 Through the hazy sun of a Cuban morning, we caught our first glimpse of Guantánamo Naval Base, once an obscure outpost of American military might, but now where the treatment of detainees held in the war on terrorism has put it in the eye of an international storm over human rights.
Bill O'Reilly and I, along with our three-person Fox News camera crew, crammed into a small charter plane that swept down onto what looked like a deserted landing strip jutting out on a scrub-covered peninsula. For such a center of attention, the naval station's first appearance was deceiving-a virtually deserted landing strip and empty hangars steaming under that tropical sun. We were the only aircraft in sight, and as we taxied to a stop, we were greeted by a slew of military men, including the man in charge of the joint task force that runs the detention center at Guantánamo, Admiral Harry Harris.
The background
Guantánamo sits about 400 air miles from where we took off in Miami, and is southeast of Havana. "Gitmo," as folks call it, is divided in two, with the airstrip across the bay from the main facilities and the detention camps. A short bus ride took us to a dock where we boarded a small boat for the 20-minute trip to the main base.
O'Reilly, Harris and I sat down with one Captain Leary, who is the actual man in charge of the naval facility (Adm. Harris, who met us at the airstrip, runs the joint task force). Leary explained a little about the history of Guantánamo, a little piece of the United States in Cuba, thanks to a 1903 treaty that grants the USA rights to the area "in perpetuity." Ironically, in recent years the naval station had become increasingly irrelevant to America's defense posture in the region. That changed after 9/11 when detainees from the Afghan war began to arrive there.
As Leary talked, I realized this was an ideal place to hold dangerous prisoners-a perimeter laced with mines placed by the Cubans, a dry, foreboding geography, and nothing around but the Caribbean Sea, even if you could escape land.
The scene at Gitmo
By the time we docked and began our slow drive to the main base, I had already gone through a couple of bottles of water, and my short-sleeved shirt was drenched in sweat. I marveled at the Marines, Army men and Naval officers who wore long-sleeve combat fatigues with undershirts. When asked about the heat, they just shrugged and said, "You get used to it, sir," and remarking that things are a lot hotter, in more ways than one, in Iraq.
There isn't just one camp for detainees, but several. Camp X-Ray, the site of those scenes of shackled, orange jump-suited prisoners being dragged around by American MPs, has long since been abandoned and sits overgrown some distance away from the current facilities. A number of officers remarked to me that they deeply resented many in the news media who still broadcast those images, even though they are now ancient history.
In fact, all of the men and women we met at Guantánamo seemed genuinely pleased to have us there, and were eager to tell their side of the story. Too often, they feel much of the press puts out a distorted picture of what is happening in Gitmo.
Before we sat down to a quick briefing from the Admiral on the situation at Guantánamo followed by the interviews we had scheduled with some of the interrogators, we had a chance to meet some of the troops as they had lunch at the commissary. The soldiers we met were a cross-section of America, north and south, east and west, and all seemed committed to the work they were doing in Guantánamo under very difficult circumstances. They were thrilled to meet Bill, and the head of the commissary even had a cake to welcome us. The mood was much more somber when we saw them at work as guards on patrol at two of the detention facilities.
The facilities
Through a series of fences and gates, we entered the center for what the military called the most "compliant" prisoners. They didn't have to be cooperative in interrogation to earn the right to stay in this area, just not be "troublemakers." Col. Mike Bumgarner, who, at the time, was in charge of the detention facilities, showed us around.
Just weeks earlier, many of the so-called "compliant" prisoners had attacked prison guards in a well-planned assault and, as a result, what had once been an inmate population of over 100 was now just a group of 30 or so. Their open barracks seemed clean and well ventilated, and the few detainees we saw were young, with beards and white outfits that would not seem out of place in the Middle East. They appeared healthy, though subdued.
Later, we were shown maximum-security facilities that looked a lot like maximum-security prisons in this country. The cells were small and bare with frosted windows and steel doors, and an arrow pointing towards Mecca under a thin mattress. This is what all of the least compliant detainees have to look forward to. But before anyone feels too sorry for them, Col. Bumgarner provided a sobering assessment of the detainees in custody: "They'd kill you in a heartbeat." This was a sentiment conveyed by the interrogators as well. Said one, "One detainee looked me in the eye and said that if he ever got out, he would hunt me down and kill me and my family."
Admiral Harris explained in his briefing to us that some of the men released from Gitmo have actually gone back to Afghanistan and Pakistan and rejoined Al Qaeda. Just one day after we left Gitmo, three detainees committed suicide. When we checked with him a few days after, Adm. Harris suggested the suicides were not out of despair, as some news reports and detainee lawyers claimed, but rather as part of a continuing effort to embarrass the United States government.
Leaving
By late that afternoon, our visit had concluded, so we packed our gear and began our trip back. This time, Admiral Harris arranged to have us taken back to the landing strip via two "Viper" boats-high-speed Coast Guard boats, each outfitted with three machine guns. It was fast and fascinating, and we soon found ourselves back at the dock and winding our way up a small hill to the landing strip where we quickly boarded our plane and headed back to Florida with a clearer and more focused sense of what takes place "behind the wire."
David Tabacoff is the executive producer of both The Radio Factor and The O'Reilly Factor.
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