 Welcome to Free Thoughts. I'm Aaron Powell. I'm Adam Bates. Our guest today is Andrew Turner. He's a former Navy non-commissioned officer who served as a member of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp in detainee operations. Welcome to Free Thoughts, Andrew. Thank you. Start by telling us what is Guantanamo Bay. Well, obviously it's a big body of water right on the southeast most corner of the island of Cuba. But as we know it, as most people know it here in the U.S., we think of the large naval installation that's been there for quite a few decades and in more recent years has housed the Joint Task Force and Joint Detention Group. And so how did you end up there then? So in 2009, I was based here in D.C., had just returned from deployments to the Middle East and they needed volunteers to go down to work in the Joint Detention Group. The person that was initially supposed to be slated for that spot, the next day found that he would have to re-enlist to take any more deployments and decided that wasn't going to happen. So he backed out and I got dropped right into another deployment. So previous to going to Gitmo, had you had any experience in corrections and in prisons, anything of that nature? I'd had some training with detainee operations with the military. That was part of, I was with a mobile security element out of Guam that had us deployed to the Middle East quite a bit. Explain that for the lay people listening. So when you say detainee operations, who are detainees and what are the operations you're involved with? So as the military and the government looks at what a detainee is, a detainee obviously is someone that's not been found guilty of anything, has not been tried. This is somebody that many times in past decades we would have called a prisoner of war, but there's that gray area there where are we even in a war and so they had to have some type of a name to fit and that became the detainee operations. So it's a little obviously different than corrections because it could be a very mobile thing of even just being out in the desert, setting up Constantina wire around a big group of people and standing there guarding them up to and including escorts and other things. So then these detainees are these people who got picked up through, you know, we like identified, here's a potential terrorist or here's someone who's participated in attack and we're going to, you know, through kind of a law enforcement so we're going to hunt them down and capture them or are these people who, you know, the prisoner of war picture of, you know, there was a battle and these were the people that we picked up on the battlefield. I mean, you know, it could have been any number of those situations. It could have been at times they would even push us over into humanitarian missions to, which was strange because, you know, you would be guarding this humanitarian camp but it almost felt like detainees at the same time. It was almost treated in the same way. I mean, obviously you were the, there wasn't this concept of fair, firm and impartial because in a humanitarian case these people weren't there being detained but it almost felt that way. So it was really hard to say one way or another what somebody would have been picked up for or what our mission even was sometimes. Well, correct me if I'm wrong but at least in the Afghanistan context my understanding is some of these detainees weren't picked up by our government at all. They may have been picked up by the Northern Alliance. They may have been picked up by Pakistani intelligence and then they ended up in our jurisdiction and in our care. They weren't people that our government had even acted against in the first place. Some of these people just kind of ended up as detainees. That's what I've been led to believe more recently too. Most of that information I'm getting from the media myself. I don't know where many of them were picked up or why a lot of that came out after the fact since I've been back from Guantanamo in 2010. Did you have a notion of what it would be like before you went there that then differ from your expectations? Oh, it definitely differed from my expectations. Going down there, I had to think about it like this. I didn't agree with the mission but in 2009 President Obama had said, we're going to close the place. So I said, okay, I want to be part of that. I want to make sure that to be there to see this place close and kind of get this stain off of the entire country, this is a good thing to do to see this place close. While down there come to find out it wasn't going to close, still isn't closed. By the time I left there, nine months or so later, it was pretty disheartening to really understand that we probably will never see that place close. What was this stain? I mean just that because at a very basic level having facilities where we detain people involved in war or attack seems reasonable. Well, I mean you're looking at, we've set up one court that has barely tried a small handful of people. At one point we had over 700 down there yet they've successfully tried 15 or less. There's still several cases that have been sitting in that court for years which could have easily been handled by our federal courts to focus on due process because my understanding and feel free to correct me lawyers is the Constitution doesn't just apply to US citizens and so in this situation I mean there is habeas rights and due process that should have always been granted along and due process to me isn't 15 years after the fact. Right, well there is this, I mean part of the reason these people are kept in Cuba in the first place the arguments early in the Bush administration were that well they're not being held in the United States. So they weren't being held as prisoners of war abroad. They weren't being held as domestic criminals within the US context. So this creation of this kind of gray zone nebulous legal area was intentional and the idea of this enemy combatant as opposed to a prisoner of war. So I think that's correct. I think that's creating this kind of hybrid or ad hoc tribunal slash court system that was by design. So why put these people in a military base in Cuba as opposed to locking them up in prison in the US putting them in detention facilities here? Is there a reason of benefit from the US perspective and having them there and then keeping them there for as long as we have? Had you asked me that 10 years ago when I first started seeing some of my fellow Navy brethren heading there to work? I would have believed that it was easier and cheaper and a better solution. Now in 2017 I kind of look back at what I've figured out from reading from digging into information from meeting with government officials when I've had the opportunity. And it seems that it was easier to politically it was easier to keep them there than ever bring them to the States because obviously then especially the whole concept of closing it makes it much more difficult because then they're going to say, oh, who wants them in our backyard? They're going to escape. They're going to become a target for other radicals when the reality is how many of them were really radicals in the first place and they may have then become radicals by locking them up for 10 plus years without any type of trial or due process rights. So yeah, there's basically three arguments that we run into different conceptions of why this, why aren't they in Supermax in Colorado for instance. And one thing that people will say is, well, the prisons can't hold them. We can't be sure that they won't escape from prisons. Now, that seems a little dubious because people don't escape from Supermax and a lot of these people are not particularly prone to escaping whether physically or just based on who they are. Another argument is that our court system is not equipped to handle these kinds of terrorism cases. Although domestic terrorism prosecutions have very high conviction rates. And then the other, I think the more cynical argument that is out there is there is not enough evidence or the evidence is tainted to such a degree that these cases simply couldn't be prosecuted in domestic courts, whether confession, allegations of tortured confessions or the evidence just doesn't exist to convict them. And in that circumstance, they would have to let these people go. So where in that area do you see yourself and why? I mean, you know, the concept of they would escape is the farthest thing from the truth. You know, I fully support them being brought to the U.S., tried in federal court, and if found guilty, you know, serving out their time in Supermax or in the maximum security at Terre Haute, it isn't like they haven't brought somebody from Gitmo and tried them successfully and put them in Supermax and they've stayed there. And there's not been one attack that's been talked about. There's not been... So that argument, you know, is obviously fluff to kind of scare people. Then there's, you know, there's always that argument saying, well, then it's gonna cost us money. But the reality is we're paying over $2 million a year per detainee to keep them in Gitmo. At Supermax, you're looking at 80 to 100,000 a year. I mean, especially for a time right now where we're talking about saving money to be putting money into a budget to keep this place open and expand it that they've talked about recently, just seems ridiculous because there's no... There's absolutely no purpose for it anymore. So I believe in President Trump's budget request, I think it was something in neighborhood of $1.1 billion to maintaining and or expanding the facilities at Gitmo. So that's a $1.1 billion is quite a bit of money to house. How many people are left at Gitmo? I think 60, 60, 65, something like that. They've reduced it quite a lot. And at this point, we won't see probably any more leave unless they somehow decided to bring them here. So what is daily life like there? Are both for the servicemen stationed there in the guards and so on and then for the detainees themselves? So obviously it's 12-hour shifts or longer. The shiftwork swaps around. It just kind of depends on how they need personnel to work and why. I can't go too deep into that obviously because of operational issues and non-disclosure agreements I signed. But when you're not working, you have time to go sit on the beach. You can go sit at a bar and drink a beer. It's definitely a very surreal issue in comparison to a lot of these people that would also have rotated in and out of Afghanistan and Iraq because there is a threat of physical violence all the time for a guard, for a medic. But it's a little more confusing and a little more convoluted than all of that. For the detainee, I mean, everything's scheduled. There's very little change to their day except for when they have things like, say the Red Cross there or their legal teams happen to be on the island for any detainee because all the detainees have assigned legal personnel from the military and civilian nonprofits. And is it the image in my head of it? Does it look like the prisons we see on TV? Does it fit that just lines of cells and common areas and whatnot? Or is it different inside? You know, the main detention camp I think that they're still using is probably five and six. I think they've combined them all down because they just don't, like most people, when they think of Gitmo, you think of Camp X-ray. And that's not been in use for well over a decade. That was something that was very short term until they can open up these other sites. Now, my understanding was these other detention camps started out far longer ago. The first few were already in place for when there was the Haitian movement that happened in maybe the 80s or early 90s. And of course, they had some problems in the refugee camp. And so they would have to then detain some of them in other areas. But the original, more or less, detention camp doesn't look like your average prison, but the newer ones that they've built more recently definitely look just like something you would see here stateside at any maximum security. Well, we spoke a little bit before about detainees, but in Gitmo specific context, so who are these people? Who is at Gitmo? Are these all terrorist masterminds the worst of the worst that you can't let out of your site for one second? Or is it a mix of people? Who are you interacting with when you're at Gitmo? Because I have this vision that I think probably a lot of Americans share that the kind of people who are there are like the scene when Clary Starling goes to visit Hannibal Lecter and it's like these profoundly evil people who you leave a pen and... This is kind of a tough one for me. I was attached to Task Force Platinum. Task Force Platinum is a fairly classified operation, so I can't discuss my daily work. But on the regular basis, the areas that obviously the media would have pervy to... It was a mixed bag. I mean, everything I understood from the average detainee is everything from a goat herder to up to the worst of the worst with Ben Laden's bodyguards down there. Did you have much contact with them? Did you speak to any of them? I mean, in the... carrying out of my job, but I wouldn't have said we had conversations per se. Right, because I guess what I'm trying to get a feel for is this just a constant kind of battlefield mentality where these guys are your enemies and you're their enemies or at some point in this process, does it become more of this? We're both stuck here. Let's make the best of it kind of approach. Or is this constantly this you're an enemy combatant kind of attitude? I think both things happen for different guards, different medics, different people assigned to the staff there. I think that there's some that never get out of that. This is some evil mastermind that's going to cut my head off and then there will be some that have made friendships with them, some that have traveled to say the U.K. and sat down with some of these detainees after the fact and talked with them on air. And even a few that have converted to Islam while they were there working, while talking to... So I think it's kind of a mixed bag. I think that there's a little bit of all of that that's happened down there. And what is the mood like among the guards or the morale? It goes up and down. It's dependent on what's going on. When I first got there within a couple weeks, we had a fairly large group of them try to self-harm. Maybe it was to get attention for the media. Maybe it was to get their lawyers involved. It's hard to say. While we had one restrained waiting on the doctors to come in to make sure that he hadn't hurt himself, we hadn't hurt him. He hadn't hurt us anything. He decided to start smashing his head into the floor with my hand under it. So to this day, I've had a couple of surgeries on my hand. I've got crushed bones in my hand. My hand doesn't particularly work all that well anymore. And so my morale personally went up and down with the win because I wasn't leaving. And what this wasn't like getting injured in Iraq where you were getting pulled off, you were still there and you were still going to do your job. For me, I had to just not take it personally. I understood if I had been captured somewhere and stuck in a prison in Iraq, the code of conduct said, you will go against any of this detention. And so I didn't hold it personal to them. I totally understood why I did that. So speaking of being stuck places, there are inmates in Gitmo today who have been cleared of charges or there's not enough evidence even to take to the tribunal. And to the best of my knowledge, those people are still in Gitmo. They're still treated just as if they're being in prison there, despite the fact. Or is there some kind of different treatment while they wait for perhaps another country to take them? I can say that from what I understand, there is some different levels of, I know, and it's definitely been known to the media before like the Uighurs, the Chinese group were definitely segregated and had, but they were still detained. I mean, that's, you're stuck behind, you're not going out to the beach. You're not, you know, maybe you get to play some soccer and you get some ice cream and Pepsi, but you're still inside a fence line and you're not going anywhere. So maybe there's some different levels of detention, but it's all detention. They're, you know, it's, in the grand scheme of things, it's a pretty sad situation because, you know, these people that have already been cleared to be sent home should have been sent home a long time ago. So who, for anybody listening, who are the Uighurs and why were they at Gitmo, if you know? So from what I understand was there was a group of, maybe several groups. I'm not sure if they were all caught at the same time, but I think they were, they were in maybe Afghanistan either setting up businesses or helping with building schools or doing something and were either taken by a group of warlords or because they were foreigners. If you're foreigners in Afghanistan, you were easy money and they were sold to, this is all my understanding. I've never had any conversations with any of them. This is all after the fact, but, you know, my understanding is they were all sold to our government as some type of foreign fighters, and it wasn't till several years later that anybody really figured out that they were probably there for just really innocent normal issues and maybe working towards businesses or something. I don't know enough about them, but then they couldn't be sent back because obviously they're an oppressed group of Muslims in China. If we were to send them home, there's reason to believe that the Chinese government would do far worse than just putting them in a fence line and feeding them ice cream and Pepsi. There's a good chance that they'd just get off the plane and get a bullet in the head and that'd be that. So we made a pretty huge mistake with taking them and now most of them, as far as I know, have been sent on to third countries. Maybe all of that group. I don't remember for sure if there's any of them left, but there was in 2010 when I was there, there was still a big group of them. I remember reading a few years ago that several Uyghur detainees had been released to Bermuda, I think, and they were planning to open a Uyghur restaurant there, which you're saying that may have been their intention in Afghanistan at the time they were picked up. So in the domestic context, these are exactly the kind of things that we would expect a system with due process to pick up before we get years and years down the line. So, but this isn't a typical war either. This is not two uniformed militaries fighting against each other, obeying the rules of war and the Geneva Conventions. So what do you think about how we ended up in this situation and is there a solution for this or are these just the kind of problems we're going to have to deal with as we sort through the war on terror? I mean, I would love to say that there's some perfect answer to these, but there isn't. I mean, there's always going to be someone deciding we need to go into somebody else's country and make problems for small groups of people and they'll always be some that will try to justify collateral damage of this sort because that's typically how collateral damage isn't just dead bodies, you know, that have been bombed somewhere. Collateral damage is anything that we've done that's affected anybody outside of these combatants. And at the end of the day, many of these combatants really aren't our problem in the first place because they're not here making war with our country. We're there making war with them. And, you know, if anybody invaded America, you can bet that there'd be quite a large number of gun owners standing up saying, hey, hold on a second, we're going to fight back and we'll fight back however we have to. And if we're being called terrorists or patriots or whatever you want to term it at that point, you know, I guess it's all whose side of the coin you're on when the chips fall. A lot of Americans seem to have a, you know, these people are enemies. They, you know, they or the ideas or the organizations they represent are a threat and perhaps an existential threat to America and its way of life. And so why, you know, you call it collateral damage that some of these people represent a form of collateral damage, but like, you know, why should we care? Like America, you know, America needs to defend itself. If they didn't want to be locked up, they wouldn't have gotten involved in these conflicts. That, you know, we're, yes, we invaded their countries, but that's because we were attacked or defending ourselves. So kind of, you know, to almost like to humanize them is to do a disservice to America or to turn your back on, you know, this country. This is not a view I agree with. I'm just... Sure, sure. No, I hear this, I actually hear this quite often because, you know, when I did a interview recently over the summer with Vice and HBO, that was, I heard it a lot. I, people came back and went, oh, well, you're being a traitor talking about it this way. And I said, why? I said, they're not my enemies. I didn't go to war with them or pick a fight with them. Our government picked a fight with that country and we just all came into play. We're, you know, there's... It's tough to call yourself a pawn after the fact, but you know, when you step back and look at the chessboard and you realize where you're partying it is, you start to look at the other pawns on the other side of the board and you kind of go, hey, we're a lot more alike than we are different other than maybe we don't speak the same language. And a lot of people don't want to accept that. I mean, it's maybe it's easier to be ignorant and view them as different and they don't want the same way of life. And they don't want freedoms and they don't... But at the end of the day, there's very few people that don't want some type of freedom and they don't want to be oppressed and we, as often as not, wind up being the oppressors in some really screwed up situations and there's really never a good answer on who's behind it. You think that's a view that people who have had personal experience in the war on terror. So whether station at Guantanamo or dealing with people overseas being involved in these conflicts are more susceptible to. Like I think that a lot of times American views of things are shaped by ignorance or lack of first-hand experience. You know, just as a random example, like the polls show that the people who are most gung-ho about kick-out immigrants and build a wall, typically the ones who live in communities where they're the fewest immigrants and don't actually have much contact with them. So do you think that there's that... The attitude that you just articulated has some sort of presence generally among people involved in this? I think to some extent. I mean, you're gonna... But then you can also, you know, if just say we take the military and you look at the mindset of the military in this day and age, it's becoming less and less conservative, you know, because we've been in a time of quote-unquote war for well over 10 years, the longest war we've ever been in. And so, you know, you'll see a lot of the older veterans and military members that served in Vietnam and Korea that are very conservative and they have almost an ignorant mindset. And I'm not calling them stupid in any way. I'm just saying that they've looked at the world in very, you know, closed... In a very closed view. They've decided this is their world and that's that. And America is America and only America. Whereas if you look at some of the newer military, you know, and some that work in federal jobs of different sorts that would have some hand in the war on terror, I think it's become easier to get information and understand what's going on and become a little more aware of the world as you're exposed to it. You know, if you served in the military in Vietnam, you really only went to Vietnam and you were in for two years and you were out. Whereas the average military now is four, five, six years for that first enlistment, you may serve in three or four countries and you're exposed to different cultures and you realize that they really aren't any different than you. And many times you find out that some of them are a hell of a lot more friendly than your average American. And they may be a little more trustworthy. When there's this generational aspect to this as well, right? And you hit on it between the generations of veterans. But just consider that 9-11 was almost 16 years ago that some of the people joining the military and fighting these wars today don't have a memory of 9-11. I'm 31. I was a sophomore in high school. So that was a very formative experience in my life. But if you're 18, 19, 20 years old, you may not remember 9-11, but you know that for your entire life, we've been at war in Afghanistan. Basically, your entire life, we've been at war in Iraq. And yeah, you would expect to see, you know, sort of a different outlook generationally because they grew up in this war on terror state and they may not remember the thing that started at all. Let me turn then to, so I had first came across you in this, seeing you in this Vice News Tonight segment back in, when was that? October. October. And that segment was about, I guess the government's lack of support for the people who were stationed there. So can you tell us a bit about that? Sure. Jason Leupold, who was the Vice News reporter that did the interviews with myself and my friend, Nicky, we had worked on getting others involved in that, but they decided to just go with the two of us for that. Several years ago, I had saw him doing a lot of digging on Gitmo, a lot of FOIA work. He's since been labeled by the government the FOIA terrorist because every time he sends in a request, it bothers them because he'll take it all the way into the courts and has no problem doing it. So I kept seeing his name popping up with these Gitmo stories and there really wasn't at this point you know this was maybe 2012, late 2012, early 2013. There really wasn't anybody talking about Gitmo anymore and that bothered me that really, because I had just started coming to grips with you know what the doctors called PTSD and realizing that that was one of my issues along with physical issues that I deal with and I didn't want people to forget that this was, there's a lot more going on down there that are going to be long-term mistakes past just the money spent on per detainee. You're looking at long-term you know issues that veterans and active duty military are gonna kind of deal with with mental health and so I had reached out to Jason and he had heard about a study that was done about a very high rate of PTSD and mental health issues in the guard staff something similar to what you'd see in corrections here but obviously some glaring differences because it wasn't just as simple of criminal correction officer and there was a lot of confusion down there there was a lot of really a lack of support to address mental health issues that were arisen both in the guard staff and in the detainees. I mean it was it was definitely a you know there's a big glaring problem there that we're not looking at long-term and nobody really wanted to talk about it and so I reached out to Jason said hey what are you doing about this is there anything going on have you heard anything I heard this rumor he said yeah I've heard the same rumor he says I'm putting in a FOIA request to see if I can get that study that report and see what happens because there was a I think the colonel that was heading up the joint detention group had hinted at it and then immediately retracted it maybe a month or two later to maybe the Miami Herald or one of the one of the newspapers so there was this confusion on well did he just say that there was a major issue with with mental health with the staff there or did he not or is the DOD what's going on and he went and dug and he found this study and then he asked me said hey do you know any others they're dealing with issues I said I know a ton of people from my time there and and I don't know that they would all want to talk a lot of them are still on active duty and and probably would be quite frowned upon if they popped up on vice and on HBO was that you mentioned this injury to your hand earlier is that what compelled you to to ultimately leave Gitmo I mean what what facilitated your your leaving of Gitmo our time was up I stayed through an entire deployment I was casted for about six weeks and then they took the cast off but they didn't really have proper MRIs down there and they never really understood the damage that had happened to my hand I didn't totally lose the functional use for about another year or so after some surgeries but stayed through a whole deployment wound up being the number one rated in my pay grade when I left I mean it was you know I took it to heart when they said fair, firm and impartial and I didn't hold anything against these and I wish that there was more being done to help them because I think that it's unfair being treated in that way whether they're bad people or not that's just not the way our system of laws was established we still have to stand up for what we what we were started as this country was started you know with with a sense of ideals and that Bill of Rights and if we're not going to stand up for that even if we don't agree with it per se on on you know the minute detail of yeah these are bad people they still deserve to be treated just like any other person in the world what was the reaction from I assume you heard after you after the reporting you heard from other people who had been there from other people you knew what was the reaction like to your story from the the servicemen as opposed to the government most that had served down there if they didn't openly say hey we agree and good job most I if I would get a message from most they would say hey you know we get it we can't obviously talk about it publicly or maybe we're dealing with mental health issues and we're not ready to talk about it publicly but for the most part most that I had that had served down there understood it wasn't strange to most of them now military that had never served at Gitmo I took a lot of heat from them you know I'll be the first to say that there was I got a lot of angry messages and and you know got called a cry baby and got called you know obviously people understood my situation a little bit more because I got injured my friend Nikki took it a lot worse and that and that was really unfair on her part because she was there as a medic she wasn't there doing anything but trying to to provide health care you know and it definitely long term affected her and and she took a lot of you know bad verbal abuse people tried and it you know luckily she she's a lot stronger these days than she was a couple years ago and it probably would have affected her a lot worse but you know it's it's it's been mixed the general public a lot of confusion you know I did a I did an I AMA on Reddit and and it was amazing how many people were like that place is still open and then when they would watch the video and watch the you know watch some of my videos and some of the the stuff I've talked about and then the device and they were people are just in shock I mean it was it was confusing I think more than anything I don't think I really took any major you know bad reaction from people it was more of confusion because the people just don't hear about it anymore do you think then that there's a will among general Americans to to close this or to reform it now now I don't think I don't think that there's any will because it's easy the minute that you say let's close Gitmo and here's why and you can lay out the most logical argument about cost about you know our our our Constitution and laws you can lay out the most logical argument and the minute that you do that somebody's going to run out and go but the terrorist and they'll get loose and they'll be in your house and and and immediately everybody this this shock and fear happens because of pure ignorance they don't know any better they you know nobody the while we have several million Muslims here in America if you ask the average American will you know do you have any friends that are Muslim most of them don't most of them don't you know maybe they know the corner store guy or the dry cleaner you know the taxi cab driver and they can say oh well that that guy's probably a Muslim they don't know and so when you say Muslim that we've we've built this fear and this ignorance around what really is is a just another religion and and then they work off of that and say oh but these are the really bad Muslims these are the worst ones you don't want them here we already got enough here and then it becomes of course even just a bigger snowball and bigger snowball and pretty soon you know seventy eighty percent of Americans are like a wait we don't want to talk about this anymore well I'll ask what I think is an even scarier question is so like senator Tom Cotton previously has said the only problem with Gitmo is that they're empty beds there you're not very hopeful on on shutting Gitmo down are you concerned about it being resurrected under a new administration or after if we imagine some future terrorist attack people haven't been put in Gitmo for a while now it's been about getting that number down but do you have a concern that this isn't over yet that this is not just a bad chapter we're trying to to close but that this this may continue and even expand sure I think I think we're we're especially now with with the incursions into Syria and us having boots on the ground there I wouldn't be surprised I wouldn't you know I haven't heard of any you know I know that I know that the president has has openly spoken about adding people there you know and there's always been the jokes that it'll be the you know the the liberal media and and and I just I just shudder at these comments because it's just such a horrible concept because people just really don't understand it but when when you look at us going into Syria and us you know with the special operations guys up in Kurdish territory in Iraq and you know cross-border into probably Turkey you know it wouldn't surprise me in the least if we've picked if we've picked up some that there's definitely a talk about hey maybe we can move them there I don't think it would be as easy anymore to do so I think the media would catch wind of it really quickly but I'm not sure that the the administration the current administration even cares I think that they would be more than happy to dump a bunch of people in there and then say look look what we did and and I think they would get applause from a big portion of America sadly it there's this this in I mean there's many inconsistencies in the way that Americans think about all sorts of things but the this one there's this frustrating like so we need to lock them up because they're scary people who if if they escaped or we let them out they might turn around and hurt us they'll end up in our homes but our country you know we have one of the highest prison populations in the world domestically a lot certainly not all or most of those people are violent people and we lock them up they serve their time and then we let them out and some of them turn around and commit violent crimes again but we don't seem to have a problem with you know saying why don't want you know I don't want you letting prisoners out into my state or or they they might escape or that you know we should keep them locked up indefinitely because some of them might commit murder again or something like that so what's going on why do we seem to not like we get with the the particular issue of terrorism which is really just a another crime right and and particularly Muslim terrorism is it that these people are foreign is it they the religious angle is it you know because it's frustrating why I do think there is in the American context there's this we may call it a fiction but this belief that that people have served their time they've been adjudicated guilty they've been sentenced they've served their they've served their debt to society we've all heard this this term before he's done his time because of the way this this system works in Gitmo right they're they're not having a trial they're not having the evidence presented they're not being sentenced none of these people have been sentenced to anything so the in so far as as people buy into our criminal justice system and what it's trying to do it's I guess it's kind of understandable that that some people may have this attitude that look these people have served their debt to society whereas maybe the terrorist is just irreconciled we can't reconcile this person with society ever and they should never get out but yeah I think I mean Andrew may have have more thoughts on this but it it certainly does seem bizarre that we're we seem much more willing to take this risk of recidivism from a murder or from a rapist or aggravated assault but somebody who was picked up by the Northern Alliance or they drove bin Laden's car for whatever reason this person is just too dangerous to ever let out ever I mean I I think we've we've we've been we've kind of had the the the hood pulled over our our head if you will and we've been kind of blinded to a lot of the facts because I mean when you look at even our own prison population how many of them are actually even violent criminals and then when we so-called adjudicate and they've done their time well they've not really done their time because they're still being punished because they're still felons and they're still not having voting rights and we we we do it to our own people why why would it be surprising that we do it to others but I mean it's definitely it's easier it's easier to spin this in our in our day of 24 hour news to scare people with you know back in in in the 70s when I was growing up there was something under your bed and nowadays you could probably tell your kids there's a terrorist living in the closet and that would scare them and I because that's what they've grown up on that's the boogeyman and you don't have to really have a logical concept anymore. You can just say oh but it's a terrorist but how is it a terrorist that where they where they tried where they convicted because technically to to have been found of a crime I mean that's that's what it takes it's not there's not this simple but it's a terror no he's not a terror he's a detainee and and under our system of laws they're innocent until proven guilty so he's just an Afghan or he's just a Uighur or he's just a you know an Iraqi or that's what he is and that's where we've we've kind of kind of blown it really is we allow everybody to try them in the court of public opinion long before they ever even see a day in court that might examine the facts of who they really are. Now go back to the reforms because we talked about possible reforms for the the prison from the detainees or shutting it down ideally but from the the perspective of the the people stationed there and the work that you've done. First is there this it seems so that you mentioned that there's this kind of you accused of cry baby is for talking about PTSD is that a prevalent attitude in the military is it you know because we talk about like these soldiers that on on the home front the senses you know these your heroes and we need to support the troops but is there is is like taking on mental illness on its face and addressing it and trying to help not part of that for some reason. You know I think I think we've put and I'll catch heat over this down the road. I know I will for saying this but we've put the military on a pedestal that we probably shouldn't. Is it a job that a lot of people have no interest in ever doing sure is it a is it a just job that's open for speculation that's that's kind of person to person and they but it's still a tough job that damages people but when we're open about it it you know it's always been the macho where the men the women can't hack it it and obviously that's changed in more recent years but we're still way behind the curveball or way behind the eight ball with the understanding that that the average the average 1819 2030 40 year old in the military is just a person where there that this is not an invincible suit of armor these are not Iron Man and Tony Stark here this is just a average person that's going to react in specific ways and one of those is going to be mental health problems to what you're exposed to. And and there's a lot of people that don't want that pedestal being chipped down by accepting that that we aren't infallible that they you know you have to kind of accept that there's going to be problems come along and so there is there is folks in the military and probably in the government that don't want people to openly talk about post-traumatic stress disorder. They don't want you to talk about mental health issues they don't want they just want to kind of push you to the side and say oh but we're helping them but then when you actually address it and say well how how are we going to do this and what can we do tomorrow and what are we doing next week and what are we doing next year what are these plans that you got we'll figure it out but that isn't acceptable anymore you know if if if we're going to put ourselves in a situation of the longest running war we've ever faced we have to accept that we're going to have a lot of problems long term from that then so changing culture in any institution or any group especially on the sides of the military is is awfully difficult and takes a long time so are there other things like more immediate concrete reforms that you think the government ought to be taking to help out people who have faced the kinds of troubles that you have I mean I think we're I think we're getting there we're on that we're on that that precipice we're we're we've we've turned a huge corner from pre 9 11 to post 9 11 military and you know veterans affairs medicine and the the focus we've taken on mental health issues and we're starting to remove the stigma there but it I mean it's still going to exist because at the end of the day the military is the biggest boys club in America and and everybody's going to slap each other on the back and everybody wants to be macho and so it's hard to admit that there's problems and so there's still that issue I mean it's the biggest issue is is it okay to talk about when we get past that everything else is going to be simple and we're not there just yet but we're getting there we're pretty close I think I think that that you know but the problem is is there's always that push in the military to say oh but we're doing something and we're going to talk about it and we're going to address it but then behind the scenes you know there there's there's that underlying but now shut up and go back to work and and we're not really going to talk about it per se and and a lot of people then get even more damaged mentally because there's there's kind of a two two sides to that coin and it's a little harder for them to then openly talk about even with say therapists and other things like that but we're getting there I think I think you know we're definitely head and shoulders past the Vietnam era and even the original Gulf War you know and and probably more I think more so with the nonprofits and the non-governmental organizations that have really jumped in to try to force that hand in many ways so earlier you mentioned that when you did an AMA on Reddit you were the response you received from the public was a mixture of surprise that the Gitmo still open but also confusion about about what's going on there and and what Gitmos about so what do you think are the American people's biggest misconceptions still in 2017 about Guantanamo Bay I mean the obviously the the largest glaring misconception is most people when you say oh I was down to Gitmo they go to the place that closed but you know even more so and and in that that AMA it was one of the probably the biggest reacted to questions somebody said well what what do you think that the American people what's one thing that you think the American people should know and I said I can't tell you that because of a non-disclosure agreement I said there's there is glaring problems with that place and but the one thing that I would love to tell you about I can't because I have to decide is it worth going to jail over to talk about so the one thing you want Americans to know is that there's something you really want them to know but you can't discuss that's pretty much what it is I mean there's there's a lot of little things like that there's I mean it's it's there's there's a lot of glaring issues with that place that would be great at some point to be declassified and talked about I mean that's that you know it's obviously it needs to close it needs to close tomorrow but outside of that without all the information coming to light it probably won't thanks for listening this episode of free thoughts was produced by test terrible and Evan Banks to learn more visit us at www.libertarianism.org