WASHINGTON — A group of senior military lawyers were so concerned about changes in the rules designed to safeguard prisoners during interrogation that they sought help outside the Defense Department, according to a New York lawyer who headed a recent study of how prisoners have been treated in the war on terrorism.
The military lawyers were part of the Army Judge Advocate General's office, which in the past has played a role in ensuring that interrogators did not violate prisoners' rights.
"They were extremely upset. They said they were being shut out of the process, and that the civilian political lawyers, not the military lawyers, were writing these new rules of engagement," said Scott Horton, who was chairman of the New York City Bar Assn. committee that filed a report this month on the interrogation of detainees by the U.S.
The report was released just days before the first photos were broadcast showing naked Iraqi detainees being abused at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
The Pentagon's "interrogation rules of engagement" became a focus of controversy in the Senate this week because they permitted the use of techniques such as "stress positions" and "sensory deprivation" and the presence of military dogs.
Some international law experts, as well as some Senate Democrats, said the loosened rules violated the Geneva Convention, which forbids soldiers to use physical force to obtain information from detainees.
But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the rules had been examined and approved by lawyers for the administration.
On Tuesday, Stephen A. Cambone, undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, said Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of Defense for policy, "issued any number of statements and directives to the effect that detainees in Iraq, civilian or military, were to be treated under the provisions of the Geneva Convention."
The military lawyers complained that the Pentagon was creating "an atmosphere of legal ambiguity," Horton said. "What's happened is not an accident. It is exactly what they were warning about a year ago," he said.
None of the military lawyers would agree to speak publicly, he said, because to do so would threaten their careers.
All sides agree that the abusive treatment of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib violates international law and is far out of bounds. They disagree, however, on whether the Bush administration's legal policy toward interrogating prisoners caused or contributed to the abuses.
