“Chain of Command”

The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib¹

by H. Frei, Zurich/Switzerland

In May 2004, the magazine The New Yorker published several texts by Seymour M. Hersh in which he described the cases of torture at the Baghdad Abu Ghraib prison. It was this magazine which also published articles by Hannah Arendt at the beginning of the 1960s about the Eichmann2 trials in Jerusalem, a report, which was later published in the book “Eichmann in Jerusalem”.

So, what is the book “Chain of Command – the Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib” about? Seymour Hersh has been a legendary investigative reporter since 1969 when he brought the My Lai story in Vietnam to light. Chain of Command is full of information and specific details of the events since the attacks of September 11, 2001, including intelligence failures prior to 9/11. Hersh describes the “other war” in Afghanistan with its secret battles, the evacuation of Pakistani army members from Afghanistan, which enabled an unknown number of Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters to join in the exodus from Afghanistan. He also describes the corruption of the Saudi family and Richard Perle’s business dealings with Adnan Kashoggi, the arms dealer. There is a chapter specifically on Pakistan, a country in possession of atomic bombs and whose president, General Pervez Musharraf, is regarded by the US as an ally in the fight against terrorism. Finally, Hersh analyses the situation in the Middle East after 9/11, as well as the situation in Iran, which could become the next country to possess atomic weapons, the role of Israel, Turkey and the Kurds.

Hersh exposes the massacre of My Lai in Viet Nam

Seymour Hersh became well-known world wide when in 1969 he exposed the massacre of My Lai during the Viet Nam war. In March 1968, soldiers of the 11th Brigade of the US forces killed at least 500 civilians – among them many women, children, babies and elderly persons – during an operation which had begun as a search for Vietcong soldiers. The soldiers shot a number of these civilians from helicopters, others at close range on the ground. There were also incidents of rape and torture. After hours of fighting and the resultant bloodbath, the soldiers set the village of My Lai on fire and left a mass of corpses behind them.

The torture scandal in Abu Ghraib

In 2004 Hersh again caused a stir when he played a decisive role in uncovering the torture scandal in the Iraqi Abu Ghraib prison. In his book, “Chain of Command – The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib” he documents the manner in which sensitive intelligence was gathered and disseminated within the Bush administration. Hersh details how serious decisions were made in secret by a small handful of people and how they violated human rights by revoking regulations of the constitutional state. In the course of his investigations, Hersh came across a Special Access Program SAP, which permitted worldwide acts, torture and murder by a special unit, beyond the law. This group, for which legal rights, the law and international conventions did not exist, also had the say in the prison torture in Abu Ghraib. With the help of this unit, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld wanted to make the “manhunt”, as he called it, more effective than the one initiated by high ranking members of the Pentagon with their hesitant approach.

A top secret American special task force operated in Abu Ghraib. Simple military policemen, who carried out the abuse at the end of the “chain of command“, were then punished.

The USA maintains secret prisons in Singapore, Thailand, Pakistan and other friendly nations. The order of the US government was to soft-knock the prisoners in these prisons in order to learn everything that could be useful in the war against terrorism. – The White House fights terror with its own terror, Hersh states. – Bush talked about “smoking them out in their holes” and capturing them “dead or alive”. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld was the one who developed the necessary mechanisms. It was of no use that prominent CIA people pointed out that no useful information could be obtained by torture.

Since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has increasingly regarded the murder of Al Qaeda members as a justifiable military act in a new war. Lawyers of the Department of Defence ultimately decided that the murder of particular individuals was not illegal according to martial law.

A former secret service member stated that one of his reasons for quitting the service was that the government only made use of information collected by CIA and other intelligence services if it fitted in with their agenda.

CIA did not want a second Phoenix murder program in Iraq

Even before the torture of prisoners in Iraq became evident, members of the American secret service CIA had protested against the “treatment” of arrested persons, Hersh writes. The Agency contacted its lawyers and terminated its activities in Abu Ghraib which were connected with the secret special access program. A former secret service member said that they would never debase their soldiers for that and that they had once done so. During the Vietnam War, the Phoenix program of the CIA for the elimination of North Vietnamese agents in South Vietnam got out of control. According to South Vietnamese statistics, between 1968 and 1972 nearly 41,000 people became victims of the murder program initiated by the American secret service. At that time, civilians were secretly eliminated for being presumed communist sympathizers; however, most of them had nothing at all to do with the Vietcong guerrilla organization.

Where does Seymour Hersh get his information?

Seymour Hersh is called the leading investigative reporter in America. His revelations are not based on statements of the ‘weather forecaster’, some ‘nice ex-leftie’ or ‘opponents of the American power policy’, Hersh says. He gets them from ‘good, old-fashioned supporters of our constitution’. A long time ago, he realized that people should not be judged by their political opinions. It is more important to ask if they are people of integrity or not. Hersh has well-placed sources inside the government, intelligence community, military, and the diplomatic corps which allows him access to a wide range of information unavailable to most reporters. Contrary to Noam Chomsky, who lines up the whole imperial economic and power politics of the USA in his sights, Hersh analyses the processes within the system, their legality, the chain of command.

How could neoconservative ideologists succeed?

In the epilogue of his book Seymour Hersh asks the question, how those eight or nine neocons in Washington were able to make it to the top, those people who regarded it as appropriate to attack Iraq in the so-called war against the terrorism. Why was this group able to reverse the policy of the American government so easily and throw fixed priorities of US politics overboard? How did they succeed in playing bureaucratic institutions off against each other, in intimidating the press, in pulling the wool over Congress’ eyes and in subordinating the military forces?

In his report, “Chain of Command” Seymour Hersh tries to give an answer to all these questions, probably knowing that there is still so much we do not know and will perhaps never know about the presidency of George W. Bush.

Note: Hersh’s latest article in the New Yorker details the Pentagon’s plans for Iran – and for expanded covert activities.

1 Seymour M. Hersh. Chain of Command – The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 0060195916

2 Karl Adolf Eichmann, the high-ranking German official who was hanged by the state of Israel for his part in the Holocaust, the Nazi extermination of Jews during World War II.