Gary Sinise Takes Pulse of the Troops

This is a rush transcript from "Glenn Beck," January 21, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

GLENN BECK, HOST: The new Obama administration is circulating a draft executive order that calls for the closing of Guantanamo Bay — sometime. Meanwhile, our troops are still overseas fighting the War on Terror.

Actor and activist Gary Sinise has been to Iraq four times. He joins me now. Gary, welcome to the program. How are you are, sir?

GARY SINISE, ACTOR: I'm very good, Glenn. I wouldn't call myself an activist, more of an actor.

BECK: I just read what they put in front of me. That's all I do here. That's my only job. I'm just a talking head.

SINISE: Glenn.

BECK: Yes, Sir. Listen, Gary, I wanted to ask you, because you've been to Gitmo. What, like, two years ago, you were at Gitmo?

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SINISE: I was. I took my band down there. We played a concert there. Yes, Sir.

BECK: All right. For the prisoners or the troops?

SINISE: Well, I played for the troops down there.

BECK: OK, good. I didn't know because, you know, in Hollywood, I know a lot of people are like, "Those poor prisoners. I feel bad for them." There are some that will play for the prisoners.

SINISE: Well, we went down there and we played for the troops. I had a nice — you know, a tour down there. It's a very isolated place, very unusual. We've got families down there that are living there and kids that are being raised on this island. They can't really go anywhere besides the little zone that is, you know, controlled by the U.S. there.

BECK: You know, let me ask you something, Gary, because I know how you feel about the troops and I feel the same way about them there. Honestly, after 9/11, what gave me hope that we were going to be OK was meeting the troops. People who think, "Oh, these troops. They're just animals," they've never actually met. I have two family members that are serving.

So they haven't met them. They are people of real integrity and honor. I mean, we saw it yesterday. Here was the inauguration. They no longer answer to President Bush. Boom, on a dime, they will do what President Obama says.

These people are honorable. How do you think they would feel about, you know, closing down Gitmo, and then possibly moving. While they're serving overseas, their families might be exposed to them if these people are moved over to someplace like Camp Pendleton?

SINISE: Well, I can tell you about my personal experience, having been to Guantanamo Bay. There's a lot of bad actors down there. They are behind bars and, you know, they're pretty dangerous people.

I talked to a lot of people that are running things down there a couple of years ago, and they describe some of the people that are actually being kept there.

BECK: Right.

SINISE: They're not the kind of people I would want to run into.

BECK: Gary —

SINISE: Pardon me?

BECK: Oh, I'm sorry. I don't mean to interrupt you, but I'm now getting — I could talk to you forever. You are really, truly one of the good guys and I don't want to you go before we have a chance to just talk about — you have a new movie out, "George Wallace," where you play another guy in a wheelchair. It seems like this isn't becoming a stretch for you.

SINISE: Well, actually, it's an older film. It came out in 1997. It was on TNT at that time. It is directed by one of our great, great American filmmakers, John Frankenhimer. And John always wanted to do a DVD of this particular film and he always intended to. And then he passed away before it could be done, and so nothing happened to the film and it kind of disappeared.

I saw it at a film festival about a year ago. They were showing some of my movies, and it made me get — you know, get involved and contact Warner Home Entertainment to see what was going to happen with it. And they had no plans for it, so I tried to encourage them to put it on DVD and it was released yesterday on DVD.

It is probably one of the things I'm most proud of that I have worked on.

BECK: Wow. That's a mouthful. Thank you very much, Gary. We will talk again. Thanks for all you do, by the way.

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