From The White House To Abu Ghraib

The creator of the famous Stanford prison experiment says the Bush administration is responsible for the US army's abuse and torture in Iraq

In the Guardian, Sasha Abramsky writes:

From White House to Abu Ghraib
The creator of the famous Stanford prison experiment says the Bush administration is responsible for the US army's abuse and torture in Iraq.

Thirty-six years ago, Philip Zimbardo, a young psychologist at Stanford University, set up an experiment intended to explore how normal young men would behave if put into a prison setting.

Zimbardo's team advertised for paid volunteers, screened the applicants for mental abnormalities and personality disorders, divvyed up the chosen ones into guards and prisoners, and then kicked off the experiment.

Over the next few days, in the basement lab of the psychology building, the uniformed "guards" - getting increasingly caught up in their role - thought up ever-more creative ways to assert their dominance over the jumpsuit-wearing "prisoners". They paraded them around with bags over their heads; removed the prisoners' clothing as punishment; took away their bedding; made them scrub toilets with their bare hands; insisted they do huge numbers of press ups, sometimes with other prisoners sitting on their backs; threw them into a dark, locked closet that was supposed to serve as an isolation unit; made them scream obscenities at each other; even forced them to pretend to be engaged in sexual activity with other brutalized prisoners.

The experiment was supposed to last two weeks. By day five, however, four of the prisoners had begun showing signs of nervous collapse; and by day six, the "Stanford Prison" had to be closed. What had started out as a low-key academic project had degenerated, in a remarkably short space of time, into a real-life version of William Golding's book Lord of the Flies.

Sound familiar? Over 30 years later, many of the same techniques, amplified by the horrors of war and the terrors of guerilla insurgency - some of them simply bizarre demonstrations of sadism, others clumsily thought-through control strategies - surfaced in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Zimbardo has long been haunted by the events that his experiment precipitated. The realization that he and his fellow-experiment designers had created an utterly toxic environment, in which decent people playing guards speedily degenerated into brutes and decent people playing prisoners became abject, cowering, hysterical captives, has informed Zimbardo's career ever since.

Now, he has finally written a book on the Stanford Prison Experiment, tying it in with the slide toward torture that has occurred in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Titled The Lucifer Effect, Zimbardo's volume argues that it's futile to put all of the blame for these violent episodes on "bad apples" in an otherwise good barrel. Quite the opposite, he writes. If senior political, military or correctional officials create a "bad barrel," signify to underlings that abuse will be tolerated, turn a blind-eye to wanton acts of humiliation, then the chances are pretty high that many "good apples" that get dumped into the situation will swiftly go rotten.

A few years back, Zimbardo was approached by the defense team for Sergeant Ivan "Chip" Frederick, one of the reservists on trial for the Abu Ghraib abuses. Frederick was in charge of Tier 1A, the infamous tier in which men were electric-shocked, had attack dogs set on them, and were made to engage in various humiliating sexual rituals. He wasn't one of the prime abusers, but he was responsible for letting the cycle of brutality go unchecked. He was also a man of limited initiative, used to taking orders, and desperate to fit in, to be one of the boys.

Zimbardo came to believe that Frederick was, essentially, a fall-guy for "The System" (his capital letters, not mine). After 9/11, he argues, the higher ups in that system, whether it be political leaders, top military brass or shadowy intelligence bosses, were all giving a nod-and-a-wink to acts designed to physically and mentally break detainees. As the editors of the book The Torture Papers documented, getting "actionable intelligence" from suspects being interrogated came to be more important than respecting the niceties of the Geneva Convention or the various prohibitions on torture signed onto by congress over the years.

In the second half of The Lucifer Effect, Zimbardo develops arguments for why Bush, Cheney, then-CIA chief Tenet and Geoffrey Miller - the major general who arrived in Abu Ghraib determined to have the prison there implement Guantanamo methods of interrogation - should stand trial for the atrocities that occurred in Abu Ghraib. If a man like Frederick is going to go to prison for years for his actions, Zimbardo argues, then the higher-ups who allowed this to happen on their watch should most assuredly be held accountable too.

Of course, Bush isn't about to stand trial anytime soon. Congress isn't going to muster the cajones to impeach the man, let alone hand him over to any international court of justice. But that doesn't make Zimbardo's line of reasoning any less valid: bad situations or systems do lead to atrocious actions, not by every participant but by enough to cause tremendous damage. Political climates created by those in power do have a trickle-down impact throughout society, rendering previously unthinkable acts normal.

In the long-run, President Bush's casual acceptance of the need for the state-as-torturer, his willingness to embrace a means-justifies-the-ends philosophy, will likely be his most shameful legacy.

George W's poll numbers are now so utterly dismal that it's hard to work out which actions are most repellant to ordinary voters. I'd like to think - though, admittedly, without the data to back up the hunch - that his and Cheney's implicit condoning of a climate in which torture has flourished ranks up there. After all, most Americans, like most people everywhere, are not innately bad. Maybe for a while they accepted the notion that Abu Ghraib was the product solely of a few twisted, amped-up lowly reservists. Not anymore. Zimbardo and others have done too good a job of showing up the connections, of insisting we look at the nudge-nudge, wink-wink nature of the Bush administration's relationship to torture.

Heroes and Villains

Among the things I hate most about the nature of the woebegone wars we're fighting now is how easily our troops can become the bad guys. The New York Times recently reported on yet another collateral damage incident, this time in Afghanistan.

At Military.com, Jeffrey Huber writes:
American marines reacted to a bomb ambush with excessive force in eastern Afghanistan last month, hitting groups of bystanders and vehicles with machine-gun fire in a series of attacks that covered 10 miles of highway and left 12 civilians dead, including an infant and three elderly men, according to a report published by an Afghan human rights commission on Saturday… …One victim, a newly married 16-year-old girl, was cut down while she was carrying a bundle of grass to her family’s farmhouse, according to her family and the report. A 75-year-old man walking to his shop was hit by so many bullets that his son said he did not recognize the body when he came to the scene.

The incident took place on March 4 in Nangarhar Province. The military began an investigation shortly afterwards, and is now considering criminal charges against the Marines involved. I have no interest in condemning or condoning those Marines, and have no means of doing so. The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission report on the incident condemned the suicide bomb attack that started things, but also said that: “In failing to distinguish between civilians and legitimate military targets, the U.S. Marine Corps Special Forces employed indiscriminate force. Their actions thus constitute a serious violation of international humanitarian standards.”

That might be true, but it appears that the Commission's report is largely based on anecdotal evidence from eyewitnesses. Eyewitness reports are seldom reliable, and we have no way of knowing the underlying motives of these particular eyewitnesses, most of whom are families and friends of the victims and who may or may not have direct or indirect connections with al-Qaeda and/or the Taliban.

That the U.S. military is in the final stages of approving condolence payments to the families of the killed and wounded doesn't tell us much. We've been doing that sort of thing for a long, long time. But the outrage among Afghanis seems to be genuine.

“This is not an isolated case,” said Nader Nadery, deputy director of the human rights commission. Nadery said this incident and others like it are defeating the U.S. goal of winning the hearts and minds of the Afghani people away from the Taliban. I'll second that sentiment.

The Afghan commission's report has been forwarded to Admiral William Fallon, chief of Central Command, for review. That's just the kind of administrative headache Fallon and his staff need right now. They're already presiding over two failed wars, some kind of murky monkey business or other in Somalia, plus the possibility of an air and maritime operation against Iran.

The Marines involved in the Nangarhar Province incident are still in theater, but the rest of their 120-man company has been pulled out of the country. The entire company will no doubt be subjected to intense scrutiny over the affair, and its morale and readiness will suffer for it. Platoons of rear echelon merry fellows will wipe out mighty forests coming up with lessons learned and corrective training syllabi that no one will ever read.

The Marines under investigation may get a fair shake from the military justice system and they may not. Military justice is always a crapshoot. You could be Private Lynndie England, who got 36 months in the Naval Brig in San Diego for her part in the Abu Ghraib scandal. Or you could be Major General Geoffrey Miller, Donald Rumsfeld's interrogation czar at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, who was allowed to retire as a two-star. Or you could be Donald Rumsfeld, the man perhaps most singularly responsible for every crime and disaster committed in our Middle East misadventure, and retire as Secretary of Defense to a life of luxury that very few of us dare to dream of.

Funny how that works, isn't it? Lynndie England will be lucky to get back her civilian job at a fast food joint. Miller and Rumsfeld will never have to eat at one.

Like I said, I can't condone or condemn the Marines in this story because I don't really know what happened. But I find myself sympathizing with them because it's a travesty that they were in Afghanistan in the first place.

The fourth anniversary of the Mesopotamia Mistake took most of the public's eye off the fact that we've been flopping around in Afghanistan since October of 2001. Five and a half years later, Afghanistan is a narco-state, the Taliban are launching a spring offensive, the Karzai government is a joke and, oh yeah, the tallest Arab ever wanted dead or alive by an American president is still on the loose.

None of that is the fault of the Marines under investigation for using "indiscriminate force" at Nangarhar Province. None of those Marines concocted the elaborate hoax that led to our invasion of Iraq, none of them lied to us year after year about how well things were going there, and none of them tried to blame the "hostile media" or "Defeato-crats" for their own culpability in running two of the most mismanaged wars in U.S. history.

Nor will they live comfortably the rest of their lives on the cushion of their war profits. Whatever the results of their investigation or trials, none of those Marines will land seven-figure book deals, or cushy fellowships with neoconservative think tanks, or high dollar jobs as pundits in Rupert Murdoch's right wing media empire, and they're not likely to pick up executive positions with big profile defense contractors.

And come January 2009, none of them will retire to their ranches in Texas and erect libraries dedicated to the redemption of their legacies.

How Rumsfeld Micromanaged Torture

Alexander Cockburn writes:
When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld boasted, as he did frequently, of his unrelenting focus on the war on terror, his audience would have been startled, maybe even shocked, to discover the activities that Rumsfeld found it necessary to supervise in minute detail. Close command and control of far away events from the Pentagon were not limited to the targeting of bombs and missiles. Thanks to breakthroughs in communications, the interrogation and torture of prisoners could be monitored on a real time basis also.

The first prisoner to experience such attention from Rumsfeld's office, or the first that we know about, was an American citizen, John Walker Lindh, a young man from California whose fascination with Islam had led him to enlist in the Taliban. Shortly thereafter, he and several hundred others surrendered to the Northern Alliance warlord Abdu Rashid Dostum in return for a promise of safe passage. Dostum broke the deal, herding the prisoners into a ruined fortress near Mazar-e-Sharif. Lindh managed to survive, though wounded, and eventually fell into the hands of the CIA and Special Forces, who proceeded to interrogate him.

According to documents later unearthed by Richard Serrano of the Los Angeles Times, a Special Forces intelligence officer was informed by a Navy Admiral monitoring events in Mazar-e-Sharif that "the Secretary of Defense's Counsel (lawyer William Haynes) has authorized him to 'take the gloves off' and ask whatever he wanted." In the course of the questioning Lindh, who had a bullet in his leg, was stripped naked, blindfolded, handcuffed, and bound to a stretcher with duct tape. In a practice that would become more familiar at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq 18 months later, smiling soldiers posed for pictures next to the naked prisoner. A navy medic later testified that he had been told by the lead military interrogator that "sleep deprivation, cold and hunger might be employed" during Lindh's interrogations. Meanwhile, his responses to the questioning, which ultimately went on for days, were relayed back to Washington, according to the documents disclosed to Serrano, every hour, hour after hour. Someone very important clearly wanted to know all the details.

Lindh was ultimately tried and sentenced in a U.S. court, but Rumsfeld was in no mood to extend any kind of legal protection to other captives. As the first load of prisoners arrived at the new military prison camp at Guantanamo, Cuba, on January 11, 2002, he declared them "unlawful combatants" who "do not have any rights under the Geneva Convention." In fact, the Geneva Conventions provide explicit protection to anyone taken prisoner in an international armed conflict, even when they are not entitled to actual prisoner of war status, but no one at that time was in a mood to contradict the all-powerful secretary of defense.

A year after Haynes, his chief counsel, had passed the message that interrogators should "take the gloves off" when questioning the hapless John Walker Lindh and report the results on an hourly basis, Rumsfeld was personally deciding on whether interrogators could use "stress positions" (an old CIA technique) like making prisoners stand for up to four hours, or exploit "individual phobias, such as fear of dogs, to induce stress," or strip them naked, or question them for 28 hours at a stretch, without sleep, or use "a wet towel and dripping water to induce the misperception of suffocation". These and other methods, euphemistically dubbed "counter-resistance techniques" in Pentagon documents that always avoided the word "torture," were outlined in an "action memo" submitted on November 27, 2002, for Rumsfeld's approval by Haynes. The lawyer noted that Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Richard General Richard Myers (respectively deputy defense secretary, under-secretary for policy and chairman of the joint chiefs) had already agreed that Rumsfeld should approve all but the most severe options, such as the wet towel, without restriction. A week later, Rumsfeld scrawled his signature in the "approved" box but added, "However, I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?"

The answer, of course, was that he could always sit down if he felt like it, and in any case, according to a sworn statement by Air Force Lt. General Randall Schmidt, appointed in 2005 to investigate charges by FBI officials that there had been widespread abuse at Guantanamo, Rumsfeld's signature was merely for the record; he had given verbal approval for the techniques two weeks before. In any event, sitting down at will was not an option available to Mohammed al-Qahtani, a Saudi inmate in Guantanamo who soon began to feel the effects of Rumsfeld's authorization in the most direct way. Qahtani, alleged to have been recruited for the 9/11 hijackings only to fail to gain entry into the U.S., had been under intense questioning for months.

There is no more chilling evidence of just how closely connected Secretary Rumsfeld was to the culture of torture so defiantly adopted by the Bush administration than Schmidt's 55-page statement, which at times takes on an informal, almost emotional tone. Schmidt is adamant that Rumsfeld intended the techniques "for Mister Kahtani (sic) number one." And so Qahtani's jailers now began forcing him to stand for long periods, isolating him, stripping him, telling him to bark like a dog, and more. "There were no limits put on this and no boundaries", Schmidt reported. After a few days, the sessions had to be temporarily suspended when Qahtani's heartbeat slowed to 35 beats a minute. "Somewhere", General Schmidt observes, "there had to be a throttle on this", and the "throttle" controlling the interrogation was ultimately Rumsfeld, who was "personally involved", the general stresses, "in the interrogation of one person." Bypassing the normal chain of command, the secretary called the prison chief directly on a weekly basis for reports on progress with Qahtani.

Years before, a G.D. Searle executive had remarked on Rumsfeld's practice of "diving down in the weeds" to check on details, but this was a whole new departure. At one point in Schmidt's description of his interview with the secretary during his investigation, it appears that Rumsfeld was bemused by the practical consequences of his edicts: "Did [I] say 'put a bra and panties on this guy's head and make him dance with another man?'" Schmidt quotes him as remarking defensively. To which Schmidt, in his statement, answers that Rumsfeld had indeed authorized such specific actions by his broad overall approval.

Sometime in mid-August 2003, Rumsfeld took action to deal with the question of "insurgency" in Iraq once and for all. During an intelligence briefing in his office he reportedly expressed outrage at the quality of intelligence he was receiving from Iraq, which he loudly and angrily referred to as "shit", banging the table with his fist "so hard we thought he might break it",according to one report. His principal complaint was that the reports were failing to confirm what he knew to be true ¬ that hostile acts against U.S. forces in Iraq were entirely the work of FSLs ["Former Saddam Loyalists"] and dead-enders. Scathingly, he compared the quality of the Iraqi material with the excellent intelligence that was now, in his view, being extracted from the prisoners at Guantanamo, or "Gitmo," as the military termed it, under the able supervision of prison commander Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller. Rumsfeld concluded his diatribe with a forthright instruction to Stephen Cambone [under-secretary of defense for intel]ligence] that Miller be ordered immediately to the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, where the unfortunate PUCs [Persons Under Confinement] were ending up, and "Gitmoise it." Cambone in turn dispatched the deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a fervent Christian fundamentalist given to deriding the Muslims' Allah as "an idol," to Cuba to brief Miller on his mission.

Boykin must have given Miller careful instruction, for he arrived in Iraq fully prepared, bringing with him experts such as the female interrogator who favored the technique of sexually taunting prisoners, as well as useful tips on the use of dogs as a means of intimidating interviewees. First on his list of appointments was Lt. Ricardo Sanchez, who had succeeded McKiernan as the commander of all U.S. forces in Iraq. It must have been an instructive conversation, since within 36 hours Sanchez issued instructions on detainee interrogation that mirrored those authorized by Rumsfeld for use at Guantanamo in December the previous year that gave cover to techniques including hooding, nudity, stress positions, "fear of dogs," and "mild" physical contact with prisoners. There were some innovations in Sanchez' instructions however, such as sleep and dietary manipulation. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the overall commander of the U.S. military prison system in Iraq at that time, later insisted that she did not know what was being done to the prisoners at Abu Gharib, though she did recall Miller remarking that "at Guantanamo Bay we learned that the prisoners have to earn every single thing that they have" and "if you allow them to believe at any point that they are more than a dog, then you've lost control of them".

The techniques were apparently fully absorbed by the Abu Ghraib interrogators and attendant military police, as became apparent when photographs snapped by the MPs finally began to surface, initially on CBS News' 60 Minutes in late April 2004. When Rumsfeld first learned that there were pictures extant of naked, humiliated and terrified prisoners being abused by cheerful, he said, according to an aide who was present, "I didn't know you were allowed to bring cameras into a prison."

It is not clear when Rumsfeld first saw the actual photographs. He himself testified under oath to Congress that he saw them first in expurgated form when they were published in the press, and only got to look at the originals nine days later after his office had been "trying to get one of the disks for days and days".

The army's criminal investigation division began a probe on January16, 2004, after Joseph Darby, a soldier not involved in the abuse, slipped the investigators a CD carrying some of the photos. As the CID investigation set to work, Karpinski, according to her later testimony, asked a sergeant at the prison, "What's this about photographs?" The sergeant replied, "Ma'am, we've heard something about photographs, but I have no idea. Nobody has any details, and Ma'am, if anybody knows, nobody is talking." When she asked to see the logbooks kept by the military intelligence personnel, she was told that the CID had cleared up everything. However, when she went to look for herself, she found they had missed something, a piece of paper stuck on a pole outside a little office used by the interrogators. "It was a memorandum signed by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, authorizing a short list, maybe 6 or 8 techniques: use of dogs; stress positions; loud music; deprivation of food; keeping the lights on, those kinds of things," Karpinski said. Over to the side of the paper was a line of handwriting, which to her appeared to be in the same hand and with the same ink as the signature. The line read: "Make sure this happens!!"

Further indications of Rumsfeld's close interest in ongoing events at Abu Ghraib emerged in subsequent court proceedings. In May 2006, Sergeant Santos Cardona, an army dog handler was court-martialed at Fort Meade, Maryland. In stipulated (i.e., accepted by defense and prosecution) testimony, Maj. Michael Thompson, who had been assigned to the 325th Military Intelligence Battalion in the relevant period and reported to Col. Tom Pappas, the battalion commander, stated that he was frequently told by Pappas' executive assistant that "Mr. Donald Rumsfeld and Mr. Paul Wolfowitz" had called and were "waiting for reports". The defense also read aloud stipulated testimony from Steve Pescatore, a civilian interrogator employed by CACI, a corporation heavily contracted to assist in interrogations, who recalled being told by military intelligence personnel that Secretary Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz received "nightly briefings".

Needless to say, the numerous investigations of itself by the military high command concluded that no officer or official above the rank of colonel bore any responsibility for Abu Ghraib. Col. Pappas was granted immunity in return for his testimony against a dog handler. One of the investigations, conducted by former Defense Secretary Schlesinger (who had become a friend of Rumsfeld since the distant days of the Ford administration) concluded that the whole affair had been simply "animal house on the night shift", the acts of the untrained national guard military police unit from Cumberland Mary, and assigned to Abu Ghraib.

This strategy of deflecting responsibility downwards appears to have been crafted in the three desperate weeks that followed the first call for comment on the photographs from 60 Minutes' producer Mary Mapes. While Gen. Myers bought time with appeals to the broadcasters' patriotism, Rumsfeld's public affairs specialists went into crisis mode under the urgent direction of Larry DiRita, who had taken on Torie Clarke's responsibilities as Pentagon public affairs chief following her departure in April 2003 . To help in developing tactics to deal with the storm they knew would break once 60 Minutes went ahead, DiRita's staff summoned an "echo chamber" of public relations professionals, "all Republicans of course", as one official assured me, from big firms such as Hill and Knowlton to advise them. Naturally, the well-oiled system for delivering the official line through the medium of TV military analysts was brought into play. Retired Army Gen. David Grange, one of the stars of this system, got the tone exactly right on CNN. Responding to a question from Lou Dobbs that though there were six soldiers facing charges, "their superiors had to know what was going on here." Grange responded quickly: "Or they didn't know at all because they lacked the supervision of those soldiers or (were not) inspecting part of their command." In other words, the higher command's fault lay not in encouraging the torture at Abu Ghraib, but simply in failing to notice what the guards were up to. "These soldiers," continued Grange indignantly, "these few soldiers let down the rest of the force in Iraq and the United States, to include veterans like myself. It is unexcusable."

Meanwhile, Rumsfeld accepted full responsibility without taking any blame, a standard response for high officials implicated in scandal. He said had had no idea what was going on in his Iraqi prisons until Specialist Darby, whom he commended, alerted investigators, though he also claimed that a vague press release on the investigation issued in Baghdad at that time had in fact "broken the story" and alerted "the whole world." He said he had written not one but two letters of resignation to President Bush, which were rejected. Gen. Myers testified under oath that he never informed Rumsfeld that he was trying to persuade CBS to suppress their report. When a leaked internal report by Gen. Antonio Taguba detailing how "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees" at Abu Ghraib had been published in the press and even on Fox TV a few days after the original CBS broadcast, Feith sent an urgent memo round the Pentagon warning officials not to read it , or even discuss it with family members.

What Rumsfeld did not mention in all his public protestations of regret over Abu Ghraib was that in the same month of May 2004 he had on his desk a report prepared by the Navy inspector general's office detailing the interrogation methods, refined in their cruelty, being practiced on Jose Padilla and other inmates in the South Carolina naval brig. Padilla, a Puerto Rican former gang member, found himself incarcerated on the direct authority of the secretary of defense, one of three prisoners accused of terrorism held in the jail and subjected to a carefully designed regime of isolation and sensory deprivation. Padilla, according to his attorneys, would ultimately spend 1,307 days in a nine-by-seven-foot cell, often chained to the ground by his wrists and torso and kept awake at night by guards using bright lights and loud noises. In repeated legal arguments, administration lawyers maintained that Rumsfeld was entitled to hold anyone deemed 'an enemy combatant' in his rapidly excpanding prison system.

Major General Miller Testifies In Abu Ghraib Torture Court Martial

The NYTimes reports:
Testifying at the court-martial of a dog handler accused of abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller said Wednesday that he never suggested that dogs be used to intimidate prisoners during interrogations in Iraq.

General Miller, who was the commander of the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was sent to Iraq in August 2003 by senior Pentagon commanders to review the interrogation and detention system there and recommend ways to improve the collection of intelligence about the growing insurgency.

Within days of his visit, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the commander of the coalition forces in Iraq, issued guidance that seemed to allow for the use of dogs in interrogations.

Since the disclosures in April 2004 of extensive abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, sometimes involving dogs, the question of who was responsible for interrogation procedures has remained a subject of debate.

General Miller, the highest ranking officer to testify at any trial involving misconduct at Abu Ghraib, shed little light on Wednesday into questions of command responsibility for the prison abuses.

He was called as a witness in the trial of Sgt. Santos A. Cardona, 32, who is charged with using his dog, a Belgian Malinois, to abuse prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

In March, military jurors sentenced another dog handler, Sgt. Michael J. Smith, was sentenced to nearly six months in prison for abuse that included taking part with Sergeant Cardona in a competition to see who could be first to terrify prisoners enough to get them to soil themselves.

In nearly an hour on the witness stand, General Miller offered new details of his trip to Iraq, which has been depicted as importing harsh interrogation techniques from Guantánamo. He said he recommended that military dogs could be used to help with "custody and control" of detainees at the prison.

Harvey J. Volzer, Sergeant Cardona's civilian defense lawyer, asked whether General Miller had recommended "military working dogs as part of the interrogation situation."

His response: "No."

General Miller said he believed that the dogs "were very effective in assisting detention staff in maintaining custody and control."

Mr. Volzer has said that the dog handlers were following orders from superior officers. But it remained unclear how General Miller's testimony could help Sergeant Cardona.

Mr. Volzer told the military jury of four officers and three enlisted soldiers in his opening statement on Tuesday that soldiers at Abu Ghraib were operating under confusing orders and that the testimony might be aimed at bolstering that argument.

After General Miller's visit, General Sanchez issued an order saying that Arab men had a fear of dogs and that the fear could be exploited in using the animals "while maintaining security during interrogations."

Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the top military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib, testified in the earlier trial of Sergeant Smith that General Miller had recommended the use of dogs during interrogations. But on Wednesday in the current trial, he testified that General Miller did not make any such specific recommendations.

General Miller did not appear in the earlier trial, invoking his right not to give testimony that might incriminate him. But he changed his position after the Senate Armed Services Committee delayed his retirement until he was more forthcoming.

Abu Ghraib & Gitmo Major General Invokes 5th Amendment At Court Martial For Underlings

The Washington Post reports:
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, a central figure in the U.S. detainee-abuse scandal, this week invoked his right not to incriminate himself in court-martial proceedings against two soldiers accused of using dogs to intimidate captives at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, according to lawyers involved in the case.

The move by Miller -- who once supervised the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and helped set up operations at Abu Ghraib -- is the first time the general has given an indication that he might have information that could implicate him in wrongdoing, according to military lawyers.

Harvey Volzer, an attorney for one of the dog handlers, has been seeking to question Miller to determine whether Miller ordered the use of military working dogs to frighten detainees during interrogations at Abu Ghraib. Volzer has argued that the dog handlers were following orders when the animals were used against detainees.

Maj. Michelle E. Crawford, a defense lawyer representing Miller, said the general decided not to answer further questions because he has "been interviewed repeatedly over the last several years" about his role at Guantanamo Bay and his visit to Iraq and he stands by his many statements to Congress, Army investigators and lawyers.

Miller's "choice to no longer answer the same questions . . . was based on the advice of counsel and includes the fact that he has already, and repeatedly, answered all inquiries fully," Crawford said.

Miller's decision came shortly after Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the commanding officer at Abu Ghraib, accepted immunity from prosecution this week and was ordered to testify at upcoming courts-martial. Pappas, a military intelligence officer, could be asked to detail high-level policies relating to the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib.

He also could shed light on how abusive tactics emerged, who ordered their use and their possible connection to officials in Washington, according to lawyers and human rights advocates who have closely followed the case. Pappas has never spoken publicly. Crawford said Miller was unaware of Pappas's grant of immunity. "This could be a big break if Pappas testifies as to why those dogs were used and who ordered the dogs to be used," said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "It's a steppingstone going up the chain of command, and that's positive. It might demonstrate that it wasn't just a few rotten apples."

Pappas's attorney, Maj. Jeffery D. Lippert, said yesterday that Pappas would not comment. But he added in an e-mail that "the Commanding General of the Military District of Washington has ordered Col. Pappas to testify if called as a witness in pending courts-martial, and granted him testimonial immunity to facilitate his appearance as a witness."

Miller invoked his military Article 31 rights through his Army lawyer on Tuesday, after a Navy judge in the Military District of Washington ruled that lawyers defending the two dog handlers could interview Miller this week. Article 31 rights are almost identical to those afforded civilians by the Fifth Amendment, and invoking them does not legally imply guilt. Miller now will not meet with the defense lawyers.

Eugene R. Fidell, a Washington expert in military law, said that Miller's decision is "consistent with his being concerned that he may have some exposure to worry about." Fidell added: "It's very unusual for senior officers to invoke their Article 31 rights. The culture in the military tends to encourage cooperation rather than the opposite."

Miller has long been in the spotlight of the Abu Ghraib abuse investigations, largely because he was sent to the Iraq prison in August and September 2003 with the goal of streamlining its intelligence-gathering operations, using Guantanamo Bay, commonly called "Gitmo," as a model. Officers at Abu Ghraib have said that Miller wanted to "Gitmo-ize" the facility, and that harsh tactics migrated from the Cuba facility via "Tiger Teams" that Miller sent to Iraq as trainers.

Photographs documenting a wide array of abuse against dozens of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 were turned over to military investigators in January 2004. The photographs were revealed publicly in April 2004, and seven low-ranking military police soldiers have taken most of the blame for the treatment of captives, which included sexual humiliation, stress positions and beatings. All seven were convicted on various charges, the most serious of which led to a 10-year prison sentence for Pvt. Charles A. Graner.

In an interview with defense attorneys for those MPs in August 2004, Miller said he never told Pappas to use dogs in questioning detainees. Photos of the dog handlers scaring detainees at Abu Ghraib were among the most notorious to emerge from the prison. Dogs were also used at Guantanamo Bay.

"At no time did we discuss the use of dogs in interrogations," Miller said, according to a transcript.

Volzer, who represents Sgt. Santos A. Cardona, one of the military dog handlers charged with abuse, said he believes the grant of immunity to Pappas will essentially clear his client, because Pappas already has admitted in administrative hearings that he improperly ordered the use of dogs. Volzer said he believes that Pappas was taking direction from Miller, and that Miller was acting on instructions from Defense Department officials. Cardona and Sgt. Michael J. Smith are scheduled to be tried in separate courts-martial in February and March.

"I think the command is hiding something, and I think what they're hiding is material that is exculpatory that says the interrogation techniques were approved by powers above General Miller," Volzer said. "Having Pappas available to testify may have given Miller the impression that he is next to be accused of doing something inappropriate or giving inappropriate orders."

Miller, now based at the Pentagon as a senior official managing Army installations, was recommended for administrative punishment for his alleged mishandling of interrogations of a valuable detainee in Guantanamo Bay. But high-ranking military officials have declined to impose the penalty. The detainee was subjected to a number of abuses that mirrored the ones that later emerged in the Abu Ghraib photographs.

Maj. Christopher Graveline, who has prosecuted several of the Abu Ghraib abuse cases, said yesterday that Pappas might be called to testify in upcoming courts-martial, but declined to comment on "any current or future prosecutions."

Asked whether prosecutors are looking at additional charges arising out of the Abu Ghraib investigation, Graveline said: "We're taking it where the evidence leads it."

General Is Said To Have Urged Use Of Dogs At Abu Ghraib

The Washington Post reports:
A U.S. Army general dispatched by senior Pentagon officials to bolster the collection of intelligence from prisoners in Iraq last fall inspired and promoted the use of guard dogs there to frighten the Iraqis, according to sworn testimony by the top U.S. intelligence officer at the Abu Ghraib prison.

According to the officer, Col. Thomas Pappas, the idea came from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who at the time commanded the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and was implemented under a policy approved by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top U.S. military official in Iraq.

"It was a technique I had personally discussed with General Miller, when he was here" visiting the prison, testified Pappas, head of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade and the officer placed in charge of the cellblocks at Abu Ghraib prison where abuses occurred in the wake of Miller's visit to Baghdad between Aug. 30 and Sept. 9, 2003.

"He said that they used military working dogs at Gitmo [the nickname for Guantanamo Bay], and that they were effective in setting the atmosphere for which, you know, you could get information" from the prisoners, Pappas told the Army investigator, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, according to a transcript provided to The Washington Post.

Pappas, who was under pressure from Taguba to justify the legality and appropriateness of using guard dogs to frighten detainees, said at two separate points in the Feb. 9 interview that Miller gave him the idea. He also said Miller had indicated the use of the dogs "with or without a muzzle" was "okay" in booths where prisoners were taken for interrogation.

But Miller, whom the Bush administration appointed as the new head of Abu Ghraib this month, denied through a spokesman that the conversation took place.

"Miller never had a conversation with Colonel Pappas regarding the use of military dogs for interrogation purposes in Iraq. Further, military dogs were never used in interrogations at Guantanamo," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq.

Pappas's statements nonetheless provide the fullest public account to date of how he viewed the interrogation mission at Abu Ghraib and Miller's impact on operations there. Pappas said, among other things, that interrogation plans involving the use of dogs, shackling, "making detainees strip down," or similar aggressive measures followed Sanchez's policy, but were often approved by Sanchez's deputy, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, or by Pappas himself.

The claims and counterclaims between Pappas and Miller concern one of the most notorious aspects of U.S. actions at Abu Ghraib, as revealed by Taguba's March 9 report and by pictures taken by military personnel that became public late last month. The pictures show unmuzzled dogs being used to intimidate Abu Ghraib detainees, sometimes while the prisoners are cowering, naked, against a wall.

Taguba, in a rare classified passage within his generally unclassified report, listed "using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees" as one of 13 examples of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" inflicted by U.S. military personnel at Abu Ghraib.

Experts on the laws of war have charged that using dogs to coerce prisoners into providing information, as was done at Abu Ghraib, constitutes a violation of the Geneva Conventions that protect civilians under the control of an occupying power, such as the Iraqi detainees.

"Threatening a prisoner with a ferocious guard dog is no different as a matter of law from pointing a gun at a prisoner's head and ordering him to talk," said James Ross, senior legal adviser at Human Rights Watch. "That's a violation of the Geneva Conventions."

Article 31 of the Fourth Geneva Convention bars use of coercion against protected persons, and Common Article Three bars any "humiliating and degrading treatment," Ross said. Experts do not consider the presence in a prison of threatening dogs, by itself, to constitute torture, but a 1999 United Nations-approved manual lists the "arranging of conditions for attacks by animals such as dogs" as a "torture method."

But Pappas, who was charged with overseeing interrogations at Abu Ghraib involving those suspected of posing or knowing about threats to U.S. forces in Iraq, told Taguba that "I did not personally look at that [use of dogs] with regard to the Geneva Convention," according to the transcript.

Pappas also said he did not have "a program" to inform his civilian employees, including a translator and an interrogator, of what the Geneva Conventions stated, and said he was unaware if anyone else did. He said he did not believe using force to coerce, intimidate or cause fear violated the conventions.

Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, who commanded the prison guards at Abu Ghraib's cellblocks 1A and 1B until Nov. 19, when Pappas assumed control, said in an interview that Navy, Army and Air Force dog teams were used there for security purposes. But she said military intelligence officers "were responsible for assigning those dogs and where they would go."

Using dogs to intimidate or attack detainees was very much against regulations, Karpinski said. "You cannot use the dogs in that fashion, to attack or be aggressive with a detainee. . . . Why were there guys so willing to take these orders? And who was giving the orders? The military intelligence people were in charge of them."

Taguba never interviewed Miller or any officer above Karpinski's rank for his report. Nor did he conduct a detailed probe of the actions of military intelligence officials. But he said he suspected that Pappas and several of his colleagues were "either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib."

In a Feb. 11 written statement accompanying the transcript, Pappas shifted the responsibility elsewhere. He said "policies and procedures established by the [Abu Ghraib] Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center relative to detainee operations were enacted as a specific result of a visit" by Miller, who in turn has acknowledged being dispatched to Baghdad by Undersecretary of Defense Stephen A. Cambone, after a conversation with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Cambone told lawmakers recently that he wanted Miller to go because he had done a good job organizing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and wanted Miller to help improve intelligence-gathering in Iraq.

Some senators, however, have noted that the Bush administration considers Guantanamo detainees exempt from the protections of the Geneva Conventions, and wondered if Miller brought the same aggressive interrogation ideas with him to Iraq, where the conventions apply.

When asked at a May 19 Senate hearing if he and his colleagues had "briefed" military officers in Iraq about specific Guantanamo interrogation techniques that did not comply with the Geneva Conventions, Miller said no.

He said he brought "our SOPs [standard operating procedures] that we had developed for humane detention, interrogation, and intelligence fusion" to Iraq for use as a "starting point." He added that it was up to the officers in Iraq to decide which were applicable and what modifications to make.

But Pappas said the result of Miller's visit was that "the interrogators and analysts developed a set of rules to guide interrogations" and assigned specific military police soldiers to help interrogators -- an approach Miller had honed in Guantanamo.

After calling the use of dogs Miller's idea, Pappas explained that "in the execution of interrogation, and the interrogation business in general, we are trying to get info from these people. We have to act in an environment not to permanently damage them, or psychologically abuse them, but we have to assert control and get detainees into a position where they're willing to talk to us."

Pappas added that it "would never be my intent that the dog be allowed to bite or in any way touch a detainee or anybody else." He said he recalled speaking to one dog handler and telling him "they could be used in interrogations" anytime according to terms spelled out in a Sept. 14, 2003, memo signed by Sanchez.

That memo included the use of dogs among techniques that did not require special approval. The policy was changed on Oct. 12 to require Sanchez's approval on a case-by-case basis for certain techniques, including having "military working dogs" present during interrogations.

That memo also demanded -- in what Taguba referred to during the interview as its "fine print" -- that detainees be treated humanely and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

But Pappas told Taguba that "there would be no way for us to actually monitor whether that happened. We had no formal system in place to do that -- no formal procedure" to check how interrogations were conducted. Moreover, he expressed frustration with a rule that the dogs be muzzled. "It's not very intimidating if they are muzzled," Pappas said. He added that he requested an exemption from the rule at one point, and was turned down.

In the interview transcript, Taguba's disdain for using dogs is clear. He asked Pappas if he knew that after a prison riot on Nov. 24, 2003, five dogs were "called in to either intimidate or cause fear or stress" on a detainee. Pappas said no, and acknowledged under questioning that such an action was inappropriate.

Taguba also asked if he believed the use of dogs is consistent with the Army's field manual. Pappas replied that he could not recall, but reiterated that Miller instigated the idea. The Army field manual bars the "exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment of any kind."

At least four photographs obtained by The Washington Post -- each apparently taken in late October or November -- show fearful prisoners near unmuzzled dogs.

One MP charged with abuses, Spec. Sabrina D. Harman, recalled for Army investigators an episode "when two dogs were brought into [cellblock] 1A to scare an inmate. He was naked against the wall, when they let the dogs corner him. They pulled them back enough, and the prisoner ran . . . straight across the floor. . . . The prisoner was cornered and the dog bit his leg. A couple seconds later, he started to move again, and the dog bit his other leg."

New Questions For Abu Ghraib Prison Commander

Miller meets with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a tour of Abu Ghraib prison on May 13

Newsweek reports:
Things may be heating up in the prison abuse scandal for Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the former Guantanamo Bay commander who is now in charge of detainees in Iraq. In a harshly worded letter, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence committee questioned the "candor and accuracy" of Miller’s responses in a classified briefing to the committee last week.

The May 21 letter to Miller from Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking minority member on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, chastises the general for "gaps and discrepancies in your presentation" and for selectively withholding information. "If information is only provided in response to a question that is phrased in precisely the right way, it is virtually impossible for Congress to fulfill its constitutional oversight responsibility," Harman writes.

In her letter, Harman refers to new details about interrogation policies at the Gitmo detention facility that became public less than 24 hours after Miller’s May 20 testimony. "I am dismayed that information emerging immediately after your briefing raises questions about the candor and accuracy of your statements," she says. A copy of the letter was obtained by NEWSWEEK.

Harman cites a recent Pentagon briefing and press reports, in The Washington Post and elsewhere, that documented deep misgivings by military lawyers and other legal experts over the interrogation policies at Gitmo overseen by Miller. She also expresses her chagrin that the committee has not received a copy of an Oct. 12, 2003, interrogation policy at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq that was reportedly issued by Iraq commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. That policy, Harman says, "seems to indicate a role for military police that goes well beyond the passive intelligence collection role that you have described."

NEWSWEEK also confirmed Monday an Associated Press report that Vice Adm. Albert Church III, the Navy inspector general, has recommended a more in-depth look at the interrogation practices initiated by Miller at Gitmo. Church inspected Gitmo during a brief visit in early May. Lt. Chris Servello, a Navy IG spokesman, said Church’s recommendation has been passed up to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s office.

Miller’s performance at Gitmo and in Iraq has come under increasing scrutiny as the scandal has widened. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade that once ran Abu Ghraib, has accused Miller of exporting interrogation practices directed at alleged al Qaeda and Taliban suspects at Gitmo--which a Pentagon spokesman called "more rigorous"--to Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, possibly in violation of Geneva Convention protections. The Gitmo prisoners were deemed to be "unlawful combatants" not subject to the Geneva Conventions, though the admininstration maintained a policy of treatment loosely consistent with the Conventions.

Miller has denied that any systemic abuse occurred at Gitmo. And he has insisted that he only intended for members of the military police (MPs) at Abu Ghraib to play a "passive" role by passing on information about prisoners to interrogators with Military Intelligence (MI).

But a number of MPs at Abu Ghraib have said that MI interrogators encouraged them to soften up prisoners with physically and psychologically abusive practices. Even though the Iraq war was nominally fought in observance of the Geneva conventions, which forbid torture or inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees, Miller brought with him to Iraq a "matrix" of such practices modeled on Gitmo’s interrogation techniques. These included the use of harsh heat or cold, withholding food or altering a prisoner's diet, isolation, threatening prisoners with dogs, and limited use of "stress positions" to cause discomfort or pain.

Congressional leaders, including some Republicans in both houses, have grown increasingly infuriated over what Harman calls "a breakdown in congressional oversight in addition to the breakdown of the chain of command" in the prison abuse scandal. Harman says she was not aware that interrogation practices were being questioned even though she visited both Iraq and Gitmo--the latter three times--and spoke with Miller in December 2003.

A spokesman for Joint Task Force 7 in Iraq, Capt. Mark Doggett, said he was unaware of the letter and had no immediate response to it.

Who is Geoffrey Miller?

Peter Ogden at the Center for American Progress reports:

In a war that has both catapulted and sunk many careers, the appearance of Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller walking across the front page of The New York Times this week brought yet another player to the international stage.

Miller is the Pentagon's choice to run the prison system in Iraq, and he is charged with the vital task of introducing law, order and decency to a prison system that lacks all three.

This would be a tough task at any time, and is doubly so in the wake of the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Miller must not only clean up the prisons, but also win the trust of the Iraqi people by demonstrating in public, highly visible ways that reforms have been instituted and that Abu Ghraib is no longer a place of arbitrary imprisonment and systematic abuse.

Is he the right man for the job?

At a moment when our nation's credibility is at an all-time low, one would hope so. But Miller's record as commander of the detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay (a.k.a., "Gitmo"), his perceived anti-Muslim bias, and his now infamous recommendation that guards in Iraq soften-up prisoners for interrogation, all strongly suggest that he is not that man.

Back on the map after spending the last sixteen months on the Cuban coast in charge of 600 detainees, Miller has already promised to "Gitmo-ize" the operation, according to the outgoing head of Iraq's prison, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski.

Miller went on to say, in a phrase bound to instill confidence in his cultural sensitivity, "We can do this the hard way or we can do it my way."

This is, in fact, Miller's second attempt to "Gitmo-ize" the Iraqi prisons. Last August, top Pentagon officials dispatched Miller with orders to find better ways of extracting intelligence from prisoners. According to the now-famous report by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, Miller's team, using Guantánamo "procedures and interrogation authorities as baselines," advocated using detention operations as "an enabler for interrogation," and insisted that "the guard force be actively engaged in setting the condition for the successful exploitation of internees."

It should come as no surprise, then, that many of the documented cases of prisoner abuse occurred around the time that Miller released this report. It's hard to dismiss this as a mere coincidence.

Miller's record at Guantánamo is also cause for serious concern. Over the past two years, this detention facility has been condemned by the International Committee of the Red Cross and others – particularly in Muslim communities – as an opaque, illegitimate, discriminatory, and quite possibly abusive camp for detainees.

Though Miller cannot be held personally responsible for all of the problems associated with Guantánamo (it was not his decision, for instance, to declare all the inmates "enemy combatants" and deny them their legal rights), as commanding officer he must be held accountable for the culture of secrecy, the charges of anti-Arab discrimination, and the accusations of prisoner abuse.

The emphasis on secrecy and opacity at Guantánamo Bay was established as soon as the first prisoners from Afghanistan and Pakistan arrived. It was promptly decreed that not only the press but Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International would be denied access to the facilities.

Miller justifies this secrecy on the grounds that those being held are suspected terrorists and thus may harbor highly sensitive intelligence. And now the Iraqi and American people have been asked by the White House to place their trust in him. The problem is that Miller's penchant for secrecy went unchecked at Guantánamo, where American commanders can play Col. Kurtz on a rock pile with good views of the Caribbean.

This kind of approach will not work in Iraq, where the only way to win the support of the people is to operate the prisons in the most transparent manner possible. A simple "trust me" from Miller won't suffice. The Iraqis do need to trust, of course – but they need to be able to verify, too.

Earning this trust will be particularly hard in Miller's case, given the allegations of his anti-Muslim bias. One of the few stories to leak out of Guantánamo Bay in the past year involved Miller's persecution of a Muslim prison chaplain, Army Capt. James "Yousef" Yee. Miller accused Yee last year of participating in a spy ring and had him detained for 76 days – a large portion of which was spent in shackles and solitary confinement. When further investigation revealed no compelling evidence of Yee's guilt, the charges were first reduced to mishandling classified information and lying to investigators, and then were dropped altogether.

This startling development raised some very troubling questions about whether Miller was capable of understanding the difference between law abiding Muslims and terrorists. And the Arab community was further enraged when Miller – rather than apologizing for the false accusation and extended detainment – insisted on reprimanding Yee on incidental charges of adultery and possession of pornography. Though again these charges were overturned, a widespread belief that Miller was motivated by an anti-Muslim bias endures to this day.

Finally, Miller's tenure at Guantánamo is haunted by the charges of abuse and torture that have been leveled by several former inmates. They describe shocking forms of physical and psychological duress (beatings, solitary confinement, inadequate medical treatment), as well as sexual humiliation (forced viewing of naked female prostitutes) that would be difficult to believe were they not so uncannily similar to the types of abuse that have been captured on film at Abu Ghraib.

These factors ought to be enough to disqualify Miller from his new post. With so many talented people in the U.S. military, we could certainly find someone who would bring a less tarnished reputation to the job. As it is, we don't know if the Iraqi people will give us a second chance to demonstrate our commitment to preserving basic human rights. It's impossible to imagine getting a third.

Torture At Abu Ghraib Followed CIA's Manual

The Boston Globe reports:
The photos from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison are snapshots not of simple brutality or a breakdown in discipline but of CIA torture techniques that have metastasized over the past 50 years like an undetected cancer inside the US intelligence community. From 1950 to 1962, the CIA led secret research into coercion and consciousness that reached a billion dollars at peak. After experiments with hallucinogenic drugs, electric shocks, and sensory deprivation, this CIA research produced a new method of torture that was psychological, not physical -- best described as "no touch" torture.

The CIA's discovery of psychological torture was a counterintuitive breakthrough -- indeed, the first real revolution in this cruel science since the 17th century. The old physical approach required interrogators to inflict pain, usually by crude beatings that often produced heightened resistance or unreliable information. Under the CIA's new psychological paradigm, however, interrogators used two essential methods to achieve their goals.

In the first stage, interrogators employ the simple, nonviolent techniques of hooding or sleep deprivation to disorient the subject; sometimes sexual humiliation is used as well.

Once the subject is disoriented, interrogators move on to a second stage with simple, self-inflicted discomfort such as standing for hours with arms extended. In this phase, the idea is to make victims feel responsible for their own pain and thus induce them to alleviate it by capitulating to the interrogator's power. In his statement on reforms at Abu Ghraib last week, General Geoffrey Miller, former chief of the Guantanamo detention center and now prison commander in Iraq, offered an unwitting summary of this two-phase torture. "We will no longer, in any circumstances, hood any of the detainees," the general said. "We will no longer use stress positions in any of our interrogations. And we will no longer use sleep deprivation in any of our interrogations."

Although seemingly less brutal, no-touch torture leaves deep psychological scars. The victims often need long treatment to recover from trauma far more crippling than physical pain. The perpetrators can suffer a dangerous expansion of ego, leading to cruelty and lasting emotional problems.

After codification in the CIA's "Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation" manual in 1963, the new method was disseminated globally to police in Asia and Latin America through USAID's Office of Public Safety. Following allegations of torture by USAID's police trainees in Brazil, the US Senate closed down the office in 1975.

After it was abolished, the agency continued to disseminate its torture methods through the US Army's Mobile Training Teams, which were active in Central America during the 1980s. In 1997, the Baltimore Sun published chilling extracts of the "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual" that had been distributed to allied militaries for 20 years. In the 10 years between the last known use of these manuals in the early 1990s and the arrest of Al Qaeda suspects since September 2001, torture was maintained as a US intelligence practice by delivering suspects to foreign agencies, including the Philippine National Police, who broke a bomb plot in 1995.

Once the war on terror started, however, the US use of no-touch torture resumed, first surfacing at Bagram Air Base near Kabul in early 2002, where Pentagon investigators found two Afghans had died during interrogation. In reports from Iraq, the methods are strikingly similar to those detailed in the Kubark manual.

Following the CIA's two-part technique, last September General Miller instructed US military police at Abu Ghraib to soften up high-priority detainees in the initial disorientation phase for later "successful interrogation and exploitation" by CIA and military intelligence. As often happens in no-touch torture sessions, this process soon moved beyond sleep and sensory deprivation to sexual humiliation. The question, in the second, still unexamined phase, is whether US Army intelligence and CIA operatives administered the prescribed mix of interrogation and self-inflicted pain -- but outside the frame of these photographs. If so, the soldiers now facing courts-martial would have been following standard interrogation procedure.

For more than 50 years, the CIA's no-touch methods have become so widely accepted that US interrogators seem unaware that they are, in fact, engaged in systematic torture. But now, through these photographs from Abu Ghraib, we can see the reality of these techniques. We have a chance to join fully with the international community in repudiating a practice that, more than any other, represents a denial of democracy.

Abu Ghraib & Gitmo Abuse: U.S. Policy or Anomaly?

Major General Miller's team stated that the function of Detention Operations is to provide a safe, secure, and humane environment that supports the expeditious collection of intelligence

~Taguba report

The BBC reports:
A key question which remains unresolved after the furore over the photos of alleged Iraqi prisoner abuse is to what extent the breaking of prisoner morale is still part of American policy.
The man brought in to run the Abu Ghraib prison is Maj Gen Geoffrey Miller, the man who ran the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

He told reporters who were shown the prison near Baghdad that sensory deprivation methods would now be used only after a general had "signed off" on them.

"We will examine very closely the more aggressive techniques," he said. But he did not say they would be stopped.

Yet he also said on Saturday that the Geneva Conventions would be applied in Iraq - they are not in Guantanamo though the Pentagon says their "spirit" is respected.

The Geneva Conventions are designed to protect prisoners of war from inhumane treatment.

Protections

On Saturday Gen Miller referred to the Fourth Geneva Convention, which applies to the protection of civilians in wartime.

Both it and the Third Geneva Convention, also drawn up in 1949, but this time to cover prisoners of war, lay down a series of measures to ensure that protection.

Importantly, both state that prisoners must "be treated humanely at all times".

Gen Miller is not new to Abu Ghraib. Last summer he was brought in to review the handling of prisoners there. His findings are revealed in the report this year by Maj Gen Antonio Taguba into abuses at Abu Ghraib.

The report uses euphemisms as it describes Gen Miller's conclusions. But the meaning is clear enough - prisoners have to be prepared for questioning.

"MG Miller's team focused on three areas: Intelligence integration, synchronisation, and fusion; interrogation operations; and detention operations.

"The principal focus of MG Miller's team was on the strategic interrogation of detainees/internees in Iraq. Among its conclusions in its Executive Summary were that CJTF-7 [the US army in Iraq] did not have authorities and procedures in place to affect a unified strategy to detain, interrogate, and report information from detainees/internees in Iraq. The Executive Summary also stated that detention operations must act as an enabler for interrogation."

Interrogation conditions

The words "integration", "synchronisation", "fusion" and the phrase "enabler for interrogation" must mean the process by which the detention officers prepare the prisoners for questioning by subjecting them to demoralising techniques.

There is more.

"MG Miller's team stated that the function of Detention Operations is to provide a safe, secure, and humane environment that supports the expeditious collection of intelligence. However, it also stated "it is essential that the guard force be actively engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees".

Did the guard force at Abu Ghraib who liked to take pictures of themselves at work simply overstep the mark while following a general instruction to set the "conditions for successful exploitation of the internees"?

Claims of accused

Evidence that it is all part of policy has come from one of the soldiers seen in the photos. Specialist Sabrina Harman of the Military Police was pictured smiling behind a pyramid of naked prisoners.

She is quoted in the Washington Post as saying in an e-mail that the aim was to break down the prisoners for interrogation.

"If the prisoner was co-operating, then the prisoner was able to keep his jumpsuit, mattress, and was allowed cigarettes on request or even hot food. But if the prisoner didn't give what they wanted, it was all taken away until [military intelligence] decided," she wrote.

"The job of the MP [military police] was to keep them awake, make it hell so they would talk."

Gen Miller insists the Geneva Conventions are being fully adhered to now

The whole issue of interrogation is now under examination by yet another investigation, this time led by Maj Gen George Fay.

And as US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld himself said during Friday's Congressional hearings into the alleged abuse, there is more to come.

During the hearings Republican Senator Lindsey Graham warned that the further revelations might concern "rape and murder".

It was striking that only one senator, the senior Democrat Carl Levin, asked Mr Rumsfeld about this. Many others chose to use most of their time making speeches, as often happens in Senate hearings.

Mr Levin identified the problem. The photos, he suggested, did not show a few "bad apples" infecting the rest of the barrel, but the application of a policy.

PR disaster

One is reminded of the calamitous effect of the British treatment of IRA suspects during internment without trial in the early 1970s.

The British army put into practice so-called "sensory deprivation" techniques designed to break down a prisoner's resistance before and during interrogation.

Those techniques involved isolation, subjection to white noise, hooding, sleep deprivation and physical hardship, such as being kept standing or keeping arms spread out.

When news of these methods came out, as they did quite quickly, there was an uproar and the IRA was handed a new recruiting sergeant.

The CIA and the US military developed similar coercive techniques. An American manual describing some of them and called "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual - 1983" was released under the US Freedom of Information Act in 1997.

The methods included the threat of force on relatives, blindfolding and the stripping of prisoners naked.

The methods used in Abu Ghraib have added in sexual humiliation, presumably regarded by the guards as particularly effective in the Arab world.

US and British soldiers are regularly subjected to the techniques themselves to help enable them to resist interrogation. It is known in the trade as R2I - resistance to interrogation.

New Abu Ghraib Commander Explains Detention and Interrogation Procedures

The Coalition Provisional Authority reports:
Physical contact, hooding, stress positioning, and questioning unclothed detainees are not authorized U.S. interrogation techniques in Iraq, the deputy commanding general of detention operations told reporters in Baghdad May 4.

Major General Geoffrey Miller, previously head of the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, was recently brought into the Iraq operations. He reports directly to Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the commanding general in Iraq.

Miller said that although hooding had been used in the past as a tactical measure when transporting captured persons to a detention facility within a division environment, that is no longer the case. "They either put a pressure bandage around the detainee's eyes or they use ... dust goggles and they put a rag on the inside," he explained. "Because we have transitioned into an occupation role and as we're transitioning to [working with a sovereign] government, we've chosen to use a less intrusive method that will accomplish the same mission."

Miller said the military was aggressively addressing the problem of any interrogators who used unauthorized techniques. "I got here about 30 days ago and have done this assessment. I've seen an enormous [amount of] positive work and positive change," he said. "There's a commitment by thousands [in the U.S. forces in Iraq] to do the right thing. As you know, unfortunately, a very small number did not do the right thing, and that's being addressed."

He said, "We were all chagrined by the occurrences" and noted that he told the interrogators in Iraq that "at the end of the day, you've got to make sure that what we've done will make America proud."

Miller also said that civilian contract interrogators are held to the same standards as the military. "If they do not follow our standards, then we discharge them," he said. "If there are acts that are beyond the level of discharge, then we will take the appropriate action to hold them accountable."

Miller had visited the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq during August and September of 2003 to assess detention and interrogation procedures. He said neither he nor his team saw any evidence of abuse during their two-week stay. His recommendation at that time was to streamline the chain of command by integrating the interrogation and detention functions, he said.

Following that recommendation, Abu Ghraib has been reorganized, Miller said, with a military and police brigade commander in charge of the detention mission and a military intelligence brigade commander in charge of interrogation, both reporting to his office.

Interrogations are handled by groups known as "Tiger Teams," Miller explained, and each team has one or two interrogators, an analyst, and a linguist. Every interrogation, he added, "must have an interrogation plan that lays out the techniques that will be used to garner information" and that plan is submitted to a supervisor for authorization. Teams may not use any techniques not authorized in the plan, he said.

According to Miller, the analyst watches the interrogation from a viewing area and team chiefs drop in to make assessments. "There will be times in interrogation where they'll stop -- the analysts will stop the interrogation and bring the interrogators out and say, 'This is not working; we've got five techniques authorized, let's try this one.' Or, 'Let's take a pause.' ... So it is a system of assessments that go on. And then they'll do an after-action review after every interrogation," he said.

"We lay out the standards for what we do on interrogation, and -- I can only speak with great certainty about the last 30 days -- we're following those standards. Interrogation teams are good people. We've laid out the edges of the roads, what the authorities are, and they are moving rapidly toward that," Miller said. "Remember, I'm biased. I'm proud of these people, for they have taken the responsibility for winning. And we're doing this correctly."

Operations at Abu Ghraib will continue, Miller said, although the number of detainees there will be reduced to no more than 2,000.

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)