Early signs were given secondary priority - USA Today

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Posted 5/10/2004 12:33 AM Updated 5/10/2004 1:51 AM

Early signs were given secondary priority

By John Diamond, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON â?? Days after a military prison guard in Iraq placed a compact disk containing photographs of prisoner abuse on the bunk of an Army investigator, the military's top officer knew that the Pentagon, and the country, were facing a major crisis.

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This was the Pentagon's first explicit, high-level warning, but by no means its first hint that something had gone drastically wrong at the largest U.S.-run prison in Iraq. The now voluminous public record shows that the Pentagon received repeated reports of prisoner abuse but put a higher priority on extracting information about terrorist or insurgent attacks.

Although the specific abuses at Abu Ghraib occurred far down the chain of command from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, it was a chain closely supervised from the top. Indeed, in cases of high-level detainees, rules imposed by Rumsfeld dictated that Pentagon officials up to and including the Defense secretary be involved in approving the use of coercive interrogation methods

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Two civilian Pentagon officials, a high-ranking military officer and a U.S. intelligence official â?? all with direct knowledge of the system and its rules â?? described the elaborate process for consulting with the Pentagon on interrogations. All spoke on condition they not be identified. It was unclear whether top Pentagon officials approved coercion or any of the abuses at Abu Ghraib. But the civilian, military and intelligence officials who described the process said that high-ranking Pentagon officials did approve coercive interrogation methods such as sleep deprivation for high-level detainees at other facilities in Iraq and elsewhere. Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita did not return several phone calls and e-mails seeking comment.

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