Ghost In The Machine

Senators yesterday expressed dismay and outrage over the fact that no senior Pentagon officials have been held accountable in the rampant cases of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Now there’s a new wrinkle. New, secret documents obtained by the Washington Post show "top military intelligence officers at the Abu Ghraib prison came to an agreement with the CIA to hide certain detainees at the facility without officially registering them." Keeping prisoners hidden, off the books, is in direct violation of international law. There have been reports of at least 100 "ghost" detainees held in prisons in Iraq, but the Pentagon previously said they must have just fallen through the cracks and weren’t part of any official arrangement. Now, however, Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, second in command of intelligence gathering at Abu Ghraib, told investigators that his superior, Col. Thomas M. Pappas, put in motion a secret procedure in November 2003 to keep detainees off the books for the CIA. Pappas told investigators that Jordan was the one who facilitated the arrangement with the CIA in the first place.