Testimony of a Female Second Lieutenant

This is an excerpt from a summary of an interview that took place on 23 March 2005 at Moon Hall, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The summary was released by the US Government on 15 June 2006 under a FOIA request by the ACLU, who made it public on June 19, 2006.

I was stationed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (GTMO) from 14 February 2003 to 22 November 2003. At the time I was assigned to/working for the Interrogation Control Element (ICE) as the NCOIC of the Gulf States Team and later an interrogator for the Special Projects Team.

During the course of the interview I was asked about what I knew about detainee abuse at Guantanamo. I was specifically asked about the following acts: Inappropriate use of military working dogs, inappropriate use of duct tape, impersonation of or interference with FBI agents, inappropriate use of loud music and/or yelling, sleep deprivation, short-shackling, inappropriate use of extreme temperatures during interrogation, and inappropriate use of sexual tension as an interrogation technique, to include lap dances and simulated menstrual fluids.

I have personal knowledge of the following:

I graduated from the 97E course at Fort Huachuca in 1992. Prior to deploying to JTF-GTMO, I completed a three-week "refresher course" at Fort Huachuca called "Tiger Team University." Tiger Team University was split into two phases. The first phase, which was one week long, provided an overview of the Arabic culture and the Islamic terrorist network. The second phase, which lasted two weeks, was intended to provided [sic] the interrogators with specific scenarios and reinforce the approaches that were both approved and successful JTF-GTMO. Several of the instructors at Tiger Team University had personal experience interrogating detainees at JTF-GTMO.

I heard about the use of female interrogators encroaching on a detainee's personal space while attending Tiger Team University. A former JTF-GTMO instructor described how a "SGT [REDACTED] used her gender, being female, as an asset during interrogation sessions with a high value detainee. The instructor described how [REDACTED] touched a detainee in the shoulder and knee, leaned in close to the detainee's face, and whispered comments or questions in his ear.

I am aware of an interrogator impersonating an FBI agent. [REDACTED]

Yelling and loud music were both utilized in interrogations. [REDACTED] I wouldn't characterize the music as "loud." There was a policy that music used in interrogations couldn't hurt the detainee's hears [sic]. Yelling was a technique used in implementing the "Fear Up Harsh" approach. The use of yelling was taught during the basic 97E course at Fort Huachuca.

I did not observe sleep deprivation used by interrogators. When I first arrived in GTMO, the standing rule was a detainee couldn't be interrogated for "more than 20 hours in a row." MG [text ends abruptly here] (Enclosures to the Schmidt-Furlow Report (Part 1), p. 843).

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