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Unlike some military-police units, which specialize in handling prisoners of war, the 372nd trained mainly as traffic cops. "We would do traffic stops, pulling people over and questioning them," says Shoemaker-Davis. "We never actually did anything you'd use in a prison." Their first assignment in Iraq last summer was in keeping with their training: acting as traffic cops, leading convoys, keeping roads open.
The 372nd reservists were assigned duty at Abu Ghraib in October. There, according to Army investigators, the chain of command got badly muddled. Army regulations limit the intelligence-gathering role of MPs to passive collection, but members of the 372nd found themselves fielding requests from military intelligence (MI) officers, who were in charge of part of the prison. In his investigation of the abuses, Major General Antonio Taguba found that MPs were "actively requested" by MI officers and private contractors to "set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses." Taguba took testimony supporting this from several of those who were eventually charged, including Specialist Sabrina Harman, 26, and Sergeant Javal Davis, 26. In a sworn statement, Harman told investigators, "It is Graner and Frederick's job to do things for MI and OGA [other government agencies] to get these people to talk." Her own job, she said, was to stress detainees by keeping them awake.
E-mails that Frederick sent home suggest he took pride in his role in "softening up" detainees for the MI staff. "They usually don't allow others to watch them interrogate, but since they like the way I run the prison, they make an exception," he told a family member in an e-mail shared with TIME. The sergeant also boasted, "We have a very high [success] rate with our style of getting them to break. They usually end up breaking within a couple of hours." Around the time military officials launched a criminal investigation, Frederick's e-mails started to include qualms about his Abu Ghraib duties. In January he wrote, "I questioned some of the things that I saw." And not every MP agreed to go along. The Taguba report says Specialist Jason Kennel declined to do MI's dirty work without formal paperwork.
Confronted with indisputable photographic evidence of malfeasance, defenders of the Abu Ghraib seven offer testimony as to what they say is the true character of their friends and loved ones. Sabrina Harman is so tenderhearted, attests her stepmother Patricia Harman, "she picks up bugs and puts them outside" rather than kill them. England, said her sister Jessica Klinestiver, would give money to anyone who needed it. Frederick, his uncle insists, was no prisoner abuser back home but "actually saved the life of a prisoner who was hanging himself. He got him down and got him breathing," says Lawson. "He received an award from the Governor of Virginia."
As for the photos, says Klinestiver, "I believe they were posed." England's grin, she insists, was aimed at her friends behind the camera, not the humiliated detainees. Lawson contends that the photos were staged so they could be used to intimidate new prisoners. "It was a psychological tool," he insists, to "loosen up these prisoners for these interrogators."