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 Early Bird 10/21/07 Story numbers indicate order of appearance only. This is the single print version. Use the PRINT command in your browser to print the entire Early Bird as one document. (NOTE: This single file format is a long document and can use 50 or more pages of paper.) IRAQ
October 21, 2007 Pg. 1 State Department Struggles To Oversee Private Army The State Department Turned to Contractors Such as Blackwater Amid a Fight With the Pentagon Over Personal Security in Iraq By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post Staff Writer Last Christmas Day in Baghdad, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad received a furious phone call from Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi. An American -- drunk, armed, wandering through the Green Zone after a party -- had shot and killed one of his personal bodyguards the night before, Mahdi said. He wanted to see Khalilzad right away. At the vice president's home, Khalilzad found the slain guard's family assembled. Mahdi demanded the names of the American and his employer. And he wanted the man turned over to the Iraqi government. After consulting with the embassy's legal officer, Khalilzad identified the shooter as Andrew J. Moonen, an employee of Blackwater USA, the company that provides security for U.S. diplomats in Baghdad. But he would not deliver Moonen himself. Within 36 hours of the shooting, Blackwater and the embassy had shipped him out of the country. "As you can imagine," the embassy's Diplomatic Security office said in an e-mail to its Washington headquarters the day of Moonen's departure, "this has serious implications." But as with previous killings by contractors, the case was handled with apologies and a payoff. Blackwater fired Moonen and fined him $14,697 -- the total of his back pay, a scheduled bonus and the cost of his plane ticket home, according to Blackwater documents. The amount nearly equaled the $15,000 the company agreed to give the Iraqi guard's family. Ten months later, however -- after Blackwater guards shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians in a Baghdad traffic circle on Sept. 16 -- the State Department can no longer quietly manage the consequences of having its own private army in Iraq. The FBI is investigating the incident, Baghdad has vowed to overturn a law shielding contractors from prosecution, and congressional critics have charged State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security with failing to supervise Blackwater and other security companies under its authority. The shootings have also reopened long-standing, bitter arguments between the State Department and the Pentagon, which over the years have feuded over policies including the decision to invade Iraq and the treatment of detainees. Such broad disagreements have frequently played out over a narrow question: Who is responsible for the safety of U.S. civilians serving in Iraq? With State Department and FBI investigations underway, the military leaked its own report on the Sept. 16 shootings, finding no evidence that the Blackwater guards fired in self-defense, as the company has maintained. U.S. officers have publicly criticized the security contractors as out-of-control "cowboys" who alienate the same Iraqis the military is trying to cultivate. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said last week that the contractors are at "cross purposes" with military goals, and he has suggested they be put under his authority. Many at State see this as a power grab by a Defense Department that has long refused to supply protection for diplomats. Since last month's shootings, one diplomat said, the Pentagon "has spared no expense to excoriate Blackwater and the State Department." At its headquarters in a Rosslyn high-rise, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) is in crisis mode. Already, the service has more than doubled its three dozen agents in Baghdad, dispatching at least a third of the elite, 100-agent mobile SWAT force it keeps for emergencies around the world. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has ordered that at least one DS agent accompany every Blackwater-guarded convoy leaving the Green Zone -- an average of six or seven each day -- and has directed DS to monitor and archive radio and video transmissions from Blackwater vehicles to be used as evidence in any future incident. An examination of State Department security contractor operations awaits Rice's review. Some officials speculated that Rice will have no choice but to remove Blackwater's approximately 900 personal-security personnel from Iraq; others said they think the company will be allowed to stay through the end of its current contract in May. Replacing Blackwater -- by far the largest and most visible of three private security companies under State Department contract in Iraq -- would be difficult and expensive. DS officials fear that their bureau may be permanently tasked with guarding the hundreds of U.S. civilian officials now under Blackwater protection in Iraq. The service has only 1,400 trained agents worldwide, spread among the State Department building in Washington, 25 domestic U.S. offices and 285 U.S. diplomatic facilities overseas. In the short term, taking over in Iraq would require pulling agents from other assignments. Training new agents "would take anywhere from 18 months to two years to identify them, do all the backgrounds, do the clearance work, seven months of basic training [and] follow-up training for high threats," said Richard Griffin, the assistant secretary of state for Diplomatic Security, in recent testimony. A new, $112 million contract signed last month with Blackwater may also be in jeopardy, according to a senior DS official who, like other current and former administration officials and military officers interviewed for this article, discussed the contractor issue on the condition of anonymity. The new contract -- adding 241 Blackwater personnel and increasing its helicopter fleet in Iraq from eight to 24 -- will provide a quick-reaction air component for diplomatic transport, medical evacuation and rescue, the senior official said, something for which the military has declined to dedicate resources. The need for the helicopters, the official maintained, was underscored when a convoy carrying Poland's ambassador in Baghdad was ambushed early this month. "Our technical ops center [in Baghdad] heard the radio chatter" between the ambassador's guards and the U.S. military, the official said. When the military said a rescue would take an hour, DS contacted Blackwater. Its helicopter extricated the dead and wounded -- including the badly burned ambassador -- in seven minutes. But as criticism of State's security operations grows, the downside of having a contractor army at its disposal -- and under its responsibility -- has become more apparent, the official said. "With perfect 20/20 hindsight," he said, "maybe four years ago we should have seen this coming." A Low-Key History Before Iraq and Blackwater landed it in congressional hearing rooms, DS preferred to stay in the diplomatic shadows. Its duties include investigating visa and passport fraud, providing courier services, and managing technical and physical security for State's domestic and overseas facilities and personnel. Most visibly, its agents provide around-the-clock protection for the secretary of state and visiting foreign dignitaries. Each U.S. embassy is assigned a DS agent as regional security officer. Trained, local hires have long provided protection around buildings, but it was not until 1994 that DS contracted with a U.S. firm for personal protection services, hiring Virginia-based DynCorp to accompany exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide back to Haiti after the U.S. military restored him to power. Later, other U.S. contractors were hired temporarily to protect U.S. officials in trouble spots including Bosnia and the Palestinian territories. But for the most part, U.S. diplomats venturing outside their embassies are lightly guarded with local protection or are on their own. Marc Grossman, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey in the mid-1990s, recalled telling his staff to take their own security precautions. After losing embassy employees to attacks, he advised staffers to keep a six-sided die in their glove compartments; to thwart ambushes, they should assign a different route to work to each number, he said, and toss the die as they left home each morning. DS operations grew after the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, but it was not until after the administration declared war on the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 that security contractors became a permanent fixture on the State Department's payroll. North Carolina-based Blackwater was hired to protect Hamid Karzai, first installed as head of a transitional government in Kabul and later elected president. Karzai was reluctant to accept the guards, said a U.S. diplomat posted to Afghanistan. "He was concerned about how it would look to have blonde or African-American guards, even women." Karzai asked why he couldn't have Italian Americans who could blend in more easily. Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, who arrived in Kabul in December 2001 as President Bush's special envoy, later serving as ambassador there before moving to Iraq in 2005, received complaints about the contractors from Karzai. Tribal elders were insulted when they were refused access to him; some were even pushed to the ground if they approached too aggressively, the U.S. diplomat recalled. Blackwater also guarded Khalilzad, whose gratitude was mixed with worry that the guards' speeding convoys would hit an Afghan child darting from a side street. But Afghanistan, in security terms, was child's play compared with what would lie ahead in Iraq. A Convenient Choice When the U.S. military invaded and occupied Iraq in early 2003, there was no question who would be in charge of security for the official civilians pouring in to remake the country. Under an executive order signed by Bush, the Coalition Provisional Authority and its head, L. Paul Bremer, reported directly to then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. But as U.S. troops became preoccupied with a growing insurgency, the Pentagon hired Blackwater to provide protection for Bremer and other civilians. The next year, as the United States prepared to return sovereignty to the Iraqis and the State Department began planning an embassy in Baghdad, Rumsfeld lost a bid to retain control over the full U.S. effort, including billions of dollars in reconstruction funds. A new executive order, signed in January 2004, gave State authority over all but military operations. Rumsfeld's revenge, at least in the view of many State officials, was to withdraw all but minimal assistance for diplomatic security. "It was the view of Donald Rumsfeld and [then-Deputy Defense Secretary] Paul Wolfowitz that this wasn't their problem," said a former senior State Department official. Meetings to negotiate an official memorandum of understanding between State and Defense during the spring of 2004 broke up in shouting matches over issues such as their respective levels of patriotism and whether the military would provide mortuary services for slain diplomats. Despite the tension, many at State acknowledged the Pentagon's point that soldiers were not trained as personal protectors. Others worried that surrounding civilian officials with helmets and Humvees would undermine the message of friendly democracy they were trying to instill in Iraq. "It was a question of, 'Do you want uniforms?' " the senior DS official said. " 'Should the military be doing that kind of work?' " It was clear that the mission was beyond DS capabilities, and as the mid-2004 embassy opening approached, "we had to decide what we were going to do," the former State Department official said. "We had to get jobs done, and to do that we had to have some protection." State chose the most expedient solution: Take over the Pentagon's personal security contract with Blackwater and extend it for a year. "Yes, it was a sole-source contract" justified by "urgent and compelling reasons," said William Moser, the deputy assistant secretary of state for logistics management, in recent congressional testimony. Midway through the contract, Moser said, an independent audit forced Blackwater's $140 million proposal down to $106 million. The senior DS official rejected congressional suggestions that Blackwater's Republican political contacts and campaign contributions influenced its selection. "I'll stack our procurement office against anybody else's," he said. "Particularly DOD's." State officials "could care less whether [Blackwater head Erik] Prince gave money to anybody." Blackwater was the only contractor in Iraq with helicopters, and it already had personnel and facilities in place. When the sole-source contract expired in the summer of 2005, State invited bids on a massive "worldwide personal protection services" contract to put its operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere under one umbrella. Blackwater formed a consortium with U.S. firms DynCorp and Triple Canopy, and the group won a multiyear, $1.2 billion agreement. Under the individual task orders that only the three are eligible to bid on, DynCorp provides personal security in northern Iraq, and Triple Canopy in the south. Blackwater covers Baghdad and Hilla, and has by far the largest share of the $520 million that State spends annually on contract security in Iraq. Both Blackwater and State say the firm provides good value. The cost of sending a U.S. diplomat or DS agent overseas "ranges from around $400,000 for a regular mission around the world to around $1 million for an American diplomatic position in Iraq," Moser, the State logistics official, told Congress. "So when we talk about using contract employees, I think that we have to be very careful to consider what the fully loaded costs would be of direct hires." DS provides contractors a 1,000-page list of rules and procedures and says all security personnel meet rigid requirements -- including military or police experience -- and undergo security vetting. Contractors are highly paid for security duties: Blackwater charges State $1,221.62 a day for a "protective security specialist," according to a 2005 invoice released by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. But that is an all-inclusive cost, Blackwater head Prince argued during a recent interview on the "Charlie Rose" show. "They get paid well, but they get paid only for every day they are at work in a hot zone. They pay significant taxes right off the top of that, state and federal. They have to cover their own insurance, their own housing allowance -- all those benefits that a soldier gets wrapped in." In any case, Prince said, "I know it would be hard for the State Department to recruit other people to come over and do reconstruction work . . . if some of them are going home in coffins." U.S. diplomats who have served in Iraq are uniform in their defense of Blackwater and the other security firms that protect them. Blackwater, they point out, has lost about 30 of its own personnel in Iraq -- and not one diplomat. But just as diplomats receive only rudimentary training to protect themselves, DS had little preparation and established no comprehensive guidelines for running a thousands-strong private army. In particular, the senior DS official said, little thought was given to how contractors would be held legally accountable for incidents such as the Sept. 16 shootings. Oversight, the official acknowledged, has "perhaps not been as good as it could be." <A name=e20071021554586.html> Washington Post October 21, 2007 Pg. 19 Iraqi Police Tied To Attack On U.S. Base 8 Officers Arrested in Rocket Strike That Killed 2 American Soldiers in Baghdad By Joshua Partlow, Washington Post Foreign Service BAGHDAD, Oct. 20 -- The men gathered in the evening at the schoolyard to execute their attack. By the time they finished, at least seven rockets had crashed down nearly four miles away inside the American military headquarters compound in Baghdad, killing two U.S. soldiers and wounding at least 38 other people, according to U.S. soldiers. From the courtyard of his concrete-barricaded garrison in southwestern Baghdad that evening, Lt. Col. Patrick Frank heard the distinctive sound of rocket fire. He hurried inside his command office to flat-screen panels displaying aerial imagery to pinpoint the launch site. Within minutes, his cellphone began ringing. Several Iraqi informants told him the attack had originated near the decrepit school in al-Amil, recalled Frank, the battalion commander in the neighborhood. His sources agreed on another thing, too, he said: "There were several Iraqi police vehicles spotted leaving the scene." In the days since the Oct. 10 rocket barrage, U.S. soldiers have arrested eight police officers suspected of collaborating with Shiite militiamen to target the U.S. base. Assaults by mortars and rockets on military installations across the country are relatively common -- though the missiles frequently land in unpopulated areas. But if the police are found guilty, the Camp Victory assault would represent one of the more glaring examples of Iraqi security forces turning on their American partners to devastating effect. "It's no secret the Iraqi police have some systemic problems with corruption," said Maj. Bill Kinsey, operations officer for the 1st Infantry Division's 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment. "They've got dirty cops. I would say 'just like anywhere else,' but there's more of them and the stakes are higher." Staff Sgt. Lillian Clamens, 35, a mother of three from Lawton, Okla., and Spec. Samuel F. Pearson, 28, a former college football player from Westerville, Ohio, were killed in the attack. The military has not released the names or nationalities of the wounded. One U.S. military official said that most of the injured were American soldiers but that many suffered minor wounds and have since returned to duty. "This is one of their more effective attacks. But it's not the first time," Kinsey said. "You've got to get rid of them so the rest of the police can start doing their job." An Iraqi army unit in southwestern Baghdad was first to arrive at the school after the strike, and it found at least 14 rocket launchers in the courtyard, U.S. soldiers said. Members of Frank's personal security detail drove to the al-Amil police station, where they apprehended the occupants of a police vehicle returning to the station and captured another man who was on his way out. In the following days, U.S. soldiers detained a total of 17 suspects, including eight policemen, said 2nd Lt. Andrew Dietrich, an intelligence officer from the battalion. Three of the detainees were subsequently released, although none was a police officer, he said. The militant members of the Mahdi Army, the powerful Shiite militia led by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, were "definitely" behind the attack, Dietrich said. The militiamen have been responsible for killing and displacing Sunni residents and setting roadside bombs for American soldiers. They have also gotten rich by controlling fuel distribution, the housing market and stolen car networks. Iraqi and U.S. officials acknowledge that Shiite militiamen have infiltrated Iraqi security forces, particularly the police. Five days after the rockets fell, another American military unit detained four of the suspects hiding in a Ministry of Agriculture compound in eastern Baghdad. One of the men was among the five most-wanted criminals in Baghdad, but his affiliation was not disclosed in a U.S. military statement on the arrests. "We now have detained all of the leadership and the key operatives of the indirect-fire cell that attacked Victory Base last week," Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, the deputy commanding general for Baghdad, said in the statement. The role of the police in the incident remains unclear. Frank said he suspected that they were involved in guarding the scene while the triggermen launched the rockets. Maj. Khudair Abbas Hassan, the al-Amil police chief, confirmed that U.S. soldiers had arrested Iraqi police officers, including a lieutenant, following the attack, but said they were members of an emergency police force based in neighboring Bayaa district and were not part of his station. Frank said that was not true. While discouraged that police had been implicated in the attack, Frank said recent recruitment of local Sunni residents for police academy training would balance the Shiite-dominated police force. "By having a mixture of Sunnis and Shiites in the station, it will have the effect of mitigating the influence of militants," he said. The U.S. military would not disclose specifically where the rockets landed, citing security concerns. Camp Victory is part of a sprawling fortified complex, home to thousands of American soldiers and private contractors, on the western outskirts of the capital near Baghdad International Airport. The houses and offices of top U.S. generals are on the base, alongside man-made lakes and in marble-columned palaces built while Saddam Hussein was in power. Some soldiers said they have grown accustomed to the relatively small risk posed by incoming rockets and mortar shells. "For folks who've never been out or never been deployed before, it is a big deal. Then there are those that know it's part of the deal with being over here and the chances of getting hit are very slim," a U.S. military official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the incident. "This attack, in the context of our time here, isn't all that surprising, but it has been a while since we've been hit like that." Special correspondent Zaid Sabah contributed to this report. <A name=e20071021554622.html> Washington Times October 21, 2007 Pg. 5 Militants Corralled In Joint Operation By Steven R. Hurst, Associated Press BAGHDAD — U.S. and Iraqi forces, backed by Polish army helicopters, swept through Shi'ite militia strongholds south of Baghdad yesterday, rounding up dozens of militants and killing two. The prime minister met the provincial governor, who called for reinforcements to root out "the criminals." Iraqi police said 30 suspected fighters linked to Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army were grabbed in a pre-dawn house-to-house search by U.S. and Iraqi raiders in two eastern neighborhoods in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad. U.S.-led ground forces backed by two Polish army helicopters came under fire from machine guns and an anti-tank grenade launcher, the military said. Coalition forces reported no casualties but said two militants were killed in the sweep. The statement reporting the operation said the Polish helicopters were called in after ground forces were attacked with three roadside bombs and small-arms fire. The governor of Qadisiyah province, which includes Diwaniyah, met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad yesterday to ask for help boosting security in the region. Gov. Hamid al-Khudari dismissed concerns of rising tensions between Sheik al-Sadr's group and the governor's party, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), whose militia is known as the Badr Brigade. Mr. al-Khudari replaced Gov. Mohammad al-Hassani, who was assassinated by a powerful roadside bomb in August. Mahdi Army militants were suspected in the attack. Sheik al-Sadr and SIIC leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim signed a truce earlier this month. Mr. al-Khudari appeared at pains to give the impression that the cease-fire was holding, and that Shi'ite fighters involved in the turmoil had broken with Sheik al-Sadr. Police also clashed with gunmen in the Shi'ite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, during a raid in which they detained a Sadrist leader, local authorities said. Late yesterday, a mortar shell crashed near the Shi'ite shrine to Imam Al-Abbas in the city center, killing one person. To the north of Diwaniyah, police broke into the house of a leading al Qaeda member in a village near Hillah. They captured Raed al-Alwani, who was wanted in the slayings of more than 100 Iraqis, according to police. In all, at least 26 persons were reported killed or found dead in attacks nationwide. <A name=e20071021554674.html> Los Angeles Times October 21, 2007 Arms Caches Recovered Near Baghdad By a Times Staff Writer BAGHDAD — U.S. soldiers found and destroyed 20 tons of explosives just north of Baghdad in the last two days, the military reported Saturday. The ordnance, discovered in five caches west of Tarmiya, consisted mostly of the nitrogen-based explosive powder that is used in roadside bombs and car bombs, said Lt. Stephen Bomar of the Army's Task Force Lightning. The group said it was the largest explosives cache recovered during its 15-month operation in Iraq. The detonation of one of the caches left a 100-square-foot crater that was 30 feet deep. Bomar said no suspects had been killed or taken into custody in connection with the caches, and he declined to speculate on which insurgent or militia groups they might belong to. In the northern city of Kirkuk, three Iraqi policemen were wounded in a roadside bombing Saturday, and six people were kidnapped by gunmen on the highway between Tikrit and Kirkuk. Two Iraqi soldiers were killed in a roadside explosion in Hawija, southwest of Kirkuk. Near Hillah, south of Baghdad, gunmen killed a local bureaucrat, and in the capital a roadside bomb killed one municipal worker and injured two others. <A name=e20071021554669.html> Los Angeles Times October 21, 2007 Iraqi Interpreters Walk The Talk They go on patrol with U.S. troops, without weapons, and lead secret lives in fear of insurgents. By Tina Susman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer YOUSIFIYA, Iraq — Ghost is as mysterious as his name suggests. Every 45 days, he slips away from his job and heads home for a two-week break. Once there, he remains inside. He does not visit friends, take walks, go on dates, or do any of the things that would be expected of a handsome 27-year-old. He sees only his parents and siblings, because they are the only people who know that during his long stretches away, Ghost works as an interpreter for the U.S. Army. It is a job that pays triple what most Iraqi companies offer, but it comes with a heavy price. Interpreters share the risks when U.S. troops go out on patrol, but they don't carry weapons. They also know that insurgents would kill them or their relatives if they knew how they earned their money. So they live like phantoms. They don't reveal their true names, using monikers such as Ghost, Scarface, Snake or just plain William. They do not allow their photos to be taken. They fear being exposed if they leave the confines of their bases. They also fear being left behind after President Bush said he would adopt the advice of his top commander in Iraq, Gen. David. H. Petraeus, who said last month that security had improved enough for some American forces to leave. "You know the situation. Every interpreter, if he stays in Iraq, will get killed," David, a former tour guide, said with a tone of resignation in his voice. Lives on the line At least 257 Iraqi interpreters have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, according to the office of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). It cited figures from L-3 Titan Group, the U.S. company that provides the military with most of its interpreters. Company officials did not respond to requests for comment, but at a February job fair in Baghdad, a Titan recruiter said about 7,000 Iraqis were working as military interpreters. Kennedy co-sponsored a bill approved by Congress in Maythat for two years increases to 500 annually from 50 the number of special immigrant visas granted to Iraqi and Afghan interpreters working for the U.S. military or its contractors. A State Department official said Oct. 9 that all 500 visas for the 2007 fiscal year ending Sept. 30 had been allotted, but there was no breakdown of how many went to Iraqis and how many to Afghans. Denmark, which in August pulled nearly all of its 460 soldiers out of Iraq, secretly flew about 200 interpreters and other contract workers and their families out of the country so they would not face harm. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced this month that interpreters who had worked for at least 12 months with British troops would be eligible for financial aid to help them resettle in Iraq or elsewhere, and in some cases, Britain. His announcement came as he unveiled plans to cut Britain's troop presence in Iraq in half by next spring. Difficult process There are no such plans in place for interpreters with the U.S. military, who must obtain a letter of recommendation from a general before they can submit visa applications. That alone can take months, said Army Capt. Chris Sanchez of Los Angeles, who has tried to help several people obtain such letters. "It's stupid," said Sanchez, who becomes visibly angry when he talks about the interpreters' plight. "They want to be Americans. They're doing more to fight the war on terror than most Americans." Three interpreters attached to Sanchez's unit, the 4th Battalion of the 31st Infantry Brigade here in Yousifiya, have been killed in the last year. Like all military interpreters, Frank, Scarface and Zidon were unarmed, but they went on missions with the U.S. troops and died in attacks that also killed more than 20 Americans. The unit is to leave Iraq next month, heightening concern among interpreters who had hoped to get their applications processed before the soldiers they have come to know departed. "My family is scared, especially my mother," Ghost said as he sipped coffee one morning at a U.S.-Iraqi base in Yousifiya, where he was to interpret for Sanchez at a meeting with local leaders. "When I go home for breaks they ask, 'Is it dangerous or is it good?' I tell them it's good. My mother says, 'We hear there are a lot of bombs. Aren't you scared?' I tell them, 'No, I'm with the colonel. I'm a gentleman and stay inside.' " That's not true. Two days later, Ghost joined troops on a nighttime air assault to search for insurgents suspected of killing five U.S. troops and an Iraqi soldier. But lying is a constant. William tells people he works as a guard for a government ministry. Caesar, an avuncular 40-year-old, says he works at a chicken-processing plant. The fear remains even for those who have left the job. Anees Baban worked for U.S. troops in Baghdad for more than two years, beginning in June 2003. He quit in 2005 when he was transferred to a base north of the capital, because of the dangerous commute. This year, he found a letter, weighted down with a bullet, on top of his car, accusing him of being a traitor. Then someone called him on his cellphone and ordered him to quit his job. Baban told the caller he already had quit. Then he changed his cellphone number. Another interpreter, Hameeda, did not get a warning. She left her home in Baghdad one day in mid-July to go to her job. A few minutes later, her husband received a phone call. "They took me!" was all Hameeda said. Her body was found in a trash dump the next day. She had been shot five times, her sister-in-law said. Her ID cards stating where she lived and her cellphone containing her relatives' names and numbers were missing. Soon, her brother, Muthaffar, began receiving threatening calls. "You're next," the caller warned. Muthaffar fled to Syria, but his terrified wife remains in Iraq with their two children. "I'm always panicked," she said, refusing to give her name. Most interpreters say they do the job for the money: a salary of about $1,050 to $1,500 a month. That's about one-tenth of the pay for U.S.-based interpreters brought to Iraq, but it's triple the average Iraqi salary. They save their money, hoping that it will buy them a way out of Iraq. "My wife says, 'If I lose you, who will take care of me? Who will take care of the kids?' " Caesar said. "I tell her I have to make money because one day when coalition forces leave, we will have to leave this country." But money is not the only draw. Baban wanted to be part of the rebuilding of Iraq after Saddam Hussein's ouster. "I wanted to be an active part of it with the Americans -- to help them, and also to help my people," he said. He also hoped his work would earn him a U.S. visa. For Ghost, money was never the draw. He says he always had wanted to work for the U.S. Army, and the military sorely needed interpreters when it rolled in from Kuwait in 2003. Ghost was living in Jordan at the time, but returned to Iraq. The eldest of four children of a Shiite family in the south, he saw the job as an honor. "At that time, if you worked for the coalition you were considered a very lucky man," said Caesar, who got his start when a bomb exploded on his street in 2003. U.S. forces came to his house, which was near the blast site, looking for information. They were impressed with his English and suggested that he become an interpreter. Things began changing for interpreters in 2004, after U.S. forces tried to crush insurgents in the western city of Fallouja. The ferocity of the battle and the number of Iraqis killed, including civilians, galvanized anti-U.S. sentiment and insurgent zeal. Until then, Ghost said, many interpreters used their real names. After Fallouja, they adopted nicknames. Some began wearing ski masks and gloves to avoid being recognized. One day in 2004, Caesar found a note on his door: "You are a traitor." He moved his family from the house and then again every few months. Desperate measures Luckily for him and for others who must take similar steps, the instability has made frequent moves common. It also is common for people with jobs to stay away for weeks at a time because commuting is so dangerous. When the two-week home leave comes, the interpreters follow the same routine. They change into civilian clothes and stash their uniforms and military IDs at work. Most take elaborate measures to leave their bases without drawing attention. During the scorching summer months, William said, he leaves at high noon, when fewer people will be outside to see him. David, the former tour guide, takes a taxi to Mahmoudiya, then switches cars for the ride to his home in another city. It reduces the chances of anyone being able to follow him. Some acknowledge that they miss their strange, cloistered lives at the military base after they have been home for a while. The interpreters share living quarters and spend many hours together, developing bonds as tight as those of any family. Nevertheless, they all want to leave Iraq. Baban has applied for refugee status with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Syria. He has an interview scheduled in January. Muthaffar also applied and was told to come back for his interview in six months. One interpreter, Charlie, got his recommendation letter from a general in late September and expects to be in the United States within a few months. But Caesar's application was delayed by a paperwork glitch, and his quest for a general's endorsement has been pushed back until December. <A name=e20071021554601.html> New York Times October 21, 2007 Iraq President Assails Syria's Support For Turkish Cross-Border Threat By Andrew E. Kramer BAGHDAD, Oct. 20 — President Jalal Talabani of Iraq has criticized Syria for supporting Turkey’s threat to carry out military attacks against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. Mr. Talabani said in an interview that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria had crossed a “red line” by speaking approvingly of Turkey’s threat of a cross-border offensive against the rebels. “Usually I refrain from commenting on Syrian positions to maintain our historical good relations,” Mr. Talabani, himself a Kurd, said in the interview, published Saturday in the Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat. “But this time I cannot support this crossing of a red line.” The tensions have already unnerved world oil markets. The price of crude oil hit a record high Thursday, before sliding 87 cents to close at $88.60 a barrel in New York on Friday. “I think these statements are dangerous and contradict the soul of Arabic solidarity,” Mr. Talabani said in the interview. Mr. Talabani’s comments were in reference to Mr. Assad’s endorsement of the Turkish Parliament’s decision on Wednesday to authorize cross-border incursions against Kurdish rebels. Turkey, however, has said that no strikes are imminent. The rebels, known as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., use bases along the mountainous border to stage attacks inside Turkey in a separatist struggle that has continued for decades. Syria also has a large Kurdish minority and, like Turkey, fears that the substantial autonomy that Kurds inside Iraq have won will impel Kurds in Syria to seek similar concessions, or even independence. Turkey says about 3,000 rebels seeking an independent Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey now operate out of bases in Iraq. Meanwhile, a spokesman for the P.K.K. threatened in a telephone interview on Saturday that the group would retaliate against the Turkish oil infrastructure if Turkey attacked its bases. The spokesman, Abdul Rahaman Jaderi, said the group would strike a pipeline that transports Iraqi oil to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. “Turkey makes money from Iraqi oil pipelines and buys weapons to attack us,” he said. Violence continued inside Iraq when a roadside bomb detonated Saturday morning beside a crowded minibus, killing three people and wounding nine on a highway south of Baghdad. An American soldier was killed and another eight were wounded in an ambush in Baghdad, the United States military said. Also Saturday, the military said soldiers near the city of Tarmiya, north of Baghdad, had discovered a large cache of homemade explosives stored in piles of 100-pound bags and totaling more than 18 tons in one of the largest such finds of the war. Ordnance specialists detonated the stockpile. “The crater from the blast measured 100 feet wide, 100 feet long and 30 feet deep,” the military news release said. Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting. <A name=e20071021554675.html> Los Angeles Times October 21, 2007 Iraq May Condemn Turkish Move By Christian Berthelsen, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer BAGHDAD — The Iraqi parliament began debate Saturday on a resolution condemning Turkey for its recent decision to authorize strikes against Kurdish rebels in Iraq, as an estimated 15,000 Kurds from a village on the border between the two countries protested the Turkish move. Debate on the measure, which would urge Iraq's northern neighbor to rely on peaceful means to resolve disputes, is likely to last several days. Several party leaders in parliament voiced support for such a resolution, but some said the wording must be tempered to also condemn attacks by the Kurdish separatists and voice understanding for Turkey's position. On Wednesday, Turkey's parliament voted to authorize cross-border military raids over the next year targeting fighters from the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, the main Turkish rebel group, who operate from bases in the mountains of northern Iraq. The vote came after a recent PKK attack killed 13 Turkish soldiers. Many Iraqi representatives, including in the northern region of Kurdistan, do not support the rebel group and are sympathetic to Turkey's position. But Iraqis are also keen to demonstrate their sovereignty, particularly as the U.S. continues its military involvement in their country. Another factor at work are the concerns of Iraqi Kurds and their supporters, who fear the Turkish saber-rattling is a pretext for encroaching on Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region bordering Turkey. "They have Kurdophobia," said Mahmoud Othman, a member of the Kurdistan Alliance bloc in parliament. "They are afraid of anything Kurdish." The United States, trying to relieve tensions between two allies, has been pressuring Iraq to launch an offensive against the PKK. But with Iraq's fledgling security forces stretched thin trying to keep order in the country's central region, the chance of a major Iraqi offensive in the near future is slim, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said. The language of the resolution introduced Saturday by parliament Speaker Mahmoud Mashadani "expresses astonishment" at Turkey's decision and, among other things, calls on U.S.-led military forces in Iraq to protect its borders. A key debate in the coming days will be whether to label the PKK a terrorist group in the resolution. Several party leaders said such a declaration would be key to the measure's passage. But others, including Abdul Kareem Enizi, the chief of the Islamic Dawa Party -- the Shiite faction of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki -- suggested that the PKK be given asylum in Iraq. An estimated 15,000 demonstrators from the border village of Zakho marched Saturday to condemn the Turkish vote, carrying billboards written in Kurdish, Arabic, Turkish and English calling for a peaceful solution to the standoff. Several marchers said their main concern was that civilians would be hurt or killed in the crossfire. "The regional government should not let the two sides finish their internal fights on our lands," said Suleiman Barwari, a 51-year-old resident of Zakho. Times staff writers Raheem Salman, Saif Rasheed, Ned Parker, Wail Alhafith and special correspondent Asso Ahmed contributed to this report. <A name=e20071021554676.html> Chicago Tribune October 21, 2007 Bonus Is Army's Biggest Gun Incentives, aid to families used to draw, retain troops By Aamer Madhani, Washington Bureau WASHINGTON — With the Army entrenched in two protracted wars while trying to increase its overall troop levels, commanders are finding they have to sweeten the pot to attract a few good men and women and keep the ones they already have. Next month, the Army is launching a pilot program called the Army Advantage Fund, which offers recruits $45,000 toward a house or a new business upon completion of their military stint. That program comes on top of thousands of "quick-ship" bonuses that the Army doled out this year to recruits who agreed to ship out to basic training within 30 days, as well as ongoing re-enlistment programs to retain those with special skills. At the same time, the Army is hoping to enroll at least 2,000 recruits over the next year into Active First, a new program that allows enlistees to start their service on active duty and complete it in the National Guard. The Army also hopes to bolster troop levels through peer-to-peer recruiting programs that give soldiers bonuses for persuading friends and family to enter the service. And looking ahead, the military hopes to get more money to assist military families. More attention to their needs is crucial if the services are to retain personnel after their initial tour of duty ends. While the Army met recruiting goals for the last fiscal year, commanders have acknowledged that the terrain is only getting rougher as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue. Last week, Lt. Gen. Michael Rochelle, deputy chief of staff for personnel, said the Army will continue to rely on the unpopular "stop-loss" program that requires some soldiers to stay with their unit beyond their retirement or re-enlistment dates. This month, Army leaders reported that for the fifth straight year they gave more waivers to recruits with criminal histories and medical issues, and that fewer than 80 percent of new enlistees had a high school diploma. War good for incentives A relatively strong job market —along with resistance by parents to steering young people toward military life—is further complicating the recruiters' mission. And senior Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, say they worry they are losing many of their best troops to private security companies working in Iraq and Afghanistan that can offer two to three times what the military pays. "In order to be competitive, we simply have to be in the marketplace with them," said Rochelle, explaining the reasoning behind the "novel" ways in which the Army hopes to boost recruitment over the next year. Spec. Victor Taylor, 32, who plans on re-enlisting next month to a six-year contract with the New York National Guard, said the cash incentive is not the reason he decided to stick with his unit, the 42nd Infantry Division. But he acknowledged that the $15,000 bonus he'll receive is a nice perk. Taylor, who served six years in the Marines in the 1990s, said his contract expired at the start of October, weeks before his unit—which has already spent a year in Iraq—was set to head to Egypt for a training exercise. A former sheriff's deputy in upstate New York, Taylor said he decided to join the Guard in 2006 because he missed the camaraderie of the military. At his commander's suggestion, Taylor said, he signed a one-year contract this month as a bridge until his unit heads for Egypt, where he plans to sign a six-year extension. By signing the long-term contract in Egypt, he'll ensure his signing bonus will be tax-free. "When I was a Marine, you never heard of these kinds of incentives," said Taylor, adding that he has been on the lookout for potential recruits so he can cash in on the peer-to-peer recruiting program. "There is a lot of flexibility and a lot of incentives available right now. I think it is what it is because we're in a time of war." The Pentagon is hoping to receive billions of dollars in next year's defense spending bill to help bolster military families, an issue that commanders say is central to whether a service member re-enlists. Recruiters have a well-known saying that "you sign a recruit, you re-enlist a family." Millions set aside Deep in the House version of the defense appropriations bill, $670 million has been set aside for family advocacy programs and more than $600 million for child-care centers. A whopping $1.6 billion is designated for education programs, including allotments to pay for college loan deferrals. As the Army tries to build its force level over the next two years and the Marine Corps starts its own dramatic expansion, commanders and Congress have come to realize they need to pay more attention to caring for troops' families, according to military advocates. Last week, the Army leaders announced a new initiative called the Army Family Covenant, a pledge that commits to spending $1.4 billion in 2008 on Army family programs. Army officials have said repeatedly that retention, not just bringing in new recruits, is central to the expansion. "There is a saying we use around here that, 'If momma ain't happy, no one is happy,' " said Kathy Moakler, director of government relations for the National Military Family Association. "The Army is starting to think outside the box on retention and recruiting. There is a realization that supporting families is part of the cost of this war." Gen. David McKiernan, commander of U.S. Army Europe, said the covenant is less about starting new programs and more about putting "resources and people" into existing programs that military families rely on. He said that commanders in Europe recently moved to increase child-care availability from 55 to 70 hours per week, a step necessary as more military spouses find themselves temporarily becoming single parents while their mates deploy. "The idea is to make the leadership responsible and accountable and then give them the right resources to take care of Army families," McKiernan said. "What we've got to do now is put our money where our mouth is." <A name=e20071021554600.html> New York Times October 21, 2007 Marine Inquiry Into Afghan Killings To Look At 2 Officers, Lawyer Says By Paul von Zielbauer A Marine Corps court of inquiry, scheduled to convene in November in the killings of at least a dozen Afghan civilians last March by a special operations platoon after its convoy was attacked, will focus only on the actions of two officers in charge, a defense lawyer said yesterday. The two officers, Maj. Fred Galvin, the commander of F Company, Second Marine Special Operations Battalion, and Capt. Vincent Noble, the platoon leader and mission commander at the time, will be the only members of the elite unit to be called as official parties to the court of inquiry, said Lt. Col. Scott Jack, a lawyer for Major Galvin. No marines have been charged with a crime in connection with the episode, in which at least a dozen apparently unarmed Afghan civilians were killed on March 4 by members of Captain Noble’s platoon in the minutes after a suicide bomber drove his vehicle into the convoy. No marines were seriously wounded in that attack. Neither Major Galvin nor Captain Noble fired his weapon during the episode, Colonel Jack said yesterday in a telephone interview. In early October, a Marine general authorized the court of inquiry, a rarely used type of formal inquisition created by the British military, to examine the civilian shootings by the marines, in a remote area of eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. A military inquiry last spring found that after the suicide bomb attack struck their convoy, the Marine platoon began rolling westbound and fired at people and vehicles along a seven-mile stretch of highway toward Jalalabad. Both the military investigation and a separate inquiry by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission found no evidence that the marines had been fired on. Documents from the court of inquiry, led by a three-member panel of officers with combat experience, say the proceeding will examine “any failure or dereliction” by the two officers “relative to the tactical conduct and fire discipline” of platoon members, Colonel Jack said. The court is scheduled to convene Nov. 1 at Camp Lejeune, N.C. It will also examine whether the use of force “was consistent with the operations order and the rules of engagement in effect at the time, and the law of armed conflict and reflected sound military judgment,” Colonel Jack said, reading from court papers released to him and other lawyers late Friday. In addition, the court plans to examine whether the two officers’ “leadership was consistent with the operations order and the principles of discriminate and proportional use of force,” Colonel Jack said, and whether the platoon and company commanders reported the incident properly. Mark Waple, a civilian lawyer for Major Galvin, said his client and Captain Noble had done nothing wrong. “I’m very optimistic that even this court of inquiry will not result in any adverse action against either of these two Marine officers,” Mr. Waple said. A civilian lawyer for Captain Noble did not immediately respond to e-mail and telephone messages yesterday morning. Colonel Jack said that depending on the findings, marines who fired their weapons in the March episode could still face legal consequences, but that it was too soon to tell. “There may be something that comes out of the inquiry that always implicates something,” he said. <A name=e20071021554595.html> New York Times October 21, 2007 Old Enough Now To Ask How Dad Died At War By Lisa W. Foderaro LANCASTER, N.Y. — CamerynLee was only 3 years old when her father, Lance Cpl. Eric J. Orlowski, a Marine Corps reservist, was killed in an accidental shooting during the first days of the Iraq war. Now 8, she is suddenly hungry for information about the man she remembers only in sketchy vignettes: Did he like chicken wings as much as she does? How about hockey? Was he funny? “When it happened, I don’t think she fully understood,” said her mother, Nicole Kross, 29. “At that age she really didn’t ask too many questions. It’s all coming out more now.” In a grim marker of the longevity of the war, children who were infants or toddlers when they lost a parent in action are growing up. In the process, they are coming to grips with death in new, more mature and at times more painful ways — pondering a parent they barely knew, asking pointed questions about the circumstances of the death and experiencing a kind of delayed grief. Families and bereavement counselors say that media coverage of the war, dedication ceremonies and even school events — in which most classmates have both parents in attendance — can all heighten yearning for the missing parent. For young children, the flood of prickly feelings and questions often arises just as the surviving parent is moving beyond his or her own intense grief, sometimes with a new spouse or partner in the picture. “As 3-year-olds, they have a pragmatic, concrete concept,” said Joanne M. Steen, co-author of “Military Widow: A Survival Guide.” “They’ll say matter-of-factly, ‘My daddy died.’ But at significant points in their lives, they go back and revisit this, and it’s really hard on the surviving spouse. They end up telling the story over and over again of how Daddy died at each stage.” Nevertheless, many parents work hard to keep the memory of the dead parent alive for their children. CamerynLee and her mother, sitting in their sunny kitchen in this middle-class town outside Buffalo recently, looked at pictures of Lance Corporal Orlowski, along with letters of condolence from President Bush and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Outside, the Marine Corps flag was flying near a Halloween scarecrow. Ms. Kross also showed her daughter a letter that her father wrote from Kuwait City, which began, “What’s up ladies?” He ended it by telling CamerynLee to be a “good girl for Mommy” and urging Nicole, a former Air Force reservist, to “take care of yourself.” It was the first time that Ms. Kross had shown the letter to CamerynLee, a sprite of a girl with a gentle voice and large blue eyes. “I think about him every day,” CamerynLee said as she studied the letter. “I remember cooking with him. He was helping me flip the sausages. I remember him carrying me. I wish he was still alive.” In some cases, involving children who were very young or not even born when their mothers or fathers died, the surviving parents attempt to create memories. Brandy Williams, of Waipahu, Hawaii, had a 3-year-old daughter at home and another on the way when her husband, Sgt. Eugene Williams of Highland, N.Y., was killed by a car bomb in March 2003. Mrs. Williams has three videos of her husband, who was usually the one behind the camera, and the girls, Mya, now 8, and Monica, 4, have watched them over and over. In one, the couple is coming home from the hospital with Mya after her birth. “Monica thinks it’s her, and it’s so hard because she doesn’t understand,” Mrs. Williams said. There is also a table in the living room displaying his Army beret and pictures of him, smiling. “My worst fear is that they’ll forget about him,” Mrs. Williams said. Like CamerynLee, Mya clings to fleeting images of her father: frolicking with him on a playground at Fort Stewart in Georgia, being given toys. At first, Mya’s understanding of her father’s death was appropriately simplistic, filtered through a child’s universe. “When I told her that Daddy’s in the sky with the angels, she said, ‘Like the Care Bears?’ ” recalled Mrs. Williams, referring to the popular line of rainbow-climbing bears. “So for a while we would say, ‘Daddy’s in heaven with the Care Bears.’ ” But after attending a grief camp run by a nonprofit organization, the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, or TAPS, 6-year-old Mya asked her mother exactly how her father had died. They were sitting in the car in a supermarket parking lot, and Mrs. Williams told her as calmly as she could about the checkpoint and the bad person who pulled up in a car and the bomb that exploded. “I’m looking at her through the rearview mirror, and I saw her eyes get really big and it was heart-wrenching,” Mrs. Williams recalled. “At the grief camp, she heard about I.E.D.’s and roadside bombs and hearing how her daddy died was hard for her to take. The rest of the day she was withdrawn and quiet and said she didn’t want to hear anything else. I started freaking out: did I do the right thing?” TAPS, a Washington-based organization that helps military families cope with grief and trauma, estimates that at least 2,000 children under age 18 have lost a parent in the war in Iraq. It is unclear, however, how many of those children were toddlers or infants when the death occurred. Grief counselors and sociologists who study military families say that children, and the surviving spouses, need a strong network of support after a member of the military dies, especially since many abruptly leave the cocoonlike environment of a military base. “This goes back to the old axiom that if you don’t take care of the mother, she can’t take care of the child,” said James A. Martin, a retired Army colonel and associate professor in the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College. “In that kind of trauma, it’s really what the extended family and community and organizations can do to reach out and provide comfort to assist the primary caregiver,” he said. “The younger the children, the more likely that kind of support is needed.” The burst of initial support is not always sustained, however. Brandy Sacco, a 26-year-old nursing student, lost her husband, Sgt. Dominic J. Sacco of Albany, two years ago when insurgents fired on his tank. Mrs. Sacco was left with two young children: Anthony, then 3 months, and 4-year-old Elyssa Armstrong. (Elyssa is Mrs. Sacco’s daughter from a previous relationship, but Sergeant Sacco, his wife said, cared for her as if she were his own child.) “I had people come visit me the first month,” said Mrs. Sacco, who lives in Topeka, Kan. “They brought me food, and then everybody was gone. I was like, O.K., what do I do now?” For Elyssa, who is now 6, the anguish of losing her stepfather in the war resurfaced last summer when a new softball complex was dedicated in his memory at nearby Fort Riley. Sergeant Sacco’s parents flew in for the event, and Elyssa’s mother spoke through tears at the ceremony. “That opened up a lot of things for Elyssa,” Mrs. Sacco said. “She cried the week before and the week after. She listens to sad songs more these past couple of months, and she’s only 6.” Like Mrs. Williams in Hawaii, Mrs. Sacco has one child who can remember a father and one who cannot, a source of considerable sorrow. “Anthony was Nick’s only biological child, and I wish he had more time with his father so he would actually remember his face,” Mrs. Sacco said. “At the same time, Elyssa can help me talk about him. She points things out: ‘That’s when your daddy and me and Mommy went to Universal Studios.’ ” Elyssa has not been excessive with questions about her stepfather’s likes and dislikes. But she is clearly struggling. Despite having had grief counseling, she has fallen behind in school and sometimes acts younger than her years. “She still has her bad days where out of the blue she’ll cry,” Mrs. Sacco said. “I tell her, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s fine. It hurts.” In Rochester, John and Cathy Pernaselli, the parents of Petty Officer First Class Michael J. Pernaselli, are raising his daughters, Nicole, 6, and Dominique, 7. Petty Officer Pernaselli was killed in the Persian Gulf in April 2004 during his first tour. He had divorced his wife and secured custody of the two girls. When Officer Pernaselli died, his daughters, then 3 and 4, had trouble grasping it. “They couldn’t understand why — what had happened,” Mr. Pernaselli said. “They had just talked to him two days before.” They now see a counselor every week and take comfort in keeping his memory close. Both have pillows on their beds imprinted with his picture and talk to him in their prayers. Both wear gold pendants engraved with his likeness (as Mrs. Pernaselli does). They celebrate his birthday every year. But emotions are raw. “They’ll say, ‘Why did it have to be my dad?’ ” said Mr. Pernaselli, 55, who works at a Wegmans supermarket. “They’ll hug the pillow and eventually work themselves out of it.” While fielding questions and providing reassurance can be tiring, it at least plugs a parent or guardian directly into the child’s psyche. In that sense, a child’s volubility can be strangely comforting to some parents. Mrs. Williams now worries about Mya’s recent silence, fearing that her daughter is avoiding discussion of her father as a way to protect both herself and her mother. After Mya’s second visit to the TAPS grief camp this summer, Mrs. Williams prepared herself for a new round of inquiry about her husband and his death. “I asked her if she had any more questions, and she said, ‘No, I don’t,’ ” Mrs. Williams recalled. “When she asks me and I start talking about it, my voice gets cracky and tears roll down my face,” she said. “I don’t know if it will ever get better. I see Mya hurting more now because she’s understanding more. In school, when we have family events, that’s the toughest for her. She sees the mommy and the daddy, and it’s just me.” <A name=e20071021554667.html> Los Angeles Times October 21, 2007 Pg. 1 FBI Working To Bolster Al Qaeda Cases The U.S. is concerned that evidence obtained from CIA interrogations will be inadmissible at war-crimes tribunals. By Josh Meyer, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON — The FBI is quietly reconstructing the cases against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and 14 other accused Al Qaeda leaders being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, spurred in part by U.S. concerns that years of CIA interrogation have yielded evidence that is inadmissible or too controversial to present at their upcoming war crimes tribunals, government officials familiar with the probes said. The process is an embarrassment for the Bush administration, which for years held the men incommunicado overseas and allowed the CIA to use coercive means to extract information from them that would not be admissible in a U.S. court of law -- and might not be allowed in their military commissions, some former officials and legal experts said. Even if the information from the CIA interrogations is allowed, they said, it would probably risk focusing the trials on the actions of the agency and not the accused. The FBI investigations, involving as many as 300 agents and analysts in a "Guantanamo task force," have been underway for as long as two years. They were requested by the Defense Department shortly after legal rulings indicated that Mohammed -- the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- and the other Al Qaeda suspects probably would win some form of trial in which evidence would have to be presented, according to senior federal law enforcement officials. The task force has reviewed intelligence, interviewed the 15 accused Al Qaeda leaders and traveled to several nations to talk to witnesses and gather evidence for use in the tribunals, the federal law enforcement officials said. Like most others interviewed for this article, they spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the investigations, which are being coordinated with the Pentagon. A Pakistan-based U.S. official who has participated in the hunt for Al Qaeda leaders since 2001 said he was interviewed by FBI agents four months ago in Washington. They were "very aggressively pursuing KSM and all of the things he's been involved in," he said, referring to the accused terrorist by his initials. The FBI is especially interested in Mohammed, who during the more than three years he spent in CIA custody boasted that he had killed Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and orchestrated more than two dozen other terrorist plots. Several senior counter-terrorism officials said they believed that Mohammed falsely confessed to some things, including the Pearl slaying, under duress or to obscure the roles played by operatives who might still be on the loose. Mohammed's prosecution is expected to be the centerpiece of the military commissions, which could occur as early as next year. However, some U.S. officials familiar with them said the tribunals could be delayed for years by legal challenges. The FBI's efforts appear in part to be a hedge in case the commissions are ruled unconstitutional or never occur, or the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay is closed. Under those scenarios, authorities would have to free the detainees, transfer them to military custody elsewhere, send them to another country or have enough evidence gathered by law enforcement officials to charge them with terrorism in U.S. federal courts, some current and former counter-terrorism officials and legal experts said. "I think there's no surprise that they have to call in the FBI to clean up the mess left by the CIA secret detention program," said Jumana Musa, advocacy director for Amnesty International. "They would be smart to use evidence that did not come out of years of secret detentions, interrogations and torture." Special Agent Richard Kolko, an FBI spokesman, said the investigations were a natural outgrowth of a long-standing interagency effort. "The FBI will support the prosecution of KSM and other high-value detainees by making its investigative and evidentiary expertise available to the prosecution team," he said. He referred all other questions to the Defense Department. Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said the Defense Department was working closely with its interagency counterparts in "building a case against KSM and scores of other men at Guantanamo alleged to have committed law of war violations -- including the attacks of 9/11, USS Cole bombing [in 2000] and East Africa embassy bombings [in 1998]." Neither those two men nor CIA spokesman George E. Little would comment on whether the FBI investigations were being conducted to bolster shortcomings in the cases against Mohammed and the others that are, at least in part, the result of CIA interrogations. FBI officials interviewed for this article emphasized that the bureau's probes should not be viewed as a repudiation of the CIA's efforts, noting that the spy agency's primary responsibility has been to gather intelligence to prevent further attacks, not collect evidence for trial. But some former and current U.S. officials said concerns about the potential inadmissibility of the CIA interrogations, and the controversy surrounding them, were the primary reasons the FBI agents were sent to gather more evidence, in some cases reinterviewing suspects and witnesses. The FBI and CIA have appeared to be headed for a collision on the issue of detainee interrogations since shortly after the September 2001 attacks. From the outset, the FBI has played a central role in the hunt for Al Qaeda leaders, helping the CIA, the military and foreign governments track them and process evidence against them. FBI agents initially helped interview some of the suspects, with an eye toward gathering evidence for a criminal trial. After Mohammed's March 2003 capture in Pakistan, some FBI agents and federal prosecutors made clear they wanted him tried before a jury. The Al Qaeda leader had been indicted by a federal grand jury in New York in 1996 for his role in an alleged Philippines-based plot to blow up U.S. airliners in mid-flight over the Pacific Ocean. But the CIA moved aggressively to take over the interrogations of Mohammed and other senior Al Qaeda detainees, beginning with suspected training camp coordinator Abu Zubeida, who was captured in Pakistan in 2002. Some current and former FBI officials said the spy agency began using coercive techniques such as waterboarding, or simulated drowning, in an effort to get the detainees to talk immediately about the terrorist network's plans. CIA officials told The Times that the FBI wasn't getting crucial information about pending attacks out of Zubeida that they knew he possessed, and that their "enhanced" techniques ultimately worked better and faster. Current and former FBI officials said those CIA techniques resulted in false confessions that were obtained illegally. By mid-2002, several former agents and senior bureau officials said, they had begun complaining that the CIA-run interrogation program amounted to torture and was going to create significant problems down the road -- particularly if the Bush administration was ever forced to allow the Al Qaeda suspects to face their accusers in court. Some went to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, according to the former bureau officials. They said Mueller pulled many of the agents back from playing even a supporting role in the interrogations to avoid exposing them to legal jeopardy, in the belief that White House and Justice Department opinions authorizing the coercive techniques might be overturned. "Those guys were using techniques that we didn't even want to be in the room for," one senior federal law enforcement official said. "The CIA determined they were going to torture people, and we made the decision not to be involved." A senior FBI official who since has retired said he also complained about the lack of usable evidence and admissible statements being gathered. "We knew there were going to be problems back then. But nobody was listening," he said. "Now they have to live with the policy that they have adopted. I don't know if anyone thought of the consequences." Another retired FBI agent who helped lead the bureau's Al Qaeda investigations said one fundamental flaw in the tribunal process was that the accused terrorists might be granted the right to confront their accusers in court -- even a military one. And the CIA is likely to prohibit its officers from taking the stand to face cross-examination about their interrogation techniques and other highly classified aspects of the spy agency's detainee program. "They have put themselves in a very bad situation here," the former agent said. "They have to redo everything because they have to come up with clean statements from these [detainees], if they can get them, obtained by law enforcement people who can actually testify. The CIA agents are not going to testify, nor should they." Pentagon spokesman Gordon and CIA spokesman Little said no decision had been made on how much information gathered by the CIA, including the interrogations, would be allowed into evidence at the commissions. They also said it was too early to tell whether the CIA agents would testify, although the courtrooms for the military commissions, Gordon said, would be designed with partitions to protect the witnesses' identities and with mute buttons to allow for classified testimony. "When it comes to the high-value detainees," Little said, "it was, most of all, the efforts of the CIA -- following a lawful, effective and safe process -- that led these terrorists to share concrete, actionable intelligence that our government used to identify other terrorist figures and disrupt their activities." Some former FBI officials and legal analysts said that even if evidence gathered through the CIA interrogations were admissible, it had lost significant credibility because of the allegations of coercion and torture. CIA officials have said that they never tortured the detainees and that they operated within the law. Ultimately, some of the terrorism suspects confessed. But the coercive techniques made even some CIA officials skeptical of whether their confessions were believable, much less sustainable in any court, one former CIA counter-terrorism covert officer said. The decision to minimize the FBI's role in interrogating the suspects "was regarded by many as really being in error, in part because [CIA officers] don't have the expertise as to what is evidentiary and what isn't," the official said. "And now there are all of these consequences." Musa of Amnesty International said: "People like KSM should be held accountable. And the real tragedy would be that the focus of the commissions won't be on scrutinizing the conduct of Mohammed and the others, but on the conduct of the CIA." Federal law enforcement officials believe they have gathered enough admissible evidence to try the high-value detainees. "We've redone everything, and everything is fine," one official said. "So what's the harm?" <A name=e20071021554584.html> Washington Post October 21, 2007 Pg. 15 Pressure Alleged In Detainees' Hearings Ex-Prosecutor Says Pentagon Pushing 'Sexy' Cases in '08 By Josh White, Washington Post Staff Writer (Reprinted from Saturday's late edition) Politically motivated officials at the Pentagon have pushed for convictions of high-profile detainees ahead of the 2008 elections, the former lead prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay said last night, adding that the pressure played a part in his decision to resign earlier this month. Senior defense officials discussed in a September 2006 meeting the "strategic political value" of putting some prominent detainees on trial, said Air Force Col. Morris Davis. He said that he felt pressure to pursue cases that were deemed "sexy" over those that prosecutors believed were the most solid or were ready to go. Davis said his resignation was also prompted by newly appointed senior officials seeking to use classified evidence in what would be closed sessions of court, and by almost all elements of the military commissions process being put under the Defense Department general counsel's command, something he believes could present serious conflicts of interest. "There was a big concern that the election of 2008 is coming up," Davis said. "People wanted to get the cases going. There was a rush to get high-interest cases into court at the expense of openness." Davis said he thought the military commissions could go forward as a legitimate way to try alleged terrorists in U.S. custody, but he said he had serious concerns about how the new officials were approaching the commissions. He said he felt a sense of expediency over thoroughness was taking hold and that efforts to use classified evidence -- a controversial idea that has drawn congressional concern -- could taint the trials in the eyes of international observers. Davis abruptly resigned after complaining that his authority in prosecutions was being usurped. He argued that Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, a new legal adviser to the convening authority for military commissions, should remain a neutral and independent party and should leave prosecuting cases to p |
