The Dark Side by Jane Mayer

Author:Jane Mayer [Mayer, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-45650-2
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2008-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

At this point, a remarkable internal rebellion broke out on the island. It was led not by political opponents of the Bush Administration, nor by human rights activists, but rather by seasoned professional law-enforcement and military men who were appalled at the direction the government was taking. At the helm was Jim Clemente, a thin, intense special agent with distinctively angular features, from the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico, Virginia. He had been working in Guantánamo since October, and almost from the start had been trying tirelessly to halt what he believed was likely to become the criminal abuse of Qahtani.

Clemente brought unusual credentials to the task. He had a law degree and had previously been a prosecutor in New York. Interestingly, given his attempt to stop mistreatment, his area of expertise prior to September 11 was child sexual abuse. Victimization of the powerless was something he had thought a lot about. He had other talents, too. He was the role model for Mandy Patinkin’s part on the television series Criminal Minds. And in 2007, after recovering from lymphoma, he collected a human rights award for an episode of the show that he wrote himself. It was about Guantánamo and featured the successful interrogation of a terrorist who was outsmarted by wit, not brawn. Clemente’s real-life star turn in Guantánamo didn’t go quite as smoothly.

In a series of conversations and meetings in November 2002, Clemente and several other FBI and Criminal Task Force members confronted General Miller, who by then had taken over the military command. They warned him strongly that the cruel and degrading interrogation approaches under contemplation for Qahtani were “potentially illegal.”

Clemente and others had already witnessed disturbing scenes on the island. Several had spied Becker’s guards wrapping the obstreperous detainee’s head in duct tape. They also saw Qahtani “after he had been subjected to intense isolation for three months,” according to an e-mail from one agent to his superiors. The agent wrote, “During that time period, the detainee was totally isolated (with the exception of interrogations) in a cell that was totally flooded with light. By November the detainee was evidencing behavior associated with extreme psychological trauma (talking to non-existent people, hearing voices, crouching in a corner of the cell covered in a sheet for hours on end).”

Contemporaneous e-mails from an FBI agent to superiors say, “On a couple of occasions I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18 or 24 hours or more.” The agent related that he had visited an “almost unconscious” prisoner in a room where the temperature was “probably well above 100 degrees.” There was “a pile of hair next to him,” which he seemed to have pulled out.

Clemente sent an e-mail describing a female interrogator “placing lotion in her hand and touching a detainee’s … lap,” at which point the detainee “grimaced in pain.

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