The Wisconsin Film Festival Presents “We Are Not Ghouls”: Upholding the Constitution
Above: Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley, a JAG officer, who defended Guantanamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed and won his release
Below: Producer/Director Chris James Thompson who self-financed and took nine years producing “We Are Not Ghouls"
By Jonathan Gramling
In the aftermath of 9/11, America was nearly hysterical with fear as hate crimes and prejudicial incidents against Arabs and Muslims — and even Indian Sikhs — rose dramatically in the United States. And the George W. Bush administration vowed a War on Terror, it launched an invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 with its Allies to root out al-Qaeda, which claimed responsibility for the bombings.
As with any governmental effort fueled by hysteria, the War on Terror swept up many innocent people along with some terrorists in an effort to show the American people it was making progress in the War on Terror. Many of those innocent people were also subjected to unspeakable torture that members of the Bush administration described as “enhanced interrogation techniques.
It took the efforts of many civilian and JAG defense attorneys to eventually free these innocent people swept up by the U.S. government. One of those JAG officers was Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley, whose tireless and brave efforts to free Binyam Mohamed from Guantanamo Bay were captured by independent filmmaker Chris James Thompson of Milwaukee in the movie “We Are Not Ghouls,” one of the premier films featured by the Wisconsin Film Festival April 13-20.
Bradley had worked with death row inmates who undeniably were guilty. She felt that she was a good judge of character.
“It took me probably, to be honest with you, no less than 5-10 minutes, if that, in the cell with Binyam to realize that something was terribly wrong. His whole body language was just so … I don’t know how you would put it. I wasn’t even talking with him during the first 5-10 minutes. Karl was talking with him because I just wanted to sum up the situation after I first met Binyam. Literally, as concerned and scared as I was going into the cell with Binyam, coming out of there 4-5 hours later after our initial meeting, I was left with that word, pissed the hell off.”
Bradley realized that the Bush administration was peddling a lie — maintained by the lack of transparency — to justify actions it could never get away with in peace time.
“I still remember that vividly to this day of walking out of that cell knowing that everything the American people had been sold about Guantanamo was false,” Bradley said. “It was all based on fear. The other thing that I came out thinking about after my initial meeting with Binyam was how we can use fear to control people. And I can understand that after 9/11, people
were fearful. After 9/11, especially in America because we are not used to being attacked, it was a different world. I realized that how the government was using that event and the fear to keep people in that same panic mode so they could justify rounding individuals up, locking them away and telling them we got the ‘bad guys’ and we are keeping you safe. That, to me, was all based on fear and control.”
In essence, it was a legal battle to uphold the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law.
“We saved the Constitution because the Constitution was not being upheld,” Bradley said about herself, other defense attorneys and even some JAG prosecutors who knew what was being done was wrong. “When you have high government officials say, ‘We don’t torture,’ I was like, ‘Yes you do.’ And that is the most frustrating thing, when people are telling you that we don’t do these things and you know they are. They are telling you, ‘We are treating the detainees humanely’ and I am saying, ‘No you’re not.’ Just trying to counter that reaction or propaganda was probably the most frustrating thing I had to deal with because it is hard to tell people something — this is why I like the documentary — because the less people know, the broader story of what was happening at Guantanamo other than we had bad people down there and that our government was doing the right thing was hard to get out. We were treating people fairly and we were going by the Geneva Convention because that is the story that everyone wants to believe. But that really isn’t what was happening.”
It took attorneys on both sides of the court to uphold the Constitution at great risk to their careers.
“I was really proud of many of the attorneys — civilian attorneys as well — given the environment and the institution that we worked in that they were willing to say, ‘We cannot just blindly follow orders, blindly follow what you are telling us because we know there is a higher principle that we are fighting for and that is the Constitution,’” Bradley said. “And that occurred on both sides, defense and prosecuting. You saw Lt. Col. Sanderville and other prosecutors who quit and said that they couldn’t do it anymore. We were at a training. They were training the defense attorneys and the prosecuting attorneys during the same training session. I recall on one occasion where a gentleman came up to me — I thought he was trying to trap me because I knew he worked for the prosecution — and said, ‘I really don’t like where I am. I don’t like what is going on over there.’ He sincerely wanted out. And he wasn’t the only one. There were a couple of Air Force attorneys as well who quit and said that they could not do this anymore. I give my hats off to those in the military who did stand up and said, ‘This is wrong.’”
Bradley still believes in the U.S. government, but does not blindly believe everything it says and does.
“You can’t have a knee-jerk reaction that everything the government does is wrong,” Bradley emphasized. “That’s why you have to question and get to the truth. I think it is also a mindset on how you approach it. Yes, you can approach it like everything the government does is suspicious and wrong. But again, that goes to a level of distrust. And I guess what I am saying is that we have to have that balance of not believing everything and there is nothing wrong with questioning. There’s nothing wrong with getting to the trust of the matter, but not being blinded whether you are for the extreme right or the extreme left. And personally, I think that is what is wrong with our country today. You either have to be on one side or the other. And really, many things are a matter of gray. And some things are not always right or wrong. Those people who take to the extreme are just being blind in another fashion. Everything comes down to a matter of balance.”
Bradley volunteers with the public defender’s office now that she has retired from JAG service. And on some level, the work is the same, saving innocent young Black men swept up in an environment of domestic fear fueled by prejudice and scapegoating.
“I think you hit the nail on the head earlier when you look at Black males and how they get treated in society,” Bradley said. “And unfortunately, that criminal justice system, the same elements of fear and assumptions that someone looks different from you, they must be very bad people still exists in the criminal justice system. It’s not just to the maximum as it was or to the extreme, in most cases, as it was in Guantanamo.”
And Bradley is committed to fighting that prejudice.
“I have gone back to get my Ph.D. in history because I think it is very important to educate people in understanding the broader contributions that many individuals have brought to this country: Native Americans, African Americans, Japanese Americans and Latin Americans,” Bradley said. “That is so much missing from us understanding each other as people and our contributions and not just see things from a European standpoint.”
Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley is still fighting the good fight to hold America to its ideals and its belief in the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution.
