Thursday, August 26, 2004

Environmental Disaster

Okay...Here's the story. I live in Pembroke, Maine, on alternate weeks. That
s because I live in New York most of the time.

I bought a house with my husband about three years ago here, in God's Country. I know that you will be saying, " the ultimate Yuppie Dream"...yes. You are totally correct....but the ultimate Yuppie Dream is the dream that we all hold. There is a paradise somewhere, if we could only find it. Well, I found it. It's amazing and mind-blowing. Now there is a proposal for an LNG plant to be built up a bit, in Eastport. I'm wondering if the people of Eastport have ever visited Port Elizabeth, New Jersey? Have they been south of Boston? Do they get the picture? To the understand both the visual and personal implications of giant, 200-foot bunch of towers on their landscape? The personal threats of being burned alive in an apocryphal explosion at the site? There was a planning board meeting tonight that tried to cover the preliminaries of "escape from Eastport"...would there be an escape? There's one road that leads out from Moose Island. It leads right by the proposed LNG terminal. How, exactly, would 1,500 people leave that island? There is no hospital on the Island, and none near the Passamaquoddy tribe that is voting on this LNG site. How would these people leave? How would they be treated for burns? What is the problem here? The Texas Company that has worked with the Native Americans is selling jobs and money. Are they also selling death and destruction?

Why Does Bush REALLY hate Kerry? Here's Why!

How John Kerry Busted the Terrorists' Favorite Bank
By David Sirota and Jonathan Baskin
Washington Monthly

September 2004 Issue

Two decades ago, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was a highly respected financial titan. In 1987, when its subsidiary helped finance a deal involving Texas oilman George W. Bush, the bank appeared to be a reputable institution, with attractive branch offices, a traveler's check business, and a solid reputation for financing international trade. It had high-powered allies in Washington and boasted relationships with respected figures around the world.

All that changed in early 1988, when John Kerry, then a young senator from Massachusetts, decided to probe the finances of Latin American drug cartels. Over the next three years, Kerry fought against intense opposition from vested interests at home and abroad, from senior members of his own party; and from the Reagan and Bush administrations, none of whom were eager to see him succeed.

By the end, Kerry had helped dismantle a massive criminal enterprise and exposed the infrastructure of BCCI and its affiliated institutions, a web that law enforcement officials today acknowledge would become a model for international terrorist financing. As Kerry's investigation revealed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, BCCI was interested in more than just enriching its clients--it had a fundamentally anti-Western mission. Among the stated goals of its Pakistani founder were to "fight the evil influence of the West," and finance Muslim terrorist organizations. In retrospect, Kerry's investigation had uncovered an institution at the fulcrum of America's first great post-Cold War security challenge.

More than a decade later, Kerry is his party's nominee for president, and terrorist financing is anything but a back-burner issue. The Bush campaign has settled on a new strategy for attacking Kerry: Portray him as a do-nothing senator who's weak on fighting terrorism. "After 19 years in the Senate, he's had thousands of votes, but few signature achievements," President Bush charged recently at a campaign rally in Pittsburgh; spin that's been echoed by Bush's surrogates, conservative pundits, and mainstream reporters alike, and by a steady barrage of campaign ads suggesting that the one thing Kerry did do in Congress was prove he knew nothing about terrorism. Ridiculing the senator for not mentioning al Qaeda in his 1997 book on terrorism, one ad asks: "How can John Kerry win a war [on terror] if he doesn't know the enemy?"

If that line of attack has been effective, it's partly because Kerry does not have a record like the chamber's dealmakers such as Sens. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) or Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). Though Kerry has been a key backer of bills on housing reform, immigration, and the environment, there are indeed few pieces of landmark legislation that owe their passage to Kerry.

But legislation is only one facet of a senator's record. As the BCCI investigation shows, Kerry developed a very different record of accomplishment - one often as vital, if not more so, than passage of bills. Kerry's probe didn't create any popular new governmental programs, reform the tax code, or eliminate bureaucratic waste and fraud. Instead, he shrewdly used the Senate's oversight powers to address the threat of terrorism well before it was in vogue, and dismantled a key terrorist weapon. In the process, observers saw a senator with tremendous fortitude, and a willingness to put the public good ahead of his own career. Those qualities might be hard to communicate to voters via one-line sound bites, but they would surely aid Kerry as president in his attempts to battle the threat of terrorism.

From Drug Lords to Lobbyists
Despite having helmed the initial probe which led to the Iran-Contra investigation, Kerry was left off the elite Iran-Contra committee in 1987. As a consolation prize, the Democratic leadership in Congress made Kerry the chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations and told him to dig into the Contra-drug connection. Kerry turned to BCCI early in the second year of the probe when his investigators learned that Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega was laundering drug profits through the bank on behalf of the Medellin cartel.

By March 1988, Kerry's subcommittee had obtained permission from the Foreign Relations Committee to seek subpoenas for both BCCI and individuals at the bank involved in handling Noriega's assets, as well as those handling the accounts of others in Panama and Colombia. Very quickly, though, Kerry faced a roadblock. Citing concerns that the senator's requests would interfere with an ongoing sting operation in Tampa, the Justice Department delayed the subpoenas until 1988, at which point the subcommittee's mandate was running out.

BCCI, meanwhile, had its own connections. Prominent figures with ties to the bank included former president Jimmy Carter's budget director, Bert Lance, and a bevy of powerful Washington lobbyists with close ties to President George H. W. Bush, a web of influence that may have helped the bank evade previous investigations. In 1985 and 1986, for instance, the Reagan administration launched no investigation even after the CIA had sent reports to the Treasury, Commerce, and State Departments bluntly describing the bank's role in drug-money laundering and other illegal activities.

In the spring of 1989, Kerry hit another obstacle. Foreign Relations Committee chairman Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.), under pressure from both parties, formally asked Kerry to end his probe. Worried the information he had collected would languish, Kerry quickly dispatched investigator Jack Blum to present the information his committee had found about BCCI's money-laundering operations to the Justice Department. But according to Blum, the Justice Department failed to follow up.

The young senator from Massachusetts, thus, faced a difficult choice. Kerry could play ball with the establishment and back away from BCCI, or he could stay focused on the public interest and gamble his political reputation by pushing forward.

BCCI and the Bluebloods
Kerry opted in 1989 to take the same information that had been coldly received at the Justice Department and bring it to New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who agreed to begin a criminal investigation of BCCI, based on Kerry's leads. Kerry also continued to keep up the public pressure. In 1990, when the Bush administration gave the bank a minor slap on the wrist for its money laundering practices, Kerry went on national television to slam the decision. "We send drug people to jail for the rest of their life," he said, "and these guys who are bankers in the corporate world seem to just walk away, and it's business as usual? When banks engage knowingly in the laundering of money, they should be shut down. It's that simple, it really is."

He would soon have a chance to turn his declarations into action. In early 1991, the Justice Department concluded its Tampa probe with a plea deal allowing BCCI officials to stay out of court. At the same time, news reports indicated that Washington elder statesman Clark Clifford might be indicted for defrauding bank regulators and helping BCCI maintain a shell in the United States.

Kerry pounced, demanding (and winning) authorization from the Foreign Relations Committee to open a broad investigation into the bank in May 1991. Almost immediately, the senator faced a new round of pressure to relent. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Democratic doyenne Pamela Harriman personally called Kerry to object, as did his fellow senators. "What are you doing to my friend Clark Clifford?," staffers recalled them asking, according to The Washington Post. BCCI itself hired an army of lawyers, PR specialists, and lobbyists, including former members of Congress, to thwart the investigation.

But Kerry refused to back off, and his hearings began to expose the ways in which international terrorism was financed. As Kerry's subcommittee discovered, BCCI catered to many of the most notorious tyrants and thugs of the late 20th century, including Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the heads of the Medellin cocaine cartel, and Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist. According to the CIA, it also did business with those who went on to lead al Qaeda.

And BCCI went beyond merely offering financial assistance to dictators and terrorists: According to Time, the operation itself was an elaborate fraud, replete with a "global intelligence operation and a Mafia-like enforcement squad."

By July 1991, Kerry's work paid off. That month, British and U.S. regulators finally responded to the evidence provided by Kerry, Morgenthau, and a concurrent investigation by the Federal Reserve. BCCI was shut down in seven countries, restricted in dozens more, and served indictments for grand larceny, bribery, and money laundering. The actions effectively put it out of business what Morgenthau called, "one of the biggest criminal enterprises in world history."

Bin Laden's Bankers
Kerry's record in the BCCI affair, of course, contrasts sharply with Bush's. The current president's career as an oilman was always marked by the kind of insider cronyism that Kerry resisted. Even more startling, as a director of Texas-based Harken Energy, Bush himself did business with BCCI-connected institutions almost at the same time Kerry was fighting the bank. As The Wall Street Journal reported in 1991, there was a "mosaic of BCCI connections surrounding [Harken] since George W. Bush came on board." In 1987, Bush secured a critical $25 million-loan from a bank the Kerry Commission would later reveal to be a BCCI joint venture. Certainly, Bush did not suspect BCCI had such questionable connections at the time. But still, the president's history suggests his attacks on Kerry's national-security credentials come from a position of little authority.

As the presidential campaign enters its final stretch, Kerry's BCCI experience is important for two reasons. First, it reveals Kerry's foresight in fighting terrorism that is critical for any president in this age of asymmetrical threats. As The Washington Post noted, "years before money laundering became a centerpiece of antiterrorist efforts... Kerry crusaded for controls on global money laundering in the name of national security."

Make no mistake about it, BCCI would have been a player. A decade after Kerry helped shut the bank down, the CIA discovered Osama bin Laden was among those with accounts at the bank. A French intelligence report obtained by The Washington Post in 2002 identified dozens of companies and individuals who were involved with BCCI and were found to be dealing with bin Laden after the bank collapsed, and that the financial network operated by bin Laden today "is similar to the network put in place in the 1980s by BCCI." As one senior U.S. investigator said in 2002, "BCCI was the mother and father of terrorist financing operations."

Second, the BCCI affair showed Kerry to be a politician driven by a sense of mission, rather than expediency - even when it meant ruffling feathers. Perhaps Sen. Hank Brown, the ranking Republican on Kerry's subcommittee, put it best. "John Kerry was willing to spearhead this difficult investigation," Brown said. "Because many important members of his own party were involved in this scandal, it was a distasteful subject for other committee and subcommittee chairmen to investigate. They did not. John Kerry did."



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David Sirota and Jonathan Baskin work for the American Progress Action Fund, an advocacy organization in Washington, D.C.


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Jump to TO Features for Friday August 27, 2004

Bush Did This to His Former Buddy, Noriega, Remember?

Listen Up: Unusual Forms of Sound to Emanate From RNC
By Amanda Onion
ABCNEWS.com

Wednesday 25 August 2004

The Long Range Acoustical Device (LRAD), is shown below mounted on an NYPD vehicle. The technology, which can direct sound for four blocks, will be used to communicate with protesters at the RNC.
Coming soon to a convention near you: Sound like it has never (or at least, rarely) been heard before.

As politicians at the Republican National Convention use microphones to make themselves heard from the podium, other sounds in and around the event will be emitted in cutting-edge audio technology.

Outside the convention hall, New York City police plan to control protesters using a device that directs sound for up to 1,500 feet in a spotlight-like beam. Meanwhile, a display of former Republican presidents inside the hall will feature campaign speeches that are funneled to listeners through highly focused audio beams.

"These are totally different from the way an ordinary speaker emits sound," said Elwood (Woody) Norris, founder and head of American Technology Corp. of San Diego. "It's like it's inside your head."

Norris, an intrepid entrepreneur who has no college degree but more than 43 patents to his name, invented both the crowd control tool, called the Long Range Acoustical Device (LRAD), and the display audio technology, called HyperSonic Sound (HSS).

Both technologies feature unprecedented manipulation of sound, but for very different purposes. And while both technologies have unique, "gee-whiz" factors, some remain uneasy with the idea of using sound to control crowds.

"It produces sound in a way that for most people will be a novel experience, so I think it has potential to create confusion and panic," said Richard Glen Boire, founder of the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics in Davis, Calif. "It can't be identified, it's an invisible force."

Sound as a Weapon
In fact, LRAD, which is 33 inches in diameter and looks like a giant spotlight, has been used by the U.S. military in Iraq and at sea as a non-lethal force. In these settings, operators can use the device not only to convey orders, but also as a weapon.

When in weapon mode, LRAD blasts a tightly controlled stream of caustic sound that can be turned up to high enough levels to trigger nausea or possibly fainting. The operators themselves remain unaffected since the noise is contained in its focused beam.

"We've devised a system with a multiplicity of individual speakers that are phased so sound that would normally go off to the side or up or down, cancels out, while sound directly in front is reinforced," Norris explained. "It's kind of like the way a lens magnifies a beam of light."

The Department of Defense gave Norris and his team funding to develop LRAD following the 9/11 attacks. The concept is to offer an intermediate tool to warn and ward off attacking combatants before resorting to force.

"Regular bullets don't have volume control on them," said Norris. "With this, you just cause a person's ears to ring."

The NYPD, however, has said they won't be using the $35,000 tool to make people's ears ring, but only as a communication device.

"We're only going to use them for safety announcements and directions," said Paul Browne, a police spokesman.

In tests, police have shown how they can convey orders in a normal voice to someone as far as four blocks away. The sound beam is even equipped with a viewfinder so the operator can precisely target the audio by finding a person in cross hairs. Rather than using pure volume to throw sound far, the LRAD reaches distant ears by focusing the audio beam.

This is the second time the device has been used by police - Miami police also used it during the free-trade conference in that city last year.

Despite the NYPD's assurances that they won't use the tool to hurt protesters, Bill Dobbs of United for Peace and Justice, which has planned protests around the convention, has told reporters that the sound system presents "a potential Big Brother nightmare."

Quiet Noise
Inside the convention center, people will have the chance to experience - at will - another of Norris's inventions.

A TIME magazine display at the convention will feature speeches of past Republican presidents in tightly controlled beams of HyperSonic Sound (HSS). Viewers can literally step in and out of the display's different listening zones. A similar high-tech display of former Democratic presidents was featured at the Democratic National Convention in Boston in July.

HSS works by mixing regular, audible sound with two beams of super high frequency, inaudible sound waves. "Just the way artists mix their paint," says Norris.

The resulting ultrasonic sound wave can then be directed out in a tightly controlled beam. Wherever the beam makes contact with air, the air molecules interact in a way that isolates the original audible sound. So if you're standing in front of the ultrasonic sound wave, you can hear the sound. If you're a few inches away, you hear nothing.

This cuts down on ambient noise and gives listeners the somewhat eerie effect that the noise is inside their heads.

"We like to say we create silence instead of noise," said Norris. "You don't need to fill the space with a whole cacophony of noise."

The GOP convention display should perk up the ears of some curious attendees, but Norris is most excited about the device's marketing potential.

Already, some Coca-Cola machines in Japan are equipped with the technology so passers-by hear the enticing sound of soda being poured into a glass of ice. And dozens of Safeway supermarkets in California, Colorado and Virginia are testing the technology on patrons waiting in line to pay. Norris' company has also sent out HSS for testing at Wal-Mart and McDonald's. The narrow beams of sound advertise sale items at the store or restaurant and feature promotional material.

Glen Boire argues the concept is annoying and invasive, but Norris counters, "If you don't want to hear it, you can move your head a half foot away and it will go away."

Needless to say, it won't be as simple for convention-goers and protesters - who may wish to tune each other out next week.



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Jump to TO Features for Friday August 27, 2004

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Report


Iraqi police raid Najaf hotel, round up journalists at gunpoint

Wed Aug 25, 4:51 PM ET


NAJAF, Iraq (AFP) - Iraqi policemen rounded up dozens of journalists at gunpoint in a Najaf hotel and took them to police headquarters before later releasing them, an AFP correspondent said.


AFP/File Photo



Firing their guns in the air, the dozen odd policemen, some masked, stormed into the rooms of journalists in the Najaf Sea hotel and forced them into vans and a truck.


An AFP correspondent, who was also forced into a van, said the police pushed and pulled many reporters at gunpoint.


After a two-minute drive from the hotel, where journalists from across the world are based while covering the battle between Shiite militiamen and US-led Iraqi forces in the holy city, the reporters were taken to the office of the police chief.


"You people are not under arrest," Najaf police chief Ghaleb al-Jezari told them.


"You are brought here because I want to tell you that you never publish the truth. I speak the truth, but you never broadcast what we are."


The reporters, packed into the office, with some sitting on the floor in front of the police chief, protested at their detention.


"You have kidnapped us at gunpoint," said one reporter.


The police chief complained that reporters have been misreporting the proposed visit to Najaf by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the revered Iraqi Shiite Muslim leader.


Naming a Middle East television NEWS channel, he said the cleric had not decided as to when he would come to Najaf, adding "but the channel has gone ahead and said he is already in Najaf."


He said the news had triggered a march by people of Kufa to Najaf which turned violent forcing police to fire as some "bad elements in the march fired at the police."


Two people were killed and five wounded in the shooting.


After the unexpected press conference at gunpoint, the police chief kissed some of the journalists' Iraqi translators and had the reporters dropped back to their hotel.

Poverty and George W. Bush. Hand-in-Hand!

August 26, 2004
Ranks of Poverty and Uninsured Rose in 2003, Census Reports
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 12:21 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.3 million last year, while the ranks of the uninsured swelled by 1.4 million, the Census Bureau reported Thursday.

It was the third straight annual increase for both categories. While not unexpected, it was a double dose of bad economic news during a tight re-election campaign for President Bush.

Approximately 35.8 million people lived below the poverty line in 2003, or about 12.5 percent of the population, according to the bureau. That was up from 34.5 million, or 12.1 percent in 2002.

The rise was more dramatic for children. There were 12.9 million living in poverty last year, or 17.6 percent of the under-18 population. That was an increase of about 800,000 from 2002, when 16.7 percent of all children were in poverty.

The Census Bureau's definition of poverty varies by the size of the household. For instance, the threshold for a family of four was $18,810, while for two people it was $12,015.

Nearly 45 million people lacked health insurance, or 15.6 percent of the population. That was up from 43.5 million in 2002, or 15.2 percent, but was a smaller increase than in the two previous years.

Meanwhile, the median household income, when adjusted for inflation, remained basically flat last year at $43,318. Whites, blacks and Asians saw no noticeable change, but income fell 2.6 percent for Hispanics to $32,997. Whites had the highest income at $47,777.

Census Bureau analyst Dan Weinberg said the results were typical of a post-recession period. He said the increase in the number of people without insurance was due to the uncertain job picture.

``Certainly the long-term trend is firms offering less generous (benefit) plans, and as people lose jobs they tend to lose health insurance coverage,'' he said.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry seized on the numbers as evidence the Bush administration's economic policies have failed. During the years Bush has been in office, 5.2 million people have lost health insurance and 4.3 million have fallen into poverty, he said.

``Under George Bush's watch, America's families are falling further behind,'' Kerry said.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, noted that while more people lost insurance, there also were about 1 million more Americans with coverage in 2003. Overall, 243 million people had insurance last year.

``The bottom line is this: More people in America have health coverage today than at any time in our nation's history and I think that's a fact worth noting, but we can always do more,'' he said.

Even before release of the data, some Democrats claimed the Bush administration was trying to play down bad news by releasing the reports about a month earlier than usual. They normally are released separately in late September -- one report on poverty and income, the other on insurance.

Putting out the numbers at the same time and not so close to Election Day ``invite charges of spinning the data for political purposes,'' said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y.

Census Director Louis Kincannon -- a Bush appointee -- denied politics played any role in moving up the release date. The move, announced earlier this year, was done to coordinate the numbers with the release of other data.

``There has been no influence or pressure from the (Bush) campaign,'' Kincannon said Wednesday.

Official national poverty estimates, as well as most government data on income and health insurance, come from the bureau's Current Population Survey.

This year the bureau is simultaneously releasing data from the broader American Community Survey, which also includes income and poverty numbers but cannot be statistically compared with the other survey.

William O'Hare, a researcher with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private children's advocacy group, expected increases in the number of kids in poverty and without health insurance. He called the changes in the way data was released ``bothersome.''

``It makes me wonder whether this statistical agency is being politicized in some way,'' said O'Hare, who has studied the poverty and health insurance data for over two decades.

^------

On the Net:

Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov/


Trent Lott Speaks...and I agree (?)

August 26, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Hiding the Truth in a Cloud of Black Ink
By TRENT LOTT and RON WYDEN

ashington

In September, Congress will reconvene with a common goal at the top of its collective to-do list: reform our intelligence services in order to better protect the country from terrorist threats. Republicans and Democrats bring the best of intentions to their national security responsibilities. But too often, Congress and the American people lack the best information - in the form of declassified intelligence and national security materials - to ensure that the job is done right.

Thomas H. Kean, the chairman of the 9/11 commission, said that three-quarters of the classified material he reviewed for the commission should not have been classified in the first place. His panel's report, presented largely without redactions, was an exception to a long-standing practice of overclassifying national security information. Secrecy has become so pervasive in the federal government that it's often unclear whether facts are classified for legitimate security reasons, or simply for the political protection of agencies and officials.

The ability to make documents secret is one of the most powerful tools in government, and it has been used heavily for decades. The National Archives' Information Security Oversight Office reported 14.2 million classification actions for 2003 - more than double the number recorded 10 years earlier. At its extreme, the culture of classification can impair the information-sharing among intelligence agencies necessary to ensure sound policymaking; it can also deprive the American people of their ability to judge the effectiveness of their government on national security matters. We believe that the only way to address this growing problem - to clear Washington's fog of secrecy - is to direct an independent board to review the standards and procedures for national security classification.

We are not alone in our view that something may be seriously awry in the national security classification system. William Leonard, who directs the information security office, has called the current classification system "a patchwork quilt," the product of "a hodgepodge of laws, regulations and directives," and cites differing rules for making material secret from agency to agency as contributing to the confusion.

To fix this problem and provide necessary checks and balances, we have written legislation to create an independent national security classification board. It is our intent that this body will bring some common sense to bear on the national security classification system. The legislation would establish a three-person board, with the president and the bipartisan leadership in the House of Representatives and Senate each recommending one member, subject to Senate confirmation.

The board would have two tasks: first, to review and make recommendations on the standards and processes used to classify information for national security purposes; and second, to serve as a standing body to act on Congressional and certain executive branch requests to re-examine classification decisions.

Because entities from the traditional intelligence community to the Environmental Protection Agency have the power to classify documents, the board would look at national security classification across the government. And its creation would give Congress, for the first time, an independent body to which it could appeal a classification decision.

President Harry Truman noted that the C.I.A. was created "for the benefit and convenience of the president." But the United States cannot preserve an open and democratic society when one branch of government has a free hand to shut down public access to information. The lack of an independent appeals process for Congress tips the scales too far toward secrecy for any administration, and it is vital that we right this imbalance.

The 1946 Atomic Energy Act established the principle that some information is "born classified." There are certainly important sources and pieces of information that must never be compromised. But over the years, millions upon millions of documents that weren't born classified have inherited or adopted or married into a classification. As we fight the war on terror, it's a legacy we can no longer afford.


Trent Lott, Republican from Mississippi, and Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon, are members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

ABU GHRAIB

August 26, 2004
ABU GHRAIB REPORT
Abuses at Prison Tied to Officers in Intelligence
By ERIC SCHMITT

ASHINGTON, Aug. 25 - A high-level Army investigation has found that military intelligence soldiers played a major role in directing and carrying out the abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. The report undercut earlier contentions by military officials and the Bush administration that a handful of renegade military police guards were largely to blame.

The report, released at the Pentagon on Wednesday, cited for punishment the top two military intelligence officers at the prison, Col. Thomas M. Pappas and Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, and three other intelligence officers involved in the interrogations at the jail, near Baghdad, saying they bore responsibility for what happened even though they were not directly involved in abusing prisoners.

The inquiry, by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay and Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Jones, also implicated 29 other military intelligence soldiers in at least 44 cases of abuse between July 2003 and February 2004. These soldiers could face disciplinary action ranging from criminal charges to administrative punishments, like reductions in pay and rank. Even lesser penalties can effectively end a military career.

While the involvement of intelligence soldiers, as well as civilian contractors, was reportedly significantly greater than previously disclosed, many of the allegations had been described before, sometimes in less detail.

The 171-page report chronicled a gruesome range of abuses, including one death, an alleged rape, numerous beatings and instances where prisoners were stripped naked and left for hours in dark, poorly ventilated cells that were stifling hot or freezing cold. Gen. Paul J. Kern, who supervised the work of General Fay and General Jones, spoke with disgust of a "game" in which dog handlers terrorized adolescent prisoners. [Excerpts, Page A10.]

"There were a few instances when torture was being used," General Fay told reporters at Pentagon news conference, in perhaps the harshest characterization of the abuses so far by military authorities.

While investigators said the mistreatment captured in the horrific photographs that first brought the abuses to light did not in most cases involve interrogations, the panel said it had uncovered other abuses that did occur during questioning, or were carried out by military police on orders from interrogators with the aim of extracting information.

The report blamed the abuses on a combination of factors, including a small group of "morally corrupt" soldiers and civilian contractors, poor leadership by commanding officers and a failure by military headquarters in Baghdad to recognize the looming disaster.

Coupled with the findings released on Tuesday by a four-member independent panel headed by James R. Schlesinger, a former defense secretary, the Army report reaffirms the suspicion of many critics that culpability extended far beyond a handful of low-level military police personnel, to include military intelligence soldiers in Iraq and up the chain of command in the Persian Gulf to the highest levels in Washington.

"When you put these reports together, the clear message is that the system failed in a widespread manner," said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican on the Armed Services Committee.

Moreover, the reports offer revealing new details on the military's failure to prepare adequately for the postwar environment in Iraq, in this case underestimating the ferocity of an Iraqi insurgency that led to violence at Abu Ghraib.

"One of the consequences of not addressing the postwar challenges is that there were not enough troops in Iraq, and many of those were untrained," said Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican. The reports have renewed calls by some senior Democrats, including Senator John Kerry, for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to resign. The Schlesinger panel implicitly blamed Mr. Rumsfeld for contributing to a confusing set of interrogation polices, but its members said he should not resign.

On Wednesday, Mr. Kerry called on Mr. Rumsfeld to step down and urged President Bush to appoint an independent investigation to provide reforms. "It's not just the little person at the bottom who ought to pay the price of responsibility," Mr. Kerry said at a campaign appearance in a Philadelphia union hall.

Representative Martin Meehan, a Massachusetts Democrat who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, said: "The Fay-Jones report has further widened the circle of accountability. What is still missing is any sort of accountability in Washington for the policies and incompetence that gave rise to the abuses."

But senior Republicans have rushed to defend Mr. Rumsfeld and said his resignation would hand a victory to America's enemies.

"I do not find any evidence that Secretary Rumsfeld had actual knowledge of these horrific incidents in the prison system that were the direct result of lack of training, lack of supervision by the immediate command," Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee, told reporters on Wednesday.

The report also chastised the top commander in Iraq at the time, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, and his deputy, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, for not having provided adequate oversight for the detention and interrogation operations at the prison.

"We did not find General Sanchez culpable but we found him responsible for the things that did or did not happen," Gen. Paul J. Kern, the senior officer responsible for issuing the report, told reporters.

In addition to the 29 military intelligence soldiers who are alleged either to have committed abuses themselves, ordered military police officers to mistreat detainees or witnessed misconduct but failed to report it, the inquiry found six civilian contractors were involved in abuse or failed to report it.

The report also stated that 11 military police soldiers - seven of whom have already been charged - were involved in abuses, and that two Army medics in Iraq failed to report misconduct they had witnessed. The report also states that military intelligence soldiers conspired to keep at least eight Iraqis detained by American forces hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross, a violation of Geneva Conventions.

The report goes beyond any of the other military inquiries into the Abu Ghraib scandal released so far by concluding that military intelligence officers at the prison had a significant involvement in abusing prisoners. Some of the seven military police soldiers who have been charged with abuse have said they were acting at the direction of military intelligence personnel.

"It is clear from the reports that abuse occurred at Abu Ghraib and that abuse, in some cases, was directed, condoned or solicited by members of the 205th M.I. Brigade," the report said.

What General Kern called one of the most egregious abuses involved two Army dog handlers who used unmuzzled dogs in a sadistic game to frighten detained Iraqi teenagers to force the youths to urinate or defecate on themselves.

The report said abuses largely fell into two categories: intentional abuses of a violent or sexual nature, and those that occurred through the misinterpretation or misapplication of shifting procedures. By mid-October last year, interrogation policy in Iraq had changed three times in less than 30 days, the report found.

"Some soldiers behaved improperly because they were confused by their experiences and direction," said General Kern, noting that many interrogators, overwhelmed by their workload, "were feeling a lot of pressure to produce intelligence."

The report, which relied on some 9,000 documents and 170 interviews, is divided into two parts. General Fay examined the role of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, which oversaw interrogations at the prison in Tier 1A and 1B, where the security detainees were held.

This portion of the report examined in detail the 44 cases of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib that investigators found. In 16 of the cases, the report found that military intelligence soldiers solicited military police to carry out abuses, while in 11 cases the military intelligence soldiers were directly involved in the misconduct. Some soldiers were involved in more than one more case.

In some instances the two groups colluded, General Fay said, with one interrogator threatening to turn a prisoner over to a military police officer infamous for his beatings if the prisoner did not cooperate.

In his section, General Jones examined the role of senior intelligence officers and commanders above the brigade level, including General Sanchez. Together, the investigators found that 54 military police officers, military intelligence soldiers, medics and civilian contractors bore some degree of responsibility.

The report found that there was a blurring of interrogation techniques used at Guantánamo Bay and in Afghanistan that were applied improperly in Iraq; confusion with Central Intelligence Agency interrogators using different procedures; poorly trained civilian contractors, and a dire shortages of military police, interrogators and linguists.

Abusing detainees with dogs started almost immediately after the animals arrived at Abu Ghraib on Nov. 20, 2003. By then, the report said, prisoner abuse was in full swing, and dogs became just another device, the report said. The dogs were brought to Iraq on recommendation of Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, then head of detention operations at Guantánamo, who said they could be helpful to maintain order. But interrogators at Abu Ghraib said Colonel Pappas approved the use of dogs to exploit prisoners' fears.

Many interrogators and their superiors were poorly trained, the investigation found. "Most interrogator training that occurred at Abu Ghraib was on-the-job training," the report said.



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