The Talking Dog

Eric Lewis is a partner at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Lewis Baach, PLLC. Mr. Lewis previously represented four British nationals detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and currently represents a Pakistani national detained at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. On April 19, 2013, I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Lewis by telephone. What follows are my interview notes, as corrected by Mr. Lewis.

The Talking Dog: Where were you on Sept. 11, 2001?

Eric Lewis: I was in London. I was the U.S. counsel to the liquidators of BCCI, and I was working on that case. At that time, I had two small children, both back here. I was out at lunch in the Smithfield Market in London, when I heard that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. I thought, what an unusual accident. Then, we heard about the second plane, and I knew it was not an accident. I called home immediately and found my kids were o.k. After that call, I couldn't get through to them for another day, and then I couldn't come home for about a week.

Before heading back, I went to a service at St. Paul's Cathedral in London (actually outside the cathedral, with loudspeakers set up to hear what was transpiring). I have never seen such an outpouring of warmth by the British toward their American friends.

The Talking Dog: Please identify your present and former GTMO-detained or "war on terror" client or clients by name, nationality, and current whereabouts. To the extent you can, please tell me something about each of your clients.

Eric Lewis: I previously represented four British detainees (the Tipton Lads, and Jamal Al Harity), and they're now out of Guantanamo. I also represent a Pakistani named Amanatullah, who is held at Bagram. My GTMO clients were most fortunate to be British; it was at a time when Tony Blair had sufficient influence to get my clients released, although he could achieve little else.

The Talking Dog: Please tell me the status of your client's habeas litigation, be it "habeas petition pending,"petition denied and appeal pending" or whatever else is applicable of note.

Eric Lewis: Amanatullah's case was assigned to Judge Royce Lamberth. He denied the petition, finding that a detainee at Bagram is beyond his jurisdiction, applying al Maqaleh and other cases. That decision is now on appeal to the D.C. Circuit; our brief is due in the next few days.

The Talking Dog: Would the much vaunted handover of control of prisons to Afghan control make any difference?

Eric Lewis: As to the Afghan prison handover, the government has already argued that the prisons there are under Afghan sovereignty, and habeas petitions would "interfere with Afghan sovereignty." But the Afghan government has already decided that it will not take on third country nationals brought to Afghanistan by the United States. Amanatulleh was a Pakistani handed over to British forces in Iraq, and then handed over to American forces and sent to Bagram (which, by the way, is a grave breach of the Geneva conventions on the part of the British for handing him over without an assurance that the prisoner would not be rendered somewhere else,) Indeed, we brought a habeas petition for him in London, and the British Secretary of State for Defense and Foreign Affairs was ordered to produce Amanatulleh. Under the Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and Great Britain, either party has to turn over any prisoner the other asks back... and the U.K. asked for Amanatulleh's return, but the U.S. government responded "don't worry, we'll deal with Pakistan"... and then declined to turn him over to Britain. We filed a complaint before the London Metropolitan Police concerning the officials involved in his rendition. The complaint was denied, but we have sought judicial review.

The Talking Dog: Can you please tell me if you visited your clients at Guantanamo, and can you describe the circumstances of your visit?

Eric Lewis: My British clients were released from Guantanamo in 2004, before attorneys were permitted to visit, and we are not permitted to visit clients held in Afghanistan at all.

The Talking Dog: Can you tell me any significant developments concerning other litigation involving your clients?

Eric Lewis Our British clients, who were released in 2004, sued Rumsfeld and a number of generals for engaging in torture and religious abuse; we lost our Bivens action, but actually won on our claiming the trial under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which provides that all persons are to be permitted to practice their religion without restraint. Unfortunately, on appeal, the D.C. Circuit held that our clients were "not persons." this ended up being the case of Rasul v. Myers. Yes, this is the same Rasul as in Rasul v. Bush, and Shafiq Rasul is basically a kid with Nike sneakers and a baseball hat, and we had to convince him to bring a damages action; he was actually quite concerned that he might be put back in Guantanamo. But then Shafiq Rasul brought his case, and won.

Well, the British detainees went home. Then we won in the D.C. District Court, but the D.C. Circuit held they were "not persons," and as such, they had no right not to be tortured. We petitioned for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court, and then it issued the Boumediene decision, and vacated and remanded the D.C. Circuit's ruling consistent with Boumediene. In 2008, the D.C. Circuit set a schedule for briefing that would have been completed by the Bush Administration; we secured a change in the schedule so that the Obama Administration would be permitted to weigh in.

Notwithstanding the campaign rhetoric about "restoring the rule of law", the Obama Solicitor General (Justice Kagan, whom I went to college with) ended up filing exactly the same brief the Bush Administration filed, and then the D.C. Circuit issued a decision also dismissing our clients' case. The Supreme Court then denied certiorari review. This is all problematic. Even if you look at the doctrine of qualified immunity, by failing to take the case, the next time government officials torture people, there is still no judicial precedent that there is a right not to be tortured, somehow independent of the right of habeas corpus.

I did a piece a while back in which I noted that whether or not Obama says "no torture," because of the failure to institutionally do anything actually against torture, there will always be another John Yoo to come along and provide legal cover to torturers of the future. An unfortunate loss, as we are still in the same position, and constitutional rights aren't protected. Even the Bivens "special factor" had not been extended to this case until the D.C. Circuit managed to tie that up as well. As such, at the end of the day, there is still no civil legal remedy for torture and no clearly established right for foreign detainees not to be tortured..

The Talking Dog: Can you comment on recent developments associated with the GTMO hunger strike, and to the extent possible, can you put these developments in some context?

Eric Lewis: At the hearing held earlier this week (in the al Madwhani case), someone is clearly lying about what is going on, before Judge Hogan. The detainees detail a number of conditions that result in his being near death; the government simply says "not true." And for his part, in denying the detainee's motion, Judge Hogan concludes "the Military Commissions Act [of 2005] precludes it," as an impermissible "condition of confinement" issue, and also finds the detainee's actions to ostensibly be "voluntary." The Constitution cannot say "no remedy" under these circumstances. If the government has the right to "destroy the body" (rather than produce it, as the literal translation of habeas corpus means), then there is no remedy at all. The right to life in these circumstances must be antecedent and permit a challenge to the conditions of confinement. Otherwise, the government can simply take you out and shoot you This is morally incoherent and odious.

The hunger strike is spreading. The men have no hope and no certainty; hopelessness is pervasive... people have died already, and will continue to die. The government, of course, controls the pictures coming out, and hence, controls the story. The images the government wants to come out of the hunger strike are images of lunches being thrown away. Of course, control of images is all too consistent with authoritarian regimes.

Guantanamo, like many things, has a certain ebb and flow. The military, in its infinite wisdom, decided to change assignments, and brought in a hardass officer evidently committed to return to the Geoffrey Miller days. Making a decision to do something this ridiculous under these circumstances utterly escapes me; it is absurd and counterproductive. Now it appears there is a new man in charge. We will see whether it is "Miller Time" again, or whether there will be changes.

I do legal work in the Middle East, and in that part of the world, Guantanamo and our "indefinite detention" policy remains a stain-- a moral stain on the Bush Administration, and a moral and competence stain on the Obama Administration. Does this President want men never charged with anything (and over half of whom his own Administration has "cleared for release") to have been imprisoned for fifteen years by the time he leaves office?

The "worst of the worst" such as they are, are being charged with crimes, and prosecuted; the rest of "the worst" had perhaps a week in a training camp, or held an AK 47 in a dangerous part of the world where almost everyone else does... they'll be left there. What is the danger at this point? Men will have served fifteen years without charge... and if they are "hardened and angry" as a result of the decision to hold them in this way, we will punish them for that. We have amazing surveillance capabilities everywhere-- we can spot the dimples on a golf ball from satellites. Holding men in this moral abomination to avoid their "return to the battlefield" is not the answer-- there are better solutions than having these guys sitting for fifteen years without hope or any route out.

The Talking Dog: Can you comment on media coverage, in particular, of events at Guantanamo in calendar year 2013, and compare and contrast to earlier coverage?

Eric Lewis: I think there is a Guantanamo fatigue out there-- an ADHD associated with the issue as people have moved on to other things. American coverage ha been more than a little jingoistic, overall.

Certainly, the New York Times has been aggressive on its Guantanamo coverage, and the British press has been proactive-- but people these days get their news in different ways. In a great sense, if you control the pictures, you control the story. And the U.S. government controls the pictures and has made them a feature of its propaganda campaigns. Certainly, after the Rasul and Boumediene cases, there was attention paid. And now we have this Constitution Project, with Asa Hutchinson, a former Republican Congressman from Arkansas, and Jim Jones, a former conservative Democratic Congressman from Oklahoma, who call torture... torture.

Their report has received "respectful" coverage, but hardly the coverage required. We have a President who famously said "we have to look forward and not backward" when it comes to dealing with our own torturers. That is not, of course, how societies come to moral outcomes. How he assuages his political enemies is, unfortunately, what has come to define his political reality. Part of this, to be sure, is the 24 hour news cycle. Also, he felt the need to jettison or sideline the Greg Craig's and others who advised him to do the right thing... but at the end of the day, the news coverage reflects the "out of sight, out of mind" problem with the entirety of Guantanamo and indefinite detention and "the war on terror."

Eric Lewis: It is my hope that as Barack Obama begins to contemplate his legacy, he will start to solve some of the problems surrounding these issues-- he just cannot leave this where this is.

At this point, of the men remaining the government's best case (and that's for the 80 of 166 or so men not cleared for release) is that they were at most trivial players in the great scheme of things, and by the end of Obama's term, it will be fifteen years that they have been held without charge. I would hope that he would deal with this and not leave all of this to a successor; that is just more than we can reasonably countenance. I may be, of course, a cockeyed optimist on this point.

As he comes to "legacy time," he'll not want to leave this mess as he found it. My prediction is that men will start to be sent out of Guantanamo after the 2014 mid-term elections, and we will start to revisit these issues.

The Talking Dog: Can you tell me how your Guantanamo representation has effected you personally, be it professionally, emotionally, spiritually, or any other way you'd like to answer, and finally, is there anything else that you believe I should have asked but didn't, or that the public needs to know concerning these issues?

Eric Lewis: I can remember studying the Korematsu case with my Con Law professor-- Robert Bork-- back in law school. I was left with the impression that we have had some kind of "moral progression." The "war on terror" representation seemed like the Korematsu of our time. Unfortunately, what we have learned is that without the political will, the rule of law has little independent gravity on its own.

The Supreme Court did a better job in this area than in Korematsu, but the practicalities have proven ineffective. Much of the blame of this is the role of the D.C. Circuit, and shows the power of a Circuit Court to frustrate the policy directives of the Supreme Court. I suppose we can be hopeful that one day, law students will look back at this and there will be a realization of how unstuck we came after September 11th. While not excusing the Bush Administration for its excesses, the Obama administration certainly lacks the excuse of the "shock of the new."

As to me, I have never had a client do anything negative towards me as a result of my representation, and my clients abroad have been extremely supportive. We don't know here how negatively even very conservative players abroad view us concerning how we conduct our policy. Our conservative commercial clients think we're doing some very important work here.

The Talking Dog: I join all of my readers in thanking Mr. Lewis for that informative interview.

Readers interested in legal issues and related matters associated with the "war on terror" may also find talking dog blog interviews with former Guantanamo military commissions prosecutors Morris Davis and Darrel Vandeveld, with former Guantanamo combatant status review tribunal/"OARDEC" officer Stephen Abraham, with attorneys Cori Crider, Michael Mone, Matt O'Hara, Carlos Warner, Matthew Melewski, Stewart "Buz" Eisenberg, Patricia Bronte, Kristine Huskey, Ellen Lubell, Ramzi Kassem, George Clarke, Buz Eisenberg, Steven Wax, Wells Dixon, Rebecca Dick, Wesley Powell, Martha Rayner, Angela Campbell, Stephen Truitt and Charles Carpenter, Gaillard Hunt, Robert Rachlin, Tina Foster, Brent Mickum, Marc Falkoff H. Candace Gorman, Eric Freedman, Michael Ratner, Thomas Wilner, Jonathan Hafetz, Joshua Denbeaux, Rick Wilson,
Neal Katyal, Joshua Colangelo Bryan, Baher Azmy, and Joshua Dratel (representing Guantanamo detainees and others held in "the war on terror"), with attorneys Donna Newman and Andrew Patel (representing "unlawful combatant" Jose Padilila), with Dr. David Nicholl, who spearheaded an effort among international physicians protesting force-feeding of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, with physician and bioethicist Dr. Steven Miles on medical complicity in torture, with law professor and former Clinton Administration Ambassador-at-large for war crimes matters David Scheffer, with former Guantanamo detainees Moazzam Begg and Shafiq Rasul , with former Guantanamo Bay Chaplain James Yee, with former Guantanamo Army Arabic linguist Erik Saar, with former Guantanamo military guard Terry Holdbrooks, Jr., with former military interrogator Matthew Alexander, with law professor and former Army J.A.G. officer Jeffrey Addicott, with law professor and Coast Guard officer Glenn Sulmasy, with author and geographer Trevor Paglen and with author and journalist Stephen Grey on the subject of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, with journalist and author David Rose on Guantanamo, with journalist Michael Otterman on the subject of American torture and related issues, with author and historian Andy Worthington detailing the capture and provenance of all of the Guantanamo detainees, with law professor Peter Honigsberg on various aspects of detention policy in the war on terror, with Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch, with Almerindo Ojeda of the Guantanamo Testimonials Project, with Karen Greenberg, author of The LeastWorst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days, with Charles Gittings of the Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions, and with Laurel Fletcher, author of "The Guantanamo Effect" documenting the experience of Guantanamo detainees after their release, to be of interest.

Two bombs exploded near the finish of yesterday's Boston Marathon, killing at least three people (including an eight year old boy), and injuring around 120 people. The results of the explosions included numerous amputations (including loss of limbs... in some cases involving runners who were just completing their dream-of-a-lifetime race, only to have their legs blown off, and/or their loved ones maimed or killed).

Not quite as well-reported here, an American "off target" bomb managed to kill over 30 people at an Afghan wedding, during more ongoing and pointless carnage... somewhere else. Total casualties of killed and injured were believed to be in the range of... around 120 or so.

The GTMO hunger strike was met with a "violent clash" (those things tend to be one sided affairs, of course), although, as a number of recent interviews on this site reveal, the hunger strike, despite the immense suffering of those participating, has at least put GTMO back into public consciousness... though, of course, most people will quickly revert to platitudes and most alleged progressives will support the President in his ongoing doing of nothing-to-alleviate-any-of-this because he's "on our team."

[Boston's own] Dmitry Orlov asks the philosophical question about a country quite literally blowing itself up... "why are we so fucking stupid?"

I probably have little value to add to any of this, other than to note my perverse luck in not being a good enough marathon runner myself to have been eligible to participate at Boston in this, or so far, any other year's event... though of course, this sort of thing was certainly the general fear at my first NYC Marathon just a few weeks after 11 Sept. 2001.

In short, our society, and in particular, our nation, sadly took the advice of that misguided, and in the end, quite miserable person, the late Mrs. Thatcher, and erroneously believed that we are all nothing more than atomized individuals and that "there is no society," and that hence we can gratuitously engage in aggressive lashing out at everyone else on Earth (because, after all, there is no society, only atomized individuals and our selfish interests) and that we can let our polity and collective psyche become organized entirely by the most craven and short-sighted selfishness and greed imaginable... Well, hell... we soon came to look like what we have now [that being... hell.]. Unsurprisingly, children, who never bear responsibility for any of this (and who instinctively still crave human company and intimacy and a sense of honor and fairness) always seem to be prominent among the victims of violent madness, be they in Boston or Newtown, Connecticut (and some of the kids from the Sandy Hook school were at the Boston finish line, dear God) or Arizona or Afghanistan...

None of this is going to stop any time soon, unless and until we do a dramatic and sober reassessment of everything we think is important, and come to realize that nature has made us just about the most social creature there is, and that creates certain behavioral obligations toward both one another and toward the rest of the planet. We have kind of dropped the ball on respecting those obligations for a few decades (or centuries... or millenia), and while it might actually be too late for us to correct course... our only hope is if we do. And fast. Our vaunted lifestyles, as Mrs. Thatcher never learned, have only served to make us miserable and hateful... clearly, very hateful... Greater persons from Mrs. Thatcher's country suggested that "All you need is love." That sure as hell would be helpful...

Cori Crider is a Legal Director at Reprieve, a non-profit legal NGO based in London. Reprieve has represented dozens of men detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with just over a dozen left. On April 5, 2013 I had the privilege of interviewing Ms. Crider by telephone. What follows are my interview notes, as corrected by Ms. Crider.

The Talking Dog: Where were you on Sept. 11, 2001, and to the extent you can answer, please tell me where your GTMO-detained client or clients were?

Cori Crider:On September 11th, I was a college student at the University of Texas. I saw coverage of the second plane on television. That afternoon my friends and I all went to a student vigil on the main mall of the campus of the University.

What feels like very shortly afterwards, I remember seeing the photos of men on stretchers in orange jump suits -- and feeling instantly like we had tossed all our principles out the window.

It's a mundane story, but it tells you something about how long the war on terror has been going on: I had time to finish university, complete law school, become a lawyer, come here to Reprieve on a fellowship, and represent these men for over six years. Now I run the counter-terrorism team at Reprieve. In that time, these clients haven't moved. I've watched them age. They've watched me age.

Cori Crider: Reprieve was counsel in over sixty cases over the years, so I'll spare your readers the full list and offer a sample.

Our free men include Sami al Hajj, the al-Jazeera cameraman from Sudan (hunger striker for over a year when DOD turned him loose); Binyam Mohamed, the UK resident (rendered to Morocco for torture by the CIA, first man to go home under Obama); Mohammed el Gharani, Saudi-born Chadian (taken to Gitmo age 14, ordered released by Judge Richard Leon); and Ismail Mohamoud Mohamed, a Somali professor (one of the very last taken to Gitmo - he arrived in mid-2007, and we had him out by the end of 2009).

Clients who are still there today: Shaker Aamer, ISN 239, UK resident; Nabil Hadjarab, ISN 238, French resident; Younous Chekkouri, ISN 197, Moroccan; Samir Mukbel, ISN 43, Yemeni; Abu Wa'el Dhiab, ISN 722, Syrian. All of these people, as of my last unclassified information, are taking part in the hunger strike. At least some of them are being force fed through a tube in their nose; some have been hospitalised because of medical complications from their strike (Samir Mukbel, for example). (Our work has expanded to include folks in Bagram, families rendered to Libya, and people at the sharp end of drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, but that's a conversation for another day.)

I'd like to focus on two detainees, consecutive ISNs 238 and 239, the last French and British residents at Guantanamo (Nabil Hadjarab and Shaker Aamer, respectively). Nabil's passport is Algerian, but he is the son and grandson of French colonial veterans - his grandfather fought for the French in WWI, and his father in the Algerian war. All his surviving family are French citizens. So far this has cut no ice with the French authorities, who refuse to have him.

Shaker, meanwhile, has had several UK Foreign Secretaries claim they are 'doing everything they can' to get him back. He has a British wife and four British children. Recently over 100,000 people signed a petition calling on Her Majesty's Government to get him out of Gitmo and back to Britain - and I presume at the ensuing Parliamentary debate Hague will say he's done what he can and the US won't budge. It does rather raise the eyebrow, this suggestion that American's closest ally can't pull a cleared man out of jail. Nobody suggests Britain is not a 'safe' place to release prisoners to. There have been no problems with any of the men released here so far. I tend to think Hague and his predecessors have been either feckless or indifferent.

Anyway, Shaker and Nabil's cases are linked: both of them arrived at Bagram at the same time, in the first convoy of prisoners to be taken there. It was a hellish place at the time - so hellish that they're both now witnesses in a Scotland Yard investigation into British officials who interrogated them, and others, in Bagram in January 2002. By the way, both men were in Kabul on 11 Sept. 2001, although I don't think they knew one another. Both men were cleared under Bush and again by Obama's inter-agency task force.

The Talking Dog: Please tell me the status of their habeas litigation, be it "habeas petition pending,"petition denied and appeal pending" or whatever else is applicable, and to the extent applicable, if you can identify who the judge or judges involved are and if there is any published decision or decisions of note.

Cori Crider: Both Shaker's and Nabil's cases are pending before Judge Rosemary Collyer. Shaker's is in discovery; Nabil's is stayed. Most attorneys involved in these cases would tell you meaningful habeas review is dead. It's not the trial judges' fault, mind. They diligently weighed the evidence, such as there was, and in the great majority of cases rejected the government's position. The D.C. Circuit, however, believes these folks never ought to have had a hearing in the first place. It responded by moving the goalposts each chance it got. These days trial judges looking over a government interrogation report have been directed to assume that the agent recorded the interrogation accurately. Would you want to play that kind of a rigged game?
'Habeas' is now a rubber stamp for the government.

These days, I view the Gitmo portion of my job as the same as it was before Boumediene - investigation and advocacy in the court of public opinion.

The Talking Dog: Can you please tell me the last time you visited your client or clients at Guantanamo, and can you describe the circumstances of your visit. If you could, can you contrast that visit with what you found at earlier visits, including the condition of your client(s), the restrictions on you as counsel and on your clients during your visit, the condition in which you found your clients, and anything else you believe relevant.

Cori Crider: I have not been down since last January; I am going again in a couple of weeks. Most of my recent information I know from calls, and while perhaps things are not as they were in 2003, 2004, the picture our clients paint is alarming. ERF teams strapping prisoners to hospital beds to be force-fed; the camp seizing my Syrian client's wheelchair to punish him for striking; prisoners dropping from low blood sugar on the blocks every day and being taken away on a gurney. It's plainly getting worse.

And you can see why. After eleven years of indefinite detention, over half of that time "cleared for transfer" in the case of many of my clients, the desperation is palpable. It gets harder and harder to lift a man's spirits and enroll him in his defense as the years wear on. The disappointment in President Obama is palpable too. Remember, I first met some clients back when they were in their early 20's, and now they are in their 30's and look older still. Some of them, like Younus, read Obama's books and sincerely believed things would be different.

Instead, you have the White House press office referring people to DOD for queries on the hunger strike. Obama has totally abdicated responsibility for these men. But they refuse to be forgotten.

God knows how they'll look when I visit them in May. I used to see Binyam and Sami when they were striking, skin and bones. But I haven't seen most of these men in that state and it will be hard to watch. This strike has united the prisoners, however they tended in the past to respond to their predicament. Nabil was always a "go-along" kind of guy, for example; he has learned good English, and was much less likely to be vocally critical of his captors than, say, Shaker has been. Shaker never did like to stand by when he saw someone being mistreated, and so has taken a lot of flak over his outspokenness over the years. Both are striking now.

Much as I worry someone will be hurt, it's hard to blame them. What choice do they have? What would you do in their shoes?

Cori Crider: The government had certainly made it harder to communicate. For example one is now meant to give 15 business days notice for a proposed call or meeting, up from 10. It strikes me as a bit odd that, on the one hand, the military has backed off some things (e.g. the flight ban) in the face of criticism, but not others. They've showed more flexibility on calls lately, I think perhaps because of a concern that things are going to go very wrong.

(Indeed, you see from the news this weekend that it has taken a very ugly turn with guards firing 'non-lethal' rounds on prisoners. That may precipitate another communications lockdown.)

I must admit that this surprised me about the Obama Administration when it came in. Some things immediately got worse-- for example, the censorship of attorney's notes. At first it was much harder to get anything past Obama's censors than under Bush. Anything about conditions, abuse, etc, tended not to be cleared. It is amazing, quite frankly, how much information has made it out about the hunger strike.

The Talking Dog: Can you comment on media coverage, in particular, of events at Guantanamo in calendar year 2013, and previously, and in particular, with respect to your own clients and representation?

Cori Crider: It depends which 'media' you mean. Living outside the U.S., my perspective on some of this differs. Global opinion was and is firmly against Guantanamo. Indeed, "Guantanamo" has become a shorthand for extra-judicial prisons in all kinds of places!

That said, Gitmo fell off the media radar for a while here in Britain and in Europe just as in the United States. Some people do still ask me, "didn't Obama close the place?" Ordering the prison closed - while it failed - knocked the issue out of the news, mostly, for years. But that's starting to change.

The hunger strike has reignited interest in the issue worldwide; Shaker in the UK, Nabil in France, the general issue on al Jazeera, al-Arabiya, and so on. And I don't think it's about to go away. The administration ignores this story at their peril.

Cori Crider: Guantánamo will not be closed by the end of the Obama Administration. The "national security" policies of the Obama Administration have sought to ensure that it cannot be outflanked from the right. Later - in five, ten, fifteen years - the pendulum on Gitmo will swing again - perhaps it is doing so now - but it will take time. Because of the strike we may see a trickle of releases - hey, you have to live in hope to do this work - but overall, the Administration seems to have calculated that its domestic priorities are paramount, and that doing the right thing on Gitmo carries only political cost.

That's shortsighted, of course. Consider his legacy. As things stand we won't remember Obama as 'the President who closed Gitmo'. We'll remember 'the drone President', the 'President who kept Gitmo open' after decrying it for years.

Cori Crider: The hunger strike. It reminds the government that these men are not going to go gently into that good night.

Our task as advocates is to make our clients 'real' to Americans, not an empty vessel, 'the detainee', into which everyone can pour their individual prejudices.

Nor is America the only relevant audience. Most Americans have no idea who Binyam Mohamed or Sami al Hajj are, but in the UK and across the Arab world respectively, they're household names. That is why they are home today.

The Talking Dog: Can you tell me how your Guantanamo representation has effected you personally, be it professionally, emotionally, spiritually, or any other way you'd like to answer? In your case, as you've done this for your entire legal career, I suppose you'd have to do something else...

Cori Crider: I'd love nothing more than for the 'war on terror' to end, so I could retire to bake pastries or something.

But of course it changes you. Before I started this work I'm not sure I'd ever met a Muslim. Certainly I didn't enroll out of any particular connection to their plight. I just disagreed with Bush policy and wanted to stop what was happening.

But then you spend time with them and everything changes. Now I think much more about what we should do for Younus or Nabil, say, than I do against anyone else.

I also probably stopped believing in 'law' as a force for social change. That isn't to say it can't help - Rasul got us in to the prison, without which there are no personal stories to tell. But it's plain to me someone looking only to the judiciary to drive these issues forward tends to lose, lose, lose. Here's a statistic I always tell new staff: of over 50 clients Reprieve has seen go home from Gitmo, only one was ordered released by a court. As for the rest, it was facts - and the political implications of those facts - that got them out.

That's not to say the law will never respond; only that it tends not to get too far ahead of the prevailing social view on controversial issues. So in the UK, where the social response to torture has been totally different, we've had considerably better luck with litigation. We're also ahead of the US on accountability for torture, where we have senior police investigating MI5/6 and senior political officials for their role in Bagram (and in the kidnap of two Libyan families we represent). So over here, there is a real prospect we'll see some people held legally to account for their role in the US torture program.

Obviously, matters are quite different in the U.S., where torturers have book and film deals. But give it time.

The Talking Dog: Is there anything else that you believe I should have asked but didn't, or that the public needs to know concerning these issues?

Cori Crider: The Obama mantra that "Congress has made it impossible to close Guantanamo" is false. The NDAA, as onerous as it is, permits the transfer of detainees in some circumstances if the Administration has the gumption and commitment to do it.

The Talking Dog: I join all of my readers in thanking Ms. Crider for that informative interview.

Readers interested in legal issues and related matters associated with the "war on terror" may also find talking dog blog interviews with former Guantanamo military commissions prosecutors Morris Davis and Darrel Vandeveld, with former Guantanamo combatant status review tribunal/"OARDEC" officer Stephen Abraham, with attorneys Michael Mone, Matt O'Hara, Carlos Warner, Matthew Melewski, Stewart "Buz" Eisenberg, Patricia Bronte, Kristine Huskey, Ellen Lubell, Ramzi Kassem, George Clarke, Buz Eisenberg, Steven Wax, Wells Dixon, Rebecca Dick, Wesley Powell, Martha Rayner, Angela Campbell, Stephen Truitt and Charles Carpenter, Gaillard Hunt, Robert Rachlin, Tina Foster, Brent Mickum, Marc Falkoff H. Candace Gorman, Eric Freedman, Michael Ratner, Thomas Wilner, Jonathan Hafetz, Joshua Denbeaux, Rick Wilson,
Neal Katyal, Joshua Colangelo Bryan, Baher Azmy, and Joshua Dratel (representing Guantanamo detainees and others held in "the war on terror"), with attorneys Donna Newman and Andrew Patel (representing "unlawful combatant" Jose Padilila), with Dr. David Nicholl, who spearheaded an effort among international physicians protesting force-feeding of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, with physician and bioethicist Dr. Steven Miles on medical complicity in torture, with law professor and former Clinton Administration Ambassador-at-large for war crimes matters David Scheffer, with former Guantanamo detainees Moazzam Begg and Shafiq Rasul , with former Guantanamo Bay Chaplain James Yee, with former Guantanamo Army Arabic linguist Erik Saar, with former Guantanamo military guard Terry Holdbrooks, Jr., with former military interrogator Matthew Alexander, with law professor and former Army J.A.G. officer Jeffrey Addicott, with law professor and Coast Guard officer Glenn Sulmasy, with author and geographer Trevor Paglen and with author and journalist Stephen Grey on the subject of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, with journalist and author David Rose on Guantanamo, with journalist Michael Otterman on the subject of American torture and related issues, with author and historian Andy Worthington detailing the capture and provenance of all of the Guantanamo detainees, with law professor Peter Honigsberg on various aspects of detention policy in the war on terror, with Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch, with Almerindo Ojeda of the Guantanamo Testimonials Project, with Karen Greenberg, author of The LeastWorst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days, with Charles Gittings of the Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions, and with Laurel Fletcher, author of "The Guantanamo Effect" documenting the experience of Guantanamo detainees after their release, to be of interest.

Michael Mone, Jr. is an attorney with the Boston law firm of Esdaile, Barrett, Jacobs & Mone. He represents a Syrian national still detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and previously represented an Uzbek national detained at Guantanamo who was resettled to Ireland in 2009. On April 9, 2013, I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Mone by telephone. What follows are my interview notes as corrected by Mr. Mone.

The Talking Dog: Can you tell me how you first became involved in represented Guantanamo detainees?

Michael Mone: In 2005 I decided to volunteer to represent a detainee at Guantánamo on a pro bona basis. I got in touch with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and they assigned me a Saudi client; but he was released before I even got to meet him. Then, I was assigned to represent a man who was identified to me as an Egyptian national confined to a wheel chair-- Abu Abdul Aziz. I worked on his case for at least six months, before I realized that the Egyptian in the wheelchair actually went by the name Saami al Lahti, that he was already represented by Clive Stafford Smith of Reprieve, and that he too had been released. The mix-up was due in part to stale information provided by a third detainee as to who actually wanted/needed a lawyer. This was back in day when the US government wasn’t exactly forthcoming about who was in Guantánamo, nor did they see the need to facilitate a detainee’s access to counsel.

In April 2006, CCR approached me again, and this time, assigned me Oybek Jabbarov, an Uzbek national. I represented Oybek and, eventually, managed to secure his release and resettlement in Ireland in September 2009. Soon thereafter he was reunited with his wife and two sons after nearly eight years of separation. Initially, I spent quite a lot of time just trying to get the protective order entered in his habeas case so that I could actually write to and meet my client. I had to file a petition under the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals just to get the protective order entered so I could have permission to communicate with him. It took close to a year between being assigned his case and when I finally met him in August of 2007.

Then, in September of 2009, after years of working to secure his release and great efforts to get the Irish government to accept Oybek for resettlement (as well as great effort to get the U.S. government to send him there), I finally had the long-awaited fateful meeting where I could finally deliver the news Oybek had been waiting to hear: that he was getting out of Guantánamo and that he would shortly be going to Ireland. It is a moment I will never forget.

As I flew out of Guantánamo the next day, I recall looking out the window, and thinking to myself that I would never ever have to come back to this place again. As fate would have it, I had not landed in Fort Lauderdale from Cuba for more than ten minutes, before another habeas attorney asked me to take over the representation of his Syrian client. I told him I could not do it at that moment, as I had too many loose ends to tie up with Oybek, not to mention other pressing legal matters back at the office. But the main reason was that I was just emotionally and mentally exhausted from representing Oybek, and I wasn’t ready to throw myself into another detainee’s case. So I told my colleague I needed some time to catch up on things, but that I would take up the representation once those matters were attended to if the client were still at Guantanamo. And sure enough, that man-- Ali Hussein al-Shabhan, ISN 327, a Syrian national has been my client since May of 2010.

The Talking Dog: To the extent you can, please tell me something about your client, such as age, family status, personality, circumstances of their capture, or anything else you believe of relevance, as well as the status of his habeas proceedings.

Michael Mone: Ali is one of 86 men at Guantánamo who are cleared for transfer. As such, his habeas case is stayed. As I did with Oybek, I am trying to get a third country to consider accepting Ali for resettlement. Even before the Arab Spring, Ali could not be safely repatriated to Syria due to legitimate fears of persecution at the hands of the Assad regime. Certainly now, with Syria in civil war, repatriation is out of the question. Not that Ali has any interest in every returning to Syria -- he doesn’t. He wants to re-build his life in a new country where he can be safe and live in peace.

Ali will be 31 in June. He has been in GTMO since June of 2002, having spent the entire decade of his 20's in that prison. Prior to his detention, he was living in Kabul, Afghanistan with some other Syrians. When the fighting broke out, he joined the exodus of people trying to get out of harm’s way and flee to Pakistan. He left with three other Syrians he knew in Kabul, and they made their way to Pakistan, but they were picked up by Pakistani border guards and handed over to U.S. forces for a bounty.

Ali traveled to Afghanistan after graduating from high school. He wanted to "see the world" and visit a country more devoted to Islam than Syria. He was the eldest of ten siblings, and lived with his extended family; his father was a welder, and he worked every day after school in his father’s shop. After finishing school, he just wanted to travel, explore his faith, and escape a rather oppressive country for a while.

The Talking Dog: Can you tell me if your client or clients is or are participating in the present hunger strike, and whether they have participated in prior hunger strikes? And can you tell me how your most recent visit to GTMO compares, in terms of restrictiveness for example, with prior visits?

MIchael Mone: I have not spoken to Ali since the hunger strike broke out. I last spoke to him in December of 2012, for about an hour and a half. I had a call scheduled for Wednesday of last week, but unfortunately, he did not come to the phone. He has missed calls with me before, so that, by itself, is not determinative of anything.

However, I recently read that one of the lawyers representing another Syrian at Guantanamo who had been living with Ali in Kabul is on hunger strike, so I suspect Ali might be on hunger strike as well. Ali has not been a committed hunger striker in the past, so if he is on hunger strike now, that kind of tells you just how bad things have gotten there.

I haven't been to Guantanamo myself since April of 2011, and so I can't really give you any insight into how things compare now in terms of conditions. The last time I went down, Ali told me that he didn't want me coming down "just to see him"-- he said he'd rather not see me at all unless I had something concrete to tell him (presumably, about his getting out), and I've respected his wishes. Previous to that visit, I had flown to GTMO to see him in January of 2011, but he refused to see me. I wish I had something significant to tell him that required a face-to-face meeting, but unfortunately that just hasn’t been the case. I do write him and schedule calls as regularly as I can.

Michael Mone: Prior to the hunger strike, there was very little media coverage at all about the men at Guantanamo. Yes, Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald and others were reporting on the military commissions concerning the alleged 9/11 conspirators, but my client, and those cleared for transfer for years, received no coverage at all before the hunger strike. Their plight has been largely forgotten, or ignored, for years. It's sad that it takes a hunger strike for the media to pay attention to these men, but that's where we are.

Back in 2009, President Obama sent Admiral Patrick Walsh down to Guantanamo to make sure conditions there complied with the Geneva Conventions, and I recall him saying how he was struck by how uncertainty plays over time, that is to say the psychological toll of not knowing when, if ever, you were getting off the island, and the effect it was having on the men. He specifically mentioned the Uighurs, who had a court order for their release, yet at the time they had gone nowhere, and the impact their plight had on the other men. That was over four years ago! Now, you've got 86 men cleared for transfer by a unanimous decision of the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, Homeland Security, and by the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and yet, we're still holding the men. This is completely unacceptable.

Michael Mone: If you had told me in 2005, when I first signed on to represent a detainee, that I would still be doing this eight years later, I would have said you were crazy. But here we are. I hesitate to make any predictions. I certainly hope that the Secretary of Defense, military personnel at the base, and habeas lawyers can come together and reach a short term solution to ending the hunger strike. I understand that the specific incident that triggered the strike involved the alleged mishandling of Korans. I would hope that some accommodation can be reached that would satisfy the detainees and end the hunger strike.

But the underlying cause of the hunger strike is what Admiral Walsh commented on in 2009, and that is the uncertainty, and the utter despair and hopelessness that it creates, of not knowing when, if ever, you will get out of Guantánamo and see your family again.

Unless they can relieve pressure in the long term, you will have a very dire result at Guantanamo; some men will surely die from the hunger strike.

One frustration I have is that you could give these men some hope by transferring some of those men who are cleared for release. Yes, Congress has erected barriers, but there are provisions in the current NDAA that allow for the transfer of detainees. This would go a long way towards relieving some of the uncertainty and despair, but it would take a measure of political will and presidential leadership that we simply haven't seen from the Obama Administration since the Executive Order to close the base was first announced.

President Obama certainly made some courageous promises in 2009, but then, in the face of opposition, he ended up doing nothing. In May of 2009, the Administration had a plan to relocate two Uighurs to Northern Virginia-- but in the face of Republican (and some Democratic) opposition, the President backed off. In doing so, he missed an opportunity to defend his decision to close the prison at Guantánamo, and to explain to the American people that resettling these men in the US -- men picked up simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time who posed no danger to anyone -- was the right thing to do. Unfortunately, instead of standing up for principle at a critical moment, he punted, and the Administration has really been backtracking on Guantánamo ever since.

There was an ABC/Washington Post poll from last year that showed on national security issues, 53% of self-identified liberal Democrats support President Obama's decision to keep Guantanamo open. Given those results, there's obviously no political price to be paid for breaking his promise to close Guantánamo. At the end of the day, the American people don't really care.

The Talking Dog: Can you tell me how your Guantanamo representation has effected you personally, be it professionally, emotionally, spiritually, or any other way you'd like to answer?

Michael Mone: I've been practicing law for sixteen years and will probably go another twenty or so... but I know that representing a detainee in Guantanamo is the best thing that I will ever do as a lawyer. John Adams once said that, of all the things that he ever did, and that includes serving as President of the United States and authoring the Declaration of Independence, that the best service he ever rendered his country was the defense of British soldiers accused of committing the Boston Massacre. Now, I'm not comparing myself to John Adams, but this experience has taught me how vital it is for lawyers to represent unpopular clients or causes -- it is in the best traditions of our profession, and it is what our system of justice depends upon. It is the best service a lawyer can render to his country.

My Uzbek client, Oybek, once said to me "You know, I don’t understand how your country could arrest me, throw me in jail, and mistreat me, and then at that same time, let me have a US lawyer to defend me and try to get me out of here. It makes no sense.” But that is how our system is supposed to work. But we've gotten away from many of our basic values since 9/11, and we need to get back to our traditional respect for human rights and the rule of law. Unfortunately, once the pendulum swings away from civil liberties and the rule of law, and towards "security," it doesn't always swing back. Not without a push. We still have indefinite detention, expanded executive powers, military commissions instead of criminal trials in our federal courts, and the use of drones to kill U.S. citizens and it is all, I'm afraid, very disheartening.

The Talking Dog: Is there anything else that you believe I should have asked but didn't, or that the public needs to know concerning these issues?

Michael Mone: The time has long passed for the American people to realize that not every man sent to Guantanamo was a terrorist. We, as a country, need to face the awful truth that we sent hundreds of innocent men to Guantánamo who had nothing to do with terrorism. They were held in horrendous conditions, separated from their families and loved ones for years, all in our name. There are currently 86 men cleared for release as determined unanimously by highest levels US national security. They could leave tomorrow if there was the political will to release them (and for some, a third country that would accept them). Their continued incarceration at Guantánamo is inexcusable and a stain upon our national honor.

Certainly, there are some bad guys down there and they should be prosecuted -- in a Federal Court -- and punished. But the “innocent man sent to Guantánamo” is not a myth. Sadly, it was a common occurrence. Only when we finally come to terms with that simple fact can the steps be taken to close the prison at Guantánamo once and for all.

The Talking Dog: I join all of my readers in thanking Mr. Mone for that moving interview.

Readers interested in legal issues and related matters associated with the "war on terror" may also find talking dog blog interviews with former Guantanamo military commissions prosecutors Morris Davis and Darrel Vandeveld, with former Guantanamo combatant status review tribunal/"OARDEC" officer Stephen Abraham, with attorneys Matt O'Hara, Carlos Warner, Matthew Melewski, Stewart "Buz" Eisenberg, Patricia Bronte, Kristine Huskey, Ellen Lubell, Ramzi Kassem, George Clarke, Buz Eisenberg, Steven Wax, Wells Dixon, Rebecca Dick, Wesley Powell, Martha Rayner, Angela Campbell, Stephen Truitt and Charles Carpenter, Gaillard Hunt, Robert Rachlin, Tina Foster, Brent Mickum, Marc Falkoff H. Candace Gorman, Eric Freedman, Michael Ratner, Thomas Wilner, Jonathan Hafetz, Joshua Denbeaux, Rick Wilson,
Neal Katyal, Joshua Colangelo Bryan, Baher Azmy, and Joshua Dratel (representing Guantanamo detainees and others held in "the war on terror"), with attorneys Donna Newman and Andrew Patel (representing "unlawful combatant" Jose Padilila), with Dr. David Nicholl, who spearheaded an effort among international physicians protesting force-feeding of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, with physician and bioethicist Dr. Steven Miles on medical complicity in torture, with law professor and former Clinton Administration Ambassador-at-large for war crimes matters David Scheffer, with former Guantanamo detainees Moazzam Begg and Shafiq Rasul , with former Guantanamo Bay Chaplain James Yee, with former Guantanamo Army Arabic linguist Erik Saar, with former Guantanamo military guard Terry Holdbrooks, Jr., with former military interrogator Matthew Alexander, with law professor and former Army J.A.G. officer Jeffrey Addicott, with law professor and Coast Guard officer Glenn Sulmasy, with author and geographer Trevor Paglen and with author and journalist Stephen Grey on the subject of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, with journalist and author David Rose on Guantanamo, with journalist Michael Otterman on the subject of American torture and related issues, with author and historian Andy Worthington detailing the capture and provenance of all of the Guantanamo detainees, with law professor Peter Honigsberg on various aspects of detention policy in the war on terror, with Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch, with Almerindo Ojeda of the Guantanamo Testimonials Project, with Karen Greenberg, author of The LeastWorst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days, with Charles Gittings of the Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions, and with Laurel Fletcher, author of "The Guantanamo Effect" documenting the experience of Guantanamo detainees after their release, to be of interest.

That the two notable figures (who ably served their respective Imperia) that would pass away on the same day would be Margaret Thatcher and Annette Funicello?

Sometimes, stuff just happens.

Matthew O'Hara is an attorney at the Chicago office of the law firm of Hinshaw & Culbertson. He represents one man currently detained at Guantanamo Bay, and previously represented two men who have been released. On April 2, 2013, I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. O'Hara by telephone; what follows are my interview notes, as corrected by Mr. O'Hara.

The Talking Dog: Where were you on Sept. 11, 2001?

Matt O'Hara: I was in my office in downtown Chicago. The day before, I had started an evidentiary hearing in Criminal Court in Cook County for a client who was on death row. We had filed a petition to vacate his convictions on the basis of newly discovered evidence. That hearing started on September 10th, was recessed on the 11th and I was in my office preparing for a hearing to continue the next day. Because I was in trial mode, at first I did my best to ignore the chatter in the office early in the morning about a plane crashing into a building in New York. A couple of hours later, everyone left downtown. One of our paralegals gave me a ride home. I arrived home just in time to turn on the TV and watch one of the twin towers fall. That afternoon, my wife and I picked up our kids from school and talked with them about what happened. Then I went and pounded out about 25 miles on my bike just to think. The weather was as beautiful in Chicago that day as it was in New York, and it was very quiet with no planes in the sky.

The Talking Dog: Please identify your present GTMO-detained client by name, nationality, and age.

Matt O'Hara: My client is Umar Abdulayev, a 34 year old from Tajikhstan. A profile of Umar and the circumstances of his detention in Pakistan can be found here. Two other clients have previously been released.

The Talking Dog: Please tell me the status of his habeas litigation.

Matt O'Hara: We have voluntarily dismissed his habeas corpus petition. Umar is cleared for transfer. His habeas petition had previously been stayed over our objection when he was first "cleared." We had appealed that stay to the D.C. Circuit, and the Circuit agreed to remand the matter to the District Court for an "indicative ruling". the stay was then lifted. But then, after a string of bad D.C. Circuit decisions came down, we decided it was no longer a level playing field and that we could not win his petition under those circumstances. Accordingly, we voluntarily dismissed the petition-- without prejudice-- as of a month ago.

The Talking Dog: Can you please tell me the last time you visited your client at Guantanamo, and can you describe the circumstances of your visit? If you could, can you contrast that visit with what you found at earlier visits, including the condition of your client(s), the restrictions on you as counsel and on your clients during your visit, the condition in which you found your clients, and anything else you believe relevant.

Matt O'Hara: I was there last in May of 2012, probably my twelfth trip there. In a sense, my client looked pretty good. He looked fit, he had lost some weight, and looked healthy. There were restrictions on counsel to be sure-- and they were more notable than when I first went to the base. The military has institutionalized violations of the protective order.

Compared to how things were earlier, a lawyer -- an officer of the court with a security clearance -- was given a certain amount of trust-- much more deference than compared to now. Now, as I said, there seems to be an effort to institutionalize violations of the protective order. Indeed, the base has built a whole new building for the purpose of "examining" papers and items brought down by attorneys-- not to search "for contraband" as the protective order allows-- but clearly reviewing legal papers for content, again, in violation of the protective order. It is fortunate that most of the legal business with our client has already been done, because now it's a Herculean task to get any meaningful documents into a meeting with your client. You can argue with the military at the gate to the camp if you want about how they are violating the protective order, but then you end up having flown to Cuba to argue with the sergeant of the guard and a military lawyer rather than talk with your client. It's ridiculous and offensive.

The Talking Dog: Can you tell me if your client is participating in the present hunger strike? Is there anything of relevance viz a viz detainees' grievances, or the military's treatment of the prisoners, or anything else of relevance that you can tell me about that situation, including, if possible, the current condition of your client, as far as you know?

Matt O'Hara: I don't know. The last time I spoke to him was February 20th. The strike had begun by then, but he did not say anything about it. He was in Camp 5, which had a smaller population at the time, although now most of the prisoners are in Camp 6.

The Talking Dog: Can you tell me, in light of the subject of the recent letter you signed on to directed to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, if you have had contact with your client since that time (by phone, mail, etc.), whether you believe the government's recent (increasingly repressive) actions are a pretext by the government, for example, to cut off adverse publicity from GTMO, or perhaps to intercept communications between prisoner and counsel? Why do you think the government relented toward getting the flights reinstated?

Matt O'Hara: I do think that whatever the reason for stopping the flights as given was, that it violated some regulation (which was preposterous), commercial flights to GTMO have been operating for a long time, and there are not a lot of other options.

The military has been given a very tough job-- to run a prison full of men with great uncertainty about whether or not they'll ever get out. But, the military has also been extremely thin-skinned about any criticism of it. And so, they overreach, by, for example, trying to prevent such criticisms from happening. The cancellation of commercial flights was clearly retaliatory (for criticizing the military) and has, temporarily anyway, been rescinded. Nonetheless, it is getting ever harder than ever for lawyers to get to GTMO.

The Talking Dog: Can you comment on media coverage, in particular, of events at Guantanamo in calendar year 2013, and previously, and in particular, with respect to your own client and representation?

Matt O'Hara: The hunger strike has finally brought GTMO back to the attention of the media. This has been the effect of the men themselves resisting the injustice to which they are subjected, bringing their own situation into the spotlight, and that is a good thing.

Indeed, they are making a splash, as the detainees have actually gotten the media to pay attention to them. And so what? There's nothing wrong with that. How else can they resist the injustice against them, other than by the only means available to them? The courts have closed their doors to them; Congress declared that GTMO should be open forever, and the President has shrugged and blames Congress. All of the political class is resigned to keep it open. The men themselves have finally managed to get attention again in a way that our legal maneuvers in recent years haven't been able to make happen. It is their resistance, their insistence that they are still human beings and not animals, that has drawn the eyes of the world again.

The Talking Dog: We have reached the point where more men have died at Guantanamo (and invariably under suspicious circumstances) than have been "convicted" under the controversial "military commissions," and a number of those "convicted" have actually been released, while the majority held are actually "cleared for release." President Obama has been handily reelected, notwithstanding the utter failure of his "close Guantanamo within one year" promise and evident decision to continue the logical arc of policies he inherited from the Bush/Cheney Administration. And so, in light of all that, do you have any predictions for Guantanamo, "preventive detention" and related issues for, say, the remainder of Barack Obama's Presidency?

Matt O'Hara: I've told Umar that I'm getting out of the business of predicting things about Guantanamo, given how bad at it I've been. I believed early in the Obama Administration that GTMO was on its last legs. I've been utterly astounded in seeing a candidate Obama who was spot on in his critiques of the entire program, to see that same man do nothing and invest no political capital once he obtained office, and now, all three branches of government have signed on to GTMO, indefinite detention and the like as a permanent institution, rather than as an aberration.

In short, I'm not optimistic. There are some options as to how to break up the current status quo over time-- after all, things change. And the current hunger strike is an excellent example of that.

I hope the President devotes the political capital to right what is clearly a wrong. He can start by naming someone with the power and support of his office to close GTMO one step at a time. They can work on re-settling the men cleared for transfer-- incremental steps will be helpful. But I'm just not that optimistic about that, and I haven't been since May of 2009. Nonetheless, I still hope something will happen.

The Talking Dog: At over eleven and a half years since 9-11, with OBL dead, GTMO open over 11 years, the "high value detainees" commission trials dragging on, the war in Afghanistan (perhaps) over at the end of next year, do you see any way of getting the American public engaged in these issues, or any possible "public relations" angle that might help alleviate the seeming decision to simply close GTMO by having all of its occupants die there?

Matt O'Hara: It's hard to say. The hunger strike actually fits into that attention grabbing category. I do think that Americans of good will who don't follow the issue as closely as we do just don't realize what's going on. People think that it has already been closed, or that there were actual, meaningful habeas hearings, or else they are under a misperception about just who's being held and what's going on. If I had a great idea, I'd suggest it. The hunger strike, it seems, is the best example of an attention getting "public relations" move we have seen. Whatever it is, we need to get the public to focus on this issue.

The Talking Dog: Can you tell me how your Guantanamo representation has effected you personally, be it professionally, emotionally, spiritually, or any other way you'd like to answer?

Matt O'Hara: I volunteered to do this in the fall of 2006; I first thought about taking a case in the fall of 2005, but had a trial looming and put it off... but now it's been over six years since I'm doing this. Your question is a broad one.

The long term experience has made me much more skeptical of the United States's desire and willingness to do the right thing in questions like this. I had thought that GTMO was an aberration-- a rogue exception set up by a rogue administration, and our system would ultimately reject it in favor of the Constitution, human rights and the rule of law. I no longer believe that.

It's not that I was naïve to begin with-- I came in with plenty of skepticism and a real-world view about how the U.S exercises power-- but I was not prepared for what came after, especially about what has happened over the last four years.

The best exemplar of this is a client I had who has been re-settled. He was from Syria. He told us-- constantly-- that we couldn't help him-- that an American court would simply not help him, a Syrian. All we said about the rule of law, he said, had no application to his status. He said no judge would ever tell the president what to do about Guantanamo. Well, I hate to say it, but he was absolutely right as it turns out, at least in the long run as we now know it. Admittedly, he's been re-settled as the result of lawyers and human rights advocates and the workings of the political system, which created a window, and we helped him while that window was open-- but every critique I first heard from him in the spring of 2007, again I hate to say it, but he was right. Maybe in another six years, my initial impulse about the rule of law will be right. But that said, it has been disheartening and enlightening at the same time. Certainly, in the end, a negative commentary on our political and legal apparatus.

I have encountered men who, by virtue of cultural and language differences, as well as having been horribly traumatized by their experience, are coming from what amounts to a wholly different world from my own. It has been both challenging and rewarding to help two guys get out, as well as dealing with how hard it has been to get them re-settled in countries not their own,

In another sense, it has been a privilege and an honor to enable these men to speak and to have had a chance to be their link with the rest of the world. Uman knows only other prisoners and his lawyers. We are ensuring that his voice can be heard, and to make sure he's not forgotten. But for our work, these men would be forgotten-- and indeed, the military would clearly like them to be forgotten.

The Talking Dog: Is there anything else that you believe I should have asked but didn't, or that the public needs to know concerning these issues?

Matt O'Hara: I think the truth about GTMO has been written about and published many times in many places, but it just doesn't stick with the vast majority of the public. What the public should know has also been much written and spoken about. These men at GTMO suffer from being caricatured by politicians for political gain... Recall the propaganda of men with super-human strength and abilities who would chew through the hydraulic lines of airplanes or jump off tall buildings or squeeze into tiny spaces like rats and gnaw through steel, all to kill Americans... it's all a cruel joke by cynical politicians. It's pathetic and disgusting.

If people were actually forced to acknowledge the truth of the information out there-- they would demand accountability.

It was interesting seeing President Obama in Israel recently-- going "over the head" of Netanyahu to talk "directly to the people"-- he said, hey, I'm a politician myself-- and things change when people force politicians to take action.

He's right of course, and certainly knows what he's talking about on this, since he's been both a community organizer and President of the United States. Maybe he means "put pressure on me"... perhaps he means he doesn't have enough intestinal fortitude on his own to do the right thing. But, if enough people focused on just what is already known, they will demand change.

The Talking Dog: I join my readers in thanking Mr. O'Hara for that thought-provoking interview.

Readers interested in legal issues and related matters associated with the "war on terror" may also find talking dog blog interviews with former Guantanamo military commissions prosecutors Morris Davis and Darrel Vandeveld, with former Guantanamo combatant status review tribunal/"OARDEC" officer Stephen Abraham, with attorneys Carlos Warner, Matthew Melewski, Stewart "Buz" Eisenberg, Patricia Bronte, Kristine Huskey, Ellen Lubell, Ramzi Kassem, George Clarke, Buz Eisenberg, Steven Wax, Wells Dixon, Rebecca Dick, Wesley Powell, Martha Rayner, Angela Campbell, Stephen Truitt and Charles Carpenter, Gaillard Hunt, Robert Rachlin, Tina Foster, Brent Mickum, Marc Falkoff H. Candace Gorman, Eric Freedman, Michael Ratner, Thomas Wilner, Jonathan Hafetz, Joshua Denbeaux, Rick Wilson,
Neal Katyal, Joshua Colangelo Bryan, Baher Azmy, and Joshua Dratel (representing Guantanamo detainees and others held in "the war on terror"), with attorneys Donna Newman and Andrew Patel (representing "unlawful combatant" Jose Padilila), with Dr. David Nicholl, who spearheaded an effort among international physicians protesting force-feeding of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, with physician and bioethicist Dr. Steven Miles on medical complicity in torture, with law professor and former Clinton Administration Ambassador-at-large for war crimes matters David Scheffer, with former Guantanamo detainees Moazzam Begg and Shafiq Rasul , with former Guantanamo Bay Chaplain James Yee, with former Guantanamo Army Arabic linguist Erik Saar, with former Guantanamo military guard Terry Holdbrooks, Jr., with law professor and former Army J.A.G. officer Jeffrey Addicott, with law professor and Coast Guard officer Glenn Sulmasy, with author and geographer Trevor Paglen and with author and journalist Stephen Grey on the subject of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, with journalist and author David Rose on Guantanamo, with journalist Michael Otterman on the subject of American torture and related issues, with author and historian Andy Worthington detailing the capture and provenance of all of the Guantanamo detainees, with law professor Peter Honigsberg on various aspects of detention policy in the war on terror, with Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch, with Almerindo Ojeda of the Guantanamo Testimonials Project, with Karen Greenberg, author of The LeastWorst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days, with Charles Gittings of the Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions, and with Laurel Fletcher, author of "The Guantanamo Effect" documenting the experience of Guantanamo detainees after their release, to be of interest.

Carlos Warner is an attorney with the Office of the Federal Defender for the Northern District of Ohio, and represents approximately twelve men currently detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. On April 1, 2013, I had the privilege of interviewing him by telephone. What follows are my interview notes, as corrected by Mr. Warner.

The Talking Dog: Where were you on September 11th, 2001?

Carlos Warner: I was in my office in Cleveland. I had a friend in the FBI visiting from New York. He commandeered my office and he set up a mini-command center- there were 3 or 4 agents in my office during the hours after the attack. We watched in horror together on a small television we found in the office. The city was evacuated; rumors abounded that there was an attack planned or underway in just about every large American city, including Cleveland.

In our case, Flight 93 happened to fly right over Cleveland- so there was heightened fear. I looked outside my office and I remember seeing an endless string of planes lined up in the sky to land and I expected that one of these planes might crash into the City. Because of the panic, the areas around Cleveland were completely gridlocked-- nothing moved for hours. Instead of fighting the gridlock, I went out for a run with two other public defenders Walter Camino and Jack Greene through an abandoned city; it was surreal on many levels.

Carlos Warner: We represent eleven men still there, plus the Kuwaiti Fayiz al-Kandari, whose case is complete, although Fayiz has requested that I represent him.

The majority of our clients were assigned to us by the Court through "next friend petitions" dating from 2007 and 2008; almost all of those clients were Yemeni. Over the years we were assigned other clients as well, including a Kenyan, Abdulmalik and a Tunisian, Adel Hakeemy who was recently rumored to have attempted suicide. I also represent a "high value detainee"- Mohammed Rahim Our present clients, with details of their pending or recent habeas litigations, are as follows:

1. Abdul Al Rahman Al Ziahri AKA Abdurahman LNU v. Obama, et al.
09-cv-745 (formerly 05-cv-2386), ISN 441; Judge Richard J. Leon (RJL)

2. Monsoor Muhammed Ali Qattaa v. Obama, et al., 08-cv-1233, ISN 566
Judge Ellen Huvelle (ESH)

3. Abdulkhaliq Ahmed Al-Baidhani v. Obama, et. al., 04-cv-1194, ISN 553
Judge Thomas Hogan (TFH)

4. Muhammed Rahim v. Obama, et al, 09-cv-1385, ISN 10029, Judge Paul Friedman (PLF)

5. Mohammed Abdulmalik v. Obama, et al, 08-cv-1440, ISN 10025
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly

6. Nadir Omar Abdullah Bin Sa’adoun Alsa’ary aka Ahmed Omar v. Obama, et al
09-cv-745, ISN 30, Judge Richard J. Leon (RJL) as of 6/16/10

7. Jamil Ahmed Saeed v. Bush, et al, 05-cv-2386, ISN 728
Judge Royce Lamberth (RCL)

8. Abdulah Alhamiri v. Bush, et al. (dismissed), 08-cv-1231, ISN 48
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly

9. Khalid Saad Mohammed v. Obama, et al. (Released 6-15-09), 08-cv-1230
ISN 335, Judge Rosemary Collyer (RMC)

10. Idris Ahamed Abdu Qader Idris AKA Edress LNU v. Obama, et al. (dismissed)
09-cv-745 (formerly 05-cv-2386), ISN 35, Judge Royce Lamberth (RCL)

11. Muieen Adeen Jamal Adeen Abd Al Fusal Abd Al Sattar v. Obama, et al. (dismissed)
08-cv-1236, ISN 309, Judge John Bates (JDB)

12. Adel Al Hakeemy v. Obama, et al (dismissed), 05-cv-429, ISN 168
Judge Richard Leon (RJL)

The Talking Dog: Please tell me the status of the pending habeas cases.

Carlos Warner: We have a mix of men cleared for transfer or release and some who are not. In my view, there is no meaningful habeas corpus review. It's an empty vessel for the men. "Habeas Corpus" only allows for me to visit them. The District Court is not to blame, its the Circuit Court that has actively dismantled meaningful habeas corpus review. The Supreme Court has passively watched meaningful review disappear. I view my charge as to obtain the release of my clients from Guantanamo- even though I am technically assigned as habeas counsel.

Carlos Warner: I believe I've been to Guantanamo more than thirty times. And I've been there twice since the hunger strike began on February 6th, I've had notes cleared discussing the strike on both occasions. I was last down the week of March 18th. I've stated this many times-- seeing him (Fayiz) was a stark and incredible site-- I can only describe him as near death. He lost between 1/4 and 1/3 of his body weight- he couldn't stand, his cheeks were sunken- he had labored breathing. Fayiz appeared to be nearing death when I saw him. I made the focus of my meeting pleading with him to take honey. I told him I could not help him if he was dead. He was polite and kind in refusing nourishment.

The Talking Dog: Can you tell me if your client or clients is or are participating in the present hunger strike, and whether they have participated in prior hunger strikes?

Carlos Warner: Besides Fayiz, we believe that all, or almost all, of our clients are on hunger strike. This estimate is based upon the various reports we are getting from the camps.

The reports we received as of yesterday (March 31, 2013) are that 130 out of the 166 or so total prisoners are on hunger strike. We believe that the 16 "high value detainees" are not on hunger strike. We believe that two prisoners in Camp 6 are not striking. Then, there are a number of individuals either in the hospital or in different camps who are unknown, plus a few in the psychiatric ward.

All of the reports we are getting out of Camps 5 and 6 explain that the entire population is on strike, which takes us to approximately 130 men.

The Talking Dog: What's the source of these reports-- attorneys? Journalists?

Carlos Warner: Our reports are from attorneys although I pay close attention to reports in the media. Every attorney has made a concerted effort to talk to their clients, and the reports we have been getting from counsel have been uniform in their accuracy. The big open question was Camp 5. We have now had a number of reports out of Camp 5. Clive Stafford Smith (affidavit attached) spoke to Shaker Aamer recently, and that conversation confirmed again that all of Camp 5 is on strike. 130 is our count, and it could be more, up to 135, 136.

This strike is unprecedented in scale and duration. Guantanamo has never experienced anything like this. I no longer pay attention to the military numbers. We have a huge problem in Guantanamo and I am focused on getting the clients to eat again.

The Talking Dog: Can you give me the "Cliff Notes" version of what triggered this hunger strike and how it has progressed?

Carlos Warner: What I'm telling you is all declassified by the Department of Defense. It seems to have been triggered on February 6, 2013, by a particularly aggressive shakedown search. At GTMO, the Army took over management from the Navy some time last year, in terms of day to day management of the prison. The Army appointed a Colonel who had served in Iraq, who decided to "lay down the law" at the camp. One thing he choose to do is use more aggressive searches of the men and their belongings. Another example of the aggressive stance of the new command was the shooting in early January. This sort of aggressive interaction was previously unheard of at GTMO; but apparently its the new normal for the new regime. It sparked the fire that is fueled by the desperation of indefinite detention.

And so on February 6, 2013, during the complete prison shakedown, the guards took everything away from the prisoners-- all "comfort items"-- the iso-mats (yoga mats that the prisoners sleep on), family pictures and family and legal mail-- supposedly "just to check it out." And the guards, or specifically Muslim interpreters, with soldiers looking on-- went through the prisoners' Korans supposedly searching for contraband.

I met with Fayiz on February 13th, and he told me about the situation at that time. At that time, prisoners told the military that they would prefer not to have the Korans at all rather than have the military engage in this behavior, which the prisoners perceived as an affront. The men indicated they would not eat again in response to these recent events.

The last hunger strike took place in '06/'07, and was in response to similar shakedowns and also the purported suicide of several detainees. Then the men were allowed to surrender their Korans during that time. The demand has remained consistent: if the prisoners are permitted to surrender their Korans, the hunger strike would end. Period. The military has now refused to allow the men to voluntarily surrender the Koran. I cannot imagine the logic behind this decision. I have come to realize logic is a precious commodity in Gtmo.

As I see it, and as I've tried to convey to my own clients, they don't need the hunger strike for attention; after all, if they kill themselves what's the point? I and my colleagues can win this fight because we're motivated and correct- and we don't need or want our clients to die in the process. However, the men are committed to this and their solidarity is growing. If the conflict stays in the current direction, its going to end in men dying.

The Talking Dog: Does the Department of Defense know this, and if the answer is yes, what has the response been?

Carlos Warner: All of what I have told you has been conveyed to the Department of Defense; they are aware of this. We have received no response, at all. In the press they have called the surrender of the Koran an "unacceptable solution." Again, logic is a precious commodity and it is wholly lacking in the DoD's position on this conflict.

Carlos Warner: The media is a fickle animal. I get that. I think about the 86 innocent men (so found by a unanimous inter-agency task force) every day. Our problem is that GTMO has slipped to the distant background. One reason is that the Administration has no pressure on it is that the Left is satisfied with President Obama's pat answer of "it's Congress's fault" and the right is satisfied with the idea of holding innocent men at GTMO under the auspices of the war on terror. Neither the left or right fully comprehend that the majority of men in Guantanamo are innocent and should be released. The public still believes GTMO holds the worst of the worst. This falsehood must be attacked at every opportunity for those of us who have the ability to do so.

We as legal representatives are at best a loosely associated bunch... and so there has been no organized coverage. We have a difficult time agreeing on the format of an agenda let alone the agenda itself. I am willing to accept responsibility for this. GTMO has always been a political and diplomatic problem and we as counsel should attack the problem in a selfless and unified manner.

The bottom line is no one leaves GTMO until pressure is applied to the President. The status quo will result in all of the men remaining there at least until this President leaves office. The public, of course, has absolutely no conception that we are holding so many innocent men because it doesn't help the President or the Right to publicize that fact of innocent people being wrongfully detained. The general public simply views GTMO as something that it is not.

The Talking Dog: Is there anything else I should have asked you, or anything else the public needs to know about GTMO, indefinite detention and related issues and what's going on there?

Carlos Warner: Indefinite detention applies to everyone at GTMO now. That's whats driving the hunger strike. Now, is this a problem without a solution? Certainly not. With the President's support, we could have many innocent men repatriated in 6 to 7 months. There is already $40 million rehabilitation center in Kuwait built specifically for returning GTMO detainees. This center was built under the supervision of the United States for this specific purpose. There is a similar facility in Saudi Arabia. Both are ready and available. Indeed, today (4-1-13) the government of Yemen said that it wants its own detainees returned.

Our President must reaffirm what he said he would do in 2009. My President is the philosophical and moral opposite to Dick Cheney and his Neocon Clan. President Obama once announced that Guantanamo "set back the moral authority that is America's strongest currency in the world."

President Obama spoke in front of a copy of the Constitution when he said:
"I can tell you that the wrong answer is to pretend like this problem will go away if we maintain an unsustainable status quo," Obama said. "As president, I refuse to allow this problem to fester. Our security interests won't permit it. Our courts won't allow it. And neither should our conscience." He must reaffirm this pledge now.

This is his choice -- there is no legal or political impediment to Closing Guantanamo. It's not a question of politics, its a question of morals, values and the will to do what's right. I choose to believe my President will do what is right.

The Talking Dog: I join all of my readers in thanking Mr. Warner for that eye-opening interview.

Readers interested in legal issues and related matters associated with the "war on terror" may also find talking dog blog interviews with former Guantanamo military commissions prosecutors Morris Davis and Darrel Vandeveld, with former Guantanamo combatant status review tribunal/"OARDEC" officer Stephen Abraham, with attorneys Matthew Melewski, Stewart "Buz" Eisenberg, Patricia Bronte, Kristine Huskey, Ellen Lubell, Ramzi Kassem, George Clarke, Buz Eisenberg, Steven Wax, Wells Dixon, Rebecca Dick, Wesley Powell, Martha Rayner, Angela Campbell, Stephen Truitt and Charles Carpenter, Gaillard Hunt, Robert Rachlin, Tina Foster, Brent Mickum, Marc Falkoff H. Candace Gorman, Eric Freedman, Michael Ratner, Thomas Wilner, Jonathan Hafetz, Joshua Denbeaux, Rick Wilson,
Neal Katyal, Joshua Colangelo Bryan, Baher Azmy, and Joshua Dratel (representing Guantanamo detainees and others held in "the war on terror"), with attorneys Donna Newman and Andrew Patel (representing "unlawful combatant" Jose Padilila), with Dr. David Nicholl, who spearheaded an effort among international physicians protesting force-feeding of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, with physician and bioethicist Dr. Steven Miles on medical complicity in torture, with law professor and former Clinton Administration Ambassador-at-large for war crimes matters David Scheffer, with former Guantanamo detainees Moazzam Begg and Shafiq Rasul , with former Guantanamo Bay Chaplain James Yee, with former Guantanamo Army Arabic linguist Erik Saar, with former Guantanamo military guard Terry Holdbrooks, Jr., with law professor and former Army J.A.G. officer Jeffrey Addicott, with law professor and Coast Guard officer Glenn Sulmasy, with author and geographer Trevor Paglen and with author and journalist Stephen Grey on the subject of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, with journalist and author David Rose on Guantanamo, with journalist Michael Otterman on the subject of American torture and related issues, with author and historian Andy Worthington detailing the capture and provenance of all of the Guantanamo detainees, with law professor Peter Honigsberg on various aspects of detention policy in the war on terror, with Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch, with Almerindo Ojeda of the Guantanamo Testimonials Project, with Karen Greenberg, author of The LeastWorst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days, with Charles Gittings of the Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions, and with Laurel Fletcher, author of "The Guantanamo Effect" documenting the experience of Guantanamo detainees after their release, to be of interest.

Matthew D. Melewski is an associate attorney at the Minneapolis law firm of Leonard, Street and Deinard. He represents Libyan national Ismael Faraq Al Bakush, who is detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. On April 2, 2013, I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Melewski by e-mail exchange. The views and opinions expressed by Mr. Melewski are solely his own, and not the views of the Leonard Street law firm or of its member attorneys.

The Talking Dog: Where were you on Sept. 11, 2001, and to the extent you can answer, please tell me where your GTMO-detained client or clients were?

Matthew Melewski: I was living in Buenos Aires, Argentina. 9/11 was like an out-of-body experience. That morning, I had arrived at the university I was attending right after the first plane hit. There was a television in one room, where people slowly gathered. Everyone just sat in stunned silence, suggesting quietly that perhaps it was an accident. Then the second plane hit. I was glued to the television for 2 straight days. It was mostly in Spanish, except for BBC. I didn’t know what else to do. With the physical distance, language difference, and foreign city, it somehow didn’t seem real; like when I got home I would awaken from the dream.

My current and former clients were in Afghanistan during 9/11. None of them were members of the Taliban or Al-Qaeda.

The Talking Dog: Please identify your present and former GTMO-detained client or clients by name, nationality, and current whereabouts. To the extent you can, please tell me something about each of your clients, such as their age, family status, personality, circumstances of their capture, or anything else you believe of relevance.

Matthew Melewski: My current client, Ismael Ali Farag Al Bakush, has been imprisoned without charge, after being kidnapped in Pakistan, for over ten years. He is Libyan man, 44 years old, and hopeless. Like most of the detainees, he understands the reality of the situation far better than most Americans. He realized long ago that if he ever got out of GTMO alive, it would be the result of some political calculation, not a legal determination. And certainly not the consequence of any sense of fairness or justice. By the time I first met Ismael, he had been imprisoned without charge for the better part of a decade. Instilling hope into a situation like that is nearly impossible, and what little hope might have remained in that prison, Obama has now extinguished. That is what we are seeing with the most recent hunger strike.

Ironically, Ismael is ostensibly being held for being a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group – an organization that just played a central role in the U.S.-supported overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. If he wasn’t in GTMO, he’d be our ally.

The Talking Dog: Please tell me the status of your client's habeas litigation, be it "habeas petition pending,"petition denied and appeal pending" or whatever else is applicable.

Matthew Melewski: The last time I saw Ismael, he asked me and my co-counsel to dismiss his habeas case. He understood before we got there what had happened – the D.C. Circuit determined that the government of the United States can imprison someone indefinitely so long as they present a piece of paper that says “he meets the definition of bad guy under the AUMF,” even if it doesn’t identify any sources or authors (Latif). And as antithetical as that is to the constitution and modern notions of democracy, it has only gotten worse. Now you don’t even have to show that piece of paper to the accused or his attorneys. You can just show it to a judge in camera (Morafa).

So Ismael said forget it, what’s the point? I tried to argue with him. But he was right. We voluntarily dismissed his case a few months ago, citing futility.

One of my former clients had been cleared for release by the Bush administration, the Obama administration, and every intelligence agency in the federal government. And yet the Obama administration opposed his habeas case, and ultimately won under the new evidentiary rules established by the D.C. Circuit. Out of one side of their mouth they said they had no reason to hold him, and out of the other they insisted (and still insist) that he could never leave.

The Talking Dog: Can you please tell me the last time you visited your client or client at Guantanamo, and can you describe the circumstances of your visit. If you could, can you contrast that visit with what you found at earlier visits, including the condition of your client(s), the restrictions on you as counsel and on your clients during your visit, the condition in which you found your clients, and anything else you believe relevant.

Matthew Melewski: I haven’t seen Ismael in over a year. And he won’t return my letters any more. He has given up. And it gets harder the more time passes. He becomes more depressed. I struggle to be encouraging. By sheer attrition and retirement, five attorneys representing him have left since I started working on his case in 2008.

One thing that the press and Americans need to understand about the visitation problems, new inspections, flight changes, novel detainee searches, etc. (and concomitant military denials) is that the military authority at the base is constantly changing and it has no institutional memory. Every new JDG (Joint Detention Group, which runs the prison itself) commander has his own prerogatives and implements every procedure anew, and every time you visit there are brand new personnel. The differences from visit to visit are almost unbelievable, from intense security, to lax security, to new times for visits, to new procedures, with no comprehension whatsoever on the military’s part that this is happening. Anyone who has been to GTMO more than once knows that the government’s claim that nothing has changed is absurd.

The Talking Dog: Can you tell me if your client or clients is or are participating in the present hunger strike, and whether they have participated in prior hunger strikes? Is there anything of relevance viz a viz detainees' grievances, or the military's treatment of the prisoners, or anything else of relevance that you can tell me about that situation, including, if possible, the current condition of your clients, as far as you know?

Matthew Melewski: I haven’t talked to Ismael since the most recent hunger strike started, but from what I understand most of the detainees are participating in the hunger strike.

The newest JDG commander, Colonel John V. Bogdan, appears to be patient zero of the recent turmoil and the cause of the strike. Under his command a guard fired a gun in the camps for probably the first time ever, and his new search policies are what set off the strike. Rather than fix the situation, which he could have done by halting the intrusive searches or allowing the men to turn over their Korans, he has doubled down, and is attempting to break the men by dropping the temperature in the camps and restricting access to fresh water. Some lawyers have filed emergency motions, and hopefully the D.C. District Court will intervene.

The strike has gotten extremely grave. The men have not eaten for weeks, and many have lost 30-40 pounds. The men have nothing to live for. More people have left GTMO in a box than have ever been convicted of a crime (9 dead, 7 convicted over the last decade). This war on an abstract noun shows no signs of stopping, and Obama has turned indefinite detention into a bipartisan, judicially supported norm. The detainees see no other way out. I hope they are wrong.

The Talking Dog: Can you tell me, in light of the subject of the recent letter you signed on to directed to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, if you have had contact with your client since that time (by phone, mail, etc.), whether you believe the government's recent (increasingly repressive) actions are a pretext by the government, for example, to cut off adverse publicity from GTMO, or perhaps to intercept communications between prisoner and counsel? Why do you think the government relented toward getting the flights reinstated?

Matthew Melewski: I always say that the power of human incompetence should never be underestimated. Most likely, the government’s seemingly arbitrary and punitive actions are primarily the result of the JTF (Joint Task Force, which runs the overall camp) and JDG staff turning over in 2012. They all just got there a few months ago , with little sense of what preceded them. Bogdan recently testified that he did not even know about hidden listening devices installed in the prison for which he is the warden. The JTF probably relented on flights because the they did not realize the implications of suspending them.

Matthew Melewski: As every year passes the media coverage decreases. No one is interested any longer. It doesn’t move product. The most depressing aspect of the media coverage, however, beyond even the lack of interest, is the failure of the media to understand that there is no defensible reason why this idea of indefinite detention – literally imprisoning someone until they die for reasons you won’t even tell them, on the basis of information you won’t disclose – cannot be imported. I don’t expect the media to understand why, conceptually and philosophically, this practice is so inimical to the free society we convince ourselves we live in, but I am a little embarrassed that so few recognize that once you accept arbitrary, indefinite detention, it’s just a matter of time until the government finds additional uses for that power. (In fact, we’ve already done this at least once. Jose Padilla is an American citizen that we imprisoned for 4 years without trial, tortured, and then sentenced to 17 years in prison for a completely different reason, for which almost no evidence was presented). What we are doing in GTMO is immoral and indefensible, but it’s also extremely dangerous.

The Talking Dog: We have reached the point where more men have died at Guantanamo (and invariably under suspicious circumstances) than have been "convicted" under the controversial "military commissions," and a number of those "convicted" have actually been released, while the majority held are actually "cleared for release." President Obama has been handily reelected, notwithstanding the utter failure of his "close Guantanamo within one year" promise and evident decision to continue the logical arc of policies he inherited from the Bush/Cheney Administration. Further, Justice Stevens has retired, replaced with Obama's own former solicitor general, who might or might not continue recusing herself from any Guantanamo related litigation. And so, in light of all that, do you have any predictions for Guantanamo, "preventive detention" and related issues for, say, the remainder of Barack Obama's Presidency?

Matthew Melewski: Aside from the ongoing 9/11 prosecutions, nothing significant will happen. Obama does not have the courage to do what he must know, with his background, is right. Congress has just made a difficult situation worse. The D.C. Circuit has made habeas corpus petitions virtually impossible to win – and held that even if you do win, the district court can’t order the government to release you. And the Supreme Court no longer appears interested (Kagan was not involved in the cases that the Court most recently refused to hear, and thus one presumes that she did not recuse herself). That is the most depressing thing. Not that the only sure way to leave GTMO is in a box. But that people who should know better made it that way, and apparently intend to keep it that way.

The big lie is that Obama was prevented and is prevented from closing GTMO. In truth, he tried to move GTMO to a federal prison in the US, and that’s why Congress pulled the funding. He never tried to close it, as a concept, before or since. To this day the administration has the legal authority to issue waivers to transfer people out, but has never done so. Congress provided Obama with an excuse to do nothing, and he took it. Now he’s no longer even pretending to close it.

Which is not to let Congress off the hook. Almost every single GTMO-related action taken by Congress over the years has made a difficult situation worse. Precious few people at the highest levels of our government are willing to risk their political capital to resolve this situation.

The Talking Dog: At over eleven and a half years since 9-11, with OBL dead, GTMO open over 11 years, the "high value detainees" commission trials dragging on, the war in Afghanistan (perhaps) over at the end of next year, do you see any way of getting the American public engaged in these issues, or any possible "public relations" angle that might help alleviate the seeming decision to simply close GTMO by having all of its occupants die there?

Matthew Melewski: Unfortunately, no. The American public has been bombarded with propaganda from every angle, with the happy complicity of the press, for over a decade (with some very notable exceptions, of course). The overwhelming majority of Americans have no idea that most people brought to GTMO have been released, that most still there have been cleared for release by every intelligence agency and the administration itself (86 of them, to be precise), and that almost no one has ever been charged with a crime, let alone convicted. Every week I encounter otherwise thoughtful people who genuinely believe that GTMO was for “the worst of the worst,” and that those still there have been convicted of something. I see no reason why the media writ-large would ever paint a different picture, or why the American public would ever come to a different realization. The only hope for anyone at GTMO is that someone in the political class discovers some untapped courage.

The Talking Dog: Can you tell me how your Guantanamo representation has effected you personally, be it professionally, emotionally, spiritually, or any other way you'd like to answer?

Matthew Melewski: It has been hard to not be cynical and fatalistic watching so many otherwise good people trade their dignity for a self-deluded sense of security. And literally destroy hundreds of people’s lives to maintain that delusion. I feel bad for everyone involved.

The Talking Dog: Is there anything else that you believe I should have asked but didn't, or that the public needs to know concerning these issues?

Matthew Melewski: The people you vote for, who you convince yourself have a conscience and are determined to uphold the legal foundations of our society, are willing to let these men die in their cages, without ever determining if they are, in fact, guilty of a crime. This is a tragedy of the highest order, something the entire world except us recognizes.

The Talking Dog: I join my readers in thanking Mr. Melewski for that powerful interview.

Readers interested in legal issues and related matters associated with the "war on terror" may also find talking dog blog interviews with former Guantanamo military commissions prosecutors Morris Davis and Darrel Vandeveld, with former Guantanamo combatant status review tribunal/"OARDEC" officer Stephen Abraham, with attorneys Stewart "Buz" Eisenberg, Patricia Bronte, Kristine Huskey, Ellen Lubell, Ramzi Kassem, George Clarke, Buz Eisenberg, Steven Wax, Wells Dixon, Rebecca Dick, Wesley Powell, Martha Rayner, Angela Campbell, Stephen Truitt and Charles Carpenter, Gaillard Hunt, Robert Rachlin, Tina Foster, Brent Mickum, Marc Falkoff H. Candace Gorman, Eric Freedman, Michael Ratner, Thomas Wilner, Jonathan Hafetz, Joshua Denbeaux, Rick Wilson,
Neal Katyal, Joshua Colangelo Bryan, Baher Azmy, and Joshua Dratel (representing Guantanamo detainees and others held in "the war on terror"), with attorneys Donna Newman and Andrew Patel (representing "unlawful combatant" Jose Padilila), with Dr. David Nicholl, who spearheaded an effort among international physicians protesting force-feeding of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, with physician and bioethicist Dr. Steven Miles on medical complicity in torture, with law professor and former Clinton Administration Ambassador-at-large for war crimes matters David Scheffer, with former Guantanamo detainees Moazzam Begg and Shafiq Rasul , with former Guantanamo Bay Chaplain James Yee, with former Guantanamo Army Arabic linguist Erik Saar, with former Guantanamo military guard Terry Holdbrooks, Jr., with law professor and former Army J.A.G. officer Jeffrey Addicott, with law professor and Coast Guard officer Glenn Sulmasy, with author and geographer Trevor Paglen and with author and journalist Stephen Grey on the subject of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, with journalist and author David Rose on Guantanamo, with journalist Michael Otterman on the subject of American torture and related issues, with author and historian Andy Worthington detailing the capture and provenance of all of the Guantanamo detainees, with law professor Peter Honigsberg on various aspects of detention policy in the war on terror, with Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch, with Almerindo Ojeda of the Guantanamo Testimonials Project, with Karen Greenberg, author of The LeastWorst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days, with Charles Gittings of the Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions, and with Laurel Fletcher, author of "The Guantanamo Effect" documenting the experience of Guantanamo detainees after their release, to be of interest.

Stewart "Buz" Eisenberg is an attorney in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and together with co-counsel, represents two men currently detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, both of whom have been "cleared for transfer" by unanimous consent of President Obama's inter-agency task force, but nonetheless remain held in indefinite detention. I first interviewed Buz in 2008. On March 31, 2013, I had the privilege of interviewing him again, by telephone. What follows are my interview notes, as corrected by Mr. Eisenberg.

The Talking Dog: Please identify your present GTMO-detained client or clients by name, nationality, and age, and anything else of interest about them, or about what you know about events at Guantanamo, particularly the hunger strike?

Buz Eisenberg: Our clients are Mohammad Abdullah Taha Mattan, ISN 684, whom I represent with co-counsel Jerry Cohen, Gordon Woodward and Lauren Carasik, a 33 year old West Bank Palestinian, and Motai Saib, ISN 288, a 37 year old Algerian/Syrian dual national, whom I represent with Jerry Cohen. Both were picked up in Pakistan, and both are cleared for transfer (I note that many people, including habeas attorneys, use the term "cleared for release," though this is technically not true, even though most men transferred are usually promptly released by their home countries or the other places they are sent.)

The government’s smoking gun on Mattan is that he may have stayed in the same guesthouse someone else had three weeks earlier.

As to the hunger strike, that seemed to be precipitated by events on February 6, 2013, when increased abuse of the prisoners' Korans and cell shakedowns increased, and apparently, the strike got going on February 7th, and the shooting incident took place a short time thereafter, and events have just cascaded since. The removal of iso-mats (which detainees sleep on), family pictures, tooth brushes and tooth paste, and now, amazingly, drinkable water ("Camp Justice" and evidently the detention center has tap water that looks dreadful and which we have been told is not potable... but, as prisoners are being cracked down on for the hunger strike, our understanding is that the prisoners are being told to drink it now). We have had other very troubling reports, including one from David Remes’ client Uthman who reported to David on March 7th of this year (2013) that he observed a shooting by a guard in the GTMO prison recreation yard, where another detainee was struck in the neck with a rubber bullet – and which became one of the precipitating causes of the hunger strike now going on at Guantanamo. After witnessing the shooting, Uthman engaged in hunger strike himself, and after a few days was dragged by his neck to the infirmary, which in turn caused him physical problems. His weight has dropped from around 167 to 134 lbs, and his blood sugar counts have vacillated between 28 and 205 within a 48 hour period, according to David's notes.

The Talking Dog: Please tell me the status of their habeas litigation, be it "habeas petition pending,"petition denied and appeal pending" or whatever else is applicable, and to the extent applicable, if you can identify who the judge or judges involved are and if there is any published decision or decisions of note.

Buz Eisenberg: Their habeas petitions are both stayed. Even if the courts would generally entertain habeas trials of men who have been "cleared for transfer", there is also little incentive for cleared prisoners to proceed to trial. If they win, they remain “cleared” yet firmly entrenched in GTMO from which Congress has forbidden their transfer or release. And in the event they receive an adverse court decision from the habeas court, that would only undermine their "clearance" status and make it even harder to find a country willing to receive them, if ever the NDAA restrictions get lifted.

The Talking Dog: Can you please tell me the last time you visited your client or clients at Guantanamo, and can you describe the circumstances of your visit. If you could, can you contrast that visit with what you found at earlier visits, including the condition of your client(s), the restrictions on you as counsel and on your clients during your visit, the condition in which you found your clients, and anything else you believe relevant.

Buz Eisenberg: Gordon and Jerry were last in GTMO in January. Visiting hardly is worth doing. Even the last time I saw him our always pleasant client Mattan had descended into what I can best describe as a “hopeless” state. During his last visit, and for the first time, Jerry observed Motai not even wanting to come out for a visit. These men don’t want to be a burden on us, they know we are powerless to change the terrible situation in which they find themselves. I think Motai is resigned to staying at Guantanamo until he dies. We have all observed something profound about the human condition-- when stripped of any hope that tomorrow will be better than a horrific today, part of living just sort of runs by you-- something just bleeds out. This has been the pattern. And life without hope is no life. So much time has passed, hopes dashed so many times before, it's all just too painful.

We've been doing this for nine years, and when we've talked to the men, we've always been able to tell them of some angle we wanted to try; of some legal strategy; of some creative plan. They always saw evidence that gave rise to hope, some other detainees were getting transferred. Now, for the last three years, everything hopeful has ground to a halt. We have run out of avenues to pursue, of hope to offer. All we can do is sit across from men chained to the floor, and tell them, "I don't know"... I have nothing to say to inspire promise.

Gordon and Jerry observed that these men expect little at this point – without a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel the spark is draining from our clients. I'll be going down with Gordon myself as soon as it can be arranged, probably the first of June or so. The availability of flights has been, of course, made more difficult by the government, interfering with the lawyer-client relationship. At this point, all we can bring down to our clients is a bit of companionship for a few hours over a day or two-- a short diversion.

Mattan is extremely articulate and bright, but he is fading. Everything has been an empty promise. The men's spirits are waning-- they are shells of the men that they were.

The Talking Dog: Can you tell me if your client or clients is or are participating in the present hunger strike, and whether they have participated in prior hunger strikes?

Buz Eisenberg: We don't know if either is on hunger strike; we're trying to contact them, but with GTMO, there are always difficult logistical issues. Not knowing is driving us crazy. From other attorneys' clients' reports, we believe the vast or overwhelming majority of Camp 6- the "compliant camp" -- is now on hunger strike. The men used to be able to congregate. Of course, now there is a new military commander, and many things are different.

Buz Eisenberg: [Rear Adm. John] Smith is the new guy in charge. At several levels in the chain of command, decisions have been made for draconian, unfair, undignified and frankly illegal conditions of confinement to return from the earlier bygone days, just as things were ten years ago. It is unclear why they would do so. Other than a complete stall in transfers out, there was peaceful collaboration between jailer and jailed at GTMO, but there has been a slow erosion in the humanity of the jailers. For us, it's been harder to arrange client visits, and when we do, our time to meet is more constrained... we have observed much irritating back pedaling.

But now the new regime there seems hell-bent on exerting its power regardless of the self-destructive consequences. It will make the process of jailing tumultuous over needless, sadistic policies, unilaterally imposed on detainees and lawyers-- it is hard to get there, and hard to do our job once there. It also makes the whole thing more volatile, and the inevitable result will be hunger strikes, such as the massive one presently occurring.

The Talking Dog: Can we lay this at the feet of the White House?

Buz Eisenberg: Not necessarily. The military, as do all large government bureaucracies, has a life of its own. As we were reminded with all the tumult around Benghazi, about just how broad the Secretary of State's purview is. That's why we wrote directly to the Secretary of Defense-- we're not sure even he knows exactly what's going on. We're hoping that some one will step up and get some action, realizing that a a complete breakdown at GTMO is not what anyone needs. At this stage of the game, there is no need for extreme controversy over conditions of confinement.

The Talking Dog: Can you comment on media coverage, in particular, of events at Guantanamo in calendar year 2013, and previously, and in particular, with respect to your own clients and representation?

Buz Eisenberg: What media coverage? There has been some tiny space in the NY Times, BBC, CNN and Carol Rosenberg... and otherwise NOTHING.

On my best days, I like to think if there were no election, Syria were not exploding, there were no sequester or government shut down, maybe we'd be front and center. But on my worst days, I note it is much easier for most people to think of GTMO as "bunch of terrorists-- let them die there." It is much more comfortable just to let people wallow. I spoke to Lauren Carasik's class at Western New England Law last week-- a public interest minded, socially conscious group, and they had no idea even how many people were still at GTMO. Jaws dropped when they heard how few were charged with anything... I was incredulous as to how few knew anything. But the fact is, the media won't sell papers in this economy telling people about this. For us, we have a dreadfully silent plague ongoing as our clients continue to suffer.

Buz Eisenberg: We need people like "the talking dog" and the Washington Post and the Podunk Register to let people know just how expensive and attention grabbing (in a bad way) the detention center really is. Indeed, just in terms of the number of military careers, so much time and effort and bad will internationally in maintaining this thing.

Of course, our hopes have been dashed so many times before, that it's hard to keep the rose-colored glasses on.... but ever the pollyanna, I like to think that if the economy ever recovers and the school shootings stop, and people even pay less attention to March madness, maybe there will be interest in having Guantanamo and Bagram coming to an end. Why can't we have trials? We're great at having trials! Gorman and Bronte and Eisenberg will try to use our license for the purpose for which we took an oath-- but we need someone to speak the Lindsey Grahams of the world into recognizing the folly of their ways, and what a folly the whole thing has become.

Buz Eisenberg: No, I think the long term hope rests in big time principals going front and center to take charge. Maybe a new Supreme Court, for example-- the D.C. Circuit won't change anything-- maybe Justice Kennedy stepping up and deciding to push Boumediene to actually provide the real habeas relief that his opinion said it would. Instead, we get all this "deference"-- the court "defers" to congress or to the executive or to the military-- and ducks all responsibility. In the 60's, you had a different result on things like voting rights or Miranda or Roe v. Wade and others, when judicial review was real, and political.

The Talking Dog: Can you tell me how your Guantanamo representation has effected you personally, be it professionally, emotionally, spiritually, or any other way you'd like to answer?

Buz Eisenberg: I just came back from a vacation in the South of France. We were in a tiny little village. There is a monument there to the five fallen sons of Provence who fell serving in the French Resistance against the Nazis. The stories you hear about that time are all about the futility-- such a small group of people battling such a huge monster. But-- you still fight. Maybe it feels futile-- but, you can't not fight. We're not as heroic as those guys. My colleagues are nonetheless selfless, dedicated and unrelenting, but through their virtuous deeds, they can articulate just how much human harm is being committed in the name of prosecuting the war on terror. It has evolved to the point of drone attacks on whomever, wherever, that it is a political endeavor that utterly forgets humanity. We are now 300 million out of 7 billion, behaving as all the rest are entirely incidental to us.

I can't stop my representation-- though I'm limited by resources-- I'm self-funded out of my retirement (Jerry and I both are)-- but as long as there is a guy there, I'll take another case. I don't know how I will stop, even if there ends up being a bleak outcome. Some things you just do out of the oath you took.

The Talking Dog: I join all of my readers in thanking Mr. Eisenberg for that evocative interview.

Readers interested in legal issues and related matters associated with the "war on terror" may also find talking dog blog interviews with former Guantanamo military commissions prosecutors Morris Davis and Darrel Vandeveld, with former Guantanamo combatant status review tribunal/"OARDEC" officer Stephen Abraham, with attorneys Patricia Bronte, Kristine Huskey, Ellen Lubell, Ramzi Kassem, George Clarke, Buz Eisenberg, Steven Wax, Wells Dixon, Rebecca Dick, Wesley Powell, Martha Rayner, Angela Campbell, Stephen Truitt and Charles Carpenter, Gaillard Hunt, Robert Rachlin, Tina Foster, Brent Mickum, Marc Falkoff H. Candace Gorman, Eric Freedman, Michael Ratner, Thomas Wilner, Jonathan Hafetz, Joshua Denbeaux, Rick Wilson,
Neal Katyal, Joshua Colangelo Bryan, Baher Azmy, and Joshua Dratel (representing Guantanamo detainees and others held in "the war on terror"), with attorneys Donna Newman and Andrew Patel (representing "unlawful combatant" Jose Padilila), with Dr. David Nicholl, who spearheaded an effort among international physicians protesting force-feeding of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, with physician and bioethicist Dr. Steven Miles on medical complicity in torture, with law professor and former Clinton Administration Ambassador-at-large for war crimes matters David Scheffer, with former Guantanamo detainees Moazzam Begg and Shafiq Rasul , with former Guantanamo Bay Chaplain James Yee, with former Guantanamo Army Arabic linguist Erik Saar, with former Guantanamo military guard Terry Holdbrooks, Jr., with law professor and former Army J.A.G. officer Jeffrey Addicott, with law professor and Coast Guard officer Glenn Sulmasy, with author and geographer Trevor Paglen and with author and journalist Stephen Grey on the subject of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, with journalist and author David Rose on Guantanamo, with journalist Michael Otterman on the subject of American torture and related issues, with author and historian Andy Worthington detailing the capture and provenance of all of the Guantanamo detainees, with law professor Peter Honigsberg on various aspects of detention policy in the war on terror, with Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch, with Almerindo Ojeda of the Guantanamo Testimonials Project, with Karen Greenberg, author of The LeastWorst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days, with Charles Gittings of the Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions, and with Laurel Fletcher, author of "The Guantanamo Effect" documenting the experience of Guantanamo detainees after their release, to be of interest.

Ordinarily the 1st of April is a high note here at the talking dog; but events of 2013 have taken a lot of wind out of a lot of sails... even ours.

Speaking of sailing, Candace at least has a happy thought for the day...

The Talking Dog

April 22, 2013, TD Blog Interview with Eric Lewis

April 16, 2013, WTF?

April 14, 2013, TD Blog Interview with Cori Crider

April 13, 2013, TD Blog Interview with Michael Mone

April 9, 2013, What are the odds?

April 5, 2013, TD Blog Interview with Matt O'Hara

April 4, 2013, TD Blog Interview with Carlos Warner

April 3, 2013, TD Blog Interview with Matthew Melewski

April 2, 2013, TD Blog Interview with Stewart "Buz" Eisenberg

April 1, 2013, Aspirations of the day