J E R E M Y W A L K E R + A S S O C I A T E S, I N C.

presents

A Moxie Firecracker Production

A Film by Rory Kennedy

GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB

Preliminary Press Notes

WORLD PREMIERE: AMERICAN DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION,

2007 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

HBO PREMIERE: Thursday, February 22, 2007, 9:30pm

Running Time: 81 Minutes

“When you give an order and you give the signal for a little bit of torture, it spreads like wildfire. There’s no such thing as a little bit of torture.”

-- Alfred McCoy, Author, A Question of Torture

PRESS CONTACT: FOR HBO:

Jeremy Walker Lana Iny / Jessica Manzi

Jeremy Walker + Associates HBO

160 West 71st St. #2A 1100 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10023 New York, NY 10036

Telephone 212-595-6161 Telephone 212-512-1462 / 212-512-1322

Mobile (at Sundance) 917-597-7286 Mobile 917-992-4794 / 917-553-8625

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FILMMAKERS

Director / Producer RORY KENNEDY

Producer LIZ GARBUS

Writer / Producer JACK YOUNGELSON

Editor SARI GILMAN

Director of Photography TOM HURWITZ

Original Music MIRIAM CUTLER

Line Producer JULIE GAITHER

Story Editor MARK BAILEY

Co-Producer GIL SHOCHAT

Associate Producers KEITH MALONE

CAITLIN McNALLY

Production Coordinator HILLARY BYRUM

Post Production Supervisor MATTHEW JUSTUS

Associate Producer for Development MICHAEL R. SCHREIBER

Additional Photography MICHAEL CHIN

EDWARD MARRITZ

WOLF TRUCHSESS von

WETZHAUSEN

Second Camera MIGUEL DIAZ

GABRIEL MONTS

HUTTEMBERG NASSAR

STEVE NEALEY

MICHAEL K. ROGERS

BURAK SENBAK

JACK YOUNGELSON

Sound SARA CHIN

DAVID CHUA

METIN ÇORNIK

GABRIEL MILLER

JOHN O’CONNOR

ALEX SULLIVAN

Gaffer STEVEN KAYE

Field Producer Germany NADJA KORINTH

Operations Consultant, Turkey REMY GERSTEIN

Travel NYNA THREADGOULD

Translators HUSSEIN SADDIQUE

SASHA SPEKTOR

EMNA ZGHAL

Animator TODD RUFF

SUBVOYANT

Stills Animation AARON CURRAN

Assistant Editors AARON CURRAN

KEN YAPELLI

Additional Assistant Editors RICH JOYCE

DAVID RIVELLO

DAN WINIKUR

Researchers MICHAEL BISBERG

LIBBY KREUTZ

SHEILA MANIAR

Production Assistants SUZANNE ANDREWS

JACOB HUDDLESTON

Interns AMANDA HOLT

BARBARA KONTAROVICH

PEARLY LEUNG

ARIANA VAZQUEZ

Off-Line Facility MOXIE FIRECRACKER FILMS, INC.

On-Line Editor & Colorist SCOTT DONIGER

FULL CIRCLE POST

Sound Editors MARGARET CRIMMINS

GREG SMITH

DOG BARK SOUND

Re-Recording Mixer TONY VOLANTE

SOUND LOUNGE

Musicians STEPHANIE BENNETT

IRA INGBER

NOVIOLA

DEBORAH SEALOVE

LARRY TUTTLE

Legal VICTORIA COOK. ESQ.

RICHARD HOFSTETTER. ESQ.

FRANKFURT, KURNIT, KLEIN

AND SELZ

Accountant BARRY KORNBLUM, CPA

H.S. POMERANTZ & COMPANY

Bookkeeper………………………………………....ABRAHAM RONQUILLO

ADDITIONAL CREDITS BEGIN ON PAGE 26


GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB

GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB examines and contextualizes the abuses that occurred in the fall of 2003 at that notorious Iraqi prison, abuses documented in photographs that are etched in our national consciousness and will remain so for years to come. The documentary asks: what do those events say about America, our government, our military, and human nature? The film is built on the direct, personal narratives of the perpetrators, witnesses, and victims of the abuse and probes the psychology of how typical American men and women can come to commit atrocious acts. On a parallel track, the film explores the chronology of recent policy decisions that have eroded our compliance with the Geneva Conventions and that contributed to making this abuse a reality.

If news can claim to be the first draft of history, then nonfiction cinema is the compelling, carefully constructed argument that can claim to most truthfully get at the whole of the “how” and “why” behind our most extraordinary events. Rory Kennedy’s GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB is just such a film, one that will further illuminate key aspects of this history changing event, even for those who think they know all there is to know.


With GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB, producer-director Kennedy, working with HBO Documentary Films, tackles the how and the why behind one of the greatest scandals to rock the US Military, the Pentagon and the Presidency since the events of Viet Nam: the prisoner abuse scandal at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

The scandal was triggered by a single CD of photographs that became public in April 2004, after an MP named Joseph Darby turned it over to a superior officer in the Criminal Investigation Division. The Pentagon and the administration have maintained that the abuses documented in the photos were the result of “a few bad apples” or an “animal house on the night shift” aberration, an explanation reported and perpetuated by most mainstream media outlets.

GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB shows that not only were MPs put in charge of torturing and humiliating “high value” detainees at Abu Ghraib, but also that the abuse was by a culture of torture and humiliation that was sanctioned by the Pentagon and the Bush administration.

For the first time, we hear detailed accounts from those most directly involved in the abuses -- U.S. soldiers, both Military Police and Military Intelligence, as well as eyewitnesses – who were “on the tier” at Abu Ghraib, and also from a handful of Iraqi detainees who report their own harrowing experiences on the tier during that time.

We hear from such administration insiders as Alberto Mora, General Counsel, Department of the Navy, who served in that capacity between 2001 and 2006; and John Yoo, who served in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice from 2001 to 2003.

Finally, we hear from three experts on the legal, moral and psychological meaning, definition and impact of torture on those who experience it and on those who perpetrate it, and how the perpetrators likely came to become practitioners of torture. The experts are Scott Horton, Chairman, Committee on International Law for the New York City Bar Association; Mark Danner, author of Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror; Alfred McCoy, Author, A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror; Col. Janis Karpinski (retired), who was in charge of every prison in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib; and Rear Admiral John Hutson, a retired Judge Advocate General of the US Navy.

One thing becomes crystal clear as we hear what all of these people have to say: that in the summer and fall of 2003, Abu Ghraib prison was just about as close as you could get to hell on earth.


DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

A year ago I set out to explore how ordinary people, given certain circumstances, are capable of carrying out extraordinary acts of violence.

Historically, across cultures, there are many examples of this -- genocides where neighbor turned against neighbor, friend against friend. For me, the unanswered question linking all of them was, what were the factors, the precise circumstances that made such destruction and horror possible?

Starting with this broad inquiry, I soon narrowed the focus of the film. It became apparent that the story that needed to be told was the story of Abu Ghraib. Not only was this a story of violence and torture and acts of real evil, but it was also a contemporary story, here and now -- a story about ourselves. My intention would be to look at the personal and psychological make ups of those most directly involved. How could our American soldiers be capable of such monstrous acts? What could possibly have motivated them?

The photographs that emerged from Abu Ghraib were so shocking that they instantly became the defining images of all that has gone wrong with the war in Iraq (and perhaps America, too). And yet, at the same time, we know very little about their genesis. They are images that each of us has been forced to fashion our own narratives around, to formulate our own explanations, because too many questions have remained unanswered. Who were the people in the pictures? Who were the victims? Who chose to participate in the abuse and why?

As I did more research and interviewed those directly involved with the abuses at Abu Ghraib, it became impossible to avoid the fact that policies had been put into place that allowed for this culture of torture to percolate.

The story of what went on at Abu Ghraib is very complex and layered, far from black and white. I hope that this film sheds some light on what exactly took place at the prison and how those horrific acts and the photographs of them came to be. If the images are a mirror of America, a window into our potential to morally transgress, then we need to look at them more deeply, to face them, to try to understand them. If we are to exorcise the ghosts of Abu Ghraib, we can no longer turn away from what we might see. Otherwise, it may just happen again.

-- Rory Kennedy, December 2006


CONTEXT: HUMAN NATURE

GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB begins with archival footage of an experiment conducted in 1961 by Yale psychologist Dr. Stanley Milgram. The purpose of the Obedience Study was to observe an individual’s willingness to inflict pain when ordered to do so. The participants – who responded to a newspaper advertisement – did not know that the “victim” was an actor and that the shocks they were administering were not real. Although some participants showed real concern, all of the subjects administered shocks. The majority did so at the maximum level: 450 volts.

Producer-director Rory Kennedy came upon the footage as she was researching a documentary that had a wider scope than GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB, one that would explore the psychological roots of genocide.

“Originally, the film would examine how ordinary people could be driven to commit acts of extraordinary evil, from the perspective of the perpetrators. Instead of looking at the outward forces – at leaders and the historic events that seem to precipitate war and genocide, I wanted to look inward. As I was doing research, two behavioral experiments kept coming up: the Stanford Prison Study (that had to be shut down when the prison guards became overly abusive) and Milgram’s ‘Obedience Study’ at Yale.”

It was during this time, around 2004 and 2005, that the first official reports on how the abuse at Abu Ghraib came about, implicating Specialist Charles Graner, Army PFC England and nine other “bad apples,” were made public. Widely reported military Courts Martial started taking place. As she followed the news, it became clear to Kennedy that the themes of abuse at Abu Ghraib dovetailed with her genocide project.

“It seemed like an open and shut case,” Kennedy recalled recently. “The way the military was dealing with it was, these are people who turned. Let’s throw them in prison. My interest in them was strictly behavioral: it was really about these men and women and what within them brought them to do what they did. Like many, I assumed that they had behaved badly and I wanted to know why. I had,” Kennedy adds, “no other agenda.”

Kennedy began by trying to interview the key players accused of the abuse: Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, Graner and England. However, she was denied access to these individuals because they were confined to military prisons and were prevented from speaking to the press. “That was really disappointing,” Kennedy said recently. “I felt it was a first amendment issue, but there was no way around the military justice system.”

Kennedy knew there were a number of other MPs and MIs on the tier. Some had received sentences of only a few months, some had been punished with a reduction in rank. Some, who merely witnessed the abuse, weren’t punished at all.

With the Yale and Stanford studies in mind, and with the idea that she would narrow the focus of her film to Abu Ghraib, Kennedy began conducting interviews.

CONTEXT: ABU GHRAIB PRISON

As she researched the film, producer-director Kennedy “really tried to understand the context in which those photos were taken,” she said recently, just days before finishing work on the film. “So many of us saw the photos and had an immediate, visceral judgment, myself included. The images represented nothing short of abject evil.

“I went through my own journey to try to understand the people involved – both the prisoners and those in charge of them – and the first step was to understand the harrowing conditions in which they were living and working. Were all of the people charged and implicated with abuse simply evil people or was something else going on? I quickly found, however, that many of us are much more capable of harming others than we would be willing to admit. That’s a really hard idea to accept if you haven’t looked closely at what daily life was like at Abu Ghraib.”

Kennedy describes what it was like to meet and interview MP Javal Davis and MP Megan Ambuhl. Davis had completed a six month sentence for his role in the abuse, while Ambuhl had been punished with a reduction in rank. Kennedy interviewed both of them where they were living at the New Jersey and Virginia homes of their respective parents.

“When I first met Javal – he was the first interview I conducted for the film – I was immediately disarmed by him,” Kennedy says. “I did not see a monster, I saw a human being with a sweet smile and eyes you can connect with. He’s a well-spoken, decent guy-next-door.