Lynndie England: "Rumsfeld knew"

And she claims that US intelligence services knew at the time what was going on inside Abu Ghraib prison© EPA

And what was the term they used?

"Soften ‘em up." "We're trying to get information out of this guy and he hasn't been cooperating for so many days." So they would give us instructions on sleep deprivation, on what we could feed them, and if they wanted them to be naked, we would be told to take their mattress and blankets away so they're sleeping on the cold floor. After the end of October it gets pretty damned cold.

Did you do any water boarding?

No, I didn't. And I didn't witness it. But that doesn't mean it wasn't done. Because a lot of the time the interrogators would take the prisoners into the showers and close the doors and we would have to put like sheets or blankets up over the windows. We could hear what was going on but we couldn't see.

You heard screams?

Yeah. Sometimes.

At the time, were you aware of people being killed while at Abu Ghraib? One of them was the guy they called "The Iceman".

Yeah, I heard about it. Actually, I was there the night the Iceman was killed. I went to Tier One and someone said this guy had been taken to the showers and they had the water running, and you could hear this guy just screaming bloody murder. It got to the point where it was so loud and unbearable that I went back to my room. And the next day when I came back there was this puddle of water outside the shower. And I asked, "What's that from?" And they said, "Oh, its ice from keeping the body till they could transport him." The Iceman was one of the "Ghost Detainees" that officially never existed.

And who took care of him?

The Other Government Agencies.

CIA and FBI. Did they kill the Iceman?

I won't respond to that.

The torturers and the politicians who are responsible for their actions are getting away with it. Does that make you angry?

Yeah, I think they used us because the unit that was there before us, the 72nd MP Company, was pretty much doing the same things we were. Only they weren't documenting it. I'm pretty sure that it was the same at other prisons. Only there are no pictures.

Why did the people from the intelligence units allow photos to be taken?

I don't know. They never said, "Hey, you're not supposed to be taking pictures." I never heard them say that at all. They never even said, "Don't get caught." Everybody knew what was going on. Once they heard there were pictures, they wanted to see. Graner started making copies on floppy disks or memory sticks. And he didn't even want money from them. So they took it and they showed it to their buddies and their buddies wanted a copy and so on and so on. And the hearsay around was that it was okay. It was approved by MI and the OGA.

And then a sergeant named Joe Darby brought the whole scandal to light.

Darby had those pictures at the beginning of November. Later on, somebody - it was probably Graner - pissed him off about something and he was like, "Okay, I'm gonna get back at him." So he turned those pictures into the CIA and became a whistleblower. He was with our unit for years. He was our buddy. And then he turned his back on us. He betrayed us.

You just mentioned the word "scandal". Do you regard what happened at Abu Ghraib as a scandal or just something that happens in war?

I'm saying that what we did happens in war. It just isn't documented. If it had been broken by the news without the pictures it wouldn't have been that big.

You apologized for it during your trial. You said that your actions probably led to the death of many GIs afterwards.

Yes. I received letters that accused me of being responsible for their deaths because the insurgents wanted to take revenge by attacking Americans. I can't say for sure I killed thousands of people. I can say I killed all these people, but I didn't kill them directly.