[News] Torture at Abu Gharib - Seymour Hersh
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Mon May 3 11:45:57 EDT 2004
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TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?
Issue of 2004-05-10
Posted 2004-04-30
In the era of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, twenty miles west of Baghdad,
was one of the world's most notorious prisons, with torture, weekly
executions, and vile living conditions. As many as fifty thousand men and
womenno accurate count is possiblewere jammed into Abu Ghraib at one
time, in twelve-by-twelve-foot cells that were little more than human
holding pits.
In the looting that followed the regime's collapse, last April, the huge
prison complex, by then deserted, was stripped of everything that could be
removed, including doors, windows, and bricks. The coalition authorities
had the floors tiled, cells cleaned and repaired, and toilets, showers, and
a new medical center added. Abu Ghraib was now a U.S. military prison.
Most of the prisoners, however by the fall there were several thousand,
including women and teen- agerswere civilians, many of whom had been
picked up in random military sweeps and at highway checkpoints. They fell
into three loosely defined categories: common criminals; security detainees
suspected of "crimes against the coalition"; and a small number of
suspected "high-value" leaders of the insurgency against the coalition forces.
Last June, Janis Karpinski, an Army reserve brigadier general, was named
commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade and put in charge of
military prisons in Iraq. General Karpinski, the only female commander in
the war zone, was an experienced operations and intelligence officer who
had served with the Special Forces and in the 1991 Gulf War, but she had
never run a prison system. Now she was in charge of three large jails,
eight battalions, and thirty-four hundred Army reservists, most of whom,
like her, had no training in handling prisoners.
General Karpinski, who had wanted to be a soldier since she was five, is
a business consultant in civilian life, and was enthusiastic about her new
job. In an interview last December with the St. Petersburg Times, she said
that, for many of the Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib, "living conditions now
are better in prison than at home. At one point we were concerned that they
wouldn't want to leave." A month later, General Karpinski was formally
admonished and quietly suspended, and a major investigation into the Army's
prison system, authorized by Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, the
senior commander in Iraq, was under way. A fifty-three-page report,
obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and
not meant for public release, was completed in late February. Its
conclusions about the institutional failures of the Army prison system were
devastating. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December
of 2003 there were numerous instances of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton
criminal abuses" at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of
detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd
Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence
community. (The 372nd was attached to the 320th M.P. Battalion, which
reported to Karpinski's brigade headquarters.) Taguba's report listed some
of the wrongdoing:
Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;
pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom
handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a
military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured
after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee
with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working
dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in
one instance actually biting a detainee.
There was stunning evidence to support the allegations, Taguba added
"detailed witness statements and the discovery of extremely graphic
photographic evidence." Photographs and videos taken by the soldiers as the
abuses were happening were not included in his report, Taguba said, because
of their "extremely sensitive nature."
The photographsseveral of which were broadcast on CBS's "60 Minutes 2"
last weekshow leering G.I.s taunting naked Iraqi prisoners who are forced
to assume humiliating poses. Six suspectsStaff Sergeant Ivan L. Frederick
II, known as Chip, who was the senior enlisted man; Specialist Charles A.
Graner; Sergeant Javal Davis; Specialist Megan Ambuhl; Specialist Sabrina
Harman; and Private Jeremy Sivitsare now facing prosecution in Iraq, on
charges that include conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty toward
prisoners, maltreatment, assault, and indecent acts. A seventh suspect,
Private Lynndie England, was reassigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina,
after becoming pregnant. The photographs tell it all. In one, Private
England, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, is giving a jaunty thumbs-up
sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi, who is naked except for
a sandbag over his head, as he masturbates. Three other hooded and naked
Iraqi prisoners are shown, hands reflexively crossed over their genitals. A
fifth prisoner has his hands at his sides. In another, England stands arm
in arm with Specialist Graner; both are grinning and giving the thumbs-up
behind a cluster of perhaps seven naked Iraqis, knees bent, piled clumsily
on top of each other in a pyramid. There is another photograph of a cluster
of naked prisoners, again piled in a pyramid. Near them stands Graner,
smiling, his arms crossed; a woman soldier stands in front of him, bending
over, and she, too, is smiling. Then, there is another cluster of hooded
bodies, with a female soldier standing in front, taking photographs. Yet
another photograph shows a kneeling, naked, unhooded male prisoner, head
momentarily turned away from the camera, posed to make it appear that he is
performing oral sex on another male prisoner, who is naked and hooded.
Such dehumanization is unacceptable in any culture, but it is especially
so in the Arab world. Homosexual acts are against Islamic law and it is
humiliating for men to be naked in front of other men, Bernard Haykel, a
professor of Middle Eastern studies at New York University, explained.
"Being put on top of each other and forced to masturbate, being naked in
front of each otherit's all a form of torture," Haykel said.
Two Iraqi faces that do appear in the photographs are those of dead men.
There is the battered face of prisoner No. 153399, and the bloodied body of
another prisoner, wrapped in cellophane and packed in ice. There is a
photograph of an empty room, splattered with blood. The 372nd's abuse of
prisoners seemed almost routinea fact of Army life that the soldiers felt
no need to hide. On April 9th, at an Article 32 hearing (the military
equivalent of a grand jury) in the case against Sergeant Frederick, at Camp
Victory, near Baghdad, one of the witnesses, Specialist Matthew Wisdom, an
M.P., told the courtroom what happened when he and other soldiers delivered
seven prisoners, hooded and bound, to the so-called "hard site" at Abu
Ghraibseven tiers of cells where the inmates who were considered the most
dangerous were housed. The men had been accused of starting a riot in
another section of the prison. Wisdom said:
SFC Snider grabbed my prisoner and threw him into a pile. . . . I do not
think it was right to put them in a pile. I saw SSG Frederic, SGT Davis and
CPL Graner walking around the pile hitting the prisoners. I remember SSG
Frederick hitting one prisoner in the side of its [sic] ribcage. The
prisoner was no danger to SSG Frederick. . . . I left after that.
When he returned later, Wisdom testified:
I saw two naked detainees, one masturbating to another kneeling with its
mouth open. I thought I should just get out of there. I didn't think it was
right . . . I saw SSG Frederick walking towards me, and he said, "Look what
these animals do when you leave them alone for two seconds." I heard PFC
England shout out, "He's getting hard." Wisdom testified that he told his
superiors what had happened, and assumed that "the issue was taken care
of." He said, "I just didn't want to be part of anything that looked
criminal."
The abuses became public because of the outrage of Specialist Joseph M.
Darby, an M.P. whose role emerged during the Article 32 hearing against
Chip Frederick. A government witness, Special Agent Scott Bobeck, who is a
member of the Army's Criminal Investigation Division, or C.I.D., told the
court, according to an abridged transcript made available to me, "The
investigation started after SPC Darby . . . got a CD from CPL Graner. . . .
He came across pictures of naked detainees." Bobeck said that Darby had
"initially put an anonymous letter under our door, then he later came
forward and gave a sworn statement. He felt very bad about it and thought
it was very wrong."
Questioned further, the Army investigator said that Frederick and his
colleagues had not been given any "training guidelines" that he was aware
of. The M.P.s in the 372nd had been assigned to routine traffic and police
duties upon their arrival in Iraq, in the spring of 2003. In October of
2003, the 372nd was ordered to prison-guard duty at Abu Ghraib. Frederick,
at thirty-seven, was far older than his colleagues, and was a natural
leader; he had also worked for six years as a guard for the Virginia
Department of Corrections. Bobeck explained:
What I got is that SSG Frederick and CPL Graner were road M.P.s and were
put in charge because they were civilian prison guards and had knowledge of
how things were supposed to be run. Bobeck also testified that witnesses
had said that Frederick, on one occasion, "had punched a detainee in the
chest so hard that the detainee almost went into cardiac arrest."
At the Article 32 hearing, the Army informed Frederick and his attorneys,
Captain Robert Shuck, an Army lawyer, and Gary Myers, a civilian, that two
dozen witnesses they had sought, including General Karpinski and all of
Frederick's co-defendants, would not appear. Some had been excused after
exercising their Fifth Amendment right; others were deemed to be too far
away from the courtroom. "The purpose of an Article 32 hearing is for us to
engage witnesses and discover facts," Gary Myers told me. "We ended up with
a c.i.d. agent and no alleged victims to examine." After the hearing, the
presiding investigative officer ruled that there was sufficient evidence to
convene a court-martial against Frederick.
Myers, who was one of the military defense attorneys in the My Lai
prosecutions of the nineteen-seventies, told me that his client's defense
will be that he was carrying out the orders of his superiors and, in
particular, the directions of military intelligence. He said, "Do you
really think a group of kids from rural Virginia decided to do this on
their own? Decided that the best way to embarrass Arabs and make them talk
was to have them walk around nude?" In letters and e-mails to family
members, Frederick repeatedly noted that the military-intelligence teams,
which included C.I.A. officers and linguists and interrogation specialists
from private defense contractors, were the dominant force inside Abu
Ghraib. In a letter written in January, he said:
I questioned some of the things that I saw . . . such things as leaving
inmates in their cell with no clothes or in female underpants, handcuffing
them to the door of their celland the answer I got was, "This is how
military intelligence (MI) wants it done." . . . . MI has also instructed
us to place a prisoner in an isolation cell with little or no clothes, no
toilet or running water, no ventilation or window, for as much as three
days. The military-intelligence officers have "encouraged and told us,
`Great job,' they were now getting positive results and information,"
Frederick wrote. "CID has been present when the military working dogs were
used to intimidate prisoners at MI's request." At one point, Frederick told
his family, he pulled aside his superior officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry
Phillabaum, the commander of the 320th M.P. Battalion, and asked about the
mistreatment of prisoners. "His reply was `Don't worry about it.'" In
November, Frederick wrote, an Iraqi prisoner under the control of what the
Abu Ghraib guards called "O.G.A.," or other government agenciesthat is,
the C.I.A. and its paramilitary employeeswas brought to his unit for
questioning. "They stressed him out so bad that the man passed away. They
put his body in a body bag and packed him in ice for approximately
twenty-four hours in the shower. . . . The next day the medics came and put
his body on a stretcher, placed a fake IV in his arm and took him away."
The dead Iraqi was never entered into the prison's inmate-control system,
Frederick recounted, "and therefore never had a number."
Frederick's defense is, of course, highly self-serving. But the
complaints in his letters and e-mails home were reinforced by two internal
Army reportsTaguba's and one by the Army's chief law- enforcement officer,
Provost Marshal Donald Ryder, a major general. Last fall, General Sanchez
ordered Ryder to review the prison system in Iraq and recommend ways to
improve it. Ryder's report, filed on November 5th, concluded that there
were potential human-rights, training, and manpower issues, system-wide,
that needed immediate attention. It also discussed serious concerns about
the tension between the missions of the military police assigned to guard
the prisoners and the intelligence teams who wanted to interrogate them.
Army regulations limit intelligence activity by the M.P.s to passive
collection. But something had gone wrong at Abu Ghraib. There was evidence
dating back to the Afghanistan war, the Ryder report said, that M.P.s had
worked with intelligence operatives to "set favorable conditions for
subsequent interviews"a euphemism for breaking the will of prisoners.
"Such actions generally run counter to the smooth operation of a detention
facility, attempting to maintain its population in a compliant and docile
state." General Karpinski's brigade, Ryder reported, "has not been directed
to change its facility procedures to set the conditions for MI
interrogations, nor participate in those interrogations." Ryder called for
the establishment of procedures to "define the role of military police
soldiers . . .clearly separating the actions of the guards from those of
the military intelligence personnel." The officers running the war in Iraq
were put on notice.
Ryder undercut his warning, however, by concluding that the situation had
not yet reached a crisis point. Though some procedures were flawed, he
said, he found "no military police units purposely applying inappropriate
confinement practices." His investigation was at best a failure and at
worst a coverup.
Taguba, in his report, was polite but direct in refuting his fellow-
general. "Unfortunately, many of the systemic problems that surfaced during
[Ryder's] assessment are the very same issues that are the subject of this
investigation," he wrote. "In fact, many of the abuses suffered by
detainees occurred during, or near to, the time of that assessment." The
report continued, "Contrary to the findings of MG Ryder's report, I find
that personnel assigned to the 372nd MP Company, 800th MP Brigade were
directed to change facility procedures to `set the conditions' for MI
interrogations." Army intelligence officers, C.I.A. agents, and private
contractors "actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental
conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses."
Taguba backed up his assertion by citing evidence from sworn statements
to Army C.I.D. investigators. Specialist Sabrina Harman, one of the accused
M.P.s, testified that it was her job to keep detainees awake, including one
hooded prisoner who was placed on a box with wires attached to his fingers,
toes, and penis. She stated, "MI wanted to get them to talk. It is Graner
and Frederick's job to do things for MI and OGA to get these people to
talk." Another witness, Sergeant Javal Davis, who is also one of the
accused, told C.I.D. investigators, "I witnessed prisoners in the MI hold
section . . . being made to do various things that I would question
morally. . . . We were told that they had different rules." Taguba wrote,
"Davis also stated that he had heard MI insinuate to the guards to abuse
the inmates. When asked what MI said he stated: `Loosen this guy up for
us.'`Make sure he has a bad night.'`Make sure he gets the treatment.'"
Military intelligence made these comments to Graner and Frederick, Davis
said. "The MI staffs to my understanding have been giving Graner
compliments . . . statements like, `Good job, they're breaking down real
fast. They answer every question. They're giving out good information.'"
When asked why he did not inform his chain of command about the abuse,
Sergeant Davis answered, "Because I assumed that if they were doing things
out of the ordinary or outside the guidelines, someone would have said
something. Also the wing"where the abuse took place "belongs to MI and it
appeared MI personnel approved of the abuse." Another witness, Specialist
Jason Kennel, who was not accused of wrongdoing, said, "I saw them nude,
but MI would tell us to take away their mattresses, sheets, and clothes."
(It was his view, he added, that if M.I. wanted him to do this "they needed
to give me paperwork.") Taguba also cited an interview with Adel L. Nakhla,
a translator who was an employee of Titan, a civilian contractor. He told
of one night when a "bunch of people from MI" watched as a group of
handcuffed and shackled inmates were subjected to abuse by Graner and
Frederick.
General Taguba saved his harshest words for the military-intelligence
officers and private contractors. He recommended that Colonel Thomas
Pappas, the commander of one of the M.I. brigades, be reprimanded and
receive non-judicial punishment, and that Lieutenant Colonel Steven Jordan,
the former director of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center, be
relieved of duty and reprimanded. He further urged that a civilian
contractor, Steven Stephanowicz, of CACI International, be fired from his
Army job, reprimanded, and denied his security clearances for lying to the
investigating team and allowing or ordering military policemen "who were
not trained in interrogation techniques to facilitate interrogations by
`setting conditions' which were neither authorized" nor in accordance with
Army regulations. "He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical
abuse," Taguba wrote. He also recommended disciplinary action against a
second CACI employee, John Israel. (A spokeswoman for CACI said that the
company had "received no formal communication" from the Army about the
matter.)
"I suspect," Taguba concluded, that Pappas, Jordan, Stephanowicz, and
Israel "were either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuse at Abu
Ghraib," and strongly recommended immediate disciplinary action.
The problems inside the Army prison system in Iraq were not hidden from
senior commanders. During Karpinski's seven-month tour of duty, Taguba
noted, there were at least a dozen officially reported incidents involving
escapes, attempted escapes, and other serious security issues that were
investigated by officers of the 800th M.P. Brigade. Some of the incidents
had led to the killing or wounding of inmates and M.P.s, and resulted in a
series of "lessons learned" inquiries within the brigade. Karpinski
invariably approved the reports and signed orders calling for changes in
day-to-day procedures. But Taguba found that she did not follow up, doing
nothing to insure that the orders were carried out. Had she done so, he
added, "cases of abuse may have been prevented." General Taguba further
found that Abu Ghraib was filled beyond capacity, and that the M.P. guard
force was significantly undermanned and short of resources. "This imbalance
has contributed to the poor living conditions, escapes, and accountability
lapses," he wrote. There were gross differences, Taguba said, between the
actual number of prisoners on hand and the number officially recorded. A
lack of proper screening also meant that many innocent Iraqis were wrongly
being detainedindefinitely, it seemed, in some cases. The Taguba study
noted that more than sixty per cent of the civilian inmates at Abu Ghraib
were deemed not to be a threat to society, which should have enabled them
to be released. Karpinski's defense, Taguba said, was that her superior
officers "routinely" rejected her recommendations regarding the release of
such prisoners. Karpinski was rarely seen at the prisons she was supposed
to be running, Taguba wrote. He also found a wide range of administrative
problems, including some that he considered "without precedent in my
military career." The soldiers, he added, were "poorly prepared and
untrained . . . prior to deployment, at the mobilization site, upon arrival
in theater, and throughout the mission."
General Taguba spent more than four hours interviewing Karpinski, whom he
described as extremely emotional: "What I found particularly disturbing in
her testimony was her complete unwillingness to either understand or accept
that many of the problems inherent in the 800th MP Brigade were caused or
exacerbated by poor leadership and the refusal of her command to both
establish and enforce basic standards and principles among its soldiers."
Taguba recommended that Karpinski and seven brigade military-police
officers and enlisted men be relieved of command and formally reprimanded.
No criminal proceedings were suggested for Karpinski; apparently, the loss
of promotion and the indignity of a public rebuke were seen as enough
punishment.
After the story broke on CBS last week, the Pentagon announced that Major
General Geoffrey Miller, the new head of the Iraqi prison system, had
arrived in Baghdad and was on the job. He had been the commander of the
Guantánamo Bay detention center. General Sanchez also authorized an
investigation into possible wrongdoing by military and civilian interrogators.
As the international furor grew, senior military officers, and President
Bush, insisted that the actions of a few did not reflect the conduct of the
military as a whole. Taguba's report, however, amounts to an unsparing
study of collective wrongdoing and the failure of Army leadership at the
highest levels. The picture he draws of Abu Ghraib is one in which Army
regulations and the Geneva conventions were routinely violated, and in
which much of the day-to- day management of the prisoners was abdicated to
Army military- intelligence units and civilian contract employees.
Interrogating prisoners and getting intelligence, including by intimidation
and torture, was the priority.
The mistreatment at Abu Ghraib may have done little to further American
intelligence, however. Willie J. Rowell, who served for thirty-six years as
a C.I.D. agent, told me that the use of force or humiliation with prisoners
is invariably counterproductive. "They'll tell you what you want to hear,
truth or no truth," Rowell said. "`You can flog me until I tell you what I
know you want me to say.' You don't get righteous information."
Under the fourth Geneva convention, an occupying power can jail civilians
who pose an "imperative" security threat, but it must establish a regular
procedure for insuring that only civilians who remain a genuine security
threat be kept imprisoned. Prisoners have the right to appeal any
internment decision and have their cases reviewed. Human Rights Watch
complained to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that civilians in Iraq
remained in custody month after month with no charges brought against them.
Abu Ghraib had become, in effect, another Guantánamo.
As the photographs from Abu Ghraib make clear, these detentions have had
enormous consequences: for the imprisoned civilian Iraqis, many of whom had
nothing to do with the growing insurgency; for the integrity of the Army;
and for the United States' reputation in the world.
Captain Robert Shuck, Frederick's military attorney, closed his defense
at the Article 32 hearing last month by saying that the Army was
"attempting to have these six soldiers atone for its sins." Similarly, Gary
Myers, Frederick's civilian attorney, told me that he would argue at the
court-martial that culpability in the case extended far beyond his client.
"I'm going to drag every involved intelligence officer and civilian
contractor I can find into court," he said. "Do you really believe the Army
relieved a general officer because of six soldiers? Not a chance."
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