From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Null. They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our superproducer Paul Mission Controlled decond. Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Welcome back. In the first part of our series, we explored the history of Guantanamo Bay, including the centuries long obsession that so many foreign powers have had with controlling it. And, as we said now our previous episode, for most of the world today, the word Guantanamo no longer describes just that southern Bay and Harbor area in the nation of Cuba. The word instead means one and one thing only, the world's most notorious prison. So now we're diving into the deep water. What's going on in Gitmo? Here are the facts. So for many many people in the US and across the planet, this detention center occupies a strange, nebulous, dodgy legal space. Officially, it opened as a temporary facility and the first twenty people detained there and when we hear them called detainees all the time in the news, they were transported there on January eleven in two thousand and two. Eventually, over the next few years, hundreds of prisoners from multiple countries would find themselves at GETMO. All in all, there have been around seven hundred and eighty detainees held at GETMO at some point since it opened, and currently as we record this, there are thirty nine detainees still held there, many of whom have never been charged with a crime m HM. And and that's remember from our last episode. That's after the nineties when Haitian refugees were kept there as well as a few other people were kept there, specifically in Camp x Ray that we're gonna be talking about. Well, campra x Ray is one of the places that we're gonna be talking about. But what we're reference referencing right now as part of GETMO is Camp x Ray, this outdoor cage like thing. And after the attacks on New York, Pennsylvania the Pentagon in September of two thousand and one, the Bush Administration Jr. By the way, launched what they called the War on Terror. So starting two thousand and two, the Guantanamo Obay Detention Camp, which is often simply referred to as GETM, was constructed in several stages. It's a bit, uh, it's a bit misleading maybe for some people, because Guantanamo Obey the detention camp is part of the larger naval operation and the camp itself is actually several different camps, some of which have closed, uh, some of which are more transparent than others. Camp x Ray, which you just mentioned, Matt, is now closed. This was that camp with the chain link fences. This was this was the site of the photographs that sparked international outcry and prompted the US public to ask some very difficult questions about, you know, what what the ultimate end of this enterprise would be. But there were other camps too, Yeah, that's right. Camp Extray was closed, but it was replaced by Camp Delta, which had some SubCamps within at Camp Echo, Camp Iguana, which was another very controversial site in two thousand two. This camp actually held children detainees. And then you had the super luxurious sounding Camp Platinum, But I have a feeling it wasn't as fancy as it might sound um and you just to stay on here for one second. You'll see videos online of sub sections of Camp Delta referred to as like Site four, Site five, things like this. You can find that specifically in a Vice documentary that was made in that's where you may see that directly, where you actually see the sign that says Site five. Yeah, these are references. The names can become a little bit confused, using because it refers to things like one through six detention areas, right, and and we'll we'll see how those divisions work. But nol I, I agree. I suspect you're right about Camp Platinum because these camps are These camps are not places you want to live or hang out. They're not created equal, and they have different levels of amenities or comforts. And when we say amenities, we don't mean super posh stuff like Jacuzzi is obviously, uh. These detainees are housed in different areas depending upon their level of cooperation with guards and interrogators, and they also clearly differ in their level of transparency. Until two thousand and eleven, the US public did not know about something called Camp five Echo. Camp five Echo is not the same thing as Camp five. See how these names be confusing. Camp five Echo was what was called a what is called a disciplinary block. But then there was also Camp Echo, right yep. And there was also Camp Strawberry Fields. Camp No. The camps go on. Camp Strawberry Fields sounds magical. Can I can I go there? I don't know. I don't I don't think I want to go there. Um No, it's true. And then this is all wrapped up in the like you said, been this idea of the war on terror, which will get more into it, but to me has always sort of ended up feeling like the war on drugs. You know, it's a never ending war, uh, where you never really make a huge dent in the goal that you've laid out. Yeah, war on an idea is a difficult war to win because it's incredibly difficult, could argue, virtually impossible to find a clear ending point for a conflict with a concept. Right. This means that there's not there's not one nation state that can sign a surrender, right. There are maybe representatives of factions of groups who can sign over some cessation of hostilities, but they don't speak for everyone, because there's not one person who speaks for the entirety of an idea, nor does that one person speak for every other person's interpretation of that idea. And you know, there's also a great question. I've raised this question in the past. Um, the answer can be kind of depressing. But how come there aren't more things like a war on a literacy? How come there aren't things like a a war on you know, easily preventable medical conditions. You know, there was a short lived war on poverty, but it didn't seem to quite gain as much traction as the national consciousness. And like I said, well, we'll talk a little bit more about the war on terror in a moment. For now, let's focus on the arguments for the arguments against the extraordinarily unusual detention camp in Guantanamo Bay. So multiple presidential administrations have disagreed on the status of this area, gone back and forth on whether to close the prison. Um. You know, uh, former President Barack Obama in fact campaigned on the idea of closing Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and then later quite recently, the Biden administration has made some of the same signals, and then other presidential administrations said, not only do we need to keep it open, like former President Donald Trump, but we need to add more detainees. In fact, if I recall correctly, his exact line was, we need to load it up with more bad dudes. And as we record, this controversy continues. It continues because multiple human rights groups and journalists and other investigators and representatives of other countries have pointed to get MO as an ongoing example of human rights abuses, and they're asking questions like they're they're posing questions like, um, if the US presents itself as a champion of human rights, then why would it knowingly and over decades run UH an operation like this like why why is first not just why does this exists? But why is it the US? That is? Why is it the US that created it? And the their primary controversies hinge on things like torture right? Or what are what we're euphemistically referred to as enhanced interrogation techniques? UH. If you want to hear more about that, do check out our earlier episode does torture w work? It's not exactly a walk through strawberry fields, but it's important to be aware of the dilemmas inherent in acquiring information through through those methods. Uh. Another primary controversy hinges on the very shady legal status of the prison. Again for the purposes of detainment, the US officially does not consider Ghetmo us soil. And it's kind of an odd argument because the Bush Junior. Again, for anybody outside of the U S. It's it's often it feels weird to say, yes, this is technically a meritocracy, but this guy's kid became president because his dad was president. Whatever, just to say, we understand how weird that can sound. Anyway, Then President Bush Jr. Said that detainees in Ghetmo or his administration rather, it's important that it was his administration. Administration, yes, right, right right, the other president at the time of that administration. Uh, this administration said detainees and Getmo are not entitled to any of the rights or any of the protections guaranteed under the Geneva Conventions or guaranteed to people in the U S system of justice. But at the very same time they said, the US government is still nonetheless treating all detainees consistently with the principles of the Geneva Convention, which is a weird thing to say. It really is. If If anyone out there is interested in those legal arguments and hearing from the horses mouths exactly why and how those legal arguments were made, I would highly recommend on Netflix. I believe it's called Turning point nine eleven. It's a docuseries, multi part series that goes into that in depth. And again you can hear you can hear statement from the people who are making those legal arguments um and and their reasoning behind it. Right. And there's another controversy here, which is the cost From two thousand and two, right when this started, to two thousand and twenty, just last year, it has cost the United States government and estimated six billion dollars and the yearly costs of imprisoning each individual, just one at a time is thirteen million dollars, says thirteen million dollars a year. According to reporter Carol Rosenberg, who has been on this story since all the way back in two thousand two, this almost certainly makes Guantanamo quote the world's most expensive detention program, which is saying a lot because the human species love st incarceerate people. Why is it so much more expensive? Is it because of its remoteness and kind of disconnect nests from the rest of the country. Well, they they can't trade with the country on the soil which they occupy. So uh yeah, I'm sure it makes it a little weird, a little tough to get stuff in when you need it. And additionally, consider you know, we're talking about, um, a unique situation where the military's administering the prison. We're also talking about the legal proceedings that have been ongoing, right, and the arguments. There are arguments, of course and support of the camp. And the primary one hinges on the idea that if these detainees are released, they will immediately return to committing acts of terrorism. This is the argument that one out when the Obama administration used an executive order to call for the closure of the camp on January twenty two, two thousand nine. Spoiler alert, it didn't happen. Unless just talking about that, there were some detainees who were sent away, right, they were transferred to other countries. They were taken out of Guantana obey, but not all of them because old Congress stepped in. So let's let's uh, let's go through that. Yeah, let's see. So, um, the closure of Guantanamo Bay was delayed, essentially blocked by opposition from Republicans, and there were some Democrats as well that were against closing it, and these are congress people. They argued that the cost of housing the detainees was absolutely worth it, because doing so in prisons on US soil would be a threat to national security. So the isolation, the fact that it occupied this weird kind of geographical gray area, was a feature, not a bug for these folks. So in more than half of the camps, one hundred and sixty six detainees, some of whom had already been cleared for release or transferred to other facilities, engaged in a hunger strike to draw attention to the conditions there and to their situation. And we know what happened in response to that, right, the United States government began force feeding the detainees, right exactly. And also, uh, there's there's something I don't want us to lose here. The individuals who were undergoing that hunger strike had been cleared, which means that in the opinion of the US government, they were free to go once there could be fat, once the government could find a place for them to go. And if you fast forward, then President Trump that administration signs an executive order to keep the prison camp open. So domestically, the US has been divided on this and the the idea here is there's something about this idea that I think we should mention, which is the US prison system in general is not rehabilitated. There are no shortages of stories about people becoming more well versed in how to commit you know, insert crime here because of their time in prison. Right, And there's a good question, Uh, does the treatment that people undergo Quintanamo, especially if they're innocent, does it run the risk of radicalizing these individuals? Uh? This is this is an open question. But another open question, one that is in the news a lot frequently, is Okay, these people are held for years without trial in some cases, when will there be a trial? If you if you go back to the origin story from episode one, this camp was built as a direct response to the attacks on September eleven, and the initial concept was straightforward. The initial concept that just of it is the people responsible for these and other terrorist attacks will be found, apprehended, and undergo a trial, meaning that justice would prevail over chaos and acts of terrorism. But now we see that the detainees in guantanamobey whatever your whatever your stance in regards to this is, they do not legally have the rights that a prisoner in the US justice system would in theory have. I had to put in theory there, because a lot of those rights for prisoners or people who have been incarcerated on paper don't end up being implemented in practice. Sure, And I mean, Ben, you say, the idea or the question of whether or not prisoners in this situation are further radicalize or hell, even how prisoners here in the United States prison system are when they leave, whether they're rehabilitated or further radicalized. Uh, maybe not radicalized in the case of prison, but definitely like to be difficult for them to be reintegrated. Let's just say. But I would say, you know, the question around Guetanamo whether radicalizing folks is sort of a open and shut question. I feel like it's very clearly doing that, especially when you're taking someone under false pretenses oftentimes, or you know, maybe it's a good faith attempt to solve a problem, but oftentimes people get lost in the shuffle, and then you end up with folks, generations of folks who are radicalized if that happens to their parents or their family, or their brother, sister, or whomever. And in the case of Guantanamo, US constitutional protections things like do process or habeas corpus do not apply. So, for a quick and dirty explanation, habeas corpus literally translates to have a body of and this means that if you have someone under arrest, they should be brought before a judge or into court unless they are lawful grounds shown for their detention. So this does that make sense? The purpose of it is to give someone who has been detained a chance to challenge the legality of their detention. Charge me for something, you know, officer, have I been detained? Okay? Why? Okay, I need an attorney because I'm going to get a trial. Well yeah, but it's I mean, that's what that is, right, and that's that's what an individual should have. It is definitely it would be very weird if someone, you know, a police officer or anyone else just stopped you and made you not go anywhere. You know, there's threat of gun violence if you defy them. Uh, and they won't tell you why you're being stopped. I don't know if that's just a not a good it's a bare minimum for human rights. And the argument is the ends justify the means and all of that good stuff. But it's pretty clear that its people are getting lost in the shuffle, and that in a sense are absolutely being scooped up and kept without due process, you know, under pretty nasty conditions, which again I would argue, could actually make a non radical person into a radical person. It could make the United States a real quick enemy if they didn't feel that way to start. Yeah, that's the point is making earlier exactly, because how would It's it's a good question to ask. So what does it mean if you don't have these protections, Well, it means that the government can do things like keep evidence against you secret, or evidence just involved in your case secret, and it could take evidence derived from torture, and it could hold you if you are a detainee indefinitely, there is no end date to your sentences, there could be no evidence against that's just because it's a secret. It's a black box. So critics of this arrangement, or critics of the way it's organized currently maintain you'll you'll hear them argue that these military commissions, military commissions, sidebar or tribunals organized outside of US and international law by the d D by the Department of Defense. So critics are saying that these military commissions are explicitly created to evade those normal rules of not just civilian but military courts. And it may surprise some of our fellow conspiracy realists today to learn that, almost two decades later, some of these people in Guantanamo right now have never even had a trial. What are we talking about? Will tell you after a word from our sponsor, here's where it gets crazy. You know what, As a matter of fact, Matt Noel, before we get to the trial, I think it's important to note that, regardless again if your stance on prisons in general or on Guantanamo Obey detention camp in particular, it's not just human rights groups, it's not just journalists talking about torture at this facility. People who worked there have come forward with this same claims. Uh. This this is something that you know, for administrations that were very supportive of Bontanamo. Uh. This, this is at the very least not a good look in some cases. It's uh, these are damning accusations. Uh. Just last year. January two, guy named James Mitchell, psychologist and interrogator of prisons at Guantanamo Obey Detention Center, testified about horrific human rights violations that occurred at this at this facility. It's why is Mitchell important because he didn't just interrogate prisoners himself. He also created the CIA's post September eleven and Terry Asian program. And the stuff that he talks about is pretty gruesome, that's right. He described in graphic detail how detainees were tortured while still not being charged with a crime or afforded the you know, the kind of treatment that even the most heinous criminal would get, you know, on US soil. Torture included the use of tactics like waterboarding, which we know if anyone's seen Zero Dark thirty or any of these you know films that came out around the War on Terror, probably seen depictions of that, uh mock burials, um stress positions. That's we've seen that. I believe there are photographs of that from the Abu Gray prison scandal as well. Folks like you know, in these kind of being forced to stand on a very narrow bucket for a very long time or being forced into these very uncomfortable poses, all kinds of like deprivation, torture in terms of sonic torture, all of that kind of stuff. And since many of the detainees at Guantanamo were first held in these black sites, which we've got a whole episode or or maybe multiple ones about UM that are created by the CIA that don't officially exist, or they might have been held elsewhere by the military UH, and they were also tortured before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay. There's no official chain of custody right or records showing where what happened to them, and they're able to use that legal loophole of Guantanamo not officially being on US soil to justify that even if that stuff happened elsewhere. It's all very very slippery. UM. The lawyers involved are all required to sign in DA's nondisclosure agreements that prevent them from talking about any UH claimed act of torture. I go back to the Netflix documentary just because it shows you the exact wording of the these types of enhanced interrogation that they were using and why they were using them, how they got the government to sign off on it, and uh, I can't just watch it if you can, what was that one famous line like, I see no problem with this. I regularly stand at my desk for hours at a time. Sure, that's one you might remember. Um, but you've also got the architects the attorneys saying, you know, well, there's a very big difference between attaching electrodes to someone's testicles and shocking someone like that or just you know, slapping someone really hard in the face. It wasn't that bad, you know, it had to be an open palm. You can only be certain a certain number of inches away when you slapped them, you know, And just like whoa the finality of evil? Right, And then the idea that overall, in the in the scheme of the greater good, doing these things while u unethical in the moment, will result in saving people's lives. That's the argument, and that's something that a lot of people has been a lot of time debate. Again, I think we mentioned this in our first part of this series. Please do check out the episode on whether or not torture works. It's an important question and uh, you may be surprised by the dilemmas involved. The ticking time bomb scenario that is so often um glorified in popular film and fiction doesn't occur as as often as maybe screenwriters would like you to believe. Please remember a lot of those folks are just trying to sell a film, not to tell you the truth. So these black sites, we did a previous episode on black sites, they have a similar list of advantages right because they are not again, they're not on US soil, they're not officially acknowledged, they don't have oversight from the usual institutions that would be responsible for those oversights. So it may interest some our fellow conspiracy realists to know that the U. S Government has in some cases acknowledged that what took place was torture. One example would be Abu Zubadaya, who is a Palestinian man who was captured by US forces in Pakistan and then he was tortured in multiple times in a series of CIA black sites. And this is before black sites republic knowledge, by the way, or confirmed. Another example is Mohammed al Khatani, was a Saudi national. His military charges were actually dismissed because he and his legal team and made the case he had been tortured at Guantanamo. So as military charges they're dismissed, you might say, where is he now? He is still in prison. Uh, And like al Khatani in a very real way, the world is still waiting to see what happens next. Just a few days ago on September US here the current judge in the trial of the five men detained who are accused of plotting the attacks. On September eleven, this judge said that the actual trial was at least another year away, at least that's if everything works out, which historically it never has. In this case, the judges won Colonel matthew in McCall and he took over this case just a month ago, just as past August. Right now he's in the midst of pre trial hearings and in it is important to note that the coronavirus caused a delay of more than a year and a half, so they're trying to pick up where they left off. But this he makes a point when he says it's going to take a while to get here, because again, these are not the types of trials you would expect to see if you were in any US court. Detainees do not have a choice of lawyer. They are required to use the lawyers assigned to them. They are not allowed, to your point, Matt, to see the evidence against them, not all of it. And when it comes to a conviction, you only need two thirds of the jury for the conviction. That's not the way that you as courts typically work. Even if you were acquitted, even if you are found not guilty or innocent, your release is still not guaranteed. Well, even you know, in the US, I mean, we hear about people getting public defenders and how that can take a little time, and how maybe it's a false equivalency of the idea of everyone gets you know, the same treatment under the rule of law. Um, that's clearly not the case. There are people that can afford attorneys that are you know, much more likely to get them off for something. But in a situation like this, when you're a detaining not only do you not have the choice of an attorney, the option to hire your own attorney, the backlog of the attorneys that you do do have access to it can be years. Right to even get like your case hurt, I mean, the people don't talk to anybody for years. Sometimes well it can be, but it generally doesn't take two decades after you know a crime. But but, but, but it can be years without having any kind of resolution or any kind of forward movement in someone's case. We've here all the time about people that have been detained for years without you know, any kind of hope for exoneration. Well, yeah, but the biggest thing here is what Ben said. Yeah, I think the one that's couched in the middle. When you have a trial, your attorney gets to argue against the evidence and the points that the opposing attorney the prosecution makes if you're on the defense, Yeah, and then the concept of discovery, which means that you are able to see that evidence. So imagine getting imagined like worst case scenario and we're just going with hypotheticals here. Imagine you're innocent and you happen to have a name that is very similar to something like from the perspective of someone who does not speak your native language, you have a name that looks to them very similar to the name of a known terrorist. You get scooped up and you're like, what did I do? And they say you know what you did? No, really tell me, and they say, oh, no, I'm not going to But you're going to tell us what you did. And maybe you're a random taxi driver and you don't know, and maybe you speak to the lawyer and they say, well, I'm not I can't tell you the evidence they have against you. You know what I mean. And the taxi driver example, by the way, folks, is a real example that match us reference. So I would also like to say this is a little bit of a tangent. But there's a question I've been I've been mulling over recently. If the law is indeed like Guantanamo aside, put that aside for a second. If the law in the US is indeed equal, then why are some lawyers pay more than others. Why are there really expensive lawyers that seem to get even the most you know, even the people who have all the evidence stacked against them. Why are those very highly paid lawyers able to get someone off whereas less expensive lawyer wouldn't. I think it's a good question. I'd love to hear uh your perspective, especially if you work in the legal system, or if you work as a lawyer, or you work in litigation where you work in the criminal justice system. But just really quickly put a pin in my point that I was trying to make. Um, there are classes of detainees that are referred to as forever prisoners. Uh, some of which have never been charged and have been there since nine eleven, which has been twenty years now. So uh, it's it's not uncommon. And um, it's a little bit troubling. It's more than a little bit troubling. Yeah, and we'll we'll talk about let's talk about that right now. As a matter of fact, I'd like to look into the fate of the detainees. So there are the reports of torture. This may need to be its own episode. Again. In the meantime, do check out that very important question whether or not torture actually quote unquote works. Uh. Part of the hold up on the trial is due to objections by lawyers defending two individuals while he'd been Natasha and Ramsey bin alashiep Uh. There these lawyers are challenging the current judge McCall and they're saying, hey, are you qualified to reside over these cases? These are death penalty cases maybe, and we need you to suspend the proceedings until you're familiar with all the precedent, all the legal proceedings leading up to the time you we're given the case in August. Uh. And this includes they argue the rulings of the three other judges previously involved in the same case. Wait, record, scratch, you heard that right. There have been three other judges before Colonel McCall, none of which actually brought this to trial. None. Colonel McCall is the fourth judge to preside at the Guantanamo Court in the conspiracy case against khalege Sheik Mohammed, who was the alleged mastermind of the nine eleven attacks, and the four other men who were accused of helping plot those hijackings. And again those attacks resulted in almost three thousand people dead in New York and Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon. The most recent detainee to leave got out quite recently in July of this year. His name, Abdul Latif Nazer is a Moroccan national, and he had been he was finally he was released this year. He had been cleared to be released four years ago, in two six he was held for nineteen years. He was not and now never will be uh charged with a crime. So what does this mean for the future of Guantanamo obey and a pause for word from our sponsors, and we'll be back. And we've returned. So several times in these episodes you've heard us talk about people like Abdul Latif Nasa who were who were cleared for release. Uncle Sam was ready to let them leave Guantanamo obey. So why did they end up staying there for years? If that is indeed a case, if the government that apprehended you says you're good to go, why are you still stuck there? It's because the U s authorities have struggled to figure out how to transfer detainees from the base, even when they wanted them to get out. The big stumbling block, it's two big stumbling blocks here. First, there's the problem of getting other countries to guarantee humane treatment. So like if you are, for example, if you have been apprehended in your an Albanian national and the US government says, okay, this person has not committed a crime. We are going to uh send them away to freedom. We want to send them to Albania. They can't send them to Albania unless there's an agreement saying we're going to treat them humanely. And then if they try to get a third country to agree to resettle these folks, they have to say that that third country that agrees says, not only will we allow them in this country, we will also prevent them from returning to hostile activities against the United States. So you can't just say, you know, here's a plane ticket, go nuts. You have to they have to have a place to go. And so these negotiations can go out and for years and years and years. After everybody agrees, this person could leave. And compounding these complications, let's consider the case of the five Taliban prisoners who are transferred to Cutter. This was an exchange deal, and these happened a lot. They don't always make the news, but they you'd be surprised how often this happens. Uh. Five Taliban associated prisoners transferred to Cutter in exchange for the release of a US soldier, bo Bergdahl, and he was held captive in Afghanistan and Pakistan for five years after he deserted the army. So four of those five prisoners who got sent to Cutter have new jobs. They're members of the new Taliban government in Afghanistan and justice. February, the White House announced it's conducting a what they call an internal review of how to close Quantanamo, not whether to keep it open, but how to close it. And one of the big steps that you know people want this close, one of the big steps they advise taking first is to get rid of the military tribunals and allow the d o J, the U. S. Department of Justice, to reach plea deals with people have been accused of crimes, including the men suspected of masterminding nine eleven. So how do you how do you all think that the American public would react to that idea of a plea deal. I would say not, Well, it would feel that way to me as well. It's just weird because when you make a plea deal, you know that there's evidence against you. Generally that's not always, but the reason a plea deal happens is because you know it looks really bad. You're probably going to get a super intense sentence, so you take a plea deal in order to lessen that sentence. That's what a plea plea deal is, right, right. You agree to plead guilty to some or all of the charges against you in exchange for some leniency and sentencing or a series of concessions. Yeah, so like so like one example would be, um, this is just a very general example. One example would be, UM, if you are already in prison for several heinous crimes, right and you and then you know you're attached to maybe another murder or something like that, let's see multiple murder, multiple people, then you could make a plea deal to assist in in solving further murders in exchange for life in prison instead of execution. Like that's a that's a very extreme case of a plea deal. A lot of other plea deals are just with fairly petty crime or smaller, much smaller felonies, where it's much it's more effective in getting a case through the system to get to have someone accused of something take a plea deal rather than having to go through a full trial, right, so you can get you can. It's in this case it's like, okay, we've done all of this, has been all this time. Rather than do a full trial, we'll just do plea deals. Well, what doesn't apple deal often involve giving somebody else up or providing useful information. Not necessarily, not necessarily it can, but sometimes it's just to move the case through record, especially in like a petty crime, like the implication being that if you take this to a jury, then these sentence will reflect that you have inconvenienced the system. And that's like, that's you don't have sufficient evidence, right right, something like that. And that's again that we're not saying that happens all the time, but these are not. This wouldn't be new for these to happen. And so the idea of a of a plea deal on the part of people associated with the September eleventh attacks, you can see how that seems, how that can seem fundamentally deeply offensive to you know, people whose loved ones died in those attacks, or people whose loved ones died as a result of the ensuing wars that followed in the wake of those attacks. And then to get a plea deal from someone who was tortured, and then to get a plea deal from someone who was tortured. So this is just scratching the surface of the current situation, and it remains intensely controversial either way you look at it. It remains disturbing for the people, for the survivors of the September eleventh attacks, and of other terrorist attacks. You can understand how justice such as it is seems often to be an ever moving goalpost. And for critics of the prison and for relatives of detainees who were held there for years without being found, in fact, guilty of any crime, in some cases without ever being charged for a crime, you can see there's no way to recover the time that was lost. And you know, don't make any mistake about this, there were innocent people subjected to this treatment. How do we know. We know because of the statements of multiple government officials. In two thousand and nine, In fact, a former administration official explicitly publicly said this is the case. His name Lawrence Wilkerson, former CEOs chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, and he said way back in two thousand nine that he believed most detainees in Guantanamo Bay should have been released. And when he said this, he noted that he believed it happened, um not by design, but because US forces were unable to and his words, distinguish enemies from non combatants. So now that's where we are. The world weights parts of Guantanamo, both the facility and the legal processing. It's the legal processes it's pursuing. They remain hidden from the public eye. And for some this is just a necessary evil and it's committed for the greater good of national security. But for others it is solid proof that when it comes to Guantanamo Bay, there's something the US doesn't want you to know. So what do you think about this? I mean, it's obviously a very sticky discussion. I mean there's a lot wrapped up, and in terms of human rights violations, in terms of what does it even mean to have a prison located somewhere outside of the jurisdiction of our own countries government when it's convenient exactly, and do as I say, not as I do when I when I feel like it. Uh, please let us know. You can write to us on the internet. We are in all of the usual places. Yes, you can find us on Instagram, you can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter. We would like to recommend our Facebook community page. Here's where it gets crazy. But wait then, Matt, you might be saying, I hate sipping the social needs. I'm a social platform teetotaler. Wherever will I go to reach you? Well, you can give us a good old phone call. That's right. You can talk to us UH directly from your mouth to our ears via the digital magic, well, the telephonic magic of technology. We have a phone number and everything. Yeah, our number is one eight three three st d w y t K. You have three minutes to leave a message. Say whatever you'd like. Give yourself a cool nickname, hopefully not your actual name. That'll keep the anonymity a little higher. The levels of anonymity higher, just in case you know, somebody wants to pick you up and put you in Guantanamo. Ha. That's not gonna happen. By the way, One more recommendation, if you're still listening, check out the Guardians video My Brother's Keeper, a former Guantanamo detainee, his guard and their unlikely friendship. It is a horrifying and heartwarming story about two men that UH share had some shared experience in bond. It's really great. So leave that message at one three three std w y t K. Tell us all your stuff, But if you've got too much to say, you can't fit in that three minutes. Instead, send us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff They don't want you to Know is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Null. They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our superproducer Paul Mission Controlled decond. Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Welcome back. In the first part of our series, we explored the history of Guantanamo Bay, including the centuries long obsession that so many foreign powers have had with controlling it. And, as we said now our previous episode, for most of the world today, the word Guantanamo no longer describes just that southern Bay and Harbor area in the nation of Cuba. The word instead means one and one thing only, the world's most notorious prison. So now we're diving into the deep water. What's going on in Gitmo? Here are the facts. So for many many people in the US and across the planet, this detention center occupies a strange, nebulous, dodgy legal space. Officially, it opened as a temporary facility and the first twenty people detained there and when we hear them called detainees all the time in the news, they were transported there on January eleven in two thousand and two. Eventually, over the next few years, hundreds of prisoners from multiple countries would find themselves at GETMO. All in all, there have been around seven hundred and eighty detainees held at GETMO at some point since it opened, and currently as we record this, there are thirty nine detainees still held there, many of whom have never been charged with a crime m HM. And and that's remember from our last episode. That's after the nineties when Haitian refugees were kept there as well as a few other people were kept there, specifically in Camp x Ray that we're gonna be talking about. Well, campra x Ray is one of the places that we're gonna be talking about. But what we're reference referencing right now as part of GETMO is Camp x Ray, this outdoor cage like thing. And after the attacks on New York, Pennsylvania the Pentagon in September of two thousand and one, the Bush Administration Jr. By the way, launched what they called the War on Terror. So starting two thousand and two, the Guantanamo Obay Detention Camp, which is often simply referred to as GETM, was constructed in several stages. It's a bit, uh, it's a bit misleading maybe for some people, because Guantanamo Obey the detention camp is part of the larger naval operation and the camp itself is actually several different camps, some of which have closed, uh, some of which are more transparent than others. Camp x Ray, which you just mentioned, Matt, is now closed. This was that camp with the chain link fences. This was this was the site of the photographs that sparked international outcry and prompted the US public to ask some very difficult questions about, you know, what what the ultimate end of this enterprise would be. But there were other camps too, Yeah, that's right. Camp Extray was closed, but it was replaced by Camp Delta, which had some SubCamps within at Camp Echo, Camp Iguana, which was another very controversial site in two thousand two. This camp actually held children detainees. And then you had the super luxurious sounding Camp Platinum, But I have a feeling it wasn't as fancy as it might sound um and you just to stay on here for one second. You'll see videos online of sub sections of Camp Delta referred to as like Site four, Site five, things like this. You can find that specifically in a Vice documentary that was made in that's where you may see that directly, where you actually see the sign that says Site five. Yeah, these are references. The names can become a little bit confused, using because it refers to things like one through six detention areas, right, and and we'll we'll see how those divisions work. But nol I, I agree. I suspect you're right about Camp Platinum because these camps are These camps are not places you want to live or hang out. They're not created equal, and they have different levels of amenities or comforts. And when we say amenities, we don't mean super posh stuff like Jacuzzi is obviously, uh. These detainees are housed in different areas depending upon their level of cooperation with guards and interrogators, and they also clearly differ in their level of transparency. Until two thousand and eleven, the US public did not know about something called Camp five Echo. Camp five Echo is not the same thing as Camp five. See how these names be confusing. Camp five Echo was what was called a what is called a disciplinary block. But then there was also Camp Echo, right yep. And there was also Camp Strawberry Fields. Camp No. The camps go on. Camp Strawberry Fields sounds magical. Can I can I go there? I don't know. I don't I don't think I want to go there. Um No, it's true. And then this is all wrapped up in the like you said, been this idea of the war on terror, which will get more into it, but to me has always sort of ended up feeling like the war on drugs. You know, it's a never ending war, uh, where you never really make a huge dent in the goal that you've laid out. Yeah, war on an idea is a difficult war to win because it's incredibly difficult, could argue, virtually impossible to find a clear ending point for a conflict with a concept. Right. This means that there's not there's not one nation state that can sign a surrender, right. There are maybe representatives of factions of groups who can sign over some cessation of hostilities, but they don't speak for everyone, because there's not one person who speaks for the entirety of an idea, nor does that one person speak for every other person's interpretation of that idea. And you know, there's also a great question. I've raised this question in the past. Um, the answer can be kind of depressing. But how come there aren't more things like a war on a literacy? How come there aren't things like a a war on you know, easily preventable medical conditions. You know, there was a short lived war on poverty, but it didn't seem to quite gain as much traction as the national consciousness. And like I said, well, we'll talk a little bit more about the war on terror in a moment. For now, let's focus on the arguments for the arguments against the extraordinarily unusual detention camp in Guantanamo Bay. So multiple presidential administrations have disagreed on the status of this area, gone back and forth on whether to close the prison. Um. You know, uh, former President Barack Obama in fact campaigned on the idea of closing Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and then later quite recently, the Biden administration has made some of the same signals, and then other presidential administrations said, not only do we need to keep it open, like former President Donald Trump, but we need to add more detainees. In fact, if I recall correctly, his exact line was, we need to load it up with more bad dudes. And as we record, this controversy continues. It continues because multiple human rights groups and journalists and other investigators and representatives of other countries have pointed to get MO as an ongoing example of human rights abuses, and they're asking questions like they're they're posing questions like, um, if the US presents itself as a champion of human rights, then why would it knowingly and over decades run UH an operation like this like why why is first not just why does this exists? But why is it the US? That is? Why is it the US that created it? And the their primary controversies hinge on things like torture right? Or what are what we're euphemistically referred to as enhanced interrogation techniques? UH. If you want to hear more about that, do check out our earlier episode does torture w work? It's not exactly a walk through strawberry fields, but it's important to be aware of the dilemmas inherent in acquiring information through through those methods. Uh. Another primary controversy hinges on the very shady legal status of the prison. Again for the purposes of detainment, the US officially does not consider Ghetmo us soil. And it's kind of an odd argument because the Bush Junior. Again, for anybody outside of the U S. It's it's often it feels weird to say, yes, this is technically a meritocracy, but this guy's kid became president because his dad was president. Whatever, just to say, we understand how weird that can sound. Anyway, Then President Bush Jr. Said that detainees in Ghetmo or his administration rather, it's important that it was his administration. Administration, yes, right, right right, the other president at the time of that administration. Uh, this administration said detainees and Getmo are not entitled to any of the rights or any of the protections guaranteed under the Geneva Conventions or guaranteed to people in the U S system of justice. But at the very same time they said, the US government is still nonetheless treating all detainees consistently with the principles of the Geneva Convention, which is a weird thing to say. It really is. If If anyone out there is interested in those legal arguments and hearing from the horses mouths exactly why and how those legal arguments were made, I would highly recommend on Netflix. I believe it's called Turning point nine eleven. It's a docuseries, multi part series that goes into that in depth. And again you can hear you can hear statement from the people who are making those legal arguments um and and their reasoning behind it. Right. And there's another controversy here, which is the cost From two thousand and two, right when this started, to two thousand and twenty, just last year, it has cost the United States government and estimated six billion dollars and the yearly costs of imprisoning each individual, just one at a time is thirteen million dollars, says thirteen million dollars a year. According to reporter Carol Rosenberg, who has been on this story since all the way back in two thousand two, this almost certainly makes Guantanamo quote the world's most expensive detention program, which is saying a lot because the human species love st incarceerate people. Why is it so much more expensive? Is it because of its remoteness and kind of disconnect nests from the rest of the country. Well, they they can't trade with the country on the soil which they occupy. So uh yeah, I'm sure it makes it a little weird, a little tough to get stuff in when you need it. And additionally, consider you know, we're talking about, um, a unique situation where the military's administering the prison. We're also talking about the legal proceedings that have been ongoing, right, and the arguments. There are arguments, of course and support of the camp. And the primary one hinges on the idea that if these detainees are released, they will immediately return to committing acts of terrorism. This is the argument that one out when the Obama administration used an executive order to call for the closure of the camp on January twenty two, two thousand nine. Spoiler alert, it didn't happen. Unless just talking about that, there were some detainees who were sent away, right, they were transferred to other countries. They were taken out of Guantana obey, but not all of them because old Congress stepped in. So let's let's uh, let's go through that. Yeah, let's see. So, um, the closure of Guantanamo Bay was delayed, essentially blocked by opposition from Republicans, and there were some Democrats as well that were against closing it, and these are congress people. They argued that the cost of housing the detainees was absolutely worth it, because doing so in prisons on US soil would be a threat to national security. So the isolation, the fact that it occupied this weird kind of geographical gray area, was a feature, not a bug for these folks. So in more than half of the camps, one hundred and sixty six detainees, some of whom had already been cleared for release or transferred to other facilities, engaged in a hunger strike to draw attention to the conditions there and to their situation. And we know what happened in response to that, right, the United States government began force feeding the detainees, right exactly. And also, uh, there's there's something I don't want us to lose here. The individuals who were undergoing that hunger strike had been cleared, which means that in the opinion of the US government, they were free to go once there could be fat, once the government could find a place for them to go. And if you fast forward, then President Trump that administration signs an executive order to keep the prison camp open. So domestically, the US has been divided on this and the the idea here is there's something about this idea that I think we should mention, which is the US prison system in general is not rehabilitated. There are no shortages of stories about people becoming more well versed in how to commit you know, insert crime here because of their time in prison. Right, And there's a good question, Uh, does the treatment that people undergo Quintanamo, especially if they're innocent, does it run the risk of radicalizing these individuals? Uh? This is this is an open question. But another open question, one that is in the news a lot frequently, is Okay, these people are held for years without trial in some cases, when will there be a trial? If you if you go back to the origin story from episode one, this camp was built as a direct response to the attacks on September eleven, and the initial concept was straightforward. The initial concept that just of it is the people responsible for these and other terrorist attacks will be found, apprehended, and undergo a trial, meaning that justice would prevail over chaos and acts of terrorism. But now we see that the detainees in guantanamobey whatever your whatever your stance in regards to this is, they do not legally have the rights that a prisoner in the US justice system would in theory have. I had to put in theory there, because a lot of those rights for prisoners or people who have been incarcerated on paper don't end up being implemented in practice. Sure, And I mean, Ben, you say, the idea or the question of whether or not prisoners in this situation are further radicalize or hell, even how prisoners here in the United States prison system are when they leave, whether they're rehabilitated or further radicalized. Uh, maybe not radicalized in the case of prison, but definitely like to be difficult for them to be reintegrated. Let's just say. But I would say, you know, the question around Guetanamo whether radicalizing folks is sort of a open and shut question. I feel like it's very clearly doing that, especially when you're taking someone under false pretenses oftentimes, or you know, maybe it's a good faith attempt to solve a problem, but oftentimes people get lost in the shuffle, and then you end up with folks, generations of folks who are radicalized if that happens to their parents or their family, or their brother, sister, or whomever. And in the case of Guantanamo, US constitutional protections things like do process or habeas corpus do not apply. So, for a quick and dirty explanation, habeas corpus literally translates to have a body of and this means that if you have someone under arrest, they should be brought before a judge or into court unless they are lawful grounds shown for their detention. So this does that make sense? The purpose of it is to give someone who has been detained a chance to challenge the legality of their detention. Charge me for something, you know, officer, have I been detained? Okay? Why? Okay, I need an attorney because I'm going to get a trial. Well yeah, but it's I mean, that's what that is, right, and that's that's what an individual should have. It is definitely it would be very weird if someone, you know, a police officer or anyone else just stopped you and made you not go anywhere. You know, there's threat of gun violence if you defy them. Uh, and they won't tell you why you're being stopped. I don't know if that's just a not a good it's a bare minimum for human rights. And the argument is the ends justify the means and all of that good stuff. But it's pretty clear that its people are getting lost in the shuffle, and that in a sense are absolutely being scooped up and kept without due process, you know, under pretty nasty conditions, which again I would argue, could actually make a non radical person into a radical person. It could make the United States a real quick enemy if they didn't feel that way to start. Yeah, that's the point is making earlier exactly, because how would It's it's a good question to ask. So what does it mean if you don't have these protections, Well, it means that the government can do things like keep evidence against you secret, or evidence just involved in your case secret, and it could take evidence derived from torture, and it could hold you if you are a detainee indefinitely, there is no end date to your sentences, there could be no evidence against that's just because it's a secret. It's a black box. So critics of this arrangement, or critics of the way it's organized currently maintain you'll you'll hear them argue that these military commissions, military commissions, sidebar or tribunals organized outside of US and international law by the d D by the Department of Defense. So critics are saying that these military commissions are explicitly created to evade those normal rules of not just civilian but military courts. And it may surprise some of our fellow conspiracy realists today to learn that, almost two decades later, some of these people in Guantanamo right now have never even had a trial. What are we talking about? Will tell you after a word from our sponsor, here's where it gets crazy. You know what, As a matter of fact, Matt Noel, before we get to the trial, I think it's important to note that, regardless again if your stance on prisons in general or on Guantanamo Obey detention camp in particular, it's not just human rights groups, it's not just journalists talking about torture at this facility. People who worked there have come forward with this same claims. Uh. This this is something that you know, for administrations that were very supportive of Bontanamo. Uh. This, this is at the very least not a good look in some cases. It's uh, these are damning accusations. Uh. Just last year. January two, guy named James Mitchell, psychologist and interrogator of prisons at Guantanamo Obey Detention Center, testified about horrific human rights violations that occurred at this at this facility. It's why is Mitchell important because he didn't just interrogate prisoners himself. He also created the CIA's post September eleven and Terry Asian program. And the stuff that he talks about is pretty gruesome, that's right. He described in graphic detail how detainees were tortured while still not being charged with a crime or afforded the you know, the kind of treatment that even the most heinous criminal would get, you know, on US soil. Torture included the use of tactics like waterboarding, which we know if anyone's seen Zero Dark thirty or any of these you know films that came out around the War on Terror, probably seen depictions of that, uh mock burials, um stress positions. That's we've seen that. I believe there are photographs of that from the Abu Gray prison scandal as well. Folks like you know, in these kind of being forced to stand on a very narrow bucket for a very long time or being forced into these very uncomfortable poses, all kinds of like deprivation, torture in terms of sonic torture, all of that kind of stuff. And since many of the detainees at Guantanamo were first held in these black sites, which we've got a whole episode or or maybe multiple ones about UM that are created by the CIA that don't officially exist, or they might have been held elsewhere by the military UH, and they were also tortured before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay. There's no official chain of custody right or records showing where what happened to them, and they're able to use that legal loophole of Guantanamo not officially being on US soil to justify that even if that stuff happened elsewhere. It's all very very slippery. UM. The lawyers involved are all required to sign in DA's nondisclosure agreements that prevent them from talking about any UH claimed act of torture. I go back to the Netflix documentary just because it shows you the exact wording of the these types of enhanced interrogation that they were using and why they were using them, how they got the government to sign off on it, and uh, I can't just watch it if you can, what was that one famous line like, I see no problem with this. I regularly stand at my desk for hours at a time. Sure, that's one you might remember. Um, but you've also got the architects the attorneys saying, you know, well, there's a very big difference between attaching electrodes to someone's testicles and shocking someone like that or just you know, slapping someone really hard in the face. It wasn't that bad, you know, it had to be an open palm. You can only be certain a certain number of inches away when you slapped them, you know, And just like whoa the finality of evil? Right, And then the idea that overall, in the in the scheme of the greater good, doing these things while u unethical in the moment, will result in saving people's lives. That's the argument, and that's something that a lot of people has been a lot of time debate. Again, I think we mentioned this in our first part of this series. Please do check out the episode on whether or not torture works. It's an important question and uh, you may be surprised by the dilemmas involved. The ticking time bomb scenario that is so often um glorified in popular film and fiction doesn't occur as as often as maybe screenwriters would like you to believe. Please remember a lot of those folks are just trying to sell a film, not to tell you the truth. So these black sites, we did a previous episode on black sites, they have a similar list of advantages right because they are not again, they're not on US soil, they're not officially acknowledged, they don't have oversight from the usual institutions that would be responsible for those oversights. So it may interest some our fellow conspiracy realists to know that the U. S Government has in some cases acknowledged that what took place was torture. One example would be Abu Zubadaya, who is a Palestinian man who was captured by US forces in Pakistan and then he was tortured in multiple times in a series of CIA black sites. And this is before black sites republic knowledge, by the way, or confirmed. Another example is Mohammed al Khatani, was a Saudi national. His military charges were actually dismissed because he and his legal team and made the case he had been tortured at Guantanamo. So as military charges they're dismissed, you might say, where is he now? He is still in prison. Uh, And like al Khatani in a very real way, the world is still waiting to see what happens next. Just a few days ago on September US here the current judge in the trial of the five men detained who are accused of plotting the attacks. On September eleven, this judge said that the actual trial was at least another year away, at least that's if everything works out, which historically it never has. In this case, the judges won Colonel matthew in McCall and he took over this case just a month ago, just as past August. Right now he's in the midst of pre trial hearings and in it is important to note that the coronavirus caused a delay of more than a year and a half, so they're trying to pick up where they left off. But this he makes a point when he says it's going to take a while to get here, because again, these are not the types of trials you would expect to see if you were in any US court. Detainees do not have a choice of lawyer. They are required to use the lawyers assigned to them. They are not allowed, to your point, Matt, to see the evidence against them, not all of it. And when it comes to a conviction, you only need two thirds of the jury for the conviction. That's not the way that you as courts typically work. Even if you were acquitted, even if you are found not guilty or innocent, your release is still not guaranteed. Well, even you know, in the US, I mean, we hear about people getting public defenders and how that can take a little time, and how maybe it's a false equivalency of the idea of everyone gets you know, the same treatment under the rule of law. Um, that's clearly not the case. There are people that can afford attorneys that are you know, much more likely to get them off for something. But in a situation like this, when you're a detaining not only do you not have the choice of an attorney, the option to hire your own attorney, the backlog of the attorneys that you do do have access to it can be years. Right to even get like your case hurt, I mean, the people don't talk to anybody for years. Sometimes well it can be, but it generally doesn't take two decades after you know a crime. But but, but, but it can be years without having any kind of resolution or any kind of forward movement in someone's case. We've here all the time about people that have been detained for years without you know, any kind of hope for exoneration. Well, yeah, but the biggest thing here is what Ben said. Yeah, I think the one that's couched in the middle. When you have a trial, your attorney gets to argue against the evidence and the points that the opposing attorney the prosecution makes if you're on the defense, Yeah, and then the concept of discovery, which means that you are able to see that evidence. So imagine getting imagined like worst case scenario and we're just going with hypotheticals here. Imagine you're innocent and you happen to have a name that is very similar to something like from the perspective of someone who does not speak your native language, you have a name that looks to them very similar to the name of a known terrorist. You get scooped up and you're like, what did I do? And they say you know what you did? No, really tell me, and they say, oh, no, I'm not going to But you're going to tell us what you did. And maybe you're a random taxi driver and you don't know, and maybe you speak to the lawyer and they say, well, I'm not I can't tell you the evidence they have against you. You know what I mean. And the taxi driver example, by the way, folks, is a real example that match us reference. So I would also like to say this is a little bit of a tangent. But there's a question I've been I've been mulling over recently. If the law is indeed like Guantanamo aside, put that aside for a second. If the law in the US is indeed equal, then why are some lawyers pay more than others. Why are there really expensive lawyers that seem to get even the most you know, even the people who have all the evidence stacked against them. Why are those very highly paid lawyers able to get someone off whereas less expensive lawyer wouldn't. I think it's a good question. I'd love to hear uh your perspective, especially if you work in the legal system, or if you work as a lawyer, or you work in litigation where you work in the criminal justice system. But just really quickly put a pin in my point that I was trying to make. Um, there are classes of detainees that are referred to as forever prisoners. Uh, some of which have never been charged and have been there since nine eleven, which has been twenty years now. So uh, it's it's not uncommon. And um, it's a little bit troubling. It's more than a little bit troubling. Yeah, and we'll we'll talk about let's talk about that right now. As a matter of fact, I'd like to look into the fate of the detainees. So there are the reports of torture. This may need to be its own episode. Again. In the meantime, do check out that very important question whether or not torture actually quote unquote works. Uh. Part of the hold up on the trial is due to objections by lawyers defending two individuals while he'd been Natasha and Ramsey bin alashiep Uh. There these lawyers are challenging the current judge McCall and they're saying, hey, are you qualified to reside over these cases? These are death penalty cases maybe, and we need you to suspend the proceedings until you're familiar with all the precedent, all the legal proceedings leading up to the time you we're given the case in August. Uh. And this includes they argue the rulings of the three other judges previously involved in the same case. Wait, record, scratch, you heard that right. There have been three other judges before Colonel McCall, none of which actually brought this to trial. None. Colonel McCall is the fourth judge to preside at the Guantanamo Court in the conspiracy case against khalege Sheik Mohammed, who was the alleged mastermind of the nine eleven attacks, and the four other men who were accused of helping plot those hijackings. And again those attacks resulted in almost three thousand people dead in New York and Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon. The most recent detainee to leave got out quite recently in July of this year. His name, Abdul Latif Nazer is a Moroccan national, and he had been he was finally he was released this year. He had been cleared to be released four years ago, in two six he was held for nineteen years. He was not and now never will be uh charged with a crime. So what does this mean for the future of Guantanamo obey and a pause for word from our sponsors, and we'll be back. And we've returned. So several times in these episodes you've heard us talk about people like Abdul Latif Nasa who were who were cleared for release. Uncle Sam was ready to let them leave Guantanamo obey. So why did they end up staying there for years? If that is indeed a case, if the government that apprehended you says you're good to go, why are you still stuck there? It's because the U s authorities have struggled to figure out how to transfer detainees from the base, even when they wanted them to get out. The big stumbling block, it's two big stumbling blocks here. First, there's the problem of getting other countries to guarantee humane treatment. So like if you are, for example, if you have been apprehended in your an Albanian national and the US government says, okay, this person has not committed a crime. We are going to uh send them away to freedom. We want to send them to Albania. They can't send them to Albania unless there's an agreement saying we're going to treat them humanely. And then if they try to get a third country to agree to resettle these folks, they have to say that that third country that agrees says, not only will we allow them in this country, we will also prevent them from returning to hostile activities against the United States. So you can't just say, you know, here's a plane ticket, go nuts. You have to they have to have a place to go. And so these negotiations can go out and for years and years and years. After everybody agrees, this person could leave. And compounding these complications, let's consider the case of the five Taliban prisoners who are transferred to Cutter. This was an exchange deal, and these happened a lot. They don't always make the news, but they you'd be surprised how often this happens. Uh. Five Taliban associated prisoners transferred to Cutter in exchange for the release of a US soldier, bo Bergdahl, and he was held captive in Afghanistan and Pakistan for five years after he deserted the army. So four of those five prisoners who got sent to Cutter have new jobs. They're members of the new Taliban government in Afghanistan and justice. February, the White House announced it's conducting a what they call an internal review of how to close Quantanamo, not whether to keep it open, but how to close it. And one of the big steps that you know people want this close, one of the big steps they advise taking first is to get rid of the military tribunals and allow the d o J, the U. S. Department of Justice, to reach plea deals with people have been accused of crimes, including the men suspected of masterminding nine eleven. So how do you how do you all think that the American public would react to that idea of a plea deal. I would say not, Well, it would feel that way to me as well. It's just weird because when you make a plea deal, you know that there's evidence against you. Generally that's not always, but the reason a plea deal happens is because you know it looks really bad. You're probably going to get a super intense sentence, so you take a plea deal in order to lessen that sentence. That's what a plea plea deal is, right, right. You agree to plead guilty to some or all of the charges against you in exchange for some leniency and sentencing or a series of concessions. Yeah, so like so like one example would be, um, this is just a very general example. One example would be, UM, if you are already in prison for several heinous crimes, right and you and then you know you're attached to maybe another murder or something like that, let's see multiple murder, multiple people, then you could make a plea deal to assist in in solving further murders in exchange for life in prison instead of execution. Like that's a that's a very extreme case of a plea deal. A lot of other plea deals are just with fairly petty crime or smaller, much smaller felonies, where it's much it's more effective in getting a case through the system to get to have someone accused of something take a plea deal rather than having to go through a full trial, right, so you can get you can. It's in this case it's like, okay, we've done all of this, has been all this time. Rather than do a full trial, we'll just do plea deals. Well, what doesn't apple deal often involve giving somebody else up or providing useful information. Not necessarily, not necessarily it can, but sometimes it's just to move the case through record, especially in like a petty crime, like the implication being that if you take this to a jury, then these sentence will reflect that you have inconvenienced the system. And that's like, that's you don't have sufficient evidence, right right, something like that. And that's again that we're not saying that happens all the time, but these are not. This wouldn't be new for these to happen. And so the idea of a of a plea deal on the part of people associated with the September eleventh attacks, you can see how that seems, how that can seem fundamentally deeply offensive to you know, people whose loved ones died in those attacks, or people whose loved ones died as a result of the ensuing wars that followed in the wake of those attacks. And then to get a plea deal from someone who was tortured, and then to get a plea deal from someone who was tortured. So this is just scratching the surface of the current situation, and it remains intensely controversial either way you look at it. It remains disturbing for the people, for the survivors of the September eleventh attacks, and of other terrorist attacks. You can understand how justice such as it is seems often to be an ever moving goalpost. And for critics of the prison and for relatives of detainees who were held there for years without being found, in fact, guilty of any crime, in some cases without ever being charged for a crime, you can see there's no way to recover the time that was lost. And you know, don't make any mistake about this, there were innocent people subjected to this treatment. How do we know. We know because of the statements of multiple government officials. In two thousand and nine, In fact, a former administration official explicitly publicly said this is the case. His name Lawrence Wilkerson, former CEOs chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, and he said way back in two thousand nine that he believed most detainees in Guantanamo Bay should have been released. And when he said this, he noted that he believed it happened, um not by design, but because US forces were unable to and his words, distinguish enemies from non combatants. So now that's where we are. The world weights parts of Guantanamo, both the facility and the legal processing. It's the legal processes it's pursuing. They remain hidden from the public eye. And for some this is just a necessary evil and it's committed for the greater good of national security. But for others it is solid proof that when it comes to Guantanamo Bay, there's something the US doesn't want you to know. So what do you think about this? I mean, it's obviously a very sticky discussion. I mean there's a lot wrapped up, and in terms of human rights violations, in terms of what does it even mean to have a prison located somewhere outside of the jurisdiction of our own countries government when it's convenient exactly, and do as I say, not as I do when I when I feel like it. Uh, please let us know. You can write to us on the internet. We are in all of the usual places. Yes, you can find us on Instagram, you can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter. We would like to recommend our Facebook community page. Here's where it gets crazy. But wait then, Matt, you might be saying, I hate sipping the social needs. I'm a social platform teetotaler. Wherever will I go to reach you? Well, you can give us a good old phone call. That's right. You can talk to us UH directly from your mouth to our ears via the digital magic, well, the telephonic magic of technology. We have a phone number and everything. Yeah, our number is one eight three three st d w y t K. You have three minutes to leave a message. Say whatever you'd like. Give yourself a cool nickname, hopefully not your actual name. That'll keep the anonymity a little higher. The levels of anonymity higher, just in case you know, somebody wants to pick you up and put you in Guantanamo. Ha. That's not gonna happen. By the way, One more recommendation, if you're still listening, check out the Guardians video My Brother's Keeper, a former Guantanamo detainee, his guard and their unlikely friendship. It is a horrifying and heartwarming story about two men that UH share had some shared experience in bond. It's really great. So leave that message at one three three std w y t K. Tell us all your stuff, But if you've got too much to say, you can't fit in that three minutes. Instead, send us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff They don't want you to Know is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.