I knew that our task force was vulnerable to misperceptions. Some reported that our screening operations constituted “black” prisons in which commanders ordered the mistreatment of detainees. That wasn’t the case before I assumed command and wasn’t true under my command nor under my successors. But creating the right facilities and building our expertise took time and meant addressing buildings, standards, leadership, and most important, the mindset of the force. Abu Ghraib demonstrated what can happen when even a well-intentioned army attempts to conduct sensitive operations, like the handling of detainees, without the preparation and resources required to do it correctly.
By the summer of 2004, the new screening facility was clearly the most important building constructed during our critical move to Balad. It was clean and sterile, with cells, offices, and interrogation booths inside a building with aluminum paneling, glossed cement floors, and high ceilings. Only a few months after its initial construction, we doubled it in size while maintaining the same capacity. At its highest levels, the facility contained only a small number of captures.
We made the facility as internally transparent as possible. Interrogations were monitored, and inspections conducted regularly. We hosted partner representatives from the FBI, conventional military units, and other agencies, and distributed interrogation reports to their headquarters. We established ways for partners from the United States or other countries to watch selected interrogations. This allowed experts on particular topics, or even on certain personalities, to judge detainee responses. This transparency meant that screening a capture, like Abu Zar, in our facility leveraged expertise and intelligence from across the spectrum of groups doing counterterrorism.
Recognizing that people typically assume the worst of whatever they can’t see, we would take most visitors to our task force, especially those from the States, on a full tour of the facility. I wanted to dispel incorrect perceptions these congressmen, national security officials, or partner agency representatives might have. It was also a subtle, frequent reminder to my force that we were accountable for how we handled detainees. Most visitors said they were impressed, but continuous refinement and improvement were needed.
On one such occasion not long after we had begun using the Balad screening facility, Senator Carl Levin visited and toured it. He saw the facility in its first weeks of use, when the cells had been built smaller than some others in Iraq and were painted black. They weren’t dirty, and the paint choice had been made with no particular intent. But it sent a negative message. Senator Levin said nothing during the visit, and I judged him satisfied with what he saw. But soon afterward I received a letter he’d sent to the secretary of defense, expressing concern with the black cells. His letter was a surprise, and I wished I’d known his concerns on the spot, but it served as a good outside check on us. We immediately painted the cells a brighter color and simultaneously began a construction program to expand the screening facility, including cells that matched exactly with the standards that had begun to be carried out across all of the MNF-I force. We continued to learn as we fought.
I emphasized through written guidelines and face-to-face conversations throughout the task force that not only were screening operations critical but the conduct of those operations was elemental to success. Mine was a direct message: If you screw up, you will be punished. Simple as that. I won’t wait for someone else to act; we won’t “protect our own.” I will personally make sure you are kicked out of the task force and court-martialed if necessary. I was clear and unequivocal. Anything less than emphatic prohibitions on mistreatment might be taken as implicit consent.
I learned quickly as we went along. But I also made mistakes. As late as the spring of 2004, six months into my command, I believed our force needed the option of employing select, carefully controlled “enhanced” interrogation techniques, including sleep management. I was wrong. Although these techniques were rarely requested or used, by the summer of that year we got rid of them completely, and all handling inside our centers followed the field manual used by the Army.