Chain Of Command: The Road From 9/11 To Abu Gharib

by Hersh, Seymour M.

• ISBN13: 9780060195915
• ISBN10: 0060195916
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-09-13
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

Since September 11, 2001, Seymour M. Hersh has riveted readers -- and outraged the Bush Administration -- with his stories in The New Yorker , including his breakthrough pieces on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Now, in Chain of Command , he brings together this reporting, along with new revelations, to answer the critical question of the last three years: how did America get from the clear morning when hijackers crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to a divisive and dirty war in Iraq?Hersh established himself at the forefront of investigative journalism thirty-five years ago when he broke the news of the massacre at My Lai, Vietnam, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. Ever since, he's challenged America's power elite by publishing the stories that others can't, or won't, tell. In expos_s on subjects ranging from Saudi corruption to nuclear black marketeers and -- months ahead of other journalists -- the White House's false claims about weapons of mass destruction, Hersh has cemented his reputation as the indispensable reporter of our time.In Chain of Command , Hersh takes an unflinching look behind the public story of President Bush's "war on terror" and into the lies and obsessions that led America into Iraq. He reveals the connections between early missteps in the hunt for Al Qaeda and disasters on the ground in Iraq. The book includes a new account of Hersh's pursuit of the Abu Ghraib story and of where, he believes, responsibility for the scandal ultimately lies. Hersh draws on sources at the highest levels of the American government and intelligence community, in foreign capitals, and on the battlefield for an unparalleled view of a crucial chapter in America's recent history. With an introduction by The New Yorker 's editor, David Remnick, Chain of Command is a devastating portrait of an Administration blinded by ideology and of a President whose decisions have made the world a more dangerous place for America.

Table of Contents

Introduction by David Remnick	ix
I. TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB	1	(72)
1. A Guantanamo Problem	1	(19)
2. Photographs from a Prison	20	(26)
3. Crossing the Line	46	(17)
4. The Gray Zone	63	(10)
II. INTELLIGENCE FAILURE	73	(48)
1. How America's Spies Missed September 11th	73	(14)
2. Why the Government Didn't Know What It Knew	87	(16)
3. The Twentieth Man	103	(18)
III. THE OTHER WAR	121	(42)
1. Afghanistan's Secret Battles	121	(7)
2. The Getaway	128	(17)
3. A Power Base of Warlords	145	(18)
IV. THE IRAQ HAWKS	163	(40)
1. The Early Fight to Take On Saddam	163	(13)
2. Getting Closer	176	(13)
3. Richard Perle Goes to Lunch	189	(14)
V. WHO LIED TO WHOM?	203	(46)
1. March 2003: "These Documents...Are in Fact Not Authentic"	203	(4)
2. Into the Intelligence Stovepipe	207	(18)
3. Behind the "Mushroom Cloud"	225	(24)
VI. THE SECRETARY AND THE GENERALS	249	(38)
1. The Battle for Baghdad	249	(13)
2. Manhunts	262	(11)
3. Targeting the Insurgency	273	(14)
VII. A MOST DANGEROUS FRIEND	287	(36)
1. Gambling on Musharraf	287	(15)
2. The Ultimate Black Market	302	(9)
3. Washington's Deal	311	(12)
VIII. THE MIDDLE EAST AFTER 9/11	323	(38)
1. Saudi Arabia: Corruption and Compromise	324	(9)
2. Syria: A Lost Opportunity	333	(9)
3. Iran: The Next Nuclear Power?	342	(9)
4. Israel, Turkey, and the Kurds	351	(10)
Epilogue	361	(8)
Acknowledgments	369	(2)
Index	371

Excerpts

Chain of Command
The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib

Chapter One

Torture at Abu Ghraib

1. A Guantánamo Problem

In the late summer of 2002, a Central Intelligence Agency analystmade a quiet visit to the detention center at the U.S. Naval Base atGuantánamo Bay, Cuba, where an estimated six hundred prisonerswere being held, many, at first, in steel-mesh cages that provided littleprotection from the brutally hot sun. Most had been captured onthe battlefield in Afghanistan during the campaign against the Talibanand Al Qaeda. The Bush Administration had determined, however,that they were not prisoners of war, but "enemy combatants,"and that their stay at Guantánamo could be indefinite, as teams ofC.I.A., F.B.I., and military interrogators sought to pry intelligenceout of them. In a series of secret memorandums written earlier inthe year, lawyers for the White House, the Pentagon, and the JusticeDepartment had agreed that the prisoners had no rights underfederal law or the Geneva Conventions. President Bush endorsedthe finding, while declaring that the Al Qaeda and Taliban detaineeswere nevertheless to be treated in a manner consistent with theprinciples of the Geneva Conventions -- as long as such treatmentwas also "consistent with military necessity."

Getting the interrogation process to work was essential. The waron terrorism would not be decided by manpower and weaponry, as inthe Second World War, but by locating terrorists and learning whenand where future attacks might come. "This is a war in which intelligenceis everything," John Arquilla, a professor of Defense Analysisat the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and a consultant to thePentagon on terrorism, told me. "Winning or losing depends on it."And President Bush and his advisers still needed information aboutthe September 11, 2001, hijackings: How were they planned? Whowas involved? Was there a stay-behind operation inside the UnitedStates?

But the interrogations at Guantánamo were a bust. Very little usefulintelligence had been gathered, while prisoners from around theworld continued to flow into the base and the facility constantly expanded.The C.I.A. analyst had been sent there to find out what wasgoing wrong. He was fluent in Arabic and familiar with the Islamicworld. He was held in high respect within the agency and was capableof reporting directly, if he chose, to George Tenet, the C.I.A. director.The analyst did more than just visit and inspect. He interviewedat least thirty prisoners to find out who they were and how they endedup in Guantánamo. Some of his findings, he later confided to a formerC.I.A. colleague, were devastating.

"He came back convinced that we were committing war crimes inGuantánamo," the colleague told me. "Based on his sample, more thanhalf the people there didn't belong there. He found people lying intheir own feces," including two captives, perhaps in their eighties, whowere clearly suffering from dementia. "He thought what was goingon was an outrage," the C.I.A. colleague added. There was no rationalsystem for determining who was important and who was not. Prisoners,once captured and transported to Cuba, were in permanent legallimbo. The analyst told his colleague that one of the first prisonershe had interviewed was a boy who was asked if he "did jihad" -- participated in a holy war against America. "The kid says 'I never did jihad. I'd have done it if I could, but I had no chance. I just got throwninto jail.' "

The analyst filed a report summarizing what he had seen andwhat he had learned from the prisoners. Two former Administrationofficials who read the highly classified document told me that its ultimateconclusion was grim. The wrong people were being questionedin the wrong way. "Organizations that operate inside acountry without outside direction are hard to find, and we've got tofigure out how to deal with them," one of the former officials, whoworked in the White House, explained. But the message of the analyst'sreport was that "we were making things worse for the UnitedStates, in terms of terrorism." The random quizzing of random detaineesmade it more difficult to find and get useful informationfrom those prisoners who had something of value to say. Equallytroubling was the analyst's suggestion, the former White House official said, that "if we captured some people who weren't terroristswhen we got them, they are now."

That fall the analyst's report rattled aimlessly around the upperreaches of the Bush Administration until it got into the hands ofGeneral John A. Gordon, the deputy national security adviser forcombatting terrorism, who reported directly to Condoleezza Rice,the national security adviser and the President's confidante. Gordon,who had retired from the military as a four-star general in2000, had been head of operations for the Air Force Space Commandand had also served as a deputy director of the C.I.A. for threeyears. He was deeply troubled and distressed by the analyst's report,and by its implications for the treatment, in retaliation, of capturedAmerican soldiers. Gordon, according to a former Administrationofficial, told colleagues that he thought "it was totally out of characterwith the American value system," and "that if the actions atGuantánamo ever became public, it'd be damaging to the President."The issue was not only direct torture, but the Administration'sobligations under federal law and under the United Nations Convention Against Torture, ratified by the United States in 1994,that barred torture as well as other "cruel, inhuman or degradingtreatment or punishment." The C.I.A. analyst's report, in Gordon'sview, provided clear evidence of degrading treatment. Things inCuba were getting out of control.

At the time, of course, Americans were still traumatized by theSeptember 11th attacks, and were angry. After John Walker Lindh,the twenty-year-old Californian who joined the Taliban, was capturedin Afghanistan in December 2001, his American interrogatorsstripped him, gagged him, strapped him to a board, and exhibitedhim to the press and to any soldier who wished to see him ...

Chain of Command
The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. Copyright © by Seymour Hersh. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib by Seymour M. Hersh
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