'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Contract employees at Gitmo

Today I was cruising the always informative portion of the American Civil Liberty Union's website where the ACLU has been posting the documents re US torture that it has painstakingly been able to get released by the Dept. of Defense.

One of the documents they have there (see below) gives a graphic description-- by a civilian contractor employee working in a "monitoring room" overlooking an interrogation room in Gitmo in April 2003-- of extremely humiliating sexual abuse of a detainee being performed by a female military interrogator.

(The DOD is currently trying to say it can argue in secret as to why it need not comply with court orders to release further photos, videos, and other documents providing evidence of abuse of detainees in various US-run detention centers.)

Anyway, I was looking through this collection of government docs that was released-- in heavily "redacted" form-- by the government on July 26. ( A short guide to what's in that large, lengthy PDF document can be found here.)

What interested me in the 139-page-long PDF collection was the "story" that gradually emerged there in which a contractor for a company called ACS Defense working alongside uniformed military personnel in Gitmo in April 2003, reported on some bad abuse he'd seen being used inside an interrogation room there... But what this guy did was he rported it to his own supervisors in the contractor company, rather than keeping his testimony within the military chain of command.

It's kind of hard to read the story clearly... Primarily because of the huge swathes of black-out redactions, but also because the DOD unhelpfully released the docs in reverse order... The general effect is of reading a mystery novel in which only a small proportion of the "clues", and of the final resolution of the story, are ever provided-- plus, you have to read it backwards. Also, given that nmost of the names are redacted, the dramatis personae is very thin and hard to follow.

So anyway, if you go down to p.87 in the PDF file, you find the contractor's original description of what he saw as he stood with others in a "Monitoring room" overlooking two interrogation rooms in Camp Delta, Gitmo, on April 22, 2003.

The author of this memo, which was dated April 26, 2003, describes himself as having previously been trained in, and used, interrogation techniques in the US army. He says, " I had never seen in FM [Field Manual] 34-52 any section describing or prescribing what [the interrogator] had done to the detainee."

So you'll have to go to the doc to read what that contract employee saw... Basically, it was this:

[The interrogator] then shouted 'down' and the two detainee escorts pushed the detainee to the floor. When I say pushed to the floor I mean they pushed in back of the detainee's knees knees with their knees, taking the detainee to his knees. Then holding the detainee by his upper arms they slammed his upper body to the floor. This series of motions was all done in one swift movement... The force with which the detainee's body hit the floor was such that [redacted] .. and the navy analyst were laughing about the treatment of the detainee. The detainee was slammed to the floor in this fashion seven or eight times...

Then it happened again, ten to twelve more times. "The detainee was slammed to the floor so hard that I was concerned for his safety. The force with which the detainee hit the floor was, in my estimation,adequate to cause severe internal injury."

As he left the monitoring room with a colleague, to go call his supervisor and report what he had seen, he could hear another six or seven slammings. He also returned to the monitoring room and told [a redacted person] there that, "I thought he had jeopardized the mission and most likely whoever interrogated that source would have to undo the damage he had done."

Down at p.91 of the PDF dopcument is an account, also dated April 26, 2003, by another ACS employee stationed at Gitmo. He included a short description of being outside that monitoring room on April 22 and having tha first ACS person come out to tell him about it.

He also included a longer description of what he himself had seen during another interrogation, April 17, 2003. This time the monitoring room he was in was crowded with eight or more people in it.

In this incident, the interrogation started with some of the same "coerced PT" that the other guy saw April 22...

This was repeated numerous times. The individual showed signs of phsyical discomfort and pain. The session then progress [sic] with the assistance of another ICE personnel [name redacted]. At this point in time the session advanced into what can only be described as the proverbial "strip club lap dance". The ICE personnel [name redacted] removed her overblouse behind the individual and proceeded stroking his hair and neck while uttering sexual overtones and making comments about his religious affiliation. The session progressed to where she was seated on his lap making sexual affiliated movements with her chest and pelvis while again speaking sexual oriented sentences. This then proceeded to the individual being placed on the floor with her straddling him, etc. Needless to say [??? ~HC] many inappropriate comments were made during this time concerning the session and the area had the atmosphere of a party. During this period I became very uncomfortable and departed the monitoring area. I went to the MP monitoring area where I found approximately 4-6 personnel watching the session as well. Again derogatory comments were made... I questioned what I witnessed the next day and was informed that the activity per se was documented and produced results and as such was deemed appropriate/acceptable under the circumstances...

A small batch of documents included just before before these documents in the PDF file indicate the intense concern of Maj. Georffrey Miller, the commender of Gitmo then and of Abu Ghraib later, with the fact that these reports of interrogator wrongdoing had not been been filed up the military's own chain of command, but had gone to superiors in the ACS company, instead.

I guess what happened then was that ACS high-ups reported the incidents back into the military at a higher level than Miller wanted to have them reported to.

On April 29, 2003, Miller-- having presumably been alerted to the fact of the first ACS employee's report-- directed someone, possibly a Staff Judge Advocate on his staff at Gitmo, to investigate the April 22 incident. On May 2, Miller then sent a memo-- presumably based on this investigation?-- to Mr. John ?Antonius, the Director of the Joint Intelligence Group at JTF Guantanamo (pp.74-75). In it he ordered that the "Fear Up Harsh" interrogation technique-- of which the body slam was one example-- should immediately be ceased. He also noted that,

It became evident during the enquiry that a sense of mistrust exists between the contractors and military personnel in your organization. You will take appropriate measures necessary to ensure that all JIG personnel understand the one-team concept and the importance of maintaining professional working relationships. You will also establish and ensure that all members of understand appropriate chain-of-command reporting requirements.

Oh yes indeed, gotta keep those "appropriate" reporting requirements in place...

No mention that I can see in the Staff Judge Advocate's report or Miller's memo, of the "proverbial 'strip club lap dance'" technique., a vivid description of which had certainly been included in that second ASC employee's written report of 26 April. Are we to assume that the PSCLD technique was not remarkable enough to be investigated-- and also that there was no order from Gen. Miller at that time that its use be ended?

(I note, too, that there are many evident parallels with what is revealed in these documents and what I was writing about here, earlier today.