May 16, 2004
Operation "Copper Green" Denied by Pentagon
Printable Version | [eMail this article!] |Well, Seymour Hersh has struck again with his third article on US torture of prisoners with The Gray Zone (5/15/04), and it has been immediately denied by the Pentagon (AP, 5/16/04).
According to Hersh's article, Rumsfeld set up a "Special Access Program" (SAP) which is another word for a "black" or covert program and picked Stephen Cambone (appointed Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in 3/03) to head the program. Cambone is a Rumsfeld "favorite son," and from the description in the article, an extremely zealous one. The SAP goes under a number of code names - one of which is "Copper Green."
Apparently, Rumsfeld got frustrated with Special Operations units in Afghanistan having to clear action through the CIA rather than to be able to strike immediately. The response was the establishment of a covert project that allowed immediate action by operators, and created a "no rules apply" environment in the interrogation of Al Qaeda suspects. In the spring of 2003, this approach was applied in Guantanamo, and then carried to Iraq in the late summer of 2003 (in the person of General Miller).
According to Hersh's sources:
“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 project recruited operatives from the elite forces of the military and intelligence communities, gave them secret identities, and a hidden budget (not traceable by Congressional oversight). "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,”.
As the situation in Iraq continued to deteriorate, the SAP extended from "high value targets" to "dead enders" (folks who took $300 from unspecified people to shoot at convoys), and ultimately (from other reports folks just in the wrong place at the wrong time). It was decided to "Gitmoize" Iraq.
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 Guantánamo, 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.)"
As I have speculated in earlier articles, it seems highly unlikely that such abuses were confined to Iraq (or even Abu Ghraib). This is confirmed in the Hersh article: "The commandos were to operate in Iraq as they had in Afghanistan. The male prisoners could be treated roughly, and exposed to sexual humiliation." And obviously from the quote above - at Guantanamo and other, perhaps more secret, facilities.
Side note Interestingly, MSNBC did a special report on the CIA's secret prison system which has now "disappeared" from the MSNBC site. There is a related article however that was in the Washington Post on 5/10/04) (Secret World of U.S. Interrogation - UTJ permanent link). There is also an interesting piece - The CIA and Torture, On the Record - which is worth reading.
The taking of pictures of abuse and torture was also not confined to Abu Ghraib. An article in the UK Observer (5016/04) states that this is used at Guantanamo as well. This provides outside confirmation of Hersh's claims that the basis for interrogation methods for the "special treatment" is based on "“The Arab Mind,” a study of Arab culture and psychology, first published in 1973, by Raphael Patai, " which claimed “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,...”. One of Hersh's sources claimed “the bible of the neocons on Arab behavior.”
JAG apparently went to the New York City Bar Association’s Committee on International Human Rights, asking them to challenge the Bush Administration about its standards for detentions and interrogation.” This tidbit was brought up in a slightly different context by the LA Times 5/14/04 article - U.S. Military Lawyers Felt 'Shut Out' of Prison Policy, and the subject of the UTJ 5/14 piece - Are Rumsfeld's Interrogation Rules OK.
Hersh's article clearly points to other issues that have been raised here at Uncommon Thought regarding the disdain for rules and controls by the Bush Administration, and their propensity for operating secretly. As is evident with "Copper Green," they are also finding ways to create government financed and unmonitorable ways to fund these activities - and to institutionalize their "loops" which seem to exclude everyone that would normally be involved. The issue of the "private interrogators" involved at Abu Ghraib also raises issues.
First, of course has been the concern about contractors being "outside the law" and outside of accountability as well. However, there are increasing rumors that these "private contractors" are not so private, but special forces and other elites from the military and intelligence communities covertly assigned to private corporations. This fits in perfectly with Hersh's description of this particular SAP. However, it also points to the collusion of private corporations in a secret operation - namely Titan and CACI. It raises the immediate question of the military-industrial complex and the web of relationships between private corporations, government appointees, and military contacts. It is perhaps an excellent example of it, but that is a topic for further research. What is clear here, is that it is unlikely that these "investigators" could have been put in place without some sort of exchange and influence with the corporations involved.
Links to the Hersh "Annals of Security" series
Torture at Abu Ghraib