Seeker Blog

Former Special Forces lieutenant colonel Gordon Cucullu wrote Gitmo Jive based upon a June, 2005 inspection tour by ten former military and intelligence analysts. I believe this is the real story of Gitmo:

Who are these men?

While we observed absolutely no evidence of torture of prisoners at Gitmo, it is clear that the daily atmosphere is rife with harsh abuse: The prisoners are constantly assaulting the guards.

Our young military men and women routinely endure the vilest invective imaginable, including death threats that spill over to guards’ families. All soldiers and sailors working “inside the wire” have blacked out their name tags so that the detainees will not learn their identities. Before that step was taken the terrorists were threatening to tell their al-Qaeda pals still at large who the guards were. “We will look you up on the Internet,” the prisoners said. “We will find you and slaughter you and your family in your homes at night. We will cut your throats like sheep. We will drink the blood of the infidel.”

That is bad enough, but the terrorist prisoners throw more than words at the guards. On a daily basis, American soldiers carrying out their duties within the maximum-security camp are barraged with feces, urine, semen, and spit hurled by the detainees. Secretly fashioned weapons intended for use in attacking guards or fellow detainees are confiscated regularly. When food or other items are passed through the “bean hole”—an opening approximately 4 inches by 24 inches in the cell doors, the detainees have grabbed at the wrists and arms of the Americans feeding them and tried to break their bones.

When guards enter the cells to remove detainees for interrogation sessions, medical visits, or any number of reasons, detainees sometimes climb on the metal bunks and leap on the guards. They have crammed themselves under the bunks, requiring several guards to extract them. Some have attacked unsuspecting soldiers with steel chairs. Determined to inflict maximum damage, detainees have groped under the protective face masks of the guards, clawing their faces and trying to gouge eyes and tear mouths.

Keep in mind that our soldiers—young men and young women—are absolutely forbidden from responding in kind. They are constrained to maintain absolute discipline and follow humane operating procedures at all times, at risk of serious punishment. Documents recently obtained by the Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show that one detainee punched a guard in the mouth, knocking out his tooth, then began to bite the MP. Several guards were required to repel the prisoner’s attack; one soldier who came to the rescue delivered two blows to the inmate’s head with a handheld radio. For this he was dropped in rank to private.

…

Too hard? Or too soft?

We asked Hood if he was possibly being too lenient with these men. “This system of rapport-building works,” Hood assures us. In support of the soft-handed approach, he cites an extraordinary amount of actionable intelligence that continues to flow out of the interrogation rooms of Gitmo.

His revelation was a surprise to me. During my own career in the U.S. Army Special Forces, I had been taught that intelligence, like bread, gets stale quickly. That may be true for tactical intelligence of the sort I used in the field. Strategic intelligence, the kind that we continue to collect at Gitmo, however, seems to have a much longer shelf life. Today’s interrogators are succeeding at mapping out the complex organizational and financial structure of al-Qaeda in increasing detail, thereby uncovering networks that need to be attacked and dismantled. They are uncovering new “sleeper” cells. They are learning of temporarily shelved plans for new terrorist attacks, some of which have subsequently been thwarted by law enforcement authorities in America and Europe.

Another surprise for me was learning that many of the U.S. interrogators are women. We have all heard the salacious stories about using women to tease or embarrass the detainees. I saw a different reality. The camp behavioral expert, a female Ph.D. who has more than two years of experience at Gitmo, informed me that female interrogators have been very effective.

“We assume the role of sister or mother,” she explained, “something that is quite acceptable and natural in their culture.” She dresses demurely for her sessions. “I wear long sleeves, an ankle-length dress, and little makeup.” The interrogation room she enters is sparsely furnished with leg cuffs to secure the prisoner, a one-way mirror, cameras, and a distress button to summon help if needed.

“We review what we know of their backgrounds, try lots of approaches, and work on them to find something that they can relate to. Once we can get them to relate on a common item, even something irrelevant and mundane, then we can begin to probe.” It is a long, complex process requiring great patience, and more than a little human empathy. It categorically rejects the use of drugs, coercion, or duress.

Intelligence gleaned from Gitmo is blended with information from other sources to connect dots. We learned that one non-cooperative detainee had his cover penetrated just last month by having his photo identified by a freshly captured fighter in Afghanistan. Once confronted with his real identity, he began to talk.

It is important to keep in mind that these men, while exceedingly dangerous and even pathological in their desire to kill Westerners, are generally well-educated and broadly traveled. Several detainees have advanced degrees in law, engineering, and medicine from American and European schools like the University of London. Others are highly skilled technical experts with advanced training and knowledge of electronics and demolitions. (Some of these are contributing to our knowledge of al-Qaeda bombs found in Iraq.) Many of these men occupied the top al-Qaeda echelons, and met frequently with bin Laden.

A lot of these men came from middle-class or wealthy families. They come from 17 different countries, but a great many are Saudi Arabian. They are not driven by poverty, unemployment, or class deprivation. They are motivated by a virulent form of Islam that promotes jihad and death to Western civilization. They will kill Americans—including women and children—without conscience, for they are convinced that restoration of the Islamic caliphate is their sole mission on this Earth…

UPDATE: I just found a quote by Michael Barone that I’ve been looking for - on the old media’s obsession with “prisoner abuse”. This is a fragment of Barone’s review of Barnett’s The Pentagon’s New Map:

Barnett’s strategic analysis is a good antidote to old media’s focus on the behavior of seven prison guards in one shift in one cellblock in one prison and on old media’s frenzied attempt to bring Rumsfeld and Bush down by the absurd charge that somehow the declaration that some prisoners, who are in fact not entitled to Geneva Conventions protections, will not be held to be entitled to Geneva Conventions protections is directly responsible for the abuses in Abu Ghraib. Isolated prison abuses are less important than whether we, in Barnett’s terms, shrink the gap or, in Bush’s terms, bring democracy to the Middle East.

UPDATE: I am still searching my archives for the 2002 Bush directive ordering that Taliban detainees are to be treated as though they are entitled to Geneva Convention protections even though they clearly are not so entitled. So far I have found not the complete memo, though I have found a summary of the key points in this WSJ op-ed by Douglas Feith(subscribers only):

[In February 2002, President Bush determined] that the Conventions apply by law (and not just by policy) to our conflict with the Taliban regime. But Taliban detainees are entitled only to basic humane treatment, for the Taliban failed to meet the Convention’s conditions for POW status — e.g., wearing uniforms and complying with the laws of war. The Conventions do not apply to the conflict with al Qaeda. But al Qaeda detainees are entitled anyway to the same basic humane treatment, consistent with the Conventions’ principles.

As to Iraq, the U.S. government has recognized from the outset that the Geneva Conventions apply by law and all Iraqi detainees are covered by them. All Iraqi military detainees have had POW status. As we all know from the horrible photos, some detainees in Iraq have been abused, but that mistreatment violated the Defense Department’s policy as promulgated by the secretary.

UPDATE: I found my archived copy of the 2/7/2002 Bush directive “Humane treatment of al Qaeda and Taliban detainees”. It is a PDF scanned image of the declassified memo.

For more informed legal comment on the DOJ memo and the Bush directive, see this post.