Jason Vest had earlier written the 'Men from JINSA and CSP' article
( http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest ) for 'The Nation' about
the JINSA/PNAC Neocon cabal at the Pentagon as he just came out with the
following article for 'The Nation' as well which connects the neocons to the
torture in the Iraqi prison (s). You can also listen his excellent interview
about such on the 'To the Point' national radio program from earlier today on
your computer via the following URL:
http://www.moretothepoint.com/cgi-bin/db/kcrw.pl?show_code=tp&air_date=5/1
8/04&tmplt_type=Show
Implausible Denial
by Jason Vest
Writing in the December 16, 2002, edition of The Nation, I broke the
news--and explored the concerns many in the US intelligence community
had--about Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's quiet success in
prevailing upon Congress to authorize the creation of a new senior
position at the Pentagon,the Under Secretary of Defense for
Intelligence. Several months later, in the pages of the Columbia
Journalism Review, I followed up with a piece devoted to the media's
utter lack of interest--perhaps best demonstrated by the absence of
any reporter from a farcical confirmation hearing--in the new Under
Secretary himself, Stephen Cambone.
Despite his status as the Pentagon's über-intelligence
authority, in the initial days of the breaking Abu Ghraib scandal
Cambone was virtually invisible. When Rumsfeld was called to the Hill
to testify before the Armed Services Committee on May 7, however,
Cambone was unexpectedly summoned to the witness table from his chair
behind Rumsfeld. That cameo appearance resulted in a more expansive
return appearance on May 11, in which Cambone less than deftly tried
to undermine Abu Ghraib investigator Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba.
(Cambone disputed the general's conclusion that military intelligence
units effectively controlled the prison's military police
detachment.) Cambone also reacted adversely to Senator Jack Reed's
assertion (confirmed by Taguba) that recommendations made in a report
on improving intelligence collection at Abu Ghraib by then-chief
Guantánamo Bay interrogator Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller clearly
called for the use of MPs in interrogations, which helped create an
environment that begot the subsequent abuse and torture in the tiers.
As a May 12 Washington Post editorial points out, Cambone's office
approved interrogation practices that are in direct violation of the
Geneva Conventions.
At the May 11 hearings, Cambone and another senior Defense Department
official, Army intelligence chief Lieut. Gen Keith Alexander,
essentially cast themselves as mere Pentagon representatives fielding
questions about Abu Ghraib--and not as men who might bear any
responsibility for what they desperately tried to cast as an aberrant
and isolated incident. Yet many of their assertions on May 11 are in
fact contradicted by statements they made before the same committee a
month before, as well as a year-old memo outlining the
responsibilities of Cambone's office.
The Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, or OUSD(I) in
Pentagonese, was originally conceived by Rumsfeld as a centralizing
measure, a way to give him "one dog to kick" rather than a "whole
kennel" of individual civilian and uniformed defense intelligence
agencies. In choosing the person responsible for ostensibly bringing
unprecedented order and control to the Pentagon's spy shops, the
Secretary chose Cambone, a man with no intelligence experience but a
favored protégé and loyal partisan who had served on
Rumsfeld's ballistic missile threat commission and worked with the
neoconservative Project for the New American Century. Previously
principal deputy to Under Secretary for Policy Doug Feith (and, in
that capacity, liaison between Feith and the ideological intelligence
analysis unit that would later morph into the notorious Office of
Special Plans), Cambone went out of his way in his confirmation
hearings to say that he would closely "consult and coordinate" with
Feith to "insure [that] DoD-related intelligence activity supports
the goals" of the Pentagon's policy shop.
Two months after Cambone's confirmation, Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz described his new portfolio in a detailed internal
Pentagon memo. Reflecting the seriousness and specificity of
Cambone's mission, an organizational chart appended to the memo shows
a generic under secretary with six deputies, including one for
warfighting and operations, whose duties include specific liaison
with the intelligence elements of each of the armed services, each
individual combatant command, and the under secretary for policy. The
document itself explicitly states that Cambone's office will, among
other things:
provide oversight and policy guidance for all DoD intelligence
activities; provide policy oversight of all the intelligence
organizations within the DoD, to include ensuring these organizations
are manned, trained, equipped and structured to support the
missions of the Department; provide assessments of and advice [to]
the Secretary and CJCS [Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff] on the
adequacy of military intelligence performance; exercise management
and oversight of all DoD counterintelligence and security activities;
coordinate DoD intelligence and intelligence-related policy, plans,
programs, requirements and resource allocations; oversee provision of
intelligence support and involvement in information operations,
focused on assessments in support of operations.
None of this should leave much to the imagination, especially when it
comes to policies and practices pertaining to the dimensions of human
intelligence collection that involve interrogations conducted by
military intelligence. Yet when asked by Senator John Warner if his
office has "overall responsibility for policy concerning the handling
of detainees," Cambone dodged with a "not precisely, sir,"
effectively denying any responsibility as set forth in his charge by
Wolfowitz. Rather, Cambone said, he only reactively "became involved
in this issue from the perspective of assuring there was a flow of
intelligence back to the commands and done in an efficient and
effective way."
Cambone's subsequent comments were in a similar vein, and lead one to
conclude that either this particular under secretary was willfully
obfuscating, or that he was providing yet another glaring example of
the old adage that "military intelligence" is a contradiction in
terms. Nothing pertinent crossed his desk; things were always
"signed out at the command level." Though he's had time to reflect on
the whole affair, Cambone can't really say how he thinks any of it
happened: "I don't know the facts, it's for me, hard to explain."
Key reports were seen only belatedly, "well after they were issued"
or not at all, because they were "only delivered at command level."
Cambone is apparently still in the dark regarding concerns voiced by
the Coalition Provisional Authority and the State Department about
prisoner treatment: "I'm not aware of those complaints," he said or,
to clarify, "per se, in that sense, no." Though he's the senior
Defense Department official responsible for intelligence, Cambone
"did not discuss with anybody at Joint Task Force 7" interrogation
procedure recommendations, especially ones that dealt with the
transmission or dissemination of intelligence. As late as this past
February--when most other senior officials were keenly aware of the
problems at Abu Ghraib--"I still didn't know that there was a
significant issue here." And when General Miller made his trip to
Iraq, that was really under someone else's auspices, and merely with
the "encouragement" of OUSD(I).
And one certainly shouldn't consider it anything like
"collaboration" that Cambone's deputy for warfighting and
operations, Lieut. Gen. William Boykin (yes, that Boykin, of
anti-Islam "My God is bigger than your God" fame), was subsequently
briefed by Miller on his trip to Iraq; Boykin then briefed Cambone.
What makes this all the more remarkable, though, is how different in
tone and substance Cambone's comments are compared with his
appearance along with all the military intelligence chiefs--before
the same committee on April 7. Review the transcript of that hearing
and it seems as if Cambone and every element of the US military are
working hand in glove. Recapping his first year as OUSD(I), Cambone
effusively praised his uniformed colleagues and seemed to take
particular delight in crowing about how closely his office was
working with combatant commanders in Iraq on virtually every
intelligence angle:
We undertook a major effort to support the transition from Fifth
Corps to the Third Corps in Iraq, and the stand up of the Combined
Joint Task Force Seven. We continue to be actively engaged with
General Sanchez and General Fast, who is G2 [Army intelligence], in
assisting the development of the intelligence architecture there, in
providing counterintelligence support, in assisting the army and
others with the transition, particularly their tactical HUMINT [human
intelligence] teams and the like...the effort to improve capabilities
within Iraq at the operational and tactical level has been so
successful that [General Abizaid] has asked us to undertake a similar
effort with his architecture in Afghanistan.
In that hearing, Cambone introduced Army military intelligence chief
Lieut. Gen. Keith Alexander as having a "great deal of information"
on the Army's intelligence efforts in Iraq. Of particular pride to
Alexander, who expressly thanked Cambone for being "superb in
providing us support"--is a program he declined to mention at his May
11 hearing but showcased on April 7. In that instance, after
discussing the successful capture of an Iraqi general and the rapid
sharing of intelligence between Defense Department intelligence
agencies, Alexander said he chose to share that example
because, one, it shows you how important tactical questioning,
analysis and interrogation is to our folks; and two, how we are
training them today. We call Intel Support to Combating Terrorism.
It's done at Fort Huachuca, and it uses the lessons learned from
Guantánamo to our folks in Afghanistan and in Iraq. And also
the benefits for tactical questioning, for those soldiers on the
ground to know how to ask the right questions of these guys is being
taught through every one of our centers and every one of our schools
and centers throughout the United States before soldiers deploy.
Aside from this, the only other public mention of the Intelligence
Support to Combating (or Counter) Terrorism program is in the
February 13, 2003, edition of the Fort Huachuca base newspaper, which
describes it as a crash course for military intelligence officers
bound only for Guantánamo---but that the course will quickly
become "globally oriented," as "the threat is not just in
Afghanistan, it's also in the Philippines and the Middle East." While
there is no mention in the article of Geneva Conventions-specific
training--and while no mention of this unique training program was
made on Tuesday--Alexander spent much of his time in the May 11
hearing emphasizing the strict adherence of his military intelligence
officers to the standard training manuals, and trying to convince a
skeptical committee that the whole Abu Ghraib mess likely begins and
ends with nothing more than "a group of undisciplined military
police." Yet on May 12, ABC News interviewed two former Fort Huachuca
interrogation trainees who said that since early last year, "The US
military has been teaching future interrogators how to cause physical
pain while questioning detainees but remain technically within limits
set by the Geneva Conventions."
Cambone can't have it both ways. The Armed Services Committee should
thoroughly investigate the discrepancies between Cambone's and
Alexander's April 7 and May 11 testimonies, and should recall the
pair to the Hill for a more precise interrogation (in line with the
Geneva Conventions, of course). In the end, the only place for
Rumsfeld's "one dog to kick" may not be at his master's feet, but in
the doghouse.
This article can be found on the web at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040531&s=vest
Implausible Denial II
by Jason Vest
On Saturday, May 15--twenty-four hours after The Nation published
"Implausible Denial"--The New Yorker posted on its website Seymour
Hersh's latest Abu Ghraib-related investigative report. Its central
revelation: The interrogations at Abu Ghraib were part of a highly
classified Special Access Program (SAP) code-named Copper Green,
authorized by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and ultimately
overseen by Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen
Cambone. Originally a joint CIA-Pentagon program in Afghanistan that
utilized highly trained Special Operations personnel, Copper Green
eventually expanded to Iraq, Hersh reports, where Cambone decided it
would begin using non-Special Operations personnel--including
military intelligence officers and other military personnel--to begin
questioning prisoners whose status was outside the program's original
brief. The CIA objected and withdrew from the program, while Cambone
apparently tasked Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, former Guantánamo
Bay interrogations chief, with "Gitmo-izing" Iraq's prison system.
What may be more surprising than the revelations in Hersh's piece is
the fact that leads to the Abu Ghraib skullduggery were hidden in
plain sight--and that the Pentagon press corps all but ignored them.
Though Cambone has been an exceptionally sub rosa figure in his
position as DoD's intelligence chief, on November 21, 2003, he sat
down for a rare on-record meeting over breakfast with the Defense
Writers Group. Again in contrast to his May 11 comments, in which he
cast himself as a benign bureaucrat largely out of the loop, his
November comments offer a glimpse into the mechanics of how Cambone's
office was assertively taking the lead in coordinating intelligence
operations in Iraq.
Noting first that his office has "one group of people over to do an
assessment" and that another was getting ready to go, Cambone said
that "the requirement for an increased level of intelligence support
became increasingly evident as we went through a period between
early July/late August.... In that late August time frame, a
delegation went over there from the Department and included people
from the CIA to look at how we were structured, whether we had
proper arrangement at the division level, whether that information,
as it was being compiled at the divisional level, was being moved
from that level up to the CJTF-7 [Combined Joint Task Force-7] level
in an expeditious manner."
Cambone further stated that the group "came back with a list of
somewhere close to eighty or ninety recommendations," and went on to
describe a rapid infusion of personnel and technology for
intelligence-related endeavors. He also noted that the Director of
Central Intelligence, George Tenet, had "made a number of adjustments
in his complement of people in Iraq" as part of a "concerted effort
to lash up much more tightly the work that is done in the context of
the CIA activities with those being done by the Department to ensure
there is [a] cross-flow of information and cooperation."
The specifics of any of those eighty to ninety recommendations--as
well as the nature of then-joint CIA/DoD operations and the staffing
and leadership of the August delegation to Iraq, which may have
covered Miller's mission--were not, apparently, of interest to the
members of the Defense Writers Group. Though a few journalists
elsewhere had raised concerns about the gray areas Defense
Intelligence operations might be getting into--as well as Cambone's
interest in bringing all uniformed Special Operations under his
aegis--there were no follow-up questions, and Cambone's comments went
virtually unreported.
Cambone's remarks at the breakfast also bring into potentially
clearer focus the role in Abu Ghraib of Lieut. Gen. William "Jerry"
Boykin, his deputy for intelligence and warfighting support. "It is
an office," Cambone says of Boykin's shop, "that is designed to
assure the types of capabilities we have just been talking about
here, whether it is people, or it is resources, or it is material, or
it is information, is moved forward to the people who need it at
various levels of command and operation in order for them to execute
their mission."
Having been much more right than not in his reporting on the current
Administration, it's unlikely that Hersh's story is, as Pentagon
spokesman Lawrence Di Rita quickly characterized it, "outlandish,
conspiratorial, and filled with error," since the neglected public
utterances of Cambone not only track with Hersh's reporting but that
of R. Jeffrey Smith in the Washington Post for May 16. (Cambone is
prominent in Smith's story, succinctly titled "Knowledge of Abusive
Tactics May Go Higher." And he figures as well in a remarkable
article for the May 24 edition of Newsweek by John Barry, Michael
Hirsh and Michael Isikoff, "The Roots of Torture," which not only
points to Cambone's deep involvement in the intelligence-gathering
apparatus in Iraq but demonstrates that the climate for the "stress
and duress" interrogation techniques used at Abu Ghraib was
"officially approved at the highest levels of the government" as part
of a secret system "adopted to sidestep the historical safeguards of
the Geneva Conventions." ) Indeed, last week Di Rita himself
described Cambone in a way not unlike that of Hersh and the Post:
"Somebody who thinks through issues in all their dimensions, and in
whom the Secretary has enormous confidence."
This article can be found on the web at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040531&s=vest2
Rumsfeld Knew: Iraq Prison Abuse Part of Pentagon-Approved Black Ops Program:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/17/1431219
PENTAGON NEOCON CABAL ORDERED IRAQ PRISON TORTURE:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=15417
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