Florence man heads Guantanamo security.

Byline: Winston Ross The Register-Guard

FLORENCE - First stop: the Olive Garden. Then the big-box stores. And on this trip home, Tony Camera is armed with a cooler that he'll fill with dry ice, fresh halibut and Dungeness crab.

The seafood is to take back to Cuba for Camera's boss: Navy Capt. Peter Husta, chief of staff for Joint Task Force Guantanamo at the world's most notorious naval base - U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay.

Born and raised in Florence, Camera has worked for the Miami-based government contractor Southcom for the past 16 months in a place most people will only hear about, a place that's home to either hundreds of dangerous terrorists or hundreds of innocent Muslims deprived of legal rights, depending on whom you believe.

The base has become a flash point in the global debate about the U.S.-led war on terrorism, where hunger strikes and allegations of torture among its indefinitely held detainees surface regularly. The latest high-profile criticism came from former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who urged that the base be shut down immediately.

Camera - in charge of security for detainee operations for the Joint Task Force - fiercely denies the allegations of mistreatment of prisoners, saying stories of torture have been planted by operatives of the terrorist network al-Qaeda and spread by the media.

"If it bleeds, it leads," Camera said. "Just like in Iraq; nobody reports on the schools every day we opened. They report about the two soldiers that got blown up."

Guantanamo detainees are treated well, Camera insists. "Every detainee gets at least two hours of recreation every day. The average detainee gains 18 pounds in our custody."

The detainees choose from four menus, he said. They can choose between apples and oranges, and pick their favorite flavor of the nutritional supplement Ensure. They get bottled water, board games, Qurans in any of 19 different languages, prayer rugs and an arrow in each room that points toward Mecca so the detainees can pray five times a day, with the aid of a cleric's broadcast over the loudspeaker.

The 14 high-value detainees sent from secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons to Guantanamo by President Bush in September, however, are another story.

"They're in a different facility," Camera said. "We don't talk much about them."

Camera doesn't interact with the detainees, but he's sure they belong there, he said. They routinely threaten the guards, throwing "cocktails" of bodily fluids at them, he said. "They're rather kill you than look at you."

Camera says he has witnessed interrogations. He can't understand what's being said because he doesn't speak Arabic or Farsi, but nothing untoward goes on, he said. One of his best friends is on the "interrogation standardization team," to ensure "number one that no torture goes on and number two that all interrogations are done in the same way. I've seen a lot of interrogations. They look a lot like what we're doing right here. A conversation, back and forth."

The reason detainees tell stories of torture is because they're trained to do so by al-Qaeda, he says. He acknowledges that it's possible that there are detainees who shouldn't be there. But "that decision isn't made by me," he said.

"I can tell you for a fact that we hold some very dangerous people who have done some very bad things, and given the opportunity would do them again," he said. "We have released people that have gone back to the battlefield in less than six months."

Commander Rick Haupt, director of public affairs for Joint Task Force Guantanamo, said the detainees are being held there under the Law of Land Warfare, an international law that allows any nation to detain enemy combatants until the end of hostilities. It is not necessary that they be charged with a crime, but as many as 80 of the detainees may be charged with war crimes and face military commissions, or trials. They are allowed access to attorneys, Haupt said.

Camera arrived at Guantanamo Bay in a roundabout way.

After graduating from Siuslaw High School in 1994, he poked around Florence working at random jobs before he decided to enlist in the Army in 2000. He wanted to be a fireman or a medic but, based on aptitude tests, "stumbled" into a job as an intelligence analyst, right after boot camp.

Trained for Cold War era missions, Camera's focus changed considerably on Sept. 11, 2001. Eighteen months later, his entire division at Fort Campbell, Ky., was on a plane bound for Iraq, joining the first soldiers on the ground in a conflict he expected to be over in a couple of months.

One dangerous year later, Camera found himself stateside, hoping for an assignment that would allow him to live with his wife, Brandy - whom he'd met in 2002 in Florence while on leave - and their four children from previous marriages. There was a job in Miami, working in a security office and keeping an eye on classified information, his supervisors told him. Camera took it in April 2004.

For the next two years, Camera designed and implemented security systems for Army facilities in 31 countries, including those in Central and South America, managing access to classified information and making sure that the proper safes and structures were built to house the sensitive material. But the Army discharged him after discovering that he had three herniated discs in his lower back, he said, a prospect that left Camera without a job or a way to support his family.

That's when he got a call from Southcom.

"How do you feel about going to Guantanamo Bay for a year?" the recruiter asked him. Camera said, `My first thought was `Wow; it's really hot down there.' '

He was reluctant to take the job because he wouldn't be allowed to bring his family. But he had four children to feed, and the Southcom job included a significant pay boost.

His introduction to his new life started on his flight down: The C-12 transport plane flew around Cuba, mindful of Fidel Castro's standing threat to shoot down U.S. military planes that enter Cuban airspace.

Once on the ground and settled in, Camera said, "I was curious: Where are the detainees? Do we get to see them?"

He did, but as a building security manager, Camera's job wasn't to interact with them. He was there to make sure classified information didn't blow away in a hurricane, that the right papers went in the right safe, that the right people got access to the information.

"You need an alarm here, a motion detector here, this big a safe," Camera said.

"We're thinking about bad weather, a janitor mopping the hallways who didn't have clearance, about bad guys trying to get in and steal information."

Over time, Camera's clout on the base grew. In October, the joint task force's security manager quit. Camera had been filling in for him when he went on leave. So when he applied for the permanent post, he got it. He now answers to the chief of staff and supervises 13 employees, Haupt said.

"Before, I was focused on buildings," Camera said. "Now it's all aspects of security."

Haupt said Camera is in charge of physical security for the 375 detainees on the entire base as well as information security, in terms of classified information stored on the base. There are several private contractors on the base, with 1,800 employees, 1,100 of whom operate the detention camps. The military has decided that some jobs are more suited to civilian companies, Haupt said.

Camera's wife wanted no part of Guantanamo when her husband told her later she could come with the kids. But she hated Miami. Her children couldn't go anywhere alone for fear of being abducted, she said. The school district sent her a pedophile list twice a year. And the drivers were terrible.

On the base in Cuba, there are teen centers for her children. The student-teacher ratio is nine to one. Pontoon boats can be rented for less than $100 a day, to take the whole family out swimming and snorkeling.

"I've never been so close to a dolphin in all my life," Brandy Camera said.

The kids, ages 8 to 13, spend all their time outdoors because the weather is so nice. There's a bowling alley, an outdoor movie theater, playgrounds, basketball courts, pools with lifeguards, even concerts.

The shopping options are limited, the Cameras said, which is why they're regulars on Wal-Mart's Web site. The Internet service is slow, and there are only two radio stations, unless you buy XM.

Still, if Congress backs down from demands to shut down the facility, Camera said, he'd be happy to stay at Guantanamo for the rest of his career. It's beautiful, safe and he loves his job, he said - even if he can't go anywhere else in Cuba. The first thing Camera tells new recruits is: "Welcome to the most beautiful island in the Caribbean that you'll never see."