Serial S04 - Ep. 5: The Big Chicken, Part 1
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Previously on cereal, they show me like they are here to help us. yeah。 So they also get some some snack type items based on, based on their comply.

We need to gather information. These are the people that we need to get IT from. They would talk.

They would be like, why am I still here? Can you send me home? We don't know what's gona happen. It's like there's no.

哎呦。

no forseeable outcome. This, no. Like, how long am I gona stay in this prison .

from serial productions in the new york times? This is serial season for guantanamo. One prison camp told week by week i'm sarana.

Mike bomb, garner was on a plane on the target waiting to take off when his blackberry, he wanted to ignore IT. But then he thought with his boss, a general, when the general calls you generally answer, he's scooted to the back of the plane.

So i'm hiding back blackberry and talking is a general, he says, he said, mike, he says, I need you to go down the guantanamo and take command.

His own command meant he'd been charged of a whole brigade, boosted into the rare air of the senior officers. This was the call he've .

been waiting for and he said, you accept IT I said yes he said you don't think about he says it's got some issues.

And this was the early spring of two thousand. five. My bum garner was in his minds.

He's spent the last two decades rising in the military police core, stationed all over the place. Guanta o would be his biggest assignment yet. He'd be the defective warden of one of the most controversial prisons on the planet. But the place had been Operational a few years already. And a prisons of prison, right?

We also, I didn't really think he was .

going be that hard. IT would be hard. IT would be the worst year, not just my bomb garners worst year, some former detainees agree.

IT would be one tony amos worst year. By the end of bomb gardeners tenure, hand to hand combat would break out between guards and detainees. Severe new protocols would prompt worldwide condemnation.

And the worst would happen, three men would die. Apart from the superlative designation of the worst year, but the only thing the U. S. Military and the prisoners agree on about that time is that before I got horrible IT was going pretty well for a fresh day. Hunt was taken seed until they betrayed us or until they betrayed us, depending on who you ask.

This episode is part one of the worst year, the less worst part, mike bang gardeners first months on the job when each side took stock of the other's power. About a week after the call, bum garner arrived at guantanamo. A week? No, perhaps just get down here that from the airport they wished him across the bay on a fast boat straight into a waiting car that delivered him straight to his new commander, army brigadier general jay hood, who has a kindness face and does not suffer fools.

And he be around boost. There's when I came in the office, there maybe have been four seconds of like, hey, how you do a good trip yes, sir, right to business.

General hood gave him a rapid fire run down five hundred forty, some detainees. Here's how many segregation is, how many discipline blocks. General hood didn't want to be interviewed for this story, but bungler said hoo's main point was about P.

R. bomb. Garner says hod told him the military was losing the public relations war over guantanamo.

We're under, we're under a lot of scrutton right now. The U. S.

Public are government internationally. We're not trusted. When bum garners.

previous commander mentioned that this assign had some issues, this is what he was talking about by April of two thousand five, when bomb garta arrived at guantanamo. General hooded winsted several scandals. The worst one was abb.

Grab the U. S. Run prison in iraq. Hod had nothing to do with above de, but appalling photos had come out proof that guards had inflicted statistic abuse and humiliation on prisoners there.

And the shadow of that abuse fell over one tonio. Critics were saying, if IT was happening in iraq, if IT was happening in CIA black sides, because news that torture was leaking out to, surely IT was happening in guantanamo. So that was one thing.

Then there were allegations that guards and interrogators at antonio were intentionally misleading the koran, an issue that would very soon inspired e deadly protests in afghanistan and then in the middle ast, sudan, indonesia. And on top of all that, write in hoods backyard, a goold fashion sex scandal turned out four male officers, including a one star general, we're having swinging affairs with a female nurse and other female civilian contractors on the base. That's why bomb gartner had to high tail IT to guantanamo to take charge his little bitterness predecessor had been boott off the island.

Meanwhile, human rights groups were starting to call the place a gulag. Even some influential congressional republicans were waivers on their support for guantanamo. President bush in the dod were feeling the pressure. So our general hood was saying, we gotto change the narrative about guantanamo. We need to show the outside world what compliance looks like.

We've got to convince one, make sure that is right, continue to make IT Better, and at the same time get the world to understand that we are doing at the first class manner professionally, the way IT should be done with no detainee abuse occurring.

So the mission as bomb garner understood IT from that first meeting with general hood was nothing short of don't let the critics closed downland tanami make sure this place stays open the president's counting on you, mike. Bomb garner didn't take this metaphorically ally. He took IT literally.

He was the son and grandson of military man. How he was raised, if you're in charge, you fully the mission. No excuses from here on out. He thought I got to make this place the best possible version of its.

Before he made any changes from garta review viewed the whole Operation a few things about the place to please them. First, he found IT surprisingly uptight .

in some respects. As an example, when I arrived, they cannot have a straw because some filled IT could be fabricated to make a weapon.

The senior staff seem to think anything can be turned into a open, as if these detainees had superhuman skills. One going, never thought a lot of the security stuff fer doing. It's over the top, the way we transported them to guantanamo, for instance, and on occasion around the camp with the year muf s, the blacked out goggles, the many chains, the nutty, secure cy of her stuff he didn't think mattered. Leadership would freak out if anyone said anything to an outsider about the computer system where they log their notes about daily activity inside the prison blocks. IT was called dims, dims.

the tiny information management system. Diems is where we put he eight, he ate his nut bar, and he had to count carts of milk. He get moved to work at this time, I think, that have banana in all the stuff that i'm not all the stuff, but for me to say, two and three moved over to echo and we gave him, it's a Better socks.

all that classified.

You can talk about IT.

His second observation was about discipline. I thought you guys are doing IT wrong.

Who was crazy? IT was a bizarre. We the head items that they call privileged diatom that you were given additionally privilege .

to items were anything extra a detainee had on top of the basics, prayer beads, for example, or an extra sheet .

down to how many kitchen packages you get, our hot sauce or sugar or whatever we would regulate those, and that you're gonna SE your catch up for two weeks, well.

big woop. In other words, when fewer condemns didn't correct detainees behavior, the detainee was supposed to get moved to the discipline blocks the prison was organised into areas called camps, cap one, kept two and so on.

And then we had, oh, we're going to take you over to camp three. Can three was the disable camp. Cam three was huge.

Cm three was all three hundred, three hundred to people. And IT was full, and we had people waiting in line to go to cancer, everybody in the whole place, oh, discipline time. They would had to go to camp three.

And I say, okay, what makes camp story so different? I think that looks just like to say IT really was no different. I mean, there wasn't any real difference, meaning camp three as a main camp till you just tried across the mobi.

The third thing and hardest to deal with was the attitude of the guards, what bum garner called the .

guard culture in canter. I don't think i've ever said as public before, you have found among the greatest bulk of the guards, I say more than half they truly, despite the detainees. I hate to say that number IT may be a smaller, some, if they, if you know, if the life was hard on the tiny, that was okay with them. I mean, if we didn't respect islamic religion, that was okay with him.

As one guard commander told me, IT just seemed like a big babysitting Operation we were babysitting so they could get the worst detainees, he said. And burger na agreed, would holler and spit at you, throw shit and pisses you, call you vile names seasonally, banging on their medal cages, break their toilets, demand this and that.

Have you trotted up and down the tears? Some of these guards were right out of high school on their first deployment. They're king.

Twelve hour shifts with cuba, lazing hot and drip humidity. The present tears were like hot houses powered by provocation and retaliation, tit for tap. So that was the state of the place when bob garner got there.

Wordly strict wordly lacks wordly tense. Bung na had done some detention work before he'd run security at different bases, including overseas. We have been a director at the army's military police school, even worked as a share of deputy for a minute during college. He thought, all do you respect general hoods and artillery men, these senior guys making the rules. They don't have a background and corrections.

so they don't get IT. I was A I felt like I understood the insight, detaining that. I understood songs and how you do this kind of stuff.

I thought he could fix IT. Massive reset for the prisoners that was on garner's .

first big move. We set all discipline. Everybody got they are whatever they were, all forgiven. All prior events are forgiven. Cleaning like starting new today.

One garta strategy was to double down on the carrots and sticks, make the compliant camps more comfortable and the non compliant camps more miserable. He makes the differences .

start a big, bright line. Big, bright line. Good is over here. Bad is over here in bed. Within the convinces, i'm going to make bad as bad as I possibly can within .

the conventions means the one thousand hundred and forty nine geneva convention relative to the treatment of prisoners of war, which defines international standards and protections for P O W. During bomb garners first meeting with general hood, hood, hood explicitly told bum garner, go look at the geneva conventions. We're taking so much public heat over allegations of abuse and unfairness.

Look at the conventions. See what you can implement here. Bunga was familiar with the geneva conventions. He written a thesis about IT just a couple years earlier in military college.

The topic of his paper was topical side of laws are we supposed to follow when fighting terrorists? And now here was one garner on the ground floor of that still unanswered question, walking not just a fine line, but an invisible one. The bush administration's position so far had been that jane va.

Didn't apply to the men held at antonio because they weren't prisoners of war in the traditional sense. They weren't typical soldiers. They were rogues, terrorists.

So we didn't have to extend them. The geneva protections, especially the one's prohibiting torture or coercion, or crucially, the one about giving P O, W. Access to the courts, but the ones about food, water, religion, reading material, medical care, those seem OK right.

I'm gonna to figure out what else was okay. how? How should he go? How our coody go? That's after the break.

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That's B O M B A S dom slash N Y T and use code N Y T. A bunger neri's team developed a sort of cast system among the detainees, demarcated by the colour of their clothing. Initially, they put everyone in a town outfit.

Consistent good behaviour would get you a coveted White one. Bad behavior address ded orange one. If you follow the rules, your sleeping pad would be softer, closer to a mattress and a yoga man. You can keep more stuff in yourself, ll tuck your neighbors more.

Garage are very, are nicer to you. There's a less urgency placed on things. You know they'll talk to you. If you don't do this, they may be more of a discussion. You go over to a disley camp or november.

november black. Over in camp three was bum garner's discipline innovation, where he sent the most unruly detainees he referred bisht IT to make IT as isolated and unpleasant as possible. November block was called administrative segregation, or ad seg, designed to break you down in the courtyard park like a carbon jer was a barber chair.

Upon arrival, your hair would get cut, your beard shaved off, all your stuff taken away, including your clothes, you're underwear, all that remained to ward off the blasting. Ac, no sleeping pad. Every single item had to be handed back after you use that, a cup, a toothbrush, the blanket they gave you at night.

The only human beings you interacted with on november black, or guards whose period, dick, open the little flap on your door, and the guards in november black, on garner, said they were hand picked for qualities he characterized as, quote, hard robot, no personality, no discussion. I tell you, once you do IT or also i'm gonna send in a five men earth team in right here to make you do IT in november, you can't talk to any other detainee. If you start .

trying to talk to somebody, we're not going to allow that. How do you not last my talk in what we would do would drown IT out, either from the garage to start yelling in all the guard we did start yelling, or we would turn on the big fans on the end of the holes, the vacuum.

the noise from the vacuum. I forgot to mention a huge giant vacation is that .

is OK md. Arsht, formally known as detainee number five ninety, formerly nicknamed the general by U. S. Personal amo. And to care, he has caused him nothing but strive.

Augment sheet was a talker, a trouble maker, a big personality who can influence others to make trouble. To that, I was jail or son. He's originally from moroccan, but he spoke english.

He'd worked in london as a cook at a couple fancy hotels, he told da. He remembered his first encounter with bomb garner was a couple months after bomb garners arrival. Arc d, and a handful of other detainees had been stewing over in the new discipline set up, november black.

Isolated, this is not Normal isolation. This is different asia. This is isolated from isolation.

Erudite says he had organized a protest. They'd all rip up their shirts, and when they got replacement shirts, they'd rip those up to going for the staff pretty soon. Who should appear on his block. But my bumming garner himself the big chicken. Some detainees called them because of the eagle and signal .

and his army kernan's uniform. And he walk down the corridor, and he was on his own, and he's very unusual for the colonel to walk when he's own. Usually he read someone, you know.

as I walked under this tear, he had a great up plastic shield in front of his sale. And that that not only meant that he was proud of throne stuff for spit non guards, and so we d put you where there's shield. Well, he had his face pressed up again. He was the weirdest, most bizarre sight to make him seen that face pressed up against that they and yelling at the top is long.

I even I got all kind of him and me know you are you this day, you and he keeps on walking to the end of the, and came back, and he stood by the door of myself and he was smiling. He looks almost happy as if I was praising him in.

I stop. I did not really spoke english, but I was talking to him.

I could. I was just soal breath trying to tell him everything all at once. A torrent .

of complaints, especially about the guards.

Soldiers are soldiers. Why are you allowing your soldiers to abuse us? Says no and I said, yes and you are and you are encouraged to do that by allowing them to be ananimous.

The guardian, antonio covered the name tags on their uniforms a sensibly so that the terrorists could not track them down later or harm their families. The result of the known names was that detainees had a hard time complaining if a specific guard beat them up because they could identify them, says the aspen garner. Why don't you give each guard a number in place of the name tag?

Soon, as I said that his eyes poked out and at that particular moments he says, let's sit down on the talk tomorrow.

Mike bum, garner and octet, I differ on some of the details of this encounter when exactly the name tag get you came up, for example, was a long time ago, but their memories agree on the main elements. My bomb. Garner was astonished by this eloquent yellow alchemister, an augmented.

I was astonished by this new kernel like bomb. Garner, who is listening, sitting down and talking. As far as when garner knew no warden had ever done that before, IT would turn out to be his most radical move at one.

This is down and tomorrow, he says, but first tell you friends to stop team of these shirts. Still, you free to stop here. should. And if you have any concern, just write IT down.

And then we .

can sit down and talk about IT. I said to him, did you know that we are in the isolation? We are not allowed a pending the paper and you asking me to get everything down, I said, no one and he asked god he says, get them all open in the tape I said to me, have writer down everything and we sit down to more than garner's .

goal was a calm camp to keep his guys safe by getting guys like a shade to settle down. To do that, he'd mean more than the threat of november block. He figured.

Maybe it's a little unusual to meet one on one with a detainee, but let me just hear, really wants that night eric gathered the concerns of his fellow indies. He said some of them were upsetting to hear, as if the men we're falling apart, or maybe early broken. One guy asked, please, can you let us have more than twenty four hours between the thirty day stretches of isolation? Another guy, one of his demands not upsetting in one of.

says, can you ask them to bring some mixed nuts? Because I miss eating nuts to, and this get talking about that. We miss having I T. I want some.

Next day, bomb garner and some of his staff, dressed in their desert camel lage in her shade, in his orange detainee scrubs, SAT down at a little picnic table near a bomb gardeners office. The two men weren't so far part in age. They both had a lot of confidence in a temper, as aisha di remembers that they met for a few hours. And then again the next day, eh, he said he was impressed by the consideration bomb garner showed his staff with each detainee request he'd turned to. His colleagues, asked their opinions for his part, mum gartner said arc d seemed smart and a little strange.

He was a different fellow. Mercurial comes to mind. Um he's the one that drew me a map. IT was a drawing .

of a path representing an aspirational timeline for the prison. At the beginning of the path was the past, which era sheet labelled the dark ages? Bad food, poison water, lack of respect for their religion.

everything bad. And he's got these all long's st. path. And then the transitions to wear, you know, good food, you know, respect for our faith and IT leads to, I don't know, vano, but you know, happiness. On the far right.

he got the picture. The talks were fruitful. The campus administration would end up adopting a new prisoner design menu with four daily options, including one for those with delicate digestion. They'd provide detainees with bottled water. Wall clocks would be installed in the camps, so the detainees wouldn't have to rely on the guards who typically answered daytime or nigh time when you ask them the time. Even Better .

for the first time, we were allowed to have the light deemed in ourselves for the first time after nine o clock.

blessed dimness, after years of blazing lights, twenty four, seven right time expanded, A C, D, said to two hours instead of twenty minutes, and instead of twenty shets of toilet paper, a guy could get a whole role. Mongo NER wasn't about to get rid of november black or abolish earthing, but he agreed to some new guard protocols to fix the name tag problem. He agreed to area these number solution.

Each guard would wear in a sign number on his or her uniform. Government agreed to stop the guard force from calling the detainee's packages when moving them around the camps. And he agreed to error this proposal for how to stop the guards from stamp up and down the medal floors in payer time.

He said, why would you put up pair counts? And that that became accepted were general jype od. And adam Harry hairs was talking to the White house about parachutes and just became accepted part, of course.

So that was so crazy. Member, when he's a per, I go, what does the people? I would not want to take a traffic home and put a big pee on IT and put IT out whenever spread i'm in.

So that'll tell everybody to be quiet on the tear. And the guards saw that. And we've respected IT too. I got to the point though, they say, well, IT squeaks over here and your guards can continue well comfort down the tear, but there's a square icky part here. So we walk over and they would put a pair all over the squeezy part. I mean, that's the extent that went to, went to, and he is not like we were blown off if you were trying to be CoOperate with them.

AA shei, though, was conflicted about his own role in this extraordinary two day summer. On one hand, he said he felt like a hero, the prisoner said when important concessions. On the other hand, maybe he was selling his fellow prisoners shorts in some way, negotiating over small practical questions, toilet paper, rather than the actual shit. The biggest, most pressing question, why are you still holding us illegally without charge?

他说， maybe i'm giving the room message to be gara. And to the author in one time, by maybe they going the wrong misses these guys. They just wanted bitter food and bitter a treatment.

And we are William to stay in one intently. You going to think that we are OK with IT. It's okay. ay. You can keep us here for the rise of our lives.

the prospect of indefinite detention, no clear system for how this all ends. That trumped every other complain, every other demand. When would bumgarner negotiate about that?

A major aspect of the bush administration campaign to show the world that guantanamo wasn't abb grab was to becking visitors inside the camp, dignitaries, politicians, reporters. During one press conference a few months after bum gardeners arrival, president bush at IT about four times, go down there, take a look, see for yourself and people.

Did the charm offensive helped along by bomb gardeners, soothing north CarOlina accent? And foxy manner was working pretty well. Occasionally, bum garner told me he was stepped on a bus full of visitors.

He once described a Young female gardez quote, cute as a puppy. General jay hood was standing right next to him, gave him, quote, one of the worst assuming i've ever had in my life. But at the same time, three months into the worst year, prisoners at one panama were hunger striking.

Hunger strikes were not new. Theyd been going on spiritual ally since the camp's early as days, but this one persisted, and the outside world noticed, which, of course, was the point. The timing of the hunger strike was opportune. IT seemed the detainees were wise to the uptake, and visitors, also one of the organizers of the strike, told us they knew that news reports of hunger strikes, nonviolent protests in which detainees hurt their own selves, seem to penetrate the american consciousness in away. Other news from guantanamo didn't some of the most in depths reporting came from tim goldin at the new york times.

He wrote a great magazine story about this period, which is how I know that IT was late july when bum garner a, broke this first hunger strike in a maneuvre that would shape the rest of his time at one tana amal. He did IT by negotiating not with aahed I this time, but with another detainee bomb. Garner had met soon after aoh D A guam shocker armor, a british resident who wheeled his Christa brilliantly inside and outside.

Lontana o shocker armour was beloved by many of the detainees, especially saudi's like himself, and there were lot of them, most of the arabs at wanta, imo. And so shocker had sway with blub garner, too. He told bum garner this hunger strike, I can end IT.

They made a deal. If shaker stopped the hunger strike, bumgarner would try to further improve whatever conditions he could inside the camps in accordance with the geneva conventions. And so IT was ungarnered, walked the blocks with hacker, unshackled a first, and saw with amazing how other detainees hooked in celebration.

He watched shackle amr spread the word surgically among the camps. Other leaders dropped the hunger strike, the big chicken is gone to work with us. And b. Garda rejoiced when, just like that, most of the hunger strikers started eating again. Victory.

Now, instead of individual negotiations on gardener was ready to start a council of detainees which would communicate grievances. Ces to the camp administration at a sheet, says he's suggested this to bomb garner. I've also reversions where hacker amr is credited with IT, but bump garner says he did IT because geneva conventions P O W have a right to self representation.

I'm garta knew this might be delicate to pull off. Not everyone above or below him was fully on board. Why give these detainees a sense of authority? Why let them cubits a bang? Gartner had faith about a week after he walked the blocks with shocker amr. Sixty cases were brought together to a record outside alpa block in camp one for a sanctions meeting with camp administration, and these six, according to bomb garner, there were some of the most powerful detainees in the camp, an egyptian religious leader and ala. Mahamad saline.

very smart guy. He brilliant abdus .

aef from afghanistan, who'd been a taliban cabinet minister. I mean.

he was a big dog.

a saudi engineer who went to university in the states and proudly admitted his membership in alita. The son, a sharpie, sharpie.

He was very handsome. Filler always looked .

like he just stepped out of the shower beard, perfectly trimmed, particular.

These clothes always don't know. I did IT really mean.

I wish I could have look like him. And finally, shocker.

ever visit? He bubble personality. He can turn the pants. He seemed like such a nice guy.

You can hear IT, right? He liked some of these guys, the son and checker especially. He figured a couple of them would instantly kill him if they got the chance.

The son, a shari, had said as much without a much of his gleaming black hair. But aside from that bomb, garner said he respected them, not necessarily their beliefs, but they're stature. The second time the group met them garn or join, he SAT with them. The prisoners had no leg irons on no cuffs. Freestyle.

I thought IT, by this point, we've doing prety good and meet their domains of the camp administration. And I think they would probably felt that way too, because, but you didn't stay on that. Maybe, I mean, very brave fully if they had. I made even at all, we went to the big issue. You ve got to get a set free.

I'm going to told them that I cannot do. He was the warden, full stop. Freedom and justice were above his payment. De, surely they can understand that.

Well, I try to get to understand if you could be here, you can be here, and I can try to help make your life live Better while you're here. Are you continue to be musical as well? I was understand that you're not leaving.

Remember, bm garner had rushed down to guantanamo to take over no time for language or cultural training. The prison was holding hundreds of muslim men from umpteen countries, afghan and saudi, yemeni and pakistani and algerians, suspected taliban and alydar Operatives. Sure bomb. Garner was interacting with a few of the detainees individually, but on the whole, bm garta knew very little about his prisoners. He was enduring name, if disturbingly Frank, about that.

I couldn't. I didn't know the new tween, a terrorist and arb.

He lamented a few times that he deployed to iraq after he deployed to guantanamo, instead of the other way around. That way he would have recognize that some of the things he thought we're terrorist viewpoints were simply arab viewpoints. He misunderstood, or maybe alf understood who he was dealing with.

A gap adventure stretches to this day. For instance, burger na, believed to a man, all the detainees will maybe not shocker, but definite everyone else would be willing to die for their cause, which he understood to be entwined with conservative islam. So we tried to keep an eye on the religious leaders among them.

These guys are very powerful. There is only a handful love, and I can't give you any names. I can miral one on sort. strange. He was a, we call him the viking red beard, red completion, red hair marotte.

Cornas, a german resident whose family was from turkey, was marrot a religiously ader at one animal.

Of course not.

No, no, to hear what tell that he was nobody, only nineteen when he got to guanta. He didn't speak arabic or posto. He could barely talk to anyone. He hadn't even been to a religious madrasa like some of the other detainees.

They it's .

it's funny once .

and they never want to accept my religious things are about between the that's it's funny who who said that we're .

struggle to remember bumper NER, but a lot of personnel remember morat. He wasn't at one honea o that long, relatively speaking, but he stuck out to people because he stuck out. He was a very large person, a martial artist who missed his practice so dearly.

He was one seen bench pressing two smaller men out the rock yard. He was sorted european. He spoke german, also some english, plus the radish hair.

Maybe that's why bumgarner attributed special leadership powers. I don't mean to imply that bun gard's information was all wrong. I think IT was partly wrong in the same way, so much about one. Tony amo was partly wrong.

We craved order, rime and reason, so out of scraps of information that we're true, we took leaves and liberties and creating narratives that often worked true, that showed a warped picture of who these men really were. 邦 garta trusted the information he had access to。 He believed what he read in the hopped up detainee files about their terrorist links. He believed the intelligence research about how alki da continues to organize even in confinement. He believed the detainees had a sort of org chart and organized org chart.

very, very organized, organized cellular by function.

organized, in other words, in much the same way, terrorist cells out in the world are organized.

You would have those that actually specialized in message passing. You would have guys who would be the the muscle, if you will, attackers the front line soldier, if you will. You would have a shocker.

actually. Tell me this. You sort ahead the political affairs gas S I mean the every block a to have the leader that's .

omara guys originally from libya, but his family escaped to britain when he was Young. He, another former detainees, told us, yeah, there was some organization, but not like that. He was loose people on the blackwood vote and design nate someone as the go to person.

To make group decisions, we need be, or to interact with a cap administration. IT wasn't an alka thing, omar said. He was just a bin prison together thing. Maybe they only vote for a person because he speaks english, or maybe he's a leader in one block, but then he gets moved to different block and now is a regular jaw.

And he didn't depend on his background whether he was what he was before, who he was IT, all depends on how active he was inside prison. So like, for example, shark IT was very active, and he spoke for people, and he translated, then he helped and he tried to. So that will be considered by others that that they would support him.

shock. He had to be somebody. How can I? He just had in mama, he had to be. There is no way he could exert just off of his dynamic personality. I hope maybe wrong.

Maybe he was wrong. We never had good evidence to prove. shocker. Amour, with okawa shocker, didn't want to be interviewed for this story.

He was clear for released in two thousand and seven, though he wasn't allowed to leave guantanamo for another eight years. I'm morata, the guy from germany. He left one panama in two thousand six.

After spending four years there, i'd later learned both U. S. And german officials determined soon after his arrest that he wasn't taliban or alkali a or a real threat to anyone's national security.

right? wrong. This picture bomb garden had of detainees who were ideologically fiercer than americans, who didn't fear death the same way we did, who were highly secretly organized. Of course, IT influenced detainee policy, how we treated them and how we responded when they scared us. That's after the break.

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and you should be here too, because businesses that move here, thrive here, visit, discover middle x dom slash thrive to find resources available for your growing business. The unprecedented coming together of prison staff and prisoners was short lived. The same week the detainee council was forming coincided with a flare up of violence in the camps involving a mini fridge. A tunisian detainee was called in for an interrogation. Here's a archidei again here.

doing after they looked him down to the ground, the into gated starts, swear a curse in the prisoner and then he picked up a fridge and he through the fridge at the face of the prisoner.

IT sounds unlikely, I know, but there's documentation. Some of the details differ report to report, but they all reflect the debates rage between the personnel and prisoners that one garner observed when he first got to antonio in an investigative memo dated August eighth, two thousand. Five, the detainee, his shame slate, says an interrogator came to his cell slake.

He tells him he doesn't want to talk. So the interrogator says, fuckyou. Next day he comes again. Slady again, says, no.

But then a fellow to tiny, in charge of his blog possibly has on a shari who was participating in the accent detainee council, tells him to go ahead. So that does. But once he gets to the interrogation room, it's not as usual, team.

There's a female present. So he says, forget that I want to talk to you. The interrogator says, you will talk. Slady says, I have the right not to talk to you is getting agitated the interrogator puts his finger in slate's face, starts insulting his mother, calls her a bitch so as latest spits at the interrogator and that's when, quote, the interrogator hidden with the refrigerator that was in the intel room and then hit him in the face with a chair and quote, when word got back to the prisoners in the camps, ea sheet says some people wanted to rise up right away.

but people said, luck, let's not do IT. Let's keep IT calm. okay? Some people .

still hoped to break the exhAusting, reactive rythm of the camps. The council was underway. Maybe IT would work again. Accounts vary about the exact order of events during this first to mutual week of August, but according to enter C, D, the prisoners had checked their rage over the mini fridge incident. But then meeting number three of the council bomber's a wasn't there, but his recollection is that some of the prisoners started passing notes to each other, which was against the ground rules. Tim golden, in his magazine account, wrote that when an officer tried to confiscate the notes, quote, some of the detainees pop them into their mouths and started chewing unquote when general hood got wind of what had happened.

He despised the council and set up. He didn't like us using the word council leader. He, I never want to hear that word. And that pretty much, when he told me not, do you want not be talking too much to, as he haven't say, I could not told him out, but he started rain in my interaction with the man.

Really, he was like.

shut IT down now, much.

Bom gartner said he pushed back a little, but not much. He knew hood was powerful. He didn't want to get fired on the heels of that break down. Another incident, eleri, I said a coveted detainee was summer to the interrogation .

room when he refuses to attend the interaction. They came with the earth thing. They beat him up.

He immersed in front of us. The first one, we didn't see the teenager because he was in interview room. But the second one happened in front of us inside out. One of the state books I was I was present.

are you say so?

Yeah, OK, which that happened automatically. Did everybody said, banging, braking, feeling? Few minutes later, manga came on to myself.

He came on to myself and he wanted to say what was going on as if he's not part of IT. And he says, i've gone nothing to do with there. Is not, is not his decision .

to do that? He was mad. He thought the real purpose of bunglers visit wasn't to find out what had happened, to make them upset, but to take the temperature of the blocks, try to get a beat on how bad this was gonna on.

Garner had given his word that he'd curbed the violence, but now he seemed to be struggling. If he wasn't going to make his guards behave. Why should the prisoners behave? Whatever goals of trust in respect they have begun to wave, floated away.

Prisoners broke the brake ables in their cells, mostly the foot peddles on their toilets. They banged and yelled. Some prisoners suspected the violence against the tunisian than the quote was a provocation that the guards and interrogators had sabotaged. Ed, their attempt itself, representation that bang garner had betrayed them.

you know, so you went away and that they started. So handle strike, start that the alight.

a renewed, reinvigorated hunger strike, egon by shocker, amour bomb gna had had IT with hacker. They've been working together for weeks, productively or so. Bunga thought.

so he's he's playing a very important role initially. And then when he, when against me, I got hud's concurrence to put him out in camp eco permanently, and he stayed echo filter the term. So he was away from the general population for the remainder of my time. He never went to back.

And because you are afraid that he would have an influence.

yes, exactly. He had to betrayed me.

Bomb garner was stressed out. He was jugged criticism from all sides. His detainee council had failed as basit called off the experiment. He were a gentle hood in that much confidence in him that the interrogators also didn't appreciate him, giving away comforts to detainees that they themselves wanted to use as bargaining chips. And the guards bomb garners own ranking file, also growing about bomb.

garner a council and private, praising public. He was, get your fucking and shed together, get head at rest and fuck yourself, you type of guy. No, that Steve timers and navy .

master's arms in charge of the guard force in the discipline camps. He told me the crap moral was in large part because all the herb seemed scared for their careers, scared they'd be embarrassed or blamed in the press first groups, and all that fear and fingerpointing trickle down often buy .

a bungarolo was on receiving end that once, most of the time, I had my shit one sock. But the other guys are made mistakes. He would just go off, you know, you tell that, god, he's been trying to deal this way.

Why do you deal this way? Yeah, I was a hot. Yeah, i'm not proud of that.

At that time, I had A, I had a very, very, very short views in IT built throughout the period. This is the stress. I mean, I wouldn't. I told you there. No, no, I could, and I really thought that.

But he was working every day until eleven pm midnight. Sleeping may be four hours a night, red faced as detainees are refusing food in protest. He's eating like a fool, his words bomb, gardner said. He probably gained forty or fifty pounds. So yes, he was stressed.

And now a big new hunger strike had started this time with a big demand that 邦 gartner had no control over because IT pushed beyond menu plans and prayer coes straight to the heart of the matter， either trials for crimes or let us go. They were saying, in essence, treat us like proper P, O, ws. Abide by the geneva conventions.

Give us the protections of your laws, access to your courts. The press was all over IT, tracking the upward arrow of the hunger striker numbers dozens than seventy six sometime in september. The camp says it's one hundred and thirty one hunger strikes.

Attorneys representing the detainees said the numbers more like two hundred. Meanwhile, controversial legislation about standards for detainee treatment is winning through congress. Bomb gna had tried the carrots. He tried to work with the detainees to reason with them. A big stick was nine.

Ana edy's analysis is that during this time, bomb garner, timed and under pressure, made a calculated move from good guy who was genuinely trying to do the right thing by the prisoners to tough guy. I don't think that's quite A I think it's more likely that while he was at one tonio bang, garner was always the same guy, basically a reasonable guy, but also a cup through and through with the cops. What's the problem? Just follow the rules logic.

If the other team never had to be deployed, the responsibility, in opinion, went to the deny because they forced the circumstances. All you had to was comply with what you're being asked to do. And IT was this very simple type that give me this back or do give give me your hands up.

I understand, like an an Operational way why that that feels very straight forward to you. On the other hand, would you also also sit back and be like, I get IT these got, you know, a lot of them are saying I don't deserve to be here. I was grabbed off the bus at the border of whatever I was visiting my, whatever I was going to teach in a school.

You guys think i'm someone. I'm not. I've been here for four years.

I haven't talked to my parents. They don't know whether i'm Better alive. I feel like i'm dying.

I hate the food. I can speak to anyone. I miss my sisters.

Fuck you. I'm not going to do anything you asked me to do. Why would I CoOperate? You all. I have the only I was on a role now, and I couldn't stop his argument. Is their own fault if five guys in riot gear spray them with tear gas, rush into their cell, knocked them to the ground and hogtied makes me nuts first off, because look, how you made me hurt you.

Is the bullies faulty? But also because the part the kids left out, the part the government and the military never seem to acknowledge, is that the whole time we had all the power and imbaLance poison by the reality that our intel was flood, we weren't clear in our own minds about who we had or what they knew, or why we were even holding them. And so why is IT surprising in any way, or even wrong, Frankly, for a detainee to push back against our ill used power, either for the sake of islamic jaji or for the sake of due process? One side drew breath and apologized for my soap, xing bugera said. I don't disagree with anything you just said, but back then.

I can't say that I I fully took into consideration or you just described what now in life, after fifteen years, I do look back from the different perspective at all at that time that I ve really taking large consideration there. Probably thought of IT, but not much more than a few seconds. As always, I was safe, insecure.

I knew that wasn't harmon. I I didn't really get into the thinking about the wales on their life. I'm i'm sorry to say that perhaps I should have, but I didn't. I didn't. I think I was getting every day I got closer to IT you get closer to that until something happens.

Here's what happened. Bum garner felt he was losing control of the camp. The hunger strikers filled the detainee hospital, which is where they get two fed if they refused to eat.

Two fed in a hospital sounds to me like one of the worst places to be anytime, anywhere but bomb. Garner said, oh no. IT was nice in there. IT was always .

air condition. cool. You lay on the day you got males brought to you over to you like you're the king. You got tractive years nurses who paid attention .

to you constantly. The nurses were attractive because they were female. But for bum garner, IT was the law ages that broke this camels back.

When you get the two drop down, sometimes your throat becomes irritated. And so the nurses would give them laws as a cult drops, and they get to choose the flavor they will. I initially thought, given, given me make can be happy.

So what? So what? They had losers who care. But then I have slowly began and not, I have pretty much been safe. We're not running things or they're running things.

They were bringing us to our knees on resources and just messing for my arper respected, messing with this constantly. And we were now being the terms of indicated with them, they have the offensive. They are the ones dict. Once going on the camps, which was not good.

consultants from the federal bureau of prisons were brought down to assess the situation, including a forensic psychiatrist. They agreed with bump garner, you got to take back control. And so he endorsed, ed, a new approach to the hunger strike, one that the camped administration would call lifesaving and that prisoners and most everyone else would call horrifying force eating chairs.

By early december, the first five or straight chairs were shift to the island. Soon twenty more would be on route. No more cushy hospital feedings at your convenience.

If you refuse to eat, we're onna put you in the chair. Your legs, arms, torso all strapped in, they can be even customize the chairs. bang.

Garner said he could not move your head. And then a tube was snake through your nose, down to your stomach. Not everyone was voluntarily getting into that chair.

So the ideal is sometimes preceded by an earphone then girl, holding you down to strap you in. Detainees are paying on themselves, shitting themselves, bang. Gartner said they didn't on purpose. Detainees who experiences IT said IT was because they either put too much liquid inside you or cruel added relaxation, or just left you there too long.

We put a pat around and said, what happens? happens. You're not coming out here to you fed.

I know that sounds probably hard. That's probably if I actually all things that we did in guantanamo that's probably harshly staying. We did my fact, i'm sure chair the chair you watch IT.

oh yeah.

many times, many, many, many, many, many times.

even some personnel were traumatised by the process. Never mind the detainees who underwent this fresh .

hell you couldn't take IT somebody pushing on, inserting, achieve into your nose down your gotten and them all out violently and them which again, you couldn't take IT. You was do worse period in grantown history.

From where a bomb garner. Sad though, what he saw was success.

peaceful, very little misconduct, very, very, very, very little misconduct.

When he arrived all those months ago, the discipline camps had been at capacity with a weight list. Now they were sparse for a number of days that actually close november, an empty discipline block.

There was no detainee's on IT that's unheard of to have the that so momentous that never mean a lot to you. But don't say that is huge, that he is huge .

boner na had done IT. His goal was a quiet camp, and he achieved a quiet camp. November block was quiet, the hunger strike was broken.

And from then on, for the next five months, he said always, well, the longest stretch of calm guantanamo had ever seen. 邦 garner dubbed the period of peace。 Soon enough, he'd understand peace, like compliance, is in the eye of the beholder that next time.

Serials produced by Jessica iceberg, dana, chief I S and me, our editor is july sinter additional reporting by cora, career fact checking by ben, fAiling music supervision, sound design and mixing by feb wang, original score by Sophia daily alassane editing help from jane and iron glass are contributing. Editors are Carol rosen berg and rosina ali, additional research by a mcafee and sami usac I translation by mohamed raza sahab za.

Additional production from Kitty mingle and emar illo our standards editor is Susan westling legal review from alami summer and ma gandi the art former show comes from probably delco and max guter, supervising producer for serial productions, is indeed ubu. Our executive assistant is mac Miller. Sam dlink is definity managing editor of the new york times. Special thanks to jane pifer, brad Fisher, matias elo, Daniel power, marine lizana, clive stafford smith, tim golden and astor whitfield.