Free Press Releases
******************************************************************June 18, 2004
Rumsfeld Admits He Told Jailers to Keep Detainee
in Iraq Out of Red Cross View
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/18/politics/18abus.html
WASHINGTON, June 17 - Senior
Pentagon officials acknowledged Thursday that a
suspected Iraqi terrorist who was held in a
military jail - but kept off prison rosters -
should have been registered more quickly with the
International Committee of the Red Cross.
But the officials said the fact that the secret
detention of the captive, who was jailed near the
Baghdad airport without records, stretched for
seven months was probably attributable to a
bureaucratic breakdown.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said
Thursday at a Pentagon news briefing that he
ordered the detainee held without a registration
number at the written request of George J. Tenet,
the director of central intelligence.
At the same briefing, Daniel J. Dell'Orto, the
Pentagon's principal deputy general counsel, said
the initial decision to hold the detainee without
registering him was permissible, at least
temporarily, for security reasons.
But he added: "We should have registered him
much sooner than we did. It didn't have to be at
the very instant we brought him into our custody.
And that's something that we'll just have to
examine as to whether there was a breakdown in
the quickness with which we registered him."
Pentagon officials declined to discuss Mr.
Tenet's reason for wanting the detainee, believed
to be a high-ranking officer of Ansar al-Islam, a
terrorist organization, held off the prison
rolls. An agency spokesman said the C.I.A. would
have no comment on Mr. Tenet's reasoning.
Mr. Rumsfeld said the detainee, who is still in
military detention in Iraq, has been treated
humanely. Officials said he was now being
registered with the Red Cross.
A Human Rights Watch report last week identified
13 "ghost detainees" taken into United
States custody since Sept. 11, 2001. The author
of the report, Reed Brody, said the 13 were
either being held in undisclosed detention
facilities, or the United States government had
not acknowledged holding them.
The detainees are all associated with Al Qaeda
and include Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin
al-Shibh, whose interrogations were discussed at
the Sept. 11 commission hearings this week.
Mr. Brody's staff identified the 13 detainees by
tracking their arrests, largely from news reports
or interviews with their relatives, he said. They
were arrested in Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand,
Morocco and other countries.
"What's clear in these cases is that they're
being held in situations that are equal to or
worse than Triple X," said Mr. Brody,
referring to the Ansar detainee in Iraq.
"They are being held outside anybody's
scrutiny. We have no idea in most cases whether
these people are dead or alive."
Also on Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee
rejected a proposal by two Democratic senators,
Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont and Dianne Feinstein
of California, to subpoena Justice Department
documents on the administration's policies
regarding the treatment of prisoners. The
proposal, which was rejected in a 10-9 vote,
identified 23 memos, letters or reports from
Sept. 25, 2001, through March of this year on
topics that included the treatment of prisoners
at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and rules for
interrogation.
According to the proposal, the documents include
a memo from Mr. Rumsfeld to Gen. James T. Hill,
the senior officer of the Southern Command, dated
April 2003 and titled, "Coercive
interrogation techniques that can be used with
approval of the Defense Secretary." Another
memo dated Jan. 4, 2004, written by the top legal
adviser to Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the
senior American commander in Iraq, and sent to
military intelligence and police personnel at the
Abu Ghraib prison, is titled, "New plan to
restrict Red Cross access to Abu Ghraib."
Mr. Leahy and several other senators asked
Attorney General John Ashcroft for some of the
documents at a June 8 hearing, but Mr. Ashcroft
said he would not hand them over, an aide to Mr.
Leahy said.
"A formal request would have to come by way
of subpoena under the rules of the Senate,"
said Mark Corallo, a Department of Justice
spokesman. "You would think that senators
would know their own Senate rules."
Before the vote was taken, the Senate Judiciary
Committee chairman, Orrin G. Hatch, told
committee members that he had read several of the
memos and advised them against voting for the
proposal.
"We should not reveal our interrogation
techniques to our enemies," said Senator
Hatch, Republican of Utah. "There must be
some reasonable limits on what can and should be
disclosed by the executive branch to Congress and
the public about the war against terrorism."
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