Interrogations Faked at Guantanamo, Witness Says

Authorities at Guantanamo Bay staged interrogations of detainees for visiting politicians and generals to give the impression that valuable intelligence was regularly being gathered, according to a former Army translator at the camp.

Former Army Sgt. Erik Saar told CBS television show 60 Minutes that he believes "only a few dozen" of the 600 detainees at the camp were terrorists and that little information was obtained from them.

"Interrogations were set up so the VIPs could come and witness an interrogation ... a mock interrogation, basically," Saar told the program, to air on Sunday.
"They would find a detainee that they knew to have been cooperative. They would ask the interrogator to go back over the same information," he said, calling it "a fictitious world" created for the visitors.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050428/ts_nm/security_guantanamo_dc&printer=1

if it works for missle interceptors why wouldn't it work for miserable interrogators?

Thanks for coming forward, Sgt.

35 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Authorities at Guantanamo Bay staged interrogations of detainees for visiting politicians and generals to give the impression that valuable intelligence was regularly being gathered, according to a former Army translator at the camp.

Former Army Sgt. Erik Saar told CBS television show 60 Minutes that he believes "only a few dozen" of the 600 detainees at the camp were terrorists and that little information was obtained from them.

"Interrogations were set up so the VIPs could come and witness an interrogation ... a mock interrogation, basically," Saar told the program, to air on Sunday.

"They would find a detainee that they knew to have been cooperative. They would ask the interrogator to go back over the same information," he said, calling it "a fictitious world" created for the visitors.
...
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=5&u=/nm/20050428/ts_nm/security_guantanamo_dc

What exactly is going on at Guantanamo? Drug experimentation? Deviant sexual gratification? Shock and awe? Project Paperclip on steroids? Pure stupidity and incompetence?

What exactly is going on at Guantanamo? Drug experimentation? Deviant sexual gratification? Shock and awe? Project Paperclip on steroids? Pure stupidity and incompetence?
ans: all of the above(lotsa dirty sex)

...those should be the questions that an anchorperson on a major network should ask, while looking straight into the camera.

You have to think of the Guantanamo 'system' of prisons as the prisons that held captured Indians during the wars against them. It is/was utterly useless (much like Homeland Sec, for similar reason) but it appeases common folk Americans. You know, all those drips driving around rural America who need to imagine that 'Bush is keeping us safe' to justify their own political selfmutilation.

It's clear that very few- almost none- of the people being held were meaningfully terrorists, if any, and most of them are just people the regimes and warlords and such didn't like, or were just caught in some police or military dragnet and no one wanted- in this climate of fear, incompetence, insecurity, and retaliation that pervades the whole antiterrorist effort- to be the person to judge them innocent.

But after all this crappy detention, interrogations, and torture the Pentagon is too scared of them retaliating (lawsuits, actual terroristic attacks) to do anything with them. Essentially, the idea is have most of them die (read: drive them to suicide) or hand them over to foreign governments who will lock them up for life.

It's morally bankrupt idiocy and embarrassment. An honest accounting and atonement means a Bush apology, massive class action lawsuits and financial compensation (in the billions), revoking the PATRIOT Act for the most part, admission of the "detainees"' civil rights in the American legal system under the 14th Amendment, jailing of the American perpetrators of torture (probably hundreds of people, many CIA and such), firing Rumsfeld and a pile of Pentagon brass, shutdown of the Guantanamo system, and an enormous international political victory for Al Qaeda.

It's a disaster for the American Right. I never imagined they'd get themselves in this deep and surprised at how far they have given that they know the whole thing will be exposed at some point. But reactionaries are strange that way.

n/t

Recommended.

More like Stalin's Russia every day.

Gulags

Torture

more Police State Powers every day

One Party Government

Absurd (OBSCENE) Military Budgets

Dismantling of Social Programs

Pravda (Fox News)State Propaganda

Persecution of Dissent

HyperNationalism masquerading as Patriotism

Emerging Class of SMALL POWERFUL ELITES

Bogus elections

"Private Police and Security Forces"

Civil Control of Military non-existent

Highest percentage imprisoned in Western World

Potemkin Villages for the press

Rampant Historical Revisionism

Privileges and Access for Party Members Only

WOW. I gotta stop.
I'm scaring myself!

This first paragraph I recieved from an email (americanprogress.org)

DAILY OUTRAGE

According to a former Army translator, the U.S. military has staged "mock interrogations" for Congress and other officials to "make it appear the government was obtaining valuable intelligence." Cooperative detainees were rewarded with ice cream.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/28/AR2005042801639.html

Detainee Questioning Was Faked, Book Says

U.S. Military Denies Staging Interviews

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 29, 2005; Page A21

The U.S. military staged the interrogations of terrorism suspects for members of Congress and other officials visiting the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to make it appear the government was obtaining valuable intelligence, a former Army translator who worked there claims in a new book scheduled for release Monday.

Former Army Sgt. Erik Saar said the military chose detainees for the mock interrogations who previously had been cooperative and instructed them to repeat what they had told interrogators in earlier sessions, according to an interview with the CBS television program "60 Minutes," which is slated to air Sunday night.
"They would find a detainee that they knew to have been cooperative," Saar told CBS. "They would ask the interrogator to go back over the same information," he said, calling it "a fictitious world" created for the visitors.

Saar worked as a translator at Guantanamo from December 2002 to June 2003. During that time, several members of Congress reported visiting the base, but military officials said they do not know precisely how many toured it.......

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,15122310%255E1702,00.html

More evidence the "War on Terrorism" is faked for the advancement of US empire.


<snippit>
AUTHORITIES at Guantanamo Bay staged interrogations of detainees for visiting politicians and generals to give the impression that valuable intelligence was regularly being gathered, says a former US Army translator at the camp.

Sergeant Erik Saar told CBS television's 60 Minutes that he believed "only a few dozen" of the 600 detainees at the camp were terrorists and that little information was obtained from them.

"Interrogations were set up so the VIPs could come and witness an interrogation ... a mock interrogation, basically," Sgt Saar told the program, to air on Sunday.

"They would find a detainee that they knew to have been cooperative. They would ask the interrogator to go back over the same information," he said, calling it "a fictitious world" created for the visitors.
</snippit>

so we have the catered war with interludes of theatrical performances

Anyone else see it? It was a while ago now; maybe 18 months or two years ago. At the time I remember wondering about it.

Jennings visited and showed on film the cells the prisoners were kept in, and described the routines he was told they observed. I can remember Jennings saying they let him have access to certain areas of the camp and not to others.

My memory is spotty (maybe someone else remembers more), but my overall impression was that while a clean, orderly front was presented, one (or at least I) definitely got the feeling there was more going on behind the scenes.

ON EDIT: I've found mention of two ABC segments on this, one in November 2002 and one in June 2004.

-wildflower

i truested you (on his reporting in quantanamo) and now i see that trust was misplaced.

But could only report what he was told. Just my impression.

I'm trying to find a link on this. So far I've found a snip of a transcript from 20/20 special from June 2004. It was called "Peter Jennings Reporting: Guantánamo." Maybe what I saw was clips from 20/20 shown on World News Tonight.

The snip I found:

Peter Jennings: Were any prisoners tortured?

Hood: All of our interrogations are conducted consistent with all the
provisions laid out in the Geneva Convention. We are not torturing anybody and anybody who asserted so previously is lying. That doesn't happen here. Detainees are not beaten; they're not starved; they're not abused in any way.

Jennings: Do you not use sleep deprivation?

Hood: Aaaaaah, no, largely not, not that I'm aware of.

(In March 2004, Gen. Hood replaced Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller who was appointed commander of U.S.-run prisons in Iraq.)

Another pile of lies and massive deception in order to try to spur poll numbers. This is truly the worst fascist crazed administration that has ever, ever been allowed to screw up the world so bad that its almost like turning on Saturday Night Live.