about US torture have referenced some social and psychological explanations to make sense of cruel behavior.6 Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram provided one paradigm in what was later termed “the Milgram experiment.” In 1961, Milgram set up a “learning” scenario wherein an “experimenter” instructed participants to deliver a series of electric shocks of increasing voltage to a concealed but audible victim, even as the victim’s screams grew in volume. Unbeknownst to the participants, there weren’t any actual electric shocks and the screaming victims were merely pretending. Nonetheless, Milgram’s experiment revealed how normal participants can be lured by an authority figure into carrying out sadistic acts.
Ten years later, in 1971, Stanford University professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo conducted another kind of social-psychological experiment. Zimbardo hired ordinary students to play the roles of guards and prisoners in a mock prison scenario. As in Milgram’s experiment, Zimbardo set out to see if simple situations could move normal actors to do things they would not otherwise do. Within a week the guards brutally abused their captives, and Zimbardo had to abruptly call off the experiment. Zimbardo’s “Stanford prison experiment” is often referenced to show how situations can move normal people to become depraved and abusive.
Both experiments are revealing, but neither can fully explain how and why US forces abused and tortured their prisoners. Milgram and Zimbardo set up specific conditions—volunteers, participants, instructors, equipment, and oversight—in order to generate behavior they could analyze for one case of violence within each of their lab experiments. The narrow scope of the Milgram and Zimbardo experiments makes it difficult to extrapolate from them to real-world examples of violence.7 In other words, one cannot take the carefully constructed lab conditions as a given, and so it is crucial to understand the particular circumstances—such as pressures, orders, resources, and oversight—that led to US prisoner abuse during the war on terror.
Some have speculated that rage over the September 11 attacks could have fueled abuses. Gary Berntsen, a CIA agent who fought al Qaeda troops in Afghanistan in late 2001, voiced a feeling that seemed to be shared by many Americans after the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. “One word kept pounding in my head,” Berntsen said. “Revenge.”8 Festering anger over September 11 could have contributed to a desire for violent retribution, leading to torture and abuse. But most soldiers who handled detainees served with honor and distinction, and never tortured. Moreover, troops who did engage in torture have cited many reasons and explanations beyond lingering anger over the September 11 attacks. For instance, some soldiers have said that their rage and frustration about combating Iraqi insurgent groups contributed to prisoner abuse. Others provide far more mundane reasons, including boredom.
Many critics (and apologists) of US torture have pointed to inexperienced interrogators and violent conditions to explain how abuse took root. But this doesn’t explain why other inexperienced interrogators who worked in violent areas in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo didn’t abuse or torture detainees. There are also cases in which experienced interrogators have worked in far less dangerous environments and have turned to torture (e.g., Guantanamo).
A common explanation for the spread of detainee abuse during the US war on terror runs as follows: White House and Pentagon officials drafted memos sanctioning coercive techniques for interrogation in Guantanamo; many of these methods were used, turned abusive, and sometimes led to torture. Officials from Guantanamo, most notably Major General Geoffrey D. Miller, were transferred to Iraq and “Gitmoized” the military facilities there, namely Abu Ghraib.9 This combination of events allowed the horrors of Abu Ghraib to take hold and spill out elsewhere in Iraq.
But this fails to explain how and why troops turned to torture in Afghanistan and elsewhere prior to this string of events.
As this book will make clear, some US forces tortured and abused detainees even before government officials drafted and disseminated memos permitting coercive interrogation and certain “harsh” techniques. (There were, however, early cases of US abuse and torture after the Bush administration lessened certain provisions of the Geneva Conventions by refusing to classify detainees as prisoners of war.) This poses a predicament for those whose theories of US torture stem from the so-called “torture memos,” along with the personnel who drafted and dispatched them. Solely ascribing the rise of torture to the Bush administration memos that sanctioned harsh techniques is inadequate.
In the course of my reporting, I tried to find a straightforward interpretation for the development of US torture during the war on terror. But I failed to find a one-size-fits-all explanation for the myriad cases in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo. As one human rights lawyer told me, “There isn’t a grand theory of US torture that encapsulates and explains all the different abuses that have taken place in the war on terror.” The more I learned about cases of detainee abuse, the more I have found myself agreeing with that sentiment.
There are several explanatory narratives for US prisoner abuse. Yet they share many common threads—some are woven together, some hang as loose strands. Collectively, these threads offer an account of US torture and abuse, and it is possible to discern in them patterns that have been replicated throughout the war on terror.
American soldiers, interrogators, generals, psychologists, senior Bush administration officials, and lawmakers shared many of the very same compulsions and beliefs that led US forces to assume that torture was effective, permissible, and necessary. There has likewise been a pattern in the costs incurred through the abuse of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo. The toxic dividends of torture are shared by victims and victimizers, and have shaped the legacy of US torture during the war on terror.
Chapter 1:
Searching for Answers
THE HORIZON UNFURLED along the westward road as distant figures slowly came into view.
Neglected orchards dotted the landscape. Ochre-colored mountains sliced across the smooth expanse. Dust devils flared across the horizon, tightened into long, thin funnels, whipped across the plains, and dissipated into light wisps of sand. Oil refineries chugged away, clouding the air with thick fumes. As the road curved and sloped uphill, a large prison complex, encircled by glistening coils of concertina wire, punctured the sky and interrupted the placid scenery that surrounded it.
An American soldier scanned the scenery.
“It reminds me of Iraq,” said Adam Gray. He was now back home in Tehachapi, California. His stepfather, Roy Chavez, was driving him home while Adam sat beside him, gazing at the familiar landscape and quietly reminiscing.
After serving a year-long tour in Iraq, Adam went on leave to visit Roy and his mother, Cindy Chavez.
“It really shocked me when I picked him up at the airport. He wasn’t in his uniform; he just had his regular clothes,” said Roy. That he had changed clothes might have seemed like a small detail, but it surprised Roy, given how much pride Adam took in his military service. “I don’t know if he was just sick and tired of it and [thought] ‘I’m on leave, I don’t want to deal with this anymore. I just want to have a good time, see my mom, just be a regular normal person.’ ”
Regaining that normalcy wasn’t easy for Adam. The jagged bluffs that encircled his hometown area were remarkably similar to the scenery he had seen in the Middle East, and they plunged him back into a time and place that had irretrievably affected him.
Other members of Adam’s Army unit also had great difficulty making the transition back to the US. The camaraderie that bound them was no longer intact; each went his separate way after their unit returned. They were no longer linked by a common purpose; their mission was over. “Accomplished,” said some.
Yet
