National Public Radio All Things Considered - Transcript

National Public Radio (NPR)

SHOW: All Things Considered 9:00 AM EST NPR

HEADLINE: Susan Collins and Carl Levin discuss the Army report on the role of US military intelligence in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal

ANCHORS: ROBERT SIEGEL

BODY:
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

And we're going to hear now from two members of the Senate Armed Services Committee: Senator Susan Collins, a Republican of Maine, and Senator Carl Levin, who is the ranking Democrat on the committee; he's from Michigan.

Welcome to both of you.

Senator SUSAN COLLINS (Republican, Maine): Good afternoon.

Senator CARL LEVIN (Democrat, Michigan): Thank you.

SIEGEL: We've now had two reports about Abu Ghraib in two days, and both found real culpability limited to those in the prison and their immediate commanders, those working there, and indirect responsibility farther up the chain of command. And I'd like to hear from both of you. First, Senator Collins, are you generally satisfied with where today the Army and yesterday the Schlesinger commission assigned blame, responsibility, culpability for what happened there?

Sen. COLLINS: I am. I thought that these two new reports shed much-needed light on exactly what happened and who should be held accountable. It would be unfair if only low-level prison guards who were directly involved in the abuse were held responsible for the conditions at the prison that allowed this abuse to occur. So I thought that both reports were tough-minded in their findings and fair in their recommendations.

SIEGEL: Senator Levin, do you agree?

Sen. LEVIN: Well, it's obviously-first of all, I haven't read these reports; they're much too long to have read in 24 hours. But from the briefing, there's a lot of work to be done before I can reach any kind of a judgment that these are adequate. For instance, we were told today that there are reports in this report, there are documents that describe phone calls, e-mails and visits to the military intelligence people that put pressure on them to come up with intelligence information, to come up with results. Well, I've got to dig those out; I've got to pull those out of the report and look at them and find out who made these phone calls, who were behind the e-mails, who put the pressure on the military intelligence.

And also, we've got to be very cognizant of what happened in the Schlesinger report where we have, according to Schlesinger, members of the National Security Council staff visiting that prison, leading people at that facility, according to Schlesinger, to conclude, perhaps incorrectly, that even the White House was interested in the intelligence gleaned. And we should be talking to these National Security Council staff to see what it is they were doing there, why they went. And we should be talking to the military intelligence people and the MPs to find out why it is that they felt that this was pressure to come up with the intelligence using means which were obviously not acceptable.

SIEGEL: Senator Collins, do you also want to hear from those people, perhaps in your hearings, to find out what involvement there was from people on the National Security Council staff here in Washington?

Sen. COLLINS: Well, if there is, in fact, such involvement, that would be helpful. I would note that members of the National Security staff do not traditionally testify before Congress. But I also want to concur with Senator Levin's statement that these are very long reports that have just come out. The Fay report is some 9,000 pages long, so obviously I have more review to be done also. But I think that the Fay report answered a question that many of us raised at the very beginning when these abuses became public, and that is: What was the role of military intelligence? And as a result of this very detailed investigation, I think the answer is clear that military intelligence was involved to some extent in the abuses; it was not just some prison guards. It's also clear that this involved not only individual misconduct, but a lack of leadership, severe understaffing at the prison and a failure by some in the chain of commend to provide clear and consistent guidance.

SIEGEL: Well, both the generals today and also former Defense Secretary Schlesinger yesterday, when asked about the general who was in command in Baghdad, General Sanchez, and what his responsibility was-someone today said, 'We found him responsible but not culpable,' and the tendency was to say, 'We cut General Sanchez a lot of slack 'cause he had a war to fight, and we have to understand what his other concerns were at that time.' Should General Sanchez be held to a higher standard than that, Senator Levin?

Sen. LEVIN: Well, I'm not going to reach a judgment on that until after I complete the report. But what was also significant in the comments about that yesterday from Jim Schlesinger was that he felt that the lack of planning for a violent aftermath in this war, lack of planning by the Pentagon, was a major contributing factor to the problems that Sanchez found because he didn't have the people. Even though the military, uniformed military, wanted more people, they weren't given more people on the ground. And Schlesinger was very critical of the failure on the part of the Pentagon to plan for the kind of possible insurgency that resulted, and one of the results of that was that there was a lack of adequate resources to handle thousands of prisoners that came under our control in Iraq.

Now we're seeing and hearing and reading every day about much more significant results of that failure to foresee this potential for an insurgency. But one of the effects was what happened at Abu Ghraib 'cause they just didn't have enough people to handle the prisoners.

SIEGEL: And in the time that's left, I wanted to hear from both of you, first Senator Collins, what ought to be done to prevent such a thing from happening in the future? Can we simply say more training, more hours spent with reserve units? What actually would prevent such a thing from ever occurring?

Sen. COLLINS: I think the most important action that can be taken is to hold those responsible accountable for the abuses at the prison. We obviously need to do a better job of training, of ensuring resources are there. But this action was clearly wrong, and we need to ensure that those responsible are sanctioned in some ways. That is one of the findings of this report, which does recommend criminal or administrative sanctions against some of those further up in the chain of command. And I think that sends the strongest message of all.

SIEGEL: But, Senator Levin, systemic issues as well?

Sen. LEVIN: Yeah. There are systemic issues in terms of a very bad presentation of what the rules were to the folks at the prison by the leadership. There were real failures at the Pentagon in that regard. But I agree with Senator Collins; holding people accountable is critically important. And just simply saying, as the Pentagon did, that this was a bunch of low-level folks is clearly wrong. They're going to defend-try to contain this kind of damage. They shouldn't be allowed to do so. We've got to take this right up the chain as far as it goes. And it's ironic and interesting and important that there were twice as many intelligence people involved here as there were MPs.

SIEGEL: Well, thanks to both of you for talking with us about this, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan and Senator Susan Collins of Maine, both members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.