"I was inside the wire," says Retired military chaplain Kent Svendsen. He has a unique perspective on the debate over transferring terror suspects from Guantanamo Bay to Illinois. Svendsen spent 2004 counseling U.S. soldiers at the facility in Cuba.

"I was specifically assigned the detention center. So I went in the wire, in the front gate and then I made it a point to travel the entire camp, visiting with the soldiers, asking them how things were," says Svendsen.

Now he's asking different questions about the proposed detainee transfer to Thomson prison, 60 miles southwest of Rockford.

"My first gut reaction is why," says Svendsen. "We have to deal with the situation, I'm not quite sure of the logic of why you need to get them off that particular piece of property and put them on this piece of particular property."

Svendsen worries about drawing terrorists' attention to our region. He also wonders where detainees would go if acquitted, once the trials start.

But Svendsen does believe it's possible to replicate the top notch security he saw at Guantanamo Bay here in the U.S.

"It took several checkpoints for you to get through and if you had no need to be there you weren't let anywhere near the place."

And he says it takes highly trained guards to keep some of the prisoners in line.

"Maybe 20 percent were very belligerent and violent and would look for ways to attack the guards."

Despite that, the retired chaplain says he never saw any evidence of alleged human rights violations against detainees.

"I've never said that I knew what went on in the interrogation rooms, but I did know about the day-to-day activity in the cell blocks and there they were treated very humanely."

Svendsen does not believe those conditions would change on U.S. soil.

Svendsen says the worst mistreatment he heard of in Guantanamo was one military guard squeaking the floorboards at night to keep detainees from sleeping. Svendsen says that guard was quickly censured. The retired chaplain served on an orientation board directing soldiers to treat the detainees respectfully and report abuses.