Army officials told Congress on Tuesday that a small number of soldiers and civilians bore responsibility for the abuse of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison, but they added that intelligence officers also could be implicated as the military investigates further.
In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, the general who conducted the initial investigation into the incidents blamed a rampant failure of leadership at the prison, as well as a “lack of discipline, no training whatsoever and no supervision.”
Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba also said leadership failures went as high as the brigade commander, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of the 800th Military Police Brigade responsible for security at the prison when at least some of the abuses occurred.
The hearing produced an extraordinary disagreement between Taguba and a top Pentagon civilian official, Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, over who was in charge of the prison at the time of the abuses. Taguba said tactical control was turned over to military intelligence officials in November. Cambone said military police still ran the facility.
The U.S. has been roundly criticized for the horrific images of abuse that have been broadcast and published worldwide. A group of hooded executioners cited the abuse at the prison as justification for the beheading of an American captive in a video made public Tuesday on a Web site linked to Al Qaeda.
Senators were eager to get to the bottom of the mistreatment of prisoners and asked Army officials whether others higher up in the command structure were responsible.
Though Taguba said he uncovered no policy that would have countenanced mistreatment, he would not rule out the possible participation of others in the abuses, including military intelligence officers, members of the CIA and civilians detailed to the prison.
“A few soldiers and civilians conspired to abuse and conduct egregious acts of violence against detainees and other civilians outside the bounds of international laws and the Geneva Convention,” the general said.
`Probably influenced’
Under questioning by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Taguba said those he found responsible in his report “were probably influenced by others, if not specifically directed by others” at the prison, including intelligence officers. So far, seven soldiers face courts-martial while seven other members of the military have been reprimanded.
Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, the Army’s deputy chief of staff, said allegations of involvement by military intelligence officers are being investigated but that obtaining specific names and incidents from those who have been accused has been difficult. He said some of the soldiers are not talking to investigators.
“My assessment is that there was a complete breakdown in discipline on the MP [military police] side,” Alexander said. “And there were intel [intelligence] soldiers, contractors, who may have been involved, or at least in some of those pictures. And the question is, what did they say to the MPs to get them into this?”
Later in his testimony, Alexander speculated that “you had a group that were essentially leadership and controlled their environment on the midnight shift. Nobody came to check on them for periods of time, and their leaders may have been absent at those times.” He said that if leaders were involved, they should be punished.
Karpinski, a general in the Army Reserve, has been suspended and given a letter of admonishment in connection with the abuse but has not been charged. Taguba had faulted her for a breakdown in discipline at the facility.
Taguba said an Army intelligence colonel, Thomas Pappas, was given tactical control of the prison in November, effectively replacing Karpinski in supervising the facility. Nonetheless, Taguba said, there was friction between Karpinski and Pappas over who was in charge.
Democrats homed in on the role of Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller in the questioning of Abu Ghraib prisoners, noting that Miller had been sent to Iraq in August after experience in the interrogation of suspected terrorists at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Cambone said Miller recommended the involvement of military police officers in “setting the conditions” for successfully interrogating prisoners, without violating Geneva Conventions regulations for treating them humanely.
Taguba said the Miller recommendations meant that more coercive techniques could be applied to prisoners prior to their interrogations. But Cambone disagreed, saying that the guidance meant only that the military police officers could tell interrogators what the prisoners had been saying in confinement.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said that it was fair to conclude that the abuses cited in Taguba’s report “are in some way connected to Gen. Miller’s arrival and his specific orders, however they were interpreted, by those MPs and the military intelligence [officers] that were involved.”
In response to a question from Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, deputy director of the U.S. Central Command, said that any order to “soften up” a detainee would not be legal.
Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the committee, said the Pentagon will make more photos available to senators Wednesday. The senators also might be shown at least one videotape. But it still has not been determined whether the photos and videos will be made public.
Vice President Dick Cheney questioned whether additional photos should be released to the public. In an interview with Fox News, he said the Pentagon will make the material accessible to Congress, but “then there will have to be a decision made what and at what point any additional photos are released to the public.”
Speaking Tuesday to a “town meeting” of uniformed and civilian Defense Department staff at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld portrayed himself as one of the majority of members of the armed forces who suffered “a body blow” with the revelations about prisoner mistreatment.
Depicting the perpetrators of the abuse as a small minority within the military, Rumsfeld said, “We find that we have … a few who have betrayed our values by their conduct.
“The look on the faces of the people who have viewed the photographs and the videos from what took place there,” he continued. “They were stunned, absolutely stunned, that any Americans wearing the uniform could do what they did.”
`They’re murderers’
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) criticized a solicitation for donations on behalf of presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) that, he said, demanded the firing of Rumsfeld and criticized President Bush’s handling of the abuses.
Inhofe said he was “more outraged by the outrage” over the treatment of the prisoners than by the abuses themselves. “They’re not here for traffic violations,” he said. “They’re murderers, they’re terrorists, they’re insurgents.”
When asked how he felt about criticizing U.S. policy in a time of war, Kerry told WJXT television in Jacksonville: “Problems with what’s happening in Iraq in terms of the conduct of the war are not the fault of criticism, they are the fault of decisions that have been made by the administration.”
