CONFIRMED RUMSFELD AND CAMBONE ARE TOAST!

Military Intelligence
The Pentagon is trying to steer the investigation away from Military Intelligence, but it isn't working. A new investigation is starting to see what it's role was in the prison scandal. This will blow the whole think sky high. They will find it is wider than the one prison and that it stems from the tactics originated at Gitmo by General Miller that were transferred to other Iraq prisons.

The scathing report we know of so far covered only the one prison, not the others in which the Red Cross and others have reported abuses of detainees.

Cambone and Rumsfeld must be really sweating this new development.

BBB

Protecting the System
Editorial
Protecting the System
Wednesday, May 12, 2004; Page A22
Washington Post

THE BUSH administration still seeks to mislead Congress and the public about the policies that contributed to the criminal abuse of prisoners in Iraq. Yesterday's smoke screen was provided by Stephen A. Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence. Mr. Cambone assured the Senate Armed Services Committee that the administration's policy had always been to strictly observe the Geneva Conventions in Iraq; that all procedures for interrogations in Iraq were sanctioned under the conventions; and that the abuses of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison were consequently the isolated acts of individuals. These assertions are contradicted by International Red Cross and Army investigators, by U.S. generals overseeing the prisoners, and by Mr. Cambone himself.

Start with adherence to the Geneva Conventions, which Mr. Cambone's boss, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, has publicly derided as outdated and which the administration acknowledges are not being adhered to at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison. Mr. Cambone said yesterday that the administration considered all detainees at Abu Ghraib to be covered by either the Third or Fourth Geneva Convention. But he also confirmed a statement by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the current commander at Abu Ghraib, that techniques officially available for interrogation have included hooding, sleep deprivation and stress positions. An official report by the Red Cross confirms that those techniques as well as harsher ones have been used systematically, and not only at Abu Ghraib. The report says they have been employed by tactical military intelligence units all over Iraq, including at a permanent facility at the Baghdad airport. According to Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), an Army report says that the policy for Iraq specifies that permission of the commanding general can be sought for the use of "sleep management, sensory deprivation, isolation longer than 30 days and dogs."

The Third Geneva Convention, which applies to prisoners of war and captured insurgents, says that they "may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind" as a way to make them answer questions. The Fourth Geneva Convention, which covers people under foreign occupation, says "no physical or moral coercion shall be exercised against" them, "in particular to obtain information from them or from third parties." A senior Army official, Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, testified that the Army believes its "harsh" techniques are allowed under these provisions. The Red Cross, which is designated by the conventions as their monitoring organization, believes otherwise: That the U.S. practices are in violation was one of the principal findings of its February report. U.S. forces were systematically breaking the conventions in five major ways, the report found, three of which concerned the treatment of prisoners under interrogation. It described the abuse as "standard operating procedure."

Mr. Cambone made no attempt to reconcile his claim of U.S. adherence to international law with the actual procedures his office has helped to promulgate. Instead he insisted that the crimes at Abu Ghraib -- which, though they went beyond the established practices, were based on the same principles -- were the responsibility of the guards and their commanders, and not the intelligence-gathering system. In this he was contradicted by the witness sitting next to him, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who repeated the conclusion of his own investigation: that the practices were introduced by intelligence interrogators who were improperly placed in command of the guards.

These contradictions go to the heart of this scandal and its impact. The sickening abuse of Iraqi prisoners will do incalculable damage to American foreign policy no matter how the administration responds. But if President Bush and his senior officials would acknowledge their complicity in playing fast and loose with international law and would pledge to change course, they might begin to find a way out of the mess. Instead, they hope to escape from this scandal without altering or even admitting the improper and illegal policies that lie at its core. It is a vain hope, and Congress should insist on a different response.

BBB
I notice that newspaper editorial boards are finally picking up on the same issues that I found telling, that Rumsfeld and Cambone are dangerous men.---BBB
--------------------------------------------------------------
By Robert Schlesinger, Boston Globe Staff,
This story ran on page A8 of the Boston Globe on 6/8/2003.

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/159/nation/Expanding_role_of_Defense_Department_spurs_concerns+.shtml

WASHINGTON -- The Department of Defense's responsibilities have grown beyond anything that military commanders had imagined at the end of the Cold War, according to national security specialists; some have voiced worry that the department's expanding roles could tax the Pentagon's resources or compromise some civilian authorities.

Nearly 15 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there is no more talk about a budgetary ''peace dividend'' or trimming US forces. The US military is not only operating in more places around the world than at any other time since World War II, but it has also expanded into areas previously reserved for other government agencies: establishing a new intelligence unit, launching a homeland defense command, and exerting growing influence in foreign policy.

''You've got people doing things, certainly from the Pentagon perspective, that they wouldn't have dreamed of 15 years ago or even 10 years ago,'' said Andrew F. Krepinevich, a former Defense Department official who runs the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a defense policy institute.

While it has become fashionable to ascribe the expansion to the ambitions of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, its roots are more complex, growing out of long-term trends that began with the end of the Cold War and from the response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Some national security specialists worry that this expansion could hurt US policy and the military itself. Even with Bush budget increases, including a requested $15 billion this year, the military can handle only so many missions at a time.

For example, while George Bush campaigned in 2000 against using the military for nation building, US forces have subsequently assumed that sort of mission in Afghanistan and Iraq.

''Certainly through the 1990s, as we found ourselves in these lower-level conflicts that you would not term as world wars, but to look at the Kosovos or the Bosnias or the Afghanistans, we are putting the military right on the edge of political roles,'' said Tad Oelstrom, a retired three-star Air Force general who heads a national security program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

Oelstrom said that, in many cases, the US military's role in other countries has increased beyond defense-related activities. ''The military all along has wondered whether or not they are prepared to do this and what they should do or shouldn't do,'' said Oelstrom.

Some specialists worry that as the military is used, other traditional instruments of foreign policy can suffer and atrophy. The State Department, they fear, could be undercut, and the intelligence community could become distorted and politicized.

''You've got many different tools of national power, and if you've got one that is very muscular and well developed, and you have others that in comparison are a bit more anemic . . . you have a tendency to use the one that's well-developed,'' said Clark Murdock, a former defense official who works at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The newly created position of undersecretary of defense for intelligence underscores the changes in progress at the Pentagon. Rumsfeld said the post would not duplicate the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, or other members of the intelligence community.

Stephen Cambone, the new undersecretary, said last month that the existing agencies ''will all go about doing their tasks,'' but that his unit will ensure that they are meeting the intelligence needs laid out by the Pentagon.

The mission, he said, ''is to try to get to them a sense of what the priorities are for the department.''

But the office's mandate was drawn broadly, giving Cambone direct control over the Defense Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency as well as the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency.

Those agencies are officially part of the Department of Defense, answering both to Rumsfeld and CIA Director George Tenet. But giving Cambone explicit authority over the agencies allows him far-reaching authority that intelligence specialists said cuts into a major piece of Tenet's turf.

Jay Farrar, a former employee in the Defense Department and National Security Council who works with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that Cambone's broad authority is not a coincidence. ''It's one more step in the Defense Department seeking to consolidate major control over the intelligence apparatus of the United States,'' Farrar said.

The fear is that giving the Pentagon greater influence will politicize the intelligence process by encouraging reports that support current policies, rather than reporting trends and developments that challenge them. ''It looked like a classic case of you can't get the intelligence you want from the intelligence community, you create your own unit,'' said Mel Goodman, a former CIA analyst who teaches at the National War College and is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. ''The civilian side of the intelligence community gets weaker and weaker, and it's obvious that Rumsfeld's playing a policy game to get intelligence to support policy.''

Complaints about the quality and availability of intelligence during the first Gulf War prompted a decadelong military effort to gain more influence over the gathering and disseminating of intelligence. Rumsfeld has been a critic of the intelligence community since chairing a 1998 commission that examined national missile defense. Some analysts argue that the reform was needed. ''It is an iteration of how to organize intelligence to get us better information,'' Oelstrom said.

The Pentagon's growing profile extends beyond intelligence. The end of the Cold War opened swaths of the globe into which the US military has become engaged or more deeply enmeshed, especially in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Current US military operations include Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, Colombia, the former Yugoslavia, South Korea, the Philippines, and former Soviet states such as Georgia.

In the process, regional combatant commanders have gained a stature that, in many cases, overshadows the role of ambassadors in the regions. The military commanders have greater resources, bigger staffs, and better access to intelligence than ambassadors serving in the same countries.

''Part of the reason why a regional combatant commander has such prestige throughout a region is if he visits a country, has an entire entourage, [he] is the manifestation of American power in a way that an individual diplomat isn't,'' Murdock said.

That has been exacerbated by Rumsfeld's activist view of the defense secretary's role in formulating foreign policy, often behind the scenes in frequent missives -- ''Rummygrams'' -- to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and others.

Rumsfeld and Powell ''have strong personalities, but they aren't necessarily on the same page, which I think is good, not bad,'' said Oelstrom, who argues that competing ideas and visions can yield a balanced foreign policy. But potential problems lie in over-reliance on the military for foreign policy, according to Murdock and others.

One new job for the military is the Pentagon's evolving role in homeland defense. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Pentagon has added an assistant secretary for homeland defense and last year created a northern command to coordinate the military response to domestic threats.

Though it can occasionally be called upon to support civilian authorities in times of major need or disaster, the military is constitutionally barred from law enforcement in the United States. The creation of the command has raised the specter for some that that division is eroding.

''There are two views on it,'' said Michael Greenberger, director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland. ''One is that it's very scary that we now have the military trying to play what has traditionally been a civilian, domestic, non-DOD role. But . . . I don't think anybody really can make an assessment about what's going on right now.''
----------------------------------------

Globe Correspondent Bryan Bender contributed to this report. Robert Schlesinger can be reached at [email protected].

The Central Intelligence Agency has used coercive interrogation methods against a select group of high-level leaders and operatives of Al Qaeda that have produced growing concerns inside the agency about abuses, according to current and former counterterrorism officials.

At least one agency employee has been disciplined for threatening a detainee with a gun during questioning, they said.

In the case of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a high-level detainee who is believed to have helped plan the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, C.I.A. interrogators used graduated levels of force, including a technique known as "water boarding," in which a prisoner is strapped down, forcibly pushed under water and made to believe he might drown.

These techniques were authorized by a set of secret rules for the interrogation of high-level Qaeda prisoners, none known to be housed in Iraq, that were endorsed by the Justice Department and the C.I.A. The rules were among the first adopted by the Bush administration after the Sept. 11 attacks for handling detainees and may have helped establish a new understanding throughout the government that officials would have greater freedom to deal harshly with detainees.

Defenders of the operation said the methods stopped short of torture, did not violate American anti-torture statutes, and were necessary to fight a war against a nebulous enemy whose strength and intentions could only be gleaned by extracting information from often uncooperative detainees. Interrogators were trying to find out whether there might be another attack planned against the United States.

The methods employed by the C.I.A. are so severe that senior officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation have directed its agents to stay out of many of the interviews of the high-level detainees, counterterrorism officials said. The F.B.I. officials have advised the bureau's director, Robert S. Mueller III, that the interrogation techniques, which would be prohibited in criminal cases, could compromise their agents in future criminal cases, the counterterrorism officials said.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, President Bush signed a series of directives authorizing the C.I.A. to conduct a covert war against Osama bin Laden's Qaeda network. The directives empowered the C.I.A. to kill or capture Qaeda leaders, but it is not clear whether the White House approved the specific rules for the interrogations.

The White House and the C.I.A. declined to comment on the matter.

The C.I.A. detention program for Qaeda leaders is the most secretive component of an extensive regime of detention and interrogation put into place by the United States government after the Sept. 11 attacks and the war in Afghanistan that includes the detention facilities run by the military in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

There is now concern at the agency that the Congressional and criminal inquiries into abuses at Pentagon-run prisons and other detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan may lead to examinations of the C.I.A's handling of the Qaeda detainees. That, in turn, could expose agency officers and operations to the same kind of public exposure as the military now faces because of the Iraq prison abuses.

So far, the agency has refused to grant any independent observer or human rights group access to the high-level detainees, who have been held in strict secrecy. Their whereabouts are such closely guarded secrets that one official said he had been told that Mr. Bush had informed the C.I.A. that he did not want to know where they were.

The authorized tactics are primarily those methods used in the training of American Special Operations soldiers to prepare them for the possibility of being captured and taken prisoners of war. The tactics simulate torture, but officials say they are supposed to stop short of serious injury.

Counterrorism officials say detainees have also been sent to third countries, where they are convinced that they might be executed, or tricked into believing they were being sent to such places. Some have been hooded, roughed up, soaked with water and deprived of food, light and medications.

Many authorities contend that torture and coercive treatment is as likely to provide information that is unreliable as information that is helpful.

Concerns are mounting among C.I.A. officers about the potential consequences of their actions. "Some people involved in this have been concerned for quite a while that eventually there would be a new president, or the mood in the country would change, and they would be held accountable," one intelligence source said. "Now that's happening faster than anybody expected."

The C.I.A.'s inspector general has begun an investigation into the deaths of three lower-level detainees held by the C.I.A in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Justice Department is also examining the deaths.

The secret detention system houses a group of 12 to 20 prisoners, government officials said, some under direct American control, others ostensibly under the supervision of foreign governments.

The C.I.A. high-level interrogation program seemed to show early results with the capture of Abu Zubaida in April 2002. Mr. Zubaida was a close associate of Mr. bin Laden's and had run Al Qaeda's recruiting, in which young men were brought from other countries to training camps in Afghanistan.

Under such intensive questioning, Mr. Zubaida provided useful information identifying Jose Padilla, a low-level Qaeda convert who was arrested in May 2002 in connection with an effort to build a dirty bomb. Mr. Zubaida also helped identify Mr. Mohammed as a crucial figure in the 9/11 plot, counterterrorism officials said.

A few other detainees have been identified by the Bush administration, like Ramzi bin al-Shibh, another 9/11 plotter and Walid Ba'Attash, who helped plan the East Africa embassy bombings in 1998 and the attack on the Navy destroyer Cole in October 2000.

Some of the prisoners have never been identified by the government. Some may have only peripheral ties to Al Qaeda. One Middle Eastern man, who had been identified by intelligence officials as a money launderer for Mr. bin Laden, was captured in the United Arab Emirates. He traveled there when some of the emirates' banks froze his accounts. When the U.A.E. government alerted the the C.I.A. that he was in the country, the man was arrested and subsequently disappeared into the secret detention program.

In the interrogation of Mr. Mohammed, C.I.A. officials became convinced that he was not being fully cooperative about his knowledge of the whereabouts of Mr. bin Laden. Mr. Mohammed was carrying a letter written by Mr. bin Laden to a family member when he was captured in Pakistan early in 2003. The C.I.A. officials then authorized even harsher techniques, according to officials familiar with the interrogation.

The C.I.A. has been operating its Qaeda detention system under a series of secret legal opinions by the agency's and Justice Department lawyers. Those rules have provided a legal basis for the use of harsh interrogation techniques, including the water-boarding tactic used against Mr. Mohammed.

One set of legal memorandums, the officials said, advises government officials that if they are contemplating procedures that may put them in violation of American statutes that prohibit torture, degrading treatment or the Geneva Conventions, they will not be responsible if it can be argued that the detainees are formally in the custody of another country.

The Geneva Conventions prohibit "violence to life and person, in particular . . . cruel treatment and torture" and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment."

Regarding American anti-torture laws, one administration figure involved in discussions about the memorandums said: "The criminal statutes only apply to American officials. The question is how involved are the American officials."

The official said the legal opinions say restrictions on procedures would not apply if the detainee could be deemed to be in the custody of a different country, even though American officials were getting the benefit of the interrogation. "It would be the responsibility of the other country," the official said. "It depends on the level of involvement."

Like the more numerous detainees at Guantánamo Bay, the high-level Qaeda prisoners have also been defined as unlawful combatants, not as prisoners of war. Those prisoners have no standing in American civilian or military courts.

The Bush administration began the program when intelligence agencies realized that a few detainees captured in Afghanistan had such a high intelligence value that they should be separated from the lower-level figures who had been sent to a military installation at Guantánamo Bay, which officials felt was not suitable.

There was little long-term planning. The agency initially had few interrogators and no facilities to house the top detainees. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the agency began to search for remote sites in friendly countries around the world where Qaeda operatives could be kept quietly and securely.

"There was a debate after 9/11 about how to make people disappear," a former intelligence official said.

The result was a series of secret agreements allowing the C.I.A. to use sites overseas without outside scrutiny.

So far, the Bush administration has not said what it intends to do over the long term with any of the high-level detainees, leaving them subject to being imprisoned indefinitely without any access to lawyers, courts or any form of due process.

Some officials have suggested that some of the high-level detainees may be tried in military tribunals or officially turned over to other countries, but counterterrorism officials have complained about the Bush administration's failure to have an "endgame" for these detainees. One official said they could also be imprisoned indefinitely at a new long-term prison being built at Guantánamo.

read this important op ed
Read this important op ed:

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=691440#691440

mark

Another criminal act by Bush adm.
Another criminal act by the Bush adm.

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=692852#692852

I just knew he did it!
I just knew he did it! Seymour Hersh always gets it right
---BBBSecretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and one of his top aides authorized the expansion of a secret program that permitted harsh interrogations of detained members of Al Qaeda to be used against prisoners in Iraq, including detainees at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, according to an article in The New Yorker Magazine.

The article, by Seymour M. Hersh, reports that Mr. Rumsfeld and Stephen Cambone, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, approved the use of the tougher interrogation techniques in Iraq in 2003 in an effort to extract better information from Iraqi prisoners to counter the growing insurgency threat in the country.

Across the Bush administration, officials on Saturday disputed several of the critical details in Mr. Hersh's article. They said that there was no high-level decision or command that they were aware of to use highly coercive interrogation techniques on Iraqi prisoners.

Mr. Rumsfeld, who has apologized for the abuses, has said that the prison abuses were conducted by lower-level military forces without the approval of senior commanders.

One of the central unresolved questions of the prison abuse scandal is whether the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners was ordered by senior military or civilian officials.

Administration officials pointed on Saturday to testimony before Congress in which several administration officials acknowledged that the Geneva Conventions applied to detainees in Iraq and therefore did not permit the use of coercive tactics. But some officials, speaking on background, acknowledged that as the insurgency worsened in Iraq last summer, there was rising concern about how to improve intelligence about future attacks.

At the Pentagon, the chief spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, vigorously denied the allegations that Mr. Cambone directed a covert program to encourage the coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners to improve intelligence gathering.

"It's pure, unadulterated fantasy," Mr. Di Rita said in a telephone interview. "We don't discuss covert programs, but nothing in any covert program would have led anyone to sanction activity like what was seen on those videos."

"No responsible official in this department, including Secretary Rumsfeld, would or could have been involved in sanctioning the physical coercion or sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners," Mr. Di Rita said.

Mr. Di Rita said Mr. Cambone was not involved in setting detainee policy in Iraq. "Cambone had no involvement in any matter involved in detainee management," Mr. Di Rita said. "That's part of the fevered imagination of conspiracy theorists."

The article, to published in the May 24 edition of The New Yorker, said that the expansion of the "special access program" allowed authorities in charge of Abu Ghraib to engage in degrading and humiliating practices.

The article said, "According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon's operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq."

In addition, the article said that Mr. Rumsfeld's decision in the matter had, in effect, shifted the blame for the abuses from himself to lower-level military guards.

Some elements of The New Yorker story have been previously reported, including the development by the C.I.A. of a special interrogation program for Qaeda prisoners captured in Afghanistan. That program, authorized by government legal opinions, included the use of coercive interrogation methods.

Mr. Hersh writes that Mr. Cambone carried out Mr. Rumsfeld's directive to use the coercive interrogation methods.

The article said that by the summer of 2003, American military and intelligence agencies were growing fearful about the strength of the insurgency and were frustrated at the poor intelligence they were getting from detainees.

Some of the officials identified by Mr. Hersh in the article have testified publicly about their actions in the prison abuse issue. Mr. Cambone testified for several hours before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, May 11, and was questioned extensively about what interrogation methods were approved for prisoners in Iraq and whether they complied with the Geneva rules.

Asked by Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, "What is the status" of detainees in the prison, he answered flatly, "They are there under either Article 3 or Article 4 of the Geneva Conventions." Those two articles pertain to prisoners or war or other prisoners, respectively.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts. asked him whether military intelligence, C.I.A. and private contractors "all have identical rules and regulations in terms of interrogating the detainees or prisoners of war or combatants? Or is there any distinction between the three?"

"Within Iraq the rules of the Geneva Convention apply," said Mr. Cambone. "So therefore, the rules apply for all three."

Senator Kennedy asked: "My question is, do they have different kinds of rules of questioning? Do each of those services have rules? If they do have rules, how are they different?"

"I can speak for the D.O.D., contractor and military personnel, and those rules are the same," answered Mr. Cambone, carefully leaving out the question of what rules apply to the C.I.A.

Re: I just knew he did it!


Be careful of that assumption, he's a reporter not God.

Rumsfeld reportedly approved interrogation plan
Rumsfeld reportedly approved interrogation plan
By Jeremy Pelofsky
(Reuters) - May 15 2004 20:39

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a plan that brought unconventional interrogation methods to Iraq to gain intelligence about the growing insurgency, ultimately leading to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, the New Yorker magazine has reported.

Rumsfeld, who has been under fire for the prisoner abuse scandal, gave the green light to methods previously used in Afghanistan for gathering intelligence on members of al Qaeda, which the United States blames for the September 11, 2001, attacks, the magazine reported on its Web site on Saturday.

Pentagon spokesman Jim Turner said he had not seen the story and could not comment. The article hits newsstands on Monday.

U.S. interrogation techniques have come under scrutiny amid revelations that prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad were kept naked, stacked on top of one another, forced to engage in sex acts and photographed in humiliating poses.

Rumsfeld, who has rejected calls by some Democrats and a number of major newspapers to resign, returned on Friday from a surprise trip to Iraq and Abu Ghraib prison, calling the scandal a "body blow." Seven soldiers have been charged.

The abuse prompted worldwide outrage and has shaken U.S. global prestige as President George W. Bush seeks re-election in November. Bush has backed Rumsfeld and said the abuse was abhorrent but the wrongful actions of only a few soldiers.

The U.S. military has now prohibited several interrogation methods from being used in Iraq, including sleep and sensory deprivation and body "stress positions," Defence officials said on Friday.

SPECIAL ACCESS PROGRAM

The New Yorker said the interrogation plan was a highly classified "special access program," or SAP, that gave advance approval to kill, capture or interrogate so-called high-value targets in the battle against terror.

Such secret methods were used extensively in Afghanistan but more sparingly in Iraq -- only in the search for former President Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. As the Iraqi insurgency grew and more U.S. soldiers died, Rumsfeld and Defence Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen Cambone expanded the scope to bring the interrogation tactics to Abu Ghraib, the article said.

The magazine, which based its article on interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, reported the plan was approved and carried out last year after deadly bombings in August at the U.N. headquarters and Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad.

A former intelligence official quoted in the article said Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, approved the program but may not have known about the abuse.

'DO WHAT YOU WANT'

The rules governing the secret operation were "grab whom you must. Do what you want," the unidentified former intelligence official told the New Yorker.

Rumsfeld left the details of the interrogations to Cambone, the article quoted a Pentagon consultant as saying.

"This is Cambone's deal, but Rumsfeld and Myers approved the program," said the Pentagon consultant in the article.

U.S. officials have admitted the abuse may have violated the Geneva Convention, which governs treatment of prisoners of war.

The New Yorker said the CIA, which approved using high-pressure interrogation tactics against senior al Qaeda leaders after the 2001 attacks, balked at extending them to Iraq and refused to participate

After initiating the secret techniques, the U.S. military began learning useful intelligence about the insurgency, the former intelligence official was quoted as saying.

Rumsfailed
Rumsfailed won't be fired or impeached because it will show the failure of the Govt. incl. the congress in the bogus war on terror in Iraq. Both the Dem and Repub majority still believe that the illegal invasion was the right thing to do and also believe that Iraq must be colonized.

The American people for the most part are simplistic minded and believe in the fairy tale of the good and just America. They cling to the notion that America stands for freedom and that the leaders are not dioblical and evil. The fairy tale is ingrained in most Americans so deep that fact and logic won't shake their mindset.

Pentagon Denies Report's Rumsfeld Claims
Pentagon Denies Report's Rumsfeld Claims
Sun May 16, 2004

(AP) NEW YORK - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the expansion of a secret program that encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners to obtain intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq, The New Yorker reported Saturday.

The Defense Department strongly denied the claims made in the report, which cited unnamed current and former intelligence officials and was published on the magazine's Web site. Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita issued a statement calling the claims "outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture." Defense Department officials deny that, saying prisoners always are treated under guidelines of the Geneva Conventions.

"No responsible official of the Department of Defense approved any program that could conceivably have been intended to result in such abuses as witnessed in the recent photos and videos," Di Rita said in his statement. "This story seems to reflect the fevered insights of those with little, if any, connection to the activities in the Department of Defense."

Di Rita also said Cambone has never had any responsibility for any detainee or interrogation programs.

Stephen Cambone: Rumsfeld's henchman
http://www.atimes.com
Asia Times

Stephen Cambone: Rumsfeld's henchman

Stephen Cambone, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's right-hand man and under secretary of defense for Intelligence, was for the first time caught in the glare of media attention as part of the congressional inquiry into Iraq prison abuses at Abu Ghraib. [1] Under sharp questioning by a few senators on May 11, Cambone vigorously defended both Rumsfeld and Douglas Feith, under secretary of defense for policy. Cambone's attempt to split hairs on whether the Geneva Conventions were applicable to intelligence gathering in Iraq and his awkward defense of the role of military intelligence in interrogations put him at odds with the US Army general who first investigated abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. As the first-ever under secretary of defense for intelligence, Cambone will likely come under increased fire as the prison scandal unfolds. Some of the most intense questioning of Cambone centered on whether the Geneva Conventions were "precisely" respected. What "precisely" Cambone knew and when he knew it, and what precisely was the role of military intelligence will be questions that Cambone will be required to answer.

Cambone, who as director of strategic defense policy during the first Bush administration under defense secretary Dick Cheney had been a prominent promoter of missile defense systems, served as the staff director of the two congressional commissions - one on missile defense and another on space weapons - chaired by Donald Rumsfeld in the late 1990s.

The two Rumsfeld commissions focused on the issues at the top of the list for the national-security militarists and the large military contractors: the ballistic-missile threat to the United States and US space-based defense capabilities. In the tradition of Team B, the unstated agenda of these commissions was to turn up pressure on the administration to support new weapons programs and substantially increase major military spending. [2] Both commissions received funding from defense-spending bills - in effect using taxpayers' revenues to subsidize them. But perusing the backgrounds and connections of the individuals charged with overseeing the commissions, Rumsfeld and his right-hand man Cambone, most observers at the time believed that the conclusions were preordained.

After Rumsfeld was named defense secretary, he made Cambone his special assistant in January 2001. Then, in March 2003, Cambone was appointed the first-ever under secretary for intelligence - a position that "will allow the Defense Department to consolidate its intelligence programs in a way that could undermine CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] head George Tenet's role", one defense analyst noted. [3] Well known and much despised by both military and civilian officials in the Pentagon prior to joining the second Bush administration, Cambone, serving as Rumsfeld's henchman and intelligence chief, soon began creating a new enemies list in the CIA and State Department.

While Cambone was directing the two Rumsfeld commissions, he also participated in two national-security strategy and military-transformation commissions sponsored by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP). The institute's 2001 report, "Rationale and Requirements for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control", and the PNAC's "Rebuilding America's Defenses" were blueprints for Rumsfeld's promised "revolution in military affairs". Several other PNAC associates, in addition to Rumsfeld himself, also served on the Rumsfeld commissions, including Paul Wolfowitz, Malcolm Wallop, William Schneider, and James Woolsey. Both the NIPP and PNAC studies seem to have served as blueprints for the defense policies initiated by the current administration of George W Bush with respect to nuclear policy, national security strategy and military transformation. [4, 5]

Despite - and perhaps because of - his close relationship to the defense secretary, Cambone is apparently widely disliked in the Pentagon. Tom Donnelly, PNAC military analyst and lead author of "Rebuilding America's Defenses", wrote in the Weekly Standard that "fairly or not, Cambone has long been viewed as Rumsfeld's henchman, almost universally loathed - but more important, feared - by the services". [6] The Washington Monthly reported in late 2001: "It would be hard to exaggerate how much Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top aide Stephen Cambone were hated within the Pentagon prior to September 11. Among other mistakes, Rumsfeld and Cambone foolishly excluded top civilian and military leaders when planning an overhaul of the military to meet new threats, thereby ensuring even greater bureaucratic resistance. According to the Washington Post, an army general joked to a [Capitol] Hill staffer that 'if he had one round left in his revolver, he would take out Steve Cambone'. Cambone's reputation in the building hasn't improved much since September 11, but Rumsfeld's has been transformed." [7]

When asked by the New York Times (April 11, 2003) if he thought hardliners in the Pentagon had politicized intelligence to support arguments for the war in Iraq, Cambone responded: "Any policymaker has certain views. Policymakers are where they are and doing what they do because they have a view." Further, he said: "The politicization of intelligence, I think, happens when intelligence is thought to be more than it is. And what it can be at best is a summary judgment at a given moment in time based on the information that one has been able to glean."

Cambone's work on missile-defense issues extends well beyond his participation on the influential Rumsfeld missile-threat commission. According to the Carnegie Non-Proliferation Project, "As director of strategic defense policy, [Cambone] was a major contributor to president [George H W ] Bush's decision to refocus the SDI [Strategic Defense Initiative] program in 1991 and developed the concept for a global protection system. He was a member of the high-level group appointed by the president to discuss the global protection system with Russia, US allies and other states. In addition, he was responsible for addressing and resolving policy issues that arose in the compliance review group (DOD [Department of Defense] organization to oversee compliance with the ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty) and the strategic systems committee of the Defense Acquisition Board, which is responsible for approving DOD weapon-system acquisition." [8]

Before he joined the Bush Sr administration, Cambone worked for SRS Technologies, a defense contractor. SRS recently received a US$6 million contract to provide administrative and management support for the Missile Defense Agency. [9]

SRS has also received a lot of attention recently for its work on the controversial military effort to mine the passenger records of JetBlue. Torch Concepts, the SRS subcontractor that worked on the project, "worked directly with the army and had a specific mandate to ferret information out of [the] data stream [to find the] abnormal behavior of secretive people", said SRS's Bart Edsall in an interview with Wired News. Privacy advocates immediately cried foul when the story broke. Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said: "We should put the brakes on all these data-mining programs and have a serious national conversation, because travel data is just one example of the many kinds of data every data-mining operation wants to suck in from private business." [10]

Notes
1. Eric Schmitt, "Rumsfeld aide and general clash on abuse", New York Times, May 12, 2004.

2. Lisbeth Gronlund and David Wright, "What they didn't do", Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 1998.

3. John Prados quoted in TomPaine.com, April 14, 2003.

4. Michelle Ciarrocca and William D Hartung, Axis of Influence: Behind the Bush Administration's Missile Defense Revival, World Policy Institute, July 2002.

5. Rebuilding America's Defenses (PDF file), Project for the New American Century, September 2000.

6. Tom Donnelly, Rumsfeld the Radical, The Weekly Standard, September 9, 2002.

7. Paul Glastris, Who's Who, The Washington Monthly, November 2001.

8. Carnegie Non-Proliferation Project: National Missile Defense Debate, Biography.

9. Missile Defense Agency: New Procurements and Awards.

10. Ryan Singel and Noah Sachtman, Army admits using JetBlue data, Wired News, September 23, 2003.

11. Photo.

("Stephen Cambone", Right Web Profiles, Silver City, New Mexico: Interhemispheric Resource Center, May 2004.)