U.S. Department of Justice

The U.S. Department of Justice occupies two distinct positions in the account: it is described by an interrogator as responsible for running the Guantánamo camp, and it later produced an official review documenting the special interrogation of Mohamedou Ould Slahi. The first role is presented as an assertion made to a detainee; the second is part of a public record that helps test the account of what happened.

Claimed Role at Guantánamo

During an interrogation, an official sought to reassure Slahi by describing detention in Cuba as humane, noting that the camp had two imams and saying it was run by the Department rather than the military. The statement is evidence of how the interrogator represented the institution and the conditions of detention, not independent confirmation that the camp was in fact administered as described. Its reassurance sits uneasily beside the later documentary record of Slahi’s treatment.

Review of Interrogation Practices

The Department’s own 2008 review of interrogations in Guantánamo, Afghanistan, and Iraq summarized classified records of the special interrogation conducted by the Special Projects Team. Read alongside the Senate Armed Services Committee’s inquiry, the review documents a second, carefully devised interrogation plan and reports events that substantially correspond to Slahi’s account in his diary. The records included detailed memoranda describing both what was said in sessions and how information was obtained, giving the review a role in assessing the methods behind the interrogation-derived intelligence.

Public Records and Evidentiary Limits

The review did not make the underlying records public in full: those records remained classified. Its account, together with the Senate inquiry, nevertheless provided a documented basis for examining the interrogation, including the staged boat transfer and the isolation arrangements at Camp Echo. The distinction matters: later official summaries corroborated important parts of Slahi’s narrative, while the limits of access left the original files unavailable for direct public inspection.

Institutional Context

The book places the Department within a wider system of detention, intelligence gathering, and legal proceedings rather than presenting it as a single, uniform actor. An interrogator invoked the Department to distinguish the camp from military control; later, a Department review recorded evidence about military interrogation practices. That contrast makes the Department’s appearances significant without erasing the limits of what the evidence establishes about its authority or actions in each setting.