FOCUS| William Fisher: Getting Closer to the Top?

In less than a month, we may finally get to hear from the army general who ordered commanders at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison to "get dogs." Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who ran the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and then was sent to Iraq to "Gitmo-ize" Abu Ghraib, has been ordered to testify in the trial of a military dog handler.

Link Here

***MOTHER JONES***

Punishing Whistleblowers Quote
"There is just so much violence in the world, and someone has to stop it. Joe, he did his part."Gilbert Reffner, former neighbor of Spc. Joe Darby
















Jason Vest has a profile in Government Executive about Torin Nelson, a military interrogator who was one of the whistleblowers alerting officials to the abuses at Abu Ghraib. And where is he now? Struggling to find contract work with the military. "They're saying there's no blacklisting policy, but there's clearly a blacklist." It sure seems that way. Here's what someone who does the right thing can look forward to these days:

All Nelson did was pass on what little he had heard and had been able to document. And as far as he was concerned, he'd already paid a fair price for doing the right thing. It was bad enough that word of his meeting with investigators leaked almost immediately at Abu Ghraib. The ostracization that followed was far from pleasant. Worse were the thinly veiled death threats that convinced even as formidable a man as Nelson that he had no choice but to flee not just Abu Ghraib, but Iraq.

Comparatively speaking, Nelson hasn't had the worst of it. Darby [the main whistleblower at Abu Ghraib] and his family, for example, had to be taken into protective custody after receiving death threats. After Provance [yet another whistleblower] spoke to the media about Abu Ghraib and the Fay investigation, his superiors ordered him to cease contact with the press, and subsequently suspended his security clearance, reassigned him and demoted him. Through the graces of Provance's home state senator, torture opponent Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Provance did address a congressional subcommittee on whistleblower protection in February.Nelson, by the way, is now running for congress in Utah.

Posted by Bradford Plumer on 04/20/06 at 11:58 AM

Link Here

Abu Ghraib Whistleblower in Protective Custody