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Live From Guatanamo the Interrogator
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
ABC News: Nightline
June 26, 2006
(OC) Good evening. I'm Terry Moran. And that, those lights behind me here, that is the US detention center here in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We have the extraordinarily rare opportunity to broadcast live to you here - from here tonight, from one of the most secret and controversial corners in the world. The place the President himself has said recently, he'd like to see closed. It's a place that has been rocked earlier this month by the suicides of three inmates here. And it remains an object of international condemnation on human rights grounds. But there is a reason for Guantanamo. And the proud American men and women who work here feel strongly that what they do here needs doing, to protect the country from another 9/11. So, let's take a look inside the wire at this striking symbol of America's war on terror.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(VO) Monday morning in GuantanamoBay. A detainee out of his cell for an hour, reads the news authorities here pre-select and post on a nearby board. Another nearby detainee nearby paces his 18 foot by 10 foot exercise pen, beads in hand. This is CampPhi, the latest state-of-the-art maximum security facility here.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL KEVIN BURKE (US MILITARY)
Detainees come out of their cells and go to shower.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(VO) Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Burke, commander of the Army's MP unit here, shows off the cells. Those for the detainees considered noncompliant.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(OC) This is it?
LIEUTENANT COLONEL KEVIN BURKE (US MILITARY)
This is what a detainee who is noncompliant would have.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(VO) And for those who corporate, more comfort items here. And here, they have a prayer mat here.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL KEVIN BURKE (US MILITARY)
A prayer rug. Prayer beads. Skull cap. The checkers, the chess, the deck shoes.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(VO) And every three minutes, a guard performs a check of each cell, pausing for a word or two with the men locked in these 7 by 12 foot cubicles. And this is just in CampV. There are five others at various levels of security. Today, we were taken on a carefully arranged tour of many parts of this formidable camp complex. From maximum security to minimum security. The kitchen, where detainees' food is prepared in accord with Muslim scriptures.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(OC) And the meats that you serve are culturally specific.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL KEVIN BURKE (US MILITARY)
Yes, Khalid certified. And culturally, yes, specific within the 14-day menu.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(VO) A garden, in another part of the camp, where detainees are allowed to grow watermelons and peppers. The gardeners themselves? They were locked away and we were forbidden from interviewing them, despite written permission from them and their lawyers. And despite the fact that all three detainees in this area are no longer considered enemy combatants.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(OC) Do you feel sorry for them at all?
US MILITARY (MALE)
It is not my job to feel sorry for them. It's my job to provide a firm, fair, impartial and safe environment for them to live, until that determination is made for their future.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(VO) And then, later, Colonel Burke takes us into an interrogation room, where amazingly, there's a lazy boy chair, and other comforts for detainees, some of whom remain shackled to the floor during these sessions. Would people really believe this is where interrogations at GuantanamoBay take place?
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(OC) And they may look at this picture and say, you're staging this.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL KEVIN BURKE (US MILITARY)
We do have - we do have interrogation rooms that are more austere than this.
PAUL RESTER (JOINT INTERROGATION GROUP)
The entire effort is to be as - I know the - it's hard to fathom this. But as cordial as possible under these circumstances.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
That slightly grandfatherly civilian there with us is Paul Rester, he's the director of the joint interrogations group in GuantanamoBay. He's the man who runs all the interrogations of detainees here, though he doesn't like to use the word "interrogation."
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(OC) Interrogation is a negative word. What would you call what you do?
PAUL RESTER (JOINT INTERROGATION GROUP)
Here, we are - we have involved into custodial interviews.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(VO) Paul Rester has been interrogating or interviewing or questioning America's enemies or suspected enemies for 35 years, going back to Vietnam. He is fiercely proud of his work at GuantanamoBay.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(OC) When people think about interrogations at GuantanamoBay, they think about torture.
PAUL RESTER (JOINT INTERROGATION GROUP)
I think that what people forget is that when these individuals were first brought here, there were four smoking holes in the ground. We had individuals who in fact were party to or witting of, at the time, present and future, immediate future plans and intentions to continue to do harm against the mainland of the United States and the American people or its interests abroad. I really think we should give some pause to simply throwing semantics around and cheapening terms such as torture and human rights abuses. And really look at the root of what the issues are.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(OC) So, you define torture for me.
PAUL RESTER (JOINT INTERROGATION GROUP)
For me?
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(OC) No, for the people who are going to be interrogated. What counts as torture?
PAUL RESTER (JOINT INTERROGATION GROUP)
Well, we don't employ torture.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(OC) What is torture?
PAUL RESTER (JOINT INTERROGATION GROUP)
For myself, torture is the deliberate and sadistic of mental or physical pain on another human being. It's as simple as that. For the pure and simple satisfaction of doing it. It serves no redeeming social value in eliciting concrete information. It serves no redeeming social value in - in obtaining the knowledge we need to combat this particular enemy.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(VO) But Rester frankly acknowledges that some of the techniques used here pushed the limits, his words, of what is permissible.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(OC) But there was policy here at GuantanamoBay that you could put a detainee in stress positions for hours.
PAUL RESTER (JOINT INTERROGATION GROUP)
Again, when you say a detainee, I want to be perfectly clear, there were special plans for specific detainees that allowed certain processes which are available in the public record.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(OC) Forcible enemas?
PAUL RESTER (JOINT INTERROGATION GROUP)
Excuse me?
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(OC) A forcible enema?
PAUL RESTER (JOINT INTERROGATION GROUP)
No, I'm not aware of forcible enemas.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(OC) That's the allegations...
PAUL RESTER (JOINT INTERROGATION GROUP)
People can allege what they want to allege. I've seen any number of allegations that are - that are patently outrageous.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(OC) You short-shackled people to the floor for hours at a time, until they soiled themselves?
PAUL RESTER (JOINT INTERROGATION GROUP)
If you were able to locate the detainee that was allegedly shackled on the floor in his own excrement, pulling his hair out, because that's what's in that e-mail, I think there may be another explanation that is not related to interrogation. The individual might have been simply ill, you know. I mean, I don't know.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(VO) And as for two of the most explosive allegations that detainees were threatened with dogs or made to believe they were about to be drowned, a technique called water boarding?
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(OC) Dogs used here in interrogations?
PAUL RESTER (JOINT INTERROGATION GROUP)
No.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(OC) Water boarding?
PAUL RESTER (JOINT INTERROGATION GROUP)
No. The other event you mentioned...
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(OC) Water boarding.
PAUL RESTER (JOINT INTERROGATION GROUP)
Again, not of record.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(OC) Meaning, it's not...
PAUL RESTER (JOINT INTERROGATION GROUP)
It's not of record. And I have no one who has ever told me or witnessed to me that it took place.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(VO) What Paul Rester does know, he says, is that the detainees here represent a real threat to the United States. And that the interrogations here have elicited vital information and continue to do so. For instance, this chart from a briefing we got today, outlines the al Qaeda bomb makers officials say are here at the camp, 15 of them. Officials say roadside bombs from Iraq and Afghanistan are actually brought here to Guantanamo, where detainees are asked about their designs and who might have helped make them.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(OC) Are you getting anything good? Is there still point in interrogating these people?
PAUL RESTER (JOINT INTERROGATION GROUP)
Yeah. Because they know who's still out there. They know how they do business.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(VO) For Paul Rester and many Americans here at GuantanamoBay, getting that information is tough business but worth it.
PAUL RESTER (JOINT INTERROGATION GROUP)
That's what people ought to take away from this. The United States continues to be at-risk. If it doesn't seem to quite aware of it, then maybe that's what those of us who are doing this really want. I am not any way disappointed when I go home and my neighbor doesn't know where Guantanamo is and never heard of a war because that's our job, to keep them safe.
TERRY MORAN (ABC NEWS)
(OC) Paul Rester, the head of interrogations here. One final note there's a new ABC News/"Washington Post" poll just out tonight, about this place. It has some striking findings. While most Americans, the poll shows, support holding terror suspects here at GuantanamoBay, seven in ten oppose holding them indefinitely without criminal charges. That's the Administration's policy. Majorities of both Republicans and conservatives oppose it. We'll have more from GuantanamoBay later in the program. But now, to my colleague, Martin Bashir, in New York. Martin?
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