Vet death stresses mental illness toll

Army whistleblower revealed detainee abuse as he got sicker

Ian Fishback saw the world as cleaved between the just and unjust, the exemplary and the erring. A scholar-athlete from a small town in northern Michigan, he chose the military as his path toward a principled life, and when the Army failed its own credo during the war in Iraq, he persisted in making the truth known.

Fishback, who had retired from the Army, died this month, in circumstances still unclear, alone and broke in a group home, convinced he was being persecuted by the very forces he had once embraced. He was 42.

The short life and needless death of Fishback underscore the costs of two decades of war far beyond the battlefields and the overall strain on the nation’s mental health system. He is one of many high-profile veterans of the global war on terrorism whose lives have ended in tragedy.

“There are many potential root causes here,” said Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J., referring to Fishback’s decline. Malinowski was director of Human Rights Watch when he first met Fishback in 2005 and connected him with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who also wanted to expose wrongdoing in Iraq.

“There is a veteran mental health crisis in this country, and there is a shortage of facilities and of helpers,” he said. “We panic when we are running out of ICU beds in America, but we accept that we don’t have enough mental health beds.”

A shortage of psychiatrists, psychologists and psychiatric nurse practitioners across the United States has worsened during the pandemic, mental health experts say, and lawmakers have struggled to find a solution. Staffing shortages at the Department of Veterans Affairs may have hampered access to care, possibly including for Fishback.

In 2005, as an Army captain, he revealed that fellow members of the 82nd Airborne Division had systematically abused detainees in Iraq. His allegations led to the passage of far-reaching anti-torture legislation championed by McCain.

Fishback, who served four combat tours in Iraq, later earned a doctorate, taught at West Point, and became a sought-after speaker on the subject of moral injury and military service.

In recent years, he also had paranoid delusions and deep depression, and was prone to outbursts that caused him to lose jobs and relationships. He oscillated between defiance about his fragile mental state and desperation as he searched for help, a dozen family members, former professional associates and friends said in interviews.

Since September, alarmed at his physical and mental deterioration, his friends and his sister had scrambled to move him from hospitals and low-income adult group homes where, they said, he was heavily medicated with antipsychotic drugs, to a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Battle Creek, Michigan. Appeals on his behalf to the department went unanswered, they said. Fishback was found dead in his room at the group home after breakfast Nov. 19.

“He was always driven by a deeply humanistic sense that people deserve respect, in this case detainees,” said Nancy Sherman, a professor of philosophy at Georgetown University, who was deeply involved in trying to help Fishback over the last decade.

She added, “He had an enormous sense of purpose and rigidity, and rigidity doesn’t make for resilience often.”

As a young man, Fishback was known around his small town as a high achiever in school and sports — running hills with a backpack full of weights while others were content to do the slow jog, his sister, Jazcinda Jorgensen, said. He debated classmates over his strict moral code.

A high school teacher suggested the military, so he applied and was accepted to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

“He always had a real strong sense of morality and justice and thought it was best to use that as an officer,” his sister said.

He graduated from West Point with a Bachelor of Science degree in Middle Eastern studies in 2001 and served in the Army until 2014, including four combat tours with the 82nd Airborne and Special Forces.

One day in 2005, Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon analyst and then a senior military adviser for Human Rights Watch, was clearing off his desk when his phone rang. The person on the other end said, “Hello sir, I am a U.S. Army officer, and I am concerned there has been torture of detainees in my unit,” Garlasco recalled. He added, “Needless to say, that piqued the interest.”

After numerous email exchanges, the two met at an Applebee’s restaurant in La Grange, Georgia, where Fishback described horrific abuse of Iraqi prisoners between September 2003 and April 2004 that included exposure to extreme temperatures, beatings and sleep deprivation at Camp Mercury, a forward operating base near Fallujah.

Fishback had appealed to superiors and even clergy for 17 months before he turned to Capitol Hill for help. “He said, ‘I want John McCain,’ ” Garlasco said.

A Human Rights Watch team took him to meet with the senator.

The Detainee Treatment Act passed the Senate 90-9 and was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2005.

But Fishback struggled as he worked toward a master’s degree in philosophy and political science at the University of Michigan, which he earned in 2012. He met Sherman during his studies and she became his confidante.

When she noticed that he was showing symptoms of paranoia, “I worried a lot,” she said. She helped him find a therapist.

He taught at West Point from 2012-15, but trouble continued, including altercations with students and faculty.

Major Ian Fishback with his mother, left, and sister in 2003. He died awaiting a bed at the VA.