Some Seek Broad, External Inquiry on Prisoner Abuse

"My understanding is that the investigators will take their investigation wherever it leads them," Lawrence T. DiRita, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, said at a news conference yesterday. ". . . There's certainly no predetermined level above which the investigators -- are off-limits to the investigators."

As proof the military can credibly investigate itself, defense officials point to Taguba's work. Completed in April, his report has drawn widespread praise for its thoroughness and integrity.

But Taguba's charter was limited to looking at the 800th Military Police Brigade and its management of detention facilities in Iraq. Although Taguba implicated some military intelligence personnel in the abuses, he did not pursue those leads, nor -- as he told the Senate -- did he interview U.S. military authorities above the level of brigade commander. Among those not interviewed was Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, who ordered the inquiry.

A separate investigation, initiated in late April and headed by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, is looking into the role of military interrogators. But Fay serves as deputy to the head of Army intelligence, which puts him in the chain of command of the units he is investigating.

The Army has two other inquiries underway. Since February, the service's inspector general, Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek, has been reviewing doctrine and training associated with detention operations throughout the U.S. Central Command area. Preliminary findings have cited problems in training, organization and doctrine but no "pattern of abuse" of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Senate testimony this month by Gen. John P. Abizaid, the head of Central Command.

Additionally, since March, the inspector general of the Army Reserve, Col. Beverly Ertman, has been assessing the training given military police and intelligence personnel on the laws of land warfare, ethics, leadership and Army values.

Earlier this month, the Navy's inspector general, Vice Adm. Albert Church, received orders to look at operations at two prisons outside Iraq and Afghanistan holding terrorist suspects -- the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the naval brig at Charleston, S.C.

Apart from those administrative reviews, the Army's Criminal Investigation Division is pursuing dozens of alleged abuse cases in Iraq and Afghanistan. Army officials said Friday that of nine open cases involving prisoner deaths since 2002, eight were determined by medical examiners to be possible homicides, involving acts committed before or during an interrogation. Investigators also are looking into an additional 42 potential cases of misconduct against civilians that occurred outside detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Regarding the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, criminal charges have been brought against seven military police reservists but not against any military intelligence personnel, although the military guards say they acted under the direction of intelligence soldiers.

A senior Army officer with direct knowledge of the criminal probes said at a Pentagon briefing Friday that investigators have targeted military intelligence personnel. But responsibility for bringing charges rests with field commanders, he added.

Concerned that his client and other lower-ranking soldiers charged so far will end up shouldering all the blame, Gary Myers, a civilian military lawyer representing Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II, requested a special "court of inquiry" earlier this month. Such an inquiry, consisting of senior officers outside the chain of command at issue, was convened after a U.S. Navy submarine collided with a Japanese fishing boat near Hawaii in 2001.

But Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, the convening court-martial authority in the Abu Ghraib case, rejected the idea, informing Myers he saw no legal basis for it.

President Bush and other senior administration officials continue to portray the abuses largely as isolated incidents carried out by a small number of soldiers. But some defense experts suspect that the Pentagon may be trying to prevent investigations from exposing the possible existence of a secret intelligence-gathering effort that either overlapped with some of the publicized abuses or operated in the same combat zones.

An article in the New Yorker magazine this month by Seymour Hersh reported that as part of the administration's war on terrorism, Rumsfeld established a highly classified "special access program" aimed at capturing and interrogating "high value" individuals. The Pentagon has not confirmed such a program.

"Every intelligence operation has a breakaway point, where you try to protect the organization with a cover story," Hamre said. "What some people are saying is that the Pentagon is still trying to keep the breakaway line at the rogue-soldier level."

Others pointed to less covert factors that are complicating decisions by both the administration and Congress on how to investigate the detainee scandal.

"One thing that makes this unusual is that it is happening in wartime, where the results have the potential of affecting the war itself," said Peter D. Feaver, a professor of political science and public policy at Duke University. "The other factor is the presidential election. Any investigating commission set up now might get sucked into a partisan fight."

Rumsfeld and other senior defense officials also warned several weeks ago, as news of the abuses began to emerge, that the Pentagon ability's to investigate -- and publicize what it finds -- would be constrained by the need to avoid trampling on rights of the accused and jeopardizing future prosecutions.

Nonetheless, members of the outside panel set up by Rumsfeld say they intend to make their study as comprehensive as possible and to take advantage of the defense secretary's pledge to provide whatever documents and interviews with Pentagon personnel they request.

"We'll probably be doing some kind of timeline to start with -- who knew what when," said Fowler, one of the four members. "Each of us is pretty independent. The one thing you can be sure of from us is, ours will be a really thorough and reasoned review."

Staff writers Scott Higham, R. Jeffrey Smith and Joe Stephens contributed to this report.