Former Powell aide links Cheney's office to abuse directives

Former Powell aide links Cheney's office to abuse directives - Print Version - International Herald Tribune: "Agence France-Presse | THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2005

WASHINGTON Vice President Dick Cheney's office was responsible for directives that led to U.S. soldiers' abusing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, a former top State Department official said Thursday.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, then the secretary of state, told National Public Radio he had traced a trail of memos and directives authorizing questionable detention practices up through Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's office directly to Cheney's staff.

'The secretary of defense under cover of the vice president's office,' Wilkerson said, 'regardless of the president having put out this memo' - 'they began to authorize procedures within the armed forces that led to what we've seen.'

He said the directives contradicted a 2002 order by President George W. Bush for the U.S. military to abide by the Geneva conventions against torture.

'There was a visible audit trail from the vice president's office through the secretary of defense, down to the commanders in the field,' authorizing practices that led to the abuse of detainees, Wilkerson said.

The directives were 'in carefully couched terms,' Wilkerson conceded, but said they had the effect of loosening the reins on U.S. troops, leading to many cases of prisoner abuse, including at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, that were contrary to the Geneva Conventions." ...