 My name is Peter Bergen. I run the International Security Program here. Thank you for coming this afternoon. It's really my pleasure to introduce three old friends of New America. One of them is one of my oldest friends. In fact, from a long time ago, Andy Worthington, who's a filmmaker, journalist, and wrote the complete Guantanamo files, and it's arguably, I don't think arguably, is one of the world's leading experts on Guantanamo. In fact, we have three of the world's leading experts on Guantanamo in this room. It's hard to imagine who a better panel. And then next to Andy is Tom Wilner, who's a well-known lawyer at Sherman and Sterling. Tom Wilner represented a number of the Guantanamo detainees. He argued two U.S. Supreme Court decisions that established the right to have a fabulous corpus for the detainees and also established their right to counsel to probably the most significant legal decisions of the last decade and a half. And finally, Colonel Mo Davis, who is a professor at Howard University, who was who ran the commissions at Guantanamo for some period of time. He's a colonel with 25 years service. He's also obviously a lawyer. And I'm going to turn it over to these gentlemen. Should we start with you, Andy, or do you want to start with? How do you want to start? I think I'm leading off. You're leading off. Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, thank you. And thank you for having us again at New America. I would say it's a pleasure to be here, but I keep thinking every year will be the last time that we reconvene, but it just keeps going on and on. As I'm sure you wouldn't be here now if you didn't know that yesterday was the 13th anniversary of the first plane landing at Guantanamo and the men getting off the plane and beginning this chapter in our history that I keep thinking at some point I'm going to be on a panel. We're going to be talking about this as a historical footnote rather than a continuing chapter in America's history. So I think every year when I come here, I'm optimistic that that's going to happen. And it just seems that we never quite get there. So hopefully this time I'll be right. And next year it'll be a historical chapter. It was interesting to me yesterday watching the march in France. Millions of people turned out to stand up to terrorism, to stand with the French people when they had their equivalent of 9-11. It made me think back to our 9-11 when the world stood with us, when throughout the world everybody rallied around America. And to look at the opportunity that we had and how we've squandered that opportunity is disappointing. And I think a large part of that points to Guantanamo and the stain that it continues to represent. I guess the encouraging news is that Guantanamo is down to 127 detainees. Originally the total population was 779. So if you recall, you remember the statements, you know, these men are all the worst of the worst, the kind of people that'll chew through the hydraulic lines on the plane, you know, just to kill Americans on the way to Guantanamo. So that group of the worst of the worst started with 779 is down to 127. And of that number, there are 59 of that group that have already been cleared to be transferred out. So, you know, a group that the CIA, the FBI, Department of Justice, Department of Defense unanimously agree, didn't commit an offense, won't be charged, don't pose a threat, and we don't need to keep them. But they've been sitting there for, what, now five years since they were cleared for transfer at a cost of somewhere, depending on which estimate you look at, between a million and $3 million per person, per year, to keep people in confinement that we say we don't need. So that leaves 68 people that aren't in that to be transferred category. There's a small group that either have been prosecuted or will be prosecuted and then another group of the ones that are in between. But that group of 68 represents about 8.5% of the total number that ever went to Guantanamo. This group that we were told represented the worst of the worst. There are about 8.5% that we want to keep in confinement and potentially prosecute. So it was encouraging yesterday, if you watched the Sunday talk shows, there was a lot of attention devoted to Guantanamo. And again, I think there's kind of a cohort of people that for years have protested and rallied and said, you know, we need to close Guantanamo. But you had yesterday, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dempsey, you know, who on Fox News said, and I'll quote him so I don't get it wrong, it's in our national interest to close Guantanamo. It creates a psychological scar on our national values. So you always hear that, you know, we got to listen to the generals. Well, here is the highest ranking general saying that this is a stain on our country and we need to close Guantanamo. You had Cliff Sloan as well, you know, who just recently stepped down after leading the State Department effort to repatriate as many of the clear detainees as possible. And I had certainly, you know, kudos to him for I think 29 men were transferred out last year, which was the biggest year yet. But he was on as well. And he said, you know, well over 90% of those who have been transferred after going through this process, not only are not confirmed of engaging in wrongdoing, they're not even suspected of engaging in wrongdoing, because you always hear the argument about, and we were talking about this earlier, it's frustrating to me when you hear people like yesterday on television saying, if you send these men out of Guantanamo, they're going to go back and reengage in terrorism, it's like reengage. Where's the evidence they ever engaged to begin with? Because if there was evidence that they were ever engaged to begin with, we would prosecute them. So these are people that we had no evidence they ever engaged to begin with. According to their statistics, about six and a half percent have reengaged in some form. And he went on to say, he said, my own personal view is that holding men for 12 or 13 years without charges, many of whom have been approved for transfer for almost half of that time, is deeply inconsistent with the kind of country that we want to be. So I mean, I agree wholeheartedly with that. This has gone on for far too long. Guantanamo never should have opened to begin with. It was an effort to avoid the law. Our strength for 200 years was our belief in the law. And then after 9-11, we went to Guantanamo in the belief we could avoid the law. And we've paid that price for 13 years now, and it's time that it stopped. The few that are to be prosecuted, there have been a total of six people in 13 years that have been convicted, tried convicted and sentenced in military commissions at Guantanamo. Hicks, Hamdan, and Cotter are three that I personally charged as when I was chief prosecutor. There's also Al-Balool, Al-Kosi, and Nor Uthman, Muhammad. So we've completed a grand total of six trials in 13 years. Of those six, four of the six were convicted of providing material support for terrorism, which the D.C. Circuit, which is the most conservative, most respected of the federal appellate circuits, held that material support for terrorism was not a legitimate law of war offense. In the Hamdan case, and also they reaffirmed that in the Al-Balool case, and they dismissed the charges. So the six people that have been tried, convicted, and sentenced for the six were tried and convicted and sentenced for an offense that we've now determined was not an offense. So in two of those cases, in Hamdan and then on Friday, in the case of Nor Uthman, Muhammad, charges have been dismissed. David Hicks currently has a petition. He pled guilty to providing material support. He has a petition to set aside his conviction. So this second-rate process that we created at Guantanamo that was supposed to be swift and severe and secret, we've completed six trials and two-thirds of those were convicted of an offense is not an offense. So it hadn't exactly been, you know, a sterling success at Guantanamo. I guess the one thing that's really significantly different than the last time we got together is in the interim, we've had the torture report that's been made public. And it was, I'm certainly pleased that that has taken place. I think my only concern is I think many people look at that as an endpoint, that the objective was to get that report out into the public domain. But to me, it's a starting point, not an ending point. The question is, what do we do now? Because, you know, we led the effort to bring the world on board with the convention against torture, which President Reagan presented to the Senate for ratification. And when he did, he sent the letters saying, the core provisions of the convention establish a regime for international cooperation and the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on universal jurisdiction. Each state party is required to either prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution. So to me, it's a question of who do you side with? Do you side with Ronald Reagan or with Dick Cheney when it comes to torture? And I think Reagan had the right view when he submitted this. And this is back in the day, and it was hard to recall in Washington a time when things were done on a bipartisan basis. But back in 1988 when President Reagan sent the convention against torture to the Senate, it was approved overwhelmingly. Because we all believed in that notion that people that commit torture should be held accountable for their conduct. So to me, the question now is, the reports out there, we've acknowledged, whether it's President Obama or John McCain, both sides of the aisle have acknowledged that we tortured some folks. And the question is, what do we do now? And doing nothing is not the right answer. Thank you, sir. Andy. Yeah, thanks, Peter. Well, hello, everybody. Good to see you here. Mo and Tom and I used to joke that we were coming here every year. So last year we actually took a year off. I think partly because we were tired, but also because there were signs of progress last year and there hadn't been for several years before that. I certainly feel more optimistic about this longstanding stain on American justice being brought to an end than I have for many years. But I would say that our happiness is dependent on seeing action. So every time somebody is released, we're then waiting for there to be further action because we've seen so often for a variety of reasons, the whole process hitting a brick wall. Mo gave you a lot of figures there about who's still at Guantanamo. And it is very heartening that 28 men have been released in the last year. There are 127 men still held and 59 of those have been approved for transfer out of the prison. The majority of those were people who were approved for release by the Guantanamo Review Task Force, a high-level interagency task force that President Obama established shortly after taking office in 2009. And as Mo said, it's five years at least since those men were told that the U.S. didn't want to hold them. Some were told during the year in 2009, so it's up to six years. And 52 of these 59 men are from Yemen. And the stumbling block has been that across the entire United States establishment there's an extreme reluctance, in fact a refusal, I would say, to contemplate releasing people back to Yemen because of the security situation in that country. That may be, I think, when I examine that, that seems to me that although I understand the worries about the security situation, it seems very extreme to me that that's a blanket ban on everybody from that country. But at least it's been addressed in recent months and the administration has begun to find new homes for some of these men from Yemen who they don't want to send home. But it's going to be an uphill struggle with 52 Yemenis approved for transferring ground to Panama to find other countries. I'm presuming that a lot of work is being done behind the scenes. We certainly hear some of that in the media and I very much hope that those things are continuing. The seven other men of a particular interest to me is that one of those men is Shaka Amr, the last British resident in the prison. And in the last few months I've been involved in a campaign in the UK called We Stand With Shaka to try and get him released. I won't talk too much about that because this is a campaign particularly focused not on the United States but on David Cameron, our prime minister, trying to persuade him to say to President Obama that it's extremely important that this man, a legal British resident, is returned to the UK. What's interesting about his story is that this person, Shaka Amr, who's a Saudi national, has indefinitely to remain in the UK, has a British wife and four British children, is that he is one of, if not the most outspoken critic internally of the entire detention system, lawless detention system set up after 9-11. From the moment that he was seized in Afghanistan in late in 2001, where he says and no one has provided credible evidence to the alternative that he had gone on to pursue humanitarian aid, he has fought for the rights of the prisoners. He from the beginning said you can't treat us like this. Where are our rights? He understood that they had been stripped of their rights entirely. And he has fought against the unfair detention system and he has been punished regularly for that. So he knows personally about his own abuse. He knows about the torture and abuse of others. But we presume in the UK that he's still held because both of the security services on both sides of the Atlantic are saying that they'd rather keep him than have him released to tell stories that frankly are only going to embarrass both of our governments. Both of our governments have proved very good at keeping accountability out of the courtrooms. So Shaka Amr is one of these people. As we were hearing, if we're going to go ahead and I hope that we're going to continue to see swift action on releasing the men that the US said it doesn't want to hold. We are left with this group of 68 men, about 10 of whom are facing or have faced trials, leaving 58 men who the task force said were too dangerous to release but also said that the reason that there was not sufficient evidence to put them on trial. Now that should always be shocking and I think it's shocking that as a result of that report in the spring of 2011 President Obama issued an executive order specifically authorizing the detention of 48 men that the task force had said were too dangerous to release but insufficient evidence existed to put them on trial. Because it enshrined this notion that however it came about it was justifiable to say we've got a kind of terrible evidence problem here but you have to trust us we have to break our rules and hold these people and it was the moment that President Obama himself did this rather than inheriting everything from President Bush as he mostly did. And there is frankly no justification for trying to enshrine that notion. That's a very very dangerous flight from the basis of detaining people, reinforcing what had initially happened with the Bush administration and the problem with the so-called evidence is that when it's examined it's discovered that a large amount of this information came from the prisoners themselves or from their fellow prisoners being interrogated and talking about each other. There were photo albums that were shown everywhere in the detention centers in the war including Guantanamo of other prisoners and people were persuaded in various means to say that they knew these people and that they knew stories about them. In some places that we know about obviously people were tortured, they were subject to other forms of abuse. There were people who were bribed, they were given treats if they would tell stories and there are prisoners who have spoken about that happening. Some of them haven't spoken about that because they were people who were pushed because they had mental health issues. There are other prisoners who simply while not being destructively broken by what happened to them say that they simply gave up on the ability to resist and at some point they went into the interrogation room where they were taken every day and said okay okay what do you want I'll tell you whatever you want to hear and I know personally of some stories of people who who everything they said was a pack of lies but if you look at the files you will see that these things are put down as though there is some degree of reliability to it and the problem is that once you start to analyze it in depth very little in the in these files is reliable. So in recognition of this I think to some extent what happened well when President Obama designated these 48 men for indefinite detention in the spring of 2011 he was aware that that was going to cause criticism from people who who respected the law and human rights so he said there will be a review process to for us to to look at the cases of these men to see whether whether we think they continue to pose a threat and that review process didn't actually begin until the fall of 2013 and it is moving slowly it is intended to review the cases of all of these indefinite detained prisoners and the majority of the men who were initially designated for prosecution in large part because of the problems with the military commissions that mo has talked about so in the last year or so there have been nine of these periodic reviews which are which which is representatives from all the major departments of agencies here in washington looking at the cases of these men as they make a case for saying you know why they do not constitute a threat how they want to rebuild their lives they're given military representatives at Guantanamo whose for as I can see a very quite closely representing them actually trying to help get their story across to these representatives of the administration that they do not pose a threat and we've had nine of those reviews and in six of those cases the prisoners have been approved for release two of those men have been freed in recent months one man went back to q8 and another to Saudi Arabia the four others who've been cleared haven't because they're Yemeni so they're part of the whole issue that the entire US establishment has with people from Yemen but this is progress and if these if these reviews continue then I think it's I think we are very clearly going to see that a very high-level review process is establishing that the of these 68 men it is not it is not appropriate to say that they are they are all so dangerous that they must continue to be indefinitely detained or put on trial it's a very slow process I think and I'd love to see it happen a lot quicker but I think it's I think it's the single most important thing that people who are concerned about the injustice of Guantanamo should support I think it's important not to be swayed by the notions that that that you can you can accept the the purported dangerousness of people when the evidentiary basis is so shallow so tainted so broken so that's where we're at the the thing that will happen if if the prisoners approved for release are released and we reach this point where we've got 68 men or less than that is that I believe at that point the president will be able to make the case more strongly than he has been able to to date to congress that that it's ruinously expensive to continue Guantanamo to make the cases he always has done about how fundamentally wrong Guantanamo is on every basis and to move those men to the United States mainland now there are many many lawyers many people involved in human rights are extremely concerned that this would then enshrine the Guantanamo system on the US mainland I have to say that it seems to me there is no evidence of the right of the government in this country to hold people without charge or trial on the US mainland and that that would be the subject swiftly of robust legal challenges I don't think the intention would be sustainable if anybody wanted to back it of holding people without charge or trial on the US mainland they would have to be put on trial or they would have to be released but you know we will continue I imagine amongst various groups to argue about that but I think this is obviously the only way that Guantanamo can be closed is for as many people as possible to be released from there the rest to be brought to the US mainland for trials and for the their disposition in the ways that we can argue about how that would happen but this is how I see the progress and as I say this is this is more optimistic about things than I have been for some years and it remains an issue of great importance to me as a as a human rights issue but you know Guantanamo is an international story what the United States did after 9 11 resonated internationally I'm here as a British person not because you know because I want to take on what America did but because these issues are so profoundly important because America was founded on the basis of the rule of law and Guantanamo is and always has been a legal moral and ethical abomination and every day that it remains open it ought to be a source of profound shame to anybody who respects the rule of law and justice and fairness so you know I hope that we don't have to keep doing this every year and that this will be the year that we really really do see progress and that those of us who care can do whatever we can to encourage the Obama administration to keep moving towards the president fulfilling that promise he made on his second day in office to close Guantanamo thank you Tom well let me say I never know what I'm going to say until I hear Mo and Andy and they're terrific and then I wonder well what further can you say but I'd like to start off I'd like to recognize congressman Jim Moran who joined us a few years ago up here and who was one of the great congressmen who supported closing Guantanamo from the beginning and fought for it and I think in the last elections in congress the great loss was not just that the republicans won the senate but that two great legislators Jim Moran and Carl Levin retired because they were the great supporters throughout so we miss you I hope we can get together otherwise and strategize I want to say you know I want to be a little bit more reflective on some things and the what happened in Paris and talking with people about it has made me realize one of the problems we face in dealing with Guantanamo and torture I have a sense sometimes when I speak that I'm speaking within an echo chamber that the people who listen are the people who agree already and and we haven't reached beyond that to the great mass of the American public about these issues we've got to do a better job about it I'm shocked that I've seen polls that most Americans believe maybe the torture was okay maybe we need it and and I realized thinking about it after Paris and talking with some other people that there's a question people have that we haven't addressed whether our western democratic values can effectively deal with Islamic terrorism is it are they effective can you can you really forego torture do you need to have detention based on suspicion rather than evidence no people really are questioning that and and unfortunately I don't think we have addressed it convincingly I think it's important to my basic belief and based on the facts is as general Dempsey said that you know it's in our national interest to close Guantanamo that when the United States tortures it condones torture throughout the world it makes the world worse but it hurts us you know we've got a you mentioned Ronald Reagan on the when he presented the Convention on Torture for Ratification in the U.S. and our act Reagan also said some other things when he nominated the first Bush there's so many Bushes now you don't know which one when he nominated the first Bush to be president he made a great statement he said you know our greatest strength derives not from our wealth our military power but from our values our principles the United States ability to have effect around the world to make the world a better place depends on our adherence to our principles are what Dianne Steinstein is now fighting a fight on the torture report and people are disagreeing with her you know we've we've got to make the case that torture hurts us and it's a fairly easy case on the facts I think you know I mean I've interviewed lots and lots of interrogators and they all say there's no doubt that rapport building is much more effective than if you torture people yes you get information you don't know if it's reliable and and the only but rapport building is much better for getting reliable information you can count on now people say well there might be a justification in a in an exigent situation the ticking time bomb but that you never you know you really see that you never see it you don't you don't every one of my clients at Guantanamo night 12 was tortured every one of them there was no exigent situation they had been there for years so what do you do do you torture thousands and thousands and thousands of people to get one piece of information which which may or may not be relevant when you could do rapport building it makes no sense and it hurts us around the world Abu Ghraib is continuing to hurt us Guantanamo hurts us Andy talked about what we're doing in another issue that you know come into it is I found for the last 13 years that so much of this debate and torture and others is based on concepts are false statements are false facts are false assumptions rather than digging in and seeing what are the actual facts you know when I brought a case in May 2000 May 1 2002 just for hearings for the people in Guantanamo at that time we were told that everyone down there was the worst of the worst and I you know I met some of the families of the Kuwaitis and I said these kids were actually you know good kids who had been involved in charity I said shouldn't they at least have a hearing so we get to the actual facts well I you know I soon certain learn through deep throats in the intelligence community listen by and large we got a lot of the wrong guys every Arab bound down there turned in for a bounty was sent to Guantanamo a lot of these guys most of them were either low low level people who had gone down to shoot a gun or were just simply innocent people but but we kept debating in the press these are bad guys you can't let bad guys go so you can't get people have a hearing you know today we are as Andy said we're one of the basics for our law coming back to the Magna Carta which we got from you guys by the way thank you very much so you have a right to be here 800th anniversary this year 800th anniversary but was the concept that you can't hold people arbitrarily that they have a right to go before an independent judicial authority to see whether there's a law they're supposed to violate it and there's evidence that will allow them to be held what we're saying for people for the 65 people who have not been cleared we're still at Guantanamo the government makes this statement that they're too dangerous to release but the evidence against them can't be presented let me tell you that's as Andy was saying that's very very misleading the public gets the view oh that the government knows that these are really dangerous people there's something there but you know there's some sort of evidence that might have been through torture so they can't do it that's not the case it's a mis mischaracterization of who those people are I've looked at the evidence a lot of of two of the people because I'm not allowed to see others Andy by the way because the WikiLeaks information is out has looked at them and what you find is that these are people who has he said there will be allegations against a made by another detainee if you look at it you could see that those other detainees making the allegations are proven to be liars in other cases but there's this vague suspicion so people say well is it vague well maybe they did something how can we let them go it's not that they've made a determination they're too dangerous it just that's a mischaracterization it's a vague suspicion we don't hold people we have never held people based on pure suspicion you you either have evidence against them and can try and rethrow them out of court I mean the evidence against these people would never stand up in a court of law it's it's wrong does if we start holding people based on suspicion we could clear out the streets in this country and it's more dangerous when they are people who don't have a voice in the United States or the minority I mean what do we do we start holding blacks again based on suspicion but not not waspy white people you know we don't do that it's so wrong and we've got to explain to people you know how this really is wrong let me just say one more fact about it just to put it in in context most of the people in Guantanamo were picked up in the months after 9-11 in and around Afghanistan it was really recognized pretty quickly that we didn't get the leaders I mean everybody knows that they got away so the people we got it became recognized were at most low level people and as I said a lot of innocent people down there every Arab was turned in interestingly by June of 2004 the New York Times had an article which I really thought it was a seminal article said we talked to all security experts in the United States in Europe and they recognized that there's nobody significant there's no significant threats down there it was only after that that the that the Bush administration transferred in some of these high so-called high-valued detainees from black sites but most of these 65 people who are still down there are the people who were there from the beginning who we recognized as long ago in 2004 were not significant threats and yet they're still there we've got to dig into the facts really deal with these issues and and close the damn place it's disgraceful and the president I I don't want to criticize him as I always do because he's doing something and I want him to go further but you know I don't want to give him too much credit for suddenly getting what is it 30 people out after all these years we've got to really devote the resources and have the political courage to get this place closed try the few people who do you think should be tried and get the others home as Cliff Sloan did say in one of his recent speeches that one of the top security experts for another country not a European country said to him the most important thing we could do to combat terrorism is to close Guantanamo we got to get it done thank you gentlemen point of information Tom so when you said your client dozen of your clients were tortured what what happened to them as a general um it was still so various things um each of them were badly beaten up when they were detained or when they were detained in the process or in almost immediately from the time that they were taken into custody and it was shocking to me one of them fousy al oda's father had fought with against in the first Kuwait war when it was invaded by Iraq he had been an underground fighter for the United States and against Saddam Hussein and Fazi was a little kid he loved the United States he said he was so happy when he was turned into the United States from the first day he was put in something hung by his wrists from the floor and beaten he said he just couldn't believe it each of them told stories like that others were prodded with a electrode some were sort of sexually molested was this in Afghanistan in pakistan i mean on the way out to in afghanistan in afghanistan and pakistan some more abuse in guantanamo in guantanamo not as severe physical abuse you work at shaman and sterling which is a well-known white shoe rule firm right yes what is the attitude of your partners about the work you do well i i ran into considerable difficulty when i took on this work originally it was sherman and sterling it's not only like it's a financial firm in many friends in wall street many who were killed in 9 11 so there was some i had some problems taking this on is that dissipated yes it's dissipated i i think that initially it was a tremendous problem because when there was focus on guantanamo now frankly in the national press there's a little focus of it it doesn't present them with problems now let me say there were some people and i you know i've always said this interestingly people my age were very supportive because they grew up in a time when we had to fight for causes we considered important i think the younger people had got into the capitalist financial stage when making money is the purpose of law and when i grew up you know i think all the sort of lawyers not only is in as long not only a way to make money but a way that you're the guardians of the rule of law which allowed commerce and allowed free speech and everything else so kennel davis so you were the chief prosecutor which years were you chief prosecutor from september 2005 to october 2007 what are your i mean if you had any i mean obviously you're a huge critic and of the of guantanamo what have your former colleagues do they understand the positions you've taken or are they would they unhappy about it or i think it's a mixed bag i think i'd say a majority are very supportive yeah and some that aren't i think there's some that kind of look at you know these you know the drank the kool-aid and bought the argument these guys are the worst of the worst and any rights they get are you know through charity and grace and not through you know the rule of law but i think that's been the exception and not the rule i mean i've had a lot of support from the intelligence community from the military community i mean if you look at the people that fought against ever opening guantanamo ever starting the military commissions ever using torture it was the uniformed services and then they were excluded from the conversation he had the political appointees the john ewes and the david addington's and you know that made the decisions and you know put us on this path my impression is uh i haven't read the entire ci report but my impression that one of the takeaways from the report is that there was an early discussion of having the bureau of prisons be involved which would have obviated this whole thing is that correct yes um you know you mentioned paris tom uh french magistrates my impression is can hold you for two or even three years without charge on a suspicion of terrorism right and then what's and how long could he be held in the uk is it 14 or 28 or i'm not sure where they ended up but it was somewhere yeah it was expanding the number so in france a magistrate can throw you in jail for two or three years i mean not 13 years but i mean we're not alone in this i mean i i think there are other countries that western countries which have a you know but interestingly even in a country like israel which faces the constant threat of of terrorism you need to be brought before a judge within 10 days and there needs to be evidence presented right so you know it would it took us to win really more than the you know two and a half years three years to win the whistle case before they could even get any sort of hearing right after that it was another four years after so in france at least you're going to see a magistrate even though he or she might throw you in jail you're still going to have some kind of due process a review after the detainees won the right to habeas and the cases went before the federal courts the government's argument has always been that under the law of war we have the right to detain the enemy for the duration of the conflict and the courts have accepted that argument well the conflict that the government cited is the war in afghanistan which the president officially ended a couple of days ago december 31st right so either the basis the legal justification that we've used for the last 13 years to justify the tension under the law of war doesn't exist anymore so either have to create a new legal fiction we have tied ourselves in a huge pretzel on this one right i mean because it's either they're either prisoners of war in which case they should be released as of now or they're common criminals in which case they shouldn't have gone into what it was a prisoner of war detention camp right so we're again we're setting a precedent you know in our conduct you know from this point forward on setting a legal basis a legal justification to detain people outside the law of war and outside the criminal justice process now the yemenes i mean which country is in your estimation because i mean i think there is a reasonable argument to say hey you know yemen it's unstable people have escaped from prisons multiple times in fact the leadership of al-qaeda and yeah raven peninsula i think were some of them came out of a yemeni prison so are other countries like uragwai or which countries could they go to other countries presumably you know the negotiations going on do you have a sense andy well i mean first of all i'd like to say that but when you've had a high level review process which is established that people aren't a sufficient threat to carry on holding they're not even but you then don't send them home because you're saying that that there's another it's like there's another airlock it's like you can never get out of the prison because i think they should be sending people home on the basis that you know that there's that i can understand they're gonna have worries if there appears to be you know terrorist sympathies that are very obvious in their family background for example but i think the blanket ban to me seems completely unacceptable but i mean so as a political matter it might be easier to release them to uragwai and then eventually they get back to you i mean these are all what is the way to go well you know i think you may be right peter in the sense that you know that people will be released to countries and that when the dust settles in a few years maybe a range this will be made for people to move i don't know which countries they are i mean clearly you know maybe cliff slone retired because he has so many air miles well he's been he's been everywhere talking to everybody which of the countries that have been accepting the prisoners of late well i mean we had kazakhstan was the last country so uh you know i don't know whether that means that there are other places in central asia i think central and south america you know there are there are places that are looking at but estonia is apparently taking people i think one of the myths is that there aren't countries willing to take people i found about four years ago i found a country in my other normal life and i went into at that time dan freed was in charge of getting people and dan said to me tom the problem isn't the countries i've got a lot of countries it's getting the orders from the white house to transform them there now cliff slone when he just retired he said we have a lot of countries who will take them and they said the pope has been terrific in doing that the plan has been terrific the pope has been terrific in encouraging countries to do it um i'm tempted to say he's a heck of a pope but um yeah but he really is but anyway he um latin american countries and other central europe central asian countries i'm going to tell you know one of the problems you go to you know it's easy to find countries which are uh not democracies which will you know take them but there are countries who will take them the problem is the united states won't take them now i mean that's that's just well i guess my next question which is if you if we're going to really close guantanamo by the end of 2016 which ensures the president's plan i mean and congressman moran is here and and i mean there is a sort of huge not in my backyard type which where could they conceivably go in the united states where there wouldn't be i mean is it tear hote is it i don't know what it is i mean what i believe in in the last congress it was quite clear that the uh senate armed services committee would have voted to take them to the united states as part of this and um both the leadership and the republican ranking uh member would have done that um the problem was in the house and i think that's the next thing to work on yeah it sounds exactly right you know the one country that adamantly refused to take any detainees is us right which really hurts when you go to other countries and say you know would you help us out of this problem that we created you know we're not going to help ourselves we'd like for you to help us but you know bermuda took four palau took six you think you know we're the home of the brave and we can't be as brave as bermuda well now there's been a there's been a huge controlled experiment on the question of trying people in al-qaeda relatively high ranking abu hamza just got a life sentence uh not that he was in al-qaeda but sort of in the support network uh and there aren't people demonstrating in the streets in new york new york downtown new york didn't close down when these trials have had all the argument the ksm trial would be there would be a tax the downtown new york would be in lockdown because you couldn't drive around it and it didn't happen now ksm of course still hasn't been on trial he's been in us custody for what 12 years now so the question i mean one of the question for this like uh let's take a poll here when do you think he will actually go on trial 2015 2016 2017 2018 i don't know because i think what we're aiming for is the is the point of which all the men who haven't been approved for release and move to the us mainland i would say to a military prison i would say that it's feasible that we will reach the position where it is argued that those men the small number of them need to be put in federal courts as was intended in 2009 and should have happened i don't know whether that will happen i mean these are they it's very speculative yeah so if ksm got transferred to the united states it's conceivable that he would get transferred into military custody and face an electric commission rather than a federal trial well except the military commissions don't work right well that's why i'm asking this i just like an estimate from you about the year that he will go on trial i think if i was betting i would say 2016 and in federal court but to make your point though peter when ksm was withdrawn from the criminal justice system and they said they're going to try him by uh military commission all the lawyers i know who were defending these guys who were going to be charged were praying it wouldn't be in federal court and they could have it in the military commission because they could bollocks up the system forever and they knew that i mean it was it was so so lindsay graham was saying we need to try these people before military commission that's the way to do it with the assumption this was a quick and easy way all the defense lawyers said this is just what we want and that's what happened yeah when i was chief prosecutor is when president and president bush had to make a decision on what to do with the black sides and the people that were being detained there and there was a debate whether to go the doj bureau of prisons route or the military and guantanamo military commissions route and the president made the decision to go the military commission route so in september of 2006 is when the plane landed at guantanamo and we didn't know how many people would be getting off the plane that day but there were 14 since then that was september of 2006 since then there's been one person that's been tried convicted in sentence and the case is over and done who's Ahmed galani where was that i was in new york in federal court all right so he's the only one the other 13 men that got off the airplane that day with him are still floundering in the system at guantanamo you've had in addition you mentioned abu hamza abu hamza it was 21 months ago that he was extradited from the uk to the us and in 21 months he's been prosecuted convicted in sentence you had abu gaith yeah you know pretty high pretty high visibility case abu katala federal court so our federal courts work extraordinarily well our prison system you know we've had no you know all these guys have been successfully held prosecuted and the world keeps turning but we keep spinning our wheels at guantanamo in this process that over and over and over has failed okay can i just yeah intrude one more point that so uh eric holder said i want to try ksm in the federal courts in new york and there was opposition and the president backed down and it's gotten into this mess we should say uh craig craig when he the very beginning when he was counsel the president recognize one of the big things is what mo said how can you ask other countries to take these detainees if you won't take them yourselves craig craig had a plan to move some of the Uyghurs who were you know who the bush administration said were captured by mistake from guantanamo to move one to a community in northern virginia yeah and where there was a Uyghur community guy was absolutely innocent was a frank wolf frank wolf yeah who who i am not sorry retired um stood up and said you cannot do this this is a terrible thing and obama backed down rather than saying what are you talking about here's an innocent man who the people have you know the bush administration is cleared you know of course we've who we have held on fairly the backing down from both those decisions has continued guantanamo open it up to anybody in the audience who has a question if you could uh just uh mention your name wait for the mic which is going to come to you right now so take you the first question this gentleman here with the glasses my name is mike sponder i was uh i'm from the outside so they made me director of innovations at the office of naval research forget about goodness and mercy i'm i'm talking to the choir who i all agree with assume for the sake of argument that every single one of these people went back and i wish it was somebody on the other side instead of 15970 a qap or al caterer or isis or everything there'll be 15,000 and then 160 i'm not forget about whether they're innocent or not what's the difference if these people go back and they start off especially if you go to yemen they keep getting killed i'm not and you're talking the choir i listened to the choir except for the fact there's who cares if they go back okay bluntly now if there were 68 people going back and there was nobody else out there okay i can understand that but there's dozens of thousands of people fighting can anybody on the other side by the way night here explain why just let them go well let me say that i i i agree with you except if you really have a hola shake Muhammad you don't want to you want to prime i mean aside and that's that's but you're right aside from guys who really could be leaders and bad you create more people by keeping them here isn't i so i agree and but they're not but a lot of them are innocent but go on mode andy well you know there's uh there's been a lot of exaggeration and hysteria about this that has been stoked repeatedly throughout the the media throughout the establishment um i think there have been i think there is evidence that the number of people who have been released from Guantanamo who have engaged in anything that could be described as terrorism is very small but it's much much smaller than the figures that are that are regularly banded about um the latest you know the media tends to put together both for people that the establishment says are are confirmed and suspected of re-engagement or engagement um that that that you shouldn't put the two together the suspected ones are you know let's put those aside don't start saying those are official figures you've got a 16 figure i think that i think peter and the research that's done here as has said it's more like six um and we we just don't have this backed up properly if it was investigated probably we'd find that the well let me ask let me ask a question because this is relevant so because most of the people who re-engaged or whatever the term you want to use or the bush administration released a lot more people than the Department of Administration than many of them are Saudis and in fact the two leaders of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula are Saudi and they're both Guantanamo releasees so the question is now that there was this much Matt Olson let the process where they looked at all the cases and the releases that have been happening now do we have do we have any sense i mean my my intuition is is that that of those almost nobody has gone over cliffstones and of those yeah the the percentage and it's a fairly broad definition re-engaging i'm writing it's a 6.5 percent okay well see they see most american this is the thing it's like most for most americans if it's anything above zero percent you know even though we know that in our own system what in the federal court system 66 people reoffend well there you go and this is the this is the exaggeration and hysteria frankly because if you've got 60 to 70 percent recidivism rate within the domestic prison system and people want it to be zero in Guantanamo forgetting you know all of the different angles of you know whether people engage or re-engage how the how some people are frankly going to be very upset about the things that have happened to them but the fact is the illusion that is created is that if you release you know a single recidivist from Guantanamo what it means is a guy who's going to be getting into a jumbo jet and trying to fly it into a tall building you know these are not people who are being recommended for release it's and on every layer there's hysteria and exaggeration because the genuinely dangerous people the handful of people accused of being genuinely dangerous are not going to be released under any circumstances like this so you're talking about people who were essentially at best low-level foot soldiers serving with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance in in Afghanistan and we come back to the whole problem with the war on terror which is that the Bush administration said to the American people these are the worst of the worst trust us they're all terrorists you know when a when a Q80 guy that Tom talked about called Fauzi El-Oda was released from Guantanamo in the fall he had his periodic review board recommend him for release the BBC news website ran the headline for the story was terror suspect released to Q8 I have a friend who works for the BBC website I ran I got in touch with him and I said look he was accused of training on a rifle in a camp in Pakistan one afternoon he has never never actually been accused of terrorism at all and my friend went you're absolutely right Andy I'll change it but that's the casual nature of what happened after 9 11 with the war on terror is that foot soldiers in Afghanistan were turned into terrorists by the Bush administration and it's a huge part of the problem that has existed ever since we are unable to differentiate between foot soldiers and terrorists and civilian I'll ask you a question so the five Taliban leaders who were exchanged for private Bo Bergdahl who went to who went to gutter do we know what's happened to them are they on a house arrest in a gutter have they done anything as I understand that they have done nothing they're not under house arrest yeah can I say you of course as you pointed out you know they in the military had said this they would probably needed to be a release release soon anyway with the end of the war so we basically gave them back and got Bergdahl yeah and my my understanding though is that they are not accused of having done anything since we haven't heard anything about them so I'm presuming my understanding of them these are guys who are you know they were cabinet ministers I mean they were yeah well they're also you know they're in their 50s or even perhaps in their 60s I think they're happily retired in gutter you know and enjoying swarming around in you know in Qatar and not being back in Afghanistan in Chris Matthews show the day that the transfer was announced and he ripped me a new one for you know how could President Obama send these you know bloodthirsty you know guys back out to you know kill more Americans I'm like more Americans right you know where's the evidence they ever did anything you know my job as chief prosecutor the 779 only saw the cases of the ones where we felt that there was a determination there was potentially evidence that would warrant prosecution so the 779 there were roughly 75 that we'd identified as potential cases for prosecution so less than 10% when I saw the fight you know the announcement came out these five people were being traded and I look at the list and I said who in the hell are these guys they didn't even have enough evidence to even make it to my desk to be considered for prosecution yet they're labeled you know as being these bloodthirsty terrorists who are going to go back and kill more Americans when they never well it's a very very valid point though actually that you know they mean a couple of those guys were accused of atrocities in Afghanistan which had never been confirmed as such but it was part of the inter-Afghanistan you know civil war but the point they are none of them were ever accused of it's really the point this gentleman made you know unless you get a very bad guy okay so we're gonna that they go back so no no no that's your point except for a guy like Khaled Sheikh mom and that is your point and speckard from georgetown university I worked on the detainee rehabilitation program where we had 20,000 detainees 800 juveniles and just as you said somebody were picked up that you know just in a sweep probably completely innocent held for a very long time I was able able to make interviews of them also Palestinians Kashmiris that were held under so-called open check you know without a without a clear accusation and clear court process and I would just like to confirm a lot of what you're saying I mean this in itself is psychological torture to be held in a prison cell having no idea what your future is right just to explain so you were you went to Guantanamo you I didn't quite get working Guantanamo I worked in 2006 putting together the detainee rehabilitation program in Iraq for 20,000 detainees 800 juveniles so it was a Islamic challenge and psychological program and a lot of our detainees in Iraq at least were beaten badly when they were arrested some of them had so-called soft torture in the prison the high value ones less were tortured except for Abu Ghraib and but what I found in talking with these people is okay that was awful but the ones that had been in Iraqi hands were very happy to come into our hands because we don't torture the same but you know being put in a prison cell and having no idea of your future is torture in itself and that's something that we don't think about you know anybody should go lock themselves in the closet for 20 minutes see how they feel about it and imagine what is it 13 years can I mention that and I normally make that point that we concentrate on physical torture it's a much worse torture to be to be kept someplace without cause and without having a hearing forever there was one of our guys this not Fauzi all over but Fayyaz al-Khanari is still there who said to me I said did they you know did they torture you describe these things and he said to me you know that's over I can take that what I can't take is sitting here without reason forever without a chance to get out and I can confirm for you that I've talked to people that have gotten out Palestinians for example and they told me they have PTSD I'm a psychologist I can diagnose it they have PTSD they're having flashbacks they're so afraid could I get picked up again could this happen to me again I mean it's going to be with them for their entire lives of being put in a small cell and also people told me I will die before I'll get imprisoned again you know I'll do anything before I'll get imprisoned again so we have to keep in mind this is an effect it's it's it is torture in itself if I could just say something that I mean when I was talking I didn't I didn't you know go into the torture report and one of the things that is concerned me about the torture report apart from the you know clear lack of accountability which which I think is necessary for us to pursue is that it was dealing with the CIA program and that it was possible for people not to recognize that actually the whole post-911 response the whole war on terror has torture built into it at all kinds of levels and that one of those levels is at Guantanamo where there was a specific for a very short amount of time there was a CIA black site within Guantanamo but but the the system at Guantanamo itself has involved torture a program that Donald Rumsfeld introduced which spread amongst the prison population 2002 to 2004 is one thing looking at the whole history of Guantanamo one of the things is the is the force feeding of hunger strikers which you know which is clearly according to medical experts is abusive and could rise to the level of torture that's something that's ongoing I saw the latest account from shaka armor in Guantanamo who was saying that a Pakistani guy who's still held who has been in a hunger strike for a long time weighs 92 pounds and you know we don't see the pictures of these people because it would shock us to the core to see people who look like concentration camp survivors but the other thing is the low level I shouldn't call it low level even that makes it sound insignificant is the torture that's built into an arbitrary indefinite detention program like Guantanamo and the quote that I have that has a strong resonance is from a man who was a representative of the international committee of the Red Cross called Christoph Jiro who spoke in October 2003 you know the Red Cross people aren't supposed to talk about the prisons they visit because they get access to difficult prisons on the basis that they don't talk about it but the Red Cross repeatedly did speak publicly about Guantanamo because they were so shocked and this man on this occasion October 2003 said we are concerned about the mental health effects of indefinite attention on the men held at Guantanamo that was over 11 years ago so that doesn't get any better the longer it goes on and that that's exactly you know the point that people need to know is that there are men at Guantanamo who wake up every day and you know and that's the first thing that they think about that that that's all they're living with will I ever be released from this place and that's what's wrong not just that these men were never charged with a time and convicted which is what you need but also that that they weren't held as prisoners of war who would understand that there could be an end to to the conflict in connection with which they were detained and we know we've we've mentioned the end of hostilities but we've never really been able to talk about how people at Guantanamo for the most part are soldiers who have not been detained as soldiers that they have been deprived still they continue to be deprived of their rights most of them aren't even soldiers no that's one to me one of the great fallacies because you hear like Lindsey Graham I know a couple of times has talked to her not just Lindsey Graham others about the battlefield you know you can't have private Smith having to stop in the middle of an armed conflict on the battlefield and do a Miranda rights which makes imminent sense I mean you can't argue with that but it's I can think the only person I can think of that even comes close to that description is Omar Cotter who was actually captured in a firefight I mean if you take the high value detainees for instance like the five nine eleven cases none of them you know there's no private Smith didn't capture KSM all these guys were apprehended by intelligence surfaces in other countries nowhere near the battlefield and turned over yeah yeah and so this whole notion about you know we've got to have Guantanamo and military confinement and military commissions because you know this is we're at war it's just a false premise and except in it just I think you you could count on your fingers the number of people that were actually captured on the battlefield in the sense that most people would think of that me other I think another great fallacy or tragedy is I mentioned there are six people that have actually been convicted of war crimes and convicted war criminals for the six like for instance David Hicks is back home in Australia for the six aren't at Guantanamo so your best chance of getting out of Guantanamo is to be convicted as a war criminal because you've got a four and six chance of going home yeah yeah well and if you're never charged you could spend the rest of your life there well in fact some of the real nobodies in Guantanamo have complained about that that they you know that they've been approached to say is there anything that you can say to us so that we can put you on trial and you can have a plea deal and they've gone no because I know nothing you know I mean what a topsy turvy world that is this lady here oh hi I just wanted to I'm Heather Brandon from Human Rights First I just wanted to add I know we were talking before about what I think Colonel Dave is about when the KSM trial might actually start and you predicted 2016 in federal court which is better than what some of the defense attorneys are predicting I was just down there as an observer for a hearing that never happened for the KSM trial and the defense attorneys were saying 2018 in military commissions at the earliest oh did you want to you saw as well recently they've now the judges are now being held hostage as if the military commissions weren't tainted enough now it improved the optics the judges are being held hostage they're only duty I mean they're you know they're stationed at Guantanamo now not I mean used to they would travel down you know as necessary they'd have hearings now they're stationed at Guantanamo they have no other duties and they're there until the trials are completed no so that really you know enhances the optics that were holding the judges hostage at Guantanamo yeah the other question that I did have was about what we were just talking about then about the end of the armed conflict which would trigger this release of the indefinite slash law of war detainees because the administration says that they're in an armed conflict with al Qaeda the Taliban and associated forces and because of that associated forces term that now captures the conflict in Yemen you know against al Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula now that they've sort of shoehorned ISIS into that are you sort of worried that you know they will give this as a reason for never releasing these people at Guantanamo even though the Afghanistan war is over and do you think a supreme court decision will be the trigger that eventually you know let me let me address that a bit that is an issue which really hasn't been faced yet and there's and honestly there's an argument that could be made that the conflict in Afghanistan is not over even if the war is because we're still there the defining standard on this is really by Justice O'Connor in the Hamdi case when she didn't say it explicitly but made it pretty clear that our justification for holding people absent charge and trial is only in this law of war is under the laws of war and it's only for holding somebody picked up in a particular armed conflict till the end of that particular armed conflict that's the way Hamdi reads it hasn't been challenged yet but that's really the defining standard on it and that has been you know the holding until the end of the conflict has been the primary justification for holding most of these people it's been blurred and everything as Andy said but that will be the next question honestly let me ask you a question so because we are not in a conflict an armed conflict with the Taliban now as of December 31st are there anybody is there anybody from the Taliban still or or any Afghans still in the prison there are a handful of Afghans in the prison but they're all the high-level ones went to Qatar so they're they're very low level but theoretically they could be freed on that basis but the I suppose you know but the but the right on it wouldn't only apply to the Afghans of course there would be anyone else who was allegedly picked up because of the continuation of that war and there is an argument that the administration could make that we now even though the war has ended we are involved with advisors down there as the war restarts with the Taliban whether the administration makes that argument be very interesting because if they want to get rid of people they could say no but the administration throughout has made very aggressive arguments to keep people in Guantanamo for instance they could have consented to a number of habeas petitions and then really avoided all the congressional restrictions on moving people but they never did why this sort of schizophrenia because on the one hand you have people like Dan Freed and Clifford Sloan who seemed to be made they made quite a good effort to get people out and and what's the what what's the schizophrenia Peter I think that is one of the great questions is not has not been examined about this administration while President Obama makes great statements I want to close Guantanamo I want to do it in fact he has the authority to close it right away by transferring people out and he hasn't done it now he's waited for a midterm election he's something the justice department under his and Eric Holder's watch has been very aggressive about making arguments to keep people there let me just give you an example after we won so that these people have the right to habeas corpus the DC circuit which you called it one of the most respected it's certainly one of the most conservative courts took the view that if the government presented any evidence it would be accepted as true in a habeas hearing it's very unusual it's not it's contrary to English habeas because you so any evidence presented by the government was accepted as true even if it was a hearsay allegation from somebody else as a result it stopped people from getting out that was a position that the justice department advocated very aggressive because why do they do that if they want to close the part of the justice department there was I mean is it the national security division or who's we say the justice division within the criminal division that's handled the Guantanamo cases and they've taken very aggressive litigation position it hasn't been examined yeah well I've been out of this the same people essentially I mean yeah I love them all the same people yeah same people as before but we need across administrations I mean well except except yes but you have new appointments in in charge right and I you know they could have really simply consented to certain habeas petitions and they would have been interviewed by Tim Golden who was a fellow here he's doing this big book on Guantanamo do you know do you know when it's coming I think it's yeah you can talk to me in back Brian Beery Washington correspondent for Euro politics I'm just wondering among the European countries because there was a time when a lot of them are pressuring the US who's left at this point that is still sort of trying actively to close the detention center by offering to take prisoners or trying to find solutions and do you think that the Paris attacks are going to change the mood in Europe and that that momentum may slow in the coming months the only I mean men were released recently to Slovakia and as I say I've heard that Estonia is interested in taking at least one prisoner you know we don't have a public account of which countries are being spoken to and and what's likely a lot of European countries that were willing already did take in prisoners in the early years before congress imposed restrictions maybe there are others on the horizon for the Paris thing I would very much hope that people don't make the kind of connections that are that are unacceptable because if you make connections between what happened in Paris and men approved for release from Guantanamo the only basis on which you can do that is that both people that we're talking about are Muslims and there isn't you know there is no line that can be drawn between terrorists attacking people in Paris and people holding Guantanamo approved for release except that they're all Muslims so you know I would very much hope that that that's not the case I'm glad to say that I haven't seen any I haven't seen much of that happening in in general over over the years let me ask you a factual question about this congress so the restrictions that congress have put on it's about the it's it it relate to the funding for people who might be transferred they won't pay for flights so they won't pay for for funding for the defense department it's Jim Moran can explain it better but it's there is no funding if you do these things but what is so so but people are being transferred so the governments like the Slovakian government is paying for the transfer or no no no no excuse me they are being fund those transfers which comply with the regulation they the government pays for the transfer so and this has been so for for years Carl Levin put something into the there was something restricting transfers the united states that really has imagined then there was a restriction on transfers to other countries unless the secretary of defense would personally certify that the person transfer will never do anything bad j johnson was general counsel said nobody can transfer that nobody can do that nobody can guarantee that nobody can guarantee that so Carl Levin put something in the law which said okay you don't need to guarantee it but if you can't guarantee it could you just say that the transfers in the national interest and that the receiving country has taken reasonable steps to mitigate the risk that's been in the law for six five or six years so all obama needs to do our secretary is saying the receiving country has taken reasonable steps to mitigate it he's had that authority for five or six years so so those who are transferred qualify in there for get funding peter can i just say one thing i am very afraid of the paris what the paris attacks will mean um and i you know you don't talk to people who say this but i think what we've operated in for the last 13 years is a fear environment i mean when i first started this 12 years ago i never forget being at a dinner with young law professors husband and wife and i said why aren't you up in arms about this is so against our legal traditions that you hold people without trial and throw them away this way and they said i know you're right he said but we've got young children and we're afraid can can you imagine that i i know people after the paris attacks who say who have said to me well maybe we need to loosen our rules on torture maybe we need to loosen our rules on detention i think it feeds to that and i'm very afraid you know i i counter argument to that is i was sort of surprised you can you can only tell if the society is resilient after an event obviously you don't want events but you can't run the experiment with an actual event and i thought the boston marathon bombings kind of surprised by like pleasantly surprised that americans sort of team would take that in stride they didn't say hey we you know there's been no calls to send no one said hey we should send your house on you have to get them out as far as i can tell he's going to be it seemed i mean i don't know if you felt the same way it seemed like a somewhat mature response these were two kind of no hopers i think it was so it's unfortunate like you know tom mentioned if you look at the like when bush was in office a majority of americans were opposed to torture and that line is skewed the other way now to where a majority of americans say that i can't draw out an idea about this issue uh two ideas i mean first of all i think people watch too many movies and i think that is kind of explains a lot of what happened uh but i'm serious about that i agree and secondly if you look at the people who made these decisions they had what they had two things in common none of them were federal prosecutors or defense attorneys or f or fbi agents and none of them had any experience in any of this they just had no knowledge and there's a huge as you've alluded to we have like a huge amount of scientific data about effective eliciting information effectively right there's a lot i mean this is not and this is all well known in fact it was well known to the cia again this is in the report right there's because they did their own well yeah we of course it was known to the fbi but also was known to the cia who's in the cia report it was that you know cia looked into this question in the in the 70s or 80s so anyway it was it seemed to be based on sort of uh a very childish kind of understanding of but why is there gained acceptance is is most i think we've got because i know i've got a daughter who's 25 and most of my students are about 25 and if you think about their whole adult life has been post 9 11 they don't remember 9 10 they remember 9 11 forward where i was i mentioned the other day when i was traveling i got pulled aside and they used to if you got felt up at the airport i was called sexual assault not pre-boarding but it's it's i think you've used that line before yeah but it's become the new normal you know it's become the normal that we well that's a very interesting question which is about how you know one thing that you never hear in the budget discussions in washington is sort of you know we have this huge counterterrorism apparatus i mean the intelligent budget tripled since 9 11 you don't hear any discussion of sort of it's almost important i mean as a political matter you're not going to hear hillary clinton or jeb bush say hey we've really managed this terrorism problem which is true i mean 25 americans have died and then jaddy terrorist attacks since 9 11 you know if you're using even a generous you know that we that were on top of this no one's going to say that i mean president obama did to his credit sort of gesture in this direction with his speech at end of year on may i think it was may 2013 but as a political matter it's impossible if you want a career in this country to say this is really a problem that we've sort of managed i don't admit perhaps there are i mean i do you hear sort of you know leading politicians making this argument but you know how do you explain what what moe said i'm i'm troubled that the majority of americans condone torture now i know that i i i i it's troubling but let me out let me just throw this out as an idea i mean polling kind of it's sort of you know you can that kind of number can change over time i mean are you seeing it as sort of consistent trend in this direction yes yeah and maybe it is through television shows like 24 in that movie that had the people zero doc yeah sir you know i must say that i you know i know george bush i went to school with him and he thought torture worked i know the way he saw 24 and said this is proof to him yeah you know he has that sort of i don't think it's just i mean if you look at like gun control you know the numbers there have flipped i think the country as a whole is just bought into this fear state of fear do we got to protect ourselves and any means necessary and just keep us safe well i mean psychologists i mean and your psychiatrist or psychologist i mean so well i mean there's a huge amount of sort of scientific evidence about this i mean you know our sort of reptilian brain is very kind of you know kind of takes over in moments of kind of national crisis well which is why you know article 22 of the un convention against torture says you know there are no circumstances in which your reptilian brain is allowed to take over it is an absolute prohibition i mean the the problem with what's happened i think is that you know it is essentially that no one has been held accountable so although people can say they they they object to the use of torture the case hasn't properly been made about its ineffectiveness i mean this is the perfect time the the executive summary of the torture report really showed lays bare the the cruel pointlessness of it all that it was that it was so wrong on every level and unafficacious um but also because people who who who initiated it that nobody has actually been held accountable it really does help me to suggest to be one quick question i mean the court of public opinion that's pretty powerful one is just as i mean court of law is obviously even more powerful i mean the report getting published and naming names i think i think it was helpful yeah it was uh and you know feinstein is going to introduce this bill basically making this sort of for her yeah i just like to add to this this is a great discussion and something the american people have not heard is about cases where people were tortured and then volunteered to be suicide bombers or when they were tortured and they can never get over it and out or the relatives go to groups because the relatives were tortured and say i volunteer now and that's the kind of things we need to put out in the press so people understand number one it's not effective you don't get good results from torturing people and number two it feeds terrorism recruitment and those messages i don't see getting out into the public and we've got data on it including my own i agree and i'd like to work with you on that the problem is i'll tell you i mean i remember years ago i could get interviewed and put editorials in the times the post the other now nobody cares about your time yeah or are these things even you know the the interview dine feinstein and then somebody on the other side saying she hasn't done it but people won't go to the substance of stories i mean even if we try i'm a little disappointed by the media and these things because these are important facts to get out hi my name is kakupra i'm uh at human rights first as well i'd like to take you to task um on because we i think in this room we're all in agreement um how do we then convince those that want to close guantanamo that you know we have the chairman of the joint chiefs that says uh it should be closed it's international interest almost any military officer you talk to and is a former military officer myself you know i spend a lot of time on this so how do we convince for instance and and i think it's probably true to say the republican side the mitch mcconnell's the senator iots the um the linsey grams that this makes a great deal of sense not the 59 crit for release because that's all within our power as well as speeding up the prb process absolutely within our power but again changing the court of public opinion um i scratch my head about it every day so i i'd love to hear what ideas you have along those lines i think i think the administration has just done a terrible job of letting the public be misled because i think the public is bought into the worst of the worst and just kind of out of sight and out of mind i would like with linsey graham and he brings up the you know captured on the battlefield and sergeant smith can't do maranda rights and that can't do which is just a false i mean it's a true statement but totally irrelevant to guantanamo so i think what would be helpful if you actually add like a substantive discussion i've asked this on the other side i mean i can tick off all the you know the expense the damage to our reputation the effectiveness of federal courts all the reasons why there is no you know guantanamo makes no sense whatsoever what are the points other than just political talking points that the president so you know weak on terrorism put that aside what are the concrete points that say that support guantanamo and i don't i'm not aware of any i haven't heard anyone give one valid point for why guantanamo makes sense and i think that's where you could sway the public is that if they had an honest discussion and not just the political talking points you need to have the forum you need to get it out the only person writing about guantanamo today is andy worthington i'm serious you know the public has put it aside it's a hundred and thirty muslim men at a time of thing of people we have rosenberg at the miami harold she does she does well we have an issue we have an issue with people not wanting to listen which i think is very difficult because when they when the executive summary of the torture report came out it's absolutely clear that that destroys the rationale for torture on every single basis what happened a whole bunch of people sprang up just ignoring it ignoring it saying torture worked when the when you know the executive summary explicitly says no it didn't on every level what was done didn't work so it's it you know how we actually deal with those issues i think it's very difficult i'd love to see president obama make statements as eloquently about the about about the wrongness of torture as he has about guantanamo but on guantanamo again the people who don't want to listen haven't listened when he explains publicly why it's so wrong that's everything that you need to hear but the supporters and those those republican leaders that you were talking about they're never going to be swayed they have the those notions that they're wedded to you know they drive them i don't know in the torture report remember it came off as partisan the only republican who supported it was john mccain and you know i my hat's off to him he did it i um so we need to do better work actually we're going to wind this up uh because we're almost out of time um andy's book is for sale uh i'm sure the gentlemen here were entertaining questions uh and well we should all thank them for their work and for their service to the nation thank you