Pray and Tell

Jack Cloonan has done his share of terror interrogations. Instead of torture, he recommends prayer rugs and figs. Yes, figs.

By Jason Vest
Issue Date: 07.03.05

On May 13, 2004, as the world media were in full scrum over Abu Ghraib, an FBI agent who had spent time interviewing terrorism suspects at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, fired off a gloomy e-mail to a colleague. Venting about what had happened in Iraq and expressing his fears that, despite the scandal’s coverage, nothing would change, much of the agent’s angst had to do with post–September 11 notions that treating terrorism suspects as human beings was neither necessary nor useful.

“From what CNN reports, [General Janis] Karpinski at Abu Ghraib said that [General Geoffrey] Miller came to the prison several months ago and told her they wanted to ‘gitmoize’ Abu Ghraib,” he wrote. “If this refers to [intelligence] gathering as I suspect, it suggests that he has continued to support interrogation strategies we not only advised against, but questioned in terms of effectiveness … we were surprised to read an article in Stars and Stripes, in which [General] Miller is quoted as saying that he believes in the rapport-building approach. This is not what he was saying at [Guantanamo Bay] when I was there.”