"There's definitely a cover-up," the witness, Sgt. Samuel Provance, said. "People are either telling themselves or being told to be quiet."
Provance, 30, was part of the 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion stationed at Abu Ghraib last September. He spoke to ABCNEWS despite orders from his commanders not to.
"What I was surprised at was the silence," said Provance. "The collective silence by so many people that had to be involved, that had to have seen something or heard something."
Provance, now stationed in Germany, ran the top secret computer network used by military intelligence at the prison.
He said that while he did not see the actual abuse take place, the interrogators with whom he worked freely admitted they directed the MPs' rough treatment of prisoners.
--snip--
"One interrogator told me about how commonly the detainees were stripped naked, and in some occasions, wearing women's underwear," Provance said. "If it's your job to strip people naked, yell at them, scream at them, humiliate them, it's not going to be too hard to move from that to another level."
According to Provance, some of the physical abuse that took place at Abu Ghraib included U.S. soldiers "striking [prisoners] on the neck area somewhere and the person being knocked out. Then [the soldier] would go to the next detainee, who would be very fearful and voicing their fear, and the MP would calm him down and say, 'We're not going to do that. It's OK. Everything's fine,' and then do the exact same thing to him." Provance also described an incident when two drunken interrogators took a female Iraqi prisoner from her cell in the middle of the night and stripped her naked to the waist. The men were later restrained by another MP.
Sgt. Provance goes on to describe how the investigation has focused only on the MPs and not on Military Intelligence, and how he has been threatened and ostracized for coming forward.
Fay started his probe on April 23, but Provance said when Fay interviewed him, the general seemed interested only in the military police, not the interrogators, and seemed to discourage him from testifying.
Provance said Fay threatened to take action against him for failing to report what he saw sooner, and the sergeant fears he will be ostracized for speaking out.
"I feel like I'm being punished for being honest," Provance told ABCNEWS. "You know, it was almost as if I actually felt if all my statements were shredded and I said, like most everybody else, 'I didn't hear anything, I didn't see anything. I don't know what you're talking about,' then my life would be just fine right now."
--snip--
"I would say many people are probably hiding and wishing to God that this storm passes without them having to be investigated [or] personally looked at."
Let's hope there are more people like Sgt. Provance who will come forward with this kind of information. If we really believe -- and want any one else to believe -- the "a few bad apples" story, then we have to praise Provance and try to find more like him. A coverup will rightly reinforce the idea that we only want this thing to go away and to limit our embarrassment, not to find the truth. As if the behavior at the prison didn't undercut our authority enough, covering it up and then covering up the investigation can only make things worse.
