By David Swanson | 12/31
U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has admitted that he
“ghosted” a detainee, meaning that he made the decision to hold a
prisoner without keeping any records of the fact.
by calling them other names (like “unlawful combatants”), they are
probably most effectively stripped of all rights by keeping their
imprisonment secret. That is what Rumsfeld says he did.
An account of what we know on this matter can be found on page 110 of a new report by Congressman John Conyers called “The
Constitution in Crisis; The Downing Street Minutes and Deception,
Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Cover-ups in the Iraq War.“
Following a catalog of evidence of other crimes sanctioned by top Bush Administration officials, the report reads:
“We also have an admission that George Tenet specifically approved
the ghosting in Iraq of a specific individual, and that Mr. Rumsfeld
admitted to approving of ghosting of detainees as a special matter.
During a press conference in June 2004, Secretary Rumsfeld confirmed
not only that he was asked by CIA Director George Tenet to hide a
specific detainee, but also that he hid the detainee and that the
detainee was lost in the system for more than eight months:
“Q — Mr. Secretary, I’d like to ask why last November you ordered
the U.S. military to keep a suspected Ansar al-Islam prisoner in Iraq
[Hiwa Abdul Rahman Rashul] secret from the Red Cross. He’s now been
secret for more than seven months. And there are other such shadowy
prisoners in Iraq who are being kept secret from the Red Cross.
“SEC. RUMSFELD: With respect to the — I want to separate the two.
Iraq, my understanding is that the investigations on that subject are
going forward. With respect to the detainee you’re talking about, I’m
not an expert on this, but I was requested by the Director of Central
Intelligence to take custody of an Iraqi national who was believed to
be a high-ranking member of Ansar al-Islam. And we did so. We were
asked to not immediately register the individual. And we did that. It
would — it was — he was brought to the attention of the Department,
the senior level of the Department I think late last month. And we’re
in the process of registering him with the ICRC at the present time . .
.”
This is from June 17, 2004, and can be found here.
This is the Secretary of Defense publicly stating that the Director
of the CIA told him not to register a prisoner with the Red Cross, and
that he obeyed, and that several months later the prisoner was still
not registered.
Why do Nuremberg Principles III and IV both come to mind?
Principle III
The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime
under international law acted as Head of State or responsible
Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under
international law.
Principle IV
The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of
a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international
law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.
Why was the CIA calling the shots here? Because they had taken Mr.
Rashul out of Iraq for “questioning” at an undisclosed location. They
were transferring him to military custody.
Rumsfeld agreed to keep Rashul off the books, and issued a
classified order, that the New York Daily News reported on June 20,
2004, as reading: “Notification of the presence and or status of the
detainee to the International Committee of the Red Cross, or any
international or national aid organization, is prohibited pending
further guidance.”
General Sanchez issued his own order to implement Secretary
Rumsfeld’s order. Sanchez’ order, as reported in the media, “accepts
custody and detains Hiwa Abdul Rahman Rashul, a high-ranking Ansar
al-Islam member;” orders that he “remain segregated and isolated from
the remainder of the detainee population;” “[o]nly military personnel
and debriefers will have access to the detainee. . . . Knowledge of the
presence of this detainee will be strictly limited on a need-to-know
basis.” “Any reports from interrogations or debriefings will contain
only the mininum [sic] amount of source information . . .”
The ghosting of Rashul can neither be blamed on low-ranking personnel nor be described as an isolated incident.
In a statement to investigators, Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the top
military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib, said that in September
2003, the CIA requested that the military intelligence officials
“continue to make cells available for their detainees and that they not
have to go through the normal in processing procedures.”
Army General Paul Kern testified before the Senate Armed Services
Committee in September 2004, that the U.S. had held as many as 100
ghost detainees in Iraq.
Rumsfeld himself has confirmed that this was no isolated incident:
“Q — But then why wasn’t the — why wasn’t the Red Cross told, and
are there other such prisoners being detained without the knowledge of
the Red Cross?
“SEC. RUMSFELD: There are — there are instances where that occurs. And a request was made to do that, and we did.”
***
David Swanson is the Washington Director of Democrats.com and of ImpeachPAC.org. He is co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org / CensureBush.org coalition, creator of MeetWithCindy.org, and a board member of Progressive Democrats of America. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including Press Secretary for Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign, Media Coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as Communications Coordinator for ACORN,
the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson
obtained a Master’s degree in philosophy from the University of
Virginia in 1997. His website is www.davidswanson.org.