Camp Nama
Encyclopedia
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
, Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
, originally built by the government of Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
, from which its name derives, and now used by U.S. military forces. Purportedly, the original Iraqi name has been repurposed by U.S. personnel involved with the facility as an acronym standing for "Nasty Ass Military Area".
History
After the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the camp was taken over by elite American Special OperationsSpecial operations
Special operations are military operations that are considered "special" .Special operations are typically performed independently or in conjunction with conventional military operations. The primary goal is to achieve a political or military objective where a conventional force requirement does...
forces. The main purpose of the camp was to interrogate prisoners for information about Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
ian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ; October 30, 1966 – June 7, 2006), born Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh was a Jordanian militant Islamist who ran a paramilitary training camp in Afghanistan...
. The New York Times reported on 19 March 2006, the three-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion, that the elite unit, known as Task Force 6-26
Task Force 6-26
Task Force 6–26 is a United States Joint military/Government Agency unit; originally set-up to find "High Value Targets" in Iraq in the aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom. This Special Operation unit is very similar to Task Force 121 which was created to capture Saddam Hussein and high rank...
, used the facility to interrogate prisoners both before and after the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. Some of the interrogation took place in "The Black Room," which used to be a torture chamber when Saddam's government ran the facility. The camp was the target of repeated warnings and investigations from U.S. officials since August 2003. There were placards around the camp that read "No Blood No Foul," a reference to the notion, described by a Pentagon official, that "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it."
Allegations of abuse were first reported in the mainstream U.S. media in 2005. After the more extensive New York Times report in 2006, which was "based on documents and interviews with more than a dozen people," the independent organization Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
issued a report documenting detainee abuse in Iraq. The report confirmed the charges about Camp Nama uncovered by the New York Times, noting that "from 2003 to the present, numerous U.S. personnel and Iraqi detainees have reported serious mistreatment of detainees by the special task force, including beatings, exposure to extreme cold, threats of death, humiliation, and various forms of heavy interrogation. Many of these allegations have been contained in documents released to the American Civil Liberties Union and other human rights groups pursuant to Freedom of Information Act litigation."
The report included an extensive interview with one Sergeant, using the pseudonym "Jeff Perry", who worked as an interrogator with the task force running the detention center. Sergeant "Perry" indicated that written authorizations were required for most abusive techniques, indicating that the use of these tactics was approved up the chain of command:
There was an authorization template on a computer, a sheet that you would print out, or actually just type it in. And it was a checklist. And it was all already typed out for you, environmental controls, hot and cold, you know, strobe lights, music, so forth. Working dogs, which, when I was there, wasn’t being used. But you would just check what you want to use off, and if you planned on using a harsh interrogation you’d just get it signed off.
I never saw a sheet that wasn’t signed. It would be signed off by the commander, whoever that was, whether it was O3 [captain] or O6 [colonel], whoever was in charge at the time. . . . When the O6 was there, yeah, he would sign off on that. . . . He would sign off on that every time it was done.
Some interrogators would go and use these techniques without typing up one of those things just because it was a hassle, or he didn’t want to do it and knew it was going to be approved anyway, and you’re not gonna get in that much trouble if you get caught doing one of these things without a signature.
Techniques involving outright assault—hitting, slapping, and beating—were apparently not on the list, but were regularly used at Nama, indicating that the harsh methods that were approved often degenerated into even harsher treatment in practice.
HRW's senior researcher on terrorism and counterterrorism commented, "These accounts rebut U.S. government claims that torture and abuse in Iraq was unauthorized and exceptional – on the contrary, it was condoned and commonly used."
Investigation and inter-agency conflict
The reports of abuses inside Camp Nama were said to have outraged even seasoned CIA, FBI and DIA investigators accustomed to dealing with non-cooperative and hostile detainees, and to have provoked a culture clash between agencies and groups involved with the facility. By early 2004, one of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's top aides, Under-Secretary for Defense Intelligence Stephen A. CamboneStephen Cambone
Stephen A. Cambone was the first United States Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, a post created in March 2003. Cambone first came to the attention of the public at large during the testimony of Major General Antonio Taguba before the U.S...
, ordered a subordinate, DIA head Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby
Lowell E. Jacoby
Vice Admiral Lowell Edwin Jacoby, USN was the 14th Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Previously he was in the from 1999 to 2002, and the Director of Naval Intelligence and Commander, Office of Naval Intelligence from 1997 to 1999. He was the from 1994 to 1997 and Commander, from...
to "get to the bottom" of any misconduct.
By June 25, 2004, Admiral Jacoby wrote a two-page memo to Cambone, in which he described a series of complaints, including a May 2004 incident in which a DIA interrogator said he witnessed task force soldiers punch a detainee hard enough to require medical help. The DIA officer took photos of the injuries, but a supervisor confiscated them, the memo said. The memo provoked an angry reaction from Mr. Cambone. "Get to the bottom of this immediately. This is not acceptable," Mr. Cambone said in a handwritten note on June 26, 2004, to his top deputy, Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin
William G. Boykin
Lieutenant General William G. Boykin was the United States Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. He has played a role in almost every recent major American military operation, serving in Grenada, Somalia, and Iraq. He is currently an author and teaches at Hampden-Sydney College,...
. "In particular, I want to know if this is part of a pattern of behavior by TF 6-26."
According to the NYT article, General Boykin had earlier said (on March 17) through a spokesman that he told Mr. Cambone he had found no pattern of misconduct with the task force. The article does not provide further detail on Boykin's response to the investigation after Cambone's and Jacoby's intervention in June, 2004.
Transfer to LSA Anaconda
According to the NYT article, in the summer of 2004, the Nasty Ass Military Area closed and the unit moved to "a new headquarters in Balad, 45 miles north of Baghdad." This would probably refer to Balad AB, also known as Logistics Support Area AnacondaLogistics Support Area Anaconda
Joint Base Balad, formerly Balad Air Base and Logistics Support Area Anaconda, or simply LSA Anaconda - formerly known as Al-Bakr Air Base and known in popular media as Camp Anaconda - is one of the largest United States military bases in Iraq...
.
Since the transfer the unit's operations are said to have been shrouded in even tighter secrecy. According to Thomas E. Ricks of the Washington Post, a new "detainee center" has indeed been established at Camp Balad, under the auspices of a new unit, Joint Special Operations Task Force 8; entry is not permitted to normal Army Rangers personnel.