That night at about 1 a.m. I was making my rounds in the building that housed most of the interrogation booths. The interrogation buildings were prefab trailers with several small rooms about ten feet by ten feet in size. Each had a table, usually three or four chairs, and a metal hook welded to the floor. The hook served as the anchor to fasten a detainee’s leg irons during the interrogation.
As I walked toward the observation room with its one-way mirror that would allow me to peek into the interrogation booths, I heard lots of yelling, screaming, and furniture being thrown around. I saw Luther and three MPs wrestling with a detainee on the floor. It was an awful sight. I wanted to run back to my room and wash my eyes with bleach. The detainee was naked except for the pink panties I had seen hanging on the door earlier. He also had lipstick and a wig on. The four men were holding the prisoner down and trying to outfit him with the matching pink nightgown, but he was fighting hard.
My first instinct was to rush in and start barking orders at the men, demanding they stop this ridiculous and abusive wrestling match. But I managed to quell that urge and wait. I opened my thermos, poured a cup of coffee, and watched the episode play out, hoping it would take a better turn and not wanting to interfere without good reason, even if this was a terrible scene. I waited several minutes, but with no good end in sight I had to act.
Someone is gonna get hurt, I thought. I need to stop this right now.
I knocked on the door and stepped in, trying hard to look like this crazy scene didn’t bother me in the least.
“Hey Luther, you want some coffee?” I asked in a calm, low voice.
Luther, who looked like he’d been wrestling a pig and wasn’t coming out ahead, got up off the floor and walked over to me. “I sure do, Colonel,” he said, breathing hard. “I’ll take you up on that, sir.”
I asked the MPs to let the detainee up and put him in the chair for a break. Luther and I poured coffee from my thermos and went outside. We talked about catfishing and the criteria for determining when a hog is properly roasted. This segued into hunting and then why the 1911 .45 caliber pistol is a far better weapon than a 9mm pistol. I never once said anything about the lingerie or the interrogation. My purpose was to build a relationship with Luther rather than to attack him as being wrong or as a human being. What eventually came out was that he was frustrated because the detainee, two days ago, had spit in his face and screamed something lewd at him.
“‘I’m gonna butt-fuck your wife’ is how I think the interpreter said it, sir,” Luther told me. I could tell he took it seriously, probably bundling up all his frustrations and anger about a dozen different things into that one obscene sentence from a prisoner.
He asked me if I would be willing to review the case tomorrow with him and I said yes. We had the detainee taken back to his cell for the night.
The next day, Luther and I met for about two hours. I had read all the background files on the detainee prior to our meeting, so I knew this prisoner was a hardcore terrorist and had been difficult during interrogations. But I asked Luther how the interrogation process had been going.
“Sir, the problem is that the fucker just won’t talk to me,” Luther said. Just answering my question brought back the frustration for him, and I could see that he was starting to get anxious and angry again. I responded as calmly as if we were just talking about how to get your dog to come when called.
“Hey, I have a couple of questions for you. What is this guy eating every day?”
“The bastard is getting MREs, Colonel,” he said, referring to the Meals, Ready-to-Eat that soldiers eat in the field when hot meals aren’t available. In some areas, the U.S. military also hands them out to locals in need of food. They’re nutritious, but not exactly tasty. “He hasn’t had a hot meal in a while because he keeps throwing piss and shit on the guards every time they try to serve him food on a tray.”
“Okay,” I replied, still avoiding any hint of criticism in my voice. “Are any of the guards pretty females?”
“No way,” he said. “He hasn’t seen a woman in at least a year. All the corpsmen and medics are fat ugly dudes.”
“Well, Luther, here’s what I recommend. Go to McDonald’s and get a hot fish sandwich. Just one. Then stop off at the PX and get a Sports Illustrated, the swimsuit edition.”
Luther looked at me like I was crazy. “Where you going with this one, Colonel?” he asked. “You don’t want me to give that stuff to him, do you? ’Cause that just ain’t right, sir . . .”
“Just stay with me, Luther,” I replied. “Luther, I would like for you to go and see this detainee two or three times next week. But don’t even bother trying to get anything out of him. Just put him in the booth, eat your sandwich with some pistachio nuts and some fresh hot tea. You know how they all crave tea. And read the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Don’t say a word to him, but repeat this each time you bring him in the booth. Don’t yell at him or be rough in any way.”
Luther was looking at me like I’d lost my mind. He didn’t see where this was going. I told him to make sure he sat so that the detainee would be able to look over his shoulder and see the hot girls in the magazine, close enough that he could really smell the fish sandwich and the tea. Mind you, the prisoner wasn’t being denied food or left hungry. The detainees were fed quite well at Gitmo and almost all of them put on “Gitmo pounds” during their stay. The meals were regular, filling, and culturally appropriate, but a fish sandwich from McDonald’s would be a real treat, especially for this guy who was eating MREs at the moment because of his behavior.
“Well hell, I don’t mind eating and looking at girls, sir, but that’s not doing my job. I’m supposed to be getting intel from this guy. You telling me to just forget that?”
“Only for a while,” I told him. “At the end of the week, bring an extra hot fish sandwich. Let’s just see what happens.”
Luther grinned just slightly and I could tell he was starting to understand the point I was making.
Two weeks went by and Luther reported back to me that that during the first week the detainee seemed as confused as Luther had been at first, then he started showing some interest in the McDonald’s fish sandwich. When Luther held the magazine so that the prisoner could get a glimpse of the scantily clad women, the prisoner perked up and strained to see.
After a week of those silent sessions, with no interaction at all, Luther brought in a second fish sandwich and offered it to the detainee in a casual way, not like a bribe but just as a nonchalant gesture from one person to another—“You want this? Here you go.” He continued bringing sandwiches for the prisoner, and on one of those visits he also left the magazine on the table for him. On my instructions, Luther soon told the prisoner, in a very hushed, conspiratorial tone after checking to make sure no guards were watching, “Here, you take this magazine back to your cell. Just hide it in your pants. I understand you’re a man like me, and you need this.” The guards, of course, were in on the ruse and didn’t “find” the hidden magazine.
The prisoner’s attitude improved so much that he looked forward to his interrogation sessions and enjoyed seeing Luther walk into the room. Slowly over that second week, Luther started talking to him.
It wasn’t long before the rapport between Luther and the detainee led to useful intel. There was no need for me to lecture and hammer home how this approach could work so much better than trying to wrestle a detainee into a pink nightgown; Luther saw the results for himself. Luther shared his experience with the other interrogators and soon most of the noncompliant detainees became cooperative. Incentive-, respect-based interrogations began to catch on. I saw Luther in the parking lot late one afternoon and he told me the new strategy was continuing to work.
“But Colonel, I still can’t figure out why your recommendations worked so well with that son of a bitch,” he said. “I mean, it sure as hell worked, but why would a mean bastard like that open up just because I gave him a sandwich?”
“Luthe
r, my momma taught me that a good meal among enemies can cast good fortune,” I told him. “Luther, remember all human beings have the capacity to appreciate and understand acts of decency and kindness, even that dude who says something nasty about your wife. ‘Treat a man the way you want to be treated’ is what Reverend Johnson would say.”
“Sir, who in the hell is Reverend Johnson?”
“Luther, he was my Baptist minister many years ago,” I said. “I learned a lot from him.”
The technique I taught Luther was just one way we got prisoners to talk without anything remotely abusive. Much of the culture at Gitmo in 2002 and 2003, perhaps due to the anger over 9/11, involved projecting one’s rage onto the detainees. My role was to teach rapport and relationship-building approaches between the detainee and the interrogators without the abuse. Simple things like kindness, sweets, pizza, cigarettes, movies, tea, and magazines went a long way in fostering these relationships. If a fish sandwich and a girlie magazine didn’t work, then there were other plans we could implement. For instance, if the prisoner was an older male it would sometimes be effective to have a young, petite female interrogator work with him in a very calm and reassuring manner, rather than a more aggressive male interrogator.
I had a hundred scenarios we could try. No matter which strategy we employed, the goal was always the same: get the prisoner to say something in response. Anything. Once the prisoner said, “Okay,” or “Thank you,” or “Praise Allah,” I knew we had him. From there it was only a matter of time before he told us something useful.
There would be many more challenges to come at Gitmo, and I had no idea at the time that how we handled those challenges would shape the future role for military psychologists in this global war on terrorism. For example, one afternoon I was having lunch in the chow hall and a female nurse who was a Navy lieutenant commander came to see me in a fit of anger. Her name was Lieutenant Commander Pearl Henderson from northern California. “Commander, I have been hearing about you and I’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” I said with a smile. “Pour yourself a cup of coffee and let’s see if we can work this thing out.”
She began talking really fast and I regretted offering her coffee. This was an intense woman. I captured enough of what she was saying to understand that she was upset with how interrogators were coming over to the medical clinic and demanding unhindered access to detainees’ medical records. This was a surprise to me, and a disturbing concept to a psychologist. I had to ask her to slow down and give me a better understanding of what was going on.
“I’m not tracking with you at all,” I said. “They’re doing what with the medical records?”
She explained to me that there was a federal regulation that made it perfectly legal for any interrogator, regardless of rank, educational background, or age, to have legal open access to any detainee’s medical record. What I discovered was that on any given day, FBI, CIA, Army, Navy, and contract interrogators would go to the hospital and demand to see detainees’ records immediately. If any of the doctors or nurses hesitated—and they naturally would as medical professionals—these interrogators, some of them only eighteen or twenty years old, would simply walk into the medical records room and help themselves. It was allowed by federal law but it ran counter to everything the doctors and nurses held sacred about the privacy of medical records.
I told the lieutenant commander that in spite of what the regulation or law said, from a practical standpoint this system just didn’t seem to be working. Not only was I sympathetic to the staff’s desire to protect those records, but I also could see that the animosity generated by interrogators snatching records from the clinic was counterproductive to our overall mission. So Lieutenant Commander Henderson and I devised a plan that would keep the interrogators from having any physical access to the records. We painted an invisible red line around the entire medical hospital by declaring that the hospital and all doctors and nurses were completely off-limits to anyone from the intel community. The biscuit staff were the only members of the Joint Intelligence Group or the entire intel community who would have any access or discuss any medical information with the doctors and nurses. Even though the interrogators were incredibly pissed at this, and though technically it circumvented federal law, the plan actually worked. It streamlined the process and stopped thirty or forty interrogators on any day of the week from storming over to the hospital and creating havoc.
Now, we thought this was a fine solution to a real problem. But then the media got hold of the story and, of course, they completely distorted what was happening. We later saw and heard reports in the news media about how biscuit was supposedly stealing medical information and using it to help interrogators craft interrogation plans. On June 10, 2004, the Washington Post reported that “Military interrogators at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been given access to the medical records of individual prisoners, a breach of patient confidentiality that ethicists describe as a violation of international medical standards designed to protect captives from inhumane treatment.”
The newspaper went on to say, “How military interrogators used the information is unknown. But a previously undisclosed Defense Department memo dated Oct. 9 cites Red Cross complaints that the medical files ‘are being used by interrogators to gain information in developing an interrogation plan.’”
The October 9 memo, however, contained no information or proof to support these accusations. In fact, the intent of the biscuit was to be the keepers of the relevant medical information so that no detainee would ever be harmed. We had to have that information because if someone in our position did not know of a detainee’s disease or medical condition, detainees could be harmed. So we, the biscuit, became the gatekeepers of this information in order to protect it. We used the information to make sure all prisoners received their medications and that detainees with major psychiatric illnesses, such as psychotic patients, were not interrogated at all. Most importantly, we used this information to eliminate the possibility that any ill or fragile detainee would be harmed as a result of some abusive interrogation technique. So what came out of the new arrangement was that any time interrogators needed to know if there were any medical complications, they would first come to us before starting their interrogations. But the International Committee of the Red Cross and the media reported the exact opposite—that we were hoarding the information for nefarious reasons and using it, in effect, to tell interrogators exactly where to poke the prisoner with a sharp stick.
The next month seemed to go by in a blur. I was starting to feel some satisfaction that we were making progress in turning this ship around, and especially when I stepped out into the dark Caribbean night air, the stillness and quiet could lull me into thinking that all was well. On one particular night, I learned this was just an illusion. I decided to make some rounds on one of the cellblocks. It’s always good to see what’s going on at night, I thought.
I entered the prison building and started looking around. Everything seemed relatively calm, nothing out of the ordinary. I figured I would look through the rest of the cellblock and then head back to my place for some sleep. But as I walked toward the cellblock the detainees started throwing feces, urine, and other bodily fluids all over the place. It was a full-scale, all-out riot. I had heard this was a pretty common occurrence, sometimes sparked by an action like one of the detainees being taken out of his cell for interrogation, but just as often by nothing at all. The cellblock would be quiet and suddenly erupt into chaos. On this night, I had no idea what started the riot, if anything, but I could see that the guards and other staff were trying to dodge urine, feces, and other bodily fluids thrown at the nineteen- to twenty-one-year-olds. I was amazed at the level of discipline shown by the guards. There was no yelling, no cursing, and none of the guards threw the cups filled with feces back at the detainees. They were better Americans than me, I thought as I watched. Night after night for twelve-hour shifts, the guards stood steadfastly on d
uty to cope with the horror of these attacks. There was no way at nineteen I could have handled this, a foreign prisoner spitting in my face only to be followed by the same knucklehead hitting me in the back of the head with a cup of feces. On many nights I asked myself, where did we get these young Americans from? As I watched, a Styrofoam cup filled with feces and urine hit a young female sergeant directly in the face. She calmly turned and instructed the detainee to “knock it off.”
I was tense and worried about what else might come flying through the air, maybe something that would do some real damage instead of just disgusting me. One of the guards ran to me and took me by the arm in a firm grip, yelling in my ear to be heard over the noise of the riot in the background.
“Don’t worry, Colonel. We’ll get these shitheads under control. And Colonel, it will get a whole lot uglier before it gets better.”
My escort rushed me to the exit and I burst outside, the door slamming behind me as the guards continued their efforts to quell the riot. Standing there alone in the Cuban breeze, covered in Taliban feces and urine, I was utterly disgusted and couldn’t decide if it was better to ride in my car to my hooch or walk. I decided walking was a better option to avoid getting this foul smell permanently imprinted into my car. As I walked, I had to acknowledge the absurdity of the situation I found myself in, and it was actually a relief to laugh at myself and give myself a few moments of respite from the deadly serious thoughts that occupied my mind the rest of the time at Gitmo. I kept coming back to the young men and women we had serving as the guards on the cellblocks. They were an amazing, untold story, steadfastly doing their duty without ever retaliating. By the time I reached my hooch, I had created a new term for the military—the TOW. The TOW acronym was not new to the Army, but it usually stood for “tank offensive weapon,” a missile launched from a Humvee designed to kill Russian tanks. After that night, I always thought of TOW as the Turd Offensive Weapon. I learned from talking to the MPs afterward that the prisoners also had a variation we came to call the SOW—the Semen Offensive Weapon. No matter which primary ingredient was used, the methodology was the same: make the deposit in a cup, add some toilet paper for stability when throwing, douse liberally in urine, and hide the concoction in your cell for a while to let it ferment. Then wait for an opportune moment when the guard lets his attention wander and suddenly—wham!— fling the TOW or SOW by reaching through the “bean chute” used to pass in meals. One detainee explained to a guard that he omitted the toilet paper in his preparations because that promoted a better dispersal on impact. And he insisted that he had done “scientific studies” to confirm the benefits of his approach.
Fixing Hell Page 6