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WASHINGTON - From the beginning, the concern was about the photographs.
Spc. Joseph M. Darby, a 24-year-old Army Reserve soldier with the 372nd Military Police Company of Cresaptown, Md., heard about the computerized photos and video of the detainees, naked and in humiliating poses, with his fellow soldiers smiling nearby.
He got a set of the photos on a computer disk, said an Army official familiar with the investigation. Troubled by the images that flashed on the screen Jan. 13, Darby turned them over to a sergeant in his unit, who immediately notified Army criminal investigators.
Within hours, the investigators seized computers and disks from members of the unit. The next day, Gen. John Abizaid, commander of all U.S. forces in the region, was on the phone to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
"General Abizaid informed the leadership within hours of the incident," said a senior Pentagon official.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the military's spokesman in Iraq, also called the Pentagon, though with more alarming words. "He said, 'We've got a really bad situation,' " recalled one official, who like others requested anonymity. "The evidence is damaging and horrific," Kimmitt said. The photos and video were locked in the safe of the Army Criminal Investigation Division in Baghdad.
Six soldiers from the 372nd were quickly taken off duty and there was a public announcement about the criminal probe, but few details.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the ground commander in Iraq, was briefed on the initial findings and within days asked Abizaid to order a broader investigation that would reach into the entire 800th Military Police Brigade, some 3,200 soldiers that included the Maryland-based unit. There was no announcement of that more extensive investigation.
That investigation fell to Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who spent the next 2 1/2 months trying to determine what happened at Abu Ghraib. But it didn't matter that the most incriminating evidence, the pictures, had been locked away.
E-mail
Officials now think that before the scandal erupted, the Maryland soldiers might have e-mailed those pictures back to the United States, where they fell into the hands of CBS's 60 Minutes II, which first ran them last Wednesday.
Other news organizations were also on to the story, including The New Yorker magazine. But the most concern centered on CBS. "The New Yorker was not going to run any pictures," said a senior Pentagon official.
Officials said they were kept abreast of the probe, which Taguba completed in March, when the six Maryland reservists were charged with crimes. Abizaid talked daily with Rumsfeld about Iraq, and the prison investigation likely came up often, officials said.
Top Pentagon leaders, such as Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, as well as President Bush were kept aware of the situation, said Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the CBS Early Show yesterday.
'Apprised orally'
When Myers appeared on the Sunday talk shows after the report had surfaced in the press, he told incredulous moderators that he had not yet read it.
However, "everyone was kept apprised orally of the ongoing investigation," Pace said. "So the fact that the paperwork did not get to Washington, D.C., did not mean that the information did not. In fact it did."
Bush said yesterday that he didn't see or know about the pictures until they were broadcast by CBS.
"The first time I saw or heard about pictures was on TV," he told the U.S. government sponsored Arabic language network Al-Hurra. His spokesman, Scott McClellan told reporters yesterday that Rumsfeld had told the president about the allegations of detainee abuse but McClellan said he did not know precisely when.
Spc. Joseph M. Darby, a 24-year-old Army Reserve soldier with the 372nd Military Police Company of Cresaptown, Md., heard about the computerized photos and video of the detainees, naked and in humiliating poses, with his fellow soldiers smiling nearby.
He got a set of the photos on a computer disk, said an Army official familiar with the investigation. Troubled by the images that flashed on the screen Jan. 13, Darby turned them over to a sergeant in his unit, who immediately notified Army criminal investigators.
Within hours, the investigators seized computers and disks from members of the unit. The next day, Gen. John Abizaid, commander of all U.S. forces in the region, was on the phone to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
"General Abizaid informed the leadership within hours of the incident," said a senior Pentagon official.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the military's spokesman in Iraq, also called the Pentagon, though with more alarming words. "He said, 'We've got a really bad situation,' " recalled one official, who like others requested anonymity. "The evidence is damaging and horrific," Kimmitt said. The photos and video were locked in the safe of the Army Criminal Investigation Division in Baghdad.
Six soldiers from the 372nd were quickly taken off duty and there was a public announcement about the criminal probe, but few details.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the ground commander in Iraq, was briefed on the initial findings and within days asked Abizaid to order a broader investigation that would reach into the entire 800th Military Police Brigade, some 3,200 soldiers that included the Maryland-based unit. There was no announcement of that more extensive investigation.
That investigation fell to Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who spent the next 2 1/2 months trying to determine what happened at Abu Ghraib. But it didn't matter that the most incriminating evidence, the pictures, had been locked away.
Other news organizations were also on to the story, including The New Yorker magazine. But the most concern centered on CBS. "The New Yorker was not going to run any pictures," said a senior Pentagon official.
Officials said they were kept abreast of the probe, which Taguba completed in March, when the six Maryland reservists were charged with crimes. Abizaid talked daily with Rumsfeld about Iraq, and the prison investigation likely came up often, officials said.
Top Pentagon leaders, such as Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, as well as President Bush were kept aware of the situation, said Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the CBS Early Show yesterday.
However, "everyone was kept apprised orally of the ongoing investigation," Pace said. "So the fact that the paperwork did not get to Washington, D.C., did not mean that the information did not. In fact it did."
Bush said yesterday that he didn't see or know about the pictures until they were broadcast by CBS.
"The first time I saw or heard about pictures was on TV," he told the U.S. government sponsored Arabic language network Al-Hurra. His spokesman, Scott McClellan told reporters yesterday that Rumsfeld had told the president about the allegations of detainee abuse but McClellan said he did not know precisely when.
