The NYTimes > Prison Scandal: Army Says C.I.A. Hid More Iraqis Than It Claimed

The New York Times > Washington > Prison Scandal: Army Says C.I.A. Hid More Iraqis Than It Claimed:
"An Army inquiry completed last month found eight documented cases of so-called ghost detainees, but two of the investigating generals said in testimony before two Congressional committees and in interviews on Thursday that depositions from military personnel who served at the prison indicated that the real total was many times higher.

'The number is in the dozens, to perhaps up to 100,' Gen. Paul J. Kern, the senior officer who oversaw the Army inquiry, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. Another investigator, Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, put the figure at 'two dozen or so,' but both officers said they could not give a precise number because no records were kept on most of the C.I.A. detainees.

Under the Geneva Conventions, the temporary failure to disclose the identities of prisoners to the Red Cross is permitted under an exemption for military necessity. But the Army generals said they were certain that the practice used by the C.I.A. in Iraq went far beyond that"

The disclosure added to questions about the C.I.A.'s practices in Iraq, including why the agency took custody of certain Iraqi prisoners, what interrogation techniques it used and what became of the ghost detainees, including whether they were ever returned to military custody. To date, two cases have been made public in which prisoners in C.I.A. custody were removed from Iraq for a period of several months and held in detention centers outside the country.

Another question left unanswered on Thursday was why Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the military intelligence officer who oversaw interrogations at the prison, agreed to let C.I.A. officers use the prison to hide ghost detainees. The Army report said that when Colonel Pappas raised questions about the practice, a top military intelligence officer in Baghdad at the time, Col. Steven Boltz, encouraged him to cooperate with the C.I.A. because "everyone was all one team."

Still, General Kern said Colonel Pappas should have challenged the practice. "If I was instructed to hold a C.I.A. detainee in a U.S. Army facility that I owned, I would make sure that he abided by our rules, not someone else's rules," General Kern told the House Armed Services Committee. "If that didn't happen, I would have asked for a very clear explanation."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has acknowledged that in one case, acting at the request of George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, he ordered military officials in Iraq in November to hold a man suspected of being a senior Iraqi terrorist at Camp Cropper, a high-level detention center, but not to register him. That prisoner, sometimes called Triple-X, had initially been held at a secret site outside Iraq by the C.I.A., intelligence officials said, but was returned to the country after government lawyers concluded that as an Iraqi, he should be held inside the country.

For several months, Triple-X was later left unaccounted for within the military detention system inside Iraq, the Pentagon has acknowledged. At least one other prisoner in Iraq, a Syrian, was initially removed from the country and held on a Navy ship before being returned to Abu Ghraib last fall, military official have said. Intelligence officials have not said whether all of the prisoners held in Iraq by the C.I.A. were later handed over to military custody.

The disclosure added to questions about the C.I.A.'s practices in Iraq, including why the agency took custody of certain Iraqi prisoners, what interrogation techniques it used and what became of the ghost detainees, including whether they were ever returned to military custody. To date, two cases have been made public in which prisoners in C.I.A. custody were removed from Iraq for a period of several months and held in detention centers outside the country.

Another question left unanswered on Thursday was why Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the military intelligence officer who oversaw interrogations at the prison, agreed to let C.I.A. officers use the prison to hide ghost detainees. The Army report said that when Colonel Pappas raised questions about the practice, a top military intelligence officer in Baghdad at the time, Col. Steven Boltz, encouraged him to cooperate with the C.I.A. because "everyone was all one team."

Still, General Kern said Colonel Pappas should have challenged the practice. "If I was instructed to hold a C.I.A. detainee in a U.S. Army facility that I owned, I would make sure that he abided by our rules, not someone else's rules," General Kern told the House Armed Services Committee. "If that didn't happen, I would have asked for a very clear explanation."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has acknowledged that in one case, acting at the request of George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, he ordered military officials in Iraq in November to hold a man suspected of being a senior Iraqi terrorist at Camp Cropper, a high-level detention center, but not to register him. That prisoner, sometimes called Triple-X, had initially been held at a secret site outside Iraq by the C.I.A., intelligence officials said, but was returned to the country after government lawyers concluded that as an Iraqi, he should be held inside the country.

For several months, Triple-X was later left unaccounted for within the military detention system inside Iraq, the Pentagon has acknowledged. At least one other prisoner in Iraq, a Syrian, was initially removed from the country and held on a Navy ship before being returned to Abu Ghraib last fall, military official have said. Intelligence officials have not said whether all of the prisoners held in Iraq by the C.I.A. were later handed over to military custody.

In his testimony on Thursday, General Fay said C.I.A. officials in Baghdad and at the agency's headquarters in Langley, Va., refused his request for information several times, eventually telling him they were doing their own inquiry of the matter.

A C.I.A. spokesman, Mark Mansfield, declined to comment on the number of unregistered detainees. He did not dispute General Fay's statement, but said the agency was cooperating with military criminal investigators.

Military officials have said the C.I.A.'s practice of using Army-run prisons in Iraq to hide prisoners held for questioning violated military regulations and international law, and led to "a loss of accountability at the prison." Although C.I.A. interrogators were obliged to honor Army rules at the prison, they did not permit soldiers to sit in on their questioning and did not share the results of their interrogations with the most senior commanders in Iraq. The inspectors general of the Defense Department and C.I.A. are investigating the matter.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/politics/10abuse.html?pagewanted=all&position=