[Ppnews] Torture & tactics of interrogation

[Political Prisoner News]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10895199/
Tactics of Interrogation
Former Army specialist discusses his experience as an interrogator in Iraq
MSNBC
Updated: 4:27 p.m. ET Jan. 17, 2006

A former U.S. Army interrogator, who has just 
come forward with details of widespread military 
abuse of Iraqi prisoners during his tour in Iraq, 
joined Hardball's Chris Matthews to explain his recent statements.

Former Army Specialist Tony Lagouranis served as 
an interrogator in Iraq from 2004 to 2005.  He 
was stationed at the Abu Ghraib Prison two months 
after Iraqi detainees were abused there.  And he 
was later dispatched to Fallujah.

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST 'HARDBALL':  Let‘s talk 
about a lot of this that we don‘t know 
about.  We‘ve heard a lot about this from 
theoreticians, but you‘ve been there.  You were an interrogator.

MATTHEWS:  Who are most of the people that we 
capture, detain and interrogate?  Are they Iraqis 
that don‘t like the new order there after Saddam 
Hussein or are they foreigners who come in to fight for Jihad?  Who are they?

TONY LAGOURANIS, FMR. ARMY INTERROGATOR:  Well, 
first of all, I‘d like to say that 90 percent of 
the people that I saw were in my opinion 
innocent.  And that was a pretty common figure 
that interrogators came up with that I spoke to.

MATTHEWS:  How did we capture them?  Or why did we capture them?

LAGOURANIS:  Often people are captured when they 
find a weapons cash, for instance, maybe hidden 
in a canal or hidden in a building.  And they 
don‘t know who the weapons belong to, so they 
just will go around and arrest people in the 
proximity of that cash for questioning.

But they end up getting accused of maintaining 
that weapons cash.  That‘s just one way that 
people get arrested.  I could give you specific instances.

MATTHEWS:  And most of them are Iraqis?

LAGOURANIS:  Most of them.  The vast majority of them are Iraqis.  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  And when we bring them in, they just 
start rubber hosing them or start assuming their 
guilty?  Or what‘s the approach we take to prisoners?

LAGOURANIS:  Well, it depended on where you 
were.  I recall one unit, they told me that 
everybody who comes into that prison, everyone 
who is arrested is guilty.  And they really would 
only release people if there was overwhelming evidence that they hadn‘t...

MATTHEWS:  So you had to prove your innocence?

LAGOURANIS:  Exactly.  Right.  Often I had to 
prove their innocence.  But the units who were 
responsible for releasing them or sending them up 
to Abu Ghraib wouldn‘t often listen to our recommendations.

MATTHEWS:  Why did they assume because they 
picked them up in a sweep that they were guilty 
of actions against our new government over there?

LAGOURANIS:  Well, I think there are two reasons 
for that.  The first one is that there‘s a 
mistaken belief that every Iraqi knows who the 
insurgents are.  So even if they, themselves 
didn‘t commit a crime, weren‘t hostile to the 
Americans, they knew who were hostile.  And so if 
they weren‘t talking to us, it was because they 
were sympathetic to the insurgents.  So that was one part of it.

Another part was that when the detainee unit 
arrested somebody, they wanted that person to be 
guilty.  They wanted a confession out of them, 
and they didn‘t want to hear that they were 
making bad arrests.  And so it made their commander look better.

MATTHEWS:  Who‘s the they here you keep talking about?

LAGOURANIS:  Well, I worked with different units 
all over Iraq.  In particular, one of the worst 
units for this type of behavior was the 24th 
Marines.  I worked with them in north Babel.

MATTHEWS:  And these were captains, majors?  What 
rank are people that talk to you, tell you what to do?

LAGOURANIS:  The person in charge there, who I 
feel was setting policy was Colonel Johnson.

MATTHEWS:  A colonel?

LAGOURANIS:  That‘s right.  And the person who 
was sort of in charge of the judicial process was a lieutenant colonel.

MATTHEWS:  And what did you watch them do?  I 
mean, you were doing it, so it‘s not a question 
of watching it.  What were you doing when you 
were interrogating people, these people that were 
picked up in sweeps that you thought were innocent?

LAGOURANIS:  Well, let me give you an example of 
how the system worked.  I would get somebody, a 
prisoner, that they had picked up at a 
checkpoint.  This person had in his car a shovel 
and cell phone.  He didn‘t have any weapons or 
explosives.  He wasn‘t on a black list.

And so I take this evidence that they think­the 
detainee unit thought that he could use these 
things to plant an IED and use the cell phone to 
detonate it.  So I interrogate him, and his story 
checks out of why he has these things.  There is 
nothing else to incriminate him.

I send up my report, and they send it back to me 
and say no, he must have something.  He is 
guilty.  We interrogate this guy maybe five 
times, and they still refuse to believe our 
recommendation that he hadn‘t done anything.

MATTHEWS:  And you‘re saying 90 percent of the 
people that are picked up are innocent or not 
involved in the insurgency against the new government over there?

LAGOURANIS:  That‘s in my experience.  I think 90 
percent might be a conservative number even.

MATTHEWS:  What do we do with people when we determine that they are guilty?

LAGOURANIS:  Well, in these outer detention 
facilities, they would get sent to be Abu Ghraib 
or Bucca to be processed there.  And if they‘re 
not guilty, once they‘re sent to these larger 
facilities, it often takes months to process them.

MATTHEWS:  Well, if they aren‘t guilty what happens?

LAGOURANIS:  If they‘re judged guilty then 
they‘ll either get sent to the Iraqi police and 
sent through an Iraqi judicial process or they‘ll 
stay in Abu Ghraib for further questioning.

MATTHEWS:  Well, what‘s the punishment though?

LAGOURANIS:  I don‘t know what happens to them 
once they get to the Iraqi judicial process.

MATTHEWS:  Well, do they disappear?  Did you ever 
hear from them later, people that you thought were innocent?

LAGOURANIS:  I never heard from them later.

MATTHEWS:  Are we executing people over 
there?  Are we putting them in prison camps 
beyond contact with everyone else?  Are we 
banishing them to some outer place in Iraq?

LAGOURANIS:  I can‘t really say.

MATTHEWS:  You really don‘t know what happened to all those people?

LAGOURANIS:  I have no idea.

MATTHEWS:  Did you ever ask?

LAGOURANIS:  I don‘t recall ever asking.  Once 
they were out of the prison, they were out of my 
hands, and I got no feedback from them.

MATTHEWS:  Because it seems to me you took an 
interest in trying to find the truth and in 
determining whether a person was actually an 
insurgent or terrorist or whatever or was 
actually an innocent bystander, and you were 
concerned because you thought what would happen 
to them if they were judged to be guilty.

LAGOURANIS:  That‘s right.

MATTHEWS:  Well, I‘m asking that as a 
question.  What were you worried would happen to people who were innocent?

LAGOURANIS:  That they would spend too long in 
prison.  You know, it was sort of in a transition 
period during the year that I was there.  People 
were just crowding into Abu Ghraib and crowding 
into Camp Buka.  And they were staying there.

And that‘s when we started transitioning to 
moving them out to an Iraqi judicial 
process.  But I don‘t know what happened to them 
at that point.  And I would have had no access to that information.

MATTHEWS:  Let‘s talk about the people who were 
guilty, the 10 percent, as you see it.  What 
drove them to attack our forces or attack the forces of the new government?

LAGOURANIS:  Well, I would ask them that.  And 
when they were being frank with me I felt they 
told me­a lot of them mentioned the Abu Ghraib 
scandal.  The pictures that came out of Abu Ghraib.

MATTHEWS:  But they were involved in insurgency 
before the Abu Ghraib.  That‘s a chicken and egg 
thing.  I mean they didn‘t get involved...

LAGOURANIS:  Well, it depends on who you‘re talking about.

MATTHEWS:  Well, the people in Abu Ghraib at the 
time of the atrocities weren‘t there because of Abu Ghraib.

LAGOURANIS:  That‘s right.

MATTHEWS:  OK.  Well, they were there­tell me 
what the main opposition to the United States is 
based on there?  What is the main opposition just 
nationalism?  They don‘t like foreigners in their 
country.  Is it Sunnis who know that we‘re going 
to put the Shia in power?  What is it that drives 
the fighters over there to risk their lives and face prison?

LAGOURANIS:  I really can‘t answer that question, 
because I wasn‘t able to get an honest answer 
from enough people that I was convinced were 
insurgents.  So I can only give you a few examples of answers I got.

I can tell you though that I knew interrogators 
who had interrogated at Fallujah during the last 
offensive in November, and they were getting a 
lot of foreigners coming in.  I very rarely saw 
that, where we were getting Syrians.

MATTHEWS:  From where?  What countries?

LAGOURANIS:  Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, north 
Africa.  And mostly from what these interrogators 
told me, these people were mostly young college 
students.  Maybe they were studying Islam, and 
they were enraged by the American occupation, by 
the pictures that came out of Abu Ghraib, and they came to fight the Jihad.

MATTHEWS:  For the Jihad against the crusaders?

LAGOURANIS:  That‘s right.

MATTHEWS:  Tell me about it.  Because I know this 
from talking to our producers that you talked 
about north Babel.  Tell me about where north Babel is in Iraq.

LAGOURANIS:  It‘s south of Baghdad.  It‘s about 
15 minutes from Baghdad International Airport.

MATTHEWS: Is this the Babel from the old testament?

LAGOURANIS:  Sure.  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  And what was there a south Babel?  I 
mean, when we think about the tower or Babel or 
Babel or whatever it is pronounced, is that what we‘re talking about?

LAGOURANIS:  It is right.  But I don‘t know if 
there is a south Babel.  But we were in north Babel, and it was Babylon.

MATTHEWS:  And let me ask you what did you see 
there in terms of abuse of prisoners?

LAGOURANIS:  Well, at that point it was sort of 
late in the year that I was there, and it was 
long after the scandal had broken.  So we were no 
longer using any harsh tactics in the prison, but 
I was seeing evidence of abuse that was taking 
place at the time of their capture.

So when the force re-con Marines were thinking 
on, in particular, they were pretty bad in this 
regard.  They would stay in the detainees home at 
the time of the raid.  After they had been 
subdued, they would question them and they would 
punch them, kick them, broken bones.  I never saw 
this, but I saw the evidence of it, and I heard 
the story from many, many prisoners who were 
coming in.  And it was consistently from the Force Recon Marines.

MATTHEWS:  Why were they doing it?  Were they 
sadistic or they were afraid?  What would 
motivate a soldier, a U.S. soldier, to beat up somebody?

LAGOURANIS:  I think they wanted information.  I 
think they were frustrated by the lack of 
intelligence that was coming out of the prison 
facilities and they wanted new targets to 
hit.  They wanted to shut down the insurgency.

MATTHEWS:  Are we winning over there or losing 
over there in the grandest possible sense of that 
term, winning or losing?  Are we winning the 
hearts and minds or are we losing the hearts and minds?

LAGOURANIS:  We‘re certainly losing the hearts 
and minds.  There‘s no doubt about that.

MATTHEWS:  Has the United States‘ action in Iraq 
increased the amount of terrorism or anti-western 
activity, militarily or paramilitarily, there would have been otherwise?

LAGOURANIS:  Within Iraq?

MATTHEWS. I guess that‘s a tautology.  Let me ask 
you this.  If we were to poll Iraq two years 
after our occupation, would we be better off, 
would their attitude toward Americans be better or worse?

LAGOURANIS:  I think far worse.  From what the 
Iraqis told me, the vast majority of them were 
very happy when we invaded.  They hated Saddam 
Hussein.  The vast majority of them.

MATTHEWS:  What did they expect us to do, come 
in, rub our hands together, good working and then 
spike the ball and head out?

LAGOURANIS:  Well, I think they were worried 
about was the lack of security, the lack of 
American dedication to repairing the 
infrastructure and providing jobs for Iraqis.

MATTHEWS:  Are we going to give them breakfast in 
bed?  Why should America give jobs to 
Iraqis.  We‘re there to get rid of their 
dictator.  We got rid of him.  What do they want 
us to do then.  Then give them a country?

LAGOURANIS:  Whether you‘re right or wrong­

MATTHEWS:  I‘m just asking.  What do you think is 
a reasonable proposition for a foreign 
force?  I‘m just asking­what do they want?  They 
want us to give them houses and build jobs and do all this for them.

LAGOURANIS:  I‘m not saying what is reasonable or 
unreasonable.  I‘m just telling you what the 
Iraqis, why they grew angry at the American 
occupation.  And a lot of it was arbitrary 
arrest, violence done to relatives and friends.

MATTHEWS:  Is it more what we didn‘t do or did do?

LAGOURANIS:  It‘s both.  Not providing 
security.  These things were big concerns for the Iraqis.

MATTHEWS:  Senator John McCain said one month 
ago, "We‘ve sent a message to the world that the 
United States is not like the terrorists.  We 
have no grief for them.  But what we are is a 
nation that upholds values and standards of 
behavior and treatment of all people, no matter 
how evil or bad they are."  And President Bush 
caved to his bill banning cruel, inhumane and 
degrading treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody.

What‘s it like inside a facility like you‘ve been 
in Mosul and Fallujah?  When you‘re inside a 
prison over there, what does it smell like, sound 
like, etc.?  Give me a picture, if you can of 
life inside one of those prisons.

LAGOURANIS:  When I first got to be Abu Ghraib, 
we were occupying that hard site, you have the 
famous pictures of where there are actual cells 
with bars.  That was pretty depressing.  It was­

MATTHEWS:  Did it smell?

LAGOURANIS:  It smelled pretty bad.  They were 
trying to keep it clean, but the prisoners didn‘t 
have regular opportunities to bathe.

MATTHEWS:  Did it smell like B.O.?  What did it smell like?

LAGOURANIS:  B.O., some urine, whatever, sure.

MATTHEWS:  OK.

LAGOURANIS:  But when you got out to the outlying 
detention facilities like Mosul, like North Babel 
(ph), these things were normally outdoor 
compounds.  The prisoners might have wooden 
shacks or tents that they could sleep in.  But 
they were allowed to mill around and keep themselves clean.

MATTHEWS:  It was horrible or just bad or unpleasant?

LAGOURANIS:  Just unpleasant.

MATTHEWS:  What about the­how often a day would a 
prisoner be exposed to some form of torture, some 
form of discomfort applied to him, to get him to talk?

LAGOURANIS:  It depends.  Some prisoners when you 
interrogate them, that‘s not the method you want 
to use.  There‘s only a small number of them that 
we determined needed harsh treatment.

MATTHEWS:  Give me an example of that.

LAGOURANIS:  OK.  We might take this prisoner and 
throw him into a shipping container with loud 
music and strobe lights so that he couldn‘t sleep 
and was disoriented.  Force him to stand, kneel, 
or other difficult positions.  We wouldn‘t allow 
him to sleep.  We wouldn‘t allow him regular 
meals.  We‘d feed him, but not at regular 
intervals so he would become more 
disoriented.  And we would keep him in the 
cold.  It was cold in the nighttime, in Mosul, 
where we were doing this stuff.

MATTHEWS:  Fahrenheit?

LAGOURANIS:  Oh, 50, 55.  He would be in a thin polyester jumpsuit.

MATTHEWS:  He would be shaking after a while?

LAGOURANIS:  He‘d be shaking.  And we‘d keep this 
up with him for sometimes days.

MATTHEWS:  What was it like to­what did it feel 
like to be doing that to another person?  Did you 
connect with these guys or did you see them as foreigners and different?

LAGOURANIS:  Often I would connect with 
them.  Sometimes after we had been using these 
procedures on them.  And then I would spend a lot 
of time speaking with him, and interrogating 
him.  Sometimes I would form a connection with 
him, especially if I felt like they were innocent.

MATTHEWS:  Were they praying during this to withstand the torture?

LAGOURANIS:  Sometimes.

MATTHEWS:  What did it feel like trying to hurt a 
person who seemed so religious?

LAGOURANIS::  I don‘t recall using those tactics 
on somebody who was extremely religious.  But 
they would often pray during this.  None of it felt good.

MATTHEWS:  In your experience over there, did you 
ever hear anyone say I‘ll tell you what you want 
to know, and really tell you the truth?  Did anybody break?

LAGOURANIS:  Not with those tactics.  The only 
time people give me information and broke was 
when I was developing a rapport with them.

MATTHEWS:  What do you think was the incentive 
that actually worked?  If you were to write a 
book right now, a page in a book of proper 
interrogation, what would you say worked?

LAGOURANIS:  I think it worked when I was able to 
convince the prisoner that I was willing to help 
him and that he could help himself by giving me 
information and that he didn‘t feel like he was incriminating himself.

He might be informing on some of his colleagues 
or something like that, but I wouldn‘t ask 
questions about his involvement so much.  And I‘d 
keep reassuring him that he­his involvement wasn‘t going to be punished.

MATTHEWS:  And you felt you got useful information out of that?

LAGOURANIS:  That was one of the only approaches that work.

MATTHEWS:  And how would you describe the 
information and its value to the U.S. forces over there?

LAGOURANIS:  Location of weapons caches and names of insurgents, tactics.

MATTHEWS: Tony, I‘m getting a lot of insight 
here.  You basically told us­I mean, this has to 
be checked over time, but 90 percent of the 
people we pick up over there are innocent of any 
activity, they just seem to be in the wrong place 
at the wrong time, picked up in sweeps.

Also, that you think the best kind of 
interrogation is, if you will, the softer kind, 
the more human, where you try to figure the 
person out and connect with the person, rather 
than to torture them.  But let me ask you about 
the­your reaction when you saw the Abu Ghraib 
pictures.  What did they say to you, when you saw 
this young woman, you know, towing a guy around 
by a dog collar and you saw all this kind of 
packing of people together, there naked people 
like hot dogs or something­you know, a hot dog 
pack.  What did that all say to you?

LAGOURANIS:  Well, it‘s funny, because at that 
time that that scandal broke and the picture came 
out, I was using the harshest tactics that I used 
all year in Mosul.  I was using dogs, I was using 
stress positions.  And I look at those pictures 
and I was horrified.  And I thought that this -- 
you know, these were bad apples.  Because...

MATTHEWS:  ... But you were doing the same thing.

LAGOURANIS:  Well not exactly.

MATTHEWS:  Were you doing that, putting dogs 
within a couple feet of a guy‘s face?

LAGOURANIS:  Yes, we were doing that.

MATTHEWS:  Well what were they doing differently than you?

LAGOURANIS:  Well that particular picture could 
have been a picture of me.  I mean, that was...

MATTHEWS:  ... What was a professional interrogator doing there?

LAGOURANIS:  He was trying to terrify the prisoner and induce a panic attack.

MATTHEWS:  In other words, he‘s going to let that 
dog­he‘s making the­look at the poor guy‘s 
face.  I‘m going to say he‘s a good guy or bad 
guy, but look at that poor guy‘s face, scared to 
death that dog is going to bite his nose off.

LAGOURANIS:  Right.

MATTHEWS:  That‘s the idea, right?

LAGOURANIS:  That‘s the idea, right.  So you want 
him to become so afraid that he‘ll tell you 
anything.  I don‘t really think it‘s a very effective technique.

MATTHEWS:  Did it work for you?

LAGOURANIS:  It never worked for me.

MATTHEWS:  What about this water boarding, where 
somehow you lay a person down and you pour water 
over their face, you convince them they‘re 
drowning, because you probably are drowning them, aren‘t you?

LAGOURANIS:  Right.

MATTHEWS:  That‘s why you‘re convincing them you‘re drowning them.

LAGOURANIS:  Right.  I think that must be 
terrifying.  But I never saw that happen.  I 
did­an interrogator in North Babel, he was a 
Marine interrogator, told me that he had done 
that to a prisoner and that same prisoner told me that...

MATTHEWS:  ... And what did he say about it, the 
guy who did it?  Was he proud he did it?

LAGOURANIS:  He was proud he did it, yes.

MATTHEWS:  Why?

LAGOURANIS:  Because he felt like he was a 
cutting-edge interrogator and getting intelligence.

MATTHEWS:  Did he say he got anything out of it?

LAGOURANIS:  He did get intelligence out of that 
particular prisoner.  I don‘t know if it was as a 
result of that technique, probably it was.

MATTHEWS:  Where do you stand, having been 
through this training and experience of an 
interrogator, on the question that keeps popping 
up in America?  Should we outlaw 
torture?  Because I know the president, even 
though he signed the bill, and this sounds very 
nice, he also put in a caveat saying, “I‘ll still 
be commander-in-chief and I‘ll do what I have to.”

LAGOURANIS:  What‘s my opinion on torture?  I 
don‘t think we should be using it.  I don‘t think 
it‘s good for us as a nation to lower our moral standards.

MATTHEWS:  Suppose you had picked up Moussaoui, 
the guy, the 20th hijacker, he‘s called­the guy‘s 
who picked up in Minnesota, who was getting 
flight training in a way that suggests that he 
was going to be part of the hell that hit us on 
9/11.  And you got him a week or so before the 
terror.  What would you have done with him, to 
get the truth out of him?  What would the other guy, the 19 guys up to?

LAGOURANIS:  Well, you know, I might have 
tortured him.  You know, if there‘s a ticking 
bomb scenario, I might have tortured him.  But I 
shouldn‘t be held to account for that afterwards.

And part of the problem in what we‘re doing in 
Iraq is we‘ve given the power to abuse detainees 
and torture people to everyone, to every infantry 
private, to every specialist interrogator, to anyone.  And that‘s...

MATTHEWS:  ... Anybody that picks up somebody can do what they want to them.

LAGOURANIS:  Right, and they‘re not­I mean, not 
legally.  They‘re not supposed to be doing that, 
but it‘s tacitly allowed, and that‘s what‘s 
happening.  And we can‘t behave like that.

MATTHEWS:  And this is hurting us in the world?

LAGOURANIS:  Absolutely.  It‘s hurting us in 
Iraq.  I mean, it‘s fueling the insurgency.

MATTHEWS:  Thank you for coming up.  We‘ve got to 
take a lot of what you take seriously.  Thank you 
for what you gave us tonight, Tony Lagouranis.


© 2006 MSNBC.com

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