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Rumsfeld Apologizes for Abuse Before Senate Committee

Aired May 07, 2004 - 14:48   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Miles O'Brien at CNN Center in Atlanta. Stay close to your TVs. Round two of Rumsfeld's grilling by members of Congress begins in short order, about 15 minutes from now. As long as it takes Rumsfeld and his entourage to get across the Capitol and the other committee to get ready. CNN, of course, will bring it to you live as it happens.
In the meantime, we've been listening to the morning events as you have, we hope, at home along, with an expert here, military intelligence analyst Ken Robinson who has a lot of background in all of these areas.

Ken, glad to have you with us. First of all, let's talk about, among the bombshells which might have come out here today, the revelation that there are many more pictures and perhaps video out there. That in and of itself indicates this has the possibility of expanding even further, if that's possible.

KEN ROBINSON, CNN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Video makes it more painful from several levels. On an information level the fact that you see moving pictures and you hear sound and you hear possibly the discomfort or torture. That's going to have a reverb rating effect.

But more importantly, what's the source of the video? Is it from military police taking pictures? Or is it from an interrogation camera controlled by an intelligence booth? If that's the case, then it might expand the circle of people who might be witting.

So the big question there will be what's the source of the video?

O'BRIEN: So it's really important to point out that if it's just video versions of the still pictures we've seen, that's one thing. If it shows interrogations which might be questionable, we're in a whole different realm.

ROBINSON: Completely different. It will cause the circle to expand widely and it will go up the chain of command quite far, quite fast.

O'BRIEN: And interrogations such as this, as I understand it, are routinely any videotaped for various reasons.

ROBINSON: Yes. Interrogations are planned. And there's an interrogation plan that's produced, it's coordinated. The ideas in it are shared with how you're going to find an approach for a specific prisoner.

And then it's videotaped and observed and a cast of thousands may be standing behind in a booth or observing or listening and giving recommendations to the interrogator of new approaches to try.

So there's a lot of people with their fingerprints on the body.

O'BRIEN: Someone who is trained to do this sort of interrogation spends a lot of time learning the rules of engagement. Specifically, the Geneva Convention which the U.S. upholds. Give us a sense of in the course of training how much attention is focused on that very point.

ROBINSON: That's a question that I knew generally but I didn't know the exact specific numbers and have been checking on that in the last 24 hours.

Over -- and we have got a graphic if we can show that -- 695 total hours of instruction that is taught for the interrogator course at Fort Wachuka, Arizona. And of that 192 hours are completely focused on the Geneva convention in the law of the land warfare, 1/3 of the training in for this long course.

O'BRIEN: So what you're saying is it is presented as a priority in that training.

Let's listen quickly. There was an interesting exchange between Senator McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Secretary Rumsfeld. Let's listen to that for just a moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: What were the instructions to the guards?

DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: That is what the investigation that I've indicated has been undertaking is determining...

MCCAIN: Mr. Secretary, that's a simple, straightforward question.

RUMSFELD: Well, the -- as chief of staff of the Army can tell you the guards are trained to guard people. They're not trained to interrogate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: All right. Quickly then, this is not something that is left up to any gray area. This is stuff that everybody should understand in a situation like that. In fact, the marching orders would be written down, wouldn't they?

ROBINSON: Yes, doctrinally, the military police control the movement prisoners of war or detainees and they own the prison. The chain of command from General Karpinski down is responsibility for the safety, security, and the good health and good order and discipline inside that prison. That's the doctrine.

Now, there's a chain of custody handoff when an interrogator wants to interrogate the prisoner. And military police are in that loop and they pass that prisoner to the military intelligence who has a plan which he's produced, which has been chopped on. And then he goes about executing that plan trying to get combat information of the next attack.

O'BRIEN: But the two groups tend to butt heads, don't they, because there's a turf issue there.

ROBINSON: There's friction naturally between the two.

O'BRIEN: All right, Ken Robinson, appreciate your insights.

ROBINSON: You're welcome.

O'BRIEN: Six American soldiers have been charged in the Iraqi prisoner scandal. Those are under scrutiny. Their families are slowing coming forward to defend them. Relatives of Army Reservist Lynndie England say she is being used as a scapegoat. Her family spoke to the media a short while ago in Fountain, West Virginia. And that's where we find Kathleen Koch -- Kathleen.

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is a small town here, Miles. Fountain, West Virginia. It's just about ten miles southwest of where young 21-year-old Lynndie England grew up in Fort Ashby, West Virginia. And an attorney for her company who accompanied her sister and best friend here to this press conference today said that they were holding it to show a little more flattering image of her, a little more image of this young woman that we have seen in so many of these horrific photos over the last week.

He said, quote, "We want you to know that she's a human being." So what they brought were photos, smiling photos of Lynndie with her family, photos after her high school graduation, photos of her after the prom with her best friend.

And when her sister spoke out, her sister Jessica Kleinstiner and her best friend Destiny Goin, they describe England as a role model. They said she is kind, she's dependable, she's strong. They said that they believe, in this case, she was doing nothing more than following orders.

They insisted over and over again they thought these photos had been posed, that they had been staged. And that neither Lynndie nor anyone with her was hurting anyone, any of these prisoners.

And again as you said, they maintain definitively that in their opinion, at least, she's been made a scapegoat.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JESSICA KLEINSTINER, LYNNDIE ENGLAND'S SISTER: You don't know her. You're just looking at pictures and just saying what you want. And that's not her. QUESTION: So what do you want us to know about her?

KLEINSTINER: The type of person she is. I mean that's not the type of person she is. I mean she'd do anything. If any one of you would need money for anything, my sister would give you money without wanting money in return. That's how he is.

She would help you if she needed help moving, she would be over to help lift a big couch or something. It wouldn't matter. All you have to do is call and she would drop everything she's doing to help you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOCH: One of the other photos we was of a Specialist Charles Graner. That is who the attorney here said is the father of Lynndie England's child. He says right now she's 5 months pregnant. The military is restricting her movements to Fort Bragg, North Carolina and the surrounding area. But as yet, she's not been charged -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Kathleen Koch in West Virginia. Thanks very much.

So should the secretary resign? Let's debate it with two guests in Washington. Lawrence Korb is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. And Frank Gaffney is the founder and president of the Center for Security Policy.

Mr. Gaffney, let's begin with you. Should the secretary resign? And I guess the question of timing is also a subquestion of all of this.

FRANK GAFFNEY, FOUNDER, PRES., CENTER FOR SECURITY POLICY: I don't think he should resign over this particular debacle. I think it is a debacle. I think it is, has been said by everybody throughout the course of the hearing today, sickening that some Americans did this. I don't believe that he is responsible for them having done it.

O'BRIEN: Why not? Doesn't the buck stop at the top and all that?

GAFFNEY: The buck does stop at the top. And the question of sorting out how this happened and where the chain of command allowed it to happen is something that I think the secretary of defense should preside over. He accepted responsibility in that sense.

It's just in the sense of eliminating him from this position at this particular moment in time, when I think he is clearly one of the not the most effective member of the president's cabinet and the guy on point in a war, would be self-defeating and I believe very counter productive.

O'BRIEN: Mr. Korb, that is a good point. We're in the middle of a war. And is this a time to be changing the person at the top at the Pentagon? LAWRENCE KORB, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: Well, I think it is because the war we're in is a war against -- to win the hearts and minds of people in the Muslim world. And unless the secretary resigns because the president can't obviously, we're not going to get over the problems we created by the abuses in the prison.

This has setback the American attempt to convince people in that part of the world that we're there to help them that we're not their enemies. Unless Rumsfeld goes, they won't get that message.

He also ought to resign because he's responsible for what happened because, A, he's set the tone by saying that they were going the ignore the Geneva Convention and then didn't plan adequately for what would happen after Saddam fell.

Those troops that were sent over there were sent over on quick notice. They weren't trained because he ignored the General Shinseki's advice, the Army Chief of Staff, who told him before the war that after Saddam fell you'd need several hundred thousand troops there. We didn't have that many. We rushed the reservists over.

And he also ought to resign because when this happened, by letting the media release this rather than getting out ahead of it, he endangered the lives of the soldiers there because he turned more people toward the insurgency.

O'BRIEN: Lots on the plate. Mr. Gaffney, let's talk about the issue of boots on the ground in Iraq because if you look at a lot of the problems that the U.S. is dealing with in Iraq, it goes back to, in many cases, lack of forces, lack of capability, lack of people on the ground.

Does that in and of itself constitute grounds for resignation on the part of the secretary?

GAFFNEY: I don't think so. Many of the indictments that Larry's just rendered are like this one. They're all convenient and just unfortunately not relevant given the facts as we know them.

The fact as we know on the case of the boots on the ground is the guys on the ground, the people who commend these forces were, as Secretary Rumsfeld said several times, I think, in the hearing, the guys who were setting the numbers of people they had.

They needed and they didn't want a larger, as they call it, footprint there than was necessary. They wanted this to be more Iraqi than American at the earliest moment as possible.

And on the question did the secretary set a bad tone, I don't think so. I think the secretary made it clear that people who conceal themselves as civilians are not going to be treated the same way as people who are in combat in designated military units and in uniform. That's a distinction noted by the Geneva Convention, by the way.

And finally, on the question of is there some inadequate disclosure by the secretary, that he was concealing it, that he the media represent it, I think that he made a very compelling case here. The uniform code of military justice requires, requires him, and many the subsequent subordinate commanders to stay out of this process less they be interfering with it.

That cannot be lightly set aside. And it may seem inconvenient, and it certainly is inconvenient to the political argument, which is I think what Larry's making here that the secretary should go. But it is a fact and it is crucial to how our forces operate and expect to be treated under the law.

O'BRIEN: But in essence though what that leaves the secretary, any secretary in this case, is putting himself in the position ultimately of judging himself, doesn't it?

(CROSSTALK)

GAFFNEY: ... position of judging himself. It puts him in the playing the appropriate role in the chain of command. When the report gets to him in the appropriate order, he then plays the role that he is supposed to play. It's when he's asked to play it before then, he's asked to start disclosing information that's been developed for the trial? I mean, that's crazy! And it would be completely inappropriate.

O'BRIEN: Mr. Korb.

KORB: No, no. He could have alerted the president, the American people and the world about those pictures that had nothing to do with the charges that were presented, because, in General Taguba's report, right in the front, he outlines what are in those pictures. So he could have done that without inferring in any way with the uniform code of military justice.

(CROSSTALK)

O'BRIEN: We have to leave it there unfortunately because it's a busy day in Washington, as you well know. Lawrence Korb and Frank Gaffney, thank you very much for sharing with us the pros and cons of all that.

Let's go to Judy Woodruff now who is in Washington. She'll take us down the next round of testimony from the secretary of defense and his entourage.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired May 7, 2004 - 14:48   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Miles O'Brien at CNN Center in Atlanta. Stay close to your TVs. Round two of Rumsfeld's grilling by members of Congress begins in short order, about 15 minutes from now. As long as it takes Rumsfeld and his entourage to get across the Capitol and the other committee to get ready. CNN, of course, will bring it to you live as it happens.
In the meantime, we've been listening to the morning events as you have, we hope, at home along, with an expert here, military intelligence analyst Ken Robinson who has a lot of background in all of these areas.

Ken, glad to have you with us. First of all, let's talk about, among the bombshells which might have come out here today, the revelation that there are many more pictures and perhaps video out there. That in and of itself indicates this has the possibility of expanding even further, if that's possible.

KEN ROBINSON, CNN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Video makes it more painful from several levels. On an information level the fact that you see moving pictures and you hear sound and you hear possibly the discomfort or torture. That's going to have a reverb rating effect.

But more importantly, what's the source of the video? Is it from military police taking pictures? Or is it from an interrogation camera controlled by an intelligence booth? If that's the case, then it might expand the circle of people who might be witting.

So the big question there will be what's the source of the video?

O'BRIEN: So it's really important to point out that if it's just video versions of the still pictures we've seen, that's one thing. If it shows interrogations which might be questionable, we're in a whole different realm.

ROBINSON: Completely different. It will cause the circle to expand widely and it will go up the chain of command quite far, quite fast.

O'BRIEN: And interrogations such as this, as I understand it, are routinely any videotaped for various reasons.

ROBINSON: Yes. Interrogations are planned. And there's an interrogation plan that's produced, it's coordinated. The ideas in it are shared with how you're going to find an approach for a specific prisoner.

And then it's videotaped and observed and a cast of thousands may be standing behind in a booth or observing or listening and giving recommendations to the interrogator of new approaches to try.

So there's a lot of people with their fingerprints on the body.

O'BRIEN: Someone who is trained to do this sort of interrogation spends a lot of time learning the rules of engagement. Specifically, the Geneva Convention which the U.S. upholds. Give us a sense of in the course of training how much attention is focused on that very point.

ROBINSON: That's a question that I knew generally but I didn't know the exact specific numbers and have been checking on that in the last 24 hours.

Over -- and we have got a graphic if we can show that -- 695 total hours of instruction that is taught for the interrogator course at Fort Wachuka, Arizona. And of that 192 hours are completely focused on the Geneva convention in the law of the land warfare, 1/3 of the training in for this long course.

O'BRIEN: So what you're saying is it is presented as a priority in that training.

Let's listen quickly. There was an interesting exchange between Senator McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Secretary Rumsfeld. Let's listen to that for just a moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: What were the instructions to the guards?

DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: That is what the investigation that I've indicated has been undertaking is determining...

MCCAIN: Mr. Secretary, that's a simple, straightforward question.

RUMSFELD: Well, the -- as chief of staff of the Army can tell you the guards are trained to guard people. They're not trained to interrogate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: All right. Quickly then, this is not something that is left up to any gray area. This is stuff that everybody should understand in a situation like that. In fact, the marching orders would be written down, wouldn't they?

ROBINSON: Yes, doctrinally, the military police control the movement prisoners of war or detainees and they own the prison. The chain of command from General Karpinski down is responsibility for the safety, security, and the good health and good order and discipline inside that prison. That's the doctrine.

Now, there's a chain of custody handoff when an interrogator wants to interrogate the prisoner. And military police are in that loop and they pass that prisoner to the military intelligence who has a plan which he's produced, which has been chopped on. And then he goes about executing that plan trying to get combat information of the next attack.

O'BRIEN: But the two groups tend to butt heads, don't they, because there's a turf issue there.

ROBINSON: There's friction naturally between the two.

O'BRIEN: All right, Ken Robinson, appreciate your insights.

ROBINSON: You're welcome.

O'BRIEN: Six American soldiers have been charged in the Iraqi prisoner scandal. Those are under scrutiny. Their families are slowing coming forward to defend them. Relatives of Army Reservist Lynndie England say she is being used as a scapegoat. Her family spoke to the media a short while ago in Fountain, West Virginia. And that's where we find Kathleen Koch -- Kathleen.

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is a small town here, Miles. Fountain, West Virginia. It's just about ten miles southwest of where young 21-year-old Lynndie England grew up in Fort Ashby, West Virginia. And an attorney for her company who accompanied her sister and best friend here to this press conference today said that they were holding it to show a little more flattering image of her, a little more image of this young woman that we have seen in so many of these horrific photos over the last week.

He said, quote, "We want you to know that she's a human being." So what they brought were photos, smiling photos of Lynndie with her family, photos after her high school graduation, photos of her after the prom with her best friend.

And when her sister spoke out, her sister Jessica Kleinstiner and her best friend Destiny Goin, they describe England as a role model. They said she is kind, she's dependable, she's strong. They said that they believe, in this case, she was doing nothing more than following orders.

They insisted over and over again they thought these photos had been posed, that they had been staged. And that neither Lynndie nor anyone with her was hurting anyone, any of these prisoners.

And again as you said, they maintain definitively that in their opinion, at least, she's been made a scapegoat.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JESSICA KLEINSTINER, LYNNDIE ENGLAND'S SISTER: You don't know her. You're just looking at pictures and just saying what you want. And that's not her. QUESTION: So what do you want us to know about her?

KLEINSTINER: The type of person she is. I mean that's not the type of person she is. I mean she'd do anything. If any one of you would need money for anything, my sister would give you money without wanting money in return. That's how he is.

She would help you if she needed help moving, she would be over to help lift a big couch or something. It wouldn't matter. All you have to do is call and she would drop everything she's doing to help you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOCH: One of the other photos we was of a Specialist Charles Graner. That is who the attorney here said is the father of Lynndie England's child. He says right now she's 5 months pregnant. The military is restricting her movements to Fort Bragg, North Carolina and the surrounding area. But as yet, she's not been charged -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Kathleen Koch in West Virginia. Thanks very much.

So should the secretary resign? Let's debate it with two guests in Washington. Lawrence Korb is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. And Frank Gaffney is the founder and president of the Center for Security Policy.

Mr. Gaffney, let's begin with you. Should the secretary resign? And I guess the question of timing is also a subquestion of all of this.

FRANK GAFFNEY, FOUNDER, PRES., CENTER FOR SECURITY POLICY: I don't think he should resign over this particular debacle. I think it is a debacle. I think it is, has been said by everybody throughout the course of the hearing today, sickening that some Americans did this. I don't believe that he is responsible for them having done it.

O'BRIEN: Why not? Doesn't the buck stop at the top and all that?

GAFFNEY: The buck does stop at the top. And the question of sorting out how this happened and where the chain of command allowed it to happen is something that I think the secretary of defense should preside over. He accepted responsibility in that sense.

It's just in the sense of eliminating him from this position at this particular moment in time, when I think he is clearly one of the not the most effective member of the president's cabinet and the guy on point in a war, would be self-defeating and I believe very counter productive.

O'BRIEN: Mr. Korb, that is a good point. We're in the middle of a war. And is this a time to be changing the person at the top at the Pentagon? LAWRENCE KORB, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: Well, I think it is because the war we're in is a war against -- to win the hearts and minds of people in the Muslim world. And unless the secretary resigns because the president can't obviously, we're not going to get over the problems we created by the abuses in the prison.

This has setback the American attempt to convince people in that part of the world that we're there to help them that we're not their enemies. Unless Rumsfeld goes, they won't get that message.

He also ought to resign because he's responsible for what happened because, A, he's set the tone by saying that they were going the ignore the Geneva Convention and then didn't plan adequately for what would happen after Saddam fell.

Those troops that were sent over there were sent over on quick notice. They weren't trained because he ignored the General Shinseki's advice, the Army Chief of Staff, who told him before the war that after Saddam fell you'd need several hundred thousand troops there. We didn't have that many. We rushed the reservists over.

And he also ought to resign because when this happened, by letting the media release this rather than getting out ahead of it, he endangered the lives of the soldiers there because he turned more people toward the insurgency.

O'BRIEN: Lots on the plate. Mr. Gaffney, let's talk about the issue of boots on the ground in Iraq because if you look at a lot of the problems that the U.S. is dealing with in Iraq, it goes back to, in many cases, lack of forces, lack of capability, lack of people on the ground.

Does that in and of itself constitute grounds for resignation on the part of the secretary?

GAFFNEY: I don't think so. Many of the indictments that Larry's just rendered are like this one. They're all convenient and just unfortunately not relevant given the facts as we know them.

The fact as we know on the case of the boots on the ground is the guys on the ground, the people who commend these forces were, as Secretary Rumsfeld said several times, I think, in the hearing, the guys who were setting the numbers of people they had.

They needed and they didn't want a larger, as they call it, footprint there than was necessary. They wanted this to be more Iraqi than American at the earliest moment as possible.

And on the question did the secretary set a bad tone, I don't think so. I think the secretary made it clear that people who conceal themselves as civilians are not going to be treated the same way as people who are in combat in designated military units and in uniform. That's a distinction noted by the Geneva Convention, by the way.

And finally, on the question of is there some inadequate disclosure by the secretary, that he was concealing it, that he the media represent it, I think that he made a very compelling case here. The uniform code of military justice requires, requires him, and many the subsequent subordinate commanders to stay out of this process less they be interfering with it.

That cannot be lightly set aside. And it may seem inconvenient, and it certainly is inconvenient to the political argument, which is I think what Larry's making here that the secretary should go. But it is a fact and it is crucial to how our forces operate and expect to be treated under the law.

O'BRIEN: But in essence though what that leaves the secretary, any secretary in this case, is putting himself in the position ultimately of judging himself, doesn't it?

(CROSSTALK)

GAFFNEY: ... position of judging himself. It puts him in the playing the appropriate role in the chain of command. When the report gets to him in the appropriate order, he then plays the role that he is supposed to play. It's when he's asked to play it before then, he's asked to start disclosing information that's been developed for the trial? I mean, that's crazy! And it would be completely inappropriate.

O'BRIEN: Mr. Korb.

KORB: No, no. He could have alerted the president, the American people and the world about those pictures that had nothing to do with the charges that were presented, because, in General Taguba's report, right in the front, he outlines what are in those pictures. So he could have done that without inferring in any way with the uniform code of military justice.

(CROSSTALK)

O'BRIEN: We have to leave it there unfortunately because it's a busy day in Washington, as you well know. Lawrence Korb and Frank Gaffney, thank you very much for sharing with us the pros and cons of all that.

Let's go to Judy Woodruff now who is in Washington. She'll take us down the next round of testimony from the secretary of defense and his entourage.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com