Taxi to the Dark Side Page #9

When Abu Ghraib hit, my first thought was, "Had I been circumvented?

Had their been authorizations for the abuse of prisoners that I had not learned about?"

Had the orders really been rescinded?

According to interrogators, the use of shackling, dogs, stress positions and sensory assault, continued to be widespread.

Tony Lagouranis was an interrogator who arrived in Iraq after the Military became aware of the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

[SPC. Tony Lagouranis, Interrogator, Iraq] Among the Interrogation Guidelines they gave us,

it said that dogs are authorized to be used on detainees.

You know, stress positions. Sleep deprivation.

All of those things that I did, or I would consider harsh techniques, or violating Geneva Conventions,

I was told to do. So we were told to do that to these people by our Superiors.

[Rear Admiral John Hutson (Ret., Former Judge Advocate General, 30 Years Military experience] The spine of the United States Armed Forces is the chain of command.

What starts at the top of the chain of command drops like a rock down the chain of command.

And that's why Lynndie England knew what Donald Rumsfeld was thinking without actually talking to Donald Rumsfeld.

In the wake of Abu Ghraib, journalists began to look harder at previous cases of abuse ...

To try to understand what had caused them and who was responsible.

[Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell] People like Tim Golden at the New York Times

got a hold of it and started looking at the case of Dilawar, in particular. The taxi driver.

It became at least plausible to me that this man wasn't even guilty of anything other than being there when the sweep occurred.

And here was a guy who was murdered in detention.

[Speaker] In memory for those whose lives were taken, for those who gave selflessly of themselves.

Four years ago our nation came under attack ...

[Tim Golden, New York Times Reporter] 9/11 was very much in the air. And I think the officers tried to keep it in the air.

They tried to remind these kids that these people are our enemies.

But it's hard to see how these young soldiers could have been expected to figure out

who their real enemies were among a bunch of militiamen and farmers in a society that was completely foreign to them.

[SPC. Glendale Walls, Interrogated Dilawar at Bagram] If I remember correctly, his story

had something to do with the rocket attack at a military base.

And he was supposed to be the driver of the get-away car.

[Tim Golden, New York Times Reporter] He had taken his new car, which he was obviously excited about,

And driven to Khost, the provincial capitol, where he went to look for taxi passengers.

And he in fact found these three men in Khost, at the marketplace,

- Who were headed back to Yakubi. - Yakubi! Yakubi!

You have to imagine that Dilawar was driving home from this provincial capitol, which was about as far as his world stretched.

He gets stopped at Fire Base Salerno by a group of Afghan militiamen.

And the men apparently found an electric stabilizer in the trunk of the car. At least they claimed to.

Camp Salerno had been rocketed from some distance earlier in the day.

And the Afghan militiamen immediately arrested the four guys on suspicion of having had some involvement in that attack.

He's taken to Bagram this great distance away.

You get a bunch of guys who are back at this detention site, and they are told that we have evidence

that they have been involved in a rocket attack on American forces.

So I think that kind of tripped a wire in them.

[Tony Lagouranis, Military Interrogator, Iraq] You're in this atmosphere where you're with nothing but military people.

And you feel sort of morally isolated. And you lose your moral bearings.

Then you're frustrated because you're not getting intelligence from a prisoner that you believe is guilty

And has intelligence to give you. So, of course, you want to start pushing the limits,

And see how far you can go.

[SPC. Glendale Walls, Interrogated Dilawar at Bagram] A lot of the pressure came from the fact

that we had a few high value detainees that gave a lot of good information.

And when we started to lose those detainees due to going to Guantanamo Bay,

That they expected this to come from everybody.

[PFC. Damien Corsetti, 519th Mil-Intel Unit, Bagram] We would interrogate some of these guys just to interrogate them.

And it was ridiculous. I mean, you'd get some of these guys in and you're like,

"This is the wrong man. This is not who we're supposed to have."

Especially being a screener, you could tell from the moment you got him in.

You're like, "We're not supposed to have him."

[SPC. Glendale Walls, Interrogated Dilawar at Bagram] We had one prisoner came in who was mentally challenged.

And SGT. Loring kept saying that, you know, this is a cover.

This is al Qaeda's cover. This is what they do.

And I went in there and talked to him and, basically, they had this guy in a diaper.

He'd eat his own feces. But Loring kept saying it was an act.

[PFC. Damien Corsetti, 519th Mil-Intel Unit, Bagram] They'd be like, "Hey, we want you to go yell at this guy."

So I'd grab my box of Frosted Flakes that I was eating for breakfast that morning,

and I'd go into the room, and I'd be like, "Alright, I have to yell at you today."

So I'd be like "dehydrogenated salt substitute." And just start yelling that at them. And they'd be like,

They'd look at me all crazy, and I'd be like,

"Yeah! That's your fault they put that in my cereal now."

Or I'd yell at them if Elvis was really the King of Rock, or if he was dead.

Or stuff like that. And I'd write that in my interrogation summaries.

And I'd send that up to higher that that's what I did for that two hours.

[SPC. Glendale Walls, Interrogated Dilawar at Bagram] You really can't get a feel for a person until after you talk to him a couple of times.

So on the first three times I talked to him, it was just verifying his story.

Looking for loops. Looking for holes. After the third time I talked to him,

and his story was still consistent, I kept telling him I thought he was innocent.

[Tim Golden, New York Times Reporter] And they wanted these people to be guilty

because that would look better for their unit.

They could say that we arrested 60 people this month. And they were all terrorists.

[Moazzam Begg, Detained at Bagram and Guantanamo] "When was the last time you saw Osama bin Laden?" "When was the last time you saw Mohamed Atta?"

Now, this was a standard question that they would ask of every detainee.

[Tony Lagouranis, Military Interrogator, Iraq] It's very hard to go into an interrogation with very little evidence...

and we almost never had evidence on these guys...and elicit a confession.

You can go in and get intelligence, but if you're asking this guy to completely incriminate himself,

it's very difficult. So you have to start using harsher and harsher techniques in order to elicit the confession.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes