Serial S04 - Ep. 7: The Forever Reporter
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this is stocked. And the day would never made public, but the day of the riot moral was never higher. How we be a basted explain. We're let this happen.

From serial productions in the new york times. This is serial season for guantanamo. One prison camp told week by week. I'm Sarah ic.

We're gna jump forward to present diggin tana now ish for the rest of this series. I'm going to start in summer of twenty twenty two when dana, I went down to guantanamo a second time. Media can't tour the prison compound anymore, but you can go down to report on the special court at granton's called the military.

Five cases are still in some phase of criminal prosecution, including the case against the men accused of planning the nine eleven attacks. So we went to the court, which we've never seen an action before. Two other reporters are there with us, john ryan from illegal affairs publication called law dragon, and Carol rosenberg, formally of the miami herald, now of the new york times.

Car's been covering guantanamo for more than twenty years. She's the one to watch here. You can't bring any recording equipment into the court room, so I don't have tape for this part.

I'll just tell IT army soldiers are checking us through security at the entrance to the court. They tell us, no, you cannot bring your coffee into the spectators gallery. This doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

Lots of courtrooms don't allow beverages, but carroll pushes back. Is that a new rule? Carol, why can someone go ask why? Once we're inside, before we even take our seats, drama begins.

Not inside the actual court. Remind you where the lawyers and defendants and judges will soon be. But in our section, the gallery, i'm standing with carroll at the thick glass windows that separate us from the courtroom.

She's explaining to me what's what when an army mp in charge of security, a guard, tells us to sit down, which does seem unreasonable. Court hasn't even started. There's no one here but us.

The guard is turn and excessively bossy. We've always been able to stand at the glass before court begins. Carl says, is that a new rule? No answer.

Carol sits in her assign seat. They've got all reporters in the front row, but separated by one, john ryan and seat, number three and me and number five data in seven. Carol seat is number one.

We are told by the guard. Our new books will be configured if we do, do or make drawings that depict the courtroom. I assume this is an empty threat.

A Carol clock set points to of her head, her seat. The number one seat is right under a camera that can see what he writes. First things first, can you run on the coffee question? Carola.

Ks, we did, man, they told us only water bottles. The planets are in retrograde. Carol grump, les, this is a new rotation of M. S. They don't know what they're doing yet.

Carol figures, maybe this uptight guard will relax when he sees we know how to behave, but the guard doesn't let up, and when we return the next day, the guard's back, and then some, I get caught, whispers ing something to Carol, we are not going to have conversations. The guard snap, then, as a witnesses testifying, SHE hollers wake up into her radio, admonishing a fellow guard doing inside the court room sleeping is against the rules. A little later, may day, I see john ryan to my left, noting off.

I don't know what to do. There's a wide empty seat between us. The seats are oversized and comfortable, just right for a nap, so there's no way to settle. Nudge him.

But I don't know, john really it's not my place to get between him and some shut eye as I mall the most collegial course of action SHE appears the terrifying guard gets right up in john startled face. SHE tells him to stop sleeping, and if you can't stay awake, i'm going to ask you to leave. John's been covering this court for seven years, and this has never happened him before.

He keeps saying, i'm fine, i'm fine, i'm fine. All this is aggravating. Of course, insulting were being treated like children, but Frankly, IT rules often in me an amusement. More than anything, after this week, we're out of here. But Carol, Carol is livid. Behold the sound of indignation as absorbed by Carol rosenberg keyboard back at the media Operation center, the mark that's where reporters work from down here, carroll is writing up a memo about the mean guard .

and army specialist. It's too long.

i'm.

Like such a bit, can we please get the army special in not to do disruptive outburst? While cordsen session, the guard truly did not benefit from lefty righty training.

I assumed he was firing off an email to this guy, run the public affairs director for the military commissions but he could just call around if he wanted van so maybe he wasn't writing to run. Who are you writing to?

I haven't decided yet. I'm thinking the director general um obviously run probably the chief prosecutor and I am not sure the chief defense tourney. And i'm trying to decide like IT since this this must be a public hearing and this seems to be a systematical rsp and of the .

public .

trying to just what observe probably .

someone .

of depending on but the question is whether they also add a couple of the congresswomen who are really interested in making keeping these things public.

What had I missed here? I mean, the guard was rude in orbit. The pentagon, maybe some congressman. I asked her kind of sideways. I'm a little scared of Carry myself. Um is that necessary because the guard's temporary, she's going to go in some short amount of time and release .

nine months. I know this this sounds really petty. But like john said.

IT could be .

a really long fucking year if she's harassing people non stop in there every time we go to court.

This is an important case, a capital case. And it's not like I can just grab a transcript. Carl points out. I've got one shot in there to hear what's going on.

The two of us take this serious ly, we take notes, we pay attention, we consult and and she's made IT hard. I mean, someone that was like during IT was really disruptive during kinder key testimony.

right? But so like that effect in front of us. But what's the larger fight? Your fighting just to zoom out first, second.

I don't know if .

it's a fight. I know that when I say carles been covering guantanamo for more than twenty years, that's a sentence that can slide by quickly. So let me be clear.

I don't mean Carol checks in on guantanamo from time to time. I mean, Carol rosenberg is the guantanamo reporter. Carol was here the day the prison opened, and she's been here ever since for more than two decades.

While other reporters came and went, Carol stayed. SHE has never stepped away and never have been paused. Carol knows more about guantanamo than anyone in the world. SHE alone holds its institutional memory.

I'm overstating, but only slightly when I say that whatever the rest of us back on the mainland know about wantons amo, it's because of Carol and SHE covers this speed more or less by herself. John only covers the court and he doesn't always come. So that means it's all on.

Carol SHE is writing not just the first draft of one hano history, but in some instances, the only draft and what she's been struggling against in a hundred different ways for years now is that the military has been making IT harder and harder for her or anyone to report from down here. Today's nonsense is just the latest enrollment. You can see how my worker nerves, an army specialist, a Fisher on a power trip, is going to make her job harder than adult is.

So I don't know if it's a fight. Well, yeah, it's a fighting against being disrespected, consistently disrespected.

Dana, ask Carol, can you just take this guard of aside and say, hey, listen, this isn't how this works here. No SHE can do that, he says, because I be against the rules. They they don't understand how abNormal all this is, he says, this culture of threats and supervision of the press, that you can talk to a guard, that you can't come and go from the courtroom as you please can't.

you can't get up and go to the bathroom. There was a period when if one reporter needed to go to the bathroom, everybody had to get up and go up.

They forced you to try. So IT, that's john.

The problem with john is is like, I get so heated and then he's so funny. I want to laugh, but I get angry, angry.

I'll let you get to IT. At three fourteen pm, Carol sends her memo. Four minutes later, someone emails are back, saying they look, look into IT ponto.

And a half hour after that, the mean guard is gone. We're told he's gone to be retrained and we assigned the next time we go to court. Big smiles from everyone, visible of Candy on the desk where they check our badgers and not the cheap kind, the good kind.

Mms, many kid cats, many twists the uniform. Yong, woman who wants me down for weapons admires my pin. Inside the gallery, the guard reads the rules and a voice cover with, and then gently announced that he might stand up during court now and then because he has a bad back.

I hope he doesn't make you uncomfortable. He says, I apologized in advance if IT makes you uncomfortable. Carol rosen burg, one guantanamo guard force, zero, a swift clean.

To the first timer, I eat me. Carrol's fights might seem a little nuts, and i'm not dismissing the notion that guantanamo has driven carroll a little nuts. What incredible is that this place hasn't driven her completely nuts.

IT wasn't always this way. Carroll hasn't entered two solid decades of just respect SHE couldn't taken IT, SHE told me, but right now is a bad period. Perhaps counter intuitively, late stage guan animo, with its drunken prison population and sputtering court, is even less open to public view and more aggressively anti Carol than early stage guantanamo, which seemed backwards to me.

The government was hiding so much more back in the day, who the prisoners were, for instance. All the ways we abuse them. What's left to hide? That's what this episodes about, the battle that's now under way at antonio.

O, I broke down for me the deterioration of her access here, which he calls the closing of the approach. IT isn't about protecting one tonio secrets. It's about something else entirely.

I don't want to oversimplify the military was never thrilled to have Carol guantanamo o but to give you a sense of what Better times were like for her in two thousand, three, for example, general Jeffery Miller, who oversaw some of the most brutal treatment of detainees, is at antonio. General Miller invited Carol down to the camp to serve the troops s thanksgiving dinner. In the military, the officers serve the enlisting on thanksgiving. So it's Carol in a bunch of generals wearing aprons in the afterwards SHE in the officers of joint task force tonne o the J T, F, SAT down for their meal. The most lavish thanksgiving spread SHE had ever seen the .

military .

put on that was .

like towers of shrimp. And let me love ster toiles and giant, and had an obviously turkey and smoke samon. And I just remember red being so oppel ent IT reminded me of a buffet in the person.

Golf and IT was sort of a reflection, I thought of the fact that the J. T. F. Was riding high and could do anything he wanted in order anything want. And there was nothing they couldn't get.

They had lobster tales and piles of shrimp in a story to tell, a story they wanted americans to hear, which was this, we got him. We got the terrorists who attacked us on nine eleven, not all of them, but hundreds of them, and were going to treat them humanely and still get justice for the american people. Carrel says he was wise to what this was, an effort to go up her. But the upside was that by having .

her serve math potatoes IT signal to the troops, that I would somehow considered someone importance, which I think contributed to people willing to talk to me.

SHE wasn't necessarily writing the stories the military wanted, heard the right guantanamo detainee's, mostly Young fit soldiers, was in early two thousand. Two headline or SHE asked unwelcome questions about the geneva conventions, said, but even so, Carol was allowed to talk to all kinds of personnel, guards, commanders, their deputies, medical staff.

Back in the day, carl could ask factual questions and feel pretty confidence to get an answer, maybe not always a factually true answer, but an answer. SHE was allowed to watch a passion literacy class and write about IT. SHE could see where the wagers are.

Persecuted muslim group from china were being housed while the U. S. Government tried to figure out how to get rid of them. The wagers have a little garden, he wrote. They planted orange seeds and have inchi seed dings they are cultivating.

SHE could ask if someone would please bring her taper courter inside the prison so SHE could get sound of the culture player during ramadan. And they do. another. Advantage of the early years, colleagues, other correspondents, all the big papers and magazines, T, V people, foreign reporters, which meant more people asking questions, asking for access, more people pushing back against the od restrictions from the gets go carls coverage was singular, more comprehensive than anyone else is, and often more annoying to the government.

SHE tried relentlessly to figure out how much guantanamo was costing us, a thirteen point four million dollars super secure building for investigators, a seven hundred and forty four thousand dollar soccer field, a thirty two thousand dollar shipping refrigerator designed to hold dead bodies but used to store bottled water. All carls reporting most expensive prison on earth was a two thousand eleven headline. Outlandish gossip has swooped around this base about how Carol finds stuff out.

A former public affairs officer told me that an orientation sessions for incoming troops, they were warned that Carol might try to trick them. The neck is thinking, he heard, before you put a stop to IT, Carol hired attractive Young men and women to flut with personal in bars, so they'd reveal sensitive information. All these people misunderstand, Carol is old school. She's not a locker or an eve dropper. SHE reads and SHE files, records, request and SHE works the phones.

IT, no, okay.

If he wants .

information from .

a source, SHE makes IT bracingly clear. She's talking to her atterley. She's known a while.

I do. I want you to do what i'm trying to find and .

she's not being in as she's being explicit. I am not trying to endanger your security clearance. I'm not getting back you and screw you up, but i'll talk you later. Okay, bye. Ubiquity, not stealth, has always been carls reporting strategy at one tonio.

Technically.

she's based in miami. SHE was a condo there, but SHE half lives at antonio, like a naturalized citizen of the hermetic world. There's carrol's desk, carrol's clock, Carols, White board, carls.

leftover vers in the fridge. Some of stuff is like spired by years and years.

Carles broken down bike.

There's a problem when I trying to drive IT here. Listen, it's.

From the very beginning, Carol tried to be here as often as possible, should have the prison tour at least once a month, tried to attend every administrative hearing and court proceeding for every defendant. That's how he finds stuff out, which on occasion has LED to retribution. In late two thousand and six, Carol broke a story about a building project that infuriated the pentagon.

Afterwards, Carol says he got a call from a certain general who informed her SHE could look forward to sleeping in a tent from here on out. And IT happened. Reporters who'd been sleeping in a hotel were now bunking in big quantity hut shape. TTS directed on an abandoned trip out by the court, carrel said.

The tense were so bad, actually, except that you never felt clean and you were over near any amenities and your glasses would fog up every time you had to leave the overawe condition tent to use the bathroom outside, no matter Carol kept coming. But over the years, the colleagues fell away. A big game would still show up for big events, nine, eleven anniversary, say, but more often a trickle at times.

Sh'd be the only person staying in the hawking military tents out there on the older strip, trying to communicate the improvisational nature of this mission and how is becoming permanent for Carol, those with the good years. So that's how I went for the first decade or so. But karl says the relationship between guantanamo in the press took a decisive sour turn about halfway through obama's presidency.

The real beginning of the end, actually looking back, is the hunger strike in john Kelly s.

Reaction to IT. John Kelly is marine core general john Kelly. He was in charge of U. S. Southern command south comm, the dod command center responsible for guantanamo, during the most widely publicize and effective hunger strike ever organized there.

Obama, remember, had announced when he took office that he was going to close guanta nama within the year that was in january of two thousand. Nine carls coverage, along with everyone else, is began asking, how's obama going to pull this off? What's the plan? No one was more interested in the answers to those questions than the detainees themselves.

By the time obama's second term rolled around, they were pissed, had been yet another flare up over claims that personnel were missing. And ling, the koran navy guards have been replaced by army mp. S, who are ruffle and more restrictive.

But the detainee's underlying complaint was that of the hundred and sixty six men still there, more than half had been cleared to leave guantanamo by the obama administration. Yet there they still SAT spring of twenty thirteen, Carol confirmed. The lawyers reports that the detainees were hunger striking.

I figured IT out by watching their untouched food rashes get thrown into a dumpster after lunch. Carol was all over the news. So everybody.

they locked down while they figure out how they're going to manage this hunger strike. Had one marine major who's a defense lawyer this week to me, his client has even gotten his tooth Price locked down. The head of the internet red cross tells us that they oppose force feeding and that some people describe as as torture. So whatever is going on down there, it's it's a very dark period for guantanamo.

Carles paper, the miami herald began publishing a daily hunger strike tracker showing how many people were refusing food, how many were being tube fed, how many were hospitalized over its south com. General john Kelly was unhappy.

He got very angry at the coverage. He believed that the media were too sympathetic to the prisoners, that um the prisoners were manipulate and their lawns were manipulating in the media.

General Kelly fought back. He told the J. T, F, to stop providing the hunger strike data. He declared that information suddenly off limits, which shut down the herald's track.

Ker, he'd institute a rule that of the couple thousand people working at the G, T, F, only six of them could be quoted by name or photographed six approved faces. They called them consisting of commanders or public affairs people. I eat no more.

Talking to guards. At one point, he tried unsuccessfully to shrink media visits to one day once per quarter. That's how much one of them out, general Kelly went on to become president trump s.

Homeland's, security secretary, and then his chief of staff. He declined to speak to me, but during a speech major before he left south calm, his feelings tumbled out. You're the best one percent of our society i'm convinced about.

You are all good and decent man and women. He was addressing the troops at one tonio who gathered in the chapel on the base. He praised them lavishly, told them they were the sault of the earth.

Ordinary americans, he said, who do an extraordinary job under enormous stress and IT always breaks my heart when I read the negative reporting of what theoretically, or what supposedly he goes on here, breaks my heart because I, the reporting is wrong, and I believe the media representations that report what goes on here, no what's wrong, but they go on their very way. Highlighting that the speech lasted only fifteen minutes, but he lasted with frequent references to the agenda driven press, the critics who don't know the meaning of honor or integrity or duty, they will never start pulling. They are disappoint est accusations at us.

They will never tell the truth because it's not in their interest to tell the truth. Fake news was not yet in the political vacuum. Bacon here is coming. That's after the break.

Hey, it's john chase and mara from wirecutters, the product recommendation service from the new york times. Muri IT is gift giving time, which means I am hopeless and need help. John, we over forty gift sides, like gives her people who love food.

I really love this water warming on that list. I didn't even know these existed. Is this q and anywhere pot? If you're someone like me who explodes butter in your microwave, you can melt butter in IT, but you can use IT for a ton of other stuff, making hot chocolate warming soup.

And IT looks great on the stove top. This is useful, but it's also a good looking at what's an easy get for like a under fifty box. So in our gift under fifty guide, we have this super cute palm size lue tube speaker comes in a ray of school colors, is waterproof.

I want for my garden for all of wirecutters give ideas and recommendations. Had to N Y times dot com slash holiday guide. For the government in the beginning at least, guantanamo was a good news story.

We got them, or bringing them to justice. Then IT became the shameful place the president tried to closed, but couldn't. And by trump's auguries, apart from serving as an occasional punch line for Donald trump himself, guantanamo was an albatross and lesser, circling the pentagon's neck to use terms. Carol herself coin a forever prison housing a bunch of forever prisoners.

For me, I had to reallocate, right? I knew that wasn't gona close. But now how i'm going to cover is under trump and so the story became one tonio forever .

IT was poison. The story to democrat and republicans alike, everyone's failure, everyone's burden. Better to cork IT and bury IT pray that it's noxious political half life doesn't outlast your own IT seemed to carrel that no one in government wanted to be reminded of guantanamo or wanted the american people reminded of guantanamo. An attitude compounded by something else, dark and new, a culture .

during the trumpet administration that allowed you to more than just respect the media. I mean, that set in down here during covin in a way that was like viral, truly hating the media. Uh, not wanting him here. Hating reporters less.

You think she's exaggerating.

Care was hated, hated. I mean, care was the pain of the existence of the senior officer. Gmo, when I was there, period.

That is, recently retired navy commander Daniel berni that was the public affairs officer for the J T. Affect antanas o in twenty twenty. His job in no small part was to talk to reporters.

In fact, he was explicit that people, if they see Carol or not, to be speaking to danel .

bari was the first person to offer me a clear view into the world. Carol was and still is up against. He's the one who explained how the guantanamo leadership fashion Carol into a threat. I've been trying to talk to Daniel on the record for almost two years before he was finally able to do IT once he officially retired from the navy and could speak freely.

I could tell you that Carol was called bitch more than a few times in my presence.

privately, in private conversations, or in, like in meets open.

not everybody.

And these are.

these are officers or no.

Am I dum B2Be sho cked by tha t? I find that shocking a little bit.

honestly. I.

no, I okay, right? He told me his first with that, something was off about the comments perception. Carol came before he even landed at antonio.

He was in miami at self calm, waiting for permission to fly to the base, getting grief ed on his new job. And he was handed a big binder copies of Carol stories and pronounce our tweet. There is no heading. That said, watch out for this person. But he said that was the implication that SHE was somehow unethical, a problem, Daniel, he was coming in fresh, let's say I .

didn't know who he was. I was now, mind you, I didn't act like I didn't know he was like, oh, of course, but I had no .

clue when he finally arrives at antonio, strange things happen. His boss, the navy, and roll in charge to the G, T, F, won't set a meeting with him. And the person he is replacing, maria, and then navy commander and a friend of his SHE, seems totally spooked. He says, one day he's showing him around. They go over to meet the public affairs officer for the naval base just for introduction.

And we go into this person's office and maria puts her two cell phones and a microwave. And yeah I I want you know and just we're clear that the move .

like you do in the movies, when you don't want somebody eves dropping and what you're doing.

yeah, well, I didn't know that. Oh, okay, right. Like, I know I watch a lot of movies, but I was like, what is going on here and then SHE just tells me, you know, I think they can listen to us.

Oh, and so we want to have a private conversation here and I don't know. And i'm like, what the heck could we possibly say that would be something we wouldn't want them to hear? And why would they want to hear .

what we have to say, not to mention who is the day the intelligence services danel didn't know marie didn't want to participate in the story, so I could not ask her. This was spring of twenty twenty. Because of covet, reporters weren't allowed on the base at all.

They've suspended all media tours of the G, T, F. The court was on hold. Carol couldn't get down.

There, would end up being her longest stretch away, the total of five hundred days. So SHE and Daniel never met in person, but they did speak on the phone. Sh'd ask him questions, basic information, and he mostly was told he couldn't answer her once or twice.

He says he was given false information to pass under her, which made a mad. He'd been instructed to prepare his commander the ad role in charge of the J, T, F, for a round table discussion with reporters, anti start planning for a resumption of media tours. But after a while he realized, oh, I see, they don't intend to do any media whatsoever.

IT was dawning on him. The whole public affairs apparata sc. Wanta imo seemed frozen. Commanders and press officers whose job is to speak to the press, acting like they'd be investigated or fired for speaking to the press, for speaking to Carol, dan alberni said the fear seemed to have taken root about a year earlier when the previous G, T, F. Commander, admin.

John ring, i'm told us, well liked by a lot of people at guantanamo, had been fired, fired. It's not often an admin gets fired. The announcement came the very same day. Carol publish a long article in the times quoting admin ring. He had SAT down with reporters during a four day media visit and talked about how the prison might need to update its facilities to accommodate the elements of the ageing prisoners. In her story, Carol detailed, not without tenderness, some of their conditions, people using canes and Walkers and races admr ringed in wana, speak to me for this story.

But Daniel says, by the time he got to one tonio, his sense was that while many senior people at south comm and at guantanamo understood that Carol wasn't the cause of admiring ings firing, many other people didn't the timing rimed too nicely with their distrust of the media? And so coincidence slid into ring, was fired because he spoke to Carol again, not true. But to some people, IT felt true.

The real story was that ring had been under investigation for other complaints, including his management style, in a couple of security spills. I'll spare you the complicated back story, but the upshot, according to rings then public affairs officer, was that everyone seemed to turn on the public affairs s staff treated them like paris, he said. So they became miserable in their jobs, and in turn treated Carol like cyp tonight.

And then there was ac, and please bear with me while I take you inside. Zx, or deal for a minute. Because zack getting in trouble surprised the heck enemy.

I had met zack ears before when day and I first visited guantanamo. 20。 That was part of our tour. He was one of the approved people media could interview. Do you only go by your first name, last name?

I only go by za, the culture advise his man.

His phone name was aumia, iee. But at tono he was just zack for security reasons. He told us everyone at guantanamo news.

Zc, besides Carol and the detainees themselves, he was one of the very few permanent people there. He lived with his family on the base. You've been hired in two thousand.

Five, during the bomb garner era, as a cultural advisor to the gt. F, he's originally from the middle. Ast, he's muslim, and his job, he said, was to help the J, T, F.

Commanders understand the mindset and behavior of the prisoners, and also to train in coming guards on the basics of islam. That was clear though, he worked for the military. That's how we talked when we met him back in twenty fifteen.

Whatever I learned from the detainees I passed at all to the leadership, everything, everybody, world by world.

Sac was trusted. He was dug in. He had his own homy office in the headquarters building with all the jt f, big wages. And just to drive homes, jax position at antonia, some of the former detainees we spoke to, they told us they loved zc, though he added out for. So when I heard that zack, that same zc company man, was forced from his job, I called him up. Seven years after our first meeting we had a rather aimless conversation for more than two hours until they said, um so I heard a story about why you left guantanamo and then wow, that came alive .

he spilled .

over with anger telling me how he was investigated but they'd never tell him me exactly what four, how he was getting drop from email chains and standing meetings. How I took a while to figure out what was going on, that they were freezing him .

out for what you don't like me fire me, you know, told me we don't want exactly we don't know. I don't destroy my life and my reputation. You post my god and picture in the camps.

They posted my picture, you know, as if i'm a terrorist, not to be allowed in the camps. Do not let this person in anytime. If you see this person.

report him to clarify. Zc, I never actually saw his own photo, said, but he said a linguist he knew told him .

about IT think i'm a terrorist. My wife used a substitute de teaching at the school, and other teachers will whisper, ah, why SHE here? He allowed to be here.

They damaged the whole reputation of my family. My kids used to work at the dive shop. You know, they hear people whispering.

And what are the whispers? Like .

whispers, if he thought he's a teris know he's in deep shit trouble. You know he's this is that, you know, he has foreign contacts. You know, if people knew my business without me even knowing IT.

zack tried to protest this treatment, but the J, T, F. Command told him to stop agitating. Stop emAiling them. Don't talk anyone about this. Lao.

now, you want me to be quiet. Well, I get there. I could ask, I still quiet for two years now. I'm not being quiet.

is not being quiet.

Fuck you.

This all started in twenty nineteen. When's c wrote a book about his life and his experience at antonio that he wanted to publish. He voted the final draft through the proper D O, D channels.

But he believes the book, not the substance of IT, but the very idea of IT, robed the J. T. F. The wrong way. Because after that is when the intelligence folks began investigating him, they wanted to know where his money was going, who is context, where, why he was asking for certain reports, the investigation dragged on, and for more than a year, zac was relegated to a do nothing job in the housing office. He spent his time smoking on godless numbers of cigarettes and trying to understand, why is this happening to me?

The next time I met up with ac was about a year later at his house in florida. He was common. He'd taken out his stress on the front line, ripped out every blade of grass and covered IT in mulch. He had some perspective.

He thinks what happened to him was a combination of petty, jealous is people above, in resenting his nice house, his designated parking spot, I had a direct line to the also, he said a change had fAllen over the G, T, F. After trumps election. He noticed right away a harsher tone.

The J. T. F. Leadership, he said, was talking about taking things away from the detainees that they'd had for a decade, things like television, art classes, communal living.

He said his budget for the detainee library disappeared, and he said he was hearing more islamophobia comments at work. IT wasn't lost on zack that would happened to him. Had also happened to chaplain James e.

And to the arc translators all those years earlier. He was suspected of being a spy treated like a national security threat. Another reason he says they turned on him, Carol jack was the one who brought up, not me.

I mean, even I was associated, I don't know you to record this or not. I was associated with Carol. You know, they had just like they had the stem phobia. They had carrozza believe me. I mean.

but so what's .

the was afraid and they keep passing on our watch. 这 不干 了， 我 这 怎么 干了？ Maybe those people going to hate, hate IT. The fact that i'm .

saying this right now.

you know, everyone has told me this, not thank you very much. So i'm not the only one who said IT, but I kept hearing, you know, Carol knows everything, Carol knows everything. How does he get information to the music? I don't know. He does IT.

It's not me where who was saying this?

Good house meeting like dead man meetings, you know, and official meanings. okay.

So that would be like some newspaper story would come out and they would be like.

where are you getting this stuff? I was getting accused without me knowing.

accused of leaking information. But zack didn't cut non. Instead, he defended her. He says he repeatedly told the leadership that in his experience, Carol had always acted above board, never asked him for information he knew he wasn't allowed to tell.

As you can probably hear as axy bic smoker, carl used to smoke too. They'd see each other sometimes at the little smoking area out in the parking lot of the G. T.

F. Headquarters building. Zack thinks maybe that's what Sparked the rumors. A few months before Daniel berni arrived on the island, they went to pick up some dinner at a pair restaurants in the bowling ali called spins and bombers.

Less than an hour later, zac sent an email to maria SHE of the microwave. The spooked public affairs officer Daniel would soon replace maam. He wrote, just for your situation awareness, while I was at spines and bombers around eight forty five pm, with my wife, Carol and two other female journalists set at our table while we were waiting for to go.

Food mainly. Carol talk to my wife. He goes on to explain all the banana topics.

They chatted about our food got ready, and me and my wife excuse ourselves and left. Carol did not try anything. SHE stayed professional. SHE complained about herself quitting smoking again above for your situation awareness, sincere zack. This was the atmosphere he felt he had to work on himself because .

they are watching me, because I don't want somebody I D yet to go back to mea.

Daniel bari and zack overlap tic lontano Daniel, i'd heard about zack and his banishment. He've been told that had something to do with the booky route. Daniel ll definitely understood the leaderships antipathy toward Carol, but he didn't really get how dangerous IT was to stick up for her.

As acadian i'm marry one time, I stood up and said. We should not be afraid of this person. And I think I might have, you know, put a mocho into that and said, you know, why are we afraid of this woman from the new york time?

He is just do her job.

He had a little bit of a grow up pair town, he said, which not welcome coming from a public affairs officer, they're not generally considered the office of the military. Before long Daniel too, was under investigation.

Yeah, so the jack comes in is giving your badge. Um they they have another officer escort me out.

which was humiliating. He said, same as ec, give me a badge. Get out. At first, Daniel was investigated for a spill of classified information.

IT turned out there was no spill, but then, as with ac, they kept digging for close to five months. Then you can do his job or enter the G, T, F. Area, but he could play chess and work out and otherwise try to end off depression on a hike.

Colleague told him the stories going around the Daniel was a spy, or that he was secretly making a movie about guantanamo. He does make documentary, but this was made up. And one more one that actually did make IT into an investigative report that he had leaked information to the media on two occasions, none of the accusations against Daniel was substantiated.

Same as true as ac. By the way, I don't know south comes perspective on these investigations. They didn't answer my questions about them and didn't provide anyone for me to interview for this story.

When his tour of duty was up, Daniel went back to california, and after twenty six years in the military, he decided to quit. IT took the navy two and a half more years to approve his retirement to confirm he hadn't done anything wrong. As for zack, the military finally offered him a lump some of money if he promised not to sue IT wasn't much.

He and his wife, amy called me as they were deciding whether to accept that amy was even more of upset than zack. SHE said he felt like a slap in the face. They will, till the last minute, they were gonna cover their essays.

Yeah, this is like what nobody even says, sorry, you know? And then IT hurts. I'm sorry, i'm sorry when I get, you know, sometimes access like emmy, calm, calm down.

Like serious. Ly, no, don't apologize. Don't apologize. They ended up accepting the money.

About six weeks later, zac sent me a video of his oldest son, shotter, joining the army. Some enemy. Orn domestic enemy. Jack was very proud of him.

I was standing el berni about five times. Why, though, what was the threat that you or zc or the other public affairs officers presented? Again, so many secrets were already out.

You could say the word torture. In open court, camp seven was no longer a taboo subject. Only a few dozen detainees were left at the prison, and their identities and histories, even their health affluents, were in large part, public knowledge.

So what was the command afraid of? I tried to ask the people in charge at the time, the admin, his chief of staff, also a couple of public affairs officers, they are declined or didn't respond. Daniel didn't know the answer, but he had opinions. After admin ring was fired, he said no senior person wanted to get fired, and they felt the sure fire way to get fired was negative press. But if the press isn't covering wanna, then there can be the kind of negative press that can get me fired.

So i'm going na shut IT down. And i'm not gonna say that because I don't have A I know i'm not gonna say that maybe they don't have the authority to do that. I'm just gonna make IT happen. There was just this utmost interest in trying to keep media from covering gtm o and hoping this that if you stuck your head deep in that cuban sane, the media would drop interest.

In other words, if I can't officially institute a no media policy, then i'll do the next best thing, strangle all avenues by which information travels out of this place.

So I I guess what i'm saying to you is I got accused of a whole bunch of things that were literally bulls shit that were never brought nothing and I believe was to keep me out of my job.

A couple other public affairs officers I talk to from around that time, they second at Daniel analysis that some of the powerful people running guanta o didn't want any coverage at all the road blocks that make reporting from guantanamo difficult. Does your intentional? One person told me the ideas, quote, you can't control what Carol rights, but you can control her access what that looks like after the break.

It's molick from york times cooking and i'm in the kitchen with some of our team, nick, to richert. And what are you making for thanksgiving this year?

I'm making the chee hassle back potato team featuring layers of finally cut potatoes. Very easy, but it's a real what about you?

I'm actually doing a mushroom welling ten puff pastry wrapped around the delicious savory mission feeling are you ably as standing, if not more so than a turkey? No matter what kind of thankful ving your cooking, you can find the recipe nyt cooking darcos lash thanksgiving. The situation, Daniel granaries described a military choking off media that is still playing out.

A antonio, it's not subtle. The J, T, F, you ve been changed. Its mission statement used to be safe, humane, legal and transparent current custody of detainees.

Few years ago, they quietly dropped the word transparent. The J, T, F, right now is possibly the least transparent it's ever been. Carol, his drug may be three prison related facts. Out of south comes since twenty twenty one, which obviously hasn't stopped her from reporting carls.

One of the best reporters in the world is not about to let a bureaucracy, military otherwise dictate her coverage, but the prison Operation will not give her an ounce of CoOperation, will not engage with her as if no outsider is entitled to know what goes on inside. Now, if Carol calls south, come to ask a question about the prison. The answer, SHE gets back at best, is we ll go back to you.

You can't speak to any non public affairs personnel without prior approval. These aren't Carol specific rules. Obviously, they applied to all media, but carls the reporter the most effect since the J, T, F, shut down media tours.

In practice, this means no one working there. None of the nine hundred, some people is permitted to speak to her on duty or off. SHE hasn't been able to speak to A G, T, F.

Commander since twenty nine, SHE can get a photo, really, any photo, not even if a sunset without her handlers. okay? SHE can't get inside the prison compound.

No reporters are allowed anymore. And on the rest of the base, SHE can't seek casual comment from a soldier or sailor going about their day. Maybe if he had approval, SHE could.

But there is no one to grant that approval. There's no longer and on sight public affairs officer for the prison. It's true. There is no one on the forty five square miles of this naval base who can officially answer a reporters question about the prison, one of the highest profile Operations of the pentagon, which, needless to say, creates tension.

So you are the spokesman. You can handle the questions. You are the spokesman. You can handle the questions.

We're out a media briefing at one tony amo, a review of the ground rules for visiting reporters. Carles, been to hundreds of these brief things. I've been to three.

This one is about to become painful again. It's the four of us, da, me, Carol and john ryan, in the conference room of the hotel we were staying. Sitting to our right are four public affairs officers.

One guy, he's with public affairs for the prison, but he's saying, I can't answer your questions. no. The next guy, army staff sergeant curry, passenger, also with the prison, he pips up.

We take questions and answer, but we can answer anything really .

is once he says we can pass your .

questions along, where is we just write .

them directly?

Com is back in miami. So carls asking, I mean, I can write to self come directly, so why would I go through? You .

function .

here because in questions one.

so your job is to hit forward. Your job is to hit forward.

SHE is saying your whole function here is to ford my emails to south calm. To be fair to Carol, she's thinking a bunch of things right now. One is, what is the point of all these people down here who have nothing to do with the cost to taxpayers?

Another is, maybe they are doing something that they're not telling us. Another is, are they gna mess with me somehow hinder me? To be fair to Young cry crasser, though his hackles are up because rude, he says, we do more than forward emails.

We do more than that put in the public at the rest function. Yes, we are a leason with you, the media and self on public affairs. What else you do is public affairs s for the J. T. fair. So that he will not say .

what else he does, just other non public affairs things, things having to do with visitors. He also won't say where his offices.

where do you sit? And i'm not sure like why it's so important moving right along.

they tell us about the six approved faces on base who can be named or photographed or actually it's five because one person, the former public affairs officer, has rotated out. So five, they tell us the names of two. For the other three, they have to get back to us.

In reality, though, the number is zero because when Carol and john ryan to have asked to meet with the approved G, T, F, faces the decline, or don't answer, you can get access to them. Dana asks if we can take photos of other personnel around the base without showing their faces, are identifying them, which was allowed in the past no, says staff argent curry passenger. We would prefer .

that there were no pictures of us.

even if it's uni dentification.

yeah. So it's .

a preference.

But is IT a rule? yes. So we have our own internal policies that with image, curry explains .

that the policy is meant to protect the privacy and security of the service members.

We have kind of sensitive mission here, and they could be a threat if their name is out in the public. People who know what's happened here may reach out what's happened in the past. So we would protect our privacy, protect our privacy.

When has that happened in the past? I'm sorry. When has IT happened in the past? But exactly when? We just know that this is something that happened.

Can you give us a concrete example? No speculation. crete. When it's happened in the past, when it's happened in the past, in the best that was win no, a concrete example of when IT has happened in the past yeah in the past. I I don't have a date before you boy.

This goes on for quite a while until our handler, adam, step in and tries to smooth that over carls not having IT in internal. The public .

affairs officer is saying that people have taken photograph, photographs taken out and they have been reached out to, we're trying to find out when that happened OK get back. And and I don't mean in the past, I mean like the specific example of a photograph that caused someone to be reached to our our duties are sensitive and nature regarding the work that we do here. People have been reached out to in the past because they were identified to somehow.

as I can't tell if cory is misunderstanding the question or if he's being obtained, what he seems not to recognize is that carroll is scrapping for a reason, big reason, severely limiting photography. Here is a big deal, but there's no bridging worlds here. Carol believes guantanamo belongs to us, to the united states of america, and that we should all know and see what goes on here.

Corry, and I admit I making an assumption here, but he seems to believe one, tony amo belongs to them, to the military. And we reporters are why I troublesome guests. And just to add, there's something happening.

Carol sees IT as guantanamo's version of an urban myth, as if the remnants of alita are out there scaring the newspaper, identifying low level guantanamo personnel so they can hunt them down back home when no evidence that ever happened. As far as I know or as far as CarOlina either. And she's been hearing this particular ducey .

for years and .

they believe .

IT it's tiring and any ability to sort a chAllenge.

The attempts to undermine Carol to get rid of A R have evolved along with antonio. The first attempt was almost carles san editor told me that rick bocuse, the general in charge of detainee Operations in two thousand and two, called him in miami and asked if he'd send someone else. His reason Carol knew more than their public affairs people and was embarrassing them in front of the other correspondents in two thousand and six.

They claim he came to the island without permission. SHE did have permission in two thousand and nine, and navy commander insisted she'd verbally harassed and demanded her newspaper investigate. They did, and found no harassment.

Mostly these attempts had been a nuisance, a stressful distraction. But one last story about Carol, because about halfway through her time here, well, who knows what? Halfway guantanamo will likely outlast Carol, but a while back displayed almost broker.

you know, I was bound for life some .

years ago for reading something.

and that changed me.

SHE was covering the legal case of a Young canadian detainee. This was in twenty ten. A witness in the case was going to justify the guantanamo o court identified him only as interrogator number one, but this interrogator had already come forward in the toronto star. His identity was public. So in her story, Carol also named him SHE didn't do IT graciously. There was a news reason guy had previously pleaded guilty to abusing prisoners in afghanistan, one of whom died, but the pentagon claimed SHE and the canadian reporters had violated the military court's protective order as well as the media ground rules for covering the guanta nama military commissions, and they banned her permanently, they told the miami herald. You can send someone else if you are just not Carol.

And I was like, i'm done and I didn't know what to do. Carol gotten a .

feeling that the herold was wearing of her close coverage. By that point, they took a lot of grave for IT. SHE worried her bosses might seize the opportunity to throw in the towel.

SHE called an editor and he made some calls, and soon her cell phone ring SHE was at her mother's house in connect SHE stepped outside to take IT. On the phone was the first amendatory ornee named dave shoulder. He would represented her, he said. He told her he had a couple of ideas for how to fight this man, including the first amendment.

First thing I said to him is this is where I cry.

always. Don't look at .

me said to me, I said to you know today, but they say the constitution doesn't apply down there. He's like we're going to get you back in there. They have violated your constitutional rides. And I said they say the constitution doesn't apply down there.

Why does that make you cry? Seriously, why does that make you the answer?

Makes me cry so awful. I hate this. He said, a carell.

If I going to hate this, can't do IT because you're going to use IT, let me try and compose myself. I would use IT. No, I don't want .

to use a critters ously. I I would only use IT if IT IT helps that make us understand who you .

are those but it's so often I can't when I really met at myself as I can never get through IT without crying.

SHE took a beat.

He said, oh, Carol, you take IT with standing like now i'm confused because i'm all emotional. It's the constitution. You take IT wherever you go. IT travels with you.

Carol and I talked about this call for a long time, about twenty minutes, me pushing and pushing to understand why, and made her emotional Carol trying to pin IT down why? Why was he crying over the constitution? Why was he so profound? IT just made me feel so good, he said, no, that's not IT.

Now you're making me analyze IT. I've never had to analyze IT before finally SHE got there. SHE had done nothing wrong by naming the interrogator in her story. And before he took dave shell is call SHE thought that was immaterial, that the department of defense could travel her anyway.

Like, I wasn't guilty.

Yeah.

cause I knew the rules. This was not a violation of anything. But I wasn't.

I didn't. I didn't think that mattered. It's a lawless's place and they can do whatever they want down there. And they did IT. And then now i'm trying and that guy basically told me I had rights, which I guess I didn't realize until that moment I was just out of fumbling my way through.

I realized, he said, first of all, that is an american journalist. I have a license to ask questions. Sometimes I may be unpleasant about IT, but I am here to ask questions on behalf of the american people. And I take that really seriously and then trying to stop her. That was motivating, actually, because because fuck them.

but think that three little thing to say, they tried to take that away from me for saying something that was true. I'm still angry about IT, right? And I mean, IT was like all of the stuff i've articulated about, somebody has to watch them.

And history can't happen without a journalists reporting IT. And what if they had a hearing and nobody came all of that? I mean, I think I believe that beforehand. But he Crystalized in that moment, they trying to tell me I couldn't report something that was true, and I kind of believed that maybe the constitution didn't apply IT out here.

Carol added. Well, it's still an open legal question whether IT applies to the detainees. But like dave shell said, IT does apply to her. Sh'd forgotten that. Or maybe she's started to believe all laws were negotiable at one animal.

IT was so IT was like the best thing he could have ever told me.

He says it's why SHE kept going back instead of turning away at various points. Still, SHE wishes SHE weren't doing this alone that he had a bunch colleagues, like in the old days. Then SHE wouldn't be the only one fighting. SHE didn't plan on becoming antonio forever reporter, but here he is, more or less the last reporter standing captive to her own expertise, her own sense of duty.

So the crying, I told Carol, I wouldn't use IT unless he helped to explain something about her full disclosure. Carles are contributing editor on this series, and she's reviewed this script as well, which does not mean she's endorsed every word of IT. This crying part was the subject of our most protracted back and forth. Because I didn't have to use IT, I have a lot of other takes. Carol kept asking to do IT again.

He said, oh, Carol both said he could .

try to remember the precise quote from dave schouler's, and also so SHE wouldn't be crying.

Oh, Carol, Carol.

even when I was packing up my mike, he was still trying. Is you why was he so intent on not crying? Not because he doesn't to be seen as an emotional person, doesn't care about that.

What he cares about someone says, single minded is access to the guantanamo ory. Her fear is that if the people who run guantanamo hear her talk like this, they might think they almost won back then, and that maybe they should try again. IT is not crazy to think that they might find an excuse to try to get red of her or put her back in, attend or decide that reporters don't need to come to guantanamo. All, let me watch the court on close circuit TV from the states. That is not crazy.

That tripped to anta ammo in twenty twenty two day. And I left after a week. Carol was staying on, but there was someone flying out with us who he wanted to speak to a source.

So SHE came along to the airport, did her thing chat with people, poked around for information, complained about this and that we have time to kill. So we went to one of the gales for lunch as we boarded a bus to return to the terminal. SHE looked pensive for a minute.

He said to me, i've already done what I came to do, so I don't really need to be here except to stir the pot and be a pain in the ass. I can help myself. It's terrible, right? It's terrible.

I can't stop. But i'm outraged all the time. SHE was laughing, as he said IT, but only a little. So what happens when a prisoner decides to tell his own story about one of the united states is biggest secrets, his treatment in CIA custody that next time.

Serials produced by Jessica iceberg, dana chavez and me. Our editor is Julie snyder.

Additional reporting by cora career fact checking by ben fAiling music supervision, sound design in mixing by feb wang, original score by Sophia daily alasania editing help from aero glass are contributing editors are Carol rosenberg and rozina ally additional production from emar ilo and Daniel gmt our standard detours our Susan westling and ihaka legal review from alan summer and ma gandi the art for our show comes from public a delco and max r supervising producer for zero productions is in day hugi. Our executive assistant is mac Miller. Sam dollar is deputy managing editor of the new york times.

Special thanks to mark cibo, dave schulz and genet rights men and to all the journalists and writers whose reporting helped inform this series, including, but definitely not limited to, charlie savage, Michelle l. Shepard, a won rah, margo Williams, ben fox, Lawrence right, jane mayor, just brave, ben tob current Green berg, da priest, Steve call, terrific dermis, tim golden, Peter burgin, spener acr man seamer and everyone involved in guantanamo voices. And john ryan has a forthcoming book, america's trial torture and the nine eleven case on guantanamo.