Tag Archives: Medill National Security Journalism Initiative

Parents of kidnapped journalist weigh in on new U.S. hostage policy

  • Marc and Debra Tice, parents of kidnapped journalist Austin Tice, say they are "cautiously optimistic" about the changes to U.S. hostage policy. (Photo: Amina Ismail/MEDILL NSJI)

WASHINGTON – Faced with an upsurge in journalist kidnappings, President Barack Obama issued a new executive order in June that allows families to offer ransom money without fear of prosecution and establishes an interagency fusion cell to improve U.S. hostage recovery efforts.

Kidnappings of journalists are on the rise, up 35 percent in 2014 to 119 journalists, according to Reporters Without Borders’ most recent annual roundup of abuses against journalists. RWB also reported that 66 journalists were slain in 2014, bringing the number of journalists killed in connection with their work in the past 10 years to 720.

But how far do the changes go toward providing an effective solution to the bureaucratic tangle we’ve already spun when it comes to coordinating the return of kidnapped Americans?

The fusion cell is led by senior FBI official Michael McGarrity and housed at bureau headquarters. It is made up of officials from the FBI and departments of State, Treasury, Defense and Justice, as well as the Office of Director of National Intelligence and the CIA.

Marc and Debra Tice flew to Washington in June to meet with Obama to review his executive order revising U.S. hostage policy. Austin Tice, their son, is a freelance journalist who was kidnapped while reporting in Syria in August 2012.

Speaking just days after their meeting with the president, the Tices expressed frustration at the difficulties they personally faced navigating the complicated system while trying to find their son.

“We spent two years figuring out who do you call, who’s got responsibility, who’s got capabilities, who’s got the desire, so we had to find our way through Washington and the bureaucracy and these different agencies of the government by ourselves effectively,” Marc Tice said.

“All of these resources already exist,” added Debbie Tice. “What we are really asking for is more efficient, more effective, more economical stewardship of resources.” The Tices spoke of institutional roadblocks at both the macro and micro, day-to-day levels.

“He has got an apartment that he is running, how do we deal with that? He has got bank accounts and student accounts, a social media identity… there’s a whole ecosystem that we have to go through,” Marc said.

“Think about the bank account that has nothing going into it, and has automatic payments coming out. And how quickly that can become a huge issue that we can’t get our hands around,” said Debbie.

The Tices said it took the family over a year to figure out a legal authority to deal with this issue. They still have not been able to access Austin’s Twitter account, from which he last tweeted about spending the day at Free Syrian Army pool party on August 11, 2012.

A Defense Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity explained how circuitous government efforts between the White House, the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the FBI, the Pentagon and the military services can be – especially when these agencies are all uniquely involved in different aspects of hostage recovery.

“Start with authority. Who has the authority to act for civilians?” the defense official said.

“One major criticism the Obama administration has faced is treating terrorism as a criminal activity,” he said. “Despite the ‘war on terrorism,’ we don’t treat it as a war, but as a crime.”

“If you’re in an Afghani combat zone, you’re DOD responsibility. Otherwise, you’re an FBI issue, unless you get a security order from the Secretary of Defense.

“So the FBI has the lead, but technically no overseas reach. You can only get there through the State Department and Department of Defense. And the FBI can’t tell DOD to do anything. And DOD would still need to get an execution order to do anything anyways.

“For the FBI, State and these agencies are peers – you can’t just tell them what to do. They would have to be told, pretty much, by the President. The CIA chain is just like State. They’d need presidential findings… they can’t just do a one-off. The DOD would need to call over to the Joint Staff, and then go to the Secretary of Defense for an execution order, but that can take 2 years.”

While the defense official lauded the enhanced support for hostages and their families, he criticized organizing the fusion cell under the umbrella of the FBI.

“The organization with the least reach is now entirely responsible for getting hostages home. So this could be seen as a huge slap in the face for families.”

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R- Calif., has advocated for displacing the FBI from its traditional leadership role in hostage negotiations.

“The problem is…in Iraq, there is no FBI. In Syria, there’s no FBI. In Afghanistan, there’s no FBI. In war zones, you don’t have the FBI,” Hunter said in May, discussing an amendment to the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act on the House floor.

“What you have is the Department of Defense and different intelligence agencies. [They] are the ones who track the networks, know the networks, know who the bad guys are, know where the hostages may be and then, in case we actually get good intelligence, the Department of Defense and our intelligence communities, those are the people that would act on the intelligence, not the FBI.”

Chris Voss, former lead FBI hostage negotiator, had a different take.

“The issue is in agencies putting the right people in the right places, and they’ve now designated the right places. In kidnapping issues, the actual authority and responsibility rests with the FBI, which is in charge of investigating murders and kidnappings overseas. Moving the coordination to that effort over to the FBI makes more sense, and elevates responsibility to FBI to a higher level.”

Voss said that now the overall coordination should be easier and quicker because of the higher level of authority involved – “but it still comes down to the level of expertise of the person in the position. Did the people involved with the government do a very poor job over the past two years?”

“In all these ISIL instances, there’s been a complete absence of any evidence of government subject matter expertise. It’s time for the government to take a hard look at the people doing the jobs and see if they’re up to the task. And there’s no evidence that they are.”

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U.S. reluctant to declare safe zone along Turkey-Syria border

Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey exchange pleasantries before testifying in front of the Senate Committee on Armed Services about U.S. counter ISIS strategy. (Matt Yurus / Medill NSJI)

Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey exchange pleasantries before testifying in front of the Senate Committee on Armed Services about U.S. counter ISIS strategy. (Matt Yurus / Medill NSJI)

WASHINGTON – Turkey and the U.S. agreed to a deal in late July that might lead to an ISIS-free zone along the Syrian-Turkish border while allowing the U.S. to launch airstrikes against the marauding jihadist organization from Incirlik Air Base in Southern Turkey.

There is not a plan in place, however, to create this buffer or safe zone, as it is often called. And Obama administration officials are reluctant to call what they expect to be a roughly 60-mile long and 40-mile deep area that nearly reaches Aleppo a safe zone.

The administration refers to this as an “ISIL free zone so that it would not have the perception of a safe zone protected as a no-fly zone,” said Ömer Taşpınar, a professor at the National War College and expert on Turkey. To implement a no-fly zone, the U.N. must pass a resolution, and Russia and China would veto it, and Iran would view it as a hostile act, according to Taşpınar.

Taşpınar pointed out that the agreement did not detail the type of zone that would be created. The Turkish media, however, has been reporting that the U.S. has finally agreed to a safe zone. So in this sense, it has been a public relations strategy, he added.

There are a lot of loose ends and potential complications, he said. The Turkish forces are hesitant to deploy ground troops without the protection of a U.S. and coalition-enforced no-fly zone. The Obama administration has refrained from sending in a sizable U.S. led ground force, instead choosing to train indigenous fighters, and these moderate Syrian rebels are too weak to police the area.

In early July, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter told the Senate Armed Forces Committee that only 60 moderate rebels were in training, a force “much smaller” than expected. He expected that number to improve, however, saying that as the U.S. learns more about the opposition forces and builds relationships recruiting will become easier. More recently, The Washington Post reported that Jabhat al-Nusra captured U.S.-backed Syrian rebels earlier this month — five of whom were directly trained by U.S. personnel. U.S. officials said that many more members of the Syrian rebel forces have returned to Turkey.

Taşpınar noted that this area is too small to house millions of Syrian refugees. There are roughly 4 million Syrians displaced in neighboring countries, according to a USAID report. More than another 7 million and 12 million are internally displaced and need humanitarian assistance, respectively, in Syria.

What this zone does is break the Kurdish plan to “establish a Kurdish enclave,” he said. The Turks along with the U.S. consider the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a terrorist group.

The same report from The Washington Post quoted Yezid Sayigh, a senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, as saying, “I don’t think we will see anything approaching what even resembles a safe zone” in Syria.

To accomplish this there will have to be access to electricity, water and shelter along with medical facilities.

The U.S. recently sent six F-16, or “Fighting Falcons,” and an additional 300 personnel to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. These aircraft were sent to carry out attacks over northern Syria and close the border after Turkey agreed to the deal.

It has been roughly a year since the coalition began airstrikes in the region. U.S. intelligence agencies estimate that ISIS has the same amount as fighters as it did then, between 20,000 and 30,000.

 

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Hong Kong, spy hub of the Far East

WASHINGTON – My mother and I came to Hong Kong – then a British colony – in 1991, and when I was little, sometimes she would tell me about my first and only personal encounter with an intelligence agency.

When we first entered Hong Kong, my mother and I were led into a room near the border checkpoint by an operative of the Special Branch of the Royal Hong Kong Police, then a front office for MI5, the feared British police and intelligence agency.

“What is your business in Hong Kong?” the agent asked.

It turns out my grandfather was an intelligence officer of the Chinese Communist Party posted as a school principal in Hong Kong in the 1940s, and the Special Branch had been watching him the whole time.

Luckily my mother and I walked out of the room that day, and I continued to be a normal kid growing up in Hong Kong.

But it was after I became a journalist in Hong Kong that I realized how this Asian financial hub is also the spy hub of the Far East. And despite the fact that Hong Kong has been under Chinese rule since 1997, its law enforcement agencies still have close contact with U.S. and British law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

“What is your business in Hong Kong?” the agent asked.

It turns out my grandfather was an intelligence officer of the Chinese Communist Party posted as a school principal in Hong Kong in the 1940s, and the Special Branch had been watching him the whole time.

Luckily my mother and I walked out of the room that day, and I continued to be a normal kid growing up in Hong Kong.

But it was after I became a journalist in Hong Kong that I realized how this Asian financial hub is also the “spy hub of the Far East.” And despite the fact that Hong Kong has been under Chinese rule since 1997, its law enforcement agencies still have close contact with U.S. and British law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

According to the Guardian and the South China Morning Post, in 2004 Sami al-Saadi, a vocal opponent of late Libya dictator Muammar Gaddafi also known as Abu Munthir, was detained in the Hong Kong International Airport for a week before forced onto a flight to Tripoli. After the fall of Gaddafi’s regime, Human Rights Watch obtained fax correspondence between CIA and Tripoli, which revealed Hong Kong government’s role in al-Saadi’s rendition to Libya.

faxpart1

This CIA fax to Libya authority shows the Hong Kong Government offering advices to ensure the rendition of al-Saadi. (Screenshot of documents released by The Guardian via DocumentCloud at http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2011/sep/09/libya#document/p6)

The fax shows that the Hong Kong government offered suggestions to Libyan authority on how to assume control of al-Saadi.

faxpart2

The segment of the fax shows the Hong Kong Government requesting the details about the purposed rendition of al-Saadi. (Screenshot of documents released by The Guardian via DocumentCloud at http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2011/sep/09/libya#document/p6)

It also shows Stanley Ying, the then Principle Secretary for Security, is listed as a key contact in the Hong Kong government.

But that does not mean the Hong Kong government is always an ally for Western governments. In the case of Edward Snowden, we saw the opposite.

Edward Snowden came to Hong Kong on May 20, 2013 from Hawaii, and he seemed to have faith in Hong Kong’s judicial system.

“Hong Kong has a strong tradition of free speech. People think China, Great Firewall … but the people of Hong Kong have a long tradition of protesting on the streets, making their views known … and I believe the Hong Kong government is actually independent in relation to a lot of other leading Western governments.”

— Edward Snowden

Despite numerous protests from the U.S. government, the Hong Kong government allowed Snowden to fly to Moscow.

From Snowden’s case, we can see that the decision of whether to hand over a valuable person to Western intelligence really depends on what kind of information that particular person possesses.

Ben Lam, a local news editor who was assigned to cover Snowden’s case and has numerous encounters with Chinese intelligence in Mainland China, said Hong Kong becomes a hub for intelligence activities because of historical and geographical reasons.

“Back in the days of British rule, it was the West’s window to Mainland China and vice versa for the Chinese,” he said.

“I would say the major players in Hong Kong right now are the MI6, CIA and also Chinese intelligence agencies,” he said. “The Japanese government also has an extensive intelligence network in Hong Kong, and their operatives often use journalists as their covers.”

Hong Kong is a city known for its financial activities, tourism and political tension between locals and the Chinese government. But it is also a place where an invisible war on national interests happen everyday.

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Marine Reserve unit hit hard in Iraq holds 10-year reunion

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A Marine Reserve unit that suffered some of the heaviest casualties during the Iraq War reunited Aug. 15-16. Many of the vets still bore the physical and emotional scars left by the 2005 deployment.

Hundreds of Marines and family members gathered here at Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base to pay tribute to Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines. Ten years have passed since the Ohio-based unit lost 22 Marines and a Navy corpsman while operating near Haditha.

Sharing decade-old memories with combat buddies was bittersweet, said medically retired Lance Cpl. Carl Schneider.

“It’s always good to see them; but it’s very hard, too,” he said. “I know it’s been 10 years, but it doesn’t feel like it.”

In January 2005, the 180 Marines of Lima Company, nicknamed “Lucky Lima,”  3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment, with 180 men, mobilized for Operation Iraqi Freedom. They returned here without 23 of their men.

The deployment had a relatively quiet start, with Lima Company remaining unscathed for the first several weeks. But in May 2005, nine Lima Marines were killed — several in the same improvised explosive device attack. In July, two more Marines and a corpsman were killed in action. The following month, 11 Marines riding in an amphibious assault vehicle were killed by a roadside bomb attack.

In the decade since that deployment, many of the Marines have gotten married, raised children and grown beards. Almost all have left the Marine Corps to pursue other careers.

Some of them kept in frequent touch because they remained in the Columbus area, but others hadn’t seen each other in years. Even George “Doc” Wentworth, the company’s corpsman, who knew each member of the unit because he handled their medical paperwork, said it was tough putting names to some of the faces.

“It’s been five or 10 years since I’ve seen them,” he said.

While a decade has passed and some of the physical scars have faded, the memories have not.

Schneider said he learned to cope with the memories in part through his career as an occupational therapist. He was one of the Marines severely burned in the May 2005 IED attack. He underwent 15 surgeries, including extensive skin grafting, to repair his face and arms.

Schneider brought his wife, Charlotte, and their 9-week-old son to the reunion. It was the couple’s one-year wedding anniversary, but instead of a romantic date, they ate dinner with Lima Marines and families.

“This is how much we wanted to be here,” Charlotte Schneider said.

Schneider’s family joined other veterans and their families on buses Saturday for the 30-mile trip to the memorial service south of Columbus. They were escorted by a dozen police cars and about 600 motorcycles. Traffic stopped on Interstate 270, while drivers and local firefighters stood at attention and saluted the unit.

“These Marines here are just at that point in their lives now when they begin to process what happened,” said retired Chief Warrant Officer 4 Orrin Bowman. “And that’s why we’re having this reunion — so these guys can reunite and reconnect.”

Bowman didn’t deploy with the unit, but instead had the difficult duty of making the 23 casualty assistance calls.

“We had nine funerals in five days,” he said.

Since his retirement from the Marine Corps in 2006, Bowman has been active as president of the Mid-Ohio Marine Foundation and was part of the committee that organized the reunion. Although the memories from 10 years ago still haunt him at times, he said, “being here is great. It’s good therapy for me.”

Robert and Cherie Hoffman sat in the front of the bus, staring out at the firefighters and motorists lining the highway. “I don’t want to be here,” Robert whispered to his wife. Cherie held his hand. Their son, Sgt. Justin Hoffman, died in an IED blast in May 2005.

Being around the Marines and hearing stories of their deployment has helped the sergeant’s parents find peace. Looking out for each other is what helped many of the Lima families, both those dealing with death and those dealing with being survivors.  After walking around the hotel ballroom where the families had gathered and talking to Sgt. Hoffman’s friends, Cherie Hoffman was smiling.

“I got eight new numbers tonight, and I’m going to invite all of these kids over for dinner,” she said.

During the memorial service at the base, Sgt. Maj. Dan Altieri, the top enlisted member of 25th Marines, read the final roll call of the fallen, but also noted that Lima Company’s deployment forged lasting friendships.

“We need to move forward remembering the good things,” he said.

Retired Lt. Gen. Dennis McCarthy, who led Marine Corps Forces Reserve during Lima Company’s 2005 deployment and served as the guest speaker during the reunion, agreed. He said the unit should not be defined by its loss.

“I think it’s not disrespectful at all to remember more than just the losses,” he said. “Don’t allow Lima’s legacy to be all about the losses.”



Published in conjunction with Marine Corp Times Logo

				
							

		
			

					
									
													

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Pentagon looking at 3-D technology to revolutionize national defense



				

				
WASHINGTON – Last November, the Department of Defense unveiled its Defense Innovation Initiative. A core component of the initiative is the formation of a new Long-Range Research and Development Planning Program that will purportedly target several technology areas, including how to use 3-D printing to revolutionize national defense.


Already, 3-D printing is capable of producing artificial limbs, guns and even cars. But what is limiting its wide-range use in military?


“Just because a new technology can provide a service, like printing new things, doesn’t mean it necessarily should provide us service,” said Brennan Hogan, program manager of LMI Research Institute, a private corporation that provides management consulting, research and analysis to governments.


A lot of concerns should be taken into account before massively applying this technology. For example, what’s the implication of applying it? How to ensure the quality? How to test different parts of a machine? How big the testing scale should be? And where to test — lab or market?


“Next two or three years would be additive manufacturing. And so the democratization of the ability of manufacturing,” said Jim Joyce, manufacturing strategy and operation specialist leader of Deloitte. “The breaking of the tyranny of the scale of capital machine or people who are manufacturing will be the basis of the profound revolution.”


“We do have the taxpayer in mind, but there seems to be a struggle between those of the current leadership on the Hill and their understanding of what the industrial bases is trying to do,” Hogan said.


The government’s procurement system provides lots of protections to taxpayers, but when it comes to additive manufacturing – which basically is able to reach all aspects of people’s life – some of the requirements don’t actually meet the needs of what things are being proposed.


“The potential for revolutionary advancement is absolutely there. Where we are, though, is that we have an acquisition system that is ill-suited to deal with that,” said James Kenyon, director of advanced programs and technology at Pratt & Whitney. “Why? Because these things cost taxpayers’ money.”


The current stage of additive manufacturing is still evolutionary as DoD is working on determining which hardware out of the hundreds of thousands should be replicated using this new technology instead of using them to do something logistically different.


However, we’ve already seen many 3-D printing use in military. The naval dental school has been printing bridges for people in their mouths for almost 30 years. The customization of an individual’s physiology and the lack of infection makes it a perfect alternative for traditional artificial teeth. It is also used in modification of weapons so that they are more customized for individuals, rather than mass produced. Another typical example for its military use is its rapid equipping ability. Whenever troops need something that they didn’t have at the moment, they can just print it out in a short time.


“The revolution comes by when you can certify the results of additive manufacturing,” Joyce said. “We should break the logistic pressure by unleash the technology in various ways.”

				
							

		
			

					
									
													

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#MedillRemembers James Foley, One Year Later



				

				



				
							

		
			

					
									
													

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Off the page: Dan Archer on how ‘immersive journalism’ is changing the face of national security reporting



				

				
This image is a screenshot from Dan Archer's Ferguson Firsthand piece. (Dan Archer/Courtesy)
This image is a screenshot from Dan Archer’s Ferguson Firsthand piece. (Dan Archer/Courtesy)


In the course of covering national security, there may be moments when words will seemingly come up short — scenes where descriptions rooted in paper and ink (or in pixels on a screen) will feel insufficient to put readers in the depth of a moment.


The color of the clouds created by smoke and gas suspended in the air during a riot. The timbre of a witness’ cries after a shooting. The claustrophobia of a crowded courtroom.


The pressure to capture the multi-sensory essence of a story might be a challenge for print reporters, but moments like these are the stuff one journalist’s reporting dreams are made on.


Dan Archer.




Archer is a transmedia journalist who works as a Reynold’s Fellow at the Missouri School of Journalism’s Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and a graphic journalist at Empathetic Media.


His style of domestic civil rights and national security reportage combines elements such as video game platforms, comic-book-style editorial cartooning, data and other media elements into what he calls “immersive journalism” to give audiences greater control of how they navigate the news and to let them explore stories from multiple points of view.




One such endeavor is a comic recreation of eyewitness testimonies from the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, created for Fusion.  The Instagram image below is a snapshot from the project, which can be viewed here.







Another was his so-called “sketchbook” from the streets of Baltimore’s Sandtown neighborhood, where Freddie Gray was arrested and later died in Baltimore Police custody.





But perhaps his most well-known project — and one which, according to Archer, most accurately reflects his current focus on transmedia (versus merely graphic) journalism — was the “virtual-reality experience” he built which allows users to explore the Michael Brown shooting crime scene from the perspectives of multiple witnesses and incorporates primary documents, witness testimony, photo-based scene reconstruction, data visualization and more.


The Medill National Security Journalism Initiative spoke to Archer via Skype to get the story behind his stories and insight into the potential for new media to change the face of national security reporting.


According to Archer, the graphic side of transmedia reporting can catch people off guard initially, but actually allows for greater ease of access to subjects — especially ones who might otherwise be scared off by cameras.


He also said it helps keep the stories focused on their subjects, rather than on the journalist’s experience while trying to report them out (i.e. riot coverage that focuses on what’s happening to a reporter vs. what’s motivating the crowd to be there in the first place). He expressed a discomfort with this “ego journalism,” but was careful to call out the practice vs. its media practitioners.




But he said that transmedia journalism does little to make government and law-enforcement officials more comfortable in interviews and depictions than more traditional forms of reporting would, especially in the age of body cameras and a growing demand for increased police accountability.




Archer said that immersive reporting isn’t that big of a departure from graphic journalism.  Rather, it allows aspects of 2-D reporting to be expanded into further dimensions (such as sound or, in the case of versions of his Ferguson reconstruction designed for virtual-reality consoles, three-dimensional navigation and spatial understanding).


He said diving into the design of such storytelling environments isn’t intensely complicated due to the availability of game engines (some of which are freely available) and YouTube tutorials.




His advice for more traditional print journalists?


Throw orthodoxy out the window, get a handle on emerging interactive story tools and set out to discover fresh approaches to building narratives — especially when it comes to topics that may be so ubiquitous that audiences have tuned out their media coverage.



				
							

		
			

					
									
													

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Afghan-Americans to Pakistan: stop supporting terrorism



				

				


On August 14, almost 50 Afghan-Americans gathered outside the Pakistani embassy in Washington, D.C. to protest what they say is Pakistan’s ongoing support of terrorist organizations operating in Afghanistan. The protesters called for the United States Congress to stop funding the Pakistani government and for the Pakistani government to stop supporting terrorism networks operating in Afghanistan.

				
							

		
			

					
									
													

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The Debrief: Guantanamo Edition // INSIDE A MILITARY COMMISSION COURTROOM



				

				


In this installment of “The Debrief: Guantanamo Edition,” Medill students who recently returned from a reporting trip to Naval Station Guantanamo Bay take you inside of a military commission courtroom — with words, that is. Find out what it’s like to be in (and report from) such a courtroom to help you get ready to cover a commission yourself.

				
							

		
			

					
									
													

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The two faces of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba



				

				
NAVAL STATION GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA – The U.S. may have opened an embassy in Havana, Cuba, but 500 miles away at the Guantanamo Bay naval base you wouldn’t know that anything had changed.


Guantanamo Bay, with its small-town feel, is a major naval base as well as home to the infamous detention center for captives in the war on terror. Since the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba, operations have continued on as usual, with no plans to change. In fact, experts say closing the base would take decades. Meanwhile, the gift shop still has Fidel Castro bobble heads for sale.


“There is no impact on the base at this point,” said Kelly Wirfel, the public affairs officer for the Naval Station Guantanamo Bay. “We are continuing to execute our mission here.”


In essence, the naval base is an island within the island, separated from Cuba and relatively unaffected by changes in diplomatic relations. Whatever changes are going on in Washington and Havana, daily life doesn’t show any signs of changing yet. Global Post spent a week on the base finding out how the historic diplomatic shift would affect residents’ lives.


At Radio GTMO, the local radio station, the maxim is “Rockin’ in Fidel’s Backyard,” and there are no plans to alter it. The $25 Fidel Castro bobbleheads for sale in the radio’s gift shop aren’t going away anytime soon — the sailors running the station just placed a new order. The North East Gate, which used to allow travel to and from Cuba, will remain closed, and the mines surrounding the base will stay in the ground.


“As the US and Cuba normalize relations, two big Cuban demands remain: ending the embargo and giving back Guantanamo,” said Shannon O’Neil, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Neither is likely before the 2016 presidential election, given the Republican field and the role Congress must play.”


But she stressed that the challenges to the Obama administration’s attempts to close the military prison are likely only a short-term hurdle.


“In a post-Castro brothers’ Cuba, negotiations to return the territory are possible and even likely, with precedents around the world,” O’Neil said. She pointed to the transfer of the Panama Canal from US control to Panamanian control as an example; that transition took more than 20 years.


The 45 square miles of land occupied by the Guantanamo Bay base have been leased from Cuba since 1903. The original lease agreement gave the land to the US “for the time required,” which effectively means the US can take its sweet time leaving. The US pays just over $4,000 a year in rent, though the Castros still refuse to cash the checks, because that would serve to legitimize the current occupation of Guantanamo. The Cuban embassy did not return calls about whether the Cuban government planned to start cashing the checks.


In January 1961, shortly before John F. Kennedy was inaugurated, President Dwight Eisenhower severed diplomatic relations as Fidel Castro declared himself in favor of Marxist ideology and began mass jailings and executions of Cuban dissidents. Then, in 1964, Castro cut off the water supply, forcing the base to become completely self-sufficient.


Guantanamo Bay is first and foremost a naval base, in operation since the land was acquired over a century ago. It has docks capable of accommodating ships as large as a small aircraft carrier, and facilities catering to the families of soldiers stationed at the base.


“We’re a logistical hub so lots of the ships that are doing operations in the Caribbean pull in here to be refueled, resupplied, whatever it is that they might need,” Wirfel said. The base has also supported humanitarian missions, such as taking in a massive influx of Haitian refugees and migrants in the early 1990s as a part of Operation Sea Signal.


Twenty years later, all but 28 of the refugees have left. The base is home to a mix of service members and their families, civilians, and third-country nationals, mostly Jamaicans and Filipinos who come to the base for work.


In total, nearly 4,000 people live on the base, including more than 500 spouses and children.


The naval base has the feel of a humid small town that could be anywhere on the Gulf Coast. There’s McDonalds, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell. The local high school’s team name is the Pirates. There is a movie playing every night but Wednesday at the Lyceum, a stadium-style outdoor theater, complete with a concession stand that sells popcorn, hot dogs, and soft drinks for a dollar each.


The movie theater is where you will find Jose Polics, 18, many nights of the week. He has lived in Guantanamo Bay his entire life. “It’s a wonderful experience,” said Polica. “The best part is that the Gitmo community has treated me so nice.”


Polica recently graduated from W.T. Sampson High School, the only one on the base. He graduated with only a handful of other students. Though he says he is interested in going into a job having to do with IT, he has no desire to leave the base. “I consider Gitmo my home,” he said.


The hippest place to be each night is the Jerk House, a Jamaican restaurant that offers the most highly coveted service for most residents of Guantanamo Bay: Wi-Fi.


The base is notorious for its terrible and outrageously expensive internet service. Visiting journalists pay $150 per week for just one hardwire hook-up with connectivity speeds that are reminiscent of pre-broadband days.


Like moths to a streetlight, the free Wi-Fi creates a melting pot of the community outside the Jerk House. In one evening reporters were joined by a crew of FBI witnesses who were scheduled to testify in an on going military commission.


“It’s my first time here,” said one of the witnesses who had helped collect evidence overseas. The team was sporting sunburns and raving about their time on the beach.


Nearby, at the officer’s club, an IT technician joined a table full of reporters. He said that he comes down to Guantanamo about once a month from Virginia Beach to help broadcast the military commissions to viewing rooms on military bases stateside. He has a couple of boats in the marina and offered to take the group sailing on one of the many down days that come with reporting on the base.


For most, entertainment can be hard to come by in the isolated naval base. The Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Department tries to solve this problem. The organization makes sure there is something to do each day of the week, from kayaking to a “South of the Border” celebration, featuring an adolescent mariachi band flown in from nearby Florida.


Despite all the programming, residents of the base tend to get island fever.


Wouldn’t it be nice if they could take a nice little trip to Cuba?


“I think the consensus is that everyone here would love that. But there is no talk of that, and if it does happen, it will certainly be sometime down the road,” Wirfel said. “I hope I’m here for that.”


There are two sides to Guantanamo. On one side is a regular naval base whose mission is “to guarantee the success of a myriad of strategic operations by providing exemplary support to our tenants, government agencies, and allies,” Wirfel said. On the other side are the notorious Guantanamo Bay detention camps. Separating them are roadblocks and barriers manned by armed guards.


One of the few things the two sides have in common is the 17-mile border they share with Cuba.


A barbed-wire fence and a minefield surround the base. Marines are posted at watchtowers 24 hours a day. Even the local radio station is designed not to broadcast past the border of the base.


But the edge of the base is not completely impermeable.


Since 1995, high-ranking military personnel from each side have held monthly “fence-line meetings.” The site of the meeting alternates, one month in an old Marine barracks on the US side, the next month in a beat-up Cuban customs house.


“The captain of the base, Captain (David) Culpepper, meets with the Cuban Frontier Brigade, which is their equivalent to the military on that side,” Wirfel said. “It’s a very professional meeting. There is never anything political talked about. It’s all administrative in matter.”


The goal of the meetings is to keep the border peaceful. Neither side wants an inadvertent flare-up from a misunderstanding.


“As you can imagine, when you have guards standing on the fence line face-to-face with each other, it’s important that there’s some communication as to what’s happening on our side and what’s happening on your side,” said Wirfel. The reestablishment of diplomatic relations, Wirfel said, would not affect the monthly meetings, which have been going on for 20 years.


In addition to the monthly get-togethers, there is a surprising annual joint military effort at cooperation between two countries that have not gotten along for decades.


“Every year we also do a bilateral exercise with them,” Wirfel said. This year they cooperated to fight an imaginary fire on the fence line. The participants jumped back and forth across the heavily guarded border, at one point carrying a person with a simulated injury across the border into enemy territory.


A short drive away, less than five miles from the naval docks, sits a side of Guantanamo Bay that reminds visitors and service members that this is a deployment site rather than a traditional military base.


Following 9/11, the Department of Defense decided to begin using the base as a detention center for those captured overseas in the newly declared War on Terror.


On Jan. 11, 2002, the first 20 detainees arrived at Camp X-Ray, a facility made up of chain-link enclosures that resembled dog cages more than jail cells. Since then, there have been several new detention facilities constructed, a few of which resemble standard federal correction lock-ups. In total, more than 780 detainees have passed through the island-based detention center. Today, 116 remain.


Many of the guards who work in the detention centers are military police and live in long canvas tents that look like massive drainage pipes sliced in half. The oceanside tents are kept heavily air-conditioned to dissuade the local iguanas and banana rats from seeking shelter during the blistering-hot days.


Not even a mile down the road is Camp Delta, home to the people allegedly responsible for orchestrating the greatest terrorist attack ever on American soil. This prison is effectively an island within Guantanamo, which itself is an island of US control on the island of Cuba.


The Joint Task Force, with members from all four branches of the US military, runs the detention center. The group in charge is called Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF Guantanamo. On its website, the mission is clear: “JTF Guantanamo conducts safe, humane, legal, and transparent care and custody of detainees, including those convicted by military commission.”


That mission remains unchanged, regardless of the reestablished diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba.


“Nothing has changed for us,” said Captain Chris Scholl, public affairs officer for JTF Guantanamo. “It is business as usual.”


In the end, it may be far too much to expect instantaneous changes at Guantanamo. The base acts a tidal pool, collecting debris and detritus from more than a century of history: the Spanish-American War, the US colonial period, the Cuban Revolution, the Cold War, and now the aftermath of 9/11 and the “Global War on Terror.” Yet at the same time, the tortured politics surrounding Guantanamo have given rise to a relic; a fossilized collection of odd legal, political, and cultural circumstances that the world is unlikely to see again.

				
							

		
			

					
									
													

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