All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest on the show is Jason Leopold.
He's an investigative reporter and deputy managing editor at truthout.org.
He's the author of the national bestseller, News Junkie, a memoir.
And as you guys know, we've been interviewing Jason lately about different experiments, medical experiments, psychological experiments.
Abuse, torture with psychotropic anti-malarial drugs down there at Guantanamo Bay over the past couple of months here.
And now his writing partner, Jeffrey Kaye, has a new one here at truthout.
Guantanamo detainee files hints at psychological research.
And this is, of course, referring to the the leak of I forget what the number was, how many documents by WikiLeaks on the topic of Guantanamo over the weekend here.
And actually over the last couple of weeks.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
Great to be back with you, Scott.
Thanks so much for having me on again.
Well, I'm really happy to have you here.
How many documents did WikiLeaks put out this weekend?
You know, they actually have seven hundred and seventy nine Guantanamo detainee case files.
They've as of last night, they released about one hundred and eighteen of them.
And they'll be rolling out the rest within, I imagine, the you know, the weeks ahead.
You know, for your listeners, if they are interested in grabbing all of them, the Guardian UK newspaper has all of the documents, all the case files that they've posted.
And that's my understanding that they say that they got it from a source other than WikiLeaks, but I'm sure it's associated with WikiLeaks.
So it's seven hundred and seventy nine case files.
And that's basically the number of detainees who were first imprisoned.
That's the peak number that we had over at Guantanamo.
Man, you know, it occurs to me to interrupt you here and say or interject here that for people out there in the audience who believe in religion and stuff, you ought to pray for that Bradley Manning.
That kid is the greatest American hero ever.
Yeah, it's, you know, it was it clearly when you look at the entire picture of, you know, what he leaked and what there's varying opinions on, you know, whether he should be how he should be prosecuted, whether he is a criminal, whether he's Daniel Ellsberg.
The fact of the matter is, in Bradley Manning's mind or, you know, in his eyes, he saw evidence of of crimes being committed.
And I think that that, you know, is certainly something that he felt, you know, compelled to do in terms of of leaking this material.
And, you know, it's it really is important in terms of giving us a full picture of what went on at Guantanamo.
You know, Guantanamo, as you and I discussed previously, is is a facility that was described by former military officials as a, quote, battle lab, meaning that Guantanamo itself was it was an experiment.
I mean, that you know, that that particular statement or those two words, battle lab is something that was revealed in the Senate Armed Services Committee report released in 2009 on the treatment of detainees in the custody of the Department of Defense.
And when you read that report alongside these case files, you get a real good picture, a full understanding of, first of all, you know, what how the information was likely obtained, which is by and large through, you know, torture and coercive interrogation method.
And, you know, it also becomes you're you're able to to grasp onto the fact that it's much of this information is unreliable.
And I think that that is very important to understand about these case files, is that the one thing that's missing, Scott, is that it doesn't provide the context.
I mean, basically, these are case files that just make, you know, flat out statements about who these individuals are.
And it does not provide any basic understanding of how the information was obtained.
I mean, in some cases it actually says, you know, we can't vouch for this information.
We can't vouch for the veracity of the of the information here.
And in other cases, it says, you know, the interview or so-and-so detainee was not even interviewed.
So they're calling, you know, these the this so-called intelligence and putting together a case file in which they say, you know, this detainee should should should be indefinitely imprisoned.
This one another detainee may be, you know, we recommend for prosecution.
So it's it's the information is suspect.
The we know that, you know, for years we've heard that Guantanamo housed prisoners who were, you know, just sold to the U.S. for bounty and they were just innocent.
But now we know now now we have the smoking gun proof that that is, in fact, the case that the vast majority of the detainees at Guantanamo were either low level foot soldiers or frankly, just innocent.
Right.
Well, you know, I guess she's I've been reading so much about this.
I can't keep it all straight in my head.
I think maybe it was Chris Floyd's piece that really highlighted that one of the well, in general, a lot of these people were there not because they were even thought to be bad guys on whatever level of threshold of evidence you want to call that.
They weren't even thought to be bad guys at all, but they were thought to perhaps know something.
And this included a child or at least a very young teenager, I think, who they thought maybe he would know some things about some Taliban movements in his neighborhood or something like that.
And that was how he ended up at Guantanamo Bay in the first place, was they just wanted to ask him some questions about the neighborhood guys.
Scott, that's exactly correct.
And he's still there 10 years later.
This kid, he's still there.
There there were the detainees, children as young as what I understand is 12.
Perhaps they had a special camp for them, Camp Iguana.
They you know, the Bush administration scooped up individuals to basically and brought them to Guantanamo and use them as, you know, as assets or or for the purposes of just gaining intelligence.
I mean, the Al Jazeera photographer who spent six years in Guantanamo, we just we we we found out that it was basically so the U.S. government could gain insight into Al Jazeera's news gathering operations and and equipment.
You know, the thing to keep in mind is that who can forget Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush and Dick Cheney saying stating everyone housed at Guantanamo in prison at Guantanamo were the worst of the worst.
There are more than 500 who were released that they didn't come close to being the worst of the worst.
You know, the the the common thread in all of these case files is something that, you know, Jeff Kaye had discussed in his latest piece and and something that he and I both discussed in a in a story that we spoke to you about.
I spoke to you about several weeks ago.
Is that, you know, this this these detainees were used for the purposes of exploitation?
That word exploitation or exploit was, you know, is cited in these case files.
Well, now, were any of these guys the worst of the worst that I mean, it seems to me that anybody who actually was wanted, whether I mean Abu Zubaydah was just their travel agent anyway or whatever, but still like anybody who actually knew Ayman al-Zawahiri, they were in secret torture prisons and in the former Soviet Union or in underground dungeons in Thailand or something like that.
They weren't brought to Guantanamo Bay till 2006, right?
That's that's exactly right.
In the case of Abu Zubaydah.
I mean, was there anyone, though?
The real question is, was there anyone at Guantanamo who was actually, you know, wanted or were they all just none of them were the worst?
The worst of all, you know, I would say that there were some that were the you know, the worst of the worst.
But we're talking about you could probably count them on, you know, one hand.
Right.
But meanwhile, KSM was being held, you know, in Poland or Romania or something.
All right.
Exactly.
All right.
Hang tight, everybody.
It's Jason Leopold from Truthout.org.
We're talking about the WikiLeaks on the Guantanamo files.
We'll be right back.
All right, Joe, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
Talking with Jason Leopold from Truthout.org.
And his oftentimes writing partner, Jeffrey K., has a new piece today, Guantanamo detainee files hint at psychological research.
And when we went out to the break, Jason, you were picking up on the word exploitation from your previous reporting.
And now from these new WikiLeaks, Guantanamo files.
Go ahead.
Yes.
I mean, I think the you know, as I said, the you know, the common thread here is that the detainees were used for the purposes of exploitation.
In the investigative story, Jeff K. and I had written and published, you know, several weeks ago.
That was one of the key components of the entire torture program was to, you know, use detainees for the purposes of exploitation, for propaganda, to use them as informants, to get them to turn and become agents of the U.S. government.
And in fact, we know that to be the case.
And in many of these case files now, certainly, you know, we found in just in the past couple of days that there were about eight detainees providing information for information to the U.S. government on about 200 or so other detainees.
So in that sense, the you know, the interrogation, the torture program and many people say that, you know, there were, you know, the interrogation methods at Guantanamo differed than those from the CIA, but they they're they're very similar.
So, you know, exploitation was the key component.
And that is something that, you know, these documents reveal, which, you know, I think is important to highlight that the detainees ended up being informants.
And that's where much of the information, by and large, came from.
Well, you know, I'm sitting here furiously clicking these tabs, trying to find the right article here.
Well, here's one that's very relevant to what you just said.
A Libyan, once a detainee, is now a U.S. ally fighting in Libya.
We're fighting on his side.
I don't know if we're fighting on his.
Maybe the same thing.
That's from The New York Times.
But somewhere in here was the reason I'm looking for it is because there were numbers, there were specific numbers of how many people here were classified as mentally ill one way or the other.
And it made me immediately think of your reporting at Truthout that, you know, a lot of these people.
Oh, here, almost from The Guardian, almost 100 of the inmates who passed through Guantanamo are listed by their captors as having had depressive or psychotic illnesses.
Many went on hunger strike or attempted suicide.
And I was thinking about all those stories about these dudes slamming their head into the wall, trying to kill themselves and stuff.
That's from these anti-malarial drugs they gave these guys, isn't it?
Yeah, well, that's I'm glad you brought that point up.
I mean, yes, there is, you know, there are about 100 detainees who, you know, suffered various mental illnesses.
And and, you know, they gave them this this controversial drug and treatment doses.
And then, Scott, they isolated them.
So they they isolated them for 30 days.
That was you know, that that's another important, you know, note here is that when they went to you know, when they were brought to Guantanamo, they went through, you know, various procedures, including, you know, giving them these, you know, hallucinogenic anti-malarial drugs that have been linked to suicide and and homicide.
And then they isolated them for 30 days.
And basically that was, you know, as a way of breaking them down.
Now, you give those drugs to individuals who who suffer from any form of mental illness.
And it just it exacerbates it, exacerbates those conditions.
Yeah, well, take a perfectly sane person, you know, who's perfectly fit physically and mentally, and then lock them up, tie them up, beat the hell out of them, keep them awake for weeks, tell them you're never going to see a judge, you're going to die here and give them anti-malarials and see if you don't turn them into a psychotic in, you know, the space of a couple of weeks.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And that's you know, that and that's the context that you just mentioned.
That's really important to keep in mind, you know, when reading these case files, because it does apply.
I mean, these are standard operating procedures that that apply to all detainees.
So the thing that I also want to mention here is that since these documents were released on Sunday, you know, we it's been met with virtual silence by, you know, our own government, by Congress, you know, by the by the president.
Perhaps that's not a surprise to people who have seen this president, this administration and this this spineless, spineless Congress in both parties, the way that they've, you know, they've reacted to war crimes.
But, you know, it's very important to to to keep that in mind, because ultimately, you know, the question becomes, OK, the documents are released.
Now what?
And that's and that's actually a question that remains unanswered.
Now what?
You know, we got to peek behind the curtain now.
And it's it's it's beyond troubling.
And it's it remains to be seen what what will what will happen.
Well, you know what it is?
It's confirmation that all the critics were right completely all along.
Anyone who defended this thing was absolutely full of just Republican talking points, none of which were related to reality whatsoever.
It's like when the Dufour report came out and said Saddam Hussein never had a lick of mustard gas after 1991.
Right.
Right.
Exactly right.
And, you know, that also applies to some Democrats.
I mean, you know, these are it definitely goes involves both parties, politically speaking, of course.
And, you know, last year, I would just remind people that last year, actually almost a year ago to the day, a former former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson.
He signed an affidavit.
He wrote he wrote, provided an affidavit to the attorneys representing one detainee in Guantanamo.
And basically, Wilkerson had stated in this affidavit a year ago, the vast majority of detainees at Guantanamo were innocent, that George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld knew it, that they refused to to release them due to the political fallout that would have ensued.
And they felt that holding innocent detainees was was OK in terms of just the, you know, the whole broader war issues.
So I said the same thing on this show for years, going back to three years.
He's been saying, right, right, exactly.
Yeah.
So, you know, it's certainly, you know, these documents confirm what, you know, what Carl Wilkerson had stated.
And I think that that's important as well, because, you know, he he he went out on a limb to, you know, to make this statement.
And now, you know, in terms of a year ago, stating that he would be willing to go to court to testify, to testify under penalty of perjury, that that is, in fact, what he discovered after mounting his own independent investigation of what took place at Guantanamo is explosive.
And it's it's, you know, nothing's going to happen because here's the thing.
They've ruled in Bometting that, OK, everybody gets rid of habeas corpus if they're not already in the process of being tried down there.
And then they all these guys that got their habeas corpus rids who the government had nothing on them, they didn't get set free.
And the higher courts have ruled that they don't have to be set free.
Obama's decided he's going to hold everybody forever.
And as Chris Floyd points out in his article, the New York Times and Washington Post treatment of these WikiLeaks as compared to the treatment in the European papers and a truth out is just absolutely a disgrace.
It's all about how even when they say, yeah, they had kind of shaky grounds for deciding on the guilt or innocence of people.
The article is focused on people who really were dangerous, who we accidentally set free instead of the hundreds of innocent people.
And and so as long as that's the agenda setting media in this country, the agenda set, this doesn't really amount to anything, nothing new.
That's what The Times says.
This is what we all already knew.
So what are you going to do?
You know, I have to say I absolutely agree with Chris Floyd.
In fact, that is something that I had discussed over the past couple of days.
The Times coverage, The New York Times specifically, their coverage of this of these documents has been horrendous.
They've had these documents for the past two months, perhaps longer.
They contacted the U.S. government to work with them in terms of redacting certain information.
Their coverage has been watered down.
It's it's just it's just been horrendous.
And specifically when you compare it to coverage in El Pais in Spain, the Guardian in the UK.
I mean, it's as if they're looking at two sets of documents.
So, yes, and I think, by the way, that is the same attitude, Scott, the same sort of attitude that we've heard when the State Department cables were released last year.
Oh, there's not much new to see here.
It's the highest of treason, but nothing really of substance that you need to be worried about.
Right.
And that's the sort of attitude, unfortunately, that the public has as well at this point, because that's what they're being told by the media.
So they're they're they're thinking that they shouldn't care.
Go ahead and tell me anything really important that I may have missed.
I may have forgotten to ask you about out of Jeffrey K's article today at Truthout.org.
Well, basically, you know, Jeff K. sort of tries to explain to people what the documents really show.
And that is the vast amount of psychological research and exploitation that took place.
And, you know, really, it is to understand that one really needs to go back and look at our previous report that we that we did together in which we spoke to former Air Force Captain Michael Kern.
But it's, you know, the the documents in his report really just try to explain to the general public, more or less, that this is an entire exploitation program.
And the detainees were used for the purposes of getting them to turn and become agents of the U.S. government.
And one more point here before I let you go, Jason, that is I'm sure you saw The Washington Post article over the weekend about why Guantanamo wasn't closed.
And it's there's, I don't know, 5000 words or something long in the article, but there's right in the middle is the important part.
Obama never tried to close it.
He put no pressure on Congress whatsoever.
And they got four or five quotes, I guess, three or four anyway, of congressional Democrats and their aides saying, hey, man, no one from the White House came down here to help whatsoever.
We were going to stick our neck out just to get it chopped off if he didn't have our back on this issue.
So we dropped it, man.
That's what they wanted us to do was to drop it.
So he was simply lying either when he said he wanted to close it or when he claims that, oh, gee, I really would like to accept the Republicans are in my way or whatever.
He's done nothing to try to close Guantanamo.
He's absolutely done nothing.
In fact, I publish a report last year, a campaign promise died, which really hit on many of the themes in The Washington Post that basically showed how Obama is just basically provided lip service in terms of Guantanamo.
He did absolutely nothing, Scott.
And that nothing started in May of 2009, just about three or four months after his inauguration.
You know, the idea that Obama really wanted to close Guantanamo is a myth.
You know, he's paid lip service to people.
He's provided quite a bit of rhetoric that we can, you know, look back on.
But in terms of action, absolutely nothing.
If anything, that administration that, you know, that this White House has thwarted every effort along with the Republicans and Democrats to close it.
So the idea that, you know, that he was really trying to, which some people believe is ludicrous.
Yeah, well, you know, they got that dialectic perfect, you know, I guess two years ago when Dick Cheney and Barack Obama gave their dueling speeches.
So Dick Cheney says, you know, we ought to institute outright Nazism in America forever.
And then Obama standing in front of the Bill of Rights says, no, we just ought to have prison without trial.
And and if they are acquitted in a certain kind of trial that we might give them, then we'll hold them forever anyway.
And whatever, whatever.
And basically went, you know, 99 yards towards Dick Cheney's position while sounding like the opposite of his third cousin or whatever he is over there.
Yeah.
You know, Scott, I will tell you that in the past 24 hours and certainly over the past year, I've spoken to about a dozen defense attorneys who represent Guantanamo detainees.
And I will tell you that all of them, all of them have said that this administration currently is far worse than the previous administration.
Far worse.
How's that now?
Far worse because of the rules that or I should say the abuse of the classification system.
The fact that this administration has gone further than the last administration to block every effort that the defense attorneys have made to mount a defense in their clients cases.
You know, they've they've put several rules into place in terms of, you know, what what they can present in front of a judge.
In fact, yesterday, by the way, the Justice Department sent out an email to all of the defense attorneys stating, even though these WikiLeaks Guantanamo documents are out there in the public domain, they've been obtained illegally and you are not permitted to look at them.
So they all the defense attorneys must continue to to treat them as classified documents.
I mean, and so the defense attorneys feel that the this administration is worse in the barriers that they've put up compared to the Bush administration.
And, you know, when you look at it very closely, you can really get a basic understanding as to what they mean, certainly in terms of state secrets, you know, what's what's what's being committed to go into the courtroom, the secrecy by which the government operates under in the habeas cases.
And again, the abuse of the classification system is one is one thing that everyone hits upon.
So, you know, stating that, you know, everything is classified or protected and cannot be released.
Yeah, well, and that's just beyond absurd when they're talking about what's published even by The Times and The Post.
Come on.
Right, right.
Yeah, no, it absolutely is.
So, you know, as I said, they're, you know, they're they're under strict orders now not to, you know, not not to look at these documents.
I mean, there are some attorneys that said they don't even think that they're allowed to download them from their computer in their offices.
They have to go to a secure facility to look at it.
They cannot certainly cannot discuss it with me on the phone.
If I if I call a defense attorney up and say, look, I just saw the the case file from one of your from your client.
So and so.
Can you discuss it?
No, they can't.
And it sounds like these lawyers need lawyers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, you know, it's the Bush administration created a system or created Guantanamo a lawless facility.
The outside of the law, the Obama administration is simply covering up, you know, the Bush administration's crimes.
I think in a nutshell, that's what we're dealing with.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, listen, before I let you go, I want to emphasize to the audience how important the work that you and Jeffrey K have been doing.
I can't speak English very well, but you understand what I'm trying to say.
I think it's really important the work that you and Jeffrey K have been doing over there, truth out.
And I want them to know that.
And so this one is called Guantanamo detainee files.
Hint at psychological research just dipping into the new WikiLeaks Guantanamo files here.
And then I don't know if you remember him off the top of your head or what, but can you tell us the names of the last two or three articles about the malaria drugs and so forth?
And then if not, I guess we'll just give them the best Google search.
Yes, it's the Guantanamo detainees given controversial drug akin to pharmacologic waterboarding.
Very lengthy headline there.
Right.
Pharmacologic waterboarding.
There you go.
Right.
That's a Google search term for it.
Guantanamo official was told not to discuss drug given to detainees.
And that was a follow up story.
And then the most recent one, which is the CIA psychologist note revealed true reason behind Bush's torture program.
And that's the exploitation story, the story about the exploitation.
So I'm incredibly grateful, Scott, for your support the past year for the work that we're doing.
Thank you.
Well, it's incredibly important work, and I just hope you keep doing it so that I can keep interviewing you about it.
Count on it.
All right.
Good deal.
All right, everybody.
That is Jason Leopold from truthout.org.
Again, today's piece is Guantanamo detainee files hint at psychological research.
It's by Jeffrey K.
And by the way, also, Jason is the author of News Junkie, a memoir.
