War Without End

Alpha · Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2004 7:18 pm Post subject: BBC Israeli Interrogators in Iraq

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/articles/2004/07/03/breaking-news-bbc-airs-israeli-torture-connection-to-iraq.php

Abdul Haq · Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 3:34 am Post subject:

THANKS!

dangerousdna

dangerousdna · Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 3:39 am Post subject:

Now, let's ask this question again

Who is John Israel?

Abdul Haq · Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 4:00 am Post subject:

Alpha · Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 3:22 pm Post subject:

Alpha · Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2004 3:25 am Post subject: Israeli Interrogators in Iraq

Look at how Hersh contradicts himself in the interview via the following URL where he refers to an Israeli Mossad type and that the Israelis 'couldn't' get away with what the USA was doing at Abu Ghraib. Then he contradicts himself later in the interview by mentioning that the Israelis have been using such tactics for years:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6010419/

'Hardball with Chris Matthews' for Sept. 14
Read the complete transcript to Tuesday's show

Updated: 12:08 p.m. ET Sept. 15, 2004

Guests: Kitty Kelley, Seymour Hersh

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: In the eye of a political hurricane, Kitty Kelley‘s “The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty.” It‘s making noise, it‘s raising questions. I‘ve got some of my own. Tonight, finding the truth with author Kitty Kelley.

Plus, only 14 days into September, and this month is already the deadliest for terrorists and Iraqi insurgent attacks since September 11. How did America get from 9/11 to today‘s war in Iraq? Some answers from investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, author of “Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib.” It‘s HARDBALL.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I will never relent in defending America.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The hope is there, the sun is rising. Our best days are still to come.

BUSH: We‘re on the path to the future, and we‘re not turning back.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: Good evening. I‘m Chris Matthews.

Kitty Kelley has written a lot of books that have made a lot of noise and also raised a lot of questions. And I have got some questions myself about her new book, “The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty.”

Kitty, thanks for joining us on the show tonight. It‘s great to have you. You‘re making all this noise. I hope you‘ll make some noise on this show tonight.

Let me ask you this. The election is coming up in less than 50 days. What in your book is useful to the voter in deciding this November election?

KITTY KELLEY, AUTHOR: I think the entire book is, Chris, because I think it is very, very relevant. They will understand this president better by reading about his family. Because he is a product of a very, very powerful family. Probably the most powerful family in the world today.

MATTHEWS: My favorite question of people who are in the news, as well as those who write it sometimes, is, where did we get it wrong? Where is the public notion of the Bush family—and I mean the generalized notion, I think you know what I mean—different from what you discovered to be the truth?

KELLEY: God, what a great question. There is such a disconnect between the public image of the Bushes and the private reality. And this is not a book just about George W. It really does go back 100 years. And it spans a lot of political lifetimes, if you will. The president‘s great grandfather, his grandfather, and his father. And shows another portrait of the class system in America.

So how did we get it wrong? Now, we‘re getting it wrong because so much is locked up. So many records are locked up and are not available to us because of an executive order that this particular president signed.

MATTHEWS: You mean for the first presidency.

KELLEY: No. I mean, George W. Bush signed an executive order which locks up his records as governor, his father‘s as president, and even Clinton‘s records. And Chris, I think that is really serious. Unless historians step forward, teachers and writers and librarians, and say—they‘ve got to challenge that executive order of the president‘s.

MATTHEWS: OK. Until we get some of that information out, let‘s talk about your book and your methodology as a reporter. What are your rules in deciding what to put in your book, if someone tells you—if I said something about someone else, how would you decide whether to use it or not?

KELLEY: It depends on who it is and what they say, where they said it and how they said it. In this book, behind every name source, I‘ve really tried to have unnamed sources. And this book was the most heavily vetted book that I have ever written in my life. It took me four years, and it also took four sets of lawyers who have gone over the manuscript.

Not all of the interviews—I did nearly 1,000 -- are tape-recorded, but I tried to where I could, providing notes. I‘ve tried to back things up with Freedom of Information documents, from State Department, from FBI. I‘ve read—I‘ve tried to combine primary and secondary sources as best I can to provide this picture.

MATTHEWS: Let‘s talk about one of the things that‘s really in the news now before your book came along. Your book is out today. But let‘s talk about this big question of whether and why President Bush did or did not take a physical exam back when he was with the Air National Guard. Let‘s look at the first quote here. “Bush‘s failure to accomplish annual medical examination, as the record states, could not have been either casual or accidental, said retired First Lieutenant Robert Rogers. There is circumstantial evidence pointing to substance abuse by Bush during this period. Is it unreasonable to raise the possibility that he was suspended from flying as a direct or indirect consequence of substance abuse? It might be if there was no way for Bush to prove his innocence. But George W. Bush can readily defend himself if he so chooses, simply by voluntarily releasing his complete military records, which he has refused to do.”

Who is Robert Rogers, Lieutenant Rogers, and what is his role with regard to Bush‘s role in the Air National Guard?

KELLEY: He is retired First Lieutenant Robert Rogers, an 11-year veteran of the National Guard. And...

MATTHEWS: What was his relationship to President Bush when he was in the Air Guard?

KELLEY: I don‘t think there‘s any relationship.

MATTHEWS: Well, why—what does he know—what does he know about -

· what does he know about the possibility or impossibility or plausibility of our current president having involved himself with substance abuse, as he says in this book of yours?

KELLEY: He says that this is a logical assumption to make.

However...

MATTHEWS: Who is he to tell us that? I‘m just curious of why you chose this man...

KELLEY: He is a member...

MATTHEWS: ... to talk about President Bush‘s use of illegal substances or whatever.

KELLEY: Well, it isn‘t just that that he was telling me, Chris. The news on the National Guard is not whether or not George Bush took illegal substances, but it is the fact, he had a solid gold record up until April of 1972. And then he is missing. And he was penalized by the Air Force, by the National Guard, and six additional months were added to his Guard duty.

I went to Rogers because he has written about the National Guard and he seems to be a historian of the National Guard. And I needed it explained to me.

Then I went to a classmate of Bush‘s, Mark Soler (ph), to just explain to me what 1968 was like at Yale. Did you get into the National Guard easily? Were there reserved slots open? How did one do it? And then I interviewed...

MATTHEWS: Excuse me, I‘m sorry. I just want to talk to you about Lieutenant Rogers.

KELLEY: OK.MATTHEWS: Did he ever meet President Bush?

KELLEY: Didn‘t ask him.

MATTHEWS: Well, do you think he ever met president—did he know anything about President Bush, the man? President Bush as he was when he was with the Guard?

KELLEY: I don‘t know that.

MATTHEWS: How old is he?

KELLEY: He is in his 60s.

MATTHEWS: Was he a contemporary of President Bush? Was he in that Guard unit down in Texas, or not? Did he ever meet President Bush?

KELLEY: No.

MATTHEWS: And yet he‘s here speculating on President Bush‘s use of drugs.

KELLEY: Chris, he is the one who told me about the National Guard and the Air Force instituting random drug testing at that time. He told me further, that every single question that I asked him and that you‘re asking of the president could be answered with the release of the Flight Inquiry Board record. And that‘s the one record that the White House has not released.

MATTHEWS: Let‘s take a look at another quote in the book. You wrote in your book—it‘s a big book—“Even as a married man, George had a whispered past, which almost surfaced during the campaign. A woman appeared in Austin, claiming to have been a call girl from Midland with an intimate knowledge of him during his days in the oil patch. Supposedly, she was ‘the other woman‘ in his life, or one of them, said Peck Young, an Austin political consultant. ‘She set herself up in a hotel here and was prepared to sell her story to the highest bidder. Word got around town, and she claimed she got a visit from some men who made her realize it was better to turn tricks in Midland than to stop breathing. She said she had been approached by what she described as intelligence types. She left town abruptly.”

Who is Peck Young?

KELLEY: Peck Young is a political activist and consultant in Austin.

MATTHEWS: What side is he on?

KELLEY: Politically, what side is he on?

MATTHEWS: Is he a Democrat or Republican?

KELLEY: I think he‘s a Democrat.

MATTHEWS: What does he know about the private life of George W. Bush in those days?

KELLEY: Exactly what he was quoted as saying.

MATTHEWS: What does he know, though?

KELLEY: Exactly what he was quoted as saying in the book. This happened. This occurred.

MATTHEWS: It just says, “Supposedly, she was the other woman in his life.” What does that mean, supposedly? Did he know that she was the other woman in his life?

KELLEY: Did he—who know, Peck Young know?

MATTHEWS: Yeah. The man you‘re quoting here. Did he know anything about George Bush‘s private life?

KELLEY: No. He was telling me what occurred in Austin when George was running. And this woman came to set herself up to tell the story. I thought...

MATTHEWS: Did he give you the name of the woman so you could talk to her?

KELLEY: Yes.

MATTHEWS: And what happened then?

KELLEY: I didn‘t talk to her.

MATTHEWS: Why not?

KELLEY: Because she wouldn‘t talk.

MATTHEWS: Do you have any indication that she had had any relationship with the former—with the current president when he was back there in Texas?

KELLEY: I can‘t really make that supposition. I can really only go as far as what I know.

MATTHEWS: But you quote this fellow.

KELLEY: And I ran into a real wall of fear on that one. And I remember, I went back to Peck Young. And I said, now, tell me about these so-called spooks. I said, they were honestly listed as spooks? But she—

I could not go any further with her.

MATTHEWS: What sense did you have that Peck Young was a good source when you—you do say he didn‘t know the president as a young man back then. And what does he bring to the table here exactly in terms of truth?

KELLEY: It isn‘t so much in terms of truth. It is truth about what happened and what occurred in Austin at that time. This was not a story that was just known to Peck Young. This was known to a lot of political operatives at the time.

MATTHEWS: But he didn‘t know for a fact that the president had an affair with—or any kind of relationship with this prostitute, did he?

KELLEY: For a fact? Was he in the room, as the French say? Was he under the bed? No.

MATTHEWS: No, no. Did he have any knowledge at all? Any real knowledge at all?

KELLEY: Only what he is quoted on in the book, Chris. That‘s as far as I can go.

MATTHEWS: OK. Well, let‘s come back. More with Kitty Kelley when we return. And later journalist Seymour Hersh on how America went from September 11 to the war in Iraq and coming up this Friday, the debut of HARDBALL: THE HORSERACE with all the biggest stories, the latest polls and the hottest ads this week in the presidential race. That‘s THE HORSERACE this Friday at 7:00 Eastern.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTHEWS: We‘re back with author Kitty Kelley whose new book is “The Family, The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty” which is now number one on Amazon. Kitty, I‘ve got a quote here. This is very alluring. “Some people felt that George—this is George W. Bush, the president, his past did not seep out and embarrass him and his family because he was protected by a coterie of former CIA men with an allegiance to his father” who is of course for a while there director of the CIA.

Where did that come from? How did you get upon that?

KELLEY: You‘re quoting me or you‘re quoting...

MATTHEWS: This is just a direct quote from you, the author, on page 551. Some people felt that George Bush‘s past did not seep out because you had been talking about drug use and extramarital affairs and embarrass him and his family because he was protected by a coterie of former CIA men with an allegiance to his father. That‘s not in quotes. That‘s just right from you.

KELLEY: That is the author. That is an informed opinion based on information and belief and the interviews of nearly 1,000 people. I don‘t think it is preposterous. It is really—where does logic lead us?

MATTHEWS: You didn‘t use logic. You used the word felt. You said some people felt. That‘s an unusual way of saying something if it‘s basically even secondhand testimony.

KELLEY: But you and I just talked about Peck Young. He felt that way. He saw what was going on in Austin. He saw a coterie of people surrounding George Bush. It is a theme of this book throughout that George Bush has—George W. Bush has really been protected and enabled by his family. I think it is part of his political success, Chris.

MATTHEWS: But Peck Young, the Austin political consultant, the Democrat you quote here said, all he said was supposedly she was the other woman. Even he was loose in his testimony. Even he was being speculative. And then you say, after citing him as your source here, you say some people felt. That is even a looser attribution. Feeling is hard. First of all, you or I don‘t know how anybody on earth feels except ourselves.

So when you say some people felt, that is a softer way of saying, they believed. Do they believe that he was being protected by the CIA or not?

KELLEY: How about this, Chris? Some people asserted. I found that when I interviewed people who worked at the CIA, even when George was director there, how he protected the black sheep in the family, his brother James Smith Bush. Yes. This can‘t be a huge surprise to you.

MATTHEWS: I‘m trying to learn all this, Kitty, and I‘m trying to be good here...

KELLEY: And you are.

MATTHEWS: Let me talk here about this other question. This is about George Bush and his wife Laura. This is your account. They “used to go down to the island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands to visit Laura‘s college roommate Jane Clark and her boyfriend, the former baseball great Sandy Koufax. Elsewhere on the island, the Bushes used to attend and enjoy heavy pot-smoking parties. This was not inconsistent with Laura‘s past. She graduated from Southern Methodist University in 1968 and had been known in her college days as a go-to girl for dime-bags of marijuana. She not only smoke doped, said public relations executive Robert Nash, an Austin friend of many in Laura‘s SMU class, but she sold dope.”

OK. Robert Nash, what personal knowledge did he have of any illicit traffic of drugs by the first lady?

KELLEY: It was hardly illicit traffic in drugs. It sounds like a Colombian cartel.

MATTHEWS: It says smoked dope.

KELLEY: She did.

MATTHEWS: OK. How do you know she sold dope?

KELLEY: Because I interviewed people who were there. People who smoked dope with her. People who were in...

MATTHEWS: Where is that in your book?

KELLEY: Their names? Their names are not there. Their names are...

MATTHEWS: Where are the first-person witnesses to this illegal drug use? Where are they in this book? I see a guy named Robert Nash who as you quote is an Austin friend of many in Laura‘s SMU class. That suggests to me he didn‘t have a personal relationship with her either.

KELLEY: Oh, yes, he did.

MATTHEWS: He did?

KELLEY: I mean, he knows Laura Bush.

MATTHEWS: Why did you say many in Laura‘s SMU class? Was he a friend of Laura‘s or not?

KELLEY: Because I interviewed a lot of people in Laura‘s SMU class. I interviewed a lot of people in Tortola who were there. Do they want to be named? No. Are they going to be named about smoking dope with the first lady? No. I interviewed someone who did cocaine with George Bush at Yale. Is he going to go on the record? No. He did verify it to Erica Jong, a writer in New York City. But as he said to me, now it‘s a felony, one. Two, I did it with him. He wasn‘t holier than thou about it. And he said, I have a little bit of institutional loyalty to the university.

MATTHEWS: What about the accusation in your book that George Bush, the president of the United States now, snorted coke at Camp David when his father was president. Who was your firsthand source on that?

KELLEY: The firsthand source is unnamed. I confirmed it with his former sister-in-law.

MATTHEWS: What do you think of the pattern in your book of citing sources that don‘t have firsthand experience by name. No, listen. And then making statements about sources whose names can‘t be used? What good is it getting the names throughout this book of people who don‘t know what they‘re talking about in terms of firsthand experience, and then not citing the ones who you claim or say as an author do have firsthand experience.

What good does it do to the reader to constantly come across names that don‘t know what they‘re talking about in terms of firsthand experience and then be told by you the author that there‘s a plethora of people out there who are on the record with you but don‘t wish to go on the record in terms of publication. I understand journal. I‘ve been dealing with this for years myself. I know how tricky it is to try to get people to come forward. Could you get anyone to come forward and say that any of the Bush family. Let‘s start with the president and first lady broke the law.

Did anyone come forward and say, I am willing to go on the record and say, I sold them, I was with them, I did it with them, I know they did it, anybody?

KELLEY: No.

MATTHEWS: Well, that‘s a hell of a shield, isn‘t it?

KELLEY: No, Chris. You know in the instance, in the book, where in New York City attorney is quoted about the former George Bush and the mistress that he had in the early 1960‘s in New York City. And he shared an apartment with her. He is unnamed. The woman, her first name is in there. But the last name, the reader sees, it goes bracket. Last name deleted for privacy reason. He went back to his records. He gave me a date. He gave me a time. His law firm is in there. Would he step forward and put his name after it, no.

MATTHEWS: Here‘s the problem. When you go to sources as a journalist, you‘ve had to do and it I‘ve had to do it. You go and get them to say something at a dinner or a lunch or a maybe over a few drinks, wherever. The minute you turn on the tape-recorder and you say I‘m going public with this with your name on it, they change the story. They don‘t quite have the excitement behind the way they deliver the story. It gets a little less juicy. There‘s something lost when you start to say to a person, I won‘t use your name.

KELLEY: No Chris. No, no. Time out.

MATTHEWS: Go for it. You‘ve got all the time you want.

KELLEY: That didn‘t happen with this, because it was no surprise that Kitty Kelley was doing this book. I didn‘t ambush anybody. Anybody that I approached knew that I was doing it for this book. So it wasn‘t a matter of seductive cocktail conversation and then going back to them. It wasn‘t that way at all.

MATTHEWS: It just stun me that the 700 page book can‘t have one on the record bit of testimony. On the record testimony. When of course, all the noise about this book will be caused by the words you use, and that nobody will stand by those words.

KELLEY: I think you have just—you have just underlined the power of this family, Chris. This is a sitting president. His father is a former president, a former director of central intelligence. People are frightened. And I had to accommodate four sets of lawyers. I can tell that you. The book is fully documented. And I stand beside every word of it. I know that it seems dicey.

MATTHEWS: The problem is there‘s not a word in the book against the first family that‘s in the headlines today.

KELLEY: That is the problem. But that‘s not my fault. That‘s the media coverage of this book.

MATTHEWS: Let the buyer beware. Thank you very much. Good luck with the book, Kitty, you always do well.

To read an excerpt, go to hardball.msnbc.com. Still to come on HARDBALL, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, on whether top Pentagon officials were behind the prison abuse scandal in Iraq. Your watching HARDBALL on MSNBC.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTHEWS: Tomorrow on HARDBALL, we‘ll talk about Kitty Kelley‘s new book and get a response from Republican strategist Ed Rogers, who was an aid to the first President Bush. Up next, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh on the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal in Abu Ghraib and whether top Pentagon officials were behind it. You‘re watching HARDBALL on MSNBC.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTHEWS: This half hour on HARDBALL, journalist Seymour Hersh on his new book, “Chain of Command: The road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib.” Did the top advisors of the Defense Department set the tone that lead to the prison abuse scandal. Seymour Hersh is coming here, but first lets check in with the MSNBC News Desk.

(NEWS BREAK)

MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL.

Joining me now is Seymour Hersh, whose investigative reporting for “The New Yorker” magazine has unflinchingly examined U.S. activities post-9/11. They‘re weaved together with new reporting in his new book, “Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib.”

I want you ask you about something. You broke My Lai, right?

SEYMOUR HERSH, AUTHOR, “CHAIN OF COMMAND”: Yes.

MATTHEWS: Is this bigger than My Lai?

HERSH: No. My Lai, they sat around all day and killed people,

stopped in the middle and had some K rations, chewing and having their

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: As they‘re killing people in the ditch.

HERSH: And then went back and went back into it.

This is, I think, internationally, just as My Lai, once we discovered

it was a horror, this has the same sort of impact. It is not—it is not

· it is funny to use words...

MATTHEWS: I think it has got a bigger impact. Let me tell you, let‘s

talk about Abu Ghraib. People tell me who know something about Islamic

culture that as much as we are, to put it lightly, turned off by beheadings

· they shock the hell out of us because we can‘t think of anybody doing that, although electrocution is pretty bad, too—they say that is part of killing the enemy. That‘s what we do. That‘s execution for crime. That‘s the way they deal with enemies.

But stripping guys and making them do weird things in front of other guys, in front of women, is apparently horrendous to the very soul of an Islamic man.

HERSH: And I had an Israeli, a very hard-nosed Israeli guy, one of commandos, intelligence guys, old-timer, said to me, you know, I hate Arabs. I‘ve been killing them for 50 years. And they hate us and been killing us for 50 years.

But we know one day we‘re going to have to have peace with those SOBs and share a border some way. And I‘ll tell you something, Hersh, he said. If we had done to our Arabs in prison what you had done to yours, we couldn‘t do it.

That‘s how bad it is.

MATTHEWS: That‘s why I‘ve been saying for 10 years now the reason the Israelis don‘t engage in massacres when they sometimes get in terrible situations is, they have got to live there. Blood doesn‘t forgive. You kill a bunch of people, you humiliate a bunch of people, they spent thousands of years getting even with you. Isn‘t that it?

HERSH: I‘ll tell you, literally, generations can go by and they can do revenge, particularly the Taliban. Some of those people, 100 years for revenge is not—we don‘t know what we‘ve done.

MATTHEWS: OK. Let‘s talk about your story.

(CROSSTALK)

HERSH: Let me say one more thing about your point.

MATTHEWS: OK.

HERSH: Because it is an interesting point.

Around the world, America has lost some prestige because of Abu Ghraib. It‘s certainly as profound as My Lai and perhaps more because it gets to the soul of anybody who is Islamic. Our friends that are Islamic are horrified by us because they see us—people who want to send their children, who do business here...

MATTHEWS: Sure.

HERSH: They say things to me like, you‘re a perverted, sexually perverted culture. What? An Arab man, you‘re photographing him faking homosexual acts with other men, with girls going like this?

MATTHEWS: Yes.

HERSH: And I actually—there were some people, as you know, even in the Armed Services Committee investigating it, compared this to college hijinks. Not a chance.

MATTHEWS: No.

HERSH: Not a chance.

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about—well, the ramifications, I think, are obvious. We had friends in the world until recently, good friends, like Egypt. Certainly people in Jordan are friends of ours, certainly people in Morocco. All over the Arab world, we‘ve had friends. What is their life like right now?

HERSH: Well, look, the Egyptians still do things for us. There‘s still the Egyptian security service. But the people, the erosion of support for the United States among our allies is huge.

MATTHEWS: Right.

HERSH: That‘s the issue.

MATTHEWS: I remember walking through the streets of Cairo back in ‘71, after coming out of the Peace Corps. And the little kids on the street, Cairo kids, would come up to you and say, do you know John Wayne? They loved America. Do you know Muhammad Ali? Don‘t say nothing against Muhammad Ali. There was a kind of rough and tumble back and forth in those days.

HERSH: Don‘t give up on that, because I was in Damascus just recently and they still like Americans, believe it or not. Most people make a distinction between the government and the people.

American, we are pretty up-front, straightforward people. And they like us.

MATTHEWS: Not after we reelect the president. Won‘t they think then that we‘re with the government or will they think the election is fixed? What will they think?

HERSH: It is going to be real interesting next year.

MATTHEWS: Yes, that‘s right.

Let me ask you about this—on this show, we try to ask a lot of questions and hard questions, hopefully get the answers to come out of it all.

(CROSSTALK)

HERSH: Are you apologizing for getting tough with me in advance?

MATTHEWS: No, I‘m trying to explain my method here and I‘m trying to get the answer out of you. I‘m being nice for a second to get you disarmed here.

We have a problem of Americans abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib. And a lot of tough guys in this country would say, so what? They deserve it. Fine. Let‘s put them aside. Did this order from the top? Did the masks, the dog chains, the leashes, the collars, sort of the notion of sexual humiliation, did that come from the smart guys at the top of an intelligence or did that come from a bunch of country kids who just thought up all this stuff?

HERSH: No question it came from the top, from a bunch of guys in intelligence.

MATTHEWS: OK. How do you know that?

HERSH: I‘ll tell you what happened.

Very early on, one of the things you need to do in the insurgency in Iraq, you need to penetrate it. Right now, we know nothing about the insurgency. We knew nothing when we began the war in Iraq because we were surprised when it happened. And we‘re surprised today. When a bomb -- 10 Marines are killed the other week, we don‘t know about it. A bomb today outside a police station, we don‘t know. We have no intelligence inside.

We can‘t penetrate the insurgency. We never have been able to, which is why we have got a lot of problem in Iraq. But that‘s a different issue.

At one point when the war was going bad last year, the thought was, bring

in some of the pros. We have a—I‘ve written about it—we have a

secret, top secret unit that has been doing stuff for—since December of

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: They‘re super interrogators.

HERSH: Yes. And they operate in the cold. They‘re out there, way out there.

MATTHEWS: What do you think of their practices? Are they OK? Are they tough, borderline?

(CROSSTALK)

HERSH: You have to say, in the beginning, it‘s not such a bad idea to go get that guy, grab him, and don‘t worry about legality.

MATTHEWS: Sure.

HERSH: We thought that...

MATTHEWS: What do you do? What is standard interrogation practice? It is not humiliating somebody sexually as much as keeping them up all night, making it so they can‘t dream. You know that stuff.

HERSH: The good guys will tell you what—the good guys—and I‘m talking about the good guys not only in the FBI, but in the CIA and special ops guys. I know some of these guys. The good guys will tell you, establish rapport.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

HERSH: You never coerce. Coercion, particularly with a guy who wants to commit jihad, a guy who is willing to—comes from a group of people who want to fly airplanes into our buildings, willing to die, how are you going to get them to do anything other than give you something canned, even under duress?

Rapport. Show them you‘re a good guy. Show them they don‘t understand. Take the time. This is standard practice. And anybody who says coercion works, they don‘t know what they‘re talking about. There‘s absolutely no sophisticated person in the government, in the intelligence community who will argue seriously...

MATTHEWS: Can you argue that to some ideologue in the Defense Department who wants to break this insurgency so he can prove he was right there wasn‘t going to be one? Because isn‘t that what all this is about, the surprising—as the president said, he miscalculated. We have got this big insurgency in Iraq right now that nobody counted on. Now they‘ve got to crack it so it doesn‘t embarrass them even further, right? Isn‘t that what is going on?

HERSH: You can‘t crack it now, the way we‘re doing it now.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Right.

But what created this special push in your book? Tell me what you learned in your book about this special push—you say it came from the top—to break these prisoners.

HERSH: The idea was to get some people—in Iraq, the idea was this.

We could not penetrate, as I said, the insurgency. We have got 20,000 people. Who knows. Thousands of people arrested, some just in roadside street, random street arrests with roadblocks. We don‘t know who is who inside the government inside the prisons. Get some of the guys, the young guys, the young males who have no connection to the insurgency. Get them naked. Show them photographs. Simulate a sexual act. Get photographs so you can blackmail them. Tell them—this is, as you said, totally shameful humiliation for them, beyond belief. It‘s all over for them.

MATTHEWS: Whose idea was this?

HERSH: It comes from a lot of guys.

MATTHEWS: Well, name some names.

HERSH: No, it is not a question of naming names.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: What offices in the Pentagon?

HERSH: Even the Israelis have done this.

MATTHEWS: But what office in the Pentagon did it come from?

HERSH: High up. This came from a special operations group we had.

MATTHEWS: Cambone?

HERSH: Cambone was certainly aware of it. So was Rumsfeld of the notion of a special unit.

MATTHEWS: The Special Plans guys, Feith and the others, did they get involved in this or not?

HERSH: I just don‘t know if they were briefing

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: But how do you know it came from the top if you don‘t know who it was at the top?

HERSH: I‘ve been told by people in a special unit, what—let me just finish the sentence.

The underlying theory was, get—and you‘ll hear it. It is not so crazy. Get some of these guys, get the book on them, so we can tell them, we‘re going to send you home to your community. We want to you join the insurgency and start telling us what‘s going on or else we‘re going to spread these pictures out to your neighbors.

MATTHEWS: So they were trying to not just break them and get the truth out of them.

HERSH: They were turning them.

MATTHEWS: They were going to use them as double agents.

HERSH: They were going to turn them. That was one of the underlying intellectual ideas.

MATTHEWS: How did you get that?

HERSH: From—I‘ve got good people. Look

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Can you describe them?

HERSH: People with access to something known as a special access program, a SAP. It‘s the special program I talked about. We have a small group of commandos that operate without American I.D.s, and probably Canadian, Jordanian. Who knows.

MATTHEWS: And this is firsthand information from them?

HERSH: Don‘t push me on this stuff. It is real information.

MATTHEWS: We‘re going to come right back with Seymour Hersh. The name of the book is “Chain of Command.” Back with him.

And don‘t forget, you can keep up with the presidential race on HardBlogger, our election blog Web site. Just go to HARDBALL.MSNBC.com. And while you‘re there, sign on to our free daily e-mail briefing.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTHEWS: We‘re coming back with journalist Seymour Hersh and his new book, “Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib.”

HARDBALL returns after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. We‘re back with Seymour Hersh, Sy Hersh, author of “Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib.”

Let me ask you, Sy, you are one of great historians—not historians. You‘re one of the great investigative reporters, starting back in the Vietnam days, when you were covering there and you got involved with the McCarthy campaign and things like that. I always thought of you very nicely because of that.

Let‘s talk about deep history here. Harry Truman had to quit the presidency in 1952. He was 23 percent in the polls. He had to quit not because people didn‘t think he was an OK guy, but because they hated Korea. Korea, we had gotten bogged down around the 38th Parallel. We were fighting our way back up to that parallel, incredibly costly campaign.

Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson was Mr.—he was Mighty Mouse for two or three years in this country. Nobody stood in his way in the early ‘60s, after the Kennedy assassination. By ‘68, he had to quit. Jimmy Carter had to quit—or was beaten because of the Iranian hostage crisis, something far less than this thing we‘re in right now, far less in terms of dimension and cost to this country.

Why is President Bush, in the midst of what looks to be a bogged down war, where we‘re continuing to face whole stretches of Iraq we cannot pacify, Fallujah, Najaf, all the places in the Sunni Triangle, all these areas that are now building up civilizations against us, how come he is doing better than ever in this campaign and he looks like he‘s going to win right now? What is going on?

HERSH: Well, we don‘t have a Democratic candidate that is posing an option, a choice. I think there isn‘t a clear choice.

The American—you and I both know a lot of people, a lot of Republicans don‘t like this war.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

HERSH: A lot of military guys I can tell firsthand I know don‘t like this war.

MATTHEWS: But there are ways to beat a president without going 180 on him. Ike in 1952 said, I will go to Korea. He didn‘t say, I was going to buckle. He just implied he would fix the damn problem, right? I will go to—Nixon said, I got a plan, right?

HERSH: He said, I have got a plan to end the war. And it turned out to be to win it.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Well, he stuck in four more years with a deal he could have gotten four years earlier. Right, all that. And Humphrey, I don‘t know what he was talking about.

But it seems to—and Reagan in 1980 beat Jimmy Carter. I can tell you. I was on the plane. He beat him because he basically said we‘ve got to be strong. He didn‘t have any particular solution to the Iranian hostage crisis either.

Why can‘t this country focus on the debate, is there a better way to go in Iraq and the rest of the Arab world than we‘re going right now that is costing us all these men and women?

HERSH: Look, if I had the answer to that question, I would put it in a bottle and sell it for a buck and be a millionaire overnight.

I don‘t have the answer. But I have—I can tell you one thing. The 200 octane fuel that drives this is us, the Americans. I had a friend of mine who is a high-tech guy who worked in special ops all his life, very tough-nosed guy, very American, willing to die for his country, did his service, was an officer and a Delta Force-connected kind of guy. He is approached by American companies.

I had lunch with him the other week. He said he is approached by CEOs of major companies to do security in Iraq because he has got some good ideas. And he says to them, are you an American company? And they say yes. He said forget it. It is over. Americans are over. We‘re over. There‘s no—there‘s not—you are not going to make it in the United States. We are not going to make it in Iraq. I don‘t care what they say politically, what the White House says.

And I think until somebody articulates the idea that maybe another thousand lives isn‘t worth what we‘re doing, and God knows how many countless Iraqi lives—and it has nothing to do with Saddam Hussein anymore, whether he was good or bad, or WMD. We‘re looking at, we have put a guy in business, Iyad Allawi...

MATTHEWS: The new prime minister of the interim government.

HERSH: Who has no support. He couldn‘t walk on a street in Baghdad.

MATTHEWS: Well, why do these conservative writers, neoconservative writers I read in the paper and everybody watching reads in the papers, say, give him time; Allawi will put together a government over there? What are they talking about?

HERSH: I would like to smoke what they‘re smoking, because it isn‘t going to happen.

Look, we promised democracy. You have got a country where the Shiites are the majority. You‘re not giving the Shiites what we promised. We‘re not giving them democracy.

MATTHEWS: They want an up-and-down vote. They want the country.

HERSH: We didn‘t give it to them. We back off our...

MATTHEWS: Sistani wants it and he has a right to it if you believe in one man, one vote.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: He‘s got a right to it.

HERSH: That‘s what we said.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

HERSH: Sop we‘re walking away from first principles ourselves.

And they talk about an election, election. And they talk about—the White House now or the president was talking at the convention about there will be an election and then this will be this Iraqi army that is going to materialize. Are you kidding?

MATTHEWS: What are you hearing about the issue that is really cutting edge this week, Sy? And I don‘t know if you know. Just say you don‘t know. That would be refreshing around here. We have decided apparently not to go into those parts of the country, the Sunni Triangle, the really rough places, where they‘ve set up their own sort of militia against us because we don‘t want a big loss of Americans. That‘s a damn good reason, as far as I‘m concerned.

And some people think maybe—we had Barry McCaffrey on last—he allowed the fact that we may be also doing it because of the timetable here at home as well. We have got an election. Who wants a lot of hell to pay between now and Election Day. Is that smart military decision-making or is it just politics?

In other words, are we better off, if you‘re for the war, going out and fighting for these areas where we‘re—are contested right now and they‘re really fighting against us, or put it off until the Iraqis can go do the dirty work for us?

HERSH: First, you are never going to get the Iraqis to do the work for us, dirty work for us. That is not going to happen.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: They are not going into those tough neighborhoods?

HERSH: No.

And the second thing is, the answer is, of course I don‘t know what the inside politics—I‘ll tell you something that always interested me. We walked away from Najaf. Remember the Najaf issue? We were face to face with Muqtada al-Sadr and all of a sudden, we allow him to walk out with his arms. When? A couple days before the Republican Convention.

I was always struck by that timing. I think politics always takes over at the end.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Do you think Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is signalling his officers to move militarily based upon the political calender?

HERSH: No, I can‘t say I know anything about that. How would I possibly know what Rumsfeld is doing?

I do know that, look, he is a patriot. I disagree with him profoundly on everything. But do I think, ultimately, he would allow a decision to go forward? I hope not.

MATTHEWS: Why do we all like Rumsfeld? I do, too. I don‘t get it either, but we all like him.

HERSH: Well, he‘s got a certain...

MATTHEWS: And there‘s so much trouble in this foreign policy, so many questions to raise.

HERSH: I don‘t like his policies, but I like him.

MATTHEWS: I wish I could get him down under sodium pentathol sometime and see what he thinks.

Anyway, thank you, Sy Hersh.

The name of the book, “Chain of Command.” For an excerpt of “Chain of Command,” log on to HARDBALL.MSNBC.com.

When we come back, retired General Montgomery Meigs will join us with his response to Seymour Hersh‘s interview here today.

You‘re watching HARDBALL on MSNBC.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL.

Retired Army General Montgomery Meigs is an MSNBC military analyst.

General, I‘ve got to ask you. The main thrust of what we heard from Sy Hersh tonight is that this came from the top, this abuse of prisoners, the whole shebang. What‘s your sense of this?

RET. GEN. MONTGOMERY MEIGS, NBC MILITARY ANALYST: I think it‘s too early to tell.

I‘m sure that there were policy issues that got in the way that confused people. I listened to what he said about this special compartmented group that was running around doing stuff. I don‘t know that for a fact. It‘s likely. It‘s possible. It‘s plausible. But right now, we don‘t have enough really good primary evidence on this.

MATTHEWS: Right.

MEIGS: And if you look through the book, a lot of it is sort of so-and-so said. But show me the documents. Show me the real hard proof of this kind of stuff.

MATTHEWS: What‘s our sense, being a military man, of the reaction by our guys and our women to the story, Abu Ghraib?

MEIGS: I think—all the people I have talked to, both retired and on active duty, are horrified by it.

MATTHEWS: They feel bad as fighting men and fighting women?

MEIGS: Absolutely. Absolutely.

MATTHEWS: They feel that this is a disgrace?

MEIGS: It‘s a terrible failure. You look at those pictures and you say to yourself, how could this have happened?

MATTHEWS: POWs, Geneva Convention. Prisoners of war in this war or insurgency, does it get dirtier when you‘re fighting an insurgency than it would normally be in the field?

MEIGS: The restrictions you have to put on the troops in terms of discipline have to be tougher. It‘s hard enough in conventional combat, when you are supposed to pick up prisoners who have just killed some of your buddies.

I mean, look, this is violent stuff. Very hard to get the troops to do the right thing. But you can. In this kind of insurgency thing, it‘s very, very difficult. And you‘ve got to try to do two things. What are the rules? Make the troops follow the rules. Don‘t treat your enemy as a subhuman, because the minute you start to lose respect for your enemy, two bad things happen. One, you underestimate him. Two, you can tend to do things that—or your troops can—that lead to this kind of behavior.

MATTHEWS: Do you think there was a morale situation where—or a military situation where you‘ve got a lot of guys in prison and you‘re guarding them, and you know that a lot of them were involved in IEDs, explosive devices, blowing limbs off of people and setting up these mines along the roadway? Is that how soldiers look at these guys?

MEIGS: Sure.

MATTHEWS: You were in combat. You may be here for a while, but I know we‘re still at war.

MEIGS: There‘s some of that going on.

Plus, remember, the unit that was taking care of these prisoners was not properly trained for it, was poorly led, was put under all kinds of pressure to get results. You have all these intelligent people running around. We‘re not clear which ones were Army and which ones were civilian and who was directing what to whom. That still isn‘t clear. And maybe the court-martials will bring that out for us.

MATTHEWS: Well, the big question to me is the police kind of question, which is, where did they get the hoods, where did they get the leashes, where did they get the dog collars? All the stuff we see in those gross pictures from Abu Ghraib look like they were issued. That‘s not the kind of stuff you bring from home for midnight sport.

(CROSSTALK)

MEIGS: The hoods were mostly sandbags.

MATTHEWS: Were they?

MEIGS: If you look carefully, a lot of those are sandbags.

Secondly...

MATTHEWS: They look awfully small for sandbags.

MEIGS: No.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Really?

MEIGS: Normal sandbags are about that big.

(CROSSTALK)

MEIGS: The other issue is, the dog handlers will have leashes. The dog handlers are going to have collars.

MATTHEWS: And that all would be available in that prison?

MEIGS: It would be available in the dog handler unit.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Where would the M.P.s get it?

MEIGS: Dog handlers were an M.P. unit.

MATTHEWS: Why would they go do something like that? Why would they go somewhere else to some other unit and try to get something issued to them?

MEIGS: They had dog handlers in the prison.

MATTHEWS: Right.

MEIGS: So if you‘ve got dog handlers in the prison, hey, I need a leash, that‘s easy to get. That‘s not a big question.

MATTHEWS: What is your view as a military man? Did this come from prisoners—I‘m sorry, did this come from the enlisted people who were in the M.P. unit there, the ones guarding the prison? Or did this come—the whole suggestion of how you humiliate someone sexually in this perverse way, do you think average G.I.s would think up this stuff? Do you think average reservists would think up this stuff?

MEIGS: I think it‘s a combination. We have already had individuals plead guilty to abuse that they initiated. The question that you always...

MATTHEWS: Was that a variation on what they saw was being done by the M.I., military intelligence people?

MEIGS: That‘s the issue. That‘s what I was getting to.

What you always ask in a situation like this, Chris, is, what is the command climate? What kind of subtle messages are being sent in that sort of unofficial way? What‘s going on there? And that really hasn‘t been developed yet. And hopefully as we go through these courts-martial, more and more of that will come out. And the reason I underline courts-martial, that‘s sworn testimony.

MATTHEWS: Yes. I would like to hear from the majors and the colonels. I would like to hear from the guys in the middle.

MEIGS: Well, I think you‘re going to hear from some more senior people as their defense counsels take them into courts-martial.

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about this war. We have a lot of military experts on MSNBC, and it‘s great to have them, like yourself. Is there a problem in questioning a war?

MEIGS: No.

MATTHEWS: For a retired officer, for a retired field officer?

MEIGS: I don‘t think so.

MATTHEWS: Field ranked.

MEIGS: I mean, look, we‘re citizens, just like everybody else.

MATTHEWS: Because you hear the scuttlebutt that people in the military don‘t like this war in Iraq. And then you get them on TV and it‘s very hard to get anybody to say that.

MEIGS: I don‘t think I would typify it that way.

I think the problem with this war is, we haven‘t really—we aren‘t directing our energy against the enemy‘s center of gravity. Look, if you‘re taking down a football team, you‘re running a business, what do I go to, to my competitor that takes him out of the game the quickest? The thing that takes al Qaeda out of the game the quickest and its surrogates is going to their ability to keep spinning off these cells and regenerating themselves.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

MEIGS: That‘s not our major effort.

MATTHEWS: That‘s not in Iraq.

MEIGS: Our major effort is—you just said it yourself.

MATTHEWS: OK. Well, that‘s been my skepticism from the beginning.

Anyway, thank you very much, General Montgomery Meigs.

Join us again tomorrow night at 7:00 Eastern for more HARDBALL. And then tomorrow at 9:00 Eastern, we‘ll be back for a special edition of HARDBALL. It‘s HARDBALL Wednesday from now on.

Right now, it‘s time for the “COUNTDOWN” with Keith.

END

Alpha

Israelis 'using Kurds to build power base'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/The_Kurds/Story/0,2763,1243589,00.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More on Israeli Torture Tactics Used at Mosul Prison in Iraq

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0914-20.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1304042,00.html

Alpha

Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 14:38:00 -0700 (PDT)

Dear Mr. Pyes,

With regard to the your Los Angeles Times article (which was discussed on the 'To the Point' nation radio program yesterday on PRI which one can listen to via the link at www.moretothepoint.com), General Janis Karpinski (of the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal) had mentioned that she had met an Israeli interrogator working with the Delta Force (special forces) interrogation team at the detention facility near the Baghdad airport (so there is a strong possibility that Israeli interrogators were also working with US special forces in Afghanistan - perhaps with Delta Force there as well):

http://www.latimes.com/news/yahoo/la-fg-detain21sep21,1,4636052,print.story

You can hear General Karpinski's BBC interview about such via scrolling down to the link at the following URL (the Jane's article about Israelis interrogators working for the USA in Iraq is also linked at the following URL):

Israeli Interrogators in Iraq:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/07/03/breaking-news-bbc-airs-israeli-torture-connection-to-iraq.php

Forwarded:

Israeli torture tactics (hooding, sexual abuse, etc) used at Mosul Prison in Iraq:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2004/09/20/israeli-torture-tactics-in-mosul-iraq-as-well.php

Israeli Interrogators in Iraq:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/07/03/breaking-news-bbc-airs-israeli-torture-connection-to-iraq.php

Zionists and torture in Iraq:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/articles/2004/08/19/the-zionists-and-torture-in-iraq.php

Treason at the Pentagon:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2004/09/08/treason-in-high-places-pentagon-zionists-aipac-and-israel.php

You might also be interested in James Bamford's new book ('A Pretext for War') which conveys the motivation for why the USA has been attacked (at the World Trade Center in 1993 and on September 11th, 2001). 'A Pretext for War' also conveys the neoconservative agenda for war in Iraq and beyond:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/articles/2004/07/22/james-bamford-on-msnbc-hardball-about-a-pretext-for-war.php

http://www.latimes.com/news/yahoo/la-fg-detain21sep21,1,2698482.story

U.S. Probing Alleged Abuse of Afghans
Inquiry focuses on an 18-year-old soldier who died while in American custody. He and seven other prisoners were tortured, witnesses say.
By Craig Pyes and Mark Mazzetti
Special to The Times

September 21, 2004

GARDEZ, Afghanistan — American military investigators have opened a criminal probe into allegations of murder and torture involving an 18-year-old Afghan army recruit who died while in U.S. custody last year. The new inquiry, which will also focus on the alleged torture of seven other Afghan soldiers, was confirmed Monday by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command.

The previously undisclosed death occurred in March 2003 after the eight soldiers were arrested at a remote firebase operated here by the U.S. Army Special Forces, according to witnesses and an Afghan military investigation.

Motivation for those arrests remains cloaked in Afghan political intrigue. The action was requested by a provincial governor feuding with local military commanders, an Afghan intelligence report says.

In the end, none of the eight men was charged with a crime or linked to anti-government conduct.

The dead soldier, identified as Jamal Naseer, a member of the Afghan Army III Corps, was severely beaten over a span of at least two weeks, according to a report prepared for the Afghan attorney general. A witness described his battered corpse as being "green and black" with bruises.

Alleged American mistreatment of the detainees included repeated beatings, immersion in cold water, electric shocks, being hung upside down and toenails being torn off, according to Afghan investigators and an internal memorandum prepared by a United Nations delegation that interviewed the surviving soldiers.

Some of the Afghan soldiers were beaten to the point that they could not walk or sit, Afghan doctors and other witnesses said.

Afghan military prosecutors looking into the incident privately recommended more than a year ago that the Afghan attorney general's office pursue a murder case against unnamed American soldiers at the Gardez firebase. No action on the recommendation was taken, but the prosecutors say the case is still open.

The prosecutors' confidential 117-page investigative report recently was reviewed by a Washington-based nonprofit educational organization, the Crimes of War Project, and the information was provided to The Times. The U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, or CID, stymied in an earlier attempt to investigate the incident, launched its probe over the weekend in response to questions by The Times about the Afghan report.

The eight-man Afghan army unit was taken prisoner as part of a campaign by U.S. forces and the local governor to bring Paktia province in southeastern Afghanistan under the control of the central government, Afghan and U.N. officials said. American forces suspected that some Afghan commanders were selling weapons to anti-government forces, they said.

After Naseer's death, the seven other troops were transferred to Afghan police custody and released without charges. None was linked to Al Qaeda or the forces of the ousted Taliban regime.

Former Atty. Gen. for the Armed Forces Yar Mohammed Tamkin, who directed the Afghan investigation, concluded in the report that there was a "strong possibility" that Jamal Naseer was "murdered as the result of torture" at the hands of his American captors.

He added that under Afghan law, "it is necessary for our legal system to investigate the torture of the seven individuals and the murder of Jamal, son of Ghazi, and other similar acts committed by foreign nationals."

One witness account provided to Tamkin's investigators came from Naseer's brother, an Afghan army commander also among those detained at Gardez. He told investigators in a statement that soon after Naseer died, two "high-ranking" U.S. soldiers squabbled near the body.

One American, he said, grabbed the other by the collar, scolded him for torturing the youth and said he "should have been shot with a bullet," according to the report.

None of the suspected Americans was identified in the Afghan military's investigation.

The 20th Special Forces Group was in charge of the Special Forces mission throughout Afghanistan at the time of the Gardez incident. It is a National Guard group based in Birmingham, Ala., that also draws soldiers from units in Florida and Mississippi. Officials said it was customarily assigned to Latin American operations.

The 20th group was replaced countrywide on March 15, 2003, by the 3rd Special Forces Group from Ft. Bragg, N.C., U.S. officials said.

'The Gardez 7'

In Washington, Pentagon officials said they could find no reports passed up the chain of command as required when a death occurs in U.S. custody, raising questions about possible efforts by American troops in Afghanistan to cover up the incident.

Earlier this year, the CID received a tip about the incident from an Afghan prison official but said it was unable to investigate the matter because of a lack of information.

The case of the "Gardez 7," as CID officials dubbed it, was filed away as unfounded because investigators had no records, victims' names or witnesses, said Christopher E. Coffey, an Army detective based at Bagram air base in Afghanistan.

Access to the Afghan military report on the death of Naseer was obtained during an independent investigation of prisoner abuse allegations by the Crimes of War Project.

The group was established in 1999 to provide information that could "lead to greater pressure to prevent [war crimes] and to punish those who commit them." It is described on its website as "a collaboration of journalists, lawyers and scholars dedicated to raising public awareness of the laws of war."

Coffey said that with the new information, the CID would pursue charges of murder and of abuse of a person in U.S. custody.

"We're trying to figure out who was running the base," Coffey said. "We don't know what unit was there. There are no records. The reporting system is broke across the board. Units are transferred in and out. There are no SOPs [standard operating procedures] … and each unit acts differently."

Remote bases such as Gardez are usually operated by Special Forces and intelligence agencies and report to special operations commanders. Even representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross are not allowed to visit such bases.

"Gardez is the worst facility — it is three or four times as bad as any other base in Afghanistan," said Coffey, whose CID group has been assigned to Afghanistan since April 2003.

Disclosures this year of U.S. military abuse of detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison damaged America's image around the world, prompting a series of high-level military reviews by the Pentagon.

A report last month by former Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger found that prisoner abuse by interrogators in Iraq could be traced, in part, to the use of unauthorized techniques that had previously been applied in Afghanistan.

In July, an investigation of detainee operations in Iraq and Afghanistan by the Army's inspector general, Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek, disclosed 94 cases of alleged abuse, including 39 deaths in U.S. custody — 20 of them suspected homicides. The report said the inspector general had found "no incidents of abuse that had not been reported through command channels."

No Documentation

But Naseer's death was not among those counted. The absence of documentation appears to undermine findings that all abuse incidents were properly reported through the chain of command.

Witness accounts provided to Afghan military investigators suggest the possibility that U.S. military officials at Gardez tried to distance themselves from the incident almost immediately after the death. All seven survivors and Naseer's bruised corpse were turned over to local police later the same day, after American officers sought assistance from the governor and local security officials, according to the Afghan military report and interviews.

The Afghan soldiers were transferred to police custody on the governor's orders — with no arrest warrants, no criminal charges filed and no documentation of Naseer's death, Police Chief Abdullah Mujahid acknowledged in a letter to the provincial governor.

The letter was included among evidence in the Afghan military investigation.

At the time, the Gardez police chief told officials of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, or UNAMA, that he was keeping the prisoners in custody only at the request of U.S.-led coalition forces.

An American Special Forces commander also had threatened to kill the chief if he released any coalition prisoners, said a UNAMA official who witnessed the warning.

Gardez police held the men for a month and a half with as many as 13 other inmates in a "secret detention room" built for five prisoners, according to the attorney general's report. While in police custody, the prisoners were treated by local doctors. They told UNAMA that they had received no medical attention during their 17-day detention at the Special Forces base.

At the jail, the men were still wearing the soiled clothes they had on when they were taken into custody, Afghan doctors and other independent witnesses said, and their wounds were not bandaged or treated. Eventually, the men were transferred to a prison near Kabul, but only after their injuries "showed signs of improvement," the military report said.

Their arrival at the Kabul prison without arrest warrants or criminal charges prompted the Afghan government investigation.

The following account is based on evidence and information developed in that investigation, as well as the inquiries conducted by UNAMA and the Crimes of War Project. It was culled primarily from documents and testimony in the Afghan report, the UNAMA internal memorandum and interviews with witnesses and sources familiar with people and events surrounding the death of Naseer.

Local Intrigue

On the morning of March 1, 2003, a group of eight Afghan soldiers manned a frozen military checkpoint at the Sato Kandaw Pass in southeastern Afghanistan's Paktia province, a strategic outpost on the trade route to Pakistan. It was also a crossroads for political rivalries.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, then the special presidential envoy to Afghanistan, had months earlier declared Paktia one of the three most troubled regions in the country in terms of warlord violence. Local intelligence agents also reported suspicions that some military units allied with interim President Hamid Karzai's central government were selling arms to Taliban elements.

Provincial Gov. Raz Mohammed Dalili, a Karzai ally, was being challenged for regional power by tribal warlord Bacha Khan. Local military and police commanders loyal to the central government also opposed Khan but feuded as well with the governor and among themselves.

One way feuding Afghan factions settle old scores or seek fresh advantage is by reporting their enemies to the Americans as Al Qaeda or Taliban members, an Afghan legal expert said.

"It doesn't matter if you're a criminal or not," said Lal Gul, chairman of the Afghan Commission for Human Rights. "People can say what they want against you. The Special Forces, if they want to arrest you, will just take you away…. They can't distinguish between real and false suspects."

One of the governor's projects at the time was to clear the roads of illegal checkpoints run by provincial army commanders.

Dalili said in a recent interview that the Karzai government and the U.S. Embassy had asked him to work closely with American Special Forces in the region. In Kabul, Dalili was considered too weak to take on local commanders alone. The governor said he asked "Mike" — the nom de guerre of the Special Forces commander at Gardez — to move against the Sato Kandaw checkpoint.

UNAMA officials in Gardez said they knew a succession of Special Forces commanders as "Mike." The "Mike" in charge during March 2003 was so aggressive in his avowed mission to rid the country of "bad guys" that a fellow soldier called him "Crazy Mike," a UNAMA official said.

At a March 10 meeting of local security officials sponsored by UNAMA, Mike reportedly warned local commanders that he would kill any one of them if they released his Taliban prisoners or sided with anti-coalition forces. One official in attendance said he stood up and interrupted.

" 'Mike, sit down. This is the United Nations. We don't talk about shooting or killing people here…. If you want to tell him you'll kill him, commence your own meeting and tell him there.' "

Today, Dalili continues to speak proudly about his association with American Special Forces and is effusive in his praise of Mike.

"My only purpose was to bring peace and security," he said in the interview.

Afghan military intelligence in Paktia took a dimmer view. They concluded in a report that the governor ordered the arrests of the men at the Sato Kandaw checkpoint to defame the Afghan Army III Corps commanders with whom he was feuding.

The arrested soldiers also blamed warlord Khan, who coveted control of Sato Kandaw Pass, for providing false intelligence about the soldiers to the American Special Forces.

Tea and Shackles

Most of the eight Afghan soldiers on duty at the pass were in a basement shelter when the U.S. Special Forces unit and its interpreters drove up to the checkpoint about 11 a.m. The "foreign friends" asked to join them for tea and they were invited inside, the men recalled.

The Afghans were led by Naseer Ahmad, known as Commander Pare, a 25-year-old soldier with a vivid scar from the corner of one eye to the lobe of an ear. A thick shock of black hair burst from under his pakol hat. The youngest Afghan soldier was Pare's brother, the slightly built, bearded 18-year-old Jamal Naseer, a new recruit looking for his first permanent job. The security checkpoint was heavily armed, according to the Afghan report.

Just as sugar was being put in the cups, the Americans "pointed their weapons at us and told us, 'Don't move!' " one of the Afghans told prosecutors.

According to accounts from the arrested men, they were disarmed, handcuffed, shackled and blindfolded. Some said they were struck by rifle butts.

"We were taken like animals" to the Gardez firebase, Momin, one of those arrested, told prosecutors. "The behavior of the authorities was completely wild."

17 Days in March

The men said they were interrogated individually. They were asked about Al Qaeda. They were grilled about stealing wood from trucks grinding north over the pass toward Kabul.

The Afghans said they were pummeled, kicked, karate-chopped, hung upside down and struck repeatedly with sticks, rubber hoses and plastic-covered cables. Some said they were immersed in cold water, then made to lie in the snow. Some said they were kept blindfolded for long periods and subjected to electric shocks to their toes.

One of the men, Abdul Rahim, said the beatings stopped only after he convinced the Americans that he was simply the unit's cook.

"They beat us a lot. They tore off our nails…. I was beaten very hard by punches and kicks," Momin, who, like many Afghans, goes by one name, told investigators. "I was seriously injured from the beatings."

In his statement to prosecutors, Noor Mohammed said: "They put us in the water and on the snow and beat us up…. They were throwing us against the wall."

Afghan authorities found substantial corroboration for such claims from witnesses describing the soldiers' physical condition after 17 days in U.S. custody.

Gardez Police Chief Mujahid told military prosecutors that when the men arrived at his jail from the American compound, many had injuries that appeared to be the result of severe impacts. A doctor was called to treat the prisoners.

Dr. Aziz Ulrahman, who worked at the Gardez Hospital, examined Commander Pare that night at the police station. He told the Crimes of War Project that the man's feet were swollen and black and blue, injuries "caused by blunt-force trauma."

The UNAMA delegation interviewed the men at the Gardez jail and described similar injuries in a confidential memo dated March 26, 2003. It reported that two of the men were visibly wounded and one was unable to walk as a result of what he said were beatings to his knees and legs. The men unanimously blamed U.S. soldiers for their injuries, the U.N. team said.

The delegation recommended an investigation into possible human rights violations, torture and other cruel and inhumane treatment by Special Forces personnel.

In an interview, UNAMA officials said they did not know the status of that recommendation.

A Cold, Quiet End

Witnesses remembered it was a bitterly cold day when American soldiers half-carried Commander Pare's younger brother to the warmth of the cook's room at the U.S. firebase. A wood stove held off the late winter chill outside.

But Jamal Naseer was not comforted. He complained to the witnesses of pains in his abdomen. He was so badly bruised he could not walk unaided. After a short time he asked for help getting outside to urinate.

Two Afghans working in the cook's room lifted the 18-year-old under each arm and eased him out the door. In an interview, one of the men who asked not to be named recalled that the young man started to loosen his trousers, then went limp and collapsed to the ground.

The men knelt beside him. They saw his eyes roll upward in a frozen stare. The young soldier died in their arms. It was about midday, the witness said.

Hours later, Commander Pare was brought to his brother's side in a long tent in the prisoner compound, he told a reporter. Apparent efforts by the camp's medical personnel to resuscitate Naseer had failed.

"After I entered the room, I observed that a plastic tube was in my brother's mouth and an injection into his arm," he told investigators. "Meanwhile, three senior [U.S. soldiers] entered and asked the translator who had done the beating…. At this moment, [one soldier] grabbed [another soldier] by the collar and said that he should not have been tortured and should have been shot with a bullet."

Pare said the American officers left, then one returned and offered personal condolences. He said the American told him there had been a misunderstanding.

"They told me that they respected my religion and they asked for forgiveness in mistreating us," Pare told Afghan investigators. "Afterward, they asked what they could do to help me."

The commander said he refused their offer of money for burial expenses. He said he would burn anything given to him by the Americans rather than "spoil the martyrdom of my brother."

Later, the Afghan who had witnessed Naseer's death came to visit Pare. They both wept over the body. The witness later told a reporter he was deeply saddened by the death. "Whether he was innocent or guilty, he was still a Muslim."

The man helped Pare turn the youth's body to face Mecca. Pare sat beside his brother's remains until 10 p.m., until a police vehicle arrived to transport it to the hospital.

At the hospital, doctors were unwilling to conduct an autopsy to determine officially the cause of Naseer's death. They were fearful police would return and beat them, according to a deputy hospital administrator later interviewed by Afghan prosecutors.

What exists of an official death record was provided in a formal statement by a hospital security guard named Haji Abdul Qayum, who prepared the body for burial.

In his statement to prosecutors, Qayum described himself as "a Muslim eyewitness and … someone who has seen the corpse of Jamal."

Describing the state of the corpse after it was picked up from the American compound, the security guard said in his statement: "The body seemed green and black. The area around his knees was injured and was black, and his toes were swollen and his right elbow was bruised and seemed to be burned."

Qayum said in a later interview with a reporter that Naseer's "face was completely swollen, as were his palms, and the soles of his feet were swollen double in size. The face was dark and looked like it was burned, and both eyes were swollen shut."

He recalled that when he stripped away the dead man's clothes, a length of insulated cable fell out of a pant leg. He said it had copper loops at each end. He said he discarded it.

Naseer's mother also attested to the body's condition. In a statement to prosecutors she said, "I observed his entire body, with wounds to his chest and legs and injuries all over his body."

Foreign Friends

Within hours, Americans contacted the governor and other security officials to get the corpse and to transfer the remaining detainees to the custody of Gardez police, according to the military report. The transfers were completed during the night of March 16 and into the next morning on the governor's personal order, the report said.

The transfer set in motion a number of inquires by Afghan civilian and military authorities to determine why the dostan kharagi, or foreign friends, as they referred to the Americans, had arrested and allegedly tortured their soldiers, and on what grounds the men were being held.

In the end, none of the concerned agencies said they had evidence that the men had committed any crimes, or were linked to anti-government elements.

The sole reason for their continued detention, the investigators concluded, was because the Americans wanted the prisoners hidden until their wounds had time to heal.

The men remained in custody another month and a half. Gardez police finally transferred them to the national prison facility near Kabul.

But in Kabul, prison authorities again questioned on what legal grounds the soldiers were being held and asked the Afghan attorney general of the armed forces to investigate.

Afghanistan's attorney general ordered that the case be fully investigated by military prosecutors. A request by Afghanistan's Army III Corps for an explanation of the incident from U.S. military officials received no response, according to documents in the Afghan report to the attorney general.

Much of that lengthy report is written in longhand Dari. Official statements by illiterate soldiers were commonly stamped with their fingerprints after the statements were read back to them.

In the end, the key findings were confined to one page of the report.

The first was that "the seven soldiers who had been transferred to the Kabul prison were being held without evidence of guilt." In response, the attorney general immediately ordered their release.

Second, there was "a strong possibility that one of those arrested, Jamal, son of Ghazi, had been murdered by coalition forces as a result of being tortured." The authors cited the 14th amendment of the penal code of Afghanistan to keep the case open for further investigation. To date, the attorney general has not acted on that recommendation.

The dogeared dossier has been filed away in a provincial outpost. Under Afghan law, there is a 10-year statute of limitations running on any future criminal prosecution of the case, one of the prosecutors said.

Prosecutor Abdulghani Kochai said no one involved in the case on the Afghan side was willing to quit. The mother of Jamal Naseer, he said, wants to eventually testify against those she believes killed her son.

"She cut away a piece of skin from his leg showing the marks of torture, and has wrapped it in a scarf to use as evidence on that day."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Freelance reporter Pyes reported from Afghanistan, where he also prepared investigative reports for the Crimes of War Project. Times staff writer Mazzetti reported from Washington.

Alpha

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5251751/

Secrets Of Unit 1391

Uncovering an Israeli jail that specializes in nightmares

By Dan Ephron
Newsweek
June 28 issue - Sometimes a country's darkest secrets have a way of surfacing in the most offhanded manner. Gad Kroizer, an Israeli historian, was researching old British police buildings when he stumbled on a 70-year-old map drawn by a government architect. The map showed the location of 62 police compounds built by the British in Palestine in the late 1930s and early 1940s where both Arabs and Jews who agitated against Britain's occupation were interrogated. What caught Kroizer's eye was a camp called Meretz, which he had not seen on any contemporary Israeli map or read about in any modern writing on security compounds in the Jewish state. "There was a discrepancy between the map I had and the lists I'd been looking at," says Kroizer, who lives in Jerusalem and teaches at Bar-Ilan University. "I started putting two and two together."

What Kroizer had discovered and later footnoted in an academic paper (published in the March 2004 issue of Cathedra, circulation: 1,500) was the location of an ultrasecret jail where Israel has held Arabs in total seclusion for years, barred visits by the Red Cross and allegedly tortured inmates. Known as 1391, the facility is used as an interrogation center by a storied unit of Israel's military intelligence, whose members—all Arabic speakers—are trained to wring confessions from the toughest militants. According to Arabs who've been imprisoned in 1391, some of the methods are reminiscent of Abu Ghraib: nudity as a humiliation tactic, compromising photographs, sleep deprivation. In a few cases, at least, interrogators at 1391 appear to have gone beyond Israel's own hair-splitting distinction between torture and what a state commission referred to in 1987 as "moderate physical pressure."

But the nightmare for those in 1391 is the isolation and the fear that no one knows where you are, say Arabs who've been held there as well as an Israeli who's been inside the prison. The location of the compound is so hush-hush that a court this year banned a visit by an Israeli legislator. Prisoners describe being hooded everywhere at the facility except in their cells. Jailers often tell them they're on the moon or in another country (in fact, the compound is less than an hour's drive from Tel Aviv). "This can be devastating emotionally," says Dalia Kerstein, whose Israeli human-rights group, HaMoked, has petitioned the High Court of Justice to close down 1391. "We've seen that psychological pressure in certain instances can be even harder on inmates than physical pressure."

Hassan Rawajbeh would be the first to agree. A member of the nearly disbanded Palestinian Preventive Security force suspected of taking part in a shooting attack on Israelis, Rawajbeh was picked up by soldiers in Nablus 18 months ago. Af-ter stops at two other detention centers, he was hooded, handcuffed and thrown on the floor of a van. When the hood was removed, he was in a tiny, windowless cell with black walls and almost no light. The chamber contained no toilet, only a bucket in the corner, which the 39-year-old Rawajbeh says his jailers would empty once every few weeks. A low buzzing droned constantly. Rawajbeh, who denies shooting at Israelis, was never beaten, but he says he was on the verge of a breakdown. "I was jailed six times before," he said earlier this month at his office in Nablus, where other Palestinians, some armed with pistols, smoke cigarettes and drink coffee. "But those experiences were like five-star hotels compared to 1391."

For nearly four months, Rawajbeh saw no —one but his interrogators, who kept him naked for days at a time and prevented him from going to the bathroom. "You begin to feel like the jail exists only for you, that no one else is there," he says.

Israeli officials deny torturing inmates at 1391 or any other facility. But Gideon Ezra, the former deputy head of Israel's Shabak security service, says psychological pressure is one of the most effective tools interrogators have in the war against terrorism. Ezra, now a member of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud Party and his cabinet, says 1391 was actually set up as an interrogation center for non-Palestinian Arabs who entered Israel illegally. (Ezra says the number 1391 corresponds to the adjacent military base and has no particular significance.) "In cases like that, you need to find out very quickly who this person is and how he might harm you."

But at least one former inmate at 1391 says the comparison to Abu Ghraib is fitting. Mustapha Dirani was brought to the facility after being abducted by Israeli commandos from his home in Lebanon in 1994. Israel believed Dirani knew the whereabouts of a missing airman, Ron Arad, and wanted to glean information quickly, while he was still stunned from the kidnapping. Dirani, who returned to Lebanon five months ago in a prisoner swap, said in a phone interview that he was raped by a soldier in those first days at 1391 and sodomized by an interrogator he identified as George. His civil suit against the state for more than $1 million in damages is scheduled to start in January. "It's the same style as in Abu Ghraib. They take advantage of the fact that Arabs and Muslims are culturally conservative," says Dirani, who spent eight years at 1391 but was never tried for a crime. In what might look to some people like a foreshadowing of Abu Ghraib, Dirani said in an affidavit four years ago that he was interrogated naked for days and photographed repeatedly.

George has since left the intelligence unit that operates at 1391, according to Kerstein of HaMoked. She believes the Army might be worried the interrogator will divulge other scandals if the Dirani case ever goes to trial. In an interview with Israel's Channel Two television four months ago, George said Dirani invented the rape story to avoid retribution back in Lebanon for information he divulged to the Israelis.

Kroizer, the academic who stumbled on 1391, is still surprised by the attention his footnote received. Days after his paper was published, his editor got a call from Israel's military censor, who wanted to know why the article had not been submitted for inspection. "We publish an historical journal. We usually deal with issues that are at least 30 years old," says the editor, Benjamin Zeev Wexler. "But I thought it was interesting to note that this old British interrogation center was still operating today." For a few hundred Arabs held there over the years, it was no news at all.

With Joanna Chen in Jerusalem and Samir Zedan in Nablus

© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

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