29 January 2002
Transcript: Rumsfeld, U.S. Senators Brief Media in Cuba
(Rumsfeld, senatorial delegation inspect detainee facility) (3470)
The detention facility at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
will probably be expanded to accommodate hundreds -- but not thousands
-- of people, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said January 27.
Rumsfeld, accompanied by a delegation of U.S. senators, spoke during a
news briefing at the facility. Appearing with him were U.S. Senators
Daniel Inouye (Democrat, Hawaii), Kay Bailey Hutchinson (Republican,
Texas), Ted Stevens (Republican, Alaska), and Dianne Feinstein
(Democrat, California).
Rumsfeld said that the facility had been "in a state of considerable
disrepair" when work on it commenced just 21 days before, and that he
was favorably impressed by what had been accomplished in that time.
"I am very satisfied that these folks have done a terrific job of
getting this facility up and operating in 21 days. They have been
improving it every single day. They find ways to do it better and
they're making it function better," Rumsfeld said.
The security system in place for the detainees is appropriate,
Rumsfeld said. The detainees are also receiving medical care "that is
identical to the medical care that the men and women you see here in
uniform receive every day," he asserted.
Rumsfeld accompanied the senatorial delegation in an effort to
ascertain whether to proceed to the next phase -- building modular
units that could house several hundred prisoners at the facility.
"The big question ... is how many cells would be appropriate,"
Rumsfeld said. "The numbers that are floating around are in the
hundreds, not the thousands," he continued.
Rumsfeld also stated that the Defense Department would not release any
report given to it by the International Committee of the Red Cross on
the care, treatment and conditions of the detainees at the Guantanamo
facility. He said the ICRC works on a basis of confidentiality, so as
to protect its ability to gain access to people in situations of
detention.
The transcript of Rumsfeld's remarks follows:
(begin transcript)
United States Department of Defense
NEWS TRANSCRIPT
Presenter: Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
Sunday, January 27, 2002
Secretary Rumsfeld Media Availability after Visiting Camp X-Ray
(Remarks with Senators Stevens, Inouye, Hutchison and Feinstein at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba)
Rumsfeld: To the men and women in uniform here we want to say thank
you so much for what you're doing. You're doing a great job. We know
it, you know it, you ought to be proud of it.
They tell me it's been just 21 days since this operation has been in
business and that is a very short period of time to have accomplished
all you've accomplished. We appreciate it.
I suppose everyone here was introduced. Senator Hutchison?
Hutchison: Yes.
Rumsfeld: Good. You all spoke? Terrific. We've got people from
California and Texas and Alaska and Hawaii here, I suspect. Did you
check?
Feinstein: We did.
Hutchison: Yes.
Rumsfeld: First of all, let me say a word about the war on terrorism.
We have been at it just a matter of months, not a long time. And it is
going to be a much longer time that we will have to be at it, let
there be no doubt.
The task that the President has set out for us is to deal with the
terrorist networks. They exist. Thousands of people have been trained
to kill innocent people -- not just Americans, but people across the
globe -- and the President is determined to stick at it until the job
is done.
I was asked why I was coming down here today. Was I coming down to
check and make sure that everything was being done properly? I said
no. I wasn't. That I knew it was being done properly. It had been from
the beginning. The men and women here doing this job are people who
went to our high schools and our grammar schools who are responsible,
they're properly trained, properly led, and have been doing a
first-rate job. I came down to say thank you.
Voices: Hooah!
Rumsfeld: Now, are there questions from the troops first? I'll answer
all of those I know how to answer and I'll leave the tough ones for
the senators. (Laughter)
Inouye: They want to know when they can go home.
Rumsfeld: They just got here!
I used to come to Guantanamo Bay back in 1951 and '52 and '53 and '60,
and '64 and '65 and '70. That was back before they had air
conditioning. It didn't even exist in those early days.
I'd be happy to respond to some questions from the press and so would
the members of the United States Senate here.
Q: Can you describe, sir, what you saw? What impressed you about what
you saw? Start with that.
Rumsfeld: What we have seen here today is a lot of very talented
people who came down here a few weeks ago and this entire center was,
as I recall, in a state of considerable disrepair. It hadn't been used
for some time, and it has been very quickly put in shape that they
could receive and hold something in the neighborhood of 150 or 160
detainees and as you hear behind me, the SEABEEs working to see that
that number of cells will increase so that we can hold additional
people here.
I've had a chance to visit with a chaplain. I've had a chance to visit
with the medical people. We've had an opportunity -- and I might just
say the detainees here are receiving medical care that is identical to
the medical care that the men and women you see here in uniform
receive every day. In fact I think I see the Chief Medical Officer.
Raise your hand right there. There he is. They're doing a terrific
job.
We saw the security system, which is appropriate. We saw people who
have just come out of surgery recently in various states of recovery
from bullet wounds and various breaks and problems they've had. We
were briefed on the security situation.
Q: Did you got any kind of feeling, though, in your gut when you
looked in on the people who are, who we allege have been part of the
organization that were engaged in this war against us? Any sort of
feeling or reaction looking at these people?
Rumsfeld: We did see the detainees. We also talked to the people who
are in the process of interrogating them for law enforcement purposes
and for intelligence-gathering purposes. We have teams,
multidisciplinary teams, of people who are engaged in that. What else?
Q: Mr. Secretary, for Swedish Television. For how long time will these
prisoners, detainees, be held here and do you envision a military
tribunal being set up right here at Guantanamo?
Rumsfeld: As you know the President has signed a military order
permitting the establishment of a military commission, to use the
phrase of the military order. He has not, as yet, assigned any
individual to be subjected to that commission and as a result we don't
have plans at the moment as to where any commission might be held.
Q: Sir, can I ask on the, do you share at all the sentiments of
Senator Stevens on the reaction of British parliamentarians? He said
they had done a great disservice to young American men and women here.
And do you believe that the British detainees here seek any kind
special treatment? And in particular, what's your response to --
Rumsfeld: Wait, let's just do one at a time just for the heck of it.
(Laughter)
Do I think anyone ought to get special treatment? No, I don't. I think
that we have a group of people who are al Qaeda and Taliban
terrorists, who have been captured in various parts of Afghanistan.
They have been brought here because they are considered individuals
that ought not to be out on the street with the possibility that they
could kill somebody else, and the interrogation process will go
forward. But no, I don't think people at the moment -- I suppose after
a period in most prison situations an assessment is made as to who are
the most serious and dangerous of the prisoners and they tend to be
handled in a manner that's appropriate to that, and those that are
considered to be somewhat less dangerous tend to be handled in a
manner that's appropriate to that.
Q: Mr. Secretary, did you hear from any of those inside Camp X-Ray
that there is a concern that some of the detainees are communicating
with one another in a way that could possibly (inaudible)?
Rumsfeld: The subject was discussed.
Q: Mr. Secretary --
Q: Could I have a follow-up?
Q: Mr. Secretary, would it be terribly dangerous to blur the
distinction between lawful combatants and unlawful combatants? Could
you help us understand what legal entity, organism, international or
otherwise, does make that distinction (inaudible) the Geneva
Convention between unlawful and lawful combatants?
Rumsfeld: There is a definition of what a lawful combatant is and
there are four or five criteria that people look to historically.
There's precedent to this, and there is a reasonable understanding of
what an unlawful combatant is.
The characteristics of the individuals that have been captured is that
they are unlawful combatants, not lawful combatants. That is why they
are characterized as detainees and not prisoners of war. The al Qaeda
are so obviously a part of a terrorist network as opposed to being
part of an army -- they didn't go around with uniforms with their
weapons in public display, with insignia and behave in a manner that
an army behaves in; they went around like terrorists, and that's a
very different thing.
It's important for people to recognize that this is a different
circumstance, the war on terrorism. It requires a different template
in our thinking. All of the normal ways that we think about things
simply don't work.
For example, there were no armies or navies or air forces for us to go
after in Afghanistan. We're going after terrorists. That means you
have to go and find them and root them out and stop them from killing
people. And --
Q: What is your response to the British Foreign Secretary --
Sec. Rumsfeld: You've had a chance.
Q: Is there evidence that the detainees have been communicating with
each other and have developed some kind of a hierarchical organization
with perhaps a troop leader?
Rumsfeld: I'm not in a position to respond to that except that you can
hear them communicating with each other.
Q: But is there some kind of an organizing effort going on?
Rumsfeld: Most detainees when they get together in a prison
environment do talk to each other and do discuss things. It's a fairly
common pattern. They've only been here a very short period of time.
Whether it's happened thus far here, I don't know, but I suspect it
will.
Q: Mr. Secretary, are you satisfied with this facility? Do you think
they should go forward with the next step -- what they're calling the
modular facility -- and when would that be?
Rumsfeld: I am very satisfied that these folks have done a terrific
job of getting this facility up and operating in 21 days. They have
been improving it every single day. They find ways to do it better and
they're making it function better.
It is extremely manpower intensive, and these fine folks, they're
limited in number and what we've done is we've put a pause on bringing
more people in. I do believe we're going to have to go forward with
the so-called modular next phase. The big question before the house is
how many cells would be appropriate? The numbers that are floating
around are in the hundreds right now, not the thousands, although some
people have suggested larger numbers but I doubt that. At some point
we will process the paper in the ordinary way and present it to the
Congress and ask for some support so that we can have a facility that
is not a permanent detention center that would last 100 years, but
something that is much more appropriate than the cells here that have
been put together in the past few weeks.
Q: The Australian government said that it would like the Australian
citizen, David Hicks, home to face trial there. Is that going to
happen? And under what conditions are foreign nationals going to be
allowed home to face trial in their own countries?
Rumsfeld: I am not a lawyer. Those are the questions that lawyers
answer and I don't.
I'm searching my memory to see if I -- I cannot at the moment recall
any country that has contacted us and said they wanted the opportunity
to try nationals from their country that are currently being held in
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It may be that someone did through the State
Department or through some other portion of the government that I'm
not aware of, but I'm just simply not aware of that so it's really a
hypothetical question at this stage.
Q: Sir, did any of these detainees try to talk to you and did you
exchange any words with them?
Rumsfeld: No.
Q: What kinds of specific things did these detainees do to get them
selected to come here? And is it possible that some could be in
custody, U.S. custody, for years to come?
Rumsfeld: The problem with answering that question the way it's posed
is that these are individuals. They're not a group completely,
although they all were captured and they all were captured in
Afghanistan, I believe. No, they were not. Some I believe were
captured in Pakistan and turned over to us. The kinds of things they
did was, in the case of the al Qaeda, they took over much of
Afghanistan, they organized cells in 50 or 60 countries, raised
millions and millions of dollars, and attacked a number of locations
around the world including the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
The Taliban have been linked tightly to the al Qaeda and behaved as
they do, worked closely with them, organized with them --
Q: But they were selected was a larger body of detainees in
Afghanistan. Why were these detainees selected to come here?
Rumsfeld: Ah. First of all, a journey begins with a single step. What
we're doing is trying to sort through these people. What they do is
we've sorted some and we've given them to Pakistan back. We've looked
at some that Pakistan has captured and taken them because we felt they
would be useful from an intelligence-gathering standpoint. We have
given some back to Afghanistan.
Then what they've done at Bagram and Kandahar is to sort through these
people, do a quick sort, and make judgments as to who they believe to
be ones that might prove to be particularly useful from an information
standpoint and sent a group of them here. I'm sure in some cases we'll
find that that first sort wasn't perfect. But it's that kind of a
process.
Q: You were in the building on September 11th. You felt it rock, and I
know that you worked through the smoke and the stench and you went to
the memorial service for those almost 200 Pentagon employees. What
were your personal emotions when you walked through that gate seeing
people that you believe are responsible for that?
Rumsfeld: I guess the feeling I have is that we are darn fortunate
that the United States went to Afghanistan, worked with the Afghan
people to liberate that country from the al Qaeda and the Taliban,
that we were able to capture and detain a large number of people who
had been through terrorist training camps and had learned a whole host
of skills as to how they can kill innocent people. Not how they can
kill other soldiers, but how they can kill innocent people, and that
we've got a good slug of those folks off the street where they can't
kill more people.
We'll take two more questions.
Q: To what degree have the interrogations provided you any useful
information?
Rumsfeld: To a considerable degree. There have been terrorist
activities that have been stopped and disrupted prior to their being
successful in killing innocent people.
Q: On the Red Cross recommendations, once they are made, will you
release that report?
Rumsfeld: I am glad you asked that question.
Q: Could you tell us now what they told you?
Rumsfeld: What they told me is that they have a longstanding practice
of confidentiality. That they, if we want them to tell us things, we
do it on the basis that we will not reveal that information to others.
That is what their policy is. They believe very sincerely that to the
extent they maintain that practice, they will have the ability to go
into more countries, see more circumstances, do more of the things
they do for the good of humanity than if they do it in a different
way.
Q: But will you release their report?
Rumsfeld: That's what I'm responding to.
Their arrangement when they go in is that what they tell us will be
confidential by them and by us. And to the extent they know it will
not be confidential, their policy is that they don't provide that
information to us. Therefore, if we want that information we need to
enter into an understanding with them that it will be confidential and
that is to preserve their ability to move around the world and have
the confidence of people. And also they -- I don't even know if I
should be talking for the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Are any of them here?
Voice: No, sir.
Rumsfeld: Except to say that they -- I don't know what kind of a
report they will issue if any, but I do know that it would be markedly
different if we told them that we would release it. Therefore if we
want the benefit of having them here and having them offer their
advice, which we do and I feel that, General, you feel it's been a
useful thing from your standpoint.
General Lehnert: Yes, sir. We've had a very professional and
cooperative arrangement with them.
Rumsfeld: And so at the moment the answer is it looks like there will
be nothing released by us because if we were to release something and
they knew we would do that we might not get a report anyway.
Q: Sir, could you clarify what you said earlier? Are you saying sir,
that based on the interrogation of some of these detainees that future
terroristic operations have been stopped?
Rumsfeld: No. What I said is that if you take the aggregation of all
detainees we've taken and interrogated -- in Afghanistan, in Pakistan,
here -- that information gained from detainees has been useful in
disrupting other terrorist acts.
Last question.
Q: Sir, the British Foreign Minister has issued a statement saying
that he would like the British detainees to be tried in the United
Kingdom. What is your response to that?
Rumsfeld: My response is that if in fact he's made a statement like
that -- is he the appropriate person to speak for the government in
that regard?
Q: He could be. It was endorsed (British Prime Minister) Tony Blair.
Rumsfeld: It was. Then it would probably go to the Department of
Justice or to the United States government. They would then look at
it, process it, and respond in some way. Then issues as to the
appropriateness of doing that would be addressed; issues as to when it
might be done. Have we gotten the kind of intelligence information we
need from them already? If so, that would fit one fact pattern.
The question, we would work out arrangements with other countries as
to whether or not they would be willing to share any intelligence they
got prospectively, which would also be a factor to be considered. And
I must add, there certainly are some countries that support terrorism
that I doubt we would be willing to do that with simply because we
want these people off the street. We don't want them out committing
other terrorist acts.
Thank you.
(end transcript)
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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