– Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON – An Army investigation into allegations of prisoner mistreatment by U.S. soldiers in Iraq ignores the role top commanders in Iraq may have played in approving and monitoring prisoner interrogations there, according to an Army Reserve general who was once in charge of the prison.

Pentagon officials said the Army report into abuses at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, which will be released early next week, will implicate about two dozen people but found no wrongdoing among officers above the rank of colonel.

But Janis Karpinski, the Army Reserve brigadier general in command of detention facilities in Iraq when the abuses occurred, said top officers in Iraq were aware of the interrogations and had knowledge of the techniques that were used.

Specifically, she said Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, visited Abu Ghraib in September 2003 and, shortly afterward, began to receive daily reports on interrogations at Abu Ghraib.

Those reports, she said, came from Col. Thomas Pappas of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, which directed interrogations at Abu Ghraib. Pappas is expected to come in for heavy criticism in the Army report. But Karpinski insists that blame should go higher.

“Col. Pappas did not act on his own,” she said in an interview. “I do know he was under tremendous pressure all along. … The pressure was intensified immediately following Gen. Miller’s visit, and it never got any better.”

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to discuss the report’s details, but said of Karpinski’s claim: “She’s wrong.”

“This report does address chain-of-command issues above the 205th MI brigade,” Whitman said. “This is a very thorough, comprehensive investigation; it will be illuminating on many fronts.”

In testimony before Congress and in earlier press interviews, Miller has denied that he approved the use of abusive interrogation tactics. Pappas, in an earlier statement to investigators, reportedly said Miller approved the use of dogs to intimidate prisoners.

Karpinski also said Gen. Barbara Fast, Pappas’ immediate commander and the head of Army intelligence in Iraq, knew of the interrogation techniques used at Abu Ghraib and frequently visited the prison.

“Gen. Miller was giving Gen. Fast instructions,” Karpinski said. “There’s no doubt in my mind about Gen. Miller’s involvement in this.”

An Army official said neither Miller nor Fast would be available for comment Thursday.

A Defense Department official with knowledge of the report declined to comment on Karpinski’s claims. The official said the report thoroughly examined abuses at the prison, and who carried them out. A handful of outside contractors hired by the military to conducted interrogations, the official said, will also be implicated.

A report last month by Army Lt. Gen. Paul Mikolashek, the Army’s inspector general, found that only a limited number of people at the prison were involved in the abuses.

“These abuses should be viewed as what they are – unauthorized actions taken by a few individuals and, in some cases, coupled with the failure of a few leaders to provide adequate supervision and leadership,” Mikolashek wrote.

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Allegations of prisoner abuse in Iraq surface in January when a soldier reported them. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then the U.S. commander in Iraq, ordered an investigation and military officials announced that claims of abuse had been made.

Sanchez assigned Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba to examine the accusations; his report offered disturbing details about the treatment of prisoners by U.S. captors and military police officers assigned to guard them.

But it was not until pictures of soldiers abusing prisoners were made public in April that the abuse allegations became a full-fledged crisis.

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Maj. Gen. George Fay, a reserve officer serving as second in charge of Army intelligence, was assigned to investigate further. In June, the Army replaced Fay with Lt. Gen. Anthony Jones, deputy commander of the Army Training and Doctrine Command, explaining that Fay’s rank did not allow him to question officers serving above him.

So far, seven enlisted soldiers from a military police company have been charged with abuses. Their company operated inside the Abu Ghraib cellblocks where high-security prisoners were held.

Karpinski said that when Miller came to Iraq a year ago, he told her in a briefing that he had been sent by the secretary of defense. Karpinski has said that Miller told her that he wanted to “Gitmoize” Abu Ghraib. Karpinski said that she took that phrase to mean bring Guantanamo interrogation tactics to Iraq.

Miller, in congressional testimony in May, said he instructed guards to observe prisoners, not mistreat them.

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(c) 2004, Chicago Tribune.

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AP-NY-08-19-04 2251EDT