A CIA officer who oversaw the agencys interrogation program at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and pushed for approval for increasingly harsh tactics has come under scrutiny in a federal war crimes investigation involving the death of a prisoner,witnesses said. Steve Stormoen,who is now retired from the CIA,supervised an unofficial program in which the CIA imprisoned and interrogated men without entering their names in the Armys books. The so-called ghosting program was unsanctioned by CIA headquarters. In fact,in early 2003,CIA lawyers expressly prohibited the agency from running its own interrogations,current and former intelligence officials said. The lawyers said agency officers could be present during military interrogations and add their expertise but,under the laws of war,the military must always have the lead. Yet,in November 2003,CIA officers brought a prisoner,Manadel al-Jamadi,to Abu Ghraib and,instead of turning him over to the Army,took him to a shower stall. They put a sandbag over his head,handcuffed him behind his back and chained his arms to a barred window. When he leaned forward,his arms stretched painfully behind and above his back. The CIA interrogated al-Jamadi alone. Within an hour,he was dead. Now,nearly eight years after a photo of an Army officer grinning over al-Jamadis body became an indelible image in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal,federal prosecutors are investigating whether al-Jamadis death amounted to a war crime. The instructions from CIA lawyers could become an important element of the inquiry. Though its not required for prosecutors to show that someone knew such interrogations were against the rules,its still valuable evidence, said David Crane,a Syracuse law professor and former war crimes prosecutor. The instructions also undercut the argument that CIA officers were simply following rules laid out by their superiors. The government can say,He was told not to,and he went ahead and did it anyways, Crane said. Stormoen,who ran what was known as the detainee exploitation cell,processed al-Jamadi into the prison but was not in the shower room when al-Jamadi died. Stormoen,56,was part of the CIAs paramilitary arm,the Special Activities Division,after leaving the Army. He retired after al-Jamadis death and received a letter of reprimand for his role in Abu Ghraib.
