[Vision2020] Off List: Re: US Navy Veteran Whistle Blower Imprisoned In IraqRecalls Torment

[Ted Moffett]

Saundra et. al.

I grew up in a military family, so though I am appalled by a story such as
this, I know the military mindset... Many would justify this sort of
treatment as necessary in a war situation.  The weird thing is, this man was
trying to do the right thing to expose misconduct, and then was accused of
this very misconduct when he was jailed and interrogated.  No wonder people
often keep their mouths shut when corruption is involved... The whistle
blower often becomes a target for attacks from one side or the other.

Ted Moffett


On 12/21/06, Saundra Lund <sslund at roadrunner.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Ted,
>
> Thanks -- I guess -- for sharing this with us.  Further breaking of my
> patriotic heart  :-(
>
> ""Even Saddam Hussein
> <
> http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/saddam_hussein
> /index.html?inline=nyt-per>  had more legal counsel than I ever had," said
> Mr. Vance, who said he planned to sue the former defense secretary, Donald
> H. Rumsfeld
> <
> http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/donald_h_rumsf
> eld/index.html?inline=nyt-per> , on grounds that his constitutional rights
> had been violated. "While we were detained, we wrote a letter to the camp
> commandant stating that the same democratic ideals we are trying to
> instill
> in the fledgling democratic country of Iraq, from simple due process to
> the
> Magna Carta, we are absolutely, positively refusing to follow ourselves.""
>
> Call me disloyal or an enemy to my country, but I expect -- no, I DEMAND
> --
> better than that that for our own citizens from our OWN government.
> Shameful, shameful, shameful . . . and in the name of the lie of WMD,
> regardless of who -- precisely -- started the lie  :-(((
>
>
> Saundra Lund
> Moscow, ID
>
> The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do
> nothing.
> - Edmund Burke
>
> ***** Original material contained herein is Copyright 2006, Saundra Lund.
> Do not copy, forward, excerpt, or reproduce outside the Vision 2020 forum
> without the express written permission of the author.*****
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
> On Behalf Of Ted Moffett
> Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2006 11:57 AM
> To: Vision2020
> Subject: [Vision2020] US Navy Veteran Whistle Blower Imprisoned In
> IraqRecalls Torment
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/18/world/middleeast/18justice.html?ex=1324098
> 000&en=e8c9cab2d3af846b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
>
> December 18, 2006
>
> Former U.S. Detainee in Iraq Recalls Torment
>
> By MICHAEL MOSS
> <
> http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/michael_moss/i
> ndex.html?inline=nyt-per>
>
> One night in mid-April, the steel door clanked shut on detainee No. 200343
> at Camp Cropper, the United States military's maximum-security detention
> site in Baghdad.
>
> American guards arrived at the man's cell periodically over the next
> several
> days, shackled his hands and feet, blindfolded him and took him to a
> padded
> room for interrogation, the detainee said. After an hour or two, he was
> returned to his cell, fatigued but unable to sleep.
>
> The fluorescent lights in his cell were never turned off, he said. At most
> hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor. He said he was
> rousted at random times without explanation and made to stand in his cell.
> Even lying down, he said, he was kept from covering his face to block out
> the light, noise and cold. And when he was released after 97 days he was
> exhausted, depressed and scared.
>
> Detainee 200343 was among thousands of people who have been held and
> released by the American military in Iraq
> <
> http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/ir
> aq/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> , and his account of his ordeal has provided
> one of the few detailed views of the Pentagon's detention operations since
> the abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib. Yet in many respects his case is
> unusual.
>
> The detainee was Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who
> went to Iraq as a security contractor. He wound up as a whistle-blower,
> passing information to the F.B.I.
> <
> http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/federal
> _bureau_of_investigation/index.html?inline=nyt-org>  about suspicious
> activities at the Iraqi security firm where he worked, including what he
> said was possible illegal weapons trading.
>
> But when American soldiers raided the company at his urging, Mr. Vance and
> another American who worked there were detained as suspects by the
> military,
> which was unaware that Mr. Vance was an informer, according to officials
> and
> military documents.
>
> At Camp Cropper, he took notes on his imprisonment and smuggled them out
> in
> a Bible.
>
> "Sick, very. Vomited," he wrote July 3. The next day: "Told no more phone
> calls til leave."
>
> Nathan Ertel, the American held with Mr. Vance, brought away military
> records that shed further light on the detention camp and its secretive
> tribunals. Those records include a legal memorandum explicitly denying
> detainees the right to a lawyer at detention hearings to determine whether
> they should be released or held indefinitely, perhaps for prosecution.
>
> The story told through those records and interviews illuminates the
> haphazard system of detention and prosecution that has evolved in Iraq,
> where detainees are often held for long periods without charges or legal
> representation, and where the authorities struggle to sort through the
> endless stream of detainees to identify those who pose real threats.
>
> "Even Saddam Hussein
> <
> http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/saddam_hussein
> /index.html?inline=nyt-per>  had more legal counsel than I ever had," said
> Mr. Vance, who said he planned to sue the former defense secretary, Donald
> H. Rumsfeld
> <
> http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/donald_h_rumsf
> eld/index.html?inline=nyt-per> , on grounds that his constitutional rights
> had been violated. "While we were detained, we wrote a letter to the camp
> commandant stating that the same democratic ideals we are trying to
> instill
> in the fledgling democratic country of Iraq, from simple due process to
> the
> Magna Carta, we are absolutely, positively refusing to follow ourselves."
>
> A spokeswoman for the Pentagon's detention operations in Iraq, First Lt.
> Lea
> Ann Fracasso, said in written answers to questions that the men had been
> "treated fair and humanely," and that there was no record of either man
> complaining about their treatment.
>
> Held as 'a Threat'
>
> She said officials did not reach Mr. Vance's contact at the F.B.I. until
> he
> had been in custody for three weeks. Even so, she said, officials
> determined
> that he "posed a threat" and decided to continue holding him. He was
> released two months later, Lieutenant Fracasso said, based on a
> "subsequent
> re-examination of his case," and his stated plans to leave Iraq.
>
> Mr. Ertel, 30, a contract manager who knew Mr. Vance from an earlier job
> in
> Iraq, was released more quickly.
>
> Mr. Vance went to Iraq in 2004, first to work for a Washington-based
> company. He later joined a small Baghdad-based security company where, he
> said, "things started looking weird to me." He said that the company,
> which
> was protecting American reconstruction organizations, had hired guards
> from
> a sheik in Basra and that many of them turned out to be members of
> militias
> whom the clients did not want around.
>
> Mr. Vance said the company had a growing cache of weapons it was selling
> to
> suspicious customers, including a steady flow of officials from the Iraqi
> Interior Ministry. The ministry had ties to violent militias and death
> squads. He said he had also witnessed another employee giving American
> soldiers liquor in exchange for bullets and weapon repairs.
>
> On a visit to Chicago in October 2005, Mr. Vance met twice with an F.B.I.
> agent who set up a reporting system. Weekly, Mr. Vance phoned the agent
> from
> Iraq and sent him e-mail messages. "It was like, 'Hey, I heard this and I
> saw this.' I wanted to help," Mr. Vance said. A government official
> familiar
> with the arrangement confirmed Mr. Vance's account.
>
> In April, Mr. Ertel and Mr. Vance said, they felt increasingly
> uncomfortable
> at the company. Mr. Ertel resigned and company officials seized the
> identification cards that both men needed to move around Iraq or leave the
> country.
>
> On April 15, feeling threatened, Mr. Vance phoned the United States
> Embassy
> in Baghdad. A military rescue team rushed to the security company. Again,
> Mr. Vance described its operations, according to military records.
>
> "Internee Vance indicated a large weapons cache was in the compound in the
> house next door," Capt. Plymouth D. Nelson, a military detention official,
> wrote in a memorandum dated April 22, after the men were detained. "A
> search
> of the house and grounds revealed two large weapons caches."
>
> On the evening of April 15, they met with American officials at the
> embassy
> and stayed overnight. But just before dawn, they were awakened, handcuffed
> with zip ties and made to wear goggles with lenses covered by duct tape.
> Put
> into a Humvee, Mr. Vance said he asked for a vest and helmet, and was
> refused.
>
> They were driven through dangerous Baghdad roads and eventually to Camp
> Cropper. They were placed in cells at Compound 5, the high-security unit
> where Saddam Hussein has been held.
>
> Only days later did they receive an explanation: They had become suspects
> for having associated with the people Mr. Vance tried to expose.
>
> "You have been detained for the following reasons: You work for a business
> entity that possessed one or more large weapons caches on its premises and
> may be involved in the possible distribution of these weapons to
> insurgent/terrorist groups," Mr. Ertel's detention notice said.
>
> Mr. Vance said he began seeking help even before his cell door closed for
> the first time. "They took off my blindfold and earmuffs and told me to
> stand in a corner, where they cut off the zip ties, and told me to
> continue
> looking straight forward and as I'm doing this, I'm asking for an
> attorney,"
> he said. " 'I want an attorney now,' I said, and they said, 'Someone will
> be
> here to see you.' "
>
> Instead, they were given six-digit ID numbers. The guards shortened Mr.
> Vance's into something of a nickname: "343." And the routine began.
>
> Bread and powdered drink for breakfast and sometimes a piece of fruit.
> Rice
> and chicken for lunch and dinner. Their cells had no sinks. The showers
> were
> irregular. They got 60 minutes in the recreation yard at night, without
> other detainees.
>
> Five times in the first week, guards shackled the prisoners' hands and
> feet,
> covered their eyes, placed towels over their heads and put them in
> wheelchairs to be pushed to a room with a carpeted ceiling and walls.
> There
> they were questioned by an array of officials who, they said they were
> told,
> represented the F.B.I., the C.I.A.
> <
> http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central
> _intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org> , the Naval Criminal
> Investigative Service and the Defense Intelligence Agency
> <
> http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/d/defense
> _intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org> .
>
> "It's like boom, boom, boom," Mr. Ertel said. "They are drilling you. 'We
> know you did this, you are part of this gun smuggling thing.' And I'm
> saying
> you have it absolutely way off."
>
> The two men slept in their 9-by-9-foot cells on concrete slabs, with worn
> three-inch foam mats. With the fluorescent lights on and the temperature
> in
> the 50s, Mr. Vance said, "I paced myself to sleep, walking until I
> couldn't
> anymore. I broke the straps on two pair of flip-flops."
>
> Asked about the lights, the detainee operations spokeswoman said that the
> camp's policy was to turn off cell lights at night "to allow detainees to
> sleep."
>
> A Psychological Game
>
> One day, Mr. Vance met with a camp psychologist. "He realized I was having
> difficulties," Mr. Vance said. "He said to turn it into a game. He said:
> 'I
> want you to pretend you are a soldier who has been kidnapped, and that you
> still have a duty to do. Memorize everything you can about everything that
> happens to you. Make it like you are a spy on the inside.' I think he
> called
> it rational emotive behavioral therapy, and I started doing that."
>
> Camp Rule 31 barred detainees from writing on the white cell walls, which
> were bare except for a black crescent moon painted on one wall to indicate
> the direction of Mecca for prayers. But Mr. Vance began keeping track of
> the
> days by making hash marks on the wall, and he also began writing brief
> notes
> that he hid in the Bible given to him by guards.
>
> "Turned in request for dentist + phone + embassy letter + request for
> clothes," he wrote one day.
>
> "Boards," he wrote April 24, the day he and Mr. Ertel went before Camp
> Cropper's Detainee Status Board.
>
> Their legal rights, laid out in a letter from Lt. Col. Bradley J. Huestis
> of
> the Army, the president of the status board, allowed them to attend the
> hearing and testify. However, under Rule 3, the letter said, "You do not
> have the right to legal counsel, but you may have a personal
> representative
> assist you at the hearing if the personal representative is reasonably
> available."
>
> Mr. Vance and Mr. Ertel were permitted at their hearings only because they
> were Americans, Lieutenant Fracasso said. The cases of all other detainees
> are reviewed without the detainees present, she said. In both types of
> cases, defense lawyers are not allowed to attend because the hearings are
> not criminal proceedings, she said.
>
> Lieutenant Fracasso said that currently there were three Americans in
> military custody in Iraq. The military does not identify detainees.
>
> Mr. Vance and Mr. Ertel had separate hearings. They said their requests to
> be each other's personal representative had been denied.
>
> At the hearings, a woman and two men wearing Army uniforms but no name
> tags
> or rank designations sat a table with two stacks of documents. One was
> about
> an inch thick, and the men were allowed to see some papers from that
> stack.
> The other pile was much thicker, but they were told that this pile was
> evidence only the board could see.
>
> The men pleaded with the board. "I'm telling them there has been a major
> mix-up," Mr. Ertel said. "Please, I'm out of my mind. I haven't slept. I'm
> not eating. I'm terrified."
>
> Mr. Vance said he implored the board to delve into his laptop computer and
> cellphone for his communications with the F.B.I. agent in Chicago.
>
> Each of the hearings lasted about two hours, and the men said they never
> saw
> the board again.
>
> "At the end, my first question was, 'Does my family know I'm alive?' and
> the
> lead man said, 'I don't know,' " Mr. Vance recounted. "And then I asked
> when
> will we have an answer, and they said on average it takes three to four
> weeks."
>
> Help From the Outside
>
> About a week later, two weeks into his detention, Mr. Vance was allowed to
> make his first call, to Chicago. He called his fianc�e, Diane Schwarz, who
> told him she had thought he might have died.
>
> "It was very overwhelming," Ms. Schwarz recalls of the 12-minute
> conversation. "He wasn't quite sure what was going on, and was kind of
> turning to me for answers and I was turning to him for the same."
>
> She had already been calling members of Congress, alarmed by his
> disappearance. So was Mr. Ertel's mother, and some officials began
> pressing
> for answers. "I would appreciate your looking into this matter," Senator
> Richard J. Durbin of Illinois wrote to a State Department official in
> early
> May.
>
> On May 7, the Camp Cropper detention board met again, without either man
> present, and determined that Mr. Ertel was "an innocent civilian,"
> according
> to the spokeswoman for detention operations. It took authorities 18 more
> days to release him.
>
> Mr. Vance's situation was more complicated. On June 17, Lt. Col.
> Keir-Kevin
> Curry, a spokesman for the American military's detention unit, Task Force
> 134, wrote to tell Ms. Schwarz that Mr. Vance was still being held. "The
> detainee board reviewed his case and recommended he remain interned," he
> wrote. "Multi-National Force-Iraq approved the board's recommendation to
> continue internment. Therefore, Mr. Vance continues to be a security
> detainee. We are not processing him for release. His case remains under
> investigation and there is no set timetable for completion." Over the
> following weeks, Mr. Vance said he made numerous written requests � for a
> lawyer, for blankets, for paper to write letters home. Mr. Vance said that
> he wrote 10 letters to Ms. Schwarz, but that only one made it to Chicago.
> Dated July 17, it was delivered late last month by the Red Cross.
>
> "Diana, start talking, sending e-mail and letters and faxes to the
> alderman,
> mayor, governor, congressman, senators, Red Cross, Amnesty International
> <
> http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/amnesty
> _international/index.html?inline=nyt-org> , A.C.L.U., Vatican
> <
> http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/roman_c
> atholic_church/index.html?inline=nyt-org> , and other Christian-based
> organizations. Everyone!" he wrote. "I am missing you so much, and am so
> depressed it's a daily struggle here. My life is in your hands. Please
> don't
> get discouraged. Don't take 'No' for answers. Keep working. I have to tell
> myself these things every day, but I can't do anything from a cell."
>
> The military has never explained why it continued to consider Mr. Vance a
> security threat, except to say that officials decided to release him after
> further review of his case.
>
> "Treating an American citizen in this fashion would have been unimaginable
> before 9/11," said Mike Kanovitz, a Chicago lawyer representing Mr. Vance.
>
> On July 20, Mr. Vance wrote in his notes: "Told 'Leaving Today.' Took
> shower
> and shaved, saw doctor, got civ clothes back and passport."
>
> On his way out, Mr. Vance said: "They asked me if I was intending to write
> a
> book, would I talk to the press, would I be thinking of getting an
> attorney.
> I took it as, 'Shut up, don't talk about this place,' and I kept saying,
> 'No
> sir, I want to go home.' "
>
> Mr. Ertel has returned to Baghdad, again working as a contracts manager.
> Mr.
> Vance is back in Chicago, still feeling the effects of having been a
> prisoner of the war in Iraq.
>
> "It's really hard," he says. "I don't really talk about this stuff with my
> family. I feel ashamed, depressed, still have nightmares, and I'd even say
> I
> suffer from some paranoia."
>
> ----------------------
>
> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>
>
>
>
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