NEW YORK --- The panel that has been investigating the Abu Ghraib prison scandal is leaning toward the view that failures of command and control at the Pentagon helped create the climate in which the abuses occurred, Newsweek reports in the current issue. The four-member commission’s report is still being drafted and its final conclusions are not yet definite. But, as Senior Editor Michael Hirsh and National Security Correspondent John Barry report in the August 9 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, August 2), there is strong sentiment to assign some responsibility up the line to senior civilian officials at the Pentagon, including Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, several sources close to the discussions say.
Rumsfeld is expected to be criticized, either explicitly or implicitly, for failing to provide adequate numbers of properly trained troops for detaining and interrogating captives in Afghanistan and Iraq, Newsweek reports. His office may also be rebuked for not setting clear interrogation rules and for neglecting to see that guidelines were followed. The commissioners “are taking an unvarnished look at the issue as a whole,” says a source close to the commission. “A more extensive look than some people had initially thought they might take.”
As commission chairman James Schlesinger and his team rush to complete their draft report by Friday -- the final version is expected Aug. 18 -- participants say there’s been a good amount of contention over how high to go and how tough to be. The central “philosophical debate,” sources say, turns on whether Al Qaeda poses such a new challenge that the old rules of detention and interrogation are no longer adequate, or whether America should stick to its traditions and treaty obligations, even against an adversary that respects neither.
Some on the commission also believe that Rumsfeld and senior officials failed early on to set up clear, baseline rules for interrogations -- an ethical “stop” sign, in a sense. The lack of direction from the top created confusion at Abu Ghraib and other prisons, according to testimony heard by the Schlesinger commission. Documents indicate that interrogation officials often undercut or ignored Army Field Manual 34-52, the standard doctrine setting interrogation guidelines in conformance with Geneva.
One example is a classified assessment of Army detention operations in Iraq done in the late summer of 2003 -- a copy of which was obtained by Newsweek. While the author, the then Gitmo commander Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, refers at one point to “providing a humane environment,” he does not mention Geneva protections or the field manual when he recommends that MPs “set conditions” for “successful exploitation of the internees.”
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NEWSWEEK: Report on Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal Expected to Blame Systemic Failures at the Pentagon
