Harry Harris

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For the Australian surgeon known as Harry Harris, see Samuel Henry Harris

Rear Admiral Harry Harris is director of operations (J-3), United States Southern Command. He formerly served as commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo and Guantanamo Bay detainment camp commander until Mar 29 2007.

Rear Admiral Harry Harris

1 Early life
2 Director, Information, Plans and Security
3 Commander, Joint Task Force Guantanamo
4 References

[edit] Early life

Rear Admiral Harry B. Harris, Jr., was born in Yokosuka, Japan, and reared in Tennessee and Florida.^[1] He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1978. After flight training, he was assigned to VP-44, homeported in Brunswick, Maine. His subsequent operational tours include assignment as a Tactical Action Officer onboard USS Saratoga (CV-60), when CV-60 participated in the Achille Lauro incident and strikes against Libya; Operations Officer in VP-4 during Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm; and three tours with Patrol and Reconnaissance Wing 1/CTF57/CTF 72, homeported in Kami Seya, Japan. In 2002, he reported to Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, serving as ACOS for Operations, Plans, and Pol-Mil Affairs (N3/N5) where he was responsible for the planning and execution of the Naval component’s portion of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

His command assignments include VP-46 at Whidbey Island, Wash., and Patrol and Reconnaissance Wing 1/CTF57/CTF 72 at Kami Seya, Japan. While in command of Wing 1, Task Force 57 was heavily involved in Operation Enduring Freedom, flying nearly 1,000 combat sorties over Afghanistan.

Rear Adm. Harris’ shore assignments include Aide and Flag Lieutenant to the Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Japan, in Yokosuka, Japan; duty on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations as a strategist in the Strategy and Concepts Branch; and Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

His education assignments include selection for the Navy’s Harvard/Tufts Program, where he graduated with a master's of Public Administration from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1992. Subsequently selected as an Arthur S. Moreau Scholar, he studied international relations and ethics of war at Oxford and Georgetown Universities, earning a master of Arts in National Security Studies from the latter in 1994. While at Georgetown, he was also Fellow in the School of Foreign Service.

Rear Adm. Harris has logged 4400 flight hours, including over 400 combat hours, in U.S. and foreign maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft. His personal decorations include the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Legion of Merit (3 awards), the Bronze Star (2 awards), the Meritorious Service Medal (4 awards), the Air Medal, the Joint Service Commendation Medal, the Navy Commendation Medal (5 awards), the Navy Achievement Medal, and various campaign and unit decorations.

[edit] Director, Information, Plans and Security

In August 2004, in his first Flag assignment, he reported to the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations as Director, Information, Plans and Security Division, responsible for Navy current operations and anti-terrorism/force protection policy.

[edit] Commander, Joint Task Force Guantanamo

In March 2006, he assumed command of Joint Task Force Guantanamo in Cuba.

[edit] Harris's comments about the first three captives deaths

Following the reports that three of the Guantanamo captives had committed suicide on, June 10, 2006, Harris triggered controversy with widely quoted comments, including characterizing their deaths as "acts of asymmetric warfare". A Blue Ribbon panel of independent forensic pathologists was unable to independently determine a cause of the three captive's deaths, because the Guantanamo camp authorities had failed to hand over all evidence the forensic experts needed. The camp authorities had failed to provide access to the improved ropes that the Americans claimed they had used to hang themselves, and all they had failed to hang over the men's throats.

Main article: Guantanamo suicide attempts

Harris gave a long interview to ABC nightline host Terry Moran on June 27, 2006.^[2]

Harris characterized the Combatant Status Review Tribunals as "a very rigorous procedure".
In answer to the question: "So no man who ever came to Guantanamo Bay came there by mistake was innocent?" Harris replied he believed this to be true.
Harris assured Moran that no detainees had ever been tortured at Guantanamo.
Harris said he did not regret calling the three suicides reported on June 10, 2006, "an act of asymmetric warfare."
Harris acknowledged that he had read the detainee's suicide notes, and, in his opinion, it would be fine to release them, once the Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigation had concluded. But he said the decision to release the notes did not lay within his authority.

[edit] Change in interrogation policy

Early in the history of the Guantanamo interrogations there was a serious dispute within the American counter-terrorism community over the proper approach to interrogation. The FBI argued that the best approach for acquiring reliable intelligence was for captives to be assigned long term interrogation teams, who they saw consistently, who conducted non-coercive interrogations, that focussed on building rapport with the captives. The CIA and Military Intelligence analysts favored the use of coercive interrogation techniques. FBI agents observed the use of interrogation techniques they judged to be (1) likely to result in unreliable information, false denunciations, false confessions; (2) would result in information that could not be used in a court of law.^[3]

The FBI chose to withdraw from the interrogation efforts, rather than leave its agents exposed to the possibility of later criminal prosecution for abusing captives.

Later, it emerged that the coercive interrogations of high profile captives such as Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi and Mohamed al-Kahtani, had resulted in serious intelligence failures.

After being subjected to coercive interrogation Al Libi confessed that Iraq had supplied his terrorist training camp with trainers who had trained al Qaeda terrorist trainers how to employ Iraq's arenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction for terrorist purposes.^[4]^[5] Al Libi's coerced confession apparently established two of the key claims the Bush administration used to justify invading Iraq: (1) That there were clandestine ties between Iraq and al Qaeda; (2) That Iraq did, after all, have active WMD programs and a ready arsenal of WMDs. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell based much of his key speech to the United Nations, justifying the United States plans to invade Iraq, on Al Libi's coerced confession.

Time magazine acquired a copy of al-Kahtani's interrogation log, where it was recorded that he had been subjected to almost two months of sleep deprivation, and other "extended interrogation techniques".^[6]^[7]^[8] Al-Kahtani eventually "broke", and denounced thirty fellow captives as Osama bin Laden's bodyguards. An FBI observer recorded observing al-Kahtani "gibbering in a corner" during the use of these extended interrogation techniques.

When Harris assumed the command of JTF-GTMO he continued the DoD's criticism of the rapport-building approach to interrogation, and continued to speak in favor the coercive approach. But, in the fall of 2006, Harris began to describe the camp's interrogation approach as the rapport building approach, and criticized the coercive approach, without ever acknowledging that he had previously advocated the coercive approach, and criticized the rapport building approach.

[edit] Fifth Anniversary of Guantanamo

On January 11, 2007, the fifth anniversary of the arrival of the first 20 Guantanamo captives in Camp X-Ray, Harris's views on the camps' future was the subject of an article in distributed by the American Forces Press Service.^[9] According to the widely quoted article Harris said:

“I think that we’ll have a detention facility and a detention mission for the foreseeable future. The president has said that he would like to see Guantanamo closed when it’s no longer necessary, and we support that, of course, and we believe in that. The issue is when it’s no longer necessary. And I believe that today, as long as we’re in the fight, as long as we’re in the global war on terror, and as long as we have forces engaging the enemy in Afghanistan and in Iraq, there is a need for a facility like Guantanamo.”
“One of the things that I believe that we’ve learned over the years of our experience in Guantanamo is that the detainees are enemy combatants, and they never lose sight of that fact. They know who the enemy is, and the enemy is us, and they never forget that. We have a tendency to forget that they are enemies, and we have to always be on our guard.”
“I believe that the media coverage is shifting to be more factual and truthful about what is happening in Guantanamo. We’re seeing that as we expose Guantanamo to a broad range of media, international media as well as U.S. domestic media. The reporters are professionals who come there, and they get to see all the stuff that’s happening in Guantanamo. And when they see it, when the light of day shines on it, then it’s hard to say that the detainees are kept incommunicado in some black hole of Guantanamo and all these other misperceptions that you read from reporters who report on Guantanamo without having had the benefit of actually visiting Guantanamo. So this is a good thing. We should be transparent as possible, and we strive for transparency, and transparency is actually in our mission statement.”

[edit] February 8th statement

On February 8, 2007 Harris repeated his comment that there were no innocent men in Guantanamo, during an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Michael Rowland.^[10] Among his comments were:^[11]^[12]^[13]

HARRY HARRIS:	*My mission is to run a detention facility in a safe and humane way. The nation has decided that we need a place like Guantanamo to keep detainees like the ones we have here.* *I personally believe that we have the right people here at the right place for the right reason, and that we are detaining them in the right way.*
MICHAEL ROWLAND:	A lot of detainees including David Hicks insist they're innocent. What makes you so sure they have a case to answer?
HARRY HARRIS:	Well, it's not a question of guilt or innocence. With the exception of those detainees that would be charged with war crimes as part of the military commissions process, and David Hicks is one of those, but we are detaining enemy combatants here in Guantanamo. Now, that's the right of any nation at war to do that, and it's an internationally recognised right. There's no expectation that they be tried or charged with exception to those that are alleged to have committed war crimes - now, they would be charged and then tried in a legal process. *But the other detainees are enemy combatants, and we're keeping them off the battlefield.*
MICHAEL ROWLAND:	You say you believe you have the right people here. So, you believe there are no innocent detainees?
HARRY HARRIS:	*I believe there are no innocent detainees here. But again, I use the term "innocent" loosely. It's not a question of innocence, it's a question of enemy combatant status.* So, I believe that the detainees that we have here in Guantanamo are enemy combatants. It's not a question of guilt or innocence because they haven't been tried, and we don't have an obligation to try them - with the exception of those that we think have committed a war crime.

After the interview David McLeod, Australian captive David Hicks Australian lawyers commented that if Hicks was being tried in an Australian court of law, Harris's prejudicial comments would trigger a mistrial:^[13]

"This suggestion that because detainees are there, that that is in itself evidence of terrorism, or their being a terrorist, simply puts the lie to any attempt to deal with them in a fair and open manner. To suggest that a prisoner in the Australian criminal courts is guilty would in itself amount to a mistrial or an inability to proceed appropriately and fairly before a court."

An article published on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's web-site quoted Australian Senator Bob Brown described Brown as expressing "outrage" over Harris's comments.^[14]

"The reports coming from other detainees who've come out of Guantanamo Bay - and they're verifiable - show that there's been inhumane treatment. We know anyway that the rights of Hicks have been removed, he's had no legal rights - he's been judged guilty by Admiral Harris himself."

On 26 March 2007, not being in an Australian court of law, Hicks entered a guilty plea to the charge of providing material support for terrorism.^[15]^[16]