[Main scoop: the diary names a private contractor that the army's internal report specifically recommended firing last February was still there as of last Sunday, happily playing golf between duties.]
[And contractors of course are beyond the reach of military displinary action and seem so far to be virtually beyond any law at all.]
URL: http://billmon.org/archives/001442.html
May 02, 2004
An Iraq Prison Diary
Bernhard, a Whiskey Bar reader in Germany, has made a spectacular
catch - or cache, I should say, since it comes from the bowels of the
Google data base.
What he stumbled across is the diary of one Joe Ryan, a frequent
caller and on-air personality at station KSTP, a conservative talk
radio station in Minneapolis. More recently, Joe has been serving as a
military interrogator at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and KSTP has been
posting his diary on their web site.
For some strange reason, though, the radio station recently removed
Joe's diary from its site. Unfortunately for KSTP - and, I suspect,
for Joe - the page has been cached by Google.
A copy also now resides on my hard drive.
The diary is a fascinating read - not least because it documents the
fact that as of last Sunday, one of the private contractors identified
in the Army's own internal investigation of the torture scandal was
still at Abu Ghraib, and may still have been supervising or conducting
interrogations.
The contactor's name is Steven Stephanowicz, and he works for CACI
International - one of two firms that have been publically linked to
the abuses in Abu Ghraib's high-security cell block. CACI has told the
Los Angeles Times that it "knew of no allegations of abuse" against
it's employees. But here's what Sy Hersh reported on the New Yorker
web site yesterday:
General Taguba urged that a civilian contractor, Steven
Stephanowicz, of CACI International, be fired from his Army job,
reprimanded, and denied his security clearances for lying to the
investigating team and allowing or ordering military policemen who
were not trained in interrogation techniques to facilitate
interrogations by setting conditions which were neither authorized
nor in accordance with Army regulations. He clearly knew his
instructions equated to physical abuse, Taguba wrote.
According to Hersh, Taguba's report was completed in late February.
And yet, here's what Joe Ryan, our radio personality turned military
interrogator, put in his diary entry for April 25:
I got to take the rest of the day off after our long booth time.
This gave us a nice evening after dinner to head to the roof and
play a round of golf. Scott Norman, Jeff Mouton, Steve Hattabaugh,
Steve Stefanowicz, and I all took turns trying to hit balls over
the back wall and onto the highway.
Unless there have been two Steve Stefanowicz/Stephanowiczs working as
interrogators at Abu Ghraib, it appears the Army not only ignored Gen.
Tagabu's recommendation that Stephanowicz be fired and stripped of his
security clearances, it didn't do anything about him at all -- leaving
Mr. Stephanowicz free to continue his "work" at the prison (with time
off for the occasional round of golf.)
I think this gives us a pretty good idea of how serious the Army was
about correcting these abuses up until the point where they were
splashed all across the global media.