Standard Operating Procedure
Author of Ground-breaking Book on Scandal at Abu Ghraib Prison Coming to Campus

Ioana Patringenaru | June 2, 2008

Philip Gourevitch, a former New Yorker staff writer, will speak on campus about his book examining the Abu Ghraib scandal. (Photo: Andrew Brucker)

Four years ago, pictures showing the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq filled the airwaves and dominated the front pages of newspapers across the United States. Now, for the first time, a documentary filmmaker and a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker magazine have conducted lengthy interviews with soldiers who served at the prison and are telling their stories in a ground-breaking book.

Writer Philip Gourevitch will discuss “Standard Operating Procedure,” that came out in April, during a talk June 3 at The Neurosciences Institute, as part of UCSD Extension’s Revelle Forum. The event is free to UCSD students with ID. A documentary of the same title also will be released this spring.

“Standard Operating Procedure” tackles some of the most difficult questions to come out of the Abu Ghraib scandal. What did the people in the photographs think they were doing and why did they take them? What was "standard operating procedure" and what was "being creative" to make prisoners uncomfortable? Who was giving orders and who was following them?

The book draws its insights from more than 200 hours of interviews with soldiers and former prisoners at Abu Ghraib conducted by documentary filmmaker Errol Morris. He is perhaps best known for his screen adaptation of Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time.” But his works also have explored darker subjects.

Gourevitch is now the editor of the Paris Review, a prestigious literary journal. His account of the genocide in Rwanda, “We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families,” won many prizes, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the George K. Polk Award for Foreign Reporting.

In “Standard Operating Procedure,” Gourevitch and Morris delve deep into the psyche of the Military Police officers who served as prison guards at Abu Ghraib. Many of the soldiers turn out to be ordinary young American men and women, who have been dropped into something out of Dante's “Inferno.”

The authors profiled several of the MPs in a recent New Yorker article based on materials for their book. “By taking pictures of the prisoners on the [Military Intelligence] block the M.P.s demonstrated two things: that they never fully accepted what was happening as normal, and that they assumed they had nothing to hide,” Gourevitch and Morris wrote.

On June 3, Gourevitch will share more of his insights into this complex and significant story with members of the San Diego and UCSD communities.