The Inspector of Abu Graib

When the US Army can’t face a painful truth about itself, it kills the messenger.

It could have been a feel-good story—something badly needed in America today—about a bright Army general who did the right thing at a tough time and was duly rewarded. The general is Tony Taguba, a two-star officer who was born in the Philippines and made his way to college in America on a ROTC scholarship and, after graduation, began a 34-year career that brought him, after rapid promotions and high accolades, to the American war in Iraq in 2003.

Taguba was serving in the US military’s headquarters in Kuwait in 2004 when word of an impending scandal—one that was immediately understood to have implications as severe as the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam—stunned the top command. It concerned the Abu Ghraib prison, located twenty miles west of Baghdad. The notorious jail had long been shuttered prior to the US invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein. It was renovated by the US and now held as many as 50,000 detained men and women. Most of them were believed to be linked to or have knowledge of the Al Qaeda opposition. The prisoners were confined in 12’-by-12’ cells that were, as I reported two decades ago, little more than holes in the ground.

I first learned of the tortures and other abuses that took place at Abu Ghraib late in 2003 while interviewing an ousted senior officer of the Iraqi air force. He took a dangerous seven-hour taxi ride from Baghdad to Damascus, where we met in an out-of-the-way hotel for three days. He wanted a way out of Iraq for his wife and two children, and I passed his name and contact information to various officials in Washington. One evening he brought up Abu Ghraib, about which I knew nothing, and told me that the US military, desperate to learn about the opposition in Iraq, had taken to seizing mothers and their children and jailing them there. The women were sending messages asking family members in Baghdad to come and kill them because they had been sexually abused by their American guards and interrogators.

Sometime around the New Year’s holiday, an unhappy and friendless American military police prison guard came forward to alert his superiors of the abuses taking place at the Abu Ghraib prison. He was a member of a National Guard unit that was trained in traffic control but was reassigned with little or no instruction to serve as prison guards. The guards were teamed with members of an experienced and more senior American military intelligence unit at the prison. Its mission was to break down young male Iraqi prisoners and get them to tell what they were assumed to know about Al Qaeda activities. The young men and women prison guards, perhaps flattered by the attention or perhaps eager to show that they could “get tough” with the prisoners, began abusing and tormenting the prisoners, photographing the abuse, and sharing the photos.

The first story I would later write about the abuse for The New Yorker put it this way:

The photographs tell it all. In one, Private [Lynndie] England, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, is giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi, who is naked except for a sandbag over his head, as he masturbates. Three other hooded and naked Iraqi prisoners are shown, hands reflexively crossed over their genitals. A fifth prisoner has his hands at his sides. In another, England stands arm in arm with Specialist [Charles] Graner; both are grinning and giving the thumbs-up behind a cluster of perhaps seven naked Iraqis, knees bent, piled clumsily on top of each other in a pyramid. There is another photograph of a cluster of naked prisoners, again piled in a pyramid. Near them stands Graner, smiling, his arms crossed; a woman soldier stands in front of him, bending over, and she, too, is smiling. Then, there is another cluster of hooded bodies, with a female soldier standing in front, taking photographs. Yet another photograph shows a kneeling, naked, unhooded male prisoner, head momentarily turned away from the camera, posed to make it appear that he is performing oral sex on another male prisoner, who is naked and hooded.

The stunning photographs, thousands of them, were circulated via email among the National Guard unit. Over the holidays in late 2003, the disgruntled prison guard turned the photos over to the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, known as the C.I.D. A major inquiry was immediately ordered and the job had to go, under Army regulations, to a general who outranked the highest official in charge of the safety and security of the Abu Ghraib prisoners, who was a one-star officer.

The assignment went to General Taguba, who was told he had only one month to research the issues and a week or so to write his report. The general spared no one in the chain of command, and his devastating portrayal of the abuse—which often involved attack dogs and was clearly known and tolerated or ignored by senior officials at the prison, at Army headquarters in Baghdad, and elsewhere—made him few fans.

Tony and I did not meet for more than two years after his report, which I obtained and published in my reporting. He understood that his efforts could possibly end his career and make him—rather than what he had found in his report—the problem. But he was unprepared for the message he got shortly after turning in his classified report. Taguba was asked to take a limousine ride with John Abizaid, then the four-star head of the Pentagon’s vital Central Command, which had responsibility for the conduct of the Iraq war. The two men shared the back seat of Abizaid’s Mercedes. Abizaid told him that if he didn’t make drastic revisions to his report, whose fault finding went to the top of the chain of command, “You and your report will be investigated.”

Taguba later told me: “I wasn’t angry about what he said but disappointed that he would say that to me. I had been in the Army thirty-two years by then, and it was the first time I thought I was in the Mafia.” He did not change a word and filed his report, which included the photographs that few at the top of the Pentagon wanted to ever see or made public.

There was more to come. 60 Minutes obtained a clutch of the more egregious Abu Ghraib photographs but was barred by senior executives at CBS from going on the air with them. Meanwhile, I obtained a copy of the Taguba report and was prepared to publish a detailed article on Taguba’s remarkable work in The New Yorker with a link directing readers—and all in the media—to the full report. I had been tipped off that 60 Minutes, the most popular and influential television news show at the time, had obtained stunning photos of Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse by a friend who worked for the program. I also was told that Dan Rather, the senior correspondent for the show, had been waging a losing battle with network executives to get the photos on the air. After a consultation with David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, it was agreed that I would let a senior producer at 60 Minutes know I had the Taguba report, but would delay its publication if Rather, et al., could assure me that they would go on the air with the photos as soon as possible. I got the assurances the magazine and I needed.

It was in no way a political decision: it was simply an acknowledgment that the disturbing photographs CBS had would increase the impact, and the audience, for my later revelations of what Taguba had uncovered. CBS broadcast the photographs, and the world was reeling from the horrors on display. My story based on the Taguba report added to the worldwide outrage at the actions being carried out by America.

There was fury at the top of the Pentagon, most of it aimed not at the failure of all leaders responsible for the Abu Ghraib prison but at the one guy in the system who did the right thing and told the truth.

As I wrote of Taguba in 2007:

On the afternoon of May 6, 2004, Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba was summoned to meet, for the first time, with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in his Pentagon conference room. Rumsfeld and his senior staff were to testify the next day, in televised hearings before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees, about abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq. The previous week, revelations about Abu Ghraib, including photographs showing prisoners stripped, abused, and sexually humiliated, had appeared on CBS and in The New Yorker. In response, Administration officials had insisted that only a few low-ranking soldiers were involved and that America did not torture prisoners. They emphasized that the Army itself had uncovered the scandal.

If there was a redeeming aspect to the affair, it was in the thoroughness and the passion of the Army’s initial investigation. The inquiry had begun in January, and was led by General Taguba, who was stationed in Kuwait at the time. Taguba filed his report in March. In it he found:

“Numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees . . . systemic and illegal abuse.”

Taguba was met at the door of the conference room by an old friend, Lieutenant General Bantz J. Craddock, who was Rumsfeld’s senior military assistant. Craddock’s daughter had been a babysitter for Taguba’s two children when the officers served together years earlier at Fort Stewart, Georgia. But that afternoon, Taguba recalled, “Craddock just said, very coldly, ‘Wait here.’ ” In a series of interviews early this year, the first he has given, Taguba told me that he understood when he began the inquiry that it could damage his career; early on, a senior general in Iraq had pointed out to him that the abused detainees were “only Iraqis.” Even so, he was not prepared for the greeting he received when he was finally ushered in.

“Here . . . comes . . . that famous General Taguba—of the Taguba report!” Rumsfeld declared, in a mocking voice. The meeting was attended by Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (J.C.S.); and General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, along with Craddock and other officials. Taguba, describing the moment nearly three years later, said, sadly, “I thought they wanted to know. I assumed they wanted to know. I was ignorant of the setting.”

In the meeting, the officials professed ignorance about Abu Ghraib. “Could you tell us what happened?” Wolfowitz asked. Someone else asked, “Is it abuse or torture?” At that point, Taguba recalled, “I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, ‘That’s not abuse. That’s torture.’ There was quiet.”

Rumsfeld was particularly concerned about how the classified report had become public. “General,” he asked, “who do you think leaked the report?” Taguba responded that perhaps a senior military leader who knew about the investigation had done so. “It was just my speculation,” he recalled. “Rumsfeld didn’t say anything.” (I did not meet Taguba until mid-2006 and obtained his report elsewhere.) Rumsfeld also complained about not being given the information he needed. “Here I am,” Taguba recalled Rumsfeld saying, “just a Secretary of Defense, and we have not seen a copy of your report. I have not seen the photographs, and I have to testify to Congress tomorrow and talk about this.” As Rumsfeld spoke, Taguba said, “He’s looking at me. It was a statement.”

At best, Taguba said, “Rumsfeld was in denial.” Taguba had submitted more than a dozen copies of his report through several channels at the Pentagon and to the Central Command headquarters, in Tampa, Florida, which ran the war in Iraq. By the time he walked into Rumsfeld’s conference room, he had spent weeks briefing senior military leaders on the report, but he received no indication that any of them, with the exception of General Schoomaker, had actually read it. (Schoomaker later sent Taguba a note praising his honesty and leadership.) When Taguba urged one lieutenant general to look at the photographs, he rebuffed him, saying, “I don’t want to get involved by looking, because what do you do with that information, once you know what they show?”

Taguba also knew that senior officials in Rumsfeld’s office and elsewhere in the Pentagon had been given a graphic account of the pictures from Abu Ghraib, and told of their potential strategic significance, within days of the first complaint. On January 13, 2004, a military policeman named Joseph Darby gave the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division (C.I.D.) a CD full of images of abuse. Two days later, General Craddock and Vice-Admiral Timothy Keating, the director of the Joint Staff of the J.C.S., were e-mailed a summary of the abuses depicted on the CD. It said that approximately ten soldiers were shown, involved in acts that included:

“Having male detainees pose nude while female guards pointed at their genitals; having female detainees exposing themselves to the guards; having detainees perform indecent acts with each other; and guards physically assaulting detainees by beating and dragging them with choker chains.”

Taguba said, “You didn’t need to ‘see’ anything—just take the secure e-mail traffic at face value.”

I stayed friendly with Tony after writing the profile. It was impossible not to have admiration for someone who chose honesty over, perhaps, a third star.

And so we had one of our regular casual lunches the other day in a restaurant near the Pentagon. Tony had chosen not to follow the path of most of his peers after retirement by going to work for a major defense corporation. He watched his two children grow up and did consulting for some private groups on management and veterans’ issues and a longer stint with the AARP, the nation’s largest nonprofit focused on improving the life of those 50 years and older.

I told him I was returning to Abu Ghraib and his fall from grace. He gave his usual smile and said: “I was not a whistleblower. I knew I was in trouble when I was given the assignment, but when you see those photos what can you do? I was a dead man walking.

“The kids were trained as traffic cops and then were told to transport [Iraqi] detainees. That’s how they got to Abu Ghraib. They weren’t trained for that but they had vehicles and rifles, just undisciplined kids with incompetent leadership and they were on the list to go home. They had all their equipment packed in Kuwait and ready to be shipped. And then they were told to stay behind.”

I asked: Would he do it again? “Sure,” Tony said, “I was hamstrung by the thirty days I had to investigate. I do not think I fulfilled my mission. Rumsfeld was blaming the soldiers, but underneath they had no operational plan” for dealing with the prisoners.

“In hindsight, there was nothing I did to compromise my integrity, But integrity in the military and elsewhere is a bumper sticker. There is no reward for telling the truth.”

At one point I flashed the horrid Abu Ghraib photo that got worldwide distribution of an American soldier holding back a Belgian Malinois in a predatory crouch a few feet from a terrified Iraqi prisoner.

“The dog did bite him in the crotch,” Tony replied. He instantly recognized the photo and knew its history. “Some said: ‘Don’t take a pix,’ but the scene was not recorded, as were others. “The prisoner was severely bit.” He stopped to think for a moment. “I don’t think he died.”

Eleven members of the unit at Abu Ghraib were eventually convicted in military court. The only higher-up to suffer was Tony Taguba.