Iraq: Inside Abu Ghraib: Why Did They Do It?

For all the tangled nudes, the hideous hoods, the dangling wires and the dog leash, perhaps the single most shocking thing about the images from Abu Ghraib prison is the woman in so many of the pictures: smiling broadly or giving a thumbs up or just standing casually in the demented scene as if posing in a college dorm. It’s the all-American face of Private First Class Lynndie England. The girl next door, a Jessica Lynch gone wrong.

What forces, internal or external, could have brought this diminutive, 21-year-old woman and her six accused comrades to this appalling pass? There is no shortage of explanations. From the moment the atrocities at Abu Ghraib came to light, military commanders, members of the Administration and, indeed, the Commander in Chief were quick to label those implicated as “bad apples.” As President Bush put it, they are an exceptional “few” whose actions “do not reflect the nature of the men and women who serve our country.” The families and friends of the accused, of course, say the very opposite is true: these are normal, patriotic Americans who put their lives on the line to serve their country but went astray because they followed orders. Psychologists and historians who study torture give what is probably the most disturbing explanation of all: they are us. For under certain circumstances, almost anyone has the capacity to commit the atrocities seen in the photos that have shocked the world.

An Iraqi prison couldn’t be further from home for those facing career-ending charges in the scandal. The 372nd Military Police Company, a unit of reservists based in a one-story brick building in Cresaptown, Md., draws most of its members from small, down-at-the-heels towns in the green valleys of Appalachia. Many sign on as teenagers, as England did, to get college benefits. Others, like Staff Sergeant Ivan (Chip) Frederick, are eager to see a bit of the world. Patriotism runs deep in this part of the country, and recruitment ads for the armed services constantly stream in on local radio.

Members of the 372nd were a tight-knit group that was deployed to Bosnia in 2001, according to Kerry Shoemaker-Davis of Fort Ashby, W.Va., who left the unit that year but whose husband remains with the 372nd in Iraq. After drills, she relates, members would head to the Big Claw bar near headquarters for beer, buffalo wings, karaoke and the raunchy jokes that the mostly male company loved to tell. “Oh, yeah, we would party,” she says. “We would take the place over” and often shut it down at 2 a.m.

Shoemaker-Davis knows four of the people accused in the prisoner-abuse scandal, plus the whistle-blower, Joseph Darby. And, like other friends and acquaintances, she has trouble squaring the folks she knows with what she sees in the photos. “I think they were doing what they were told, but that doesn’t excuse it,” she says. “The people I knew would have said, ‘No. Kiss my butt.'”

Lynndie England joined the unit at age 17, having insisted to her parents that she finance her own college education. Independent and tomboyish, England had enough of a wild streak to enjoy standing outside during thunderstorms and even a twister. She dreamed of becoming a storm-chasing meteorologist, says her family. At 19, she surprised many by impulsively marrying a friend. Says Shoemaker-Davis: “When she was was on leave from Bosnia, she ran up to me laughing in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven and said, ‘Look what I did!’ and showed me her ring.” The marriage was brief and the divorce amicable.

Shoemaker-Davis, who counts England as a good friend, says the “tiny” private was well liked in the company and often volunteered for tasks outside her official job as an office clerk. “Even though she was in administration, when platoons went out, if we needed another person, we would have to fight over her. She was awesome. A quick study, very sharp.” Shoemaker-Davis describes England’s formula for proving herself to the men as Be strong, train hard, don’t be afraid to break a nail or get as dirty and stinky as the guys.

The most senior member of the 372nd facing charges in the Abu Ghraib abuses is Frederick, 37, who has served with the company for 20 years. Frederick was just short of qualifying for a full pension when he was mobilized last year. Married, with two stepdaughters, ages 14 and 18, Frederick has a civilian job as a guard at a medium-security Virginia prison, where his wife Martha also works. His uncle William Lawson describes him as “very laid back” and “a practical joker.” Shoemaker-Davis sees him as a “tough guy,” used to being in charge: “He has a very strong personality. He’s a prankster and likes to do your typical rude guy things. He’s quite the belcher.”

Specialist Charles Graner, 35, a former Marine, is also a prison guard, having worked since 1996 at a maximum-security prison in southwestern Pennsylvania. Those who subscribe to the bad-apple theory of what went wrong can find a few nasty morsels to chew on in Graner’s biography. He has a history of violence against his ex-wife Staci, who has obtained at least three restraining orders against him since they separated in 1997. According to the New York Times, Staci charged in a 1998 court document that “Charles picked me up and threw me against the wall” and also sneaked into her home at night. “I just don’t think this is normal behavior.” Prisoner abuse was a problem at the penitentiary where Graner worked, but he was not implicated in a 1998 scandal that led to the firing or transfer of 24 guards. The divorced Graner became romantically involved with England while serving in Iraq, and England’s family has confirmed through its attorney that she is about five months pregnant with Graner’s child.

Although most members of the group formed strong bonds, Darby and Frederick had their differences. “He and Freddie didn’t get along very well,” Shoemaker-Davis says, although she doubts this explains why Darby blew the whistle. “I believe that in his heart he thought he was doing the right thing.”

Unlike some military-police units, which specialize in handling prisoners of war, the 372nd trained mainly as traffic cops. “We would do traffic stops, pulling people over and questioning them,” says Shoemaker-Davis. “We never actually did anything you’d use in a prison.” Their first assignment in Iraq last summer was in keeping with their training: acting as traffic cops, leading convoys, keeping roads open.

The 372nd reservists were assigned duty at Abu Ghraib in October. There, according to Army investigators, the chain of command got badly muddled. Army regulations limit the intelligence-gathering role of MPs to passive collection, but members of the 372nd found themselves fielding requests from military intelligence (MI) officers, who were in charge of part of the prison. In his investigation of the abuses, Major General Antonio Taguba found that MPs were “actively requested” by MI officers and private contractors to “set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses.” Taguba took testimony supporting this from several of those who were eventually charged, including Specialist Sabrina Harman, 26, and Sergeant Javal Davis, 26. In a sworn statement, Harman told investigators, “It is Graner and Frederick’s job to do things for MI and OGA [other government agencies] to get these people to talk.” Her own job, she said, was to stress detainees by keeping them awake.

E-mails that Frederick sent home suggest he took pride in his role in “softening up” detainees for the MI staff. “They usually don’t allow others to watch them interrogate, but since they like the way I run the prison, they make an exception,” he told a family member in an e-mail shared with TIME. The sergeant also boasted, “We have a very high [success] rate with our style of getting them to break. They usually end up breaking within a couple of hours.” Around the time military officials launched a criminal investigation, Frederick’s e-mails started to include qualms about his Abu Ghraib duties. In January he wrote, “I questioned some of the things that I saw.” And not every MP agreed to go along. The Taguba report says Specialist Jason Kennel declined to do MI’s dirty work without formal paperwork.

Confronted with indisputable photographic evidence of malfeasance, defenders of the Abu Ghraib seven offer testimony as to what they say is the true character of their friends and loved ones. Sabrina Harman is so tenderhearted, attests her stepmother Patricia Harman, “she picks up bugs and puts them outside” rather than kill them. England, said her sister Jessica Klinestiver, would give money to anyone who needed it. Frederick, his uncle insists, was no prisoner abuser back home but “actually saved the life of a prisoner who was hanging himself. He got him down and got him breathing,” says Lawson. “He received an award from the Governor of Virginia.”

As for the photos, says Klinestiver, “I believe they were posed.” England’s grin, she insists, was aimed at her friends behind the camera, not the humiliated detainees. Lawson contends that the photos were staged so they could be used to intimidate new prisoners. “It was a psychological tool,” he insists, to “loosen up these prisoners for these interrogators.”

How much was ordered by higher-ups and how much was free-lance sadism will presumably become clearer when the accused men and women of the 372nd face the criminal-justice system. The equivalent of a grand jury that is under way will probably lead in coming weeks to courts-martial that could result in punitive discharges or imprisonment. Frederick, who was in charge of the others and thus appears to be most culpable, is likely to be tried first. He and five others facing charges remain on duty in Iraq, although the unit has been transferred out of Abu Ghraib. England has been sent to Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

Some observers in the military believe the nudity and sexual humiliations staged at Abu Ghraib are not all that different from the crude hazing and horseplay that are commonplace among servicemen. In his 2003 book Jarhead: A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles, author and former Marine Anthony Swofford describes how his unit staged a “field f___,” a simulated mass rape of one Marine by others, to let off steam and entertain a visiting journalist. Says Swofford of the scenes at Abu Ghraib: “We can be assured that somewhere on American military bases throughout the world, some people are treating their peers the same way.”

On the other hand, some experts on torture deeply doubt that members of an MP company from a small town could have come up with something like the pose seen in one of the most infamous images from Abu Ghraib–one in which a hooded prisoner stands on a box with electrical wires connected to his arms and genitals. The photo could have been a textbook illustration of a classic torture method known as crucifixion, says Darius Rejali, an associate professor of political science at Reed College and author of Torture and Modernity. This kind of standing torture was used by the Gestapo and by Stalin, he says, although the wires and the threat of electrocution if you fell were a Brazilian police innovation. “You don’t learn this sort of thing in West Virginia,” says Rejali. “Somebody had to tell these soldiers what the parameters were for their behavior.”

Psychologists who have studied torture and prisoner abuse say it is remarkably easy for people to lapse into sadistic behavior when they have complete power over other human beings, especially if they feel the behavior has been sanctioned by an authority figure. In a classic series of studies conducted at Yale in the 1960s, psychologist Stanley Milgram showed that psychologically healthy volunteers did not hesitate to administer what they thought were electric shocks to another human being when instructed to do so by a researcher. Two-thirds followed instructions and kept raising the voltage–right up to levels marked DANGER: SEVERE SHOCK and XXX. Milgram found that compliance was greatest when participants couldn’t see the face of their subject (although they could hear an actor’s fake screams) and when they took their instructions from an official-looking scientist in a white lab coat.

In a 1971 experiment that is perhaps even more relevant to Abu Ghraib, Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo created a fake prison ward on campus and randomly assigned student volunteers to be prisoners or guards. What was to be a two-week experiment had to be cut short after just six days because the guards “began to use the prisoners as playthings for their amusement,” recalled Zimbardo. “They would get them to simulate sodomy. They also stripped prisoners naked for various offenses and put them in solitary for excessive periods.”

Zimbardo and other psychologists who have studied torture and sadism by prison guards and soldiers believe that most abuse can be traced to group dynamics and circumstances rather than to individual personalities. “During actual wars, if there isn’t any particular command figure in charge who puts a stop to it, it can spread like a psychological epidemic,” says Israeli psychiatrist Dr. Ilan Kutz. “Even people who think of themselves as very moral people, if other people are doing it, that makes it O.K.” In prisons, Zimbardo has concluded, abuse is virtually guaranteed if three key components are not present: clear rules, a staff that is well trained in those rules and tight management that includes punishment for violations. All three seemed to be lacking in Abu Ghraib, he says. It’s not that the place held a few bad apples; it’s that “the barrel itself was rotten.” –With reporting by Melissa August and Perry Bacon Jr./Washington; Mike Billips/Atlanta; Simon Crittle, Julie Rawe and Amanda Ripley/New York; Kay Johnson/Palo Alto; Siobhan Morrissey/Miami; and Nathan Thornburgh/Fort Ashby