*EPF403 09/09/2004
Congressional Report, September 9: Ghost Detainee Issue Examined
(Senator Warner vows to probe CIA on missing information) (690)

Members of Congress described testimony provided September 9 by top-ranking generals involved in investigating the abuse of Iraqi prisoners held in U.S. custody as very helpful, but zeroed in with questions about how some individuals became "ghost detainees" who were not logged into the prison system, and were unseen by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner said committee members intend to probe into the subject of how Iraqi prisoners could essentially disappear in the Abu Ghraib prison system and why the Central Intelligence Agency has not been more forthcoming in response to Army requests for information about ghost detainees.

Warner made his comments after the commanding general of the U.S. Army Materiel Command said the number of ghost detainees in Iraq ranged in number from dozens up to 100. Army General Paul Kern said identifying a precise number of prisoners -- who were essentially kept off the books --- "is a difficult question for us to answer."

Army Major General George Fay, who also testified before the committee, answered Warner's question about the volume of ghost detainees by saying there is no documentation from the CIA to really address the issue, but he suggested the number is "probably in the dozens."

Kern said the issue of ghost detainees "needs to be further investigated."

Senator Carl Levin said it is unacceptable that the CIA has not been more forthcoming in response to requests for information.

Fay said the CIA's inspector general informed him that the agency was conducting its own investigation into the matter and would not respond to his repeated requests for information.

Senator John McCain said President Bush's nominee to head the CIA, Porter Goss, should provide answers on this matter.

"We will continue to pursue this," Warner vowed.

The committee hearing, and another later in the day at the House Armed Service Committee, heard from Kern that there was no single explanation for the prisoner abuse. After conducting 170 interviews and sifting through 9,000 documents, he said 23 military intelligence personnel were found guilty of abuse ranging from simple to severe. The range covered those who were uninformed about the definition of abuse to those who improperly used dogs as part of an interrogation process.

Kern said Army doctrine dictates that dogs should be muzzled and only used in a security role and not in interrogation sessions, but that a confusing memo issued by the Combined Joint Task Force-7 resulted in the employment of dogs in a proscribed manner designed to exploit the prisoners' cultural abhorrence of dogs.

Fay said prison authorities thought they had the authority to use unmuzzled dogs to threaten prisoners as part of interrogations, but they had not been granted permission to do so. He attributed the foul-up to a miscommunication.

Kern said Army investigators found evidence of individual misconduct as well as the failure of leadership and military discipline. He said 44 separate incidents of abuse have been identified. For investigative purposes, he said, abuse was defined as violations of international law under the Geneva Conventions.

Warner asked another witness, Army Major General Steven Whitcomb, if there are now sufficient checks and balances in place to prevent further prisoner abuse from occurring. "Absolutely," said the special assistant to Army General John Abizaid, commander of the U.S. Central Command.

Fay said military personnel have been retrained and re-certified to conduct interrogations in all prison facilities and civilian contractors must also be certified to interrogate.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter said September 9 that the failure to follow standard military operating procedures "clearly contributed to a chaotic situation that facilitated criminal acts" in Abu Ghraib.

Kern said the final report designed to fill in gaps of knowledge about the prison abuse scandal is scheduled to be issued toward the end of September. Vice Admiral Albert "Tom" Church, the Navy's Inspector General, is preparing that report at the direction of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

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

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