Fixing Hell Read online

  Almost in a sprint, Major Leso left my office and busied himself with getting to Texas. After he left my office, my phone rang. It was Colonel Ed Cooper, the chief psychologist of the Army. Chief psychologists were known for how they could sell snow to Eskimos, and on this occasion, I was the Eskimo. Colonel Cooper was encouraging me to remain at Walter Reed and replace him because he was ready to retire. I was quite flattered, but I had to laugh.

  “Ed, there’s no way in hell I’m going to stay at Walter Reed and be psychologist of the Army,” I said. “I’m tired, my wife is tired, and we just want to go home to Hawaii and be with our granddaughter. I’m supposed to head home in about six months.”

  Colonel Cooper laughed and said he couldn’t blame me, that he just had to try to make his exit smoother by finding a good replacement. “Hell, I’d get myself reassigned to Hawaii if I could,” he said.

  Major Leso soon left for his brief training assignment with the 85th CSC in Texas. He hadn’t even been gone for four days when I received a call from the commanding officer of the 85th informing me that the unit had received its orders to deploy to Cuba. The unit would be providing mental health services to the soldiers and enemy combatants being held at the prison on the American base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Known as “Gitmo” from its military abbreviation GTMO, this Cuban base was a strategic stronghold in one of the last Communist dictatorships still on earth, and in recent years it had been used to house terrorist prisoners captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

  Located in the southeastern part of Cuba, Gitmo had an interesting history. Beginning in 1903 the U.S. military leased it from the Cuban government. Prior to the global war on terror most Americans had never even heard of it. Those who did know of this faraway place recalled that it was used as the transient facility for the Cuban and Haitian flotillas in the 1980s and 1990s. Until we began bringing in the Afghan terrorists most high-ranking officials wanted the base at Gitmo closed because it had no real purpose. Then we needed a place in a real hurry to put the detainees from the war with Afghanistan. Suddenly Gitmo became the epicenter for the growing debate over the human rights of detainees in the war on terror.

  Although apologetic about the bind she was putting me in, the commander of the 85th nonetheless requested that Major Leso be allowed to deploy to Cuba as part of her unit. Not surprisingly, she saw him as an outstanding young officer and thought he would be a significant asset for their unit in Cuba. I hesitated before replying, because I knew the 85th’s reputation included many problems that are common to combat stress control companies. The biggest problem was that CSC units had psychiatrists or psychologists as their commanding officers, and most psychologists, social workers, nurses, and psychiatrists didn’t make good field commanders. They had an unrelenting need to be liked, which often got in the way of a successful military command. Most mental health military officers had no real formal training to be military unit field commanders, and they were usually very bad at this endeavor. So she needed Major Leso not just for his capabilities as a psychologist but also for what he could bring to the unit as a capable military officer. Saying yes would create problems on my end, but there was only one right answer. This unit was going into the field and they needed my officer, so I had to allow Major Leso to deploy. I could hear the relief in the commanding officer’s voice when I said yes.

  Major Leso was given some leave from his temporary duties at Fort Hood and he returned to my office at Walter Reed posthaste to pack up his furniture and belongings. He was very apologetic.

  “Colonel James, sir, you were correct,” he told me. “It looks like I’m going to deploy and I won’t be able to be the director of training this coming year.”

  I told him not to worry. “We’ll figure out a way to get it all done,” I said. “Go on down to Cuba and perform your duties like I know you will, soldier. I’ll see you in about six months or so.”

  Major Leso had no idea, nor did I at that time, that his future, my future, and the shape and direction of the profession of psychology would never be the same.

  Major Leso assumed, given the typical clinical mission of the 85th, that he would work as a clinical psychologist for the next six months down in Cuba—much longer than he had planned to be with the unit, but not all that long for a deployment. He did not know that by the time he departed for Cuba, hell had already begun to engulf the Joint Task Force in Gitmo, and it was waiting to swallow the life and soul of this young, brilliant Army psychologist. His world would be irrevocably altered.

  The problems at Gitmo all related to the unusual command structure. Gitmo had a two-star general and a one-star general who did not see eye to eye. In a typical military command, the senior ranking officer, in this case the two-star general, would be in charge of everything. Not at Gitmo. In the haste to prepare for war after 9/11, the command there was thrown together with the already existing Navy personnel at the base, a blend of some active-duty Army staff, and many Army reservists and National Guard troops. At this very early stage in the war, many of these reservists had never deployed and had little experience. Their inexperience was compounded by the two-star general not being in charge of all the staff at Gitmo. The one-star general felt that he did not work for the two-star general and that the two-star couldn’t tell him what to do. This divisiveness hurt morale and got in the way of the troops accomplishing the mission. It would be like the CEO of any American company not having control over all of his or her employees. In any well-functioning military command, one person and only one person has complete control and veto authority over everything—the commanding general. The lack of a clear chain of command at Gitmo left most soldiers asking, “Who’s in charge here?” This sentiment would not be found on any other active-duty Army post anywhere else in the world. Problems between these two generals flowed downhill to affect the mission and every soldier in the whole task force.

  Unknown to Leso while he was en route to Joint Task Force Guantanamo, the pressures were mounting on the military to collect “actionable” intelligence that could yield quick results. The top brass wanted intel that would save lives on the battlefield, and units from halfway around the world were delivering plenty of prisoners to Gitmo that looked like hot prospects. But so far, efforts at interrogating these terrorists were not going well. The Army did not have many seasoned old crusty warrant-officer interrogators left. Most of the interrogators from the Vietnam era, those with enough experience to produce good results, were either retired or dead. The majority of interrogators were very young, inexperienced, and did not have the ability to extract accurate and reliable actionable intelligence from the prisoners. Seeing little results from the inexperienced interrogators, the commanding general, Major General John McKipperman, brought a group of former CIA contract psychologists to Cuba—a few months before Major Leso’s assignment—to teach the interrogators harsh and abusive interrogation tactics. The goal was to get the detainees to talk—quickly. Results were marginal, but by the time Leso arrived a culture of severe tactics had taken hold as the norm for much of the Joint Intelligence Group at Gitmo. The bar for what might be considered abusive was raised higher and higher, and the leaders at the base turned their backs on conduct that was, at a minimum, questionable. The interrogators learned that they could try pretty much whatever they wanted to get the prisoner to talk, and a lack of good information often just spurred them to attempt something more extreme.

  Major Leso jumped right into his role as a clinical psychologist with the 85th CSC in Cuba, seeing patients immediately and maintaining optimism about his deployment. In less than a month, though, his assignment changed drastically. He was removed from his clinical duties and reassigned to work with the Intelligence Control Element section of the Joint Intelligence Group. The commanding general realized that there were problems with the intel unit’s productivity, cohesion, and focus, so he directed Major Leso to assist with improving the unit’s interrogations. Major Leso’s concern was that he had never been trained to
perform these duties, had no real strong in-depth forensic background, and had never consulted or received extensive training with police detectives in his doctoral work. The task force surgeon, the chief doctor of the task force and Leso’s superior at the time, expressed concern about putting him in this position, but the general insisted. This was the moment when a bright, promising young officer’s future was stolen. Within a matter of days, he was reassigned from his clinical duties as a doctor, helping soldiers cope with the stresses of working at Gitmo and being away from home, to advising interrogators on how to interrogate prisoners.

  In August 2002, I got a phone call from John Leso. I knew immediately that something was wrong and this was not the same eager young man I had last seen in my office. I was shocked at the voice I heard on the line. I could hear and almost feel the anxiety, hopelessness, uncertainty, and terror in his voice. He briefed me on what had transpired and his new mission and told me how uncomfortable he was in his new role. I told him that I would consult Colonel Morgan Banks down at the Fort Bragg Special Operations Command to see if Major Leso could be reassigned. Colonel Banks oversaw all psychologists working in the special operations community, and now Major Leso had become a part of that community, involuntarily, overnight, and without the proper training.

  When I spoke with Colonel Banks, we agreed that we had grave concerns about Leso’s lack of preparation for his new role, but we also saw this as an opportunity for psychologists to do the right thing and influence the interrogation process, assuming we could get Major Leso the appropriate training. Colonel Banks and I agreed that the right thing to do was to bring Leso to Fort Bragg as soon as possible and provide him training so that he could help what was rapidly starting to look like a sinking ship at Cuba. During the week of September 16, 2002, Leso was sent to Fort Bragg for briefing on the appropriate and inappropriate behaviors, the rules of engagement, what was legal and not legal, and, most importantly, the Geneva Conventions. Colonel Banks emphasized to Major Leso that it was imperative for him to teach interrogators how to treat all prisoners with decency and respect and how to use incentive-based interviews rather than harsh interrogation tactics. This was the first training of its kind in the country, to teach psychologists how to ethically work with interrogators, and I hoped it would give Major Leso more confidence in his ability to contribute in a meaningful way as a psychologist, rather than feeling that he had been thrown into a role wholly inconsistent with his background.

  Meanwhile I still had to run my department. With Leso deployed to Cuba for a six-month assignment, he would be away from Walter Reed from approximately June to December 2002. Given that Cuba was in the Atlantic region of the country, this new deployment would be an ongoing responsibility of my psychology department at Walter Reed. So in addition to getting by without Major Leso while he was in Cuba, I also had to begin searching for a suitable replacement, most likely from within my department, for when Leso returned from Cuba. And I had to get moving on it because Leso’s six-month tour of duty was going to go by fast, at least for me.

  Indeed, it seemed as though September and October 2002 passed in a flash. My wife and I began the exciting process of planning our return to Hawaii around September 2003. Thinking about the freshness of Hawaii, the joy of being around our granddaughter, and the pleasantries of visiting with old friends served as a respite from the tragedy of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, any leftover problems from 9/11, and the daily grind at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In the first week of October my phone rang, and it was Colonel Cooper. He began emphasizing the importance of coming up with a suitable replacement for Major Leso, whom, it was clear, would be another psychologist from my department.

  I told Ed I would make it happen, confident because I had a hard-charging young officer who was at my door every day eager to take the assignment. I had complete trust and faith in him. But then he found out that he had a serious medical condition that would prevent his deployment. There were two more officers I might send, but neither was a promising choice. One was a young female captain who had a six-month-old baby at home. The other was the oldest psychologist in the Army and his wife had just completed a round of chemotherapy. I considered every possible solution, but in the end it was clear that there was only one right answer. I would have to deploy to Cuba and replace Major Leso myself. Colonel Cooper and Colonel Banks agreed that this was the right course of action, particularly because things were getting worse down there. Gitmo needed an experienced senior Army psychologist with a significant background in correctional and forensic psychology. Once the matter was settled, I started making arrangements to go down to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and receive many classified briefings and review relevant documents.

  I was less than thrilled about going to Cuba instead of Hawaii, and I knew my wife wouldn’t be happy either. But when I informed her of my pending deployment she was undaunted. With approximately six years in the Navy prior to transferring over to the Army, we were veterans of many deployments. We both felt that a six-month deployment was a long weekend as deployments go. No sweat, we thought. Six months in Cuba and then back to our plan to go home to Hawaii.

  The remainder of October and November 2002 continued to fly by like a runaway freight train going downhill. I occupied myself with making sure that I was in the best physical shape of my life and reading everything that I could read about the new mission at Joint Task Force Guantanamo.

  In the first week of January 2003 I boarded a civilian plane out of Baltimore-Washington International Airport and headed south for the Combat Redeployment Center, which was a training and mobilization center down at Fort Benning, Georgia. My civilian plane from Baltimore arrived at 7 p.m. at the Columbus, Georgia, airport. I got my bags, then sat on a huge bus with what seemed like three hundred soldiers. Why do soldiers need so many goddamn bags, I thought as I sat crammed on this unheated bus on a cold Georgia night. It seemed that these soldiers had a thousand suitcases and duffel bags on a bus that was designed to seat thirty or forty people. We waited for three hours until every seat on the bus was filled because the contract driver, Mr. Pete, was getting paid by the head and did not want to go back to Fort Benning with seats unfilled. Finally, Mr. Pete started the bus and we arrived at Fort Benning, about two hours south of Atlanta, late on a Sunday night. It was dark, cold, raining, and we were met by a first sergeant who seemed angry at the world but toned down the vitriol when he saw a colonel standing in front of him. He showed me to my barracks, wanting to provide me with a finer touch because of my rank. He thought that somehow, if he assigned me to a single room that night, I would overlook this dump of a barracks. It didn’t work.

  My barracks room had holes in the walls, broken windows, and water dripping from the ceiling. The shower facilities were filthy. I was simply appalled that we had young soldiers going to—and more importantly, returning from—a combat zone living in these barracks. I looked around and thought I wouldn’t want to let a cat or dog live in this building for fear of it being eaten by a rat. I called the concierge over and told him so.

  “First Sergeant, these berths are unfit for human habitation!” I barked at him.

  He was unimpressed with my opinion and my attitude on this late Sunday night in Georgia. “It’s what we got, sir.” And with that he went away to yell some more at the other soldiers grousing about their accommodations.

  I stayed in the barracks for about three of the ten days I was scheduled to be at Fort Benning. After that, I just couldn’t take it anymore. The mixture of alcohol, women, and young soldiers filled with testosterone at this remote part of the post was a bad combination. I would be awakened in the night by brawls, women screaming, and the sound of beer bottles breaking. On the third night of my stay I was given a roommate, a lieutenant colonel who farted louder than the detonation of any hand grenade I had ever heard. His snoring could have competed with the sound of an Amtrak train struggling to make up time in the snow. That next morning, I found my way to the first sergeant’
s office and saw that his mood was still as foul as mine.

  “First Sergeant, I’ll be back in formation at 0500, but I’m not going to spend another night in this roach motel,” I told him. He mumbled a “yes sir” without hardly looking at me, but I suspect he said more to my back as I walked out. I spent the remaining nights basking in the luxury of the local Motel 6. I could at least get to sleep.

  The next morning, I was in formation at 5 a.m. with about five hundred other soldiers who were all freezing their asses off. I, on the other hand, was not. I had learned nearly twenty years ago never to deploy anywhere in the world without long underwear. It doesn’t matter if they tell you you’re going to Hot As Hell, Texas, or an expedition to the sun, take some long underwear because it’s going to be cold at night. The first sergeant barked out instructions and told us the plan of the day, adding comments that indicated to this experienced psychologist that he was either seriously delusional or just enjoyed messing with us.

  “And to anyone who wants to come to me with some bullshit complaints about your barracks, just do yourself a favor and keep it to yourself,” he yelled. “The accommodations here at Fort Benning are top-notch, five-star housing and damn near luxurious. So I’m not interested in your complaining.”

  We crammed on the bus and spent the rest of our six days getting equipment, shots, and disrobing in a room filled with thirty of my closest friends who I had just met. Of course, a variety of more medical exams, more shots, getting more equipment, going to more meetings and more briefings were to follow. On the tenth day, I was scheduled to fly out of Fort Benning, down to the naval air station in Jacksonville, Florida. There, I would board a military-chartered Continental Airlines 737 to Cuba.

  About two hundred or so passengers boarded the 737 that morning for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As we reached Cuba and flew over the Caribbean island, I couldn’t help but notice the beauty of the place. The coral reefs were mesmerizing, with a bluish, turquoise water similar to Maui, Hawaii. Upon landing I was quickly escorted through the in-processing—my rank usually got me the fast-lane treatment in these situations—and given my badge. I was officially part of the staff at Gitmo.