Most of you have probably already seen this story, which was on the front page of the NY Times today:
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, acting at the request of George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, ordered military officials in Iraq last November to hold a man suspected of being a senior Iraqi terrorist at a high-level detention center there but not list him on the prison’s rolls, senior Pentagon and intelligence officials said Wednesday.
This prisoner and other “ghost detainees” were hidden largely to prevent the International Committee of the Red Cross from monitoring their treatment, and to avoid disclosing their location to an enemy, officials said.
Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, the Army officer who in February investigated abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, criticized the practice of allowing ghost detainees there and at other detention centers as “deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine, and in violation of international law.”
This prisoner was apparently not abused. They just forgot about him, and forgot to question him–despite their belief that he was a high ranking Ansar-el-Islam officer actively planning attacks on U.S. forces.
Other “ghost detainees” (see correction/update below)have died in U.S. custody. From a May 25 NY Times story:
Accounts from intelligence officials seem to indicate that the practice of keeping detainees off official prison rosters was widespread.
In one of several cases in which an Iraqi prisoner died at Abu Ghraib in connection with interrogations, a hooded man identified only by his last name, Jamadi, slumped over dead on Nov. 20 as he was being questioned by a C.I.A. officer and translator, intelligence officials said. The incident is being investigated by the C.I.A.’s inspector general, and military officials have said that the man, whose body was later packed in ice and photographed at Abu Ghraib, had never been assigned a prisoner number, an indication that he had never been included on any official roster at the prison.
(I’m almost sure this next excerpt from the same story, a few paragraphs later, describes the same prisoner. The article doesn’t make it totally clear, though.)
An American military policeman said in sworn testimony early last month that the man had been brought to Abu Ghraib by “O.G.A.,” initials for other government agency, or the C.I.A., with a sandbag over his head. Military guards took the prisoner to a shower room at the prison, which was used as a temporary interrogation center, according to the account by Specialist Jason A. Kenner of the 372nd Military Police Company.
“He went into the shower for interrogation and about an hour later he died on them,” said Specialist Kenner, whose account left unclear whether the detainee was examined by a doctor or given any military treatment before he died.
“When we put on his orange jumpsuit to take him to the tier, we were told not to take the sandbag off at all,” Specialist Kenner said. “After he passed, the sandbag was removed, and I saw that he was severely beaten on his face. At the time, they would interrogate people in the shower rooms. He was shackled to the wall.”
“Later that day,” Specialist Kenner added, “they decided to put him on ice.”
Today’s Times article says the Ansar-al-Islam suspect in Camp Cutter, “is believed to be the first to have been kept off the books at the orders of Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Tenet.”
What I want to know is, are the key words in that sentence “first…off the books” or “at the orders of Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Tenet”? Were other detainees held off the books before, without Rumsfeld’s authorization? Was Rumsfeld’s authorization always required to hold a detainee without recording his name?
If so, was there a specific authorization for each individual “ghost detainee”? Or a more general order to hold detainees without listing them on the prisoner rolls if CIA officials requested it?
If not, why was Rumsfeld’s authorization required for the Camp Cropper prisoner and not for others? It might be that the chain of command utterly broke down at Abu Ghraib and no one even bothered asking Rumsfeld; they just did what intelligence told them. But Camp Cropper wasn’t a model of organization either, if they just forget to interrogate this prisoner. And Tenet seems to have been very careful about getting DoD and White House approval for the CIA’s actions.
A note on the timing: The “ghost detainee” whose body was photographed at Abu Ghraib died on November 20, according to the NY Times story
(see correction below). Rumsfeld’s order to hold the Ansar-al-Islam suspect without listing him was issued “in November”, according to today’s Times story. This CBS news story and this CNN story says Rumsfeld’s order was about a prisoner code- or nick-named “Triple X.” This U.S. News story, say that General Ricardo Sanchez’ ordered military guards to keep “Triple X” off the rosters and away from Red Cross inspectors on November 18, 2003. Rumsfeld’s authorization would have been issued before Sanchez’ directive; I don’t know how long before. According to Newsweek, “[o]n Nov. 19, Abu Ghraib was formally handed over to tactical control of military-intelligence units.” So it’s hard to tell much from the timing.
I could editorialize on all this, but what’s the point.
CORRECTION/UPDATE: The May 25 NY Times story probably has the date of the detainee’s death wrong. The Pentagon’s list of detainees who died in custody, reported in this CNN story, includes:
Manadel Al-Jamadi, who was being held at Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi prison in which the well-known abuse of prisoners took place. He died November 4, 2003, death of “blunt force injuries complicated by compromised respiration,” doctors said. Two CIA personnel, an officer and a contract translator, were present when he died, and the agency and Justice Department are conducting inquiries.
A Newsday story also gives the November 4 date:
One Iraqi who died in CIA custody is Manadal al-Jamaidi, who was brought to the notorious Abu Ghraib prison on Nov. 4, the same day he was captured by Navy SEALs. Pictures of his body wrapped in plastic and packed in ice have appeared around the world….
Al-Jamaidi, according to an administration official familiar with the circumstances surrounding his death, had been brought by the SEALs to a detention facility at the Baghdad airport for initial interrogation by the CIA.
He was delivered to Abu Ghraib wearing an empty sandbag over his head and had been interrogated for an hour by a CIA officer and a contract employee translator when he suddenly collapsed and died. That’s when interrogators removed his hood and discovered that he had severe head wounds.
How and when those wounds were inflicted was not known.
Cmdr. Jeff Bender, a spokesman for the SEALs, said he did not know whether al-Jamaidi was injured by the SEALs. “At the present time, no Naval Special Warfare personnel are being questioned in regard to the [CIA] investigation,” he said.
The administration official familiar with the al-Jamaidi case said that he does not know whether al-Jamaidi was already hooded when he was turned over to the CIA and whether the CIA officers at the airport knew that he had suffered severe head injuries. CIA officers “claim they didn’t harm him,” the official said….
Al-Jamaidi was a “high-value” prisoner because, according to the administration official, he reportedly was deeply involved in the resistance movement and perhaps had knowledge of planned attacks.
There’s also this Guardian article:
The dead prisoner was yesterday named as Manadel al-Jamadi. He allegedly died after being beaten by CIA or civilian interrogators last November in the showers of Abu Ghraib prison.
According to testimony by a guard at the prison, Specialist Jason Kenner, US navy seals brought Mr Jamadi to the prison “in good health”. When CIA officers began interrogating him later with a bag over his head, however, he slumped over dead during questioning. They then removed the bag, revealing that he had severe facial injuries….
But there was growing confusion last night as to what had happened to Mr Jamadi’s body. In evidence given at a closed hearing last week, Mr Kenner said he had seen the body packed in ice while a “battle” raged between CIA and military interrogators over who should dispose of it.
Yesterday the head of forensics at Baghdad’s morgue, Faik Amin Baker, said Mr Jamadi’s corpse had not arrived in his department – the usual place for dead Iraqis.
“We have received 26 bodies from the Red Cross and he wasn’t one of them,” he told the Guardian. “I’ve checked our records.” ….
In an email leaked by his defence, [Staff Sergeant Ivan] Frederick said Mr Jamadi had been under the control of “OGA”, or other government agencies, in other words the CIA and its paramilitary employees.
They stressed him out so bad that the man passed away,” it said. “They put his body in a body bag and packed him in ice for approximately 24 hours in the shower. The next day the medics came and put his body on a stretcher, placed a fake IV in his arm and took him away.”
Mr Jamadi was never entered into the prison’s inmate-control system, the New Yorker magazine reported, “and therefore never had a number”.
If he was killed on November 4 it was before Rumsfeld’s order regarding the other prisoner was implemented through Sanchez’ directive.
I have no idea how assigning prisoner numbers works. Perhaps it’s normal for a prisoner not to be given one or listed on the rolls for a day or so, and this man died/was killed before he was issued one, in which case he was not really a “ghost detainee” in the same sense as “Triple X”. But there are plenty of indications that he was not an ordinary prisoner–the fight over his body; that it was not sent through the Red Cross; the possibly faked medical treatment; that an administration official told Newsday he was a “high value detainee”, etc.
And then there’s the epilogue, also from the Guardian:
The Guardian has learned that US officials released Jamadi’s body to the International Committee of the Red Cross only on February 11 – more than three months after his death. The Red Cross delivered his body to Baghdad’s mortuary the same day.
The US death certificate issued for Jamadi contains no cause of death and no explanation for his severe cheek wound….
According to medical sources at Baghdad’s main forensic medico-legal institute, keeping Jamadi’s body refrigerated for three months made it difficult to establish the real cause of his death. “You can only do an autopsy for the first 40 days. After that the body changes,” one senior doctor said. “The cell tissue in the body deteriorates and the blood clots.”
The fact that Jamadi’s body is still lying in Baghdad’s overcrowded mortuary suggests that his family may not know of his death. It was not clear last night what steps – if any – the US authorities had taken to inform them.
From this MSNBC article, though, there was a U.S. autopsy:
In fact, one prisoner, Mon Adel al Jamadi, died while being interrogated in Abu Ghraib by a CIA officer last November, shortly after being captured by Navy SEALs. Al Jamadi was being questioned about a plot to attack U.S. forces with plastic explosives.
An autopsy revealed al Jamadi had broken ribs and had been “badly beaten.” His CIA interrogator has told investigators the prisoner was injured before he was turned over to the CIA — something the Navy denies.
The charitable interpretation is that we conducted the autopsy ourselves and didn’t list the results so as not to compromise the investigation; the uncharitable interpretation is that it was a cover-up. The Guardian reporter seems to believe the latter, but a Guardian reporter would be predisposed to believe that. I lack both the knowledge and, after having read all this, the objectivity, to make an educated guess.
Actually, that’s a great point you make at the end. What’s the point?
Let’s just face the facts… we’re not perfect but so many people want to make us seem evil when we aren’t. We are fighting a war against a vicious enemy. Far far more vicious than ourselves and everyone in the middle knows it.
This site has really fallen off… it seems to be focusing on all the wrong things. It used to strike me as intelligent… now it just seems like rants and alot of whining.
This post is too long by half already, so I’ll just put these quotations in the comments.
“Q: You seem to be drawing a distinction between that and the order that you sent out that allowed this other prisoner to be not registered immediately. Why is —
SEC. RUMSFELD: I’m not an expert on that. Dan Dell’Orto is. And what I can say is that I think it’s broadly understood that people do not have be registered in 15 minutes when they come in. What the appropriate period of time is I don’t know. It may very well be a lot less than seven months, but it may be a month or more.”
Later on:
“Q: And the last thing. (Off mike.) How is this case different from what Taguba was talking about, the ghost detainees?
SEC. RUMSFELD: It is just different, that’s all.”
I think your bias is showing a bit more than you realize Blue.
“All the wrong things”?
What pray-tell are the “right” things?
Oh…never mind…I fear I may have answered my own question there. If not, please feel free to correct me.
Only problem being that, this is not (or should not) be a partisan topic. Coming to terms with why Abu Ghraib happened is something all Americans should be focussed on. Not just the whiny ones (which is shorthand for “left” I suppose) or the intelligent ones (which is shorthand for “nonthreatening” I suppose). Again, feel free to tell me I’m wrong.
Then again…what’s the point?
Edward,
This probably doesn’t belong in this thread or maybe I have no business posting it at all. I certainly don’t mean to offend anyone.
I don’t deny being biased. Everyone is.
By wrong things I mean many of the people posting seem to be distracted by their overt dislike of Bush and that’s is all that is really communicated. Or maybe they are stuck in a rut.
I’m not sure really.
You of all posters should certainly know if anyone does that this site has many left leaning posters so there is no way that I could be implying that I thought the site was good at one time because it leaned to the right. Most of the time it leans the opposite direction. What originally attracted me to this site was the quality of posting even if it did lean in the opposite direction of myself.
Like I said it’s just my opinion that the hatred of Bush has distracted many to focus on the wrong things. Wrong meaning the site just isn’t as interesting to me.
Not that I think it is the purpose of this site to interest me.
“Like I said it’s just my opinion that the hatred of Bush has distracted many to focus on the wrong things. Wrong meaning the site just isn’t as interesting to me.”
I think it’s much more likely that you’re just unhappy with the direction public feeling regarding this administration has gone. Sullivan and Tacitus, once proud stalwarts, are declaring Bush the lesser of two evils at best.
You might also be interested to know that the word Bush didn’t appear in this thread until your last comment, so if it’s motivated by Bush-hatred, it’s a weird sort.
Blue,
I think sidereal might be on to something here.
Nothing in Katherine’s post was bashing Bush, or even mentioned Bush. She’s continuing here excelletn series about torture (and she’s blazed a trail cited again and again across the blogosphere noting that Clinton was guilty of some of this as well), so no charges of Bush-hating really stick here.
I think you’re bringing that to this thread. Why you’re doing so is a good question though.
You might also want to examine the postings made by Moe Lane, self-described Right Wing Death Beast. I’m not sure he would be flattered to be called a liberal. He certainly seems to take the whole torture issue pretty seriously.
Actually, given the important conservative virtues of valuing individual freedom & mistrusting government power, I would think that conservatives would be extremely interested in pointing out situations where our government in abusing its power by committing or enabling torture. Judging from what I’m reading, at least some conservatives agree with me on this.
“You might also want to examine the postings made by Moe Lane, self-described Right Wing Death Beast. I’m not sure he would be flattered to be called a liberal. He certainly seems to take the whole torture issue pretty seriously.”
I do, although by the time my cobloggers got done with the topic there wasn’t much original left for me to say about it. They tend to do that a lot. 🙂
Moe
PS: If you can read this, then my job’s webblocker is still down. For how long? (Shrug)
Sidereal & Edward,
I think you missed my point. I clarified my comment by stating upfront that my post probably didn’t belong on this thread. Please read my post more carefully so that you don’t accuse me of something that just isn’t true.
But both of you seem to have missed that comment. The fact that you missed or dismissed that sort of validates how I feel about this site now.
Actually, I am not unhappy with the direction the public is taking on this issue. I think it is only the media and those that hate Bush that are trying to get many to focus on the “wrong” issues. I think the public in general gets that the administration is dealing with the issue.
And finally, how can one say that they openly dislike the Bush administration and then be surprised that others think that may taint what they post. I think it has and that’s why I said the site isn’t as interesting to me anymore.
Ton,
I didn’t come anywhere near calling Moe a liberal. Why would you want to put those words in my mouth when you know I didn’t say it. I said that the site had many left leaning posters. That’s just a fact. Why didn’t you focus on what I actually said? Go back through some of the threads and count them up? Even look at the responses on this thread. 4 to 2.
And I didn’t discount the torture issue. I discount how eager so many appear to be to make us appear as if we are the bad guys. We are the evil ones. We are the ones who desire to kill innocent people. That’s just not the case and we all know it.
“I discount how eager so many appear to be to make us appear as if we are the bad guys. We are the evil ones. We are the ones who desire to kill innocent people. That’s just not the case and we all know it.”
That is a completely false characterization.
Your first post was at best a mixed message though, Blue.
There’s nothing to be gained by belaboring the point, clearly, but you seem a rational person, so I’ll give this one final go.
You did include a critique of Katherine’s text:
I can understand that you would be less interested in the site if it’s taken a turn you dislike, but you did choose this thread to post that comment on, so—despite the caveat—and based on the fact that your critique of the site followed your specific critique of Katherine’s text, I believe sidereal’s and my comments are not fairly characterized as “dismissing” your point.
Back to your point (and I accept that it’s not meant to reflect this post, per se), it requires a rather tricky balance to keep folks engaged across the spectrum (you won’t believe how many times liberal friends of mine tell me I’m pandering to the right). It should hardly be unexpected that we’d get it wrong from time to time, leaning too far one direction or the other.
Comments like yours do help us recognize when it’s tilting too far one way, though, so thanks for contributing it. And sorry for making too much of the fact that you posted the comment on this thread (we could use more open threads here, it’s true).
“That is a completely false characterization.”
False on this site, at least. (Wearily rubbing forehead) Blue, you’re reading into these posts stuff that their authors aren’t intending, to their justifiable umbrage. I just had to shout and threaten a long-time poster here with banning for doing precisely that*; do not even remotely think that I won’t toss people from my own side of the spectrum for similar transgressions. We have Posting Rules: read them, please.
Moe
*And if any of you think that I enjoyed it, think again.
Oh, the catastrophic equilibrium beckons, Moe.
Borrowing an illustration from Phil in another thread, if you drew a Venn diagram of the interests and attitudes of all of the commentors, the overlap would be enormous — everyone loves their kids (or someone else’s kids), wants to be safe, enjoys a laugh, hates the Yankees, and so on — and the exclusion zone would be a relatively small section, mostly related to practical implementations to achieve shared goals. And yet the entirety of the political blogosphere (and the offline political world) squeezes into that exclusion zone, until that’s the entire world of discussion, wherein the perspective is narrowed down until disagreements look like canyons and disagreers looks hardly even of the same species.
That’s a shame. Maybe if you hang the Venn diagram on the wall and throw a dart at it and see how often everyone basically agrees, you remember how small that section is.
Blue – just to clarify, I wasn’t really reading you as saying that Moe, specifically, was a liberal. I was reading you as saying those who are highly upset with the torture situation and the administration’s handling of it are just upset because they are liberals or because they started out with a hatred of Bush. I was pointing out that, on the contrary, many conservatives are upset with the situation and the administration for good conservative reasons.
“…so many appear to be to make us appear as if we are the bad guys. We are the evil ones. We are the ones who desire to kill innocent people. That’s just not the case and we all know it.”
I’ve never seen that attitude among my many liberal friends or in 95% of the coverage of the torture issue. I will accept in good faith however, that this is the impression you are getting. How about I try to give an alternate explanation of the meaning intended and you tell me if it makes sense to you.*
Some of us hold pretty high ideals for our country. Saying, we’re better than Saddam Hussein or we’re better than the old Soviet Union just isn’t good enough by a long shot. We recognize that as individual human beings, we’re not inherently better than the inhabitants of any other country. Therefore, if we want to behave better as a country than other countries, we need to practice vigilance to ensure our behavior is up to snuff. We recognize that our government has at numerous times behaved immorally in foreign situations. (You’d think a traditional conservative, with a suspicion of governmental fallibility, would be quicker to acknowledge this than a liberal would.) We recognize that our government is the government we have the most power to influence. (I can criticize the rulers of Pakistan or North Korea all I want, but won’t have much effect, whereas I do have some small influence at home.) Therefore, when I see that the current administration of my country is behaving in such a way, with such certainty of its own infallibility, as to institutionally encourage unacceptable behavior**, then I become angry. That’s not hating my country, that’s loving my country. That’s not saying “we’re evil”, that’s saying “we’re better than that, and we need to fix things now.”
* This is of course my perception of where many of us are coming from. Since this was Katherine’s post to begin with, I apologize if I mischaracterize her stance in any way.
** You can argue about whether you think the evidence really shows the administration has done such a thing, but that’s separate from the issue of whether posters such as Katherine are calling the population of the U.S. evil.
sidereal – Great comment.
Moe – I may have erred in mentioning you in my original comment. I had the memory of seeing some posting where you were expressing your concern over the torture issue. I may have been conflating your comments with some other poster’s in my mind, so I apologize if that was the case.
Ton,
I was being very generic in why I said I found the site has lost some flavor in my opinion. I have tried to describe why in previous posts. I am moving past that in order to respond to you.
I agree with so much of what you said. It was well written and thoughtful. Stating it once gets your point across well. If you kept telling me that for the next 30 days 3 times a day and ignore all the good you would probably lose me . I would think that you have an agenda since you would only be focusing on what I do wrong.
I don’t think I ever implied that we shouldn’t be upset about the some things that have taken place in the prisons. I still stand by my comment that so many of the issues have been clouded because of peoples hatred of Bush.
And this is what I truly find discouraging:
This is exactly what we should be doing. We should be putting pressure on the really bad situations. So many on the left are like cops giving out speeding tickets all the while ignoring the real dangerous criminals in our midst. I’m not saying we should stop giving out speeding tickets, it could put more people in danger if we did. But the two just aren’t equal in my mind.
So many are putting so much energy into opposing Bush that they are focusing on the “wrong” things.
** I said people want to make us “seem evil”. And by us I include the U.S. as a whole and this administration.
“This is exactly what we should be doing. We should be putting pressure on the really bad situations.”
I agree with this to the extent that it’s practical. Diplomacy, economic pressures, and in extreme situations even military action can be used abroad to work against the abuse of human rights. Of course, it’s always tricky to more good than harm even with the best of intentions, and frequently such interventions are governed by the interests of those in power more than actual concern for the well-being of others, but it’s still an important goal.
The options for individuals seeking to redress such wrongs abroad are much more limited. Amnesty International sponsors letter-writing campaigns to repressive regimes attempting to influence specific cases where individuals are being abused. Supposedly this sometimes has a good effect. Many times, it probably doesn’t make much difference.
Domestically, though, I’ve got not only more power, but more responsibility. Let me give your traffic ticket analogy a different spin. Suppose I have a kid at home whose getting into trouble. He’s swiped money out of Mom’s purse, wrecked the car, bullied the kid next door, etc. Across town there’s a gangster who has killed, robbed, blackmailed, etc. Obviously the ganster is the “real dangerous criminal”. Guess which one we’re going to spend more time talking about and yelling at in our house? No, our kid isn’t nearly as bad as the mobster, but our kid is the one that we have the responsibility to straighten out. And if the kid keeps screwing up for months on end, he’s probably going to be hearing about it for months on end – especially if he refuses to ever admit responsibility or straighten himself up.
I will grant you that those who hated Bush to begin with are the quickest to jump on evidence of his wrongdoing – just as avid Bush supporters are willing to find excuses or avoid the issue. In the case of the folks who run this site, I don’t think either one is the situation.
Ton,
Good analogy, let me add to it just a bit.
The left seems more interested in hindering the cops from taking care of the gangster because they have real problems in their own house.
Now, that looks like an accurate assessment of the situation.