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Spectacular catch : an Iraq Prison Diary

by Open-Publishing - Tuesday 4 May 2004
1 comment

Edito Wars and conflicts International Prison


by Billmon

Bernhard, a Whiskey Bar reader in Germany, has made a spectacular catch or
cache, I should say, since it comes from the bowels of the Google data base.


What he stumbled across is the diary of
one Joe Ryan, a frequent caller and on-air
personality at station KSTP, a conservative
talk radio station in Minneapolis. More recently, Joe has been serving as a military
interrogator at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and KSTP has been posting his diary
on their web site.

For some strange reason, though, the radio station recently removed Joe’s diary
from its site. Unfortunately for KSTP - and, I suspect, for Joe - the page has
been cached by Google. A copy also now resides on my hard drive.

The diary is a fascinating read - not least because it documents the fact that
as of last Sunday, one of the private contractors identified in the Army’s own
internal investigation of the torture scandal was still at Abu Ghraib, and may
still have been supervising or conducting interrogations.

The contactor’s name is Steven Stephanowicz, and he works for CACI International one of two firms that have been publically linked to the abuses in Abu Ghraib’s
high-security cell block. CACI has told the Los
Angeles Times
that it " knew
of no allegations of abuse" against it’s employees. But here’s what Sy Hersh
reported on the New
Yorker web site
:

General Taguba urged that a civilian contractor, Steven Stephanowicz, of
CACI International, be fired from his Army job, reprimanded, and denied his security
clearances for lying to the investigating team and allowing or ordering military
policemen "who were not trained in interrogation techniques to facilitate interrogations
by ’setting conditions’ which were neither authorized" nor in accordance with
Army regulations. "He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse," Taguba
wrote.


According to Hersh, Taguba’s report was completed in late February. And yet,
here’s what Joe Ryan, our radio personality turned military interrogator, put
in his diary entry for April 25:

I got to take the rest of the day off after our long booth time. This gave
us a nice evening after dinner to head to the roof and play a round of golf.
Scott Norman, Jeff Mouton, Steve Hattabaugh, Steve Stefanowicz, and I all took
turns trying to hit balls over the back wall and onto the highway.


Unless there have been two Steve Stefanowicz/Stephanowiczs working as interrogators
at Abu Ghraib, it appears the Army not only ignored Gen. Tagabu’s recommendation
that Stephanowicz be fired and stripped of his security clearances, it didn’t
do anything about him at all — leaving Mr. Stephanowicz free to continue his "work" at
the prison (with time off for the occasional round of golf.)

I think this gives us a pretty good idea of how serious the Army was about correcting
these abuses up until the point where they were splashed all across the global
media.

Which in turn lends a particular poignancy to this line from a letter CBS received
following its 60 Minutes II broadcast on Abu Ghraib:

Do you really think this
is going to help this situation? Don’t you think the government can correct this
situation without you publicizing it? Of course they can."


I’m going to post this now, then update later with some more excerpts from Joe
Ryan’s prison diary. It’s fascinating stuff, but I want to get the news about
Stephanowicz out there as quickly as possible.

And thanks again to Bernhard for a truly stellar catch.

Update 8:50 PM ET: It appears it is at least possible that the "Steve Stefanowicz" mentioned
in Joe Ryan’s diary is not the same as the "Steven Stephanowicz" mentioned, according
to Sy Hersh, in the Army’s internal report.

There is a Steven Stefanowicz cited in a two-year old American Forces Information
Services article as being (at that time) a Navy petty officer on active duty
in the Middle East. A commenter on this thread (peg, at 6:38 pm) asserts that
official DOD records show this Stefanowicz is an intelligence specialist. I have
not been able to verify this information.

It is possible, I suppose, that a Navy intelligence guy named Steven Stefanowicz
has been working as an interrogator at Abu Ghraib prison at or about the same
time that a CACI contractor named Steve Stephanowicz was also working as an interrogator
there. Stranger things have happened.

It appears from Hersh’s article that many, if not most of the contractors working
in the prison had military backgrounds. So it would also seem possible that the
Steven Stefanowicz mentioned by the AFIS has since left the Navy and gone to
work as a private contractor.

In other words, Stefanowicz and Stephanowicz may be the same person, and somebody
along the way may have simply messed up the spelling of their last name. Once
again, though, I cannot prove or disprove any of these theories.

04.05.2004
Collective Bellaciao

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