Excerpt: 'Inside the Wire'

May 2, 2005 — -- Erik Saar, a former Arabic-language translator at Guantanamo Bay Detainee Camp, appeared on "Good Morning America" today to talk about his book, "Inside the Wire," which details explosive allegations of abuse against prisoners there, including sexual torment, brutality by guards and mock interrogations for visiting VIPs.

You can read an excerpt from "Inside the Wire" below.

My girlfriend Darcie and I spent my last night in Washington sleepless and teary. We'd been together for six months and things were going remarkably well, but she still didn't understand why I had volunteered for this duty. When I had broken the news to her back in late September over dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant, it put quite a damper on the evening. But when is the right time to tell your significant other you're leaving for six months?

"Dar, I'm going to be going away for a few months starting sometime in December," I'd blurted out as she dipped a tortilla chip in salsa.

She looked up, surprised, and said, "Where ...why?"

When I told her I'd volunteered to go to Guantanamo Bay, she looked partly puzzled and partly pissed.

"Well, I figured this would be good for my career," I said, "and I think it will be the last time I have to go away while I'm in the army. Besides, I think it might be a good test for us."

Fumble.

"Why would you say that?" she asked me with a definite edge in her voice.

How to get out of this one? I had never loved anyone as much, never known anyone with such a passion for life, such energy. Still, I was a little freaked out about how fast I had fallen for her. She was coming off a divorce too, and I didn't want her to one day decide we were too serious. I figured that if this was the real thing, we'd be able to handle six months apart; it might even strengthen the bond. We talked the rest of the night.

Now that the day had come, I dreaded leaving her. She promised she'd wait for me. I hoped that was true.

At 600 we marched through our morning routine: Darcie showered while I made coffee and watched the news, and then I took my turn in the shower. Dar taught third grade in Fairfax County, out in Virginia, and she left for work early every day.By the time I walked her out to her car, tears were threatening her vision again. Mine came later as I drove up the Baltimore-Washington Parkway to my condo to finish packing. I was afraid she might find life easier without me. I wanted Dar to go on living her life while I was away, but not effortlessly. What if she liked being single again?

My first flight took me to Norfolk, where I checked into the Navy Lodge, your basic Best Western-style box, for an overnight layover. I clicked through the TV stations, starting to wonder how I'd react to seeing terrorists in chains. The photos on the news of the first detainees arriving in Cuba, kneeling in the dirt and gravel in their orange suits, chains, and blackout goggles, hadn't bothered me as they had some people. I was just glad they'd been caught. Word in army circles was that some of the detainees were talking, but many were claiming not to know much. I was looking forward to finding out for myself, and hoping to get my feet wet quickly.

Camp Delta was being called a "legal black hole" by some critics. The Bush administration had designated the detainees as enemy combatants and had decided the suspects were not entitled to legal representation. Human rights activists were denouncing the camp as inhumane. Most in the intel community, including me, saw things differently. There were other things to worry about in our country as 2002 came to a close. We had still not found Usama, we were helping to shape a brand-new Afghani government, and President Bush had wanted the UN to make final demands for Saddam Hussein's unconditional compliance with weapons inspectors. War in Iraq seemed inevitable.

With military efficiency, I ordered a wake-up call in Norfolk for 0345. I didn't have to be at the airport till 0500 and it was just a fifteen-minute ride away, but I didn't want any glitches in the program. Rain was coming down in a cold, heavy curtain, so I was hardly delighted when the cabbie told me that for security reasons the lane closest to the terminal was off limits and I'd have a short walk before I got to cover. Short walk: a quarter mile in the pounding rain with 150 pounds of luggage at 0430. Maybe this inauspicious start should have told me something.

I checked six months' worth of bags, grabbed a cup of coffee at the snack shop, and settled in with USA Today next to a window to kill the hour before boarding. The first story that caught my eye was about preparations to send more troops to Kuwait to build up for the likely invasion of Iraq, and I wondered if my brother-in-law, a chaplain in the marines, would have to go.

Many in the IC believed overthrowing Saddam was fine, but there was a deeper, better motive for going into Iraq than the alleged WMDs. United States policy makers were well aware of the increasing hostility toward the American military in Saudi Arabia. It wasn't helping the royal House of Saud. Some, or perhaps most, of our troops would be pulling out of there, so the United States needed a footprint elsewhere in the region.Although many of my colleagues in intel hoped that Iraqi troops would throw down their weapons and welcome us with open arms, as promised by Vice President Cheney, even the bulk of the GIs I knew wondered what would be the endgame. Who, we wondered, would be the magician to pull off the unification of Shiites, Kurds, Chaldean Christians, and Sunnis under the umbrella of democracy? Even if democracy succeeded, it might be in the form of a Shiite government that would become a close ally to theocratic Iran.

We were all unhappy about the continued ability of Usama bin Laden to evade capture. The president had lately been downplaying the importance of getting him, but everyone I knew in intel circles thought it should be on the top of our to-do list. Some of us believed he was receiving help from Pakistanis sympathetic to the cause, while others thought we simply needed more foot soldiers on the case. The problem had only been exacerbated by the shift of special operations forces from the mountains of Afghanistan to the oil fields of Iraq in preparation for invasion.

My transportation to Cuba was a regular Continental flight except that all sixty or so of us were either with the military or family members of troops. We made a pit stop in Jacksonville, then on to Guantanamo. Because we couldn't fly over the island, we had to go around it and come up from the south to the base. As we began our descent, I was glad I had a window seat as I twisted around to get as full a view as possible. I'd never been to the Caribbean, and I was amazed at the clear blue of the water. The beachfront was much rockier than I'd expected, with no vast stretches of silky smooth sand that I could see.