The documentary that DeSantis did not want you to see: How Vice pulled probe into claims presidential hopeful approved force-feeding and torture while at Guantanamo and how 'Navy girls would go crazy over him'
By Neirin Gray Desai
Daily Mail
July 23, 2023
A view of the naval base on Guantanamo Bay, where DeSantis served for a year starting in March 2006 as a legal advisor
Vice allegedly pulled a documentary probing claims Ron DeSantis authorized force-feeding while working in Guantanamo Bay out of fear the governor would retaliate.
The film - called 'The Guantanamo Candidate' - examined claims that while DeSantis was a legal advisor to the Navy in 2006 he advised military officials on how to carry out forced-feeding on prisoners who had been on hunger strike.
The documentary was meant to come out on May 28 as part of a Vice docuseries that airs on Showtime but it was reportedly pulled on May 25, a day after DeSantis announced he was running for president.
It also came just weeks after Vice, once lauded for its daring and disruptive journalism, declared bankruptcy in mid-May.
The controversial practice of force-feeding was declared a form of torture by the United Nations in February 2006, just one month before DeSantis arrived in Guantanamo and served there for a year.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis served as a legal advisor to military officials in Guantanamo Bay. He is pictured with his wife Casey during his wedding in 2009, three years after his stint in Guantanamo in 2006
Mansoor Adayfi (pictured) was interviewed for the Vice film, according to the transcript. Adayfi has previously claimed he remembers DeSantis watching and smiling as he was being force-fed through a tube that was inserted into his nose
Vice reporter Seb Walker asked DeSantis about his time in Guantanamo Bay in 2006 during an unrelated press conference in Jerusalem in April. The governor responded angrily: 'All that's BS. Totally BS'
A script of the 30-minute film, seen by the Daily Beast, indicates it was hosted by Vice journalist Seb Walker, who performed multiple interviews with people who were at Guantanamo Bay at the time.
The first was a prisoner who has previously recounted how DeSantis watched and laughed as he was force-fed via a tube in his nose during a hunger strike.
DeSantis has been reluctant to discuss the allegations at length but was famously asked about them by Walker during a press conference in Jerusalem in April.
The governor vehemently denied the claims and challenged the prisoner's ability to remember his face.
'All that's BS. Totally BS,' he said.
'Do you honestly believe that's credible? This is 2006. I'm a junior officer. Do you honestly think they would have remembered me from Adam?' he responded to Walker.
'Of course not, they are just trying to get into the news because they know people like you will consume it because it fits your preordained narrative that you're trying to spin. Focus on the facts and stop worrying about the narrative,' he said.
Also interviewed for the documentary, according to the transcript, was a guard at the prison, staff sergeant Joe Hickman.
Hickman has alleged that three hunger strike leaders in the prison were killed by US officials, who later claimed they died as a result of a suicide pact. According to the transcript, in the film he suggested DeSantis would not have had the authority to have been involved in that incident.
He also described DeSantis as 'extremely handsome' and said 'Navy girls would go crazy over him', according to the transcript.
'They weren't going to give somebody like that that kind of responsibility,' Hickman said in regards to any possibility of his involvement in the deaths of the three inmates.
During the time DeSantis was stationed in Guantanamo, officials were facing issues with prisoners going on hunger strike over the prison's conditions
DeSantis said there should have been military commissions set up sooner to try Guantanamo Bay detainees
That is in contrast to claims from DeSantis' commanding officer at the time, Capt. Patrick McCarthy, who told the Washington Post that DeSantis was in fact involved in that alleged incident.
'He would have been one of the folks that I dispatched to help facilitate the investigative effort,' McCarthy told the Post. According to the Vice transcript he declined to be interviewed for the film.
A source with direct knowledge told the Daily Beast the documentary was shelved on May 25, just four days before the documentary was set to air and after promotional materials had been shared.
The episode's description read: 'Seb Walker investigates allegations from former Guantanamo Bay detainees that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis witnessed acts condemned by the United Nations as torture during his past service at the controversial detention camp as a Navy JAG officer.'
One person with knowledge of the decision told Semafor that Showtime's Washington lobbyist, DeDe Lea, had raised concerns about the Guantanamo film.
The inmate interviewed for the film was Mansoor Adayfi, according to the transcript.
He wrote a now-famous opinion piece for Al-Jazeera in April in which he detailed his experience being force-fed and claimed that DeSantis watched and smiled.
Adayfi described in the piece how he was 'violently strapped into the chair so tightly that I could not move'.
'A nurse forced a thick tube into my nose and down my throat. My nose bled and the pain was so great that I thought my head would explode. The nurse would not stop. Instead, he began pouring Ensure into a feeder bag attached to the tube,' he added.
'As I tried to break free, I noticed DeSantis’s handsome face among the crowd at the other side of the chain link. He was watching me struggle. He was smiling and laughing with other officers as I screamed in pain.'
Adayfi went on to claim that he was left strapped in the chair overnight after having been force-fed and they began the process again the next morning.
'Because I had thrown up, they fed me another case. This time, they mixed laxatives into the bag. The mixture of Ensure and laxatives completely wrecked my intestines after having no solid foods for more than nine months. They left me restrained in that chair all night, soiled with my own waste and vomit,' wrote Adayfi.
A US Army soldier stands at the entrance to Camp Delta where detainees are held
The Daily Breast wrote to Showtime regarding the decision to axe the documentary and was given the same response as The Hollywood Reporter, which first broke the story.
The Showtime spokesperson said, 'We don't comment on scheduling decisions,' and did not answer when asked if the DeSantis office had been in discussions with the network about the documentary.
The Beast also wrote to the DeSantis campaign regarding the claims he watched forced-feedings and was directed to the relevant segment of the Jerusalem press conference.
It did not address questions about collusion with Showtime.
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