[From the diaries -- Hunter]
Way back on page A-15 of today's Washington Post, we find out that a review of Pentagon documents proves that what had been described as an "ad hoc" and "unauthorized" practice by the CIA of hiding unregistered detainees at Abu Ghraib was anything but.
Army and Pentagon investigations have acknowledged a limited amount of ghosting, but more than a dozen documents and investigative statements obtained by The Washington Post show that
unregistered CIA detainees were brought to Abu Ghraib several times a week in late 2003, and that they were hidden in a special row of cells. Military police soldiers came up with a rough system to keep track of such detainees with single-digit identification numbers, while others were dropped off unnamed, unannounced and unaccounted for.
The documents show that the highest-ranking general in Iraq at the time acknowledged that his top intelligence officer was aware the CIA was using Abu Ghraib's cells, a policy the general abruptly stopped when questions arose.
According to the documents, the CIA had been trying to locate a place to stash its "unregistered prisoners." They first hoped to use the high-security military base Camp Cropper, but "Lt. Col. Ronald G. Chew, the military police commander there, told Army investigators later that he 'argued against the practice' and turned the operatives away." The CIA turned to Abu Ghraib.
According to the documents reviewed by the Post, "Col. Thomas M. Pappas and Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, the top two military intelligence officers at the prison, took part in discussions with the CIA on how to handle agency detainees." Pappas and Jordan and the CIA came to an arrangement that kept the International Committee of the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations from knowing the detainees existed. Beginning in September of 2003, according to statements from officers and soldiers at the prison, a "steady stream" of ghost detainees were held there.
The most recent Pentagon review of detainee abuse was released this month by Vice Adm. Albert T. Church III, who told reporters that his probe found 30 cases in which prisoners were held off the books, including one kept secretly for about 45 days.
According to investigative statements by some soldiers, such detainees were left in isolation cells for weeks without being interrogated, they were sometimes registered under fake names and essentially lost, and the rules that applied to thousands of other detainees did not always apply to them.
After initially denying that there was a system for holding CIA detainees, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top Army officer in Iraq at the time, eventually admitted to at least two cases of which he was aware: one detainee who died in custody and another who was kept without registration at the behest of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Ah, Rumsfeld. I guess we now know who in the chain of command knew about this policy, and when. Why does Rumsfeld still have his job?