Exclusive: Judge orders CIA to hand over Inspector General report in Iraqi prisoner's death
Questions of improper classification: Is a CIA cover-up a protected intelligence source or method?
A federal judge has ordered the U.S. government to hand over an investigation into a deadly CIA interrogation in Abu Ghraib prison as he considers whether it can be made public.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, DC, ordered the government to produce a “clean and redacted” copy of the CIA Inspector General’s report of its investigation into the 2003 death of Manadel al-Jamadi by Tuesday.
Judge Boasberg will conduct an in camera or private review of the 2005 Inspector General’s report into Jamadi’s death—a document the agency has been fighting to keep secret for nearly two decades. Boasberg’s in camera review suggests the court is skeptical of the CIA’s assertions that all but a few pages of the report are properly exempt from public disclosure.
Jamadi’s face became one of the unforgettable images of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Bags of ice covered his naked corpse. A trickle of blood oozed from an open wound on his temple. Two Army reservists with lighthearted grins took turns leering over his corpse, flashing a thumbs up with green latex gloves.
Jamadi was a suspect in the October 2003 bombing of the Red Cross that killed 12. He was captured in a nighttime raid by Navy SEALs on November 4, 2003. He was handed over to the CIA, which took him to the notorious Abu Ghraib prison for interrogation. Within hours, he was dead. The only people in the room, when Jamadi died, were a CIA polygraph examiner turned interrogator and his translator.
The CIA Inspector General’s investigation into Jamadi’s death is the subject of a Freedom of Information lawsuit I filed against the CIA. Our lawsuit, which is approaching its second birthday, has forced the agency to disclose that agency personnel attempted to cover up the facts in Jamadi’s death, a cover-up that was never prosecuted.
The agency now claims that disclosing more from the report would compromise intelligence sources and methods, and the case should be dismissed.
Judge Boasberg’s order for an in camera review came hours after we asked the court on Friday to reject the CIA’s attempts to dismiss our lawsuit. I hope you’ll read the motion by my attorneys at Loevy & Loevy. I’m biased, of course, but I think that not only is it well-argued, but it’s very clear and easy to read, a sign of good lawyering.
As we point out in the motion, the CIA ignores one of our core arguments: “that, as a matter of law, a CIA agent’s cover-up is not an intelligence source or method, and that this Court has repeatedly rejected the agency’s interpretation of the CIA Act.”
Information in the Inspector General’s report explaining how CIA personnel attempted to cover up their misconduct, destroyed evidence, lied to investigators, or conspired to defraud the United States—all of which the IG investigated them for—does not fall within the CIA’s “mandate to conduct foreign intelligence.”
The government does not directly address this argument in its filings in the case. Obviously, it would be absurd for the CIA to claim that lying to the agency’s own investigators, destroying evidence, and conspiring to defraud the United States is a protected intelligence method. But that’s the implication of their request to keep the rest of the IG report under wraps.
In 2005, I was the first to report that Jamadi died in the shower room in a position the world recognizes as torture. He was found hanging by his wrists, which were handcuffed behind his back. Most of his weight was being carried by his shoulders, which looked as if were about to pop out of their sockets.
The Jamadi case is the only known instance where you can put a CIA interrogator in a room with a dead prisoner in a torture position. Even so, no one from the agency has ever been held publicly accountable for Jamadi’s death. The only people prosecuted were a group of Navy SEALs who were accused of abusing—but not killing—Jamadi. Their story is the subject of a book I’m writing titled The Ice Man.
In our lawsuit, we argue that the CIA is withholding information that the CIA declassified and officially acknowledged. Parts of this case were previously declassified in 2005 by order of then CIA Director Porter Goss.
The CIA’s response was a non-sequitur: I didn’t show that Director Goss declassified or officially acknowledged the whole Report.
In addition, we pointed out that the information in the IG report was disclosed in a report by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division that the CIA reviewed before it was publicly released by the ACLU.
I’ll keep you posted on the judge’s decision.
Amazing work - justice is hard to come by without exposure