Abu Ghraib Testimony Is in Conflict

Taguba Says Collaboration Of MPs Violates the Rules; Intelligence Official Differs 

GREG JAFFE / Wall Street Journal 12may04

WASHINGTON -- The Army general who investigated abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and a top Pentagon official offered sharply different views of who was in charge of soldiers at the prison and whether military police should have been allowed to set conditions for interrogations.

Their disagreements, aired in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, underscored poor control over military-police guards at the facility and why it has been hard to figure out who should be held responsible for the abuse of prisoners.

Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba

The hearing took place on a day when an Islamic-militant group released a video of men beheading an American civilian in Iraq and claiming it was done in retaliation for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. "Where is the revenge for the honor of Muslims in the crusader prisoners?" said a statement by an al Qaeda-linked group claiming to be behind the slaying. The tape purported to show Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who has ties to the al Qaeda terrorist network and is believed to be recruiting Arabs to fight the U.S. in Iraq, wielding the knife. U.S. intelligence officials said last night that they are analyzing the tape and couldn't confirm who the masked men were.

Senators, who appeared shaken by the incident, spent most of the hearing puzzling over the widely differing versions of what went wrong at Abu Ghraib.

Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who prepared a scathing report on conditions at Abu Ghraib, said control of the prison and the military-police guards at the facility was turned over to military-intelligence officials in November. He also insisted it was a violation of Army regulations for military-police officers, who are responsible for prisoners' well-being, to collaborate with military interrogators prior to interrogations.

Stephen Cambone, undersecretary for intelligence, contradicted Gen. Taguba, insisting that military-police guards never were placed under the control of military-intelligence officers and that Pentagon guidelines allowed the two groups to work together to obtain information from uncooperative detainees.

Their disagreements drew an exasperated reaction from some senators. "How do you expect the [military-police soldiers] to get it straight if we have a difference between the two of you?" asked Sen. Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.)

The gap between Gen. Taguba and Mr. Cambone highlights the widening gulf between those lawmakers and military officials who believe the abuse was widespread and those who believe it was the work of a few bad soldiers.

As he wrote in his report, Gen. Taguba repeatedly told the senators that military-police officers who took photographs as they humiliated and abused naked Iraqi prisoners were encouraged by military-intelligence officers. "I believe that they collaborated with several military-intelligence interrogators at the lower level," he said. "...I would say they were probably influenced by others, if not necessarily directed specifically by others."

He also singled out Col. Thomas Pappas, the military-intelligence commander, saying he was in charge of the prison. Mr. Cambone, however, said Col. Pappas was in charge only of the prison facility, not the prison guards.

Gen. Taguba testified that Col. Pappas clashed repeatedly with Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, over which of them actually ran the prison. There was "a confusion and friction between those two commanders," Gen. Taguba testified.

Several senators suggested the abuse at Abu Ghraib stemmed in part from an August 2003 visit to the facility by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who had been overseeing the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

With the insurgency in Iraq gathering steam, Gen. Miller's mission was to make recommendations that would improve the collection and distribution of intelligence at Abu Ghraib.

The general laid out a series of recommendations to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. officer in Iraq. One was that military police "set the conditions" for more successful interrogations of prisoners and import some of the more-effective practices from the Guantanamo Bay facility.

"When Gen. Miller went over there and he spoke and addressed this with each of the commanders, he gave them the special operating procedures that they were using at [Guantanamo] to use as an example on how they should generate their own operating procedures," Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, the deputy commander at U.S. Central Command, told the lawmakers. U.S. Central Command oversees U.S. troops in the Middle East.

It isn't clear precisely what special procedures Gen. Miller recommended or what he meant when he suggested military police should "set the conditions for interrogations." Gen. Taguba and several other senators suggested Gen. Miller's recommendations were taken to mean that military police should put prisoners under stress.

Mr. Cambone disputed that interpretation, saying military police were simply supposed to tell interrogators what prisoners had been saying in their cells and give them insights into the personalities of individual prisoners.

Several senators, however, tied the abuse at the prison, which began in October 2003, to Gen. Miller's August visit. Using a shorthand reference to the Guantanamo facility, Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) asked: "When someone says that they're going to Gitmo-ize a prison, wouldn't a subordinate think we're going to change the rules?"

Other senators complained the Pentagon hadn't been forthcoming enough about Gen. Miller's recommendations or their implementation. "I don't have adequate information from Mr. Cambone as to exactly what Gen. Miller's orders were...and the connection between his arrival in the fall of 2003 and the intensity of the abuses that occurred afterwards," said Sen. Hillary Clinton (D., N.Y.).

Regardless of the disagreements, both Mr. Cambone and Gen. Taguba said solders were instructed to abide by the Geneva Conventions, which dictate humane treatment for prisoners of war.