Captured Iraqi and Terrorist Records Now Available

I am delighted to draw your attention to the fact that the Conflict Records Research Center (CRRC) is now open to scholars at the National Defense University.  It presently contains a collection of some 22,000 pages of records captured from Saddam’s regime and from Al Qaida and its allies.  However, that total is simply a drop in the bucket compared to where it is going to be.  The collection grows on a daily basis and there is reason to believe that that growth will accelerate over time.

The CRRC’s website describes the two collections this way:

The Saddam records consist of a wide range of government files—audio recordings of high-level meetings, speeches by Saddam and senior officials, correspondence between ministries, records of the Presidential Diwan, and others—that bear mainly on issues related to national security, defense policy, and diplomacy. These records are categorized by their originating agency or office (for instance, Iraqi Intelligence Service or General Military Intelligence Directorate), and will eventually constitute the vast majority of CRRC holdings.

The [Al Qaida] records also consist of a wide range of files, including everything from al Qaeda “pocket litter” to financial records, theological and ideological documents, strategic plans, operational guidebooks, and histories of individual operations from the Afghan war in the 1980s through the early 2000s. These documents are grouped thematically. There are also a small number of documents generated by the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

The website is a little sparse at the moment, but expect it to grow richer over time.  I imagine that Jessica Huckabey, the acting director (and a friend and occasional co-author of mine) can give you more information on the collection, its future prospects, and how to use it.

I do know that at the moment only documents with full English translations are being entered into the database, so don’t allow lack of Arabic skills to deter you.  The originals were “seized” as provided for under international law and are held by the US Government. The US and the Iraqi Governments have agreed that Iraq will receive the originals back.  Don’t count on Al Qaida ever getting their documents back.  The records open to scholars at the CRRC consist of digital copies of the originals, plus translations and file information sheets. In other words, this is the modern day equivalent of the microfilming of the German, Japanese, and Italian records that were captured in World War II.  It is also worth noting that the records at the CRRC are not the Ba’ath Party records that are held at the Hoover Institution nor the so-called “Jewish Archives” which are at the U.S. National Archives.  (

In a past life I worked with the materials that Jessica and her colleagues are migrating into the CRRC and I can tell you that for those scholars interested in modern Iraq, terrorism, or modern military history, there is a goldmine here.  Reputations to be made.  Dissertations to be written….

Still, according to an e-mail to The Daily from Kanan Makiya, the founder of IMF, there is a “deep rift” within the Iraqi Ministry of Culture about whether or not any of the records should be returned now.

Makiya said that in an Iraqi radio program that aired last Thursday, which he heard in Erbil, Iraq, “a deputy minister of culture, senior to Eskander and his team who visited Hoover, tore into his colleagues’ allegations, supporting enthusiastically the IMF and Hoover’s role.”

Captured Documents, Historians, Anthropologists, etc. (Part III)

My rejoinder to Hugh Gusterson’s comment on my 15 January piece “Captured Documents: Military Historians and Terrorism Scholars vs. Anthropologists?”

I would like to thank Prof. Gusterson for his thoughtful response to my posting.  I rather imagine that he and I will not convince each other.  However, I think this is a debate worth having so as to allow other people who are or may become involved in the issue to make an informed decision consistent with the ethics of their own chosen professions and with their personal moral sense.

I appreciate Prof. Gusterson’s clarification that there are, indeed, multiple different collections of Iraqi documents and that those documents presently at Hoover are different from those documents taken by the U.S. military.  As I do not know the facts behind the collection at Hoover, I cannot bring myself to say that the same legal and ethical conclusions apply to those as apply to the others.

More substantively, however, it seems to me that Prof. Gusterson disagrees with me on two basic grounds.  One relates to whether it was legitimate for the US Government to seize the Iraqi records in the first place.  The other relates to whether it is legitimate to retain these records.  Allow me to address these two issues in reverse order.

RETENTION.

First, as I read the Trudy Peterson article that he and I have both referred to, international law speaks to the legitimacy of seizure not of retention.  In fact, Peterson personally suggests that ‘in the years after the hostilities cease, the seized records should move into archival custody and, ultimately, be repatriated.’  Note the use of the words ‘years’ and ‘ultimately.’

Secondly, while I cannot speak for the U.S. Government and I don’t know what I don’t know, I have always been under the impression that the U.S. Government has never denied that these documents (media files, etc.) are Iraqi property and thus would be returned someday.  (As an aside, it is my understanding that the records from Nazi Germany were not completely returned to Germany until the 1960s and I have heard from an historian who worked in them that the Imperial Japanese records were not completely returned until the 1970s.) 

Thirdly, and most importantly, the documents referred to under Minerva and which will make their way into the Conflict Records Research Center are digital copies (mostly pdf, wav, and wmv files), not the hard copies themselves.  Whatever conclusion one comes to with regard to proper disposition of the originals, there is no a priori reason to assume that this conclusion should apply to copies or to the information contained in the originals. 

In the context of the current exchange, this confusion is my fault.  I referred to “records” and “documents” when I should have referred to “copies of records and documents.”  I apologize to anyone who was confused or misled.

Note that retention of copies of captured records has long precedent behind it.  The National Archives and Records Administration’s Record Group 242 is “Collection of Foreign Records Seized.”  This RG consists mostly of microfilm copies of originals.  It contains materials dating back to 1675.  These are copies of records not only from the obvious countries (Germany, Japan, North Korea, etc.) but also from countries with whom the United States has never been at war (e.g. Norway, the Netherlands, and Portugal).

Furthermore, it is my understanding that once copies (electronic or otherwise) are made of Iraqi records—and such copying is absolutely necessary for analysis for even the most obviously war or administrative-related analysis, let alone for work by historians—those copies become official U.S. Government records.  As such, the U.S. Government is legally obliged to retain them.

SEIZURE

With regard to the issue of seizure, Prof. Gusterson wonders if I have read the Trudy Peterson essay to which I provided a link.  Allow me to assure all concerned that unless the last ~18 months are one big hallucination I have read it several times.

Prof. Gusterson goes on to note that the piece says that ‘combatants may seize records for use by occupation government.”  He argues that there is no legitimate reason for the US to have these records now that the occupation is over.

There are two problems with this. 

First, as noted above, the Peterson piece (and apparently international law) speaks to seizure, not retention

Second, the Peterson piece actually gives six legitimate reasons for the seizure of records, not just the one that Prof. Gusterson mentions.  Collectively, they provide tremendous leeway for seizure.  In Ms. Peterson’s words:

“To sum up, then:

• If the occupying power needs state records for military operations, it can seize them.
• If the occupying power needs state records for the administration of occupied territory, it can seize them.
• If the records are those of municipalities, religious, charitable, educational, and institutions of arts and sciences, they should be immune from seizure unless the persons employed by the institution are ‘definitely suspected of or engaged in activities hostile to the security of the State.’ Records of municipalities, however, are probably liable for seizure for the purpose of administering the municipality.
• If you are a private person or a private business or organization definitely suspected of or engaged in activities hostile to the security of the State, your records and personal papers can be seized.
• If you are a private person or business or organization that is not engaged in hostile activities, your records and papers are immune from seizure.
• If you are a prisoner of war, your ‘military documents’ can be taken from you, but all other personal documents are yours.”

A FINAL ISSUE

There is one more issue that concerns me.  To be fair, this is not a point that Prof. Gusterson raised, rather it is one that I fear some people might read into his remarks.  He pointed to a piece agreeing with his interpretation which was written by Dr. Saad Eskander, the Director of the Iraq National Library and Archive.  Certainly Mr. Eskander is an expert in the field and his piece is well worth reading.  That said, I fear that Dr. Eskander’s title may lead some to believe that the records under discussion came from “libraries” or “archives.”  As far as I know, that is not the case.  As far as I know, they came from working files.

Is this a relevant distinction?  The Peterson essay speaks to this question, as well:

“But what about archives per se? The Hague IV Convention of 1907 does not use the word ‘archives.’ It is, perhaps, fair to read “archives” into Annex Article 56’s “property of municipalities, that of institutions dedicated to religion, charity and education, the arts and sciences, even when State property” but it is not explicit. Furthermore, archives are both cultural and administrative property and fit somewhat awkwardly in a purely cultural definition. The 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the event of Armed Conflict solved this ambiguity by including in the definition of cultural property to be protected ‘manuscripts . . and important collections of books or archives” and buildings such as “depositories of archives.’ However, its Article 3, item 2, notes that the obligation to protect such property ‘may be waived only in cases where military necessity imperatively requires such a waiver.’

“Can we stretch the definition in the 1954 convention to cover current records and personal papers? Probably not. While we could argue that letters in the possession of a soldier are “manuscripts” and the records of the secret police are “archives,” the intent of the 1954 Convention is clearly to protect noncurrent historical materials, particularly those housed in a facility designated as an historical archives.”

Captured Documents, Historians, Anthropologists, etc. (Part II)

I received a reply from Prof. Hugh Gusterson to my recent posting on the dispute over whether documents captured in Iraq could legitimately be fodder for historians and others under the Defense Department’s Minerva program.

I would not want his response to be buried in the comments section, nor would I want my forthcoming rejoinder to be so buried, so they shall be the subject of this posting and the next.  I would also be delighted to hear from others on either side of this debate.

Herewith Prof. Gusterson’s response:

BEGIN QUOTATION

My thanks to Mr. Stout for drawing attention to my article on the Minerva Initiative. Although my comments about the Iraqi documents captured by U.S. military forces constitute a very small part of the article, I welcome this opportunity to clarify my argument. Mr. Stout is quite right that the Ba’ath Party documents funneled by Kanan Makiya’s Iraq Memory Foundation to the Hoover Institute are distinct from the much larger collection of maybe 100 million Iraqi documents taken by the U.S. military early in its occupation of Iraq. My article (although it already exceeded the journal’s space limitations) would doubtless have benefited from a more elaborate description of the different kinds of documents seized and the different destinations they have found.

However, I must respectfully disagree with Mr. Stout that the DoD’s custody of these documents is permissible under international law and that researchers funded by Project Minerva to work in those archives will therefore have clean hands. Mr. Stout says “just about every country that has ever fought a war holds or has held captured records from its opponents. In fact, there is specific provision for this in international law.” One wonders if he read the article to which his blog refers readers since that very document makes transparently clear why it is illegal for the U.S. to retain the Iraqi documents DoD seized – documents that constitute the administrative memory of the Iraqi state. The article Mr. Stout cites says “combatants may seize records for use by occupation government. When a territory is occupied, the occupying power needs the records of the former government to enable the new government to function… It is reasonable to assume that such records as needed for governance are to be seized for use, not removal.”

Leaving aside the question of whether the U.S. occupation of Iraq was itself legal under international law, there are thus two reasons why the DoD’s removal of this massive archival treasure trove from Iraq contravene international law: (1) Instead of keeping the captured documents in Iraq for use in assuring administrative continuity (as permitted by international law), the U.S. removed them from the country as a kind of war booty for analysts in the U.S.. (2) Although the U.S. occupation has, in a formal legal sense at least, ended, taking with it any legal case for the U.S. to retain custody of these documents, the U.S. is not only keeping the documents but making plans (through Project Minerva) to institutionalize their use in the U.S.. Saad Eskander, the Director of the Iraqi National Archives, has written an article making clear that he sees no legal distinction between the Iraqi documents at the Hoover Institute and those seized by the DoD. His article specifically condemns Project Minerva for inciting scholars to work with the documents Mr. Stout has been working with. His article can be found at http://essays.ssrc.org/minerva/2008/10/29/eskander/.

Hugh Gusterson

END QUOTATION

Captured Documents: Military Historians and Terrorism Scholars vs. Anthropologists?

Professor Hugh Gusterson of George Mason University has an article entitled “Project Minerva and the Militarization of Anthropology” in the latest issue of Radical Teacher.  This is Prof. Gusterson’s latest objection to Defense Department funding of social science research.  The article has some good points and some rather weak ones, such as the implicit admission late in the article that the title is untrue despite the Government’s (alleged) intentions.  However, I want to focus on one factual error that Gusterson perpetuates relating to captured documents.

Gusterson rightly notes that among the research topics under the Minerva initiative is an “Iraqi Perspectives Project” involving study of captured Iraqi documents.  He goes on to say that these are 5 million Iraqi records looted by the U.S. military and provided to Kanan Makiya’s Iraq Memory Foundation which then stashed them at the Hoover Institution.  The Iraq Memory Foundation does have a substantial collection of documents (primarily from the Iraqi Ba’ath Party) and they are at Hoover.  He says that, because these are illegal booty, they should be returned forthwith to Iraq. 

However, Gusterson is quite wrong when he says that these are the documents referred to under the rubric of the “Iraqi Perspectives Project” (IPP).  In fact, the documents used in the IPP are a completely different set of documents (and other media) numbering in the millions captured by U.S. forces in the course of Operation Iraqi Freedom.  They come primarily from Saddam’s immediate apparatus, the Iraqi military, and the Iraqi security services. 

How do I know?  I worked with these records off and on from 2003 to 2009 and I’ve never seen any of these Ba’ath records that Prof. Gusterson is so concerned about.  Nor, to my knowledge have any of my former colleagues.  Using the other collection of Iraqi records, the one Gusterson seems unaware of, I co-authored (a very small part of) The Iraqi Perspectives Report and also co-authored (in a more serious way) a forthcoming peer-reviewed article assessing Saddam’s perceptions during Desert Storm.  My former colleagues have written several other works (such as this, this, and this) using these records.  More such works are in preparation. 

Whatever the facts are related to the records held at Hoover they are quite different from the facts related to these records that we have used.  Given this, there is no reason to think that the moral or legal issues associated with the two collections should be the same.

It is worth noting that just about every country that has ever fought a war holds or has held captured records from its opponents.  In fact, there is specific provision for this in international law.  Furthermore, such records are among the most valuable sources for many military and diplomatic historians.  Since the Civil War the United States has typically made such captured records available to scholars after the war in question was over.  It is doing the same again, through something called the Conflict Records Research Center.  (See also here.)  Ironically, the one case in which there was serious foot-dragging in opening up captured records was the Philippines War, a highly controversial war even at the time given its imperialist overtones and the fact of torture by American forces.  The U.S. Government should be ashamed of the fact that it suppressed those records for literally about a half-century.  I am proud that the Government is trying not to make the same mistake again.

It is also worth noting that the U.S. Government similarly holds substantial records seized from Al Qaida and its various affiliates and that these, too, will help populate the Conflict Records Research Center.  I used these records in writing with Jessica Huckabey and John Schindler The Terrorist Perspectives Project  as well as this and yet another forthcoming article in a peer-reviewed journal.  In fact, working with these materials was my primary endeavor from 2005-2009.  The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point has also used these records, which they refer to as the Harmony documents, and have used them to make major contributions to our understanding of the terrorists we face.

I don’t in any way begrudge Prof. Gusterson the right to defend his profession.  It would be helpful, however, if he would get his facts straight and if he would at least recognize that other scholarly professions, acting entirely ethically and honorably, might see things differently and might not want to be denied the raw materials necessary for their work.