Statement of LTC, G2 planner for V Corps/CJTF-7; Annex to Fay/Jones/Kern Report

Sworn Statement of Privacy Act Statement Authority: 10 USC 301; 5 USC 2951; E0 9397, dated 22 Nov 43 Principal Purpose: To provide commanders and law enforcement officials with means by which information may be accurately identified. Routine Uses: Your social security number is used as an additional/ahernate means of identification to facilitate Mins and retrieve/ Disclosure: Disclosure of your social security number is voluntary Location: Heidelberg, Germany Date: 16 Jul 2004 Name. SSN: Rank: LTC Organization: V Corps, APO AE 09014 " Q: What is your current duty ent? V tale; I am currently the Deputy G-2 for tkr, USAREUR, Heidelberg, Germany Q: What unit were you assigned to in Iraq? I originally deployed to Iraq as the G-2 planner for V Corps which became CJTF-7 in JUN 03. For a short while, I was in the C-2, Ops. In OCT 03, I became the C-2 Chief of Staff under MG Fast. I departed Iraq in FEB 04. Q: Have you been interviewed previously about this matter? Yes, I was interviewed by someone out of the IG sho abo three and a half weeks ago I can't recall the name. I was also interviewed by T Abu Ghraib. Q: Do you recall attending the BUBs over there? Yes, I would generally attend the BUB during mornings and evenings. Regarding the comment that you were referring to, I can't recall any specific comment being made by LTG Sanchez. I do recall one instance where we all kind of collectively stopped and scratched our heads after a comment by the general, but I honestly can't recall the context of that comment. I do not even want to speculate as to what the substance of that comment was. Q: Do you recall a conversation you had with No, I don't recall any discussion wittlinillibout a comment, though we talked numerous times each day about lots of issue. It could have happened but I simply cannot remember. , issues related to commas tisfa n with contractor performance We bad a seniorCACI employee on the ground as a "contract team leader," so to speak, as the direct POC for the MI rigade. Q: In your opinion, is the use of contractors in future operations a viable option? Yes, although the command and control needs to be tight. The current active and reserve component structure isn't sufficient, at least for Cl/ HUMINT given current and foreseeable OPTEMPO. OIF I seriously depleted us with regard to RC assets, as discussed earlier. It's unfortunate that one guy might give the whole experience a bad name; contractorsbring uni lie skills ex eri once and backgrounds 20 complex operations. As an aside regardin 'm 99% sure and I confirmed this wi y hired as a screener. This means he di 't n ve been a interrogator or equivalent. If a decision was made to put him in the booth for interrogations, this was made internally at Abu Ghraib. I don't know of anything from a regulatory perspective that prevents a screener that demonstrates superior skills frombeing used as an interrogator, but that is not the norm. I do know that he did havestrategic debriefing training, but do not believe he was a formally trained interrogator. Q: Are the strategic level interrogators at INSCOM and DHS military or civilian? Military I think, at least predominantly. Q: Do we have a DA Civilian population of interrogators? We have a GS132 Intel series; but they are generally not used/trained in that role to my knowledge. There may be some special program interrogators. As an aside, HUMINT assets in the AC have been greatly depleted from the force structure. At Corps level, there is supposed to be a Tactical Exploitation Battalion (TEB)with an interrogation company. But most of the active Corps TEBs lost their interrogators. Only the 18th Airborne Corps retained theirs — the 519th MI. There is a lot of demand for tactical HUMINT operationally, but during force restructuring, those Corps and below assets have often been used as bill payers. ­ Q: Docs V Corps have an MP Brigade? Yes, the 18 th MP Brigade, but they were assigned and consumed by their mission ofsecuring Baghdad. The 800 th MP BDE was given the Abu Ghraib mission partly because they advertised their services in the detention ops unit, as far back as our initial planning process and performed this role during the ground war for CFLCC. Also, they were not aV Corps asset, they were retained by ARCENT. 6 !vie? Q: What v1401/1/00 He arrived in Sep an individual augmentec, soon after I got back from leave to see my new baby. elected him to be the MC director / OIC of interropti a 0• to . ,...d• ort OL Papp was between COL Pappas an. I was asked b if there was a place to mov ue to this co 'ct. When e uPaM of ive" tasking came down in Dec 3 (a new requirement for a LTC), we move over there. Q: What was the command relationship like at Abu Ghraib with the multiple command structures there? Whir I know was the MI chain of command over there was solidly under the 205 111 MI BDE and COL Pappas. There was not much confusion as to the chain of command within the MI chain. I cannot speak to the other command relationship but there did appear to be confusion with the MP relationship. Q: Do you recall working witleillal I interacted witlaillion a couple of occasions, but more so with IMMO Q: Do you know I don't recall the name. Q: Who 1111111is a CACI contractor through a V Corps contract. He was embedded in V Corps as we deployed. His work is excellent. When we wanted to hire contractors at in CJTF -7, we originally looked to expand the V Corps CACI contract. However, we received guidance not to do so since we knew CTIT-7 will be around a long time after we left. We did not want the contract to be associated with _a unit such as us that would redeploy from the AO. One of the Vice Presidents of CACI as there at the time and suggested that instead of using the V Corps•contract that an temate route, was using the Ft. Huachuca contract. Nobody knew then that it was a DOI blanket purchase agreement at the time, vice Army. We assumed a Ft. Huachuca contract would be an Army contract. Huachuca wound up blessing off on the proposed statements of work and CJTF-7provided funding. Q: At Abu Ghraib, was there an individual respoi.sible for monitoring contractor performance? There was no single person tagged with monitoring the contractors, though interrogation oversight went through interrogation ops channels. I went to to the BDE S-3 for operational support or employment issues or feedback. I went to the Commander for 5 AGO 000683 Generally, the contractors were very professional and the skills/experience they brought to the table were very good .1 personally was able to assess contractors at Camp Victoryon a near Bail basis. At Abu ed on the JIDC/Brigade staff on the ground, COL Pappas, They always had positive comments about the CACI contractors. Q: Did you interface daily with contractors? At Camp Victory, I had daily interaction with many contractors, specifically analysts,SSO and local national screeners. Again, at Abu Ghraib, Irelied on the staff at that site to fill me in on the duty performance of their contractors. I made between 5 to 6 trips there between the fall of 2003 and winter of 2004. Q: Did you have a formal system to monitor contractors and validate their performance? No, there was no formal system to monitor their performance, though there was an informal process as indicated earlier. In retrospect, that's one of our biggest mistakes, but we were pretty much consumed trying to get personnel in, support established, operational, etc, all during combat ops. Everything I saw first-hand and heard from others indicated that contractor performance was going very well. We did not get around to establishing a formal system to monitor their performance. We should have made that happen. I was aware of only two problems throughout the contractor force, one dealing with an SSO employee at Victory who lacked the proper clearance and had duty performance issues, and the second dealing with an OSINT analyst downtown who drank alcohol in the Green Zone. The former resulted in CACI firing the employee; the latter (though contractors were not under GO #1 per our SJA) resulted in a reprimand from the company to the employee for poor judgment, and the institution of a CACI code of conduct that all Iraq employees had to review/sign which precluded the use of alchol, among other common sense items. The only complaint I recall was about possiblyarming the screeners at Abu Ghraib. There were securic, , issues out there which I observed first hand that made many contractors desire an individual weapon for personal protection in the event of a riot or breakout attempt. This was still being staffed wheni departed, but was a valid concern, which I relayed to MG Fast earlier. COL Pappas took action to mitigate the concerns, pending staffing, by ensuring that contract personnel were never required to escort detainees, as was happening periodically due to a lack of MPs at the screening point. Q: Were contractors briefed on the requirements o fthe Geneva Conventions and the CJTF-7 Interrogation Memo? do no and inf s matter. However, I was told byine.an a CACI contractor in the C2X) that all interrogators read the memo before going into the "booth." I also told about theinterrogator orientation program/brief (believe developed by which included training on the Geneva Conventions as well as 205 th MI Bde Ps, etc at Abu Ghraib; Ibelieve contract personnel went through this orientation program. we started to see USN and USAF fills of any significance, and those only came after a long fight and were almost always lower in grade than the requirement. Three dynamics necessitated our use of contractors in intelligence: I. CJTF-7 wanted to reduce green suiters' performance of some tasks where possible. At first, during ground operations, HUMINT ops were not a high priority compared to the other intel disciplines. The rate at which our units maneuvered made the HUMINT gathered often OBE by the tune it was reported. However, after we transitioned to SASO and became relatively static, HUMINT became far more important and critical to the operation. HUMINT became the ''coin of the realm" as we determined the nature of the evolving threat and developing insurgency, and provided Intel support to raids and precision targeting. At the same time we were setting up aumerous penr;inent bases/camps which required intel support to force protection, screening local nationals to work at those camps, screening the MEK population, screening Iraqis for certain positions of trust (BIAP, linguists, key government officials, etc) — the demand for Cl/MIMI:NT was very high. There was never enough and the demand was only growing. Because of the demand versus availability, Tactical HUMINT Teams (CI and interrogators) were one of the most "emotional" assets to task organize within the CJTF, usually resulting in GO level involvement. 2. The detainee population began skyrocketing in summer 03. We did not have enough assets to process detainees and extract timely, actionable intelligence at any echelon. It was nearly impossible to speedily transport, process and keep up with the number of detainees captured during the dozens of raids being performed every day throughout the AO. We had whole groups of detainees that would arrive at holding areas with no specific information about the circumstances of capture other than the fact that they might have been involved in, for example, a raid against a possible bomb-making cell. Who was in the room with the material, vice who was just rounded up in the general area was often unknown to the interrogator (an example). This made the subsequent interrogation mission very difficult, and was directly linked to a lack of screening and HLTMINT assets. 3. Much of our CI & HUMINT assets were from the reserve component, as well as a significant number of our analysts. The RC assets were on a 365 day clock, and very unlikely to be extended to a second year. I recall several mid-level sourcing meetings, and looking at 6-10 months down the road it was pretty clear that shortages would be very likely in these areas once our RC assets redeploy. We knew that by late 03/early 04we would lose about 2/3 of our Cl/HUMINT assets to demobilization, and sourcing of replacements was very unclear at the time. Other commands were looking at contracting options (ie CENTCOM J2X was looking as a company (either ACS or SOS I can'trecall)) and we knew GITMO was using contractors. Q: Did you assess the quality of the contractor personnel? Q: What was your understanding of the ROE for combat operations? For example, if US Forces are.engaged by a hostile force. The hostile force is armed and has fired upon USforces, the hostile force is now maneuvering away from our forces, but has not laid down 3 its arms and not indicated surrender in any way, what would the ROE allow US forces to do at that point? It sounds like at that point, the enemy is still an armed force capable of further resistance. We could still engage it. Q: What kind of oversight did you provide for any contracts in Iraq? ' I had no direct oversight of the Titan contract. CJTF-7 was a user of the contract. I had oversight of the CJTF-7 language manager. My role was to identify requirements forlinguists Category l through 3. I did not perform oversight over the Titan linguists. I was more supervising the requirements manager than anything else. As for the CACI contract, while there was never a COR officially appointed in writing by the Cont Officer, I was the closest thing to being the COR for that contract. Q: How many CACI contractors did you have there? For phase I beginning in JUL 03, we started getting fills in AUG-OCT for detainee screeners, interrogators, personnel for the SSO shop, local national employee screeners and open source Intel analysts. This was about 45-50 employees (actual fill) of a requirement of approx 70. By late DE 03 to early 2004, we had filled all these slots. Phase II expanded in part due to • y 0 additional contractors including interrogation report writers, more Intel analysts for the JIDC and C2 staff, more Cl/HUMINT specialists, planners and foreign disclosure Jstudy or the JIDC. We had about 90 officers. Many of these positions were still unfilled as I departed in FEB 04. Q: What was the need for all these contractors? For one thing, my personal opinion is that we were not resourced to make the transition from being a Corps headquarters to a CJTF HQ. We had a Joint Manning Document that was not being filled systematically by the other services (except the Marines) or by our coalition partners. CJTF-7 headquarters was struggling to be effective in a combined/joint and SASO environment, especially early on. The CPA mission was larger than expected, there were numerous undocumented requirements that developed, and the spectrum of issues that CJTF-7 HQ dealt with from day to day was extremely broad. We were staffing/directing matters from in the "weeds" tactical, day-to-day operations such as precise targeting of groups, through strategic CENTCOM/ServiceINCA level issues. We found ourselves faced with a range of issuesthat were very different from those faced by a traditional Corps HQ. Frankly, we were "covering down" on all sorts of positions with all sorts of MOS. Further, we were fillingpositions with individuals who were much lower in rank than the positions called for. We had 55 or so joint slots and only the Marines filled theirs. It wasn't until DEC 03 that 2 • timimi I, ave read this statement which begins on page 1 and ends on page 7. y understand the contents of the entire statement made by me. The statement is true. I have initialed all corrections. I have made this statement freely without hope of benefit or reward, without threat of punishment, and without coercion, unlawful influence, or unlawful inducement. Subscribed and sworn to before me, a person authorized hy law to administer oaths, this t &ay of July 2004 at &Yr) ok-c-cy3oG -1(,,,acc6fii;Das ca26 (Typed name of Person Administering Oath) (0 Usc cc-f-ti(it) G1/2 v Gd(? (Authority to Administer Oaths) . 7 AG0000685 DOD 000772