Fixing Hell (7 page)

The biggest problem I had was selecting interrogators who would not be abusive, raise their voice, or use any fear tactics with these boys whatsoever. More so than with other prisoners, we had to approach the interrogation of these boys gently. They were young, scared, and very traumatized, so any harsh tactics would have exactly the opposite of the desired effect, making the boys shut down even more and tell us nothing. I soon realized that these boys exemplified why the methods I wanted to employ at Gitmo were necessary, a case study in how a softer approach will yield more results than brutality. Major General Miller had handed me exactly the type of prisoners I needed to test my philosophy on interrogation.

Fortunately there was an FBI agent on the island who had some limited experience with teenage gangs in Texas, and his experience and style served the process well. We also had a civilian contract interrogator who had many years working with adolescents and teenage boys. The Army did not have enough military interrogators so it hired contractors to do this job, most of whom were retired military or had had many years of military experience as interrogators. The two interrogators bonded with the juveniles like they were their younger brothers.

Though we were dedicated to a gentle approach with these juveniles, there was no mistaking our intentions. We needed these boys to talk to us, and we established a program that would help us get to know them and encourage them to trust us. The boys worked with the Muslim chaplain from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m., were seen by the interrogators from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., and then they would break for lunch and rest. The rest of the afternoon was reserved for academics, recreation, group prayer, visits as needed with the pediatrician, and instruction on the Koran. Though I hoped they could provide intel that would be useful, I still cringed at using the word “interrogation” with these three boys. The word typically denotes terror, torture, or abuse. After some thought, I instructed everyone at Camp Iguana to use the word “interview” instead—to change both the attitude of those doing the interrogation and the perception of the boys.

My days were intense, trying to make sure the boys were not abused or unnecessarily stressed while also facilitating their interrogation. Each morning I went to physical training, showered, ate breakfast, and spent 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at Camp Iguana with the teenage terrorists. Afternoons from approximately 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. would be reserved for meetings and consultations with military police, interrogators, and other staff members. It was a daily struggle to keep the staff who had contact with these teenagers mindful and hypervigilant. One of my greatest fears was that, in my effort to help these juveniles heal from their traumatic experiences and to trust us, I would inadvertently encourage the staff to relax too much around them and let their guard down. I worried that I might sound like I was trying to talk out of both sides of my mouth, but I frequently reminded the staff that these juveniles were not sweet kids. All three had been captured while fighting in a combatant role against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. It was easy, because of their youth, disheveled appearance, illiteracy, and poor health, to see them as innocent little boys. This was not the case. On occasion, I had to remind staff that a thirteen-year-old right index finger could pull the trigger on an AK-47 or fire a rocket-propelled grenade as easily as a thirty-year-old finger. It was a constant struggle to find the right psychological balance between seeing them as either terrorists who happened to be fourteen or harmless boys caught up in the tragedy of their third world nation’s plight.

The juvenile prisoners consumed much of my time and energy, but they were not my only tasks. While working with them, I was still expected to oversee the rest of the interrogation process at Gitmo and to fix what had gone so wrong in the past. It was clear to me that if I was going to stumble across the abuses and torture Major Leso talked about, I wouldn’t find it during the daytime when supervisors were around. I needed to walk the grounds and see what went on at the interrogation booths in the late night. One day I decided to pay an unannounced visit that night to observe interrogations.

However, before leaving work to rest prior to my midnight return, I began to see what Major Leso was concerned about. I went into an office to talk with an interrogator by the name of Luther. Luther was a good old boy from Georgia, a retired warrant-officer interrogator who stood about five feet five inches tall and was built like a fire hydrant. He had trouble in his eyes, anger that he directed at anyone in his path. He was pissed about something, but I didn’t know him well enough to broach the subject. I had a brief conversation with Luther as we went over some of his notes from his previous interrogations. As I turned and left his office, I noticed a pair of women’s pink panties and a pink nightgown hanging on the back of his office door. Thinking I might do better than to simply ask what the lingerie was for, I made a point to find the schedule for interrogations instead. I wanted to observe Luther’s next interrogation, and as luck would have it, he was scheduled for that night. Interrogations were regularly conducted at night as a way to screw with the prisoner’s head, to keep him off balance when he was tired.

That night at about 1 a.m. I was making my rounds in the building that housed most of the interrogation booths. The interrogation buildings were prefab trailers with several small rooms about ten feet by ten feet in size. Each had a table, usually three or four chairs, and a metal hook welded to the floor. The hook served as the anchor to fasten a detainee’s leg irons during the interrogation.

As I walked toward the observation room with its one-way mirror that would allow me to peek into the interrogation booths, I heard lots of yelling, screaming, and furniture being thrown around. I saw Luther and three MPs wrestling with a detainee on the floor. It was an awful sight. I wanted to run back to my room and wash my eyes with bleach. The detainee was naked except for the pink panties I had seen hanging on the door earlier. He also had lipstick and a wig on. The four men were holding the prisoner down and trying to outfit him with the matching pink nightgown, but he was fighting hard.

My first instinct was to rush in and start barking orders at the men, demanding they stop this ridiculous and abusive wrestling match. But I managed to quell that urge and wait. I opened my thermos, poured a cup of coffee, and watched the episode play out, hoping it would take a better turn and not wanting to interfere without good reason, even if this was a terrible scene. I waited several minutes, but with no good end in sight I had to act.

Someone is gonna get hurt, I thought. I need to stop this right now.

I knocked on the door and stepped in, trying hard to look like this crazy scene didn’t bother me in the least.

“Hey Luther, you want some coffee?” I asked in a calm, low voice.

Luther, who looked like he’d been wrestling a pig and wasn’t coming out ahead, got up off the floor and walked over to me. “I sure do, Colonel,” he said, breathing hard. “I’ll take you up on that, sir.”

I asked the MPs to let the detainee up and put him in the chair for a break. Luther and I poured coffee from my thermos and went outside. We talked about catfishing and the criteria for determining when a hog is properly roasted. This segued into hunting and then why the 1911 .45 caliber pistol is a far better weapon than a 9mm pistol. I never once said anything about the lingerie or the interrogation. My purpose was to build a relationship with Luther rather than to attack him as being wrong or as a human being. What eventually came out was that he was frustrated because the detainee, two days ago, had spit in his face and screamed something lewd at him.

“‘I’m gonna butt-fuck your wife’ is how I think the interpreter said it, sir,” Luther told me. I could tell he took it seriously, probably bundling up all his frustrations and anger about a dozen different things into that one obscene sentence from a prisoner.

He asked me if I would be willing to review the case tomorrow with him and I said yes. We had the detainee taken back to his cell for the night.

The next day, Luther and I met for about two hours. I had read all the background files on the detainee prior to our meeting, so I knew this prisoner was a hardcore terrorist and had been difficult during interrogations. But I asked Luther how the interrogation process had been going.

“Sir, the problem is that the fucker just won’t talk to me,” Luther said. Just answering my question brought back the frustration for him, and I could see that he was starting to get anxious and angry again. I responded as calmly as if we were just talking about how to get your dog to come when called.

“Hey, I have a couple of questions for you. What is this guy eating every day?”

“The bastard is getting MREs, Colonel,” he said, referring to the Meals, Ready-to-Eat that soldiers eat in the field when hot meals aren’t available. In some areas, the U.S. military also hands them out to locals in need of food. They’re nutritious, but not exactly tasty. “He hasn’t had a hot meal in a while because he keeps throwing piss and shit on the guards every time they try to serve him food on a tray.”

“Okay,” I replied, still avoiding any hint of criticism in my voice. “Are any of the guards pretty females?”

“No way,” he said. “He hasn’t seen a woman in at least a year. All the corpsmen and medics are fat ugly dudes.”

“Well, Luther, here’s what I recommend. Go to McDonald’s and get a hot fish sandwich. Just one. Then stop off at the PX and get a Sports Illustrated, the swimsuit edition.”

Luther looked at me like I was crazy. “Where you going with this one, Colonel?” he asked. “You don’t want me to give that stuff to him, do you? ’Cause that just ain’t right, sir . . .”

“Just stay with me, Luther,” I replied. “Luther, I would like for you to go and see this detainee two or three times next week. But don’t even bother trying to get anything out of him. Just put him in the booth, eat your sandwich with some pistachio nuts and some fresh hot tea. You know how they all crave tea. And read the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Don’t say a word to him, but repeat this each time you bring him in the booth. Don’t yell at him or be rough in any way.”

Luther was looking at me like I’d lost my mind. He didn’t see where this was going. I told him to make sure he sat so that the detainee would be able to look over his shoulder and see the hot girls in the magazine, close enough that he could really smell the fish sandwich and the tea. Mind you, the prisoner wasn’t being denied food or left hungry. The detainees were fed quite well at Gitmo and almost all of them put on “Gitmo pounds” during their stay. The meals were regular, filling, and culturally appropriate, but a fish sandwich from McDonald’s would be a real treat, especially for this guy who was eating MREs at the moment because of his behavior.

“Well hell, I don’t mind eating and looking at girls, sir, but that’s not doing my job. I’m supposed to be getting intel from this guy. You telling me to just forget that?”

“Only for a while,” I told him. “At the end of the week, bring an extra hot fish sandwich. Let’s just see what happens.”

Luther grinned just slightly and I could tell he was starting to understand the point I was making.

Two weeks went by and Luther reported back to me that that during the first week the detainee seemed as confused as Luther had been at first, then he started showing some interest in the McDonald’s fish sandwich. When Luther held the magazine so that the prisoner could get a glimpse of the scantily clad women, the prisoner perked up and strained to see.

After a week of those silent sessions, with no interaction at all, Luther brought in a second fish sandwich and offered it to the detainee in a casual way, not like a bribe but just as a nonchalant gesture from one person to another—“You want this? Here you go.” He continued bringing sandwiches for the prisoner, and on one of those visits he also left the magazine on the table for him. On my instructions, Luther soon told the prisoner, in a very hushed, conspiratorial tone after checking to make sure no guards were watching, “Here, you take this magazine back to your cell. Just hide it in your pants. I understand you’re a man like me, and you need this.” The guards, of course, were in on the ruse and didn’t “find” the hidden magazine.

The prisoner’s attitude improved so much that he looked forward to his interrogation sessions and enjoyed seeing Luther walk into the room. Slowly over that second week, Luther started talking to him.

It wasn’t long before the rapport between Luther and the detainee led to useful intel. There was no need for me to lecture and hammer home how this approach could work so much better than trying to wrestle a detainee into a pink nightgown; Luther saw the results for himself. Luther shared his experience with the other interrogators and soon most of the noncompliant detainees became cooperative. Incentive-, respect-based interrogations began to catch on. I saw Luther in the parking lot late one afternoon and he told me the new strategy was continuing to work.

“But Colonel, I still can’t figure out why your recommendations worked so well with that son of a bitch,” he said. “I mean, it sure as hell worked, but why would a mean bastard like that open up just because I gave him a sandwich?”

“Luther, my momma taught me that a good meal among enemies can cast good fortune,” I told him. “Luther, remember all human beings have the capacity to appreciate and understand acts of decency and kindness, even that dude who says something nasty about your wife. ‘Treat a man the way you want to be treated’ is what Reverend Johnson would say.”

“Sir, who in the hell is Reverend Johnson?”

“Luther, he was my Baptist minister many years ago,” I said. “I learned a lot from him.”

The technique I taught Luther was just one way we got prisoners to talk without anything remotely abusive. Much of the culture at Gitmo in 2002 and 2003, perhaps due to the anger over 9/11, involved projecting one’s rage onto the detainees. My role was to teach rapport and relationship-building approaches between the detainee and the interrogators without the abuse. Simple things like kindness, sweets, pizza, cigarettes, movies, tea, and magazines went a long way in fostering these relationships. If a fish sandwich and a girlie magazine didn’t work, then there were other plans we could implement. For instance, if the prisoner was an older male it would sometimes be effective to have a young, petite female interrogator work with him in a very calm and reassuring manner, rather than a more aggressive male interrogator.