WASHINGTON — As a young military officer at the height of the war on terror, Lt. Ron DeSantis was often seen running on the beach of Guantánamo Bay and along its ridgeline, encircling Camp America. It was a chaotic time at the U.S. military detention facility in Cuba, and as an ambitious Navy lawyer, DeSantis was positioned to witness history up close.
He arrived at Joint Task Force Guantanamo in the spring of 2006 as its leaders were grappling with multiple challenges and global scrutiny. Aggressive tactics were adopted to break a hunger strike. An armed clash erupted between detainees and a riot squad in May. Three men were found dead in their cells in the same hour of a single night in June. And the CIA would transfer some of its highest-value detainees to the camp in the fall of that year.
DeSantis had little authority to address these crises as a 27-year-old lieutenant at a notorious facility micromanaged from Washington. But it was a formative period for a career-minded officer who had enlisted hoping for a deployment to Guantánamo Bay, where he would come face to face with the realities of America’s least conventional war.
