Abu
Ghraib Prison: A Hell On Earth
By Edward T.
Pound and Kit R. Roane
13 July, 2004
US News.com
In
October last year, Army Capt. Donald Reese visited the Abu Ghraib prison
complex near Baghdad for the first time. He had plenty of reason to
be there. He had just been installed as the warden of part of the prison,
and as he toured cellblock 1, he was stunned to see a bunch of naked
prisoners. He would later tell Army investigators: "My first reaction
was, 'Wow, there [are] a lot of nude people here.' " Army intelligence
officers assured him, he testified, that "nothing was illegal or
wrong about it"--that, in fact, stripping the prisoners was a tried-and-true
intelligence tactic used to make the prisoners uncomfortable. By his
own account, Reese, a reservist and window-blinds salesman in civilian
life, was ill-prepared for the job. He had never before set foot in
a prison, even as a visitor, and he knew nothing of the Geneva Conventions,
which specify conditions for humane treatment of enemy prisoners of
war and others. "I, myself, have never been in a prison,"
Reese told Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who was assigned to investigate
the issue of abuses at Abu Ghraib. "So I had no experience at all
as far as a warden or that type of thing."
As things turned
out, of course, there was plenty wrong with the treatment that some
of Reese's soldiers inflicted on Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib. The
Army admonished Reese for failing to supervise his subordinates, but
he is not alone: Criminal charges have been brought against seven soldiers
in Reese's 372nd Military Police Company, while other military police
and intelligence officers have been reprimanded. Several Defense Department
investigations are underway, and the Senate is planning a close look.
These various inquiries
may answer the most pressing questions: How did the mess at Abu Ghraib
happen? Was it, as the Bush administration says, the work of just a
few rogue soldiers, a few bad apples? Or did some senior military leaders,
despite their denials, know what was going on inside the prison walls
late at night? For now, the most compelling evidence of what happened
is contained in a report completed in March by General Taguba. He found,
the report says, "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses."
Chaos. Over
the past two months, many of the classified documents supporting Taguba's
findings have emerged in various news accounts, including in U.S. News.
But the magazine now has obtained all 106 classified annexes to the
report, and the several thousand pages of material provide the most
comprehensive view yet of what went wrong at Abu Ghraib and in the Army's
management of the teeming prison system in Iraq after Saddam Hussein's
government was toppled. Taguba focused mostly on the MP s assigned to
guard the inmates at Abu Ghraib, but the classified files in the annex
to his report show that military intelligence officers--dispatched to
Abu Ghraib by the top commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez--were
intimately involved in some of the interrogation techniques widely viewed
as abusive.
The abuses took
place, the files show, in a chaotic and dangerous environment made even
more so by the constant pressure from Washington to squeeze intelligence
from detainees. Riots, prisoner escapes, shootings, corrupt Iraqi guards,
unsanitary conditions, rampant sexual misbehavior, bug-infested food,
prisoner beatings and humiliations, and almost-daily mortar shellings
from Iraqi insurgents--according to the annex to General Taguba's report,
that pretty much sums up life at Abu Ghraib.
It was an environment
for which not just Reese's reservists but many regular Army troops were
singularly unprepared. Col. Henry Nelson, an Air Force psychiatrist
who prepared a report for Taguba on Abu Ghraib, described it as a "new
psychological battlefield" and detailed the nature of the challenge
faced by the Americans working in the overcrowded prison. "These
detainees are male and female, young and old," Nelson wrote; "they
may be innocent, may have high intelligence value, or may be terrorists
or criminals. No matter who they are, if they are at Abu Ghraib, they
are remanded in deplorable, dangerous living conditions, as are the
soldiers."
The documents provide new insight into how Abu Ghraib was spiraling
out of control even as top military commanders battled behind closed
doors over how best to run the facility and obtain more usable intelligence
information from detainees. General Sanchez and Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski,
a reservist who commanded the 800th MP Brigade, to which Reese's unit
was attached, were often at loggerheads over the management of Abu Ghraib.
In her secret testimony, Karpinski, who was criticized for leadership
failures in the Taguba report, said Sanchez refused to provide her with
the necessary resources to run Abu Ghraib and other prisons. Sanchez,
she said under oath, didn't "give a flip" about his soldiers,
and added: "I think that his ego will not allow him to accept a
Reserve brigade, a Reserve general officer, and certainly not a female
succeeding in a combat environment. And I think he looked at the 800th
MP Brigade as the opportunity to find a scapegoat . . . . "
As the commanders
battled it out, soldiers at Abu Ghraib were confused over who was in
charge, the documents show. At one point, someone smuggled a handgun
to one of the detainees, and Karpinski ordered a report on the incident
but was told that Lt. Col. Steven Jordan, the senior military intelligence
officer in the prison, had issued a gag order to her MP s. Karpinski
blew up. "Bullcrap," she replied, according to her interview
by General Taguba. " . . . They're still my MP s."
Weak leadership
in the prison meant soldiers couldn't accomplish basic tasks, like feeding
their detainees. Without a clear chain of command, especially after
Sanchez informed Karpinski that military intelligence authorities would
assume responsibility for running a key area of Abu Ghraib where Iraqis
were detained for interrogation, some soldiers just ran wild. "One
of the tower guards was shooting prisoners with lead balls and a slingshot,"
a company commander testified. Karpinski, in her interview with Taguba,
said some soldiers likened the place to "the wild, wild West."
Soldiers ran around in civilian clothes and covered latrines with so
much graffiti a commander had them painted black. An Army captain photographed
female subordinates showering in outside stalls while private contractors
smuggled beer into the prison.
"A hodgepodge."
The place, the documents suggest, was bedlam. Colonel Jordan, when
questioned by General Taguba about how out of hand the camp had become,
said: "I mean every time I turned left, sir, there was all this
stuff coming up." The intelligence officer noted that in one 18-hour
period he had had to deal with two soldiers abusing a prisoner, another
soldier being sexually propositioned by an officer, and a third sick
and vomiting in her room after drinking too much alcohol. He also worried,
he testified, that "hookers" were living in some bunks.
Abu Ghraib wasn't
the only prison where abuses took place. The problems there, the newly
available documents show, had their roots months earlier at another
U.S.-run detention center in southern Iraq called Camp Bucca. Evidence
showed that MP s viciously attacked prisoners there, including one who
had his nose smashed in. Four soldiers were given less than honorable
discharges but were not prosecuted. "I'm convinced that what happened
[at Abu Ghraib] would never have happened if" the Camp Bucca cases
had been prosecuted, Maj. Michael Sheridan, who worked at Abu Ghraib,
told General Taguba.
Abu Ghraib housed
several thousand detainees of all kinds, in the "hard site"
and in two tent encampments, Camp Vigilant and Camp Ganci. "We
had juveniles, we had females, we had the crazy," Reese told Taguba.
"I don't want to call them crazy, but the psych ward was also dumped
on Wing One [of Abu Ghraib]. So we had quite a hodgepodge of people
in there." Included in the hodgepodge were hardened criminals,
plus security detainees who might be of "intelligence value"
in terms of identifying those responsible for the Iraqi insurgency and
attacks on American and allied forces. An intelligence officer who testified
in the Taguba inquiry said he felt the pressure: "Sir, I was told
a couple times . . . that some of the reporting was getting read by
[Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld, folks out of Langley [the Central
Intelligence Agency], some very senior folks."
But at the same
time, soldiers complained in testimony, there seemed little interest
from the top brass in providing the prison facility with what it needed
to get the job done. None of the top commanders wanted to hear about
the lack of prison guards, lack of guns for MP s or floodlights to bathe
the compounds at night and prevent escapes, almost a constant threat
at Abu Ghraib. Soldiers complained that there weren't enough of them
to properly man guard towers or patrol perimeters. The detainees were
often separated from freedom by little more than a few strands of wire
and were always on edge because of the dismal living conditions and
the shortage of edible food. Six prisoners, including the suspected
murderer of an American soldier, escaped from Abu Ghraib during Ramadan.
None was caught.
Rioting was also
a constant problem. In one instance, prisoners at Camp Vigilant tossed
"baseball-size rocks" at MP s, complaining about the lack
of "basic needs, such as showers, shampoos, blankets, and toilets,"
an Army review shows.
The most serious
riot, at Camp Vigilant, took place on the night of November 24, when
guards shot and killed four detainees. "The prisoners were marching
and yelling, 'Down with Bush" and 'Bush is bad,' " another
Army review said. "They became violent and started throwing rocks
at the guards, both in the towers and at the rovers along the wire.
. . ." Guards feared for their lives--"the sky was black with
rocks," the report said--and a mass breakout appeared imminent.
The review of the November riot cited the failure of guard commanders
to post rules of engagement for dealing with insurrections. Soldiers
were hesitant to shoot, and when they did shoot, they often didn't know
whether they were using lethal or nonlethal ammunition because they
had mixed the ammo in their shotguns.
"Simple
fixes." The review, which also evaluated a shooting incident
inside tier 1 of the "hard site" prison building, found that
MP s there were confused over whom to report to--their own commanders
or military intelligence officers who controlled the interrogation wing.
"Clear-cut chain of command," the Army review found, "does
not exist in the prison."
Another classified annex reported that the prison complex was seriously
overcrowded, with detainees often held for months without ever being
interrogated. Detainees walked around in knee-deep mud, "defecating
and urinating all over the compounds," said Capt. James Jones,
commander of the 229th MP Company. "I don't know how there's not
rioting every day," he testified.
Among the more shocking
exchanges revealed in the Taguba classified annexes are a series of
E-mails sent by Maj. David Dinenna of the 320th MP Battalion. The E-mails,
sent in October and November to Maj. William Green of the 800th MP Brigade
and copied to the higher chain of command, show a frantic attempt to
simply get the detainees at Abu Ghraib edible food. Dinenna pressed
repeatedly for food that wouldn't make prisoners vomit. He criticized
the private food contractor for shorting the facility on hundreds of
meals a day and for providing food containing bugs, rats, and dirt.
"As each day goes by, tension within the prison population increases,"
Dinenna wrote. " . . . Simple fixes, food, would help tremendously."
Instead of getting help, Major Green scolded him. "Who is making
the charges that there is dirt, bugs, or whatever in the food?"
Major Green replied in an E-mail. "If it is the prisoners, I would
take that with a grain of salt." Dinenna shot back: "Our MP
s, medics, and field surgeon can easily identify bugs, rats, and dirt,
and they did." Ultimately, the food contract was not renewed, an
Army spokeswoman says, although the company holds other contracts with
the military.
The problems at
Abu Ghraib were exacerbated by the friction between the intelligence
and military police commanders--not surprising in light of General Sanchez's
decision to have military intelligence officers assume control of the
facility from Karpinski's MP s in November. Sanchez also gave the military
intelligence officers more resources--something he didn't do for the
800th MP Brigade, according to Karpinski and others--in his drive to
obtain more intelligence from detainees.
Breaking tables.
The Taguba report shows that the major abuses at Abu Ghraib occurred
between October and December, almost all of them in the early hours
of the morning, when senior officers were not present. Most of the abuses
were committed by members of the 372nd MP Company, but others were committed
by personnel under the control of Col. Thomas Pappas, the commander
of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, and Colonel Jordan, one
of his top aides, the annexes show.
In a sworn statement,
Torin Nelson, a civilian interrogator at Abu Ghraib, told investigators
that they should look into two other interrogators who he believed were
roughing up detainees. One of the men, he said, "has a reputation
for breaking the tables in the room" while interrogating prisoners.
He described an incident in which one of the men allegedly threw a prisoner
from a vehicle, then "started dragging . . . the detainees by the
cuffs."
The annexes show
that most detainees were questioned, many times naked, in interrogation
booths near the hard-site prison, though some interrogations were conducted
in tier 1. In some cases, military dogs were used to intimidate prisoners,
the classified annexes show; sometimes they were muzzled, and sometimes
they were not. Interrogators also used sleep deprivation--sometimes
keeping prisoners awake for all but four hours in a 24-hour period,
according to the testimony of Steven Stephanowicz, a civilian interrogator.
In his report, Taguba said he suspected that Stephanowicz; another civilian
interrogator, John Israel; Pappas; and Jordan "were either directly
or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib."
In his 80-page interview with Taguba's investigators, Captain Reese,
the warden, said he relied on Jordan for guidance that everything being
done in the prison was permissible. He recounted this conversation with
Jordan: "Why does everybody have their clothes off? And he just
said, 'It's an interrogation method that we use,' and from that point
on I said, 'OK.' "
Pappas, interviewed
three times last February by Taguba's staff, insisted that he sought
to curtail abuses. "There once was an incident where the detainees
. . . were naked," Pappas said. "I told them to have the detainees
put their clothes back on and that it was inappropriate." He knew
of only two instances of detainee abuse by his interrogators, he said,
and disciplinary action was taken in each case. He also said General
Sanchez had given him approval to use dogs in interrogations, as long
as they were muzzled. As for the Geneva Conventions, Pappas said, they
were "not specifically posted in any of the facilities where the
detainees were being held."
Pappas's role at
Abu Ghraib did not sit well with Karpinski, who had originally taken
control of the facility, along with 15 other Army prisons in Iraq, last
summer. The classified annexes show that tensions ran high. Simply put,
one hand did not know what the other was doing. Informed by another
officer of Sanchez's decision to have Pappas assume control at Abu Ghraib,
Karpinski said, according to her statement to General Taguba: "If
Colonel Pappas is going to take charge of the MP Battalion . . . I still
want them to send me information. I want to know what's going on with
my MP s. Because I'm the one that's going to be asked the questions
[about any problems]." The officer, Karpinski recounted, said,
"Ma'am, I don't think so." Making matters worse, Karpinski
said, was the fact that Sanchez and his deputy, Maj. Gen. Walter Wodjakowski,
consistently ignored her pleas for more resources. "They did not
want to be bothered by me," she testified. "And--were they
blowing me off because I was a reservist? Yes. . . . We asked, and we
got nothing."
She laid out a litany
of complaints: When she asked for force protection at Abu Ghraib to
suppress incoming mortar fire, Sanchez gave her no troops. Worried about
the safety of her soldiers, she complained loudly "up the line,"
including to Wodjakowski, about how military intelligence was using
a former Iraqi soldier--who had been a prisoner--as a translator. "Nobody
seemed to care that this guy was out there and had full access to everywhere
on the compound," she testified. Karpinski said she had reason
not to trust the Iraqi: He had fought against U.S. forces as a member
of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard.
Bathrooms. At
one point, Taguba asked Karpinski if she recalled a memo issued by General
Sanchez requiring prisoners to be treated with "respect and dignity."
Karpinski said she did. Known for her sharp tongue, she then described
the lousy food, lack of showers, and violations of prisoner rights--all
issues she had taken up with Sanchez. "Soldiers recognize that
the person [Sanchez] who signed that policy letter about dignity and
respect," she testified, "has about as much interest in dignity
and respect for prisoners as he does about the cleanliness of bathrooms."
Sanchez formally admonished Karpinski last January for leadership failures.
A spokeswoman in Iraq says Sanchez and Wodjakowski both have been strong
supporters of their troops and suggested that Karpinski wasn't all that
worried about problems at Abu Ghraib. Karpinski, the spokeswoman said,
"chose not to participate" in twice-weekly meetings with Wodjakowski
where she could have discussed problems at Abu Ghraib. Wodjakowski,
she says, was "very distressed by the conditions of the troops"
at the prison and sent other general officers there to "assess
and improve the living conditions."
Whatever battles
there were between the top generals, many soldiers felt abandoned by
their chain of command. In testimony, they complained about the lack
of toilet facilities, unsanitary conditions, and their unnecessary vulnerability
to frequent mortar attacks when they slept out in the compounds. "If
you are talking about soldier life support, it's been horrible,"
Capt. Mark Hale, an MP at Abu Ghraib, told Taguba's staff last February.
He added: "The only guidance my guys got was the guidance I gave
them. . . . When you tried to go up, you basically got blown off."