Confessions of a Torturer: The story of Army interrogator Tony Lagouranis

March 2007
Confessions of a Torturer: The story of Army interrogator Tony Lagouranis

Lagouranis says his own interrogations there were just talking, "right out of the army field manual." Some of the older interrogators, however, were still using harsher methods. Some detainees judged to be uncooperative were stripped of their mattress, blankets, and extra clothing to expose them to the cold in their cells. Others were kept in isolation for months at a time and hooded when they were taken to the interrogation booths, so that they'd see no one but their interrogators. Nevertheless, it seemed to Lagouranis that the administration of Abu Ghraib was getting progressively cleaner. Also, it was common knowledge that the CIA was torturing prisoners, he says, so anything the army did paled by comparison.

IN APRIL 2004 the New Yorker and 60 Minutes II broke the story of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib. Not long after those infamous photos were published, Lagouranis was transferred from Mosul back to Abu Ghraib. CNN broadcasts played constantly in the area where the interrogators wrote their reports, and it was there, while watching congressional hearings, that Lagouranis heard Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld say that the detainees in Iraq were being treated according to the Geneva Conventions. "I also heard [Lieutenant General Ricardo] Sanchez say that dogs were never authorized to be used in Iraq." This testimony flatly contradicted guidelines for interrogations that Sanchez, the military commander in Iraq, had issued in September and October of 2003.

"That's when I got really pissed," Lagouranis says. "I was like, 'Shit, these guys are fucking us over.'"