Intelligence interrogation, U.S., George W. Bush Administration

U.S. interrogation policy in the George W. Bush Administration was based on the Administration position that certain individuals captured, in what it termed the war on terror were not entitled to prisoner of war status, which, in turn, allowed the use of interrogation techniques outside the scope of the Third Geneva Convention and other relevant agreements. On February 7, 2002, George W. Bush wrote "I determined.... that members of al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces are unlawful enemy combatants who are not entitled to the protections that the Third Geneva Convention provides to prisoners of war."

This was not universally accepted inside the government. Colin Powell, then the U.S. Secretary of State, first pointed out that treating Afghanistan as a "failed state" completely outside the Geneva Conventions would be a reversal of previous U.S. policy that sought to engage the Taliban. Powell rejected the idea that the Conventions would not apply to new kinds of conflict. He challenged the White House Counsel that the President was not being presented with what Powell saw as the main choices:
 * 1) Declare that the Geneva Convention does not apply to the failed state, but treat all prisoners consistently with the U.S. agreement to the Conventions
 * 2) Declare that the Geneva Convention does not apply to the failed state, treat all prisoners consistently with the U.S. agreement to the Conventions, but reject prisoner of war status for the all members of al-Qaeda, and Taliban members on a case-by-case basis

Over time, civilian policymakers either pushed military and intelligence interrogators to "get more results" without specifying detail, or, in some cases, providing legal opinions justifying harsher measures. There was a conflict among policymakers, and different factions of both military and Central Intelligence Agency personnel, over the value and appropriate extent of coercive interrogation methods.

In this article, be aware that not all timelines are completely consistent. The date of publication of the various orders and opinions do not always seem in a logical sequence; some guidance for interrogation procedures for Iraq were issued before the equivalent procedures for Guantanamo. Some of this, however, appears to be an artifact that the later, published document may have followed a series of unreleased working papers.

Soon after the Afghanistan War (2001-) began, the George W. Bush Administration made a policy determination that certain individuals captured there were not "lawful combatants" and thus not entitled to prisoner of war status as defined by the Third Geneva Convention. Donald Rumsfeld issued a memorandum to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff denying POW status to members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

An essential thing to understand is that these policies did not apply to a single place such as Guantanamo, or a single conflict area. Detention, outside the judicial process, has indeed taken place at Guantanamo, but also in the U.S. proper, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and in "black sites" at clandestine locations in third countries.

Some court decisions only apply to Guanatanamo, which is outside U.S. soil but meets certain legal criteria of U.S. control. At other sites not on U.S soil, U.S rules may not be paramount, especially if it is a "black site" operated by the Central Intelligence Agency, usually with a third country. The Obama administration has ordered the closing of the foreign sites.

Judicial and extrajudicial models
Extrajudicial detention, as a part of a broader counterterrorism approach, had been part of U.S. policy well before the 9-11 attacks, but following events such as the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, the FBI counterterrorism official Jack Cloonan described the process as being taken out of the judicial system "...by design, because we have declared a war, have we not? " The FBI has been criticized as too focused on the law enforcement process to work effectively on counterterrorism, since agents have been conditioned to use interrogation techniques that can be described in court without causing evidence to be rejected. Cloonan said this could even apply to a military tribunal. This indeed became the case with  Susan Crawford, a retired judge and former Army general counsel appointed by the Bush Administration, threw out an indictment as tainted by torture.

The Department of Justice, before the Obama Administration took office, rescinded a number of the main legal opinions.

Interrogation techniques
A general principle of U.S. laws is that military bases outside U.S. soil are under military, not civilian justice, systems. The initial creation was assigned to military personnel, although the U.S. civilian leadership later changed some initial military assumptions. Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on Law and Security at New York University, said military personnel, in the post-9/11 situation, "chose to follow the rules they knew–primarily, the Geneva Conventions. I can only be speculative here but most likely under the old rules the detainees would have been categorized as prisoners of war under the terms of the Geneva Conventions, which account for all categories of individuals picked up on the battlefield, including civilians...The United States did not hold these routine hearings to establish the detainees’ status as prisoners of war–-so the decision to sidestep the Geneva Conventions seems to have taken place well before prisoners arrived at Guantanamo Bay."

Most interrogation was done by military personnel and subject to Defense Department guidelines. Of these, some, such as simply asking questions, the direct interrogation techniques, are clearly noncoercive. Other techniques, such as Mutt and Jeff and isolation interrogation techniques, were psychologically coercive. Additional "enhanced" techniques including waterboarding and stress positions were authorized on a case-by-case basis.

FBI interrogation techniques were not explicitly specified by this administration, but existing FBI policy emphasized the noncoercive.

Military doctrine
Existing military guidance stated constraints in international law. In the most recent unclassified document, consistent with earlier [de]classified and unclassified guidance, an interrogator is allowed to use ruses of war to build rapport with interrogation sources, which may include posing or “passing himself off” as someone other than a military interrogator. However, the collector must not pose as:
 * A doctor, medic, or any other type of medical personnel.
 * Any member of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) or its affiliates. Such a ruse is a violation of treaty obligations.
 * A chaplain or clergyman.
 * A journalist.
 * A member of the the civilian government, such as a Member of Congress. These were relaxed quickly, as in the false flag interrogation techniques, which are not necessarily coercive; false flags, apparently of friendly nations, are common intelligence tradecraft for recruiting spies.

These are part of a broader context of interrogation techniques that had been defined in then-classified guidance, as approved for use by military interrogators at Guantanamo. Rumsfeld gave different guidance in a number of documents, primarily in 2002 and 2004. Some of the more coercive techniques needed the approval of a general or senior civilian official. The most extensive list of military-approved coercive techniques were in October 11, 2002 memorandum from LTC Jerald Phifer, staff intelligence director for JTF 170. . This was approved up the chain of command through through MG Michael Dunlavey, the Guantanamo interrogation task force commander, up to Rumsfeld, with various legal reviews along the way. Approval of the use of some methods, after Rumsfeld's policy approval, may have been delegated to the Commander, United States Southern Command. Military techniques in Iraq, at times, followed different but closely related techniques; the more coercive methods required the preapproval of LTG Ricardo Sanchez, the field commander at the time.

Phifer's system breaks the techniques into Roman numeral categories, representing the intensity of the technique, from I as mildly to III as strongly coercive. The number (and letter) following denotes the specific technique.
 * Category I: The process begins generally comfortable enviroment, starting with direct interrogation techniques, and using rewards such as cookies and cigarettes if appropriate. Category I methods are preauthorized if the detainee is uncooperative.
 * Category II: These require the permission of the Officer-in-Charge, Interrogation Section
 * Category III: May be used only with prior approval by the JTF Commanding General, with legal review and information (although not preapproval) by the Commander, USSOUTHCOM. They also can include "other aversive techniques, such as use in military interrogation resistance training (i.e., SERE) or by other U.S. government agencies)". "Other government agency (OGA)" is a common military euphemism for the Central Intelligence Agency, but it is uncertain if Phifer was referring to the CIA-only techniques.

Phifer does list, as Category III-3, a technique that meets at least some definitions of the waterboarding interrogation technique. His description is somewhat different than the CIA method described by ABC News, and may actually be more dangerous; see the technique subarticle.

This memo was reviewed and approved by the JTF Staff Judge Advocate (legal officer), LTC Diane Beaver. and recommended to the Commander of USSOUTHCOM by MG Michael Dunlavey. Dulavey was of the opinion that these were necessary to overcome increased resistance, but he believed they would not violate U.S. or international law.

Without making a judgment on whether the techniques meet the requirements of international law, it is noteworthy to compare the wording of Category III, Technique 1, with the wording of the U.N. General Assembly definition of torture.

"The use of scenarios designed to convince the detainee that death or severely painful consequences are imminent for him and/or his family"

"Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."

It may be inferred, but is not definitely known, if all these techniques, with the approval and guidance caveats, were approved for use at facilities other than Guantanamo, but the existence of guidance strongly suggests that A-Q were approved. The Befuddled Interrogator is not in Rumsfeld's memo, but, since listed by Mackay, was probably a standard and approved method.

In no guidance, however, do the humiliation methods used by guards at Abu Ghraib prison appear. The techniques used on Abed Hamed Mowhoush, which resulted in his death, do not appear in either military or CIA guidance.

CIA interrogation development
In mid-March 2002, CIA had selected fourteen interrogators and trained them in six techniques, the use of which had to be preapproved by the Deputy Director for Operations. These were used together with sleep restriction and orders for constant movement, although not in stress positions. In the room played "rap artist Eminem's "Slim Shady" album. The music was so foreign to them it made them frantic".

These six techniques included three methods of making physical contact with the subject, prolonged standing, chilling, and waterboarding. The contact methods were:
 * Attention Grab, involving grasping the prisoner's clothing and shaking him,
 * Attention Slap, an open-handed slap to unspecified locations
 * Belly slap,"A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage."

Some CIA documents were released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests by the American Civil Liberties Union, but are almost completely censored. Nevertheless, several documents contain at least the word "waterboarding". It is almost the only text that appears in the context of an Inspector General review of interrogation techniques used on Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. On March 2, 2009, the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York released a letter, sent to U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, acknowledging that the CIA had destroyed 92 videotapes of "enhanced interrogations". Judge Hellerstein is addressing the ACLU requests; a criminal investigation is in progress by the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Early Afghanistan Operations
In 2001, United States Central Command (CENTCOM) commander Fred Franks, requested permission, from the U.S. Secretary of Defense to establish an “interagency coordination cell” and assistance in soliciting participation from national-level agencies. Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense authorized a Joint Interagency Coordination Group (JIACG) that October, with authority to work directly with non-military  agencies. GEN Franks immediately tasked then-BG Gary Harrell, with creating this interagency coordination cell and, in November 2001, approved a JIATF–CT with 30 military billets and as many non-DOD personnel as possible. An advance team went to Afghanistan the day after Thanksgiving 2001. This became an interdisciplinary unit with representation from many agencies in the United States intelligence community, United States Special Operations Command, the U.S. Department of State, and law enforcement organizations. Functioning primarily as an intelligence-gathering fusion center, while at the same time jointly operating Afghanistan’s main interrogation facility at Bagram Airport, JIATF–CT comprised 36 U.S. military, 57 non-DOD, and several British and Australian special forces personnel.

Once large-scale U.S. forces were in Afghanistan, an additional U.S. Army task force, based in Kandahar, conducted basic interrogations of prisoners, to obtain information of immediate value to tactical commanders there, and to select those of significant intelligence interest. The latter group would be sent to the strategic interrogation center at Guantanamo; field interrogators were told to select al-Qaeda personnel, Taliban leadership, and "non-Afghan Taliban/foreign fighters; and any other who may pose a threat to U.S. interests, may have [strategic] intelligence value, or may be of interest for U.S. prosecution."

Final decisions on the high-value prisoners were made by a board at United States Central Command forward headquarters in Kuwait. That group had representation from U.S. Army intelligence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Army military police, and the Central Intelligence Agency and other civilian intelligence organizations.

The CIA had its initial Afghanistan interrogation and detention center center at Bagram, then in a facility called the "Salt Pit" in Kabul, which was demolished by 2005. A new facility was established at Bagram, then moved elsewhere. It also had representation at the military facilities in Bagram and Kandahar.

Guantanamo operations
The George W. Bush Administration established the Guantanamo detention camp, at the Naval Station Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. A general principle of U.S. laws is that military bases outside U.S. soil are under military, not civilian justice, systems, although this was partially upset, specifically for Guantanamo, in the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld Supreme Court decision.

Reporting to United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), the camp was made up two organizations: separately commanded detention (TF 160) and intelligence interrogation (TF 170) task forces. Later, at first for reasons of simplified adminnistration, these were combined into Joint Task Force-Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO).

Merger
On August 27, 2002, GEN James T. Hill became the new commander of USSOUTHCOM, and elected to merge the two task forces to reduce adminisrative overhead. He selected MG Geoffrey Miller, general military commander rather than an intelligence or police specialist, and selected him, to take command of JTF-GTMO on  November 4, 2002.

Some reports said that Baccus was relieved, but he countered that he was decorated for service, given an outstanding performance review, and JTF-160 received the "Joint Unit Meritorious Award for their time period in Guantanamo, of which I was the commander of that joint task force seven out of the nine months in the period of time of the award. ...my leaving Guantanamo was on a part of a plan to join the two task forces together. I left on the seventh of October; Miller was in place on the first of November."

Detention Task Force
In January 2002 more than 1,000 U.S. service members of TF 160, under the command of U.S. Marine Corps BG Michael Lenhart were sent to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to provide security for detainees under U.S. control. Its mission was support the intelligence unit, Joint Task Force 170, established on 16 February 2002. Greenberg said that JTF 170, under reservist MG Michael Dunlavey, was established in February.

Army BG Rick Baccus was sent, in March 2002, to Guantanamo, replacing the ad hoc Marine-based unit with a military police brigade of the Rhode Island National Guard. Baccus was a Military Police officer, but not experienced in prison operations. While penology falls generally under a police and judicial function, they are separate specialties; while the Federal Bureau of Investigation is part of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Bureau of Prisons is a completely separate organization with different organization and training. Even in the FBI, counterterrorism intelligence is a relatively new and specialized function, different from their traditional roles in law enforcement and counterespionage.

Baccus said "By charge of the president, through the secretary of defense, through SOUTHCOM, the charge was to treat the detainees humanely. That was our charge. Let the interrogators handle interrogations, but our charge was to handle the detainees and make sure they were treated humanely..."

He continued, "There has to be that necessary tension, because how we look at detention operations is far different than how you would look at interrogation operations. I'm not an interrogator by trade, don't know anything about it, didn't get involved with it while I was at Gitmo. ... And so the thing I would mention is just that they have to work the one-on-one with the individual detainee... They have to work their relationships to try and garner information."

Intelligence Task Force
USSOUTHCOM also established the Joint Interagency Interrogation Facility (JIIF), designated Joint Task Force 170 (JTF 170) on January 22 and immediately began interrogations focused on intelligence collection, force protection, and planned terrorist activities. This interrogation effort also supports law enforcement agencies, and tribunal efforts.

Horton also observed that MG (U.S. Army Reserve) Michael E. Dunlavey, the commander of JTF 170, outranked the detention force commanders (Lenhart and later Baccus). In principle, Dunlavey, an intelligence rather than police specialist, reported to USSOUTHCOM, but actually had a direct line of communication to Rumsfeld.

Policy Changes
In the summer of 2002, GEN Jack Keane, Vice Chief of Staff for the U.S. Army, visited GTMO; and found quality of intelligence gathered unsatisfactory finding "... the police are guarding the detainees, and the interrogators are trying to get information out of them, and the two never work together towards common objectives." unified command. It certainly is reasonable to have a common senior leadership, but, as discussed above, police and intelligence approaches to information gathering are different.

After subsequent problems such as Abu Ghraib, it became clear that while the intent of Army regulations were that military police did not take part in intelligence interrogation, the current versions, applicable when Keane made his assessments, were not clear on the subject.

A major basis for Administration policy was a legal opinion, dated August 1, 2002,  from  Jay Bybee, Assistant Attorney General for the  Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice went to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales.

On October 11, 2002, MG Michael Dunlavey, JTF-170 commander, requested permission to increased interrogation methods, including the Category III methods described above. His legal officer, Beaver, assumed that Bush could also decide that the Uniform Code of Military Justice did not apply, and thus that torture-like methods could be utilized. "Who am I," she asked later, "to second-guess the President?"" Rumsfeld approved some, but not all, the requests, in some cases reserving methods for situations where he personally gave prior consent.

Padilla case
Jose Padilla, an American citizen arrested as a dirty bomb suspect arrested in 2002, was initially arrested by the FBI. A subsequent opinion from Jay Bybee, Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, stated that the military had the authority to detain him "as a prisoner captured in an international armed conflict", in part based on ex parte Quirin, which also involved individuals captured on U.S. soil. Padilla, as opposed to Quirin et al., was an American citizen. Also, the memo determined that the Posse Comitatus Act did not apply to such captures, since the context was warfare rather than civilian law enforcement. His subsequent handling, resulting in court charges in 2007, went from the noncoercive FBI approach, to a coercive special case of an American citizen in the U.S. but in a coercive nonjudicial system, and eventually to judicial proceedings. The opinion was repudiated by the Office of Legal Counsel in January 2009, before the Obama Administration took office.

Cloonan cited the value of Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs) in planning the establishemt of rapport with Padilla. They advised "You know what he needs? He needs a father figure," leading to Cloonan being selected as the preferred interrogator, because he was the oldest man on the FBI team.

According to his defense attorney, writing in the Washington Post, a month after arrest, however, he went into the secret interrogation system; the President declared him a terrorist and the Attorney General warned of the dirty bomb threat. He was held in nonjudicial custody for several years, undergoing coercive interrogation. Eventually, before the Supreme Court was about to hear his case, It reached the Supreme Court in 2004, at which point the government finally allowed him to speak to a lawyer. Part of the government case was that he was an "enemy combatant", having been in Afghanistan in late 2001. Eventually, just before a Supreme Court deadline, Federal prosecutors charged him for none of the several alleged plots in the U.S., but for conspiracy, in the 1990s, with jihadists in Bosnia and Chechnya. He was convicted on this charge and the coercive interrogations were kept outside court review.

Proxy interrogation
Under the Bush Administration, the United States interpreted its obligations under the Convention against Torture to be applicable only to activities taken in U.S. territory, not in foreign operations. Not all transfers to a state are for purposes of interrogation, but sometimes simply to end the U.S. role of keeping an individual in custody. In some cases, while the U.S. is aware the country may torture, there are cases where the United States detains someone it strongly believes to be a terrorist, no state has filed criminal charges against him, and his state of nationality is much better positioned than the United States to interrogate him, given issues related to language and knowledge of networks, clan structures, and culture."

Iraq War
By the time the Iraq War started, Rumsfeld relaxed some restrictions on interrogation but forbade others and required others have his personal advance approval. With respect to prolonged standing, which had been recommended to be used for not more than 4 hours, he wrote "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?" Rumsfeld, who uses a stand-up writing desk, seems to have missed that prolonged standing, as a stress-inducing technique, does not allow the subject to shift position.

Preparation
Before the start of the war, there had been considerable targeting of Ba'ath Party officials for detention. and interrogation. The 55 prime candidates' pictures and biographies were put on a deck of playing cards distributed to troops.

These prisoners were taken by military authority in a war zone. They were interrogated by U.S. and allied personnel, but except for the few cleared of guilt, eventually turned over to the new Iraqi government several years later.

Legislation and opinions
Some of the Bush Administration determinations about prisoners taken in Afghanistan, and later in Iraq and elsewhere, were overruled by the United States Congress, in the Detainee Treatment Act and by the Supreme Court of the United States. and the United States Supreme Court.

Sometime in the spring of 2004, CIA Inspector General John Helgerson advised Director of Central Intelligence, Porter Goss, that some of the interrogation techniques in use, even if not considered torture, might violate the Convention against Torture. That convention, ratified with reservations in 1994, bans not only torture, but bans lesser abuses if they are "cruel, inhuman or degrading." The report, according to unnamed sources that spoke to the New York Times, addressed techniques used three dozen terror suspects being held in secret locations around the world, in particular, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

In the summer of 2004, the administration disavowed the August 2002 opinion by Jay Bybee, and released, in December 2004, a new opinion approved by James B. Comey, then the deputy attorney general, explicitly rejected torture and adopted more restrictive standards to define it. It had a footnote, however, about the   "treatment of detainees" under still-classified directives, meaning that the 2002 policy could still be used in selective cases.

Interrogation rules of engagement
In August 2003, according to the New York Times, the officer-in-charge of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center, CPT Carolyn Wood, issued a list of approved coercive techniques that went well beyond the "rules of engagement" later approved by LTG Sanchez. Wood had headed interrogation teams in Afghanistan and brought these to Iraq with her. The JIDC, formally established on Sept. 20, was not part of the cellblock where the highly publicized abuses by guards took place. She reported to LTC Steven Jordan, the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion commander.

Sanchez had issued unsigned interrogation guidance on on Sept. 10 and Sept. 28, and signed directives on Sept. 14 and Oct. 12, all of which were different. The September 10 draft, according to COL Marc Warren, the chief legal officer at Multi-National Corps-Iraq, added sensory deprivation, which could be done with hoods. The September 14 document added "sleep management" and stress positions, with limitations: 4 hours sleep in 24, and forced standing or crouching for up to 60 minutes. Col. Warren said that the October revision narrowed these measures, bringing them into compliance with the Third Geneva Convention. It allowed measures such as long-term isolation of a prisoner only with Sanchez' approval. Note that isolation was in Rumsfeld's list of techniques permitted with his approval.

The Oct. 12 directive also ordered that interrogators take control of the 'lighting, heating, and configuration of the interrogation room, as well as food, clothing and shelter' given to those questioned at Abu Ghraib, a Senate aide said. The memo directed interrogators to work closely with military police guarding the prisoners to 'manipulate internees' emotions and weaknesses' to gain their cooperation."

A poster with the Sanchez-approved techniques included all of the techniques in Rumsfeld's April 2003 memo, but went beyond them. The additional methods, requiring his approval, were: An anonymous source told the Public Broadcasting Service that Sanchez' chart did not list "a number of techniques that were in use at the time: removal of clothing, forced grooming, hooding, and yelling, loud music and light control. Given the detail otherwise noted ... the failure to list some techniques left a question of whether they were authorized for use without approval." Sanchez also specified, as controls:
 * "Techniques must be annotated in questioning strategy
 * "Approaches must always be humane and lawful
 * "Detainees will NEVER be touched in a malicious or unwanted manner
 * "Wounded or medically burdened internees must be medically cleared prior to interrogation
 * "The Geneva Conventions apply within CTF-7 [Sanchez' command]"

Some of the humiliation methods later seen in the Abu Ghraib cellblock clearly violated the controls.

Early incidents
Abed Hamed Mowhoush was an Iraqi Major General who was an air defense commander, under Saddam Hussein. He surrendered in November 2003, after his sons were in custody, and died while undergoing interrogation in December 2003. The autopsy report designated the death a homicide, secondary to asphyxia and chest compression. His interrogators believed that Mowhoush had knowledge about the role of Ba'ath Party leadership in the Iraqi resistance.

He was interviewed by Army interrogators led by CWO2 Lewis Welshofer. On November 10, Welshofer questioned Mowhoush without coercion, but, according to an interview with Mowhoush's son, Welshofer's approach changed late in the same week. He bound Mowhoush and slapped him in front of Iraqi detainees, to, in Eelshofer's words, "to show Mowhoush who was in charge."

MAJ Jessica Voss, Welshofer's commanding officer, testified that she refused permission to use methods including slapping prisoners during interrogation, but she had approved restraint with a sleeping bag, although forbidding interrogators to sit on the bagged prisoner. Rejali states that Welshofer then gave the prisoner to a CIA officer, "Brian" and Iraqi personnel, who beat him into unconsciousness. It is not known if "Brian" was one of the 14 CIA trained interrogators.

Welshofer was fined but received no prison time. The issues involved include whether he was authorized to use methods that bordered on, or were, torture; if he was trained in using them with the minimum possible risk; if his overall approach to interrogation was sound. He was convicted but given a light sentence, partially in recognition that his orders were ambiguous.

Abu Ghraib
The original command structure that affected the prison was that all operations were under LTG Richard Sanchez, commanding Joint Task Force 7, the initial military field organization for the occupation of Iraq. Reporting to Sanchez' staff, including his staff intelligence officer, MG Barbara Fast, were the 800th Military Police Brigade under BG (U.S. Army Reserve) Janis Karpinski, and an intelligence command under COL Thomas Pappas.

After his work in Guantanamo, then-MG Miller was transferred to detainee operations in Iraq. While he first discussed his work in broad terms, he was associated with the attempts to pressure detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. According to a report by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who first publicized the situation, Miller had recommended, “Detention operations must act as an enabler for interrogation. . . to provide a safe, secure and humane environment that supports the expeditious collection of intelligence,”

Karpinski's command, however, had responsibility for all military police activities in Iraq, not just the prison. The prison cellblock was run by a unit two levels below her, the 372nd Military Police Company of the 320th Military Police Battalion.

A series of press reports later broke regarding interrogation tactics and prisoner treatment at Abu Ghraib; MG Anthony Taguba was ordered to investigate. MG Taguba, in his report,  said Sanchez' decision to put the prison under the control of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade was an unwise decision, because it “effectively made an MI Officer, rather than an MP officer, responsible for the MP units conducting detainee operations at that facility. This is not doctrinally sound due to the different missions and agenda assigned to each of these respective specialties.” He also criticized Miller's assumptions about priorities, saying "the intelligence value of detainees held at...Guantánamo is different than that of the detainees/internees held at Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities in Iraq....There are a large number of Iraqi criminals held at Abu Ghraib."

Testimony indicated that Pappas personally approved pressure techniques including the use of dogs. According to a military prosecutor, MAJ Matthew Miller, Pappas approved a request from interrogators to use dogs on three resistant detainees, "admitted he failed to ask" LTG Sanchez for approval as the CJTF7 procedures required.

Executive Order 13440
With Executive Order 13440, President George W. Bush reaffirmed, in July 2007, his determination "that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 defines certain prohibitions of Common Article 3 for United States law, and it reaffirms and reinforces the authority of the President to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions." He approved CIA programs that:
 * Do not torture, as defined by 2340 of title 18USC2340 or constitute other acts defined by 18USC2441
 * Violate the Military Commissions Act of 2006 or the Detainee Treatment Act
 * Are applied to an alien detainee, who is determined, by the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DCIA) "to be a member or part of or supporting al Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated organizations; and [is] likely to be in possession of information that:
 * could assist in detecting, mitigating, or preventing terrorist attacks, such as attacks within the United States or against its Armed Forces or other personnel, citizens, or facilities, or against allies or other countries cooperating in the war on terror with the United States, or their armed forces or other personnel, citizens, or facilities; or
 * could assist in locating the senior leadership of al Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces"
 * Are determined, by the DCIA, "based upon professional advice, to be safe for use with each detainee with whom they are used
 * Provide detainees in the program receive the basic necessities of life, including adequate food and water, shelter from the elements, necessary clothing, protection from extremes of heat and cold, and essential medical care.

Transition and the Obama Administration
Intelligence experts increasingly questioned the emphasis on coercive approaches. One conference concluded "Non-coercive, traditional, rapport-based interviewing approaches provide the best possibility for obtaining accurate and complete intelligence." The participants described the proper approach as analogous to seduction. "For anyone who has been involved in a seduction, it will be immediately clear that coercion simply will not work. What works is the exact opposite – a careful and thoughtful exchange of ideas and attitudes that will help the interrogator find a path to the desired intelligence." This differs with the policies from 2002-2007. Such feedback, along with court decisions, caused the Bush Administration to modify some policies, and, just before the end of the Administration, to disavow some.

Shortly after taking office, President Obama revoked Executive Order 13440 of July 20, 2007. All executive directives, orders, and regulations inconsistent with this order, including but not limited to those issued to or by CIA from September 11, 2001, to January 20, 2009, concerning detention or the interrogation of detained individuals, are revoked to the extent of their inconsistency with this order.

Taguba has expressed support for a nonpartisan, nonprosecutorial investigation to understand what went wrong in the prior administration's decisionmaking, and how to prevent it in the future.