Alright, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
And our first guest on the show today is Jason Leopold.
He's an investigative reporter and deputy managing editor at Truthout.org.
He's the author of the national best-seller, News Junkie, a memoir.
Welcome back to the show.
How's it going, Jason?
Hey, Scott.
Good to be back with you.
Thanks for having me on again.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here.
Now, you've been covering Guantanamo Bay at Truthout here lately and doing a lot of great work.
I think I'm pretty much caught up on interviewing you about all of these recent pieces.
The latest here is called Filling in the Gaping Holes in WikiLeaks Guantanamo Detainee Files.
Now, you ain't blaming WikiLeaks for having an incomplete file.
Definitely not.
As you were saying on the show the other week, you learned quite a bit from the WikiLeaks Guantanamo Detainee Files, but apparently not quite enough to get a truthful narrative.
So now you're going back and filling in some of the gaps, what we already know about Guantanamo Bay and how the new documents from the WikiLeaks cache fit into what we already know.
Yeah, and basically what these documents...
I mean, the reason I did this was for several reasons, but the two most important reasons are the intelligence that these detainee assessment briefs, these DABs, what the government refers to them as, they contain many, many assertions, and it would appear to just the average reader that these individuals are in fact the worst of the worst, which is what Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials have referred to them.
And the other reason is because the media at large, which has not, in my opinion, done the best job uncovering Guantanamo, has really taken these files and printed or reprinted the allegations contained in them, pretty much just reprinting it without any questions asked.
So what I wanted to do was really try to let readers know how this so-called intelligence on each individual was obtained, perhaps.
As I said, the intelligence or the information on the threat that these detainees posed, it does not contain any information as to how the government obtained that information from the detainees.
So I went back several years back to look at other sets of documents, which I felt would provide a clearer picture to people as to how this information was obtained.
And basically, these are old FBI emails from back in 2004, maybe 2005 if I'm not mistaken, in which the FBI sent out a notice to all of their agents, officers who had been working at Guantanamo and asked them to respond with anything that they felt more or less showed that abuse was taking place, detainees were being tortured.
And as I looked at those documents, as I looked at those emails and the descriptions, it became clear that the detainees would more or less say anything just to get the torture to stop.
And that information just ended up in these WikiLeaks files.
If one were able to see, for example, Abu Zubaydah, the high-value detainee, and all of the information said there that it says about him, if it were to say, well, he said this information while being waterboarded, I think the public is smart enough to say, well, perhaps I cannot trust that.
In one FBI email that I quoted, literally right out of the gate, beginning the story, it says that the detainee was sitting in the corner, freezing cold, literally pulling his hair out.
We don't know who that detainee is, but I think that if the public knew that whoever the detainee is and the information that is alleged about him came as a result of being tortured for nearly an entire day, perhaps they would call into question the government's assertions about these individuals.
Yeah, well, but that doesn't seem to make any difference if anybody calls any of this into question anyway, but it'd be nice just for footnote's sake, I guess.
Yeah, and I think it's important to – look, I think it's very important to have a historical record, particularly when you have Bush administration officials and others continuously out there trying to rewrite the narrative, control the narrative, and you don't have anyone, frankly, when it comes down to it, in our government – or I'm sorry, Democrats – challenging that.
So this has become, Scott, perhaps not a surprise, a partisan issue, where it's Republicans saying torture is good, Democrats saying torture, maybe it's not so great, but it didn't get the intelligence.
So no one's willing to look at the facts here and to say that this is what happened, these are why the documents are important, this is why you cannot trust the documents, and why you should look at it closely and question the veracity of the information there.
Now, we have 172 detainees left at Guantanamo.
Many have been cleared for release.
You have the Uyghurs that are there, the Yemenis, and when it comes down to it, the vast majority of them were innocent.
They were sold – we had this discussion before – they were sold for bounty, but there's nothing that we have been given to show that the information they provided was obtained through torture.
Well, now, how widespread was all the torture at Guantanamo Bay?
Because it seems like the people who – most of whom went through the worst tortures, they went through the worst tortures at CIA black sites at former Nazi and Soviet bases in Poland or in torture dungeons in Thailand and Morocco or something, and then were brought to Guantanamo.
But then the one case that I know the specifics of, because the logs were published in Time magazine, what, back in 2005 was the torture of Khatani, the so-called 20th hijacker, who was refused entry into the country, or came back later or something, and they got him.
And this was the one that people might remember ABC News reported, that his torture was choreographed in the White House, that all of the principals, Rice, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, all of them except George Bush, I guess, choreographed the torture of this guy Khatani step-by-step by phone.
And this is the one where John Ashcroft, the attorney general at the time, wondered out loud, why are we doing this in the White House?
History is not going to look kindly on this.
Of course, he didn't have to fear for a jury.
So I was wondering, anyway, to get to the point, please tell us about what you know about the torture of Khatani.
And then, to what degree did the other 760 or so inmates at Guantanamo Bay have to endure the same level of torture?
Or what level they did have to endure?
Sure.
And you know, the torture of Khatani, what's interesting, Scott, is that as I went through these old FBI emails, which are available publicly, people can go out there and read them for themselves, I believe I put a link in the story, there are actually several emails from FBI officers that are actually describing a specific detainee who turned out to be Khatani, which I was totally unaware of when these documents were first released, you know, years ago.
And it became clear that the individual they're describing is Khatani because, as you indicated, what we know now from those logs.
So Khatani was set up with a, you know, he was targeted or actually singled out for a specific interrogation plan.
He was tortured to the point, you know, I spoke to the former chief prosecutor of Guantanamo last week, Colonel Morris Davis, you know, and he said that, you know, from what he understands, Khatani was tortured to the point where, you know, he's no longer mentally stable.
Susan Crawford, who is the, you know, the former, you know, head judge over at Guantanamo, said, you know, we tortured Khatani, Al Khatani.
And, you know, like I said, these FBI emails certainly give a insight that, you know, his torture was micromanaged, as you indicated, from, you know, from the White House.
But in terms of Guantanamo in general, look, you know, torture, and I say this often, it does not just entail waterboarding.
It, you know, torture was widespread at Guantanamo.
It involved, you know, cold, extreme temperatures, isolation.
Look, for all we know, it could have involved, as we indicated, the use of drugs in which detainees did not give their informed consent, as I reported with Jeff Kaye.
There were regular beatings.
There were just, you know, these immediate reaction force teams that were called in to respond to, you know, any disturbances.
They were looking for a reason to torture detainees.
I will tell you that I spoke to a former JAG attorney who was at Guantanamo, and, you know, this person looked at DVDs, you know, everything was videotaped there, and photographs where, you know, detainees were bloodied.
Their faces were bloodied from basically getting beaten.
So, you know, with my conversations with former guards, the look at these FBI emails, which clearly are not, you know, do not show that they did not discuss all 779 detainees who were there, but I think when you put that all together, Scott, it shows that, you know, the abuse of prisoners was widespread.
It happened often, and was quite brutal.
You know, there are still unanswered questions about suicides, supposedly, that took place at Guantanamo.
Look, the issue of hunger strikes that recently I reported one that just took place about a month and a half ago, the way that they force-feed detainees when it comes down to it, that's looked at as a form of torture.
I mean, Guantanamo in general, and I'll repeat this as well, is referred to or has been referred to as a battle lab, meaning the prison itself is an experiment.
So, it's very important as we discuss, as we get right back into this ridiculous debate about torture, the usefulness of Guantanamo, is to not forget, you know, the crimes that were committed there over the past 10 years, that this administration, the Obama administration, simply refuses to, frankly, really acknowledge, forget about investigate, just acknowledge.
And, you know, largely because they're perpetuating it at this point, it was widespread, and if anyone is going to read those WikiLeaks files, which are government files, they were the ones that were released to WikiLeaks, they're not the ones who put them together, as you indicated, it's really important to then take another set of files, as I indicated, these FBI emails, and give those a read.
And I think at least it would help you make, you know, or help people make an informed decision and understanding as to how this intel was obtained, why it's unreliable, and largely, you know, in addition to that, why the U.S. was just so dead set on, you know, holding these people.
Well, you know, I guess I'm really showing the gray whiskers and my beard here, and I'm sure I just sound like an old fuddy-duddy to most people in the audience, but this stuff is illegal, right?
I mean, do we have laws that say you can't do that?
Yes, you know, it's still illegal, Scott, it's not as if, look, you know, Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo, all these various former government officials who simply come up, you know, draw up a piece of a legal document, rather, you know, get their attorneys to write a legal document saying they can do this, really doesn't make it legal.
And, you know, John Yoo redefining what torture is does not make torture legal.
You know, it's something simply that just hasn't been challenged.
Nobody has investigated.
Other countries try to investigate, and, you know, this administration, the Obama administration, that is, has pressured those countries not to investigate.
So I think that, you know, ultimately when you determine that wrongdoing occurred, you know, that requires an investigation.
But the reason that they, you know, that they can sort of stand up and say we didn't do anything is because nobody, you know, had bothered to investigate.
That's the problem.
Nobody has held anyone accountable, literally.
No one has been held accountable.
You know, you've got the few, you know, folks over at Abu Ghraib, but for the most part no one has been held accountable for, you know, torture, which is a war crime in the context that it was, that detainees were subjected to.
And it's illegal under, you know, domestic and international laws.
I mean, we're, you know, we signed the Convention Against Torture.
It's just unbelievable.
And obviously, you know, we're right back at this debate with, you know, Osama bin Laden and the fact that, look, you know, waterboarding worked, we obtained all this important intelligence from these detainees, and that's just simply not true.
I mean, it's interesting.
I had an exchange on Twitter, of all places, with former Bush speechwriter Mark Thiessen, who admitted, and this is important, Scott, because, you know, we have this discussion.
He admitted that the torture and waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed wasn't to get intelligence, okay?
It was not to obtain any sort of actionable intelligence.
Rather, it was done so he would become compliant.
And that is something that I had hit on with Jeff Kaye in, you know, one of our previous stories, that, you know, this former survival evasion resistance escape officer, Captain Michael Kearns, who you had spoken to, that the whole torture program wasn't about really gaining intelligence.
It was, you know, about getting these detainees to become dependent, to collaborate, to become compliant like animals.
So, you know, that really strays from the narrative that the Bush administration had told us, and which we're still being told, you know, back in, you know, 2002 or whatever it was at this point.
It's certainly a decade ago, that we needed to thwart pending attacks against the U.S.
So we had to subject these detainees to, you know, torture, what they called enhanced interrogation techniques.
And here you have the former Bush speechwriter who's saying, no, no, no, they knew the answers.
They knew the answers.
This was just about getting him to become compliant.
Yeah, which then we saw in his confession, where he took responsibility for global warming and World War II and everything else that ever happened.
Exactly.
It's ridiculous.
And so, you know, I feel that, I do feel that the documents that WikiLeaks has, you know, just to get back to that, you know, they're important, because it gives us, you know, a real understanding as to, you know, who these people, you know, who are the people that were held there.
But it's also important to put everything into context.
And that's what's missing, Scott, is that context is not out there.
We don't have any context as to how any of this intelligence was obtained.
And I think that if we did, you know, if we were able to obtain more of it, it would underscore how widespread torture was, how dominant a role torture played in every single aspect of, you know, this program, this, you know, the war on terror, the, everything, you know, that the Bush administration started, that the Obama administration is continuing.
Well, you know, that's the real context here that, you know, I think is the most important truth of the whole discussion, is that just imagine what it would be like if Obama told Eric Holder to tell some U.S. attorney, this is your job now, put these men in prison, do your worst, and panel a grand jury.
Imagine the ridiculous comic book other reality we would have to live in, where there could be a rule of law that would be applied to the cabinet of the former administration, that these men would be prosecuted for violating their own laws.
I mean, it was Reagan that signed the Anti-Torture Act, and the Republican Newt Gingrich Congress in the 90s, Newt Gingrich-Trent lot Congress in the 90s that passed the War Crimes Act.
You know, but that couldn't happen in a million years from where we are today.
It's just, it's a joke just to even mention it, really, like trials for these guys looking backward instead of just forward.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, it would never happen, but it's funny.
That's how far gone we are now, you know?
It is.
We're way down the bottom of the slippery slope.
Yeah, and I don't think that there will be any time when we return.
Look, I'm not even sure if we ever were in that place previously, but the fact is that the crimes of the last administration were widespread.
We know about many of them.
Documents have been released.
People have come forward.
And the fact of the matter is that there's just no interest from our government, from the people we actually put into office, in holding anyone accountable.
And let me tell you, Scott, as well, that there are going to be more documents that you'll see in the weeks ahead on Guantanamo, on torture, on things that are far worse than what we even know.
And I can tell you that that's something that will absolutely be released.
And I do think it will shake things up.
I think the only thing, honestly, that it will take to perhaps get people to pay more attention, to maybe demand prosecution or investigation are videos, photographs.
We really need to see that in order to make that kind of an impact.
They destroyed a lot of it.
They destroyed the videos.
And I guess if there are pictures, they're probably not official ones, but ones like that surface like Abu Ghraib did where individual soldiers were just having fun taking pictures, right?
Yes.
I mean, look, there are, I can tell you this.
There are many DVDs at Guantanamo on this immediate reaction force team, DVDs, videos that are still there, you know, in possession of the Department of Defense.
And I think that if people looked at them, they would see that this was, you know, we were brutalizing, you know, the detainees and really just looking for a reason to do so.
There are photographs in the thousands that, you know, are in the possession of the Department of Defense, which is interesting because, you know, this is what the administration, this administration had changed the Freedom of Information Act to prevent those from being released.
So there are things out there.
I honestly don't know what they are.
I've heard rumors, but they clearly are photographs, videos that the government doesn't want to see the light of day.
I do think we're close to seeing some of them, and I do believe that some photographs will be released.
I have no idea what they will show.
And, you know, in addition to that, we continue to live with Guantanamo.
In Congress, they're trying to pass a, you know, legislation that will make it permanent, a permanent prison that, you know, they want to make sure that detainees, you know, there's been an offer for, you know, detainees who are going to hold indefinitely.
Perhaps they can see their families.
You know, they don't want that to happen.
I mean, as I indicated, there are 172 left, but, you know, there are many who are innocent.
You know, we don't know why they're, you know, the government's telling us that they're just too dangerous to release, or we can't try some of them.
So, you know, we really don't want to afford them any basic rights at this point, and I think that that is, you know, a major violation, you know, of various international and domestic laws.
So, you know, we're going to continue to deal with this, and I think it's really important for, you know, the media to continuously try to put this in context.
I've been very disappointed with, you know, the fact that the, you know, the detainee files have simply been reported as, you know, the information has not been called into question or even challenged, and it's just been, you know, reprinted as fact to show that they're the worst of the worst.
All right, well, I sure appreciate the fact that not all of the media is AWOL on this story.
There are very few people I can turn to on this subject.
There's Andy Worthington and Daphne Eviatar and you, and I'm scratching my head.
Very few are good on this issue, even care about it at all.
So I really appreciate all you guys' work there at Truthout on this subject.
Thank you so much.
It's one of the most important issues.
I'm not letting it go.
Yeah, and like I said, it will continue to, you know, it will continue to stay out there in terms of, you know, bubbling up every now and then.
But, you know, keep your eye out for some more documents, and I think that will shed additional light as to what really happened and answer your questions as to, you know, how widespread torture was.
I absolutely will.
All right, well, thanks very much for your time.
I really do appreciate it.
Thanks, Scott.
Everybody, that's Jason Leopold.
He's an investigative reporter and the, what is it, deputy managing editor at Truthout.org.
He's also the author of the national bestseller, News Junkie, a memoir, filling in the gaping holes in WikiLeaks' Guantanamo detainee files at Truthout.org.
Great stuff.
Very important piece.
Hope you look at it.
