him, you know, take the medication, even though that says in the SOP that, you know, the corpsmen need to make sure that, you know, the prisoners take the medication.
So three weeks before, you know, he's collecting, supposedly collecting all this medication.
And then, you know, he gets sent to this punishment cell, which he had said, according to, you know, this investigation, would basically kill him.
He would die there.
And, you know, he was right.
So I think there are really important questions as to, well, did he really collect this medication?
I don't think that the report is conclusive, certainly in saying, you know, providing any evidence and maybe there's, you know, something redacted, but there's nothing that says, you know, as I said, it just says his Koran wasn't searched.
I think that they're guessing at this point.
But it's also, I should add, that medication was just left for him.
You know, the night before he died, a corpsman, you know, walked by a cell and, you know, dropped medication into his splash box.
That's a box that's on the door to sort of prevent, you know, splashing of the guards and simply just left the medication there and walked away.
And so who knows?
You know, was he, you know, you know, did somebody sort of, you know, place two dozen pills in an area for him that he would have access to?
I have no idea.
But I think that there are very important unanswered questions as to how this prisoner who suffered, who had these, you know, these head injuries, these debilitating head injuries, who was manic, who was bipolar, who was being treated with schizophrenic medication, you know, knew that, hey, I'm going to basically, you know, put this plan together and hide all of these pills.
Because that's more or less what they're trying to say here.
They're saying, we didn't have anything to do with it.
It wasn't on us.
This was all him.
So hopefully the, you know, the NCIS report or investigation will, you know, provide more details to that.
But again, you know, aside from Adnan Latif, I mean, he's a ninth prisoner to die, the report shows these systemic failures.
I mean, there's even an SOP, Scott, that says you can't feed the wildlife.
And the wildlife there is more or less the, you know, the iguanas and the banana rats.
And they were violating that as well, you know, allowing the, you know, the prisoners to do that.
So, you know, if you have all these, you know, these failures, if you have people not following the SOPs, is it possible that other things took place that we don't know about?
Well, I would think so.
Because on one hand, they say, well, they did all this, but they certainly didn't do, you know, didn't do anything, you know, didn't abuse him or anything, you know, of that nature.
I think that this is, as I indicated, a damning indictment of, you know, of the policies of this administration, of indefinite detention.
And the fact that something like this, I have to be honest with you, does not get more attention on that scale is stunning to me.
Because you cannot have a better smoking gun at this point about how bad it is at Guantanamo than this Scott document.
Yeah.
I mean, it's just horrifying, man.
I read the story today and it just reminded me of the kind of thing, and I know I'm a broken record about this, everybody, I'm sorry, but this is the kind of thing that my government used to, with a straight face, say about the Soviets.
And other communist, horrible dictatorships, like say, for example, Fidel Castro's communist dictatorship down there in Cuba.
And yet, you know, flip a coin, which side of the wall are you more likely to get a fair trial at this point?
It's madness.
I mean, in fact, you're more likely to get an actual trial in communist Cuba than on the American side, right?
Right.
It'll be a fake trial, but at least they'll hold one.
Right.
Exactly.
It'll be a fake trial, they'll hold one.
I mean, look, as I said, nobody here is getting a trial.
Look what's happening in Guantanamo right now.
You have the prosecution, the government, that is pressuring the judge overseeing these military commissions to move things along.
Hurry up.
Get these 9-11 guys on trial already.
We need to move along.
But it's so bizarre.
I don't even know how to react to that because this is the same government that refused to put them on trial in Article 3 courts where it would have gone much quicker.
They hold them at CIA black sites for years.
It's been 11, 12 years and now they're saying, hey, we're getting impatient.
They created this.
They created this monster.
Nobody asked for it.
This is what they created.
There have been attempts to sort of change it and what happens?
You have the Republicans pouncing on the Democrats and the Democrats caving.
They're pathetic.
Both parties are pathetic in the way that they respond and deal with these issues and then wag their fingers at other governments for policies that we duplicate and, you know, Guantanamo and the death of this prisoner and others being a perfect example.
This man was cleared for release.
He had a family.
He had a son that he talked about.
He was cleared by the Obama administration.
He was cleared by the Bush administration.
He went to the Supreme Court.
They refused to take it.
He finally died and his story more or less is kind of silent.
A report comes out that's a damning indictment of the policies of the administration of the policies that are in place at Guantanamo and it's met with more or less utter silence by people.
It's a footnote.
Here you have a hunger strike You have more than 100 prisoners that are starving themselves and the only way that they can make their voices heard and it's we're not hearing enough of those stories and I think that things are going to get much worse but what I see is the public sort of being completely desensitized to what's taking place.
TV rules them all.
That's what it comes down to.
TV, by ignoring the story, is implying quite successfully that it's not a story so you don't need to worry about it.
After all, the empire's got a thousand scandals to pick from and so shrug.
Right?
It's not even really a decision by the people that they don't really care about or whatever.
Yeah.
No, you're absolutely right and it's television certainly is not going to cover something like this in depth.
I mean, look, this report that I put together here is a 4,000 word report.
It takes an investment to read it.
I felt that it is important to not just say hey, there were these failures and this prisoner died and sort of treat it as a straight news story.
I felt that this was important.
Let me help you sell it, too, before you say why it was so important.
I'm surprised it was 4,000 words.
I read it like it was 2,000 words.
No problem.
Real quick, and it's very well done and very readable.
I do hope that you're not turning people off by saying how long it is.
It's not much of an investment to read it.
You'll get a lot out of it, but it doesn't cost much to sit down and read this thing at all.
I'm sorry for interrupting.
Go ahead and say again why it was so important to you.
I think that's the problem that we're seeing here, Scott.
As you mentioned, with television, with the news, with these various sort of revelations that come out, I don't feel that people are sort of getting the full impact or understanding how damning some of these revelations truly are.
We're certainly seeing it with the NSA and the programs there, but it's widespread.
It's widespread.
Think about this without all the other things going on.
Think of how huge this is, this massive hunger strike of people trying to starve themselves to death in indefinite detention down at a military base in Cuba.
This is huge.
This is as big as the whole world, but it's just drowned out by so much other important stuff and static, too.
There's definitely other important things.
I don't particularly think that my story is the only important one, but this is huge.
In the context of what we're talking about, Scott, of what Obama talked about with regard to Guantanamo, what we're talking about with regard to the cost of operating this prison, and then you see this document where it says the leadership failures across the board.
How is it that no one is held accountable for that?
Why is this continuing to happen?
And why are we dismissing deaths like this?
Deaths that like I said, this man had a family.
I've spoken to his brother in Yemen.
You say in the article his son was a toddler the last time he saw him when he went off to seek medical attention and got kidnapped by the empire, and he never did get to go home and see him again.
His son is now 10 years old, which that ought to really stick with people, too.
Like, okay, yeah, yeah, he was brown and everything, but this was a human being.
Like you say, he had a son.
He had a brother.
He had a wife.
And he was wholly innocent, and I think it's a perfect symbol of Guantanamo.
Like I said, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and a few other of those guys, they're the window dressing on the indefinite detention that all these innocents are suffering there still.
It's madness.
It's got to stop.
It's completely mad and wrong.
And everyone knows it, too.
Alright, listen, I'm sorry for ranting, but we're all out of time here.
We've got to go.
Thank you so much.
It was great to talk to you again.
Always appreciate it, Scott.
Take care.
Alright, everybody.
That's the great Jason Leopold.
He's now writing for Aljazeera.com.
This one is called Military Contributes to Adnan Lateef's Death.
Military Contributes to Adnan Lateef's Death.
A very important story.
Please go read it.
See you tomorrow.
Oh, man, I'm late.
I sure hope I can make my flight.
Stand there.
Me?
I am standing here.
Come here.
Okay.
Hands up.
Turn around.
Whoa, easy.
Into the scanner.
Ooh, what's that?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Ooh, what's this in your pants?
Hey, slow down.
It's just my...
Hold it right there.
Your wallet has tripped the metal detector.
What's this?
The Bill of Rights?
That's right.
It's just a harmless, stainless steel business card-sized copy of the Bill of Rights from SecurityEdition.com.
There for exposing the TSA as a bunch of liberty-destroying goons who've never protected anyone from anything.
Sir, now give me back my wallet and get out of my way.
Got a plane to catch.
Have a nice day.
Play a leading role in the security theater with the Bill of Rights Security Edition from SecurityEdition.com.
It's the size of a business card, so it fits right in your wallet.
It's guaranteed to trip the metal detectors wherever the police state goes.
That's SecurityEdition.com.
And don't forget their great Fourth Amendment socks.
Hey, guys.
I got his laptop.
Hey, all.
Scott Warren here for the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
Aren't you sick of the neocons in the Israel lobby pretending as though they've earned some kind of monopoly on foreign policy wisdom in Washington, D.C.?
These peanut clowns who've never been right about anything?
Well, the Council for the National Interest is pushing back, putting America first, and telling the lobby to go take a hike.
The empire's bad enough without the neocons making it all about the interests of a foreign state.
Help CNI promote peace.
Visit their site at councilforthenationalinterest.org and click Donate under About Us at the top of the page.
That's councilforthenationalinterest.org.
Hey, all.
Scott here, hawking stickers for the back of your truck.
They've got some great ones at libertystickers.com.
Get your son killed.
Jeb Bush 2016.
FDR, no longer the worst president in American history.
The National Security Agency, blackmailing your congressman since 1952.
And USA.
Sometimes we back Al-Qaeda.
Sometimes we don't.
And there's over a thousand other great ones on the wars, police state, elections, the Federal Reserve, and more at libertystickers.com.
They'll take care of all your custom printing for your bandier business at thebumpersticker.com.libertystickers.com.
Everyone else's stickers suck.
Hey, all.
Scott Horton here to tell you about this great new project, Listen and Think Audio at listenandthink.com.
They've got two new audiobooks read by the deepest voice in libertarianism, the great historian Jeff Riggenbach.
Our Last Hope, Rediscovering the Lost Path to Liberty by Michael Meharry of the Tenth Amendment Center is available now.
And Beyond Democracy, co-authored by Frank Karsten of the Mises Institute Netherlands and journalist Carl Beckman will be released this month.
And they're only just getting started.
So check out listenandthink.com.
You may be able to get your first audiobook absolutely free.
That's Listen and Think Audio at listenandthink.com.