Exclusive: New CIA docs reveal how agency personnel tried to cover up a deadly interrogation
CIA Inspector General found the "position" a suspected Iraqi insurgent was placed in contributed to his November 2003 death in Abu Ghraib prison.
The CIA has released some revealing new pages from its internal investigation into the death of the Ice Man, Manadel al-Jamadi. I’ve posted the entire document, which is linked below. If you believe, as I do, that this line of inquiry is worth pursuing and would like to see more, please consider a paid subscription.
Even if you’ve never heard the name Manadel al-Jamadi before, there’s a good chance you’ve seen his beaten and bloodied face. It was one of the indelible 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
Why does this long-ago death in a war that most Americans would prefer to forget still matter? It matters to the Navy SEALs who captured Jamadi. They were the only ones to face charges in a homicide they did not commit, and their lives and careers were never the same. I tell the story of what happened to them in my book, The Ice Man.
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.
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.
To find out why, I filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act for the 2005 CIA Inspector General’s report into Jamadi’s death. I am represented by attorneys with the law firm of Loevy & Loevy, which specializes in FOIA cases.
Our lawsuit, now in its second year, has forced the CIA to make a series of disclosures. Last year, the CIA revealed that the Inspector General found that agency personnel may have committed involuntary homicide and could face criminal charges stemming from their efforts to cover up Jamadi’s death. In the latest round of disclosures, the CIA revealed how agency personnel tried to cover it all up.
The new information includes, for the first time, an account from CIA personnel of what happened inside the Abu Ghraib shower room during Jamadi’s interrogation.
Almost every sentence that describes the actions of CIA personnel is either a lie, a half-truth, or an obfuscation.
1. “For security, Subject was restrained to the bars on the window”
Let’s start with the position Jamadi was placed in the shower room.
In a subsequent chronological summary of events, the Inspector General’s report provides additional detail on the “security” position in which CIA personnel say Jamadi was placed:
“For security purposes, Subject is handcuffed to an exterior window with enough slack in the chain that would enable him to kneel or stand.”
In fact, CIA interrogator Mark Swanner specifically directed the guards to place Jamadi in a position designed to prevent him from kneeling.
Staff Sergeant Mark Nagy, who escorted Jamadi to the shower room, told investigators with the Inspector General’s office that Swanner “wanted Al-Jamaidi standing during interrogation.” Shackles were attached from his handcuffs to the barred window of the shower room. “Al-Jamaidi may have been able to kneel from this position, but to do so, his arms would have been stretched up and behind him,” Nagy said. Army Specialist Dennis Stevanus told Army criminal investigators that “the prisoner could stand without discomfort, but he probably would have experienced discomfort if he tried to sit.” Specialist Jason Kenner said, “The interrogator told us that he did not want the prisoner to sit down and wanted him shackled to the wall.”
The CIA interrogator wanted Jamadi to be standing not for “security” reasons but rather to tire him and break down his resistance. It backfired. Unable to stand, Jamadi collapsed during the interrogation. The shackles connecting his handcuffs to the barred window that were intended to keep him standing wrenched his wrists up behind his back, hyper-extending his shoulders as they rotated backward in the sockets. It is a position universally recognized as torture.
In response to my Freedom of Information lawsuit, the CIA has released additional pages of the Inspector General’s report. The CIA’s internal review recognized that “the position in which Jamadi was placed during the interrogation” played a role in his death:
“The deputy medical examiner concluded that the position in which al-Jamaidi was placed during the interrogation exacerbated his otherwise serious but non-life threatening internal injuries and compromised his breathing.”
2. “Shortly after restraining subject to the window, [redacted] moved Subject’s headcover up above his nose and mouth”
CIA personnel claim that they lifted the green plastic sandbag covering Jamadi’s head up above his nose and mouth so he could breathe during the interrogation. Once again, the Army guards tell a different story.
The guards say that the hood was still covering Jamadi’s nose and mouth when he collapsed after 90 minutes in the shower room. It was the guards who lifted the hood to check on the prisoner’s condition. When they did, blood gushed from his mouth “as if a faucet had been turned on,” one guard recalled.
Jamadi’s injuries would have been immediately apparent to the CIA personnel if they had lifted the sandbag. The injuries would likely have been apparent even with the hood pulled down. Several military personnel recalled seeing blood stains on the sandbag covering Jamadi’s head before and after his death. One described it as a “pancaked-sized” spot of blood.
New inmates at Abu Ghraib typically got a medical check upon arrival. Not Jamadi. As far as the official prison register was concerned, Jamadi didn’t exist. He was one of the CIA’s “ghost prisoners” who were kept away from the Red Cross, the international human rights organization responsible for ensuring that detainees were being treated humanely, as required by the Geneva Conventions. The official military inquiry into the abuses at Abu Ghraib, led by Major General Antonio Taguba, found that the practice of ghosting was “deceptive, contrary to Army Doctrine, and in violation of international law.”
The sandbag never left Jamadi’s head in Abu Ghraib prison until it was too late.
3. “Subject was maintaining a coherent conversation and never said anything about being in discomfort of in need of medical attention.”
One of the CIA’s own personnel heard differently. Kevin Pine was a member of the CIA’s Global Response Staff, the bodyguards who accompanied agency personnel in dangerous situations like the Jamadi mission. While Jamadi was being questioned at a SEAL base before he was moved to Abu Ghraib, Pine told the CIA Inspector General’s office that he recalled that Jamadi had cried out, “I’m dying, I’m dying.” The CIA interrogator, Mark Swanner, didn’t seem concerned. “I don’t care,” the interrogator said. “You’ll be wishing you were dying.”
4. “After one hour and a half hours of questioning, (0715 local time), [Redacted] observed Subject slump toward the floor. [Redacted] immediately sought the assistance of the Military Police”
Mark Swanner didn’t summon the guards to get Jamadi some help or because Jamadi was dead. Swanner summoned the guards because he wanted the prisoner repositioned on the window so he would be forced to remain standing. One of the guards recalled Swanner saying that Jamadi was “playing possum”—faking injury.
Here’s what Sgt. Walter Diaz, one of the guards who was summoned to the shower room, told investigators with the CIA Inspector General’s office. (Diaz refers to the CIA, as “OGA,” which stands for other government agency):
Sometime later, Diaz said he was on the opposite tier of the shower room when the OGA interrogator came out and said he needed some help, explaining, "This guy doesn't want to cooperate." Diaz said that when he went into the room, Jamadi was almost kneeling. Diaz stated that the OGA interrogator requested the prisoner's handcuffs be repositioned so that he would have to stand during interrogation. Diaz enlisted the help of Sgt. Frost and Spc. Stevanus. Diaz recalled that as he was lifting AI-Jamaidi, he (Diaz) noticed that there was some blood on his uniform, but he could not detect the source of the blood. Diaz and Frost lifted the prisoner as Stevanus repositioned the handcuffs on the barred window. However, Jamadi was still "hanging" when they released him. The OGA interrogator reportedly asked them to reposition Jamadi higher on the window, which they did. It was at this point that Diaz said he told the OGA interrogator, "There's something wrong here. Diaz said he felt the prisoner's chest but did not detect a pulse. Diaz stated he lifted the hood on Jamadi’s head and noted that his face was "all swollen," adding that "one part of his face was deformed," and he was "bleeding from the mouth. Diaz stated that they uncuffed Jamadi from the window and "eased him down," whereupon "all this blood came out of his mouth." Diaz indicated with his hands that the blood formed an approximate 6-inch circle on the shower room floor. According to Diaz, when AI-Jamaidi was laid face down on the floor, his knees retained the same angle as when he was upright and handcuffed to the window so that his legs were bent up in the air. Diaz said he and the other soldiers told the OGA interrogator, "This guy's dead . . . It's on you," and then walked out of the shower room.
As I reported last year, the CIA Inspector General concluded CIA personnel may have been criminally negligent in Jamadi’s death and then tried to cover it up. Four criminal statutes were “potentially relevant to agency personnel in their treatment of Jamadi and their actions in the Inspector General’s investigation:”
Involuntary manslaughter
Making false statements
Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations
Conspiracy to commit offense or defraud the United States
Investigators with the CIA Inspector General’s office reported that agency personnel "had not been entirely truthful in their accounts of the incident.” One person involved had admitted to removing the green plastic sandbag that covered Jamadi's head, but the explanation “was not believable.” John Rizzo, the former acting general counsel of the CIA, wrote in his book Company Man that in the Jamadi case CIA personnel “obfuscated and perhaps did things to obstruct the investigation.”
Even so, as recently as this month—more than 20 years after Jamadi’s death—the CIA still refused to say what discipline was imposed on its personnel involved:
I’ve posted the redacted Inspector General’s report here.
Where's the morality?