Palace of the End: Inside Abu Ghraib Prison, Confessions of an Interrogator

Acronyms

Introduction

In war, some must die, and some must witness.

And remember.

Since leaving Abu Ghraib prison in late 2003, I’ve lived in several cities on four continents, all of them safe places with peaceful populations. But, wherever I am, Iraq still haunts me. Sometimes I silently stare misty-eyed at nothing for what seems like hours, overwhelmed by images and memories of what I have seen, and what I have done.

Nightmares continue to torment my sleep. The story is always the same and never deviates more than a few details. It is a collage of fears I lived with every day while in Iraq and memories I have lived with ever since. I never quite catch the preamble, but the images coalesce: I’m driving the lead vehicle in a convoy. In a still and quiet night, distant lights mark our approach to a town. We slow down before a wall. I can’t tell where to go through. Something’s wrong about this place.

A bone-jarring thud and an explosion in the engine compartment bring the Humvee to a dead halt. We’ve just become sitting targets. Get out! I shout to the others in my squad as I grab my weapon and bail out the door. Gunfire rakes the thin sheet metal skin of the Humvee. The blackness is blinding. I can’t see targets, but I raise my M16 and squeeze the trigger. Nothing happens.

My weapon is jammed!

I scramble for cover behind the rear of the Humvee. Another explosion rocks the vehicle. From down in the dirt I call out, Who’s hit? Who’s hit?

No answer. I feel adrenaline pumping. My thoughts race.

Where’s the rest of the convoy? Did they take off and leave us here? Am I the only one left?

I swing to the other side of the vehicle and find the side of the Humvee blown apart. Then I perceive the uniforms of soldiers motionless on the ground. I hear one moan, Jeff, help. It’s Trevor. I rush to him, pull a flashlight from my cargo pocket, and kneel beside him to check for wounds. But his glazed eyes stare blankly into mine, and to my horror I see he’s already dead. Another soldier lays beside him, face down in a pool of blood.

I feel a sharp sting in my chest and my uniform feels wet at the knee. Where is my flak vest? Why don’t I have my flak vest on? I wipe my knee and find blood, but it doesn’t hurt, so the blood on my hand can’t be mine.

The voices of the enemy are near. They’re coming for me. I search for another weapon, but I can’t see any. Another burst of gunfire, now very close. I am hit again, this time in my ribs. I’ve got to escape. I try running but I can’t. I roll into a dusty pit, but now I’m trapped. I look up to see one my pursuers standing over me. He is young. His expression is gleeful. I know him! I’ve interrogated him!

I shout, No, Ra’ad, don’t!

Ra’ad keeps his AK-47 leveled toward me while he turns his head and excitedly calls, Abu! [Father] followed by more words in Arabic. I know I cannot let them capture me. I have to die, right here and now. I must make him shoot. I look down and find a rock. It’s my one chance to make him kill me before the others arrive. I grab the rock and stand to face my executioner. I cock my arm to throw. Staring at the muzzle of his weapon, I hope for the flash.

I hear myself shout, as if I could defend myself with the primal sound of my fear. Then everything is pitch black, still, and quiet. I am lying on my side and trembling uncontrollably. Am I hit? No, I don’t think so. I feel nothing, only the pounding of my heart and the terror that shakes my body to its core. Where is Ra’ad? Is he standing over me?

I feel his weapon pointed at the back of my head. I can’t take this fear any longer. Do it now, Ra’ad, I whisper, Just do it now.

Then I see a red light in the corner of my eye. It’s blurry. Is it a vehicle from the convoy?

Come back, I silently plead, Don’t let me die here alone! I pull together the courage to slowly turn my head and glance up. Numbers come into focus. They have a warm glow. The face of my alarm clock tries to reassure me: I am safe and in my bed, months and years and thousands of miles from Iraq. Now awake, I continue to shudder alone in the dark for long minutes. And the same words form in my now-conscious mind: Oh, God, please, not again.

1

The Accidental Interrogator

February 13, 2003 fell in the middle of the week: an all too familiar drizzly day with a solid slate gray sky blanketing my hometown of Portland, Oregon. Surfing the Internet, I hunted for winter vacation deals to someplace warm and sunny and was zeroing in on Hawaii. I’d decided I needed a week in the sun to warm my bones and brighten my outlook. My new job would start in April, so I wouldn’t have another chance to take a vacation, or go for a hike, for a long time. For years I had dreamt of hiking the Na Pali coast of Kauai.

Then the phone rang and I heard a familiar voice as the caller responded to my hello with a two-word question: Sergeant Day?

Yes, I said warily.

This is Sergeant Kessler, the unit administrator from the 104th Division, Headquarters Company, he said, as if I might know another guy called Sergeant Kessler.

Sergeant First Class (SFC) Leonard Kessler had never before called me midweek, let alone identify either of us by our army rank. It could mean only one thing: They got me.

Hello, Sergeant Kessler, I responded, reciprocating his military bearing.

Are you sitting down?

Yes, I lied.

You have been mobilized for Operation Iraqi Freedom as a 97 Echo Interrogator, he said, sounding as if he were reading a pre-pared statement.

Now, I was sitting. I momentarily went numb and barely registered the rest as Kessler blabbered on about all the tasks I would need to complete before reporting to my gaining unit on February 20. Just one week. My new unit’s headquarters was in Connecticut, but I would find them already mobilizing at Fort Dix, New Jersey. The Army cordially mandated that I join them there.

97 Echo? I asked in disbelief.

Yes, Kessler replied. You have a secondary MOS of 97 Echo Interrogator? he asked as if to confirm the paperwork on his desk.

Yeah. I sighed and shook my head. I closed my Internet browser page and stared out my window. Rain drops splashed in the puddles on my driveway as I muttered to myself, Well, looks like I just got an all-expenses paid trip to someplace warm and sunny.

Of my three military occupational specialties (MOS), I’d done 97E/Interrogator the least. Years earlier, to qualify for a spot in the Army Reserves, I had signed up as an interrogator. It remained my primary MOS for only two years, but I’d never done anything with it except fill a slot on a duty roster.

In early 2003, war with Iraq looked inevitable. The Army scoured its database, grabbing eligible soldiers with training in critical needs specialties such as interrogation to help fill mobilizing units that were understrength. The invasion would launch one month after I reached Fort Dix, and I had to be trained up, tuned up, and ready for war.

Ironically, for some time before Kessler’s fateful call I’d been trying to go somewhere new. Oregon’s natural beauty is incredible, but Puddletown – one of the tags locals sometimes give Portland after slogging through its eight-month rainy season – just didn’t seem to have any room for me. But I’d always had a strong urge to travel, to see and explore every-where from the highest Alps of Europe to the jungles of the Amazon. I wanted to travel to the end of the Earth and see every strange and exotic place and people along the way.

The State Department had hired me in the spring of 2002 – eight months before Kessler’s call – as an Information Management Specialist. I’d been doing a similar job the past three years at the 104th Division headquarters, across the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington. But working for the State Department promised a lot better salary and a long career full of exciting travel to distant and exotic lands. I would experience Third World squalor and sometimes danger along the way, but the promise of travel and adventure made the risks more than acceptable.

I still needed to check out clean with the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service for a security clearance. That holdup lasted eight months. The confirmation call had come in the first week of February, and I had April 21 training start date at the Foreign Service Institute in Alexandria, Virginia. I couldn’t wait to discover where my new career would take me. I was all set, locked in, nothing could stop me now.

One week later the U.S. Army yanked me back into active duty. Kessler’s call would postpone my dream for more than a year. I would still be going someplace exotic, pretty much assured of unimaginable squalor, and I had an ironclad guarantee of danger – for a fraction of the pay.

Over the next week, I turned my life upside down preparing to make my flight to New Jersey. In the emotional spaces I experienced, between moments of despondency and fatalistic resignation, I kept thinking, I’m going to find that guy and break his nose!

That guy was a super-brief acquaintance from the spring of 1986. I’ve long forgotten his name and can only vaguely recall his face, except for his shaggy head full of sandy-colored surfer-dude curls, but I can acutely recall his exuberance. Throughout my army years, both active duty and reserves, whenever I found myself in a situation that I regretted ever joining, I’d joke about tracking him down and punching his lights out.

One afternoon back in 1986, out of college and passing in and out of dead end jobs, I found myself at the Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) in Portland tepidly considering what the armed services had to offer. I’d never considered the military as an option.

I had grown up believing that I was meant for something remarkable, that God, fate, or dumb luck would lead me someplace special in the greater world. I had studied all kinds of liberal arts subjects at the University of Oregon, and I avidly followed current events. After college, I continued reading about history and prehistory of all regions of the world, archaeology, mythology, and more.

But as far as the Portland job market went, I was a mega database of useless information. My liberal arts degree suggested little more than I had postponed adulthood for four years with minimum time spent studying and maximum time spent partying. I later slipped my diploma into a drawer somewhere and haven’t seen it since.

After college, I had begun to feel as if I were just drifting through life without meaning or purpose. Other than looking for a dead end job better than my last dead end job, I had no plans or goals, and only a vague, impossible dream of traveling the world.

But going two hours downstate to the University of Oregon in Eugene was about as far out there as I had ever gone, except for a few family vacations and some college trips to a short list of places between Seattle and Southern California. Until 1986, the farthest east I’d ever gone was during a childhood vacation to Yellowstone National Park, and the only exotic place I’d ever been was during another family trip to Disneyland.

In February 1986, I went to an interview for what I thought was a legitimate job, but it turned out to be just a no-name outfit looking for commission-only door-to-door life insurance salesmen. Their catchy customer sales pitch was Most people don’t plan to fail; they just fail to plan. They could have been talking about me. That night I decided to give the military a shot.

But the recruiters weren’t showing me anything interesting, so I headed toward the door. Then I bumped into this hyper-excited guy loitering in the hallway. He had come to Portland from a small town in central Oregon intent on landing an assignment in military intelligence (MI). He told me he’d get a top secret security clearance, study a foreign language at the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterey, California, for a year, and then go overseas.

What a great plan!

I headed back into the army recruiters office and told them I wanted to know about MI careers and language training at DLI. Their $7,000 signing bonus and promises of faster promotions than the other services sealed the deal.

I passed the language aptitude test and had a plan: learn German and go to Europe. I signed up for MOS 98C, Signal Intelligence Analyst. Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) is one of the categories of MI. The others include Image Intelligence (IMINT), Electronic Signals Intelligence (ELINT), and Human Intelligence (HUMINT). I would later learn there are other unofficial, though more useful, intelligence sources popularized in the MI community. These included Rumor Intelligence (RUMINT) and Bogus Intelligence (BOGINT).

Our two-minute chance meeting had changed the direction of my life. Some people discover they have a talent and passion for a skill or trade, some answer a calling, some are either born into a family business or marry into one, while other people recall a teacher or another role model as the ultimate inspiration for their career. My pivotal figure was a scruffy kid from the Oregon outback, reaching for high aspirations but planted on flat feet, lurking in the hallway of the Portland MEPS. My gung-ho acquaintance failed his physical and the Army handed him a bus ticket back to central Oregon. I got a plane ticket to Fort Dix and a radically new world.

The best I can say about Basic Training is that the drill sergeants were great motivational speakers because their speeches were brief, succinct, and loud. Each had his favorite prepared speech that seldom lasted more than one sentence, but my platoon’s drill sergeant was the most inspirational of them all. With the size and personality of a grizzly bear, Drill Sergeant (DS) Crawford was the tallest, largest, and loudest of all the drill sergeants. His other attributes included a mustache – a standard attribute for NCOs – and wire rim glasses that obscured his eyes. We never knew who he was looking at or what he was thinking other than, whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

I think he liked me more than most of the trainees in his platoon because I had among the top scores in the company on the physical fitness tests, I was the only trainee in the platoon who qualified as expert on the weapons qualification range and, because I’m a tad over six feet tall, he didn’t have to lean over very far while imparting wise words of advice directly into my ear. Thanks to DS Crawford’s constant encouragement, I found I could do many things faster than I ever knew possible, including everyday tasks such as showering, shaving, eating and sleeping.

I also discovered I could find the motivation to finish tough jobs no matter how exhausted or hurt I became. Once during a long road march on a sweltering summer afternoon and despite sweating profusely with a sixty-pound rucksack on my back, I found the last mile much easier after DS Crawford roared in my face, Suck it up, soldier, and drive on! For many years afterward, I often recalled DS Crawford’s timely recommendation every time I was too tired, disgusted, or demoralized to keep doing something that I knew I had to finish.

Reality shock is always part and parcel of time in the Army. One of the first doses came when I showed up at DLI in Monterey. I wouldn’t be learning German or any other European language I’d checked as preferences when I signed my fate away at the MEPS. Of all the choices, Arabic and Korean were two languages I didn’t want to learn. So, naturally, they assigned me to a 47-week course in Korean.

Like untold numbers of recruits before me and since, I learned right away that when the Army wants you for something, you have no recourse. Salute and execute was one of the mottoes drilled into us, although Salute, grumble about it and then execute was much more accurate, especially in the MI community.

Many of my colleagues referred to us as MI weenies. They recognized (or hoped) that MI had it easier than combat arms soldiers and served in the rear echelons, but that wasn’t always true.

I landed in Korea in the spring of 1988. I was excited to finally arrive, but that didn’t last long. I got out and saw the country several times, and during a trip to Panmunjom on the DMZ it seemed as if I had reached the end of the Earth. One end, anyway. But most days were spent with little to do except read or hang out and drink with my equally bored friends. Worst of all, my unit was run by possibly the biggest bunch of misanthropes ever congregated in one battalion.

I later concluded this is one of the Army’s biggest flaws: frequently mistaking a willingness to abuse subordinates for leadership. I later realized those types were not only a minority in the Army, they were also the worst soldiers.

Beyond keeping my barracks room clean for daily inspections, my most significant accomplishment that year was holding a clipboard and pen in my hands and walking briskly out of the room whenever my platoon sergeant walked in. I found that acting as if I had something important to do helped me stay out of his crosshairs.

We had a real-world intelligence mission keeping track of what the North Korean army was up to, but most of the year they were up to nothing. If not for a few buddies, a couple of girlfriends, and a lot of beer, I don’t know how I would have lasted. For years afterward, I remembered my stint in Korea as the worst year of my life. I never imagined that someday it would hold a distant second place.

Before leaving, I vented to Sergeant (SGT) Keith Fletcher, one of my drinking buddies, my disappointment about serving there and how I’d suffered through a miserable year and accomplished so little. He agreed, but had a philosophical take on it, saying, It doesn’t matter, because after you leave, no one will remember what you did here, or how well you did it. The important thing is you get to move on with your life, and this place will be just a faded memory.

Orders for my next post had me headed to Fort Ord, near Monterey, CA. Assigned to Alpha Company, 107th MI Battalion, part of the 7th Infantry Division, I arrived with no intention of staying in the Army. But although those months at Fort Ord included a lot of tedium, moments came when I enjoyed going out to the field and learning how to be a good tactical soldier. The leadership in the chain of command had the opposite philosophy of the ones in Korea. They were committed to soldier development, and they treated soldiers with due respect.

Early one morning in December, 1989, soldiering seemed much more real. Big Army called the 7th ID in the middle of the night with orders for immediate deployment. Half of my company awoke before dawn and shipped out for Panama before first light. Every month half the company was listed on the Rapid Deployment Force (RDF). By chance, I wasn’t on RDF that foggy December morning.

By the time our buddies returned the next month, most of us who had stayed behind were envious. Action had been light with little danger to our forces, and they came back loaded with ribbons and combat patches for doing no-sweat duties like guarding buildings on an army base for a month.

By spring 1990, my attitude toward the Army had changed. I’d been promoted to sergeant the previous fall, a role I took so seriously that I had grown a mustache. I got so ambitious that I explored other opportunities in the Army. I scored high on a test for Officer Candidate School (OCS), but I delayed going for it because I wasn’t ready to commit to 20 years of active duty. In another moment of high testosterone and a sense of invincibility, I interviewed with a Special Forces recruiter, but that went no further than flirting with an invitation to try out for that team. I also got the paperwork for applying for defense attaché positions in American embassies, but I never followed through on that, either.

I was serious about lesser super trooper feats such as airborne and air assault schools, but my platoon sergeant always told me the company was under-staffed and so I was mission essential for the next field exercise.

As the end of my tour loomed, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. The Army tempted me with $20,000 to reenlist. Korean linguists were in short supply, but I had no intention of going back to Korea. But after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, the emphasis had shifted away from European languages, so German was out. The retention office staff offered me Chinese followed by a three-year tour in Hawaii. I took the bait.

In September, 1990, the Iraqis invaded and annexed Kuwait. But during Operation Desert Storm/ Desert Shield, I was in Chinese class at DLI. In October, I saw a former colleague from Fort Ord, SGT White. He had just graduated from Arabic and was about to head to his new unit that had already deployed to Saudi. I tried to sympathize with him, but he wasn’t having it. He wanted to go.

The Gulf War ended quickly, and soon after soldiers everywhere wore combat patches on their shoulders and ribbons on their chests. I had ribbon envy. When I listened to their stories, part of me wished I had gone, too. I also imagined being part of a major combat operation, the long weeks and months of adapting to the desert, the desert camouflage uniforms, facing the possibility of engaging with the enemy or running for cover from Iraqi SCUD missile attacks. I felt like a bench warmer. I had put on the uniform and practiced my job until it was second nature, but never got to take the field in the big game.

A drinking buddy from my Korean tour, SGT Jim Booker, hadn’t felt the same way. He had spent the war at Fort Meade, Maryland. He told me he had put in 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for four months.

And after it ended, all the civil service employees drove into work with the new cars they’d bought with their overtime bonus money, while all I got was a lousy AAM [Army Achievement Medal]. That’s when I knew I wasn’t staying in the Army, he told me when we met up a year later.

AAMs are the lowest achievement medals soldiers can be awarded. As SGT Jacobs from my section in Hawaii said, "It doesn’t matter what you do or how well you