San Francisco protest CACI over torture of Iraqi prisoners by its employees

June, 2004 http://www.ActAgainstWar.org

CACI International Inc.: Torture for Profit

Virginia-based CACI International Inc. is worth over $1 billion. With 92% of its revenue coming directly from the federal government, it is one of the clear tech-winners in the ongoing trend to privatize the U.S. military. In the U.S., CACI works on projects such as designing and maintaining intelligence databases, including a contract with the Justice Department.
The corporation's Iraq contract is worth almost $40 million. CACI's "blanket-purchase" agreement with the U.S. government was originally for computer integration and data processing, but such agreements are vaguely-written and open-ended to allow government agencies to make additional requests without requiring a separate bidding process. CACPs no-bid contract in Iraq was extended by the Interior Department to cover the hiring of CACI employees to work as interrogators and in other forms of "counter intelligence."
CACI had 27 employees working as interrogators in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Army Major General Antonio Taguba's February, 2004 report on torture and abuse at the prison found that one of CACI's interrogators, Steven A. Stefanowicz, "allowed and/or instructed MPs, who are not trained in interrogation techniques, to facilitate interrogations by "setting conditions' which were neither authorized and in accordance with applicable regulations/policy. He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse." General Taguba recommended that Mr. Stefanowicz be reprimanded, fired and stripped of his security clearance.
Despite being an international scandal, CACI's stockholders see the Abu Ghraib tragedy as a growth opportunity for the business. According to Darren M. Bagwell, director of research at Thrivent Investment Management, which owns 117,000 shares of CACI, "the current drop [in CACI stock] is an opportunity because their interrogation work is just a sidelight for them - this is an information-technology company." (Wall Street Journal, May 12, 2004)

Eluding Accountability for War Crimes

General Taguba's report and the widespread distribution of torture photographs has lead to a dramatic public outcry against these atrocities and the war in Iraq. Public outrage has been focused on the entire military and civilian chain of command up to the Cabinet and to President Bush himself. Civilian contractors working for the Bush Administration must also be held accountable for their crimes and their profits made literally off of the lives of innocents. According to military intelligence officers, 70-90% of prisoners jailed in Iraq were arrested "by mistake."
As of May 27, 2004, at least five U.S. government investigations into CACI's involvement in Abu Ghraib were underway. The General Services Administration is investigating whether CACI violated contracting rules and whether it should be banned from future government contracts. The Interior Department is reviewing the contracting procedures that allowed to Army to hire CACI and has blocked the Army from using the contract to place new orders with the company, although work already underway will continue. Other inquiries are being conducted by the Army's office of the Inspector General, the Defense Contract Audit Agency and Military intelligence.
Despite the numerous investigations, it is unclear whether private contractors such as CACI can be prosecuted, much less punished, given gaps in current U.S. law and military regulations. As civilians, contractors are not subject to military law or the Geneva Convention and a law that would make U.S. domestic law apply to civilian contractors is sitting on Attorney General John Ashcroft's desk. In Iraq, contractors are exempt from local law through an order issued by U.S. administrator Paul Bremer last year.

Zero Tolerance for Torture - At home or abroad

The phenomenon of prisoner torture is not limited to a prison in Baghdad: the soldiers guilty of torturing Iraqi prisoners have worked as guards in the U.S. prison system, where abuse and torture are regular occurrences. Muslim, Arab and South Asian detainees rounded up since 9/11 have repeatedly been tortured and abused in custody, in manners eerily similar to Abu Ghraib. The Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General issued a 239-page report in April 2003 documenting common instances of torture perpetrated against detainees, including strip-searching, sexual humiliation, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement for weeks or months and physical abuse. Attorneys for two detainees are pressing for the release of 300 hours of videotapes documenting the abuses that have never been made public.
Recent scandals at the California Youth Authority - the state's prison system for youth - have shown the systematic abuse of children held there. Two suicides in January, 2004 were followed the next month by the state's release of a report documented the use of locked cages, almost daily violence, brutality of guards and improper over- and under-use of psychiatric medication. In April, a videotape of a guard pummeling and kicking an inmate after the inmate had been subdued became public.
Torturers at home and abroad must be held accountable for human rights abuses and war crimes. Legal frameworks must shift to ensure that private contractors such as CACI cannot slip through legal loopholes and escape scot-free. The privatization of torture in Iraq is reflective of a war wholly privatized, one that is based on ensuring corporate profit for U.S. corporations by securing Iraq's resources. The only path to democracy and liberation in Iraq is an end to the U.S. occupation, the immediate withdrawal of troops and the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty.

For more information, contact Direct Action to Stop the War at http://www.ActAgainstWar.org