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US Seizure, Exploitation, and Restitution of Saddam Hussein's Archive of Atrocity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2014

BRUCE P. MONTGOMERY
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Abstract

In the 2003 invasion of Iraq, US forces seized millions of documents, thousands of audio and video tapes, and hard drives and digital devices from Saddam Hussein's government ministries and other sites. In war, the seizure of enemy documents for military advantage is permissible under the laws of armed conflict. Following their capture, the materials have undergone a process of analysis, triage, exploitation, dissemination, politicization, more analysis, scholarly investigation, and postwar diplomacy. An analysis of these events reveals the scope and nature of US exploitation of enemy documents and media in the Iraq War, the limits of the laws of armed conflict regarding their custody and use, and the complications surrounding their repatriation to Iraq.

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Articles
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Journal of American Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , May 2014 , pp. 559 - 593
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

1 See Douglas Cox, Document Exploitation Blog, “U. S./Iraq Negotiations on Iraqi Archives and Documents,” 2 Sept. 2012, at www.docexblog.com/search?updated-max=2012-09-20T11:47:00-04:00&max-results=5, accessed 27 Sept. 2012.

2 Hague Convention (IV) Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, 18 October 1907, Annex I (“Hague Regulations”), Article 53, International Committee of the Red Cross, available at www.icrc.org/ijl.nsf/full/195, accessed 24 April 2011.

3 Article 53, 1907 Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and Its Annexed Regulations, available at www.icrc.org/ijl.nsf/full/195, accessed 24 April 2011, added emphasis.

4 Article 52(2), Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions, available at www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/full/470?opendocument, accessed 24 April 2011.

5 See Hague Convention (IV) Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, 18 October 1907, Annex I (“Hague Regulations”), available at www.icrc.org/ijl.nsf/full/195, accessed 24 April 2011; Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, 12 August 1949, available at www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/full/380, accessed 24 April 2011; Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 8 June 1977, available at www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/full/470?opendocument, accessed 24 April 2011; Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International and Non-international Armed Conflicts (Protocol II), 7 December 1978, available at www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/INTRO/475?OpenDocument, accessed 24 April 2011; Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, The Hague, 14 May 1954, available at www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/INTRO/400?OpenDocument, accessed 24 April 2011; Protocol for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, The Hague, 14 May 1954, available at www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/INTRO/410?OpenDocument, accessed 24 April 2012; Second Protocol to the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, The Hague, 26 March 1999, available at www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/INTRO/590?OpenDocument, accessed 24 April 2012.

6 See Article 17, Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, 294, N.T. S.215, adopted at The Hague, 14 May 1954, available at www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/INTRO/400?OpenDocument, accessed 24 April 2011.

7 Ibid., Article 1.

8 Ibid., Articles 8–9.

9 Ibid., Article 4(2).

10 See Mathew Thurlow, D., “Protecting Cultural Property in Iraq: How American Military Policy Comports with International Law,” Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal, 8 (2005), 153–87Google Scholar, 159.

11 Second Protocol to the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, The Hague, 26 March 1999, available at www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/INTRO/590?OpenDocument, accessed 24 April 2011.

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17 Cox, “National Archives and International Conflicts,” 456.

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19 Department of the Army, Document and Media Exploitation Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures, Final Draft, p. 1–2,

20 Department of the Army, The Law of Land Warfare (FM27-10), 1956, available at www.afsc.army.mil/gc/files/fm27-10.pdf.

21 Document and Media Exploitation Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures, p. 1–3.

22 Document and Media Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures, p. 1–1.

23 Ibid., p. 6–1.

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25 See Joint Publication 2-01, Joint and National Intelligence Support to Military Operations, 5 Jan. 2012, pp. xi – xvi, I-4, available at www.dtic.mil/doctrine/new_pubs/jp2_01.pdf, accessed 2 Feb. 2012.

26 Ibid., p. xvi.

27 Document and Media Exploitation Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures, 2–1.

28 Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, “Top Secret America: A Hidden World, Growing beyond Control,” Washington Post, 19 July 2010, available at http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/print, accessed 22 June 2012.

29 Ibid., III-3.

30 Christopher Steiner, “Automatons Get Creative,” Wall Street Journal, 18–19 Aug. 2012, C3.

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32 Ibid.

33 See Joint Publication 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, 12 April 2001, as amended through 17 Oct. 2007, available at www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict, accessed 9 Oct. 2012.

34 Kevin Woods, “Captured Records – Lessons from the Civil War through World War II,” unpublished manuscript, 2008.

35 Ibid., iv.

36 Ibid. According to the author, “This paper was written at the Institute for Defense Analysis. However, this paper represents the author's personal views, and not the views of the IDA, the Department of Defense, or any command or agency of the Department.”

37 See Combined Media Processing Center-Qatar, Standard Operating Procedures, 4 Feb. 2005, Section 1.2, available at www.docexblog.com/2012/02/captured-iraqi-document-exploitation.html, accessed 20 May 2012; and Statement by Brigadier General Anthony A. Cucolo III, director of Joint Center for Operational Analysis, and Lieutenant Colonel Kevin M. Woods, project leader and principal author of Iraqi Perspectives Project, US Joint Forces Command, “The Iraqi Documents: A Glimpse into the Regime of Saddam Hussein, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on International Relations,” House of Representatives, 109th Cong., 2nd Sess., 6 April 2006, 25.

38 Combined Media Processing Center-Qatar, Standard Operating Procedures, Section 2.2.2.

39 Ibid., Section 2.3.

40 See Cucolo and Woods, 25.

41 Montgomery, Bruce P., “Saddam Hussein's Records of Atrocity: Seizure, Removal, and Restitution,” American Archivist, 79 (Fall–Winter 2012), 326–70, 341CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Scott Shane, “Iraqi Documents Are Put on Web, and Search Is On,” New York Times, 28 March 2006, available at www.nytimes.com/2006/03/28/politics/28intel.html?, accessed 12 July 2012.

43 Stephen F. Hayes, “Finally: The Bush Administration Releases the Saddam Documents,” Weekly Standard, 20 March 2006, available at www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1596393/posts, accessed 10 Dec. 2013.

44 Shane.

45 Ibid.; and William J. Broad, “U. S. Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Primer,” New York Times, 3 Nov. 2006, available at www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/world/middleeast/03documents.html?pagewanted=all, accessed 12 July 2012.

46 Fritz Umbach, “Bush's Bogus Document Dump,” Salon.com, www.google.com/search?q=bush%27s%20bogus%20document%20dump&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&source=hp&channel=np, accessed 11 Jan. 2013.

47 Shane.

48 Hayes.

49 Shane.

50 Ibid.

51 Ibid.

52 See United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Postwar Findings about Iraq's WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How They Compare with Prewar Assessments (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2006), 62–63Google Scholar, available at https://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_rpt/srpt109-331.pdf, accessed 7 Dec. 2012.

53 Ibid. p. 63.

54 Julian Borger, “WMD in Iraq? Take a Look for Yourself,” The Guardian, 29 March 2006, available at www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/mar/29/news.iraq, accessed 11 Jan. 2013.

55 Broad, “U. S. Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Primer.”

56 See Woods, Kevin, Lacey, James, and Murray, Williamson, “Saddam's Delusions: The View from the Inside,” Foreign Affairs, 85, 3 (May–June 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/20031964, accessed 4 Jan. 2013.

57 Kevin M. Woods and James Lacey, “Iraqi Perspective Project: Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents,” Volume I, Institute for Defense Analysis, Joint Advanced War Fighting Program, IDA Paper, P-4287, Jan. 2007. See also Woods, Lacey, and Murray, “Saddam's Delusions.”

58 Woods, Kevin M., The Mother of All Battles: Saddam Hussein's Strategic Plan for the Persian Gulf War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2008), xvGoogle Scholar.

59 Human Rights Watch/Middle East, Bureaucracy of Repression (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1994), 8–10Google Scholar.

60 Thomas Asher, “Making Sense of Minerva Controversy and the NSCC,” at http://essays.ssrc.org/minerva, accessed 17 Jan. 2013

61 Robert M. Gates, Secretary of Department of Defense, Speech before Association of American University Libraries, Washington, DC, 14 April 2008, at www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1228, accessed 17 Jan. 2013. Also see Asher.

62 Gates.

63 Asher.

64 Gates.

65 See The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Additions and Corrections to Series II, Volume I (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1902), iii.

66 Cucolo and Woods, “The Iraqi Documents,” 13–18. See also Woods, “Captured Records,” 16.

67 See “Other Activities,” American Political Science Review, 50 (June 1956), 614–15.

68 Lorry M. Fenner, Letter from the Director: Quarterly Update, Conflict Records Research Center, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, Washington, DC, 1 April 2013, at http://crrconline.org/2013/04/01/letter-from-the-director-quarterly-update, accessed 3 April 2013.

69 Saad Eskander, “Minerva Research Initiative: Searching for the Truth or Denying the Iraqis the Rights to Know the Truth?”, at www.essays.ssrc.org/minerva/2008/10/29/eskander, accessed 5 May 2012.

70 Ibid.

71 Ibid.

72 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property 1970, Paris, 14 November 1970, at http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13039&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html, accessed 10 Jan. 2013.

73 Protocol for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, The Hague, 14 May 1954, at www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/INTRO/410?OpenDocument, accessed 24 April 1954.

74 See Convention on the Means of Prohibiting the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, November 14, 1970, 823 U.N.T. S. 231 (1972), at http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13039&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html, accessed 2 May 2012.

75 UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects, 1995, at www.unidroit.org/english/conventions/1995culturalproperty/main.htm, accessed 10 Jan. 2013.

76 Eskander.

77 SAA/ACA Joint Statement on Iraqi Records, 22 April 2008, at www.archivists.org/statements/Iraqirecords.asp, accessed 15 Feb. 2012.

78 See Montgomery, “Saddam Hussein's Records of Atrocity,” 355.

79 See Register of the Hizb al-Ba'ath al-'Arabi al-Ishtiraki In Iraq [Ba'ath Party] Records, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University, 2012, at http://cdn.calisphere.org/data/13030/g3/c84j0cg3/files/c84j0cg3.pdf, accessed 7 Feb. 2013.

80 Mufti, Iraq: State of Evidence, 4–10.

81 See Iraqi Memory Foundation, Solicitation/Contract/Order for Commercial Use, Solicitation Number W74V8H-04-T-0094, Code 3V9P5, awarded 18 June 2004; Iraq Memory Foundation, Solicitation/Contract/Order for Commercial Use, Solicitation Number W74V8H-05-T-0232, Code 3V9P5, 8 Sept. 2005; Iraqi Memory Foundation, Amendment of Solicitation/Modification of Contract, Contract Number W74V8H-05-P-0684, 31 Aug. 2006; and Iraqi Memory Foundation, Amendment of Solicitation/Modification of Contract, Contract Number W74V8H-05-P-0684, 7 Aug. 2007. The author is grateful to Douglas Cox for sending email copies of these documents that he obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. They may be seen at his website: www.docexblog.com/2012/01/iraq-memory-foundation-defense.html, accessed 23 Jan. 2013.

82 Hugh Eakin, “Iraqi Files in U. S.: Plunder or Rescue?” New York Times, 1 July 2008; and Swartz, Nikki, “Iraq Records Spark Controversy,” Information Management Journal, 42 (Sept.–Oct. 2008)Google Scholar, 10–19, 13.

83 Hoover Institution Archives, “Register of the Hizb al-Baath al-Arabi al-Ishtirak in Iraq [Baath Party] Records, 2012. A complete set of the Anfal digital collection is located at the Archives, University of Colorado at Boulder.”

84 Peter Kenyon, “Saddam's Spy Files: Keys to healing or More Hurting?” National Public Radio, 24 June 2012, at www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyid=127986894, accessed 17 May 2012.

85 See Devin Banejee, “Iraq Asks Hoover to Return Records,” 25 May 2010, at www.stanforddaily.com/2010/05/25/iraq-asks-hoover-to-return-records, accessed 10 July 2011.

86 Eskander, “Minerva Research Initiative.”

87 See Salah Nasrawi, “Iraq's Stolen Memory,” Al-Ahram Weekly, n.d., http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/print/2011/1071/re10.htm, accessed 2 April 2012.

88 Montgomery, “Saddam Hussein's Records of Atrocity,” 346.

89 Ibid., 346.

90 Jeffrey B. Spurr, “A Report on the Activities of the Iraqi Delegation,” IraqCrisis Listserv, 19 May 2010.

91 Ibid.

92 See Cox, Douglas, “Archives and Records in Armed Conflict: International Law and the Current Debate over Iraqi Records and Archives,” Catholic Law Review, 54 (Fall 2010)Google Scholar, 1002–44, 23.

93 Memorandum, Archivist of the United States General Counsel, Subject: General Schedule – Seized German Records, 5 June 1953, NARA, RG64, Box PC-62; and Woods, “Captured Records,” 26.

94 US Department of State, “Appendix to Testimony before the Subcommittee on International Organizations, International Security, and Human Rights, April 28, 1994,” posted on German History List, 9 May 1994, at www.h-net.org/∼german/discuss/transfer/whatis.html, accessed 3 Oct. 2011.

95 See US Department of State, Media Note, Office of the Press Secretary, Return of the Smolensk Archive, 13 Dec. 2002, at http://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2002/15942.htm, accessed 12 June 2012.

96 Cox, “National Archives and International Conflicts,” 479.

97 Geneva Protocol II, Article I.

98 See Douglas Cox, “U. S./Iraq Negotiations on Iraqi Archives and Documents,” Document Exploitation Blog, 2 Sept. 2012, at www.docexblog.com/2012/09/significance-of-new-draft-iraqi-law.html, accessed 27 Sept. 2012.

99 Ibid.

100 Kenyon, “Saddam's Spy Files.”

101 Ibid.

102 See Danielson, Elena S., “Primary Rights and the Rights of Political Victims: Implications of the German Experience,” American Archivist, 67, 2 (Fall–Winter 2004), 176–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

103 Ibid.

104 See International Center for Transitional Justice and Human Rights Center, University of California at Berkeley, “Iraqi Voices: Attitudes toward Transitional Justice and Social Reconstruction,” May 2004, at www.law.berkeley.edu/HRCweb/pdfs/Iraqi_voices.pdf, accessed 14 Jan. 2013.

105 Marina Ottaway and Danial Kaysi, “The State of Iraq,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2012, Washington, DC, 1, at www.carnegieendowment.org/files/state_of_iraq.pdf, accessed 13 Feb. 2013.

106 Ibid., 1.

107 Ibid., 3. Also see Galbraith, Peter W., “Is This Victory?”, New York Review of Books, 55, 16 (23 Oct. 2008), 74–75Google Scholar.

108 Jane Arraf, “Protests Surge in Iraq's Sunni Regions Testing Maliki,” Christian Science Monitor, 1 Feb. 2013, available at www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2013/0201/Protests-surge-in-Iraq-s-Sunni-regions-testing-Maliki, accessed 7 Feb. 2013.

109 Sam Dagher, “Saddam's Brethren Get Organized,” Wall Street Journal, 12 April 2013, A9.

110 Matt Bradley, “Details Emerge on Probe of Iraqi Camp Raid,” Wall Street Journal, 6 May 2013, A11.

111 Ottaway and Kaysi, 9.

112 Ibid.

113 See Universal Declaration of Human Rights, available at www.un.org/en/documents/udhr, accessed 10 Jan. 2013.

114 Convention on the Prevention of and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, available at http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/ha/cppcg/cppcg.html, accessed 10 Jan. 2013.

115 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, available at http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/ha/catcidtp/catcidtp.html, accessed 10 Jan. 2013.