FilmBox

Director’s Statement on STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE

Is it possible for a photograph to change the world? Photographs taken by soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison changed the war in Iraq and changed America’s image of itself. Yet, a central mystery remains. Did the notorious Abu Ghraib photographs constitute evidence of systematic abuse by the American military, or were they documenting the aberrant behavior of a few “bad apples”?

We set out to examine the context of these photographs. Why were they taken? What was happening outside the frame? We talked directly to the soldiers who took the photographs and who were in the photographs. Who are these people? What were they thinking? Over two years of investigation, we amassed a million and a half words of interview transcript, thousands of pages of unredacted reports, and hundreds of photographs. The story of Abu Ghraib is still shrouded in moral ambiguity, but it is clear what happened there.

The Abu Ghraib photographs serve as both an expose and a coverup. An expose, because the photographs offer us a glimpse of the horror of Abu Ghraib; and a coverup because they convinced journalists and readers they had seen everything, that there was no need to look further. In recent news reports, we have learned about the destruction of the Abu Zubaydah interrogation tapes. A coverup. It has been front page news. But the coverup at Abu Ghraib involved thousands of prisoners and hundreds of soldiers. We are still learning about the extent of it.

Many journalists have asked about “the smoking gun” of Abu Ghraib. It is the wrong question. As Philip Gourevitch has commented, Abu Ghraib is the smoking gun. The underlying question that we still have not resolved, four years after the scandal: how could American values become so compromised that Abu Ghraib—and the subsequent coverup—could happen?

Errol Morris

A Conversation with Errol Morris

FilmBox.COM: Tell me about Standard Operating Procedure.

Errol Morris: I think of the film as a nonfiction horror movie. The imagery is designed to take the viewer into the moment the photographs were taken, as well as to evoke the nightmarish, hallucinatory quality of Abu Ghraib.

FilmBox.COM: Your starting point is the photographs?

Errol Morris: Yes. The infamous Abu Ghraib photographs taken during the fall of 2003. It all starts with the photographs. They are at the core of this whole project. 270 photographs were given to the Army Criminal Investigation Division, and many of them appear in the movie. Standard Operating Procedure is my attempt to tell the story behind these photographs, to examine the context in which they were taken. People think they understand the photographs, that they are self-explanatory. They think they know what they are about – but do they, really? That’s the question. Megan Ambuhl, one of the soldiers in the movie, asks: have we looked “outside the frame?” This film is an attempt to do that.

FilmBox.COM: Did you come to this subject out of an interest in photography?

Errol Morris: Yes. And my desire to make another investigative film – like The Thin Blue Line. I like investigating, and this was an opportunity to become involved in a contemporary, rather than a completely historical, investigation.

FilmBox.COM: You have been writing about photography for The New York Times.

Errol Morris: A series of essays for the online Times called Zoom. One of my ongoing themes is: photographs can be misleading – without context we are free to interpret photographs any way we choose. It’s one of the odd and interesting things about photography. You look at a photograph, you think you know what it means, but more often than not you could be wrong. Photographs provide evidence, but usually, it takes some investigative effort to uncover evidence of what?

Before I got involved with the Abu Ghraib story, I was thinking about a new kind of history. What if we could enter history through a photograph? What if we could enter the world of this war, as if you were using the photographs as a portal into history. Photographs are often used to accompany historical narration, but here we use them the other way around.

FilmBox.COM: Did you try to contact any of the detainees who were in the photographs?

Errol Morris: Yes, of course. We tried to locate the detainees who appeared in the most famous photographs. It’s been difficult to impossible. We spent over a year trying to track down “Gilligan,” the hooded man on the box. We couldn’t find him. Not through military records. Not through “fixers” on the ground in Iraq. We don’t even know if he’s still alive.

FilmBox.COM: How did you connect with the American military people that you did talk to? How did you gain their trust?

Errol Morris: It took a very, very, very long time. My mom told mErrol Morris: I’m a good nag. The central ingredient is persistence. My first interview was with Janis Karpinski, the brigadier general who was the head of the prison system in Iraq and who was later relieved of command and demoted by Bush. My cameraman, Bob Chappell, had seen her on C-SPAN and said, “You should have a look at this. This is really interesting.” I watched the piece, and asked Karpinski to come to Boston for an interview. We did an extremely long interview: seventeen hours over two days. Her anger comes through vividly. And it is clear that she was used as a scapegoat.

FilmBox.COM: Did that interview set you to tracking down the others?

Errol Morris: From Karpinski I decided to interview as many of the “bad apples” as I could. [The media referred to “the seven bad apples” – the seven MPs who were indicted. The seven are Sabrina Harman, Megan Ambuhl, Lynndie England, Charles Graner, Ivan Frederick, Jeremy Sivitz and Javal Davis.] The first of them we interviewed was Javal Davis. We flew him up to Boston. He was extremely articulate and his interview was very, very powerful. From that point I was quite sold on making the movie. I didn’t know whether I would be able to make it, but I felt that it was a story that I needed to tell. The media and the government provided little information about these soldiers. Who were they? Why did they do what they did?

After Javal, I suppose you would describe the process as networking. It’s an odd way to use the term, but it’s meeting one person, getting that person to make calls, meeting another person, getting them to make calls. Eventually I was able to interview five of the bad apples, and other people who were prosecuted, principally Roman Krol. He was a military intelligence guy who appeared in several photographs taken by Lynndie England.

FilmBox.COM: Are the people in the film in contact with each other? I don’t see Megan and Lynndie going out for coffee together [Lynndie England became pregnant by Charles Graner while serving at Abu Ghraib. He was also having a relationship with Megan Ambuhl, and is now married to her.]

Errol Morris: Megan and Lynndie do not talk. Megan and Sabrina are friends and are in close contact with each other.

FilmBox.COM: You weren’t allowed to talk to Charles Graner?

Errol Morris: No. We weren’t allowed to talk to Chuck Graner or Ivan Frederick. They were in prison. Lynndie was paroled last April, and we talked to her about a month after her release. Frederick was released in November, but while they were in prison we had no access to them at all. My hope is to talk to Graner and to Frederick at some point in the future.

AS: Didn’t you have the urge to confront the higher-ups? Not Karpinski, but the other generals?

Errol Morris: Yes. But I was focused on something different. This is the flip side of The Fog of War. The Fog of War is about a man at the very top of the pyramid, the man second in the chain of command to the President. These are people who, rather than at the apex of the pyramid, are at the bottom. The central figures in this story are privates, specialists, sergeants. They are low ranking. And many were very young. Lynndie England was 20 years old.

FilmBox.COM: The women were particularly demonized, especially Lynndie England.

Errol Morris: People are surprised that she is articulate. Her last speech in Standard Operating Procedure is like a page from a Theodore Dreiser novel. It’s as if sex must inevitably lead to tragedy. It’s interesting: the pictures that became best known – the iconic photographs – usually have an American female MP in them. Lynndie England. So it’s this picture of a petite American woman dominating male Iraqi prisoners with the camera held by a male American soldier.

FilmBox.COM: The sexuality of the humiliation.

Errol Morris: Yes, that captured the attention of the world. And yet, I will always have a hard time understanding why stacking naked Iraqi men in a pyramid is an unspeakable sexual crime but trussing up naked Iraqi men with woman’s panties on their heads is not. Isn’t it all unspeakable? When they started working in Tier 1A [the area of the prison where most of the photographs were taken] in September, all of this was already in place. In Sabrina Harman’s first photographs, we see the stress positions, the panties, the whole nine-yards. As Lynndie England says, “This is what we saw.” We know one thing for certain, these MPs did not create these policies, they first witnessed them and then were asked to carry them out.

FilmBox.COM: Some of the photographs look posed.

A: Yes. The most infamous among them are posed. I often think that if cameras had not been present, these events would not have occurred. The pyramid is an example. Graner, in all likelihood, orchestrated these events for the camera.

FilmBox.COM: So what were they punished for? For taking photographs?

Errol Morris: Yes. I believe they were punished for embarrassing the military, for embarrassing the administration. One central irony: Sabrina Harman was threatened with prosecution for taking pictures of a man who had been killed by the CIA. She had nothing whatsoever to do with the killing, she merely photographed the corpse. But without her photographs we would know nothing of this crime.

The photographs do two things at the same time. They provide an exposé and they provide a cover up. They showed the world that these things were going on, but they point the finger at a very small group of people. They make you think it’s these people who are the culprits. These are the people who are responsible for everything. That is a misdirection. It gives you a false picture.

FilmBox.COM: Plus the letters between Sabrina and [Sabrina’s domestic partner] Kelly are really striking, because they were written before there was any investigation. It’s not after-the-fact testimony.

Errol Morris: That’s correct. I should stress that those are the actual letters. That’s Sabrina’s handwriting. Those are all taken from the actual letters that were written to Kelly. Although the letters are excerpted in the movie, the plan is to include more substantial excerpts in the book.

FilmBox.COM: Beyond the first-person statements of the soldiers, we also hear shocking testimony from Brent Pack, the photo-investigator. He’s the only one, apart from you, who addresses the whole topic through the evidence in the photographs – namely, who took what, who was standing where, what was the timeline in which they were taken.

Errol Morris: Yes. He is the prosecution expert. He’s a government witness who was asked to examine the photographs and to put them into chronological order. He’s the one who makes this distinction between criminal acts and standard operating procedure. We see these really awful things that are considered standard operating procedure.

FilmBox.COM: Isn’t this a big indictment when Pack admits that, from the prosecution’s point-of-view, many of these photographs depict standard operating procedures?

Errol Morris: To me it’s completely bizarre, particularly when Pack shows you the picture of the detainee known as Gilligan standing on the box with wires. It’s the iconic photograph from Abu Ghraib – for many people it is the iconic picture of torture – and Pack tells you that this is standard operating procedure. That moment, I hope, is shocking. It was for me. Shocking, in particular, because at that moment Abu Ghraib and the investigations into the photographs become about us – about our values, our society.

FilmBox.COM: It’s ironic that it comes from the guy that was on the government side. And then there’s an interrogator himself who talks about how torture became a calculated part of the process.

Errol Morris: That’s Tim Dugan, a civilian contract interrogator for CACI Corporation. [There were different groups of civilian contractors working at Abu Ghraib. CACI Corporation supplied interrogators, Titan Corporation supplied interpreters.] Dugan is remarkable. It was the most difficult interview for me to get. After what he has been through, I don’t believe he trusts anyone. But I do trust him. In the two years that I’ve been involved, he’s said some pretty heady things and made some strong claims, but what he told me has been independently confirmed by others.

FilmBox.COM: Another great shocker is the story of al-Jamadi, who died at Abu Ghraib during an interrogation.

Errol Morris: Yes. If not for Sabrina Harman and her photographs of his corpse, we would never know about it. It would be hidden. The death of al-Jamadi was written about for the first time by Jane Mayer in the pages of The New Yorker. But the reason we know about the murder is through Sabrina Harman’s photographs. Under a different set of circumstances, you could imagine Sabrina winning a Pulitzer Prize for photography.

FilmBox.COM: Has anything official happened with that murder?

Errol Morris: Yes, there have been a couple of prosecutions but no one has been convicted. Charges have been dismissed. And no CIA operative has ever been charged or convicted in connection with the murder – even though we know the name of the CIA operative who was alone in the shower with Al-Jamadi. Some of the Navy Seals who brought him to Abu Ghraib were charged but not convicted.

FilmBox.COM: I understand that you have amassed a lot more material in the course of making the film.

Errol Morris: Yes. I was not only involved in interviews. I was also investigating.

FilmBox.COM: Investigating?

Errol Morris: The closest thing that I can compare it to is The Thin Blue Line. In The Fog of War, I had only one person to deal with – Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. In The Thin Blue Line, I was involved with a full-fledged investigation – trying to get one person after another to talk to me, trying to get them on film. In The Thin Blue Line, I was interviewing people – both on camera and on audiotape. I was collecting documents, testimony. It was a full-fledged investigation. The same is true with Standard Operating Procedure. I have a million-and-a-half words of transcript, over thirty interviews, tens of thousands of pages of documents, and over a thousand photographs.

FilmBox.COM: So you have over a thousand photographs that the press has never seen?

Errol Morris: Yes. I’ve been investigating now for two years and every person that I talk to I try to get material from them. We’ve assembled an archive, a really substantial archive of material on this subject.

FilmBox.COM: Do you have plans for all of this material?

Errol Morris: Well, it was pretty obvious during the making of this movie that there was more than one movie in this material. Part of it will be included in my book with Philip Gourevitch. [The book Standard Operating Procedure will be published in 2008 by Penguin Press. Gourevitch is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the editor of The Paris Review.]

FilmBox.COM: Do you feel an obligation to do more with it?

Errol Morris: I do. I feel an obligation to continue with the investigation, an obligation to see this through. I feel that Standard Operating Procedure is the tip of an iceberg. Frankly, I would like to see the people who were responsible for this punished. Many people involved in Abu Ghraib have been censured. But the people who are responsible for these policies have emerged unscathed. They pin medals on each other’s chest, and they congratulate themselves.

FilmBox.COM: Is there a “smoking gun” in this story as there was in The Thin Blue Line?

Errol Morris: The smoking gun is Abu Ghraib itself. The seven bad apples are a sideshow. It is all part of a much bigger picture. As Javal Davis says, the worst stuff was not in the photographs.

FilmBox.COM: Hasn’t the military and the administration repeatedly said that everything was in accord with the Geneva Conventions?

Errol Morris: The one thing that can be said conclusively about Abu Ghraib is it was entirely a violation of the Geneva Conventions. All of it. First, you choose a prison-site that’s being mortared every day. You are talking about an incredibly dangerous place that was understaffed, undersupplied, and situated in the middle of the Sunni Triangle. There’s not enough food for the prisoners and often what food there is is contaminated. The conditions are horrible, and the detainees are on the verge of rioting. The MPs are outnumbered: one hundred to one. You have a prescription for disaster.

In addition, you have enormous pressure coming from above to get useful intelligence – to capture Saddam, to find Saddam. You have rules of interrogation that have been relaxed to the point where they are nonexistent. There is constant pressure to find people that can provide intelligence to the U.S. military, but no real idea of how to do it. People rounded up in random sweeps and put in prison without any real hope of getting out. The prison population is growing. The insurgency is growing. And there is the growing realization, even though our leaders are in a state of denial, that this is not a cake walk, that the mission has not been accomplished, that Iraq is spiraling out of control. A growing feeling of desperation and fear.

FilmBox.COM: You’ve said that this is not a film about torture. But your outrage about torture is clearly implied.

Errol Morris: Yes, there’s outrage. But it’s not only about torture. It’s everything. Extortion, kidnapping. Keeping children in prison. The use of attack dogs. This is America? This is the America that we’ve grown up to love and defend? And then blaming low-ranked soldiers for all of this?

I don’t know if Americans care about torture, because I think the prevailing attitude is you do what you have to do to win a war against an implacable enemy. But I do think there is one thing that Americans still react to – it’s the simple idea of little guys getting punished and the big guys who are really responsible walking away. Cover up, misdirection, scapegoating.

At the core of this film, you are being introduced to a reality that people have not seen, and you have to ask yourself: what would you do? What kind of predicament were those soldiers put in? Untrained, understaffed, ill supplied. What does all of it mean and what does it mean about us – our military, our society? We haven’t wanted to look at it. I would like everybody who watches the film to ask themselves the simple question: What would I do if I had been put in this position?

FilmBox.COM: Do you feel that your film exonerates the indicted soldiers?

Errol Morris: If you’re asking, can I absolve these seven bad apples of all responsibility, the answer is, “No, I can’t.” But I can explain how they found themselves in this situation. I can provide a context for their actions.

I have tried to make a morally complex movie and to capture the complexity of the situation. The Fog of War attempted to capture the moral complexity of McNamara, and the problems that he was dealing with. People get confused. They think that to capture moral complexity is to exonerate or to absolve which is, of course, not the case. It’s simply to capture the moral complexity.

This story is about these soldiers dealt with the horror of Abu Ghraib. It’s also about how each one of us, as individuals, would deal with the nightmare of being trapped in something where there is no way out. It forces us – the viewers – to ask the question: how would I have reacted? What would I have done?

It’s much easier for us as a society to imagine seven bad apples as than to face the reality of what we were doing. The most chilling point for me is when Karpinski tells us: None of this produced useful intelligence. Nothing useful to the war effort came out of this place.

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE
Timeline
May 1, 2003 President Bush declares the end of major combat in Iraq.

June 30, 2003 Brigadier General Janis Karpinski assumes command of the 800th MP Brigade.

September 6, 2003 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visits Abu Ghraib.

September 7, 2003 Major General Geoffrey Miller visits Abu Ghraib.

October 12, 2003 Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez issues the Interrogation and Counter-Resistance Policy for Iraq.

October 15, 2003 The 372nd MP Company begins its mission at Abu Ghraib.

October 18, 2003 Specialist Sabrina Harman photographs a prisoner nicknamed “Taxi Cab Driver.” He is shackled to his bed and has underwear on his head.

October 24, 2003 Corporal Charles Graner photographs Private First Class Lynndie England, Specialist Megan Ambuhl and a prisoner nicknamed “Gus.” “Gus” is naked and has a tie-down strap wrapped around his neck like a leash; Private First Class Lynndie England holds the end of the strap.

October 25, 2003 Private First Class Lynndie England photographs US soldiers alongside three naked prisoners who are shackled together on the floor.

November 4-5, 2003 Specialist Sabrina Harman and Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick photograph a hooded prisoner nicknamed “Gilligan” who is standing on a box with wires attached to his fingers. A prisoner named Manadel al-Jamadi arrives at Abu Ghraib and is killed during an interrogation with CIA personnel. Specialist Sabrina Harman and Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick discover and photograph al-Jamadi’s corpse.

November 7, 2003 Specialist Sabrina Harman, Private First Class Lynndie England and Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick photograph seven prisoners as they are stripped naked, made to form a human pyramid and forced both to simulate and to perform sex acts. Sergeant Javal Davis, Corporal Charles Graner and Specialist Jeremy Sivits are also present.

November 24, 2003 A prisoner on Tier 1A uses a smuggled gun to shoot at MPs.

December 12, 2003 Photographs are taken of US soldiers using their military working dogs to attack a naked prisoner. The prisoner is bitten in his leg.

December 13, 2003 Saddam Hussein is captured.

December 29, 2003 – January 3, 2004 Photographs are taken of a prisoner nicknamed AQ, sometimes hooded, sometimes shackled, being menaced by a military working dog.

January 13, 2004 Specialist Joseph Darby turns in photographs to agents from the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division.

January 14, 2004 The investigation into photographs and prisoner abuse begins.

January 16, 2004 Colonel Pappas issues an amnesty period related to the photographs. The U.S. Command in Baghdad issues a brief press release about an investigation into prisoner abuse.

January 21, 2004 CNN reports that US soldiers reportedly posed for photos with partially naked Iraqi prisoners and that the Army is investigating allegations of abuse at Abu Ghraib.

January 31, 2004 Major General Antonio Taguba is appointed to conduct an investigation into the 800th MP Brigade.

March 3, 2004 Major General Taguba briefs his superior officers on his findings.

March 9, 2004 The Taguba Report is submitted in its final form.

March 20, 2004 The Army files charges against Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, Corporal Charles Graner, Specialist Sabrina Harman, Sergeant Javal Davis, Specialist Jeremy Sivits and Specialist Megan Ambuhl.

April 28, 2004 CBS breaks the Abu Ghraib story and broadcasts 12 of the photographs.

April 30, 2004 Seymour Hersch’s article “Torture at Abu Ghraib” is posted on The New Yorker’s website and it runs in the May 10, 2004 print edition.

May 7, 2004 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

May 7, 2004 The Army files charges against Private First Class Lynndie England.

May 19, 2004 At a special court martial in Baghdad, Specialist Jeremy Sivits pleads guilty to dereliction of duty, maltreatment, and conspiracy to maltreat. He is sentenced to one year in a military prison, a reduction in rank to private, a fine, and a bad-conduct discharge from the Army.

May 24, 2004 Brigadier General Janis Karpinski is suspended, pending investigation.

August 23, 2004 The Schlesinger Report, a review of the Department of Defense’s detention operations, is submitted.

August 25, 2004 The Fay-Jones Report, an investigation of intelligence activities at Abu Ghraib, is published.

September 11, 2004 Specialist Armin Cruz pleads guilty to maltreatment and conspiracy to maltreat. He is sentenced to 8 months in prison, a reduction in rank to private and a bad conduct discharge.

October 20, 2004 Staff Sergeant Ivan Fredrick pleads guilty to aggravated assault, maltreatment, conspiracy to maltreat, indecent acts, and dereliction of duty. He is sentenced to 8 years in prison, reduction in rank to private, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and a dishonorable discharge.

October 30, 2004 Specialist Megan Ambuhl pleads guilty to dereliction of duty and is sentenced to a reduction in rank to private and loss of a half-month’s pay. She later receives an other-than-honorable discharge from the Army.

January 16, 2005 Corporal Charles Graner is convicted of assault, maltreatment, indecent acts, conspiracy to maltreat, and dereliction of duty. He is sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, a reduction in rank to private, a dishonorable discharge, and the forfeiture of all pay and allowances.

February 1, 2005 Specialist Roman Krol pleads guilty to maltreatment and conspiracy to maltreat. He is sentenced to 10-months in prison, a reduction in rank to private, and a bad conduct discharge.

March 21, 2006 Sergeant Michael Smith is convicted of assault, maltreatment, conspiracy to maltreat, an indecent act, and dereliction of duty. He is sentenced to 6-months in prison, a reduction in rank to private, forfeiture of pay, and a bad conduct discharge.

June 1, 2006 Sergeant Santos Cardona is convicted of assault and dereliction of duty. He is sentenced to 90 days of hard labor, a reduction in rank to specialist, and a forfeiture of pay.

February 4, 2005 Sergeant Javal Davis pleads guilty to assault, intent to deceive on an official statement, and dereliction of duty. He is sentenced to 6 months in prison, a reduction in rank to private, and a bad conduct discharge.

April 8, 2005 Brigadier General Janis Karpinski is relieved of command of the 800th MP Brigade.

May 5, 2005 President Bush approves Janis Karpinski’s demotion to Colonel.

May 16, 2005 Sabrina Harman is convicted of maltreatment, conspiracy to maltreat, and dereliction of duty. She is sentenced to six months in prison, a reduction in rank to private, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and a bad conduct discharge.

September 26, 2005 Lynndie England is convicted of maltreatment, indecent acts, and conspiracy to maltreat. She is sentenced to three years in prison, a reduction in rank to private, and a dishonorable discharge.

March 1, 2007 Private Lynndie England is released on parole.

August 28, 2007 Lieutenant Colonel Steven Jordan is convicted of disobeying a general order to refrain from discussing the Abu Ghraib investigation. He is acquitted of more serious charges including the failure properly to train and supervise enlisted soldiers. He is sentenced to a reprimand.

October 1, 2007 Private Ivan Frederick is released on parole.

January 8, 2008 Lieutenant Colonel Steven Jordan is cleared of all criminal responsibility when General Richard Rowe dismisses his conviction and his sentence.

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE
Sony Pictures Classics and Participant Productions Present
An Errol Morris Film
Music by Danny Elfman,
Production Designer, Steve Hardie, Edited by Andy Grieve, Steven Hathaway, and Dan Mooney
Directors of Photography, Robert Chappell & Robert Richardson, ASC
Executive Producers, Jeff Skoll, Diane Weyermann, Martin Levin, Julia Sheehan, and Robert Fernandez
Produced by Julie Bilson Ahlberg
Produced & Directed by Errol Morris