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Inside Guantanamo

“They’ve forgotten that we’re down here,” laments the soft-spoken, 23-year soldier as she reflects on her mission. “And they want to sit there and they want to say, ‘Well, they’re beating them.’ … I haven’t ever beaten anybody. I’ve never tortured anybody. And it really hurts. It’s like, ‘Look, I’m in the Army, I’m serving our country, I’m trying to make it safe for you. And this is … the thanks I get?’ That’s really what makes it really hard.”

The sergeant’s noble frustrations aptly capture the contradictions and politics that shroud the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

For three weeks, a camera crew from National Geographic Explorer was granted broad access to this hotly debated patch of real estate. Shadowing military guards, government leaders, attorneys and even former detainees, “Inside Guantanamo” chronicles the specialized mission of the controversial military prison: to detain suspected enemy combatants of the U.S.

The 90-minute documentary is as much about life in the prison as it is about the geopolitical controversies that surround it.

For their part, troops assigned to run the facility appear proud of their mission.

“We’ve got nothing to hide here. It’s a fact. There is nothing that I’m not proud to talk to my kids about or to explain to my mom,” Guantanamo’s commander, Rear Adm. David Thomas, says to the camera.

However, because of security concerns, camera crews are severely restricted in what they can show within Guantanamo’s heavily fortified walls — no detainees’ faces or names or nationalities, no names of the guards, no critical infrastructure. The military operates as though Gitmo is a target for terrorist attack, the narrator says, with armed guards on constant patrol.

What the cameras do capture, though, are the prison’s routine inner workings — cell checks; detainee transfers; the human, sometimes combative, interaction among guards and prisoners. The difference is, Guantanamo doesn’t house your common cat burglar. Among those who now call Guantanamo home are members of al-Qaida, the Taliban and the accused co-conspirators of the Sept. 11 attacks, and they’re housed across nine concrete and steel maximum-security and medium-security camps — including at least one camp that no journalist has ever seen.

Still, Gitmo remains a highly visible facility.

“For the military,” the narrator continues, “Guantanamo is the front for the war on terror. … The eyes of the world are on these guards. Any misstep can become headline news.”

The film explains the ongoing battles questioning the necessity — and legality — of the prison.

The Supreme Court on three occasions challenged the Bush administration’s assertion that the detainees at Guantanamo don’t fit the Geneva Conventions’ definition of “enemies” and are therefore not subject to the conventions’ protections. Allegations of torture, including the notorious practice of “waterboarding,” are discussed at length in the documentary.

“Questioning the detainees in this program has given us information that has saved innocent lives by helping us stop new attacks,” then-President George W. Bush says in a 2006 clip.

Not everyone agrees, including Bush’s former secretary of state.

“Guantanamo has become a major problem for the way the world perceives America,” retired Army Gen. Colin Powell says. “And if it was up to me, I would close Guantanamo, not tomorrow, but this afternoon.”

Caught in political crossfire

Inextricably linked but far removed from the controversy are the hundreds of military people who serve duty at Guantanamo, checking cells, transporting detainees and securing the site. Some of the detainees first arrived when the guards now watching over them were still in grade school.

The film captures the lingering monotony of life in confinement: a guard helping a detainee choose between a book by Louisa May Alcott or Stephen King; the shouts and curses routinely delivered to military guards by detainees; the 12-hour days spent checking each cell every three minutes for suicide attempts.

Because of the limited access, viewers never learn what charges, if any, have been brought against the detainees or what reasons the military might have for their detention. Viewers only learn that many of them weren’t sought out by coalition forces but were turned in by others, often for a cash bounty. When released, many have returned to civilian life in the Middle East, but some have returned to the fight against America.

Gitmo, says a former prisoner, did nothing but hurt the American cause.

“They created more jihadists against them,” says Omar Madani, a detainee who spent six years at Gitmo but was released in May 2008. He is now in Kabul.

As detainees were released, says the narrator, stories of their detention spread throughout the Muslim world, and some say that those stories have inspired the next generation of jihadists.

“There are military officers who believe that the No. 1 and 2 leading, identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq are, No. 1, Abu Ghraib and No. 2, Guantanamo, because of their effectiveness in helping recruit combat soldiers against American forces,” says Alberto J. Mora, former Navy general counsel.

Many disagree. Terrorism came first, they say, not Guantanamo.

“I don’t want them in our prisons. I want them” at Gitmo, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said during his 2008 Republican presidential campaign. “Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is we ought to double Guantanamo.”

As a documentary, “Inside Guantanamo” maintains neutrality but presents a detailed picture of Guantanamo today. How we treat enemy combatants will ultimately be up to future generations to judge.

“Guantanamo, at moments, has contained the best of America and the worst at the same time. It’s an amazing place,” says Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, a military lawyer who has defended several prisoners. “And you see in individuals, the heroic and beauty that is America, and at times you see what we can be when we succumb to our fears.”

Don’t miss it

National Geographic Explorer’s “Inside Guantanamo” debuted April 12 and will re-air on the National Geographic Channel. Check local listings for air times. Click here to find out more and watch a panel discussion with military and civilian experts.

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Gitmo at a glance

Guantanamo Bay now houses nearly 200 detainees.

• The facility was first put into use in 1903 as a coaling and naval station. Starting in 1942, it was used as a Japanese internment camp during World War II.

• Today, more than 6,000 military personnel, contractors and detainees call Gitmo home. Troops from all branches of the military belong to Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO).

• Troops work four days on, two days off, in 12-hour shifts that begin at 5:30 a.m. They carry a whistle, a radio and pepper spray; only the guards in the towers have live rounds.

• The 45 square miles of land belong to Cuba but the U.S. leases it — at $4,085 a year — from Fidel Castro. (He has reportedly stopped cashing the checks.)

• Camp 7 holds the “highest-value” detainees; no journalists have seen it. Its location on the base is a secret.

Source: National Geographic