Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia (37 page)

5
. Stuart B. Barber, letter to Paul B. Ryan, April 26, 1982, 3. My thanks to Richard Barber for his help with many important details about his father’s life and for providing this and other invaluable documents.

6
. Ibid., 3.

7
. Horacio Rivero, “Long Range Requirements for the Southern Oceans,” enclosure, memorandum to Chief of Naval Operations, May 21, 1960, NHC: 00 Files, 1960, Box 8, 5710, 2. Admiral Horacio Rivero credited Barber with doing most of the writing for the Long Range Objectives Group that produced this document.

8
. Rivero, “Long Range Requirements,” 2.

9
. Horacio Rivero, “Assuring a Future Base Structure in the African-Indian Ocean Area,” enclosure, memorandum to Chief of Naval Operations, July 11, 1960, NHC: 00 Files, 1960, Box 8, 5710; see also Monoranjan Bezboruah,
U.S. Strategy in the Indian Ocean: The International Response
(New York: Praeger Publishers, 1977), 58.

10
. Barber, letter to Ryan, April 26, 1982, 3.

11
. Roy L. Johnson, memorandum for Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Plans & Policy), July 21 1958, NHC: 00 Files, 1958, Box 4, A4-2 Status of Shore Stations, 2–3. See also Bezboruah,
U.S. Strategy in the Indian Ocean
, 58; Vytautas B. Bandjunis,
Diego Garcia: Creation of the Indian Ocean Base
(San Jose, CA: Writer’s Showcase, 2001), 2.

12
. Massimo Calabresi, “Postcard: Diego Garcia,”
Time
, September 24, 2007, 8.

13
. GlobalSecurity.org, “Diego Garcia ‘Camp Justice,’”
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/diego-garcia.htm
.

14
. See, e.g., Peter Hayes, Lyuba Zarsky, and Walden Bello,
American Lake: Nuclear Peril in the Pacific
(Victoria, Australia: Penguin Books, 1986), 439–46.

15
. Michael C. Desch,
When the Third World Matters: Latin American and United States Grand Strategy
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 152–53.

16
. GlobalSecurity.org, “Diego Garcia ‘Camp Justice.’”

17
. Neil Hinch, “A Time of Change,”
Chagos News
24 (August 2004), 6.

18
. Times Online, “The Secret Downing Street Memo,” May 1, 2005, available at
http://timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article387374.ece
.

19
. Stephen Grey,
Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006); Ian Cobain and Richard Norton-Taylor, “Claims of a Secret CIA Jail for Terror Suspects on British Island to Be Investigated,”
Guardian
, October 19, 2007; Council of Europe, Parliamentary Assembly, “Secret Detentions and Illegal Transfers of Detainees Involving Council of Europe Member States: Second Report,” explanatory memorandum, June 7, 2007, Strasbourg, 13.

20
. Democracy Now, “CIA Admits Used UK Territory for Rendition Flights,” February 22, 2008,
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/22/headlines#6
.

21
. Kevin Sullivan, “U.S. Fueled ‘Rendition’ Flights on British Soil,”
Washington Post
, February 22, 2008, A16; Cobain and Norton-Taylor, “Claims of a Secret CIA Jail”; Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor, “US Accused of Holding Terror Suspects on Prison Ships,”
Guardian
, June 2, 2008; Reprieve,
“US Government Must Reveal Information about Prison Ships Used for ‘Terror Suspects,’” press release, June 2, 2008, available at
http://www.reprieve.org.uk
.

22
. See Vine, “The Former Inhabitants”; David Vine, S. Wojciech Sokolowski, and Philip Harvey, “
Dérasiné
: The Expulsion and Impoverishment of the Chagossian People [Diego Garcia],” expert report for American University Law School, Washington, DC, and Sheridans Solicitors, London, April 11, 2005.

23
. I have never been employed or paid by Tigar or anyone connected with the suits. The American University law clinic that Tigar supervises paid for some of my research expenses in 2001–2 and in 2004.

24
. This book builds on David Vine, “Empire’s Footprint: Expulsion and the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia” (Ph.D. diss., Graduate Center, City University of New York, 2006). Despite the significant role that the British Government and its officials played in carrying out the expulsion, I focus on the U.S. role for three reasons: First, nearly all the literature on Diego Garcia has focused on the role of the British Government in organizing the removal process. The literature has not, other than in passing, examined the role of the U.S. Government in ordering and orchestrating the expulsion. This neglect has left some confusion about the role of the U.S. Government in creating the base and ordering the expulsion. Frequent historical and factual inaccuracies have also appeared in the journalistic and scholarly literature (e.g., to whom the base and the territory belong: as it should be clear by now, while the territory is technically controlled by Britain the base is controlled by the United States, with Diego Garcia
de facto
U.S. territory). These shortcomings have made a scholarly exploration of the history of the U.S. role long overdue. Second, because I have found that the U.S. Government ordered the expulsion, I believe any analysis of why the Chagossians were exiled must focus on the U.S. role. Third, on a personal level, as one who was born and lives in the United States, I was more immediately concerned about the U.S. Government’s role in the exile.

25
. Because I think social scientists have an obligation to ensure that people participating in and assisting with our research directly benefit from the research—we certainly benefit through grant money, book contracts, articles, speaking engagements, prestige, jobs—I made small contributions of food or money to families with whom I stayed. As thanks to the Chagos Refugees Group for helping to enable my research, I periodically worked in the group’s office, primarily providing English translation and clerical assistance.

26
. In this I was guided by the work of Hugh Gusterson,
Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996); Carole Cohn, “‘Clean Bombs’ and Clean Language,” in
Women, Militarism, and War: Essays in History, Politics, and Social Theory
, ed. Jean B. Elshtain and Sheila Tobias (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1990), 33–55, Jennifer Schirmer,
The Guatemalan Military Project: A Violence Called Democracy
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998); Lesley Gill,
The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas
, (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2004); James Mann,
Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet
(New York: Penguin Books, 2004).

27
. In total, I conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with 18 former and 2 current U.S. Government officials. They included officials from the U.S. Navy, the U.S. departments of Defense and State, and the U.S. Congress. The interview sessions sought to elicit detailed histories of the decision-making process leading to the development of the base and the expulsion. Throughout, I continually asked interviewees to describe their thinking at the time of the events under discussion to identify their contemporaneous interests, motivations, assumptions, and understandings. I conducted more than 10 additional interviews of a similar nature with journalists, academics, military analysts, a scientist, and others who were involved in the history of Diego Garcia or who were knowledgeable about the base.

28
. I used these sources and interviews not just to understand the history of Diego Garcia and the dynamics of U.S. Empire but also to understand more about the actors in the national security bureaucracy themselves. As Derek Gregory points out, the actions of states are not produced “through geopolitics and geoeconomics alone”; they are also produced by cultural, social, and psychological processes and practices, especially those that “mark other people as irredeemably ‘Other’” and locate both the self and others spatially. Derek Gregory,
The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq
(Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 16, 20. The aim is not to demonize or blame particular individuals but to empathetically understand their involvement within the context in which they were living, while identifying processes and practices that conditioned their actions.

29
. Stuart B. Barber, letter to Ryan, April 26, 1982.

30
. Henri Marimootoo, “The Diego Files,”
Weekend
, serial, May–September 1997.

31
. Exchange of Notes between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Government of the United States of America concerning a limited United States Naval Communications Facility on Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean Territory (The Diego Garcia Agreement 1972), London, October 24, 1972, 3.

32
. “Guidelines for Visits to Diego Garcia,” memorandum, August 21, 1992, UKTB 3.

33
. Calabresi, “Postcard,” 8. Having filed such a story when he was one of the first journalists to visit the island in at last 25 years, Calabresi calculated “the equivalent in 2007 media dollars” as “probably a box of Chablis.”

34
. Letter to author, May 12, 2004.

35
. Simon Winchester,
The Sun Never Sets: Travels to the Remaining Outposts of the British Empire
(New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1985); “Diego Garcia,”
Granta
73 (2001): 207–26.

36
. See, e.g., La Barca: Blog, available at
http://labarcaatsea.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!SCEFC52FCBOE5896!167
; Diane Stuemer, “Caught in a Net of Colourful Neighbours,”
The Ottawa Citizen
, February 5, 2001.

37
. The Department of Defense defines a “facility” as a building, structure, or utility. Department of Defense, “Base Structure Report,” 8.

38
. Global Security.org, “Iraq Facilities,”
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/iraq.htm
; “Afghanistan Facilities,”
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/afghanistan.htm
; Patrick Cockburn, “Revealed: Secret Plan to Keep Iraq under US Control,”
Independent
, June 5, 2008; Joseph Gerson, “‘Enduring’ U.S. Bases in Iraq,” CommonDreams.org, March 19, 2007; Alexander Cooley, “Base Politics,”
Foreign Affairs
84, no.6 (2005): 79–92; James Bellamy Foster, “A Warning to Africa: The New U.S. Imperial Grand Strategy,”
Monthly Review
58, no. 2(2006), available at
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0606jbf.htm
; Ann Scott Tyson, “Gates, U.S. General Back Long Iraq Stay,”
Washington Post
, June 1, 2007, A11.

39
. Guy Raz, “U.S. Builds Air Base in Iraq for Long Haul,”
All Things Considered
, National Public Radio, October 12, 2007,
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15184773]
; Tom Engelhardt, “Baseless Considerations,” Tom Dispatch.com, November 5, 2007.

40
. Mark Gillem,
American Town: Building the Outposts of Empire
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), xvi.

41
. Engelhardt, “Baseless Considerations.”

42
. See, e.g., Theresa Hitchens, Michael Katz-Hyman, and Victoria Samson, “Space Weapons Spending in the FY 2007 Defense Budget,” report, Center for Defense Information, Washington, DC, March 6, 2006.

43
. E.g., David Harvey,
The New Imperialism
(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003); Neil Smith,
American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003); Niall Ferguson,
Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire
(New York: Penguin Press, 2004); Chalmers Johnson,
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic
(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004).

44
. G. John Ikenberry, “Illusions of Empire: Defining the New American Order,”
Foreign Affairs
83, no. 2(2004): 144.

45
. See, e.g., Ferguson,
Colossus
; Michael Ignatieff, “The Burden,”
New York Times Magazine
, January 5, 2003.

46
. David Ottaway, “Islanders Were Evicted for U.S. Base,”
Washington Post
, September 9, 1975, A1;
Washington Post
, “The Diego Garcians,” editorial, September 11, 1975.

47
. U.S. Congress, House, “Diego Garcia, 1975: The Debate over the Base and the Island’s Former Inhabitants,” Special Subcommittee on Investigations, Committee on International Relations, June 5 and November 4, 94th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975).

48
. Catherine Lutz’s
Homefront
, an ethnography of Fayetteville, North Carolina and the Fort Bragg U.S. Army base, has provided a particularly effective model for exploring the costs of militarization and U.S. Empire in the United States; in many ways I sought to replicate her study with a base abroad. Catherine Lutz,
Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century
(Boston: Beacon,
2001). See also Katherine T. McCaffrey,
Military Power and Popular Protest: The U.S. Navy in Vieques, Puerto Rico
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002); Gill,
School of the Americas
.

49
. With few exceptions, anthropologists have been absent from the debates on empire. Amid earlier imperial arguments in the 1960s, Kathleen Gough criticized anthropology, “the child of Western imperialism,” for having “virtually failed to study Western imperialism as a social system, or even adequately to explore the effects of imperialism on the societies we studied.” More than three decades later, Catherine Lutz found there was still almost no anthropological analysis of empire. (Kathleen Gough, “New Proposals for Anthropologists,”
Current Anthropology
9, no. 5 (1968): 403, 405; Catherine Lutz, “Making War at Home in the United States: Militarization and the Current Crisis,”
American Anthropologist
104, no. 3 [2002]: 732.)