Line Increasingly Blurred Between Soldiers and Civilian Contractors

Yet, Cambone also noted, "there may have been circumstances under which this regulation was not followed." He said the issue is under investigation.

Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky (D-Ill.) last week asked President Bush to suspend the prison contracts until investigations are complete. She said she worries that contractors have divided loyalties. "Are they taking orders from their CEOs and shareholders and then telling our soldiers what to do?"

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said: "I'd like to know who was in charge . . . what agencies or private contractors were in charge of interrogations. Did they have authority over the guards? And what were their instructions to the guards?"

Contractors are not subject to military codes of conduct and not held to the same rules as government workers, including the Geneva Convention that protects human rights, defense analysts say. The Coalition Provisional Authority exempted contractors working for the occupation from Iraqi law; instead they are to follow the laws of their own countries and could be charged and tried at home for violations. Cambone testified that contractors are "subject to suspension from their contracts by the government for cause. Criminal sanctions may be pursued by federal authorities.

CACI chief executive J.P. "Jack" London has declined to discuss his employees' work at the prison but said the company is very selective in hiring interrogators, sending only 3 percent of the 1,600 applications to the military for approval. Most of the applicants had military training in interrogation and all of them had security clearances, London said.

In Iraq, the contract interrogators worked in three-person teams with a translator and an analyst. They answered to CACI managers, London said, and did not participate in the military chain of command.

The bureaucracy of the contracting process also complicates how contractor operations are run because it's unclear who the client is. For example, the request for contract interrogation support originally came from Command Joint Task Force 7, the military group that oversees coalition forces in Iraq. It was then sent to the Interior Department and processed at a federal business center at Fort Huachuca, Ariz. The Defense Department will pay for CACI's interrogation services.

Contract translators also are being investigated for their roles in abuses at Abu Ghraib and other facilities -- including one in which a detainee being questioned by the CIA died. The military is almost entirely dependent on contractors, and specifically on Titan, for Arabic interpreters.

Titan, which has a contract worth up to $657 million, employs 4,200 people worldwide who work with the military. The majority are assigned to Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar and Afghanistan, according to the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command.

More than a few of the interpreters are doctors, artists, grocery baggers, recent college graduates and others with no background in translating, according to interpreters and military officers in Iraq. Titan spokesman Wil Williams said interpreters hired in the United States and Iraq must pass oral and written exams demonstrating their fluency in Arabic and English, Williams said. The translators also go through a one-week program at Fort Benning, Ga., on how to work with the military, how to protect themselves and even on the Geneva Convention, he said. The Pentagon conducts a counterintelligence check on Iraqi translators to ensure that they are not former members of the Baath Party or should not be hired for other reasons.