Serial S04 - Ep. 1: Poor Baby Raul
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These first two episodes of serial season four are free, but to hear the whole series, you'll need to subscribe to the new york times where you'll get access to all the serial productions and your time shows. And it's super easy. You can sign up through apple podcast or spotify.

And if you're already a time subscriber, just link your account and you're done. Over here at cereal, we love criminal justice stories. Guanta o is the most astonishing when we've ever seen.

Guanta o is a prison and accord that we made from scratch. Right after september eleventh's, we were at war n in afghanistan fighting alki da and the taliban, and pretty soon we had captured thousands of men. Our makeshift holding cells in afghanistan couldn't handle them all.

We needed a safe place to keep them away from the chaos so we could sort them out. And the place we chose was guantanamo bay, eight thousand miles away from afghanistan. In cuba, we already had a sleepy naval base there.

We've had IT since one thousand three. There is plenty room. And this part was crucial. The bush administration figured, because the base was in cuba on foreign soil, the prisoners we delivered there wouldn't have access to us courts. That was the innovation we wanted the way to hold these guys for.

However, along we wanted, and mostly we wanted to interrogate them, however, we wanted to find out what they knew, specially about aleida, because we didn't know a ton about kde back then and we were petrify. They're about the blind side, us again. So that was the idea.

Guantanamo wouldn't be a traditional P. O, W. camp. IT would be a new thing with new rules. The problem, or there were many, many problems, but the problem that dogged one tonio the whole time, and which became apparent pretty quickly, was that these weren't the guys we thought.

They were all told seven hundred and eighty muslim men and some boys were held at one tonne o and even the ones who were taliban or al kaya, they were overwhelmingly low level, like fall soldiers, other prisoners, we never figured out exactly who they were or if they post a threat to us. Our intel wasn't so hot. We shipped all these prisoners to guantanamo without a solid plan for letting them back out. Many people SAT there for two, three, five years, and some twelve years, fourteen years, sixteen years.

We didn't know what to do with them.

Thirty men are still held at montana, mo. And the cost, the last time someone talked up thirteen million dollars a year per prisoner, gun tana is probably the most expensive lock up in the world. astonishing? no.

Dana chivas and I dan's worked on previous seasons of cereal. She's going to be my cohoes this season daily. And I ve been trying to do a story about one tono for years, almost a decade. Our first attempt was in twenty fifteen.

sara. I had flown down to one. Tony mo or gtm o is is often called for the official media tour. The only way we can see the prison, the experience was strange. Almost as soon as we arrived, we were picked up at the airport by two soldiers from public affairs.

Small little mini mart, a quick on this site is just a small just again, if you want to snack er or something, they also have souvenir there, but you'll have another chance to get more souvenirs on the other side.

Guantanamo has three gift shops. Recently, the gift shops did a collaboration with disney. So you could bring home A T shirt that says, antonov ay with a mini IT, or one with palm trees that says, I don't get more Better than this.

For the mindful, there is a coffee mug with a simple mantra, be here now. Guanta a mobile. We passed up the souvenir offer on day one. Maybe you caught there, is hesitant the tape because how inappropriate. But by day three.

totally getting a bobblehead there, we were .

shelling out cash for fidel castro bob heads to bring to our loved ones back home. To be a guantanamo is to be worn down into a, if you can't beat them, join them. posture.

It's a company town. A company is the U. S.

military. Everything in the town belongs to the U. S. military.

The car washed by high school, the bowling ali, the ground zero paintable range. And of course, the story of guantanamo. They tell you at guantanamo about what they're doing. That also belongs to the military.

Our mission today is to provide safe, humane, legal and transparent custody of the detainees. here.

They didn't talk about the history of the prison. Why is hear what went on here? Who's still being held here? They talked about the mission, and they kept tight from the cap commander all the way down the chain. Our public affairs s courts, a medical officer, a guard, safe, legal.

transparent care, safe.

humane and transparent, study the detainees riding .

compassion, care for these detainees, care custody in control. The U. N. Has said the treatment of the detainees, antonio is, quote, cruel, inhuman and degrading that they are detention and past torture or violations of international law. But at the prison itself, what we heard from our military tour guide was about how well cared for the details were.

They can give their own clippers uh, tooth pace, so they also get some some snacks type items based on best on their compliance.

It's not that anyone was unprofessional or impolite with us. The soldiers we spend the most time with the public affairs escorts were, consider IT hosts, pigging us up a little after six A M. Engaging in small talk. Sir, I spent a lot of time wooing and eying. Besides, they point IT out, look at the color.

that water. Yes, amazing.

Commenting on the weather is really.

really, really hot anan. Lum yes.

While behind a set two prisons housing one hundred and twenty two men, the vast majority of whom had been there for more than a decade without charge. Beautiful .

garden.

My tolerance thrown this polite chitchat war, standing on a Cliff above the Sparkling sea, next to a small building where the adolescent prisoners were once held. I had a tiny meltdown part of the day where the fact upness is just gone to my head. Would you say I think of meaning the part of the day we're like the heat and the fucked openness of everything is like just taking out my sensibility. What you mean? What I feeling loopy from all of how you do?

Well, it's exhAusting because you're like pretending everything is pretend. That's when I we're going to play and we're playing our part.

Everyone's doing their part. The attending that's making me this.

Recently, I looked back at my notes from that time i'd written, went to some look out area. I pretended to give a crap about the view. You can see, naval thing is in the water used to tie battleships in the bay.

IT was a nice views for sure, lots of hills, some Green, swampy, mangrove looking things out on the bay. And then IT really is like theater. You're pretending to report or else you're pretending to report the story they're telling you and they're pretending to believe that the story you're doing is the one you've told them you're doing.

You're pretending to believe all the bulls shit they have to tell you and they're pretending that they're believing that you're believing IT. And everyone knows the only information you want is stuff that either don't know or couldn't or wouldn't talk about, even if they did know. Everyone asks charme and yx set up, including us.

What we wanted to know is what the people working at one panama thought about panama, how they saw their jobs. They were part of something extraordinary. So as asking prety much everyone, I met what they thought about the detainees and their status, sincerely asking, does this place feel like it's winding down?

A lot of the prisoners have been cleared to leave. They're even been supposed to be here anymore. How do you feel about that? And they look a little stricken.

They said things like, I don't know, I don't have any personal feelings, you know, toward these people. Or this line of questioning makes me completely nervous. One guy told me he was unfair me even to ask.

We started give up on the idea. We could have a Normal conversation with anyone lucky for us. One of our public affairs, skorts, was a delightful rave sunshine in the form of army specialist role. Sanchez roll was cheerful and chat. He seemed looser than the other .

experts like employee. That was a joke. Definitely a joke. It's nothing like, nothing like this in line. They have no cheries here or so.

Within an hour of meeting, we've learned role was from arizona, newly married, who's leading a group for L, G, B, T. Service members go hosting a show over at the radio station, and he seemed genuinely interested in the history of one tanana. So after a couple days, I pitched my question to roll, roll.

I said, some of these guys have been cleared to leave for four or five years now. And yet all around us, there's this massive apparatus to sustain their confinement. Do you ever struggle with that idea?

I never. I never strugling with the idea because I feel that we have we have pushed our limits so far to to make such a humane environment for them that every day we're trying to seek new ways to to try to make this place a Better environment, to make IT A A Better living situation. That's oh my gosh, poor baby role.

That is present day role. Sanchez, years after Sarah I met him at, I played him that seem tape. You just heard of him answering serious question about the detainee's. He told me he remembers that conversation.

Oh my god, SHE caught me. That that question caught me. That was in a moment where I was realizing things, and he called me, which is why, which is why I don't sound as quickly eloquent as I usually do. No, I don't .

have this can.

No, I didn't have a can answer because I was a grain that they should just leave in that moment. I felt like at least I feel right now in my heart, what I wanted that moment was just free to take me back home with you guys and take me off the island. Yeah, I felt trapped.

I felt trapped because I couldn't say anything. I couldn't know. I was, I was now in that moment, I was not lying.

Well, of course, couldn't tell us any of this back then. He was still in the job.

That's why we never did a story in twenty fifteen. We couldn't get anyone to open up to us. But even as guantanamo faded as a topic of national discussion, we kept thinking about IT, wondering what was going on down there.

We figured there has got to be a way to do this story. We've even tried writing A T. V show about IT, a fictionalized version of guantanamo, which humbling.

But while we are researching that, we had all of these fascinating off the record conversations with former personnel and former detainees, as if we started to wonder, maybe enough time has passed, enough people are back in civilian life, maybe they would be willing to put some of those stories on the record. So we tried again, contacted guards, interrogators, commanders, lawyers, chaplains, translators, also former prisoners, more than one hundred people. And a remarkable number of them said, okay, i'm ready. Here's what happened.

There's been great journalism about the legal maneuvering to justify antonio and about the details abuse about the politics and policy. But what we were after were the insider stories, a history of antonio. You could only get from the regular people who went through IT the people caught inside a justice system that at its core was made up.

What were they thinking if they could speak as themselves for themselves? What would they say now that they couldn't say that a lot, as IT turns out. From serial productions in the new york times, this is season four of cereal guantanamo, one prison camp told week by week.

I'm serra ic, and i'm dana to.

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holiday guide. Before we get back to us all, we just want you to hear what one panama is like, how IT feels to live there and work there and be imprisoned there from a bunch of people we've talked to. It's the backdrop. All the other stories this season, for example, maybe you have an ad in your head of what is like to work IT wantoning. Put that aside .

for a second. I love kim. O, like it's it's law. And jake mary .

was twenty five when he arrived at guantanamo. O, to work in military intelligence.

know you're on forty two square miles. You got like five great beaches. You know it's always summer. You don't have much to worry about, you know, like they were not. You worries, you know in paying taxes, that in paying you rent if you want to go school, but dive and after work, I mean, you could be at the beach geared up and in the water and twenty minutes.

Guantanamo, for years was portrayed as a key component in the war against terrorism. But IT also happens to be on a crib, an naval base stocked with booze. I party my ass off off and get more.

Every is in good shape and looking good. Everyone's ten. And how everyone's drinking and Young, massive. Mona, drinking massive .

and a parking, everyone is drunk.

And in and in the port of reconstruction ard, because they have the best speech parties, thousands of Young fit soldiers. And Taylors, for some of them, is the first time away from home. Corn tono is where they've landed to come of age.

I talk to a one guy, Patrick, who was on the prison's quick reaction force. It's kind of like a swap team. He turned twenty one at one tanami.

He started his deployment ment trying to hit on women in bars, but ended up falling in love with another man, the sailor. They had the neck around. What would you do together? What types of activities would you do?

Or like where would you go?

What OK?

I just you asked.

and I felt.

felt the need .

to ask in that way.

just be explicit the.

and I heard sexual activities and where, never mind. So I felt very like college, like I thought of being. Obviously, the next day wasn't classes that was get more.

Remember, the original purpose of guantanamo was to get fighters off the battle field out of the way to a place where we could question them. Guantanamo was a hastily built in til factory. Chaos is, simply put, IT was chaotic. Well, meaning chaos, but chaos the wise. That's paul rester.

He oversaw the military's intel shop at guantanamo in the early days when he first got there, guan honnami was already crawling with people from three and four letter agencies, C, I, A, F, B, I, D, I A, N, C, I S. Some were seasoned alki da investigators. Others were fresh out of army until school.

All were competing for access to the detainees. To streamline the scheduling, they teamed up three interrogators, plus and interpreter. So that's four people trying to interrogate a single detail at the same time. They're sitting in a room together at the same time. And oh, by the way, the only person in the room discuss any the study's knowledge of what they're talking about is the detainee.

I tried to explain everything I can.

Omar dhi is a former detainee, was picked up in pakistan .

and try to swee them to the people they looking for.

for him and for a lot of other detainees who didn't know much or anything at all about, okay, da, the interrogations were mastering the same questions over and over again for months, sometimes years. They'd say, I already answered that, go back to the file, or they d stop speaking at all. The american strategy could be mystifying. Another guy, macron, as he was nineteen when he was taken to guantanamo, he said he had this one interrogator who keep talking about the time he spent in germany, where mars from.

He taught me a lot of stories about his life, and that was really boring. But he taught me and lots of stuff from his harsh using hashes and stuff like that with Young german parties and lots of trade stuff.

But and you just did you say anything? You just sit .

there and listen to IT. Yeah, I couldn't go away. I I had shackles on the ground. I was a lot of ground. I couldn't stand up.

In the beginning, the detainees didn't have a choice about the interrogations. They were forced to go. That's what me, guantanamo, guantanamo.

To do what we wanted to do there, we ended up breaking international law, side stepping the geneva conventions, which gives certain protections to prisoners of war. Instead, the government argued that the man weed captured warrant prisoners of war. There were something else.

They called them unlawful enemy combatants. And according this line of thinking, unlawful enemy combatants were not protected by the geneva conventions, which meant we could play by a different set of rules. We could scream with them for hours, leave them shackled to the floor.

One time they taught me, my family, my mother and father. They died on a car, car accident that they told me a lot of things. awful. yeah. They told me all my family, my brothers and mother and fathers sit in the car and they had the accident, so but he didn't, he's told me, can tell me any details, and he's not allowed to talk with me about his son. He just taught me that very short and said, I can tell you this was .

this an interrogator who .

said this IT wasn't integrated. I I didn't know if if I should to believe him or not. I didn't know.

Morat didn't learn his family was alive until years later when his lawyer gave him a letter in his mother's handwriting.

Unlike Normal american prisons, there weren't huge divisions among the inmates. They were from all over the world, afghanistan, but also arabs from sadi arabian, yemen, libya and moraca, kuwait, tune's a sudan. There are a few europeans to australians.

Those guys tended to be released first. They spoke different languages, which is a barrier in the beginning. But then they started learning each other, sandwiches, including english.

They were muslims. They'd all been grabbed in the same conflict. Omar, the guys said they knew who is who, who is out? Ka.

of course, we knew who was kind and wit obvious, because they spoke the way they spoke. How would they communicate? Even inside? They had a different system.

By large, everyone got along. The abiding antagonism of the cell blocks was between the prisoners and the guards. Often the girls would come in hot hostel or scared.

They've been told, like the rest of us back home, that these were the guys, these are the men who attacked us on nine eleven. But after a while, some of them would start to doubt a former guard who worked in the blocks in the early years. He said by the end of his tour, he could differentiate among the detainees.

It's like, wait a minute, just go right here. Yeah, he's probably, you know, probably legit. Uh, a horrible person that is either killed or caused people to be killed.

This kind of here doesn't know shit. He just sits in his cell and cries once, go home. After nine months or a year, the guard unit would rotate out and the cycle would start over. The prisoners had different strategies for getting through. A former detainee from yemen who goes by danny, he spent fourteen years at quanta ama.

I'm very optimistic that I was like, I always like, like the the sun, light and bright side and try to make from lemon juice on everything. But I was so hard, so hard, so mean.

If you protected or provoked, you risked all manner of physical abuse, including being trapped by a team of guards and riot gear. Some detainees on, for instance, fought back. Oma r figured i'm going to get my ass kicked regardless, so I mind as well, make their lives harder.

He remember red. After one particularly brutal confrontation, omar had a bad eye, and he said a guard had gouged IT. And afterwards they put him in a new cell where he could see his reflection on study. He hadn't seen himself in a long, long time.

They had the, like an iron mirror. IT wasn't the mirror was like around thing on the walk. And IT was the first time I saw my face. And I saw held my hair when, like the White, just to a White, my eye was like, I shock to see my eye was completely White is like shockers.

What were you most scared of in guantanamo?

A when you were there cared. I know maybe the. We don't know once you going to happen, it's like you mean there for years and there's no.

No, no, for see what outcome. You don't there's no like, how long am I going to stay in this person? I don't.

Not crazy. There wasn't. And there wants an logical system, how people are released and why and what. And is mostly nothing to do in the law, nothing to do with you want went on an interrogation. It's more to do with other politics outside.

Guantanamo o the prison wasn't built to last, and nobody wanted IT to last, but nobody could manage to shut IT down. Even president bush, whose administration started antonio, he talked about closing IT less than five years after IT opened, didn't happen. Next came president obama.

In two thousand and nine, he was going to close antonym a. Within a year, congress blocked that plan. One, panama was obese. No politician wanted to touch, and the military couldn't empty IT out either.

We'd hope to put a bunch of people on trial for war crimes, but most of them we didn't even charge, much less convict. The evidence we had was too problematic, or we abuse them too badly, or they were too small fry, not worth the effort. We tried other ways to sort them to determine which detainees posed a threat in which ones didn't.

But the people who did get cleared for release or transfer a bunch of them, they still couldn't leave. We, in order to send them, couldn't send them home. We consider their governments to unstable, couldn't find another country to take them, refuse to take them in ourselves. A decade in, and we were all stuck, and so began the languishing of guantanamo. Jake mayer, the intellect alyse, he first got to go tanami in two thousand five.

the attempt was high. Everything was moving like you were a part of something big. So you caught up in the momentum. You caught up constant into collection. You know, as fast as you can, as fast as you could get IT.

Six years later, he came back.

Totally different story.

By then, twenty twelve, the intel mission, antanas primary mission, pretty done. They're about one hundred and seventy prisoners left. We've gotten whatever we could from them. The be hive energy of the place is dissipated .

know there's a lot less people there is like a ghost town town um so you know the party moved on, I guess. And like everybody was to kind of just like what is going on now there's this feeling of everybody is just like, why are we still here?

The majority .

of prisoners were living community in a new, modern prison by this point that access to movies, book, C, D players did. Did art projects made fantastic things at a cardboard? They could final special items from the next, the big store on the base.

Interactions were optional. And one former detainee told me, kind of pleasant. But the perks didn't obliterate the facts. President obama's second term had begun in guantanamo stunk of permanence. In early two thousand and thirteen, the detainees began a hunger strike, which grew and grew, attracting attention all over the world. The hunger strikers message was the same as ever, either charged me with a crime or let me go.

And that's pretty much child things were when there and I got to guantanamo and twenty fifteen and met roll, the prison was maybe closing, maybe not closing. And there were one hundred and twenty two men stood there with no idea of when or if they would ever leave.

So when I called real years later, what I wanted to know was, what do people like him whose job IT was to tell the official story in granta? O, what did they really think about working there? What was the unofficial story? Of course, roll can speak for the thousands of people who worked there over the last twenty two years, but he did have a story to tell me about why he was so desperate to leave guantanamo and what happened to him after. By the time Sarah I met him, ravel had been in the army for eight years already.

Be fork one time to obey the military was my entire world. I was talking about every single day, every day I loved IT. I, I, I took advantage of the military. The military did not take advantage of me.

Roll told me when he was graduating from high school, he needed some direction. The military gave him that, and he got to do incredible things they sent him to. Why paid for him to go to coronary school? He got a twenty thousand dollar or bonus when he enlisted in two thousand seven. Before guantanamo, he'd deployed the kosovo in afghanistan, which surprisingly, he loved afghanistan lost his regenia about.

I became super gather like I would get my hair died black, I would get my eyebrows um wax. Because on the german inside, they had a they had a russian ran barber sallon. And so we would go in there and get facials. And IT was crazy .

after afghans. Stan roll's next appointment was to guantanamo bay, cuba. The peril of the entities, which is says on the 声音 在 管 他的 嘛， the peril of the entities, rowel had never been to the crib. An before rose job was to escort reporters like Sarah and me around the base and into the prison. Like most of the public affairs s staff and most of the staff, quanta omo actually, roll didn't know much about the detainees, but he was excited to tell reporters about all the good the military was doing for the prisoners.

I was so excited for for you to come out there for fox news, for BBC, for algeria news to come, so I can share the message of what we have to do as a military and that we we were going over and above as if we were some, you know, salvation army, that we are there to keep them safe, to send them back, to be with their family. And that's what we're doing. We are humAnitary arians here.

That was my belief. That is what what we were fed to be told. That is how we talked about IT. That is what we believed.

But the job was really stressful, but not just for the public affairs staff. A lot of people told us this. The flip side of the drinking culture was an intense anxiety, the fear of getting in trouble, that was like they were under the world's microscope.

Sometimes the detainees would tattle on the guards. Sometimes their own leadership would go after them, slip up. Mistakes and bone headed decisions that would Normally be handled with a slap on the rest could wind up in article fifteen proceedings at get more. Roll told me he preferred the fear and anxiety of afghanistan, at least IT was flooding at guantanamo.

You're like on edge the entire day. You can't really think you can't be productive, and that's always happening there.

The public affairs staff especially, were in a tRicky position cop between reporters who are notoriously impatient with government public affairs types, and their own commanding officers who were watching their every move to make sure they didn't say too much or the wrong thing. So they kept to the safe herbs of their talking points. Present day I will demonstrated for me, for instance, if a reporter had asked what percentage prisoners are hunger striking right now a question so I did ask role might have said, thank you so much for that question. Our enrol feedings are overseen by a nursing staff and making .

sure that they are really staying safe, you know, because our biggest take away in our biggest mission here, montana bais, making sure of the safe and humane, legal, transparent care and custody of detainees. And so this fully falls. This fully falls into the humane part we want to make sure that we're Carrying, oh.

the safe, legal, humane thing role said part of its power was not just how long IT was.

I didn't roll off the time, but what I did do was IT was just long enough to make you rule your eyes or not, ask those questions or be inconvenient. Ed, you know, there was just long.

You're so right. We were like, so like we were so bored by the time you've got to the end of that line that we just .

you're not going to give him from us and we're going to just tire you down.

Yeah what was the worst question a reporter could ask you?

Um came seven.

camp seven for nearly fifteen years. Camp seven was the super secret compound where the government held its most important prisoners. These were the people accused of planting nine eleven like clean chick muhammad, and are supposedly high ranking members of alcade prisoners who had been held and tortured in secret C.

I. A prisons overseas for a long time. Everything about camp seven was classified. Who was there, what went on there, and certainly as location at antonio, down an unmarked dusty road, tuck away in the scrubby hills.

So if a report asked a question about camp seven, like if we have extra time, can we look for camp seven? Which sr. Did ask.

if we have extra time, can we look for camp .

seven and the other public affairs people would deflect.

I've never add anything set to you about ten, seven. I know nothing about IT.

I mean, you hear rumors, but as far as what they tell, I don't know anything about IT.

The rumors that there's .

a camp seven, the secret camp .

seven role, got the impression they were supposed to act as if I was a more thinking about like IT might not even be real.

doesn't exit. Don't even ask about IT. It's a media. It's a media thing.

A mea myth.

yep. And IT was violently mature that we did know anything I was like you don't know anything, don't say you know anything kernel heat there's the .

only one who could talk about you don't nothing. But he said they did know about camp seven. The existence of camp heaven had been reported nearly eight years before a simple google search would surface. A rh of information about cam p 7， the suffer wl had learned in his public affairs s training about transparency and truth and journalism. He took IT seriously, but now he was starting to feel uncomfortable.

We didn't have this experience of of being shady. We didn't have this experience of you know telling lies. There was a point. Where we all were so drained that that's when a lot of a sign up to do that secret mission, I told you about .

the secret mission after the break.

Role secret mission came a few months into his appointment. He didn't really know he was signing up for. He just knew was a chance to get away from the tours and the reporters and work inside the prison.

The mission was combat camera. It's not specific to one. Panama is a regular military job. Instead of Carrying a weapon during Operation, you Carry a camera to document IT for the commanders and for posterity. I suppose. Although the D O, D has never released combat camera recordings from the prison, roll's job on combat camera was to film the detainees who are on hunger strike as they were forced from their cells and then force fed. He didn't really have a problem with the idea of force feeding the hunger strikers.

IT was an act of protest, and so the military had to keep them alive. I mean, how? what? What are they going to do? What could you imagine the story that gets out if a detainee died on our watch because they started today?

During his shifts, role would sit in the combat camera office until call came in. He'd make his way to the cl block in a golf cart, and then wearing a faciem for protection, he would film the guards as they burst into a prisoner cell, strap the prisoner to board and Carried him out. Next, the guards would put the prisoner in a feeding chair, his arms, legs in head, all fashion.

The chair was traps. Once a prisoner was secured and couldn't move, the medics snaked, defeating to up his nose and down is thrown into his stomach and pumped, insure whatever nutrition drink they are, easing at the time into his body roll film, the whole procedure. Sometimes, as the prisoners were being forced fed, they would speak directly into his camera.

They would talk, they would be like, you know, why am I still here? Can you send me home? I don't want to be here anymore.

You know, i'm just like you. I have a son who is your age and. There is a certain one that would always talk to me and talk at me because he was used to combat camera. So he would talk at me and tell me to save him and just show those videos to the public again. I think in the moment, and I wish she's very numb to IT at that time, I she's numb to IT.

But he says he kind of had to force himself to be nub vague unease was floating around in his saki IT was easier to ignore IT. And that worked okay until one day his perspective on the military and ungan panama shifted. What happened was he gotten in trouble for something that had nothing to do with combat camera roles.

Roommate told his commanding officer. He thought roll was having in affair was one of roles. Friends role was married, and the adultery is a big no no.

In the military, an investigation was launched. Roll was put on probation for sixty days and was passed over for a promotion. Then months later, roll gotten trouble again, fulfilling a brazil zer test.

All of this was a shark. He says he wasn't having an affair. His roommate was just home a and he says he'd only had one glass of wine that they gave him a second breath lizer.

And he passed. But his commanding officer, puni, shed him anyway. He had devoted years of his life to the military.

He believed in the military, lived by its definitions of good and bad. Now, suddenly he was on the outside of the good guys club. And being on the outside, he started looking at things on the inside differently.

So when Sarah asked role that question you heard earlier about whether he ever struggled over the imprisonment of the detainees, and he gave that paint answer, he says, what was actually going on was he was starting to glitch to ask himself those same question. Sera was asking everyone. He was starting to feel complicit in what he called stealing people's lives. Soon after we met him, revel in his unit, returned to arizona when they had first to played the one panama roll was a cheerful, confident guy, a model soldier.

By the time he left, I came away thinking that I was a piece of shirt.

A few months after he got home roles, said he had a panic attack and eventually got a diagnosis of P T S D from afghanistan, anguilla onna o which is striking considering in twenty eleven, in twenty twelve, when roles in afghanistan, we were actively fighting a war there. Hundreds of americans were killed in afghanistan during those two years. And then here he was the caribbean guantanamo bay, where he could sit t pinole das in the sunshine and go to the beat of he wanted, and he comes home and falls apart.

I think it's weird that I don't have any negative ties to what happened in afghanistan and what happened in koval. And I assume because I trained for those possibilities we go through, we have a simulation of what it's like to be flipped over in a truck sideways and upside down. And you have to navigate yourself and unbuckle yourself inside of a of a hum.

I like those of the training we do. So I was trained for afghanistan. I was trained for cosell. al. You can not train for montana, a bay.

You cannot train for a thing if you don't know what IT is, if the people around you are not being honest about the whole trembling heart of the endeavor. What made guantanamo so confusing was that to satisfy our terrified post nine eleven needs, we had to show aside the old tim tested rules about how to treat war prisoners.

And for the ordinary people who had to Operate inside the new rules, there was a gap between what they were being told and what they were seeing for themselves. Thousands upon thousands of military personnel, hundreds of prisoners, everybody trying to bridge that gap, everybody scrambling to the same experiment. The season of syria, a history of guantanamo, told by people who know things the rest of us done about the consequences of an improvised justice system. It's gna be six stories, starting with a guy who acted out the stuff of nights res, which at the time all part of his job. That's next time.

Serials produced by Jessica iceberg dana chips in me, our editor is july snyder, additional reporting by cora, career fact checking by ben fAiling music supervision, sound design and mixing by feb wang gino score by Sophia daily Alexander editing help from alvin melis janua and arrogant ass are contributing ting editors are Carol rosenberg and rosina ali. Additional research by ama gilo and a mere cathode.

Our standards ector is using westling legal review by aluminum summer. The art for our show comes from poo delkin and mox cuter additional production from Daniel meet the supervising producer for zero productions is indeed tubes. Our executive assistant is mac Miller.

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