WASHINGTON — The latest Pentagon review of military detainee mistreatment criticizes U.S. officials for failing to establish clear interrogation guidelines but concludes that Pentagon officials and senior commanders were not directly responsible for the widespread abuses, said Defense Department and congressional sources who have read the report.
The investigation by Vice Adm. Albert T. Church, the Navy's inspector general, has found no evidence that top officials ordered the harsh treatment of detainees in prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Yet it chronicles a number of instances in which more active Pentagon oversight could have prevented abuses such as those that occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the sources said.
"While authorized interrogation techniques have not been a causal factor in detainee abuse, we have nonetheless identified a number of missed opportunities in the policy development process," the report concludes, according to one source who quoted from it.
One "missed opportunity" cited in Church's report was the Pentagon's failure to give interrogators in Afghanistan, and later in Iraq, a clear set of interrogation guidelines once soldiers began capturing hundreds of prisoners there.
Another occurred in 2002, when new interrogation techniques for Guantanamo Bay were approved despite the objections of senior military lawyers who feared they could lead to abuse. Although the Pentagon later rescinded many of the physically stressful techniques, a Pentagon inquiry last year found that harsh interrogation methods at Guantanamo Bay "migrated" to prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Church's 368-page report, portions of which will be released Thursday, is part of a broad investigation into military prisons ordered by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. It is the sixth major report on abuses completed since last year, with three remaining. Isolated criminal cases are being pursued by the Army Criminal Investigation Command and the Justice Department.
Unlike the investigation into military police conducted in the spring by Army Maj. Gen Antonio M. Taguba and a subsequent inquiry into intelligence soldiers by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay and Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Jones, the Church report is not an investigation of possible criminal activity and recommends no new charges.
"It's a 'mistakes-were-made' kind of report, instead of a 'these-people-are-responsible' report," said a congressional aide who has read the Church document. "The passive voice is used a lot."
