he use of American corrections executives with abuse
accusations in their past to oversee American-run prisons in Iraq is
prompting concerns in Congress about how the officials were selected and
screened.
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, sent a letter
yesterday to Attorney General John Ashcroft questioning what he described
as the "checkered record when it comes to prisoners' rights" of John J.
Armstrong, a former commissioner of corrections in Connecticut.
Mr. Armstrong resigned last year after Connecticut settled lawsuits
brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the families of two
Connecticut inmates who died after being sent by Mr. Armstrong to a
supermaximum security prison in Virginia. One of the inmates, a diabetic,
died of heart failure after going into diabetic shock and then being hit
with an electric charge by guards wielding a stun gun and kept in
restraints.
In his letter, Mr. Schumer requested that the Justice Department
conduct an investigation into the role of American civilians in the Iraqi
prison system. Mr. Armstrong is assistant director of operations of
American prisons in Iraq, and Mr. Schumer said he was apparently working
under contract for the State Department.
State Department officials had no comment on the case and could not
confirm whether Mr. Armstrong worked for the department in Iraq or not.
Mr. Armstrong, who has an unlisted phone number, could not be reached for
comment.
Another official, Lane McCotter, who was forced to resign as director
of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an incident in which a
mentally ill inmate died after guards left him shackled naked to a
restraining chair for 16 hours, was dispatched by Mr. Ashcroft to head a
team of Americans to reopen Iraq's prisons.
After his resignation in Utah, Mr. McCotter became an executive of a
private prison company, the Management and Training Corporation, one of
whose jails was strongly criticized in a Justice Department report just a
month before the Justice Department sent him to Iraq. The report found
that the jail, in Santa Fe, lacked adequate medical and mental health care
and had no suicide prevention plan, which had contributed to an inmate's
hanging himself.
In Iraq, it was Mr. McCotter who first identified Abu Ghraib as the
best site for America's main prison and who helped rebuild the prison and
train Iraqi guards, according to his own account, given to Correction
.com, an online industry magazine
Officials at the Justice Department would not say who decided to give
Mr. McCotter the assignment or whether the Justice Department was aware of
his history when Mr. Ashcroft announced his appointment.
"The contractors were all vetted in the normal process," said a senior
Justice Department official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity.
"They all came highly recommended by corrections experts."
Speaking of the two cases in an interview, Mr. Schumer said: "One might
be an aberration. Two is getting awfully close to a pattern."
He said, "Of all the people who have experience running prisons in this
country and haven't run into trouble, how did they pick these guys?"
Vincent Nathan, an expert on prison management, said "I find it
somewhat mystifying that the Justice Department failed to involve its own
professional administrators in the federal Bureau of Prisons" in running
the prisons in Iraq.
The Bureau of Prisons, Mr. Nathan noted, is part of the Justice
Department and has long experience in running prisons that hold
foreigners, including illegal immigrants.
The Justice Department official said Mr. McCotter's role in overseeing
prison operations in Baghdad was limited to what are regarded as civilian
prisoners, rather than military ones. But the unclear chain of command at
Abu Ghraib has made it difficult to distinguish between the two
groups.
"What is the civilian side?" Mr. Schumer asked. "Many of the people who
were abused were civilians."
Mr. Armstrong returned from Iraq last week to attend his daughter's
graduation and has not decided whether to go back, said a Michael Lawlor,
the chairman of Connecticut's House Judiciary Committee and a neighbor in
West Haven.
During his eight years as commissioner of corrections in Connecticut,
Mr. Armstrong was also criticized by the guards' union and the National
Organization for Women for failing to deal with repeated complaints by
female guards that they were being sexually harassed by male guards.
But his most difficult time came when he sent more than 200 Connecticut
inmates to Wallens Ridge, a supermaximum security prison in Big Stone Gap,
Va.
One inmate, Lawrence Frazier, the diabetic, died after being hit with
an electric charge. Another, David Tracy, who had been diagnosed with
mental illness, jumped off his bunk with a makeshift rope around his neck
in plain sight of a guard who did nothing to come to his aid, said David
Fathi, a senior staff counsel for the A.C.L.U.'s National Prison Project.
Mr. Fathi, who oversaw a lawsuit against Connecticut and Mr. Armstrong,
said the state had deprived the prisoners at Wallens Ridge of their
constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment.
Inmates at Wallens Ridge were frequently strapped down in four point
restraint, meaning their arms and legs were fastened down, and were then
hit by stun guns "for trivial things," Mr. Fathi said. The guards, who
were all white, often used racial slurs in talking to the prisoners, he
said.
Mr. Lawlor, who visited Wallens Ridge, said the warden's office had
been decorated with photographs of Confederate generals and Confederate
battle flags.
Connecticut in two separate out-of- court settlements agreed to remove
all of their inmates from Wallens Ridge and to pay $1.9 million to the
families of the inmates who died.
