Tonight at 9:00 EDT, National Geographic will present its new documentary, "Exporer: Inside Guantanamo," a two-hour presentation filmed during three weeks at the prison during August, 2008, provided to me for review. The access National Geographic received was unprecedented. That access, and the politics behind that decision, seem to color the documentary to a degree. Nonetheless, it remains the most comprehensive--and only--documentary from the inside.
To expand on the politics issue a bit: Guantanamo was the focus of much of the presidential campaign, with even McCain arguing that it should be closed. The defense and intelligence communities kicked into high gear to maintain Bush policies and to keep Guantanamo open. It's hard not to imagine that a 2008 decision by the Pentagon to allow a National Geographic crew into Guantanamo--the first time any such access has been allowed--wasn't at least partially politically motivated and that there wasn't a PR motive involved.
That's reflected, to a degree, in the restrictions placed on the crew. All footage had to be cleared by Guantanamo commanders. One-on-one access to detainees was prohibited--all contact with them had to be in the presence of guards, and the identities of the detainees protected. All of those restrictions are understandable, even defendable. But they still have the effect of limiting much of what's seen, because the primary lens is that of the guards.
From that perspective, this is a valuable record. The pressures that these young men and women are under are unbelievably intense, that much is clear from the documentary. Having their day-to-day life documented has some value, as long as the viewer keeps firmly in mind that we're not seeing the full picture of life at Guantanamo. The presence of the camera changes interaction, and much interaction was kept off limits, although one controversial issue does make it on to the screen, that of guards and medical staff preparing to force feed a hunger-striking detainee.
The producers also made a the effort to travel to Great Britain and Afghanistan to talk to former detainees, to get as much of the story as they could from them. Likewise, pro-Guantanamo defense officials are countered by the defense and civilian attorneys who have fought so hard for seven years to see justice done.
But that leads to a bit of a frustrating "he said, she said" element to the documentary, in the face of certain facts we know to be true. One of the constant themes running through the documentary is the threat to the nation terrorism poses--a very real threat, but one that has been used excessively by the prior administration to justify their extraordinary, and extralegal, actions. The backdrop of 9/11 is obviously integral to the story. But at many points in which the excesses of the Bush administration are presented, they are punctuated by a shot of the World Trade Center burning. When a defense attorney discusses any of the three Supreme Court decisions (Rasul, Hamdan, Boumedienne) that struck down administration policies stripping the detainees of legal protections, the producers cut in a snippet of one of Bush's belligerent speeches about smoking out the enemy, about the "worst of the worst" at Guantanamo.
The producers are careful to provide both sides, but ultimately Guantanamo isn't a "both sides" kind of story. We know that torture happened at Guantanamo. We know that many of the detainees, particularly the first few hundred that were sent there, were not the "worst of the worst," but ended up there as a result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Thus, Guantanamo defenders are often allowed to forward arguments that we know objectively are false. While they are countered by some of the oppositional voices in the piece, they are not countered by the authoritative voice of Peter Coyote, the program's narrator.
To further my ambivalence about this documentary, National Geographic hosted a panel discussion of participants in the documentary, moderated by Chris Wallace, of all people. It's worth watching that discussion because of the strong presentations by two eloquent Guantanamo opponents--Alberto Mora, Former General Counsel of the U.S. Navy and Sarah Havens, a defense attorney for current detainees.
Admittedly, I am incapable of being an objective observer on the subject of Guantanamo. That comes in part because of the real effort afoot by the defense and intelligence community to undermine Obama's effort to close the prison. Many of the participants in this documentary, and in the follow-up panel discussion, are active in that effort. Thus, the political calculations that allowed for this documentary to be made in the first place, and the political environment in which it is appearing, have to be considered in viewing it.
But Guantanamo isn't an issue that calls for objectivity in many ways. Yes, we need to recognize that there are some dangerous terrorists held there, that there is a security risk for the guards. But those who argue for the closing of Guantanamo aren't asking for all of these men to be set free, we're asking for justice to finally be done for them after all these years--the innocent and the guilty.
This documentary is definitely worth watching to get an inside view of this place that has come to represent the worst of what America can be. It's worth watching to see that, in individual actions by many of the Americans stationed at Guantanamo and the lawyers that have fought for the rule of law, also represent the best of what America can be. It's a worthy, although imperfect, effort in providing more documentation about this shameful period of American history.
But it should be taken together with documents like those that the Seton Hall Law School have compiled, the ICRC report on torture, and careful investigative records like Karen Greenberg's The Least Worst Place, which I reviewed earlier. Ms. Greenberg participated in the discussion of that review.