The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the report has not yet been completed, said the 9,000-page document says that a combination of leadership failings, confounding policies, lack of discipline and absolute confusion at the prison led to the abuse. It widens the scope of culpability from seven MPs who have been charged with abuse to include nearly 20 low-ranking soldiers who could face criminal prosecution in military courts. No Army officers, however, are expected to face criminal charges.

Officials also said that the report implicates five civilian contractors in the abuse, and that Army officials plan to recommend that their cases be sent to the Justice Department for possible prosecution in civilian courts.

The investigation, shepherded by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, is one of several into the abuse, which became widely known after hundreds of photographs surfaced depicting detainees in mock sexual positions, in a naked human pyramid and being intimidated by unmuzzled dogs. While the Pentagon and the White House have consistently blamed the abuse on what they have called a rogue band of MPs acting on their own, officials said this new report spreads the blame and points to widespread problems at the prison.

The findings, elements of which were reported by other news organizations, appear to support contentions by defense attorneys for the charged MPs that the problems at the prison were pervasive and were exacerbated by a lack of leadership. The lawyers have asserted that their clients were acting on orders when they stripped detainees and kept them awake using stress positions and humiliating poses. Officials said the Fay report will stop short of saying that soldiers were ordered to abuse detainees.

One senior defense official said the investigation specifically decries the fact that many soldiers saw or knew of the abuse and never reported it to authorities. Concerns are also raised about the vague instructions from high-ranking officials about what was allowed during interrogations at the prison, which led military intelligence and military police soldiers to misapply them, the official said.

"The interrogation policy was misunderstood, and it was one of a few policies that failed," the official said. "There was total confusion about the military intelligence tactics, techniques and procedures."

Another defense official said the Army study would be "a comprehensive report, a thorough look at another aspect of Abu Ghraib, to include up to the CJTF-command level," a reference to Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who until recently was the top U.S. commander in Iraq. Others said the report criticizes the leadership but softens its assessment by noting that top officers were focused on the insurgency that erupted last summer.

Officials said the probe criticizes commanders for essentially failing to pick up the strong signs of abuse as they rose through the chain of command and for all but ignoring reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross detailing the abuse.

The top command "shares responsibility for not ensuring proper leadership, proper discipline and proper resources," one defense official said. "Command should have paid more attention to the issue. Signals, symptoms of abuse weren't fully vetted to the top."

Military officials said Fay's report is expected to be presented to the public early next week. An independent investigative panel appointed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld plans to issue its report on Tuesday. The Senate Armed Services Committee announced yesterday separate hearings set for Sept. 9 to deal with both reports.

In the medical journal the Lancet, an American physician and bioethicist called for an investigation of the role medical personnel may have played in enabling and overlooking the abuse at Abu Ghraib.

"The U.S. military medical system failed to protect detainees' human rights, sometimes collaborated with interrogators or abusive guards, and failed to properly report injuries or deaths caused by beatings," Steven H. Miles of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota wrote in the issue published today.

Miles based his assertions on the findings of Army investigators, the translated testimony of detainees and news reports. He noted that a psychiatrist helped "design, approve and monitor interrogations at Abu Ghraib"; that a physician permitted an untrained guard to stitch a cut on a prisoner's face; and that doctors "routinely attributed detainee deaths on death certificates to . . . natural causes" when the deaths were the result of torture.

He also said that inspectors from the International Committee of the Red Cross found inadequate medical records on detainees and that monthly "health inspections," required by the Geneva Conventions, were not always done.

In a telephone interview yesterday, Miles conceded that military physicians have difficult roles with regard to the enemy, but he said that their ultimate loyalties should be clear.

"Docs are different from soldiers. . . . Our sole obligation is to the well-being of the patient," he said. He said this is especially important for physicians who have contact with prisoners.

"The health personnel will, in fact, be the first and last barrier between them [prisoners] and human rights abuses," he said. "When the health professionals are either silent or actively complicit in these abuses, it sends a message to the detainees how utterly beyond human protection they are."

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Abu Ghraib Doctors Knew of Torture, Says Lancet Report

By John Carvel

The Guardian U.K.

Friday 20 August 2004

Army doctors at the Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad falsified medical records to cover up torture and human rights abuses perpetrated on Iraqi detainees, the British medical journal the Lancet reported today.

It called for a full inquiry into reform of the military health system to address the failure of army medical staff to live up to their code of ethics and a professional obligation to care for their patients.

The journal published an article by Steven Miles, a professor of bioethics at the University of Minnesota, saying that American army doctors and nurses had been fully aware of torture and degrading treatment at Abu Ghraib, but did not blow the whistle before an official inquiry began in January.

He said their neglect of the commonly accepted standards of human rights included:

Failure to maintain medical records, conduct routine medical examinations and provide proper care of disabled or injured detainees;

Medical personnel and medical information were used to design and implement psychologically and physically coercive interrogations.

Death certificates and medical records were falsified.

An example of the ethical failings of medical personnel came in November 2003 after Iraqi Major General Mowhoush's head was pushed into a sleeping bag while interrogators sat on his chest.

Dr Miles said: "He died; medics could not resuscitate him, and a surgeon stated that he died of natural causes. Months later, the Pentagon released a death certificate calling the death a homicide by asphyxia."

In an editorial comment, the Lancet called on health care workers who had witnessed ill-treatment at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay to break their silence.

"Those who are still in positions where dual commitments prevent them from putting the rights of their patients above other interests should protest loudly ...

"The wider non-military medical community should unite in support of their colleagues ... Abu Ghraib should serve as an eleventh-hour wake up call for the western world to rediscover and live by the values enshrined in democratic constitutions."

It said military doctors had a well recognised problem of dual loyalty to patients and employers.

Dr Miles added: "Army investigations have looked at a small set of human rights abuses, but have not investigated reports from human rights organisations, nor have they focused on the role of medical personnel, or examined detention centres that were not operated by the army.

"The US military medical services, human rights groups, legal and medical academics, and health professional associations should jointly and comprehensively review this material in light of US and international law, medical ethics, the military code of justice, military training, the system for handling reports of human rights abuses, and standards for treatment of detainees.

"Reforms stemming from such an inquiry could yet create a valuable legacy from the ruins of Abu Ghraib."

Click here for more information.

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Witness to Abuse Trying to Be Heard

By Elizabeth Williamson

The Washington Post

Friday 20 August 2004

Interrogators responsible, ex-soldier says.

Hagerstown, Md. - In his 33 years, Ken Davis has had two big chances to change history. The first was 10 years ago in the District, when a man standing next to him started shooting at the White House. The second was last year in Iraq, when he saw naked Iraqi prisoners on the floor, screaming.

Subduing the gunman was easy compared with what the former reservist for the 372nd Military Police Company is trying to do now: persuade the Army that it was military intelligence and other intelligence operatives, not the seven soldiers charged, directing the abuse in Abu Ghraib prison.

He's gone to Army superiors, three members of Congress and two reporters with his story. No one from military intelligence has been charged - just the seven from the 372nd.

Davis said he has no illusions about what happened. He agreed that the alleged abuses by his fellow soldiers, documented in sickening detail in hundreds of photos, were "morally wrong." He also conceded that his own state of mind became so twisted by the horrors of war that he, too, might have abused prisoners had he had the opportunity.

But the point, he said, is that those charged didn't act alone.

"It seems they want to sacrifice seven soldiers for the sins of everyone," he said. "Whoever led them down that path is a culprit as well."

Davis lives with his wife, Kellie, and their three children in a rambling rented Victorian here, with Barbies in the bathtub, a frisky poodle in the kitchen and a pile of documents on the dining room table. The papers include an Army Developmental Counseling Form he received from Cpl. Charles Graner - the MP who appears, grinning, in so many of the photos. In the form, a superior, Capt. Christopher Brinson, tells Graner: "You are doing a fine job. . . . [Y]ou have received many accolades from the [military intelligence] units here."

David Sheldon, Brinson's attorney, said his client, who is an aide to Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), has been ordered not to comment during the investigation.

Davis isn't surprised.

Eating lunch in a favorite shopping mall restaurant one recent afternoon, Davis remembered the prisoners and tried not to cry. The naked ones, crawling, an Army boot pushing them to the floor. The one who died in a riot at Camp Ganci, a tent compound in the Abu Ghraib complex, shot with live ammunition because the rubber bullets had run out. And the dead stare of another detainee, the back of his head sheared off by a roadside bomb meant for Davis's convoy. "It's not what I went over there for," he said.

His real reason for speaking out, he said, goes like this: "I think that once I die, I would really like my life to have meant something."

He said he started thinking that way Oct. 29, 1994, when he was with a buddy at the White House, on his first-ever trip to Washington. Francisco Duran, an angry Army veteran next to them, pulled an assault rifle out of his coat and started firing. Davis and another tourist tackled him.

He joined the Army Reserve after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and arrived in Iraq last September, his knapsack filled with pocket Bibles and toys. His job was to transport dignitaries and prisoners, but the former Pentecostal minister pursued another mission, too. Photos show him holding a bedraggled girl; smiling with two boys holding the religious booklets he gave them.

Davis didn't intend to wind up at Abu Ghraib on Oct. 1. But he was involuntarily switched out of his Reserve unit, the 352nd Military Police Company from Rockville, into the shorthanded 372nd from Cresaptown, Md.

Where the 352nd was "a tight ship," he said, his new unit was anything but. Paperwork and inmates got lost. There never were enough soldiers or equipment. Discipline and morale was at rock bottom. Intelligence personnel walked the halls in flip-flops and shorts, tape over their name tags, doing "basically whatever they wanted," Davis said.

One warm night in late October, according to his statement to Army investigators, Davis went to find a fellow member of his unit on Tier 1A, a military intelligence holding area.

Three prisoners were there, he said, with the military intelligence personnel and Graner. They ordered the prisoners to strip and cuffed them together in a sort of embrace. Then they made them crawl, their genitals dragging on the floor, holding them down with boots pressed against their backs.

Davis said that when he asked about the tactics, a military intelligence officer told him, "We know what we are doing."

Davis went to his platoon leader, 1st Lt. Lewis Raeder. His statement says Raeder told him: " 'They are MI and they are in charge let them do their job,' or words to that effect."

"I don't recall my specific conversation with [Davis], but no one reported to me any incidents of abuse," said Raeder, who has been admonished for not training his troops on the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit mistreatment of prisoners of war and civilian detainees. "MI was in charge of the prison. MI was in charge of the interrogation. I don't know what happened down there."

A photo, seen around the world, shows Davis, Graner, the MI group and the three naked prisoners. Rick Hernandez, civilian attorney for Pfc. Lynndie England, one of the seven charged, said the prosecution gave him a copy of Davis's statement for the first time Aug. 6. He said he believes that Davis's testimony would be valuable. But military prosecutors have said the focus should be on England, not on personnel who have not been charged.

"They're still trying to portray the accused as rogue soldiers acting on their own," Hernandez said.

On Nov. 8, the day photos were taken showing Graner standing over a pyramid of naked Iraqis, Davis's convoy hit a roadside bomb. He never was able to check, but he said he thinks the Iraqi who died was one of those he'd seen on the floor.

"I shut down," he said. "I hated everything. It became real to me that they're trying to kill me."

In that state of mind, he acknowledged, if he'd had the opportunity to abuse prisoners, "I cannot guarantee what I would have done."

Two days later, Davis's superiors recommended him for an Army Commendation Medal. "Sgt. Davis' courage, selfless service and dedication to duty . . . bring great credit upon himself, his unit and the United States Army," the citation reads.

In December, Davis's father had a heart attack, and he flew home. After a checkup for a prior groin surgery, a doctor denied his request to return to Iraq, pending a decision by an Army medical board. From February until he left the military last month, he worked at Fort Lee, Va., as an aide to higher-ups. Last month, according to his personnel records, he received a disability discharge.

While at Fort Lee, Davis told his story to a chaplain, a counselor, superiors. A sergeant sent an e-mail to Iraq. Army investigators, Davis was told, said "I was of no interest."

Having exhausted the chain of command, in April, Davis contacted his member of Congress, Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-Md.), who had given him a tour of the Capitol after he subdued the White House gunman.

He spoke with Bartlett and Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), both members of the House Armed Services Committee, and with Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.). The lawmakers videotaped his statements. At one point during the meeting, Davis recalled, Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, stopped in but "wanted no part of it."

Hunter remembered telling Davis that as part of a criminal investigation, he shouldn't be discussing the situation, said Harald Stavenas, a spokesman for the House Armed Services Committee.

Davis said that Hunter, whose son is a Marine serving in Iraq, told him he understood what he'd been through. "No, you don't," Davis said. Hunter, Stavenas said, advised Davis "to seek counseling and comfort with his church group."

On May 27, shortly after the abuse photos came out, Davis gave a written statement to Army investigators. He pointed out four intelligence officers in the October photo. Seven soldiers were charged in the abuse, but no intelligence personnel.

Early this month, an Army prosecutor, Capt. Chris Graveline, called him. "Why haven't you looked for the people who taught our soldiers how to do this?" Davis said he asked him. He said Graveline told him he was new to the case.

Through a Pentagon spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, Graveline said he "prefers not to speak to the media about the ongoing prosecution case."

Since an article about Davis appeared Aug. 7 in The Washington Post, attorneys and an investigator for defendants Graner, Spec. Megan Ambuhl and Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II have phoned him.

In coming days, the results of an Army investigation examining the role of military intelligence in the prisoner abuse are due out. Davis said he finds it strange that nobody has spoken with him for it.

"I don't know if they want the truth," he said, "or if they just want it to go away."

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