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CONTRACT LINGUIST UPDATE - As of 9 June 04 UNCLASSIFIED

vide that to the committee. and Guantanamo. So to give you a specific answer, I'd like to prothree different locations. That's not-I'm talking Afghanistan, Iraq, ical assistance, so it actually breaks out in different ways and in terrogators, linguists, and others that are providing some analytGeneral BURGESS. We've broken the number out in terms of in

of the linguists, where different security clearances are required or skills that we're talking about, though, depending on the category written into the contract, and that is worked. There are some of the Sir, in those cases where security clearance is required, that is

Senator AKAKA. General Burgess, it is reported that one of the two civilian contractors named in Major General Taguba's report did not have a security clearance. What are the rules regarding security clearances for contracted personnel who will be interrogating detainees?

General BURGESS. Sir, as a general rule—and I highlight “general rule”—we require at least a collateral clearance, depending on the access that the individual's going to have. However, I have asked for the specific statements of work for those contract, and have not read them yet.

Senator AKAKA. I've also read some articles on this, and would ask the question, whose responsibility is it to ensure that all of the U.S. contracted personnel have the appropriate clearances?

General BURGESS. Sir, as a general rule, that resides with the organization that "lets the contract," and you have a contracting officer who is responsible for seeing that the contract is executed in accordance with the standards. That is normally done at the Unified Command and lower, depending upon where you're executing the contract.

Senator AKAKA. I've read some reports where the hired contractor firms claim that it is not their responsibility to do any background research or checks or investigations on any of the people they hire. Do you know that to be true?

General BURGESS. Sir, I do not know that to be true.

Senator AKAKA. Also, General Taguba's report stated that contracted personnel from third-world nations were involved in this. Do you have any comment about that?

General BURGESS. Sir, depending on your definition of thirdworld country, it is a true statement to say that we use foreign nationals with security clearances to do interrogations or translations. Senator AKAKA. Čan you name some of the countries that these foreign nationals are from?

General BURGESS. Sir, for example, we are using some Iraqis to do some linguist work for us, if you will, not only translation work, but also just providing those skills for the soldiers on the ground.

Senator AKAKA. What kind of training did the U.S. civilian contractors have prior to going to Iraq? I've been informed that the training for interrogators included training tactics and techniques used by other countries. Did such training occur? If so, are these tactics and techniques approved by DOD intelligence officials?

General ALEXANDER. Sir, as far as I know, they did not. The contract that I'm familiar with, the personnel who were brought on from the CACI contract were former soldiers or former U.S. who had an interrogation MOS and had been trained on the rules. Sir, as we stated earlier, they were also supposed to sign and understand the interrogation ROE.

General BURGESS. I would highlight the approaches or the interrogation techniques would still be those that are laid out in the Appendix H of the Army FM that we discussed earlier.

Senator AKAKA. Another concern I have is about records. General Burgess, who is responsible for keeping a record of all of these civilian contractors that the U.S. has in Iraq? Is this responsibility

General BURGESS. Sir, I do not know the answer to that question.

Senator AKAKA. General Romig, was there any consultation between commanders-that's commanders from company, battalion, or brigade between commanders and the command JAG regarding the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib?

General ROMIG. Sir, we had a JAG officer assigned to the brigade, the MI brigade. I can't tell you the day-to-day discussions, but there was a JAG officer assigned to the brigade. In addition, the MP brigade had a couple of JAG officers. As I said, there was a magistrate cell in Abu Ghraib of three to five JAG officers. So there was ample-we believe now, having said that, we're taking a look at the resourcing and the training for our JAG and MI units to make sure we're doing it right, so we're looking at that also. Senator AKAKA. Thank you for your responses. Chairman WARNER. Thank you very much.

Senator Lindsey Graham.

Senator GRAHAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Hat's off to the panel. You all have done an excellent job answering a lot of questions. I think the truth is, we won't know yet. When somebody offers as a defense in a court-martial, "Someone else made me do it," it's going to take awhile to find out who that someone else is. I share Senator Collins' concern that this is probably not just six or seven people having an out-of-bounds perverted experience, it probably goes deeper. But in terms of what Senator Kennedy was asking, General Romig is that right? Am I pronouncing your name right?

General ROMIG. Yes, sir.

Senator GRAHAM. I'm informed the Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act exists that would allow the Department of Justice to prosecute contractors serving overseas. Are you familiar with that?

General ROMIG. Yes, sir, that is correct.

Senator GRAHAM. I would make this invitation to you. Could you and your JAGs look at that, and maybe get the other JAGs to look at it and see if we need to improve that? Because I'm not so sure it gives us all the tools that we need, but I would appreciate it if you would do that.

General ROMIG. Yes, sir, we would look at it.

[The information referred to follows:]

Section 3266 of title 18, United States Code, enacted by the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000 (MEJA), directs the Secretary of Defense, after consultation with the Secretary of State and Attorney General, to prescribe regulations governing the apprehension, detention, delivery, and removal of persons under MEJA. The Department of Defense is currently engaged in that process. The Department is also reviewing legislation to amend MĒJA. H.R. 4390 was introduced on May 19, 2004, to amend MĒJA to apply to employees of contractors of other Federal agencies when their "employment relates to supporting the mission of the Department of Defense." Currently with respect to contractor employees, MEJA applies only to an employee of a Department of Defense contractor.

General ROMIG. One additional point about that. There are implementing instructions that are on the Federal Register right now that DOD has put out. Prior to that, though, the Air Force has prosecuted two cases under that act.

Senator GRAHAM. Thank you, and if we need to improve it and

General Alexander, you've been very candid. One of the things that jumps out at me about this report is that the prison is being shelled every day, it seems like. These people are in a war zone, so you could have the best-trained, highly-motivated people in the world, and this was just a tough job. But if you have poorly-trained people who were told they were going to go home, and had that yanked out from under them, and poor command, it's a cocktail for disaster. Do you agree with that?

General ALEXANDER. Yes, sir.

Senator GRAHAM. Okay. Part of this hearing-and I appreciate so much what the Chairman and Senator Levin have done by having these hearings-is to try to make sure that we get it right next time. Seven-hundred people guarding 7,000 at one time is not a good ratio, I don't believe. Do you have the men and women under your command necessary to, in a valid way, get MI gathered? Is it your opinion we have enough people in uniform in the Reserve component to act as MPs to prevent this problem in the future?

General ALEXANDER. Sir, that's a great question. Army transformation is at the heart of what you're getting to right now. I know that the Army leadership has been over here to brief that, but let me give it to you from my perspective, because it is impor

tant.

Today we have about 240 active duty interrogators. We will more than triple that under Army transformation and that key change and some of the other changes we make for our analysis and other areas to fight this new emerging threat is where our Army is going under that transformation, and that's very important to our country in the future.

So I would say that continue please, sir, supporting as you have that transformation process. It's vital to resolving this issue and others.

Senator GRAHAM. Chairman Warner asked a very good question in just simple terms, and give us an educated guess, because I know you don't know everything, what do you think happened in that prison between the MI community and the MPs?

General ALEXANDER. Speculation

Senator GRAHAM. Just your gut feeling as a three-star general. General ALEXANDER. I believe you had not only poor leadership, you had a group that were essentially leadership and controlled their environment on the midnight shift. Nobody came to check on them for periods of time and their leaders may have been absent at those times, and that other people came up and heard that some of this was going on, and they did things that were incorrect, reprehensible, and should be punished. If any leaders participated in that, they should receive the same punishment, and if anyone told them to do that, in my mind, they should receive the same punish

ment.

What we have to do, sir, is find out exactly who told them and what they did do, and I think that will come out.

Senator GRAHAM. One final thought. I think everyone here, Republican or Democrat, will make sure you have the resources necessary to gather intelligence in a lawful way to protect our troops to do your job, and we will look at retooling the military. We can

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