News Compass

Monday, May 10, 2004

Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: The Alleged Masterminds Named John Israel AND Steven Stefanowicz "
(Steven Stefanowicz said he lives in Adelaide, Australia.)

Read here article in LA Times for more: "...In the last six months, U.S. Army commanders, Pentagon officials and military trainers have sought advice from Israeli intelligence and security officials on everything from how to set up roadblocks to the best way to bomb suspected guerrilla hide-outs in an urban area..."

Read here article in The Guardian (UK) for more ""...Israeli advisers are helping train US special forces in aggressive counter-insurgency operations in Iraq, including the use of assassination squads against guerrilla leaders, US intelligence and military sources said yesterday. The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has sent urban warfare specialists to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the home of US special forces, and according to two sources, Israeli military "consultants" have also visited Iraq."

For more on article below, read here Justin Raimondo's article "Abu Ghraib Defendants: Pawns in a Game"

Excerpts:

Army reservist Jeremy Sivits will be court-martialed for his alleged role in the abuse of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison on May 19. Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits, 24, is a member of the 372nd Military Police Company.

(His father, Daniel Sivits, said his son was trained as a truck mechanic, not a prison guard, and would have gotten in trouble had he not followed orders to photograph the abused prisoners. "Apparently, he was told to take a picture and he did what he was told. He was just following instructions" Daniel Sivits told The Associated Press in an interview late last month. Read here for more)

But the Tacuba report – the Army's own internal assessment of the situation at Abu Ghraib – affixed primary blame on FOUR OTHER individuals:
"Specifically, I suspect that COL Thomas M. Pappas, LTC Steve L. Jordan, Mr. Steven Stephanowicz, and Mr. John Israel were either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib (BCCF) and strongly recommend immediate disciplinary action as described in the preceding paragraphs as well as the initiation of a Procedure 15 Inquiry to determine the full extent of their culpability.

COL Thomas M. Pappas, Commander, 205th MI Brigade, be given a General Officer Memorandum of Reprimand and Investigated UP Procedure 15, AR 381-10, US Army Intelligence Activities for the following acts which have been previously referred to in the aforementioned findings:(i)Failing to ensure that Soldiers under his direct command were properly trained in and followed the IROE. (ii)Failing to ensure that Soldiers under his direct command knew, understood, and followed the protections, (iii) Failing to properly supervise his soldiers working and "visiting" Tier 1 of the Hard-Site at Abu Ghraib (BCCF).

LTC Steven L. Jordan, Former Director, Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center and Liaison Officer to 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, be relieved from duty and be given a General Officer Memorandum of Reprimand for the following acts which have been previously referred to in the aforementioned findings:(i) Making material misrepresentations to the Investigating Team, including his leadership roll at Abu Ghraib (BCCF).(ii)Failing to ensure that Soldiers under his direct control were properly trained in and followed the IROE.(iii)Failing to ensure that Soldiers under his direct control knew, understood, and followed the protections afforded to detainees in the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.(iv)Failing to properly supervise soldiers under his direct authority working and "visiting" Tier.

Steven Stephanowicz, Contract US Civilian Interrogator, CACI, 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, be given an Official Reprimand to be placed in his employment file, termination of employment, and generation of a derogatory report to revoke his security clearance for the following acts which have been previously referred to in the aforementioned findings:(i) Made a false statement to the investigation team the locations of his interrogations, the activities during his interrogations, and his knowledge of abuses: (ii)Allowed and/or instructed MPs, who were not trained in interrogation techniques, to facilitate interrogations by "setting conditions" which were neither authorized and in accordance with applicable regulations/policy. He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse.

John Israel, Contract US Civilian Interpreter, CACI, 205th Military Intelligence Brigade,be given an Official Reprimand to be placed in his employment file and have his security clearance reviewed by competent authority for the following acts or concerns which have been previously referred to in the aforementioned findings:(i) Denied ever having seen interrogation processes in violation of the IROE, which is contrary to several witness statements:Iii) Did NOT have a security clearance."
The two "civilian" contractors, John Israel and Stephen Stefanowicz, who share the blame with Pappas and Jordan, are the most intriguing characters in this fast developing drama, and the most mysterious

New York Times reported:
"The other contractor implicated, John Israel, identified as a civilian translator assigned to the same brigade, is described in one place in the Army report as a CACI employee and in another as an employee of Titan, which provides translators for the Army throughout Iraq."
Another article in The New York Times reported:
"Ralph Williams, a spokesman for the Titan Corporation in San Diego, said Tuesday that John Israel, one of the contract employees implicated in the prison abuse scandal, worked for a Titan subcontractor that he would not name."
The Taguba report describes Steven Stefanowicz as a "civilian Contract Interrogator" employed by CACI, and attached to 205th Military Intelligence Brigade. Taguba goes on to accuse him of having " made a false statement to the investigation team regarding the locations of his interrogations, the activities during his interrogations, and his knowledge of abuses."

Click here to CACI website

Click here CACI International quoted in website on Cooperation Between Israel and the State of Virginia

Click here Titan website on services

Steven Stefanowicz had been living in Adelaide, Australia.

As in the case of John Israel, we don't even know who employs Steven Stefanowicz. According to the Philadelphia Daily News:
"What's more, CACI International steadfastly refuses to even say whether Stefanowicz really does work for the Arlington, Virginia.-based defense contractor - refusing to return several phone calls and an e-mail from the Daily News."
As far as anyone knows, both Stefanowicz and John Israel are still stationed at Abu Ghraib, but, incredibly, the former is now telling his friends that he's coming home to Australia, where he worked for 18 months in the "information technology" field and where his fiancée lives.

As The Australian reports under the headline "Iraq 'torturer' calls Australia home":
"[Stefanowicz] wrote to an Adelaide friend on Thursday, saying he wanted to leave Iraq: 'It's safe to say I've seen enough for a lifetime here in Iraq and it's definitely time to come home,' the 35-year-old said in an email. …'He's coming back to Australia shortly – he feels like Adelaide is his home,' said one acquaintance from the IT industry.'"
It's all so very casual: a likely war criminal is going to just get on a plane and sashay over to Australia, where he'll take up where he left off and marry the girl of his dreams, his "anger" over 9/11 apparently abated.

Will Stefanowicz get away with it?

Will the U.S. authorities allow him to just run off, and take refuge in Australia or some other country, getting off scot-free while poor slobs like Sivits, Trailer-Park Lynndie, and the other fall guys get the book thrown at them?

If Stefanowicz is allowed to flee Iraq, without being arrested either by the Americans or the Iraqis, then we have the right to ask: who and what is being protected here?

That top U.S. officials knew and approved of how the detainees were "softened up" for interrogation is now coming out. Stefanowicz and John Israel, the two "civilian" contract employees, played key roles in all this, and are likely the primary links to high-ups.

Yet their role is being steadfastly ignored, and one of them is being allowed to sneak away quietly – while their instruments, a bunch of clueless kids who did as they were told, take the rap.

The cover-up proceeds apace, with our brain-dead "mainstream" media criminally complicit.

Everything about this war has been shrouded in secrecy and covered over by a thick layer of lies and subterfuges.

The "Office of Special Plans," the "White House Iraq Group," and other ad hoc semi-clandestine operations, set up by the neocons in the dark bowels of the national security bureaucracy, went outside regular channels and operated as essentially independent entities.

This war and its disastrous aftermath were engineered, reports Bob Woodward in his new book, Plan of Attack, by the Vice President and his neoconservative Praetorian Guard in a veritable coup d'etat:
"Powell felt Cheney and his allies – his chief aide, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and what Powell called Feith's 'Gestapo' office – had established what amounted to a separate government."
Could that "separate government" have sent its agents to Iraq – in the form of "private" contractors – and carried out its own military policy in the name of fighting the "war on terrorism" – by terroristic means?