Right after September 11th, we created a brand new criminal justice system at Guantanamo Bay. A prison and a court to deal with people we suspected of being terrorists. To do what we wanted to do at Guantanamo, we pushed aside the old rules for detaining prisoners of war so we could interrogate people how we wanted and hold them indefinitely without charging them with a crime. Maybe you have an idea of what it's like to work at Guantanamo Bay.
Put that aside for a second. You know, you're on 42 square miles. You've got like five great beaches. I partied my ass off in Guantanamo.
Everyone was getting drunk and getting laid. I mean, I love Guantanamo. Like, it's La La Land. We're like a Disneyland employee.
Hmm, let's talk about that comparison there. Oh, no, that was a joke. Definitely a joke. It's nothing like Disneyland.
Our mission today is to provide safety and legal care. The U.S. government has its own story about what's been happening inside Guantanamo all these years. Legal care and care.
But we wanted the people who served at Guantanamo and survived Guantanamo to tell their stories. Now that they've left Guantanamo, what would they say now that they couldn't say then? A lot, as it turns out. Chaos.
As simply put, it was chaos. You think your Allah is going to help you? You think your Koran is correct? You know, it's a bunch of garbage.
It's a blah, blah, blah. What rights? Nobody knows you exist here. He wasn't tortured.
He wasn't physically beaten. He wasn't tortured. He was beaten in the respect that we won, he lost. So we are tortured by someone who doesn't believe in torture.
How can this guy who believes in him do this to me? This is something that they would never make public, but the day of the riot, morale was never higher. Because we got to kick their asses and get away with it. And that's the Guantanamo's truth.
From Serial Productions of the New York Times, this is Serial Season 4, Guantanamo. Hosted by me, Sarah Koenig, and Dana Chivas. Coming March 28th. Listen on the New York Times audio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Is getting even so open? Are you? Are you in prison right there? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my god.