How Portland Paper Got Iraq Abuse Story

By: Charles Geraci A reporter for the newspaper that broke a story about human rights abuses in Iraq after the U.S. handover of sovereignty said that the news emerged from his recent stint as an embed, and required three weeks of intensive checking.

This past weekend, Mike Francis, a reporter for The Oregonian (Click for QuikCap ) in Portland, exposed the high-level U.S. military decision ordering Oregon National Guardsmen to return abused Iraqi prisoners to their Iraqi jailers after the American soldiers had come to their aid. The incident occurred on June 29 -- Iraq's first official day as a sovereign country. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has now asked the Pentagon to investigate.

The story was accompanied by 15 photos, a few quite graphic. Some were shot from a distance through the scope of a rifle. The Oregonian is not saying exactly who took them or how they got them.

It all began when Francis, while embedded in the 2nd Battalion, 162nd Infantry regiment of the Oregon Army National Guard in Iraq, received a tip from one of the guardsmen in mid-July. This soldier referred to a certain "detention facility" but would say nothing more. Subsequent conversations with about a dozen other soldiers confirmed a troubling episode inside the compound of the Iraqi Interior Ministry.

In the midst of Francis' questioning, he received a written account from Capt. Jarrell Southall, an Oregon guardsman who witnessed the abuse.

Despite an Army order that soldiers were not to discuss the events, Southall agreed to go on the record, while other soldiers clung to anonymity. Francis said that he had "multiple conversations" with Southall alerting him to the seriousness of the story and ensuring he had no problems coming forward.

"I asked Southall if he was sure about wanting to do this," said Francis. "He said 'yes' -- that he was moved by what he saw." Southall did contact a military lawyer and afterwards stressed that he was speaking as an individual, not as an army officer.

Francis received varying levels of cooperation from the Oregon national guardsmen. "Some seemed to be burdened by [the abuse] and wanted to talk," Francis said. "Others were much more tight-lipped. Some wanted to speak about it but said they couldn't."

While in Iraq, Francis obtained numerous photos from a "confidential" source illustrating the abuse. The Oregonian ran four of these on Sunday's front page and eleven others in full-color inside. They depict the beating of blindfolded Iraqi prisoners and the injuries they suffered.

Some were taken by a national guardsman, or by others in the American military, and some are believed to have been taken by Iraqi jailers.

"We didn't think the pictures were overly graphic," said Steve Engelberg, the paper's managing editor/enterprise. "They were sufficiently important to justify having them appear in the Sunday morning newspaper that would be on the breakfast table."

The bombshell story this week appeared in the Oregonian about three weeks after Francis first learned of the abuse.

The paper's editor, Sandra Rowe, outlined the reasoning behind the paper's decision to run the story. "It's clearly important because it goes to the heart of some of the questions the United States has to face [in Iraq], the role of the military, and the challenges and potential conflicts," she said.

There remain a lot of questions Francis would like answered. "I am looking forward to the official military response," he said.

"But this is a very solid story," Francis asserted. "The U.S. Embassy has referred to the events as 'brutality.' We have photos of the abuse. And nobody up the chain of command has denied the abuse occurred."