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Seymour Hersh Publishes Book About US Treatment of Captives
From The New York Times.... Seymour M. Hersh, a writer for The New Yorker who earlier this year was among the first to disclose details of the abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, [is publishing a book titled] Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (HarperCollins), which is being released Monday. .... Mr. Hersh asserts that a Central Intelligence Agency analyst who visited the detention center at Guantänamo Bay, Cuba, in the late summer of 2002 filed a report of abuses there that drew the attention of Gen. John A. Gordon, a deputy to Condoleezza Rice, the White House national security adviser. .... Although a number of senior officials were briefed on the analyst's findings of abuse, the high-level White House meeting did not "dwell on" that question, but rather focused on whether some of the prisoners should not have been held at all, the book says. .... Mr. Hersh also says that a military officer involved in counterinsurgency operations in Iraq learned of the abuses at Abu Ghraib in November and reported it to two of his superiors, Gen. John P. Abizaid, the regional commander, and his deputy, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith. .... But Capt. Hal Pittman, a Central Command spokesman, said in a statement Saturday, "General Abizaid does not recall any officer discussing with him any specific cases of abuse at Abu Ghraib prior to January 2004, nor do any of the officers of the Centcom staff who travel with him." Mr. Hersh also says that F.B.I. agents complained to their superiors about abuses at Guantänamo, as did a military lawyer, and that those complaints, too, were relayed to the Pentagon. Mr. Hersh's thesis is that "the roots of the Abu Ghraib scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists" who have been charged so far, "but in the reliance of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld on secret operations and the use of coercion - and eye-for-eye retribution - in fighting terrorism." .... In a statement posted on its Web site, the Pentagon said: "Based on media inquiries, it appears that Mr. Seymour Hersh's upcoming book apparently contains many of the numerous unsubstantiated allegations and inaccuracies which he has made in the past based upon unnamed sources." .....
Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-09-12 |
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