06/20/13 – Jason Leopold – The Scott Horton Show

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Hey everybody, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
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Our first guest today is our good friend Jason Leopold, author of News Junkie and now reporter for aljazeera.com.
And I don't mean the fake aljazeera.
They finally got that URL away from the fake aljazeera.
Aljazeera.com, aljazeera.net, either way here.
It's the great Jason Leopold and his latest is a Guantanamo tour.
Much ado about nothing.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Jason?
Hey, Scott.
Great to be with you again.
Very good to have you here.
Listen, before we get into the Guantanamo stuff, is it okay if I ask you a little bit about Michael Hastings here?
Sure.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, it's been a little while since I interviewed him, honestly.
It's because I put down the book, The Operators, and I was embarrassed that I never finished the book.
So I never interviewed him about the book.
And then I never interviewed him about anything after that either because I'm stupid and now he's dead.
But anyway, I know that you and him were actual friends.
So I was just hoping you could tell the people about him and what you think and things like that.
Sure.
Well, for a guy who was 33 years old, he was just so—I'm not even sure I can generate the right words.
When I heard the news—geez, what was it, a couple days ago?
It really hit me hard.
He was an incredible reporter who everyone has been saying, those who knew him in a very old school.
I just found him to be just so incredibly passionate about not just reporting but about the truth.
We started to speak last year regularly after I had obtained some documents from the Department of Homeland Security in which these internal emails showed just how nuts the Department of Homeland Security went over a report that Michael Hastings wrote for Rolling Stone about the Occupy Wall Street movement.
These emails were just hilarious because it said—the Department of Homeland Security officials were saying, we need to call up Michael Hastings and explain to him our mission.
They were talking about pressuring him to correct his story, take down his story.
They were basically trying to say that his story was wrong.
I was putting together a report.
I got on the phone with him, and we just started talking about various—first of all, this story.
He laughed and said he actually tried to call the Department of Homeland Security for comment when he was putting the story together, and they wouldn't comment.
We were just talking about the Freedom of Information Act and some of the stories he was working on and how I was going to really utilize the Freedom of Information Act to try to get some of that material.
He was like, go for it.
He was just an all-around nice guy in terms of a reporter and just really cared about the stories, really did not want to be pigeonholed in terms of being identified as liberal, Democrat, libertarian, whatever it is.
He was just a person who lived and breathed journalism.
It really was something that he was incredibly passionate about.
As somebody who was just 33 years old, to have that kind of experience and to be so authoritative in his work and writing, it was inspiring to me.
He was out here in L.A. starting to write about the entertainment industry as well as continuing to work on some political issues.
Some of the stories that he was working on certainly involved the CIA.
He wrote this incredible story last year about these abuses that took place at this hospital in Afghanistan.
That's actually what I spoke to him about recently was this Freedom of Information Act request that I filed trying to grab all these documents from the Department of Defense.
I'm not sure that really completely answers your question.
It's just, for me, just hearing that news is just wow.
It was truly a shock.
Just really.
Let me tell you this.
From my point of view, you know what I do.
I don't do journalism like you guys.
I sit here, but I'm kind of the clearinghouse.
I talk to all of you guys.
There's really very few.
I think some of my listeners probably get bored and quit listening because it's the same guests over and over again because I'm pretty picky.
There's not too many journalists and or columnists, opinionists out there, who have the attitude to get the job done well, you know what I mean, to get the correct job done.
Like during the Iraq War, I interviewed 100 reporters about the Iraq War, and a lot of them would just, well, yeah, David Petraeus said this, and so I guess I'm supposed to repeat it now or whatever.
With him, it wasn't a matter of he would get it right on the follow-up question.
He always got it right in the first place.
I didn't have to set the question up.
Hey, isn't it true that they haven't proven that any of these EFP bombs are really coming from Iran?
He'd just bring it up anyway himself.
He already knew that was the important point.
Yeah, they keep saying these bombs come from Iran, but there ain't the slightest bit of evidence yet.
I'm pretty sure that was some of the first stuff we talked about back in 2007 and whatever.
And his piece on Afghanistan, he's not embedded with the Americans.
He's out cruising around on the Duran line, hanging out in Pashtunistan, unembedded, just reporting on the real war, you know what I mean?
There are very few reporters.
I think of Patrick Coburn and David Enders and a few others who are really willing to get out there and risk their skin like that, Scahill, of course.
There are very few who are willing to, who have that very independent attitude that you're talking about, but then also the very real willingness to be over there in danger, getting the job done.
Yeah, you have to think about this, Scott, and I will tell you that I thought about it, and I think this is what really made me sad is in my reporting about Guantanamo and Michael's reporting about whether it's the Afghanistan hospital or whether it was a Hollywood producer who ended up in jail, which is one of his recent stories, I've asked myself many times, why do I continue doing this reporting?
And it's a difficult question to answer because it's not sexy.
It's certainly not making any friends, and the same goes with Michael.
He knew that, and he certainly didn't care about that.
And it's amazing that there's a lot of risks that we take as reporters, and I really cannot answer that question as to why I continue to do this type of work.
And I know that for me, I'm just compelled to do it.
It's just, I feel like I'm just chasing something that eventually I'll find whatever the truth is.
I think Michael's work, his body of work is incredible in that it really shows that he, too, was chasing not just the truth but really wanted to let the public know that what they're being told is not exactly, certainly it's not the truth necessarily, and it's not exactly the way it seems.
There's a whole different world, and the only way to do that is to really be independent, to be unembedded, to be, you know, he took his observations and shared it with everyone.
And I was reading some of these tweets, and Geraldo Rivera tweeted yesterday a tragedy about the death of Michael Hastings, but let's not forget that he was responsible for taking down or for ruining the career of one of our best generals.
And it angered me, it frustrated me, because he committed an act of journalism.
It was actually General McChrystal himself who was responsible for his own behavior.
Michael was there and reporting and observed what was happening and shared that.
And that is the type of journalism that you don't see, and that kind of response from a guy like Geraldo Rivera, which I don't think of him as a journalist, but it really did.
What it did for me is that it really sort of kind of showed where we are right now in terms of journalism.
I'll use the latest uproar with Edward Snowden, the contractor who was working with the NSA, as an example.
It's striking to me, Scott, how many journalists, well-known journalists, professional journalists, people who are supposed to be out there digging up the dirt, pounding the pavement, and revealing the truth, are so – their response to all of this is just – I'm not sure if it's just based in opinion, but it's more or less that they're not doing their jobs.
You know, the thing is, I think Josh Marshall at the Talking Points memo, sort of out of the mouths of babes kind of a thing, he put it perfectly from the point of view of the bad guys.
He said, look, some of us reporters identify with the regime, and some of you others are the outcast types.
Excuse me.
And it's like, yeah, that's right, you're a fascist bootlicking toady, barely a human at all.
Please continue on your walk.
I mean, but it's – I guess that I'm – maybe I'm naive, because I didn't expect that.
And I didn't expect to see – I know that the world of scoop journalism, having been in it, having made some mistakes as a reporter in that world, is incredibly competitive, and we eat our own.
But this is – what I've been seeing is just incredibly sad, because no one's really willing to step up and say, hey – actually, excuse me, I will say that Matt Apuzzo from the Associated Press, he actually said, these are questions we should have been asking years ago, and had we done that, and he included himself, we wouldn't be asking these questions now.
And it's just incredible to see the type of response that's being put out there publicly by journalists.
Of course, Hastings was out there in full force on his Twitter feed, backing Snowden, backing Greenwald, and shouting down the detractors, and rollicking, and having a great old time getting involved in the fight right away, too.
Yeah, and look, you said – you used the word backing Snowden.
And I think that's really what – for me, I mean, I'm not backing anyone.
I'm interested in asking more questions and finding out – and trying to obtain more information.
And what I've seen, and how this relates to Michael Hastings, is that kind of response.
It's like, I can't forget Laura Logan from CBS, when she was so highly critical of his reporting, of Michael Hastings' reporting, and basically said that McChrystal was this great American, and Michael Hastings will never be the type of American – I'm paraphrasing here, and I may be messing it up – but the gist is that he's no McChrystal.
And this is a woman who's a reporter.
She wears that badge, I'm a journalist.
She works for CBS.
And that's really where we are.
So his loss, aside from the fact that I knew him and was getting to know him very well, knew what he was working on and sharing some stories, is a loss for everyone.
And as you noted, there really are very few people that are out there doing this type of work, taking these types of risks.
And it's difficult.
This is a very sort of difficult job to do, particularly right now, Scott, because people are not speaking to journalists.
One of the reasons that I was speaking to Michael about Freedom of Information Act is because I have sources, but I'm here in Los Angeles, and it's very difficult for sources to feel comfortable speaking to me about certain government activity.
There's really no incentive for them to do it anymore, if it could mean that they will be prosecuted, investigated.
So the alternative method is using the Freedom of Information Act, as flawed as it is, to try and obtain information.
Well, that's one of the biggest stories of this decade, I think, that has gone so underreported, is the chilling of sources for investigative journalists in this country and what that's really come to mean for journalism and all that.
But I'm sorry to stop, because I need to ask you about the cause of death here, because obviously, as you mentioned, he's working on CIA stories.
As a matter of course, Michael Hastings is making powerful enemies, because he didn't cover the local zoo beat.
He covered the who-ought-to-be-in-real-trouble beat.
And so people are concerned about that.
On the other hand, I saw a video this morning that looks to be him blowing through a very solidly red light at Santa Monica and Highland this morning.
Do you have any idea what the hell he was doing out at 4.30 in the morning, or do you have an opinion about all the suspicions and whatever?
You know, I don't.
He was working on stories.
He was working on stories.
I know, look, a lot of people work on stories like that.
You've got WikiLeaks.
I should mention, I'm sorry, I should mention, Jason, in my setup here, that WikiLeaks is saying, oh, he contacted our lawyer just before he died and this kind of stuff.
Yeah, I'm not sure why WikiLeaks said that.
I'm not sure.
Obviously, they're trying to make a point.
They did the same thing with Aaron Swartz, the Internet activist who killed himself, saying that he contacted them or he helped them.
The implication is that there was murder, there was foul play.
Look, I have absolutely no idea.
All I know is that he was out 4.30 in the morning, I'm aware of.
I've lived in L.A. for a long time.
I know Highland and Melrose.
I do, too.
It's notorious for accidents.
I certainly don't want to get into that area without really knowing anything other than the fact that at this point it just looks like there was.
Actually, it was going very fast.
I watched the same video you watched.
That's pretty much it.
I'm not sure.
I'm not very interested in what WikiLeaks, what their point was and all that.
They sort of throw out this tweet and then move away.
Well, why?
I could have tweeted that he had just been meeting with Jason Leopold about a FOIA request.
So what?
Right, yeah.
Yeah, he was a journalist.
He called lawyers and things sometimes.
Maybe he was being investigated by the FBI, but the FBI, I don't know.
When I heard about his death and actually heard about it from your wife, Larissa, I immediately filed, actually, a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI and asking for a case file, if anything exists.
Just because, first of all, that's what I do.
I'm pretty well known for doing that.
So I filed that.
I did the same thing when Hugo Chavez died.
I asked the FBI for his file as well.
We'll see if anything comes from that, if there's anything in there.
At this point, for me and many people, including you, I imagine, it's a loss of a great journalist, someone who was just working on incredible stories that we won't get the chance to read.
Hopefully, perhaps somebody will pick up what he was working on and run with it.
It's really a loss for all of us because he was doing some great work, and he really believed in what he was doing, and he was incredibly passionate.
That kind of passion is just really difficult to find right now.
Yeah, certainly true.
I want to mention real quick about that.
Something about L.A. always compelled me to drive fast too, especially on the freeways there.
The whole damn town is like a racetrack to me.
I don't know.
He saw it that way too.
He's a brash young male.
It makes sense that he might be driving fast in the middle of the night.
There's nothing suspicious about that.
I wanted to point out that I read one of these sites where someone had a theory.
The comment section seemed to be populated with car experts, not people who were interested in politics or journalism at all, but people who were just insane about cars.
They were talking about how, yeah, it looks like an accident.
Give me a break.
They pretty much all were unanimous about that.
One of them even said if he'd been in a lesser car, it might have broken in half and tossed him free of the fire, but because he was in a Mercedes, it held together.
Unfortunately, it worked against him in this particular case, but it's just a random chance.
It's like they found bones from September 11th on top of skyscrapers a mile away.
How the hell did that happen?
Who knows?
Throw a bunch of numbers in a random generator thing and see what happens.
A bunch of terrible stuff.
Who knows?
Like I said, I've lived in L.A. for a while.
It's a car city, and there's no time when you do not turn on the television that you won't see a car chase.
I saw it last night.
Car chase, car crash.
Breaking news here, Scott, is we have a car accident and a wreck on La Cienega.
That literally, though, cut into the news, or we'll get some breaking news about that.
In fact, part of the reporting on Hastings was that this was the only crash that happened in L.A. last night, and that was unique.
Yeah.
I will say that actually is pretty unique, because, like I said, it's L.A., and there's many, many accidents.
I live on a road where every morning people are just speeding, and oftentimes I'll wake up to, ah, boom.
So that is certainly not unusual for L.A.
Look, obviously, like I said, the tweet by WikiLeaks was, what's the impression?
It's clear.
Or what's the implication?
That there was foul play, that he was murdered, that this was not just a car accident.
For me, I'm not really going to go to that place yet.
My thing is he better really be going somewhere with that, or that's going to really piss me off, you know?
Right.
Well, like I said, it was the same thing about Aaron Swartz.
I mean, Aaron Swartz was doing incredible work as well.
And I think that there are legitimate questions to ask about, you know, what the government was doing.
And, look, you know, if the government was investigating, you know, Michael Hastings, would that be a surprise, given that we already know that the government is investigating or, you know, had been looking at the Fox News reporter, you know, the Associated Press, New York Times?
No, it's not a surprise.
In fact, you know, I would imagine that anyone doing that type of work these days should know that, hey, you know, you're being watched or there's a chance that you could be.
So not surprised about that.
Yeah, you know, the Fox News lady couldn't believe it when Ron Paul said, yeah, I mean, I'm concerned that Barack Obama's just going to kill this Ed Snowden with a drone or, you know, just send assassins after him or something.
And the lady just thought this was the silliest thing she ever heard.
And I only wish that he had said, don't you remember the news last week was a Fox News reporter was an unindicted co-conspirator in an espionage case for doing reporting out of the State Department, lady?
Your colleague.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
Yeah, and that, you know, I mean, and certainly in that chat with the Guardian, you know, Edward Snowden, you know, said that, you know, the government's not going to be able to silence me or, you know, by murder.
He actually used the word murder me, you know, that this is not going to go away by murdering me or silencing me.
But, you know, clearly the reaction to that was what's wrong with this guy?
You know, he's sort of nuts for even thinking that way.
You know, to sort of like bring it back down to, you know, to a place where people can understand, it's very, very dangerous right now to report, excuse me, to report on government activity.
It really is dangerous, Scott.
And when I say dangerous, I don't mean dangerous in the sense that, you know, a drone is going to come to West L.A. and, you know, take me out.
It's just dangerous in the sense that people, you know, that I speak to don't want to speak.
There's just, like I said, there's no incentive.
The administration, this administration, has made it clear that if you reveal any government activity, particularly activity that has to do with national security, counterterrorism, we'll go after you.
You know, the whole, you know, what the government did with regard to the Associated Press, when we found out that, you know, that they were, you know, grabbed their phone records, ultimately what that, you know, what the whole point of that was is to ensure, Scott, that their sources will never speak to them again or they'll have a very difficult time cultivating sources.
Because now anyone who is a potential source knows that the government will go to great lengths to try to find out who you are.
All right, now hold it right there.
Can I keep you over into the next segment here?
Because I didn't get a chance to let you talk about your new story at all.
Yeah, yeah, that sounds great.
Thanks, Scott.
Okay, good deal.
Everybody, this is Jason Leopold, great reporter for Al Jazeera.
We'll be right back on Scott Horton Show after this.
ScottHorton.org.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is the Scott Horton Show.
I'm talking with Jason Leopold, now at Al Jazeera, author of News Junkie.
And we were talking about Michael Hastings, but now we've got to talk about Guantanamo Bay.
Oh, but first I've got to mention, since you talked about, well, I'm not scared that they're going to kill me with a drone.
It's just that they've made it dangerous for my sources to talk to me on the phone.
Well, you know, the head of the FBI admitted that he's flying drones around, presumably L.A., and I would presume over your house on a regular basis just yesterday.
And it's not just the Austin Police Department and some county sheriffs up in, what, Montana or whatever.
It's the FBI flying drones for police use against American citizens already.
They now concede.
Yeah.
Well, look, Scott, let me just say one thing about that.
You know, I think years ago this probably would have sounded like crazy conspiracy theory.
So, as you know, I write quite a bit on Guantanamo.
And, you know, recently I've written many stories about the death of a Guantanamo prisoner named Adnan Latif, a Yemeni.
I've made many, many, many calls to Yemen, you know, speaking to his family.
And I assume that, you know, I'm calling Yemen, I'm speaking to his family, I'm talking about Guantanamo, talking about his death, talking about, you know, terrorism.
I'm sure that, you know, that call was monitored.
And, you know, that's not a surprise to me.
You know, but I will say that there is, you know, there are very important steps journalists do need to take, certainly to, you know, to ensure, you know, that their electronic communications are, you know, that they're conversing in ways that are, you know, protected.
So, you know, whether that means, you know, doing it on some sort of, you know, secure network or, you know, if you're communicating via Gmail with, you know, sources, well, that's kind of, you know, ridiculous.
You shouldn't be surprised if some trouble happens.
Well, you know, I'm not giving away any sources and methods or anything, but I know that when Larissa was reporting a lot of her, you know, national security beat stuff for our story back a few years ago, she might as well have been a spy, the rigmarole she went through with all of her code names.
Right.
Secret methods of getting information here, there, the other place, you know.
That is if you don't want the National Security Agency in on everything that you're doing as a journalist.
Let me just add one more thing to that.
John Kiriakou, the former CIA officer who is now in prison, you know, for what he, you know, revealed, you know, to some journalists.
I mean, I will say this, that, you know, John, given his background, you know, if you look at the indictment, I believe it's the indictment, but it showed that they basically collected his communications from, you know, they collected his emails.
Where was he communicating from in which he revealed this information?
His Hotmail account.
So, you know, the point being that it appears that, first of all, they, you know, they got his Hotmail account.
I'm not sure if they got it before, you know, if they went directly to, you know, to Microsoft or if they simply just went to his computer and went through all of his emails.
But that is just an example of poor operational security.
You know, you don't reveal information, whatever it is, you know, to a journalist, you know, through Hotmail.
So, or any of those free, you know, email services.
And, you know, that should certainly be, you know, a lesson not just for those sources, but, you know, journalists as well.
You know, don't reach out to your sources using, you know, using those services because it's, you know, if you do wind up getting some information and it's classified, it could come back and haunt you.
That's good advice for anyone, really.
I mean, think about anybody who's running a business that's big enough that their competitor might have some political connections, you know what I mean, or anything like that.
Right.
Definitely don't use Hotmail.
Yeah, do not use Hotmail.
Do not use Hotmail.
I think that should be the, you know, phrase of the day.
Yeah, there you go.
All right.
Now, listen, tell us about, well, first of all, tell us about Lateef because you have done a lot of great reporting on this and it works.
It's part of your story here, your latest, again, everybody, the great Jason Leopold, a Guantanamo tour, Much Ado About Nothing.
It's at Al Jazeera English, aljazeera.com.
Yeah, and the title, you know, the headline of that story, I mean, the Much Ado About Nothing, I mean, where people are hopefully, you know, taking the time to read it, it's a lengthy story.
We'll understand that it's basically, you know, I had met a nurse there who was, you know, doing some of the force feedings, overseeing the force feedings and conducting them.
And no one at Guantanamo, you know, none of the soldiers and certainly the doctors or anyone in the military will give us their names.
And when we went to the hospital, there was a nurse there who had a fake name.
His name was Lia Nato, which he had adopted from the play Much Ado About Nothing, the Shakespeare, Shakespeare's play.
And in fact, he said at one point, you know, the detainees have a much, you know, much longer, live longer here than they would if they were in their home country.
And anyway, he was, you know, trying to say that the whole.
But not if they can help it.
They're all trying to commit suicide by starvation.
Right.
Yeah.
So, you know, that's the reason for the, you know, for the headline.
With regard to Lateef, you know, I'm actually working on a, you know, on a follow-up right now.
It's been about nine months since he died.
He is, his autopsy report has still not been released.
It has not even been released to his family.
As far as I can tell, it has not been released to, you know, certain members of, you know, government, Yemeni government officials.
So, you know, there are certainly, you know, some questions that still remain, obviously, about, you know, the circumstances behind his death.
There's also an NCIS, Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigation, NCIS investigation into his death.
Apparently, that's still ongoing.
And finally, there's also a report that the United States Southern Command did into, conducted into his death.
It's called a, you know, commander's inquiry.
And that report is actually finished, Scott.
And it was supposed to be released back, it was finished in mid-November.
It was supposed to be released in March, maybe February, March.
Well, it's now, you know, in, you know, sitting at the Pentagon, you know, behind some red tape.
Excuse me.
It appears that it's not being released because the information in the report may prove to be embarrassing to, you know, certainly to, you know, to Joint Task Force Guantanamo, to the military.
And given the, you know, the public relations disaster surrounding the hunger strike, you know, the timing of it isn't, you know, isn't the best.
I will say that, you know, the government says that, or the Pentagon said to me that, you know, the reason that the report hasn't been released is, you know, first it needs to be shared with Yemeni government officials.
And after that, they'll make a decision on releasing it.
They dispute that it's, you know, that it's being held back for any reasons about, you know, trying to hide embarrassing information.
But, you know, his story, Adnan Latif, his death has actually been lost or forgotten, you know, in the whole story revolving around the hunger strike, which I think is very sad.
In fact, I spoke to one of the attorneys who represents one of the prisoners, and I found out that her client, you know, one of these prisoners on hunger strike, actually started his hunger strike after Adnan Latif died.
So it turns out that there's several who have been on hunger strike actually since last September, protesting his death.
And, you know, they don't believe he died, that he committed suicide.
So there are still many, many questions that, you know, that need to be answered about his death.
Certainly, you know, how was he able to hoard, you know, the medication that, you know, the government claims, the military claims that he did, collected enough for a lethal dose.
In fact, when I was at Guantanamo, and this is what's going to be in my next report, I can tell you that.
So I had the opportunity to interview two guards, and I brought up the question about Adnan Latif's death.
And I said to them, you know, these were guards, one who worked in Camp 5 where he died.
And this was a woman, and I said to her, how could a prisoner, or I should say, how could a detainee, because it's made very clear to us, Scott, when we're at Guantanamo, that they're not prisoners, they're detainees.
You know, that's not a prison, it's a detention facility.
How about captives?
Oh, yeah, no, no, no.
You'll be corrected.
And very, very quickly, you know, no, that's wrong, Scott.
These are detainees, you know, belligerents.
And truly, that's the kind of response you'll get.
And as you point out in the story, they're not enemy combatants.
They're unprivileged belligerents.
That's literally the change made from Bush to Obama, the exact same policy notwithstanding.
Yeah, it's just a different label.
You know, the same thing that he did with the war on terror.
He retired that phrase, and I guess there's another one that he chose.
But I did ask this guard.
I said, how is it that if you guys walk the block, okay, you're walking the block every, you know, you're pacing back and forth, you're walking it, you're checking in the cells every one to three minutes.
How is it that a prisoner would be able to hoard enough medication that they would then, you know, collect a lethal dose to commit suicide?
Not just any prisoner, by the way, but Adnan Latif, who was mentally ill.
And, you know, the Joint Task Force Guantanamo public affairs official immediately interrupted, saying, hey, hey, we're not going there.
We're not going to discuss that.
And I said, why?
Why not?
You know, these are legitimate questions.
And he just did not want me to get into, you know, any questions surrounding any prisoner.
Because, first of all, they don't discuss any prisoner specifically.
They won't discuss any prisoner by name.
They won't discuss any prisoner by, you know, their internment numbers.
So it's very difficult.
Adnan Latif, you know, since he died, there were some questions that they were willing to answer, but, you know, for the most part, off limits.
However, this guard said, you know, actually answered the question and answered it in a way that I found very interesting.
She said, well, sir, I don't know how they would, you know, be able to collect enough medication to, you know, commit suicide, because we have to watch them, you know, take their medication.
And in addition to that, most of the medication, I guess, that she has seen has been administered, and this is what she said, in liquid form.
She claimed it was rare in her experience to see any of the corpsmen administering, you know, pills or medication that came in, you know, a capsule or a pill, and that, in fact, it was, you know, in liquid form, which obviously raises questions about, you know, what kind of medication was, you know, Latif given?
What, you know, was it, you know, in pill form, liquid form?
So, you know, the point being that there are unsolved or issues that are unresolved here, and questions that still need to be answered.
Now, of course, I followed up with what she said, you know, with the military, and they just won't answer that question.
You know, when I asked about what the guard said, they just would not go there.
So, you know, this was more or less what, you know, what this tour of Guantanamo was like, and I really tried to, you know, capture that in the story.
You know, it started out by, you know, I think I discussed this with you last time we spoke.
It started out the tour by, you know, seeing this prisoner staring at me through a cage, through a cell, and giving me a thumbs-down sign, you know, ended it by walking through Camp X-Ray and seeing a rat in one of the cages where a prisoner, you know, a banana rat in one of the cages where a prisoner was in, and it was just, it was so striking to me, this sort of, you know, these bookends, if you will, you know, starting it with a human being in a cage and a rat in a cage, and it was, it was strange.
It was a very, it was surreal, and, you know, the whole experience about, you know, not being able to, you know, refer to them as prisoners, not being able to, you know, speak about or discuss them by name, the restraints, you know, the shackles, as I referred to them, I was corrected on that, they're not shackles, they're humane restraints, and that's not a joke, Scott, that's what they call them.
Well, were they, they're wrapped in felt, or?
Yes, they're, you know, they're, but the point being that it's not force-feeding, it's enteral feeding.
It's, you know, it's not torture, it's enhanced interrogation techniques.
It's, you know, and you can seriously, in that little bit of time, Scott, get so caught up in not just the euphemisms, but how that affects you psychologically, because it removes all images of what, you know, what would be conjured, what would normally be conjured up by mentioning these, you know, these phrases.
You know, when you think of force-feeding, you know, what kind of image comes to mind?
Perhaps it's someone like, you know, shoving food down someone's throat.
You know, enteral feeding is very, you know, sanitized.
You know, humane restraints, it's, you know, you're thinking it perhaps in medical terms, so you're removing, you know, any sort of image of brutality.
You know, I think that's such an important point, Jason, that's such an important point like George Carlin says about, you know, you think in language, and so you can be corrupted if people can manipulate the language that we use.
You know, you talk about force-feeding and the images it conjures, if you put it that way.
A friend in the chat room, I guess, last week or the week before said, well, I think of the hammer and sickle when you say force-feeding.
That used to be Ronald Reagan's big thing he liked to beat Mikhail Gorbachev over the head about, was force-feeding their political prisoners who were trying to starve themselves to death.
And what kind of horrible totalitarian monstrosity is that?
Right, right.
And so you do have to, it's very important that you change the jargon to something that doesn't have an association with something else you already know about, especially something else that maybe your own government has trained you to condemn when it's a splinter in the eye of somebody else.
Yeah, you know, this is, I may have discussed this with you before, but in my stories when I'm writing about Guantanamo, I don't use detainees, I use prisoners.
It's pretty clear at this point after 11 years that they're prisoners.
And why would I use detainees?
Well, that's certainly the word that the government wants me to use.
And they're very serious about that.
But the point being is that I have the power to sort of change it.
It's certainly not something, or even use the word captive, which I know Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald, she uses that quite a bit.
But I'm telling you, it was so, you know, after just a couple of days, and you're hearing this over and over again, I had to remind myself truly that I cannot get caught up in using these words, these euphemisms, or letting it sort of dictate where my story goes.
And there's this point where I discuss in my story here that we're taking this ferry ride to one side of the island, and the scene itself was beautiful, Scott.
You know, it's Cuba.
You're looking at these beautiful cliffs and wildlife and water.
And, you know, it was a remarkable scene.
But I had to stop and remind myself that I'm traveling right now to a place, to a prison, where some of the worst human rights abuses in the past decade, obviously, have taken place, where, you know, hundreds of prisoners were brutally tortured, where men committed suicide, where, you know, or so we're told.
I mean, where, you know, this was a very, very dark place that I was traveling to.
So it was, you know, and then you enter the prison, and it's really like entering another world because there are these pillars that spell out honor bound, you know.
And it's like, whoa, you know, you're seeing these, you know, honor bound, and you're getting caught up in, you know, the value of the week.
There's a sign there that said, value of the week, integrity.
And it's like it made me dizzy.
Well, it's a government program, right?
So it's all government language, especially the military.
Everything is Newspeak weirdo jargon in the military.
You can't even call it the Delta Force, right?
It's the CAG or whatever.
Right, right.
Everything has its silly little name.
Yeah, and so it was really, I mean, it was an important trip.
And, you know, this was a pretty difficult story to write because, and I'm going to be honest with you here, is that, you know, what made it difficult is having to, it was being so honest because I knew that what I'm writing is not going to, what I was writing was not going to make, you know, the military happy, was not going to make, you know, the escorts that I had, you know, particularly happy, possibly.
And, you know, when you're surround or when you're with, you know, some of these folks, and this actually goes to sort of like, you know, what we discussed at the beginning of your show with, you know, with Michael Hastings, you know, that, you know, your reporting is not, you're not supposed to make anyone happy.
And, you know, but being around them during my time of my trip, you know, I could see or I got to know them a bit.
They were, you know, they were in the military.
Guantanamo was not a choice that they made.
They didn't sign up and say, hey, I want to go to Guantanamo.
But it is a deployment.
And they were, you know, perfectly nice people with families.
And they were doing, you know, their jobs in terms of, you know, public relations.
But, you know, writing the story was difficult because, you know, like I said, walk, as I say in the story, walking through Camp X-Ray was like walking through the remnants of a concentration camp.
I don't see how anyone can see it any other way, Scott.
You know, the way that it's set up, the way that it looks, it looks like a concentration camp.
And I said that.
I wrote that.
And I think it's very important to me that anyone who's reading this takes away that image, that understands that that is what this place looks like.
That's what, you know, that's what we set up.
So, you know, being truly, you know, honest, you know, seeing this, as I said, seeing this, you know, bearded man in a cage and letting people know that what I saw at that moment, you know, wasn't a member of Al-Qaeda, possibly.
And we know just from the fact that it's a low-level prisoner, it likely wasn't.
But it was just a human being in a cage giving me a thumbs-down sign, probably in a way to protest his, you know, the past 11 years that he's been, you know, held without charge or trial.
I mean, look at it.
Even if he got one shot before the judge and the judge agreed with him on the writ of habeas corpus under the Boumediene decision, that, yeah, I don't really see much of a case for holding this guy.
He still could just be sitting there the rest of his life anyway in the indefinite detention.
And you know what?
We're almost out of time.
I've got to go to Dan Ellsberg soon.
But I wanted to ask you real quick and get your comment on this, whether you think this is important the way I do.
But I keep reading about how the actual worst bad guys being held there, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and then this guy, I guess it was bin Attash or one of these guys, that because there's no law, because this is all just made-up nonsense, the so-called law governing the court process there, the ones who are actually even getting a pretend trial at all and not just being held for life on Obama's say-so, that they get to wear camouflage military-style hunting vests so that they can pretend that they're generals in the Al-Qaeda war against America instead of just sitting there in an orange jumpsuit and being treated like the scum of the earth, like some rapist or murderer on his way to Rikers Island or whatever.
They get to strut around acting like they're military commanders, the butchers of New York.
And I just thought, you know, they can't get a damn thing right down there, can they?
It's true, and that was a very big controversy, is that, look, if they're having a military commission, and this is sort of like a trial on a battlefield, if you will, well, then they should have the opportunity to wear that sort of garb to show that that's who they are.
Which, of course, is their defense, that we're not criminals.
This is a war, and we're the generals in the war, and you kill people on your side, and so we kill yours, too, and whatever.
Everybody's the same here.
Not guilty, Your Honor.
That's their argument, and we hand it to them.
Here's the thing, Scott, is that, as you know, no one gets to see this.
You get to read about it, but no one gets to see it.
So, you know, ultimately, at the end of the day, it really is, you know, does it make a difference?
The idea we were saying is that they can't get anything right, but, you know, that's part of the problem about having this, you know, in a corner of Guantanamo, where nobody gets to witness anything.
Right.
Well, that's why they put it in Communist Cuba in the first place, is so it would be out of reach of anybody except, you know, on their guided tour.
Right, right, exactly.
And it's supposed to be out of reach of even the courts and whatever.
As Obama said in his recent speech where he pretended again that he meant to close it at all.
Did you take that seriously at all, by the way?
I did not take it seriously, and I will tell you that I did, you know.
I mean, will you take seriously if I tell you that I want to win the lottery and I'm determined to do it?
Well, yeah, I guess.
Okay.
But it wouldn't mean that much to me, really.
You know, look, he appointed or his administration is appointing someone at the State Department, you know, to fill the vacancy about shutting Guantanamo.
There's a lot of bureaucracy, you know, that's involved in this, and it is going to be difficult because of all the politics that are involved.
Ultimately, though, Scott, you know, Obama does have the power as president to start moving some of these folks out who have already been cleared.
He hasn't done that.
He still hasn't done that, you know, since his speech.
As far as I can tell, you know, there hasn't been any sort of, you know, request, you know, to start releasing anyone.
I'm sorry, we're out of time.
I just don't think so.
We've got to go.
Thank you very much for your time on the show, Jason.
It's great talking to you again.
Thanks, Scott.
Have a good one.
Everybody, that's the great Jason Leopold now writing at aljazeera.com.
The latest is a Guantanamo tour.
Much ado about nothing?
Yeah, no.
Not enough ado about a lot.
That's what it's really about.
And we'll be right back here in just a moment with the American hero, Daniel Ellsberg.
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