Within C.I.A., Worry of
Prosecution for Conduct
NY Times
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: February 27, 2005
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 - There is widening unease within the
Central Intelligence Agency over the possibility that career
officers could be prosecuted or otherwise punished for their
conduct during interrogations and detentions of terrorism
suspects, according to current and former government
officials.
Until now, only one C.I.A. employee, a contract worker from
North Carolina, has been charged with a crime in connection with
the treatment of prisoners, stemming from a death in Afghanistan
in 2003. But the officials confirmed that the agency had asked
the Justice Department to review at least one other case, from
Iraq, to determine if a C.I.A. officer and interpreter should
face prosecution.
In addition, the current and former government officials said
the agency's inspector general was now reviewing at least a
half-dozen other cases, and perhaps many more, in what they
described as an expanding circle of inquiries to determine
whether C.I.A. employees had been involved in any misconduct.
Previously, intelligence officials have acknowledged only that
"several" cases were under review by the agency's inspector
general. But one government official said, "There's a lot more
out there than has generally been recognized, and people at the
agency are worried."
Of particular concern, the officials said, is the possibility
that C.I.A. officers using interrogation techniques that the
government ruled as permissible after the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks might now be punished, or even prosecuted, for their
actions in the line of duty.
The details of some of the inquiries have been reported, but
the government officials said other cases under review have never
been publicly disclosed. Officials declined to provide details of
all the cases now under scrutiny. They would not say whether the
reviews were limited to incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan, where
C.I.A. officers have been particularly active, or whether they
might extend to cases from other countries, possibly including
secret sites around the world where three dozen senior leaders of
Al Qaeda are being held by the agency.
The officials said that the concern within the ranks had been
growing since the agency's removal of its station chief in
Baghdad, Iraq, in December 2003 in part because of concerns about
the deaths of two Iraqis who had been questioned by C.I.A.
employees.
The reason for the station chief's removal has not been
previously disclosed. Former and current intelligence officials
say the action occurred nearly four months before a wider pattern
of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq became publicly known. The
removal was ordered by senior officials at C.I.A. headquarters in
Washington within several weeks of their learning about the
deaths of the Iraqi prisoners in separate incidents.
In response to the reviews, the C.I.A. has already made a
number of significant changes to its rules on interrogation and
detention as a new safeguard against problems, the officials
said.
Asked about the inspector general's reviews, an intelligence
official described them as a robust effort on the part of the
C.I.A. to ensure that its conduct had been proper. "The inspector
general is working collaboratively with counterparts in the
military services in all investigations," the official said.
The agency has referred some cases to the Justice Department
for a review of possible criminal charges under the federal
torture law, which forbids extreme interrogation tactics, and
under civil rights laws more commonly used in police brutality
prosecutions. Justice Department officials said that prosecutors
working in a special unit in Alexandria, Va., were conducting
criminal inquiries into the possible mistreatment of detainees by
nonmilitary personnel, but that they would not discuss what cases
were being reviewing or whether they would charge anyone with
crimes.
Justice Department officials would say only that several cases
involving civilian employees of the government had been referred
to the department. They would not discuss which cases were under
scrutiny or what agencies had sought the department's review. But
they said such reviews would seek to determine whether the facts
in the cases warrant prosecution under several federal statutes,
among them the civil rights laws, which bar government employees
from using excessive force, and the federal torture law, which
forbids the use of extreme interrogation techniques on
detainees.
In one of the cases that contributed to the removal of the
station chief, an Iraqi named Manadel al-Jamadi died under C.I.A.
interrogation in a shower room at Abu Ghraib on Nov. 4, 2003. It
is probable that he died of wounds inflicted by commandos of the
Navy Seals who struck him in the head with rifle butts after they
and C.I.A. officers captured him. But former intelligence
officials said there were still questions about the role played
by a C.I.A. officer and contract interrogator who had taken
custody of Mr. Jamadi and were questioning him at Abu Ghraib at
the time of his death.
Mr. Jamadi had not been examined by a physician at the time he
was brought to Abu Ghraib, because the C.I.A. officers had
circumvented procedures in which he was to have been registered
with the military.
The death was among the most notorious to emerge from the
incidents at Abu Ghraib that became public last spring, in part
because the man's body was photographed wrapped in plastic and
packed in ice.
In another widely publicized incident, an Iraqi commander,
Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, died after he was shoved
head-first into a sleeping bag by Army interrogators, after
several days of questioning that also involved at least one
C.I.A. officer. An autopsy showed that General Mowhoush died of
"asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression" showing
"evidence of blunt force trauma to the chest and legs," according
to Army officials.
In both those cases, American military personnel are facing
disciplinary proceedings, including hearings in Colorado in which
several Army soldiers are being tried on murder charges. The
death at Abu Ghraib is still being investigated by the C.I.A.'s
inspector general, and has been referred to the Justice
Department for possible prosecution, the current and former
intelligence officials said.
None of the reviews at the C.I.A. have been completed, but
they include a broad assessment of detention and interrogation
procedures in Iraq, the officials said. Already, they said,
senior officials at the C.I.A. have ordered broad changes as a
result of the review, including some that would impose strict
limits on the use of coercive techniques used to extract
information from suspected terrorists, the officials said.
Intelligence officials had previously described the shakeup of
the C.I.A.'s Baghdad operations as related to concerns about the
officer's capacity to manage the agency's large and fast-growing
station in Iraq. But in recent interviews, current and former
intelligence officials said that while those accounts were partly
accurate, the action was also prompted by concerns that the
Baghdad station chief had not paid enough attention to issues
surrounding the detention and interrogation of prisoners.
There is no indication that the former station chief, who has
since left the C.I.A., is under any kind of criminal scrutiny,
the officials said.
To date, the C.I.A. has publicly acknowledged possible
wrongdoing in a case of prisoner abuse in only one case,
involving David Passaro, a civilian who had been working under
contract for the C.I.A in Iraq. Mr. Passaro is awaiting trial in
federal court in North Carolina in connection with the June 21,
2003, death of a prisoner in Afghanistan a day after being beaten
during an interrogation.
The reviews come after the Justice Department's repudiation of
an August 2002 legal opinion that had served as the foundation
for rules that guided the C.I.A. in how far its officers and
contractors could go in using coercive techniques to extract
information for prisoners during interrogations. Some current and
former intelligence officials have expressed concern that the
repudiation undermined some of the legal authority that the Bush
administration had provided for the agency's role in detention
and interrogation.
In public testimony last week, Porter J. Goss, the director of
central intelligence, declined to say how many C.I.A. reviews of
possible misconduct involving prisoners were under way or when
they might be completed. But he told the Senate Intelligence
Committee that while the North Carolina case was the only one to
have been made public, "a bunch of other cases" were now under
review by the inspector general.
"What I can't tell you is how many more might come in the
door," Mr. Goss added. Mr. Goss, who took over in September, said
that a report ordered by one of his predecessors had produced "10
recommendations or so" involving interrogation and detention, and
that "about, I think, eight of those have been done."
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