CIA Copy of New Yorker Article: Torture at Abu Ghraib

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THE NEV YOLK
FACT
ANNALS OF
NAIIONAL SECUMTY
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 women—no accurate count is possible—were 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 4,
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-agers—were
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:
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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 photographs—several of which were broadcast on CBS's "60 Minutes 2" last week—show —
leering GIs taunting naked Iraqi prisoners who are forced to assume humiliating poses. Six
suspects—Staff 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 Sivits—are 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 Grafter; 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 other—it'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 routine- a 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 Ghraib—seven
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
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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:
Fsaw 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 cell—and the answer I got was, "This is how military
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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 agencies—that is, the C.I.A. and its paramilitary
employees—was 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 reports—Taguba'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
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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 Hannan, 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 ME and °GA. to get these people to talk."
Another witness, Sergeant Javal Davis, who is also one of the accused, told C.I.D. investigators, "
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. Dakhla, 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 Karpinsld's seven-month tour of duty, Taguba noted, there were at least a dozen officially .
reported incidents involving escapes, atempted and other seriousecurity isues that were
investigated by officers of the 800th M.P. Brigade. Some of the incidents had led to the killing or
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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
detained—indefinitely, 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 GeofCLey
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 Guantanamo 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."
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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 Guantanamo.
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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