In New Manual, Army Limits Tactics in Interrogation

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By ERIC SCHMITT

Published: April 28, 2005

WASHINGTON, April 27 - The Army is preparing to issue a new interrogations manual that expressly bars the harsh techniques disclosed in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, and incorporates safeguards devised to prevent such misconduct at military prison camps in the future, Army officials said Wednesday.

The new manual, the first revision in 13 years, will specifically prohibit practices like stripping prisoners, keeping them in stressful positions for a long time, imposing dietary restrictions, employing police dogs to intimidate prisoners and using sleep deprivation as a tool to get them to talk, the officials said.

Those practices were not included in the manual in use when the bulk of the abuses occurred at Abu Ghraib in Iraq in the fall of 2003, but neither were they specifically banned.

Military investigations have faulted senior officials - including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former top commander in Iraq - for adding to the confusion by giving approval, and then rescinding it, for limited use of harsh techniques that went beyond what was allowed in the manual.

Accompanying the new manual, which runs more than 200 pages, will be a separate classified training document that will provide dozens of interrogation scenarios and go into exacting detail on what procedures may or may not be used, and in what circumstances.

As examples of the new rules, Thomas A. Gandy, director of human intelligence and counterintelligence for the Army, said interrogators questioning a prisoner in a small room could throw a chair against the wall in a fit of mock rage to frighten the captive, a technique called "fear up." But under no circumstance, he said, could the interrogator throw the chair at the prisoner or otherwise threaten him directly.

Army interrogators have never had such a set of specific guidelines that would help teach them how to walk right up to the line between legal and illegal interrogations.

"It's going to be specific yeses and noes," Mr. Gandy, a career military intelligence officer, said in an interview. He provided details from the manual's final draft and emphasized that the document would require adherence to the Geneva Conventions, as does the current manual.

The interrogations manual applies only to Army forces, but the Army controls the vast majority of detainee operations in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and Mr. Gandy said there had been a effort to synchronize the Army's policies with practices of the other armed services.

The new manual would not govern interrogations by the Central Intelligence Agency at its detention sites. But in a change, it expressly prohibits the C.I.A. from keeping unregistered prisoners, called "ghost detainees," at Army prisons like Abu Ghraib.

Mr. Gandy said the new document banned physical or mental torture, slapping or humiliation. But he declined to offer more examples of specific techniques that would be allowed, saying he did not want to tip off potential captives on what they could expect. "The key to interrogations is uncertainty and putting the guy on edge," he said. "We don't want to tell them where the edge is."

The revamped manual, titled "Human Intelligence Collector Operations," is part of a wide-ranging overhaul of interrogation and detention policies and operations undertaken by the Army, and the military in general. The Army, for instance, has embarked on a systematic revamping of its training and doctrine for military police and intelligence officials. The new manual contains a broader focus beyond interrogations to include how human intelligence officials run informant networks in the field.

The Army is planning to create 35 additional units specially trained in detention operations over the next three years. It is also preparing to add 9,000 military intelligence personnel, including 3,000 interrogators, case officers to run informant networks and other so-called human intelligence officials. Interrogators' final field exercise will last about 11 days instead of 5, Mr. Gandy said.

[Field_Sailor]

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