Major General Geoffrey Miller

Major General Geoffrey Miller, as commander at the tightly-controlled prison camp al Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, should be investigated for his potential responsibility in the war crimes and acts of torture committed against detainees there.

Gen. Miller was commander of Joint Task Force-Guantánamo (JTF-GTMO) from November 2002 until April 2004, when he became deputy commanding general of detention operations in Iraq, the position he currently holds.

Gen. Miller knew or should have known that troops under his command were committing war crimes and acts of torture against detainees at Guantánamo

As commander of JTF-Guantánamo, Gen. Miller oversaw both military intelligence and military police functions. Ilis mission was "to integrate both the detention and intelligence function to produce actionable intelligence for the nation..... operational and strategic intelligence to help the [United States] win the global war on terror.”29% Before Gen. Miller was brought to Guantánamo, his predecessor in charge of detention, Brigadier General Rick Baccus, was reportedly accused by Pentagon officials of interfering with interrogation by "coddling" detainees for addressing them with words such as "peace be with you,” and “may God be with you," promising them that they would be "treated humanely," and authorizing placement in the camp of ICRC posters specifying certain rights that prisoners have under the Geneva Conventions.297 Under Gen. Miller, detention and interrogation functions were brought together for the first time. The Schlesinger panel described the use of interrogation techniques at Guantánamo as "carefully controlled.”298 Church described the “strict command oversight” and “controlled conditions.”299

Because no independent monitors with the ability to publicly report on conditions have been able to visit Guantánamo, it is difficult to get a complete picture of practices under Gen. Miller. However based on the testimony of people released from Guantánamo, as well as evidence that has been released as a result of litigation, it appears that under Gen. Miller's command, detainees at Guantánamo were frequently subject to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The ICRC has reportedly described the psychological and sometimes physical

298

297

Testimony of General Miller, Senate Armed Forces Committee, Hearing on Iraq Prisoner Abuse, May 19, 2004.

See Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, "Inside the Ring," The Washington Times, October 4, 2002; David Rose, Guantánamo (New York, The New Press, 2004), p. 85; "GITMO Camp Commander Relieved," The Washington Post, October 14, 2002.

coercion on prisoners at Guantánamo as "tantamount to torture." Among tactics that appear to have regularly been in use are prolonged sleep deprivation and shackling prisoners in uncomfortable “stress positions” for many hours.301

Released detainees also describe: threats with unmuzzled dogs; forced stripping, being photographed naked; being intentionally subjected to extremes of heat and cold for the purpose of causing suffering, being kept around the clock in filthy cages with no exercise or sanitation; denial of access to necessary medical care; deprivation of adequate food, sleep, communication with family and friends, and of information about their status, and violent beatings.302

In one case, military intelligence officials and interrogators told The New York Times that Mohammed al-Kahtani, a Saudi detainee, was put on a plane, blindfolded, and made to believe that he was being flown to the Middle East. After several hours in the air, the plane returned to Guantánamo and al-Kahtani was allegedly put in an isolation cell for several months, hidden from the ICRC, and subjected to harsh interrogations conducted by people he was encouraged to believe were Egyptian security agents. Al-Kahtani was reportedly forcibly given an enema because it was uncomfortable and degrading. 303

The Times also reported that:

[Interviews with former intelligence officers and interrogators provided new
details and confirmed earlier accounts of inmates being shackled for hours and
left to soil themselves while exposed to blaring music or the insistent meowing
of a cat-food commercial. In addition, some may have been forcibly given
enemas as punishment.

While all the detainees were threatened with harsh tactics if they did not cooperate, about one in six were eventually subjected to those procedures, one former interrogator estimated. The interrogator said that when new interrogators arrived they were told they had great flexibility in extracting information from detainees because the Geneva Conventions did not apply at the base.304

300 Neil A. Lewis, "Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantánamo," The New York Times, November 30, 2004.

301

See Human Rights Watch, "Guantánamo Detainee Accounts," A Human Rights Watch Backgrounder, October 2004 [online], http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/usa/gitmo1004/; Center for Constitutional Rights, "Report of Former Guantanamo Detainees, August 4, 2004 [online], http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/reports/docs/GitmocompositestatementFINAL23july04.pdf.

303 Neil A. Lewis, "Fresh details emerge on harsh methods at Guantánamo," The New York Times, January 1, 2005. Ibid.

304

Documents released to the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit paint a bleak picture of the treatment of Guantánamo detainees under Gen. Miller. In particular, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation express their shock at techniques used on detainees. In one e-mail, an FBI agent wrote:

Here is a brief summary of what I observed at GTMO. On a couple of
occassions (sic), I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and
foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food, or water. Most times
they had urinated or defacated (sic) on themselves and had been left there for
18, 24 hours or more. On one occassion (sic), the air conditioning had been
turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the
barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. When I asked the [military police]
what was going on, I was told that interrogators from the day prior had ordered
this treatment, and the detainee was not to be moved. On another occassion
(sic), the A/C had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated
room probably well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on
the floor with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling
his own hair out throughout the night. On another occassion (sic), not only was
the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played
in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand
and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor. 305

Another FBI agent reported seeing a detaince "sitting on the floor of the interview room with an Israeli flag draped around him, loud music being played and a strobe light flashing." In another recently-declassified FBI e-mail, the author writes:

from what cnn reports, gen karpinsky at abu gharib (sic) said that gen miller
came to the prison several months ago and told her they wanted to "gitmotize”
abu ghraib. i am not sure what this means. however, if this refers to intell
gathering as i suspect, it suggests he has continued to support interrogation
strategies we not only advised against, but questioned in terms of effectiveness.

yesterday, however, we were surprised to read an article in stars and stripes, in
which gen. miller is quoted as saying that he believes in the rapport-building
approach. this is not what was saying at gitmo when i was there. [redacted] and i

305

American Civil Liberties Union, E-mail from [redacted] to [redacted], August 2, 2004 [online], www.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/FBI_5053_5054.pdf (though this was written in 2004, it was recalling earlier events).

did cart wheels. the battles fought in gitmo while gen. miller he was there are on
the record.

Recently-revealed videotapes of so-called "Immediate Reaction Forces" (or "Extreme Reaction Force" (ERF)) reportedly show guards punching some detainees, a guard kneeing a detainee in the head, tying one to a gurney for questioning and forcing a dozen to strip from the waist down. One guard squad was all-female, traumatizing some Muslim prisoners. 306

Between 2002 and 2004, Gen. Miller met on several occasions with the ICRC, which made him aware of their evolving concerns over the treatment of detainees. In October 2003, the ICRC conducted more than 500 interviews at Guantánamo before meeting with Miller and his top aides. According to defense department documents,307 the ICRC told Miller of its concern over the lack of a legal system for the detainees, the continued use of steel cages, the “excessive use of isolation" and the lack of repatriation for the detainees. The ICRC felt that the interrogators had “too much control over the basic needs of detainees... the interrogators have total control over the level of isolation in which detainees were kept, the level of comfort items detainees can receive, and the access to basic needs of the detainees." According to the documents, Gen. Miller responded that interrogation techniques were not the ICRC's concern. The ICRC countered that those methods and the lengths of interrogations were coercive and having a "cumulative effect" on the mental health of the detainees.308

One of the detainees whom Gen. Miller refused to show to the ICRC as recently as February 2, 2004, was Abdallah Tabarak, a Moroccan citizen and allegedly Osama bin Laden's personal bodyguard. According to a Department of Defense memo, Gen. Miller told the ICRC that "Because of military necessity, the ICRC may not have private talks with him.” Tabarak was transferred to Morocco in August 2004. In December 2004, he reportedly said that in Guantánamo, he had been beaten, given forcible injections, and held in a dark cell which left him with eyesight problems. 309

306

Paisley Dodds, "Guantánamo Tapes Show Teams Punching, Stripping Prisoners," Associated Press, February 1, 2005. In November 2002, just before Miller arrived, U.S. National Guardsman Spc. Sean Baker was allegedly abused by an ERF while posing undercover as a detainee. Baker was told to put on an orange jumpsuit and crawl under a bunk in a cell. According to Baker, the ERF members "grabbed my arms, my legs, twisted me up and unfortunately one of the individuals got up on my back from behind and put pressure down on me while I was facedown. Then he - the same individual — reached around and began to choke me and press my head down against the steel floor. After several seconds, twenty to thirty seconds, it seemed like an eternity because I couldn't breathe, I began to panic..." Baker was evacuated to a hospital in Virginia, and was later sent to an Army hospital for treatment of traumatic brain injury and he has been plagued by seizures ever since. See David Rose, Guantánamo (New York, The New Press, 2004), pp. 72-74. These documents are collected at "Conditions at Guantánamo Bay: DoD Documents Detail Red Cross Comments on Detainee Treatment and Actions Taken in Response," The Washington Post, June 18, 2004 [online],

307

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/documents/gitmomemos.html.

308 See also Scott Higham, "A Look Behind the 'Wire' at Guantánamo: Defense Memos Raise Questions about Detainee Treatment as Red Cross Sought Changes," The Washington Post, June 13, 2004.

309 See Amnesty International, "United States of America: Guantánamo - An Icon of Lawlessness," January 6, 2005.

In June 2004, shortly after Gen. Miller left Guantánamo, the ICRC conducted a full visit and concluded (in the words of The New York Times, which obtained a memorandum based on the ICRC report that quotes from it in detail and lists its major findings):

[Investigators had found a system devised to break the will of the prisoners at
Guantánamo... and make them dependent on their interrogators through
"humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced
positions."... [T]he methods used were increasingly “more refined and
repressive" than what the Red Cross learned about on previous visits. "The
construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of
intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel,
unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture.” It said that in addition
to the exposure to loud and persistent noise and music and to prolonged cold,
derainees were subjected to “some beatings.”310

Thus, there is a mounting body of evidence that acts of torture and war crimes were committed at Guantánamo, and that Gen. Miller, as the commander of the tightly-controlled camp, knew or should have known about these crimes.

Gen. Miller may have proposed interrogation methods for Iraq which were the proximate cause of the torture and war crimes committed at Abu Ghraib

As discussed above, the most severe abuses at Abu Ghraib occurred just after Gen. Miller went to Iraq to advise Gen. Sanchez on the hunt for “actionable intelligence” among Iraqi prisoners.

Gen Janis Karpinski, commander of the 800 Military Police Brigade with authority over the U.S. prison facilities in Iraq, said that Miller "came up there and told me he was going to 'Gitmoize' the detention operation."311 Miller has denied using this word.312

As Gen. Taguba highlighted in his report, Miller recommended that “the guard force be actively engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees.” As the Fay report makes clear, Gen. Sanchez "relied heavily on the series of SOPs [standard operating procedures] which MG G. Miller provided to develop not only the structure, but also the interrogation policies for detainee operations."

310

Neil A. Lewis, "Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantánamo," The New York Times, November 30, 2004. 311 Scott Wilson and Sewell Chan, "As Insurgency Grew, So Did Prison Abuse," The Washington Post, May 9, 2004. Testimony of Gen. Miller, Senate Armed Services Committee, Hearing on Iraq Prison Abuse, May 19, 2004 ("Senator, I did not tell General Karpinski I was going to Gitmo-ize Abu Ghraib. I don't believe I've ever used that terme - ever").

312