Prison Scandal: Brooklyn's Version Of Abu Ghraib?
Even as the Pentagon seeks to quell the furor over Abu Ghraib, the Justice Department is trying to make sure a similar scandal doesn't erupt closer to home. At issue: more than 300 hours of secret videotapes from a U.S. prison facility in Brooklyn, N.Y., where many Arab and Muslim detainees were incarcerated in the months after 9/11. On the tapes, according to a report by federal investigators, prison guards slam inmates into walls, twist their arms and wrists and subject them to humiliating strip searches in which, in some cases, male prisoners were forced to stand naked in the presence of female guards; in others, prison guards "laughed, exchanged suggestive looks and made funny noises."
The existence of the tapes was first disclosed late last year in a blistering report on conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn by the Justice Department's inspector general. But the tapes got little attention at the time, in part because only a handful of blurry stills from the videos were released. But now attorneys in two lawsuits filed against top Justice officials on behalf of former inmates tell NEWSWEEK they plan to push for full release of the videos, arguing that, as with Abu Ghraib, the visual evidence can make the case far more powerfully than mere allegations from prisoners. "There are clear parallels here," says Nancy Chang, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has brought one of the cases. So far, Justice has refused to release any of the tapes. One reason, says Bureau of Prisons spokesman Dan Dunne, is that disclosure could violate the "privacy" rights of the prison guards, about a dozen of whom are being investigated for possible disciplinary action. (Federal prosecutors recently closed a criminal probe of the guards, in part because the victims had all been deported to foreign countries and weren't available to testify, one official says.)
The allegations of mistreatment date back to the Justice Department's post-9/11 round-up of more than 1,200 foreign nationals largely on minor immigration violations. None was ever charged with any terror-related crimes. In response to complaints, the Justice I.G. launched an investigation into the handling of the inmates at the Brooklyn facility. Prison officials first denied any mistreatment; one official insisted staff members were "very polite" with the detainees. Then investigators discovered the videotapes hidden in a storage locker. Among the most egregious of the abuses documented on the tapes, investigators found, were repeated and degrading strip searches that were used "to intimidate and punish detainees." (In a lawsuit filed this month, one Muslim former inmate alleges that he was subjected to repetitive strip searches at the Brooklyn facility, in which guards inserted a flashlight and pencil into his rectum.) Dunne says the Bureau of Prisons has already taken steps to address the I.G. report, including a new "zero tolerance" policy for abuse of inmates, and another--about to be announced--forbidding any videotaping of strip searches. "We've taken these findings very seriously," he says.
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Michael Isikoff has been an award-winning investigative correspondent for Newsweek since 2004. He has written extensively on the U.S. government's war on terrorism, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, presidential politics and other national issues. His book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," co-written with David Corn, was an instant New York Times best-seller when it was published in September, 2006. The book was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "fascinating reading" and "the most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations" in the run up to the war in Iraq. Since January 2009, Isikoff has been an MSNBC contributor, making regular appearances on the Rachel Maddow Show and Hardball w/ Chris Matthews.
Ever since the events of September 11, Isikoff has broken repeated stories about the U.S. government's war on terror and won numerous journalism awards. His blog "DeClassified: Investigative Reporting in Real Time," which appears regularly on Newsweek's Web site and is written with MarkHosenball, has become a must-read for senior U.S. intelligence officials. Isikoff and Hosenball won the 2005 award from the Society of Professional Journalists for best investigative reporting online.
Isikoff's June 2002 Newsweek cover story on U.S. intelligence failures that preceded the 9-11 terror attacks, along with a series of related articles, was honored with the Investigative Reporters and Editors top prize for investigative reporting in magazine journalism. He was honored, along with a team of Newsweek reporters, by the Society of Professional Journalists for coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal. For that coverage, Isikoff obtained exclusive internal White House, Justice Department and State Department memos showing how decisions made at the highest levels of the Bush administration led to abuses in the interrogation of terror suspects. Isikoff was also part of a reporting team that earned Newsweek the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2002, the highest award in magazine journalism, for their coverage of the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.
Isikoff's exclusive reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal gained him national attention in 1998, including profiles in The New York Times and The Washington Post and a guest appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman." His coverage of the events that lead to President Bill Clinton's impeachment earned Newsweek the prestigious National Magazine Award in the Reporting category in 1999. Isikoff's reporting also won the National Headliner Award, the Edgar A. Poe Award presented by the White House Correspondents Association and the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency. In 2001, Isikoff was named on a list of "most influential journalists" in the nation's capital by Washingtonian magazine.
Isikoff is the author of "Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story," a book that chronicled his own reporting of the Lewinsky story and was hailed by a critic for The Washington Post-Los Angeles Times news service as "the absolutely essential narrative of the scandal with revelations that no one would have thought possible." The book, also a New York Times bestseller, was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Book of the Month Club.
Isikoff came to Newsweek from The Washington Post, where he had been a reporter since September 1981. There he covered the Justice Department and the Persian Gulf War, reported on international drug operations in Latin America and worked on the Post's financial news desk. Isikoff graduated from Washington University with a B.A. in 1974 and received a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 1976.
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