United States Army Captain Carolyn Wood is a military intelligence officer who served in both Afghanistan and Iraq. She was implicated by the Fay Report to have "failed" in several aspects of her command regarding her oversight of interrogators at Abu Ghraib. She was alleged by Amnesty International to be centrally involved in the 2003 Abu Ghraib and 2002 Bagram prisoner abuse cases. [1] Wood is featured in the 2008 Academy award-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side . [2]
Wood previously served ten years as an enlisted soldier in the U.S. Army, rising to the rank of Staff Sergeant, before being commissioned as an officer.
In July 2002, Wood was in command of about 20 analysts and interrogators in the intelligence unit located at Bagram Collection Point. She expanded the interrogation procedures with the use of stress positions, isolation for up to thirty days, removal of clothing, and exploitation of detainees' phobias, such as the use of barking dogs.
Two prisoners, Dilawar and Habibullah, were killed in custody in December. When Military Police guards were charged with their beatings they tried to mitigate their responsibility by attempting to link the intelligence unit's expanded interrogation procedures as leading to such abuse. The MPs had been trained to use non-lethal force on violent and combative detainees, including painful peroneal strikes referred to as "compliance blows". [3] These strikes are used in civilian law enforcement but were later determined to not be part of Army doctrine. [4] Their arguments failed to exonerate them but was readily accepted by critics and opponents of the U.S. side in the War on Terror.
Many of the enhanced interrogation procedures, such as the use of barking dogs, were later overturned after review by military lawyers. The practice of shackling a captive's hands above their heads was classified as criminal assault.
Wood was called as a witness during the court martial of Willie Brand, the first GI to be charged. But, on legal advice, Wood invoked her right to protection against self-incrimination. The Arizona Daily Star quoted speculation over Wood's role, addressing the concern that Wood had been unaware of the most extreme abuse of her subordinates, and addressing the concern that Wood had merely passed on authorization for the abuse from more senior officers. [5]
Wood arrived in Abu Ghraib on August 4, 2003 [6] and took the initiative to recommend the establishment of the Hard Site in Abu Ghraib based on her experience in Afghanistan. [7]
The Hard Site was opened on August 25, 2003. This was intended as an isolation area to house detainees determined to be of intelligence value, but it was also used by MPs to isolate violent detainees. It became the location of the incidents that first provoked public controversy after criminal detainees were moved into the Hard Site for rioting, and then later revealed to have been humiliated by guards on the night shift.
As in Bagram, the accused guards claimed they were ordered to do this to soften detainees for interrogation. Wood testified in the pretrial hearing against Lynndie England that the conduct went far beyond the intelligence orders she had given to the MPs at Abu Ghraib. [8]
England later admitted the intelligence rules had played no role in the incident, [9] but the incident had already provoked a major Army inquiry into Army practices at Abu Ghraib.
Wood played a key role in drafting the interrogation rules that were issued from General Ricardo Sanchez's office on September 14, 2003. [10] [11] [12]
These were revised twice more, on legal advice that the originals could lead to violations of the Geneva Conventions. Many techniques remained, however, and some were to be permitted on a case-by-case basis only with General Sanchez's authorization. The Army inquiry concluded there was confusion on this matter under Captain Wood's leadership, and some interrogation techniques continued to be used without the required authorization. [13]
In testimony before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee:
Wood's role at Abu Ghraib is featured in Alex Gibney's 2008 Academy award-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side . [2]
The Fay/Jones Report's final mention of Wood contained the following findings: [14]
In late May 2006 Wood testified at the courts-martial of the Abu Ghraib dog handlers that all personnel at the prison had signed General Sanchez's memo authorizing extended interrogation techniques. [15]
When asked if she would have approved the use of dogs against detainees Wood testified: "Using an unmuzzled dog goes against the CG's (commanding general's) policy."[ citation needed ]
Captain Wood was awarded two Bronze Stars for the services she provided in Afghanistan and Iraq. According to a CBC documentary on Abu Ghraib a Bronze Star awarded to Wood following the deaths in custody was awarded for valor. [16]
On January 22, 2003, Capt. Carolyn A. Wood receives a Bronze Star for “exceptional meritorious service” as the head of military intelligence interrogators at Bagram. She and her small platoon of 15 interrogators from the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion returned from Afghanistan to their base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina earlier in the month. On May 8, 2003, Wood receives her second Bronze Star According to an article published in The Guardian on June 23, 2004, six months after her withdrawal from Abu Ghraib, Wood was taking an advanced interrogation course at Fort Huachuca, the Army's primary intelligence training centre.The Guardian reported that although Wood hadn't been charged, she had been allocated a military lawyer. [17]
According to the Arizona Daily Star on March 26, 2005 Wood was still stationed at Fort Huachuca. [5]
According to the CBC, Carolyn Wood was only a First Lieutenant when her company was sent to Bagram, and her second Bronze Star was awarded after her return from Abu Ghraib. [16] The CBC said, on November 16, 2005 that Wood was still an interrogation instructor at the Army's military intelligence instruction centre at Fort Huachuca.
As of October 2008 [update] , CPT Wood remains on Active Duty, assigned to the 501st Military Intelligence Brigade, and is the Company Commander of the Headquarters and Operations Company of the 527th Military Intelligence Battalion.
Janis Leigh Karpinski is a retired career officer in the United States Army Reserve. She is notable for having commanded the forces that operated Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, at the time of the scandal related to torture and prisoner abuse. She commanded three prisons in Iraq and the forces that ran them. Her education includes a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and secondary education from Kean College, a Master of Arts degree in aviation management from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and a Master of Arts in strategic studies from the United States Army War College.
Charles A. Graner Jr. is an American former soldier who was court-martialed for prisoner abuse after the 2003–2004 Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. Along with other soldiers of his Army Reserve unit, the 372nd Military Police Company, Graner was accused of allowing and inflicting sexual, physical, and psychological abuse on Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib prison, a notorious prison in Baghdad during the United States' occupation of Iraq.
During the early stages of the Iraq War, members of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency committed a series of human rights violations and war crimes against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, including physical abuse, sexual humiliation, both physical and psychological torture, rape, as well the killing of Manadel al-Jamadi and the desecration of his body. The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs of the abuse by CBS News in April 2004. The incidents caused shock and outrage, receiving widespread condemnation within the United States and internationally.
About six months after the United States invasion of Iraq of 2003, rumors of Iraq prison abuse scandals started to emerge.
The Taguba Report, officially titled US Army 15-6 Report of Abuse of Prisoners in Iraq, is a report published in May 2004 containing the findings from an official military inquiry into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse. It is named after Major General Antonio Taguba, the report's principal author.
Geoffrey D. Miller is a retired United States Army major general who commanded the US detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Iraq. Detention facilities in Iraq under his command included Abu Ghraib prison, Camp Cropper, and Camp Bucca. He is noted for having trained soldiers in using torture, or "enhanced interrogation techniques" in US euphemism, and for carrying out the "First Special Interrogation Plan," signed by the Secretary of Defense, against a Guantanamo detainee.
Mullah Habibullah was an Afghan who died while in US custody on December 4, 2002. His death was one of those classed as a homicide, though the initial military statement described his death as due to natural causes.
Ghost detainee is a term used in the executive branch of the United States government to designate a person held in a detention center, whose identity has been hidden by keeping them unregistered and therefore anonymous. Such uses arose as the Bush administration initiated the War on Terror following the 9/11 attacks of 2001 in the United States. As documented in the 2004 Taguba Report, it was used in the same manner by United States officials and contractors of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003–2004.
Thomas M. Pappas is a former United States Army colonel who is a civilian intelligence officer with the Army's Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Eustis, Virginia.
In 2005, The New York Times obtained a 2,000-page United States Army investigatory report concerning the homicides of two unarmed civilian Afghan prisoners by U.S. military personnel in December 2002 at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility in Bagram, Afghanistan and general treatment of prisoners. The two prisoners, Habibullah and Dilawar, were repeatedly chained to the ceiling and beaten, resulting in their deaths. Military coroners ruled that both the prisoners' deaths were homicides. Autopsies revealed severe trauma to both prisoners' legs, describing the trauma as comparable to being run over by a bus. Seven soldiers were charged in 2005.
Jeanette Arocho-Burkart was a Sergeant E-5 in the United States Army.
Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States, in the context of the early twenty-first century War on Terrorism, refers to foreign nationals the United States detains outside of the legal process required within United States legal jurisdiction. In this context, the U.S. government is maintaining torture centers, called black sites, operated by both known and secret intelligence agencies. Such black sites were later confirmed by reports from journalists, investigations, and from men who had been imprisoned and tortured there, and later released after being tortured until the CIA was comfortable they had done nothing wrong, and had nothing to hide.
The US Army Field Manual on Interrogation, sometimes known by the military nomenclature FM 34-52, is a 177-page manual describing to military interrogators how to conduct effective interrogations while conforming with US and international law. It has been replaced by FM 2-22.3 Human Intelligence Collector Operations.
George Fay, while an officer in the United States Army, was the lead author of an investigation into the scandal at Abu Ghraib, more commonly known as the Fay Report.
The Fay Report, officially titled Investigation of Intelligence Activities at Abu Ghraib, was a military investigation into the torture and abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. It was sparked by leaked images of Iraqi prisoners, hooded and naked, being mistreated obtained by the United States and global media in April 2004. The Fay Report was one of five such investigations ordered by the military and was the third to be submitted, as it was completed and released on August 25, 2004. Prior to the report's release, seven reservist military police had already been charged for their roles in the abuse at the prison, and so the report examined the role of military intelligence, specifically the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade that was responsible for the interrogation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. General Paul J. Kern was the appointing authority for the report and oversaw the investigation. The chief investigators were Major General George Fay, whom the report is named after, and Lieutenant General Anthony R. Jones.
Samuel Provance is a former U.S. Army military intelligence sergeant, known for disobeying an order from his commanders in the 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion by discussing with the media his experiences at the Abu Ghraib Prison, where he was assigned from September 2003 to February 2004. After being disciplined for his actions, he eventually brought his case to the United States Government in February 2006, resulting in a congressional subpoena of the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The main points of his testimony are that military intelligence soldiers and contracted civilian interrogators had abused detainees, that they directed the military police to abuse detainees, the extent of this knowledge at the prison, and the subsequent cover-up of these practices when investigated.
Damien M. Corsetti was a soldier in the United States Army. As part of the Army's investigation into prisoner abuse at Bagram, Corsetti was charged with dereliction of duty, maltreatment, assault and performing an indecent act with another person. PFC Corsetti was later found not guilty of all charges. At the time Corsetti was a specialist in the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, serving under Lieutenant Carolyn Wood.
Steven L. Jordan is a former United States Army Reserve officer. Jordan volunteered to return to active duty to support the war in Iraq, and as a civil affairs officer with a background in military intelligence, was made the director of the Joint Interrogation Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib prison.
Taxi to the Dark Side is a 2007 American documentary film directed by Alex Gibney, and produced by Gibney, Eva Orner, and Susannah Shipman. It won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It focuses on the December 2002 killing of an Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar, who was beaten to death by American soldiers while being held in extrajudicial detention and interrogated at a black site at Bagram air base.
The 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion, whose unit crest portrays the "sly fox", evolved from the 3252d Signal Service Company which was activated in England on 1 April 1944.
