Defense Officials Told To Keep Mum

DECEMBER 7--Weeks after the disclosure of the abuse of detainees at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, Department of Defense officials reported continuing brutalization of Iraqi insurgents at the hands of military interrogators, according to a just released memo. When Defense Intelligence Agency officials objected to the treatment, they were allegedly threatened and told to shut up by the interrogators, wrote DIA chief Lowell E. Jacoby in a June 25 memo to Stephen Cambone, the Pentagon's under secretary of defense for intelligence. The document, which you'll find below, was released by the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained the document via a lawsuit filed against the U.S. government. Among the abuse cited in the memo, the DIA workers reported seeing a Special Operations interrogator "punch a prisoner in the face to the point the individual needed medical attention." After a DIA worker took photos of the injured Iraqi, the images were confiscated by his superior in the Special Ops unit known as Task Force 6-26. (2 pages)