An Interrogator Speaks Out

There is a must read article from the Feb. 9th Washington Post. It is written by Eric Fair who is speaking out about his experience as a civilian contract interrogator attached to the 82nd Airborne Division at the detention facility in Falluja.

Fair served in the Army from 1995-2000 as an Arab linguist, and as a contract interrogator in 2004. The excerpts below are from the article "An Iraq Interrogator's Nightmare." You may find a copy here if the Post archives that one.

A man with no face stares at me from the corner of a room. He pleads for help, but I'm afraid to move. He begins to cry. It is a pitiful sound, and it sickens me. He screams, but as I awaken, I realize the screams are mine.

That dream, along with a host of other nightmares, has plagued me since my return from Iraq in the summer of 2004. Though the man in this particular nightmare has no face, I know who he is. I assisted in his interrogation at a detention facility in Fallujah. I was one of two civilian interrogators assigned to the division interrogation facility (DIF) of the 82nd Airborne Division. The man, whose name I've long since forgotten, was a suspected associate of Khamis Sirhan al-Muhammad, the Baath Party leader in Anbar province who had been captured two months earlier.

The lead interrogator at the DIF had given me specific instructions: I was to deprive the detainee of sleep during my 12-hour shift by opening his cell every hour, forcing him to stand in a corner and stripping him of his clothes. Three years later the tables have turned. It is rare that I sleep through the night without a visit from this man. His memory harasses me as I once harassed him.

Despite my best efforts, I cannot ignore the mistakes I made at the interrogation facility in Fallujah. I failed to disobey a meritless order, I failed to protect a prisoner in my custody, and I failed to uphold the standards of human decency. Instead, I intimidated, degraded and humiliated a man who could not defend himself. I compromised my values. I will never forgive myself.

Fair goes on to condemn his lack of courage in not standing up against the abuse and torture, and to make clear that Abu Ghraib was not an "isolated incident." He feels that he must speak out, that silence only allows the policy to continue.

Some may suggest there is no reason to revive the story of abuse in Iraq. Rehashing such mistakes will only harm our country, they will say. But history suggests we should examine such missteps carefully. Oppressive prison environments have created some of the most determined opponents. The British learned that lesson from Napoleon, the French from Ho Chi Minh, Europe from Hitler. The world is learning that lesson again from Ayman al-Zawahiri. What will be the legacy of abusive prisons in Iraq?

Fair's article is eloquent and painful. It deserves "witnessing," which I sure a lot of Vets can understand. Nobody can take the nightmares away, but we can honor the effort to stand and face them, and to speak truth to power.