Federal News Service - Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee - Transcript

Federal News Service

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE SUBJECT: FINDINGS OF THE SCHLESINGER INDEPENDENT REVIEW PANEL ON DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE DETENTION OPERATIONS

CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE DUNCAN HUNTER (R-CA)

WITNESSES: JAMES R. SCHLESINGER, CHAIRMAN, INDEPENDENT REVIEW PANEL ON DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE DETENTION OPERATIONS; HAROLD BROWN, PANEL MEMBER, INDEPENDENT REVIEW PANEL ON DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE DETENTION OPERATIONS

LOCATION: 2118 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

BODY:

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REP. TOM COLE (R-OK): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Let me begin, if I may, first by thanking both of you for not only your distinguished service, but I thought the report was exceptionally helpful and tough minded and analytical, and at the same time the remarks have put the findings in what I think is an appropriate context and it's been a tremendous contribution to the debate. As the chairman said, I'm from Oklahoma so I'll use a football analogy if I may. We do those better than most. It's like dealing with people that know how to study the game film without being a Monday morning quarterback. So very, very helpful.

There's a specific matter I wanted to pursue in terms of communication between the Army and the office of the secretary of Defense, and then more broadly with this committee, that does trouble me and I'd like to know if you have any reflections on it. The pictures that were the matches to the firestorm, so to speak, were available in January and popped up at that point. In theater people were doing the right things, it was moving up the chain of command.

The secretary's office I'm sure was informed about the same time, but the pictures themselves, which clearly people should have been able to see this is going to create an enormous political problem for the department, and for the country more broadly in the region, did not reach the secretary until literally the night before he testified I guess to us. They were in the hands of the press before they got to the secretary, even though they had been-and so, number one, I'd like to know in your opinion what happened there, what should happen, what steps have been taken.

And then two, the other thing that really-there's a lot of things that are distressing about the situation, but the other aspect from the communication standpoint is, again, this committee I thought-we were very slow to know. I mean, we should have known well ahead of when we did and I think we could have-this would have been less supercharged, quite frankly, had this committee been in a position to know, again before sort of watching it on 60 Minutes. So I'd like to get your reflections on where the breakdown was there and what can be done about that?

MR. SCHLESINGER: The first point to be made is that one must always bear in mind the concern about command influence. That the people who might be guilty of infractions should not have their cases contaminated by remarks at higher level, and this led to some inhibitions about moving this information up the chain of command. The second point is that this is totally unacceptable and one of our recommendations is that this kind of information be rapidly brought to the top, irrespective-not irrespective-in a way that does not create a problem with trials under the uniform code of military justice through excessive command influence. The Air Force had a procedure and we recommend that that procedure take place in the future; be used by the department in the future.

Harold?

MR. BROWN: Yes, and I believe that is now being implemented by the Department of Defense. You're right, Mr. Cole, that knowledge of the pictures at the top and to the committee would have been helpful, but it still would have been a firestorm. And I think part of the problem was that without seeing the pictures, the secretary of Defense and some of the senior commanders, who didn't see them either, didn't realize how big a problem that it was going to be no matter what they did. But they could have tried, as the committee could have tried, to ease some of the fallout from it.

Jim is right, the concern-and it wasn't an excuse, it was a reason for not forwarding them up the line was concern about command influence. But I think it was misplaced in this case because although clearly anybody seeing the pictures would be prejudiced by them, you could still I think have handled it in a different way. It's been pointed out several times that in January an announcement was made that an investigation of abuse was going forward, and I think the secretary of Defense was aware of that. But without seeing the pictures, you couldn't know what a big deal it was going to be.

MR. SCHLESINGER: There was one other aspect, and that was that these pictures were transmitted to CENTCOM and that the lieutenant colonel who received them looked at the pictures and did not recognize the political bombshell, so he did not transmit the information "You've got to see these pictures" upward.

REP. COLE: Let me ask one more question, because I see my time is running out. I want to direct this to you if I may, Secretary Brown. You mentioned in your comments-and it's something that I agree with but I'd like you to be a little more specific if you could, that there may be appropriate different ways to question different classifications of detainees. On the other hand, I have some sympathy with Mr. Bartlett's concern that once you start having different systems, it's awful easy for lines to blur and things to get out of control. You know, is it really realistic to have separate levels-types of questioning? Or, you know, should we just stick with the Geneva Convention?

MR. BROWN: We do stick with the Geneva Convention. In Iraq it applies to everybody except terrorists. It applies to resisters. It's a different convention.

MR. SCHLESINGER: Except for foreign terrorists.

MR. BROWN: That's right.

MR. SCHLESINGER: If they come in, they don't get Geneva protection.

MR. BROWN: Right. But I think we can abide by them, but we have to abide by our interpretation of them. The ICRC has a protocol to the Geneva Convention which essentially says what we consider terrorists should be treated as prisoners of war. What that means, according to that interpretation-to which we don't subscribe-is that if Mr. Zarqawi, the fellow who's going around chopping heads off, is captured, according to that protocol he's a prisoner of war and we are barred from asking him where his colleagues might be and what they might be up to. In fact, some interpretations say that that kind of question, interrogation, is torture. Well, we don't buy that.

REP. COLE: Thank you very much, gentlemen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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REP. COLE: Thank you.

Thank you, gentlemen, very much. You've been enormously generous with your time. Thank you for indulging the committee and thank you for your service. We're adjourned until 2:00.