FBI Letters Outline Abuse, Point to Approving Bush Memo
Reported by Marie Therese - December 21, 2004
Excerpted from Newsday, 12/21/04: WASHINGTON FBI agents have lodged repeated complaints of physical and mental mistreatment of prisoners held in Iraq and Cuba, saying in reports that military officials have placed lighted cigarettes in detainees' ears and humiliated Arab captives by wrapping Israeli flags around them, according to new documents released Monday.
The FBI records, which are among the latest set of documents obtained by the ACLU in its lawsuit against the federal government, also include instances in which bureau officials said they were disgusted by military interrogators who pretended to be FBI agents as a "ruse" to glean intelligence from prisoners.
The FBI complained that military interrogators had gone beyond the restrictions of the Geneva Convention that prohibit torture; the agents cited Bush administration guidelines that permit the use of dogs and other techniques to harass prisoners.
The records disclosed Monday are the second set in which FBI officials objected to military detention practices, and are notable because some instances occurred after revelations this year of prisoner abuses at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Earlier this month, the ACLU released records in which FBI agents complained about prisoner abuse in 2002. The new records show FBI complaints have continued through 2004. In each case, the names of the agents were removed before the records were released.
Later:
Another unidentified FBI agent told his superiors in July that he had witnessed military interrogators and government contract employees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay using "aggressive treatment and improper interview techniques" on prisoners.
"I did observe treatment that was not only aggressive, but personally very upsetting," he said.
At the Pentagon, Air Force Maj. Michael Shavers, a military spokesman, said the Defense Department would have no comment about the FBI records or the administration guidelines that were the subject of complaints by agents.
The FBI agents referred to what they described as a new executive order on prisoner treatment by President Bush. They described the order as allowing interrogation tactics that were forbidden for FBI agents. The records did not include a copy of the Bush order, or make clear exactly when it was signed. Pentagon officials would not comment on whether there was any new order.
According to FBI officials, the Bush order approved interrogation tactics that included "sleep deprivation and stress positions," as well as "loud music, interrogators yelling at subjects and prisoners with hoods on their heads."
Later:
In many of the records released Monday, FBI officials expressed repulsion upon learning that military interrogators posed as FBI agents in their interviews with prisoners.
They said they had learned the "ruse" was approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and that it had an adverse effect on obtaining "cooperation" from prisoners. In one instance, an FBI official told his superiors in a December 2003 e-mail that impersonation "tactics have produced no intelligence." The official added that these techniques actually "have destroyed any chance of prosecuting this detainee."
The FBI official added: "If this detainee is ever released or his story made public in any way, [Defense Department] interrogators will not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done [by] the 'FBI' interrogators. The FBI will be left holding the bag before the public."
Later:
Many agents assigned to Iraq and Cuba reported witnessing incidents of abuse by military units or civilian contractors.
In a June "urgent report" to the FBI director from the Sacramento field office, for example, a supervising special agent described abuses such as "strangulation, beatings, placement of lighted cigarettes into the detainees' ear openings and unauthorized interrogations."
The supervisor added that some military officials "were engaged in a cover-up of these abuses."
In other instances, a female prisoner "indicated she was hit with a stick," according to a memo from May 2003.
In July, Army criminal investigators were reviewing "the alleged rape of a juvenile male detainee at Abu Ghraib prison." It was not clear whether the incident was related to a previous report of a boy who was raped by a contractor. Other agents gave more details of alleged abuses.
In a June instance, an agent from the Washington field office reported that an Abu Ghraib detainee complained he was cuffed and placed into an uncomfortable physical position that the military called "the Scorpion" hold. Then, the prisoner told the FBI, he was doused with cold water, dropped onto barbed wire, dragged by his feet and punched in the stomach.
An FBI official in a July 30 e-mail message described an incident at Guantanamo Bay that he found bothersome: "I saw a detainee sitting on the floor of the interview room with an Israeli flag draped around him, loud music being played and a strobe flashing."
He said the captive was in the custody of military officials at the time.
"Such techniques were not allowed nor approved by FBI policy," the agent wrote.
Later:
Another agent reported in August that while in Cuba he often saw detainees chained hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor, "with no chair, food or water."
"Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left for 18 to 24 hours or more," the agent wrote.
Sometimes, he reported, the room was chilled to where a "barefooted detainee was shaking with cold."
Other times, he said, the air-conditioning was turned off and the temperature in the unventilated room rose to well over 100 degrees.
He said one detainee "was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night."
The FBI documents also included a report of a prisoner in Cuba whose legs were injured and who said he had lied about being a terrorist out of fear that the U.S. military would otherwise have his legs amputated.
"He indicated he was injured severely and in a lot of pain," the FBI documents said, yet the prisoner constantly was being asked whether he had attended a terrorist camp in Afghanistan. The agent wrote that the prisoner "stated he wanted to receive decent medical treatment, and felt the only way to get it was to tell the Americans what they wanted to hear."
End of excerpt. To read entire article click on the Newsday link above.
COMMENT
FOX News Channel has come down hard and heavy on the ACLU for the past few months. Is it possible it has nothing to do with Christmas and the Boy Scouts?
Could it be that the Bush administration is worried that eventually the ACLU Prisoner Abuse investigation is going to wend its way into the Oval Office?
