Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski met Israeli interrogator in Iraq
Mon Jul 5, 2004 02:40
64.140.158.19


Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, US general says met Israeli interrogator in Iraq

SCV NEWSMAKER OF THE WEEK:
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski
Fmr. Commander, 800th Military Police Brigade
http://www.scvhistory.com/scvhistory/signal/iraq/sg070404.htm

Sunday, July 4, 2004
(Telephone interview conducted June 29, 2004)

**MEDIA—MANDATORY CREDIT: The Signal newspaper of Santa Clarita, Calif.
**OK to republish in whole or part for news purposes WITH CREDIT.

"Newsmaker of the Week" is presented by the SCV Press Club and Comcast, and hosted by Signal City Editor Leon Worden. The program premieres every Wednesday at 9:30 p.m. on SCVTV Channel 20, repeating Sundays at 8:30 a.m.
This week's newsmaker is Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, former commander of the U.S. Army's 800th Military Police Brigade in Iraq. The following interview (rt: 2:10) was conducted by telephone on Tuesday, June 29, 2004.

Signal: Gen. Karpinski, thank you very much for joining us today.

Karpinski: My pleasure. Thank you for your interest.

Signal: Please give us a thumbnail sketch of your background. You live in South Carolina now; where did you grow up?

Karpinski: I grew up and I lived most of my life in New Jersey. My sisters and my brothers all still live in New Jersey, so I'm up there quite a bit. Went to school in New Jersey.

Signal: Did you go to college before joining the Army?

Karpinski: Yes I did. I studied English and secondary education.

Signal: Did you ever teach high school?

Karpinski: I did, as a long-term permanent substitute for about a year and a half.

Signal: And then — you up and decided to join the Army?

Karpinski: No, it wasn't a spur-of-the-moment thing. I'd really been interested in the military since I was about five years old. My best recollection of that — I didn't grow up in a military family or anything, but my best recollection of that is, I saw some photographs that my mother had in a box in what we called the "cedar closet," and I was going through that box when I was really young, and I saw a picture of my father with his uniform on. And I thought, gee, this is so neat, and I talked to him about it. And in that same box was his hat, one of his hats that he had worn, and I put that thing on my head, and my mother said that I would wear it around the house as often I could get away with it.

Signal: At the risk of dating you, who was president when you signed up?

Karpinski: When I signed up? Gee, that's something I should know right away, right? I think it was probably Nixon.

Signal: Did you come from a Republican or Democratic household?

Karpinski: My mother was, as far as she was concerned — she was part of the Republican Committee in New Jersey, and then she was a committeewoman for Union County in New Jersey. My grandfather was part of the Republican Committee for the state of New Jersey and went to all of the Republican national conventions. My mother believed that there was one party, and I grew up in that kind of environment.

Signal: You're Army Reserve now, but you signed up with the regular Army?

Karpinski: Yes, I did.

Signal: How long did you serve?

Karpinski: Just short of 10 years. It was something that I — like I said, I was very interested in being in the military, and then managed to do that when I realized I probably did not want to teach school at that particular point in my life. And everything fell into place. The recruiter stopped by; I talked about going to jump (airborne) school, and he said I could probably do that; the only limitation was that I was a female — and that wasn't about to change. But we worked through that, too, and I went off to basic training down at Ft. McClellan, Ala.
At that time they still had the Women's Army Corps, but they cased the colors and they closed that program. They retired the Women's Army Corps while I was actually going through training at Ft. McClellan. And then we went into full integration — it was supposed to be a seamless integration — to mainstream us into the different branches that were open to women at the time. And we were not always welcome with open arms by any of those organizations.

Signal: Was it kind of a boys' club?

Karpinski: Oh, absolutely. We were intruders. And my first company commander — I was a lieutenant, had just come from jump school and arrived at Ft. Bragg, and my first company commander told me that he didn't agree with women being in the military police. He didn't agree with women being in any of the branches. "Go back to being WACs." And actually he was married to a woman who wanted to be a mother and be a wife, and that's the position he thought all women should be in.

Signal: Why did you ultimately leave the Army?

Karpinski: Why did I opt to leave the army?

Signal: Yes, after 10 years.

Karpinski: Well, it was just short of 10 years, and I kind of put that mark on the wall — that if I didn't feel like there (were) going to be opportunities, and the outside world was more interesting or presented more opportunities, then I was going to do that. So I did.

Signal: As a civilian, what do you do for a living?

Karpinski: Well, I was doing a lot of training in different corporations and doing corporate improvement programs. I don't mean to say that I got into it by default — but when I was living in Atlanta, I was doing, on a voluntary basis, I was doing Volunteers in Literacy, and I had the opportunity to teach some — provide reading lessons to some pretty powerful people. And then I left and went over to the Middle East during Desert Storm because I was a reservist at the time.

Signal: What did you do in 1991 Desert Storm?

Karpinski: Well, I was assigned to 3rd United States Army; the headquarters was at Ft. McPherson, Ga. And they deployed — the concept that 3rd Army applies is — and it really does work — they have active components, they have reserve components, and they have a civilian work force, and everybody works together. When you have a uniform on, there is no distinction between whether you are a reservist or whether you are active component because you have a job to do and you make a contribution. So they deployed an early entry cell. I was a targeting officer for 3rd Army. And Gen. Schwarzkopf wanted the targeteers there as early as possible, so we deployed very, very early on, after the Iraqis crossed the border and invaded Kuwait.

Signal: In addition to an operational background, don't you have some kind of background in military intelligence?

Karpinski: I do, but it's really from a different perspective. As a targeting officer, I looked at the types of targets; we prepared what they called target folders — it talked about the construction materials; it talked about the value of hitting that particular target; that kind of thing.
And my other experience with intelligence was at the tactical level, because I had a tour with special operations, so I had to develop the intel for the locations that they were going to.

Signal: Fast-forwarding, how did you become commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade? Basically, you were America's chief jailer in Iraq, right?

Karpinski: I was. Yes. I was.

Signal: Is that something you asked to do? You wanted to be a prison warden?

Karpinski: No. As a matter of fact, I was over in the Middle East — following Desert Storm, I stayed as an adviser in the United Arab Emirates, for developing women's military training programs. I stayed there for almost six years and learned a tremendous amount about Islam and about the Arab mentality, and about how their culture is. I have tremendous respect for them.
Then I was getting ready to come back to the United States and I got a packet to put in for command opportunities as a battalion commander. So I applied for command of a military police battalion and was selected, and my battalion was in Tallahassee, Fla. And it was an EPW, an Enemy Prisoner of War, battalion. So I spent my time as a battalion commander doing EPW-type of training. And then I left there and went into really operational assignments, generic kind of assignments, chief of staff, branch and material, as they call them.
So when I was eligible for general officer, my battalion, even as a reserve battalion, was subordinate to the 800th Military Police Brigade. The commander at the time asked me, what did I see in the future? What did I want to do? And I said, "I really love operations, and then eventually I'd like to take your job." So he said, "Well, this is the best MP assignment in the reserve component." So that was my first choice.
You have to — the process for applying for different positions as a general officer is a little bit complicated and it's not really that important, but that was my first choice. So I was actually very pleased when I came out on the general officers list and I was selected for command of the 800th Military Police Brigade. It was a privilege and I was just absolutely thrilled with that opportunity.

Signal: What was you military rank at that time?

Karpinski: I was a colonel. I was an 0-6, and I was the chief of staff to the largest reserve command in the United States. So I was selected and I knew that they were already deployed, and did as much homework as I could on the status of the units and how many people they had cross-leveled and their numbers and everything. It was not a good picture, actually, but I wanted to go and serve with my soldiers in a combat zone. I really wanted to do that.

Signal: So when you took over, many of your soldiers were already deployed in Iraq?

Karpinski: Yes. The units had already been deployed for six months, seven months, by the time I got there.

Signal: You got there when?

Karpinski: Middle of June of 2003, and I took command on the 29th of June.

Signal: So you didn't see action during the "major hostilities" of the months before.

Karpinski: No, no. Because the 800th MP Brigade and subordinate units were primarily located in the south of Iraq. They were located very close to the border with the largest EPW camp — that was Camp Bucca — and they were at two other locations just north of that location.

Signal: So in late June, you're in charge of how many prison facilities?

Karpinski: Well, at that particular time we had an EPW camp, a large one, where they had held about 8,000 prisoners total, and the majority of them had been released. And then there were three other facilities. But we were taking control of 16 prisons and correctional facilities located throughout Iraq.

Signal: Were all 16 in use in June?

Karpinski: No, they were not. As a matter of fact, most of them were not. They'd been so heavily looted, there were practically — in all of the facilities there were no doors, there was no infrastructure. When Saddam opened the doors to all of the prisons in November of 2002 and released all the prisoners, it didn't take long for all of the locals to come and take everything of any kind of value — to include, in one large facility, they came and took sections of the wall away.

Signal: The major looting throughout Iraq had just happened before you got there, right?

Karpinski: Yes, it did. But not only that, but, I mean — they would go into, like, the electrical lines. Say you have a conduit with all of the electrical lines and the cables. Well, they would go in and they would loot the copper wires. So it rendered all of that functional conduit useless. It was — we went in and there were, like I said, no doors — everything of any kind of value was completely taken away.
The first time I got to Abu Ghraib, which was the first week of July, I was literally — I was walking with the company commander — who was an outstanding company commander; he was a National Guardsman out of Nevada; Capt. Armstrong, his name was — and he walked the grounds with me of Abu Ghraib, and it was unbelievable. We were actually wading in nearly knee-deep concrete, rebar, glass, everything that was a result of the heavy looting out at Abu Ghraib.
I said to him at one point, "Do you think you can do anything out here?" And he said, "Yes, ma'am, now that you're here, we'll be able to function." And I said, "What do you mean? Who has been taking care of you?" He said, "Well, nobody's been taking care of us." They were assigned to a different headquarters at that time — an active-duty military police brigade — and they never even bothered to go out and check on that unit.

Signal: When you arrived, there were 8,000 prisoners in this one detention center?

Karpinski: There had been up to 8,000, but the vast majority of them had been released. There (were) about 3,500 remaining at that time.

Signal: How many troops were under your command?

Karpinski: I had 3,400 soldiers assigned to the 800th MP Brigade.

Signal: So when you got there, the prisoner ratio was about 1-1, but then — what? They started arresting a lot of people?

Karpinski: There was a complete change. Our mission down at the one prison facility was specifically EPW, Enemy Prisoners of War, because they policed up during the conflict.

Signal: Which facility was that?

Karpinski: That was at Camp Bucca, which was down near the Kuwaiti border. That was the function that the brigade had been deployed to handle. That was their mission. So when the vast majority of those prisoners were released after the end of hostilities, the CJTF-7 (Coalition Joint Task Force-7) — the headquarters up in Baghdad — that was (Lt. Gen. Ricardo) Sanchez's command — at that time it was (Lt.) Gen. (William) Wallace; Gen. Wallace left and Gen. Sanchez came in and replaced him. He requested the 800th MP Brigade to come north to Baghdad to take on this prisons mission, and they kept us. By design. The CFLCC (Coalition Forces Land Component Command) commander, Lt. Gen. (David D.) McKiernan, insisted that we remain assigned to CFLCC, because he was concerned that the CJTF-7 headquarters was going to break us up and use us in lots of different military police functions.
So even though — and I went and spoke to a general who was the theater support command commander down in Kuwait — I went and spoke to him twice about my concerns about taking this new mission, when we were not equipped, nor were we of the strength, personnel-wise, to take on this new mission. And he said to me both times, as I was leaving the meeting, "We understand that this is not your usual mission. But you're the best that we have. And that is why you are going up there to do this."

Signal: What did you understand the mission to be?

Karpinski: Well, it was no longer involving EPWs, because major hostilities were finished. This was not only to detain Iraqi criminals — regular criminals — as we came to call them, Iraqi-on-Iraqi crimes — it wasn't only to detain them, but it was to restore and rebuild all of the prison facilities so we could house this criminal element.

Signal: Was Abu Ghraib in use as a detention facility when you arrived?

Karpinski: No, it was not. There was about — I have to say, correctly — that there (were) about 25 criminals being held there. But they were being held in a very, very austere, triple-strength, concertina-wire-type of a thing, only because they had been policed up in that particular area and dropped off at that prison facility, and we had an MP company there, so they were holding them. But that was it. There (were) only about 25. But that prison, 260 acres, was not ready to hold any prisoners at that time.

Signal: Because of the conditions from the looting?

Karpinski: Absolutely. Absolutely. The only advantage was, No. 1, the size; and previously it had been every level, from minimum security all the way to maximum security, and of course the death chamber was there. But it had a 20-foot wall, pretty much intact, all around the whole compound. So we had the ability — or, the contractors were going to start form scratch.

Signal: Speaking recently to Torin Nelson, one of the interrogators at Abu Ghraib

• Israeli Interrogator at Abu Ghraib Prison — BBC, Mon Jul 5 02:50