Good morning. We're covering a new show about life at Guantánamo Bay.
Inside prison wallsAround 780 people have been detained at the prison at Guantánamo Bay since it opened in January 2002. Thirty men remain there today, many of whom have not been charged. The podcast "Serial," which debuted in 2014 with the story of a questionable murder conviction, has dedicated its new season to Guantánamo. Over nine episodes, it tells the story of the prison through a personal lens, by way of conversations with people who worked or were detained there. I spoke with the hosts, Sarah Koenig and Dana Chivvis, about the show. Desiree: There's an interesting political story to be told about Guantánamo, but why did you decide to tell this story through the people who lived through it? Sarah: The government threw all of these normal people on Guantánamo, and they had to sort out how on earth are we supposed to behave in here, how are we supposed to make sense of this? So over the course of 20 years, you saw this thing, which was kind of like a terrible spasm in the national response to 9/11, harden into something that was trying to justify and sustain itself. I think that's what we were interested in: Who were those people who are having to make decisions, who are having to survive a thing not of their own making, and what did that look like and what did that feel like? In the reporting of the podcast, did anything upend your preconceived notions or surprise you about Guantánamo? Dana: The people who work in Guantánamo for the military rotate in and out about every nine months, but the prisoners have been there, so very quickly the prisoners learned how the prison operated better than the guard force did. I heard a lot of stories about prisoners who would correct the guards and be like, "No, no, you need to give me 10 squares of toilet paper," or "You're not handcuffing me right. Let me show you how to do it." And I think the thing that surprised me the most as I started digging into it was that we were told by the Bush administration that these are the worst of the worst, these are the people who did 9/11. As it turned out, they were not, and the people who worked in Guantánamo — and a lot of people in the Bush administration — knew that from within months of the first prisoners' arriving. There wasn't a tremendous amount of screening going on. It was really like an overflow room for the war in Afghanistan. And the prisoners who are there, and were there, have now been dipped in this toxic paint of this place forever. One thing that struck me was that while things at Guantánamo were scary and unsettling, it was also a really surreal place. Sarah: I think the thing that a lot of people either don't know or forget is that it's just a naval base. Like a normal naval base, it has sandwich shops and a coffee shop and a school and a chapel. It's just when you first visit there, you're not psychically ready to see that. But by the third time I went, I wasn't even noticing that stuff. Once, I was there with these young people from various N.G.O.s who were there to observe the court, and one guy goes, "I got a coffee this morning, and then this woman told me to 'have a nice day,' and I was like, What are you talking about? How can I have a nice day?" And I was like, "Oh, you're a newcomer. You'll get over that." How have you seen Guantánamo evolve? Sarah: When I was first reporting on it in the early 2000s, there were hundreds of prisoners there, and it felt very active and very violent and very scary and very shocking. And in 2015, I think there were 122 people. It wasn't like the bad wasn't still happening, but it had dug in for the long term. These people just live here now, and the court is chugging along. It felt very like an institution. To me it feels like it's in its last throes, and it's sort of falling apart. But it's interesting — I spoke to an attorney who has been working there for more than a decade on the same case, and he was like, "Every time you come, you think this thing is about to fall apart, and I'm here to tell you: You have no idea whether it's falling apart." Listen to the first two episodes of the season here. For more
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Sunday, March 31, 2024
The Morning: Life at Guantánamo Bay
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