A Gitmo cover-up?

February 9, 2007

In October, Heather Cerveny, a Marine Corps sergeant, went public with allegations into prisoner abuse she learned of at Guantanamo Bay. Cerveny spent a week at the base in late September as a legal aide to a military lawyer, and heard directly from several Navy prison guards about harsh, and frequently arbitrary, physical abuse.

U.S. Southern Command launched an investigation and concluded that “insufficient evidence exists to substantiate the paralegal’s allegations.” SouthCom’s probe, however, appeared to have been rather thin.

…Lieutenant Colonel Colby Vokey, the superior officer to the Marine sergeant who filed the allegations, called the investigation “outrageous.” “I am aware that the investigators interviewed only the suspects and some witnesses but did not interview any detainees or potential victims,” he told ABC News. “Failure to interview those who may have been subjected to abuse is indicative of an incomplete investigation.”

As first reported on “The Blotter” on ABCNews.com, Heather Cerveny, 23, a Marine Corps sergeant, who spent a week on the base last September working as a legal aide to Lt. Col. Vokey, said she was “shocked” to hear several guards from different parts of the base openly speak of mistreating prisoners.

One said, “I took the detainee by the head and smashed his head into the cell door,” she told ABC News in October after filing a sworn affidavit with the Pentagon Inspector General. Another “was telling his buddy, ‘Yeah, this one detainee, you know, really pissed me off, irritated me. So I just, you know, punched him in the face.'”

Cerveny’s account was apparently corroborated by a civilian employee on the base, but SouthCom talked to 20 military officials, all of whom denied having been a part of, or a witness to, prisoner abuse.

Worse, a SouthCom investigator wants to go after Cerveny for coming forward with her accusations in the first place.

Amongst the recommendations issued by the investigating officer but ultimately rejected by the SouthCom commander following the investigation was “that disciplinary or other action be taken against Sergeant Cerveny,” which Lt. Col Vokey says is the most “outrageous part of the investigation.”

“The interview of her [Sgt. Cerveny] was ridiculous and oppressive,” he said. “The investigating officers, a colonel and a captain, walked straight into her office with the intent to accuse her of a crime before she even opened her mouth. The colonel already had the form in his hand to read her her rights and accuse her, before the interview started.”

It sets a great precedent, doesn’t it? As Vokey put it, “This was outrageous and sends a dangerous message to all our service members: you’d better not report anything that goes on at Guantanamo Bay, or you’ll be threatened or charged with a crime.”

Not so off-thread: you should highlight the article in the New Yorker on “24” called Whatever it Takes.” It makes a lot of interesting points, not the least of which is that a fairly high-ranking delegation from West Point (or similar) came to Hollywood to try to get the producers of 24 to cut back on the torture scenes, as the popularity and apparent effectiveness of such scenes were making it much harder to convince the cadets not to engage in torture.
Needless to say, the delegation left unsatisfied.

  • Unfortunately, there is little precedent in it. It seems like anyone who blows the whistle on any wrongdoing associated with the admins Global Epic War on Whomever We Want is subject to all manner of retaliation.

  • See? I told you guys that the “GW” in G. W. Bush stands for “Gestapo Wanna-be.” Someone ought to grab these uniformed thugs by their collective throats, and explain to them the “niceties” of war-crimes allegations….

  • oh, i just love the way these guys work. next thing you know, they’re going to execute someone first, and then question them.

  • Torture? What torture? I don’t see any torturing going on…

    …American authorities continue to insist that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident in an otherwise well-run detention system. That insistence, however, stands in sharp contrast to my own experiences as an interrogator in Iraq. I watched as detainees were forced to stand naked all night, shivering in their cold cells and pleading with their captors for help. Others were subjected to long periods of isolation in pitch-black rooms. Food and sleep deprivation were common, along with a variety of physical abuse, including punching and kicking. Aggressive, and in many ways abusive, techniques were used daily in Iraq, all in the name of acquiring the intelligence necessary to bring an end to the insurgency. The violence raging there today is evidence that those tactics never worked. My memories are evidence that those tactics were terribly wrong…

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR2007020801680.html

  • I wouldn’t put too much stock in two soldiers “bragging” about their toughness in front of a woman. That’s just hearsay under questionable conditions. And what did the other witness corroborate? That the things happened or that she had heard they happened.

    The investigation sounds like a cover up though.

    One thing that has bothered me was in the documentary(?) The Road to Gitmo. When the prisoners first came to Gitmo they were terrorized, but toward the end of the film they were talking back to guards, kicking back on their beds, all the world like a regular prison. So I don’t what that meant.

    Are there two phases of Gitmo?

  • So where has all the torture and abusive behavior gotten us? Iraq has become a disaster, bin Laden is still on the loose, al Qaeda in Iraq still exists, the military has innocent prisoners in Guantanamo it doesn’t want to cut loose because we’ve abused them so badly they probably would like to do something negative to the US and after all the Abu Ghraib stuff came to light thousands more US soldiers have died.

    F*ck your “24” and ticking time bomb scenarios. All torture has brought us has been more enemies, more death, more quagmire and the loss of our national prestige and soul.

  • If anyone hasn’t read the article racerx mentioned (#5) it’s definitely worthwhile. (An Iraq Interrogator’s Nightmare, by Eric Fair).

  • The Eric Fair article really is good. I shuder to think what kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome problems are going to come out of this immoral war. Petorado said it well in #7

    All torture has brought us has been more enemies, more death, more quagmire and the loss of our national prestige and soul.
    Comment by petorado

  • We must remember how precarious our constitutional “guarantees” really are. If they can be subverted by an administration that is really only interested in making money, we must guard against an administration with a more “evil” agenda.

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