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War, War, War See other War, War, War Articles Title: Interrogator details pre-Abu Ghraib abuses Expert US military interrogator witnessed abuses in Iraq he believed violated laws of war PAMELA HESS Sep 25, 2008 12:32 EST A military interrogation expert, Air Force Col. Steven Kleinman, told Congress on Thursday that prior to the abuses at Abu Ghraib, he witnessed interrogations of Iraqi detainees that he considers violations of the Geneva Conventions. One of those interrogations was conducted by an Air Force civilian and a contractor employed by the same organization, the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, which had sent a small team to Iraq in September 2003 to help a special forces task force make its interrogations of stubborn prisoners more effective. Kleinman told the Senate Armed Services Committee that his two colleagues forcibly stripped an Iraqi prisoner naked, shackled him, and left him standing in a dank, six-foot cement cell with orders to the guards that the prisoner was not to move for 12 hours. They could intervene only if he passed out, Kleinman said his two colleagues told the guards. Had the prisoner passed out, he would have hit his head on a wall, Kleinman said. Kleinman put a stop to the interrogation. "Until their time in Iraq they had never seen a real world interrogation," he said. The men work with the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training program for U.S. forces, which includes stressful mock interrogations intended to prepare soldiers to withstand and resist abusive interrogations in case they are someday taken prisoner. The program uses methods derived from the real-life experiences of American prisoners of war. The techniques include forced nudity, stress positions, exposure to extremes in weather and waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning. The mock interrogation program was once known as the Communist Interrogation Model. It was designed to "physically and psychologically debilitate an individual's ability to resist, with the primary objective of forcing compliance," according to Kleinman's testimony. Kleinman also detailed sitting in on another interrogation. An Iraqi prisoner was on his knees in a room painted all black with a light shining in his face. Behind him stood an American guard slapping an iron bar against his palm. After every question the Iraqi answered, his military interrogators slapped him across the face. That had been going on for 30 minutes. Kleinman said he called his now retired commander, Col. Randy Moulton, to express concern about the methods being used. He said Moulton checked with his superiors and called him back to say the harsh techniques had been specifically approved by the Pentagon's general counsel, William "Jim" Haynes or higher. Moulton also said he had been told the prisoners were terrorists who were not protected by the Geneva Conventions, Kleinman said. However, a July 2003 Defense Department memo directed that Geneva Conventions protections applied to all war prisoners and detainees in Iraq. Kleinman also intervened in another planned interrogation that involved painful and tiring stress positions, followed by interrogation, then 45 minutes of sleep. The interrogation would technically comply with rules requiring four hours of sleep every 24 hours for prisoners, but the sleep would not be continuous. "I stopped that also," Kleinman said. His team left shortly thereafter. It was there for about a month as scheduled. "We did leave under a cloud," Kleinman told The Associated Press after the hearing ended. According to Kleinman and Moulton, the military invaded Iraq and took control without expert interrogators or well-reasoned polices for dealing with prisoners, and was flailing for information however it could get it. "In far too many cases, we simply erred in pressing interrogation and interrogators beyond the edge of the envelope; as a result, interrogation was no longer an intelligence collection method; rather, it had morphed into a form of punishment for those who wouldn't cooperate," Kleinman said in his prepared testimony. In a September 2003 e-mail to a senior officer, Moulton complained about the lack of interrogation expertise across the entire Defense Department, which caused the JPRA team to be sent to Iraq to advise. It was an unusual role for the organization, which trains soldiers how to resist interrogations, not conduct them. "No DOD entity has a firm grasp on any comprehensive approach to strategic debriefing/interrogation," Moulton wrote. The e-mail was released by the committee along with other documents. Moulton told the committee, "I'm more than disappointed. I felt terrible that's where it went. However, at the time we were acting on good intentions." The committee also released responses from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and legal counsel John Bellinger regarding their knowledge of the CIA interrogation program when Rice was the national security adviser and Bellinger the council's top lawyer. She and Bellinger were also briefed on SERE interrogation methods at the White House in 2002 or 2003. "I recall being told ... that these techniques had been deemed not to cause significant physical or psychological harm," Rice wrote. Rice told the committee the CIA had sought NSC approval before embarking on its own harsh interrogation program in the spring of 2002. Rice said she asked then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to review its legality. The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the White House on legal matters, later determined the CIA's program to be legal. Rice also said Bellinger advised her regularly about "concerns and issues" relating to the Pentagon's interrogation and detention program at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. She said the Justice Department never discussed with her the FBI's now documented concerns with interrogation practices at Guantanamo Bay and CIA detention facilities. Bellinger said he knew the FBI refused to participate in some CIA interrogations, which included waterboarding for at least three detainees. He was also aware of allegations of abuse at Guantanamo in 2003. Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said in an interview Wednesday that Rice and Bellinger's statements show the White House knew the harsh techniques under consideration for use by American interrogators were adapted from those used by former enemies who regularly violated the Geneva Conventions. "These discussions about the use of these tactics took place at the highest level of our government, at the White House," Levin said. Levin contends the high-level endorsement paved the way for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thursday's hearing is the committee's second on the origins of the Pentagon's harsh interrogation program. The review fits into a broader picture of the government's handling of detainees, which includes FBI and CIA interrogations in secret prisons. The committee expects to issue a report later this year. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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