FT Interview transcript: Bill Clinton

The excerpt below pertains to Gitmo but other sections pertain to a variety of topics, including trade, the growth of NGOs, China, the U.N. and the Davos conference. Clinton's comments are generally thoughtful and worth a read.
FT.com / World - Interview transcript: Bill Clinton: "FT: 'Obviously, if this is a success, it would do wonders for America's image around the world: Do you think, Mr. President, that it's time that we close Gitmo?'
BC: 'Well it either needs to be closed down or cleaned up. It's time that there are no more stories coming out of there about people being abused.
'And then the second issue is a tougher one, I dealt with this, I'm not blameless on the second issue. We had a law on the books when I was President, that was enforced from time to time, which permitted the Justice department to hold suspected terrorists beyond the normal length of time they could them without trial, if, bringing the indictment and the trial would require the presentation of evidence which would reveal the identity of the intelligence source, compromise the life of the intelligence source, maybe risk the life of the intelligence source, but more importantly dry up what we thought we were finding out about terror networks.
'It sounds so reasonable but if you're the guy who's in prison and you're not guilty, you could be held there three, four, five years and there has to be come limit to that.
'But the more important thing and I want to make some explicit statement here because I think people in the West who feel threatened by terror may be tempted to become more tolerant of the need to be tougher with suspected terrorists.
'But once you've got people in custody if you start really roughing them up, there are two huge problems with that quite apart from the morality of it.
'There are two huge practical problems. Practical problem number one. If American or British troops get the reputation for abusing people in their prisons then when they get captured you know, then who do they send for, every time there is a"