03/28/07 – Sam Provance – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton and this is Antiwar Radio.
What really happened at Abu Ghraib?
Well, my guest today sure will be able to answer that question to some degree at least.
His name is Sam Provence, he's a sergeant in US Army Intelligence, the IT computer specialist at Abu Ghraib prison and is featured in the HBO documentary Ghosts of Abu Ghraib.
He has an article for Consortium News that we're running in the Viewpoint section today on Antiwar.com called The American Ghosts of Abu Ghraib.
And within that article, as well, is a link to his sworn statement to the United States Congress.
Welcome to the show, Sam.
Thank you, glad to be here.
You were a sergeant in the army for eight years, is that right?
Yes.
And honorably discharged eventually, is that right?
That's correct, on October of last year.
Okay, and now, if I have this right, after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, you were the only person from Abu Ghraib to talk to the investigators in Germany, is that right?
No, that's not true.
There was actually a group of us that were suddenly driven to Darmstadt in Germany to speak to Major General Faye, who was leading the second major investigation in Abu Ghraib.
I didn't know all the particulars of that time as far as the scope of his investigation or even who he really was.
But from the outset, I thought it was strange exactly who was sent up there to speak with him and who wasn't.
And he interviewed the others before me and then I was last as far as being interviewed.
Okay, now what was it that you were the only one of then?
Well, I would say I wouldn't say I'm the only one, but I'm one of the few people in the intelligence community, military or civilian, that has been really forthcoming with what really went on.
There's some others that might have told the truth, but they didn't tell the whole truth.
A lot of people read these sworn statements from soldiers and even some of the translators or interpreters and they get the wrong impression that that's all that they have to say when that's just all that they were either asked or that they volunteered to the investigation.
Right.
And you say in your article that this General George Fay was singularly uninterested in what you had to tell him.
Is that right?
Right.
He was expecting something a little more cut and dry when talking to me as it was with the others, I assume, from what they told me of their experience with him.
Initially it began, it was very friendly and went out of his way to tell me he wasn't charging me with anything and wasn't reading me my rights.
And then his questions just pretty much focused on the MPs and the photograph and wanting to know explicitly how I knew what I knew.
And then I had a whole lot more to tell him, but he wasn't interested in that because they primarily weren't things that I had participated in myself or seen with my own two eyes or had photographs to prove.
And so I pretty much badgered him until he gave in and then said, okay, well let's hear it.
And then everything changed when after telling him everything I could, he suddenly began turning everything around on me.
And was saying that this whole thing was actually, could have been prevented if I had come forward sooner with what I had just told him.
Well, wasn't that right?
What's that?
Wasn't that right?
No.
I've reported wrongdoing in the military before, as far as that goes.
And like I even said in my statement to him, either nobody would care or would get covered up.
So you thought if you told it would just get you in trouble but not get anything done?
Absolutely.
And not to mention the things that were going on weren't considered wrong.
Even though I had a problem with it, it didn't mean that it was illegal.
And it's not like everybody knew exactly what the parameters were.
And so something or going against that, it was wrong.
I was very confused for a lot of my time when I'd be grabbed as to exactly what's that.
Because I didn't even really know what people were allowed to do or how far they were allowed to go with it.
Well, you said in your testimony to the Congress or your sworn statement to the Congress that the military intelligence guys with your crew had already been trained back home how to do things, but then some new intelligence guys from Guantanamo Bay came down and changed the rules.
Right.
Well, the thing was we realized we were in this flux of this so-called war on terror.
And the people, to my knowledge, were doing things right when they first got there.
And then these people from Guantanamo Bay came and they were the experts.
They were the heavy hitters.
They were the experienced.
And right off the bat, there was a big fight between the old school and the new school.
And eventually the new school won.
And until the day I left, this momentum of change just kept coming.
And so before the new school arrived from Guantanamo Bay, none of this stuff was happening?
I really don't know too much about that other than a lot of the stuff that I did find out that was going on was being done by the old school.
You know, like the nakedness and the loud music or the starvation, things of that nature.
They were already implementing some of those things from what they were telling me.
And then the Guantanamo people just kind of capitalized and even went further.
I see.
Now, I interrupted you.
I'm sorry.
You were talking about how this general, once you started volunteering this information to questions that he hadn't asked you, he turned on you and started saying that you could be the one prosecuted.
Is that it?
Oh, right, right.
And I was now one of the bad guys.
And I was just completely shocked because I'm cooperating as fully as possible with this investigation.
And then he even pulled out my statement to General Treguba, you know, where I said I was glad the investigation was being done because what had been going on was shameful.
And then he even turned that around on me.
You know, and said that if I really believe that, you know, like he was trying to charge me with, that I would have done something sooner.
Well, and he's got a point.
I mean, I don't mean to entirely dismiss your argument that nobody would have listened to you anyway.
It seems pretty clear, actually, that the only reason this story had any legs at all was because of the photographs and all the evidence that basically could not be denied.
And, you know, I pretty much buy your argument that if you had come forward without that kind of firsthand evidence that it probably wouldn't have gone anywhere.
But you could have tried, Sam, and you describe in your sworn statement to Congress some pretty horrifying things that were going on for you to not be trying to talk to your superiors about it.
Well, again, you know, I mean, by that time I didn't trust my superiors.
And, you know, I just felt like I had nowhere or no one to go to about these things.
And then even talking to the people that worked there, you know, they showed a lot of resistance to, you know, even the mildest speculation about what they're doing being wrong.
And not to mention my life being in danger.
You know, I mean, out there at that time it was the Wild West and, you know, anybody, anything could have happened to anybody and they could have said that anything happened.
Well, and we see that, you know, once the story broke, you know, I'm trying to be fair to you here, once the story broke and you tried to tell them everything you knew, that's what made them angry.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And, you know, just like I watched this movie, Serpico, about the police officer that found corruption in the police department and how he kept going through all these channels to try to get something done and then, you know, nothing was getting done and they kept pushing him off.
And then his last resort was to go to the media, which was the cardinal sin.
And, you know, and it wasn't until then that something, you know, began to get done.
And that's how, you know, I can completely relate to that.
And that's, you know, how I felt when I went to the media.
And I felt like that's the only way that there was going to be any kind of attention, you know, given, you know, for something to be done.
Otherwise, you know, my testimony to General Fay or to Cuba, you know, would have been like a lot of the others to this day, you know, that are there, that were just, you know, shelved or buried.
Now, there are probably some people in the audience who, even if they hear it directly from you, won't believe that you or any of your fellow soldiers could do any wrong.
They've seen pictures of naked guys stacked in pyramids and Rush Limbaugh, although to be fair, he retracted this later, you know, initially wrote this off as just frat boy hijinks and no big deal.
So I'm wondering if you can tell us, you know, what exactly are we talking about here that these American military intelligence and military police and contractors and the rest were doing to these people?
Well, it's kind of like when I was the General Sanchez's relinquishment of command ceremony.
And I was really shocked when he said at the very end, you know, during his speech, you know, I'm thinking just going to ride off into the sunset.
But instead, you know, he uses this as his last opportunity to still try to lay blame to the soldiers.
And he said that if he had learned anything in his command, it was that it is up to the soldier in the field to decide what is right and what is wrong and not to rely on policy or hide behind politics.
And it's crazy because, I mean, he is a policymaker and, you know, all leaders and soldiers that were in that theater at that time relied on him for guidance on exactly what is right and wrong.
You know, soldiers are, you know, that's all you're trying to do is to look for that kind of guidance, especially in a theater of war, much less something like, you know, guard duty and rules of engagement.
And then, you know, that's just speaking within the military, you know, then you throw in the wildcard of the civilian interrogators, you know, who are the, you know, natural role models of the military intelligence soldier, because that's who the military soldier wants to become when he gets out of the army.
So he's going to follow his lead even more than his military leaders.
And, you know, these MPs were more or less exploited.
You know, they were led down a road and, you know, and when, you know, trouble happened as a result, they left them out to dry.
As far as, you know, how people feel about soldiers and doing it wrong, I mean, that's completely understandable.
I mean, that's good intention.
You know, nobody wants to, just like the war itself, you know, a soldier can't help but support the war, because if he doesn't, it makes everything he's done as well as the, you know, death.
And as, you know, buddies get wounded, it makes it mean nothing if the war isn't something good, if it's not right.
And so they have to, you know, reason in the mind that this is right, this is good.
I mean, it's something even myself I've had to struggle with, because, you know, I've been awarded for my service in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
And it's been really hard for me to come to grips with, you know, the fact that, you know, we never really belong there.
And, you know, what's going on isn't right, and it's not good.
Well, forgive me if I'm a little bit confused.
I guess, you know, I know from reading Seymour Hersh's book and things like that, that at the top, at the White House and at the Department of Defense, that they had changed the rules, that they had made a decision to Gitmo-ize the process, so to speak, and that kind of thing.
However, a lot of what you say here today sort of does reinforce, I think, the idea that what we're talking about is bad apples who were unsupervised and, as you say, lacked guidance, and so therefore were kind of spinning out on the night shift.
Well, it's not one extreme or the other.
You know, I'm not saying that necessarily these MPs were all good people that were just, you know, given a wrong direction, and they blindly went that way.
I think it's a combination of both things, and at the head of it all was this pressure, you know, to produce products.
You know, like Colonel Pappas introduced the quota system, where no matter what, interrogators had to produce a report, had to produce something that was relative to whatever they were looking for.
And it forced this, you know, for them to put out bad information, and then, you know, the bad information actually got used by people that believed it, and then they would, you know, round up innocent people.
But it was pretty clear.
I mean, because like Abu Ghraib, like I said in the article, you know, Abu Ghraib wasn't just a handful of soldiers out in the middle of nowhere running amok.
I mean, the place was full of brass.
I mean, it was always being walked about by people of higher rank, you know, at all hours of the night.
And if anybody was left to themselves, you know, it wasn't done, you know, I wouldn't say it was unintentional.
Or they just really didn't care, you know.
They didn't care what the MPs did to those detainees.
You know, they left some instructions.
As long as those instructions were carried out, they didn't care, you know, how exactly they did it in some respects.
Well, and in your article, and I believe in your testimony to Congress as well, you make a pretty sharp division between the MPs who were basically just the prison guards and the actual military intelligence officers.
And you say that all the blame was directed toward the MPs and away from military intelligence, which I suppose is more likely to lead up a chain of command to people with power.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I mean, to this day, when people look at this thing and they think about it, all that comes to mind are these photographs and the MPs.
You know, and there was almost absolutely no focus brought on any of the interrogators or especially the civilians.
I mean, the interrogation process doesn't even come to people's minds when they're looking at this whole thing.
You know, everything is centered and focused on the MPs and the MPs alone.
And that's why it's way like, you know, Senator Graham could say what he said, you know, with this idea that it was just a handful of soldiers out in the middle of nowhere and get away with it.
Now, in terms of the tortures, what exactly are we talking about here?
I mean, what sort of crimes were being perpetrated against the prisoners at Abu Ghraib?
As far as legally or my personal opinion?
Well, you know, call it what you want in terms of the law, but stress positions, murders, rapes, beatings, temperature, sleep deprivation, etc.
You know, I want to hear firsthand what it is that you know that was going wrong there.
Well, first you had what, you know, the guidelines given to the interrogators as posted on the wall, anyway, were very vague guidelines that could be taken in a small measure or a large measure, you know, something like environmental manipulation.
You know, anybody could interpret that in a number of ways, especially in an environment like that.
But, you know, I would be told very openly, very casually and sometimes even humorously about the starvation and, you know, scaring them with dogs or, you know, using the prisoners as practice dummies.
As practice dummies, what does that mean?
Well, there was a group of MI guys that they made into a guard force.
And according to one of them, they were being trained by the MPs, you know, in this duty.
And the one guy was saying how, you know, he wanted to show them how to knock somebody out by chopping them on the neck.
And they did that to the one guy and the next detainee sees that, you know, he's freaking out and they calm him down until, you know, he's good to go.
And then they do the same thing to him.
You know, and so using them for heavy bags.
Right.
And that's just that one instance that, you know, this MI guard, you know, told me.
But, you know, like I said in my sworn statement, even, you know, it didn't matter if you're a cook or a mechanic, you know, everybody knew about these things, you know, because it was very openly talked about.
Well, and you mentioned also in your sworn statement that at least one person, I believe their name is blacked out, told you about murders that they had seen committed there.
Right.
That was actually early on from another MP company that was there from Nevada, I believe.
And that's what really got the, you know, got the wheels turning and my eyes open for what just might be going on there.
And, you know, it just kept telling me, you know, this went on, that went on and, you know, and then supposedly she said she had documented all these things.
And then for fear of her life, it sent them home to her family in case she didn't make it out.
I don't know what to be told, but when she made it back home where she, you know, especially once the scandal erupted, she has, you know, more than the opportunity to be heard concerning these things.
But then she just immediately denied everything and has since disappeared.
Really, so she denied everything to investigators who attempted to talk to her about it?
I don't know about investigators.
I haven't seen her name or testimony in any of the investigations, but I know the media were looking for her shortly after I testified about her.
And that's just what I read in the news as far as what happened with her.
I know the people in her unit were even saying, you know, something along the lines of her being stressed out and a little, you know, crazy and, you know, like she was then blaming it on menopause or something.
Now, Lindsey Graham, I want to know about your relationship with this senator.
From your testimony, you talk about him taking a great interest in what you had to say and actually, you know, particularly on the subject of, you know, military police versus military intelligence and attempting to follow up on what you said was ignored by the military advisors.
And of course, he's been publicly very critical of the military commissions and that kind of thing.
But then in your article for Consortium News that we're running today at Antiwar.com, again, it's called The American Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, you say that he's completely turned on you now.
Apparently so.
You know, when I first went to this screening for this movie in DC, you know, I learned Senator Kennedy and Senator Graham was going to be there and I assumed it was going to be, you know, a treat, you know, a real bipartisan show of support for, you know, what's depicted in this documentary.
But instead it turned into a very, very heated debate and I was shocked because, you know, like you said all along, you know, Senator Graham has, you know, been, you know, very harshly against a lot of, you know, it seems like the corruption, you know, going on.
And even he himself called me shortly after I went to the media back in summer of 2004 and we had, you know, a short conversation and it's all these years, you know, I just assumed, you know, he was up there leading the fight against, you know, these torture policies and for prosecuting those truly responsible.
But here at this screening, you know, he like totally flip-flopped on me and, you know, went, you know, going completely along with this whole, you know, bed apples thing and, you know, it was like, you know, like it was just these soldiers out there, you know, running amok and that they're comparing it to, you know, a dormitory that he used to check up on as an army officer, you know, when he was in the military.
And comparing his due diligence in that matter to General Karpinski's failure and being able to do the same, you know, as if she was going to convoy from, you know, wherever she might have been out to, you know, Abu Ghraib just to make sure that the soldiers, you know, these handful of soldiers out in the middle of nowhere are doing what they're supposed to be doing.
Well, now that's an interesting point.
And I noticed that in your article that you defend her and I guess just now you seem to say beyond reasonable expectation that she could have run that tide of a ship.
Although that's kind of surprising to me, honestly, it seems like if she's the general in charge of the prison, she's going to at least make sure that the colonels and whoever under her understand their instructions and follow them explicitly and don't tolerate anything like this.
Is that not her responsibility?
It might have been on paper, but it wasn't, it sure wasn't in reality.
Okay, well explain that, explain that.
Well, to her credit, you know, she was shot out of the operation because I know I never saw her there at the prison.
You know, you had all these other generals.
But again, that could have been her fault, right?
I really wouldn't know.
I mean, I really wouldn't know.
I just know the way that things were.
And, you know, if it was expected of her to run that tide of a ship, sure, the generals in charge of her who themselves came to the prison would be pretty much motivating her to get out there a little bit more.
But she said, you know, she was cut out of the operation and I would definitely see, you know, people, you know, in the inner circle that I worked at at the prison feeling like she had no business, you know, getting into their affairs because, you know, she was, you know, this MP officer.
I see.
And to be fair to her, she asked to be court-martialed so that she could prove her innocence and that sort of thing.
And they, of course, refused to grant her that.
That's what she said.
Okay.
All right.
Well, I guess to sum up here, Sam, and again, I'm sorry I have been mentioning this throughout the half hour, but I'm talking with Sam Provence, who was a sergeant of the IT guy at Abu Ghraib.
And has borne witness to what he saw there.
I guess I just wanted to mention that the Red Cross reported that the army admitted to them that 70 to 90 percent of the people in there were innocent.
So for anyone who would justify that, well, these people are terrorists anyway, so cares about them.
No, they weren't.
And with that, I guess I'd just like to ask you if you have any closing comments or maybe important issues that I neglected to touch upon?
I would just inspire people not to merely take official explanation and to dig into these things for themselves.
Because even what little people can get their hands on that's released to the public, they can still see in between the lines and see through some of the BS that's being put out there, the smokescreen.
Because nobody can really dig into this thing and not have their intelligence insulted or not be morally outraged.
And like you said, that's absolutely right about the majority of the people that are being innocent.
Because I think a lot of people have a wrong perspective of things, and that has a lot to do with it too.
I mean, even soldiers at the prison at the time, even we had the wrong perspective of things.
If these people are here, they're here for a reason, and they're obviously either criminal or they know something about Al Qaeda or where the weapons of mass destruction went.
It was all a lie.
There's so much more to this.
There's so much more to this.
And certainly this all isn't something coming from a few soldiers.
Even just talking about it sounds crazy.
Like a group of soldiers just happened to get together and coincidentally be sadistic together on one particular shift and nobody knew about it.
It's ridiculous.
And I just wish that there were more people out there that were involved or that are in the know that would be more forthcoming.
A lot of the problem is people are still in the military or they're in the civilian job position, and people are more worried about losing their career or their reputation.
But I think these things are a lot bigger than that.
All right.
Well, where would you recommend that people go to find out the best information on this story so far?
The ACLU, I know, has put out volumes and volumes of released actual statements.
A lot of it's been redacted or blacked out.
But there's a lot of things in there that the investigation just never even acknowledged.
You know, like this, you know, sign of this Iraqi general that they abused to get him to talk.
That's actually, you know, not just one, but more than one statement.
But yet General Fay never even acknowledged that that existed.
But it's there for the world to read.
That was General Zabar that you mentioned in your congressional testimony, right?
That's right.
And they abused his son to get him to talk?
That's right.
And this is actually a statement released to the public, and in General Fay's investigation, which was supposedly so thorough, it's not even mentioned as one of his incidences, you know, not even for him to deny it happened.
And there are several articles I know about me, you know, trying to bring this to people's attention, and even to this day, you know, I mean, to just act like, you know, the boy never existed.
Yeah.
Makes you wonder if he's even still alive now.
Yeah, exactly.
And he wasn't there alone.
I mean, he was actually there with his brother, and he was in the interrogation booth with us.
I mean, his brother was, and I'm thinking, my God.
And by the time I'd learned that they were, you know, basically kidnapping whole families, and then just putting the women and children in a different, more secure section of the prison.
All right, well, we're actually over time here, so we're going to have to cut it short.
I really appreciate your time today, Sam.
Oh, no problem.
Everybody, Sam Provence, he's featured in the HBO documentary Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, and he has an article in ConsortiumNews.com called The American Ghosts of Abu Ghraib.
We're running it in the viewpoints today at antiwar.com.
Thanks again.