abuse and other violations of human rights that so tarnished this country's reputation. what we wanted to do through the book was to make clear that guantanamo wasn't just about legal battles. of course, it was about these landmark legal battles that have been fought, that have been brought by the lawyers on behalf of their clients to challenge the prison beyond the law. guantanamo is about more than that, though. it's about the stories. and i think the stories is the key here. what we've tried to do through the contribution of more than 100 of the lawyers who have worked on these cases. lawyers from all walks of life. large law firms, small law firms, public interestbg>ñ organizations, federal defenders offices is to bring to light the stories of the detainees and the stories of the abuses of guantanamo. because in the end it's not only about the legal battles.

it's also about changing the narrative, changing the discourse and changing the understanding about what guantanamo was and why guantanamo was a human rights catastrophe and a disaster for this nation. what we did was we organized these stories to try to give the reader a depiction of what it was like to represent detainees from the moww>ñ you accepted a case to traveling down to the base at guantanamo to dealing with all of the bureaucratic hurdles that you had to get through to litigating in court, to litigating out of court and to finally trying to obtain the 4jdtqi p'd also to give ther give voice to the story of the detainees. who have been silent for so initially by and primarily by being held in communicado for more than two years the world didn't even know who was held at guantanamo. the names were secret.

it was done -- it was a secret prison in effect at this u.s.-run naval base. so we wanted to give voice to the stories of the detainees and the numerous contributions in the book do that. they bring it out in all of the horror, the suffering, the trials, the torture, the abuse that the detainees went through and the sense of hope in the enduring human spirit and the humor that's gone on at guantanamo and the sense of hope that the detainees -- or many of the detainees have been able to maintain. in addition to telling the stories, we want to preserve the stories. guantanamo is not over. there are more than 200 individuals who are being detained there now still without trial. finally getting a chance to fight their cases, though, in court. but guantanamoov' is also going

be something that's remembered, something that's studied, something that's talked about for generations. and it was very important to mark and me and to our contributors and for all those who have been involved that the truth be made clear. that the truth be preserved. and that we not forget what was done by the united states at guantanamo holding people in arbitrary detention and subjecting them to abuse for so long and all the lies and distortions that surround the prison. u to tell the truth and tell the stories both now and to preserve those stories for the future. in addition to the book, we have also set up an archive, the guantanamo bay detention archive in connection with nyu's library and seaton hall law school which the book in a sense is the beginning. and through the archive we're

going to continue this important process of preserving, preserving the records of guantanamo, preserving the stories so that it will always be there and people will not be able to minimize, distort or alter the truth of what happened doct during these last eight years in guantanamo. finally, i want to say that in this day and age and specially in the area of counterterrorism lawyers have been vilified. you have individuals like john, for example, who used the law as a tool for justifying torture and illegality. and you really have a story of the evil that can be perpetrated under the cloak of law. what i hope comes through here, though, through the lawyers who

have given so much of their time to the cause and to fighting the detentions at guantanamo and who have also given their stories is a sense of the possible redemptive power of the law and the ability to struggle against and sometimes succeed in overcoming injustice. i want to turn it over now to my coeditor, mark denbeaux, who will get it going for tonight. >> thank you very much, jonathan. before i begin, i want to thank some other people. this book is here because new york university press was willing to take a chance on something that had periods of time when it looked like chaos with no hope of order and no opportunity i to collect and organize. our editor explained to us once, she'd never seen a case where people would take thousands of pages, edit them, put them into

a narrative, work out a narrative structure and fit them together. and that happened. not so much -- not just by jonathan and myself. and one of the two of us it was more jonathan than me to begin with but we had four law students who are mentioned in the book as coeditors. they spent thousands of hours trying to figure out how to fit one story in with another. if you look at it, you'll find some stories are done in three places. 'cause we didn't want a collection of essays of people explaining their entire experience starting at the beginning and going through till the end. so what our goal was to present guantanamo through the eyes of the lawyers as reporters. and the stories of the detainees as reported by the only people who were the primary source, first person accounts of what they were told and what they saw. now, the reason that we decided

to do this actually came about with the conversation that jonathan and i were having a few years ago, a question is how would history look at guantanamo? and it dawned on us almost at the same time that it was really likely history would say, well, guantanamo wasn't very good. it was a public relations embarrassment. they had some really bad people there. luckily guantanamo kept the bad people from hurting us. sure, a few people were kept there too long but justice prevailed and justice triumphed and i think that was very painful for almost any lawyer involved to simply cauterize this past and try to cover it over. sometimes it's necessary just to expose what happened. and what we have here is the first beginning. and it's only the beginning. you might want to know that i don't know if we've made that fully clear. the excerpts from the pieces to tell the story, the entire pieces, every one of them, which is many times more than the book

are a part of an electronic archive that's available through the nyu press so anybody who wants to see the entire unedited piece of every person's story can do so. and that, of course, was the first step on the goal of making sure the history of guantanamo is accurately and fully reported with all of the pictures there. you because the next campaign is to make sure that every document from guantanamo is not destroyed. the aclu, nyu and i think yale are now working to putting together to keep the government from destroying the records that are there. we have delicate problems with the attorneys getting their notes because there are questions of attorney/client confidences but we are going to preserve this so that for decades people will be able to look and actually see the notes people took while they're interviewing their detainees page after page after page over and over and over. over six and seven years and

they're quite compelling and quite gripping. it's an spewing thing about the role of the lawyers here. we have lawyers who are incredibly important to the process who felt they didn't want this to be the lawyers' stories. while they're proud of the law and the role the law played in developing this, they didn't think the issue was glorifying lawyers. the issue was how to get the word out and there are stories we still do not have from people who have incredibly important roles just because they didn't want to participate in a way that would seek to deplorefy the law. i think the lawyers have done a wonderful job but this book is not intended to glorify the lawyers. and our feeling was that often in history events happen that they don't know is important at the time. looking back, oh, that was important.

and often the events involved people who were not very verbal and not very literate. you can think of the issues in the south in the '60s when there were many people who had many important stories. no one even knew whether they would be significant and what had happened and they are lost. now we only know about selma, alabama, from the stories of important, heroic people who were there and from some legal cases and legal briefs but nobody knows actually the story of the residents of selma and the county. our feeling was if we could preserve this starting with this book, then these'ñs electronic archives and then moving on spoke the protection of the rest, we will all know because the one thing the lawyers do know is they knew it was important. they are verbal. they are literate and they are articulate and as you are about to see, they can tell very low key but nonetheless important stories. and so what we're going to do now is have some of the lawyers who have contributed to the book

read the excerpts they selected and i'm going to start, i think, with -- i want to make sure i get all the facts right but we're asking that michael ratner of the center of constitutional rights which has been organizing and coordinating this entire venture. there's no lawyer working in guantanamo who haven't been coordinating through the operation of the center. and michael, i'll ask you to do the first reading. [inaudible] >> yes, i say. >> i've been introduced. i'm michael ratner and in thinking about the readings as well as what mark said about lawyers, i want to just tell a story about a sociologist who came to the center the other day and he was doing a story of lawyers having created a movement, in fact, and the center of lawyers, myself included -- we were raised to represent other people and other movements and we didn't think of

ourselves as actually creating a movement but in this case i think it's accurate to say that the 6 or 700 lawyers who wound up representing guantanamo detainees really created a movement to close guantanamo and arbitrary detention and the effects are still not all in but moving along. anyway, i've chosen three or four short excerpts from the book. mark began with me because the cases really began out of the center for constitutional rights. so the first one is november 14th. and the chapter is titled michael ratner, guantanamo the ninth circuit of hell. on november fourteenth, 2001, awoke in the paper that president bush had issued a military order for the detention and trial of noncitizens in the war on terrorism. as president of the center for constitutional rights i recall my shock. i remember thinking that there had been a cuda-at that in the

united states. -- coup d'etat in the united states. but a watershed memo for me in our country in a country that has some semblance of a democracy that presidential authority was under law. the next excerpt concerns what happened at the center when i and a couple of others decided we would represent the first people taken spoke custody under the military order. the november 13th order pushed ccr into action. it was this document that made us begin the historic fight for the rights of those who a few months later would be imprisoned at guantanamo. it was not automatic that ccr would take on the cases of those jailed under this order. and it was not immediately clear that those cases -- what those cases would be about.

at first most of the focuses of ccr, the media and the experts was on the draconian ad hoc provisions and the aspects of the president's order. few of us paid much attention to its indefinite detention aspects. we began a discussion about representing the first people detained or tried under the order. it was not the easiest of discussions. our office in manhattan is close to the world trade center. i had actually witnessed the attacks. for months new york was like a massive funeral. we were all frightened. the anthrax scare came immediately on the heels of the attacks. did we really want to be representing those who may have been directly involved? some of us were uncomfortable doing so. others were worried about funding as ccr depends on private donations and foundations. would it be personally dangerous to represent those accused of the attacks? of course, it was possible that those accused were innocent. but at the time we took the cases we had to assume our clients might not be.

we decided that the military order was so contrary to law and represented such a threat to fundamental liberties that we needed to challenge it particularly its denial of habeas corpus. once we made the commitment to challenge the november 13th order, we went public with our decision and as a means of putting the administration on notice that its overreaching would not go unchallenged and to encourage those critics who might be more timid to fight back. our next step was to try and round up a legal team for what we saw would be major cases. we found some attorneys from the law firm sherman & sterling. we had difficulty finding others to work for the possible case for the reasons i mentioned fear of the public reaction, loss of financial support, and the creation of bad precedent. however, by this time, early december, 2001, we'd attracted some lawyers from outside ccr. i do not know all their motivations but the fact that their experience was in the areas of death penalty and habeas corpus litigation is a clue to their interests.

the earliest members of the team was joe, a civil rights and death penalty lawyer and collide smith from new orleans. eric friedman an expert from hofstra and we remained deeply involved with these cases. the next excerpt is on the fact at this point we've decided to take the cases but, of course, we had no clients. of course, we had no clients. but we did not need to wait long. on december 13th, 2001, it was announced that david hicks, australian was captured by the northern alliance and turned over to the united states. a few days later, it was revealed that the united states would be using guantanamo as its offshore prison where presumably hicks would be sent and where he could remain forever without any court hearing or access to a lawyer. he was detained solely because the president thought he should be detained. it was in the newspapers that i found the name of hicks' lawyer,

steven kenny, in us a a trailia. -- australia. and i found the lawyer for hicks' father as he could have no contact with his family or lawyers. i called kenny immediately. we began the discussion of our representation of david hicks and after a week or so, it was agreed. ccr and the lawyers we were working with would file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus on david hicks' behalf. , however, david hicks would not know about our lawsuit nor would we be able to consult with him. all communications with hicks were barred, whether from kenny, us or his parents. we would file the habeas case as hicks' next friend a provision in u.s. law that allows close relatives or others to act on behalf of those who cannot act themselves. traditionally this device had been used only for people who were mentally incompetent or physically incapacitated. here it was used because the prisoners were being held in communicado. the next excerpt is when i

talked briefly about what i call guantanamo one. i was quite shocked that the united states was planning to use guantanamo as its offshore prison again. i say again because i had been one of the attorneys who had worked on an earlier guantanamo case. when the administration of george h.w. bush and bill clinton had used the military base as an offshore refugee camp for haitians who were entitled to asylum in the united states but who were prohibited from entering the country because they were hiv positive. i learned the important lessons -- i learned important lessons from that litigation. first i learned guantanamo was a really bad place to be imprisoned. i compared the camp to dante's ninth circle of hell with its extreme heat, barbed wire, scorp uns hard ground, arbitrary beatingings hunger strikes and appalling detention facilities. the two prior administrations had argued and somewhat successfully that guantanamo was a law-free scone.

that the refugees were not protected by the constitution and that no court could protect their rights. as a last short excerpt, within a couple of weeks we realized that the chances for getting relief in u.s. courts was going to be difficult and take many years. so we filed with the inter-american commission on human rights within two or three weeks of representing david hicks and others. by march of 2002, the inter-american commissioned come down with an order that is still relevant today. the commission stated, a competent court or tribunal as opposed to to a political authority must be charged with the legal status and rights of persons falling under the authority and control of a state. to the contrary, the information available suggested that the detainees remain entirely at the unfettered discretion of the united states government. on this basis, the commission

hereby requests that the united states take the urgent measures necessary to have the legal status of the detainees at guantanamo bay determined by a competent tribunal. we're still in that process some eight years later. thank you. [inaudible] >> thanks. i represented a man, a german national of turkish ancestry who at age 19 was picked up riding a civilian bus in pakistan by pakistani police. turned over to u.s. military authorities for what we later learned was you a $5,000 bounty and that's what began his ordeal which ended finally on august

24th, 2006, when he was released. in the end, ultimately for like so many of the detainees simply being at the wrong place at the wrong time. so i'm going to read sort of two excerpts. one about my first meeting with him and then about the day of his release. the first is entitled shipwrecked. i first saw him on a tv screen. before my initial meeting with him in october, 2004, u.s. military police scoured me. -- escorted me. the third lawyer to enter the camp echo through several 15-foot high lock gates leading into the guards booth into the world's more notorious prison. on my way to the booth walking across gravel made bright white by the caribbean sun. my status of the civilian, clean shaven was punk waited of practice machine gunfire in the distance. the military showed me the surveillance they would implore

during my otherwise private meeting during my client. he was on a video screen waiting for me. the image was peninsulary like the grainy pictures on a store security camera or late night news broadcast depiction of a wanted menace and it was unsettling. here was a man with a beard befitting a warrior. prior to the 2004 decision in rasul v bush which opened up the camp to lawyers. officials had claimed all the detainees in guantanamo were a sort of maniacally diabolical lot. not only were they trained killers but they had nearly a superhuman ability to, for example, gnaw through the hydraulic lawyers of a c17 transport plane. i was naturally distrustful of these claims but this first image obviously did not advance my skepticism. another military guard carried out what appeared to be his somber duty instructing me to push away from the table in case

the man lunged for my throat. leaving the guard booth we walked toward the structure at camp echo that housed the detainees cells. mindful to stay within the gravel walking lanes manicured by the lowest level military personnel. an impossibly young soldier who had been preparing my client for the visit told me -- he says he doesn't want a translator. i exchange concerned books with be-linda the german translator i brought all the way to translate our interviews. you're sure talking about the correct guy. he doesn't speak english. he speaks it good enough. and he's pretty adamant. since when does he speak english i persisted. the gathered didn't know and neither did his family who cannot communicated with him in the three years since his u.s. detention began. i regretfully sent the translator to the civilian side of guantanamo, prepared to meet him alone. when the door to our meeting room opened he was seated,

squinting with the sunlight. the color designated cooperative or uncooperative just beige. with flowing beard he looked like someone who had within shipwrecked on a desert island which in a sense he was. he shook my hand and motioned for me to sit across from him on the flimsy plastic chair as if he were welcoming me to tea in his home. i tried to sound confident. i'm a lawyer. i do not work for the u.s. government. your family in germany asked me to help you. i handed him a handwritten note from his worried mother to help convince him that i was on his side. this was a considerable concern because in the three years since the only persons he had spoken to were his guards or his interrogators. the simple honesty and loving reassurance of her message still moves me. my dear son, you will be visited by an american lawyer whom you can trust.

your brothers go to school and we have been for a vacation in turkey. we were shopping with his wife and she is loving you. as i watched his pained expression while reading his first message from home, his first taste of humanity in three years, i felt as though i was delivering a crumb of bread to robinson crusoe. that guantanamo had become an international embarrassment and millions in the united states were opposed to it. because he had been held in communicado for almost three years he had no idea anyone even knew of guantanamo's existence. or his existence. i also told them that i was born in egypt. a muslim. and was a law professor with great faith in the american legal system. you have sued president bush, he asked? yes, you and i have sued him and i will do everything i can to help you, i answered. to my considerable relief he said with a heavy germany accident, this is good.

on the second day of my visit, i brought him mcdonald's coffee and a half dozen of packets of sugar to satisfy what i know about the turkish coffee culture as well as an apple pie which he ate for nostalgia for his mother's version. on subsequent visits i became more adventurous what i would bring on our next visits. jolly ranchers, cookies, canned fruit, dried foot, melting mcflurries and even a package of shrimp cocktail. i was shopping for a starving man. i also brought him starbucks but to my surprise he preferred mcdonalds coffee. it's an interesting bit of consumer's trivia an absurdly dark one really when one considers that just about a mile from the strip mall housing those and other fronts of innocent americana there existed a camp housing of fully

constructed project of dehumanization. he asked me about my family, told me about summers in turkey. and engaged in sarcastic and dark humor that i thought i could only find in certain cynical corridors in new york. he dealt with his horrible situation, the endless boredom, the brutal injustice, the aura of forever that hangs over the whole of guantanamo through a rooted and hopeful faith in islam. this he would express to me in meaningful but not preachy manner but to be sure his eye for noticing the absurd was also there. as afternoons wore on on this first trip and subsequent ones, we laughed hilariously about his incompetence of pakistani police. the absurd redundancy of his interrogations, obsessed as they seemed to be with confirming his birth date or the correct spelling of his name. and the sad state of the gitmo menu. once after he wounded a fly hovering around our table with a

coffee stir, we joked that this act of hostility was sure to get him designated as an enemy combatant. we toyed for a while with the image of him being forced to answer to another military tribunal or interrogator for either associating with such a known and sometimes mortal enemy of the united states or for otherwise revealing an obvious propensity for violence and terrorism. during my last visit with him in guantanamo, when his release seemed inevitable, i warned him that the germans might be scared to see him emerge from guantanamo with his enormous beard looking like some kind of mullah. his first reaction was to explain, i don't care. there are good and bad people everywhere. i do this for my religion. they will understand. then with a quick smile he asked, if they are so afraid of men with beards, why don't they call santa claus a terrorist.

german officials toiled my cocouncil bernhart would likely be released which gave me enough time to fly to germany for the occasion. on august 24th, 2006, we met the whole family for the six-hour for ramstein air force base where we would told he would be arriving in the early evening. the day was full of intrigue. secret meetings with german officials that tell us the location of the meeting place for the family reunion, intrusive calls from german and american reporters and almost overwhelming anxiety. while we awaited his delivery in a red cross home for the elderly near ramstein, through the window we saw a huge c17 military plane descending from the sky. ...

finally when the doors opened, reveal latched onto her son as if he might be taken away from her again at any moment. with barack in her arms she wept helplessly for a long time. in the incredible excitement about very long day, which included a 3:00 a.m. rush into the canonical, past a swarm of confused journalists to an

subsequent news stories identified me as the terrorist. i remembered one thing more clearly than any other. in the many hours that we have spent together at wonton amo, his ankle had been always change the floor. that day for the first time i saw him walk. >> thank you, professor hafetz. it has been suggested i have to turn the microphone on in the future when i use it. michael didn't have his introduction but i think he did introduce yourself. he was unable to mention he was a professor of constitutional law and the director of the civil litigation of the civil rights clinic and he's a colleague of mine. now we're going to ask that ramzi kassem was a professor at university of new york school of law, the city university, pardon me if my microphone is on i

can't read. and if it's off apparently i can't speak. anyway, he directs the immigrant refugee rights clinic at the city university of new york and we look forward to your selection tonight. thank you very much. >> i think this is working. just by way of background. over the last four years, along with my students at the state university of new york school of law i've represented guantánamo prisoners of various nationalities before federal district and appellate court in abs proceedings and before the military commissions at wonton amo. nic some of my students from two of those institutions here. so consider this a shout out. you know, our clients have fully experienced the u.s. detention and interrogation apparatus post 9/11 and i mean that very

broadly. you know, to include rendition, torture, interrogation, and detention, so-called cia black sites at various cf military sites and proxy detention sites run by foreign governments in close collaboration with u.s. authorities. and what our clients experience 's have highlighted that dehumanization is a central feature by design at the u.s. detention apparatus and an unintended consequence. everything from the interrogation techniques that we've all heard about a cia black sites to systematic abuse at background, haar, although great, wonton amo, to the use of serial numbers instead of names when referring to my clients. even down to the government's reliance in its brief son

generalities like national security and other fear mongering obstruction that do their work at a safe distance from the reality of other ones. these form part of a concerted effort to erase and silence human beings in order to render them compliant. so the work of the lawyers here today and others whose writings are featured in this book and, you know, yet others who are not in the book, you know, begin the process of breaching the wall of secrecy that was erected around the elaborate dehumanization project of which guantánamo was a part. and as important as this book is, i think it's worth noting that, you know, at this stage there are many other books that are out there. some that were originally written in english and other

books like have been translated. even more books ever written in in arabic by former guantánamo prisoners describing their experiences. so in addition to the voices of the lawyers we now have access to the voices of the individuals directly affected themselves. so i'll just read you guys a short excerpt. bourbon, virginia. one day spent with the classified documents to u.s. government which is to be used as u.s. government against my clients. i step out into the cool fall night and immediately sparked a band of men in bright orange jumpsuit merely crossing the street. and the moments of initial shock of that sobering thought that then. it is halloween night and how the kumar had scored a box office smash earlier that year. sally ports, camp five, guantánamo. the sun is blazing and this is

where inbound attorneys and frist by military guards before entering the prison counts perimeter. we are informed that contraband come in numerous and unpredictable guises. its avatars have included such disparate items at straws, socks, human rights reports, thermal underwear, and spans. but somehow sports rok. accordingly bags of food and their caloric content inventory. legal papers i scanned one by one. high-ranking officers passes by on his way as he is saluted by the guards who are searching he says, honorbound and they respond, to defend freedom sir. thereby completing guantánamo detention operation groups moderate. on the silence, freedom has become the jailer salutation. the west of the lawyers have been grasped off at other camps for their meetings and i am alone they ask if i am an interpreter for one of the attorneys. the man they call isn 87471 is

seated on a steel chair in the middle of the small brick of the room surrounded by barren walls and under the constant of surveillance cameras. he is shackled to the steel loop jutting out of the floor in an orange jumpsuit which guantánamo to notes punishment stats. such privileges as a mattress or thermal underwear have been taken away from him because he is persistent in his strike in protest and an presence meant. he is explained to remain on strike until the u.s. government ceases to refer to him and returned him to his homeland. the years on hunger strike have taken their toll on my clients. he's emaciated to the extreme and persons are still visible on his face from recent run-in with the riot squad that routinely deployed at guantánamo to intimidate prisoners. he prefers to go by his given name or by a flash a, father oblige. that is his mother's name. he fantasizes about marrying,

beginning a daughter in naming her in honor of his mother. we conclude our meeting shortly before prayer time. before we party tells me that most wonton amo prisoners only go twice because they consider themselves travelers of this land, individuals here who will certainly turn home. he confides that he recently reverted to the default practice of kneeling four times. >> thank you very much. the next reader will be jayne huckerby who is the research director for human rights and global justice at new york university and is produced a series of reports that everybody looking to guantánamo has relied upon. >> thank you. the contribution of myself and my colleague in the book is an affection towards the end entitled guantánamo beyond cuba. and in particularly, that

section looks beyond the question of guantánamo, what is the other network of reasons that have been operated by the u.s. government in the war on terror and what has been happening within those presents? in particular, my chapter concerns the concerns of the clinic here at nyu law school and representing two human nashville. both men were disappeared in 2003 and transferred among multiple cia secret prisons before they returned to their home country of yemen in may of 2005 with no explanation to why they were detained and without ever having faced any formal charges for any crime. and they were finally released from a detention facility in march 2006. and just to sort of act out that it is really important that when we talk about the guantánamo

experiments in the horrific violation that took place that we do remember that it is one part of a broader sort of human rights violations that have been occurring. i think there's one moment for me in particular in an interview with mohammed bash male when he says actually i wish i was in guantánamo because then my family would've known where i was, i would've known worthless. i would've seen a lawyer and i would've seen the red cross. and so it's a really sort of significant in light into the full range of violations in the long wait that we have to go to the full accounting of what happened. i think two e-echo ramsey's shout outs, i have two very quick ones. one is to recognize that perhaps contrary to the gender composition of our panel that female attorneys also played a very important role and loitering at guantánamo. i had particular experiences in the context of that world that are fairly well reflected in a

section of book on female attorneys and i do encourage other students to have a look at that and to talk more about that. and secondly, to recognize in every case here we've talked about the role of students and in particular the role of clinics at law schools and really stepping up and providing the legal representation and the resources needed to fight these battles. and i would like to think that only the former students and the human rights clinic also our current event all here tonight for the work we continue to do on behalf of our clients. so i'm just going to read a short excerpt from my chapter started drawing upon now multiple visits to jenin and also to africa and eastern europe to do the investigations into our clients cases. and it's a reflective piece on some of the challenges that we face in doing this work and the challenges we put our clients through in particular in doing this work.

so i'll start. in the title of the chapter is endless questions. why for example will the government acknowledged that some of the names of the individual the taliban cia custody and not those of others like our clients throughout relates. if the government believes that the claims that its program is legal, why does it attempt to shield scrutiny of effect to the dissemination squirts? why does the government ask for a way from our clients when the very reason we have to request for information on their behalf is because the government doesn't value our clients privacy without permission. why is it when we sit down with mohammed and trace on a world not where he was held for 18 months of his life that our fingers still can't draw a straight line from where his plane left afghanistan? alongside these questions that we continue to ask the u.s. government but we also ask a lot

of our clients. there is a doozy and factual questions that expand literally hundreds of hours and attempt to uncover every menu detail from flat links to the air temperature from the cells color, size, layout to the type says we served. to the shape of drinking bottles from prison protocols to toilet types, sell camera positioning, directions between interrogation rooms and so forth. beyond asking our client to dig through these excruciating memories we also require a locked in regard to the conditions under which they share these details. we ask our clients to trust us, even though we cannot guarantee their safety. we asked them to communicate freely, even as we explained their phones are probably wiretapped and that we practice all calls for the purpose of wiretapping between attorney and

client is probably completely ineffectual. we asked them to leave painful experiences blur bible or even after we've told them that any form of redress is a really long way off. we are prolific notetakers documenting questions asked and answers given. we have explained why we do that and have our clients consent. yet the lines that distinguish us from the former interrogators , particularly as the female interrogators who are similar to our team in jenin predominately white and young. often feel painfully thin. sometimes our questions are forced to track those that the american interrogators. i particularly regret that we have to ask about the subject of the americans interrogations and what they told them. we can and do brace ourselves and them for the inevitable testy moments while knowing that we can never fully guard against the ever present risk of

re-trauma. for mohammed the experience of secret detention has turned the ordinary into the ominous. airplane travel, something commonplace that gave pride to their experience in cia black sites now has a wildly different connotation. the lobby of the hotel in which we meet as security cameras which are meant to make the guests feel safer. but they immediately remind mohammed that a monitor his every move. in these and countless other ways the impact of their disappearance are ongoing and will not be sent to the united dates provides the answers to the questions that our clients and many more like them deserve. >> so we have nearly half an hour for questions. while you're getting your questions ready and going to start with one. and it's to michael ratner because of his vast years of

experience. and it's the obvious question, michael, so you'll be happy. which is that president obama said that he is going to close guantánamo and what i calculate as 74 days a year from when he took over the presidency. and in speaking beyond guantánamo, where not quite there yet. so my question is realistically speaking given what we know about the transfer of detainees to federal courts and the transfer of detainees back to their home countries, where do you think were going to be on january 22 at this year? >> actually, i think they're other attorneys on this panel that are still representing some guantánamo detainees. i'll say something about it because we have about a dozen. we still represent about eight or nine clients directly and there's 208 people laughed at guantánamo. one of our attorneys to trs is

coming back from palau today where she has resettled the uighurs along with a number of the other attorneys. there's still a number of uighurs in guantánamo i think six is the number and of course our view is those people should be brought into the united states where the weaker community is willing to resettle them in washington. they've all been found not to be enemy combatants or whatever term the current administration is using for that. but of course both obama as well as congress doesn't want them brought in. but the answer quickly, karen, is that it will not be closed on january 22. whether they'll extend it in executive order and give it more time is i think the most likely. the position of the senator and most of the attorneys is usually you charge these people and we say charge then give them criminal charges and try them in federal court then don't try

them before military commissions. that is one fat of the detainees. and the other is release and we mean belief to a country where they can safely be taken. and we do not mean that up in prevention. we are quite critical of the way the situation is unfolding. ramzi. >> i think it is an important one that everyone is asking. along with what michael is saying, you know, if mostly blood and following the obama administration has been vigorously on their self-imposed january deadline. and so it really doesn't look like they're going to close guantánamo by that deadline. but in a way that doesn't matter. my position has always been that sort of closure doesn't matter as much as responsible closure. and so from my vantage point and from the clients and their families and communities what matters more than what happens

is what happens to the men who are there. and are they'd be moved to another location for continued trial by military commission or are they being treated in conformity with the rule of law? and i think even if we assume that obama somehow manages to responsibly close guantánamo then that still leaves open the question of his continuation of many other bush administration national security policies both domestically and abroad including the use of extraordinary rendition and his wholesale adoption of the bush administration's policy of legal position because it's apparent now that the obama administration wants to preserve it as an option in its retention in detention universe. in exactly the same way that the bush administration sought to

protect it. >> time for your questions. so -- are there any? >> i'm a photographer. i photographed extensively for the last three years and it's interesting hearing your stories because in the media were probably the only other group of people who are down there other than people in the government and military. and i'm wondering if the detainees ever asked where these people coming in and taking photographs of us because some of them want to talk to us and were not allowed to talk to them. they're very curious and some are like don't take our photographs or please take her photographs. one guy was joking saying, put me in fhm magazine and kidding around and we just couldn't respond. so i'm wondering if any of your clients ever asked about the media and is the media covering our story and did any of that ever happened. >> i mean, i think despite the

best efforts of the prison guards and the lawyers for the defense department, the detainees did at least after the war started going down regularly get information from their lawyers and sort of like i think a lot of prison environment from other detainees and some of it was rumor while the speculation and some was informed by their own attorneys. so i don't think my clients, for example, knew that there was a lot of media coverage of wonton about because i would bring in excerpts of stories about him from german media and u.s. media and about guantánamo generally. and i think they knew that the camps were under serious scrutiny. so that dynamic itself is pretty interesting. the way in which they were caged, that's had some awareness

that they were being watched not only by guards but by the outside world. >> other questions? >> i have a question in terms of -- okay, go ahead. >> hi i am wondering about the sort of historic moment a good president re-created it now seems like the courts have been cutting back at that specifically. i'm wondering what sort of bad president has been created post these sort of monumental breakthroughs in how you envision those plain out and being fought back again? >> jonathan, do you want to address that to start? >> sure, the question refers to the supreme court's decision in 2008 in the median versus bush for the court definitively ruled that the detainees at guantánamo

have a constitutional right to habeas corpus to go to court. so it rejected the executive's arguments that they had no right and the efforts by congress to take away that right. it was a very important decision, but important also because the court just didn't simply reject or affirm that guantánamo detainees have a right to habeas corpus, but it didn't do very premise on which guantánamo was based. that is that you could deny someone the right simply by moving them or keeping them outside the united states or at least if they were noncitizens. and instead come the left open the possibility that habeas corpus could extend and not simply to guantánamo, but to other overseas u.s. run detention operations. and so now they're really two things going on. one is in terms of where the ap is right extends to ms professor

kassem mentioned that base in afghanistan which in many ways has replaced guantánamo as the new detention enclave outside the law and outside of court review. and so the issue they are is whether to read that providian decision as recognizing or extending a right to detainees at baghlan as a very important decision. there's also many and also gave rise to most concretely actually hearing in the district courts for the remaining guantánamo detainees are at and that's really kind of a bottom thrust of the guantánamo litigation is the u.s. has been holding people for more than seven years without a fair hearing. and so, what the dominion decision meant kind of stripped of its abstraction was you are locking people up without charge

indefinitely. you've got to give them a hearing. it's got to be before a judge and it's got to be without spelling the exact ins and outs. it's got to be a fair hearing to determine whether there's any truth to the government allegations. and what's happening in these hearings that are proceeding in the district court in washington is absolutely remarkable. in 38 of the cases that have gone to decision, judges have ruled in 30 of those cases, 30 out of 38 cases, that there is no basis for the detention and that the prisoners are effectively being held illegally. and it's not simply in the bottom line, but the way the courts have been doing that. and a number of the judges have been just utterly scathing in their criticism of the government continued detention of these individuals as if after all these years and holding people for so long, claiming that they're the worst of the

worse, a threat to national security, there's no there there. the upper has no close and there's no evidence to support the allegations. i think those are really the two pivotal things that are going on now in the detainee litigation. >> i do want to say one additional thing. there is a current case and the supreme court that is a combination of the wars on guantánamo including the center of the key in the case undergoes to maybe put the question is paired with an supreme court you can say almost three times already since 2004 in russell and now we're there for the first time. were there for the fourth and because afterwards we finally won a constitutional right to abs, then the administration both under bush and under obama have said well yes even if you when you're habeas corpus hearing and there's no legal reason for holding you, a judge cannot order the person released into the united states. so people like the uighurs remain in jail despite having

one -- one they are tribunals. so you're sitting now with the position of the administration that says even though you have pbs you can't be released in the question you have to ask is what is the good of it if you can be released by the judge. so we are faced with that. a loss that i consider what happened here is if you look at what we were fighting for was that habeas corpus the right to go to record and say what your legal basis for holding me? but we still haven't gotten to the deeper question of do you have to charge someone with a crime before you can hold them? and that is still underlined in all this litigation and arguable that we lost on that issue arrived the seven or eight years. >> other questions? >> actually if i could jump in here to add one later. i think part of what jonathan was singing is that it's important to highlight that a

lot of the judges and the 30th of are the eight cases where they went in the prisoners favor. a lot of these judges are not left-leaning detainee friendly judges. a lot of them are reagan, bush senior appointees and they came to a place where they became extremely ethical of the government advanced justifications for detention and the nature of the evidence that was being produced by the government to justify these open-ended detections. and even that background case where we represented the petitioners in that case, the judge in that case is in himself again not a democrat. not a clinton appointee and even he saw the flaws in the bush administration and of the obama administration's position that the u.s. government should be able to kidnap someone like my client from thailand, taken to his own hostilities in afghanistan, holed in there and then argue that because he is an hostilities there is no

jurisdiction. >> i have a question going back to the process of dehumanization array sure and silencing. i think that part of that process has been at the contextualization of detainees as human beings with lies, like families, spouses, children, parents. and i'm just curious in the panels experience as lawyers, both in terms of the role you played in relay messages from your clients to their families or to your loved ones with whom they otherwise would not have had contact. but also in terms of the ways in which you may have felt constrained in crafty litigation strategies, the challenge in trying to tell a human story and also trying to win a case in terms of strategic litigation. if there is any tension there and i guess the broader question is, how could lawyers contribute

in a way that is attractive of the human being at the center of the real issue, without losing sight of that in discussions of lofty principles that really matter like habeas corpus and the american constitution. >> i can start with an anecdote i'm trying to answer your question on legal strategies. so, one of the process by which we can communicate about our clients to the outside world requires that we show that everything or client-side is presumptively classified. and the only way we can talk about it in public including family members is to pass it through a form of government censors who will clear their

statements. and one thing that sort of became clear early on is that they would not be sent there, what they would not permit to be told to family members or the outside world is their particular messages, specific messages to family members read nor early on but they permit sort of loving messages to come in from family members to cause the regime of interrogation there was of course meant i suggested to dehumanize and sort of take away any connection to a personal sense of strength or hope. so when my first meeting with my client, barack cannot, we had a moment towards the end where he wanted me to write down -- he had noticed i was taking a lot of notes. he said you write a lot. and i explained to him why and

the most of the stuff i need to write down so we can get cleared. he said will write on this message to my mother. and he gave me sort of a long and moving detailed message to his family. and as i was writing it and as he was asking me to relay it to his family, i had this enormous dilemma which was, can i tell them that i can't repeat this message to his family? and there was sort of a shocking realization. the french foreign legion gives you a last message to your family before they shoot you. and i'm not sure i handled it correctly, but i didn't tell him because i think sort of personally i didn't want him to think i was useless, although perhaps in that respect i was. and also, i just felt that was

going to be more crushing that it was worth. nevertheless, i think i and everyone else have ways to communicate general messages to families. so rather than for example quoting exactly what he said, i could describe in broad terms how he was doing. and to your strategic question about using personal stories to advance the litigation are not litigation names. and that was a very explicit part of our strategy because we learned fairly early on that litigation would not work or certainly would not work until houdini him was decided because of a series of court decisions or interventions by congress that took away access to the courts. so we try to use forms of non-litigation on vacancy to help our clients out. and my client was from germany.

the germans despite the general process stations about bush and demonstration policies were not in the end particularly sympathetic to our clients. and recognizing and then actually bought and very easily to the caricatures of detainees there. so we tried as much as possible to humanize him through personal stories and personal anecdotes and his mother in particular was quite heroic and putting a human face. and would like to think with the help of his german lawyer that sort of effect did some public opinion. although, i mentioned a story in my reading about to beard. and there's only so many stories you can do to get over caricature and presupposition and the sort of fundamental distortions of guantánamo. i mean come even the progressive german media with a were now convinced he is innocent, but we heard he proved this huge beard.

that must mean he's crazy, right? he's lost his mind. so even if you went to normal, his mind is converted and ready to blow people up. there are limits because images conveners were powerful than facts. >> a brief note to that in the context of representing victims of or in addition is that you do a lot of an individual who's been through horrific trauma when you asked them to be the public face of a program, when u.s. and to the media or had their family or picture in the media. and it's something to be very sensitive about because there is the only way to reverse dehumanization, but also you do risk exposing them to her there could teach and ridiculed by communities and that may not be very sensitive to their plan.

>> other questions? over here. [inaudible] [inaudible] >> it does include their stories. the military commission defense lawyers contributed to this book and their contributions were fairly straightforward and quite moving, given the constraints and circumstances in which they operated. i think most of us who's dealt with military defense lawyers have found them to be very helpful and cooperative. >> yeah, just a brief addendum. i worked closely with one of the military defense lawyers to ultimately win the release of the illegal detention in the case of mohammed joão who was an

afghan used as young as 15, 14 or 15 when he was rendered from afghanistan to bob graham, tortured, and then taken to guantánamo and tortured again. the lawyer's name was david frock and he and his colleagues labored long and hard, even in a failed military commission system, where they were able to even enough slots to stand exposed the baseless myth of the government's case and the abusive that mr. chuan had endured. and actually interestingly it was not just david frock, but prosecutor in that case, the military prosecutor lieutenant commander who initially was very gone how for the prosecution at this used for the time they were

making a war crime, which was the allegation that mohammed to wad through a good made grenade injuring two u.s. members of the napkins are there. two big problems were one it is not a war crime. and two, they had no evidence that he actually threw the grenade. and the lieutenant commander became so disgusted by the lack of evidence when he started digging through the files in the treatment that this young boy endured, including forced isolation, sensory deprivation, and they sleep deprivation program, which has been named best frequent flyer program where mr. chuan was woken up every few hours, about 110 times in two weeks and moved in order to disorient him, create a sense of helplessness.

and lieutenant commander vanderbilt was so disturbed by what happened that he ended up resigning and becoming a witness effectively for us and our challenge, our habeas corpus challenge which they joined with the military voyeur david frock in federal court and ultimately he wanted his release. and i would encourage you to read not just the story of major frock in the book, but also the comments that were made by the district judge, eleanor vale who was utterly appalled that the government was continuing to fight this case and really send a real strong signal which i think we've are paraded you on this case in this sort of injustices that are at the heart of so many of the cases. >> let me just take a slightly different, you know, approach to that question.

for about a year and a half i've been representing one of the military commission defendants in guantánamo as his lead to civilian defense counsel before the military tribunal. or commission. and i have had occasions who have worked closely with the military lawyers who've been detailed to the defense of my client and of other guantánamo detainees have been referred for child. what jonathan does says is absolute correct. that's the. it's important to note that from our clients perspective and even from an objective point of view the military commission -- military defense lawyers are part of the system in the sense that you can't as a guantánamo detainee choose not to have a military defense lawyer. they are imposed on him so that makes their jobs extremely difficult in terms of building a rapport with their clients.

and it also is a very significant abridgment of our clients rates of free choice to counsel. they cannot fire their military lawyers. under the old military commissions act of 2006 and under the new one that was just, the mca of 2009. >> more questions? [inaudible] >> the contribution to the rack dirt, not the least of which is to document the chilling chapter of dehumanization. so my question is about dehumanization and humanity in particular our viewers the attorneys. can you talk a little bit about what impact this had on you and the other attorneys on your perception of humanity and its loss or gain and also how you

coped with your own journey to the dark side. >> i think this is one for each of you to answer so were going to start with michael and work our way towards jonathan. >> i appreciate it, alan. actually, the way i coped with it was on this time, unlike in 1992 and three when i spent a lot of time and quite fundamental. this time i didn't go to guantánamo. and until we started talking to over the years and are voyeurs i didn't realize that i just had a visceral reaction to actually going back. and i don't think i could've actually gone back in terms of my own psyche. it was guantánamo, guatemala. it was certainly the last trip i had to guantánamo. people on my trip headed by those different reaction. that's the way i'll answer part of that. >> thank you, alan.

i think it is definitely the personal experience has really shifted over the last couple of four or five years now. i sustained feeling of anger has stubbornly been there, particularly obviously at the perpetrators been a professional perspective a huge anger at the lawyers who were so instrumental in the architecture surrounding cia's retention. also, it would be definitely be missed not to mention feelings of futility at times, particularly when you do file case after case. you have these victories, but they are few and far between and don't necessarily reflect all the things that went into them. in particular, for example, it's very frustrating in the context of trying to get redress from the united states that the obama administration continues to embark the state secret

privilege to block torture but the that of u.s. courts. i think at the end of the day, i mean, speaking sort of for my colleagues, we're in a unique position with our clients and our least and so we do have been able to operate frequent communication with them. and i think their unwavering belief that one day there will be justice for what happened to them and their unwavering belief that there are good people and bad people and that will come through definitely sustains me personally. >> to maybe answer generally and many personal experience. the notion we talked about how dehumanization was sort of institutionalized with respect to the clients, but in the sense it was a strategy also with respect to the lawyers and this notion that government lawyers

or defense department officials believed in this notion of law fair, which is to say that the use of the law and the courts and international institutions was just another sort of vehicle vehicle -- and other instruments they had to fight against. so it is a form of warfare. and it is in so doing completely wiped away the possibility of law and loitering and assorted narratives that we are used to trying to project. that is that there are facts and people, governments but the stakes. but there is something like innocence and justice and all of this is swept aside eared at an institutional level, in the name of sort of broad executive power. and i think that seeped into out the litigation process in big

ways. for example, the litigation positions they took advocated the suspension of habeas corpus and in hundreds of small indignities that i think all of us can talk about him visiting guantánamo and elsewhere and having what would expect of a traditional legal lawyer client relationship respected or not respected. and they sort of shared genes preauction. and i think it has been an immensely frustrating and agonizing experience tinged with moments of immense hope and come robbery and feeling that inevitably. particularly in the early years that we must be doing some dance here. you know where this is going to end. this can't be and you're sort of standing up in courts in making

these sort of silvery tongued arguments to tribunals. but you know this is going to end badly and that you're going to lose and there we can inevitably about events that will render your legal position preposterous. so i think were motivated or i was anyway that reality or even confused by it as i would've thought that would've affected the litigation positions on the other side. and then in my personal case, moments of real gratitude and satisfaction eventually when my client was home and with his family. >> in the interest of full disclosure i think it should be noted that the professor has been a tremendous asset over the course of this litigation. i guess one general question is

that i always begin my semesters with, you know, new groups of students by noting how unnatural it is. we are at a point now a lot of their work over the course of the semester on the cases is going to develop skills and expertise in such things as torture of her ambition, unlawful detention and other, you know, notions that were completely foreign and unimaginably when i was in law school not so long ago. as far as my personal reaction, i think it speaks tones that as much as i develop very close relationships with my client and i love meeting with them, i am never quite as happy as when the plane takes off leaving guantánamo and i am on it. and throughout my work, you know, i've tried to foster some awareness of the risks of

secondary trauma among my students and my colleagues and myself. i think so far when assisting me personally and what sort of kept some seeing it is the human connection and being able to meet with a client and seem to have survived both physically and spiritually and morally and they continue to find ways to live and live and an immediately recognizable human race despite the fact that many of them, all of them were picked up that torture and abuse horribly in detention sites. so that's been a point to me. but i'm also aware that a lot of these things have been delayed with respect to my clients and to me personally in the sense that many of my clients in maybe two or three years from now they're back at home things may start to go awry. and so, at some point i'm pretty

sure i'm going to make some lucky shrink somewhere awfully rich. >> i may be the only person up here who has the misfortune to about my client still in guantánamo. although release has been approved some for three and four years. does a really good question because actually my characterization of my guantánamo experience is i feel as if it's dramatic, but mostly it seems mundane. it seems sort of banal. i don't have a sense that when i go talk to my clients they especially enjoy talking to me. i don't think we have especially warm bond. i think they will talk to me. i don't think they feel they have a lot to say. i think when i go down there to see them each time i'm wondering whether they will see me or not and that's the single greatest anxiety going down there, wondering if you'll go down in

your client will say not this time. i've never been there when a client refuse to see me. all of the times i came and i don't think i've ever been there without at least one client saying one time, no not today. so there's a sort of loony process. and the other thing i find interesting is we don't have much in common. my clients are tunisian. if they have their own view of the world and how it works. and i think probably the hardest thing to feel when i go down there is that they feel much better to see me then if i don't come. they always are polite and they always say thank you for coming and they talk. but it's actually surprisingly hard after years and years to think of anything to talk about. and i guess probably the story that influences me the most in how to explain how sort of banal the whole thing is. at two different times the government in foreign to their record to find my clients back

to tunisia. and each time i was able to get a federal district judge to order the government not to do it. one time in 2007. and i went on afterwards to talk to my clients. he said well you've really done something for me. and i said what? he said you've kept me in guantánamo. i said boy, there is one that i'm not actually going to go bragging about because i'm sitting here saying well it actually was hard. and it was an achievement and maybe that's the only significant thing that they think i've ever done for them. and subsequently it happened for both of them. so i don't go back feeling anything except sort of oppression. i think the only thing i go down there is that somebody had to be seen them, not because we have anything to talk about but they ought to know somebody comes. in dealing with the government lawyers, i can be a little slip in some ways.

but i was talking to one andrew ward in and we were having a discussion and i asked him what caused him to get in this direction. did he think this is a good career path within? i'm old now to discuss in a fatherly way this kind of discussion. finally i said andrew, at an office will work out with you so well. it looks like you're going to be out there, you know, for being america from terrorists. how do you think it's going? and he didn't want to talk a lot. and finally said andrew, i have one question for you. when your grandchildren ask you, daddy, grandpa, what did you do during the global war on terror? are you going to tell them the truth? and we politely ended the conversation. and that's as close to a dramatic and satisfactory moments as i've had.

and i'll leave it to others to find something more positive in it and i have. but i haven't found the worst either. it's just great. >> i think everyone else has expressed a lot of the range of different emotions and feelings and having been involved with this for a number of years now since the first case there were school case went to the supreme court. you kind of forget just how time goes on, time goes on, and your life you think about where you were, where markers in your life and your family and yet the hard and i think is to think that your client to the clients of other lawyers are just sort of sitting there at guantánamo or wherever they're being hauled and detained and detained not simply in present.

that detention is a fact of obviously all imprisonment. but detained without end, without knowing whether they're going to go home tomorrow or whether there ever going to go home. and that's one of the hardest things to capture indefiniteness. i mean, it's not like waterboarding. you can't show an image of it or describe it. it doesn't really chill in the same way. but i think it's the hardest thing for most of the detainees at this point. the indefiniteness of the confinement, unlike other prisoners who get tried. they know how long they will be in prison at five years, ten years, may be applied to make can time. and so it that sense i think the hardest thing is to try to remember that when you're doing this work and to try to keep that in mind because it is easy -- or not easy, but it's possible you know to separate out what the detainees are going

through into compartmentalized into view what you're doing through -- it's a legal framework. and so, you know, part of the challenge is to always keep in mind. and i., you know, it's a balancing act as professor kassem said you leave when the plane takes off from guantánamo or at a client who was detained in the united states. when you leave that facility to remember the fact the indefiniteness and the lack of due process that they are enduring and that i think is a challenge that we all have to work through. >> it was this month, november, eight years ago that the bush administration issued its executive order, then call the military order, which allowed them they thought to set up guantánamo. and got the center for constitutional rights to begin

to think about how to respond should such a thing happen. on january 11, 2002, guantánamo opened. it means that it took them less than 70 days to build, outfit, create surveillance mechanisms, trained the guards, fly the people, choose the people, fly the individual, then call the detainees here from afghanistan to guantánamo. it is slightly more than not from today until when president obama said guantánamo would close. and so, maybe we can close it in the same time span it would reopen it. thank you for coming and thank our panel. [applause]

>> every year the national press club owes another evening. this eveningwear with frank aukofer, former president of the national press club and journalist for 40 years. you have a new book entitled "never a slow day," what is it been like to be a journalist in the 20th century? >> it's been about the most fun you can have with your clothes on. i mean, the title of the book is

"never a slow day" and that's absolutely true. i never had a day when i watch the clock and wanted to be somewhere else or sometimes it was dramatic. sometimes it was frightening, sometimes it was just purely happy eared and occasionally just sat and read the paper with my feet on the desk. i always learn something everyday. inaccurate corresponded with the milwaukee journal correct? and you covered your here in d.c. during the 1960's. are there any stories you remember from that period? >> at covered civil rights back in the 1960's when i was in milwaukee and that was the best story i've ever covered. and the reason for the ones that are with the issue was so right and you didn't have to compromise any journalistic examples. you basically had to tell the story and you fell like you were a part of the movement. after i came to washington, i covered a lot of big stories including the impeachment proceedings against those president nixon and clinton, cover those allhe