Fixing Hell

by Larry C. James

  I went home and took the longest shower of my entire time in Cuba. As I stood there scrubbing and scrubbing, I realized that though I could laugh about the insanity of that moment, the riot reminded me that I still had plenty of work to do. The next day we had many long meetings to come up with safe ways of disrupting the detainees’ tendency to throw TOWs at the guards. The first move was to take away all their cups and water bottles, followed soon by the erection of Plexiglas walls that would prevent them throwing anything into the middle of the cellblock. My experience that night also gave me a newfound respect for the guards who watched over the detainees and who were subjected to that kind of abuse day in and day out, yet still found the discipline to be professional and not respond the way most people would when someone throws shit at them.

  I decided I needed to get back to walking the halls of the interrogation buildings on a regular basis. A few days went by and I showed up at about 2 a.m. to see what was going on in a particular building. Like on many of the nights before, I heard a noise, yells and screams, and decided to check it out.

  As I watched through a one-way observation window, I saw a detainee being held straight up in a corner by two large, mean, badass-looking MPs, an interrogator, and an interpreter. The four of them yelled at the prisoner as loudly as they possibly could. The interrogator decided it was time for a break after the detainee spit in the left eye of the shortest MP. They put the prisoner down and started exiting. Once the interpreter, Hakim, came out of the room, I asked him how long had they been going at it and he told me it had been three hours.

  “Three hours of that?” I asked.

  “Yes sir,” he said. “This one won’t talk, so we’re on him pretty hard, sir.”

  “Okay . . .” I said, trying not to signal any criticism. “Hakim, has the detainee been to the bathroom or had anything to eat or drink during this time?”

  “No sir.”

  When the interrogator returned from wherever he’d gone for a break, I asked if it was okay if I came into the room and simply observed. I didn’t really need his permission, but I wanted to let him retain his authority in the interrogation and not lose face in front of the other men. He replied that he wouldn’t mind. We all went into the interrogation room and the prisoner immediately noticed that there was now a fifth person to scream at him and toss him around the room. Before the interrogation began again, I pulled the interrogator aside.

  “How about if you get the detainee something to eat and drink? And maybe he could be allowed to go to the bathroom?” I said. “What do you think?”

  The interrogator seemed a bit surprised by the suggestion but he didn’t want to argue with a colonel, so he said yes. After about another half hour the detainee was allowed to go to the bathroom and get some water. When the MPs brought him back to the room, he looked directly at me and said something in broken English that sounded like a thank-you.

  I asked the interpreter what he had said. “He said, ‘Thank you,’ sir,” the interpreter confirmed.

  The comment didn’t impress me much, because I wasn’t looking to coddle the prisoner. If anything the expression of gratitude just confirmed to me that a softer touch might get more intel out of this guy. But then I looked from the interpreter back to the detainee and found him staring at me intently, with a dark, piercing look that did not convey appreciation.

  The prisoner continued looking into my eyes as he began to speak to me in Arabic. When he paused, I kept my eyes on him and asked the interpreter what he had said.

  “Sir, I don’t know if you really want to know what he said to you,” the interpreter said.

  I turned to the interpreter and said, “Tell me exactly what he said, Hakim. Word for word.”

  “Sir, the detainee told you thank you for being kind to him but he said he was going to kill you as soon as he got out of here.”

  Hmmm . . . well, that’s an interesting sentence.

  “Ask the detainee why on earth would he want to kill me,” I told the interpreter. “I’ve done nothing to harm him.”

  The detainee responded quickly and forcefully as soon as he heard the question in Arabic. “He says you’re a Kaffir, sir.”

  “A Kaffir? What does that word mean?”

  Before he could reply, the detainee screamed, “Infidel!” The prisoner was growing agitated, as if he had to get through to me why I had to die.

  I was a bit confused about why the prisoner would react this way after thanking me for a small kindness, though I was not unfamiliar with the mindless, singular fanaticism that possessed this man and most of the other prisoners at Gitmo. The man was talking to us, and that was progress of a sort, so I continued the exchange.

  “Why am I an infidel? Is it because I’m an American?”

  The prisoner shouted and slobbered some more.

  “No, you’re an infidel because you’re a nonbeliever,” the interpreter said. “In order for me to get to heaven, I must kill you as soon as possible.”

  “Well, okay. Good to know,” I said, getting up to leave.

  I told the men to continue talking with him about whatever he was willing to talk about, which would probably be a lesson in why we’re all infidel pigs who must die, and he’s going to fuck your mother, and America is the Great Satan, blah, blah, blah. As long as he’s talking, you might be able to steer him into giving up some intel, I reminded them.

  This Taliban prisoner was more confusing than most I had seen in my career, but he was not that unusual among the detainees we were encountering in the global war on terrorism. They could be disarmingly gentle and appreciative seconds before pledging to kill you and your whole family. I wondered to myself if this detainee I had just seen was a sociopath, mentally ill, or delusional. Was he unique or just goddamned crazy? I was coming to understand that America was at war with an enemy like no other we have ever faced. Moreover, it became clear that with people like that dedicated to our destruction, even if we terminated the threat from Al Qaeda tomorrow, the larger war could go on for the next fifty years. This new enemy had as its goal the total destruction of all “nonbelievers.” And if this would mean killing themselves in the process, that would be fine and be their pathway to heaven and a life of eternal bliss. That is a hell of an enemy to fight.

  My work with the juvenile detainees continued, and over time the boys did start talking to us, providing some useful intelligence about their experience with the Taliban in Afghanistan. We were quite proud of the work we did with these three boys, who stayed with us in Cuba for about a year before returning home far better off academically, medically, and psychologically than when they were brought to Gitmo. When U.S. forces captured them in Afghanistan, those boys were flat-out dumber than a bag of rocks, in poor physical health, and one of the three had severe PTSD. The educational, medical, and psychological staff worked tirelessly each day to restore their humanity, mental health, and physical health. By the time they returned back to their home, they were all functioning at the sixth to eighth grade academic level. They were medically healthy and doing well psychologically.

  This is how my country handles prisoners, I reminded myself. It’s not all about abuse. We can take juveniles like that and send them home better than we found them.

  My tour at Gitmo flew by as we continued making progress in righting the wrongs that had brought me there. The interrogators and MPs came around to the incentive- and respect-based approach, seeing for themselves that they could get better results than they had been getting with the methods that danced on that knife edge of what was acceptable and what was abusive. On May 5, 2003, I boarded a military chartered plane and headed home. Although ultimately I enjoyed my tour at Gitmo, confident that I had done good work and accomplished a great deal, I hoped that I would never see the island again. As I walked off the plane at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida, I felt I had done something meaningful in the global war on terror.

  It took us a while to get it right at Gitmo, but now that the war in Iraq wil
l be ending soon, that should be it, I thought. I’m glad we won’t be sending any psychologists to POW or detention facilities in Iraq. This global war on terror thing will end soon and my world will return to normal. I’ll be seeing patients, teaching, conducting research, and lying in the comfort of my wife’s arms each night.

  I had no idea what was coming.

  4

  Long Flight to Hell

  April 2004

  Almost a year had passed since I departed Gitmo in May 2003 and returned to Walter Reed. My wife and I were living at Fort Meade, Maryland, which is the lush military housing area for senior officers assigned to Walter Reed. Springtime at Fort Meade arrived on a Sunday in April 2004. The sun was bright and I could see early signs of spring in the budding trees and lawn emerging from the melting snow. The soft chill in the air coupled with the comforting heat from my brick fireplace somehow seemed to quiet my usually active house. I was determined to be a recluse on this day. My wife was away for a conference, and my chores were done by about 10 a.m. After a slow four-mile run at the track at Fort Meade, I found myself on the sofa drifting off to sleep while CNN faded away in the background. Oddly, my thoughts found passage again to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. I sighed, tried to put these memories aside, and wondered if my duties would ever call me to such a place again. I thought not, as I sank into a two-hour sleep.

  I awoke abruptly to a reporter’s voice, seemingly loud even though the TV’s sound was but a whisper. The volume and urgency in his voice spiraled up, signaling more than just the routine report to fill time on CNN. I turned my head and saw the first images of a horrible place called Abu Ghraib. In my groggy state, I could only make out fuzzy images of prisoners and American soldiers. I arose, staggered to the TV, remote in hand, turning the volume to high, my attention focused—and watched. Even in my half-awake state, I almost felt I was there; I could see the sights and hear the sounds clearly at this diabolical place, even though it was on the other side of the world. At that precise moment, images of naked dog piles, an Iraqi prisoner standing with a hangman’s noose around his neck, and K-9 dogs terrorizing detainees were forever etched in my memory and humanity.

  I felt both sick and furious. As I lay back down on the sofa, I wondered how this could have happened after everything we did at Gitmo.

  What dumbass psychologist at the prison let this happen? Didn’t he read the standard operating procedures I wrote at Gitmo a year ago? I’m gonna track that bastard down and kick his ass!

  I nearly yelled out loud as I was thinking what I would do to the lousy doctor who let this happen on his watch. Then I calmed myself.

  This has to be a misunderstanding. No American soldiers would do these things. Tomorrow I’ll call Colonel Banks and get to the bottom of this debacle. There’s got to be some kind of explanation.

  The exhaustion and fatigue that was a constant state of being from working at Walter Reed Army Medical Center engulfed me again. It occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, these TV images were a part of a dream fog that is common in early hypnogogic states while awakening.

  What the hell . . . Maybe I’m just dreaming.

  I put the CNN report out of my mind and fell back into a deep sleep.

  When I woke up again, CNN was still on and they were still talking about Abu Ghraib. It wasn’t a dream. On Monday morning, at 7:30 a.m., I called Colonel Morgan Banks at his office at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Special Operations Command. Morgan was the command psychologist with whom I had worked to get Major Leso some better training for the tasks he faced in Gitmo. Morgan was intimately familiar with the work we had done in Gitmo and the steps we put in place to prevent further abuses. He was a good friend and the nation’s most respected psychologist at the Special Operations Command, but as soon as he picked up the phone, I barked at him.

  “Morgan, what in the heck is going on at Abu Ghraib, and who’s the dumb son-of-a-bitch psychologist we have out there?”

  Morgan replied in his crisp military style. “That’s the problem, Larry. We don’t have a biscuit psychologist at that place. You and I know what the standard should be, but until now, the leadership wouldn’t listen to me.”

  I was dumbfounded. All the possible explanations I had running through my mind hinged on why the psychologist at Abu Ghraib had dropped the ball. But there was no biscuit psychologist? It took me a minute to even process that.

  “Larry, look, I can’t talk now,” Colonel Banks continued. “I’m on the run and lots of shit is happening, but I do need to talk to you. I’ll be coming to town real soon, and I’ll call you when I get to D.C.”

  There was a pause on the line. Then Colonel Banks added, “Larry, some shit is about to hit the fan over this thing. I’ll be in town for some Senate committee hearing.”

  I felt bad for my friend having to deal with this growing mess, but a big part of me was just happy that it wasn’t me. Over the next month, my time at Walter Reed accelerated like gas on a barn fire. I had recently learned that I was being reassigned to Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii—a respite from the East Coast, I naively thought. I had been at Walter Reed for five years, and knowing that I’d be heading to Hawaii was not only welcome news for me, but for my lovely wife, Janet. I had been the chief of Walter Reed’s Psychology Department for five years. I was burned out and needed the tranquillity of Hawaii. The simplest matters of one’s day were difficult stuff at Walter Reed, and I was psychologically spent. I felt I had done my share of hard work in recent years and was looking forward to some time on the beach with my wife.

  As my wife and I headed toward our departure date in the beginning of May, the headlines were dominated by more pictures and reports of abuses at Abu Ghraib. As it became a commonplace story on the news each night, I worked to distance myself from the tragedy.

  Don’t get yourself wrapped up in this, Larry, I told myself. This is somebody else’s task. Let them deal with it.

  I foolishly thought that somehow, this would work itself out without me. I could escape to the paradise of Hawaii—my tropical psychological home. I had survived Walter Reed and a tour at Gitmo. My duty was done, and my wife and I were ready to move on.

  On Thursday, May 6, 2004, we had only four days before I left for my new Hawaiian post. That day, the phone rang at my office in Walter Reed. It was Colonel Banks. We engaged in the type of conversation that senior military officers reserve for discussing sensitive information on an unsecured phone line. These conversations were similar to a chat with Sergeant Joe Friday of the old Dragnet TV series—just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.

  “Larry, are you gonna be in town this weekend? Man, I really need to talk to you.”

  My thoughts were elsewhere as I glanced at pictures of Bellows Air Force Station beach in Hawaii, my granddaughter who lives in Hawaii, and the ocean. I was going to be there so very soon. For a second, I almost forgot I was on a serious phone call. I snapped back into it, “Morgan, you can just call me on my cell anytime.”

  “No, man,” he stressed, “I need to talk to you in person. I’ll call you at home this weekend.”

  Clearly, the unsecured phone line he was on would not allow him to detail the seriousness of the issues. But I could tell from the tone of his voice that he had a real mess on his hands and needed some help.

  On Saturday, May 8, I attended to the details of moving 22,000 pounds of furniture (why the hell did we need so much furniture? I wondered to myself), two cars, and all of our worldly possessions 10,000 miles from D.C. to Hawaii. On Sunday, my wife and I decided to take the train to Union Station in Washington, D.C., one last time before we flew to Hawaii. Even though I longed to experience the peacefulness of Hawaii again, I had already started to miss the unique aspects of the District. While downtown, we walked to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, one of our favorite sites in D.C. On this gorgeous blue-sky day, my wife and I wanted to just stroll along the Mall, visit the souvenir booths, and experience the life of this great city before leaving. We were eager
to go back to Hawaii, but we would miss this home too.

  Unknown to me at the time, Colonel Banks was already in town for the Department of Defense inspector general committee meeting on Abu Ghraib that he had mentioned on the phone. Later this would become known as the Taguba report, after Major General Taguba, the officer in charge of the team that went in to evaluate Abu Ghraib. At exactly 1 p.m. that Sunday afternoon—just as I was heading up the stairs to the museum—my cell phone rang. It was Banks.

  “Larry, where are you?” he said urgently. “General Miller wants you in Abu Ghraib. He needs your help to fix the mess. Larry, I need to talk with you ASAP.”

  My heart sank. Instantly I began to see clear images of Gitmo all over again. “Morgan, can’t we just talk now on the phone?” I asked.

  “Larry, this is a conversation we need to have in person. Where are you right now?”

  I answered as much for my wife’s sake as for mine. “I’m with my wife, and we’re at the Smithsonian, the Museum of Natural History.” I was hoping he would tell me to just enjoy the afternoon with my wife and he’d get back to me later.