WP Steps In - Knowledge of Abusive Tactics May Go Higher

DOD "Outraged" Non-Denial Rebutting of Hersh Rebutted

Although no direct links have been found between the documented abuses and orders from Washington, Pentagon officials who spoke on the condition that they not be named say that the hunt for data on these two topics was coordinated during this period by Defense Undersecretary Stephen A. Cambone, the top U.S. military intelligence official and long one of the closest aides to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

A Nov. 19 memo from Sanchez's office that formally placed the two key Abu Ghraib cellblocks where the abuses occurred under the control of Pappas and his 205th Military Intelligence Brigade. It was 11 days later, after this memo placed the military police responsible for "security of detainees and base protection" in Pappas's hands, that he sought, in his memo to Sanchez, to draw military police explicitly into applying pressure on the Syrian.

The fact that prison interrogations were so directly controlled by these military directives, as well as the apparent cultural sophistication of some of the abuses, has already led some lawmakers to conclude that much more experienced and senior officers were involved than the seven military police now charged by the Army with wrongdoing.

The decision to place the prison's key cellblocks -- 1A and 1B, which held "security detainees" suspected of threatening U.S. forces or knowing about such threats -- under the direct control of the 205th MI Brigade came shortly after Miller visited Iraq in late August and early September at the request of Cambone, according to Cambone's congressional testimony last week.

The previous day's report had - The Pentagon, however, called the assertions, "outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with anonymous conjecture," and strongly denied that Rumsfeld, who has been under fire for the prisoner abuse scandal, or any Pentagon official had sanctioned the interrogation program.

Pentagon spokesman Di Rita said Cambone had no responsibility for detainees or interrogation programs anywhere, including in Afghanistan or Iraq.