{"id":53934,"date":"2015-02-23T12:00:26","date_gmt":"2015-02-23T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=53934"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:26:04","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:26:04","slug":"guantanamo-whistleblower-guards-rehearsed-for-reporter-visits-weeks-in-advance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/02\/guantanamo-whistleblower-guards-rehearsed-for-reporter-visits-weeks-in-advance\/","title":{"rendered":"Guantanamo Whistleblower: Guards Rehearsed for Reporter Visits Weeks in Advance"},"content":{"rendered":"

16 Feb 20125 – RSN interviewed Joseph Hickman, a former Guantanamo staff sergeant and author of the recently published book, \u201cMurder at Camp Delta: A Staff Sergeant\u2019s Pursuit of the Truth About Guantanamo Bay.\u201d In the book, Hickman alleges that three Guantanamo detainees were murdered at a CIA black site, and that this was later covered up, the deaths portrayed as suicides.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Joseph<\/a>

Joseph Hickman was a guard at Camp Delta. (image: Ziv Koren-Polaris-Joseph Hickman-Newsweek-RSN)<\/p><\/div>\n

[The transcript below has been lightly edited for readability.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Ken Klippenstein:<\/strong> What effect do you think Guantanamo has had on the United States\u2019 national security?<\/p>\n

Joseph Hickman:<\/strong> Guantanamo breeds terrorism. A lot [of detainees] were not terrorists, but when they leave, they (and their families) are going to hate America. It gives extremist groups a recruiting tool, which they can use to show how bad America is to Muslims.<\/p>\n

KK:<\/strong> What did blowing the whistle mean for your career?<\/p>\n

JH:<\/strong> It certainly didn\u2019t help. It was a hard thing to do. But I\u2019ve never considered myself a whistleblower; I don\u2019t consider myself in the same league as people like Thomas Drake or John Kiriakou. I was just a soldier trying to report a war crime. Those guys [Kiriakou and Drake] really paid a big price.<\/p>\n

KK:<\/strong> Your thoughts on the John Kiriakou case?<\/p>\n

JH:<\/strong> I\u2019m outraged by the fact that he went to jail. He was the first one to reveal waterboarding. He did it in such a way that it raised public debate over the fact that we were waterboarding. He automatically became a target for the government; he didn\u2019t get a fair trial at all. They took away any means he had to defend himself. It was horrible what happened to him.<\/p>\n

When Kiriakou tells Snowden not to come to the U.S. because he won\u2019t get a fair trial, I think Snowden should listen.<\/p>\n

KK:<\/strong> Do whistleblowers in defense agencies ever get fair trials?<\/p>\n

JH:<\/strong> It\u2019s really hard for a whistleblower to get a fair trial. It\u2019s almost like committing character suicide to come forward with something you see that\u2019s wrong. They\u2019re going to destroy you \u2013 or at least try to \u2013 instead of fixing the problem at hand. They never want to admit they\u2019re wrong. It\u2019s a very brave and courageous thing to do to become a whistleblower, but it\u2019s almost like you have to be a little crazy to do it, too.<\/p>\n

KK:<\/strong> The Obama administration says the government has all these whistleblower protections, and that Snowden would\u2019ve been safe if he had simply informed his superiors. Do people in the military take for granted that these protections aren\u2019t very serious?<\/p>\n

JH:<\/strong> Oh, you know in the military they\u2019re not serious. You know if you go against your command, you\u2019re going to pay a price. You know the chain of command is going to come down on you hard.<\/p>\n

When Barack Obama said that Snowden should come back and stand trial, that was a ridiculous thing for him to say. Snowden would go to jail for at least a year and a half before he even saw a courtroom. I got frustrated when I heard [Obama] say that.<\/p>\n

KK:<\/strong> Comment on the effects of so-called \u201cno touch torture\u201d [e.g. stress positions, sensory deprivation, etc.].<\/p>\n

JH:<\/strong> I\u2019m not an expert, but I can tell you that when you bring a body to complete muscle failure over and over again, it\u2019s got to have an effect. What those torture methods are meant to do is exhaust you to the limit to where your body fails.<\/p>\n

KK:<\/strong> Many criticize torture for failing to produce actionable intelligence. Do you agree?<\/p>\n

JH:<\/strong> I do. I don\u2019t think torture produces actionable intelligence, but I don\u2019t think that should be the question we raise. The question should be, should torture be permissible even if it does produce actionable intelligence? Should we stoop that low?<\/p>\n

KK:<\/strong> Is the point of torture perhaps not to produce intelligence, but just to extract false confessions?<\/p>\n

JH:<\/strong> I don\u2019t think so. I think at first that they want actionable intelligence, but once they realize they don\u2019t have who they thought they have, then they\u2019re looking for what you\u2019re saying \u2013 to save face. That was the case with Abu Zubaydah.<\/p>\n

KK:<\/strong> How serious is press scrutiny in Guantanamo?<\/p>\n

JH:<\/strong> They try, but it\u2019s a joke. When a reporter goes to Guantanamo, that whole visit is completely rehearsed weeks in advance. I\u2019ve watched several times, from the tower, the escort group practice days prior for the reporters.<\/p>\n

Escorts even try to sound spontaneous: \u201cWhy don\u2019t we go over here, see what\u2019s happening here?\u201d It\u2019s all rehearsed \u2013 every bit of it.<\/p>\n

KK:<\/strong> I assume the reporters eat it up?<\/p>\n

JH:<\/strong> They do. They eat it up.<\/p>\n

The only time I\u2019ve ever seen the command shaking in their boots was the time Ted Koppel was coming down. They were scared to death of Ted Koppel for some reason. I don\u2019t know if [Koppel] had information or sources, but they practiced two weeks in advance. The whole place was cleaned up. They were scared to death of him.<\/p>\n

KK:<\/strong> When the three detainees died, they just kicked out the entire press corps?<\/p>\n

JH:<\/strong> They threw them off the island right away. They didn\u2019t want the wrong soldier saying the wrong thing to them. It was pretty obvious.<\/p>\n

KK:<\/strong> What else can you tell us about how Guantanamo guards would rehearse for journalist visits?<\/p>\n

JH:<\/strong> When Ted Koppel came, they cleaned every inch of Camp Delta. They practiced \u201cspontaneity.\u201d<\/p>\n

KK:<\/strong> Were there any journalists in particular who leadership thought, \u201cWell we don\u2019t have to worry about this guy\u201d?<\/p>\n

JH:<\/strong> Bill O\u2019Reilly. The night he came, the command was actually having a party at the admiral\u2019s house because they knew they were going to get such good press coverage from O\u2019Reilly.<\/p>\n

KK:<\/strong> You mentioned that your superiors would reference the NSA\u2019s spying capabilities as a threat to prevent guards from talking to journalists. How often would that happen?<\/p>\n

JH:<\/strong> They told us that throughout the year. They told us that the NSA has a facility in Guantanamo.<\/p>\n

KK:<\/strong> Did that make guards nervous?<\/p>\n

JH:<\/strong> You get desensitized to it, you get used to it. At first it\u2019s very uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

KK:<\/strong> When your superiors gave you a direct order not to speak about the three detainee deaths, what are the consequences if you disobey that?<\/p>\n

JH:<\/strong> You could be fined, put in prison; it\u2019s very serious.<\/p>\n

KK:<\/strong> Did you find that all the whistleblower prosecutions under the Obama administration inspired you or intimidated you?<\/p>\n

JH:<\/strong> Thomas Drake inspired me.<\/p>\n

KK:<\/strong> So the whistleblower prosecutions can have the opposite effect of what the government intends, by inspiring people instead of suppressing them?<\/p>\n

JH:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n

KK:<\/strong> What were some differences between your preconceptions about Guantanamo, before you saw it for yourself, and the reality of it?<\/p>\n

JH:<\/strong> The first difference was the standard of living for the detainees. It was far worse than I could\u2019ve ever imagined. When you watch them in their cells, just pacing back and forth, you\u2019re reminded of animals in a zoo.<\/p>\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

Ken Klippenstein is a staff journalist at Reader Supported News. He can be reached on Twitter @kenklippenstein or email: ken@readersupportednews.org<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 readersupportednews.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RSN interviewed Joseph Hickman, a former Guantanamo staff sergeant and author of the recently published book, \u201cMurder at Camp Delta: A Staff Sergeant\u2019s Pursuit of the Truth About Guantanamo Bay.\u201d In the book, Hickman alleges that three Guantanamo detainees were murdered at a CIA black site, and that this was later covered up, the deaths portrayed as suicides.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53934\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}