Army Says C.I.A. Hid More Iraqis Than It Claimed

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> Fri, 10 Sep 2004 06:51:01 -0700

> Prison Scandal: Army Says

> C.I.A. Hid More Iraqis Than It Claimed

>

>

>

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/politics/10abuse.html?hp>

>

> PRISON SCANDAL

> Army Says C.I.A. Hid More Iraqis Than It Claimed

 

> By ERIC SCHMITT and DOUGLAS JEHL

>

> Published: September 10, 2004

>

> ASHINGTON, Sept. 9 - Army jailers in Iraq, acting at

> the Central

> Intelligence Agency's request, kept dozens of

> detainees at Abu Ghraib

> prison and other detention facilities off official

> rosters to hide them

> from Red Cross inspectors, two senior Army generals

> said Thursday. The

> total is far more than had been previously reported.

>

> 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.

>

> 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.

> --