The Longbow Papers

There were no rules, by her account, and there was little training. But the mission was clear. Spec. Sabrina D. Harman, a military police officer who has been charged with abusing detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, said she was assigned to break down prisoners for interrogation.

"They would bring in one to several prisoners at a time already hooded and cuffed," Harman said by e-mail this week from Baghdad. "The job of the MP was to keep them awake, make it hell so they would talk."

Harman, one of seven military police reservists charged in the abuse of detainees at the prison, is the second of those soldiers to speak publicly about her time at Abu Ghraib, and her comments echo findings of the Army's investigation into prisoner abuse there. She did not discuss abusive treatment of prisoners or clarify who specifically ordered such treatment, and she referred questions about the charges against her to her attorney, who declined to comment.

Her face is now famous as belonging to one of two soldiers posing in the widely published photograph of naked Iraqi detainees stacked in a pyramid. The picture is one of several that have inflamed the Arab world and brought condemnation from President Bush and other U.S. political and military leaders.

Harman is accused by the Army of taking photographs of that pyramid and photographing and videotaping detainees who were ordered to strip and masturbate in front of other prisoners and soldiers, according to a charge sheet obtained by The Washington Post. She is also charged with photographing a corpse and then posing for a picture with it; with striking several prisoners by jumping on them as they lay in a pile; with writing "rapeist" on a prisoner's leg; and with attaching wires to a prisoner's hands while he stood on a box with his head covered. She told him he would be electrocuted if he fell off the box, the documents said.

In her e-mails, Harman said detainees would be handed over to her military police unit by Army intelligence officers, by CIA operatives or by the contractors. The Army probe into Abu Ghraib said the U.S. government used employees of private companies as interrogators and interpreters along with intelligence officers. Two of the civilian contractors are under investigation in connection with the abuses.

Prisoners were stripped, searched and then "made to stand or kneel for hours," Harman said. Sometimes they were forced to stand on boxes or hold boxes or to exercise to tire them out, she said.

"The person who brought them in would set the standards on whether or not to 'be nice,' " she said. "If the prisoner was cooperating, then the prisoner was able to keep his jumpsuit, mattress, and was allowed cigarettes on request or even hot food. But if the prisoner didn't give what they wanted, it was all taken away until [military intelligence] decided. Sleep, food, clothes, mattresses, cigarettes were all privileges and were granted with information received."

She said the prison had no standard operating procedures and on Tier 1A, where suspected insurgents were held, Army and other intelligence officers "made the rules as they went." ...
Harman, an assistant manager at a Papa John's Pizza in Fairfax County before being sent to Iraq, said the company received additional training at Fort Lee, but it was for "combat support, not I/R," the military term for internment and resettlement. She said she was never schooled in the Geneva Conventions' rules on prisoner treatment.

"The Geneva Convention was never posted, and none of us remember taking a class to review it," Harman said. "The first time reading it was two months after being charged. I read the entire thing highlighting everything the prison is in violation of. There's a lot."

Harman is charged with conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty and maltreatment, making a false statement, and assault. She faces an Article 32 hearing tentatively set in June, the military equivalent of a preliminary hearing to determine whether there is enough evidence to convene a court-martial.

Harman's mother, Robin Harman, said her daughter would never hurt anyone.

"She has this . . . attitude that she is going to save the world," said Robin Harman, who lives in Northern Virginia. "She got over there and got an eye-opener. You don't put unqualified kids in that situation."

Yesterday, as Robin Harman watched Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld testify, she called her daughter a "scapegoat." "They're passing the buck, putting it all on the little kids," she said. "That's what makes me so mad."

Harman took many photographs while in Iraq, her family said.

Among hundreds of digital pictures passed around her MP unit -- and obtained by The Post -- is one taken before the soldiers got to Abu Ghraib in October. In it, Harman is smiling, crouching slightly, a thumb up, and leaning toward a blackened, decaying corpse with long fingers and a gaping mouth.

The photo was taken at a makeshift combat morgue in Al Hillah, her family said, citing letters that Harman sent with the picture.

RALEIGH, N.C. - Although relatives insist she was following orders, the military charged an Army reservist with assaulting detainees after photographs surfaced of her smiling and pointing at naked Iraqi prisoners.

Pfc. Lynndie England on Friday became the seventh member of an Army Reserve military police unit to be charged in a scandal that has drawn outrage around the world and damaged the reputation of the United States as it tries to stabilize Iraq.

England 21, faces four allegations, according to a statement from the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg.

She is accused of assaulting Iraqi detainees on multiple occasions; conspiring with another soldier, Spc. Charles Graner, to mistreat the prisoners; committing an indecent act; and committing acts "that were prejudicial to good order and discipline and were of nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces through her mistreatment of Iraqi detainees." ...

In photographs that have been shown repeatedly in news reports, England is seen smiling, cigarette in her mouth, as she leans forward and points at the genitals of a naked, hooded Iraqi.

Another photo shows her holding a leash that encircles the neck of a naked Iraqi man lying on his side on a cellblock floor, his face contorted. ...

Both England and Graner were members of the Army Reserve's 372nd Military Police Company, based in Cumberland, Md. Graner's attorney has said he faces a possible court-martial on criminal charges of maltreatment and indecent acts.

England's family said she is pregnant with Graner's child.

CUMBERLAND, Md., May 7 -- Ivan Frederick was distraught. His son, an Army reservist turned prison guard in Iraq, was under investigation earlier this year for mistreating prisoners, and photographs of the abuse were beginning to circulate among soldiers and military investigators.

So the father went to his brother-in-law, William Lawson, who was afraid that reservists like his nephew would end up taking the fall for what he considered command lapses, Mr. Lawson recounted in an interview on Friday. He knew whom to turn to: David Hackworth, a retired colonel and a muckraker who was always willing to take on the military establishment. Mr. Lawson sent an e-mail message in March to Mr. Hackworth's Web site and got a call back from an associate there in minutes, he said.

That e-mail message would put Mr. Lawson in touch with the CBS News program "60 Minutes II" and help set in motion events that led to the public disclosure of the graphic photographs and an international crisis for the Bush administration. ...

The irony, Mr. Lawson said, is that the public spectacle might have been avoided if the military and the federal government had been responsive to his claims that his nephew was simply following orders. Mr. Lawson said he sent letters to 17 members of Congress about the case earlier this year, with virtually no response, and that he ultimately contacted Mr. Hackworth's Web site out of frustration, leading him to cooperate with a consultant for "60 Minutes II."

"The Army had the opportunity for this not to come out, not to be on 60 Minutes," he said. "But the Army decided to prosecute those six G.I.'s because they thought me and my family were a bunch of poor, dirt people who could not do anything about it. But unfortunately, that was not the case." ...

But there are still numerous unresolved questions about the photographs. One is why they were taken. Some officials suggest that soldiers wanted the photographs as souvenirs, but some relatives said they believed that the photographs were going to be shown to other prisoners to pressure their cooperation.
Then there is the question of how the photographs became public.

Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, deputy commander of forces in the region, testifying Friday before Congress, said he was still unclear how that happened. "It was a surprise that it got out," General Smith said.

Military officials were aware of two disks with photographs on them that were part of continuing investigations, one in Iraq and another in Washington, he said.

"That was the limit of the pictures, and we thought we had them all," General Smith said.

Producers at "60 Minutes II" are not saying exactly how they got the photographs. But Jeff Fager, the executive producer, said, "We heard about someone who was outraged about it and thought that the public should know about it." ...

Officials said that the photographs showing psychological or physical abuse numbered in the hundreds, perhaps more than 1,000, with Mr. Rumsfeld hinting Friday that more may come out.

Among some prison personnel in Iraq, the photographs were apparently an open secret. "Some soldiers in Iraq had them — I'm hearing that soldiers were showing them to everybody," Mr. Lawson said. He said he did not have the original photos and did not turn them over to anyone.

The photographs have now turned soldiers like Mr. Lawson's nephew, Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick, and Pfc. Lynndie R. England into graphic symbols of military abuse. But for Mr. Lawson, they are evidence of a complete breakdown in training and authority in the Iraqi prison system.

He shared his frustration in his March 23 e-mail message to Mr. Hackworth's Web site, writing: "We have contacted the Red Cross, Congress both parties, Bill O'Reilly and many others. Nobody wants to touch this."

Less than five weeks later, images of his nephew — interviewed on "60 Minutes II" with Mr. Lawson's help — would be shown around the world. Far from untouchable, the story would become unavoidable.