Ian Fishback’s American Nightmare

Something between Fishback and Garlasco clicked. The two men began talking at length. As the comfort level grew, Fishback connected Garlasco to three sergeants from his battalion who witnessed torture. Soon the sergeants gave recorded interviews to Human Rights Watch, corroborating Fishback’s descriptions and expanding with details. Garlasco saw in Fishback a man to be admired. “For me he was Captain America,” he said. “He represented all that was good and right with the military in my eyes — duty, honor, selflessness, moral courage.”

Soon the staff at Human Rights Watch connected Fishback to members of Congress. During a meeting with Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Fishback later wrote, Biden suggested introducing him to Republican colleagues, including Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war who survived torture in Vietnam. In September, Fishback composed a letter to a man he expected would understand. “I have been unable to get clear, consistent answers from my leadership about what constitutes lawful and humane treatment,” he wrote to McCain. “I am certain that this confusion contributed to a wide range of abuses including death threats, beatings, broken bones, murder, exposure to elements, extreme forced physical exertion, hostage-taking, stripping, sleep deprivation and degrading treatment. I and troops under my command witnessed some of these abuses in both Afghanistan and Iraq.” He ended with a plea. “If we abandon our ideals in the face of adversity and aggression, then those ideals were never really in our possession. I would rather die fighting than give up even the smallest part of the idea that is ‘America.’ Once again, I strongly urge you to do justice to your men and women in uniform. Give them clear standards of conduct that reflect the ideals they risk their lives for.”

In September 2005, Human Rights Watch released its findings, challenging the Pentagon’s false presentation that American torture in Iraq was isolated to rogue soldiers at Abu Ghraib. The sergeants’ accounts were damning, describing routine beatings and humiliations set against an Army unwilling to confront its wrongs. Some soldiers acknowledged that the whistle-blowers were truthful. “Everything they said was spot on with what I saw,” Gannon Tipton said. Fishback initially remained unnamed, though given his internal advocacy, his identity was most likely known. Anonymity was short-lived. Soon after the report’s publication, he sent his letter to McCain, putting his name in circulation.

A season of legislative intervention began. Congress drafted a bill to prohibit degrading and inhumane treatment of anyone in American government “control,” a word that rebuked the undefined status associated with “PUC.” Weeks later, in an editorial titled “The Shame of Torture,” the journal America: The Jesuit Review summarized the power of Fishback’s letter. “The logjam of denials about the torture and abuse of prisoners in U.S. detention sites in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo has finally been broken,” it read. That December, President Bush signed into law the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. It read, in part, that “no individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Fishback’s life changed. Outside the military, he was hailed as a person of conscience who fought his own employer to protect the powerless and prevent soldiers from disgracing themselves. Garlasco, who escorted Fishback to a private meeting with Senator McCain, recalled Fishback emerging hopeful. “He said, ‘McCain said, “I got your back,” ’” Garlasco said. “That was important to Ian.” No matter this assurance, inside the Army Fishback often felt like an outcast. Over the ensuing years, he wrote or spoke of people applying pressure to silence him, including attempting to bar him from meeting with a member of Congress, and a warning from a deputy commander that Fishback should consider his and his family’s safety. A Special Forces trainer, he said, told him that “the battlefield is medieval” and that “what they did wrong at Abu Ghraib was take pictures.” The Human Rights Watch report also reverberated in his old battalion. “I was there when his story broke,” Soltz said. “It was like a bomb went off.” Soldiers were frightened and furious as investigators took statements. “They were just super angry,” he said. “There was a lot of anxiety and ‘Who is coming after me?’ There was a fear of people ratting on each other.” In this pressure cooker, Fishback lost relationships from two overseas tours. “Many in the 82nd were not supportive,” Clara said. “They were trying to cover their own, cover their backsides.”