Nearly a decade ago, reporters Sarah Koenig and Dana Chivvis set out to tell a different kind of story about Guantánamo Bay, the prison and court created by the US shortly after 9/11, intended to detain people US forces had captured and suspected of being members of the Taliban or al-Qaida. In 2015, when Barack Obama was approaching his final year in office and pushing to close the Cuban detention facility, they started their reporting, traveling to Guantánamo themselves and interviewing people associated with the the prison camp. But no one would say anything compelling on the record. “We’d get these super-stiff interviews on tape, and then they would be like, ‘Can you turn that off for a second?’ Or, ‘Can you just pause for a second?’ And then they would tell you the real thing that was going on,” said Koenig.
They eventually killed the story.
But Koenig and Chivvis were determined to tell an inside account of Guantánamo Bay in some capacity, and even turned to fiction—writing a TV pilot about a version of the story based on what they’d learned in their reporting. “In 2019, we called up all these people, and we were just like, ‘Look, can you just tell us this stuff off the record? We’re going to fictionalize it all.’ And they were like, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve got great stories to tell you,’” said Chivvis. A few years later, by which time they’d basically dropped the TV idea, they decided to reach back out to these people—more than 100 of them, including guards, interrogators, lawyers, translators, and former prisoners—to see if they’d move their stories on the record. “We were like, maybe now people will be ready. And a lot of people were like, ‘No, absolutely not. You’re out of your mind,’” said Koenig. “But enough people were like, ‘Okay.’”
The fourth season of Serial brings their years of reporting to fruition, an assemblage of personal stories providing an inside look at the prison camp. The new installment (the first two episodes of which are out Thursday) comes as the show nears its 10th anniversary. The series—whose first season raised questions about the case of Adnan Syed, who was serving a life sentence for the 1999 murder of his high school classmate Hae Min Lee—is remembered by many as the first podcast they listened to, and the impact of its debut season continues to reverberate. In September 2022, Syed, who had maintained his innocence, was freed from prison after a judge vacated his conviction. (However, a Maryland appeals court reinstated Syed’s conviction in March 2023; the Maryland Supreme Court is now reviewing the appellate court panel’s decision.)
In an interview with Vanity Fair, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity, Koenig and Chivvis talk about their yearslong quest to do a series on Guantánamo, the challenges of recounting a recent history that is still unfolding, and the evolution of Serial as a show.
Vanity Fair: Tell me how you decided to pick this project back up. A lot of the stuff you were able to put on the record for this show, you initially got on background for the TV pilot you were writing about a fictionalized Guantánamo.
Dana Chivvis: I think it was October of 2021. Sarah called me up, and I was actually—to show you the depths of our obsession—at the time, I was producing a story about Guantánamo for This American Life. And she called me up and was like, “Do you want to try this again?” And I remember one of the first things we did that Julie [Snyder], our editor, asked us to do was, Can you call some of those people back you talked to for the TV pilot and just see if they’ll go on the record?
Well, I was going to ask you what prompted you to reach back out to people. It seemed like you just wanted to try it again, but I’m wondering what you think changed for them.
Chivvis: In a lot of instances, they had retired from the military, and so they felt more free to talk. And then I also think a lot of it was just distance from Guantánamo itself. Would you agree with me, Sarah? I would say the number one thing is that people in the military really can’t talk openly with reporters while they’re in the military.
Sarah Koenig: Not if they want to keep their career.
And can you talk about the process of reporting this? I know you took multiple trips down there. Were those spread out over a span of years? Did the story evolve, or did you know right away, as soon as you got there, what story you wanted to tell?
Koenig: So we went in 2015 for the tour of the prison complex—which you can’t do anymore; no reporters are allowed in there anymore. [As of last year, media access to anything besides the court is reportedly restricted and described as a “courtesy.”] And then we went back together in 2022 to watch what they call the military commissions, which is the court at Guantánamo. There are still some prosecutions going on there. So we went down to watch that, which is the only way reporters can go down now. And then I went again in 2023, last fall, again for the commissions, to watch a different case.
This was a very challenging podcast story to structure. And I feel like I almost didn’t understand this when we started—I don’t know if this happens to you as a reporter, but I’m always like, Oh, that’s what I’m doing, I had no idea what I was doing. So when we did season three, which was set in a felony courthouse in Cleveland, Ohio, it was sort of an investigation of how criminal justice works in a really average way in the United States of America. Let’s just spend a year, year and a half, inside this courthouse and just watch what happens. And so it was a system explained through personal stories in the most basic way. And I didn’t really get that that’s what we were doing with Guantánamo as well.