Leadership Central to Prison Inquiry

WASHINGTON —  Who was in charge of Abu Ghraib prison?

The nation’s top military officials struggled to answer that seemingly simple question in congressional testimony on Friday, with generals launching into arcane explanations of the distinctions between tactical and doctrinal command, and civilian Pentagon leaders seeming unsure who was running the prison when.

At one point, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld basically acknowledged there was no easy answer. “The responsibility, as I have reviewed the matter, shifted over a period of time,” he said.

The question has become critical because it goes to a central issue regarding the sadistic treatment of some Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib: Were the military police who served as guards acting on their own in such incidents, or at the behest of military intelligence officers urging the MPs to “soften” prisoners for interrogation?

In a damning report on the abuses at Abu Ghraib, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba points to the command structure as one of the principal problems. Taguba’s report is sharply critical of an order issued in November that placed a military intelligence officer, Col. Thomas M. Pappas, in charge of the entire compound. In effect, he was made the MPs’ boss.

“This is not doctrinally sound due to the different missions and agendas” of MPs and the intelligence troops they work alongside in military prisons, Taguba’s report said.

The issue was the focus of much of the questioning before Congress on Friday.

“What we saw in those pictures may have been directed by the interrogation leadership which had taken over” the prison, said Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “I think that’s a question that has to be explored and investigated.”

Interrogators are principally concerned with extracting information from detainees, while the MPs’ main duty is to operate a safe and secure facility.

When intelligence officers are placed in charge, “you create a situation in which it is possible for them to get the MPs to ‘set the conditions’ for interrogation,” said W. Patrick Lang, a retired Army colonel and former top official at the Defense Intelligence Agency. “Set the conditions” is a phrase that pops up repeatedly in Taguba’s report as a euphemism for the enlistment of guards in helping break down prisoners’ defenses.

Lang said the arrangement at Abu Ghraib was highly unusual.

“Every time I’ve seen a military interrogation unit, the MPs are always the custodians and they’re in charge,” he said. “They bring in the prisoner, they take them away, and you don’t tell them what to do.”

In interviews with The Times, Army interrogators and military intelligence officers who served at Abu Ghraib when the abuses occurred late last year vigorously disputed the suggestion that they tolerated, much less encouraged, the abuse of prisoners.

“That’s totally absurd -- we didn’t do anything like that,” one interrogator said. “I didn’t want to see anything like that and would have reported it myself if I had.”

They acknowledged that interrogators relied on MPs to do such things as place prisoners in isolation, or put them on “sleep deprivation” schedules in which they were kept awake to wear down their defenses.

“But there’s a difference between keeping a prisoner awake and tying him with electrical wire,” said another interrogator, referring to one of the gruesome images beamed around the world starting late last month. “I cannot see an interrogator instructing an MP to tie a prisoner and stick him on a box.”

Indeed, some evidence suggests that the abuses that have led to charges against seven MPs had little to do with interrogation. The prisoners were brought into the cellblock after allegedly causing a riot in one of the larger open-air cages. And at least two of the prisoners involved have been quoted in media reports as saying they were never interrogated at Abu Ghraib.

But Taguba’s report makes it clear that some MPs felt pressured to engage in harsh treatment of detainees. One MP said he had heard intelligence officers encourage the guards to abuse prisoners, saying such things as “Loosen this guy up for us” and “Make sure he has a bad night.”

The officer who oversaw all prison operations in Iraq, Army Reserve Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, has said the decision to put an intelligence officer in charge of the prison poisoned the atmosphere and encouraged abuse.

The order to make that change was issued in November by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top ground commander in Iraq. The order has since been reversed, according to testimony Friday.

The change in command came after Brig. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the officer in charge of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, visited Abu Ghraib in August and recommended that the guard force “be actively engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees,” according to the Taguba report.

A senior Pentagon official, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, acknowledged in congressional testimony Friday that he had tapped Miller to go to Baghdad last summer to improve intelligence collection. Miller is now chief of detention facilities in Iraq.

Rumsfeld defended the idea of using MPs to help interrogators, saying it had proved effective at Guantanamo.

“They found in Guantanamo that how [prisoners] are detained in terms of the rhythm of their lives can affect the interrogation process,” Rumsfeld said. “And so the linkage between the two is desirable, if in fact you’re concerned about finding more information that can prevent additional terrorist acts.”

Rumsfeld also stressed that whatever the relationship between MPs and interrogators, both are obligated to uphold the Geneva Conventions barring mistreatment of prisoners.

The MPs’ primary function “is to provide a safe and secure environment,” said Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff. “When you step over the line and say you now have them setting conditions or participating in interrogation, that’s a different issue.... Army regulation prohibits that.”