General Sanchez is also toast. Will Generals Miller, Sanchez and Pappas be next? ---BBB
Prison Visits By General Reported In Hearing
Alleged Presence of Sanchez Cited by Lawyer
By Scott Higham, Joe Stephens and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, May 23, 2004; Page A01
A military lawyer for a soldier charged in the Abu Ghraib abuse case stated that a captain at the prison said the highest-ranking U.S. military officer in Iraq was present during some "interrogations and/or allegations of the prisoner abuse," according to a recording of a military hearing obtained by The Washington Post.
The lawyer, Capt. Robert Shuck, said he was told that Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez and other senior military officers were aware of what was taking place on Tier 1A of Abu Ghraib. Shuck is assigned to defend Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II of the 372nd Military Police Company. During an April 2 hearing that was open to the public, Shuck said the company commander, Capt. Donald J. Reese, was prepared to testify in exchange for immunity. The military prosecutor questioned Shuck about what Reese would say under oath.
"Are you saying that Captain Reese is going to testify that General Sanchez was there and saw this going on?" asked Capt. John McCabe, the military prosecutor.
"That's what he told me," Shuck said. "I am an officer of the court, sir, and I would not lie. I have got two children at home. I'm not going to risk my career."
Shuck also said a sergeant at the prison, First Sgt. Brian G. Lipinski, was prepared to testify that intelligence officers told him the abuse of detainees on the cellblock was "the right thing to do." Earlier this month, Lipinski declined to comment on the case.
So far, clear evidence has not emerged that high-level officers condoned or promoted the abusive practices. Officers at the prison have blamed the abuse on a few rogue, low-level military police officers from the 372nd, a company of U.S. Army Reservists based in Cresaptown, Md. The general in charge of the prisons in Iraq at the time has said that military intelligence officers took control of Abu Ghraib and gave the MPs "ideas."
A Defense Department spokesman yesterday referred questions about Sanchez to U.S. military officials in the Middle East, warning that statements by defense lawyers or their clients should be treated with "appropriate caution." Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the senior military spokesman in Iraq, said Sanchez was unavailable for comment last night but would "enjoy the opportunity" to respond later.
At the April hearing, Shuck also said Reese would testify that Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, who supervised the military intelligence operation at Abu Ghraib, was "involved in intensive interrogations of detainees, condoned some of the activities and stressed that that was standard procedure." The hearing was held at Camp Victory in Baghdad. The Post obtained a copy of the audiotape this past week, and it was transcribed yesterday.
In the transcript, Shuck said Reese was disturbed by the military intelligence techniques.
"He noted that there were some strange doings by the [military intelligence]," Shuck said. "He said, 'What's all this nudity about, this posturing, positioning, withholding food and water? Where's the Geneva Conventions being followed."
'Not a Secret' Shuck noted that the abusive tactics used in Tier 1A of Abu Ghraib were not a secret.
"All of that was being questioned by the chain of command and denied, general officer level on down," Shuck said. "Present during some of these happenings, it has come to my knowledge that Lt. Gen. Sanchez was even present at the prison during some of these interrogations and/or allegations of the prisoner abuse by those duty [non-commissioned officers]."
Reese, 39, a reservist from Pennsylvania who works as a window-blind salesman in civilian life, did not testify that day because he had invoked the military version of his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Reese, who did not respond to an e-mail sent to him in Iraq yesterday, has not been granted immunity in exchange for his testimony. He did provide a sworn statement to military investigators early in the case, but he did not say that Sanchez was aware of the abuses.
Gary Myers, the civilian attorney for Frederick, said he is asking the military to add investigators to his legal team so he can track down Reese and other witnesses, several of whom have been reassigned to military posts throughout Iraq. Myers said he will also request that immunity be granted to a number of military personnel who he said have firsthand knowledge of what took place in Tier 1A.
"We intend to seek immunity for a myriad of officers who are unwilling to participate in the search for the truth without protecting themselves," Myers said yesterday. "We are definitely interested in talking to Captain Reese."
Attorney Paul Bergrin, who represents another of the charged MPs, Sgt. Javal S. Davis, said the soldiers were simply following the lead of military intelligence officers.
"There are no ifs, ands or buts," Bergrin said. "They did order it. They were told consistently, 'Soften them up; loosen them up. Look what's happening in the field. Soldiers are dying in droves. We need more intelligence . . . '
"Nobody put it in writing; no one's going to be stupid enough for that. My client went to Sergeant Frederick and questioned him: 'Should we be following these orders?' And Sergeant Frederick said, 'Absolutely. We're saving American lives. That's what we wear the uniform for.' "
The hearing at Camp Victory took place several weeks before the story broke into public view with the airing of abuse photographs on April 28 on CBS's "60 Minutes II." Chain-of-command responsibility has now become a key unanswered question in the scandal.
"All we have now is the government reacting after the fact with a bunch of pictures and want to whitewash this and accuse six enlisted soldiers of misconduct and yet hide the fact of what was condoned at the time," Shuck said during the hearing.
Responsibility and Accountability Sanchez told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that he was "horrified at the abusive behavior" at Abu Ghraib.
"We must fully investigate and fix responsibility, as well as accountability," for the abuses, Sanchez testified. "I am fully committed to thorough and impartial investigations that examine the role, commissions and omissions of the entire chain of command -- and that includes me. As a senior commander in Iraq, I accept responsibility for what happened at Abu Ghraib, and I accept as a solemn obligation the responsibility to ensure that it does not happen again."
Sanchez visited the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade's operation, which encompassed Tier 1A at Abu Ghraib, at least three times in October, according to Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, who was in charge of U.S. detention facilities in Iraq as commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade. That month, the serious abuses documented in published photographs -- naked detainees shackled together, a guard posing with a prisoner on a dog leash -- began.
In an interview yesterday, Karpinski said the number of visits by a commanding general struck her as "unusual," especially because Sanchez had not visited several of the 15 other U.S. detention facilities in Iraq.
Karpinski has said that she is being used as a scapegoat for the command failures at Abu Ghraib.
The general, a reservist from South Carolina, said she was not present during Sanchez's visits because her brigade had surrendered authority over that part of the prison to intelligence officers. She said she was alerted as a courtesy while the three-star general was planning to travel to the prison. Karpinski added that Sanchez might have visited without her knowledge after the intelligence officers were given formal authority over the entire prison on Nov. 19.
"He has divisions all over Iraq, and he has time to visit Abu Ghraib three times in a month?" Karpinski asked yesterday. "Why was he going out there so often? Did he know that something was going on?"
Sgt. Samuel Provance, a military intelligence soldier who worked at Abu Ghraib, told The Post that enormous resources began to pour into the interrogation operation in October and November. Provance said new personnel -- including some from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- came in suddenly to beef up interrogations.
Karpinski said the resources arrived after Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, then commander of the U.S. military prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo, visited Abu Ghraib between Aug. 31 and Sept. 9. She said Miller told her he wanted to "Gitmo-ize" Abu Ghraib's operation because the intelligence gathering there was not producing the desired results. Miller has said he never used that phrase.
"I think General Miller's visit gave them ideas, inspired them, gave them plans, told them what they were succeeding with in Gitmo," Karpinski said. She added that intelligence officers were "under great pressure to get more actionable intelligence from those interrogations."
Karpinski said she believes that intelligence officers were central to the abuses because the MPs arrived in mid-October at the prison, just weeks before serious abuses began. The general also said she believes officers in the military intelligence chain of command knew what was going on, and that Sanchez later tried to shift the blame to her unit, in January, after an MP reported the abuse and provided photos to military investigators.
"I didn't know then what [Sanchez] probably knew, which was that this was something clearly in the MI, maybe that he endorsed, and he was already starting a campaign to stay out of the fray and blame the 800th," Karpinski said. "I think the MI people were in this all the way. I think they were up to their ears in it. . . . I don't believe that the MPs, two weeks onto the job, would have been such willing participants, even with instructions, unless someone had told them it was all okay."
'Rules of Engagement' On Wednesday, Pentagon officials testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that a female Army officer identified only as "Captain Woods" drafted a set of interrogation "rules of engagement" used in Iraq. Those rules had been posted at Abu Ghraib by October, and became public during hearings into the abuses at the prison.
The list shows two sets of procedures -- those approved for all detainees and those requiring special authorization by Sanchez. Among the items requiring approval from Sanchez were techniques such as "sensory deprivation," "stress positions," "dietary manipulation," forced changes in sleep patterns, isolated confinement and the use of dogs.
Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said at a May 12 hearing that some of those techniques went "far beyond the Geneva Conventions." Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld countered that they all had been approved by Pentagon lawyers.
Wood was the head of the military intelligence unit that controlled the interrogation center at Abu Ghraib. On Friday, the New York Times reported that Wood's unit developed aggressive rules and procedures while it was stationed in Afghanistan and imported them to Iraq.
During the hearing on Wednesday, Sanchez noted that the military has initiated seven courts-martial against those involved, and more charges may be brought.
"The Army Criminal Investigation Division investigation is not final, and the investigation of military intelligence procedures by Major General [George D.] Fay is also ongoing," Sanchez testified.
Sanchez said he issued policies in September that required soldiers to conduct all interrogations in a "lawful and humane manner with command oversight." In October, he said he distributed a memo titled "Proper Treatment of Iraqi People During Combat Operations." He said he reissued the memo on Jan. 16 after learning about the abuse allegations, and later issued policies emphasizing the need to treat all Iraqis with dignity.
--------------------------------------
Correspondent Scott Wilson in Baghdad and staff researcher Margot Williams contributed to this report.
U.S. Disputed Protected Status of Iraq Inmates
New York Times
May 23, 2004
U.S. Disputed Protected Status of Iraq Inmates
By DOUGLAS JEHLand NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON, May 22 ?- Presented last fall with a detailed catalog of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, the American military responded on Dec. 24 with a confidential letter to a Red Cross official asserting that many Iraqi prisoners were not entitled to the full protections of the Geneva Conventions.
The letter, drafted by military lawyers and signed by Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, emphasized the "military necessity" of isolating some inmates at the prison for interrogation because of their "significant intelligence value," and said prisoners held as security risks could legally be treated differently from prisoners of war or ordinary criminals.
But the military insisted that there were "clear procedures governing interrogation to ensure approaches do not amount to inhumane treatment."
In recent public statements, Bush administration officials have said that the Geneva Conventions were "fully applicable" in Iraq. That has put American-run prisons in Iraq in a different category from those in Afghanistan and in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban have been declared unlawful combatants not eligible for protection. However, the Dec. 24 letter appears to undermine administration assertions of the conventions' broad application in Iraq.
Until now, the only known element of the letter had been a provision described by a senior Army officer as having asserted that the Red Cross should not seek in the future to conduct no-notice inspections in the cellblock where the worst abuses took place.
The International Committee of the Red Cross had reported in November that its staff, in a series of visits to Abu Ghraib in October, had "documented and witnessed" ill treatment that "included deliberate physical violence" as well as verbal abuse, forced nudity and prolonged handcuffing in uncomfortable positions.
In Congressional testimony last week, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, the deputy commander of American forces in the Middle East, asserted that the Dec. 24 response demonstrated that the military had fully addressed the Red Cross complaints.
But the three-page response did not address many of the specific concerns cited by the Red Cross, whose main recommendations included improving the treatment of prisoners held for interrogation.
Instead, much of the military's reply is devoted to presenting a legal justification for the treatment of a broad category of Iraqi prisoners, including hundreds identified by the United States as "security detainees" in a cellblock at Abu Ghraib and in another facility known as Camp Cropper on the outskirts of the Baghdad airport, where the Red Cross had also found abuses.
Prisoners of war are given comprehensive protections under the Third Geneva Convention, while civilian prisoners are granted considerable protection under the Fourth Convention.
But under the argument advanced by the military, Iraqi prisoners who are deemed security risks can be denied the right to communicate with others, and perhaps other rights and privileges, at least until the overall security situation in Iraq improves.
The military's rationale relied on a legal exemption within the Fourth Geneva Convention.
"While the armed conflict continues, and where `absolute military security so requires,' security detainees will not obtain full GC protection as recognized in GCIV/5, although such protection will be afforded as soon as the security situation in Iraq allows it," the letter says, using abbreviations to refer to Article 5 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
That brief provision opens what is, in effect, a narrow, three-paragraph loophole in the 1949 convention.
The Red Cross's standing commentary on the provision calls it "an important and regrettable concession to State expediency." It was drafted, during intense debate and in inconsistent French and English versions, to address the treatment of spies and saboteurs.
"What is most to be feared is that widespread application of the article may eventually lead to the existence of a category of civilian internees who do not receive the normal treatment laid down by the convention but are detained under conditions which are almost impossible to check," says the Red Cross commentary, which is posted on its Web site. "It must be emphasized most strongly, therefore, that Article 5 can only be applied in individual cases of an exceptional nature."
An authority on the laws of war, Prof. Scott L. Silliman of Duke University, said that the assertions in the military's letter were highly questionable and that the military lawyers who drafted it may have misconstrued the law.
The category in which prisoners may be excluded from the protections of the Geneva Conventions that the letter cites, Professor Silliman said, are for people who can be shown to be a continuing threat to the occupying force, not people who might have valuable intelligence.
"They may be high value assets but that does not necessarily make them security risks," he said. The provision cited in the letter provides that the protections could be suspended for people suspected of "activities hostile to the security" of a warring state or an occupying power.
In testimony last week on Capitol Hill, Col. Marc Warren, a top American military lawyer in Iraq, defended harsh techniques available to American interrogators there as not being in violation of the Geneva Conventions. He said the conventions should be read in light of "various legal treatises and interpretations of coercion as applied to security internees."
Exactly how the treatment of security prisoners would differ from others under the military's approach was not spelled out in detail, but clearly it would allow their segregation into a separate part of the prison for interrogation, where some of them could be held incommunicado.
The military's letter promised to try to improve prisoners' treatment in some respects cited by the Red Cross, promising, for example, to provide shelters against mortar and rocket attacks "in due course" but noting that the shelters are in short supply for American and allied soldiers. It also said "improvement can be made" to provide adequate clothing and water, and promised speedier judgments and discharges of innocent prisoners.
The letter is addressed to Eva Svoboda of the Red Cross committee, who is identified as the agency's "protection coordinator."
It asserts that the prisoners at Camp Cropper "have been assessed to be of significant ongoing intelligence value to current and future military operations in Iraq."
"Their detention condition is in the context of ongoing strategic interrogation," it said, and "under the circumstances, we consider their detention to be humane."
The Red Cross report said that at the time of the October visits to Abu Ghraib, "a total of 601 detainees were held as security detainees."
"Many were unaware of any charges against them or what legal process might be ahead of them," the undated report said.
Professor Silliman, a former Air Force lawyer who heads the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke, said the response of authorities at Abu Ghraib to the Red Cross appeared to be part of a larger pattern in which the administration and the military devote great energy to find ways to avoid the jurisdiction of the Geneva Conventions.
"If you look at this in connection with other things that are coming out, it doesn't seem like a snap decision but part of an across-the-board pattern of decision-making to create another category outside the conventions."
He cited a memorandum written in January 2002 by Albert R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, recommending that President Bush decree that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to prisoners from the war in Afghanistan. In the memorandum, Mr. Gonzales said that getting out from under the restrictions of the Geneva Conventions would preserve the government's flexibility in fighting terrorism.
U.S. to Review Afghan Prisons
KABUL, Afghanistan, May 22 (AP) ?- An American brigadier general will review the military's secretive prisons in Afghanistan, the Army announced Saturday.
Brig. Gen. Charles H. Jacoby, deputy operational commander at the military's main base at Bagram, north of Kabul, will carry out the "top to bottom" review and deliver a report by mid-June, said a spokesman, Lt. Col. Tucker Mansager.
The overall commander of the 20,000 American-led forces pursuing militants from the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Barno, ordered the review earlier this month in response to the growing scandal about prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan.
General Jacoby is to visit each of the about 20 American detention centers, including the main jail at Bagram and others at smaller bases around the country "to ensure internationally accepted standards of handling detainees are being met," Colonel Mansager said. His review is to run independently of investigations into alleged abuse and deaths in custody.
0 Replies
BumbleBeeBoogie
1
Reply
Sun 23 May, 2004 10:01 am
U.S. general: Interrogation 'measures' faulty
U.S. general: Interrogation 'measures' faulty
By Pamela Hess
UPI Pentagon correspondent
Washington, DC, May. 19 (UPI)
A number of interrogation techniques that were included on a "rules of engagement" chart at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq violated the Geneva Conventions, according to U.S. military officials who say the list was never approved or put into effect.
"I have never seen that, and I had never approved it, and had no part in putting that together," said Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. "I never approved any of those measures to be used within the CJTF-7 at any time in the last year."
The interrogation "rules of engagement" chart given to the Senate Armed Services Committee last week by a top Army intelligence official lists several harsh techniques that allegedly required Sanchez' approval before they could be used. These included hooding prisoners to create sensory deprivation for 72 hours, sleep deprivation, and using military working dogs to intimidate prisoners at interrogations.
A legal adviser to Sanchez told the committee some of those treatments, particularly sensory deprivation, would be counter to the Geneva Conventions.
Col. Mark Warren disavowed the document, saying it was produced by a captain in the Army, a low-level officer who was attempting to write a thumb-nail guide for interrogation procedures and overstated the possible approaches.
"That list, prepared by a captain, with all good intention, had items on it that could never be approved, that, frankly, could never reasonably be requested," Warren said.
Sanchez said he never approved any harsh interrogation techniques other than 25 requests for solitary confinement for prisoners beyond 30 days.
Military officials said Friday no approaches beyond solitary confinement would henceforth be considered or approved for detainees in Iraq.
Sanchez, the top U.S. general in Iraq, also told the committee the order he gave putting a military intelligence colonel in charge of the Abu Ghraib prison did not give that colonel control over military police. That is a central question in the ongoing investigation into the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
Sanchez told the Senate Armed Services Committee his Nov. 19 order putting Col. Thomas Pappas, the commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, in charge of the prison only gave him responsibility for force protection and security, not command of the military police' detainee operations.
"He was a senior man that was permanently on that forward-operating base, and he had responsibilities for protecting the soldiers," Sanchez said. "I believe that was exactly the right decision to make given the circumstances, the tactical circumstances, and the war-fighting conditions that existed."
It's a critical point. An investigation conducted by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba criticized the order, saying it was "fundamentally inconsistent with Army regulations and undermines the goals of running a safe and secure detention facility."
The Sanchez order may also be a central issue in six pending courts-martial of the accused soldiers in Iraq who claim they were ordered to abuse the prisoners as a means of softening them up for interrogation.
Pappas and his brigade are under investigation by another general. Pappas was specifically singled out for blame in the Taguba report.
The Sanchez order was based on a recommendation from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who oversaw detainee operations at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and in April was put in charge of Iraqi detainees.
Miller recommended to Sanchez in September that "the military police (should) help set the conditions for successful interrogation," by listening in on prisoners conversations in their cells and observing their personalities "so the interrogators could better understand the attitude, the human dynamic, of the detainee as he would come into the interrogation booth."
Miller said he did not recommend the military police participate in any way with the interrogations.
"That was explained in detail to the chain of command, given them that further opportunity. And the (standard operating procedures) that laid that out was provided to them. It's about 200 pages long and goes into great detail about how this system works," Miller told the committee.
Abizaid defended Sanchez' decision to adopt Miller's recommendation, saying the problem is with Army doctrine that divides the two.
"Our doctrine is not right. It's just not right. I mean, there are so many things that are out there that aren't right in the way that we operate for this war. This is a doctrinal problem of understanding where you bring, what do the MPs do, what do the military intelligence guys do, how do they come together in the right way. And this doctrinal issue has got to be fixed if we're ever going to get our intelligence right to fight this war and beat this enemy," Abizaid said.
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the 800th Military Police Brigade commander who has come under sharp attack for her leadership of the accused soldiers, has accused Miller of trying to "Gitmo-ize" detainee operations in Iraq, a reference to the Cuban detention camp he ran where interrogations are not explicitly governed by the Geneva Conventions, according to the Pentagon.
Sanchez said his staff took Miller's recommendations and reworked them to take into account the prohibitions of the Geneva Conventions.
"After I received the recommendations of Gen. Miller I then forwarded those to my staff and the commander of the detention center for ... modification in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, since we knew that there was a difference in climates between the two different operations," Sanchez said.
Miller said none of the interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo are prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.
Sanchez also denied seeing reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross in 2003 detailing allegations of abuse at the hands of U.S. soldiers in prisons and on the battlefield. The first word he received that the ICRC had detailed abuses at Abu Ghraib in a November report was in February, he said.
"If someone brings it to my attention, I am responsible, and I will not turn my back on any report that I receive," Miller said.
Central Command Chief Gen. John Abizaid said the reports do not regularly make their way up the chain of command until months after they are delivered to lower level commanders.
"We have a real problem with ICRC reports and the way that they're handled and the way that they move up and down the chain of command. For example, the February report of '04, I first read in May," Abizaid said. "So we've got a problem there that's got to be fixed."
Miller now receives the reports from the Red Cross.
"And so all reports come to me, and I move them to Gen. Sanchez and the commander leadership as rapidly as possible," Miller said.
Abizaid said despite the ICRC's findings he does not believe "that a culture of abuse existed in my command."
"I believe that we have isolated incidents that have taken place. I am aware that the International Red Cross has its view on things. A lot of its view is based upon what happens at the point of detention, where soldiers fighting for their lives detain people, which is a very brutal and bloody event," Abizaid said.
Abizaid said he knew there were problems in prisoner detentions across Iraq -- too many prisoners, too few guards, too little intelligence making its way back to the field from prisoners, and some instances of abuse.
"But, I would also like to remind you that these images are not the kind of thing that we thought was happening out there, that anyone in the change of command would have condoned or allowed to be practiced," Abizaid said. "We should have known, and we should have uncovered it and taken action before it got to the point that it got to. I think there's no doubt about that."
The first court-martial in the prison abuse scandal was held Wednesday. Spc. Jeremy Sivits pleaded guilty to the charges against him and was sentenced to a year in jail. At least six more courts-martial are scheduled in upcoming weeks.
The military officials in Washington told the committee Wednesday that anyone else discovered to be culpable for the abuse will also face court martial.
0 Replies
BumbleBeeBoogie
1
Reply
Tue 25 May, 2004 11:15 am
Sanchez to Be Replaced As Iraq Commander
Sanchez to Be Replaced As Iraq Commander
May 25, 2004
By TERENCE HUNT
WASHINGTON (AP) - The top U.S. military officer in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, will be replaced as part of a command restructuring that has been in the works for several months, administration officials said Tuesday. The Pentagon also suspended Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski from her command.
Both have become symbols of lax supervision at the Abu Ghraib prison where U.S. soldiers allegedly abused Iraqi inmates.
President Bush praised Sanchez during a photo opportunity in the Oval Office. "Rick Sanchez has done a fabulous job," the president said as he met with a group of Iraqis. "He's been there for a long time. His service has been exemplary."
At the Pentagon, Larry Di Rita, chief spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said both Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Richard Myers "are very impressed with the work Gen. Sanchez performed from the very beginning" of his service in Iraq. Sanchez took command there in May 2003.
Regarding suggestions that Sanchez's departure is linked to the abuse scandal, Di Rita said, "That's just wrong."
Karpinski and other officers in the 800th Military Police Brigade were faulted by Army investigators for paying too little attention to day-to-day operations of the Abu Ghraib prison and for not moving firmly enough to discipline soldiers for violating standard procedures.
Karpinski's suspension, which has not yet been announced by the Army, was the latest in a series of actions against officers and enlisted soldiers implicated in the abuse scandal at the prison near Baghdad.
Sanchez will be replaced in Iraq in what administration officials said was his scheduled rotation after 13 months of duty there. Gen. George Casey, the Army's No. 2 officer as vice chief of staff, was in line for the post, defense officials said Monday.
Di Rita said, "There has been no final decision" on who will replace Sanchez.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, appearing Tuesday on CBS's "The Early Show," said he had heard the reports but could not say whether Sanchez's departure was in any way related to the prison abuse problem.
Powell did say, however, that "we all knew this was coming about as part of the normal rotation of commanders. General Sanchez has done a terrific job and he's been there for over a year now, so it seems to me in the normal scheme of things."
Last week, Spc. Jeremy Sivits received the maximum penalty of a year in prison and a bad-conduct discharge in the first court-martial stemming from the abuse of Iraqis at the prison. He was among seven members of the 372nd Military Police Company that have been charged.
Karpinski, who has returned to the United States, has not been charged with an offense. Being suspended from her command does not mean she has been relieved of command, so technically she could be reinstated, although the intensity of the international furor over the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse makes that highly unlikely, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"I don't know what the grounds are," Karpinski told MSNBC Monday night. "I know that I've been suspended. When I see it in writing, there will be an explanation for it. And what that means is I'm suspended from my position as the commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, and they assign me to another position until whatever the reason is, whatever the basis is, is cleared."
In his widely cited investigation report on the Abu Ghraib abuse allegations, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba found heavy fault with Karpinski's performance and recommended that she be relieved of command and given a formal reprimand. Instead she was given a less-severe "memorandum of admonishment" on Jan. 17 by Sanchez.
Taguba reported that despite the documented abuse of prisoners, he saw no evidence that Karpinski ever attempted to remind the military police in her command of the requirements of the Geneva Conventions, which protect prisoners of war and civilian detainees in times of armed conflict.
0 Replies
BumbleBeeBoogie
1
Reply
Tue 25 May, 2004 01:35 pm
Sanchez rejected General's offer to speek to Iraqi people
May 24, 2004
MILITARY CONTRADICTIONS
General Says Sanchez Rejected Her Offer to Give Address to Iraqis About Abuses
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT
ASHINGTON, May 23 ?- The top American general in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, rejected a recommendation in January that the military make a public Arabic-language radio or television address to the Iraqi people to confront accusations of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, the former head of the military police at the prison said in an interview on Sunday.
The officer, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, also said General Sanchez visited a military intelligence unit at Abu Ghraib at least three times in October, when the first of the worst abuses were taking place. And while General Sanchez has said he did not learn of the abuses until Jan. 14, General Karpinski said his top deputy, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, was present at a meeting in late November at which there was extensive discussion of a Red Cross report that cited specific cases of abuse.
An article in The Washington Post on Sunday cited a statement from a military lawyer that a captain at the prison had placed General Sanchez at the scene of some "interrogations and/or allegations of the prisoner abuse."
But a spokesman for General Sanchez, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, described that report on Sunday as "false," and said the general "stands by his testimony before Congressional committees" that he did not learn of the abuses until Jan. 14. And the statements by the captain, Donald J. Reese, that were referred to in the Post article contradicted his sworn testimony to Army investigators in January. When the investigators asked Captain Reese then if the "chain of command" was aware of abuse, he said "no."
In the interview, General Karpinski, commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, said she volunteered during a meeting with General Sanchez on or about Jan. 23 to make an address to the Iraqi people about the prison abuse. Army investigators in Iraq had learned of the abuse on Jan. 14 and, on Jan. 16, the American military headquarters in Baghdad issued a five-sentence written statement in English acknowledging that allegations of abuse at the prison had surfaced and were being investigated by the military.
According to General Karpinski, General Sanchez responded to her recommendation about an address to the Iraqis by saying something like, "No, absolutely not ?- we're handling this." It was not until March that General Sanchez's spokesman, General Kimmitt, volunteered further information, announcing at a news briefing in Baghdad that charges had been filed against six enlisted soldiers in General Karpinski's unit.
In an e-mail message, General Kimmitt said the account provided by General Karpinski and her lawyer, Neal Puckett, was "inconsistent with my meetings with LTG Sanchez around the same time where he was very clear with me that `we were going to do the right thing.' He was behind the press announcement 100 percent."
But two Defense Department officials acknowledged that the command in Baghdad was reluctant to say too much at the outset because of the continuing criminal investigation and, to some extent, because of the reaction in Iraq and throughout the Arab world to sketchy reports of serious abuses at Army-run prisons that had been photographed.
"We had to work with them to make sure it was out there," a senior defense official said. "There was a lot of concern that this was an ongoing investigation and they didn't know where it was going. In addition, they have their own sensitivities to manage in the theater."
General Karpinski, an Army reservist from South Carolina, acknowledged that the Jan. 23 meeting was one in which General Sanchez had formally admonished her in connection with the abuses, which were carried out at least in part by members of a military police unit that was assigned to her brigade. But she also said she regarded the military's failure to say more at the time about the abuses as a major mistake.
"Suppose the statement had been cleared and approved and it was launched two days later," said General Karpinski, an Arabic speaker who lived for six years in the United Arab Emirates. "That would have been a lot better than people finding out now. It would have shown the Iraqi people that we were doing the right thing."
She said that during the year she spent in Iraq, she read and reread "Leadership," the memoir by Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York. "One of the things kept coming back," she said. "He said when there's bad news that's been delivered to you or that's been uncovered, tell the public immediately, because it doesn't get better over time."
"It's true," General Karpinski said. "If you're truthful, you defuse anger and overreaction to any circumstance."
General Kimmitt said he could not comment directly on the meeting between General Sanchez and General Karpinski, because he had not been present. He has not responded to requests made over several days for a direct statement by General Sanchez on the exchange.
The scope of the abuse did not begin to emerge until the end of April, first in a broadcast on the CBS News program "60 Minutes II" that included the first photographs of the misconduct, and then in an article in The New Yorker that reported on the findings of a classified inquiry completed in March by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba. That inquiry concluded that those "directly or indirectly responsible" for the abuses probably included military intelligence officials and civilian contractors as well as the military police.
Although General Karpinski was formally admonished by General Sanchez, she remains commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade. Mr. Puckett, her attorney, has said she remain constrained by an Army directive that has cautioned all Army personnel involved in the prison abuse issue "to limit their comments to their own personal knowledge, and not to reveal any classified information or discuss other people involved."
In an e-mail exchange several days ago, Mr. Puckett first described General Karpinski's recommendation to General Sanchez. General Karpinski agreed in a telephone interview on Sunday to discuss that recommendation further. She said she herself learned in late November about the report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which had been sent to military lawyers in Baghdad earlier that month, but had not understood the extent of the abuses until she was told by Army investigators on Jan. 14 about the discovery of incriminating photographs.
General Karpinski said that she did not know whether General Sanchez might have known about the abuses before January, but that his deputy, General Wojdakowski, certainly knew by late November about the details of the I.C.R.C. report, which said that what Red Cross officials witnessed during visits to the prison in October "included deliberate physical violence," as well as verbal abuse, forced nudity and prolonged handcuffing in uncomfortable positions.
The Army spokesmen have not replied to questions about General Wojdakowski's knowledge of the events.
0 Replies
BumbleBeeBoogie
1
Reply
Wed 26 May, 2004 11:50 am
General Miller is said to have urged use of dogs
General is said to have urged use of dogs
Idea came from former Guantanamo Bay commander, officer says
The Washington Post
A U.S. soldier holds a dog in front an Iraqi detainee at Abu Ghraib prison, on the outskirts of Baghdad, in this undated photograph.
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Updated: 7:18 a.m. ET May 26, 2004A U.S. Army general dispatched by senior Pentagon officials to bolster the collection of intelligence from prisoners in Iraq last fall inspired and promoted the use of guard dogs there to frighten the Iraqis, according to sworn testimony by the top U.S. intelligence officer at the Abu Ghraib prison.
According to the officer, Col. Thomas Pappas, the idea came from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who at the time commanded the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and was implemented under a policy approved by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top U.S. military official in Iraq.
"It was a technique I had personally discussed with General Miller, when he was here" visiting the prison, testified Pappas, head of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade and the officer placed in charge of the cellblocks at Abu Ghraib prison where abuses occurred in the wake of Miller's visit to Baghdad between Aug. 30 and Sept. 9, 2003.
"He said that they used military working dogs at Gitmo [the nickname for Guantanamo Bay], and that they were effective in setting the atmosphere for which, you know, you could get information" from the prisoners, Pappas told the Army investigator, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, according to a transcript provided to The Washington Post.
Technique deemed 'okay'
Pappas, who was under pressure from Taguba to justify the legality and appropriateness of using guard dogs to frighten detainees, said at two separate points in the Feb. 9 interview that Miller gave him the idea. He also said Miller had indicated the use of the dogs "with or without a muzzle" was "okay" in booths where prisoners were taken for interrogation.
But Miller, whom the Bush administration appointed as the new head of Abu Ghraib this month, denied through a spokesman that the conversation took place.
"Miller never had a conversation with Colonel Pappas regarding the use of military dogs for interrogation purposes in Iraq. Further, military dogs were never used in interrogations at Guantanamo," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq.
Pappas's statements nonetheless provide the fullest public account to date of how he viewed the interrogation mission at Abu Ghraib and Miller's impact on operations there. Pappas said, among other things, that interrogation plans involving the use of dogs, shackling, "making detainees strip down," or similar aggressive measures followed Sanchez's policy, but were often approved by Sanchez's deputy, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, or by Pappas himself.
The claims and counterclaims between Pappas and Miller concern one of the most notorious aspects of U.S. actions at Abu Ghraib, as revealed by Taguba's March 9 report and by pictures taken by military personnel that became public late last month. The pictures show unmuzzled dogs being used to intimidate Abu Ghraib detainees, sometimes while the prisoners are cowering, naked, against a wall.
Taguba, in a rare classified passage within his generally unclassified report, listed "using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees" as one of 13 examples of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" inflicted by U.S. military personnel at Abu Ghraib.
Violation of Geneva Conventions
Experts on the laws of war have charged that using dogs to coerce prisoners into providing information, as was done at Abu Ghraib, constitutes a violation of the Geneva Conventions that protect civilians under the control of an occupying power, such as the Iraqi detainees.
"Threatening a prisoner with a ferocious guard dog is no different as a matter of law from pointing a gun at a prisoner's head and ordering him to talk," said James Ross, senior legal adviser at Human Rights Watch. "That's a violation of the Geneva Conventions."
Article 31 of the Fourth Geneva Convention bars use of coercion against protected persons, and Common Article Three bars any "humiliating and degrading treatment," Ross said. Experts do not consider the presence in a prison of threatening dogs, by itself, to constitute torture, but a 1999 United Nations-approved manual lists the "arranging of conditions for attacks by animals such as dogs" as a "torture method."
But Pappas, who was charged with overseeing interrogations at Abu Ghraib involving those suspected of posing or knowing about threats to U.S. forces in Iraq, told Taguba that "I did not personally look at that [use of dogs] with regard to the Geneva Convention," according to the transcript.
Pappas also said he did not have "a program" to inform his civilian employees, including a translator and an interrogator, of what the Geneva Conventions stated, and said he was unaware if anyone else did. He said he did not believe using force to coerce, intimidate or cause fear violated the conventions.
Dogs used for security
Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, who commanded the prison guards at Abu Ghraib's cellblocks 1A and 1B until Nov. 19, when Pappas assumed control, said in an interview that Navy, Army and Air Force dog teams were used there for security purposes. But she said military intelligence officers "were responsible for assigning those dogs and where they would go."
Using dogs to intimidate or attack detainees was very much against regulations, Karpinski said. "You cannot use the dogs in that fashion, to attack or be aggressive with a detainee. . . . Why were there guys so willing to take these orders? And who was giving the orders? The military intelligence people were in charge of them."
Taguba never interviewed Miller or any officer above Karpinski's rank for his report. Nor did he conduct a detailed probe of the actions of military intelligence officials. But he said he suspected that Pappas and several of his colleagues were "either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib."
In a Feb. 11 written statement accompanying the transcript, Pappas shifted the responsibility elsewhere. He said "policies and procedures established by the [Abu Ghraib] Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center relative to detainee operations were enacted as a specific result of a visit" by Miller, who in turn has acknowledged being dispatched to Baghdad by Undersecretary of Defense Stephen A. Cambone, after a conversation with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Cambone told lawmakers recently that he wanted Miller to go because he had done a good job organizing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and wanted him to help improve intelligence-gathering in Iraq.
Ideas brought from Guantanamo?
Some senators, however, have noted that the Bush administration considers Guantanamo detainees exempt from the protections of the Geneva Conventions, and wondered if Miller brought the same aggressive interrogation ideas with him to Iraq, where the conventions apply.
When asked at a May 19 Senate hearing if he and his colleagues had "briefed" military officers in Iraq about specific Guantanamo interrogation techniques that did not comply with the Geneva Conventions, Miller said no.
He said he brought "our SOPs [standard operating procedures] that we had developed for humane detention, interrogation, and intelligence fusion" to Iraq for use as a "starting point." He added that it was up to the officers in Iraq to decide which were applicable and what modifications to make.
But Pappas said the result of Miller's visit was that "the interrogators and analysts developed a set of rules to guide interrogations" and assigned specific military police soldiers to help interrogators -- an approach Miller had honed in Guantanamo.
After calling the use of dogs Miller's idea, Pappas explained that "in the execution of interrogation, and the interrogation business in general, we are trying to get info from these people. We have to act in an environment not to permanently damage them, or psychologically abuse them, but we have to assert control and get detainees into a position where they're willing to talk to us."
Pappas added that it "would never be my intent that the dog be allowed to bite or in any way touch a detainee or anybody else." He said he recalled speaking to one dog handler and telling him "they could be used in interrogations" anytime according to terms spelled out in a Sept. 14, 2003, memo signed by Sanchez.
No special approval required
That memo included the use of dogs among techniques that did not require special approval. The policy was changed on Oct. 12 to require Sanchez's approval on a case-by-case basis for certain techniques, including having "military working dogs" present during interrogations.
That memo also demanded -- in what Taguba referred to during the interview as its "fine print" -- that detainees be treated humanely and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.
But Pappas told Taguba that "there would be no way for us to actually monitor whether that happened. We had no formal system in place to do that -- no formal procedure" to check how interrogations were conducted. Moreover, he expressed frustration with a rule that the dogs be muzzled. "It's not very intimidating if they are muzzled," Pappas said. He added that he requested an exemption from the rule at one point, and was turned down.
In the interview transcript, Taguba's disdain for using dogs is clear. He asked Pappas if he knew that after a prison riot on Nov. 24, 2003, five dogs were "called in to either intimidate or cause fear or stress" on a detainee. Pappas said no, and acknowledged under questioning that such an action was inappropriate.
Taguba also asked if he believed the use of dogs is consistent with the Army's field manual. Pappas replied that he could not recall, but reiterated that Miller instigated the idea. The Army field manual bars the "exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment of any kind."
At least four photographs obtained by The Washington Post -- each apparently taken in late October or November -- show fearful prisoners near unmuzzled dogs.
One MP charged with abuses, Spec. Sabrina D. Harman, recalled for Army investigators an episode "when two dogs were brought into [cellblock] 1A to scare an inmate. He was naked against the wall, when they let the dogs corner him. They pulled them back enough, and the prisoner ran . . . straight across the floor. . . . The prisoner was cornered and the dog bit his leg. A couple seconds later, he started to move again, and the dog bit his other leg."
----------------------------------------
Staff writer Josh White contributed to this report.
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace