I was posted to Iraq in May 2003. Abu Ghraib was in a shambles. Three of the
prisons hadn’t been finished yet. The local people had come in and looted
everything; they’d stripped the electrics out, they’d ripped buildings
apart. There was nothing left when we got there.
The first time we got attacked was on our second night there. We were told we
couldn’t leave our compound after dark so we were getting mortared and we
couldn’t do anything about it. All of us were very disgruntled. We had done
six months in al-Hillah – and our orders were only for six months. But when
we got to Kuwait we were told that we were going to Abu Ghraib. So you had a
lot of pissed-off soldiers.
Within a month of taking over the prison, I saw a disturbing picture. It was
4am, because I worked a weird shift and the guys on the hard site were
coming back, and Charles Graner walked up to me and said, “Hey, Darb, check
this out” – he showed me this picture and it had a prisoner chained to a
cell, naked from the waist down with a hood on his head and the floor was
all wet around him. He looked at me and said, “Darb, you know the Christian
in me knows this is wrong, but the corrections officer in me can’t help but
love to make a grown man piss himself.”
And I looked at him and said, “Graner, you’re screwed up.” He laughed and went
into his room and I went to work. I didn’t think anything of it because
there was a thing of water there and it could have been something Graner
staged – a little shock-factor photo for him to take home with – so I didn’t
think anything about it, but that was the first instance where I started to
question what was going on.
In December, after I had come back from leave, I heard there’d been a
shooting. I asked if anyone had any pictures and everybody kept saying ‘Talk
to Graner, Graner probably does.”
So one night, sitting in the cyber cafe – where I volunteered so people could
call home and use the internet – Graner came in and handed me two discs. I
downloaded both discs, gave them back and he left. It was three in the
morning so I went to bed.
The next evening, I’d finished most of my work and at one o’clock at night I
went through the first CD and it was all pictures of al-Hillah, pictures of
the green zone, and the next folder was all the prison abuse photos. The
first picture I saw I laughed because it was just a pyramid of naked people
– I didn’t know it was Iraqi prisoners. I’ve seen soldiers do some stupid
things but as I got into the photos more I realised what they were.
There were photos of Graner beating three prisoners in a group, there was a
picture of a naked male Iraqi standing with a bag over his head holding the
sand-bagged head of a male Iraqi kneeling between his legs.
The most pronounced woman in the photographs was Lynndie England and she was
leading prisoners around on a leash, giving a thumbs-up standing behind the
pyramid and posing with one of the Iraqi prisoners who had died.
England was Graner’s girlfriend from the time when we were in Fort Lee,
Virginia. She would have done anything to make Graner happy. She was an
administration clerk. She would get off work and then go and stay with him
when he was on shift. Graner had a weird and manipulative personality. He
could be very religious in one minute and very racial about the Iraqis the
next.
I looked through every photo, shut down my computer, went outside and smoked
probably about six or seven cigarettes because I had no idea what to make of
it. I went back and I looked at them again. They bothered me because morally
they went against everything I knew to be right. These prisoners weren’t
being held because they had attacked Americans, they hadn’t killed Americans
or dragged them through the streets like the guys in Falluja. These guys –
most of them were picked up at the beginning of the war and were there
because intelligence wanted to talk to them.
It was unbelievable at first. I couldn’t believe they would do this and take
photos of it. Why would you take pictures of doing something that you
blatantly know is illegal? How could they be this stupid?
Then I tried to figure out what to do. I thought about it and thought about
it. I talked to people – I talked to my room mate, who was my counterpart in
operations, I talked to my mentor, who had just got to the facility. I just
asked obscure questions: if you had knowledge of someone doing something to
prisoners that was illegal, what would you do?
I got the answers I expected to get from myself. You have a duty to do
something about it – you’re an MP, it’s your job. But it wasn’t as easy a
decision as that. My grandfather had been a 25-year veteran of the army in
the Vietnam and Korean wars. My uncles had been in the army. My stepfather
had been in the marine corps.
I first thought: maybe if I don’t say anything, someone else will find out. Or
maybe if I give someone else a copy of the CD, they’ll do it and I won’t
have to. It took me about two and a half to three weeks to make the
decision. I expect most people in my unit did not agree with me turning in
the other soldiers because these were very popular guys – a lot hung out
with them. I was expecting a backlash from other soldiers in a combat
environment where your life relies on the guy next to you.
I typed up a letter on the computer and printed it out, untraceable, and made
a copy of the pictures off my computer. I went to try to find CID (the
army’s criminal investigation division). Special agent Pearon answered the
door and I handed him the envelope and I said, “This was left in our office.
It just says ‘Give to CID’ on it, so here you go.” I don’t think it was 15
minutes before he was sitting next to me in my office, questioning me on
where the CD came from.
Later I gave a statement. But while I was there the individuals were being
rounded up by agents. So I was in a room and they were in a hallway behind a
door behind me. The only exit I knew of was right past them. So the CID
agents covered me in blankets and made them stand and face the wall and
shuffled me out of the door. All you could see was three inches of my boot
as they pushed me out and got me to the truck.
I felt no guilt. I felt relief that I’d finally done it because it had been
weighing on me. I knew something had to be done. But I was afraid of
retribution, not only from them but from other soldiers. They had their
weapons and at night when I was asleep they were less than 100 yards away –
and I didn’t even have a door in the room I slept in. I had a raincoat
hanging up for a door. They could reach their hand through the door and cut
my throat without making a noise and I was scared of that.
Five weeks later I was sitting in the dining facility in Camp Anaconda in Iraq
when a press conference came on that was the live feed from the
congregational hearings about Abu Ghraib. There was an announcement that
secretary Rumsfeld was thanking me for turning in the photos and allowing
the investigation to go forward – thanking me by name. I was eating with
four soldiers and I just stopped mid-bite. One of the guys looked across and
said, “Darb, we need to leave”, and so we put our trays up and walked out.
Within 72 hours everyone in my unit and my home town knew I’d been the one
to turn them in.
My wife had known the night I turned them in that I was doing something and
people were going to be arrested, but she found out with the rest of the
country. She took emergency leave of absence from work and tried to escape
to her sister’s house. Her sister’s house was spray-painted with “Iraq” all
over it – spelt “Iroc”.
I received a letter from Rumsfeld saying he had no malicious intent and was
only doing it to praise me, but I find it hard to believe the secretary of
defence of the United States had no idea about the star witness from a
criminal case being anonymous.
I was told to pack my stuff and that I was getting on a plane in two hours. I
did what I was told and turned my gear in, packed my own bag and got on a
plane. While I was sitting there I was trying to figure out from the map
they gave me before I left exactly where the bus station was so I could get
a bus home.
And the plane landed – it didn’t even taxi, it stopped on the runway and a
protection team came on and got me off. There was a lieutenant-colonel
standing there who saluted me and said, “Son, get in the car, your family’s
waiting.”
When I was asked where I wanted to go, I said, “I want to go home.” And he
said, “No, you don’t understand son, you can’t go home. You’ll never be able
to go home.”
Joe Darby tells his story in The Choice this Tuesday on Radio 4, 9am
