By DAVE JANOSKI davej@leader.net
Sunday, May 23, 2004 Page: 1A
In her heart, Lisa Girman is still a soldier.
“I didn’t throw my uniform away and I’m still shining my boots,” says the
35-year-old state trooper, who left the Army Reserve late last year amid
allegations that she had used excessive force against an Iraqi prisoner.
Girman says her attorney is preparing an appeal to the Army that she hopes
will eventually upgrade her other-than-honorable discharge, restore her to the
rank of master sergeant and clear the way for her return to duty.
“Once I get back in, hopefully this will be water past us,” says Girman,
of Wilkes-Barre. She repudiates the findings of a Army hearing that she had
repeatedly kicked a prisoner in the groin, abdomen and head and encouraged
subordinates to do the same.
“Did I ever abuse, kick or punch EPWs (enemy prisoners of war)? No. Did I
ever see my soldiers do that? Never.”
Girman contends she and three of her subordinates were targeted because she
was outspoken about deficiencies at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq. Some of the
officers whose leadership she criticized have been disciplined in connection
with the sexual and physical abuse of Iraqis at the notorious Abu Ghraib
prison.
The inexperience and ineffectiveness of those officers, cited in an Army
investigative report as contributing to abuses at Abu Ghraib, were evident
earlier at Camp Bucca, according to Girman.
“I don’t like to be associated with this other scandal,” says Girman, who
had already been relieved of duty when her unit, the 320th Military Police
Battalion headquartered in Ashley, moved from Camp Bucca to Abu Ghraib. “But
the chain of command was walking on dangerous ground long before the scandal
came to light.”
In the firestorm surrounding the events at Abu Ghraib, Girman has been
telling her story to a national audience on television and radio, appearing on
“60 Minutes II” and National Public Radio and denying allegations from
superiors and at least one former prisoner that she was abusive.
And in interviews with the Times Leader during the past two weeks, friends,
family and former comrades-at-arms have backed her up, describing a competent
and committed soldier done in by her own outspokenness.
“She was hard-charging. Maybe some people didn’t like that,” says Andrew
Barancho, a sergeant first class with 320th from Forty Fort. Barancho, 41,
says he didn’t see the incidents in May 2003 that led to the allegations
against Girman and three other soldiers. But he doesn’t believe them.
“She was a state trooper. She’s been in the military a long time. She’s a
good soldier. Why would you do something that dumb?”
Police background strong
Girman joined the Army just out of Pittston Area High School in 1986. After
basic training, she joined the reserves rather than go on active duty because
of the illness of a brother, who later died.
She worked security at Boscov’s Department Store in Wilkes-Barre and then
as a guard at the state Correctional Institution at Dallas for one year before
joining the state police in 1991.
She had extensive training in running prisoner-of-war camps and served in a
camp during the first Gulf War, where, she says, she was injured while falling
off a truck during a riot. Previous reports that she had been stabbed during
that riot are false, she says.
Girman’s training and experience were sought out by the 320th when it was
activated for service in Iraq in February 2003, even though she was a member
of another locally based MP unit.
Her fellow soldiers described her as a “John Wayne type” often called
upon for the toughest jobs and a “big sister” to the troops.
“Lisa makes her presence known. She has a great sense of humor. She’s a
people person,” says Cynthia Wasluck, a 22-year-old sergeant from Mountain
Top.
Paul Shaffer, a sergeant first class from West Pittston, has known Girman
for 16 years. “She’s one of the best … the most professional senior NCO
(non-commissioned officer) that has helped me out in my career,” says
Shaffer, 35.
In May 2003, Shaffer and Girman were helping escort 44 Iraqi prisoners to
Camp Bucca when several became disruptive as they were getting off a bus,
according to soldiers from the 320th. One tried to grab a sidearm from an MP,
Girman says.
Shaffer says he saw one of the soldiers who was disciplined with Girman
force one of the Iraqis to the ground.
“He used the force necessary to stop the action.”
Shaffer says although he wasn’t with Girman the whole time, he didn’t see
her harm any prisoners.
“There’s no reason Lisa Girman would lie to me. The way they’re trying to
depict her as a vicious vigilante is just not right.”
Ten soldiers were investigated after the incident. Girman and three
soldiers of lesser rank were sent to Kuwait, where they eventually accepted
less-than-honorable discharges and reduced rank, avoiding courts-martial.
The 320th moved on to Abu Ghraib near Baghdad, where soldiers from a
Maryland Reserve unit that reported to the 320th’s commanders allegedly abused
Iraqi prisoners and photographed the abuse in a scandal that has captured
international attention.
Three officers reprimanded
No members of the 320th, which returned stateside in March, are accused of
abusing prisoners. But three of the battalion’s officers, including the
commander, Lt. Col. Jerry Phillabaum, received reprimands.
The Army investigative report of abuses at Abu Ghraib described Phillabaum
as “extremely ineffective” and often absent from his command.
Some of his soldiers echoed that judgment.
“I never met anyone in a war zone that had more R&R than he did,” Girman
says.
“He’s a really great guy,” Wasluck says. “But his job in the civilian
world doesn’t have anything to do with corrections. I think some of the
corrections stuff is almost out of his league.”
Phillabaum, a 1976 West Point graduate, retired from the Peach Bottom
nuclear plant in York County, where he worked on licensing issues. He did not
return several messages left on his home answering machine in Lansdale.
In a letter to his superiors obtained by the media, Phillabaum claimed
Girman mistreated the prisoners at Camp Bucca because she believed they had
raped Jessica Lynch. Lynch, an Army private, was captured early in the Iraq
war, but was later recovered in an Iraqi hospital. Medical records cited in
her biography say she was sodomized.
Girman denies the Lynch connection, saying she didn’t know who the Iraqi
detainees were and in any case, she and her soldiers used the minimum force
necessary.
“Nobody was injured, nobody was bruised. They were all seen by medical
personnel and there were no bruises and no broken bones.”
But “inexperienced” MPs from another unit who witnessed the incident
reported that Girman and other soldiers might have been “a little rough,”
Girman said. And her superiors in the 320th, irked by her complaints about the
lack of clear procedures in the camp, “saw an opportunity to shut me up and
eventually get rid of me.”
Girman said the 320th had no way of counting the numbers of prisoners at
Bucca because the commanders of the unit didn’t know how to use
prisoner-processing software that she had helped develop. There were no clear
guidelines for the use of weapons by MPs, and commanders ignored complaints
that the MPs were spread too thin, with 40 to 50 guards watching about 7,000
prisoners.
And some of the MPs hadn’t received adequate training.
“They had no idea what EPW stands for,” Girman says. “When we would go
to the chain of command, their inexperience would come out. They didn’t know
what to do.”
Girman returned home early this year and resumed work as a state trooper.
But she’s restricted to administrative duties while the state police examine
the Camp Bucca allegations and an unresolved drunken-driving charge filed
before she went overseas.
That charge resulted from a 3:30 a.m. crash Feb. 16, 2003, in Plains
Township. Police say Girman drove with a blood-alcohol level of 0.18 percent.
At the time, an adult driver in Pennsylvania was considered to be intoxicated
with a level of 0.10; the level has since been changed to 0.08.
Girman, who is single, also teaches police-certification courses at
Keystone College in La Plume.
Police work is “something I wanted to do as a little, little kid,” Girman
says.
“We’d play cops and robbers and the other kids wanted to be the bad guys
so they could do the fun stuff and run away. I always wanted to be the cop.”
Girman keeps in touch with her former mates from Iraq, even traveling to
Fort Dix in New Jersey to greet them when they returned from Iraq in March.
“They’re my guys. They expected me to be there.”
Girman says she expects the legal road back to the ranks will be a long
one.
“It’s going to be a slow process, six months to a year. Hopefully by 2005,
we’ll see where we’re at.
An Army spokeswoman said Friday she couldn’t say if, or how, a former
reservist in Girman’s position could return to the reserves.
But Girman is determined.
“I know I can go back in if I want to go back in.
“I’m still a soldier.”
Associated Editor Dave Janoski can be reached at 829-7255.
cutlines:
ON ALLEGED ABUSE: `Did I ever kick any EPWs? No.’
ON LT. CO. JERRY PHILLABAUM: “I never met anyone in a war zone that had
more R&R than he did.”
ON RETURNING TO THE ARMY: “I didn’t throw my uniform away and I’m still
shining my boots.”
TIMES LEADER STAFF PHOTOS/FRED ADAMS
Lisa Girman, surrounded by family, contends she and three of her
subordinates were targeted because she was outspoken about deficiencies at
Camp Bucca in southern Iraq.