- Evidence of prisoner abuse and possible war crimes at
Guantanamo Bay reached the highest levels of the Bush administration as
early as autumn 2002, but Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, chose
to do nothing about it, according to a new investigation published
exclusively
in the Guardian today.
-
- The investigation, by the veteran journalist Seymour
Hersh, quotes one former marine at the camp recalling sessions in which
guards would "fuck with [detainees] as much as we could" by
inflicting
pain on them.
-
- The Bush administration repeatedly assured critics that
inmates were granted recreation periods, but one Pentagon adviser told
Hersh how, for some prisoners, they consisted of being left in
straitjackets
in intense sunlight with hoods over their heads.
-
- Hersh provides details of how President George Bush
signed
off on the establishment of a secret unit that was given advance approval
to kill or capture and interrogate "high-value" suspects -
considered
by many to be in defiance of international law - an officially
"unacknowledged"
programme that was eventually transferred wholesale from Guantanamo to
the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
-
- Hersh, who broke the story of the My Lai massacre in
the Vietnam war, makes his revelations in a new book, Chain of Command,
which leaves senior figures in the Bush administration far more seriously
implicated in the torture scandal than had been previously apparent.
-
- A CIA analyst visited Guantanamo in summer 2002 and
returned
"convinced that we were committing war crimes" and that
"more
than half the people there didn't belong there. He found people lying in
their own faeces," a CIA source told Hersh.
-
- The analyst submitted a report to General John Gordon,
an aide to Condoleezza Rice, Mr Bush's national security adviser.
-
- Gen Gordon was troubled, and, one former administration
official told Hersh "that if the actions at Guantanamo ever became
public, it'd be damaging to the president".
-
- Ms Rice saw the document by autumn of the same year,
and called a high-level meeting at which she asked Mr Rumsfeld, to deal
with the problem.
-
- But after he vowed to act, "the Pentagon went into
a full-court stall", a former White House official is quoted as
saying.
"Why didn't Condi do more? She made the same mistake I made. She got
the secretary of defence to say he's going to take care of it."
-
- The investigation further suggests that CIA and FBI staff
had already witnessed incidents at Guantanamo just as extreme as those
that would subsequently be alleged by freed inmates.
-
- A senior intelligence official told Hersh: "I was
told [by FBI agents] that the military guards were slapping prisoners,
stripping them, pouring cold water over them and making them stand until
they got hypothermia."
-
- The secret "special access programme"
facilitating
much of the mistreatment of prisoners, widely held to have contravened
the Geneva convention, was established following a direct order from the
president.
-
- Hersh reports that a secret document signed by Mr Bush
in February 2002 stated: "I determine that none of the provisions
of Geneva apply to our conflict with al-Qaida in Afghanistan or elsewhere
throughout the world."
-
- Hersh's book reports that an army officer communicated
concerns over abuses at Abu Ghraib both to General John Abizaid, the US
central command (Centcom) chief at the time, and his deputy, General Lance
Smith.
-
- The officer told Hersh: "I said there are systematic
abuses going on in the prisons. Abizaid didn't say a thing. He looked at
me - beyond me, as if to say, 'Move on. I don't want to touch this.'"
Centcom has disputed the allegation.
-
- In an interview with the Guardian, Hersh provided
evidence
that the administration sought to evade the issue: he said codenames of
some programmes were changed within hours of his original story appearing,
presumably to maintain their secrecy.
-
- In a statement, the Pentagon said Hersh's investigation
"apparently contains many of the numerous unsubstantiated allegations
and inaccuracies which he has made in the past based upon unnamed sources
... Thus far ... investigations have determined that no responsible
official
of the Department of Defence approved any programme that could conceivably
have authorised or condoned the abuses seen at Abu Ghraib. If any of Mr
Hersh's anonymous sources wish to come forward and offer evidence to the
contrary, the department welcomes them to do so."
-
- Pressure has been building on the Pentagon over its
detention
policies after it emerged at a Congressional hearing last week that the
administration is being accused of concealing up to 100 "ghost
detainees"
from the Red Cross, which must be granted access to prisoners of war and
other detainees under the Geneva convention.
-
- Mr Rumsfeld told reporters on Friday he had approved
the use of harsh interrogation measures, but that they had only been meant
for Guantanamo. He said the measures ought to be contrasted with those
of terrorists. "Does it rank up there with chopping someone's head
off on television?" he asked. "It doesn't."
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1303105,00.html
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