Detainee Questioning Was Faked, Book Says
Detainee Questioning Was Faked, Book Says
Military Denies, Denies, Denies
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 29, 2005; A21
The U.S. military staged the interrogations of terrorism suspects for members of Congress and other officials visiting the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to make it appear the government was obtaining valuable intelligence, a former Army translator who worked there claims in a new book scheduled for release Monday.
Former Army Sgt. Erik Saar said the military chose detainees for the mock interrogations who previously had been cooperative and instructed them to repeat what they had told interrogators in earlier sessions, according to an interview with the CBS television program “60 Minutes,” which is slated to air Sunday night.
“They would find a detainee that they knew to have been cooperative,” Saar told CBS. “They would ask the interrogator to go back over the same information,” he said, calling it “a fictitious world” created for the visitors.
Saar worked as a translator at Guantanamo from December 2002 to June 2003. During that time, several members of Congress reported visiting the base, but military officials said they do not know precisely how many toured it.
Saar also told CBS, and claims in his upcoming book, “Inside the Wire,” that just a few dozen of the more than 750 men who have been held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, were terrorists, and that little valuable information has been obtained from them.
A spokesman for the U.S. military’s Southern Command, which oversees Guantanamo Bay operations, dismissed the allegation of mock interrogations.
“I can say that we do not stage interrogations for VIP visits at Guantanamo,” said Col. David McWilliams. “I don’t want to characterize or comment on what Sergeant Saar believes. He’s written his book.”
A Defense Department official familiar with interrogations said Saar would not be privy to interview strategies. He noted that interrogators often ask the same questions in separate sessions to check a detainee’s account.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said she was “initially impressed” by interrogations she saw on a tour of Guantanamo Bay in February 2004 with members of a House Homeland Security Committee. The delegation watched through mirrored glass as interrogators spoke in conversational tones and rewarded cooperative detainees with ice cream. Now, she believes, “we were duped.”
“The amount and depth of the torture that’s been alleged and corroborated leaves no doubt in my mind that what we saw was a staged interrogation,” Norton said.
Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has led the legal challenge of detainees’ imprisonment and alleged abusive interrogation techniques, said Saar’s claims support lawyers’ suspicions that the official tours of Guantanamo were phony.
“They couldn’t show people what they were really doing, because what they were really doing was illegal and inhumane,” Ratner said. “It’s such a fraud. It reminds me of the special concentration camps set up in World War II. They would take the Red Cross there to see there was an orchestra and all sorts of nice things.”
Saar also alleges in his book that he witnessed female interrogators use sexual humiliation and taunting in an effort to get detainees to talk. The general tactics he described were corroborated by Army officials, who have acknowledged disciplining two female interrogators for such acts. Numerous detainees have alleged they were victims of similar sexually suggestive interrogations.
Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Stan:
I’ll make the first comment on this. It’s true. The military response-style here is very familiar. It’s actually a non-denial. He says the military DOES not stage interrogations. Present tense. That gives them wiggle room for the past tense if it ever sees a courtroom. If it were not true, they would have called Saar a liar. They did not. They did not say it was not true. Not once. They said they were not doing this now. A sharp journalist will ask Col. Mc Williams if there has ever been a staged interrogation. Hint, hint.
29 April 2005, 11:08 amEd:
I’ll make the second comment. So what?
29 April 2005, 9:33 pmStan:
Read the series on Jurassic Park, Pseudo-Events, and Prisons. Posted earlier on this blog.
This was part of a psuedo-event… in a prison.
29 April 2005, 9:45 pmComandante Gringo:
It’s a shame you don’t allow Ed Hominems…
30 April 2005, 5:38 pmmark:
One of Ben Bradlee’s old “non-denial denial”.
Where this matters is that its a sign of a deadly serious problem. The US military does not accept that it is under civilian control. When outsiders (outside the military command of the base) come to inspect and check up on what the military is doing, then they get a staged show. One that is designed to reinforce how important the work they are doing at Gitmo is.
If the military at Gitmo had any respect for rule of law and the notion that the US military is under civilian command, then they would never falsify the information they give to the representatives of that civilian command that come to their base.
The US government was designed such that the citizens of this country had control of the government of this country. This was through a combination of free and fair elections, and a system of checks and balances that kept any one branch or person in the government from seizing absolute power away from the people. In turn, the military was to be under the command and control of this government, and in turn the military was under control of the citizens of the United States.
When the US military lies and misleads the civilian branches of government, not only the Administration, but also the Congressional and Judicial branches that have legitimate roles to play in checking and balancing the power of the Administration in directing the miliatry, then the US military is openly flaunting the design of the government that our founding fathers created.
The founding fathers were rightly afraid of a strong and powerful military taking control of the free country they had just founded. They had just fought a long and bloody rebellion against a King that claimed he had a mandate from God to rule, and which had the money to create a powerful military that would obey only his command which in turn violently repressed any threat to the rule of the King.
The Founding Fathers of this country abhored the idea of ANY standing military. They believed that this country should only raise a militia in times of danger, but that the standing army and navy should at worst be small and at best be non-existent during peacetime.
Note the use of the word “visiting” the base. Members of Congress, or their legally constituted staffs, who went to Gitmo are not going on a “visit”. This isn’t a trip to Grandmothers, and it shouldn’t be just a free weekend on a Caribbean island. Instead, this is an “inspection”. A visit like this is really a visit from the commanders of the US military. The true structure of the US government gives the power to spend money to the Congress. And the Congress also has the power to check up on how the money is being spent. And if we live in a world which is so dangerous that we require a permanent military, then the representatives of the American citizens who are elected to the Congress of the United States most certainly have the right and the duty to oversee and inspect what that military is doing both with the money of the American people and in the name of the American people.
That a military officer, who’s sworn an oath to protect and defend the citizens of the United States and the Constitution of the United States, would lie to and mislead those representatives of the citizens of the United States is tantamount to the declaration of a coup overthrowing the Constitution of the United States and declaring that the military rules this country.
That’s why this is important.
If you are interested, watch which sides people side up. Who will you see backing a white-wash investigation and no real punishment for the officers that broke their oath to defend the Constitution? And who will stand up and say that this can not be permitted?
3 May 2005, 9:57 pm