As the prisoner abuse scandal has fallen to finger-pointing, two men are taking the brunt of the blame for the lurid stories coming from Iraq: Spec. Charles Graner Jr., the alleged ringleader of the perpetrators, and Lt. Col. Jerry Phillabaum, commander of the military police unit that ran Abu Ghraib prison.
The men have become symbols of the toxic factors cited by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba in his scathing report on the prison’s conditions–rogue soldiers on the one hand and lackadaisical leadership on the other. But the abuse of prisoners documented in Taguba’s report was not the first sign of trouble for either man.
Phillabaum’s management problems began soon after he arrived in Iraq and months before he was assigned to take over Abu Ghraib.
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Graner twice was accused of abusing prisoners at a Pennsylvania prison where he worked as a guard, cases that were later dismissed, and the state tried to fire him after numerous reprimands for bad work habits. He was ultimately reinstated after arbitration.
According to military investigators, Graner, who faces a court-martial, was at the center of the prisoner abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib in the last three months of 2003.
Pictures of Graner and his fiance, Army Pfc. Lynndie England, and their colleagues, smiling while posing with naked, bound and hooded Iraqi prisoners, stunned the world.
And military officials said the abuse occurred because Phillabaum, who was supposed to be in charge of the prison, had lost control.
The abuse is the subject of six Defense Department investigations and separate congressional inquiries. It has threatened the job of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, drawn apologies from President Bush and his generals and raised larger questions about the treatment of those captured as part of the U.S. war on terrorism.
This week the scandal enters a new phase with the public court-martial Wednesday of Spec. Jeremy Sivits, one of the soldiers accused of abusing prisoners, and the arraignment Thursday of Graner and two others facing charges: Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick Jr. and Sgt. Javal Davis.
Singled out
In his report, Taguba singled out Phillabaum for extraordinary criticism. “Jerry Phillabaum was an extremely ineffective commander and leader,” he wrote. Abu Ghraib’s operations officer, Maj. David DiNenna, “basically ran the battalion on a day-to-day basis,” Taguba said.
Phillabaum and his unit–the 320th Military Police Battalion of Ashley, Pa.–deployed in February 2003, beginning their duty at Camp Bucca, a prison camp in southern Iraq.
Last May, four members of the 320th Battalion were charged with kicking and beating prisoners at Camp Bucca.
Taguba said in his report that, “despite this documented abuse,” there is no evidence that “Phillabaum, the commander of the soldiers involved . . . took any initiative to ensure his soldiers were properly trained regarding detainee treatment.”
Nevertheless, in July, Phillabaum and the 320th were put in charge of the detention center at Abu Ghraib near Baghdad.
Taguba acknowledges that Phillabaum’s battalion was badly understaffed at Abu Ghraib. DiNenna told the Tribune that the camp had as many as 7,000 detainees at a time, held in three separate compounds, and a staff of only about 288 MPs. Because the prisoners needed to be guarded 24 hours a day, the soldiers worked 12-hour shifts, meaning that at any given time there were only 144 MPs guarding thousands of prisoners.
“You can’t be somewhere 24 hours a day,” DiNenna said. So he and Phillabaum had to rely on other soldiers to supervise parts of the prison, including soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company and from military intelligence units, soldiers that the 320th had never trained with and didn’t know. Soldiers like Graner.
Graner and Phillabaum led different lives before the events in Iraq.
Phillabaum, 50, was commander of the 320th, a reserve MP unit trained to guard prisoners and provide other mission support.
He was a 1976 West Point graduate who had been in the reserves for more than 20 years. His twin sons graduated from the Naval Academy, one becoming a Navy ensign and the other a Marine.
In December 2002, he retired from Exelon Corp., a Chicago-based energy company. Phillabaum had worked at the company’s Peach Bottom nuclear power plant in York County, Pa., leading the effort to renew the plant’s operating license, a company spokeswoman said.
Civilian prison guard
Graner, 35, is a member of the Army Reserve’s 372nd MP Company, which was sent to Abu Ghraib along with Phillabaum’s 320th. The 372nd is based in Cresaptown, Md., in the state’s western panhandle, and nearly all its members come from Maryland or nearby West Virginia or Pennsylvania.
Before his tour in Iraq, Graner spent the last eight years working as a guard at the State Correctional Institute-Greene in Waynesburg, Pa., south of Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania’s most serious offenders serve their sentences at Greene, including inmates on Death Row.
Graner, who grew up in Whitehall, near Pittsburgh, joined the Marines after graduating from high school in 1988 and then went to work at Greene.
He is accused of being one of the ringleaders of the 372nd soldiers involved in the prisoner abuse. He and Frederick, whose civilian job was as a prison guard in Virginia, were the nominal leaders of the guard unit, according to an officer.
Inside Abu Ghraib, according to Taguba’s report, Graner was one of several guards who ordered acts of abuse.
According to the report, one of Graner’s colleagues, Spec. Sabrina Harman, states that it was Graner’s and Frederick’s “job to do things for MI [military intelligence] and OGA [other government agencies] to get these people to talk.”
A civilian contract translator told Army investigators that Graner and Frederick actually did their own interrogating, telling naked detainees “to admit what they did.”
“They made them do strange exercises by sliding on their stomach, jump up and down, throw water on them and made them . . . wet, called them all kinds of names such as `gays’ [and] `do they like to make love to guys,’ then they handcuffed their hands together and their legs with shackles and started to stack them on top of each other,” the contractor said.
Graner’s attorney, Guy Womack, told CNN his client was taking orders from military intelligence officials at the prison.
“He was being directed by military intelligence officers and others in the intel community, and he felt these were lawful orders,” Womack said.
The stories echo accusations raised against Graner when he was a guard at the Pennsylvania prison.
In a 1999 federal complaint, inmate Horatio Nimley accused Graner of putting a razor blade in his potatoes and later of beating and kicking him, calling him racial epithets and participating in an unwarranted full body cavity search.
Nimley had been scheduled to testify on behalf of another inmate alleging abuse, and he said he was attacked as part of an effort to intimidate him. Graner said Nimley, who was serving a sentence of up to five years for burglary, had been disruptive.
A federal magistrate said Nimley’s claim seemed valid.
But by the time the case made its way through the court system, Nimley had been released from Greene and could not be found. The case was dismissed.
In a second case, inmate Osborne Johnson accused Graner and several other corrections officers of abuse in 1999. Johnson’s federal complaint alleged that while he was handcuffed, Graner grabbed his foot, causing Johnson to hit the floor face first.
Graner contended that Johnson had kicked him. Johnson is incarcerated, but the case was dismissed Sept. 12, 2001, by a federal appeals court that found he had “failed to timely prosecute” his complaint.
Womack said Friday, “In his civilian career as a corrections officer, to my knowledge he has done nothing illegal.”
Defending commanders
DiNenna said neither he nor Phillabaum knew anything about abuse at Abu Ghraib. “No one–no one–in the MP leadership chain of command including myself and Col. Phillabaum, no one knew of those actions,” DiNenna said. He has been reprimanded for failing to take steps to address problems at the prison; he is appealing the reprimand.
DiNenna vigorously defends Phillabaum.
“The picture that’s being painted of him is totally incorrect. He was an excellent leader and commander.”
But it is clear that Phillabaum had distractions.
Taguba said that Phillabaum’s boss, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, relieved him of duty for two weeks in October and sent him to Kuwait “apparently to give him some relief from the pressure he was experiencing” as battalion commander.
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Phillabaum was also reprimanded for “lapses in accountability that resulted in several escapes,” Taguba wrote, and his unit was “stigmatized” because of the prisoner abuse at Camp Bucca.
Phillabaum also had family troubles.
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) last week released memos that Phillabaum and his wife had written to the senator in recent months seeking help.
According to a March 19 e-mail from Pam Phillabaum, during the year that her husband was on duty in Iraq, she had major surgery, and her father had two heart attacks and cancer and passed away.
Lt. Col. Leigh Coulter, commander of another battalion at Camp Bucca, told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that Phillabaum took several leaves of absence to return home during the year.
Pam Phillabaum wrote that the family is attempting to relocate to the Washington, D.C., area, where her husband has job offers. But his tour of duty in Iraq was extended, so he has not been able to accept the jobs, and they have not been able to buy a house or prepare to move.
In March, Jerry Phillabaum wrote Specter that the rest of his unit had been sent home, but he was being kept in Iraq while the investigation continued.
“I feel that I am being made a scapegoat by the Army,” Phillabaum wrote. “I have suffered shame and humiliation for doing the best job that anyone could have done given the resources I had to work with.”
The military would not confirm Phillabaum’s whereabouts last week, and his family did not respond to telephone calls.
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Leadership trouble at Abu Ghraib
After investigating prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba found leadership failures as well as changes in interrogation and detention policies.
SENIOR COMMANDER IN IRAQ
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez
Commander, Combined Joint Task Force 7
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski
Commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade
Dates: July 2003 to present
In charge of eight battalions running prison facilities in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib. She was removed from duty and reprimanded for poor leadership.
Lt. Col. Jerry Phillabaum
Commander, 320th Military PoliceBattalion of the 800th Military Police Brigade at Abu Ghraib prison
Dates: February 2003 – Jan. 17
Taguba’s report recommended that Phillabaum be reprimanded and removed from his post for leadership failures.
Capt. Donald Reese
Company Commander, 372nd Military Police Company
In charge of guarding detainees at Abu Ghraib. Reprimand and
removal were recommended for failing to train and supervise soldiers.
Cpl. Charles Graner
372nd Military Police Company
Alleged ringleader of seven guards suspected of abuses in section 1-A of Abu Ghraib, where abuses occurred.
He is scheduled to be arraigned May 20 on charges of maltreatment and indecent acts.
MILITARY INTELLIGENCE
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller
Dates: April to present
Previously head of the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. He was sent to Iraq to evaluate intelligence gathering at Abu Ghraib prison in August. Now commander of detention and interrogation operations in Iraq.
Col. Thomas Pappas
Commander, 205th Military Intelligence Brigade
Dates: Nov. 19, 2003- Feb. 6
Given control of Abu Ghraib prison by Lt. Gen. Sanchez.
Reprimand recommended for failing to train and supervise soldiers.
Lt. Col. Steve Jordan
Former director, Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib
Reprimand and removal from command were recommended for
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leadership failures.
Sources: Associated Press, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba’s report on Iraqi prisoner abuse
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