Prison Boss: No Innocent Men in Guantanamo

ByABC News
June 27, 2006, 7:55 PM

June 27, 2006 — -- Rear Adm. Harry Harris, the man in charge of the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, talked with "Nightline" anchor Terry Moran, giving his first interview since a riot rocked Guantanamo last month and three inmates committed suicide.

Here is a complete transcript of the interview:

MORAN: How old is this building?

HARRIS: This building was started in 1937 and finished in '38 as the Marine Corps Officers Club. The Marine presence here was a lot bigger than it is now. There was a full battalion here, you know. And after World War Ii we went into the Cold War, and this was the front lines.

It was the Marines. They got the Cuban Frontier Brigade and that old piece.

So the Marine presence here is quite large. And, over the years, its dwindled. And then in the '70s, it became a senior officer quarters. Then it became the JTF quarters when Gen. Miller came. So he was the first resident.

MORAN: Would you have a couple minutes?

HARRIS: Sure.

MORAN: Items of significanc e...

HARRIS: Yes, I'll show you around. There's no items of significance associated with a house -- what's left of the house.

MORAN: I mean, your...

HARRIS: But there's large -- my stuff I had brought in here. I'd be happy to talk about that.

MORAN: The rugs are interesting.

HARRIS: Yes, they're Afghan war rugs. When I was flying over Afghanistan, you know, I'd buy them out in the Middle East. And when I was stationed in Bahrain, I bought some more.

But these are cheap. You know, this is $50 for this one.

But the history behind them and the novelty is pretty interesting.

MORAN: Yes.

HARRIS: They were originally built or made by villages -- villagers in Afghanistan to commemorate some kind of a military thing over the Soviets. These are Soviet AK-47s, Soviet tanks, Hind helicopters and so on.

And then they realized that Americans would actually pay money for them, so they started cranking them out in big style.

MORAN: Naturally.

(CROSSTALK)

HARRIS: They are also made in Pakistan these days. These are all Afghan, I believe. At least, I bought them thinking they were.

(CROSSTALK)

MORAN: I have a very general question.

(CROSSTALK)

HARRIS: Now, am I looking at you or the camera?

MORAN: We're just trying to talk.

Now the first question is a very general question, but it takes off of something that's in the news right now. President Bush has said a few times he wants to close the defensive camp here at Guantanamo Bay.

What do you say?

HARRIS: I support that idea. I mean, we don't want to keep detainees here any longer than we have to. You know, these are enemies of our nation. And I believe they're here for the right reason. But if we can move them out, those that are recommended for release or transfer to other countries for continued detention, we should do that.

MORAN: So you'd like to see this place closed?

HARRIS: I would like to see the need for this place to be ended. However, today, I believe that we have a need for facilities like Guantanamo. And I believe we have, out of the 450 or so detainees we have here, there are probably 300 of them that are serious Taliban and al Qaeda leadership people.

And if we close Guantanamo today without thinking of what to do with them, then the question becomes, what do you do with them? We can't turn them loose, because there is no doubt in my mind, without any doubt whatsoever, that the majority of these 300 or so would return to the fight. And so we have to do something with them. If we don't keep them in Guantanamo, we should keep them someplace else.

So today there's a need for a facility like Guantanamo, and I'd like to see it close as well, but we have to address the issue of what to do with them.

MORAN: Do you think it can close anytime soon? President Bush seems eager to do it.

HARRIS: I think it can be closed anytime that he directs it to be closed. But in that process, I'm sure that we'll be asked to recommend what we should do with those detainees that are serious al Qaeda and Taliban leadership.

MORAN: So in your judgment, as the commander of this detention facility, if Guantanamo Bay goes away for any reason, most of the men here still need to be imprisoned by the United States somewhere.

HARRIS: I believe they need to be in detention by somebody somewhere. Now, that's discounting those are up for war crimes trials now. Those have to be dealt with in that process. But if you discount those, and then at the other end we return to either release or transfer to other countries for continued detention those that we have made that recommendation and the designated civilian official has determined that they could be released or transferred, then if you take the remainder -- and that's about 300 or so -- I agree with what you just said. We must do something with them.

If we let them go, then they'll go back to the fight. And they've told us that. We know that they'll go back to the fight.

And so that's one of the reasons why we have this facility, is to prevent them from returning to the fight on the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan.

MORAN: Are you holding any innocent men here?

HARRIS: I believe truly that I am holding no innocent men in Guantanamo.

MORAN: How do you know that?

HARRIS: They have gone through a rigorous process to get to where they are today. Not only were they processed on the battlefields in the Middle East by Central Command before they got here.

But after they got here we went through a very rigorous process called the CSRT, the Combatant Status Review Tribunal, which is a Geneva Article 5-like procedure. And that process looked at every detainee -- it was a one-time only process -- and it look at every detainee to determine whether that detainee was an enemy combatant or no longer an enemy combatant.

So if you take those that were determined to be no longer enemy combatants and you sit them aside, then you have the vast majority of the remaining detainees who were judged to be enemy combatants -- after a pretty lengthy evaluation process.

After that was over -- and the CSRT was a one-time deal -- we do since then annual administrative review boards. This is a process that has no precedent in neither Geneva, international law or U.S. domestic law.

And ARB, the ministry review board process, is all about looking at each detainee every year to see if he -- if we can afford the risk of returning that detainee to another country for continued detention or just outright release them, or if we need to keep them here. And that's another very rigorous process.

And we've gone through one complete ARB, and now we're in the ARB-2 -- the second ARB, this year.

So every detainee every year gets looked at by an ARB, and before that every detainee was looked at by the combatant status review tribunal.

So I think at the end of all that, we know who we have here, and we have some very serious enemy combatants here.

Let me qualify that by also -- not qualify, but let me add to that by saying that we have released almost 300 combatants since Guantanamo was first opened. So I believe we're serious in our commitment not to hold detainees here any longer than necessary.

And out of that 300, you know, we've assumed the risk that they can either be released or transferred to other countries for either continued detention processing or release.

MORAN: So no man who ever came to Guantanamo Bay came there by mistake was innocent?

HARRIS: I believe that to be true.

MORAN: You call it a rigorous process. The rest of the world calls it a monkey trial, secret evidence, no resources or advocacy for those accused, no recognizable legal due process.

How do you answer that?

HARRIS: Well, I believe that most of the rest of the rest of the world probably doesn't agree with your position. And I think a lot of people believe that what we are holding here are enemy combatants.

I think this process is very fair. Again, out of 800 or so combatants that have come through here, we've released over 300, or about 300 of them.

And we continue that process now. We have about 130 detainees here that we have determined -- we being not me but we being the United States -- we have determined about 130 of these folks we can afford to release them or return them to their countries for continued detention.

That's 130 folks that are waiting (ph) for their countries to be ready to accept them. So I think it's a very fair process.

And at the end of the day, what we have left are enemies of our nation. There is no expectation in international law that we do anything but detain them.

You know, it's a recognized principle in international law that belligerents can hold enemy combatants. And we certainly have these folks that we've taken off the battlefield that have gone through these processes we just spoke about.