Originally published by ScheerPost
Three Iraqi survivors of U.S. torture won a major victory in early November when a jury in the federal district court for the Eastern District of Virginia awarded each of them $3 million in compensatory damages and $11 million in punitive damages to be paid by American defense contractor CACI, which was responsible for the cruel and inhumane treatment that they endured in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison more than two decades ago.The judgment is notable for several reasons. First, it is the first time that a U.S. defense contractor has ever been successfully sued for managing a torture program. Second, the jury verdict came in the notorious Eastern District of Virginia, the home district of the CIA, the Pentagon, and countless defense contractors, including CACI. And third, this is the first finding in any federal court that there was a torture program during the so-called War on Terror, that people were harmed through torture, and that torture was illegal. Oddly, the story gained almost no traction in the mainstream media.
The facts of the case were relatively straightforward. The suit alleged that employees of CACI detained and tortured Salah al-Ejaili, a reporter for Al Jazeera; Suhail al-Shimari, a middle school principal; and Asad al-Zuba’i, a fruit vendor. They were tortured by CACI employees over a period of several weeks using techniques including electric shock, stress positions, starvation, attack dogs, and humiliation through forced nudity. These techniques were consistent with those used by the CIA on so-called “high-value prisoners” at secret “black sites” around the world. The Abu Ghraib torturers apparently learned of the techniques from CIA officers serving at the prison at the same time.
One of the men was shot in the head with a taser and the others suffered broken bones. The plaintiffs also testified that they were sexually assaulted by a female CACI contractor and forced to watch the rape of a female Iraqi prisoner. The men alleged that they continue to suffer the mental effects of the torture nearly 20 years after the fact.
CACI’s defense was quite simple. The company’s attorneys said the employees had “minimal interaction with the three plaintiffs in the case and that any liability for their mistreatment belonged to the government, not CACI, because the civilian interrogators were acting under the command and control of the military.” In other words, the defense was “we were just following orders.” We heard that same excuse at Nuremberg.
The lawsuit had a long road. The span of 16 years is long even for a federal case. The delay in trial was due primarily to CACI’s contention that, as a government contractor whose employees were acting on behalf of the government, it should have been indemnified against civil lawsuits. In the end, the District Court said that the company did not enjoy such protections.
Originally filed in 2008 on the plaintiffs’ behalf by the Center for Constitutional Rights, the case finally made it to trial in the summer of 2024. But in August, Judge Leonie Brinkema declared a mistrial when the jury failed to reach a verdict. In many cases, the plaintiffs would have walked away. The cost of a trial already is prohibitive. The cost of two is astronomical. But the plaintiffs were determined to move forward and the suit was refiled.
Brinkema has been supportive of the intelligence community since being named to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. Brinkema was the judge in my case, when I was charged with five felonies after blowing the whistle on the CIA’s torture program. During my sentencing, in which I had agreed to a Justice Department offer of 30 months in a federal prison, Brinkema said, “Mr. Kiriakou, this sentence is too short. If I could, I would give you 10 years. But my hands are tied.” (My attorneys told me later that, if she had wanted to, Brinkema could indeed have rejected the plea deal and could have sentenced me to 10 years. In the end, she was probably posing for the literally dozens of national security journalists who were in the courtroom that day.)
Just two-and-a-half years later, she sentenced CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling to three-and-a-half years in prison for “espionage,” despite the fact that there was literally no documentary evidence that Sterling had ever committed espionage. Sterling had been accused of providing information on a failed CIA operation against Iran’s nuclear program to New York Times journalist James Risen. The only evidence was that Sterling and Risen had spoken by phone more than 50 times over the previous year. But Sterling had filed a racial discrimination suit against the CIA, a story that Risen had been covering. Sterling argued that that suit was the subject of their calls. Sterling later said in his book, The Unwanted Spy, that when former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, whom he had never met, testified in court that revelation of the Iran operation was revealed, he was “doomed,” despite the fact that there was no evidence that the information had come from him.
The CACI verdict is notable also for the fact that the jury was made up of residents of the Eastern District of Virginia. Imagine seating a jury where the pool includes people who work for, or who have friends and relatives who work for, the CIA, the Defense Department, or dozens of federal defense contractors. An impartial trial involving a national security issue in the Eastern District is rare.
Yet despite these roadblocks, the plaintiffs were successful.
Another issue here is that there was virtually no media coverage of this landmark decision. Sure, there were short articles in the Associated Press and the New York Times, but the real coverage came from the alternative media, like Kevin Gosztola’s The Dissenter and The Intercept. And there was literally no commentary in the editorial pages of any mainstream outlet. Nothing.
As an aside, I have been teaching a graduate school course at Spain’s University of Salamanca for the past year called The History of Terrorism. An important part of this course is the U.S. response to terrorism in the so-called War on Terror, including the torture program. When I raised the issue of torture in the most recent running of the class, in October, I was met with blank stares. I asked the students if they had not heard of the CIA’s torture program. One of the students finally said, “Professor, you realize that we were all born after 9/11, right?” That comment was a non-sequitur. Most of us were born after World War II and we still learned about the Holocaust.
The fact that young people don’t know about torture, the fact that the mainstream media doesn’t cover developments related to torture, the fact that we still have people who have never been charged with a crime dying slow deaths at Guantanamo are all political, societal, cultural, and media failures. It’s a very good thing that the CACI plaintiffs won their case. But what is the lasting positive effect on our society if nobody knows about it? It’s up to the rest of us to ensure that we not remain silent.
John Kiriakou is an American author, journalist and former intelligence officer. Kiriakou is a columnist with Reader Supported News and co-host of Political Misfits on Sputnik Radio. He was formerly an analyst and case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency, senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, counterterrorism and a consultant for ABC News. He was the first U.S. government official to confirm in December 2007 that waterboarding was used to interrogate al-Qaeda prisoners, which he described as torture. In 2012, Kiriakou became the first CIA officer to be convicted of passing classified information to a reporter disclosing the identity of a CIA officer. He received a 30-month sentence for this whistleblowing.