Bush team 'knew of abuse' at Guantánamo

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> Sun, 12 Sep 2004 21:19:37 -0700

> Bush team 'knew of abuse' at Guantánamo

>

>

>

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1303105,00.html>

>

> Bush team 'knew of abuse' at Guantánamo

>

> Oliver Burkeman in Washington

> Monday September 13, 2004

> The Guardian

>

> Evidence of prisoner abuse and possible war crimes

> at Guantánamo Bay

> reached the highest levels of the Bush

> administration as early as autumn

> 2002, but Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary,

> chose to do nothing

> about it, according to a new investigation published

> exclusively in the

> Guardian today.

>

> The investigation, by the veteran journalist Seymour

> Hersh, quotes one

> former marine at the camp recalling sessions in

> which guards would " fuck

> with [detainees] as much as we could " by inflicting

> pain on them.

>

> The Bush administration repeatedly assured critics

> that inmates were

> granted recreation periods, but one Pentagon adviser

> told Hersh how, for

> some prisoners, they consisted of being left in

> straitjackets in intense

> sunlight with hoods over their heads.

>

> Hersh provides details of how President George Bush

> signed off on the

> establishment of a secret unit that was given

> advance approval to kill

> or capture and interrogate " high-value " suspects -

> considered by many to

> be in defiance of international law - an officially

> " unacknowledged "

> programme that was eventually transferred wholesale

> from Guantánamo to

> the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

>

> Hersh, who broke the story of the My Lai massacre in

> the Vietnam war,

> makes his revelations in a new book, Chain of

> Command, which leaves

> senior figures in the Bush administration far more

> seriously implicated

> in the torture scandal than had been previously

> apparent.

>

> A CIA analyst visited Guantánamo in summer 2002 and

> returned " convinced

> that we were committing war crimes " and that " more

> than half the people

> there didn't belong there. He found people lying in

> their own faeces, " a

> CIA source told Hersh.

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> The analyst submitted a report to General John

> Gordon, an aide to

> Condoleezza Rice, Mr Bush's national security

> adviser.

>

> Gen Gordon was troubled, and, one former

> administration official told

> Hersh " that if the actions at Guantánamo ever became

> public, it'd be

> damaging to the president " .

>

> Ms Rice saw the document by autumn of the same year,

> and called a

> high-level meeting at which she asked Mr Rumsfeld,

> to deal with the problem.

>

> But after he vowed to act, " the Pentagon went into a

> full-court stall " ,

> a former White House official is quoted as saying.

> " Why didn't Condi do

> more? She made the same mistake I made. She got the

> secretary of defence

> to say he's going to take care of it. "

>

> The investigation further suggests that CIA and FBI

> staff had already

> witnessed incidents at Guantánamo just as extreme as

> those that would

> subsequently be alleged by freed inmates.

>

> A senior intelligence official told Hersh: " I was

> told [by FBI agents]

> that the military guards were slapping prisoners,

> stripping them,

> pouring cold water over them and making them stand

> until they got

> hypothermia. "

>

> The secret " special access programme " facilitating

> much of the

> mistreatment of prisoners, widely held to have

> contravened the Geneva

> convention, was established following a direct order

> from the president.

>

> Hersh reports that a secret document signed by Mr

> Bush in February 2002

> stated: " I determine that none of the provisions of

> Geneva apply to our

> conflict with al-Qaida in Afghanistan or elsewhere

> throughout the world. "

>

> Hersh's book reports that an army officer

> communicated concerns over

> abuses at Abu Ghraib both to General John Abizaid,

> the US central

> command (Centcom) chief at the time, and his deputy,

> General Lance Smith.

>

> The officer told Hersh: " I said there are systematic

> abuses going on in

> the prisons. Abizaid didn't say a thing. He looked

> at me - beyond me, as

> if to say, 'Move on. I don't want to touch this.' "

> Centcom has disputed

> the allegation.

>

> In an interview with the Guardian, Hersh provided

> evidence that the

> administration sought to evade the issue: he said

> codenames of some

> programmes were changed within hours of his original

> story appearing,

> presumably to maintain their secrecy.

>

> In a statement, the Pentagon said Hersh's

> investigation " apparently

> contains many of the numerous unsubstantiated

> allegations and

> inaccuracies which he has made in the past based

> upon unnamed sources

> ... Thus far ... investigations have determined that

> no responsible

> official of the Department of Defence approved any

> programme that could

> conceivably have authorised or condoned the abuses

> seen at Abu Ghraib.

> If any of Mr Hersh's anonymous sources wish to come

> forward and offer

> evidence to the contrary, the department welcomes

> them to do so. "

>

> Pressure has been building on the Pentagon over its

> detention policies

> after it emerged at a Congressional hearing last

> week that the

> administration is being accused of concealing up to

> 100 " ghost

> detainees " from the Red Cross, which must be granted

> access to prisoners

> of war and other detainees under the Geneva

> convention.

>

> Mr Rumsfeld told reporters on Friday he had approved

> the use of harsh

> interrogation measures, but that they had only been

> meant for

> Guantánamo. He said the measures ought to be

> contrasted with those of

> terrorists. " Does it rank up there with chopping

> someone's head off on

> television? " he asked. " It doesn't. "

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