Eric Fair

John: Okay, it is Tuesday, July 12th, 2011. I'm John Peddigrew. I'm here with Liz and Jared at the Digital Media Studio beginning an interview for the Empathy project with Eric Fair from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Eric, when were you born, where were you born, where were you brought up?

Eric: I was born May of 1972 here in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, born and raised. Went to school here and returned to live out I guess the rest of my days here.

Eric: You went to high school here? What high school did you go to?

Eric: I'm a Liberty High School grad. I graduated in 1990 and then left and went to school in New England for four years and graduated with a history degree. And then, enlisted into the U.S. Army in 1995.

John: So, from a history major, which is always a doubtful major, you went to the Army. Did you do anything before enlisting in the Army, that is between graduating from college and enlisting?

Eric: No, I had a part time job in Boston during my college years and I worked there for a few more months after graduation. But, my intention had to be to become a police officer and I knew at the time that the only I was gonna make that happen was buy joining the Army and getting Veteran's preference. So, the Army was a means to an end. It was supposed to be five years in and out and then onto a police department.

Eric: Right, and did you enter the Army as an officer, then?

Eric: I did not, I enlisted. I went in as a private and did my five years and left as a sergeant.

John: How did you find those five years, to generalize?

Eric: They were what I expected. They were difficult, they were boring, the were mind numbing at times. The world of an enlisted solider is 2:00a difficult one. I went from writing thesis papers in Boston to mopping floors in the barracks of Kentucky. But, those were my expectations and I knew that's what was coming. So, I counted the days and watched the calendar and was happy to get out.

John: Was Basic training a monumental experience in your life?

Eric: It wasn't for me, and again I think because I went with certain expectations that I knew what was coming. Basic Training is a simple process, you keep your head down and you, not to sound like Forrest Gump, but you simply do what you're told and you follow orders. Kinda go pretty smoothly, just try not to get noticed. And, I found the Army generally pretty simple. It was do what you're told, and do it quickly and things worked out fine.

John: So, my history serves between 95 and 2000 you said no major war, necessarily depending on how you count them, but certainly military 3:00conflicts the United States was engaged in. Were you deployed overseas?

Eric: I deployed briefly to Egypt with an organization called the Multi-National Force and Observers. We were in the Sinai Peninsula. And, it's an observer force designed to observe the Camp David Treaty Accord between the Egyptians and the Israelis. So, the Sinai Peninsula acts as a buffer. The United States and a number of other countries observe Egyptian and Israeli forces to ensure that nobody's amassing any troops. So, we simply stood watch over a desert for six months. That was my deployment.

John: So, the observation itself was with your eye as opposed to from high above satellite observation.

Eric: Yeah, it was we literally counted vehicles and trucks on a daily basis. The Egyptians had a quota, and I don't remember what it was, but a certain number of trucks, same with the Israelis. We had a few helicopter assets that watched from the air, but it was a quiet six 4:00months.

John: So, after the six months in Egypt and in general where were you stationed in the Army?

Eric: I spent the majority of my career in Fort Campbell in Kentucky. Actually straddles the border between Kentucky and Tennessee. I was with the 101st Airborne Division. I'd started off as infantry, then gone on and become an Arabic linguist. So, I worked with a number of different units who were trained to essentially intercept voice communication. So, we snuck around the forests and jungles of Kentucky and trained to go to war in the Middle East for three or four years.

John: Tell me about your Arab language training. Did that start in college?

Eric: No, the Army, once I joined the Army in Basic Training they gather you in rooms and they hand out different tests to check your 5:00aptitude for a number of different jobs. And, I happened to score well on a certain test and the Army strongly suggested that I then head off to Monterey, California. It wasn't a choice, it was an assignment. I spent a year and a half in Monterey studying Arabic. So no, I had no prior experience with the language or the culture for that matter. In fact, if I remember correctly the only course I ever dropped in my college career was the history of the Middle East. I lasted a day or two and decided I wasn't interested. But, I ended up as an Arabic linguist. A year and a half in training and then back to the regular Army.

John: Just speaking very impressionistically did studying Arab language in Monterrey, California for a year and a half doesn't sound too bad, actually.

Eric: No, it was a bit of a vacation, it was ideal. The course work was very difficult, it was a rigorous program. It was 10 to 12 hour days. Weekends were often taken up by studying, but there wasn't a better assignment than Monterey, California. We were up on the hill, we 6:00had a view of the pacific. I went to the golf tournament. So, it was a beautiful place to be. We all knew, we knew how lucky we were. We knew where we were headed and where we were going, either to North Carolina or Georgia or Kentucky. So, we soaked it in, we were sad to leave.

John: Did you play golf at Eloise?

Eric: I did not, I was not a golfer when I was in Monterey. I didn't pick it up until later.

John: And, had you met your wife by this time?

Eric: No, I didn't meet my wife until after the Army. I had made a commitment during my Army years not marry or date. So, the life just didn't allow it.

John: So, after leaving the Army in 2000 what happened?

Eric: I left, 2000 my five year enlistment was up. So, I took my honorable discharge in large part because most of us figured at that point 7:00that we weren't going to do anything, that all the training that we had undertaken was useless in a way. We weren't gonna go to war. Wars in the Middle East were over. Arabic linguists weren't gonna be needed. And so, I had joined to become a police officer. I was tempted in some ways to stay because the life of the Army, I had adjusted to it and I knew it would be difficult to adjust to civilian life. But, I returned to that commitment to become a police officer and came home. And, I was lucky enough to get a position here in Bethlehem.

John: How did that go?

Eric: It went well. I'm not sure there's a better job than police work. Everyday is different, you never know where you're headed. A city like Bethlehem is a great place. You get a mix of, you have some very quiet days, days where you're getting raccoons out of trees, and other days where you're dealing with some of the tougher issues. So, it was a great place to be a policeman and I enjoyed it.

John: How long were you a policeman?

Eric: Just about two years and I ended up getting sick. I had a heart condition and at this point, this was post 9/11. The war in Iraq had 8:00just started. And, I had a choice to either sit at a desk for the next 20 years as a police man or to sort of get back involved. And, I found a way to get back involved.

John: So, you were a policeman during September 11, 2001.

Eric: I was.

John: Do you remember that day? Were you on duty?

Eric: I was not on duty, it was my day off. I remember it probably as well as everybody else does. I was actually golfing, my father and I were out golfing that morning and we had come back to the clubhouse. And someone was talking about New York and the World Trade Centers being on fire. We drove home and I watched the rest of it on television.

John: And, from that experience from the whole process of learning of the attack and who perpetrated it that in part contributed to your 9:00interest in rejoining?

Eric: It did, yeah I was engaged to be married at the time, actually in October, the following month. Had I not been engaged I almost certainly would have reenlisted at that point. I was less than a year out of my enlistment. So, I was eager to get back. And, I sat down with my then fiance, later the wife, and we talked through what my plans were. And, I was eager to reenlist at that point and I almost did, and I can't tell you why I didn't. I guess it was partly a connection having been newly married but also a connection with a job that I loved here in Bethlehem. But, I certainly, my attention was certainly focused on getting back into the military at that point.

John: What made you so eager? Did you feel like that?

Eric: I'm not sure that I can other than to say probably what everybody else felt, which was mostly anger. And, there was a need to kind of 10:00lash out. I had spent five years in the Army learning how to lash out, learning how to be violent for no good reason. And now suddenly, there was a very good reason to do those things. And it didn't, at that point, conversations about chemical weapons and Al-Qaeda, none of that mattered. There was just, I think, a deep desire, I suspect call it revenge, vengeance, it was deep rooted.

John: So, how did that lay out for you in terms of you reentering the service?

Eric: I spent another two years with the police department and got sick, lost the job because of a heart condition. And, at that point, again I could have sat at the desk and been sick for the rest of my career or I could find a way to get back and essentially go to war and I did. This was early in the war. No one had heard about interrogators, no one had heard about contractors. None of that stuff meant 11:00anything to anybody. I found a contracting company, CACI c-a-c-I, they were eager for people with language experience, with military experience, with law enforcement experience, and with security clearances. I fit the bill to a t. They hired me within 48 hours. And, December of 2003 I was on my way to Baghdad.

John: So, this is a huge topic, the fact of the Pentagon, the United States Military contracting out part of it's work to private corporations hiring people who are not U.S. Military. From food services to military like protection for key figures to interrogators. Can 12:00you, in retrospect, we'll return quickly to December 2003 in retrospect though, can you talk about how you feel now about that fact of more jobs and duties of the U.S. Military going to non-military personnel all within the context of an all volunteer armed forces after the Vietnam war.

Eric: Sure, it's a big leap because in retrospect my opinion is much different, but it was a hard learned lesson and not a simple answer. Contracting is, in my opinion, clearly a failure of the system, but it's not necessarily as black and white as that. Contracting saves the U.S. government billions of dollars. And, I know the argument is that, "Well, contractors "get paid this amount of money and soldiers only 13:00"get paid this amount of money." But, the amount of money that a contractor makes is immediate. He makes it, he leaves his job and he's not connected to the government anymore. So, there are no education benefits, there are no health benefits, there are none of the benefits that we continue to pay soldiers. When a soldier redeploys from Iraq or Afghanistan he or she continues to get paid for the remainder of their enlistment, three, four, five, 10 years. A contractor is cut off and you're done paying them. That being said the experience of war it's a complicated issue. Wars need to be fought by the citizens. And, the only way that you can do that, I think, is by having an Army that is made up of the citizens of our country the United States. And, that means there's an obligation for the Army to be made up from the city of Bethlehem and from the West Coast and from Lehigh University and from people in the inner city in New York. There needs to be, everyone 14:00needs to sort of experience what war is. The way we did it is we took a very small volunteer Army and then hired these contractors, like me, who essentially wanted to go to war. And, I think, in retrospect, that's what has caused us the most problems.

John: Back in December 2003, in CACI were you given training by that corporation before going to the Middle East?

Eric: There was a brief, we had a brief stay at Fort Bliss, Texas where we were essentially given equipment and given some very basic training classes. We were inoculated with a number of different shots, but no there was no specific job training. That was assumed as part of the contract. And again, that was the idea of contracting was that the Army, there were certain jobs that were so specialized that it 15:00was cheaper for the Army to simply outsource and to hire people who already have that experience then to spend all of those years training people up. It would have taken the Army three or four years to train interrogators to be able to handle the kind of workload that they needed. In retrospect, they had plenty of time to do it, at the time it was immediate. So no, there was no training you were hired as an interrogator and you were expected to be ready to conduct interrogations. And, I'm saying I'm sure it was the same for other interrogators. If you were hired as a security contractor or excuse for other contractors if you were hired in security you were expected to be ready to provide security. If you were hired for food service you were ready for food service.

John: And so, when piecing this together it seems clear that you are something of a model person for CACI in that you had Arabic language training in the U.S. Army. You had several years of experience in the Bethlehem Police Department. And that on paper and as they understood 16:00you you are really quite attractive to them for what they anticipate they needed in the Middle East.

Eric: Well, I was part of a system that produced these people so that the only people producing people qualified to do this job was the U.S. Military. Colleges and civilian companies were not producing interrogators. There may be a college like Middlebury up in Vermont is producing linguists, but they're not training them as interrogators. So, to find someone who's proficient in the language but also proficient in this skill you're only going to find that in the military. So, the military was essentially hiring it's own people back and they knew that. The vast majority, and in fact I would say 100% of the people that I went to Baghdad with as interrogators were prior military. Now, some of the other jobs that would be different, truck driving, transportation, food service, certainly that could come from the civilian world. But, these types of military positions were prior military.

John: And, while this is a private corporation it is hiring former military personnel. And, at least for a short while, you were back in, you were in Fort Bliss in Texas, a military installation. So, there is coordination clearly between the U.S. Army in this case and CACI corporation.

Eric: There was certainly an effort at coordination but it was a gray area for many of us. It was new territory. In some ways I was back in the Army to do an Army type job, but I was no longer wearing a uniform. I was not wearing rank, it was hard to know where you stood in the chain of command. There was no real there wasn't anything to give you a sense of how that was supposed to work. So, we really sort of 18:00figured it out on our own.

John: Could you, speaking very broadly use a word or two as to how you would, how you did think of yourself at that time? If not literally a soldier, an American who was going to fight in response to September 11th, 2001? Was this a technicality in a sense in your mind? You were trained as a soldier, you were going to deploy your skills as a solider, you are an American going to the Middle East?

Eric: We thought of ourselves as specialized American soldiers. I know the word contractor evokes the idea of people going off to war for money for no real cause. But, I would not have gone to war for England or France or for China. I would not have gone to war for the highest 19:00bidder. I was going to war for the United States of America and that was the only person or the only country that I would have done that for. Now, I wasn't going in a uniform in large part because I couldn't with my health condition, but also returning, if I had wanted to return as a soldier at that point in 2003 I would have had to reenlist. It would have taken me three or four months just to get through the system back into the Army. I would have joined a unit. I probably would have spent a year maybe two years stateside training with that unit. I would have been back mopping floors. I would have been back raking leaves. I would have been back checking toilets to make sure they were clean. All of the tasks that are involved in the Army. And then, I may have deployed at some point. There's no, certainly and again in retrospect I likely would have deployed because everyone was deploying at that point, but we didn't know that in 2003. None of us had any idea how long this conflict was gonna be. Most of us thought three, six, eight, 10 months. So, the desire to get involved and get 20:00involved quickly was what led us to find a way and contracting provided that way to get to war, essentially tomorrow. And, that's what we were doing.

John: It's fascinating, your point about the length of this war in July of 11 now, Secretary of Defense Panetta is just looking at Iraq just yesterday in the helicopter trying to figure out whether he should put more people back in or take more people out. But, in December of '03 it was going to be a quick war.

Eric: Saddam had just been captured. In fact, I was in Pennsylvania when Saddam was captured. I was getting ready to leave and I remember being disappointed. And, I'm embarrassed about that, and I'm ashamed of it but I felt like I had missed my opportunity to be involved at that point. Saddam was captured, it was over. We thought it was done.

John: So, after Fort Bliss you go to Baghdad?

Eric: We flew, I forget the route, I think maybe to Copenhagen. We flew into Kuwait. We spent a few days in Kuwait waiting a military 21:00flight into Baghdad. They left everyday and it just depended on priority and sandstorms and all the other things going on in the Middle East. We sat Kuwait on the airfield and eventually boarded a cargo plane and flew into Baghdad. Met our fellow employees and they settled us in Baghdad for a few days. And then, again, this was very early at least for us. For contracting it was early in the war. I was probably one of 20 or 30 interrogators in the country at that point. And, things were just beginning so we had no real sense of what we were gonna do or where we were gonna go.

John: This is early 2004?

Eric: This is January of 2004.

John: In Baghdad?

Eric: In Baghdad.

John: What did you see? What were your impressions of Baghdad in January of 2004?

Eric: We were on a base that eventually became Camp Victory, which eventually became this large, sprawling it still is large, sprawling U.S. base. At that time it was nothing but what the Iraqis had left behind, which it was an old air field. There were some bunkers, there was some old housing for workers, some barracks. And then, there was a number of palaces dotted around manmade canals. And, these were palaces that the Ba'ath party had constructed and then used for their gatherings. We simply moved into the open space and started to build out. By the time I left in summer it was starting to take shape. But, in January it was still a pretty wide open space.

John: So, in inhabiting Camp Victory were you working or living at least side-by-side with U.S. military personnel?

Eric: Not necessarily at Camp Victory, although that eventually became the case. But, what had happened was some of the contractors the 23:00supervisors had arrived a few weeks earlier and had secured some buildings that then became what we called CACIville, which is where no one but CACI employees lived. And, they were just broken down old buildings without doors, no running water, no toilets, none of that. So, we certainly weren't living the high life. But, the soldiers at that point everyone was sort of separated. Now, a few days later and this jumps ahead, we were sent out to Abu Ghraib. And, at that point we were essentially mixed in with the soldiers. And so, that was sort of a different, it wasn't sort of it was a completely different experience than Camp Victory.

John: So, when did you begin your work as an interrogator in Baghdad?

Eric: I spent a few days at Camp Victory, two or three, I don't remember. We drove out to Abu Ghraib. I spent a day at Abu Ghraib being told where to sleep, where to eat. And, I showed up to work the next morning and started interrogations. Abu Ghraib was an immense prison 24:00complex. And, at that time there were two holding facilities for Iraqi detainees. They were held outside in tents. And, to this day, I'm still not sure of the numbers. Certainly more than 5,000 maybe as many as 10,000 detainees at that point, less than 25 interrogators between both the military and contracting. And, the workload at that point was simply unrealistic. So, there was no time for you to sit in with another interrogator and watch him operate or to get your feet under you for a week. They needed people processed and they needed it right away. And so, we started to work.

John: To be clear, Abu Ghraib is an infamous name now, a chapter in the war. So, this was a preexisting Iraqi prison that the United States 25:00took over after the invasion.

Eric: It was, it was a notorious prison for Iraqis it was similar maybe to Alcatraz, has that same kind of name recognition. Now, most Americans had never heard of Abu Ghraib, but certainly every Iraq would know Abu Ghraib prison would know where it is. And, many would know family members or friends who had spent some time there. It was essentially, Saddam's political prison where he sent all of his enemies.

John: So, you speak about the heavy workload and really the lack of time or personnel to gradually ramp up into this work. You're into it immediately in terms of quote, unquote processing these detainees. What is the goal at this point? I'm assuming that there's a range of 26:00stories and situations and contexts, but at this early point in January '04 there's thousands of detainees that the U.S. Military is bringing into Abu Ghraib. What is a quote, unquote typical process that you experienced? What was the end point?

Eric: Huh, the endpoint. The goal at that point in 2004 was to find chemical weapons. That was the focus. We were essentially given a sheet that had requirements that the parenting units needed. And so, they wanted, of course, locations of weapon caches. They wanted the locations of former Ba'ath party leaders. They wanted to know how big of an influence Bin Laden was in Iraq. All of these types of 27:00questions that they had, but the priority question for every detainee was knowledge about chemical weapons. And again, at that point most of us, myself included, were still convinced that they were somewhere, somewhere in Iraq. Many of us believed that they were right there at Abu Ghraib prison somewhere. So, while the detainees were diverse in every sense of the word the priority with each one was to see if they were somehow connected to chemical weapons. Now, it was often easy to, it was easy to find out whether they were or were not. You could find that you had a farmer who had been storing mortar rounds in his field and had been picked up by Marines or Soldiers and knew nothing about anything let alone chemical weapons. But, with the number of detainees, the large number of detainees and the small number of interrogators there was not a good system for who was who. They were just bunched into these large groups. And, we were then sort of forced to sort through them one-by-one.

John: And literally, how would you encounter these people as you sort through them one-by-one? Would they be brought into a room where you 28:00would sit across the table and speak with them?

Eric: There were different jobs with CACI and with the Army. I was, my title was interrogator but there were many other CACI employees were what were called screeners. And, the screeners screened detainees as they came in. So, a simple two or three minute interview, name, education, military experience, Sunni, Shiia those types of things. And, from those screening reports we got a sense of at least what direction to head. Then, interrogation, interrogators were broken off into teams and then the teams focused on specific issues. Some what were called former regime elements others counter terrorism. But again, chemical weapons remained sort of that primary question. Then, as part of a team you focused on a group of detainees, you set up an interview or an interrogation with the detainee. The US Army, the MPs 29:00brought them into the room, sat them down, much like I am sitting here right now, and you interrogated them for however long you deemed necessary.

John: With the MP remaining there?

Eric: No, most interrogations were conducted with an interrogator, a translator, and a detainee. Now, you could certainly request that the MP be a part of the interrogation if you had some sort of concern, but that was rarely the case. And, often for me and for others like me it was just two of us, the detainee and me. If the Arabic got too complicated or I ended up on subjects that I wasn't familiar with I would call in a translator. But no, for the most part it was just the interrogator and the detainee.

John: Did you feel like your Arabic was strong enough to understand what they were saying most?

Eric: I understood, I struggled certainly in the beginning to communicate with them, like anything, any skill if you don't use it it fades. 30:00Language is no different. There's also the dialect to consider. The Army teaches you what's called Modern Standard Arabic, MSA which is sort of the educated language of the Middle East. If you were to watch news from Saudi Arabia it would be in MSA. And, it sounds to most Arab speakers sort of like a flowery educated language, maybe Shakespearean English that kind of comparison. So, I could understand what the Iraqi was saying or the detainee was saying. But, I certainly couldn't speak their dialect. They could generally understand where I was headed. Again, if it became complicated I could call in a translator.

John: You mentioned earlier about skills that you had for this job and that there weren't many of you who had those skills, and that the ones who did were former Army or military personnel. I mean what did you see, what do you see as the skillset that you had? Arabic 31:00languages is a big part of it. What else did you have?

Eric: Well, it was a check the box mentality. It was the government put out a requirement on a contract and said, "We need these specific tasks completed. "And, we are giving you these requirements "for these individuals." So, as an interrogator the individual must have interrogation experience, must have security clearance. And then, there may have been one or two other things. Now again, all you had to do to meet those requirements was essentially be prior military interrogator and you were in. Where if you were not a prior military interrogator it was very difficult to meet those requirements. So, the requirements were written specifically to get former military interrogators back into the fold. Now, if you were FBI or DEA or the police department and you had a number of years of experience you 32:00could certainly move into those shoes, but there was still some hoops that you would need to jump through to get there.

John: Did you feel that you were finding, creating, producing valuable information as you're going through these interrogations in early 2004? I take it that not a lot of people said that they knew where the chemical weapons were, but in a broader sense was the system working initially?

Eric: This becomes an issue of opinion. And, I know my opinion differs with a number of people not only who look at it from the outside but a number of people who were there. I, again to jump ahead, the whole venture was a failure. There were people who spoke about chemical weapons, at length, in large part now again we see this in retrospect, in large part because they wanted to cooperate. Abu Ghraib was a 33:00horrible place. These people were just a few miles from their families whether in Fallujah or Baghdad or up in Mosul. They wanted out and the only way to do that was to cooperate. So, it became clear early on that it was very hard to differentiate between someone that was cooperating with you just to cooperate and someone who actually knew what they were talking about. Again, in retrospect, we know that everyone who spoke about chemical weapons was lying. But, at the time we were so eager to find those weapons and they were just enough Iraqis willing to say that they knew something about the program that it clouded what was going on. The other issue at the time, this was an active war zone. This was not back in the United States, this was not back in the rear. We were being mortared and rocketed on a daily basis, snipers, gunfire outside the gates. It was a scary, dangerous place. So, we were at the same time while we were trying to answer 34:00these issues about chemical weapons we were also trying to get an idea of what was going on outside the walls. We weren't calling it an insurgency at that point. We didn't know, no one knew but people were getting killed. Our guys were getting killed, a lot of Iraqis were getting killed. And, commanders started to get a sense that they needed to get on top of this. And, that's when the pressure started to come down to get information on what were then being called Improvised Explosive Devices, we all know them as IEDs now. Again, this was all new language. We were trying to get a sense of this difference between the Sunni and the Shiia and who we had more to be concerned with. We were trying to get a sense of was Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Had they been there before? Why are they here now? All of these issues that now seem in retrospect clear and we can look back and say, "oh we knew." We didn't know that in January. In January, Iraq was nothing more than a very 35:00scary, very dangerous, very unpredictable place.

John: And, was that scariness and unpredictability reflected inside the walls of Abu Ghraib as well? That's something of a lead, but I know Spring '04 comes with the pictures in the news of the abuses of prisoners by the American Army, the United States Army. Did you know that in a sense from working there early on January, February, March, that the culture of the place was not perhaps perfectly--

Eric: That's how we look back at it now. And, I know that I'm required to say that I don't support those practices and make all of the 36:00right statements about the things that we've already decided about how those things transpired. But, I think that's unfair to some of the people that were involved in those things because I think we've leaned so far in the other direction which is that Abu Ghraib was this simple place where bad things happened and we need to now prosecute these bad people. Abu Ghraib was a chaotic, horrendous, horrible place and I as a college educated Arabic speaking former soldier I had trouble getting a grasp on what was going on and I had trouble with my emotions and I had trouble with nightmares then, and I couldn't sleep, and I was angry. And so, now take 18 or a 19 year old throw them into that same kind of chaotic situation and then ask them to perform at some level that from the outside seems reasonable and seems humane. It just doesn't work that way. It was a war. People were being killed. Many of the people who were in our detention facility would 37:00have been more than happy to detonate a grenade or to launch a mortar round, as well they should have been. Here we were in their country at war with them. So, to look back now we can certainly look back at the naked pyramids and the stress positions and say, "Well, that shouldn't have happened." And, it should not have. And, there's all sorts of reasons why it shouldn't happen. There are all sorts of people to blame for why it did, myself included. But, I think it's too simple to look back at that stuff and just define it one way and define it as being sort of a bad event and then move on. It's not fair to the people who were involved.

John: Tell me about enhanced interrogation, now. Is that a term that was spoken and used by U.S. Military, by CACI as another grade of interrogation technique?

Eric: I've spoken, again sort of jumping ahead, I've spoken publicly about some of the things I did in Iraq and that included sleep deprivation and stress positions and all those other types of things. Many friends and family when they hear me talk about these things get concerned that I'm somehow implicating myself in something that was done behind closed doors and I'm now bringing to light. None of that stuff was done behind closed doors. Enhanced interrogation was simply a part of the procedure used to get information from people that we thought had the information. It was all laid out on paper about what you were and what you were not allowed to do. Sleep deprivation, stress positions, fear up harsh all of these tactics were all part of the process. I never did anything in Iraq, I certainly did things in Iraq that I'm now ashamed of, but at the time I never did anything in Iraq in an interrogation booth that I was concerned that somebody might be watching. All of the interrogation booths in Iraq had two way glass, which didn't work. You could see the person person standing 39:00behind the glass. So, we knew that people were watching and observing. And yet, we had no concerns about the things we were doing because we knew that they were approved. Now, talking about some of the photographs that eventually came to light that was a different, that was different because it was being done by people who were not interrogators and so it was not part of the interrogation process. And again, that's unfair to the people who were doing it because they were just as much involved in this fight as we were. But, enhanced interrogation was a part of the process.

John: Sleep deprivation, stress positions fear up, what was the last?

Eric: Fear up harsh was a simple interrogation technique. I guess what you call good cop, bad cop. Throwing a chair, yelling and screaming, slamming your hand down on the table. If used properly here you and I are having a nice conversation, but if all of a sudden you kicked 40:00that computer table over my attention's going to shift. And, I am now going to think of you differently. And, for at least the next few minutes I'm going to pay very close attention to what's going on, not that I'm not now, but it will change my mentality about how you and I are conversing. Done at the right moment, at the right part of a conversation for the right reason it can have an effect on an interrogation. Now, it can certainly, like anything, be abused. An interrogator can go in for an hour and throw chairs and scream and yell and slam his hand on the table and accomplish absolutely nothing. But, in a nice quiet conversation about a detainee's background if you catch on to him being deceptive in some way and you knock over a chair it can get his attention very quickly.

John: So, that is crucial to my mind, for what it's worth, the idea that when you're in the middle of this, an interrogation everything is 41:00transparent and the procedures are down on paper, people are watching from the other side of a two way mirror. This is as it should be according to the military's dictates and how CACI understands it's job. Are you at war right now at that point?

Eric: In January of 2004?

John: Yes, is that how you understood it? I'm trying to connect your motivations for rejoining the military after September 11th, 2001, this motivation of vengeance as you described it and how you felt while conducting these interrogations at Abu Ghraib.

Eric: Abu Ghraib in 2004 was war. It's what you picture war to be. It is explosions. It is shrapnel. It is detainees coming in with 42:00shrapnel in them, missing arms, bleeding. It is reports outside the wall of American convoys being blown up, of Medivac helicopters coming in and taking people away and then hearing the next day that someone was killed. It is mortar rounds landing in large groups of detainees inside Abu Ghraib and having them killed on site. It is rocket attacks. Rockets are horrible things. They were using old Russian Katyusha rockets. And yet, they were taking them off their launchers and they were putting them on homemade launchers, launching them into the prison which meant that they detonated and landed before their fuel had been spent so large fire ball explosions. It was absolutely war in 2004.

John: And, these people sitting before you, in general terms, you saw as the enemy?

Eric: Again, these questions are hard because we're speaking about me in 2004. Yes, absolutely, these were the, if these weren't the men 43:00who were pushing the button or pulling the triggers they certainly knew who was.

John: Who were you answering to, who was giving you the orders to do what you did and who was overseeing your interrogations?

Eric: We were overseen, there has been a lot of talk about the confusion between who was in charge, was it the contractors or the Army. There wasn't a lot of confusion. We understood that the Army was in charge, that was the final answer. Now, there were certainly some gray areas that there should not have been about who would take the lead on an interrogation and should there have always been a military interrogator in the room and were civilians bound by all of the same laws that uniformed soldiers were. Those were certainly unclear and gray, but the idea of who was in charge, who we had to listen to was never in doubt. It was the uniformed commanders. How they did their 44:00job and whether they did it well, again, that's another question. At that point General Janis Karpinski was in charge. She has since shouldered a great deal of blame for what went on in Abu Ghraib. And, while General Karpinski and I may find ourselves on the same side of this issue now I still think that she shoulders, she should shoulder some of that blame. She did not spend the kind of time at Abu Ghraib that she should have. She came in occasionally, stayed for an hour or two, looked at the cells, a standard sort of general doing an inspection and then left. So, she had no real oversight for what was going on. And, she absolutely, she and others absolutely dropped the ball on paying attention to what was going on there.

John: Was there any trace of the U.S. media within Abu Ghraib?

Eric: No, no there was no media at Abu Ghraib. Now, there may have been, maybe I, there may have been escorted visits by some reporters and 45:00photographers that I was not aware of that happened on a higher level. It was not, certainly media members were not allowed to come and go as they pleased.

John: So, you've alluded to and you've written about this, what and when did things shift for you? You described this difference between early '04 and how you feel now. Can you pinpoint, this is a big question as if it all happened at one point, but yeah how and when did things shift for you and your understanding of what you and others were doing in Iraq?

Eric: I would like to say I had an ah-ha moment where I walked in my first day at Abu Ghraib and knew it was wrong and spoke out, but that 46:00didn't happen. It was not an ah-ha moment. Abu Ghraib was a horrible place. It certainly probably began to shift at that point but I may not have been aware of it. I do remember a morning at Abu Ghraib not long before I left where I was walking out to the interrogation booths getting ready for my day and I sat down in this large concrete embankment. And, I'm a devout Presbyterian and so I was gonna do my morning quiet time and do my prayers and I remember thinking what am I supposed to be praying here for? Am I supposed to be praying that I do well in this interrogation, that I successfully get this gentlemen to give up information that will then lead his long term incarceration. And, it may have been a moment at the time that I didn't notice, but in retrospect I think back and I remember it being very difficult to process and not knowing how to respond to that. My crisis of conscience didn't begin until I was transferred to Fallujah. What was going on 47:00at Abu Ghraib was there were simply too many detainees coming in. There were not enough interrogators who could process. And so, they began to send out advance teams to places like Fallujah and Mosul and Ramadi and Baghdad, intercept the detainees at a much earlier time in the process. Essentially, immediately after capture and get a sense for whether or not these people belonged at Abu Ghraib or whether we needed to cut them loose right away. And so, it was a far more intense sort of interrogation process. We had a much better sense of who these people were, and where they were coming from, why they had been captured. Many of them had been captured simply an hour or two prior to us having a chance to talk to them. So, Fallujah was a brutal place. Fallujah, now again, is notorious but in early 2004 most Americans, again, couldn't tell the difference between Fallujah or Baghdad or Mosul. But, that was at the time, that was ground zero for the 48:00insurgency. So, the men that were coming in there, were essentially the worst of the worst. Many of these were former Ba'ath party members, prior military, prior Republican Guard, a whole mix of just nasty, what I thought at the time were nasty, ugly, angry people. My crisis of conscience began as I continued to interview most of the Fallujah detainees and I began to find that I could justify why they were responding the way they were responding. Fallujah was their city, it was a simple turf war. It's the same way we would respond to having our own turf invaded. We see it in the inner cities. We see people cling to blocks and to street names and to a park and defend their territory and they don't allow outsiders in. Image that experience magnified by having a foreign invasion force come in and dictate when 49:00you go to bed, when you wake up, where you can go, where you can't go, what bridge is open that morning. You can't get across the Fahy bridge because we don't want you to go across the Fahy bridge right now. And just disrupting these lives. And, many of the detainees though certainly guilty of wanting to harm the United States were not that different from me. The Sunni population was well educated. If it was prior military it was the higher ranks of the military and the better units in the military so they were well trained. They knew many of the same things I knew about tactics. And, I began to realize as I sat in interrogation after interrogation that none of them were any different than I was. They simply found themselves on the wrong side of a conflict. We were also beginning to discover at this point, this 50:00was Spring, early Summer of 2004 that the likelihood of chemical weapons in Iraq at that point were, many of us, not all, but many of us were recognizing that there were no chemical weapons. We were also recognizing that there was no, some of us, that there was no connection to 9/11 whatsoever. And, some of us, myself included, were recognizing that if there was gonna be a future for Iraq it was in the Sunni community. And, that at that point was who we were at war with, with the Sunni. The Sunni had all the prior government experience, all the prior military experience, all the prior financial experience. If Iraq was going to rebuild it was gonna be with the Sunni and yet here we were at war with them. So, that it was just, it was a tidal wave of thought and emotion that eventually caused me to rethink my position.

John: It's a huge realization. You describe it so well that it, so it was accumulative effect. Your perception of all the others across the 51:00table from you, but external political things about lack of chemical weapons and the like. How long did you continue that interrogating once this crisis of conscience had begun?

Eric: Well it eventually became sort of an internal argument between this recognition that I probably shouldn't be doing this and that there was something inherently wrong with the way we were conducting interrogation and my commitment to the U.S. Army and my commitment to my contract. I had agreed to a year and the idea of quitting didn't sit well with me. It didn't sit well with anyone that was around me. You finish what you start, those types of things. And so, I had a hard time rectifying those thoughts. I eventually at that point this was, 52:00the dates are hard for me, but I was eventually transferred back to Baghdad into another team at that point that was in dire need of an Arabic linguist. And, I moved away from interrogation and I ended up doing some other things that were far more suited to both my personality and the way I viewed Iraq at that point. So, that allowed me to step away from interrogation but still be in Iraq which is why I think I lasted a few more months. At that point, though, I think I recognized that I could not go back in and do interrogation.

John: And, was there a point that you were asked too and you said that you wouldn't?

Eric: No, I never was and I can't say how I would have responded. I'd like to say I would have stood up and said, "No, I won't do that," but that's a question I can't answer.

John: And so, you fulfilled your one year contract with CACI.

Eric: No, I did not. I did quit. I quit, we were four and a half months in, I was back in Baghdad and I'd had enough. I'd seen enough, and 53:00I knew enough at that point that not only was the war turning and not a good idea but contracting was not a good idea and I didn't wanna be part of it.

John: We have about eight more minutes on this tape.

John: Okay, you wanna continue?

Eric: Sure.

John: Fallujah at that time as you put it is just ground zero for what would be called an insurgency with the set piece battle in November of '04 with Marine and Army units. You're there in February, March.

Eric: February, March, April.

John: March, April. When the U.S. Military is experiencing setbacks, really, or not being able to control parts of Fallujah that they seek to control, including the U.S. Marines having to leave areas only to return to reoccupy those areas. And then, the infamous hanging of bodies from the bridge in Fallujah, Blackwater contractor bodies in the summer of '04, I believe.

Eric: Yes.

John: You're gone by that time, but still in Baghdad. Can you tell me what you thought, felt? Do you remember seeing those photographs, 55:00those videotapes of the charred bodies hanging from--

Eric: I do, I do but it does not stand out for me as a particular incident, again, because that was a part of the war. The war was not an occasional body being hanged on a bridge or an occasional mortar round crashing into the ground. It was a daily occurrence. I had an incident while I was in Baghdad. My job was to go down to the front gate in the morning and Iraqi workers would come onto the base to get day jobs. They would clean the toilets or do some painting or move some stone and then get paid a certain amount of money and then go home. But, they would line up in the morning and try to get in early so that they could get the jobs. It was my job to walk through these lines of people and get a sense for who they were, hundreds of people. Again, an impossible task, but were there former regime elements or were there Al-Qaeda trying to infiltrate the base. This was my job, essentially. But, I used it as an opportunity to simply walk out and get to 56:00know the Iraqis and talk about Iraq and talk about whatever I wanted to happen to talk about that day. And, it was in some ways sort of a very wonderful relaxing experience although also very dangerous to be out amongst the Iraqis. But, on a particular day I was called down to the gate one morning, there was a family, two families that were there and a number of cars and they were yelling and screaming at the gate. And, the American soldiers couldn't understand what they were saying. And, I went down and determined that the families had, there were two sons that had not come home the night before which doesn't happen. The sons don't stay on the base, they have to go home. So, they wanted to know where the sons were. And, my first thought was that they had been detained for some reason. So, I went down to the detention facility on base and I asked about them and they weren't there and someone directed me to the morgue. And, it turned out that there had been a rocket attack on base the day before and both of these young men, or at that point one of these young men had been killed, but the morgue didn't know which was which. And, I was sent into the morgue to identify the body. So, I took identifications from the two families 57:00of the two sons. I went into the morgue to identify the body and I remember it opening up the bag and as I had spoken earlier about Katyusha rockets and their gasoline he had been badly burned to the point where I couldn't recognize him. So, I couldn't tell which family, at this point we were under the impression that the other son was in the hospital. So, I couldn't tell which family their son had died and which one was alive. And, my only choice at that point was to have the two fathers come in and identify the body with me which one did very quickly. So now one family is aware that their son has been killed, the other family is somewhat jubilant because their son is still alive and now I'm dealing with the second family and trying to get them to the hospital. This takes all day. At the end of the day I get a call that no, the second son is also in the morgue, has also been killed but had survived the initial blast but had been flown into downtown Baghdad at the hospital and died at the hospital. So now, I'm now responsible for talking to this family and telling them that their son is 58:00dead as well. So, as tragic as those bodies on the bridge were from Blackwater and as tragic as just about the entire every day, every day was tragedy, every day was tragedy. And so, it was hard at that point to distinguish between one tragedy and another.

John: The intimacy of your experience with Iraqis, with the story you just told to interrogations and other walking through groups of them trying to discern their background and intent can you generalize from this point of retrospect about the Iraqi people? I've met a few, they've been over here as students at different points and the like and earlier. I don't really otherwise know, and it's hard to generalize 59:00about a nationality I know.

Eric: Yeah, I can't generalize about, there were some Iraqis who I met who I did not like. They were ugly, disgusting people. And then, there some Iraqis who I met who were wonderful people. And, I suspect that's no different than any other nation, any other city, any other university, any other place of employment. But no, I can't generalize about the Iraqis. I know that some people have. I know we talk about certain aspects of a culture or a nation. But, I think a lot of that has its roots in something more nefarious than just a culture or an identity. Other than a common history and a common language, no I don't think there's any way to generalize.

John: Did you get a sense that Islam goes very deep in their lives in their person?

Eric: As a man of faith myself I can tell you that their experience with Islam, the way they experience Islam is different than the way we experience the faith here in the United States. Islam was simply part of the culture, the way they were raised, the way they go to work, the way they meet with their families, the way they play sports. Islam was a part of that. You could hear the call to prayer throughout the day from all of the mosques and that minarets that surrounded wherever you were. It was simply a part of what went on.

John: This is great, Eric. I'm a little bit excited, obviously. There's no use in going into the area with 30 seconds left. So we could I guess just let the tape roll. I was thinking of this question in the back of my mind I don't know if you think it's too cliche or formulaic or something to go back to the interrogations and whether there was, this is like a test on a college paper or something. Is there a 61:00qualitative or a quantitative difference between enhanced interrogation and torture? I mean, do we wanna bump up against that given the legal, ethical, the moral issue that's in this country about torture and waterboarding now?

Eric: I don't object to that. I'm not sure that you'll agree with my answers or not, but if you wanna explore that that's fine.

John: I don't, why don't we talk 10 more minutes. Away we go. You spent considerable time interrogating Iraqi detainees in the early months 62:00of the Iraq war in Baghdad and Fallujah, Abu Ghraib and Fallujah, two cornerstones of the early years of the war itself using techniques of sleep deprivation, stress positions, and other techniques of enhanced interrogation.

Eric: Well, I can say and I've said this from the beginning it's something that we didn't get into earlier, my experience with enhanced interrogation was brief. I participated in a sleep deprivation when I was in Fallujah. It was an incident where there was a detainee, we 63:00were doing shift work. I was on the night shift and so I came in at night and the day interrogator said, "Hey, I'm using this technique on this individual. "You need to go in, you need to help keep him awake "during the night and I'm gonna interrogate him "in the morning." So, I agreed and intervened in the sleep deprivation. The minute, the second I woke him and it was also to strip him down of his clothes. And, the second I stripped him down I knew, I knew I'd crossed a line that I had not wanted to cross. So, it was immediate. And, we'd talked before about sort of this growing sense of my own conscience, but my support of enhanced interrogation ended the second I participated in it. So, I did not use enhanced interrogation over a long period of time. I conducted hundreds of interrogations and I used a number of techniques, but those enhanced techniques for me, while I didn't consider them illegal, and I'm not sure I even considered them wrong I 64:00just knew I wasn't capable of doing those things. Later, as I came home and I rethought about the things that I had done I recognized that it had been terribly immoral and that we had certainly crossed a line that we should have never crossed. And, that's when I began to speak publicly and write. But, my view of interrogation, the process being wrong was gradual. My view of enhanced techniques was immediate.

John: Was it just a visceral response to that incident of waking this person up and stripping him down? That was an ah-ha moment in a sense?

Eric: Yes, that would have been an ah-ha moment. And again, I can't necessarily trace why it was, but yes it certainly was.

John: Was there any word among the other interrogators, among military personnel, CACI people about even more extreme measures with 65:00waterboarding being, as we know now, perhaps one of the worst methods of interrogation that the United States has used in Iraq.

Eric: Like any workplace there were whispers, but there were rumors about lots of things. Most of us, I had no experience or knowledge of waterboarding and the vast majority of the people I worked with knew nothing about that. There were other things going on at Abu Ghraib, the CIA, other organizations. We would see these people come in and watch them from afar, but we had no sense that that type of stuff was happening. So, those are questions for other people. I'd love to be able to speak intelligently about that stuff and say, "Well here is," 66:00but I didn't know. And, I have no business speaking about how that happened because I simply wasn't a part of it.

John: When you did return to the United States, left CACI, came back home you said that you realized that what was happening there was terribly immoral. How so?

Eric: I spoke before about how I knew immediately that enhanced interrogation was wrong, but interrogation in general it's a brutal thing. It's designed to be one thing and one thing only and it's manipulative. Your goal in interrogation as an interrogator is to manipulate the 67:00person that you're interrogating. I conducted, one of the interrogations that I have the hardest time processing in my memories was a family had been arrested, as families often were, brothers and cousins were collected as a group because they were suspected of what was then being called anti-coalition activities. And so, the families would come and you would interrogate them as a family and then either send them home or send them up. And, it was very hard to break a family or to get someone to speak against their brother or their father. But, I utilized a very simple technique early on which was to separate the brothers and then interview each of them individually very quickly and identify the weakest link, which happened to be the youngest brother. It was not always the youngest but in this case it was, and he wasn't well spoken and he was clearly frightened and was when he was brought in looking to his brothers to see how to act and how to behave. So, I scheduled an interrogation with him the next day. I isolated him from his brothers. I brought him in and I brought in, none 68:00of this is secret you see it on the television all the time. I brought in a big stack of papers that had nothing to do with the interrogations, put it on the desk. And, I then told him how I had worked with his brothers and they had worked with me and cooperated and that everyone was going home, it would be fine. All he had to do was admit that they were part of this group and knew this information and then I could make it official. And, I could see immediately this confusion and the fear and all of these things were apparent. And, he eventually admitted that he was and that they were, under the auspices that they were going home. He was giving up his family because he thought I'll be home tonight or tomorrow, we'll be back. And that was the end, and I sent them up to Abu Ghraib and they probably stayed there for, they may still be there. Well no, Abu Ghraib's closed, but a good five, six, seven years of their lives. Now, the only reason 69:00they went is because that one brother fell for a very simple, stupid trick. How that family has processed that experience I can't imagine. But, whatever has come out of that experience, whatever depression or anger or if someone was killed at Abu Ghraib or was killed later on in the war that came from my ability to manipulate that weak young kid. Did it help the war effort? Sure, but was it a good thing? No, it was a terrible thing. So, that's interrogation. There's nothing, nothing good about interrogation.

John: In the midst of interrogation in the most coercive moments I understand how with limited experience you had with enhanced techniques, 70:00is there any time or incidents which the person being interrogated appealed to you for help, leniency, support if not verbally but though an expression, through eye contact? Is there, obviously it's an oppositional well you represented it as such, it's an oppositional dynamic. Is there an effort ever to, a person to come on.

Eric: Not in my experience and the reason is is that as an interrogator it was my responsibility to control the room. So, I became a different person every time I walked into the interrogation booth. So, if I happened to be dealing with a young man who was a farmer in 71:00Iraq then I became someone who knew something about farming from Pennsylvania and I had worked on a farm when I was little, which I never did but it served me for that interrogation. Or, if I was dealing with a former regime element who had been a captive in the Republican Guard, oh well I was a Captain in the United States Army so you and I know each other. If someone had three or four children then I had three or four children that day. But, I never allowed it to turn the other way around. And, they would never, they could certainly, they certainly cried and pleaded that they didn't know anything, those types of things, but I never allowed them to appeal to me on any level. It just wasn't the right way to run an interrogation.

John: I guess that's what I was stumbling over, were there any appeals to your humanity, basically?

Eric: In an indirect way, certainly. I remember early on at Abu Ghraib dealing with a former Iraqi general who'd been arrested because his 72:00son was suspected of being part of this growing insurgency. They were again, they were calling them anti-coalition forces at the time. And, they had gone to this house to arrest the son. The son wasn't there, they asked the father where is the son. He said, "I don't know." No one in the family would give up the son and so the American Forces said, "Look, either you "give up the son or we're taking the father." Now, my suspicion is that the forces were gonna take the father, keep him for a day or two and then eventually just send him home just as a way to scare the family. But, because the system was so huge at that point he got mixed up in the system and he ended up at Abu Ghraib in my interrogation booth. So now, here I am interrogating this Iraqi general father who had been arrested at this point three or four months prior. So, he would have been arrested in 2003 and I'm supposed to be asking questions about where his son is today. And, he laughed at me. This was a very confident man and he said, "Even if I was inhumane enough "to give up my son how could I possibly know "where he is today." 73:00And so, he over the course of three or four minutes made me look like a fool in the interrogation booth. And, it was clear that he was the smarter man. And so, and that was a lesson I learned early on that you had to be careful about that stuff. But, as far as appeal for leniency, no that didn't come. The appeals were more you're an idiot and ask me whatever you want. I don't know these things, let's just get it over with, that sort of stuff.

John: When did you return to the States, then?

Eric: I returned in May of 2004 and came back home. I was living in Allentown, Pennsylvania at the time. And, at that point I'd come home 74:00with a friend of mine from CACI. And, he and I had decided that we would, it was a combination of both of us not supporting interrogation but also not supporting CACI. CACI was a, it just wasn't well organized. They had problems with pay, problems with getting us transferred from place to place. And so, we decided that we wouldn't work for CACI but that we would go back and work for an organization called Dynacorp and provide security. So, we came home knowing that we'd spend a few months at home and then head back. He did go back with Dynacorp, I did not. I took a job with the U.S. government and returned to Iraq a few months later with that position.

John: And, what was that position?

Eric: I worked for the Department of Defense. I was what they call an SME, a Subject Matter Expert, which I was not but that's what they deemed me. And, I worked, at this point, IEDs were becoming a major problem. And, they were killing a lot of U.S. soldiers and so a lot of 75:00organizations to include the one I was working with were tasked with finding out not only who were building these IEDs but how they were doing it, what kind of equipment and then what we could do to stop them. It was an ugly position. We were part of a response team. So, we'd get a call that an IED had gone off and hit a convoy and it was our job to then respond to that location as fast as we could and gather as much information and intelligence from that scene. So, every other day or so, or maybe not that often in retrospect it feels like that, but we were out investigating the scenes of IEDs.

John: So, you're a Subject Matter Expert working as part of the Department of Defense but not a uniformed soldier.

Eric: No, but an official, at that point an official part of the, again this becomes a gray area. We had identification badges and those badges had Geneva Convention identifications on them. As a contractor I don't even remember what my identification was but it was not as a combatant. As a member of the Department of Defense I was a combatant. I carried an identification card. I wore an American Flag that identified me as a combatant. I had a Geneva Convention ID so that if I were captured I was supposed to be treated a certain way, all those types of things. I carried a weapon, I was armed at that point. So, I was not a uniformed soldier but I was considered a combatant in the war at that point.

John: And these teams that went out to locations of IED explosions were you accompanied by soldiers?

Eric: It was a combination of American soldiers and foreign soldiers. There were some Australians and some Brits, so it was sort of a 77:00multinational multi-agency task force.

John: This had to be an incredibly tumultuous scene to go into right after a major explosion people dead, often times Americans killed. Talk about vengeance I think that that would be, not to you people around you, the situation must have been extremely heavy with that pressure.

Eric: Most of the American casualties were gone by the time we arrived. The United States has gotten very, very good and very efficient at recovering its casualties from a war zone. And, we should celebrate that on one sense, but there are other issues that I think that addresses. We spend all of this money and this effort on recovering these individuals and treating them, but at the same time it's us who 78:00are sending them into these situations in the first place. But, by the time I arrived on scene the Americans were almost always gone at that point. What was left was the carnage, was the Iraqis who were not flown out of the area. Now, an Iraqi might get lucky and he may be part of a detonation that only effected one or two people and in those cases often the American Military would transport those people. But, in the larger cases, what were then being called VBIEDS, Vehicle Born IEDs the explosions were massive and effected hundreds of people, killing dozens at a time. And obviously, the Americans couldn't deal with that and so it was left to the Iraqis. And, they didn't have the infrastructure at that point to treat them. So often, by the time we arrived if there were injured or dead it was the Iraqis.

John: And so, would you enter those homes routing out the source?

Eric: No, it was not an offensive operation. We were to gather information with the intent of passing that on. And, it would become part of 79:00a larger package which would then be a target package. And then, someone else would kick down the door.

John: So, this work seems more straight forward compared to the crisis of conscience that you had.

Eric: This was law enforcement work for me. This was like being a police officer again. And, I was exposed to things that I wish I had not been exposed to, they were horrible scenes. But, ethically it was different for me. There was certainly nothing wrong, in my mind, about going out and trying to find a way to stop what was going on. Now, my views of the war were, at that point, had evolved into recognizing that this was not a fight we were gonna win, this was not a place we belonged. It had nothing to do with 9/11. Certainly now, this was 2005 80:00late Summer, we knew, most of us had admitted at that point that there were no chemical weapons. So, I had evolved now. I was against the war, but again I had supported it in the beginning and I had been in the United States Army and many of the people I knew were there and I still felt that I had an obligation to be a part of it.

John: How long were you in this position?

Eric: Well, I was in the position a little bit over a year. I did not spend that whole time in Iraq. My deployment was not continuous. I simply went when and where I was needed. But I eventually knew that as an Arabic linguist who now had experience in Iraq that that was gonna be my future for the next however long. Again, at this point, 2005 we didn't know. We thought it could be two years, 20 years. And, I didn't wanna be a part of it anymore and so I left.

John: And then what happened? Where'd you go?

Eric: Then what happened, I'm still not sure what happened at that point. I came home, I flew into Baltimore, met my wife and I knew at 81:00that point that I was done with war. I knew that I wasn't going back. The individual who had, the friend of mine who I'd come home with the first time had subsequently been killed in Iraq, some other acquaintances I knew had been either injured or killed. And so I felt I had done my share. There were certainly others who were doing a lot more than I had done. But, I knew I was at my limit. And, I was okay for a few months, but eventually it returned and I began to suffer like most people do. And for me it was for nightmares it came in the evenings. It was images, mostly, but also sounds and smells. I found that I could smell in my dreams. And then, it came to a point where you simply, 82:00you couldn't control what it was you wanted to think about anymore. So, the idea that you could separate certain thoughts or look away or move away from those negative things in your life, I couldn't do that with Iraq. I couldn't not remember what I'd seen.

John: Did anything help temporarily at least?

Eric: Alcohol was a temporary fix. And, I think if I'd had access to drugs I'd have taken them, but I didn't. As a white suburban kid I couldn't tell you how to get drugs. But, I certainly would have searched them out if I could have. I eventually went on to counseling with my wife. We were beginning to have problems, arguments. I was angry all the time, I was frustrated and I recognized that things were wrong, 83:00I knew. And so, we did go to counseling. The counselor at that point recommended that I then seek sort of individual counseling, which I eventually did. And, one of the things the counselor talked about was this idea that when something, when there's something tragic in your life, when a parent dies, or when a friend dies, or there's a car accident those are horrible memories that we can file away. It belongs some where because they're within normal parameters. We see people suffer those things and we know that there will be a healing process. And we know that we'll never be happy about it but we can file it away in our brain and we can eventually move on in some way. But, something like Iraq there's no where to file it. It doesn't belong anywhere. There's no way to reconcile it with anything else. And so, it sticks out like a different part of your brain and it's always there. You can't put away it's a drawer you can't close. It's a wound that 84:00doesn't heal. People talk about the scab healing over. None of that, it's a fresh, fresh wound. Many of these memories that we're talking about here today are as if they happened yesterday and I suspect it'll be that way for a long time.

John: Is there any increment of fading of them being lighter than they were a year ago?

Eric: No.

John: Frequency's roughly the same?

Eric: Frequency has a little bit to do with, I can control the frequency a little bit better now. What are we seven years removed? If I can focus I have a young son now, a three and half year old. And, if I spend a few days with him I can focus on him and I can focus on training him to use the bathroom or telling him not to throw things off the upstairs banister. But, if I start to talk about it and if I agree to 85:00have a conversation about it or if I read about it in the newspaper or see it on the news it's back and it stays. Now, I recognize that now and so I'm careful about when I agree to talk about it and how I talk about it. And, I know what I'm getting myself into. And some have suggested that the more you talk about it the better it will get. That has not been my experience at all. But, I will say that you become a little bit more aware of what's coming. So, I know now that after we have this conversation, I know what's coming tonight and I know what's coming the following week. And, because I know what's coming I'm probably better prepared to handle it then I would have been four or five years ago.

John: Do you think that this experience that your having seems to cover what we're talking about but it all together in the critical 86:00understanding that you have of it right now as that will evolve is it making you a good father?

Eric: Hmm, I don't know. I have a coffee table, a side table next to my chair in my office, there's a lamp on it. And, there's a sheet of glass over the coffee table and then a space in between where you can display old trinkets. And, I have a number, in the U.S. military you get coins depending on if you accomplish a great task or you're part of unit and the coin has the unit insignia and you collect them as you go through the military. And so, I have some of my coins displayed. And, I have some Iraqi, a little Iraqi flags and other odds and ends 87:00that I've gotten over my years in the Army. And, I know that someday my son will be tall enough to look over that piece of glass and see those things and they're shiny and he's gonna wanna know what they are. And eventually, he's gonna be in middle school and then high school and take a different kind of interest in those things. And, I don't know where that will lead, but as I sat looking at them the other day I realized I needed to pack them away. And, I needed to pack away the uniforms. And, I needed to simply be, I wanted to wipe it clean because at this stage I'm not ready for that conversation. And, while he's only three and half and we're certainly not having that conversation now I don't know when it's coming. All I know is I'm not ready to have it at this point. It's easier for me to just erase it. I can't erase it for me but I can certainly erase it for him. I can't tell you about how that makes me as father. I think it scares me a little and it scares me enough to want to just erase it and not have it part of being a father.

John: How about your own father? Have your parents, family members been a source of help?

Eric: Yeah they have and I'm extremely lucky to have what I have, which is a loving wife, a heroic wife, two parents who love me and a sister and friends. And, that's not to say that there haven't been hard times and that's not to say that they've sat down and helped me sort through these things, but they've been what they're supposed to be which is there. They've not sort of abandoned me through some of the things that I've said. I've said some radical things over the last couple of years. I dabbled in becoming a pacifist briefly. And, that's something that my father could have said, "Well, that's ridiculous, pacifism is a foolish "sort of pursuit," but he didn't. He was understanding and was happy to have me explore that and think through those things. So, that type of support system has been a god send for 89:00me.

John: I guess to, perhaps the last question. You carry yourself so well, strongly. You have separated your present from your past to some extent. In obviously, self consciously speaking out against part of what you and others did. I've never done anything like that, really. And there's risk taking and all sorts of negative things that would go with it, but I would think also that there's a sense of empowerment 90:00with it to use a much used term in the sense that you're going against the grain in a way and that people read things you write. People will listen to the words you speak and that you are not in lock step with what has happened. Is that how it feels?

Eric: That's an interesting way to explain it. I guess I see it as there was point, and I can't say when that I recognized that these were my experiences and they belonged to me. I had earned them. I was responsible. I'd earned the good ones, I was responsible for the bad ones but they were mine. And, I took ownership of them and I used them the way I see fit. People disagree with me. People are angry at me. 91:00People love me. People think I should run for office. People think I should be assassinated. What they think has nothing to do with where I've been and what I've done. It's important for me to process my experiences, to process them out loud, to leave some kind of record for at least here is what going to war is. I don't know if it's good, I don't know if it's bad, but here's what it is. And, maybe bigger