Guest Post: Day at the Beach [Part 6]

FBI Emblem by cliff1066™

We recently opened YouServed.com for contributions from all Military members and Veterans. SGT Hovertank, a nine-year Army Reserve Veteran and now a VA Mortgage Center.com Loan Officer, is our first taker.

Each week we post a new part of his article, “Day at the Beach,” recounting the Sergeant’s first-hand stories and observations from GTMO. Read parts 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5 of the series.

This week: Detainee processing and an influx of intelligence agencies

To aggravate the situation in Guantanamo we had no computers. Everything was done in black ink on yellow legal pads. It was a nightmare. Each detainee was delivered to us with a dossier created by the MP’s in Afghanistan. All of the possessions they were captured with were placed in a zip-lock bag whose contents almost never matched the inventory sheet attached. Each folder included a couple of sheets with a biography that could have been written by an 8 year-old and a lock of the detainee’s hair for future DNA purposes. The new biographies generated by the in-processing sessions were added to each detainees file and we assigned each a priority for follow up interviews.

Our first brush with notoriety came early in the second week. SPC Marty Bear and I were handling the dossiers for that evening’s in coming delivery of detainees. It was well past midnight and Marty Bear was looking concerned, “Umm, you better look at this Hover.”

He had been thumbing through the pages of a daybook taken from a detainee and found what appeared to be chemical symbols and a schematic. Having barely completed Chemistry 110 in college myself and having only rudimentary knowledge of chemical weapons I still agreed we were looking at the symbols for some dangerous compounds. We immediately went to the phones and that particular detainee was never in processed at GTMO.

From the beginning, the members of the fledgling task force had the distinct feeling that we were a part of something bigger than we had ever seen before. The feelings only got stronger when the alphabet agencies began showing up in force. The first to arrive was NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigation Service) and then CID (Army Criminal Investigation Division.) Next we welcomed the CIA. Because of the compartmentalization of intelligence services imposed largely by the Clinton Administration the CIA had to come disguised as the CTC. That was a neat trick I learned also. Rest assured, just because some pencil necked bureaucrat makes an arbitrary rule; does not mean anyone in the intelligence community intends to follow it. Then not to be outdone the FBI rolled in.

I got a bad tasted in my mouth for the FBI right off that bat.

Up to this point, if we didn’t have access to the liberated flatbed we were thumbing rides off of the Jamaicans who staffed most of the base’s civilian facilities. It really was a neat little community. We learned upon arrival that because of the scarcity of automobiles everyone helped each other out with rides. It was considered extremely rude to pass a pedestrian with empty seats in your vehicle and not offer them a ride. We all benefited from the system. By the end of the first month JTF-170 consisted of about 30 individuals sharing 3 Dodge Dynasty’s and the (still) stolen truck. The FBI arrived with two brand new, jet black, pimped out, 7 passenger hummers. Though there were only four agents total, they never saw fit to give anyone a ride anywhere.

Countless times during our deployment, military intelligence personnel with enormous help from the CIA made ground-breaking discoveries. It never failed, however, that a FBI Agent dressed like Magnum PI on safari would arrive after the fact. They’d write their own report on our findings and then that night on CNN we’d have to watch our work reported as an FBI breakthrough. The CIA, NIMA, DIA and NSA were constantly sharing resources with the military and receiving little or no credit. The FBI on the other hand contributed little and got a footnote every time they took a piss break between SCUBA diving sessions. You always knew when you saw them too. They evidently were all given a gift card to the GAP upon assignment. Every time I saw a self-important douche bag in khaki cargo pants, Oakley’s, and a black polo I felt an overwhelming urge to stuff a banana rat in their pants.

Next week: Aggressive Cuban wildlife.