Karpinski joining our Hall of Fame?
Back in February, I wrote (here and here) about what seemed to me to be the disproportionate involvement of women in heroic whistleblowing acts from inside big, powerful organizations.
Now, I'm getting close to thinking that Brig.-General Janis Karpinski should join the JWN Women Whistleblowers Hall of Fame. She has made two important new revelations, yesterday and today, about important aspects of what was going on in Abu Ghraib prison when she was (nominally if not actually) in charge of everything that went on there.
In this story, from the AP via Napa News, she was quoted as saying that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the use of coercive interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq.
"I did not see it personally (at the time), but since all of this has come out, I have not only seen, but I've been asked about some of those documents, that he signed and agreed to," Karpinski was reported as having told another California newspaper, the Santa Clarita Signal.
(Thanks to Yankeedoodle for the heads-up on that.)
And then today, from AP and also on the BBC website, we have this testimony from JK:
She told the BBC Radio-4's "Today" program that she met an Israeli working as an interrogator inside the prison:
- "I saw an individual there that I hadn't had the opportunity to meet before, and I asked him what did he do there, was he an interpreter - he was clearly from the Middle East," she said in the interview.
"He said, 'Well, I do some of the interrogation here. I speak Arabic but I'm not an Arab; I'm from Israel.'"
I just want to add that in this June 22 post here on JWN, I reported that,
- when I was in DC last week, an old friend of mine who is retired from but still well connected to high US diplomatic and military circles confirmed to me that, "Yes, the Israelis have been all over Iraq ever since the start of the occupation... And certainly, they've been advising the 'interrogation' systems inside all the prisons there."
I'm wondering what other revelations about misdeeds inside Abu Ghraib we may hear from her in the days ahead?
A few problems with Karpinski's "revelations":
1) Her remarks are taken from context and are in response to journalists' (leading?) questions;
2) She says she remembers people or authorizations, but not specific names, documents, or dates;
3)She has herself been dismissed and disgraced, so might she not be trying to displace guilt?
4) Military officers, dependent on government pensions and peer respect (or call it the omerta of the uniformed tribe) are notoriously restrained in what they say about their organizations or superiors.
She might, indeed, say things that are true. However, nothing to date would stand up as credible testimony against anyone. Has she written anything?
Strange that, as the prison warden / CO, she offers only the vaguest, anecdotal recollections about the supposed Israeli interrogator. You'd think that the person in that position would have to know the full credentials and instructions of anyone who entered the premises.
FYI, men appear less often as whistleblowers not because of cowardice but because of the risk / reward tradeoff. In most cases, women's grievances are greater than the pay they endanger by speaking out. The day that women's salaries and ranks match those of men, both will be equally reluctant to gamble their career and face poverty in order to be martyrs to some altruistic cause. A (fat chance) alternative would be to revive labor unions.