[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 4364-4365]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           ACCOUNTABILITY FOR THE ABUSE OF FOREIGN DETAINEES

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, with this new session of Congress and the 
President's new term we are presented with new opportunities for 
change. Congress and the President have embraced these opportunities on 
many issues--new cabinet officials have been confirmed and a renewed 
effort is underway by the administration to repair strained 
international relationships. Unfortunately, on one important front 
there has been no change: The administration continues to stonewall on 
the prisoner abuse scandal and Congress continues to abdicate its 
oversight responsibility on this issue.
  Ignoring this problem will not make it go away. Even without a 
comprehensive, independent investigation into the abuse of detainees, 
we continue to learn more about this scandal from press reports and the 
court-ordered release of Government documents in response to Freedom of 
Information Act (FOIA) litigation.
  The latest set of documents made public through the FOIA case reveal 
not only more incidents of abuse, but also indicate that soldiers in 
Afghanistan destroyed evidence of detainee mistreatment. One file 
documents the Army's investigation into the discovery of a compact disk 
during an office clean-up in Afghanistan in July 2004. The disk 
contained photos of U.S. soldiers pointing their handguns and rifles at 
the heads of bound and hooded detainees. Many of the soldiers 
questioned about these photos said they were ``joking around'' and that 
they wanted to have some good pictures to show their friends back home. 
If the roles were reversed and it was American POWs being used as photo 
props with weapons pointed at their heads, we would be rightly outraged 
by this conduct.
  While the photos on this disk are disturbing in their own right, the 
circumstances surrounding this investigation are even more troubling. 
Unlike the photos from Abu Ghraib, these photos were not investigated 
because of an American soldier, in an act of conscious, gave the photos 
to a superior officer. These new photos were discovered by accident. 
The subsequent investigation into the photos revealed that soldiers in 
the unit were told by their superiors to delete similar photos of abuse 
to prevent their disclosure.
  New details have also emerged about one of the infamous Abu Ghraib 
photos. Many will remember the photo of Manadel al-Jimadi's corpse 
packed in ice with Specialist Charles Graner posing over the body and 
giving the ``thumbs-up'' sign. We have known for months that this was a 
homicide, but a recent news report provides additional details about 
al-Jimadi's death. Al-Jimadi, one of the CIA's ghost detainees at Abu 
Ghraib, was secretly held at the prison. The International Committee of 
the Red Cross was denied access to him in violation of the Geneva 
Conventions. Now, press reports indicate that he died in a position 
known as ``Palestinian hanging.'' This barbaric practice entails 
cuffing the detainee's hands behind his back and suspending him from 
the wrists.
  President Bush condemned Saddam Hussein for similar practices; the 
President should be as outraged when these acts are committed by 
American personnel.
  Meanwhile, the media continues to reveal details about the 
administration's use of extraordinary rendition to transfer terrorism 
suspects in U.S. custody to the custody of countries where they are 
likely to be tortured. A recent article in The New Yorker, titled 
``Outsourcing Torture,'' provides disturbing details about how the 
administration embraced the use of renditions after the attacks on 
September 11. The article cites three instances where the U.S. 
transferred suspected militants from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan. 
Although the fate of these men is not known, Uzbekistan is known to use 
interrogation methods such as partially boiling a detainee's hand or 
arm.
  The State Department recently released its annual human rights 
report. The report criticized several countries for employing 
interrogation techniques that the State Department considered to be 
torture, yet are similar to techniques approved in 2002 by Secretary 
Rumsfeld. How can we criticize these countries for using techniques 
that our own Defense Secretary approved? How

[[Page 4365]]

can our State Department denounce countries for engaging in torture 
while the CIA secretly transfers detainees to the very same countries? 
President Bush said that U.S. personnel do not engage in torture, but 
transferring detainees to other countries where they will be tortured 
does not absolve our government of responsibility. By outsourcing 
torture to these countries, we diminish our own values as a nation and 
lose our credibility as an advocate of human rights around the world.
  Even without further government action, this scandal is not going to 
go away. It is time for us to lead the investigation, rather than wait 
to read about the latest discovery of abuse in the newspaper. As I have 
said before, there needs to be a thorough, independent investigation of 
the actions of those involved, from the people who committed abuses to 
the officials who set these policies in motion. The investigations 
completed thus far provide additional insight into how the prison 
abuses occurred, but their narrow mandates prevented them from 
addressing critical issues.
  For example, an executive summary of the long-expected report on 
interrogation policy by Admiral Albert T. Church was released today. 
The full report, which is classified, reportedly criticizes the 
Pentagon for a failure of oversight, yet finds no direct evidence that 
high level officials ordered the mistreatment of detainees. The 
executive summary contains only a brief reference to the role of 
contractors in interrogations, and affirms that numerous contracts have 
been awarded in an ad hoc fashion and without central coordination. The 
role of contractors is an area sorely in need of a comprehensive 
investigation.
  Similarly, the unclassified summary leaves many questions unanswered 
about Department of Defense (DOD) interaction with the CIA. It confirms 
that approximately 30 detainees were kept ``off the books'' in Iraq. 
The summary admits that DOD assisted the intelligence agencies with 
detainee transfers and supported interrogations by ``other government 
agencies''--which is government-speak for the CIA--at DOD facilities. 
What is missing from the Church report, however, is a full exploration 
of the role of the CIA in detention, rendition, and interrogation. The 
Agency apparently cooperated with the Church investigation, but 
provided information on activities only in Iraq, and not on any of the 
other nations or facilities where the CIA is holding and interrogating 
detainees.
  A very important piece of information came out of today's hearing on 
the Church report, however. In his testimony before the Armed Services 
Committee, Admiral Church was asked by Senator Kennedy about 
unclassified paragraphs of the full report that discuss early meetings 
of the DOD working group on interrogations. That working group produced 
a memo that tracked very closely the infamous August 2002 Justice 
Department torture memo. The Justice memo claimed that for an action to 
rise to the level of torture it must result in pain equivalent to the 
type associated with organ failure or even death.
  Apparently, the working group was briefed by Justice Department 
lawyers who presented the Justice memo's legal analysis as controlling. 
According to Senator Kennedy's exchange with Admiral Church, members of 
the working group protested. They believed that interrogation policy 
should follow the Geneva Conventions. Admiral Church confirmed that the 
working group was overruled by the Pentagon's Office of General 
Counsel, which insisted on using the torture memo as the legal 
foundation for interrogation techniques. Specifically, Admiral Church 
admitted, the working group was overruled by William J. Haynes, General 
Counsel of the Department of Defense, whom the President has nominated 
to a lifetime appointment as a Federal Circuit Court judge. And still, 
given all of this information, the Pentagon claims that abuses did not 
stem from policies generated from the highest levels of this 
administration.
  Only a truly independent entity can comprehensively investigate the 
policy decisions that were made at the top and the abuses that followed 
in the field. There will always be scandals and tragedies in a nation's 
history. What makes America unique is that we do not hide from these 
issues; we investigate them, learn from our mistakes, and make sure 
they do not happen again. I have no doubt that an independent 
investigation into the abuse of detainees will be painful, but it is 
also a necessary step to moving forward.

                          ____________________