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The Lucifer Effect
Next we turn to a special investigation ordered by Rumsfeld and headed not
by another general, but by former defense secretary James Schlesinger. This com-
mittee did not conduct new, independent investigations; rather, they interviewed
top military and Pentagon leaders, and their report offers us many important fea-
tures for the case we are building.
The Schlesinger Report Identifies Culpability
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This is the final investigative report we will present. It offers valuable evidence to
our case for the situational and systemic influences contributing to the abuses at
Abu Ghraib. Of special interest are its specification of many shortfalls in the de-
tention center operation, its pointing out leadership and command culpabilities,
and its revelation of the cover-up of the photos of abuse by the military after Joe
Darby took the photo CD to a military criminal investigator.
What struck me as most unexpected, and what was much appreciated in this
report, is the section devoted to detailing the relevance of social psychological re-
search to understanding the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Unfortunately, it is tucked away
in an Appendix (G) and is therefore likely not to be widely read. This addendum to
the Schlesinger Report also presents the apparent parallels between the Abu Ghraib
situation and the abuses that occurred during the Stanford Prison Experiment.
Widespread Military Abuses
First, the report notes the widespread nature of "abuse" across all U.S. military fa-
cilities. (The term "torture" is never used.) At that time, November 2 0 0 4 , there
were three hundred incidents of alleged detainee abuse in joint operation
areas, with sixty-six established as "abuse" by forces at Guantânamo and in
Afghanistan, and fifty-five more in Iraq. A third of these incidents were related to
interrogation, and at least five deaths of detainees were reported as having hap-
pened during interrogation. Two dozen additional cases of detainee deaths were
still under investigation at that time. This grim account seems to fill up the "vac-
uum" that Fay and Jones referred to in their report about the abuses on Tier 1 A.
Albeit they were the most visible instance of the abuses perpetrated by soldiers,
they may have been less horrible than the murders and mayhem in other military
detention facilities that we will visit later.
Major Problem Areas and Exacerbating Conditions
The Schlesinger Report identified five areas as major problems that fed into the
context of the abuses. They are:
• Inadequate mission-specific training of MPs and MI soldiers
• Equipment and resources shortfalls
• Pressure on interrogators to produce "actionable intelligence" (with inex-
perienced, untrained personnel and detainees who were in custody for as
long as ninety days before being interrogated)
Putting the System on Trial
399
• Leadership that was "weak," inexperienced, and operating within a con-
fused, overly complex structure
• The CIA operating under its own rules, without accountability to anyone
in the military command structure
The report also specifies a number of prevailing conditions that exacerbated
the difficult task facing the soldiers in the Abu Ghraib Prison, notably those on the
hard site in Tier 1 A. It lists the following conditions that impacted the MPs and
MIs on that tier:
• The fear besetting MPs given that the facility was under frequent hostile
fire from mortar and rocket-propelled grenades
• Detainee escape attempts were numerous
• Several riots in the prison
• MI and MP seriously underresourced
• MI and MP lack of unit cohesion and midlevel leadership
• Reserve MI and MP units had lost senior NCOs and other personnel
through rotation back to the United States and/or reassignment
• 3 72nd MP soldiers were not trained for prison guard duty
• Thinly stretched in dealing with the large number of detainees
• 8 0 0 t h MP was among the lowest units in priority and did not have the
capability to overcome the shortfalls it confronted
• Lack of discipline and standards of behavior were not established or en-
forced
• No clear delineation of responsibility between commands and little coordi-
nation; lax and dysfunctional command structure
• Weak and ineffective leaders; top leaders failed to ensure that subordinates
were properly trained and supervised
• Some medical personnel failed to report detainee abuses that they had wit-
nessed and provided tacit approval as bystanders
• "Secretary Rumsfeld publicly declared he directed one detainee be held se-
cretly at the request of the Director of Central Intelligence." That action
provided a model of deception at the highest levels of command, which
was emulated in various ways by others in command at Abu Ghraib.
What We Have Here Is Again a Failure of Leadership
Again and again, this report makes evident the total failure of leadership at every
level and its contribution to the abuses by the MPs on the notorious night shift:
The aberrant behavior on the night shift in cell block 1 at Abu Ghraib
would have been avoided with proper training, leadership, and oversight.
These abuses . . . represent deviant behavior and a failure of leader-
ship and discipline.
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