Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 6, 2004
FT. BRAGG, N.C. — U.S. Army intelligence officers often physically and
mentally tormented detainees in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, but only once were any
held accountable for their misconduct, according to testimony heard Thursday in
a military court.
The statements contradicted the government's position
that only seven rogue soldiers — all military police — were directly
responsible for the abuse. The latest accounts in the unfolding scandal came on
the third day of a preliminary hearing into charges against Pfc. Lynndie R.
England, 21, who is one of six facing possible court-martial. The seventh has
pleaded guilty.
Until now, interrogators have been largely portrayed as
acting professionally at the prison near Baghdad that was once used by Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein as a torture chamber.
But several military
interrogators and others described for the first time Thursday a variety of
harsh treatments they said were meted out by the intelligence squad itself. The
to rment, they said, ranged from forcing nude prisoners to drag their genitals
across a dirty prison floor to scaring prisoners with police dogs and breaking
tables in front of them. One interrogator allegedly told a prisoner, "I wish I
could kill you right now."
Spc. Israel Rivera, an intelligence
analyst, testified that his colleagues reveled in the misconduct, much like the
prison guards: "It was just something out of sport. It was like, 'Hey, do you
want to see something cool?' "
The senior officer in the intelligence
unit, Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, also for the first time gave her account of her
subordinates' behavior. She detailed how two of her soldiers — whom she
did not name — had been written up for forcing a detainee to strip to his
boxer shorts and march back to his cell.
Wood said she "removed the
interrogator and analyst" from their posts and recommended nondisciplinary job
counseling for them — unlike the MPs, who are facing decades of prison
time if convic ted.
Wood also revealed that senior Army officers who ran
the detainee prison at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had
instructed her to have her interrogators encourage guards at Abu Ghraib to help
collect information about the prisoners.
Under the senior officers'
direction, Wood said, she urged interrogators to get the guards to keep logs of
detainees' daily activities to determine who prison leaders were, which ones
were communicating with fellow detainees and who was likely to break down in
interrogation sessions.
But, she said, she never told interrogators to
urge guards to play rough with detainees, despite the assertion from the six MPs
now facing possible court-martial that they were acting under the orders of
military intelligence officers.
"No," Wood said. "Words can't describe
my reaction" to later seeing photographs of the prisoner abuse. "I was shocked.
I was very disappointed. I was outraged."
England, now seven months
pregnant, has emerged as a key character in the Abu Ghraib scandal. If
convicted, she could face a 38-year prison sentence.
She is the young
woman seen smiling and flashing a thumbs-up in numerous photos taken with naked
inmates. She also has been described as being photographed topless and
bottomless and having sex with her boyfriend, Cpl. Charles A. Graner Jr.,
another MP charged in the case.
Senior Army leaders are continuing a
formal investigation into the role of the intelligence officers at Abu Ghraib.
Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill, where parallel investigations are underway, have
voiced skepticism that the abuse was limited to a few low-level
soldiers.
Thursday's revelations about misconduct by intelligence
officers surfaced in an odd way.
Military prosecutors called witnesses
to testify about the abuse by telephone from posts in Texas, Kansas, Iowa and
elsewhere.
The witnesses had little to say about England, but they
implicated intelligence officers in acts of abuse that, though not as shocking
as some of those captured by cameras, nonetheless were designed to physically
and mentally harm detainees.
Special Agent Neal Gruhn, a criminal
investigator, testified that he learned during his investigation into the
scandal that interrogators had made one detainee walk nude around the cellblock
and say, "Look at me." He said another male interrogator put his hand on the
chest of a male detainee and asked, "Do you like being touched by a
guy?"
Gruhn recalled that an interrogator employed by a private
contractor working with the military told him how a fellow intelligence officer
often slammed his fists on a table in the interview room to scare prisoners.
"He broke several tables," Gruhn said.
Capt. Brent Fitch, a military
lawyer assigned to the intelligence unit, identified three interrogators —
Rivera, Spc. Armin J. Cruz and Spc. Roman Krol — as watching or
participating in some of the abuse. Fitch said the photos bothered him,
especially because he earlier ha d watched interrogations through a two-way
mirror and believed questioning was being done humanely.
"If an
interrogator wanted to deviate" in his approach to an inmate, Fitch said, "he
would have had to request an exception to policy and send it up the chain of
command." He said he rarely, if ever, saw such requests.
Rivera
described how an intelligence officer shouted "homosexual slurs" at three rape
suspects, and he said the detainees were stripped and forced to drag themselves
on their stomachs across the floor. He said intelligence officers, including
Cruz, ordered the prisoners to "roll left and roll right" and poured water from
a paper cup on them.
"They were put together in a big bundle of bodies
and handcuffed together," Rivera said. "They were made to look as if they were
having sex. Cruz stepped on their buttocks to simulate homosexual activities.
Krol threw a football at them."
Rivera said nothing was really done
about it, "except that we all were told it better not happen again."
Wood, the captain over the intelligence unit, insisted that her subordinates
were well-behaved and largely obeyed signs she had posted around the prison
warning them of policies protecting detainees against abuse.
But she
said that Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who ran the Guantanamo Bay prison,
changed the tone of operations when he and his staff visited Abu Ghraib and
encouraged her to bring prison guards into the effort of collecting detainee
information.
"It was not really a feasible request for the MPs," she
said. "They had their hands full already just trying to keep up at the
prison."