The Interrogation Room

A former sergeant describes sex techniques used on detainees -- and why we all should be ashamed. TAP talks to Erik Saar, author of Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier’s Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantanamo.

By Tara McKelvey
Web Exclusive: 06.08.05

Erik Saar, a clean-cut, former Bible-college student dressed in a white shirt, looks like someone who’s just left the Army and still kind of misses it. Saar, 30, speaks nostalgically about his days as a sergeant and Arabic linguist -- right up to the moment when he was sitting in an interrogation room at Guantanamo Bay and watched things go terribly wrong. Sitting in a Starbucks in Rosslyn, Virginia, Saar talks about female interrogators, thongs in a supervisor’s office, and, of course, Newsweek’s “Periscope” item.

What was your first impression of Guantanamo Bay?

I got there on December 10, 2002, and stayed until June 20, 2003. It was 80 degrees and sunny every day. And there was Camp Delta. It hit me as an unfortunate realty of war. On day one, or even during the first two months, I did not say, “Wow, what a terrible place this is.” I felt like, “This is what you do when you need to defend yourself.” To be honest, it sometimes has appeared in the media that my book is nothing more than a chronicle of abuses. But I volunteered to go to Guantanamo Bay. I wanted to be at “the tip of the spear,” as you say in the Army. That’s where you’re out in front, gathering intelligence, and sitting down with the worst of the worst.