Who is Lane McCotter, and what exactly was he doing in Iraq?

Hmmmm....
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2004-05-28/cols_ventura.html

Who is Lane McCotter, and what exactly was he doing in Iraq?

As of this writing, no congressional committee has asked that question, but sooner or later, they'll have to. It is a question that may bring down the Bush administration. This is why.
(more.)

"While he and his company were under investigation by the Justice Department, the department's chief, Attorney General John Ashcroft, hand-picked McCotter to "rebuild criminal justice system." (NY Times) Inhale that: Ashcroft selected a man his own department was investigating, a man who had to leave the top corrections post in Utah or face scrutiny for what can only be called torture. And that's what inner-circle Republicans are so frightened of: If the prison abuse investigation gets to Ashcroft, it gets to the White House."

How could Ashcroft possibly explain hand-picking for command of a soon-to-be-torture-filled prison a man who was under investigation for those same offenses by Ashcroft's own department?

Write your congressman and senators, this is big. :toast:

Dear Rep. Schakowsky and Sen. Durbin:

As a loyal, informed, and active voter who has supported both of you in every election since the time that you were on the ballot in Illinois, I implore you to take action about the issue of the Lane McCotter story. I became aware of this troubling turn of events via this article in the Austin Chronicle:

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2004-05-28/cols_ventura.html
Who's Lane McCotter?

BY MICHAEL VENTURA

Who is Lane McCotter, and what exactly was he doing in Iraq?

As of this writing, no congressional committee has asked that question, but sooner or later, they'll have to.
(skipping ahead)

According to a NY Times report on May 8, Lane McCotter was an MP in Vietnam who eventually rose to the rank of colonel. His last Army assignment was as warden of the Army's central prison at Fort Leavenworth. In civilian life he eventually became director of the Utah Department of Corrections, a post he resigned under pressure in 1997 "after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time." McCotter later became a top executive in a private prison company that ran a Sante Fe jail that was "under investigation by the Justice Department" for "unsafe conditions and lack of medical care for inmates."
(skip)
While he and his company were under investigation by the Justice Department, the department's chief, Attorney General John Ashcroft, hand-picked McCotter to "rebuild criminal justice system." (NY Times) Inhale that: Ashcroft selected a man his own department was investigating, a man who had to leave the top corrections post in Utah or face scrutiny for what can only be called torture.


Sen. Durbin and Rep. Schakowsky, you may read the rest at your convenience, but please do not ignore it.

If you would not mind, would you also let me know that you have received this message?

Your loyal constituent,

****
If you need addresses and numbers, go to this site:
http://www.vote-smart.org/official_congress.php?dist=bio.php
click on your state

Oh yea, spread this story around. Its big.


:mad:

Citing former Connecticut prison boss in Iraq, Sen. Schumer seeks investigation
Sen. Charles Schumer urged the Department of Justice Thursday to dig deeper into the role civilian contractors may have played in prison abuses in Iraq, saying the hiring of Connecticut's former prisons commissioner raised new concerns.

Schumer, D-N.Y., charged two civilians hired to help set up prison operations in Iraq had checkered histories that should have raised red flags.

The hiring of John Armstrong, former Correction Commissioner for Connecticut, and O.L. "Lane" McCotter, who led correction departments in three different states, has drawn fire from Schumer with the discovery of abuses of some detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

Schumer questioned why Armstrong was hired to be the deputy director of operations for the Iraqi prisoner system after leaving his job in Connecticut in 2003 after the department was sued by female guards for alleged sexual harassment.
<snip>

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-ct--prisonabuse-armst0520may20,0,3219576.story?coll=ny-ap-regional-wire


Some US prisons as bad as Abu Ghraib

<snip>
IN VIRGINIA, for instance, human rights advocates report that inmates at two 'supermax' prisons have been hooded and subjected to 'excessive and malicious use of force by prison staff', often involving electric shock devices and rubber bullets.
Mr John Armstrong, now the assistant director of operations for US prisons in Iraq, resigned from his previous post when he was named in two wrongful death lawsuits at one of those prisons. Sergeant Ivan Frederick, the man directly in charge of the infamous Abu Ghraib 'hard site', previously worked as a Virginia corrections officer.

In Pennsylvania, a 1998 inquiry into a supermax prison notorious for racist guards revealed videotapes of routine beatings and elaborate rituals of humiliation. Specialist Charles Graner, identified as a ringleader in the Abu Ghraib depravity, has worked at that prison since 1996.
<snip>

Despite this appalling record, the US occupation authorities in Iraq appointed a former director of the Texas prison system, Mr Lane McCotter, to help set up operations at Abu Ghraib in May last year. Two months earlier, Mr McCotter's private prison company was cited by the US Justice Department for lax supervision and mistreatment of inmates in a New Mexico jail. Before that, Mr McCotter led Utah's corrections department, but was forced to resign after the death of a schizophrenic inmate who had been stripped naked and strapped to a restraining chair for 16 hours.

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/commentary/story/0,4386,253225,00.html


Abu Ghraib in America

<snip>
Indeed, reports suggest that abuses in our correctional system here at home were directly exported to our military in Iraq. The U.S. Department of Justice sent to Iraq at least two former American prison administrators who are accused of allowing grave abuses to occur under their watch in the United States. Lane McCotter, who headed a team that reopened Abu Ghraib after the American invasion, resigned as director of the Utah Department of Corrections after a mentally ill prisoner died when officers left him strapped to a restraint chair for 16 hours. John J. Armstrong, now assistant director of American prison operations in Iraq, was commissioner of Connecticut's prison system and the sole defendant in an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit representing Connecticut prisoners shipped to a Virginia super-maximum prison. In the Virginia facility, prison guards routinely punished prisoners for petty offenses like kicking cell doors by strapping them into five-point restraints for up to 48 hours, while binding their wrists and ankles to steel beds and having a strap tied across their chests. One of the prisoners, who suffered from diabetes, died after being restrained and repeatedly shocked with a stun gun. A second prisoner committed suicide. These tragedies were a direct result of the lack of oversight by officials like McCotter and Armstrong, and not surprisingly, similar tragedies manifested themselves in Iraq as well.
<snip>

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=04/05/27/4470467


Uncle Sam Wants You Anyway

Some corrections officials with questionable records, including on from Connecticut, have been recruited to work in Irag's prisons.
<snip>

Already, two of the Justice Department's "corrections advisers" are making headlines: Lane McCotter, former director of the Utah Department of Corrections, and John Armstrong, his Connecticut counterpart, both resigned in their home states after inmate abuse scandals occurred under their respective watches.
<snip>

AlterNet has learned that two more corrections advisers sent by the Justice Department to Iraq, former Arizona Department of Corrections director Terry Stewart and his top deputy Chuck Ryan, have controversial pasts as well.
<snip>

So far, the feds have been tight-lipped. Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo would not return phone calls, and a Defense Department spokesman refused comment. In an e-mail, Coalition Provisional Authority press officer Shane Wolfe noted the corrections advisers were not interrogating any inmates but training police and correctional officers and assessing the needs of Iraqi civilian prisons.
<snip>

http://hartfordadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:67239

Why are people so surprised? This administration is absolutely FAMOUS for putting a fox in charge of the hen house. And when caught, they just install a different fox. The various foxes haven't brought down the Bush administration YET, why would this one? They've been getting away with it since day 1. :shrug: