In January 9, 2002, 'Application of Treaties and Laws to Detainees' was issued to advise President Bush on the matter. The applicability of the Geneva Conventions was discussed.
Neither al-Queda nor the Taliban can be recognized as a legitimate actor in the Conventions as a High Contracting Party. As a result, both Guantanamo and Abu Ghraivb detainnes are not protected by the Conventions. Moreover, the war on terror is not a traditional war that is defined in the Conventions. John Yoo and Robert J. Delabunty advised President Bush to pay less regard to the Geneva Conventions in treating Al-Quaeda suspects. A recent report of the Washington Post
revealed the existence of detainee camps in Europe where the CIA operatives can interview the Quaeda suspects without the constrainst of the US law. The Bush administration's policy to take any means to tackle the spread of terror is evident, raising human rights concerns.
She is the highest ranking official to be disciplined in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and she's asking a simple question -- why is she the only one? She assereted that those abuses were the result of the civilians or the CIA operatives who came into her prison and interrogated suspects by using torture under her nose. Her subordinates were just following their orders. Here's her latest interview.
The Abu Ghraib scandal gave rise to anti-American sentiments among the Iraqis and the escalation of violence. The "chain of command" that includes Defence Secretary allegedly involved in the scandal. The former commander at the Iraqi prison claimed that those prosecuted just followed the orders from above. They did not came al the way to Iraq with a dog leash and other torture devices. They were provided by the CIA that was in charge of the investigation process against the "enemey combatants".
In the midst of the war on terror, the Bush administration decided that the Geneva Conventions are "obsolete" not applicable to this case. To get tough on prisoners was thought to be the best way to extract information on Al-Quaeda.
Putting the entire blame on the low-end of the hiearchy would exonerate those involved in the higher-up. Donald Ramsfeld would not resign over this case due to the fact that he acted on the very guideline set by the Bush administration.
During the Cold War era, the CIA was created to act against the USSR. The CIA operatives are immune from prosecution and they can act without remorse. They were just doing their job by giving the enemy combatants a hard time to break them up psychologically. Those actually ordered the torture would never surface in the media because they are the CIA operatives whose identities are classified. As a result, there is no legal recourse for former Abu Ghraib inmates suffered the inhumane treatments.
In an interview with NIGHTLINE, she vent her anger at the military establishment that conders her and her subordinates "disposable"as reserves. She is a scapegoat in this scandal who had just followed the orders.
The main culprit of the scandal was General Sanchez who was sent from Guantanamo. He specialized in torture techniques that he instructed MPs as a guest at Abu Ghraib. He asked Gen. Karpinsku to hand over the control of Abu Ghraib, which she had no control over since Sanchez out-ranked her as a two-star general.
BG Janis Karopinski was relieved from Command and given a reprimand for
Ms.Karpinski's assertion was that she should not bear the responsibilities for the fiasco. Considering the situation in the prison in which those two cells used for the "special" investigation were under the authority of Gen Sanchez, it is hightly plausible that the military intelligence unit acted like CIA operatives who are above the law.
In April 2004,
a secret Pentagon report concluded that U.S. soldiers had committed "egregious acts and grave breaches of international law" at Abu Ghraib. Since the photos first appeared, no senior Bush administration officials have been reprimanded for what happened at Abu Ghraib. Seven soldiers have been convicted for their role in the detainee abuse. Last month Lynndie England was sentenced to three years in prison. In January, Specialist Charles Graner was sentenced to 10 years. The highest ranking military officer reprimanded was Brigadier General Janis Karpinski who was commanding officer at the prison. She was demoted to colonel in May. She oversaw all military police in Iraq and was the first female ever to command soldiers in a combat zone. This is an abridged transcript of her interview.AMY GOODMAN: Col. Janis Karpinski has just published a book about her experience. It's called One Woman's Army: The Commanding General of Abu Ghraib Tells Her Story. How did you end up at Abu Ghraib?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Abu Ghraib was one of 17 prison facilities that we were responsible for in Iraq. The units deployed from January throughout 2003 up 'til about April of 2003 to conduct a prisoner of war mission. The units are trained to do prisoner of war operations, and a prisoner of war camp was established in Iraq, very close to the Kuwait border. So, the units -- the unit members, the soldiers, all believed that they were going to come home after victory was declared on the First of May when the President arrived on the aircraft carrier. They allowed me to deploy to Iraq to join my units, to take command of the units, although I was told that the majority of the units, the soldiers, would be coming back home because the mission was complete.
When I arrived in Kuwait, I was told that the units were going to be staying for an additional two months, because we were assigned a new mission for prison restoration and training, assisting the prison's experts up at Ambassador Bremer's headquarters in Baghdad, with training Iraqi guards to conduct prison and detention operations. So we relocated. There was never any discussion about whether we were properly equipped or prepared to take on this mission. It was simply assigned to us, and very quickly the two-month extension became a four-month extension, and then it became 365 days, boots on the ground, for all of the units that were deployed.
So, soldiers were sent to war with the full expectations that they would be home in six months or less, as they were repeatedly told at the mobilization stations in the United States, and once they were there, they couldn't get out. The extension took them six additional months, tremendous impact on reserve and National Guard soldiers, in particular, but nonetheless, this was the mission. They went forward to different locations in Iraq and took on this new detention operation -- mission.
Abu Ghraib was the largest of our facilities. It was located in the Sunni Triangle. It was never a good location for any kind of detention operations, let alone the largest detention operation and then, subsequently, the interrogation center for Iraq. We were being mortared every night at that location. We received no combat support for force protection to prevent any of those attacks from occurring, and the unit that was out there doing that mission, that particular mission at Abu Ghraib, was not equipped with any kind of combat platforms to give adequate protection to prisoners or soldiers.
It was -- Abu Ghraib, there was long discussions about using Abu Ghraib at all, because of its notoriety, because of the history, because of the thousands of Iraqis who lost their lives there under Saddam. But we did agree to use it as an interim facility and holding Iraqi criminal prisoners. And that was our introduction to Abu Ghraib.
AMY GOODMAN: How many M.P.s, military police, were under your command?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: 3,400 soldiers were under the 800th Military Police Brigade, and probably 2,400 of them, 2,500 of them were military police personnel.
AMY GOODMAN: And how many prisoners were there?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: At Abu Ghraib alone, the prisoner population did reach over 7,000 by the end of -- nearing the end of 2003, but we processed over 40,000 prisoners during the course of the time that the 800th M.P. Brigade was responsible for prisoner operations. In 16 other facilities and at Abu Ghraib, while it was under the control of the 800th M.P. Brigade, there were no infractions. Interrogations were not being conducted. They were basically interviews that were being conducted by the military intelligence interrogators at that time, and it changed considerably during and after General Miller's visit.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about General Miller. Who is he?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: General Miller was sent to visit Iraq by Secretary Rumsfeld and the Undersecretary Cambone. And they came -- General Miller came to visit from Guantanamo Bay. He was the commander of detention operations at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and he was sent to assist the military intelligence interrogators with enhancing their techniques. And he brought with him the techniques that were tested and in use at Guantanamo Bay. And he brought a team of about 20 people, 22 people with him to discuss all aspects of interrogation operations, and actually, he did an in-brief. I was invited to participate or to attend to listen to his in-brief, because he was working almost exclusively with the military intelligence people and the military intelligence interrogators while he was there.
But we owned the locations that he was going to visit, and he ultimately selected Abu Ghraib to be the focus of his efforts, and he told me that he was going to make it the interrogation center for Iraq. He used the term, he was going to "Gitmo-ize" the operation and use the M.P.s to assist the interrogators to enhance interrogations and to obtain more actionable intelligence. I explained to him that the M.P.s were not trained in any kind of interrogation operations, and he told me that he wanted me to give him Abu Ghraib, because that's the location he selected.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the dogs? Is that when the dogs were introduced?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Shortly after his visit, he -- again, he was spending most of his time with the commander of the Military Intelligence Brigade, Colonel Pappas. In his in-brief, his introduction when he first arrived there with his team, he responded to one of the interrogators, the military interrogator's question, and he was listening to the comments, the criticisms that they were doing these interviews and they were not obtaining really valuable information, so he was there to assist them with different -- implementing different techniques to get more actionable intelligence.
And one of the interrogators just asked the question about what he would recommend that they could do immediately, because they thought that they were doing a pretty good job with identifying the people who may have additional value or more military intelligence value, and General Miller said -- his first observation was that they were not -- they were being too nice to them. They were not being aggressive enough. And he used the example at Guantanamo Bay that the prisoners there, when they're brought in, that they're handled by two military policemen. They're escorted everywhere they go -- belly chains, leg irons, hand irons -- and he said, "You have to treat them like dogs."
AMY GOODMAN: You were there when he said this?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Yes, I was there when he said that. And he said, "They have to know that you are in charge, and if you treat them too nicely, they won't cooperate with you. And at Guantanamo Bay, they earn -- the prisoners earn every single thing they get, to include a change of color of their jumpsuits. When they get there, they're issued a bright orange jumpsuit. They're handled in a very aggressive, forceful manner, and they earn the privilege of transitioning to a white jumpsuit, if they prove themselves to be cooperative."
And I raised my hand. I was just there as a guest. I was not a participant, but I said, "You know, sir, the M.P.s here don't move prisoners with leg irons and hand irons. We don't even have that equipment. We don't have enough funding to buy one jumpsuit per prisoner, let alone an exchange of colors." And he said, "It's no problem. My budget is $125 million a year at Gitmo, and I'm going to give Colonel Pappas all of the resources he needs to do this appropriately."
AMY GOODMAN: Now, Colonel Pappas ran the prison within the prison, is that right? He ran something called the "hard site"?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: He ran the interrogation operations within the prison, that's correct. And it was -- Cell Block 1A and 1B were the two maximum security wings of the hard site, and during General Miller's visit, either at his order or at his request, General Miller told -- instructed Colonel Pappas to get control of Cell Block 1A.
AMY GOODMAN: Treat the prisoners like dogs. That explains the leashes and making prisoners bark?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: It seems to be consistent with those photographs, yes, with the dog collar, the dog leash and un-muzzled dogs. And, in fact, those techniques have appeared in several memorandums that have been signed by senior people.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking about General Geoffrey Miller, coming from Guantanamo to Iraq, to the Abu Ghraib prison, the biggest of the prison facilities. You were in charge of it and all of the prison facilities in Iraq.
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Correct.
AMY GOODMAN: And he said he was there to "Gitmo-ize" Abu Ghraib. We have heard the stories out of Guantanamo. We now certainly know what happened at - some of what has happened at Abu Ghraib, in Cell Blocks 1A and 1B, only because soldiers themselves took photographs, not clear what has been happening throughout Iraq.
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Correct.
AMY GOODMAN: Is there any reason to believe this hasn't happened in the other facilities that you oversaw?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Well, there were only - interrogation operations were only taking place - at prisons under my control, interrogations were only being conducted at Abu Ghraib, and they were only being conducted in interrogation facilities built specifically for interrogations at Abu Ghraib. There was what they called "Interrogation Facility Wood" and "Interrogation Facility Steel." The pictures, although they were - when they were released, it was widely reported that this was during interrogation operations. In fact, it was not during interrogation operations. These pictures were being staged and set up at the direction of contract interrogators, civilian contract interrogators, for the use in future interrogations.
AMY GOODMAN: Contract interrogators. What companies?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: There are several. Several of the contractors that were in some of the pictures were with Titan Corporation. There has been sworn statements saying they came from "OGA," other government agencies, and CACI. I can only say that the ones that I saw in the photographs were identified as being from Titan Corporation. Now, they were - my experience with Titan Corporation was that they were providing translators, and again, in some of the information that's been released in the ACLU documents, we know that some of the translators were given the opportunity to become interrogators without any training whatsoever in interrogation operations.
AMY GOODMAN: But General Miller had said he wants to blur the bright line between military police and military intelligence, that the military police were to take the prisoners to military intelligence.
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Correct.
AMY GOODMAN: Your people were to be brought - Were you in charge of military intelligence?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: No, not at all, and the Military Intelligence Brigade Commander did not work for me. He ran the Interrogation Brigade -- the Intelligence Brigade, and he ran interrogations, which was a function at Abu Ghraib.
AMY GOODMAN: Lynndie England, Charles Graner were yours?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: They were. They were assigned to a subordinate company, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: When did you start to understand what was happening?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: About the situation at Abu Ghraib, I was first informed by an email that I received on classified - what they call "classified traffic." I opened it up late one night on the 12th of January of 2004. And it was from the commander of the Criminal Investigation Division. He sent me an email and said, "Ma'am, I just want to make you aware, I'm going in to brief the C.G.," meaning General Sanchez, "on the progress of the investigation at Abu Ghraib. This involves the allegations of abuse and the photographs." That was the first I heard of it.
I did not receive that email or phone call or a message from General Sanchez himself, who would ultimately attempt to hold me fully responsible for this, but from the C.I.D. Commander. And I was alarmed at just that short email. I was not in Baghdad at the time. I was at another location very close to the Iranian border, so we made arrangements to leave at the crack of dawn to drive down to Abu Ghraib to see what we could find out about this ongoing investigation and went through the battalion over to Cell Block 1A. The people who would normally be working on any shift were not working. The sergeant that I spoke to said that their records had been seized by the investigators, and they started a new log to account for prisoners, make sure that their meals were on time, those kind of things, and he pointed out a memo that was posted on a column just outside of their small administrative office. And the memorandum was signed by the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. And said - it discussed interrogation techniques that were authorized. It was one page. It talked about stress positions, noise and light discipline, the use of music, disrupting sleep patterns, those kind of techniques. But there was a handwritten note out to the side. And this was a copy. It was a photocopy of the original, I would imagine. But it was unusual that an interrogation memorandum would be posted inside of a detention cell block, because interrogations were not conducted in the cell block.
AMY GOODMAN: This was the command of Donald Rumsfeld himself?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Talking about the techniques?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: The techniques that were allowed. And there was a note - handwritten note out to the side of where the list of tactics, interrogation tactics were. It said, "Make sure this happens." And it seemed to be in the same handwriting as the signature. That's what I could say about the memorandum.
AMY GOODMAN: People understood it to be from Rumsfeld?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Yes, they certainly did. And I never heard a word - I did - certainly did see the reference to photographs in the original email, but when I asked the soldier, when I asked the sergeant, when I asked the commanders out at Abu Ghraib, what did they know about, they knew nothing about it. They had heard that there were some photographs, but they did not know any specifics.
AMY GOODMAN: Had the Red Cross been to visit?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: They had been and had been in all of our facilities routinely. We welcomed them. They made good recommendations, and they filed reports. Now, the report that I saw the first week of December of 2003 was dated October of 2003. And it had - it mentioned in the report, the I.C.R.C. report, that they had been to Cell Block 1A and saw prisoners that were in isolation, solitary confinement for 72 hours, and they saw a prisoner who was telling them that he was being made to wear women's underwear on his head.
So, I was at what they call a 'night briefing,' an update. And after the update was finished - this was at Camp Victory, at the headquarters, and it was in the evening. And I started to leave when the update was finished, and one of the military intelligence officers said, "Ma'am, do you have a couple of minutes? We need to talk you to about the I.C.R.C. report." So I said, "Sure."
And then suddenly, all of these people that wanted to discuss this report were around me to include the Military Intelligence Brigade Commander, the senior legal advisor to General Sanchez, Colonel Warren, another person from the legal office, two of the M.I. officers, and they - I said "What I.C.R.C. report are you talking about?" And Colonel Warren handed it to me, and he said, "We need you to review this so you can sign it." I said, "I'm not in charge of the prison now. Why isn't Colonel Pappas signing it?" And Colonel Warren said, "Well, this is an earlier report, and we don't want to call attention to the fact that we have transferred the prison to the M.I."
AMY GOODMAN: To military intelligence.
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: To military intelligence. Why? I mean, they're coming out there to visit. What -
AMY GOODMAN: They had already removed you?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: They had removed Abu Ghraib from my command, yes, and turned it over to command of the military intelligence.
AMY GOODMAN: But all of the other prisons you were still in charge of?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Still in charge of.
AMY GOODMAN: And this was, the month?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: This was December of 2003.
AMY GOODMAN: December 2003.
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: It was after Thanksgiving, and Colonel Warren was there. And he had been on leave, so he came back in early December. So, that's how I could frame the recollection. And I saw - I flipped through this report, and I said, "Where has this been? Why are you handing it to me now?" And he said it must have been re-routed or routed incorrectly.
Well, I believe today that they intervened. They knew that that report was coming, and they kept it from me specifically, because there was this mention in that report of seeing a prisoner who was in solitary confinement for 72 hours, not unusual, but that he was naked - and they provided a blanket to him so they could speak to him - and that there was a prisoner who was reporting that he was being made to wear women's underwear on his head. So I said, "What is this comment about a prisoner wearing women's underwear on his head?" And one of the officers from the Military Intelligence Brigade said, "Oh, ma'am, I told the commander to stop giving the prisoners the catalogs from Victoria's Secret because they would be making things like this up." And they all laughed, And I said, "You know, I don't think that the I.C.R.C. would find that funny, and why did they go into a prisoner who was supposed to be in solitary confinement?"
So now the conversation became - that was the focus of it. 'This is what we want to say in the response. We want to tell them that a prisoner who is put in solitary confinement is put there for a specific reason, and if you interrupt that process, you lose the value of that confinement.' It was no longer on the accusations that were reported in that report. So, Colonel Warren then said to me, "Don't worry, ma'am, we're already working on a response. We just need you to sign it." I said, "Does Colonel O'Hare," my JAG officer, who had been completely reliable in reviewing responses to the I.C.R.C. reports - I said, "Has he seen this?" And he said, "Well, probably not." And I said, "Well, I want a copy of the report, and I'm going to take it back to him."
And when I went back out to my operations center that night following that meeting, I said to him, "Jim, did you see this report?" He took a look at it, he said, "Absolutely not, but I'll find out about it." Within a couple of minutes he came back in to me, and he said, "We're going out to Abu Ghraib tomorrow, because apparently there's going to be a meeting discussing the response to this report, and on how they plan to form the response." So, it took several attempts for them to get it right, because he would not advise me to sign a report that said that I was aware of this before, or that -
AMY GOODMAN: But ultimately, you did sign?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: I did sign a report, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Why?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Responding - well, there was a response that was necessary. We responded in a very timely manner to all of the I.C.R.C. reports.
AMY GOODMAN: Didn't the I.C.R.C. also report about ghost detainees? Who are ghost detainees?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: We were directed on several occasions, and directed through the CJTF-7, through General Fast or General Sanchez, by - the instructions were originating at the Pentagon, from Secretary Rumsfeld, and we were instructed to hold prisoners without putting their - giving - assigning a prisoner number or putting them on the database, and that is contrary to the Geneva Conventions. We all knew it was contrary to the Geneva Conventions. And we were told that this - these instructions were being given by Secretary Rumsfeld, and -
AMY GOODMAN: Who told you that?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Colonel Warren and General Barbara Fast, the intel officer for General Sanchez, and General Sanchez himself. And we were told that these instructions were for specific individuals, and they were a special case. And we would hold them without assigning a prisoner number until they were - until an order was given on how to handle them.
AMY GOODMAN: So that the International Committee of the Red Cross would not know that they exist, would not ask to see them?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Correct. Now, they didn't - the I.C.R.C. would not look for specific prisoners unless there was a reason or a number provided to them, for example, and because there was no communication between prisoners and family members, at least not from Abu Ghraib, because security detainees, as we were told, they fit into a different category. So, it would be unusual for the I.C.R.C. to be looking for a specific prisoner by a prisoner number. They would come in, and they would look at conditions, they would talk to individuals. Sometimes they would randomly select numbers, but the purpose of not putting them on any database is to keep them from being known.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Colonel Janis Karpinski. She was the Commanding General of Abu Ghraib, a Brigadier General. She is the only one of the generals to have been demoted for the scandal at Abu Ghraib for the torture. If the I.C.R.C. could get this information, the International Committee of the Red Cross, about abuse -- they were outsiders coming in. You're an insider. Why couldn't you get the information?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Well, because interrogation operations are separate and apart. I visited all of my prison facilities as often as I could get to them. I spoke to prisoners.
AMY GOODMAN: But you were based at Abu Ghraib.
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: I was not based at Abu Ghraib. I was based over at Camp Victory and later on in our assignment in Iraq, they - General Sanchez actually cut an order to move me out of Baghdad completely to another location, as I mentioned, closer to the Iranian border. He wanted me away from the situation. He wanted me away from the possibility of finding out about what was going on in interrogations. So, he incrementally moved me farther away, took Abu Ghraib away from me, then moved me out of Baghdad completely.
AMY GOODMAN: Once General Miller came and said the things that you objected to -- "Treat the prisoners like dogs" -- you knew, though, that the word had gone out, right, to the military intelligence and that the military police were supposed to be involved, at least in taking the prisoners to military intelligence. Did you put word out to those under you that you objected to this?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Yes, as a matter of fact. It's not exactly clear when the military police were going to be used to enhance these interrogations. We knew that at Guantanamo Bay there were 800 military police personnel to handle 680 prisoners, so they had two M.P.s to escort every prisoner they had there at Guantanamo Bay. In the middle of Iraq, in the middle of the Sunni Triangle at Abu Ghraib, we had fewer than 300 M.P.s to guard over 7,000 prisoners, so there was no opportunity to escort them -
AMY GOODMAN: And these prisoners, I.C.R.C., what, estimates 90% of them weren't charged. These were - they come from raids of homes, thousands of people just swooped up and brought in, according to whose command? Ultimately, who was responsible for that?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Well, that would be under General Sanchez, because his division commanders in each area of responsibility were assigned specific individuals that were from their area of responsibility. For example, Tikrit, and that would be the division commander in that area, and they would identify the individual, they'd identify the location, and then it would be up to that division commander to put together a plan to go out and capture that individual.
AMY GOODMAN: So, 90% of the people at Abu Ghraib, though, not charged, brought in, just being held indefinitely.
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: And I think it's important to separate the category of detainees that we're talking about. 90% of the security detainees, these so-called terrorists, associates of terrorists or individuals who may have information about terrorism, they are tagged as security detainees, and they're the ones who are being subjected to interrogation.
The other part of the population is the Iraqi criminal population, small - small crimes, non-violent crimes, looting, missing curfew. We had an effective release policy in place with my signature to release these prisoners after they had served an appropriate amount of time. And even in those cases, probably 75% or 80% of those individuals didn't have a piece of evidence in their file that would hold them or convict them in a U.S. court, but the security detainees, there was no release process - effective release process in place for them.
AMY GOODMAN: The Geneva - the ghost detainees, is this the only time you believe you broke the Geneva Conventions?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Well, I will tell you that all of the prison facilities were right on the line, not in terms of how the prisoners were being treated, but the conditions were very austere. We were keeping prisoners in the outside camps only for as long as we needed to because the temperatures were 120 degrees, 140 degrees by noontime, so I would say that we were very close to being in violation of fair treatment and humane treatment of detainees.
AMY GOODMAN: Did you ever speak directly to Donald Rumsfeld?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: No, I - Yes, he came to visit, and I expressed my concerns about the conditions in the prisons. I spoke directly to Ambassador Bremer nearly every week. I spoke to General Sanchez at least once every week, reported it in the updates and the night time briefings to General Wojdakowski, who was the deputy at CJTF-7, about the lack of funding, even the basic supplies: a basin for washing, a change of clothing, and the funding that was supposed to come from the prisons department at Ambassador Bremer's headquarters. We never saw one-tenth of the funds that we were supposed to receive. So, we were close to violating, but not for abuse or torture.
AMY GOODMAN: The ghost detainees, though -
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: - was the first violation.
For the rest of the interview, click HERE.
WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain, a prisoner of war who was tortured in Vietnam, said Sunday he will refuse to yield on his demands that the White House agree with his proposed ban on the use of torture to extract information from suspected terrorists. gI wonft,h he said on NBCfs gMeet the Pressh when asked whether he would compromise with the Bush administration. He is insisting on his language that no person in U.S. custody should be subject to gcruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or punishment.h The Arizona Republican said he had met several times with the presidentfs national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, on the issue, and both McCain and Hadley said Sunday they were working toward an agreement.
Hadley, on ABCfs gThis Week,h repeated President Bushfs assertion that the United States does not torture and follows international conventions on the treatment of prisoners. He added, gWefre trying to find a way ... where we can strike the balance between being aggressive to protect the country against the terrorists, and, at the same time, comply with the law.h gWefre working it. Wefre not there yet,h he said on gFox News Sunday.h
McCain, while saying he would not compromise on the torture language, said they were in discussions gabout other aspects of this to try to get an agreement.h He did not elaborate. McCain, a Navy flier who was captured by the North Vietnamese and tortured during the Vietnam War, sponsored an anti-torture measure that
has passed the Senate by a 90-9 vote. But the White House said it could not accept restrictions that might prevent interrogators from gaining information vital to the nationfs security and has threatened a presidential veto of any bill that contained the McCain language. McCain noted that intelligence gained through torture can be unreliable and he said the practice hurts the U.S. reputation abroad.
A top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday that wrongheaded ideas for the handling of foreign detainees arose from White House and Pentagon officials who argued that the president of the United States is all-powerfulEand the Geneva Conventions irrelevant. In an Associated Press interview, former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson also said President Bush was aloof, too distant from the details of postwar planning. Underlings exploited Bush's detachment and made poor decisions, Wilkerson said. Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded aides. He said Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard.E On the question of detainees picked up in Afghanistan and other fronts in the war on terror, Wilkerson said Bush heard two sides of an impassioned argument within his administration. Abuse of prisoners, and even the deaths of some who had been interrogated in Afghanistan and elsewhere, have bruised the U.S. image abroad and undermined support for the Iraq war. Cheney's office, Rumsfeld aides and others argued that the president of the United States is all-powerful, that as commander in chief the president of the United States can do anything he damn well pleases,EWilkerson said. On the other side were Powell, others at the State Department and top military brass, and occasionally Condoleezza Rice, who was then national security adviser, Wilkerson said. Powell raised frequent and loud objections, his former aide said, once yelling into a telephone at Rumsfeld: Donald, don't you understand what you are doing to our image?E Wilkerson said Bush tried to work out a compromise in 2001 and 2002 that recognized that the war on terrorism was different from past wars and required greater flexibility in handling prisoners who don't belong to an enemy state or follow the rules themselves.
Bush policy undermined?
Bush's stated policy, which was heatedly criticized by civil liberties and legal groups at the time, was defensible, Wilkerson said. But it was undermined almost immediately in practice, he said. In the field, the United States followed the policies of hard-liners who wanted essentially unchecked ability to detain and harshly interrogate prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, Wilkerson said. Wilkerson, who left government with Powell in January, said he is now somewhat estranged from his former boss. He worked for Powell for 16 years. Wilkerson became a surprise critic of the Iraq war-planning effort and other administration decisions this fall, and he has said his Powell did not put him up to it. On Iraq, Wilkerson said Powell may have had doubts about the extent of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein but was convinced by then-CIA Director George Tenet and others that the intelligence behind the push toward war was sound. He said Powell now generally believes it was a good idea to remove Saddam from power but may not agree with either the timing or execution of the war. What he seems to be saying to me now is the president failed to discipline the process the way he should have and that the president is ultimately responsible for this whole mess,EWilkerson said.
Wilkerson criticizes CIA
Powell was widely regarded as a dove to Cheney's and Rumsfeld's hawks, but he made a forceful case for war before the United Nations Security Council in February 2003, a month before the invasion. At one point, he said Saddam possessed mobile labs to make weapons of mass destruction, but they have not been found. Wilkerson said the CIA and other agencies allowed mishandled and bogus information to underpin that speech and the administration case for war. He said he has almost, but not quite, concluded that Cheney and others in the administration deliberately ignored evidence of bad intelligence and looked only at what supported their case for war. A newly declassified Defense Intelligence Agency document from February 2002 said that an al-Qaida military instructor was probably misleading his interrogators about training that the terror group's members received from Iraq on chemical, biological and radiological weapons. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi reportedly recanted his statements in January 2004. A presidential intelligence commission also has dissected how spy agencies handled an Iraqi refugee who was a German intelligence source. Code-named Curveball, this man, a leading source on Iraq's purported mobile biological weapons labs, was found to be a fabricator and alcoholic. Wilkerson also said he did not disclose to Bob Woodward that administration critic Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, joining the growing list of past and current Bush administration officials who have denied being the Washington Post reporter's source.
When Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales announced last week that Jose Padilla would be transferred to the federal justice system from military detention, he said almost nothing about the standards the administration used in deciding whether to charge terrorism suspects like Mr. Padilla with crimes or to hold them in military facilities as enemy combatants. "We take each individual, each case, case by case," Mr. Gonzales said.
The upshot of that approach, underscored by the decision in Mr. Padilla's case, is that no one outside the administration knows just how the determination is made whether to handle a terror suspect as an enemy combatant or as a common criminal, to hold him indefinitely without charges in a military facility or to charge him in court. Indeed, citing the need to combat terrorism, the administration has argued, with varying degrees of success, that judges should have essentially no role in reviewing its decisions. The change in Mr. Padilla's status, just days before the government's legal papers were due in his appeal to the Supreme Court, suggested to many legal observers that the administration wanted to keep the court out of the case.
"The position of the executive branch," said Eric M. Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University who has consulted with lawyers for several detainees, "is that it can be judge, jury and executioner."
The government says a secret and unilateral decision-making process is necessary because of the nature of the evidence it deals with. Officials described the approach as a practical one that weighs a mix of often-sensitive factors. "Much thought goes into how and why various tools are used in these often complicated cases," Tasia Scolinos, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said on Friday. "The important thing is for someone not to come away thinking this whole process is arbitrary, which it is not."
Among the factors the government considers, Ms. Scolinos said, are "national security interests, the need to gather intelligence and the best and quickest way to obtain it, the concern about protecting intelligence sources and methods and ongoing information gathering, the ability to use information as evidence in a criminal proceeding, the circumstances of the manner in which the individual was detained, the applicable criminal charges, and classified-evidence issues." Lawyers for people in terrorism investigations say a list of factors to be considered cannot substitute for bright-line standards announced in advance. The courts have given the executive branch substantial but not total deference, often holding that the president has the authority to designate enemy combatants but allowing those detained to challenge the factual basis for the administration's determinations. Some courts have suggested that a detainee's citizenship, the place he was captured and whether he was fighting American troops should play a role in how aggressively the courts review enemy-combatant designations. A look at the half-dozen most prominent terrorism detentions and prosecutions does little to illuminate the standards that have informed the government's decisions.
One American captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan was held in the United States as an enemy combatant. Another was prosecuted as a criminal. One foreigner seized in the United States as a suspected terrorist is being held as an enemy combatant without charges in a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. Others have been prosecuted for their crimes. In three high-profile terrorism cases, the government obtained convictions in federal court. Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen, pleaded guilty to taking part in the conspiracy that led to the Sept. 11 attacks and faces the death penalty. Richard C. Reid, who is British, pleaded guilty to trying to blow up an airliner over the Atlantic with bombs in his shoes and is serving a life term. And John Walker Lindh, the California man who pleaded guilty to aiding the Taliban, is serving 20 years.
In three other cases, the administration designated terrorism suspects as enemy combatants who may be detained by the military indefinitely without charge. One, Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen of Saudi descent, was released and sent to Saudi Arabia after the Supreme Court gave him the right to contest the government's claims. A second American, Mr. Padilla, was transferred to the custody of the Justice Department last week. The only remaining enemy combatant known to be detained in the United States, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, traveled the same road as Mr. Padilla, but in the opposite direction. "Al-Marri is precisely the flipside of Padilla," said Lawrence S. Lustberg, one of Mr. Marri's lawyers.
After 16 months of criminal proceedings on fraud charges, and less than a month before Mr. Marri's trial was to start in July 2003, President Bush designated him an enemy combatant. Mr. Marri, a Qatari who had been working on a master's degree at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., was immediately transferred into military custody and moved to the Navy brig in Charleston. John Yoo, a former Justice Department official who is now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said two issues tended to determine how the government proceeded. "The main factors that will determine how you will be charged," Mr. Yoo said, "are, one, how strong your link to Al Qaeda is and, two, whether you have any actionable intelligence that will prevent an attack on the United States." Jonathan M. Freiman, one of Mr. Padilla's lawyers, questioned that, saying the administration's decisions had often seemed to be reactions to actual and anticipated court decisions. "The government continues to be more focused on protecting its strategies than allowing them to be subjected to legal review," Mr. Freiman said.
In the indictment unsealed Tuesday, Mr. Padilla was not charged with some of the most serious accusations against him, including plotting to explode a radioactive device, because the evidence needed to prove the case had been obtained through harsh questioning of two senior members of Al Qaeda, current and former government officials have said. The statements might not have been admissible in court and could have exposed classified information, the officials said.
The Moussaoui case was also complicated by his lawyers' demands that they be given access to potentially exculpatory evidence that the government said had to be kept secret for reasons of national security. The mere possibility of being named an enemy combatant, coupled with the difficulty of divining the standards the administration uses in choosing whom to call one, can affect the decisions of defendants in criminal plea negotiations. "In the case of John Walker Lindh," said his lawyer, James J. Brosnahan, "there was a suggestion that even if we got an acquittal that he could be declared an unlawful combatant, that he could be a Padilla."
Indeed, the plea agreement Mr. Lindh signed contains an unusual provision. "For the rest of the defendant's natural life," it says, "should the government determine that the defendant has engaged in" one of more than a score of crimes of terrorism, "the United States may immediately invoke any right it has at that time to capture and detain the defendant as an unlawful enemy combatant." Mr. Freiman said he, too, had been told that the government reserved the right to detain Mr. Padilla again should he be acquitted.
Arguably, it may sometimes be preferable for a defendant to be held as an enemy combatant rather than being prosecuted. Mr. Lindh's case, for instance, is at least superficially similar to that of Mr. Hamdi, another American captured in Afghanistan. But Mr. Hamdi is free after three years of confinement, though he had to relinquish his American citizenship. Mr. Lindh is in the early part of his 20-year sentence. The government has not offered an explanation for the disparate treatment of the cases. Mr. Marri's detention, on the other hand, is potentially lifelong. Though he has not been convicted of a crime, said Jonathan Hafetz, one of his lawyers, the conditions in the Charleston brig are as bad or worse than those in the toughest high-security prisons. "He has been in solitary confinement for two and a half years," Mr. Hafetz said of Mr. Marri. "He hasn't spoken to or seen his wife and five children since he was designated an enemy combatant" in June 2003. "There's no news, no books, nothing."
This year, the same South Carolina federal judge heard challenges from Mr. Padilla and Mr. Marri. In July, the judge, Henry F. Floyd, ruled that the administration was authorized to detain Mr. Marri. Four months earlier, the judge had reached the opposite conclusion in Mr. Padilla's case. The difference, he said, was that Mr. Padilla was an American citizen. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., reversed the ruling in the Padilla case. The administration's decision last week to charge Mr. Padilla and try to moot his appeal of the Fourth Circuit's decision to the Supreme Court may have been driven by its desire to maintain a helpful precedent in the circuit where it brings many of its terrorism cases.
"They are seeking to keep their options open," said David D. Cole, a law professor at Georgetown, "by avoiding Supreme Court review in the Padilla case. It lets them keep standing the Fourth Circuit decision." In Mr. Hamdi's Supreme Court case last year, the four justices who joined Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's controlling opinion used a narrow definition of "enemy combatant," saying, at least for purposes of that case, that it meant someone "carrying a weapon against American troops on a foreign battlefield."
The government has proposed a much broader definition. "The term 'enemy combatant,' " according to a Defense Department order last year, includes anyone "part of or supporting Taliban or Al Qaeda forces or associated forces." In a hearing in December in a case brought by detainees imprisoned in the naval facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a judge questioned a Justice Department official about the limits of that definition. The official, Brian D. Boyle, said the hostilities in question were global and might continue for generations. The judge, Joyce Hens Green of the Federal District Court in Washington, asked a series of hypothetical questions about who might be detained as an enemy combatant under the government's definition. What about "a little old lady in Switzerland who writes checks to what she thinks is a charitable organization that helps orphans in Afghanistan but really is a front to finance Al Qaeda activities?" she asked. And what about a resident of Dublin "who teaches English to the son of a person the C.I.A. knows to be a member of Al Qaeda?" And "what about a Wall Street Journal reporter, working in Afghanistan, who knows the exact location of Osama bin Laden but does not reveal it to the United States government in order to protect her source?" Mr. Boyle said the military had the power to detain all three people as enemy combatants.
In January, Judge Green allowed the detainees' court challenges to their confinement to proceed. Another judge on her court reached the opposite conclusion, and an appeal from the two decisions is pending.
A judge in New York has ruled that pictures of Iraqi inmates abused by US troops should be released.
The judge made the order after a request by the American Civil Liberties Union for access to 87 unseen images.
District Judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected government arguments that this could fuel anti-US feelings.
Pictures of Iraqi inmates being abused at Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad last year have caused an outcry around the world. Several US soldiers have been jailed.
The ruling represents a huge potential embarrassment for the US administration, says the BBC's Jeremy Cooke in New York.
The government has 20 days to consider an appeal.
In a first reaction, the head of US Central Command, General John Abizaid, said publication of more pictures could distort reality.
"When we continue to pick at the wound and show the pictures over and over again it just creates the image - which is a false image - that this is the sort of stuff that's happening anew, and it's not," Gen Abizaid said.
However, the US commander in charge of Abu Ghraib at the time of the scandal said concerns that the images could trigger an upsurge in violence should not be overplayed.
"Certainly I would be concerned but I would be equally concerned... that the pictures had not been released and you allow then any opposition to say 'but there is more'," Janis Karpinski told the BBC's Today programme.
Karpinski was reduced in rank from general to colonel and found guilty of dereliction of duty. She says she has been made a "scapegoat".