May 2, 2004

NEW YORK -- Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the commander of the Army Reserve's 800th Military Police Brigade who oversaw guards at U.S. detention facilities in Iraq, including those at Saddam Hussein's former torture center at Abu Ghurayb, tells Newsweek she warned her superiors from the first about the ill-treatment of Iraqi prisoners. The trouble was, Karpinski says, she didn't have enough troops or resources to do the job right, and the men at the top ignored her complaints. "They just wanted it to go away," she says.

Photo - http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20040502/NYSU005

In the end, several of her soldiers apparently went out of control, report Baghdad Bureau Chief Rod Nordland and National Security Correspondent John Barry in the May 10 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, May 3). The CBS news show "60 Minutes II" released snapshots last week of grinning guards at Abu Ghurayb forcing naked prisoners to pose in degrading positions. "There's no excuse for what these people did," says Karpinski. "They're just bad people. But the guys involved in this were new to Abu Ghurayb. It got way out of hand." Karpinski says the scandal was just waiting to happen. "The entire detainee system...is broken," she says.

Something clearly went wrong at Abu Ghurayb -- so wrong that the military was forced to take action long before the scandal broke. In January an MP who was processing digital photos for fellow soldiers discovered the abuse pictures on a CD-ROM, and reported the find to criminal investigators. Coalition commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez ordered Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba to investigate.

Taguba's final report, dated April 4, is a devastating account of abuse at the prison and of commanders' failures to stop it. By the time it was written, six American soldiers were facing criminal charges including dereliction of duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault, battery and indecent acts with another person. Karpinski says Sanchez decided to hang the blame on her in Taguba's inquiry -- even though, she says, her Army superior exonerated her: "Holding me responsible for what happened at the squad level is absurd. Why not hold Sanchez responsible?" Coalition spokesman Col. Jill Morgenthaler says pointedly, "Sanchez relied on the brigade commander."

The reservists' case is likely to cause still more headaches for the Army. Gary Myers, a civilian lawyer for one defendant, says he intends to file for the release of all documents relating to the Army's operation of detention centers. "The stupidest thing the Army could have done is to charge these reservists," he says. "Because that brings a right to the defense -- and any defense lawyer is going to push to find out who was really calling the shots at Abu Ghurayb."

Detention centers in Iraq are run by three tiers of personnel. At the bottom are the U.S. troops like the defendants. At the top are the intelligence officers in charge of interrogations. Some of the defendants are expected to say interrogators encouraged their actions. Outside experts say that sounds likely. "Look at these photographs," says Charles Gittins, a civilian specialist in military law with long experience in interrogation techniques. "What's going on there isn't random. These reservists aren't smart enough to have thought of all those things themselves. Someone was making suggestions."

Karpinski says the abuse took place in Abu Ghurayb's Block 1A, which had been taken over and turned into a windowless prison-within-a-prison by military-intelligence officers. They called the shots there, not the usual military-police guards. "So far I haven't heard of any investigation of the military-intelligence people," she says. Reliable sources say the case does not involve CIA personnel, either directly or in the chain of command. Nevertheless, those sources add, the agency's inspector general is investigating possible CIA involvement in "two or three" other complaints of alleged brutality, including one incident at Abu Ghurayb in which a prisoner died.