News Intelligence Analysis
From the New York Times
General Says Prison Inquiry Led
to His Forced Retirement
June 17, 2007
By DAVID S. CLOUD
WASHINGTON, June 16 — The Army general who investigated
the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal has said he was forced into
retirement by civilian Pentagon officials because he had been
“overzealous.”
In an interview with The New Yorker, his first since retiring in January, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba said that former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other senior civilian and military officials had treated him brusquely after the investigation into the formerly American-run prison outside Baghdad was completed in 2004. He also said that in early 2006 he was ordered, without explanation, to retire within a year.
“They always shoot the messenger,” General Taguba said. “To be accused of being overzealous and disloyal — that cuts deep into me. I was ostracized for doing what I was asked to do.”
In a brief interview on Saturday in which he confirmed his comments to The New Yorker, General Taguba said that Thomas F. Hall, the assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs, was the first to tell him, in January 2006, that he was being forced out.
“He called me in and said I was no longer part of the team,” General Taguba said. “When someone calls you in and says ‘I have to let you go,’ and offers no explanation, you connect the dots.”
That same month, he added, Gen. Richard Cody, the Army’s vice chief of staff, told him that he would have to retire within a year.
Mr. Hall could not be reached for comment on Saturday. General Taguba was assigned to the Office of Reserve Affairs at the Pentagon after completing the Abu Ghraib investigation. His March 2004 report on the scandal found that “numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees” at Abu Ghraib by soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company from October to December 2003.
He also questioned Mr. Rumsfeld’s claims that he had been unaware of the extent of the abuse and that he had not seen photographs documenting it until months after the Army began an investigation into the allegations in January 2004. General Taguba said senior Pentagon officials had been briefed on the case and given accounts of the pictures early in the investigation.
When he briefed Mr. Rumsfeld the day before a May 7, 2004 Congressional hearing, he said Mr. Rumsfeld had complained then about not having a copy of his report. But General Taguba said he had submitted copies to superiors two months earlier.
Lawrence Di Rita, a former top aide to Mr. Rumsfeld, said Mr. Rumsfeld had not viewed the photographs because he had been advised by lawyers that doing so “could materially affect the ongoing criminal investigation.” He said Mr. Rumsfeld finally looked at the pictures the day before his Congressional testimony, the same day he was briefed by General Taguba.
Mr. Di Rita said General Taguba’s assertion that he was ostracized as a result of his investigation “is simply false.” He added, “Secretary Rumsfeld believed General Taguba managed a difficult assignment to the best of his abilities.” General Taguba said some of the most graphic evidence of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib had not been made public, including a videotape he said he had seen of a male soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee.
While his inquiry was limited to the conduct of the military police guarding the prison, he said he had strongly suspected that the guards had been influenced by military intelligence units, who were in charge of interrogating prisoners. Seven members of the military police, all enlisted soldiers, were convicted for their role in the abuse.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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