CIAinterrogations may have played a role in the deaths of several detainees in Iraq, as Bushadministration lawyers were advocating an aggressive interrogation policy thatcritics say led to torture, military documents and officials say.
U.S. officials have formally disclosedthe death of only one person interrogated by the CIA in Iraq — Manadelal-Jamadi, an unregistered “ghost” prisoner at Abu Ghraib who diedNov. 4, 2003, while handcuffed in a prison shower room.
Butsworn statements provided to Army investigators by military intelligence andpolice at Abu Ghraib contain at least four references to CIA detainees dyingduring interrogations that do not correspond with the al-Jamadi case.
Thedocuments, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, were collected foran Army investigation that first disclosed the presence of unregistered CIAdetainees at Abu Ghraib last September.
Thedocuments were posted on the ACLU’s Web site at www.aclu.org last month. TheArmy used the acronym “OGA” for “other government agency”to refer almost exclusively to the CIA.
Onedocument refers to an “OGA” detainee dying under interrogation inSeptember 2003, two months before al-Jamadi.
Anothersuggests a death occurred in October, while a third said a detainee died whilechained in the prison shower. A fourth document refers to a detainee dying fromheart problems during interrogation.
Theallegations are based on what soldiers say they heard and offer nosubstantiation. They provide few details and have been redacted to delete thenames of the witnesses, their colleagues and superiors.
Intelligenceofficials dismissed the statements as unsubstantiated hearsay or garbledreferences to al-Jamadi, who the government says died from wounds receivedduring capture by a Navy SEAL unit.
Butthey acknowledged that the CIA may have played a role in the case of an Iraqimilitary official who died during military interrogation in western Iraq inNovember 2003.
Maj.Gen. George Fay, who helped lead the Army investigation at Abu Ghraib, toldReuters that al-Jamadi was the only interrogation-related death confirmed atthe prison.
But his team turned up reports of at least three otherdeaths elsewhere in Iraqthat may have involved the CIA.
“Therewere allegations of at least three,” Fay, an assistant deputy chief ofstaff for Army intelligence, said in an interview. “There may have beenmore. OGA may or may not have been involved — yet to be determined.”
Deathsin interrogation outside Abu Ghraib were beyond the scope of Fay’s mission, sohe passed the information on to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then the U.S. commander in Iraq.
Ultimately,the allegations were left to an investigation led by Army Brig. Gen. RichardFormica, whose findings remain classified.
TheCIA, whose inspector general is reviewing about a half-dozen allegations ofdetainee abuse, said al-Jamadi’s death was the only one at Abu Ghraib withpossible CIA involvement.
Theinspector general has forwarded two cases involving CIA detainee deaths in Afghanistan tothe Justice Department. One case is headed for trial in U.S. District Court in North Carolina.
ACLUstaff attorney Amrit Singh, who recently won a federal court order requiringthe CIA to disclose detainee information, said the Army documents couldindicate the number of deaths in CIA custody was understated.
“Thesedocuments suggest the CIA was routinely torturing detainees with utterimpunity,” said Singh, who believes the Bush administration permitted theCIA to use harsher interrogation methods than the military in a series ofclassified documents.
CIADirector Porter Goss assured the Senate Committee on Armed Services last monththat agency practices presently conform to U.S. law on torture.
Hecould not say the same past techniques. But the CIA later issued a statementdeclaring that interrogation techniques, past and present, conform to U.S. law.
RepublicanSen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, is resistingDemocratic demands that the committee investigate reports of CIA torture ofdetainees and says a CIA probe now underway is sufficient.
“Theyare not torturing any detainee,” he said last month.
Former intelligence officers believe abuse allegations stemfrom a policy change that allowed aggressive new interrogation methods in thewake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“Allthe CIA does is follow direction from the National Security Council and theWhite House. It doesn’t invent these things,” said one former intelligenceofficer.
Alegal opinion prepared by the Justice Department in August 2002 presented a narrowdefinition of torture that critics say led to the use of coercive tactics.
TheWhite House publicly rejected that policy last summer after revelations ofdetainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and replaced it with a broader definition oftorture in December.