Copper Green is reportedly one of several

code name A code name, codename, call sign, or cryptonym is a code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may also be used in ...

s for a

U.S. The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous ...

black ops A covert operation or undercover operation is a military or police operation involving a covert agent or troops acting under an assumed cover to conceal the identity of the party responsible. US law Under US law, the Central Intelligence Ag ...

program in which coercive psychological and physical measures were used on detainees in military prisons. Investigative journalist

Seymour Hersh Seymour Myron Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is an American investigative journalist and political writer. He gained recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer ...

reported on the term in an article in the May 24, 2004 issue of ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

''. According to Hersh, the task force was formed with the direct approval of Secretary of Defense

Donald Rumsfeld Donald Henry Rumsfeld (July 9, 1932 – June 29, 2021) was an American politician, businessman, and naval officer who served as United States Secretary of Defense, secretary of defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, and again ...

during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and run by Deputy Undersecretary

Stephen Cambone Stephen Anthony Cambone (born June 22, 1952) was the first United States Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, a post created in March 2003. Cambone first came to the attention of the public at large during the testimony of Major General ...

. Hersh claims the

Special Access Program Special access programs (SAPs) in the U.S. Federal Government are security protocols that provide highly classified information with safeguards and access restrictions that exceed those for regular (collateral) classified information. SAPs can r ...

(SAP) members were told "Grab whom you must. Do what you want." The program allegedly designed physical coercion and sexual humiliation techniques for use against

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

Arab Arabs (, , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years ...

men specifically, to retrieve information from suspects, and to

blackmail Blackmail is a criminal act of coercion using a threat. As a criminal offense, blackmail is defined in various ways in common law jurisdictions. In the United States, blackmail is generally defined as a crime of information, involving a thr ...

them into becoming informants. According to the article, the sexual humiliation techniques were based on the book, '' The Arab Mind'', written by

cultural anthropologist Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The term s ...

Raphael Patai in 1973. The book claimed to be a "study of Arab culture and psychology". According to Hersh's anonymous intelligence source, the Patai book was "the bible of the neocons on Arab behavior", which gave life to two themes: "One, that Arabs only understand force and, two, that the biggest weakness of Arabs is shame and humiliation". Hersh claims to have spoken to a senior

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

official who said the program was designed by Rumsfeld to wrest control of information from the CIA, and place it in the hands of

the Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense, in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The building was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As ...

. According to Hersh's sources, the program was so successful in

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

, that Cambone decided to introduce the SAP program to operations during 2003 invasion of Iraq, eventually leading to the use of common soldiers instead of using special ops forces exclusively. In Hersh's view, the program was used on detainees at the

Abu Ghraib prison Abu Ghraib prison (, ''Sijn Abū Ghurayb'') was a prison complex in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, located west of Baghdad. Abu Ghraib prison was opened in the 1960s and served as a maximum-security prison. From the 1970s, the prison was used by Saddam Hus ...

, leading directly to the

Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse During the early stages of the Iraq War, members of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency were accused of a series of human rights violations and war crimes against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. These abuses ...

scandal.

Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and supervising the six U.S. armed services: the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force, ...

spokesperson Lawrence Di Rita issued a statement about the accusations, referring to them as "outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture". Senators on Capitol Hill, most notably the former

POW POW is "prisoner of war", a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict. POW or pow may also refer to: Music * P.O.W (Bullet for My Valentine song), "P.O.W" (Bull ...

John McCain John Sidney McCain III (August 29, 1936 – August 25, 2018) was an American statesman and United States Navy, naval officer who represented the Arizona, state of Arizona in United States Congress, Congress for over 35 years, first as ...

, promised to investigate the reported claims, "regardless of where it leads".

In popular culture

Copper Green was mentioned in author JD Wallace's debut novel, ''Silent Cats: Deadly Dance''. The male hero, who is based on a real person who the author claims to know personally, was an interrogator who worked on the Copper Green task force, among other task force groups. Copper Green was mentioned in Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer's memoir, ''

Operation Dark Heart __NOTOC__ ''Operation Dark Heart: Spycraft and Special Ops on the Frontlines of Afghanistan and the Path to Victory'' is a 2010 memoir by retired United States Army Reserve intelligence officer Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer. The book details Shaffer' ...

'' on page 257: "The interrogation program, called Copper Green, was authorized, but a lot of us felt it wasn't appropriate and just wasn't right." The Pentagon blacked out the words "Copper Green" in the second printing."Dark Contrast"
September 29, 2010,

Federation of American Scientists The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is an American nonprofit global policy think tank with the stated intent of using science and scientific analysis to attempt to make the world more secure. FAS was founded in 1945 by a group of scient ...

References

Torture in the Iraq War Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse Secret military programs {{Iraq-War-stub