[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 69 (Monday, May 17, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H3071-H3079]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IRAQ WATCH
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Blackburn). Under the Speaker's
announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Massachusetts
(Mr. Delahunt) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I will shortly be joined by my colleagues,
who, on a weekly basis, have come to the floor of the House to discuss
events occurring in the Middle East, specifically in Iraq and in
Afghanistan. We have called ourselves the Iraq Watch, in an effort to
have a conversation to illuminate and educate not just ourselves, but
those who are interested, as I think most people are, in these
particular matters.
It is clearly no secret, and it is a most disturbing situation, that
we have a deteriorating situation in Iraq. One only has to remember the
initial estimates of the cost that were put forth by the White House. I
think the range that was suggested by the Deputy Secretary of Defense,
Mr. Wolfowitz, was from $30 billion to $60 billion.
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When the then-Chief Economic Adviser to President Bush, Larry
Lindsay, indicated that in his judgment the range could be from $100
billion to $200 billion, he was eased out because there was a sense
that that was not a realistic number. Now, of course, we are currently
at the figure of $150 billion, and that does not include future
estimates, which again according to recent reports just simply is for
the military presence of American troops in support for other military
personnel there. That is an additional 50 or $75 billion. And of course
that does not include the cost of reconstruction, both for Iraq
[[Page H3072]]
and for Afghanistan. But, obviously, most importantly is the loss of
life, particularly American personnel, both military and civilian. The
number now is well in excess of 700. That of course does not account
for the men and women in our military who have been wounded.
Many Members of this body have been to Walter Reed Hospital and to
Bethesda Naval Hospital and met with the men and women there who have
suffered wounds, egregious wounds, that will clearly impact their
future and will alter irrevocably the quality of life that they will
enjoy for the rest of their lives.
I know that I have attended in my district the funerals of two young
men, Sergeant Caldwell and Corporal Jeff Burgess, who gave their lives
in Iraq. Furthermore, there was a universal echo of support and
sympathy for the United States in the aftermath of our national tragedy
on September 11. I think we all remember the headline in the French
newspaper, Le Monde, that screamed, very poignantly and eloquently the
day after 9-11, that ``Today We Are All Americans.''
It is clear that there was not just sympathy, but a commitment by
countries all over the world to assist our efforts to end once and for
all the scourge of global terrorism. Unfortunately, much of that
international support has eroded. And now the motives of the United
States are being called into question, and not just in the Mideast but
all over the world.
There was a recent poll that was done by one of the premier polling
groups in this country, the Zogby polling group, and it was conducted
among the elite in Latin America, the economic elite which
traditionally had been supportive of American policy. There was no
attempt to interview or survey those that had traditionally been
hostile to American interests or who have disagreed with our policies.
What I find remarkable was that of the six countries that were
surveyed, and they range from Argentina to Brazil to Venezuela to a
Central American country, that the negative opinion of the United
States Government, the negative opinion of the United States Government
exceeded 87 percent. That is particularly disturbing, because I think
we can all agree, Mr. Speaker, that we need the international community
and its support if we are going to end terrorism. If we are going to
protect our homeland, cooperation is absolutely essential. It is
absolutely critical. But now American motives are suspect.
There was a recent poll that was done, it was done by the Pew
Foundation and the numbers are startling. Majorities in seven nations
believe that our intervention in Iraq was motivated by a desire to
control Mideast oil. Clearly, there are few Americans that accept that
premise. But when one reads the list of nations that believe that our
intervention was based simply on the desire to control oil, we must
acknowledge that we have a problem that has to be addressed. Let me
just recite some of those numbers: 51 percent of the people in Russia
believe that that was our primary motive; 58 percent of the people in
France; 60 percent of the people in Germany; 54 percent of the people
in Pakistan. In Turkey the number is 64 percent. In Jordan it was 71
percent. And yet we speak of a certain moral authority. But it has
become clear that the world does not see us in that lens. They believe
our motives are much more crass. And when these numbers are combined
with comments and observations and revelations by senior administration
officials, they are reinforced.
For those of you that have not had the opportunity to read ``The
Price of Loyalty,'' which is a book regarding the tenure of the former
Secretary of Treasury, Paul O'Neill, let me commend that book to you;
and I would specifically direct your attention to page 96 of that book.
Because Secretary O'Neill, a traditional Republican widely regarded in
business circles, someone who served his country in the Reagan
administration and in Bush One, reveals an anecdote that I find
disturbing. Let me read for a moment. O'Neill had seen ``brewing a
battle since the National Security Council meeting on January 30.''
Let me interrupt the excerpt that I will quote to inform my
colleagues and the viewing audience that this was 1 week after the
inauguration after George W. Bush. One week. The anecdote itself that
he reveals occurs February 27, less than maybe 5 weeks, after the
President was inaugurated. O'Neill: ``It was Powell and his moderates
at the State Department versus hardliners like Rumsfeld, Cheney, and
Wolfowitz who were already planning the next war in Iraq in the shape
of a post-Saddam country.''
Now, let us remember, this is before our national tragedy on 9-11,
and this is not coming from outside. This is not an opinion being
offered by a Member of the House. This is being offered by the former
Secretary who was present at this particular meeting of the National
Security Council on February 27, 2001.
``Documents were being prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency,''
Rumsfeld's intelligence arm, ``mapping Iraq's oil fields and
exploration areas, and listing companies that might be interested in
leveraging the precious asset.'' Obviously he means oil. ``One document
headed 'Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oil Field Contracts' lists companies
from 30 countries, their specialties, bidding histories and in some
cases their particular areas of interests. An attached document maps
Iraq with markings for supergiant oil fields, other oil fields
earmarked for production-sharing while demarking the largely
undeveloped southwest of the country into nine blocks to be designated
for future exploration.''
I guess this is a question that I would have for the President, for
the Vice President, and for the Secretary of Defense: Why on February
27, months before the attack on the homeland, why was a map being
presented at a National Security Council meeting divvying up the oil
reserves of Iraq?
That, I daresay and will submit, is a question, Mr. Speaker, that
should be answered by the Secretary, by the National Security Adviser,
by the Vice President, and by the President. That is a question that
cannot linger, that cannot go unanswered, particularly when a majority
of people in countries that are our traditional allies have concluded
that our main interest in Iraq is not to bring democracy, is not to
save lives, but is to secure oil for our energy needs.
And, again, let me remind my friends who are here, I have been joined
by my colleagues, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel), the
gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie), and the ranking member on the
Committee on the Judiciary, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers),
let me remind ourselves that we are losing international support. And I
am convinced that many of the questions that the rest of the world has
is based on reports such as this and have a potential to undermine not
just our credibility and our moral authority, but to undermine our
national security if we are going to do something in terms of
international terrorism.
{time} 2215
Because if the world concludes, and if we do not respond that this is
our motivation, they will turn their backs on us. When this is all
combined with obviously many other issues that are out there, I dare
say we have a serious problem.
Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield.
Mr. DELAHUNT. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.
(Mr. CONYERS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks, and include extraneous material.)
Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman so much for allowing
this intervention, and I begin by commending my colleagues from
Pennsylvania and Hawaii and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr.
Delahunt).
It is my intention to offer into this discussion The New Yorker
article entitled The Gray Zone by Seymour Hersh, which raises one of
these other incidents that the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr.
Delahunt) has referred to, and that is, the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq
and the ongoing furor that has taken place around the world.
I would like to ask my colleagues in the course of our discussion
this evening whether they feel a need for an investigation conducted
from the outside as the 9/11 Commission has, which
[[Page H3073]]
it recently concluded, the Warren Commission in terms of the John F.
Kennedy assassination, because this problem is beginning to tarnish our
Nation's war against terrorism, and without a full and complete and
impartial investigation, we will add another way of undermining our
national moral authority.
I just wanted to point out that it is mentioned in this article that
will be reprinted that, ``Rumsfeld's goal was to get a capability in
place to take on a high-value target, a standup group to hit quickly,'
a former high-level intelligence official told me. `He got all the
agencies together, the CIA and the NSA, to get pre-approval in place.
Just say the code word and go.' The operation had across-the-board
approval from Rumsfeld and from Condoleeza Rice, the national security
adviser. President Bush was informed of the existence of the program,
the former intelligence official said.''
Here, ``Rumsfeld reacted in his usual direct fashion: he authorized
the establishment of a highly secret program that was given blanket
advance approval to kill or capture and, if possible, interrogate `high
value' targets in the Bush administration's war on terror.''
The people, and I conclude with this, ``the people assigned to the
program worked by the book, the former intelligence official told me,''
this is Seymour Hersh. ``They created code words, and recruited, after
careful screening, highly trained commandos and operatives from
America's elite forces, Navy SEALs, the Army's Delta Force, and the
CIA's paramilitary experts. They also asked some basic questions: `Do
the people working the problem have to use aliases? Yes. Do we need
dead drops for the mail? Yes.' No traceability and no budget. And some
special-access programs are never fully briefed to Congress.''
In other words, a deliberate development of a plan not only to commit
these outrageous atrocities that have shocked the world but a way to
avoid congressional scrutiny.
I will insert this article that I referred to earlier at this point
in the Record.
[From The New Yorker, May 17, 2004]
The Gray Zone
(By Seymour M. Hersh)
The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the
criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a
decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been
focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of
prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld's decision embittered the
American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of
elite combat units, and hurt America's prospects in the war
on terror.
According to interviews with several past and present
American intelligence officials, the Pentagon's operation,
known inside the intelligence community by several code
words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion
and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to
generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in
Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of
this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from
Rumsfeld's long-standing desire to wrest control of America's
clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.
Rumsfeld, during appearances last week before Congress to
testify about Abu Ghraib, was precluded by law from
explicitly mentioning highly secret matters in an
unclassified session. But he conveyed the message that he was
telling the public all that he knew about the story. He said,
``Any suggestion that there is not a full, deep awareness of
what has happened, and the damage it has done, I think, would
be a misunderstanding.'' The senior C.I.A. official, asked
about Rumsfeld's testimony and that of Stephen Cambone, his
Under-Secretary for Intelligence, said, ``Some people think
you can bullshit anyone.''
The Abu Ghraib story began, in a sense, just weeks after
the September 11, 2001, attacks, with the American bombing of
Afghanistan. Almost from the start, the Administration's
search for Al Qaeda members in the war zone, and its
worldwide search for terrorists, came up against major
command-and-control problems. For example, combat forces that
had Al Qaeda targets in sight had to obtain legal clearance
before firing on them. On October 7th, the night the bombing
began, an unmanned Predator aircraft tracked an automobile
convoy that, American intelligence believed, contained Mullah
Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader. A lawyer on duty at the
United States Central Command headquarters, in Tampa,
Florida, refused to authorize a strike. By the time an attack
was approved, the target was out of reach. Rumsfeld was
apoplectic over what he saw as a self-defeating hesitation to
attack that was due to political correctness. One officer
described him to me that fall as ``kicking a lot of glass and
breaking doors.'' In November, the Washington Post reported
that, as many as ten times since early October, Air Force
pilots believed they'd had senior Al Qaeda and Taliban
members in their sights but had been unable to act in time
because of legalistic hurdles. There were similar problems
throughout the world, as American Special Forces units
seeking to move quickly against suspected terrorist cells
were compelled to get prior approval from local American
ambassadors and brief their superiors in the chain of
command.
Rumsfeld reacted in his usual direct fashion: he authorized
the establishment of a highly secret program that was given
blanket advance approval to kill or capture and, if possible,
interrogate ``high value'' targets in the Bush
Administration's war on terror. A special-access program, or
SAP--subject to the Defense Department's most stringent level
of security--was set up, with an office in a secure area of
the Pentagon. The program would recruit operatives and
acquire the necessary equipment, including aircraft, and
would keep its activities under wraps. America's most
successful intelligence operations during the Cold War had
been SAPs, including the Navy's submarine penetration of
underwater cables used by the Soviet high command and
construction of the Air Force's stealth bomber. All the so-
called ``black'' programs had one element in common: the
Secretary of Defense, or his deputy, had to conclude that the
normal military classification restraints did not provide
enough security.
``Rumsfeld's goal was to get a capability in place to take
on a high-value target--a standup group to hit quickly,'' a
former high-level intelligence official told me. ``He got all
the agencies together--the C.I.A. and the N.S.A.--to get pre-
approval in place. Just say the code word and go.'' The
operation had across-the-board approval from Rumsfeld and
from Condoleezza Rice, the national-security adviser.
President Bush was informed of the existence of the program,
the former intelligence official said.
The people assigned to the program worked by the book, the
former intelligence official told me. They created code
words, and recruited, after careful screening, highly trained
commandos and operatives from America's elite forces--Navy
SEALs, the Army's Delta Force, and the C.I.A.'s paramilitary
experts. They also asked some basic questions: ``Do the
people working the problem have to use aliases? Yes. Do we
need dead drops for the mail? Yes. No traceability and no
budget. And some special-access programs are never fully
briefed to Congress.''
In theory, the operation enabled the Bush Administration to
respond immediately to time-sensitive intelligence: commandos
crossed borders without visas and could interrogate terrorism
suspects deemed too important for transfer to the military's
facilities at Guantanamo, Cuba. They carried out instant
interrogations--using force if necessary--at secret C.I.A.
detention centers scattered around the world. The
intelligence would be relayed to the SAP command center in
the Pentagon in real time, and sifted for those pieces of
information critical to the ``white,'' or overt, world.
Fewer than two hundred operatives and officials, including
Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, were ``completely read into the program,''
the former intelligence official said. The goal was to keep
the operation protected. ``We're not going to read more
people than necessary into our heart of darkness,'' he said.
``The rules are `Grab whom you must. Do what you want.'''
One Pentagon official who was deeply involved in the
program was Stephen Cambone, who was named Under-Secretary of
Defense for Intelligence in March, 2003. The office was new;
it was created as part of Rumsfeld's reorganization of the
Pentagon. Cambone was unpopular among military and civilian
intelligence bureaucrats in the Pentagon, essentially because
he had little experience in running intelligence programs,
though in 1998 he had served as staff director for a
committee, headed by Rumsfeld, that warned of an emerging
ballistic-missile threat to the United States. He was known
instead for his closeness to Rumsfeld. ``Remember Henry II--
`Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?''' the senior
C.I.A. official said to me, with a laugh, last week.
``Whatever Rumsfeld whimsically says, Cambone will do ten
times that much.''
Cambone was a strong advocate for war against Iraq. He
shared Rumsfeld's disdain for the analysis and assessments
proffered by the C.I.A., viewing them as too cautious, and
chafed, as did Rumsfeld, at the C.I.A.'s inability, before
the Iraq war, to state conclusively that Saddam Hussein
harbored weapons of mass destruction. Cambone's military
assistant, Army Lieutenant General William G. (Jerry)
Boykin, was also controversial. Last fall, he generated
unwanted headlines after it was reported that, in a speech
at an Oregon church, he equated the Muslim world with
Satan.
Early in his tenure, Cambone provoked a bureaucratic battle
within the Pentagon by insisting that he be given control of
all special-access programs that were relevant to the war on
terror. Those programs, which had been viewed by many in the
Pentagon as sacrosanct, were monitored by Kenneth
deGraffenreid, who had experience in counter-intelligence
programs. Cambone got control, and deGraffenreid subsequently
left
[[Page H3074]]
the Pentagon. Asked for comment on this story, a Pentagon
spokesman said, ``I will not discuss any covert programs;
however, Dr. Cambone did not assume his position as the
Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence until March 7,
2003, and had no involvement in the decision-making process
regarding interrogation procedures in Iraq or anywhere
else.''
In mid-2003, the special-access program was regarded in the
Pentagon as one of the success stories of the war on terror.
``It was an active program,'' the former intelligence
official told me. ``It's been the most important capability
we have for dealing with an imminent threat. If we discover
where Osama bin Laden is, we can get him. And we can remove
an existing threat with a real capability to hit the United
States--and do so without visibility.'' Some of its methods
were troubling and could not bear close scrutiny, however.
By then, the war in Iraq had begun. The SAP was involved in
some assignments in Iraq, the former official said. C.I.A.
and other American Special Forces operatives secretly teamed
up to hunt for Saddam Hussein and--without success--for Iraqi
weapons of mass destruction. But they weren't able to stop
the evolving insurgency.
In the first months after the fall of Baghdad, Rumsfeld and
his aides still had a limited view of the insurgency, seeing
it as little more than the work of Baathist ``dead-enders,''
criminal gangs, and foreign terrorists who were Al Qaeda
followers. The Administration measured its success in the war
by how many of those on its list of the fifty-five most
wanted members of the old regime--reproduced on playing
cards--had been captured. Then, in August, 2003, terror
bombings in Baghdad hit the Jordanian Embassy, killing
nineteen people, and the United Nations headquarters, killing
twenty-three people, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, the
head of the U.N. mission. On August 25th, less than a week
after the U.N. bombing, Rumsfeld acknowledged, in a talk
before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, that ``the dead-enders
are still with us.'' He went on, ``There are some today who
are surprised that there are still pockets of resistance in
Iraq, and they suggest that this represents some sort of
failure on the part of the Coalition. But this is not the
case.'' Rumsfeld compared the insurgents with those true
believers who ``fought on during and after the defeat of the
Nazi regime in Germany.'' A few weeks later--and five months
after the fall of Baghdad--the Defense Secretary declared,
``It is, in my view, better to be dealing with terrorists in
Iraq than in the United States.''
Inside the Pentagon, there was a growing realization that
the war was going badly. The increasingly beleaguered and
baffled Army leadership was telling reporters that the
insurgents consisted of five thousand Baathists loyal to
Saddam Hussein. ``When you understand that they're organized
in a cellular structure,'' General Jon Abizaid, the head of
the Central Command declared, ``that . . . they have access
to a lot of money and a lot of ammunition, you'll understand
how dangerous they are.''
The American military and intelligence communities were
having little success in penetrating the insurgency. One
internal report prepared for the U.S. military, made
available to me, concluded that the insurgents' ``strategic
and operational intelligence has proven to be quite good.''
According to the study:
Their ability to attack convoys, other vulnerable targets
and particular individuals has been the result of painstaking
surveillance and reconnaissance. Inside information has been
passed on to insurgent cells about convoy/troop movements and
daily habits of Iraqis working with coalition from within the
Iraqi security services, primarily the Iraqi Police force
which is rife with sympathy for the insurgents, Iraqi
ministries and from within pro-insurgent individuals working
with the CPA's so-called Green Zone.
The study concluded, ``Politically, the U.S. has failed to
date. Insurgencies can be fixed or ameliorated by dealing
with what caused them in the first place. The disaster that
is the reconstruction of Iraq has been the key cause of the
insurgency. There is no legitimate government, and it
behooves the Coalition Provisional Authority to absorb the
sad but unvarnished fact that most Iraqis do not see the
Governing Council''--the Iraqi body appointed by the C.P.A.--
``as the legitimate authority. Indeed, they know that the
true power is the CPA.''
By the fall, a military analyst told me, the extent of the
Pentagon's political and military misjudgments was clear.
Donald Rumsfeld's ``dead-enders'' now included not only
Baathists but many marginal figures as well--thugs and
criminals who were among the tens of thousands of prisoners
freed the previous fall by Saddam as part of a prewar general
amnesty. Their desperation was not driving the insurgency; it
simply made them easy recruits for those who were. The
analyst said, ``We'd killed and captured guys who had been
given two or three hundred dollars to `pray and spray' ''--
that is, shoot randomly and hope for the best. ``They weren't
really insurgents but down-and-outers who were paid by
wealthy individuals sympathetic to the insurgency.'' In many
cases, the paymasters were Sunnis who had been members of the
Baath Party. The analyst said, that the insurgents ``spent
three of four months figuring out how we operated and
developing their own countermeasures. If that meant putting
up a hapless guy to go and attack a convoy and see how the
American troops responded, they'd do it.'' Then, the analyst
said.``the clever ones began to get in on the action.''
By contrast, according to the military report, the American
and Coalition forces knew little about the insurgency:
``Human intelligence is poor or lacking . . . due to the
dearth of competence and expertise. . . . The intelligence
effort is not coordinated since either too many groups are
involved in gathering intelligence or the final product does
not get to the troops in the field in a timely manner.'' The
success of the war was at risk; something had to be done to
change the dynamic.
The solution, endorsed by Rumsfeld and carried out by
Stephen Cambone, was to get tough with those Iraqis in the
Army prison system who were suspected of being insurgents. A
key player was Major General Geoffrey Miller, the commander
of the detention and interrogation center at Guantanamo, who
had been summoned to Baghdad in late August to review prison
interrogation procedures. The internal Army report on the
abuse charges, written by Major General Antonio Taguba in
February, revealed that Miller urged that the commanders in
Baghdad change policy and place military intelligence in
charge of the prison. The report quoted Miller as
recommending that ``detention operations must act as an
enabler for interrogation.''
Miller's concept, as it emerged in recent Senate hearings,
was to ``Gitmoize'' the prison system in Iraq--to make it
more focussed on interrogation. He also briefed military
commanders in Iraq on the interrogation methods used in
Cuba--methods that could, with special approval, include
sleep deprivation, exposure to extremes of cold, and heat,
and placing prisoners in ``stress positions'' for agonizing
lengths of time. (The Bush Administration had unilaterally
declared Al Qaeda and other captured members of international
terrorist networks to be illegal combatants, and not eligible
for the protection of the Geneva Conventions.)
Rumsfeld and Cambone went a step further, however: they
expanded the scope of the SAP, bringing its unconventional
methods to Abu Ghraib. The commandos were to operate in Iraq
as they had in Afghanistan. The male prisoners could be
treated roughly, and exposed to sexual humiliation.
``They weren't getting anything substantive from the
detainees in Iraq,'' the former intelligence official told
me. ``No names. Nothing that they could hang their hat on.
Cambone says, I've got to crack this thing and I'm tired of
working through the normal chain of command. I've got this
apparatus set up--the black special-access program--and I'm
going in hot. So he pulls the switch, and the electricity
begins flowing last summer. And it's working. We're getting a
picture of the insurgency in Iraq and the intelligence is
flowing into the white world. We're getting good stuff. But
we've got more targets''--prisoners in Iraqi jails--``than
people who can handle them.''
Cambone then made another crucial decision, the former
intelligence official told me: not only would he bring the
SAP's rules into the prisons; he would bring some of the Army
military-intelligence officers working inside the Iraqi
prisons under the SAP's auspices. ``So here are fundamentally
good soldiers--military-intelligence guys--being told that no
rules apply,'' the former official, who has extensive
knowledge of the special-access programs, added. ``And, as
far as they're concerned, this is a covert operation, and
it's to be kept within Defense Department channels.''
The military-police prison guards, the former official
said, included ``recycled hillbillies from Cumberland,
Maryland.'' He was referring to members of the 372nd Military
Police Company. Seven members of the company are now facing
charges for their role in the abuse at Abu Ghraib. ``How are
these guys from Cumberland going to know anything? The Army
Reserve doesn't know what it's doing.''
Who was in charge of Abu Ghraib--whether military police or
military intelligence--was no longer the only question that
mattered. Hard-core special operatives, some of them with
aliases, were working in the prison. The military police
assigned to guard the prisoners wore uniforms, but many
others--military intelligence officers, contract
interpreters, C.I.A. officers, and the men from the special-
access program--wore civilian clothes. It was not clear who
was who, even to Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, then the
commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, and the
officer ostensibly in charge. ``I thought most of the
civilians there were interpreters, but there were some
civilians that I didn't know,'' Karpinski told me. ``I called
them the disappearing ghosts. I'd seen them once in a while
at Abu Ghraib and then I'd see them months later. They were
nice--they'd always call out to me and say, `Hey, remember
me? How are you doing?''' The mysterious civilians, she said,
were ``always bringing in somebody for interrogation or
waiting to collect somebody going out.'' Karpinski added that
she had no idea who was operating in her prison system.
(General Taguba found that Karpinski's leadership failures
contributed to the abuses.)
By fall, according to the former intelligence official, the
senior leadership of the C.I.A. had had enough. ``They said,
`No way. We signed up for the core program in Afghanistan--
pre-approved for operations against high-value terrorist
targets--and now you want to use it for cabdrivers, brothers-
in-law, and people pulled off the
[[Page H3075]]
streets' ''--the sort of prisoners who populate the Iraqi
jails. ``The C.I.A.'s legal people objected,'' and the agency
ended its SAP involvement in Abu Ghraib, the former official
said.
The C.I.A.'s complaints were echoed throughout the
intelligence community. There was fear that the situation at
Abu Ghraib would lead to the exposure of the secret SAP, and
thereby bring an end to what had been, before Iraq, a
valuable cover operation. ``This was stupidity,'' a
government consultant told me. ``You're taking a program that
was operating in the chaos of Afghanistan against Al
Qaeda, a stateless terror group, and bringing it into a
structured, traditional war zone. Sooner or later, the
commandos would bump into the legal and moral procedures
of a conventional war with an Army of a hundred and
thirty-five thousand soldiers.''
The former senior intelligence official blamed hubris for
the Abu Ghraib disaster. ``There's nothing more exhilarating
for a pissant Pentagon civilian than dealing with an
important national security issue without dealing with
military planners, who are always worried about risk,'' he
told me. ``What could be more boring than needing the
cooperation of logistical planners?'' The only difficulty,
the former official added, is that, ``as soon as you enlarge
the secret program beyond the oversight capability of
experienced people, you lose control. We've never had a case
where a special-access program went sour--and this goes back
to the Cold War.''
In a separate interview, a Pentagon consultant, who spent
much of his career directly involved with special-access
programs, spread the blame. ``The White House subcontracted
this to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon subcontracted it to
Cambone,'' he said. ``This is Cambone's deal, but Rumsfeld
and Myers approved the program.'' When it came to the
interrogation operation at Abu Ghraib, he said, Rumsfeld left
the details to Cambone. Rumsfeld may not be personally
culpable, the consultant added, ``but he's responsible for
the checks and balances. The issue is that, since 9/11, we've
changed the rules on how we deal with terrorism, and created
conditions where the ends justify the means.''
Last week, statements made by one of the seven accused
M.P.s, Specialist Jeremy Sivits, who is expected to plead
guilty, were released. In them, he claimed that senior
commanders in his unit would have stopped the abuse had they
witnessed it. One of the questions that will be explored at
any trial, however, it why a group of Army Reserve military
policemen, most of them from small towns, tormented their
prisoners as they did, in a manner that was especially
humiliating for Iraqi men.
The notion that Arabs are particularly vulnerable to sexual
humiliation became a talking point among pro-war Washington
conservatives in the months before the March, 2003, invasion
of Iraq. One book that was frequently cited was ``The Arab
Mind,'' a study of Arab culture and psychology, first
published in 1973, by Raphael Patai, a cultural
anthropologist who taught at, among other universities,
Columbia and Princeton, and who died in 1996. The book
includes a twenty-five-page chapter on Arabs and sex,
depicting sex as a taboo vested with shame and repression.
``The segregation of the sexes, the veiling of the women . .
. and all the other minute rules that govern and restrict
contact between men and women, have the effect of making sex
a prime mental preoccupation in the Arab world,'' Patai
wrote. Homosexual activity, ``or any indication of homosexual
leanings, as with all other expressions of sexuality, is
never given any publicity. These are private affairs and
remain in private.'' The Patai book, an academic told me, was
``the bible of the neocons on Arab behavior.'' In their
discussions, he said, two themes emerged--``one, that Arabs
only understand force and, two, that the biggest weakness of
Arabs is shame and humiliation.''
The government consultant said that there may have been a
serious goal, in the beginning, behind the sexual humiliation
and the posed photographs. It was thought that some prisoners
would do anything--including spying on their associates--to
avoid dissemination of the shameful photos to family and
friends. The government consultant said, ``I was told that
the purpose of the photographs was to create an army of
informants, people you could insert back in the population.''
The idea was that they would be motivated by fear of
exposure, and gather information about pending insurgency
action, the consultant said. If so, it wasn't effective; the
insurgency continued to grow.
``This shit has been brewing for months,'' the Pentagon
consultant who has dealt with SAPs told me. ``You don't keep
prisoners naked in their cell and then let them get bitten by
dogs. This is sick.'' The consultant explained that he and
his colleagues, all of whom had served for years on active
duty in the military, had been appalled by the misuse of Army
guard dogs inside Abu Ghraib. ``We don't raise kids to do
things like that. When you go after Mullah Omar, that's one
thing. But when you give the authority to kids who don't know
the rules, that's another.''
In 2003, Rumsfeld's apparent disregard for the requirements
of the Geneva Conventions while carrying out the war on
terror had led a group of senior military legal officers from
the Judge Advocate General's (JAG) Corps to pay two surprise
visits within five months to Scott Horton, who was then
chairman of the New York City Bar Association's Committee on
International Human Rights. ``They wanted us to challenge the
Bush Administration about its standards for detentions and
interrogation,'' Horton told me. ``They were urging us to get
involved and speak in a very loud voice. It came pretty much
out the blue. The message was that conditions are ripe for
abuse, and it's going to occur.'' The military officials were
most alarmed about the growing use of civilian contractors in
the interrogation process, Horton recalled. ``They said there
was an atmosphere of legal ambiguity being created as a
result of a policy decision at the highest levels in the
Pentagon. The JAG officers were being cut out of the policy
formulation process.'' They told him that, with the war on
terror, a fifty-year history of exemplary application of the
Geneva Conventions had come to an end.
The abuses at Abu Ghraib were exposed on January 13th, when
Joseph Darby, a young military policeman assigned to Abu
Gharib, reported the wrongdoing to the Army's Criminal
Investigations Division. He also turned over a CD full of
photographs. Within three days, a report made its way to
Donald Rumsfeld, who informed President Bush.
The inquiry presented a dilemma for the Pentagon. The
C.I.D. had to be allowed to continue, the former intelligence
official said. ``You can't cover it up. You have to prosecute
these guys for being off the reservation. But how do you
prosecute them when they were covered by the special-access
program? So you hope that maybe it'll go away.'' The
Pentagon's attitude last January, he said, was ``Somebody got
caught with some photos. What's the big deal? Take care of
it.'' Rumsfeld's explanation to the White House, the official
added, was reassuring. ``We've got a glitch in the program.
We'll prosecute it.' The cover story was that some kids got
out of control.''
In their testimony before Congress last week, Rumsfeld and
Cambone struggled to convince the legislators that Miller's
visit to Baghdad in late August had nothing to do with the
subsequent abuse. Cambone sought to assure the Senate Armed
Services Committee that the interplay between Miller and
Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in
Iraq, had only a casual connection to his office. Miller's
recommendations, Cambone said, were made to Sanchez. His own
role, he said, was mainly to insure that the ``flow of
intelligence back to the commands'' was ``efficient and
effective.'' He added that Miller's goal was ``to provide a
safe, secure and humane environment that supports the
expeditious collection of intelligence.''
It was a hard sell. Senator Hillary Clinton, Democrat of
New York, posed the essential question facing the senators:
If, indeed General Miller was sent from Guantanamo to Iraq
for the purpose of acquiring more actionable intelligence
from detainees, then it is fair to conclude that the actions
that are at point here in you report [on abuses at Abu
Ghraib] are in some way connected to General Miller's arrival
and his specific orders, however they were interpreted, by
those MPs and the military intelligence that were involved. .
. . Therefore, I for one don't believe I yet have adequate
information from Mr. Cambone and the Defense Department as to
exactly what General Miller's orders were . . . how he
carried out those orders, and the connection between his
arrival in the fall of '03 and the intensity of the abuses
that occurred afterward.
Sometime before the Abu Ghraib abuses became public, the
former intelligence official told me, Miller was ``read
in''--that is, briefed--on the special-access operation. In
April, Miller returned to Baghdad to assume control of the
Iraqi prisons; once the scandal hit, with its glaring
headlines, General Sanchez presented him to the American and
international media as the general who would clean up the
Iraqi prison system and instill respect for the Geneva
Conventions. ``His job is to save what he can,'' the former
official said. ``He's there to protect the program while
limiting any loss of core capability.'' As for Antonio
Taguba, the former intelligence official added, ``He goes
into it not knowing shit. And then: ``Holy cow! What's going
on?
If General Miller had been summoned by Congress to testify,
he, like Rumsfeld and Cambone, would not have been able to
mention the special-access program. ``If you give away the
fact that a special-access program exists,'' the former
intelligence official told me, ``you blow the whole quick-
reaction program.''
One puzzling aspect of Rumsfeld's account of his initial
reaction to news of the Abu Ghraib investigation was his lack
of alarm and lack of curiosity. One factor may have been
recent history: there had been many previous complaints of
prisoner abuse from organizations like Human Rights Watch and
the International Red Cross, and the Pentagon had weathered
them with ease. Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services
Committee that he had not been provided with details of
alleged abuses until late March, when he read the specific
charges. ``You read it, as I say, it's one thing. You see
these photographs and it's just unbelievable. . . . It wasn't
three-dimensional. It wasn't video. It wasn't color. it was
quite a different thing.'' The former intelligence official
said that in his view, Rumsfeld and other senior Pentagon
officials had not studied the photographs because ``they
thought what was in there was permitted under the rules of
engagement,'' as applied to the SAP. ``The photos,'' he
added, ``turned out to be the result of the program run
amok.''
[[Page H3076]]
The former intelligence official made it clear that he was
not alleging that Rumsfeld or General Myers knew that
atrocities were committed. But, he said, ``it was their
permission granted to do the SAP, generically, and there was
enough ambiguity, which permitted the abuses.''
Thsi official went on, ``The black guys''--those in the
Pentagon's secret program--``say we've got to accept the
prosecution. they're vaccinated from the reality.'' The SAP
is still active, and ``the United States is picking up guys
for interrogation. The question is, how do they protect the
quick-reaction force without blowing its cover?'' The program
was protected by the fact that no one on the outside was
allowed to know of its existence. ``If you even give a hint
that you're aware of a black program that you're not read
into, you lose your clearances,'' the former official said.
``Nobody will talk. So the only people left to prosecute are
those who are undefended--the poor kids at the end of the
food chain.''
The most vulnerable senior official is Cambone. ``The
Pentagon is trying now to protect Cambone, and doesn't know
how to do it,'' the former intelligence official said.
Last week, the government consultant, who has close ties to
many conservatives, defended the Administration's continued
secrecy about the special-access program in Abu Ghraib.;
``Why keep it black?'' the consultant asked. ``Because the
process is unpleasant. It's like making sausage--you like the
result but you don't want to know how it was made. Also, you
don't want the Iraqi public, and the Arab world, to know.
Remember, we went to Iraq to democratize the Middle East. The
last thing you want to do is let the Arab world know how you
treat Arab males in prison.''
The former intelligence official told me he feared that one
of the disastrous effects of the prison-abuse scandal would
be the undermining of legitimate operations in the war on
terror, which had already suffered from the draining of
resources into Iraq. He portrayed Abu Ghraib as a ``a tumor''
on the war on terror. He said, ``As long as it's benign and
contained, the Pentagon can deal with the photo crisis
without jeopardizing the secret program. As soon as it begins
to grow, with nobody to diagnose it--it becomes a malignant
tumor.''
The Pentagon consultant made a similar point. Cambone and
his superiors, the consultant said, ``created the conditions
that allowed transgressions to take place. And now we're
going to end up with another Church Commission''--the 1975
Senate committee on intelligence, headed by Senator Frank
Church, of Idaho, which investigated C.I.A. abuses during the
previous two decades. Abu Ghraib had sent the message that
the Pentagon leadership was unable to handle its
discretionary power. ``When the shit hits the fan, as it did
on 9/11, how do you push the pedal?'' the consultant asked.
``You do it selectively and with intelligence.''
``Congress is going to get to the bottom of this,'' the
Pentagon consultant said. ``You have to demonstrate that
there are checks and balances in the system.'' He added,
``When you live in a world of gray zones, you have to have
very clear red lines.'''
Senator John McCain, of Arizona, said, ``If this is true,
it certainly increases the dimension of this issue and
deserves significant scrutiny. I will do all possible to get
to the bottom of this, and all other allegations.''
``In an odd way,'' Kenneth Roth, the executive director of
Human Rights Watch, said, ``the sexual abuses at Abu Ghraib
have become a diversion for the prisoner abuse and the
violation of the Geneva Conventions that is authorized.''
Since September 11th, Roth added, the military has
systematically used third-degree techniques around the world
on detainees. ``Some JAGS hate this and are horrified that
the tolerance of mistreatment will come back and haunt us in
the next war,'' Roth told me. ``We're giving the world a
ready-made excuse to ignore the Geneva Conventions. Rumsfeld
has lowered the bar.''
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman yield?
Mr. DELAHUNT. I yield to the gentleman from Hawaii.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Michigan gave a
quote there concerning the briefing of Congress. Could the gentleman
read that again and attribute where the source of that comment was? Was
that an observation or was that a direct quote from someone? Perhaps he
can read that text.
Mr. CONYERS. No. This was from the author of the article, Seymour
Hersh, the part that determined that the existence of a program was to
avoid traceability, to have no budget that was reportable. So we did
not have anything to even oversight, and then also that they could
avoid congressional scrutiny and a requirement or obligation for being
briefed to Congress.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. So we can make absolutely sure, this is Mr. Hersh
reporting what information was coming to him, that that was the intent
of this approach; is that correct?
Mr. CONYERS. Yes, but what I am trying to do is give us the basis of
why there ought to be an investigation. I wish I could vet all of these
statements, assertions, and I have as many questions as the gentleman
probably does.
The problem is that we are now confronted with taking a few
reservists and throwing them into a court-martial situation, when
clearly this problem that has been exposed started with more than a few
privates and corporals and sergeants, determining how they were going
to commit these abuses; that this was sanctioned. This was planned, and
I repeat again, the President was informed of the existence of the
program, a former intelligence official talking to Seymour Hersh said.
This is an award-winning writer on the American government scene for
many years. I need to know more, but I am certainly not going to walk
away from this highly complex information that has been presented to
us.
Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman yield?
Mr. DELAHUNT. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr.
Conyers) for bringing the Seymour Hersh article to the attention of the
House today. I read that this afternoon, and I agree with my colleague,
the impact of that article clearly is this was a planned special
operation that did not originate with the privates and the sergeants
but at the highest levels of the Bush administration.
But the question I wanted to ask my colleague, what I got out of the
article was that not only was this a very clear attempt, if the article
is accurate, by the Bush administration to set up an intelligence-
gathering mechanism and operation that would be free and clear of any
congressional oversight, but that they were taking these procedures and
methods from Afghanistan, where we were clearly fighting terrorists and
had terrorists in custody, and were interrogating terrorists and where
we had announced, rightly or wrongly, that the Geneva Conventions would
not apply. Then we were taking these methods and procedures to a more
traditional war zone in Iraq and applying them to the detainees in the
Iraqi prisons, notably Abu Ghraib, where the detainees were a bunch of
people off the street, street criminals, rock throwers, hoodlums, maybe
some terrorists, but certainly a wide number of just disaffected Iraqis
who got swept up by the police and by the Army in an urban setting that
was a traditional war zone. Yet, here the American operation was using
these same interrogation approaches that we have been using against
known terrorists in a lawless situation in Afghanistan.
This seems to me to be the root of the problem. First off, there is
clear accountability to the very top of the Defense Department and the
White House, and every time those gentlemen talk about just a few bad
apples, it sets my hackles on edge because clearly they are trying to
avoid accountability and responsibility.
The fundamental error they made was, in my judgment, taking this from
a terror interrogation into interrogation of street criminals and
routine suspects that have so badly backfired on our image in Iraq.
So I wonder, does the gentleman read the article the same way as I
do?
Mr. CONYERS. I do, because they said they were taking people walking
off the streets, taxi drivers, in-laws of somebody who may be more
seriously implicated, and that they were bringing in an expert from
Guantanamo. They do not make them enemy combatants so that these folks
have no rights under the Geneva Conventions whatsoever, and the whole
thing reads like an absolute nightmare. They are naming names and they
are naming strategies. This so-called, what do we call it, the secret
access program.
Mr. HOEFFEL. Very aptly known as SAP, S-A-P.
Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time for a moment, because I
know we are joined by our friend, the gentleman from Washington (Mr.
Inslee), and again, I think we are coming back to an issue that has to
be discussed here, and that is an issue of competence.
There is nobody in this chamber that is not committed to making every
effort, every responsible effort to end the threat of terrorism, not
just against the United States but all over the globe. What I think the
world has concluded, as most Americans have concluded, is that the
information that
[[Page H3077]]
was provided to this administration indicating that there was weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq and that there were linkages between Saddam
Hussein and al Qaeda were absolutely false, absolutely false.
What we have learned is that much of this information was provided by
an exiled group called the Iraqi National Congress, headed by this
particular gentleman here with the sunglasses on whose name is Ahmed
Chalabi, who for years was working to return to Iraq.
Mr. Chalabi is an interesting and controversial figure, of course,
because during his exile he lived for a time in Jordan, and while he
was there, he was charged with and accused and convicted of the crime
of embezzlement in the amount of some $30 million. He was sentenced to
a term of 22 years in prison. Somehow during his exile he became
friendly with or developed relationships with Richard Pearl, who
formerly served on the Defense Advisory Board, with the Vice President
Mr. Cheney, and with others in the so-called neo-conservative movement.
{time} 2230
And they believed what he had to say. And it has been proven to be
false.
And I thought what was particularly interesting was that this past
weekend our Secretary of State, Colin Powell, made a statement, I think
it was on ``Meet the Press,'' that he now believes, and I am reading
again from the New York Times dated today, that ``he now believes that
the Central Intelligence Agency was deliberately misled about evidence
that Saddam Hussein was developing unconventional weapons.''
Now, stop for a moment to think of this, that the Secretary of State,
who made the presentation before the world at the United Nations, who
built the case for this White House and for this President, now
indicates that he was or the CIA was misled. The report goes on, ``He
hinted at widespread reports,'' this is Secretary Powell, ``of
fabrications by an engineer who provided much of the critical
information about the so-called bioweapons labs. Intelligence officials
have since found that the engineer was linked to the Iraqi National
Congress, an exiled group that was pressing President Bush to unseat
Mr. Hussein.'' This is a quote by the Secretary of State. ``It turned
out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases,
deliberately misleading,'' Mr. Powell said in an interview broadcast
from Jordan, ``and for that I am disappointed and I regret it.''
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield.
Mr. DELAHUNT. I yield.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, my constituents are tired of being suckered
with false information that both precipitated and continue this war in
Iraq, and they want some accountability of what happened with such a
massive amount of misinformation given to the American people leading
up to this war. They want accountability, and they deserve
accountability.
We offered today an amendment to the defense authorizations bill to
be considered this week that will give Americans some accountability on
the source of this information, of Mr. Chalabi's rogue group, this
alleged Iraqi National Congress. And there is nothing congressional
about it. It is a bunch of folks that want to go back in and run Iraq
and who convinced the neoconservatives who are behind this war that we
would all be greeted with rose petals because Mr. Chalabi would be seen
as the great savior of Iraq.
This great fantasy was bought hook, line and sinker by the President
of the United States and the administration, and it was a fraud. And it
is time for the American taxpayers to have accountability here.
Now, what I am told, and I want to make sure it is true, but I am
told taxpayers are still paying this group, this group that gave us,
apparently willfully, or potentially willfully, false information
leading to this war. We are still paying $350,000 a month for their
great services in Iraq. What did this group do for the American people?
It got us into a war based on false administration they gave to the
administration. The administration was all too happy to accept that
there were weapons of mass destruction there; that there was a
connection to 9-11 and that they would be greeted as liberators, the
three legs of this stool, all of which were false. And we are still
paying these people.
So we will offer an amendment, hopefully tomorrow it will be allowed,
I hope the majority will allow it to be considered, which will cut that
money off, assuming the things I have suggested are true; and I believe
they are. So we need some accountability here of this group. We cannot
continue it.
And I want to make sure people understand how dire this is and how
hoodwinked this administration was. And, frankly, I think they were
patsies for this group. We paid millions of dollars very shortly after
the Iraqi Army collapsed to fly into Iraq, I am told like some 800 or
900 of the cohorts and the coconspirators, if I can use the pejorative
term that I think is appropriate here, of Mr. Chalabi's. We flew them
into Baghdad, and it was going to be the sort of great saviors flying
in that would be the recipient of all these rose petals and would
quickly reestablish them as the functioning government of Iraq.
Surprise. They were not really welcomed with open arms in Baghdad.
Totally failed. Wasted our millions of dollars, and they are still
taking money from the taxpayers. Now, here is one mistake, at least one
mistake the administration ought to own up to and fix so we do not
continue pouring money down a rat hole in Iraq with the Iraqi National
Congress, which has not helped us one wit.
Because, frankly, what Iraq needs is a real congress which is elected
by the Iraqi people. These guys who are under indictment in Jordan, you
cannot parachute him in and expect him to be welcomed as the savior of
Iraq.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield on that
point.
Mr. INSLEE. Let me say one more thing. We need elections sooner
rather than later in Iraq to vest them with their own destiny, and I
will offer an amendment to do that as well.
I yield to the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie).
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, on that point, perhaps one of my
esteemed colleagues could enlighten me as to the status of Mr. Chalabi
and his brethren with respect to the sovereignty issue that is supposed
to come to full fruition on June 30. I am unable to determine from my
inquiries as to exactly where the United Nations representative, Mr.
Chalabi, and Mr. Bremer cross paths.
And to the degree or extent that they are in contact with one
another, let alone in league with one another, exactly what the
elements of that sovereignty will be with respect to this Iraqi
governing council and Mr. Chalabi. Do any of my colleagues have any
information on that or is everybody as much in the dark as I believe
the American people and the Iraqi people are?
Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania
(Mr. Hoeffel).
Mr. HOEFFEL. Well, I was just going to say that we have as much of a
clue as the American officials in Iraq have, which is no clue at all. I
do not think anybody has any idea what is going to happen on June 30.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, Mr. Speaker, may I ask the gentleman to take
the time back on that point?
Mr. HOEFFEL. Sure.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I, unfortunately, believe that we probably have a
pretty good idea what is going to happen at that point. I believe that
the American Armed Forces will be set adrift on a desert sea of
anxiety, insecurity, and ineptitude.
The gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) has characterized the
present situation with respect to our policy as one of rampant
incompetence, but I think that it is unfortunately all too safe to say
that that will manifest itself on June 30 with an utter incapacity to
discern even momentarily what the military mission of the United States
Armed Forces will be at that point, other than to try to survive the
day, survive the week, survive the month, survive any stop-loss that
the Secretary of Defense might impose on the troops there and then get
home.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr.
Delahunt).
Mr. DELAHUNT. Well, Mr. Speaker, I do not think we have the answers.
But, again, let me go back to this issue of
[[Page H3078]]
competence, because the President of the United States described the
Secretary of Defense as a superb leader. I reject that description. I
reject that description out of hand. One only has to see example after
example, such as the relationship, and not just a single incident, with
Mr. Chalabi. Clearly, the Kingdom of Jordan, which has been a steadfast
ally of the United States, was insulted by the appointment of this
individual, who is a convicted felon, to the Iraqi Governing Council.
King Abdulla of Jordan was here. I and several other members of the
Committee on International Relations, I believe I was joined by my
colleague here tonight, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel),
at a luncheon when I posed the question to the King, and congratulated
him, by the way, for moving towards the democratization, if you will,
of Jordan, whether he was ever consulted by Secretary Rumsfeld or by
the President about the appointment of Mr. Chalabi. And he said, no, he
was not even consulted. Yet here is an individual who established a
bank, one of the largest banks in Jordan, then embezzled, according to
the conviction, millions of dollars, causing the bank to collapse; and
he then escaped from Jordan.
When asked just recently about Ahmed Chalabi potentially becoming the
prime minister in the interim government, what King Abdulla said was,
``He was not the ideal choice.'' I daresay that was extremely
diplomatic.
But at the same time let me go and quote another individual who has
earned the respect of Members of this body and the American people,
David Kay. Remember David Kay? He was assigned the task by this
President, by this Secretary of Defense to go find the weapons of mass
destruction; and he came back and said there are no weapons of mass
destruction, Mr. President, and testified before the United States
Senate that we were all wrong. We were all wrong.
But, of course, this White House, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and Mr.
Rumsfeld cannot acknowledge that they were wrong. They were wrong about
the weapons of mass destruction. They were wrong about the links
between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. And now we find ourselves in a
quagmire.
But this is what Mr. Kay had to say, who, by the way, was one of the
most hawkish members of the United Nations monitors that went out and
that was part of that inspection team, and who actually supported the
war. But here is what he had to say. He now believes the Western
countries' intelligence agencies got it wrong for two reasons. He is
referring to the weapons of mass destruction. First, they were
manipulated by Ahmed Chalabi and other dissidents whose central
interest was ousting Saddam.
Just mentioning the name of the Iraqi National Congress leader makes
Kay laugh. There is a guy who is so transparent. Chalabi asked me once,
and again this is Mr. Kay speaking, why are you so concerned about the
weapons of mass destruction? No one cares about weapons of mass
destruction. And when asked by Tom Brokaw was he embarrassed, no, his
response was, we are heroes in error.
Well that error has cost the American taxpayers hundreds of billions
of dollars, the lives of American young men and women, and the loss of
American moral authority and prestige in the war. Mr. Chalabi, that is
disgraceful. That is disgraceful.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield.
Mr. DELAHUNT. I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Perhaps it would be useful for us to note at this
point that Mr. Chalabi does not occupy his position as a result of
unilateral action on his part. Mr. Chalabi occupies this position
because of the overt policies of this administration. The reason he is
there, the reason that we are unable at this stage, at this stage, just
prior to June 30, to say exactly what his position will be in the
future is because he continues to receive the favor of this
administration. He is there because Mr. Bush saw that he went there. He
is there because he is supported to this day, to this moment by this
administration.
Everything that has been said concerning him this evening is true. It
is factual. It is contextual. We understand the meaning of what he said
when he said we were heroes in error. And I happened to see that
announcement; and let me tell my colleagues the words do not convey the
sense of triumph, the sense of disdain, the condescending attitude or
sense of his countenance when he pronounced those words. He was pleased
with himself that he had been able to mislead the administration and
that he was getting away with it.
It is one thing to deliberately mislead someone. They may not know
what was going on. They may not know what happened. Maybe they should
have known. Maybe they should have been paying more attention in the
administration, but to give them the widest benefit of a doubt, perhaps
they did not. But once someone announces to your face that you have
been misled, and deliberately so, to continue to receive the favor of
the person who made the appointment and allows it to continue, tells
more about the person who does the appointing and ostensibly holds the
power than it does about Mr. Chalabi.
{time} 2245
Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, it can be summed up in one word,
incompetence, and a lack of leadership and an inability to wage a war
against terrorism that will succeed.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr.
Hoeffel).
Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, just over a year ago at one of our first
Iraq Watches, I recounted a visit that Mr. Chalabi paid to my office,
as I think he did to most members of the Committee on International
Relations in October 2002, just before the vote here in the House on
the war authority on Iraq.
I talked to Mr. Chalabi for 10 or 15 minutes. He had an aide with
him, and my chief of staff was with me. They left, and I turned to my
aide and I said, That is the kind of man that my grandfather would have
called a four-flusher. I do not think I have used that term since my
grandfather died in the 1980s. I am not quite sure what it means. I
think it must come from poker where a player has four cards for a
flush, does not have the fifth, and you are all hot air and cannot be
trusted and you are just a spin doctor.
That is exactly the impression that I got from Ahmed Chalabi that
day, that he was spinning. He was spinning me, he was spinning the
Congress, he was not a man of substance and not someone we should
trust.
The sad fact is, as my colleagues have said here tonight, the
administration trusted him. Paul Wolfowitz trusted him, Doug Faith,
Donald Rumsfeld trusted him, and because those individuals trusted him,
our President trusted him; and he is not worthy of our trust. As a
matter of fact, I think we need to talk about all of this talk about
resignations in the Department of Defense. I do not think we should
allow those civilian authorities in the DOD the luxury of resigning.
The President ought to fire them. He ought to fire Rumsfeld and Faith
for the bad advice they have given him, for believing in people like
Chalabi, for the lack of planning in Iraq, for sending troops over
there without enough numbers, without the armored vehicles to keep them
safe.
The failures of leadership in the Department of Defense are so great,
including believing Chalabi, that the civilian leadership ought to go.
While the President is at it, he ought to get rid of George Tenet for
the bad intelligence regarding the failure of the weapons of mass
destruction intelligence.
The only person that ought to resign in the administration is Colin
Powell, because his advice is not being listened to, but that is
another matter.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman has put his finger on
what we ought to call the Chalabi principle in the Bush administration.
The Chalabi principle is this: If you tell the truth, you get fired by
the President. If you tell a falsehood, you get promoted and praised.
That is a pretty strong statement, but let us look at the facts.
General Shinseki told the truth. He said we are going to need several
hundred thousand troops to prevent massive looting and anarchy after
the army collapses, and it was true; so they canned him. General Zinni
said the same thing; he gracefully was allowed to retire. Joe Wilson
told the truth and pointed out that the President told a significant
[[Page H3079]]
falsehood to the American people and Congress in the State of the Union
address, asserting that Iraq was getting uranium to build a nuclear
weapon. He told the truth and so the President's people punished Mr.
Wilson's wife by outing her CIA employment, which should be a Federal
crime.
So if you tell the truth in the Bush administration, you can canned,
punished, and your wife's career gets destroyed. But if you tell a
falsehood, like Mr. Chalabi's outfit who gave us repeated
misinformation, according to the Secretary of State, you get praised,
you get the President trying to get you an in in the new government in
Iraq, and you get $350,000 a month of taxpayers' money, together with
the millions of dollars we spent trying to parachute them into Baghdad
to form a new government, which was an abject failure, you are praised.
If you are Paul Wolfowitz, who told the Congress that oil revenues
would pay for this and we would be greeted with rose petals, you are
praised by the President.
And if you are the Defense Secretary, if you are wrong about WMD,
wrong about the connection with 9/11, wrong about the number of troops
we need, and wrong about not having armor and how we are going to pay
for it and how much it is going to cost, if you are wrong about not
having early elections, the Vice President says you are the best
Secretary of Defense America has ever had. This is the Chalabi
principle. We need to break this.
This is one of the things wrong with our Iraqi policy. The people
telling the truth are not listened to, and the people fouling up get
promoted. That needs to change.
Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, what is interesting is that David Kay,
highly respected, the man that was charged by this President, it did
not take him too long to conclude that Mr. Chalabi was transparent, a
manipulator, a con man, if you will.
In addition to all that the gentleman has said, do my colleagues
remember when the President of the United States delivered the State of
the Union address this year, in January of 2004, who was sitting up
right there in the gallery in the Bush family box? Does the gentleman
remember?
Mr. HOEFFEL. I remember. It was Mr. Chalabi.
Mr. DELAHUNT. It boggles the mind, it is such rank incompetence, it
is such an inability to see reality, to be fooled. It is not
incompetence, it is gross negligence. In some other forum it might
almost be funny, but here it is so tragic because it is not just about
this President and this Vice President, but it is about war and peace
and the American people and how we are viewed in the world, and it is
the blood of our children, and it is mortgaging our future.
We should walk away from Mr. Chalabi now and begin to restore the
confidence of the world in our ability to match reality and our dreams
and aspirations.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that these discussions
that we have held and are holding weekly on the floor here are meant to
communicate with our colleagues and with the American people. This is
our forum to do it. I think those who may be observing our proceedings
here today need to take up, if they believe what we have said tonight,
the cause of having Mr. Bush remove his support from Mr. Chalabi.
I think people across the country have to ask their representatives,
as well as communicate with the White House. They have to ask their
Representatives and Senators, do you support this Chalabi
administration and the Iraqi Governing Council? Do you support Mr.
Chalabi being a part of this sovereignty movement after June 30? If you
do, there have to be serious questions about your competence to be
holding office and acting on our behalf.
This is a question that needs to be asked. Americans need not feel
impotent, they need not feel they are merely observers of what other
people are doing to you and doing to this country. You can demand of
your elected Representatives and Senators, where do you stand on this
Chalabi issue?
It is not a matter of getting an individual, I am sure we all agree.
He is representative of a failure of leadership. His position in the
Iraqi Governing Council is an insult to those people who have been
wounded and who have been killed during this war. It is an insult to
those of us who uphold genuine ideas about freedom and democracy and
their spread. So long as this man is there, being the official
representative of the United States to the Iraqi Governing Council, to
that same degree will we be disenabled from achieving any of these
goals, regardless of how one feels about going to war in Iraq or not.
This is what needs to be done. You have to demand of your
representatives, where do you stand on this issue of his continued
presence as being officially supported by the United States of America?
Mr. DELAHUNT. Let me reclaim my time for a moment. I think it is
important for Americans to understand that during the course of this
week, we will be debating a bill that is described as the defense
reauthorization bill. It is our purpose collectively as members of this
informal group that came to being as a result of the gentleman from
Pennsylvania's brainstorm almost a year ago now, this informal group is
going to make every single effort to eliminate the funding and the
authority for the funding for the Iraqi National Congress that is
receiving some $4 million a year, as the gentleman indicates. For what,
we do not know. For bad information, for self-aggrandizement, for
certainly not the best interests of the United States.
We again, as the gentleman suggests, recommend that anyone who is
interested in this issue, that shares our concern and our belief that
this is very much a linchpin to beginning to restore our international
respect and support, to contact their Senators and their
Representatives to assist in this effort, to read about, not just
listen to our comments, but to become engaged, educate themselves as to
the role of this individual in the course of the past several years and
the consequences to the United States simply because there were people
in this administration, so-called neoconservatives that were looking
for a reason to go to war in Iraq long before our national tragedy of
September 11.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. This is why it is so important, and I want to make
sure everyone understands. We can do this. We do have a bill coming up
this week, and if we are able to get on the agenda on the floor, we can
stop the support for this group. It is fundamental to advancing the
genuine interests of the United States and reestablishing some
semblance of a foundation on behalf of freedom that we stop Chalabi
from being represented on the Governing Council, as having the support
of the United States of America.
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