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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
One key to the debate about who bears ultimate responsibility centers on the mystery of authority at Abu Ghraib. If it's true that a group of rogue M.P.'s ran wild inside the prison, then the chain of command would likely go up to Brig. Gen. Janice Karpinski, who was in charge of all the prison operations in Iraq, and the scandal would essentially remain contained within the Army.
But if military intelligence officers, perhaps acting according to Rumsfeld's secret orders, are to blame for the abuses, or if last November's fateful decision to amp up the intelligence-gathering efforts is a significant factor in the debacle, than the spotlight will likely bypass Karpinski and her M.P.'s and start climbing up the chain of command.
"If it's military intelligence and you go up the chain of command, you get to the Pentagon and to [Stephen] Cambone and Rumsfeld," explains Cannistraro. In Cambone's testimony before Congress last week, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence contradicted Taguba's assertion that military intelligence had control of Abu Ghraib. Cambone's version, which evoked skepticism from some members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was that military intelligence was acting as a sort of building supervisor, taking care of the prison grounds while the M.P.'s maintained control of the prisoners.
"Cambone is trying to create a firewall around the top chain of command," says Greg Thielmann, who ran military assessments at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research until he retired last October. "If guards were following military intelligence and [ranking M.I. officer] Col. Thomas Pappas, then who was he reporting to? Ultimately you get to Cambone -- and that firewall is not going to hold. One way or another, these guys above the identified culprits [running the prison] are in big trouble."
"I think it will go to Cambone," says retired U.S. Army Col. David Hackworth. "The original game plan was to fry a few fish: sergeants and corporals. Then they decided [they'd] have to fry some bigger fish: Pappas and Karpinksi. That won't work because they'll blow the whistle [on] Cambone, who's the ultimate boss of intelligence and a micromanager."
Cambone does not deny that last summer he encouraged Miller and a team of 30 specialists to travel to Abu Ghraib in hopes of improving the prison's intelligence gathering. But Cambone testified that Miller was not sent to Iraq with official directives, that he himself did not encourage M.P.'s to become involved in interrogation and that when Miller subsequently recommended breaking down the wall between military intelligence and the M.P.'s at Abu Ghraib, he never briefed Cambone about it. (Cambone also told senators that he did not read the Taguba report and was unaware of the abuse photos until after CBS's "60 Minutes II" broke the story about prison abuse on April 28.)
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., spelled out the potential trouble for Rumsfeld and the White House: "I, for one, don't believe I yet have adequate information from Mr. Cambone in the Defense Department as to exactly what Gen. Miller's orders were, [and] what kind of reports came back up the chain of command as to how he carried out those orders."
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., was equally skeptical of Cambone's testimony: "Gen. Miller suggested that guard forces be used to set the conditions [at Abu Ghraib]. Yet you did not choose to ask about this. You were completely oblivious."
