[Shadow_Group] Fw: Whitewashing torture?

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/12/08/coverup/<http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/12/08/coverup/>

Whitewashing torture?
A veteran sergeant who told his commanding officers that he witnessed his
colleagues torturing Iraqi detainees was strapped to a gurney and flown
out of Iraq -- even though there was nothing wrong with him.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By David DeBatto



Dec. 8, 2004  |  On June 15, 2003, Sgt. Frank "Greg" Ford, a
counterintelligence agent in the California National Guard's 223rd
Military Intelligence (M.I.) Battalion stationed in Samarra, Iraq, told
his commanding officer, Capt. Victor Artiga, that he had witnessed five
incidents of torture and abuse of Iraqi detainees at his base, and
requested a formal investigation. Thirty-six hours later, Ford, a
49-year-old with over 30 years of military service in the Coast Guard,
Army and Navy, was ordered by U.S. Army medical personnel to lie down on
a gurney, was then strapped down, loaded onto a military plane and
medevac'd to a military medical center outside the country. 

Although no "medevac" order appears to have been written, in violation of
Army policy, Ford was clearly shipped out because of a diagnosis that he
was suffering from combat stress. After Ford raised the torture
allegations, Artiga immediately said Ford was "delusional" and ordered a
psychiatric examination, according to Ford. But that examination, carried
out by an Army psychiatrist, diagnosed him as "completely normal." 

 
A witness, Sgt. 1st Class Michael Marciello, claims that Artiga became
enraged when he read the initial medical report finding nothing wrong
with Ford and intimidated the psychiatrist into changing it. According to
Marciello, Artiga angrily told the psychiatrist that it was a "C.I.
[counterintelligence] or M.I. matter" and insisted that she had to change
her report and get Ford out of Iraq. 

 
Documents show that all subsequent examinations of Ford by Army
mental-health professionals, over many months, confirmed his initial
diagnosis as normal. 

An officer at the California Office of the Adjutant General in
Sacramento, Calif., Sgt. Maj. Patrick Hammond, has known Ford for over 15
years during their service in the California National Guard. Hammond
said, "I have never had any reason to question his honesty and I don't do
so now." This reporter served in the military with Ford in Iraq for seven
months and can also attest that he is sane and level-headed. 

Ford, who has since left the military, claims that his superiors shipped
him out of the country to prevent him from exposing the abusive behavior.
"They were determined to protect their own asses no matter who they had
to take down," he says. 

Col. C. Tsai, a military doctor who examined Ford in Germany and found
nothing wrong with him, told a film crew for Spiegel Television that he
was "not surprised" at Ford's diagnosis. Tsai told Spiegel that he had
treated "three or four" other U.S. soldiers from Iraq that were also sent
to Landstuhl for psychological evaluations or "combat stress counseling"
after they reported incidents of detainee abuse or other wrongdoing by
American soldiers. 

Artiga and other higher-ups in the 223rd M.I. Battalion deny Ford's
charges. But in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandal, federal agencies
including the Department of Defense, the Army's Criminal Investigation
Command (CID), and the FBI are finally looking into them. The Department
of the Army's Office of the Inspector General has launched an
investigation, according to Ford and his attorney, Kevin Healy, who have
been contacted by investigators. If Ford's allegations are proven, the
Army would be faced with evidence that its prisoner abuse problem is even
more widespread than previously acknowledged -- and that some of its own
officers not only turned a blind eye to abuses but actively participated
in covering them up. 

The 223rd M.I. Battalion was one of the first divisions to enter Iraq
after the U.S. "Shock and Awe" aerial bombardment ended, in mid-April
2003. (I also served in that unit in-country from April through October
2003. I met Ford in February 2003, at Fort Bragg, N.C., and continued to
stay in contact with him until he was shipped out of the country. I have
also since left the military.) The battalion's mission was to collect
counterintelligence. Its agents, highly trained soldiers responsible for
force protection and for investigating national security crimes committed
against the Army, were divided into small units called Tactical Human
Intelligence Teams, or THTs. Every day, these teams went out from their
forward operating bases in Iraq and interacted with the local people in
an effort to gather critical intelligence on such matters as the location
of conventional and unconventional weapons and the whereabouts of the
fugitives depicted on the Pentagon's 55-most-wanted playing cards. It was
arguably one of the most sensitive and important jobs in the entire Iraqi
theater of operations. As the team sergeant of his THT, Ford was second
in command of his four-person team and responsible for training,
discipline, logistics and supervision of day-to-day operations. He was
also the team's designated combat life saver, or medic. 

Ford spent his first weeks in Iraq at Balad Air Base, also known as Camp
Anaconda, about 50 kilometers north of Baghdad along the Tigris. In early
May, he was assigned to a THT that was headed for Samarra, another 20
kilometers to the northeast. An ancient trading center that dates to the
Mesopotamian era, Samarra was known as a hotbed of Sunni Arab loyalists,
ex-Baath Party officials, and Islamist extremists. The two-story police
station the Army occupied was located in the center of town, closely
surrounded by taller buildings, giving anyone who cared to fire on the
Americans an excellent field in which to do so. And fire they did. Almost
every night, Ford and his teammates would be forced to dive from their
bunks for cover as mortar rounds rocked the compound. The concussions
shook the foundation and broke whatever glass windows remained.
Fortunately, the Iraqi mortar crews proved wildly inaccurate, and no
Americans were killed, but several were wounded and the attacks never let
up. There was immense pressure on the THT to find out who was behind the
attacks and to supply the information to the "gunslingers" of the 4th
Infantry Division. It was in that environment that Ford says he saw the
incidents that led to the end of his long military career. 

 Next page | "Nope, that never happened. You're delusional"

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