Statement of Senator Carl Levin at the Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on the Church Report
Statement of Senator Carl Levin at the Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on the Church Report
Today we hear from Vice Admiral A. T. Church on his investigation into detention operations and interrogation techniques in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo. Vice Admiral Church's investigative team has done extensive work, collecting hundreds of statements and reviewing thousands of documents. I would like to thank you, Admiral, and your team for that service.
The Church report is not and does not purport to be a comprehensive report. It doesn't fill many of the significant gaps left by earlier investigations regarding the nature and causes of detainee abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and elsewhere.
One gap in the investigations to date is what was the role of "other government agencies," primarily the CIA, in detainee abuse. General Fay's report found that CIA practices "led to a loss of accountability, abuse, ... and an unhealthy mystique that further poisoned the atmosphere at Abu Ghraib." However, General Fay was unable to fully investigate the CIA's role in detainee abuse because the CIA denied his request for documents. Both the Taguba and Fay reports highlighted the problem of unaccounted-for CIA "ghost detainees." The Schlesinger Panel was also aware of this issue, but had limited access to information on the CIA's role in detention operations. Vice Admiral Church's report states his team received limited cooperation from the CIA. The report also makes clear that he was not tasked to investigate the existence of, or policies in effect for, detention facilities controlled exclusively by the CIA, rather than by the DoD.
A second major gap in the DoD-led investigations, which the Church report fails to address, is the issue of senior leadership responsibility for creating an environment which either contributed to abusive behavior, or which condoned or tolerated, or appeared to condone or tolerate such behavior. While the Schlesinger Panel report found that abuses were "widespread" and there was "both institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels," matters of personal accountability were explicitly outside the scope of the Schlesinger Panel's tasking from the Secretary of Defense. So there has been no assessment of accountability of any senior officials, either within or outside the Department of Defense, for policies that may have contributed to abuses of prisoners.
Numerous other gaps remain unaddressed by Admiral Church's report. For example, the Army Inspector General in his assessment of detention operations, doctrine and training, looked only at Iraq and Afghanistan, not Guantanamo. The Formica report looked into allegations of abuse by Special Operations Forces only in Iraq, not in Afghanistan or elsewhere. As a result, significant abuse allegations have fallen between the cracks.
In addition, previous reports contain conflicting conclusions, making it difficult to get a clear picture of the nature and causes of the abuses. These conflicting findings are not addressed in the Church report.
For example, reports are in conflict on whether detainee abuse was systemic. General Taguba found "systemic and illegal abuse of detainees" by military police personnel at Abu Ghraib. General Fay in his report found "systemic problems and issues also contributed to the volatile environment in which abuses occurred" and included two dozen findings relating to systemic failures, including doctrine and policy concerns, leadership and command and control issues, resources and training issues. On the other hand, the Army Inspector General reporting in July 2004, was "unable to identify system failures that resulted in incidents of abuse." Vice Admiral Church's report notes that despite that statement, the Army Inspector General "recounted numerous system failures' in his detailed findings" which contributed to detainee abuse. I hope the Admiral will clarify for this Committee whether he agrees with General Taguba and General Fay that systemic problems contributed to detainee abuse.
Earlier reports found that policies and guidance at least indirectly contributed to abuses. The Schlesinger Panel report says that interrogation policies were "inadequate or deficient...at three levels: Department of Defense, CENTCOM [Central Command]/CJTF-7 [Combined Joint Task Force -7, the command headquarters in Iraq], and Abu Ghraib Prison." That report adds that changes in what DoD interrogation policies were approved by the Secretary of Defense contributed to confusion in the field about what methods were authorized. And perhaps most significantly, the Schlesinger Panel found that there was "both institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels" for widespread abuses, not just at lower levels. Similarly, General Fay found that multiple "national policies and DoD directives" were inconsistent with Army doctrine and resulted in interrogation policies that contributed to the confusion at Abu Ghraib. But the Church Report concludes that approved interrogation techniques were not a "causal factor" of detainee abuse: there were simply "missed opportunities" in the process of developing policies on detainee operations. There isn't even a determination we can find in the Church report as to whether detainee abuse would have been reduced or avoided had these opportunities been acted upon.
In addition, the Church report's assessment that there were simply "missed opportunities" is difficult to reconcile with the facts set forth in the report itself. Simply concluding there were "missed opportunities" does not adequately explain why Secretary Rumsfeld approved aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo in December 2002 - including stress positions, 20-hour interrogations, nudity, and use of dogs in interrogations- in the face of serious concerns about such techniques which had been forwarded by military lawyers from all four services to the Joint Staff.
Simply saying there were "missed opportunities" does not explain why the Office of the Secretary of Defense failed to promulgate an interrogation policy for Afghanistan consistent with the amended policy approved for Guantanamo in April 2003, even though, according to the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent up a recommendation that the same interrogation guidelines apply in both places. The bland label of "missed opportunities" does not explain the absence of policies governing the conduct of CIA interrogators at DoD facilities, which contributed to abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. These are failures of command at high levels.
And it is difficult to reconcile the notion of "missed opportunities" with policies that have come to light since Vice Admiral Church apparently ended his investigation in September 2004. A few months ago the Justice Department confirmed the existence of a memo relating to the authority to use specified interrogation techniques, produced by their Office of Legal Counsel concurrently with the August 1, 2002 "Torture" memo that was so flawed the Administration disavowed it in mid 2004. Just in the past few months, we have learned of FBI agents' strong objections to aggressive and coercive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo, which FBI agents in one e-mail labeled "torture" and in a number of e-mails deemed so disturbing that agents had guidance to "step out of the picture" when the military were carrying out interrogations. The Guantanamo commanders defended these methods by saying that DoD has their "marching orders" from the Secretary of Defense. Nor does the Church report explain recent revelations that the Bush Administration reportedly authorized the CIA to engage in rendition, the handing over of detainees to foreign countries, including ones with a track record of torture.
This failure of accountability of senior leaders sends the wrong signal to our troops and to the American people. It harms the United States' standing as a nation of laws, and it undermines the high standards of our armed forces. It places our brave and honorable military men and women in jeopardy, if and when they become prisoners.
In the end, I can only conclude that the Defense Department is not able to assess accountability at senior levels, particularly when investigators are in the chain of command of the officials whose policies and actions they are investigating. Only an independent review can fully and objectively assess both the institutional and personal accountability for the abuse of detainees.
Read the Executive Summary of the Church report.
http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=233208