Prison Abuse Panel Faults Leaders

An investigative panel said Tuesday that ultimate blame for the abuse of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq goes all the way to the Pentagon’s top civilian and military command, but the panel’s chairman said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld should not resign, because his forced departure would “be a boon to all of America’s enemies.”

Nonetheless, the group harshly criticized Rumsfeld and other senior civilian leaders for failing to lay down consistent, specific policies on the treatment of detainees. And it chastised Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, former top commander of ground forces in Iraq, and other military leaders for not properly training and staffing units to guard and interrogate prisoners at the facility outside Baghdad.

The panel, headed by former Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger, also backed the conclusions of a separate investigation that today will recommend disciplinary actions against military intelligence personnel. So far, seven military police troops have been criminally charged in the abuse.

Calling the night shift on Tier 1A at Abu Ghraib a scene of “brutality and purposeless sadism,” the Schlesinger group said that “we now know these abuses occurred at the hands of both military police and military intelligence personnel.”

The panel said the failures generally were caused by officers’ deciding to adopt interrogation practices used at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and taking them much further than they should have, especially at overcrowded Abu Ghraib, where the Army was never fully in control.

“There was chaos at Abu Ghraib,” Schlesinger said at a news conference at the Pentagon that was called to release the report, one of several investigations launched after photographs of prisoner abuse surfaced last spring, stunning the world.

Though Schlesinger said the interrogators and prison guards were “directly responsible” for the abuse, the report, for the first time, directly blames senior Defense Department management for problems at Abu Ghraib.

The panel faulted top generals, including Sanchez, for misinterpreting higher orders and issuing a series of contradictory and confusing interrogation policies. And it criticized Rumsfeld for failing to adequately assemble legal and military experts to set interrogation parameters early in the Iraq occupation.

It also traced confusion over interrogation policies to a 2002 memo issued by President Bush that said Geneva Convention protections did not apply to Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects in custody. The panel said the memo led Sanchez to believe that “additional, tougher measures were warranted” in Iraq.

In addition, the investigators criticized senior military leaders for failing to anticipate the insurgency in Iraq after Saddam Hussein was toppled. When the resistance accelerated in the summer of 2003 and the prison population soared, commanders did little to adequately train or beef up security and intelligence operations at Abu Ghraib.

Rather, Schlesinger said, senior civilian and military leaders based their planning on what happened after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when Kuwait was liberated from Iraq and no prolonged resistance followed.

“They did look at history books,” Schlesinger said. “Unfortunately, it was the wrong history.”

The abuse scandal, Schlesinger noted, has had a “chilling effect on interrogation operations.” U.S. agencies are getting far less intelligence because interrogators are fearful about the consequences of pushing detainees to talk, he said.

But he stopped well short of calling for Rumsfeld’s removal, saying it “would be a boon to all of America’s enemies, and consequently I think it would be a misfortune if it were to take place.” Schlesinger said that although commanders were not “focused” on detention operations, “we do not think it was a sufficient error to call for senior resignations.”

Bush this year rejected calls by critics, including some congressional Democrats, to fire Rumsfeld. Tuesday’s report revived the criticism.

Scott Horton, a human rights attorney who has advised military lawyers concerned about the Pentagon’s detainee policy, faulted the panel for not being tougher on Rumsfeld.

“Clearly, they’re bending over backward to protect him personally,” Horton said.

Ken Hurwitz, staff attorney with the U.S. Law and Security Program at Human Rights First group, said the report asked more questions than it answered and did not offer enough recommendations for fixing the shortcomings in the chain of command.

The report, he said, “points to the need for an [additional] independent and comprehensive investigation that takes place entirely outside of the miliary.”

Democratic leaders in Congress applauded the report. But they also said the White House must accept some responsibility.

“How many more reports will it take for the president to step up, admit mistakes and fix the problems that occurred on his watch?” asked Rep. Jane Harman of Venice, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John F. Kerry also applauded the conclusions but said investigations must look more closely at Bush administration actions.

“The administration has tried to say that what happened at Abu Ghraib was an isolated problem caused by a few bad apples, but this report makes clear that the failures at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere start at the top -- beginning with a failure to plan for the peace in Iraq, a failure to adequately train the troops and a failure to provide clear orders for interrogation,” he said. “This report is important to understanding what happened, but there are a number of key questions that go to the heart of the White House involvement in this matter that have not been answered.”

Tillie K. Fowler, a former Republican lawmaker from Florida and a member of the Schlesinger panel, agreed that blame went “well beyond an isolated cellblock in Iraq.”

She said that although the panel found “no explicit U.S. government policy calling for the torture or inhumane treatment of detainees,” there were a number of failures by the Pentagon and the U.S. Central Command that “allowed some of the abuses to occur.”

The panel also included former Defense Secretary Harold Brown and retired Air Force Gen. Charles A. Horner, who led the allied air campaign in the Gulf War.

Rumsfeld, in a four-paragraph statement thanking the group for its work, pledged that the Pentagon would “evaluate what happened and make appropriate changes.”

The report is the latest in a string of investigations stemming from the abuse and sexual humiliation of Abu Ghraib detainees. In March, an investigation by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba documented the abuses and recommended charges and discipline against military police and officers.

Last month, a report by the Army’s inspector general that reviewed U.S. detention operations in Iraq and elsewhere said the abuses were “aberrations” committed by a few.

Today, the Pentagon is to announce the results of a report by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay and Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Jones that focuses on the conduct of military intelligence operations at Abu Ghraib. The report documents 44 cases of abuse and will say that “a number of these cases involved MI personnel directing the actions of MP personnel.” It will recommend that some military intelligence personnel face disciplinary action.

Beyond the guards charged so far, the Fay-Jones report is expected to implicate 27 individuals, including five civilian contractors, more than a dozen military intelligence soldiers and at least two military medics believed to be complicit in the assaults, Defense officials said Tuesday.

Criminal prosecution will not be recommended for all 27, they said. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who ran the 800th Military Police Brigade, and Col. Thomas M. Pappas, who oversaw the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, are expected to receive reprimands that could end their careers. No officers will be recommended for criminal prosecution.

The newest reports are likely to rekindle interest on Capitol Hill, where hearings have been stalled while the investigations proceed. Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has scheduled hearings for Sept. 9.

The Schlesinger committee outlined several breakdowns in the military hierarchy that it said led to an atmosphere in which many at Abu Ghraib believed harsh treatment of prisoners was condoned.

The report said that in August 2003, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who ran the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, traveled to Iraq to size up Abu Ghraib. He called for “strong, command-wide interrogation policies,” the report said.

A month later, Sanchez signed a memo authorizing a dozen new interrogation techniques.

The problem, the panel said, was that Miller “had indicated his model was approved only for Guantanamo,” where there were vastly fewer prisoners and more guards.

In Cuba, the ratio of prisoners to guards is 1 to 1. In Iraq at the time, it was 75 to 1, panelists said. In addition, Abu Ghraib was in a combat zone and under constant shelling by insurgents. Guards there had had little training in prison work, some reporting to Abu Ghraib on only a few days’ notice.

Military leaders at the Central Command, which oversaw the Iraq operation from the United States, reviewed the policy changes approved by Sanchez and decided they were “unacceptably aggressive.” Army leaders in Iraq sought to rescind the changes but, according to the Schlesinger group, “did not adequately set forth the limits of interrogation techniques.”

That created an atmosphere in which “the existence of confusing and inconsistent interrogation technique policies contributed to the belief that additional interrogation techniques were condoned.”

Miller has since been placed in charge of all U.S. prisons in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib.

The Schlesinger group said Karpinski and Pappas, who were supposed to be operating in tandem to lock up suspects and interrogate them, never worked well together.

Both provided “weak and ineffectual leadership,” it said, adding that it “expects disciplinary action may be forthcoming” against them.

The group also criticized the work of independent contractors hired to assist Army interrogators, as well as the CIA, and said the intelligence agency’s “detention and interrogation practices contributed to a loss of accountability at Abu Ghraib.”

The panel concluded that had there not been the breakdown of controls at Abu Ghraib, there never would have been the kind of abuse that one soldier told them was often done “just for the fun of it.”

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Highlights of the report

Key findings of the investigative panel on Abu Ghraib prison abuses, led by former Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger:

* Interrogators and guards were “directly responsible” for the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, but blame goes all the way to the Pentagon’s top civilian and military command, including Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

* Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, former top commander of ground forces in Iraq, and other military leaders did not properly train and staff units to guard and interrogate prisoners at the facility outside Baghdad.

* Senior military leaders failed to anticipate the insurgency that would follow the toppling of Saddam Hussein. When the resistance accelerated in the summer of 2003 and the prison population soared, commanders did little to adequately train or beef up security and intelligence operations at Abu Ghraib.

* Rumsfeld and other senior civilian leaders failed to lay down consistent, specific policies on the treatment of detainees.

* Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who ran the 800th Military Police Brigade, and Col. Thomas M. Pappas, who oversaw the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, were supposed to operate in tandem to lock up suspects and interrogate them, but they never worked well together. They provided “weak and ineffectual leadership,” and “disciplinary action may be forthcoming.”

* Military intelligence officers, not just the seven guards charged, should be disciplined.

* Although top officials and commanders were not “focused” on detention operations in Iraq, their errors do not warrant a call for resignations.

Source: Times staff