How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib.

In from Mr. Sharkey:

THE GRAY ZONE
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib.
Issue of 2004-05-24
Posted 2004-05-15

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040524fa_fact

"The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld's decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of elite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon's operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld's long-standing desire to wrest control of America's clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A."

Information links on Stephen Cambone- the key player:

http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/cambone_bio.html

http://www.defenselink.mil/usdi/camboneinterview.html

From the above:

"What is the purpose of the horizontal integration study your office is doing with the CIA?

A Its origins are in work that we've been doing here in the Defense Department, with components in both the DCI's office and in the CIA, since the spring or summer of 2001. We have been working hard to think about what our combined needs are going to be in the way of intelligence capabilities, not today but 15 to 20 years in the future. And the reason for focusing on that time frame is that it's going to take us a considerable period of time to develop the new capabilities, processes and organizations that will be needed. Over the course of two years, we arrived at a point where we began to look at the value added by making information more easily accessible across the intelligence community, both defense and national."

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Steven_A._Cambone

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_hr/022703cambone.html

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I think Hersh is right on.

Go ahead, put the spooks under DOD, now wouldn't that be lovely? Further, if you believe the fifteen to twenty years, then I have an investment for you.

Mr. Sharkey

"Hey sport. You connect the dots. You pick up the pieces."