Cable Show 2009: Nat Geo Panelists Stir Guantanamo Bay Torture Debate
Following 'Inside Guantanamo' Screening, Military Personnel Present Contrasting Views On What Happened To Detainees
Marisa Guthrie (Broadcasting & Cable) -- Multichannel News, 4/1/2009 1:06:50 AM
Washington — Complete Cable Show 2009 coverage from Multichannel News
The prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba remains a potent symbol of America's flawed war on terror.
A panel discussion here Tuesday night following a screening of National Geographic Channel's Inside Guantanamo, an installment of the network's popular Explorer series, illustrated the dichotomy of Gitmo.
Fox News Channel's Chris Wallace moderated the panel, which included current and retired military personnel on both sides of the torture debate who appear in the film. He wasted no time with his first question: Was there torture at Guantanamo?
"Absolutely not," said U.S. Army Colonel Donald Woolfolk, former deputy commander of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo Bay. Military personnel there, he added, "conducted interrogations honorably."
Charles Stimson, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs who oversaw the Defense Department's detention policies and practices in the wake of Abu Ghraib, conceded he wasn't sure.
For his part, Alberto Mora, who served as general counsel of the U.S. Navy at the Pentagon from 2001 to 2006, said officials in the navy "came to him and said abuse was going on."
Sarah Havens, a New York attorney who represents several detainees from Yemen, said there was "irrefutable proof" of torture at Gitmo, citing the refusal by Susan Crawford, the Bush administration appointee with legal purview over Guantanamo, to try the so-called 20th Sept. 11 hijacker because he was tortured.
"How can these two realities exist?" Wallace asked.
Inside Guantanamo, which premieres April 5 at 9 p.m. (ET), does not eschew the divergent ideological views. But it does attempt to put a human face on Gitmo by introducing viewers to the men and women who patrol the cell blocks there. One young female soldier arrives for her tour looking a bit shell-shocked. She says she joined the military "to travel and to do something else besides a 9 to 5 job."
Soldiers talk of having feces and urine thrown at them and express tearful frustration over the public perception that they are abusing innocent detainees. "Firm, fair and impartial" are the military's catch-words there.
Inside Guantanamo was filmed over three weeks last August. Faces of detainees are blurred. But there are interviews with several former detainees who have been released and returned to their home countries. The military screened producer's footage for objectionable security risks. And they were denied access to Camp 7 where "high value detainees" are held.
Cameras in the cell blocks elicited a stream of invective from inside the inmates' 8X12 cells, much of it in English: "A curse on your women." "America is taking innocent civilians and turning them into mujahadin...thank you America."
Series Released Into 'Wild’
02/09/2010ESPN Looks To Grow Broadband Portal's Base
02/04/2008WWE Spending Christmas in Baghdad
11/21/2006
