PART XII
Washington, D.C.
APRIL 28, 2004
Two months before Iraqis assumed control of their country, the world was shocked by images of U.S. soldiers taunting naked Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. The digital photos, taken by the soldiers in acts of pornographic self-indulgence, documented the sadistic abuse and torment they were inflicting on prisoners in their charge. The acts were inexcusable. The photographs threatened to weaken public support and call into question the legitimacy of our ongoing efforts on the eve of the transition to Iraqi sovereignty.
Prior to the public release of the images, I was shown a portion of them. Many depicted military guards performing humiliating acts on Iraqi prisoners—forcing them into what appeared to be a human pyramid, with naked detainees piled on top of one another. In some photos, the guards were shown pointing, laughing, or giving a thumbs-up.
A number of other photographs were not released to the public at the time. They showed soldiers engaged in similarly disturbing sexual, sadistic acts—but with each other: Americans on Americans. Had all of the pictures been released at once, the public might have drawn more quickly the conclusions that I drew: These acts could not conceivably have been authorized by anyone in the chain of command, nor could they have been any part of an intelligence-gathering or interrogation effort. Rather, they were the senseless crimes of a small group of prison guards who ran amok in the absence of adequate supervision.*
To my knowledge, no one in the Pentagon had forewarning of the issues that gave rise to the abuses at Abu Ghraib, but that was beside the point. Unacceptable acts had been visited upon human beings in U.S. charge. The ramifications were so great that, as the head of this department of three million people, I felt compelled to step forward to take responsibility for the institutional failure.1 As I began to come to terms with what had happened at Abu Ghraib, the events left me feeling punched in the gut.
It was the U.S. military command in Iraq that first announced publicly that it was conducting an investigation into instances of abuse of Iraqi detainees in January 2004. At the time there was little media interest in the story, but once it was accompanied by photographs three months later, that changed dramatically. In another unique feature of war in the twenty-first century, the photographs made their way across the world within minutes, inviting a reaction that was as angry as it was swift. Leaders of nations across the world issued condemnations. The Vatican’s foreign minister, invoking the word “torture,” called Abu Ghraib “a more serious blow to the United States than September 11.”2
I shared the sense of outrage, but the reaction to Abu Ghraib in some instances seemed to be exacerbated by motivations other than simply getting to the bottom of what had transpired and bringing to justice those who had engaged in the illegal acts. The shameful abuse at Abu Ghraib would be exploited by many: America’s enemies, of course, who skillfully used the outcry for their propaganda purposes; Arab governments that had an interest in making their populations think of the Iraqi liberation as dangerous and chaotic; opponents of the war, who used the abuse to justify their position that the efforts in Iraq were immoral; and, most obviously, political opponents of President Bush seven months before the 2004 election. In some quarters, the reaction quickly veered into overstatement.
“We’re not going to recover from this damage,” Congressman John Murtha announced. “This one incident destroyed our credibility in Iraq and in all the Arab world.”3 “Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam’s torture chambers reopened under new management—U.S. management,” Senator Ted Kennedy declared on the floor of the United States Senate.4 For a senior senator to equate the perverted escapades of a handful of guards on the midnight shift with the routine practices of rape, torture, and murder in Saddam’s prisons was appalling, even by the low standards of a political season. I was surprised when my colleague Colin Powell mentioned Abu Ghraib in the same context as the My Lai massacre—an appalling episode from the Vietnam War that involved the cold-blooded murder of hundreds of civilians. “I don’t know what to make of it,” Powell said. “I’m shocked. I mean, I was in a unit that was responsible for My Lai.”5
Also lost in the melee was any recognition that the military command in Iraq first brought these abuses to light. A soldier discovered the photos and handed them to senior military officials. A prompt investigation began, leading to the suspension of seventeen personnel.
Critics nonetheless expanded their attacks by taking the inexcusable acts at the Abu Ghraib prison as the basis of a systematic critique of the Bush administration’s war policies. An article in The New Yorker, citing anonymous sources, asserted that the abuses were part of official and systematic coercive interrogation methods.6 Those false charges were widely disseminated and repeated by people who could and should have known better. “What happened at the prison, it is now clear, was not the result of random acts by a few bad apples,” stated Al Gore. “It was the natural consequence of the Bush administration policy.”7
The Economist placed a picture of a detainee on its cover under the headline “RESIGN, RUMSFELD.” Similar calls came from the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and Democratic members of Congress. Though I didn’t often find myself in agreement with them, I was quickly coming to the same conclusion, although for quite different reasons. I believed my resignation as secretary might demonstrate accountability on the part of the U.S. government. I thought that my resignation might also allow the administration and the Iraqi people to move beyond the scandal.
On May 5, at 10:00 in the morning, one week After the photos became public, I walked into the Oval Office with a handwritten note. “Mr. President,” it said, “I want you to know that you have my resignation as Secretary of Defense any time you feel it would be helpful to you.”8 I told him that if the controversy over the abuse kept growing, I might not be effective in managing the Department. I also said that I believed someone needed to be held accountable.
Bush had been deeply affected by the photographs. He shared my view on the importance of accountability.
“Don, someone’s head has to roll on this one,” he said. I told the President he had my resignation, and I thought he should accept it. However, I left our meeting without a decision.
That evening, Bush called me at the Pentagon. He said he had thought the matter over. “Your leaving is a terrible idea,” he said. “I don’t accept your resignation.”
He asked if there was anyone else he should hold accountable by firing them, and he raised General Myers as a possibility. “Mr. President,” I replied, “you would be firing the wrong person.”
There was a rationale for firing a senior official. I understood and shared the President’s need to hold someone at the top accountable for what had happened. But it would have been unjust to fire General Myers, who as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was not in the chain of command and had no direct line of responsibility in the abuse at Abu Ghraib.
I too wanted to demonstrate accountability by removing those at senior levels who were ultimately responsible for the lack of training, supervision, discipline, and professionalism that led to the inexcusable actions at the prison. As I discovered in the weeks After the abuse came to light, responsibility was diffuse.
Complicating matters was the fact that there were two lines of responsibility: the operational chain of command through CENTCOM, and the administrative chain of command through the Army. The operational chain of command started with the Commander in Chief and ran through me to the CENTCOM combatant commander to the U.S. commander in Iraq down to military officials at Abu Ghraib prison. The administrative chain of command started with me and ran through the secretary and chief of staff of the Army. I hoped that each chain of command quickly would identify where the primary responsibility lay and that we could hold accountable the appropriate senior officers.* That is not what happened. To help put the matter behind the Defense Department, I determined that President Bush deserved an option, and that left nobody but me.
On May 7, 2004, I crossed the Potomac and headed up Independence Avenue to Capitol Hill to testify on the abuses. In Washington there was speculation as to whether I might resign on the spot. There were also suggestions that more members of Congress might personally demand my resignation at the hearing. As I made my way to the Capitol, protesters lined the entrances to the Senate and House office buildings, some carrying signs accusing me, the President, and the military of war crimes.
In my testimony and subsequent press conferences on Abu Ghraib, I wanted to express my deep feelings of disgust and outrage at these indefensible acts. But there was a legal limit on what I could say publicly. The servicemen and-women depicted in the photos were awaiting trial by courts-martial. In the military justice system, the judge, jury, and prosecutor are all members of the Defense Department, and any comment made by an official in the chain of command—military or civilian—risks exerting what is called “unlawful command influence” on the outcome of the trial. If I had expressed my strongly held opinion on the guilt of those involved, it could have made it impossible to hold them accountable by law. My public statements on Abu Ghraib were carefully calibrated with legal advice. Most Americans were understandably outraged at those who had committed these acts, and they wanted to know that President Bush and I were outraged as well. Unfortunately, because both of us were at the top of the chain of command, we had to take care that our words were properly measured.
In seven hours of testimony to the Senate and House Armed Services committees alongside General Myers and Army officials, I explained what we knew about the Abu Ghraib abuse and that we were determined to do our best to make sure it never happened again.* I opened my testimony by raising the question of who bore responsibility for what had taken place. “These events occurred on my watch.” I said. “As Secretary of Defense, I am accountable for them. I take full responsibility.”9
On behalf of the Department, I apologized to the President, the Congress, the country, and the Iraqi detainees who were in military custody. Promising a full investigation, I regretted that those of us at the Pentagon had not known about the abuse—and had not seen the pictures—earlier. I stressed the importance of a full, open airing of what had taken place at Abu Ghraib and of a transparent system to punish the illegal acts. “[H]owever terrible the setback,” I said, “this is also an occasion to demonstrate to the world the difference between those who believe in democracy and human rights and those who believe in rule by the terrorist code.”10 I ended with an appeal to the members of Congress, to Americans, and to the world. “Judge us by our actions,” I said. “[W]atch how a democracy deals with wrongdoing and scandal and the pain of acknowledging and correcting our own mistakes and weaknesses.”11
During my testimony, Senator Evan Bayh, a Democrat from Indiana, asked me if my resignation would help undo some of the damage to our reputation.
“That’s possible,” I responded. I did not volunteer that I had already submitted it to the President.
Though Bush told me I should not resign, the matter still was not settled in my mind. The previous week had been excruciating because the scandal was so damaging to our armed forces and the country. I generally thrived under pressure, but I wasn’t thriving now. Abu Ghraib was threatening to consume the Defense Department, eclipsing the fine work thousands of servicemen and-women did every day. The Democratic National Committee was already using Abu Ghraib to raise funds for its campaigns.
That Sunday—Mother’s Day—our children called and told me they were with me no matter what I decided. Vice President Cheney said that with Iraq in such a difficult condition, the President wanted me at the Defense Department. “You have to stay,” he urged in a phone call.
I was later reminded of an episode more than a half century earlier. In April 1952, when I was studying naval science in college, the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Hobson struck the aircraft carrier USS Wasp in the dark of night. The Hobson sank to the Atlantic seafloor with 176 men aboard.12 The commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander W. J. Tierney, went down with the vessel. A Navy board of inquiry ultimately concluded that Tierney was to be held responsible for the incident. It could not have been easy to demand accountability from a commanding officer who lost his life. Nevertheless, there is a tradition on the sea and in our Navy that with authority comes responsibility and accountability. The Navy’s venerable tradition regrettably seemed not to have taken hold to the same extent in the other military services. The case of the Hobson said a lot about leadership—and its consequences.
On May 10, 2004, President Bush came to the Pentagon for a briefing on Iraq. At the end of the briefing, I asked the President if I could see him alone. As we sat at the round table in my office overlooking the Pentagon’s River Entrance, I handed him a second letter of resignation.13 “By this letter I am resigning as Secretary of Defense,” it read. “I have concluded that the damage from the acts of abuse that happened on my watch, by individuals for whose conduct I am ultimately responsible, can best be responded to by my resignation.” As he read my letter, Bush was quiet.
“Mr. President, the Department of Defense will be better off if I resign,” I insisted.
“That’s not true,” he responded, tossing the letter across the table back to me.
I told the President my mind was made up. Nonetheless, he insisted that he wanted some time to think about it and to consult with others. The next day, Vice President Cheney came to the Pentagon. “Don, thirty-five years ago this week, I went to work for you,” he said, “and on this one you’re wrong.”
In the end, Bush refused to accept my resignation. He had concluded that my departure would not make Abu Ghraib go away, and that he preferred to have me stay to manage the problem and the Department. For some in the United States and around the world, Abu Ghraib was a metaphor. The pictures from the prison had come to symbolize the war many had come to oppose. The President may have felt that my resignation might embolden the critics of the war effort, who would frame it as an indication of the administration’s guilt and argue that it proved the Iraq war was hopeless.
As much as I believed I was right to resign, I eventually accepted the President’s decision and agreed to stay and continue to manage the scandal, while working to keep the Pentagon, two wars, and our major transformation efforts moving forward. I now believe that this was a misjudgment on my part. Abu Ghraib and its follow-on effects, including the continued drumbeat of “torture” maintained by partisan critics of the war and the President, became a damaging distraction.* More than anything else I have failed to do, and even amid my pride in the many important things we did accomplish, I regret that I did not leave at that point.
Hundreds of individuals inside the Defense Department and on independent panels outside spent thousands of hours looking into the reasons that the abuse at Abu Ghraib occurred. One thing that became clear was that the crimes had nothing whatsoever to do with interrogation or intelligence gathering. The U.S. soldiers shown in the photographs were not interrogators, nor were they involved in collecting intelligence from those detainees. Further, the individuals they were abusing were not intelligence targets undergoing interrogations. The guards were not following any guidelines or policies approved at any level. They were a small group of disturbed individuals abusing the Iraqis they were in charge of guarding.
Part of the cause of Abu Ghraib was a lack of training. Part of it was a lack of discipline and supervision. And part of it was the failure from the outset of the Department of the Army and Joint Staff to provide the appropriate and agreed-upon staff and support to General Sanchez’s headquarters in Iraq, which made it difficult, if not impossible, for his busy command to oversee adequately the growing population of Iraqi detainees in prisons like Abu Ghraib.
I directed officials at the Pentagon to cooperate fully with the numerous investigations underway—some of which I ordered. Vice Admiral Albert Church, a cousin of the crusading Senator Frank Church who led the Senate’s intelligence investigations in the 1970s, conducted one of them. “One point is clear,” he concluded. “[W]e found no direct (or even indirect) link between interrogation policy and detainee abuse.”* A nonpartisan investigation led by two former Secretaries of Defense, James Schlesinger and Harold Brown, which included the late Congresswoman Tillie Fowler and retired General Charles Horner, found that “There is no evidence of a policy of abuse promulgated by senior officials or military authorities.”16 After twelve nonpartisan, independent reviews and investigations of Defense Department detainee policies,17 not one found evidence that abuse had been encouraged or condoned by senior officials in the Defense Department—military or civilian.†
On May 29, 2004, at the height of the controversy, I attended the dedication of the World War II Memorial on the Washington Mall. A number of people came up to me to offer encouragement. The most unusual was a gray haired former president and husband of the junior senator from New York who was castigating the administration over the scandal at the same time.
Bill Clinton walked across the large reception tent and shook my hand. He said something to the effect of “Mr. Secretary, no one with an ounce of sense thinks you had any way in the world to know about the abuse taking place that night in Iraq.” He added, “You’ll get through this.”18 I appreciated the gracious gesture.
The abuse at Abu Ghraib and illegal acts committed elsewhere in U.S. military detention facilities are part of the story of detention operations in wartime, to be sure. But they are only part of the story. Between 2001 and 2006, more than eighty thousand captured personnel passed through Defense Department custody. Of those, there were only a small number of documented cases of abuse. Each time there was an allegation of wrongdoing, it was promptly investigated and prosecuted when appropriate. The rare instances of abuse should not blind the world to the professionalism and skill of the tens of thousands of Americans in uniform who were entrusted with detainee operations.
CHAPTER 38
“At the top there are no easy choices.”
—Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation
In the heat of war, human frailty can undermine discipline and corrupt behavior even among well-trained soldiers. World War II, for example, saw instances of war crimes committed against captured soldiers on both sides of the conflict.* Detention operations in war have also suffered from misjudgments. President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the internment of more than one hundred thousand Japanese Americans in desolate camps across the western United States although they were not enemies.
Even in nonmilitary, peacetime situations, detention is a difficult task, as the staggering statistics of murder, rape, and abuse in federal, state, and local prisons across the United States attest.† Whenever and wherever abuse of prisoners occurs—from Bagram to San Quentin—it is an evil deed and a shameful disservice to our country, our society, and the huge majority ofcivilian and military guards who perform their difficult duties with professionalism.
When it came to captured terrorists, I knew that housing and interrogating them would require close attention and inevitably arouse controversy. Each step of the way toward crafting a coherent policy, we confronted complicated legal and policy dilemmas. Some critics cast these issues as simple questions of right and wrong. On matter After matter, however, we found ourselves facing decisions for which the options available were all imperfect.
We were dealing with individuals capable of horrific acts of murder and destruction. Yet they were human beings in the custody of a nation that properly holds itself to high standards. Belief in human dignity is the underpinning of Western civilization and one of the chief differences between Americans and our enemy. I knew our government had to create a legal architecture that afforded detainees due process while protecting our national security. I also believed that we needed to reinforce the incentives embodied in the Geneva Conventions. The Conventions are treaties with the broad purpose of protecting innocent life by deterring violations of the laws of the war, such as targeting civilians, not just for ensuring the proper treatment of prisoners of war.
In the months and years following 9/11, most detainees in American custody were categorized as unlawful enemy combatants. They were enemies who had ignored the long-established rules of warfare and, as a result, effectively waived the privileges accorded to regular soldiers. Some of these captured detainees were terrorists and insurgents who had attacked—and, in many cases, killed—American and coalition forces. Inevitably, others would be in our custody by mistake, as is also the case in our domestic criminal justice system.
We also knew that some detainees possessed potentially time-sensitive information that could prevent future attacks and save American lives. But while it was important to obtain that information, it was also imperative to put rules and safeguards in place to govern interrogations. In keeping with my oath of office, it was my duty to help protect the country and the American people from all enemies, and to preserve and defend the Constitution. We had a responsibility to protect innocent civilians. I was among those obligated to see to the effective and proper interrogation and detention of those captured in the war against terrorists.
Since 9/11, our primary responsibility was to prevent another attack on our people. On a near daily basis we were receiving fragmentary pieces of intelligence on a range of threats. Terrorists could use suitcase radiation weapons, or vials of anthrax or smallpox, that could spread widely and quickly, devastating the populations of major American cities. The questioning of those in Department of Defense custody provided information that saved innocent American lives. I make no apology for that.
From the outset of the global war on terror, one of the Defense Department’s tasks was to fashion a process for deciding whom to hold and whom to release. I pressed military commanders and intelligence officials with a number of questions: How many detainees should we plan to hold? For how long? At what locations? For what purposes?
This was a war that could be long and have no definitive end. We were fighting irregular forces—al-Qaida and other terrorists—not military personnel of a nation that upheld the laws of war. Our enemies were extremists motivated by an ideology in which it is perfectly acceptable, indeed in their minds a sacred obligation, to kill ordinary civilians—men, women, and children.
The longer America held detainees, the more problems we would have. The guidance I gave to the Department was to be highly selective, so that we would hold as few detainees as possible. I wanted procedures in place for promptly evaluating those captured on the battlefield, to release as many as possible without compromising American lives, and to transfer as many others as possible to the custody of their home countries. As I frequently told the President and others, the last thing we wanted was for the United States, let alone the Department of Defense, to become “the world’s jailer.”3
On November 13, 2001, the day Kabul was taken by the Northern Alliance, President Bush issued a military order formally appointing the secretary of defense as the “detention authority” for captured prisoners and for establishing the outlines of a justice system to try them.4 The order was the product of a series of discussions between White House and Justice Department lawyers.
The President’s order required that the Defense Department establish facilities to house suspected terrorists and conduct “military commissions to sit at any time and any place, consistent with such guidance regarding time and place as the Secretary of Defense may provide.”5The order was based directly on decisions that had been made by presidents of both political parties during wartime, most recently by Franklin Roosevelt during World War II. Indeed, much of the language was taken verbatim from Roosevelt’s order establishing military commissions in 1942, which had been upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court of the United States.6
The relevant sentences of the President’s order were brief, but the tasks they set out were colossal. They would require the work of thousands of people for hundreds of thousands of hours. Bush was delegating wartime responsibilities to the Department of Defense that had not been used by our government in more than half a century.
I agreed with the President’s decision to shift from a peacetime approach, which treated terrorist acts as law enforcement problems, to a wartime footing, which deemed terrorism as an act of war. This fundamental change in philosophy was challenged by some who preferred trying terrorists in civilian courts of law After the fact and treating them as common criminals. The reality was that America had tried that approach for decades, and it had proven inadequate for stopping terrorist attacks before they occurred. Treating the conflict as a war—coupled with Congress’ september 18, 2001 authorization of the use of all “necessary and appropriate force” in the fight against terrorists—was the proper way to move beyond a reactive policy of retaliation and achieve the President’s goal of establishing proactive measures to prevent terrorist attacks against America.
Still I questioned whether our military was the appropriate institution to hold captured enemy combatants. From World War II through Korea and Vietnam to the first Gulf War, it was true that the military had shouldered the responsibility for the detention of captured enemy forces. But as I saw it, this unconventional conflict—against an amorphous enemy and with no finite duration—did not fit neatly within the laws of war pertaining to conventional conflicts. When it came to detention, our military had been schooled in holding enemies of regular armed forces—that is, lawful combatants entitled to prisoner of war (POW) status. Our armed forces did not have experience or established procedures for dealing with captured terrorists who, under the laws of war, were not entitled to the privileges of POWs.
What the President directed us to undertake required the advice of attorneys familiar with U.S. statutes and our international agreements. One of the notable changes I had observed from my service in the Pentagon in the 1970s was the prevalence of lawyers—in almost every office and in nearly every meeting. By the time I returned as secretary in 2001, there were a breathtaking ten thousand lawyers, military and civilian, involved at nearly every level of the chain of command across the globe. That the Department of Defense could function at all with ten thousand lawyers parsing its every move is astounding.
The number of laws and regulations relevant to the Defense Department had exploded correspondingly. Most elements of warfare in the twenty-first century were governed by complex legal requirements, from tactical rules of engagement to strategic issues involving negotiations over the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. It was a considerably bigger challenge than two and a half decades earlier, but we needed to ensure that the Department was always in compliance with the law.
Many fine attorneys worked on detainee affairs, including Harvard law graduate and former Army Captain William “Jim” Haynes II, who as general counsel was the Pentagon’s chief legal adviser. Haynes spared no effort to protect the interests of the armed forces while ensuring the Department’s activities were respectful of our nation’s laws. He and his large staffseized the nettle of detention issues from the outset. Haynes was aided by Dan Dell’Orto, a talented career civil servant and retired Army lawyer who had served in the Pentagon during the Clinton administration. The breadth and complexity of the issues Haynes, Dell’Orto, and the general counsel’s staffdealt with on any given day—personnel, procurement, courts-martial, promotions, intelligence, contracting, international law, and treaties—rivaled the workload of any government legal office.
The President’s November 13 order required that the Defense Department establish new rules for wartime detention. The guidance handed down by the President was that all detainees in U.S. custody were to be treated humanely, regardless of their legal status.7In a separate Department of Defense order to the combatant commanders on January 19, 2002, I echoed the President’s order and directed all personnel to “treat [al-Qaida and Taliban detainees] humanely” and “in a manner consistent with the principles of the Geneva Conventions.”8
Though isolated cases of abuse and mistreatment of detainees have occurred in every war, American military forces have a long record of restraint and professionalism when it comes to holding captured enemies. After his army’s success on the frozen fields outside Princeton, New Jersey, George Washington issued unequivocal orders on the treatment of captured British soldiers: “Treat them with humanity, and Let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British army in their Treatment of our unfortunate brethren.”9 Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Dick Myers and I wanted to make sure that the military upheld this high tradition. Even while fighting an enemy whose use of brutality was the norm, we insisted on aligning our military’s conduct with the humane principles on which our Republic was founded.
In November 2001, a violent rebellion of Taliban and al-Qaida detainees in northern Afghanistan brought into focus the dangers and difficulties of managing fanatical killers in custody. General Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek Northern Alliance commander, as well as a powerful and tough warlord, held several hundred Taliban and al-Qaida foot soldiers in Qala-i-Jangi, a nineteenth-century mud-and-brick fortress near Mazar-e-Sharif.* Among the Qala-i-Jangi prisoners that November was an English-speaking man who looked out of place. His name was John Walker Lindh, and he would become known as “the American Taliban.”
During the questioning of Lindh and his fellow prisoners, two CIA agents asked him about his background and the circumstances of his capture on the battlefield among the al-Qaida and Taliban fighters. In the middle of the interrogation, a detainee leaped toward the two American intelligence operatives, touching off a prisonwide rebellion. The ensuing battle pitted Dostum’s few Northern Alliance guards, a handful of British Special Air Service (SAS) troops, U.S. Special Forces, and the two CIA agents against several hundred Taliban and al-Qaida, many committed to fighting to the death. The battle raged for three days. The prisoners managed to capture a Northern Alliance cache of weapons—including AK-47s, rocket launchers, mortars, and grenades.10 U.S. AC-130s and Black Hawk helicopters came to support the pinned-down coalition forces while Taliban and al-Qaida fighters held out in the basement of Qala-i-Jangi.11 Only when they were flushed out of the fortress with water did the fighting end. Before the battle there had been three hundred al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners, but only eighty-six emerged to surrender.12
The battle led to the deaths of some forty Northern Alliance soldiers, while another two hundred were injured.13 U.S. and British Special Forces also had taken casualties. Johnny Micheal Spann, one of the two CIA officers at Qala-i-Jangi prison that weekend, was killed in action in the first minutes of the battle, becoming the first American to die in combat operations in Afghanistan.14 His body was booby-trapped with a hidden grenade by the al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners so those recovering his remains would be wounded or killed. The episode was another reminder that many of those detained were there for a reason—they were violent, vicious, and would not hesitate to kill again.
After the toppling of the Taliban, there was no central government in Afghanistan and no functioning criminal justice or prison systems. As coalition forces eliminated pockets of resistance in the early weeks of January 2002, the Northern Alliance was holding hundreds of suspected al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners—including the survivors of the battle at Qala-i-Jangi prison. Most detainees were vetted informally and sent home; others were permitted to join the Northern Alliance. As U.S. forces established a few large bases in Afghanistan, a growing number of detainees began to accumulate in military custody.
Some detainees were supporters of the Taliban who had joined the fight against the Northern Alliance and coalition as foot soldiers. Others were senior Taliban leaders. Still others were foreigners, many affiliated with al-Qaida. They had come to Afghanistan from various corners of the world—the Middle East, Europe, Southeast Asia, and Africa—to conduct jihad against the West and to kill Americans. The origins and records of some of the Northern Alliance prisoners were unclear. These men had been picked up in bad company, and some were terrorists or the terrorists’ allies. But others may have been innocent people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. While we couldn’t afford to release dangerous men with important intelligence information in their heads, we certainly didn’t want to hold mere bystanders.
In analyzing the legal status of the detainees, government lawyers examined the Geneva Conventions. Updated and refashioned in 1949, the modern Geneva Conventions reflected the fact that Axis powers had committed horrific crimes against noncombatants during World War II. The premise of the 1949 Geneva Conventions is that a civilized and responsible nation, even while fighting and killing enemy soldiers, should abide by humane rules and mitigate the brutality of war. The Conventions regulate the way parties to Geneva are to treat enemy prisoners, setting up a system of incentives to encourage combatants to obey the laws of war and discourage the loss of innocent life.
The architects of the modern Geneva Conventions also envisioned and assumed a degree of reciprocity and mutuality of interest among the warring parties. The Conventions’ drafters knew about irregular warfare, such as that of the French anti-Nazi resistance, but they did not have in mind or prescribe rules for asymmetric warfare that deliberately targets civilians—like al-Qaida’s large-scale use of suicide “martyrs.” Al-Qaida’s videos of beheadings publicly celebrate cruelty, proving beyond a doubt that al-Qaida does not treat detainees humanely, especially Americans.
George W. Bush was not the first president to face the issue of whether terrorists should be granted the protections of the Geneva Conventions. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and its proxies pushed for adding rules to the Geneva Conventions that would grant such privileges to, and therefore legitimize, Soviet-backed guerrillas. President Ronald Reagan stood firmly against those revisions.15 He said the amendments giving irregular combatants the full protection of the Geneva Conventions would “undermine humanitarian law and endanger civilians in war.”16 The Reagan administration also was convinced that rewarding irregular combatants with the full rights and privileges of lawful combatants would not only make a mockery of the Geneva Conventions, but would undermine one of their key purposes, which was to protect civilians.
At that time, the Washington Post lauded President Reagan’s position in an editorial entitled, “Hijacking the Geneva Conventions.”17 The Post approvingly quoted Reagan: “[W]e must not, and need not, give recognition and protection to terrorist groups as a price for progress in humanitarian law.” The New York Times editorial board agreed, calling the proposal “a shield for terrorists.” It added:
President Reagan has faced more important but probably no tougher decisions than whether to seek ratification of revisions to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. If he said yes, that would improve protection for prisoners of war and civilians in wartime, but at the price of new legal protection for guerrillas and possible terrorists. He decided to say no, a judgment that deserves support.18
By 2002, both the New York Times and the Washington Post editorial boards had swung a full 180 degrees in the opposite direction.19
Consistent with the Reagan administration precedent, there was broad consensus in the Bush administration and, at least initially, among legal experts across the political spectrum, that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to al-Qaida terrorists in U.S. custody.*The logic was simple: Al-Qaida was not a nation-state and was not a party to the Geneva Conventions.† Its fighters also did not meet the four fundamental requirements for lawful combatant and prisoner of war status in the Third Geneva Convention: operating with a responsible command structure; wearing identifiable uniforms; carrying their arms openly; and obeying the laws of war. Al-Qaida terrorists, by contrast, bombed marketplaces posing as merchants and shop-goers—with explosives under their clothes, in their car trunks, or hidden on children. The nineteen 9/11 hijackers posed as businessmen in suits and commandeered civilian airliners to attack civilians, killing three thousand Americans and citizens from ninety other nations. Such deliberate, surprise attacks on civilian targets demonstrated nothing but contempt for the Geneva Conventions.
I agreed that if the United States automatically accorded the privileges of POW status to every individual captured on the battlefield (or more privileges, such as the right to appeal their detention in U.S. courts), regardless of their compliance with the Geneva Conventions, there would no longer be any incentive whatsoever for enemies to abide by the Geneva rules. Terrorists could have the best of both worlds: all of the advantages of being irregular, unlawful combatants but without any of the consequences. If accorded POW status, terrorists would not be required to give up any intelligence they possessed. Under the Third Geneva Convention, POWs are only obligated to provide name, rank, serial number, and date of birth—the most basic information—when questioned.* That means that even a number of the interrogation methods used every day in police stations across the United States are forbidden. The Geneva Conventions also require that POWs be given access to athletic uniforms, musical instruments, alcohol, tobacco, and the military justice system used by the detaining force.†
Because neither Taliban forces nor al-Qaida terrorists met the unambiguous requirements for POW status, they were not entitled to its special protections. This determination was not “abandoning” or “bypassing” the Geneva Conventions as many have erroneously alleged.23 It was, in fact, adhering to the letter and spirit of the Conventions. President Bush directed that as a matter of policy the treatment of al-Qaida and Taliban detainees would meet a high standard. He saw this not so much as a legal obligation, but as simply the right thing to do.
The plain words of the Geneva Conventions support the position he ordered, as did the written words of his most prominent administration officials. Indeed, in February 2002, William Taft IV, the senior legal adviser to Secretary of State Powell, advised White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales: “The lawyers all agree that al Qaeda or Taliban soldiers are presumptively not POWs.”24 Powell apparently felt strongly enough in this case to put his thoughts in writing. His preferred option, he wrote, entailed announcing “publicly” that “members of al Qaeda as a group and the Taliban individually or as a group are not entitled to Prisoner of War status under the Convention.”25
Though it was clear that the privileges of the Geneva Conventions did not apply to terrorists, there was serious debate about whether the Geneva Conventions applied in any way to America’s conflict with the Taliban regime. The Taliban were the de facto government of Afghanistan, a country that was a party to the Geneva Conventions. However, officials and lawyers in the Justice Department concluded that even though Afghanistan had ratified the Geneva Conventions some years before, the Taliban had not been recognized as that country’s government, either by the United States or by most other countries, nor did they actually control a viable nation-state. Because Afghanistan was deemed a “failed state,” Attorney General John Ashcroft and Justice Department officials maintained that the President was not required by law to apply the Geneva Conventions to America’s war against the Taliban.26
Those of us in the Defense Department did not address Justice’s legal position, but we had a different view as a matter of policy, perhaps none more strenuously than the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. One day in late January 2002, General Myers strode purposefully into my office with a concerned look on his face. Several days before, White House legal memos leaked to the press had given the impression that President Bush might be considering not applying the Geneva Conventions at all in Afghanistan, based on the Department of Justice’s legal opinion.27Myers felt strongly that it would be a mistake not to apply the Conventions to the Taliban. We couldn’t risk the perception that we were discarding long-established rules of international law and our treaty obligations.
I concluded that Myers was correct. Knowing that administration lawyers were weighing in, I wanted to make sure President Bush heard the Chairman’s and the Defense Department’s views.28 I asked Rice to set up an NSC meeting on the subject so that we could make the Department’s case.
At the NSC meeting on February 4, 2002, Myers and Doug Feith presented our position, which was based on the language and purposes of the Geneva Conventions. We contended that the U.S. government should not use a legal argument to avoid applying the Geneva Conventions to the conflict in Afghanistan. The memo we brought to the meeting set out our position:
· A “pro-Convention” position reinforces [the US Government]’s key themes in the war on terrorism.
· The essence of the Convention is the distinction between soldiers and civilians (i.e., between combatants and non-combatants).
· Terrorists are reprehensible precisely because they negate that distinction by purposefully targeting civilians.
· The Convention aims to protect civilians by requiring soldiers to wear uniforms and otherwise distinguish themselves from civilians.
· The Convention creates an incentive system for good behavior. The key incentive is that soldiers who play by the rules get POW status if they [are] captured.
· The US can apply the Convention to the Taliban (and al-Qaida) detainees as a matter of policy without having to give them POW status because none of the detainees remaining in US hands played by the rules.29
The DoD memo concluded by summing up what we thought the U.S. position should be:
· Humane treatment for all detainees.
· US is applying the Convention. All detainees are getting the treatment they are (or would be) entitled to under the Convention.
· US supports the Convention and promotes universal respect for it.
· The Convention does not squarely address circumstances that we are confronting in this new global war against terrorism, but while we work through the legal questions, we are upholding the principle of universal applicability of the Convention.30
Though the Justice Department offered its well-considered legal view, we noted that the Taliban was effectively the government of a country that was a party to Geneva. Our position was that it was “[h]ighly dangerous if countries make application of [the] Convention hinge on subjective or moral judgments as to the quality or decency of the enemy’s government.”31 Powell’s position, as outlined in his January 25 memorandum, was in line with ours.32 The discussion was the sort of thing that I thought would have done the drafters of the Geneva Conventions proud. Justice Department officials were doing their jobs: defining the President’s flexibility within the law. And the policy makers in the Department of Defense were doing theirs: making clear that while it is mandatory to stay within the law, not everything that is lawful is necessarily the best policy.
President Bush was apparently persuaded by Myers and Feith’s arguments, and on February 7, he set forth his conclusions in a memo.33 While he didn’t challenge the Justice Department’s legal reasoning, he seemed to feel that it risked putting the administration in a position where it could be criticized for not respecting the Geneva Conventions. Ironically, of course, the Bush administration came under exactly that unfair criticism, notwithstanding the fact that the President had explicitly decided that his administration would take a pro–Geneva Conventions stance.
In a conventional war, detention issues would have fallen under the responsibility of the military commanders in each theater of operations. But CENTCOM commander Franks was reluctant to have hundreds of those captured remain in the theater as his command’s responsibility. There were no existing satisfactory Afghan prisons that he could use, nor were there easily discernible front lines behind which detainees could be safely held. The rebellion at the Qala-i-Jangi prison demonstrated the challenge vividly. Additionally, Franks and I agreed that frontline American troops would be better used for counterterrorism missions than as prison guards or interrogators.
I thought it preferable to have Afghanistan take on the responsibility of holding detainees captured on its soil. Then, with our assistance, Afghans could begin to seek the swift transfer of non-Afghans to their countries of origin for detention there.34 If a limited number of detainees were going to have to be in U.S. custody, I preferred to hand over major detention responsibilities to another department or agency. Suffice it to say that there were no departments of the government eagerly coming forward to assist. Another possibility I considered was to create an entirely new entity with the explicit purpose of administering detention policy and operations, running tribunals and trial proceedings, negotiating with other countries around the world for the further detention of individuals, and coordinating competing interagency interests. There was no enthusiasm for this approach either, and DoD was selected.
President Bush’s November 2001 military order provided for the detention of enemy combatants “at an appropriate location designated by the Secretary of Defense outside or within the United States.” To comply with the order, a number of locations were discussed, including some in the United States. The crumbling federal prison on Alcatraz Island or the maximum security Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, were considered. So were other possibilities—such as a ship that could be permanently stationed in the Arabian Sea and island military bases in the Pacific and Indian oceans.35 Attention then turned to the U.S. military facility near the southeastern tip of Cuba.
Christopher Columbus sailed into the narrow stretch of bay named Guantánamo on his second trip to the New World in 1494. In the wake of the Spanish-American War, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a treaty with the Cuban government establishing the U.S. Navy base on Cuban soil, and leasing the land for two thousand dollars annually. I traveled to the sleepy base twice in the 1950s, as a midshipman aboard U.S. Navy battleships, and later as a naval aviator for training. With palm trees and beaches, the U.S. Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay, or “Gitmo” as it was called, was a low-key facility used to refuel and resupply Navy ships and aircraft patrolling the Caribbean.
When asked by journalists why Gitmo was chosen to house detainees, I described it as “the least worst place.”36 Grammar aside, the phrase conveyed my uneasy feelings about the entire detainee dilemma. We had made the best possible choice among a number of unattractive options. It was chosen because it was far from the ever-shifting battlefield in Afghanistan, where U.S. troops had to guard against the possibility of enemy assaults and attempted escapes. It was controlled entirely by the United States military, even though it was not then subject to American legal jurisdiction. It had some existing infrastructure, including a naval hospital. Its use would not further complicate diplomatic relations with a host nation, since our relations with Fidel Castro’s Cuba were poor at best.
Additionally, Guantánamo had a history of use as a detention facility dating back to the Carter years, when it was first used to house Cuban and Haitian refugees. The Carter administration and its successors through the Clinton administration did not afford the refugees the same legal rights as Americans because they were neither on U.S. soil nor U.S. citizens. In 2001, Bush administration lawyers determined that foreign nationals held at Gitmo would not have automatic access to U.S. courts, which had also been the case for the refugees that had been held there by several previous administrations of both political parties.
On January 11, 2002, al-Qaida and Taliban detainees began arriving at Guantánamo Bay. Initially, they were housed at Camp X-Ray, an existing facility built during the Clinton administration for illegal immigrants. We intended this arrangement to be temporary, pending construction of appropriate, modern facilities, which were completed within a few months. Soon After the first detainees arrived, we suffered a costly self-inflicted wound. Intending to demonstrate openness to the press, and to showcase the humane treatment of the detainees, the Pentagon public affairs office released photographs taken while the detainees were still in temporary quarters at Camp X-Ray. The photographs showed prisoners wearing orange jumpsuits behind chain-link and barbed-wire fences. Some wore blacked-out goggles and had their hands tied behind their backs during transfers, so that they could not attack their guards. The photographs, with primitive facilities and conditions, became enduring images of Guantánamo. They were repeatedly referred to by critics of the Bush administration long After the permanent, state-of-the-art facilities were completed. It was another example of how little was understood about war in the information age.
Contrary to the notions suggested by those early photos, the detainees at Gitmo had warm showers, toiletries, water, clean clothes, blankets, culturally appropriate meals, prayer mats, Korans, modern medical attention equal to that provided to our troops, exercise, writing materials, and regular visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
In early 2002, the U.S. military’s Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) sent up, through the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, a construction proposal for a permanent detention facility at Guantánamo Bay. The proposal, presented to me through General Pete Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs and a former SOUTHCOM commander, envisioned a costly and seemingly permanent two-thousand-bed facility. Given the battlefield pressures to move detainees out of the areas of operations, military commanders wanted to move as many as possible as quickly as possible to Guantánamo Bay.
Government organizations tend to use whatever resources are available to them. I knew that if I approved such a large facility, our forces would almost certainly ship enough prisoners to fill it. I wanted to preempt that tendency. I told General Pace that I thought we would be better off with a considerably smaller facility, and that I wanted to generate downward pressure on the number of inmates to be sent to Gitmo. I said I wanted transfers of detainees to Guantánamo Bay to be kept to a minimum—to only individuals of high interest for interrogation who posed a threat to our nation’s security. Pace came back with revised proposals several times. On each go-round, the size of the proposed expansion of the facility became smaller and more specialized, to handle only the toughest and most dangerous cases. It was not an easy process for General Pace, who had to balance the pressures from CENTCOM’s battlefield commanders with pressures from a secretary of defense who was dead set against making it easier for them to avoid tough choices by simply sending all questionable cases off to Gitmo. Pace was getting squeezed, but typically he handled the situation with good humor. At one point, when he was preparing to present yet another version of the proposal, he showed up for our meeting wearing a flak jacket, a helmet, and a grin. Finally I agreed to build a facility that could house several hundred inmates, not the two thousand originally proposed. The facility was designed so it could be expanded, but only if I became convinced in the future that there were sound reasons to house additional terrorists there.
I instructed our commanders to develop a selection process to winnow down the number of detainees to be held for long periods. I wanted captured enemies to first be sorted out in the field according to predetermined intelligence and safety criteria rather than just being sent to Guantánamo. For all but a few of the most important and dangerous detainees, I wanted them to stay in the country and have the new Afghan government begin to exercise responsibility for them.37 I urged Powell and the State Department to encourage Afghans (and later Iraqis) to take on the responsibility for holding lower-level detainees captured in their country.38
I also called for an ongoing evaluation of the detainees. I knew we ran the risk of mistakenly releasing some people who might attack us in the future, just as is the case in our civilian prison system, but I saw this as a risk we had to take. Otherwise we risked alienating populations whose assistance we needed and do an injustice to individuals who were not actually involved in terrorism.
As the number of detainees at Gitmo rose, I pushed and prodded senior Pentagon officials on almost a weekly basis as to when and how detainees could be transferred to their home countries. “You have to get your arms around this detainee thing,” I wrote in one snowflake.39“We need to get rid of more detainees,” I told Doug Feith five days later. “How do we do it?”40 And three months later I urgently wrote again, “I do want some people out of Guantánamo sent to their own countries. I really mean it. I want that done. I would like a report every two days on what is happening on this.”41
I repeatedly urged the State Department to try to persuade the detainees’ countries of origin to take responsibility for captured combatants under sensible conditions as soon as detainees began arriving in 2002.42 In the first several years the Guantánamo Bay detention facility was open, State Department officials had little success in pressing foreign governments on the matter. Most foreign governments did not want to take suspected terrorists any more than we wanted to hold them.* Despite my efforts to keep numbers down, Gitmo’s detainee population ballooned beyond 650 in its first two years.†
One of my biggest disappointments as secretary of defense was my inability to marshal the resources within our government to help persuade America and the world of the truth about Gitmo: The most heavily scrutinized detention facility in the world was also one of the most professionally run in history. Irresponsible charges leveled by human rights groups, by editorial pages, and, most shamefully, by members of the U.S. Congress who had every opportunity and reason to know better, unfairly tarnished Guantánamo’s reputation—and the reputations of our country and of the men and women of the American military who served at the facility. Even worse, the inaccurate allegations were exploited by terrorists to improve their fundraising and recruitment. This, in fact, was a component of the enemy’s propaganda strategy. In one al-Qaida training manual, the so-called Manchester document, the first lesson if captured was to “insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by State Security before the judge.”43 Its second lesson was to “complain of mistreatment while in prison.”44 The hope, of course, was that some gullible people in the West would believe their repeated fabrications. Because of the stigma that clung to Gitmo, the terrorists found it an easy case to make.
In May 2005, Newsweek magazine wrote that U.S. guards at Gitmo had flushed a Koran down a toilet “in an attempt to rattle suspects” for interrogation purposes.45 Unnamed sources, Newsweek said, had verified the allegation. The story set off a firestorm of protest in a number of Muslim cities. Commentators denounced the troops serving at Gitmo. Demonstrations and riots erupted around the world. In Afghanistan, seventeen people died in the rioting.
After a thorough examination by the Defense Department, the individual believed to have made the original allegation recanted. We then asked Newsweek to withdraw its story, but its editor would only express “regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and [we] extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst.”46 A number of those to whom Newsweek extended its sympathies were already dead. And the reputations of those military personnel serving at Gitmo had been besmirched again, as was the reputation of our country—to the benefit of the terrorists.
It was a grim irony. We deliberately made the facility transparent, which made the repeated inaccuracies all the more irresponsible. Almost from its inception, the Defense Department arranged for regular and well-attended visits by members of Congress, representatives of news organizations, opinion leaders, and other visitors and observers from around the world. In the five years After detainees began to arrive, some 145 members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, took advantage of the Department’s open invitation to visit Gitmo. There were representatives from across the executive branch—the State Department, the CIA, the FBI, the Department of Justice, and a whole host of DoD agencies and organizations—stationed there. Over time, more than one thousand U.S. and international journalists visited. We arranged for high-level European parliamentary groups to visit. Hundreds of lawyers were given access to the detainees there, as was the International Committee of the Red Cross on a regular basis.
Nearly every observer who visited Gitmo recognized that it was safer, better, cleaner, and more professionally run than most American federal, state, and local prisons, and certainly better than most foreign prisons. A senior Belgian government official said After visiting Gitmo, “At the level of the detention facilities, it is a model prison, where people are better treated than in Belgian prisons.”47 More money was spent on religiously sensitive meals for detainees at Gitmo than on meals for the American troops stationed there. The average weight gain per detainee was twenty pounds. Detainees were given Korans in their native languages. Five times each day the Muslim call to prayer sounded across the facility, and numerous arrows indicated the direction of Mecca. Detainees had access to a basketball and volleyball court, ping-pong tables, and board games. Some detainees chose to take classes in Pashtu, Arabic, and English. There were even movie nights, featuring popular Hollywood fare (which I suppose could raise a host of troubling questions). They watched sports events like the World Cup. The library had thirty-five hundred volumes available in thirteen languages (Harry Potter was the most requested). They received medical, dental, psychiatric, and optometric care—health care equal to that provided to our troops.48
Critics nonetheless continued to denounce Guantánamo as a “law-free zone” and “legal black hole.”49 Amnesty International called it “the gulag of our times.”50 The number-two Democratic leader in the U.S. Senate, Dick Durbin, compared American behavior at Guantánamo Bay to that of “Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime—Pol Pot or others—that had no concern for human beings.”51 It would have been a disgraceful comment from someone who hadn’t known better, but coming from a senior congressional leader speaking on the Senate floor, it was particularly damaging and inexcusable.
As the issue of detainees became increasingly politicized, even some senior administration officials, including ones who had been involved in the discussions that led to the administration’s detention and interrogation policies and the establishment of Gitmo, were less than supportive.52 They were anonymously cited in news reports “on background” concurring with President Bush’s opponents that Guantánamo was a stain on America’s reputation and should be closed.53 In late 2003, I wrote a memo to Secretary of State Powell, Attorney General Ashcroft, and National Security Adviser Rice saying:
[T]here continues to be static concerning the handling of the detainees at Guantánamo. I suggest that: If an agency is dissatisfied with the Administration’s policy, they propose a change to the policy to the NSC [or if] an agency doesn’t like a particular result from the interagency process (for example, a decision on a specific detainee), they elevate their concern to the NSC and propose an alternative.54
Precious few were stepping forth to defend the President’s policy and rationale. “Administration policy on detainees in GTMO is clearly an issue about which there is not unanimous agreement—in the Administration, in the Congress, in the country or in the world,” I wrote in my December 2003 memo, adding:
That being the case, and since, nonetheless, it is our Administration’s policy, it would help if all agencies would help defend the Administration’s policy and explain the reasons for it to the Congress, to the country and to the world. I don’t think DoD is the best communicator of the Administration’s policy on detainees, since it is seen as a legal matter. Nonetheless, we are supporting it energetically. It would be appreciated if all agencies would pitch in and help carry the message.55
I was perfectly willing to shutter the facility if a better alternative could have been found that would be as effective at obtaining intelligence and preventing terrorists from returning to the fight. But no alternative to Gitmo was proposed. Nor did I receive any replies to my memo. Meanwhile, the public drumbeat against Guantánamo Bay intensified.
Gitmo, though damned across the political spectrum, offered a solution—however imperfect—to the problem of keeping high-risk detainees out of circulation. What was the alternative—letting them go and then hoping to catch them as they were committing their next terrorist attack against the American people? Dedicated men and women of the U.S. armed forces performed an enormously valuable service in running a first-rate detention and interrogation operation at Guantánamo. The base has logged a proud record of professionalism and success. Detainees routinely attacked the military guards there—kicking, biting, head butting, and throwing “cocktails” of feces and urine.56 The prisoners demonstrated remarkable resourcefulness in turning personal items into deadly weapons: blankets into garrotes, sinks into bludgeons, and wires into daggers. The guards demonstrated impressive restraint. In those few cases where the military guards were goaded by detainees and crossed the line, disciplinary action was taken.
To date, not a single prisoner has escaped from Guantánamo, and hundreds of terrorists have been kept from returning to the fight. At Gitmo, intelligence officials have uncovered information that has helped prevent terrorist attacks—information about al-Qaida’s leadership, the identities of operatives, terrorist communication methods, training programs, travel patterns, funding mechanisms, and plans to attack the United States and our allies. Detainees have provided information on bank accounts, al-Qaida front companies, improvised explosive devices, and tactics.57 Coalition intelligence officials and our forces on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq have used this information to help protect the American people.
Despite the more than $500 million that U.S. taxpayers have invested in state-of-the-art facilities at Gitmo, and in operations there since 9/11, both of the 2008 presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, pandered to popular misconceptions by promising to shut it down.58 On his second full day in office, President Obama vowed to close the facility “promptly.”59 Years later, however, Guantánamo remains open, undoubtedly because the Obama administration, despite its promises, has not found a practical alternative. Eventually it may be closed, but it will be closed at great financial cost. More important, the problems Guantánamo was established to address will remain.