DOJ Office of the Inspector General

The DOJ Office of the Inspector General is a significant documentary source in the account of Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s detention and interrogation at Guantánamo. Its 2008 review examined interrogations in Guantánamo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and its findings helped establish a record of the change in control over Slahi’s questioning, concerns raised within the FBI, and methods used during the military’s special interrogation.

Reports and investigative records

The office’s review, titled A Review of the FBI’s Involvement in and Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq, devoted substantial attention to Slahi’s interrogation. The report drew on records that included the Special Projects Team’s daily memoranda, which documented both what was said in sessions and how interrogators obtained information. Those underlying military records remained classified; the DOJ Office of the Inspector General’s review and the Senate Armed Services Committee inquiry into detainee treatment summarized them for the public record.

The review’s account also provides an important institutional chronology. Slahi told the Administrative Review Board that his last interview with FBI interrogators was on May 22, 2003. The DOJ Office of the Inspector General confirmed that FBI agents involved in his questioning left Guantánamo in late May and that the military then assumed control. This transition marked a change in who directed the interrogation, not an end to it.

Warnings about interrogation methods

A few days after the military took over, an FBI agent circulated a report recording concerns about military interrogation methods. The DOJ Office of the Inspector General later described a July 1, 2003, email from FBI assistant general counsel Spike Bowman to senior FBI officials. Bowman raised concerns about aggressive methods, including physical strikes, stripping detainees, and exposing them to cold water; the email noted that one detainee had developed hypothermia.

Bowman questioned whether such conduct would be unlawful if used against prisoners of war and warned that the FBI could be implicated by association. He also sought advice on whether the matter should be referred to the Department of Defense Inspector General. The episode places the FBI’s concerns within the interagency dispute over military interrogation practices: the methods were not merely a later subject of public controversy, but had prompted internal warnings while Slahi’s interrogation was underway.

Findings about the special interrogation

The DOJ Office of the Inspector General’s review supplied details about the team that took over Slahi’s questioning. In early June 2003, an Army sergeant assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Special Projects Team identified herself to Slahi as FBI Special Agent Samantha Martin in an effort to persuade him to cooperate. Slahi’s impression that he was speaking with an FBI agent was therefore mistaken; according to the review, the interrogator was using that identity as a deception.

The review also documented the plan for a staged transfer intended to make Slahi believe he had been removed from Guantánamo. The original plan proposed hooding him and flying him around the bay by helicopter, but military interrogators later said that approach was abandoned because it was logistically difficult and would involve too many people. On August 25, 2003, Slahi was instead taken from his cell in Camp Delta wearing blackout goggles and brought on a disorienting boat ride. He was allowed to hear prearranged deceptive conversations among the passengers. The Senate Armed Services Committee inquiry into detainee treatment described the planned destination as Camp Echo, where the cell and interrogation room were to be isolated from outside stimuli; the DOJ review’s account of the altered transport helps document how the staged removal was carried out.

Public record and limits of reconstruction

The DOJ Office of the Inspector General’s findings are part of a larger record assembled from declassified government documents, investigations, litigation, news reporting, and Slahi’s manuscript. The manuscript’s editor explained that notes on redactions drew on such public sources and on close reading, but did not attempt to reconstruct the censored text or uncover classified material. The notes therefore distinguish information supported by public records or the manuscript from speculation about what the black bars conceal.

That distinction matters when reading the interrogation evidence. The DOJ review helps corroborate particular circumstances and methods, but the existence of an official summary does not make every redacted passage recoverable or every proposed identification certain. Its contribution is more precise: it preserves a traceable account of the change in interrogators, the internal warnings, and the staged transfer, while leaving the limits of what can be known visible.