05/20/13 – Jason Leopold – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Wharton.
We got Jason Leopold on the phone.
Hey, Jason.
Hey, Scott.
Great to be with you.
Great to have you here.
Now, Jason, you're the managing investigative news editor at Truthout, something like that?
I'm actually no longer with Truthout.
I left Truthout about a week ago.
Is that a week ago?
Yeah, a little over a week ago.
I'm actually contributing now to Al Jazeera English.
Oh, OK.
And, in fact, many of the stories on Guantanamo last week were published by Al Jazeera.
So moving on after many years and it was time to go.
OK, no problem.
Well, you know what?
We don't have time to talk about Guantanamo anyway.
So let's talk about Al Jazeera for a second.
Somebody just called in and said that they yanked an article because the Israel lobby in America complained about it.
And I wonder if you knew anything about that.
You know, I have to say I don't at all.
And, you know, last week was my first sort of experience with working with the Web site and, you know, which has been which published my article.
So as far as I know, I mean, it was great.
It was a great experience.
But, you know, I've heard stories about certainly Al Jazeera doing that and with coverage of the Arab Spring or, you know, that's been critical.
So, I mean, I really don't know what the veracity of that info is.
All right.
Well, anyway, so you've been in you've been in Guantanamo.
I just man, I don't know what to do because we only got like six minutes.
Can you give us six minutes worth of the worst stuff?
Guantanamo last week is the hunger strike, as you know, that's been going on for about close to four months.
And so the media, some members of the media are getting a tour of the prison facilities.
Now, I was there for military commissions in January and did not get to see the prison.
And this trip, Scott, we were shown Camp 5, Camp 6, the detention hospital, the restrained chair, the force feeding kit.
You know, I left Guantanamo with the feeling of I'm very glad that I got to see these facilities.
But I did not leave learning anything really new, certainly as it as it relates to the hunger strike.
And, you know, you have to keep in mind that this was a a tour that we were given that was controlled, that was scripted, that was that the government sort of or rather the military was directing.
So it was very difficult to get any information that would sort of that would be relevant new information.
I did get I did interview two guards and it was what was striking to me about that, Scott, was how incredibly young they were.
One male guard who was at Guantanamo when he was 18 years old.
He's now 20.
A female who's 21.
I mean, these are kids who are obviously.
Toddlers, you know, right after 9-11, and that's why Guantanamo is there.
That's why they are there.
And, you know, the one takeaway from this that or the common thread in this trip is that each and every person that I've spoken to on the military side, from the physicians to the guards, you know, to to, you know, some of the officers that basically, you know, the prisoners are all lying.
They get great food.
They have a wide range of books to choose from to read.
They have video games.
And in fact, you know, having a tube threaded or shoved into their nose and threaded down to their stomach does not really hurt.
In fact, many of them actually want this procedure done and ask to go to the hospital to have this done so they can eat.
So it was very difficult to get any information that would be revelatory.
Now, I actually published a story last week with Al Jazeera.
As I was en route to Guantanamo, I obtained the actual standard operating procedure for managing this hunger strike, or rather managing hunger strikes at Guantanamo and the force feeding protocol in general.
And that SOP was written about a month after this hunger strike began.
And it is clear to me, and I think to others, that it seems to have been written in preparation for a mass hunger strike.
And for the first time, we were able to publish what the restraint chair protocol is and how that works.
The whole thing revolving around Guantanamo, as I've mentioned to you before, is a public relations disaster.
It's a nightmare.
And they're trying to manage that.
And I give them credit for actually trying to manage it.
Well, just think of what a PR nightmare would be if they all started dropping dead of suicide by starvation.
Right.
Yeah.
We've got to hold them down and jab a tube down their throat and force them to eat their insurer.
And by the way, is insurer, are they paying out dividend checks?
Who owns insurer?
That seems like a pretty good business to invest in nowadays.
That's Abbott Laboratories.
It's funny that you mention that because one of the – insurer has become symbolic now with force feeding, with the hunger strike at Guantanamo.
And one of the human rights groups actually wrote a letter to Abbott Laboratories, the manufacturers of insurers, saying that, look, I would think that you do not want to be associated with this hunger strike.
And therefore, you should tell the military that they should stop using insurer.
But I'm sure that will not happen.
Right.
But it's still a question of how much are they using.
I mean they use other nutritional supplements.
But that was – let me just leave you with this, is that the big takeaway for me at this trip, as I said, I could not get anywhere near any of the prisoners.
But as we were leaving Camp 5, we were there to observe morning prayer.
And as we were leaving and exiting the camp, I could look behind my shoulder, and up above you could see some of the cells, and you could see the very, very narrow windows.
And I saw a prisoner looking right at me from his cell and giving me a thumbs down sign.
And that actually was something that stayed with me throughout the trip there.
I mean it was the closest, first of all, that I came to a prisoner.
And then just to sort of – I could imagine what he would say if I had the opportunity to sit down with him.
Right.
All right.
Well, man, I'm so sorry we've got to cut this short now.
But thanks very much for doing the show.
No, thank you, Scott.
Maybe we can just talk in a day or two.
Sure, we'll speak again.
Yeah, appreciate it.
All right, everybody, that's the great Jason Leopold.
He's the author of the book News Junkie.
And he's writing at aljazeera.com.
Yes, they got .com from the pirates that had it.
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