Detainee Abuse: New Human Rights First Report Details Failings of Pentagon Investigations

Washington, DC – Sept. 8 – Numerous investigations launched by the U.S. government in response to accounts of torture and abuse of detainees at U.S.-run facilities fail to fully explain what happened, why, who is responsible, and how such abuse can be prevented in the future, Human Rights First said today in a new report.

“Each one of the major investigations to date has suffered from failings that have prevented full identification of the widespread abuses, or meaningful recommendations to address them,” said Elisa Massimino, the Director of the Washington, D.C. Office of Human Rights First. “Months after the Abu Ghraib photos were published – and almost two years after the first abuse-related deaths in U.S. custody in the ‘war on terror’ – the United States still cannot ensure that such abuses will never happen again. The abuses committed by U.S. personnel and U.S. policy – which investigations to date suggest created the breeding ground for those abuses -- has engendered deep resentment towards the United States in the region and around the world, undermining U.S. interests.”

The Human Rights First report, Getting to Ground Truth: Investigating U.S. Abuses in the “War on Terror,” identifies specific ways in which investigators were prevented from developing a full picture of the problem and calls for a comprehensive and independent investigation into the U.S. detention and interrogation practices.

“Some will argue that there has already been enough time and energy spent investigating the misconduct and policy failures that led to the torture and deaths of prisoners in U.S. custody, and that further attention to these matters distracts us from the challenge of securing the peace in Iraq and fighting the global war on terror,” said Massimino. “This argument is dangerously short-sighted. Without a full understanding and accounting of what went wrong, the risk of abusive conduct – and the profound risks that would pose to U.S. interests – remains. In light of what we now know, failure to conduct an independent investigation into these issues, and to identify corrective action, would be a gross dereliction of duty.”

The Shortcomings of Reports by Taguba, Jones/Fay, Schlesinger
and the Army IG

Many of the major investigations, including those led by Lt. Gen. Anthony Jones, and Maj. Gens. Antonio Taguba and George Fay, were narrowly circumscribed in scope and therefore lacked the remit necessary to look deeply into the broader problem, the report finds. Generals Jones, Taguba and Fay were also limited by their own place in the chain of command, by a lack of subpoena power, and by their institutional inability to inquire beyond the four walls of the military itself.

The two broader military investigations conducted to date – one by the Army Inspector General, and one by the panel led by former Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger – also suffer from structural constraints. Both were limited to investigating the role of military forces in detention and interrogation; indeed, both reports expressed frustration with their inability to inquire into the role, and relationship with the Army, of other U.S. actors, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). And, the Schlesinger panel’s report, written without the benefit of subpoena power and lacking a single internal citation or footnote, suffers badly from an absence of real independence – the panel having been handpicked by the current Secretary of Defense.

Beyond these concerns inherent in the way the investigations were designed, some or all of them suffer from particular flaws, according to Getting to Ground Truth. These include:

• Failures to investigate all relevant agencies and personnel;
• Cumulative reporting (increasing the risk that errors and omissions may be perpetuated in successive reports);
• Contradictory conclusions;
• Questionable use of security classification to withhold information;
• Failures to address senior military and civilian command responsibility; and,
• An absence of any clear game plan for corrective action.

Equally important, the report says, an independent commission is just that: independent. As a group of distinguished, retired military officers recently wrote in a letter to President Bush urging the creation of such a commission: “Americans have never thought it wise or fair for one branch of government to police itself.” Such a commission need not be constrained by hierarchies internal to the organization it is reviewing, or the limits of departmental or institutional divisions of labor. It is able to operate with a level of objectivity that those closer to events and institutions cannot achieve. It can be designed to avoid either the reality or appearance of partiality or institutional protection.

To overcome the deficiencies of existing investigations, the report recommends an independent commission that satisfies the following criteria:

• It must be bipartisan and led by recognized experts of unimpeachable credibility in military and intelligence operations, human rights and international law.
• It must be fundamentally independent of the Executive Branch, with commission members selected jointly by appropriate congressional and executive officials.
• It must have access to classified information and a mandate to inquire into information from all relevant agencies and all levels of authority.
• It must have the power to take testimony under oath, and to subpoena witnesses.
• It must be empowered to offer whistleblower protection to all those with relevant knowledge, including those who may fear retribution for testifying truthfully.
• It must review and build on the findings of investigations already underway.
• It should, to the extent consistent with U.S. national security classification needs, be open to the public – a feature unique to democracy and essential to the commission’s credibility in the United States and around the world.

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