Abuse Report Widens Scope of Culpability  
Generals Point to Contractors, Military Intelligence Soldiers 
By Josh White 

Washington Post Staff Writer 
Thursday, August 26, 2004; Page A01 

Three Army generals said yesterday that an array of sometimes shocking 
detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison came in part at the hands of 
more than two dozen military intelligence soldiers and civilian contractors, 
widening the scope of the international scandal as one Army general 
conceded that some of the acts qualified as torture.

In releasing an investigative report yesterday about the actions of the 
205th Military Intelligence Brigade, the generals acknowledged that chaos 
and confusion absorbed Abu Ghraib. Interrogators did not know the rules 
and thus flagrantly broke them. Detainees were questioned while naked, 
the CIA hid prisoners from international human rights groups, and 
detainees were left hooded and handcuffed in painful positions.

In sometimes agonizing detail, the generals detailed acts of sodomy, 
beatings, nudity, lengthy isolation, and the use of unmuzzled dogs in a 
sadistic game of making detainees urinate and defecate in fear.

"The abuses spanned from direct physical assault, such as delivering 
head blows rendering detainees unconscious, to sexual posing and forced 
participation in group masturbation," the Army report says. "At the 
extremes were the death of a detainee . . . an alleged rape committed by a 
US translator and observed by a female Soldier, and the alleged sexual 
assault of an unknown female."

Coupled with an independent investigative report issued Tuesday, the 
findings released yesterday outline dramatic problems at the prison and 
highlight significant management failures up and down the chain of 
command that the generals believe ultimately led to and exacerbated 
serious abuse. Neither of the investigations assigns direct blame for the 
abuse to top military commanders or civilian leaders in Washington, but 
both reports conclude that a lack of planning for postwar Iraq and 
fundamental breakdowns in leadership fostered the environment in which 
the abuse occurred.

Gen. Paul J. Kern, Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Jones and Maj. Gen. George R. 
Fay flatly reported that they had found "serious misconduct and a loss of 
moral values" in the ranks at Abu Ghraib and explained that abuse 
occurred both in the chaos of the military police-run nightshift and also 
during official interrogations by military intelligence soldiers. Tactics 
employed by military intelligence set the stage for a subsequent escalation 
of maltreatment.

"What started as undressing and humiliation, stress and physical training, 
carried over into sexual and physical assaults by a small group of morally 
corrupt and unsupervised soldiers and civilians," the report says.
In response to questions about whether the abuse amounted to torture, 
Fay said the term was subjective, but said he thought some of the abuse 
qualified.

"Torture sometimes is used to define something in order to get 
information," he said. "There were very few instances where in fact you 
could say that was torture. It's a harsh word, and in some instances, 
unfortunately, I think it was appropriate here. There were a few instances 
when torture was being used."

The generals also describe confusing and contradictory interrogation 
policies that led some military intelligence personnel to abuse detainees 
because they thought they were following accepted practices. CIA officials 
were hiding "ghost detainees" from human rights groups, a violation of 
international law. Naked detainees were sometimes placed in excessively 
cold or hot cells with limited or poor ventilation, and no light. Commanders 
were complicit, or turned a blind eye.

The report also for the first time provided extensive details of the 
connection between controversial military intelligence interrogation tactics 
and the notorious abuse seen around the world in digital photographs of 
military police soldiers at Abu Ghraib. The report found that 23 military 
intelligence soldiers were directly involved in abuse, sometimes while 
interrogating prisoners, and that four civilian contractors were also a party 
to the wrongdoing.

Many of the problems at the prison stemmed from lack of clarity in 
instructions from the U.S. command in Iraq, according to the report. 
Interrogation guidelines were borrowed and assembled from detainee 
operations in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan. Interrogators 
were taking cues from their previous experiences, and guidance about the 
legality of certain harsh tactics from commanders was hazy at best and 
sometimes even wrong, according to the report. For example, the use of 
painful stress positions, nudity and military working dogs were not 
approved tactics for interrogations -- yet they were endorsed by Lt. Gen. 
Ricardo S. Sanchez's command.

Military intelligence solicitation of military police abuse "included the use of 
isolation with sensory deprivation, removal of clothing and humiliation, the 
use of dogs as an interrogation tool to induce fear, and physical abuse," 
the report said.

Later, in summarizing the abuse at the prison, the generals wrote that 
examples of physical abuse included "slapping, kicking, twisting the hands 
of a detainee who was hand-cuffed to cause pain, throwing balls at 
restrained internees, placing gloved hand over the nose and mouth of an 
internee to restrict breathing, 'poking' at an internee's injured leg, and 
forcing an internee to stand while handcuffed in such a way as to dislocate 
his shoulder."

Officials at the Pentagon have characterized the sexual humiliation, 
beatings and sexual positions seen in the photographs as the work of a 
few rogue military police soldiers who were attacking detainees on their 
own. Instead, yesterday's report made it clear that while MPs were 
involved in abuse, the transgressions were more widespread and 
generally accepted at the prison than previously acknowledged. 

But the Army generals found no overarching Army policy or doctrine that 
they believe led to the abuse, emphasizing that a vast majority of U.S. 
soldiers abided by the rules and have been serving with pride. Instead, 
they conclude that a lack of proper attention to operations at the facility, a 
rising and unexpected insurgency sapping resources, and a lack of 
discipline probably played strong roles in the problem.

They also found rampant confusion about allowable interrogation 
techniques, leadership failures by top-ranking officials, and the cultural 
acceptance of certain abuse at the prison.

"We found that the pictures you have seen, as revolting as they are, were 
not the result of any doctrine, training or policy failures, but violations of 
the law and misconduct," Kern told reporters at the Pentagon yesterday 
afternoon. "We've learned there were leaders at Abu Ghraib who knew 
about this conduct, knew better, and did nothing. Some soldiers behaved 
improperly because they were confused by their experiences and 
direction."

The generals said yesterday that they were unable to properly address the 
problem of ghost detainees because the policy appears to be one adopted 
by the CIA and was largely out of bounds of their investigation. They said 
that at one point there were eight such detainees at Abu Ghraib who were 
not registered, something they considered a violation of law. They said 
they were referring the matter to the Defense Department's inspector 
general and to the CIA.

The report assigns blame for committing abuse or failing to report it to 35 
military intelligence personnel -- including six civilian contractors -- and to 
11 MPs and two medics. In addition, the generals cited five others for 
reprimand, including Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the commander of the 
205th Military Intelligence Brigade, who was in charge of the facility at the 
time of the abuse.

While the months-long investigation found scant evidence that 
interrogators specifically ordered MPs to carry out abuse, it did conclude 
that in 16 cases -- more than a third of the 44 cases the generals 
documented -- "abuse by the MP soldiers was, or was alleged to have 
been, requested, encouraged, condoned, or solicited by MI personnel."
That conclusion could be important to the seven MP soldiers who have 
been charged with criminal conduct because it tends to support their 
attorneys' claims that they were acting at the direction of military 
intelligence. In some cases, the generals conclude that the MP claims of 
direction from MI interrogators were "plausible" but lacked clear proof. In 
others, tactics employed by intelligence soldiers such as stripping 
prisoners appear to have created an environment for worse treatment.
"The use of clothing as an incentive (nudity) is significant in that it likely 
contributed to an escalating 'de-humanization' of the detainees and set the 
stage for additional and more severe abuses to occur," according to the 
report.

Richard A. Hernandez, the lead attorney defending one MP, Pfc. Lynndie 
R. England, against abuse charges, said the report confirms what he has 
been claiming all along: The MPs were told to use abusive tactics against 
detainees.

"This was no rogue band of soldiers; this was a completely chaotic and 
failed command structure," he said. "They believed it was condoned 
because of what they were told to do and what they had seen done."
Human rights groups said the report highlighted major problems -- such as 
abuse of children and the hiding of detainees -- but still muddled questions 
of responsibility.

"They're just afraid to take that obvious but politically dangerous step of 
stating plainly that General Sanchez and other commanders were 
responsible for what happened," said Tom Malinowski, Washington 
advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "I think the report is a 
powerful argument for having clear guidelines for humane treatment in 
interrogations."

In Philadelphia, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) renewed his call for 
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's resignation, saying that he bears 
responsibility for "the climate" that made the prison abuse possible.
Kerry had called on the president to remove the Pentagon chief for what 
he called faulty planning of Iraq operations, and he said that the newly 
released reports offered further evidence of "the most serious 
miscalculations in any American military deployment."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Kerry's call for Rumsfeld's 
departure showed the Democratic presidential nominee "really does not 
want to talk about the issues and his record" and added: "He is more 
interested in saying what is the most politically beneficial thing to his 
campaign.

"In terms of these recent reports," McClellan said, "the president believes 
that those who committed the atrocities at Abu Ghraib should be 
punished. What occurred there was appalling, and it was wrong."
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking member of the Judiciary 
Committee, said the report raises additional concerns and called for an 
independent investigation of the Pentagon leadership's role in and 
responsibility for the abuse.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) 
described the Army abuse report as a "very thorough and competent job," 
virtually the same words he used to describe an independent analysis of 
detention operations issued earlier this week by James R. Schlesinger, a 
former defense secretary.

Asked at a news conference whether Rumsfeld should resign, Warner 
said he "essentially" agreed with Schlesinger that he should not resign, 
but he added that "the commanding officer has to take responsibility for 
those actions of his subordinates that are proven to be unprofessional or 
downright wrong."

The committee has scheduled hearings on the reports for Sept. 9, and 
Warner said he hopes to hear from Rumsfeld before then to see if further 
investigation by Congress or the executive branch is needed.
Staff writers David S. Broder in Philadelphia and Helen Dewar in 
Washington contributed to this report. 
© 2004 The Washington Post Company