US Wardens - Questionable past of wardens chosen for Iraq
NAME: US WARDENS 210504N
TAPE: EF04/0537
IN_TIME: 10:22:41:06
DURATION: 00:01:54:08
SOURCES: ABC
DATELINE: Various - 20 May 2004/File
RESTRICTIONS: No Access Internet
SHOTLIST:
Prison guard's own footage - 1997
1. Home video of guards apparently abusing an inmate and strapping him to a chair
Salt Lake City, Utah - 19 March 1997
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Rocky Anderson, Mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah
"By the time he was finally released from that restraint chair, he developed blood clotting and through a pulmonary embolism, died."
3. Still photo of Lane McCotter, Executive Director of the Utah prison system
Abu Ghraib Prison, Near Baghdad, Iraq - recent
4. Still photo of Lane McCotter with Paul Wolfowitz at the Abu Ghraib prison
5. Still photo of Lane McCotter with Paul Wolfowitz at the Abu Ghraib prison
6. Still photo of Gary Deland, Utah Prison Director at Abu Ghraib
Utah - Unknown Date
7. Medium shot of Deland and female prison guard
8. Close up of Deland speaking outside the prison barbed wire fence
Abu Ghraib Prison, Near Baghdad, Iraq - recent
9. Close up of razor wire to focus in on Abu Ghraib
New York - 20 May 2004
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Antonio Ponvert, Civil Rights Attorney:
"Very, very much like the kinds of things we are hearing out of Abu Ghraib. They're no strangers with brutality and with degradation and with humiliation and they're also quite intimate with escaping responsibility for it."
Connecticut - File
11. Prison exterior
12. Guards leading prisoner
13. Guards punching prisoner
New York - 20 May 2004
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Antonio Ponvert, Civil Rights Attorney:
"He established a culture where that was acceptable conduct and where if you did it, you wouldn't be punished, you wouldn't be disciplined and in some cases you would be rewarded."
Connecticut - File
15. Guards punching prisoner
STORYLINE:
An investigation carried out by ABC News has discovered that a number of former state prison commissioners chosen to set up the Iraqi prison system had been accused of neglect, brutality and death towards prisoners while in charge of US jails.
Lane McCotter was the Executive Director of the Utah prison system when a mentally ill prisoner was stripped naked and lashed to a chair for 16 hours. The severe punishment was dealt out as he had refused to remove a pillowcase from his head.
The abuse, recorded on video camera by prison guards, was a procedure which McCotter had approved.
When he was finally released from the chair, the prisoner developed blood clotting and through a pulmonary embolism, died.
Two months later, McCotter resigned to work as a consultant, denying any wrongdoing.
Last year, McCotter, was hired by the US government to help set up the Iraq prison system. He recently gave deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz a tour of Abu Ghraib, the prison at the centre of the current prison abuse scandals.
Gary Deland, another controversial former Utah prison director hired by the government to help set up prisons in Iraq has been described by civil rights lawyers as "sadistic" for denying medical care to inmates.
The backgrounds of McCotter and Deland, as well as two other prison directors, are now being questioned by Congress and civil rights lawyers.
The Bush administration chose a team described by the Attorney General as the best in the field, but Civil Rights Attorney Antonio Ponvert says the men are no strangers to questionable prison tactics.
Another member of the team sent to Iraq, John Armstrong, ran the corrections department in a Connecticut prison, where the tactics of prison guards were blamed for three prisoner deaths.
Videotapes made by guards show prisoners who would not follow orders, restrained, smothered and beaten by guards during the time Armstrong was in charge.
He is now in Iraq, as deputy director of operations, training Iraqis how to run prisons.
A senior Justice Department official said the department was aware of the background of the men before they were sent to Iraq, but they were among the few willing to go there.