Originally published in the NY Times on February 27, 2005 [here]
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID JOHNSTON
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 - There is widening unease within the Central
Intelligence Agency over the possibility that career officers could be
prosecuted or otherwise punished for their conduct during
interrogations and detentions of terrorism suspects, according to
current and former government officials.
Until now, only one C.I.A. employee, a contract worker from North
Carolina, has been charged with a crime in connection with the
treatment of prisoners, stemming from a death in Afghanistan in 2003.
But the officials confirmed that the agency had asked the Justice
Department to review at least one other case, from Iraq, to determine
if a C.I.A. officer and interpreter should face prosecution.
In addition, the current and former government officials said the
agency's inspector general was now reviewing at least a half-dozen
other cases, and perhaps many more, in what they described as an
expanding circle of inquiries to determine whether C.I.A. employees had
been involved in any misconduct.
Previously, intelligence officials have acknowledged only that
"several" cases were under review by the agency's inspector general.
But one government official said, "There's a lot more out there than
has generally been recognized, and people at the agency are worried."
Of particular concern, the officials said, is the possibility that
C.I.A. officers using interrogation techniques that the government
ruled as permissible after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks might now be
punished, or even prosecuted, for their actions in the line of duty.
The details of some of the inquiries have been reported, but the
government officials said other cases under review have never been
publicly disclosed. Officials declined to provide details of all the
cases now under scrutiny. They would not say whether the reviews were
limited to incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan, where C.I.A. officers
have been particularly active, or whether they might extend to cases
from other countries, possibly including secret sites around the world
where three dozen senior leaders of Al Qaeda are being held by the
agency.
The officials said that the concern within the ranks had been
growing since the agency's removal of its station chief in Baghdad,
Iraq, in December 2003 in part because of concerns about the deaths of
two Iraqis who had been questioned by C.I.A. employees.
The reason for the station chief's removal has not been previously
disclosed. Former and current intelligence officials say the action
occurred nearly four months before a wider pattern of abuse at Abu
Ghraib prison in Iraq became publicly known. The removal was ordered by
senior officials at C.I.A. headquarters in Washington within several
weeks of their learning about the deaths of the Iraqi prisoners in
separate incidents.
In response to the reviews, the C.I.A. has already made a number
of significant changes to its rules on interrogation and detention as a
new safeguard against problems, the officials said.
Asked about the inspector general's reviews, an intelligence
official described them as a robust effort on the part of the C.I.A. to
ensure that its conduct had been proper. "The inspector general is
working collaboratively with counterparts in the military services in
all investigations," the official said.
The agency has referred some cases to the Justice Department for a
review of possible criminal charges under the federal torture law,
which forbids extreme interrogation tactics, and under civil rights
laws more commonly used in police brutality prosecutions. Justice
Department officials said that prosecutors working in a special unit in
Alexandria, Va., were conducting criminal inquiries into the possible
mistreatment of detainees by nonmilitary personnel, but that they would
not discuss what cases were being reviewing or whether they would
charge anyone with crimes.
Justice Department officials would say only that several cases
involving civilian employees of the government had been referred to the
department. They would not discuss which cases were under scrutiny or
what agencies had sought the department's review. But they said such
reviews would seek to determine whether the facts in the cases warrant
prosecution under several federal statutes, among them the civil rights
laws, which bar government employees from using excessive force, and
the federal torture law, which forbids the use of extreme interrogation
techniques on detainees.
In one of the cases that contributed to the removal of the
station chief, an Iraqi named Manadel al-Jamadi died under C.I.A.
interrogation in a shower room at Abu Ghraib on Nov. 4, 2003. It is
probable that he died of wounds inflicted by commandos of the Navy
Seals who struck him in the head with rifle butts after they and C.I.A.
officers captured him. But former intelligence officials said there
were still questions about the role played by a C.I.A. officer and
contract interrogator who had taken custody of Mr. Jamadi and were
questioning him at Abu Ghraib at the time of his death.
Mr. Jamadi had not been examined by a physician at the time he was
brought to Abu Ghraib, because the C.I.A. officers had circumvented
procedures in which he was to have been registered with the military.
The death was among the most notorious to emerge from the
incidents at Abu Ghraib that became public last spring, in part because
the man's body was photographed wrapped in plastic and packed in ice.
In another widely publicized incident, an Iraqi commander, Maj. Gen.
Abed Hamed Mowhoush, died after he was shoved head-first into a
sleeping bag by Army interrogators, after several days of questioning
that also involved at least one C.I.A. officer. An autopsy showed that
General Mowhoush died of "asphyxia due to smothering and chest
compression" showing "evidence of blunt force trauma to the chest and
legs," according to Army officials.
In both those cases, American military personnel are facing
disciplinary proceedings, including hearings in Colorado in which
several Army soldiers are being tried on murder charges. The death at
Abu Ghraib is still being investigated by the C.I.A.'s inspector
general, and has been referred to the Justice Department for possible
prosecution, the current and former intelligence officials said.
None of the reviews at the C.I.A. have been completed, but they include
a broad assessment of detention and interrogation procedures in Iraq,
the officials said. Already, they said, senior officials at the C.I.A.
have ordered broad changes as a result of the review, including some
that would impose strict limits on the use of coercive techniques used
to extract information from suspected terrorists, the officials said.
Intelligence officials had previously described the shakeup of the
C.I.A.'s Baghdad operations as related to concerns about the officer's
capacity to manage the agency's large and fast-growing station in Iraq.
But in recent interviews, current and former intelligence officials
said that while those accounts were partly accurate, the action was
also prompted by concerns that the Baghdad station chief had not paid
enough attention to issues surrounding the detention and interrogation
of prisoners.
There is no indication that the former station chief, who has
since left the C.I.A., is under any kind of criminal scrutiny, the
officials said.
To date, the C.I.A. has publicly acknowledged possible wrongdoing in a
case of prisoner abuse in only one case, involving David Passaro, a
civilian who had been working under contract for the C.I.A in Iraq. Mr.
Passaro is awaiting trial in federal court in North Carolina in
connection with the June 21, 2003, death of a prisoner in Afghanistan a
day after being beaten during an interrogation.
The reviews come after the Justice Department's repudiation of an
August 2002 legal opinion that had served as the foundation for rules
that guided the C.I.A. in how far its officers and contractors could go
in using coercive techniques to extract information for prisoners
during interrogations. Some current and former intelligence officials
have expressed concern that the repudiation undermined some of the
legal authority that the Bush administration had provided for the
agency's role in detention and interrogation.
In public testimony last week, Porter J. Goss, the director of central
intelligence, declined to say how many C.I.A. reviews of possible
misconduct involving prisoners were under way or when they might be
completed. But he told the Senate Intelligence Committee that while the
North Carolina case was the only one to have been made public, "a bunch
of other cases" were now under review by the inspector general.
"What I can't tell you is how many more might come in the door," Mr.
Goss added. Mr. Goss, who took over in September, said that a report
ordered by one of his predecessors had produced "10 recommendations or
so" involving interrogation and detention, and that "about, I think,
eight of those have been done."