sent her. Cindy figured there were more Army documents about Adam and tussled with the military for months just to get basic information.
Eventually she contacted her congressman, Bill Thomas, to apply further pressure on the Army. Thanks to their combined pressure, Cindy finally received a pile of paperwork from the military. Thumbing through the pages, she saw that investigators had classified Adam’s room as a crime scene and labeled his belongings in a “Record of Personal Effects.” There were also reports about discovering Adam’s body and his physical pathology, his medication, a death certificate, and finally a psychological autopsy.
During one of my visits to Tehachapi, Cindy allowed me to examine the files. The pages of the autopsy revealed that Adam “had experienced poor sleep, decreased appetite, stomachaches, headaches, and hypervigilance” since returning from Iraq.
“Gray was upset by thoughts of not being a good NCO,” the report said. “Gray said that those problems were due to the way he felt about what happened to him during his deployment. Gray said that he could not sleep without alcohol, and that the last time he did sleep without alcohol, he woke up screaming with the sheets soaked with his sweat.”
Such symptoms weren’t uncommon for veterans who suffered from PTSD. But perhaps the most arresting part of the report was this: “Gray had risk factors for suicide. He had made a suicide gesture three weeks before his death.”
On August 8, 2004, a friend of Adam’s and his girlfriend entered his barracks room around 9:30 p.m. There they found him hanging by a belt that was fastened to the top bunk bed. Adam was breathing but unconscious. His friends hoisted him up to loosen the belt tied around his neck, then quickly called 911. Adam might have died that evening had they not stumbled into his room and roused him.
According to the report, Adam “suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder from his experiences in Iraq, and he had a substance abuse problem. Both conditions increase his suicide risk. His status as recently being released from a psychiatric hospital increases his statistical risk of suicide.”
And yet the forensic opinion ended with the statement that Adam Gray’s “death is best classified as an accident.”
Cindy felt that the investigation was incomplete; basic information about the barracks’ guard rotations that would have checked in on Adam during the night, the record of his phone calls, and his financial information appeared to be missing. Apart from the lack of investigative follow-up work, there also seemed to be basic unanswered questions about Adam. If he “had risk factors for suicide”—and even attempted suicide three weeks before his death—why hadn’t the military taken more aggressive measures to monitor and treat him? Why didn’t the military try to deal with the particular “problems … due to the way he felt about what happened to him during his deployment”?
Was the Army covering something up? she wondered. Why didn’t they seek answers to such seemingly obvious questions?
Cindy tried to contact the doctor who treated Adam in Alaska to see if he could help explain what had happened to her son. But her calls went unanswered. Then she tried to locate former unit members from Alaska. She finally got a reply from Richard Boone’s wife, Lisa, in the form of a handwritten letter. She was contrite about Cindy’s loss and tried to offer some insight into Adam’s state of mind during the time she and her husband knew him in Alaska.
“Adam stated something to the effect that he had a hard time dealing with what he had done,” she wrote.
By way of explanation, she recalled that Adam came over to their house during the summer for a night of heavy drinking.
“That night those boys tied a good one on. I’m talking two cases of beer between them both,” wrote Lisa. As the night progressed, Adam’s friends drifted off to bed. He decided to stay up longer, drinking and smoking on a recliner.
“He was tired, and had way too much to drink, began rubbing his forehead and saying, ‘I just wish I could show them what I had to do,’ ” continued Lisa. “At that point I took the beer away and everyone decided to go to bed.”
Her letter then made a vague reference to Adam’s troubled thoughts: “Anyway…it was the comment he made about the things he did that I was getting to.” Despite the vagueness, Adam Gray’s family and friends agreed that they needed to further understand “the things he did” in order to make sense of his decline.
Throughout the time I reported on Adam Gray and Battalion 1-68, I told Cindy that I was concerned about relaying any new details that would add to her pain.
“I’m not worried,” she insisted. “This chapter has been opened for three years … I’ve already been through the worst. I just want answers. But I want the truth. I want to find somebody on this planet to find me that information.”
Cindy had already been through the worst. Nothing could undo the loss of a beloved son.
“They’re born with part of your soul,” said Cindy. “And once they’re gone, that’s a whole part of you that’s gone.”
She could no longer sit through any movies that depicted violence. Anything on television that had to do with Iraq was impossible for her to watch. But she had also gained an enormous amount of empathy. Her heart sank whenever she glanced at a newspaper that pictured a young soldier who had just been killed in combat. She knew there was a mother out there attached to one of those souls about to go through the worst journey of her life.
“Every time I turn on the news and they have that ten-second segment, my heart breaks for the person that’s on the end of that phone call,” Cindy said. “If I can make any difference in the world with that, that would be an ultimate goal.”
Cindy’s journey, or quest, demanded great courage, since it meant confronting many disquieting facts. “I want to know exactly what screwed all these kids up in Iraq,” she often said.
There are multiple explanations, too varied to cover fully in this book. But answering what happened to Adam James Gray, and by extension others who were “troubled” by their experiences in Iraq, involves looking at individual circumstances as well as common experiences during the war on terror.
Adam and those on his tank seemed upset by the shooting that accidentally claimed the lives of an Iraqi family. But he and others in his unit were also affected by the abuse and torture they inflicted on their prisoners.
To better understand what happened to Adam Gray, and US personnel who shared similar experiences, one needs to answer the following questions: How did American forces turn to torture? And how has the use of torture during the war on terror affected detainees, troops, and our counterterrorism efforts?
Those questions don’t belong just to Cindy Chavez and her quest to understand what happened to her son. The US military and policymakers want to hear the answers, also; so, too, do the torture victims, other mothers, and the American public.
Chapter 2:
The Story Begins in Afghanistan
COMBINE THE WORDS “US” or “American” with “detainee abuse” or “torture,” and the response will likely contain “Abu Ghraib” or “Guantanamo.”
But the American use of torture during the war on terror did not begin with Abu Ghraib, nor did it begin in Guantanamo. It’s easy to lose track of that fact, given the powerful images associated with both of those facilities: the Abu Ghraib pictures of
