Military

Camp Pendleton General Speaks Out On Guantanamo

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published September 25, 2009 at 1:16 PM PDT

This story was published more than 15 years ago.

The Marine commander assigned to set up Guantanamo Bay Detention Center says the United State “lost the moral high ground” with its brutal treatment of prisoners there.

General Michael Lehnert retires next week as the commanding officer of Marine Installations West, including Camp Pendleton. He says he ran Guantanamo Bay Detention Center as close to Geneva Convention rules as he could in its early days in 2002. He says, before he was reassigned a few months into the project, he reached the conclusion the United States would not get much useful information by using the kind of brutal techniques practiced at the facility.

Lehnert says if the prisoners are transferred to the United Sates, he doubts Camp Pendleton would be a good place.

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“I would be asking the question how does that effect operations?” he says, “The bases here in southern California host 40 percent of the combat power of the Marine Corps. Will there be restrictions upon aviation and firing large weapons?”

Lehnert says it might affect air space above the base. Lehnert adds that officials in Michigan, a state heavily affected by the economic downturn, are considering taking the detainees

President Obama has ordered the prison to close by January 2010, but it’s not clear where the remaining 200 prisoners would go.

Military

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.