STUDENT ERIK SAAR’S BOOK: "INSIDE THE WIRE"

Last year, Erik Saar, a master’s student in his first semester at SPP, co-authored a book called "Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier's Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantanamo" (Penguin Press, May 2005). "It’s about my time as an Arabic linguist and intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army and how my experience in Guantanamo strongly challenged some of my beliefs regarding U.S. policy," Saar says. "Within the course of six months there, in 2003, I went from being an eager volunteer—happy to use my skills to contribute to the fight against terrorism—to believing the camp represented a moral and strategic failure. Through my experiences translating in the interrogation booth and analyzing the intelligence—or lack thereof—coming out of the camp, I came to believe the policies I saw were inconsistent with the core American values I thought I was defending as a soldier." Saar also began to think there was a practical argument against many of the polices at the camp: "The meager amount of intelligence gathered in Guantanamo was not worth the extensive harm brought to America's international reputation due to polices prevalent there," he says.

Saar, a Senior Research Analyst with the Government Services division of DFI International, a strategic consulting company, co-authored the book with Viveca Novak, a Washington correspondent for Time. Following the book's publication, Saar appeared on "60 Minutes," "Good Morning America," "Hardball with Christ Mathews," "The O'Reilly Factor," and BBC's "Newsnight." The book was also featured in numerous radio and print outlets, including National Public Radio and Mother Jones. One journalist, writing about the book for The Observer, an English newspaper, said it would "prove a damaging blow to a White House [that was at the time] still struggling to recover from the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq."