A Mass Grave In Afghanistan Raises Questions

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A Mass Grave In Afghanistan Raises Questions

TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. Earlier this month, James Risen, of
the New York Times, reported that Bush administration officials had
repeatedly discouraged efforts to investigate the mass killing of
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Taliban prisoners by the forces of an
American-backed warlord, General Abdul Rashid Dostum. This was during
the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. The mass grave in which the bodies
were hidden was discovered in early 2002 by members of Physicians for
Human Rights. The group has been investigating the story ever since,
combing through documents they received through the Freedom of
Information Act, and pressing for an investigation.

I have three guests from the group. Dr. Jennifer Leaning is one of the
doctors who discovered the mass grave. She’s a co-founding board member
of Physicians for Human Rights, or PHR. She’s also a professor at the
Harvard School of Public Health.

Dr. Nizam Peerwani conducted the autopsies on several bodies exhumed
from the mass grave. He’s an advisor for PHR’s International Forensic
Program and is chief medical examiner for three counties in Texas.

Nathaniel Raymond is leading the Physicians for Human Rights’
investigation into the alleged massacre.

Welcome, all of you, to FRESH AIR. Dr. Leaning, let me start with you.
What have you been able to learn so far about who’s in this mass grave
and how they got there?

Dr. JENNIFER LEANING (Co-founding Board Member, Physicians for Human
Rights; Professor, Harvard School of Public Health): The story, as we
have pieced it together, is that there was a major battle in the north
in the war in Kanduz, and thousands, between 6,000 and 12,000 Taliban,
surrendered to Northern Alliance troops that were also there with
participating U.S. military forces. And coming from that surrender -
that northern edge, the northeastern edge of Afghanistan - coming from
that surrender, thousands of Talibans were put in trucks and brought to
prison sites around Nazar.

There was an attempt to disarm them before they took them into the Qala-
i-Jangi Prison, but as they dismounted at a crossroads to head towards
the Qala-i-Jangi Prison, it became evident that there were – the men,
the Taliban men, were too numerous, and there were not enough Northern
Alliance men, which some U.S. military observers there, to create a
protected environment. So these Taliban were sent to Qala-i-Jangi. These
were men wrapped in their blankets, who had not been personally
searched. They went to Qala-i-Jangi, and there was a hold put on the
whole trail of prisoners coming from Kanduz because Qala-i-Jangi wasn’t
clear how many they were going to hold.

Then we had the uprising at Qala-i-Jangi, which in itself is a terrible
story, but it ruined the fort, and it ruined the prison for any
occupancy. Then there was a process of taking the remaining Taliban
prisoners, which were the great bulk of the prisoners, and putting them
into container trucks, which are closed trucks - that this took a
process of time that there was – it appears to be a deliberate attempt
to smother them, and this is a modus operandi for the Northern Alliance
and actually for other forces as well in Afghanistan. And then they
brought them to the Sheberghan Prison, offloaded those who were alive
and took the remainder, who had suffocated, and buried them in the
Dasht-e-Leili Desert, at a site that we saw that was only half a mile
from the Sheberghan Prison.

GROSS: Do you have any idea whether these prisoners were intentionally
put into trucks where they would likely be suffocated, or do you think
the suffocations were an accident?

Dr. LEANING: What we understand from people who have investigated this
closely is that there was the intent to see a large number of them die.

Mr. NATHANIEL RAYMOND (Physicians for Human Rights): This is Nathaniel.
At this point, we still need all the facts to determine what the
motivation was and whether there was intent in terms of the suffocation
of these prisoners. But what we’re hearing now from the FBI interviews
that were conducted with at least 10 survivors at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
is that there are allegations that forces, presumably Northern Alliance
forces, fired directly into the containers at various points in the
journey from Nazar to Sheberghan. And so it’s essential that we have an
investigation to determine why they were transported in containers -
according to the survivors, 100 to 200 in a small shipping container -
and whether there was direct firing into the sides of the containers or
into the containers themselves through the open doors.

GROSS: Dr. Leaning, you and one of your colleagues found the mass grave.
How did you know when you found it?

Dr. LEANING: It was – it was remarkable. I have seen old massacre sites.
I have seen some mass graves that are smaller, but we were riding in an
old Toyota Land Cruiser, heading southwest out of Sheberghan towards
Maymana, and as you take a road out of Sheberghan to enter the Dasht-e-
Leili Desert, as I say, within a matter of a few hundred yards, we
suddenly saw this dry desert expanse, and it’s really desert. This is
January. There wasn’t snow on the ground, but it was dry, cold, hard-
packed desert. It was 40 degrees with the wind. And we saw fresh, moist
sand and deep tracks of major vehicles, of what looked like bulldozers
and also huge trucks - bulldozers meaning there were real treads on it.
And there were these vast areas of disturbed sand and earth, moist and
darker in the light compared to the hard, firm, undisturbed surface of
the Dasht-e-Leili on both sides of this dirt road that we were on, and
we got out.

And we were careful because we were within a line of sight of General
Dostum’s military post up there, one of his headquarter posts, which is
very near Sheberghan and the prison. And since everything is so flat, it
was possible from the third floor of this outpost where he – where his
troops were, at least, for him actually to see what we were doing - for
his forces to see. And we had figured that out…

GROSS: Meaning you weren’t necessarily safe being there.

Dr. LEANING: No, and…

GROSS: Because he might have been behind the mass grave. That’s a
possibility. His men might have been behind it, so…?

Dr. LEANING: Possible, yes, because he was…

GROSS: He might not have wanted you sniffing around there.

Dr. LEANING: No. He was in military control of this part of Nazar and
the area going north and east, where Sheberghan was. He was in control
of this whole area, and of the Sheberghan Prison. It was his people that
were wardens in the prison.

And so we got out of the Land Rover, and we stayed on the road because -
of the Land Cruiser - because we were afraid that some parts of this
might have been mined, which is often the case around mass graves. And
yet, as we walked a little bit hesitantly into the disturbed earth, it
became evident that, virtually as far as the eye could see on both sides
of this road but particularly on the right-hand side as we were heading
southeast out of Sheberghan, that there were black turbans tangled in
the dirt, that there were prayer beads, isolated sandals and flip-flops,
other little garments that I didn’t stoop down to investigate because
some of them would have involved walking 20 yards into this disturbed
area, and exposed human bones. I mean, I’m a physician. There were
pieces of rib cage. There were bones that looked as if they were parts
of femurs. And it appeared as if some of the surface of this grave had
been already defaced by animals who had come to dig and then, smelling
things, had explored deeper so that the - as I say, it was an area of
disturbed earth with surface remnants of human remains and human
clothing that extended on both sides for a very large area.

And we saw three or four military vehicles at Dostum’s outpost begin to
fill with troops, with these men with uniform that we could see from a
far distance, and begin to turn out of that compound and head down the
road towards where we were. And so we quickly got back into our Land
Cruiser, did a U-turn and went very fast. Before they got onto the road
to the Dasht-e-Leili, we got back and went into Sheberghan town.

GROSS: So what is the protocol when you’ve discovered a mass grave like
this?

Dr. LEANING: John Hefford(ph) and I were human-rights investigators, and
I am a doctor, but we are not forensic experts. And so we felt equipped
to say, in our reporting to Physicians for Human Rights and in our
debriefing to several key agencies back in Nazar about what we saw, we
felt equipped and empowered to say that we had seen just what I
described to you: this vast area, several football fields in size, on
both sides of this road, disturbed earth with the tracks and disturbed
with human remains and human clothing.

We are not in any position to say how many people were buried there, and
we were not really in a position to say how recent it was except that
the earth was so obviously recent that we could say that. And our next
protocol is to talk to Physicians for Human Rights and get the forensic
team, with adequate U.N. permission and U.N. protection in this time, to
come and take a closer look at the grave.

GROSS: Well, let me bring in a forensics expert into our conversation.
Dr. Nizam Peerwani is joining us by phone, and he conducted the
autopsies of several bodies found in this mass grave. He’s an advisor
for Physicians for Human Rights’ International Forensic Program, and
he’s the chief medical examiner for three counties in Texas.

Dr. Peerwani, thank you for joining us. So when you were told about this
mass grave and asked to investigate it, what did you do when you first
got there?

Dr. NIZAM PEERWANI (Advisor, International Forensic Program, Physicians
for Human Rights): Well, it’s a pretty large grave, about 60 meters by
16.5 meters. It was obviously disturbed earth. We could still see that.
And as noticed earlier, there were a lot of fragments of clothing items
and surfaced bones, many of them bleached.

We were concerned about mines, of course. So we had a team with us, and
we did a surface mine detection to see if there was anything there. Once
we were certain we were safe, we began to do test bits. And we were very
fortunate that within a very short time, we were able to locate the
perimeter of the grave.

We did a rather large excavation. We were able to locate 15 bodies that
were in this area - 15 bodies were just a part of a very large grave, to
put that into perspective. Now, these bodies were not buried in Islamic
tradition in the sense that it was not a burial site, an Islamic burial
site as you would normally see it. These were just bodies that were
thrown the way they were located, and they were about a couple of meters
from the surface.

We were able to pull out three bodies, and I did a rather complete
autopsy on those three bodies. And they were just sampler bodies in the
sense that there was no way we could examine all the bodies. We did not
have a team to do all that. We were able to establish, first of all,
they were males. And we did some anthropomorphic studies, and we were
able to establish the ages. The first male was 18 to 23 years of age,
the second was 25 to 30 and the third was 35 to 45. They were wearing
typical clothing items, which we were later able to identify as those
worn by the Pashtun tribes. In addition, they were also having black
turbans, which is very typical of the Taliban’s clothing items. And so,
we felt pretty comfortable that we were working with Taliban bodies.

GROSS: What were you able to determine from the autopsies that you

conducted?

Dr. PEERWANI: Well, the objective of the autopsy was to decide if I
could establish the cause of death. I was able to say with great degree
of confidence that they did not die of any blunt-force trauma. They were
not strangled. They were not smothered. They didn’t have sharp-force
injuries or firearm injuries. I was also able to say they were not
starved to death. I was able to document presence of fat, subcutaneous
fat, and there were formed stool in the large bowel, which means that
they had recently been fed. And so really, one has to decide on a cause
of death in the context in which the bodies are found, that’s number
one, but also by exclusion.

Frequently in forensic autopsies, certain types of death have to be

established by ruling out all other types of death - for example, an
unwitnessed seizure death or a sudden infant death syndrome. So in this
particular case, the negative findings of trauma and the fact that I was
not able to demonstrate starvation and other findings such as this, made
me conclude that they had really suffocated to death, especially because
they were pretty young people, and there were no organic diseases that I
could document in the organs that were still there in the body.

GROSS: So you were able to determine that the cause of death was
probably suffocation.

Dr. PEERWANI: Yes.

GROSS: And that the people in the grave were probably Taliban based on
the articles of clothing that you found.

Dr. PEERWANI: That’s correct, yes.

GROSS: So can you estimate from the size of the grave how many people
may be buried there?

Dr. PEERWANI: I would say certainly several hundreds, if not a couple of
thousand. I think that the size of the mass grave, which is 60 meters by
16.5, could hold, depending upon how the bodies were stacked in other
parts, as many as several hundreds, or at least one- or two-thousand
bodies.

GROSS: Well, Dr. Peerwani, I want to thank you very much. I know you’re
on vacation right now, and I really appreciate you taking some time out
to talk with us. Thank you so much.

Dr. PEERWANI: You’re welcome, Terry.

GROSS: Dr. Nizam Peerwani conducted the autopsies of several of the
bodies found in the mass grave. He’s an advisor for Physicians for
Humans Rights’ International Forensic Program and is chief medical
examiner for three counties in Texas.

We’re going to take a short break here, and then we’ll talk more about
(unintelligible) grave and about Physicians for Human Rights’ attempts
to get the Bush administration, and now the Obama administration, to
investigate what happened.

After we take a short break, my guests will be Jennifer Leaning, a
founding board member of Physicians for Human Rights, she and one of her
colleagues discovered the mass grave of Taliban prisoners in
Afghanistan, and Nathaniel Raymond, who’s leading the Physicians for
Human Rights’ investigation into the alleged massacre. This is FRESH

AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: I have two guests from the group Physicians for Human Rights.
Dr. Jennifer Leaning discovered a mass grave in Afghanistan in which the
bodies of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Taliban prisoners were hidden.
They were allegedly killed in 2001 by the forces of a warlord aligned
with the U.S.,. Nathaniel Raymond has been leading the Physicians for
Human Rights’ investigation into the mass killing and pressing for an
official investigation.

Nathaniel, you spent years investigating what happened at the mass grave
and trying to get the United States government to investigate. Why
should the U.S. government investigate? It’s a grave in Afghanistan.
What claim does the U.S. have?

Mr. RAYMOND: Well first of all, Terry, I think when people hear about
this case, they think it’s about the past, and for me, the Dasht-e-Leili
massacre investigation is really about the future, both for the United
States and Afghanistan. What happened there was a crime that allegedly
occurred when we, the United States, were working with the Northern
Alliance. So legally, under international and domestic law, we have
responsibility for the actions of our allies when we are operating
jointly during a time of war.

But more than that, it’s really about the question of accountability.
Will there be accountability in the United States for crimes committed
during the Bush administration? Will there be accountability in
Afghanistan for 30 years of impunity by warlords, by Taliban, for crimes
such as Dasht-e-Leili?

GROSS: Now, you’ve met with resistance in your efforts to open an
investigation. James Risen of the New York Times reported earlier this
month that there were attempts to stop an investigation sought by
officials from the FBI, the State Department, the Red Cross and your
group, that the Bush administration resisted efforts from all of those
ends. And Risen quotes Pierre Prosper, who is the former American
ambassador for war crimes, and he served in the Bush administration, and
here’s what he said. He said: At the White House, nobody said no to an
investigation, but nobody ever said yes, either. The first reaction
there was oh, this is a sensitive issue. This is a touchy issue
politically. Why would this be a touchy political issue?

Mr. RAYMOND: Well, as Jim Risen reported in the New York Times, General
Dostum was on the payroll of the CIA. He was an asset of the United
States government. And at the time when the first efforts were made by
lower- and mid-level officials at the Department of Defense, the FBI and
the State Department, to find out the truth in regards to Dasht-e-Leili,
Dostum was the deputy defense minister under then-Chairman Karzai, the
president now of Afghanistan.

So it was an issue of a U.S. ally who had worked with (unintelligible)
special forces in the CIA in breaking the back of the Taliban in
northern Afghanistan soon after September 11th, who, according to Jim
Risen, was basically shielded by the actions of at least three Cabinet-
level departments to impede any investigation from going forward.

GROSS: So Nathaniel, what kind of requests did you make to the Bush
administration to investigate the mass grave?

Mr. RAYMOND: Well, as soon as our team, led by Jennifer Leaning and John
Hefford in Afghanistan, had discovered what we believed to be a mass
grave, and as soon as our forensic team had done a preliminary
assessment in February of 2002, we immediately raised these concerns to
the State Department, the Department of Defense and the National
Security Council. We called for immediate protection of the site,
security for any witnesses, and we asked them to begin, immediately, an
investigation in cooperation with not only the government of Afghanistan
but the United Nations.

GROSS: And your response was?

Mr. RAYMOND: Basically silence. There was, throughout 2002, a constant
stonewall from the Bush administration, saying that they had done an
oral debrief of the special forces when they returned to the United
States. And that the special forces said, in this verbal debrief, that
no human rights abuses apparently occurred, and so thus there was no
U.S. responsibility.

We are still trying to learn the full story of those within the Bush
administration, particularly at the State Department but also the
Department of Defense, who definitely fought for an investigation but
were, it appears, shut down.

GROSS: Nathaniel Raymond and Dr. Jennifer Leaning, of Physicians for
Human Rights, will be back in the second half of the show. I’m Terry
Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. We’re talking about a mass
grave in Afghanistan where the bodies of hundreds, perhaps thousands of
Taliban prisoners were hidden after they were allegedly killed by the
forces of an American-backed warlord, General Dostum. I have two guests
from the group Physicians for Human Rights. Dr. Jennifer Leaning is one
of the doctors who discovered the mass grave in early 2002. Nathaniel
Raymond has been leading the group's investigation into what happened
and pressing for an official investigation. The Bush administration -
resisted pressure to investigate from human rights groups and from
officials from the State Department and FBI.

Now, one of the concerns of Dr. Leaning and Dr. Peerwani about the
gravesite was that it could be tampered with and one of the things you
wanted from the Bush administration was protection of the site so that
evidence would remain there. You have evidence now that the site in fact
has been tampered with.

Mr. RAYMOND: Our consuming fear from day one, Terry, was that any
evidence there was going to be removed and/or destroyed. We were also
deeply concerned about witnesses who had spoken to journalists such as
Newsweek, to the United Nations and to others. And now, sadly, we know
two things. One, we know that there is clear evidence that our forensic
team document 2008 of tampering at the site. And we also have satellite
imagery which shows in 2006, less than a month approximately after we
filed a Freedom of Information Act request in U.S. federal court, there
is one large hole present at the site and what appears to be a hydraulic
excavator in a dump truck digging what becomes the second large trench
that our forensic team found in 2008.

But for me, and I want to make this very clear, the great tragedy in
this case has been the loss of the witnesses. We now know through State
Department documents we received through Freedom of Information Act
request that at least four witnesses - innocent men - who were bulldozer
drivers and truck drivers have been tortured, killed and disappeared.

GROSS: Nathaniel, you requested Freedom of Information Act files related
to the mass grave. Your request was made in June of 2006. And I know you
had a lot of trouble getting the Freedom of Information Act files,
although you finally got them. What kind of trouble did you have?

Mr. RAYMOND: Well, the trouble Physicians for Human Rights had was that
the Bush administration didn’t want to release any documents and so with
the help of Ropes and Gray, a law firm in Washington, we were able to
pressure them to release the documents and we started receiving them in
2008. And what we found was frankly jaw dropping.

In a November 2002 State Department intelligence report there was a body
count. And it was from a three-letter redacted intelligence source,
which means we couldn't see who was reporting it but whoever was
reporting it was identified by three letters. And this three-letter
source said that at least 1,500 to as many as 2,000 had died as part of
the massacre. And what we also learned, which was very hard for us at
Physicians for Human Rights to see is that the U.S. government had
confirmation that at least four witnesses had been tortured, killed,
and/or disappeared.

GROSS: What does it say to you that within these Freedom of Information
Act files there was a source whose name was redacted who actually gave
an estimated body count in this mass grave?

Mr. RAYMOND: Speaking with former Bush administration officials, that
source was an agency. And we still do not have confirmation about what
U.S. intelligence agency that was but it was absolutely outrageous, the
fact that the U.S. government would be saying there was no grounds for
U.S. investigation, no grounds for security of the site, no grounds for
protection of witnesses, but they had a body count for years. And they
had clear evidence that people, innocent bystanders in this case, were
being killed and they did nothing.

GROSS: Is there any other important information that you got through the
Freedom of Information Act files?

Mr. RAYMOND: I think there were several critical pieces in the Freedom
of Information Act files. One was a list prepared by the Department of
Defense, as an internal briefing paper, of all of Abdul Rashid Dostum's
previous alleged human rights abuses, including a missile attack in the
‘90s on Kabul which killed approximately 4,000 people, mostly civilians.
And it was amazing to see evidence of reservations...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. RAYMOND: ...about the alliance with General Abdul Rashid Dostum. And
what you also saw is drafts of letters from the Department of Defense to
Physicians for Human Rights, the actual effort of them figuring out what
to say to us as we requested protection for our investigators to go back
under U.N. auspices and perform a full exhumation and request for site
security. It was an amazing window into a process of bureaucratic kick
the can.

GROSS: So James Risen reported earlier month that there were requests
from inside the government to investigate what happened at this mass
grave. Did you know about those requests?

Mr. RAYMOND: We knew from speaking with former administration officials
that there had been informal conversations about the need for an
investigation. What we did not know is that the FBI had filed 10 witness
reports. What we also did not know...

GROSS: And these are witnesses who were in Gitmo but who...

Mr. RAYMOND: This is a really...

GROSS: ...had been in that, as you describe it, the convoy of death.

Mr. RAYMOND: Yes. This is a really important point, Terry, is that the
FBI was there to interrogate suspected terrorists and they started
filing reports from witnesses to an alleged crime. And I think it's a
credit to special agents Spry and the FBI agents who were at Guantanamo
that even in that environment they were trying to do their job as U.S.
law enforcement.

We did not know that until The New York Times reported it. And also, you
really get a sense, a clear view of Special Ambassador Prosper's efforts
to move the investigation forward, as we had some sense of the State
Department's efforts through public statements and also through the
Freedom of Information Act request. There was a cable from then-
Secretary of State Powell to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul requesting that
they work with the United Nations and the government of Afghanistan to -
this is at the end of 2002 - to push forward an investigation in the
wake of the Newsweek story.

GROSS: Might there be legal consequences for members of the Bush
administration somewhere down the line depending on what an
investigation, if there is an investigation, eventually uncovers?

Mr. RAYMOND: Underneath international law, which the U.S. is party to,
covering up a war crime can itself constitute a war crime. And we still
don't know the full story of why and how those investigations inside the
Bush administration did not go forward. There needs to be, to sound like
a broken record, Terry, hearings.

There needs to be an investigation. But the fact of the matter is is
that the Obama administration must commit to this simple fact, that if a
law was broken in the initial crime or in any follow on crimes that may
have occurred by the Bush administration, then those who committed them
need to be prosecuted. And I think that Dasht-e-Leili should not be
swept under the rug. It is critical to show the people of Afghanistan,
the people of the United States that the United States once again abides
by the rules of law when the laws of war are violated.

GROSS: Now, President Obama recently said to CNN, the indication that
this had not been properly investigated just recently was brought to my
attention. And he said he asked his national security team to collect
the facts for me that are known and I'll probably make a decision in
terms of how to approach it once we have all the facts gathered up. So
what's next for Physicians for Human Rights in terms of investigating
what happened at this mass grave?

Mr. RAYMOND: Well, it’s been seven and a half years but we are going to
keep going until the full truth is known. We are preparing potentially
more Freedom of Information Act requests. We are continuing to
communicate with the United Nations and all other relevant international
agencies about follow on investigation requirements. And most of all, we
are advocating to not only the Obama administration, but to the American
public for people to see Dasht-e-Leili more than as some crime in the
past but as really a critical part of what's happening now in
Afghanistan.

The people of Afghanistan are fighting more than the Taliban, Terry.
They’re fighting a culture of impunity that has existed there for now
over 30 years. And if there is going to be stability in Afghanistan,
there must be justice. And crimes like the Dasht-e-Leili crime must be
investigated. Families must know what happened to their loved ones
regardless of what side they fought on. And we must strengthen the
institutions necessary to have impartial justice in Afghanistan and
Dasht-e-Leili is a test case for that.

GROSS: Dr. Leaning, Nathaniel Raymond, have either of you ever been
involved in an investigation of an atrocity where the United States had
been an obstacle in the investigation?

Dr. LEANING: I've been involved in atrocities in investigations in the
West Bank and Gaza, in Chad, Darfur, in Kosovo, in Angola, in Soviet
Union, in Soviet Georgia, a number of other places where there have
certainly been oppressive and punitive regimes and high levels of threat
for the kinds of investigations we’ve done, that is Physicians for Human
Rights.

But this is the first one that I've been involved in where there is very
strong evidence that there is a link to U.S. high level political
knowledge about a crime - an alleged crime - but if it is established, a
war crime of significant magnitude. And I do feel as an American that
it's very important that we get this one right.

Mr. RAYMOND: If I can just...

GROSS: Yeah. Go…

Mr. RAYMOND: ...very quickly. In addition to investigating the Dasht-e-
Leili case, I've been working for Physicians for Human Rights
investigating detainee abuse by the Bush administration over the past
three years. And for me, Dasht-e-Leili is part of a larger horrific
mosaic of what happens when the United States, a supposed human rights
leader and with a proud legacy of not only following but of helping to
establish the international laws of war and treatment of prisoners,
abandons that commitment.

And I think that the issue for accountability here has obviously both on
detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib, the issue of Dasht-e-Leili, Guantanamo,
CIA black sites, has become politicized. But accountability in these
cases is not some political witch hunt. It is about being able to
restore our reputation. And that's some ephemeral thing, Terry.

It is, as someone who's worked on investigations on the horn of Africa
and in the Middle East, when the U.S. gives the green light to the abuse
of prisoners, to the wanton disregard for their rights, it gives the
green light around the world to regimes to do whatever they want. And so
it's not just about this case. It's about showing that the United States
is back in its position of working to enforce the laws that we helped
create over our 200 plus year history.

And so I think it’s easy when people say, well, these are Taliban and
al-Qaida dead. Well, it's, to quote Senator McCain, "It's not about
them. It's about us." And that's why for me, the Dasht-e-Leili issue is
so important. Our values are, are they the values of our founders or are
they the values of an Afghan warlord?

GROSS: Dr. Jennifer Leaning, Nathaniel Raymond, thank you both very much
for talking with us.

Dr. LEANING: Thank you.

Mr. RAYMOND: Thank you, Terry.

GROSS: Nathaniel Raymond is leading the Physicians for Human Rights
investigation into the mass killing in northern Afghanistan. Dr.
Jennifer Leaning is a board member of Physicians for Human Rights and a
professor at Harvard School of Public Health.
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In Ederle Bio, A Channel-Crosser's Defiant Spirit

TERRY GROSS, host:

The English Channel is a mere 21 miles across at its narrowest point.
But its powerful tides and abrupt shifts in weather makes swimming the
Channel one of the most difficult athletic feats on the planet. In the

summer of 1926, only five men in recorded history had swum the Channel.
Then an American teenager name Gertrude Ederle stuck her toe in the
Channel waters and made history. Book critic Maureen Corrigan has a
review of "Young Woman and the Sea," a new biography of Ederle by
sportswriter Glenn Stout.

MAUREEN CORRIGAN: When Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the
English Channel and to set a new speed record for doing so, died six
years ago at the age of 98, I remember routinely glancing at the photos
on the newspaper obituary pages and thinking that she looked quaint.
Certainly her modest tank suits with their boy-leg cut gave her, to my
eye, an air of premature mustiness. So did the old fashioned name,
Gertrude. In over 20 years of teaching, I’m pretty sure I’ve never had
one Gertrude among my students.

My split-second dismissal of Ederle as quaint is why Glenn Stout’s new
biography of her, called “Young Woman and the Sea,” struck me as
poignant far beyond the powers of his somewhat lumpy writing style.
Because, as Stout makes clear, Gertrude Ederle, known in her youth as
Trudy, was once the glorious epitome of the modern American girl of the
1920s. She was sporty, muscular, and plucky. She even daringly bobbed
her hair. When Ederle made her world famous swim in August of 1926, she
was 19 years old and she listened to the strains of hot jazz as she swam
the frigid storm-tossed waters of the Channel. The crew aboard a little
tugboat beside her spun gramophone records - tunes like, “Yes, We Have
No Bananas,” and “Sweet Georgia Brown.”

Ederle, as Stout emphasizes, was forward-looking but no feminist. She
took on the Channel — smearing her body in sheep grease and diving in to
master a feat achieved by only five men — simply because there were no
swimming records left for her to break. Her supportive father had
promised her a red Roadster if she succeeded. And, indeed, she got that
snappy car, as well as a ticker tape parade down Fifth Avenue. New York
City Mayor Jimmy Walker told the teenager: when history records the
greatest crossings, they will speak of Moses crossing the Red Sea,
Caesar the Rubicon, and Washington the Delaware, and frankly, your
crossing of the English Channel will take place alongside these.

But Walker’s prediction proved to be nothing more than a politician’s
bloviations. By the early 1930s, Ederle was working as an anonymous swim
coach at a public pool outside New York. Her fame had evaporated as
quickly as sea spray on a sun-warmed beach towel. Stout’s biography does
a good job of fishing Ederle out of the deep waters of historical
forgetfulness and setting her in the context of her times — the Roaring
Twenties, when public fascination with sporting events, as well as with
stunts, had reached new heights.

I cautioned, a moment ago, that Stout’s writing style is lumpy because
he often bloats Ederle’s story with chapter-long digressions about, for
instance, Native American swimming techniques or like the chapter
devoted to the geological history of the English Channel. A leaner
biography would have been even more evocative. Ederle, Stout tells us,
began swimming as a child on resort beaches in New Jersey. She suffered
significant hearing loss after having measles at age five, and the
silence of the sea clearly felt comforting to her. Ederle once said in
an interview that, to me, the sea is like a person, like a child that
I’ve known a long time. It sounds crazy, I know, but when I swim in the
sea I talk to it. I never feel alone when I’m out there.

After joining the nascent Women’s Swimming Association, Ederle began to
wow her teammates and coaches, particularly when she got out of pool
competitions and onto the open water of the ocean. She won gold medals
in the 1924 Olympics, but, on her first attempt to swim the Channel in
1925, she became sick and disoriented and had to give up. Stout gives
credence to the story that Ederle’s Channel guide — a resentful old
buzzard named Jabez Wolffe — may have put poison in the bottle of beef
tea he passed to her as she swam.

Ederle’s second try was golden, despite the heavy wind, rain and fog
that set in during her 14-and-a-half-hour swim. In the thick of the
storm, when deep ocean swells made it hard for the panicked folks on the
tugboat to keep Ederle in sight, they wanted her to quit. Someone
shouted at her to: come on out, girl. Ederle, lost in her partial
deafness and in the joy of swimming, took a while to respond. According
to those aboard, she eventually looked up, smiled, and shouted back:
What for? It may have only been a fleeting moment, but the way Stout
tells it, it just may have been the best moment of Gertrude Ederle’s
life.

GROSS: Maureen Corrigan teaches literature at Georgetown University. She
reviewed “Young Woman and the Sea,” by Glenn Stout. Coming up, Ken
Tucker reviews Wilco’s new CD. This is FRESH AIR.
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With ‘Wilco’, Wilco Shows Its Earnest Side

TERRY GROSS, host:

Our rock critic Ken Tucker has a review of Wilco’s new album, which is
called “Wilco (The Album).” It’s the band’s seventh studio album and
finds the group, led by singer and songwriter Jeff Tweedy, in a
confident, sometimes even playful mood. “Wilco (The Album),” leads off
with a song called, “Wilco (The Song).”

(Soundbite of song, “Wilco (The Song)”)

Mr. JEFF TWEEDY (Lead Singer, Wilco; Songwriter): (Singing) Are you
under the impression, this isn’t your life. Do you dabble in depression?
Is someone twisting a knife in your back? Are you being attacked? Oh,
this is a fact that you need to know. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Wilco. Wilco.
Wilco, will love you baby.

KEN TUCKER: Do you dabble in depression? Jeff Tweedy sings on that
opening song. Are you being attacked, he asks. His response? Wilco will
love you, he sings. It’s a sweet, whimsical way to begin an album
containing many comfy, inviting songs. Rare it is for a rock band to
speak with such fondness for its audience. Even the Beatles felt it
necessary to invent Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to do so. And
if I invoke the Fab Four, another reason is that there’s Beatlesque
music on “Wilco (The Album),” such as “You Never Know,” with the George
Harrison-ish melody of its refrain. Wilco may sing the words, I don’t
care anymore, but the musical craft behind those words deny them,
happily.

(Soundbite of song, “You Never Know”)

Mr. TWEEDY: (Singing) Come on children. You’re acting like children.
Every generation thinks it’s the end of the world. All ya fat followers
get fit fast. Every generation thinks it’s the last thinks it’s the end
of the world. There’s dream down a well. There’s a lone heavy hell. I
don’t care anymore. I don’t care anymore. It’s a feeling we transcend.
We’re here at the end. I don’t care anymore. I don’t care anymore. You
never know.

TUCKER: On that song, Jeff Tweedy calls his listeners, children, and
exhorts them to quote unquote “grow up.” It’s not stern daddy talking.
It’s more like the yearning hope of a man who’s done some growing up
himself over the past few years, and he recommends it as healthy, if not
life-saving. This leads Wilco into some attractive love songs, such as
Tweedy’s duet with the Canadian vocalist, Feist, singing about the
constant mysteries of getting to know someone you’ve fallen in love
with, on “You and I.”

(Soundbite of song, “You and I”)

Mr. TWEEDY: (Singing) You and I, we might be strangers. However close we
get sometimes, it’s like we never met.

Mr. TWEEDY and FEIST (Musician): (Singing) But you and I, I think we can
take it. All the good with the bad, make something no one else has. You
and I. You and I. Me and you.

TUCKER: For 15 years, Wilco has done its best to nurture a large cult
following with thoughtful experiments in dissonance, with a spacey
version of country music and with covers of Woody Guthrie songs that
sounded more like Wilco than Guthrie. It’s a track record to be proud
of, but it’s also music that placed each experiment between the band and
its audience, walling them off at a safe distance. Thus the boldest move
Tweedy has made on this album is its very directness, whether it’s
telling us Wilco loves us without fear of seeming sentimental or
pandering, or asserting a fierce devotion on the sharp, angular ballad
called, “I’ll Fight.”

(Soundbite of song, “I’ll Fight”)

Mr. TWEEDY: (Singing) I’ll go, I’ll go, I’ll go, I’ll go for you. I’ll
fight, I’ll fight, I’ll fight, I’ll fight for you. I’ll kill, I’ll kill,
I’ll kill, I’ll kill for you. I will, I will, I will. I’ll go, I’ll go,
I’ll go, I’ll go for you. I’ll fight, I’ll fight, I’ll fight, I’ll fight
for you. I’ll die, I’ll die, I’ll die, I’ll die for you. I will, I will,
I will. And if I die, I’ll die, I’ll die alone on some forgotten hill,
abandoned by the mill. All my blood will spring and spill. I’ll thrash
the air and then be still. You’ll wait.

TUCKER: “Wilco (The Album)” is about recovery and acceptance -
acceptance of the self, acceptance of one’s station in life, and feeling
at once humbled and emboldened by that. Acceptance, but not complacency.
Jeff Tweedy is suggesting how you can make stability sound like a tough
artistic challenge and a grand adventure.

GROSS: Ken Tucker is editor-at-large at Entertainment Weekly. You can
download podcasts of our show on our Web site, freshair.npr.org.

I’m Terry Gross.
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