“Because if you’re going to say, ‘Well, sometimes there might be cases where we ignore the limits.’ Well then how on earth do you define which situations those are? How do you define who’s going to make that decision?”
It is precisely in the extraordinary situations, the “ticking bomb” scenarios, where Bryson said the very best methods need to be used.
![“[T]he interrogator is a human being. We need to think of them,” says Jennifer Bryson, a former lead interrogator at the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. “What are we asking them to do that they have to live with for the rest of their life? And that person will go before God at his or her death. You have to consider it.” . Credit: EWTN News In Depth/YouTube](https://aboutcatholic.faith/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/former-guantanamo-bay-interrogator-speaks-about-torture-conscience-and-faith.jpg)
“One of the problems with torture is that people want to desperately make it stop and will say anything,” she said.
She pointed out that as Catholics, we have many examples from which to draw lessons.
“If we look at the history of the torture of saints, you can see that torture is used to try to get people to lie.” Bryson highlighted the example of the Diocletian persecutions in the early Church when a government that was hostile to Christians wanted them to publicly reject Christianity.
Torture and “enhanced techniques,” Bryson said, are not only ineffective for good intelligence gathering, they are harmful.
“You open up a huge risk if you say, ‘Well, we’ll try rapport, and if that doesn’t work, then … the gloves come off’ … you run the risk that somebody who simply is failing at interrogation can [say], ‘Well, rapport didn’t work … so I had to be harsh’ … rather than trying to figure out why is there difficulty in this particular situation.”
The role of faith
Bryson arrived at Guantanamo “discouraged and depressed” about aspects of the Church, but she began to find more spiritual footing through her experience of Catholic fellowship and the opportunity to attend Sunday Mass. Her faith “began to reopen and develop some solidity.” It helped her to not only be courageous, but to be effective as an interrogator as it played a role at times in building rapport with detainees.
“My job wasn’t to sit there and have just general generic faith discussions, however, at the same time, building trust is essential. And the fact that I am a believing Christian is part of who I am. And there were, of course, many aspects of my own private life that never, ever would have come into the interrogation room for security and safety reasons. But I did share [faith] with the detainees,” Bryson explained in the interview.
“For example, I had an interrogation on a Monday one time, and the detainee was very polite … some of [these men] were very sophisticated and respectful — especially respectful to a woman who’s modestly dressed and who’s respectful to him — and he asked, ‘Well, I hope you had a nice weekend.’ And I mentioned, ‘Yeah, I had a nice weekend, and I went to church yesterday.’ Because their view of Americans was largely ‘Godless heathens,’ and they’re unaware that there are these huge differences inside of American society. And yes, some of them could relate to another person who was a believer.”
In addition, Bryson’s Catholic faith helped her better form her conscience, a process she came to see was not just about following “dos and don’ts” but about “being able to listen to and respond to God’s will.”
“I didn’t know anything about conscience formation when I went to Guantanamo. And I’d been a Catholic at that point for almost 13 years. I mean, I’d heard of it and I had some idea, but it sounds like a topic that’s a course that priests take in seminary that’s going to have lots of academic information about do this, don’t do that. What I realized in Guantanamo is, first of all, that formation really needs to happen before the difficult challenges come. And because we can’t predict when those come, the time for conscience formation is right now.”
Bryson also spoke in the interview about forgiveness and the role of justice.
“I do think that understanding that there is a cosmic level of justice and that each of us, as human beings, will meet our Maker does provide a broader perspective,” she said.
Bryson told Flynn that her experience in Guantanamo had a huge impact on her. “It was the most radical experience I’ve had in my life with what it means to be a human being. When you’ve got to sit and talk with somebody who is an enemy, who tells you that they would be happy to kill you, and you’re able to sit there and have a conversation, usually over tea, it is an astonishing human experience and it helped me understand, for example, why we are called to pray for our enemies. Our enemies are part of being human along with us.”
Bryson’s faith and courage during and since Guantanamo has earned her the admiration and respect of people such as Robert P. George, McCormick professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University.
“The first thing that strikes people about Jennifer Bryson is her courage,” George told CNA. “For example, her physical courage in serving as an interrogator in Guantanamo and her even more impressive moral courage in speaking boldly in support of the sanctity of human life in all stages and conditions; marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife; and religious freedom and the rights of conscience.”
“As one gets to know her better, though,” George continued, “it becomes clear that behind her courage is a profound faith in Christ. Jennifer does not rely on her own resources but rather on Jesus as her ultimate source of strength. When I reflect on Jennifer’s work and witness, it always brings to mind that wonderful old hymn ‘Leaning on the Everlasting Arms’: ‘What have I to dread? What have I to fear, leaning on the everlasting arms. I have blessed peace, with my Lord so near, leaning on the everlasting arms!’”
Bryson is currently a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in the Catholic Women’s Forum and lives in Heiligenkreuz, Austria, where she is a visiting researcher at the European Institute for Philosophy and Theologie at Hochschule Heiligenkreuz. She is translating works by Catholic writer Ida Friederike Görres from German to English and studying the work of Augustin Rösler, CSsR on “the woman question.”
Watch the full EWTN News In Depth interview with Bryson about her time in Guantanamo below.
Zoe Romanowsky is General Assignment Editor at Catholic News Agency based in Washington, DC. She previously worked for Aleteia.