Something I'd intended to highlight on Saturday that got lost in the shuffle, from Douglas Jehl and Eric Schmitt's piece ("Dogs and Other Harsh Tactics Linked to Military Intelligence"):

The documents assembled by Army investigators starting in January and obtained by The New York Times cite accounts by American dog handlers who say the use of military working dogs in interrogations at Abu Ghraib was approved by Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade. Previously, Pentagon and Army officials have said that only the top American commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, could have approved the use of the animals for interrogations. A "memorandum for the record" issued on Oct. 9 by the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at the prison listed as permissible a number of interrogation procedures that Army officials have said were allowed only with approval from General Sanchez. Among other things, the memorandum said the use of dogs in interrogations and the confining of prisoners to isolation cells was permitted in some cases without a prior approval from General Sanchez. ...

A new time line provided by an Army spokesman also showed that the involvement of military intelligence personnel in abuses at Abu Ghraib began in October 2003. The first reported episode involved soldiers assigned to the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center, months before the major criminal investigation initiated in January into misconduct at the prison, which focused on the involvement by the military police. Three enlisted soldiers from the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion were fined and demoted in the incident.

Jehl/Schmitt, who tend to wag their fingers at the Army for not being propertly forthcoming with information, don't make it clear enough that the Oct. 9 JIDC memorandum was issued ten days before Gen. Sanchez's Oct. 19 order relating to approved techniques for interrogations. (I took a stab at an interrogation-policy timline, which I probably need to update in light of recent reporting, here.) Just what is a "memorandum for the record," and why was it produced—particularly in a way that would seem to anticipate if not pre-empt the policy being developed by Sanchez?

Jehl/Schmitt also don't make it clear that the punishments of three soldiers from the 519th were administrative—minor punishments meted out by the unit's commander without invoking court-martial proceedings. According to the Denver Post, the case file from the incident "notes that the investigation, which still had 'leads remaining,' was terminated" by the decision to hand down an administrative punishment. Military intelligence, in other words (remember that the January criminal investigation and the Taguba report were limited in focus to military police), seems to have been keeping both policy and punishment well in its own hands.

Add these observations to reinforce the possibility that MI in Iraq was operating in some sense as an irregular command, independent of the ordinary chain of command under Sanchez.

posted by michael  4:22:45 PM  
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