As an Army interrogator at Abu Ghraib in 2004, Torin Nelson helped investigators document instances of prisoner abuse and torture by his colleagues. Now a contract employee, he’s being blacklisted from working in the military, according to Jason Vest in Government Executive:
Since last October, Nelson has been solicited or applied for dozens of overseas contract interrogation jobs. He has gotten none. Army Lt. Col. Maricela G. Alvarado, an intelligence staff officer, told Nelson in a recent e-mail that the Army knows that he was “not involved in any incident of wrongdoing” at Abu Ghraib.
Instead, it’s blowing the whistle that appears to have made him persona non grata among military intelligence:
‘[Our company] is apparently being asked to be able to “certify” that deploying you forward would not cause an adverse circumstance at some point in the future,’ [an executive for his employer] wrote in a recent e-mail to Nelson. ‘I don’t know what that means . . . [but the] basic feeling is that any attention would be unwanted, and they do not wish to accept the risk.’
