Female Army Intelligence Officer Investigated

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Figure in Abu Ghraib inquiry shouldn't take job yet, some say
By Carol Ann Alaimo
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

A senior Army intelligence officer set to take command of Fort Huachuca, Arizona shouldn't get the job while she's under investigation over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, some federal lawmakers and defense experts say.

Officially, Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast is still the Army's choice to lead the installation southeast of Tucson, home of the military intelligence school where troops learn interrogation methods and the rules of proper prisoner treatment.

Fast has not been implicated in prisoner abuse in any reports made public to date.

Still, some say it's a mistake to put Fast in charge of such training while her own actions in Iraq are in question.

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain said Friday that Fast shouldn't get the fort's top job until the Abu Ghraib investigations are finished.

"The senator is not judging General Fast's guilt or innocence but believes that the assignment should be placed on hold until the investigations are completed," said Marshall Wittmann, spokesman for McCain, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said this week that his office is looking into Fast's role at Fort Huachuca.

"It would seem that her new command is certainly premature, if not inappropriate," Durbin told the Baltimore Sun.

Virginia Republican John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, hasn't taken a position on Fast's new job but has put her on the witness list for upcoming Senate hearings on the Abu Ghraib scandal.

Fast, 50, one of the few female Army officers to reach the rank of two-star general, is currently Fort Huachuca's deputy commander. She is due to take control of the Army post in Sierra Vista by late summer or early fall.

Her promotion to commander was announced several weeks before the Abu Ghraib scandal erupted over graphic photos of prisoners being abused and sexually humiliated.

Army spokesman Lt. Col. Gerard Healy said the Army has no second thoughts about Fast. "She was chosen for that assignment back in April and nothing has happened to cause the Army to change that decision."

Fast has spent little time at Fort Huachuca since she became its deputy commander last July. She left for Baghdad a week later and has been serving there ever since as chief of military intelligence.

She has declined media interviews while the Army investigates the prison scandal, and didn't respond to an interview request from the Arizona Daily Star. Her husband, Paul Fast, who lives at Fort Huachuca, also declined to comment.

In Iraq, Fast was the top boss in charge of interrogation efforts at Abu Ghraib when prisoners there were being abused.

She supervised two Army intelligence officers who have already been implicated in the scandal - Lt. Col. Steven Jordan and Col. Thomas Pappas, a former senior official at Fort Huachuca.

Several military police reservists now facing courts-martial on charges of prisoner abuse have insisted they were acting on instructions of military intelligence soldiers who wanted prisoners roughed up to make them more compliant during interrogations.

A military judge in Iraq recently ruled that Fast can be forced to testify at the trials of MPs charged with prisoner abuse. Lawyers for the MPs say they plan to highlight the actions of military intelligence staffers at the prison.

An initial Army report on the scandal gives some weight to the MPs' claims that they were acting at the behest of intelligence officers.

The report identified Fast's subordinates Pappas and Jordan as among those "directly or indirectly responsible for the abuse." It said Pappas should be disciplined for allowing violations of the Geneva Conventions on prisoner treatment.

The early Army report called for a separate investigation into the conduct of military intelligence personnel. That ongoing probe is looking in more detail at Fast's actions and what role her staff played in the abuse.

It isn't known when the investigation, already delayed several times over leadership shuffles, will wrap up.

Defense expert Lawrence Korb, a former naval intelligence officer who was assistant defense secretary during the Reagan administration, said there's no way Fast can be an effective leader at Fort Huachuca in her current circumstances.

As the head of military intelligence training, Fast "would be responsible for inculcating the right values to the next generation" of Army interrogators and other intelligence specialists, Korb said.

"If she's under investigation herself it would be almost impossible for her to do the job," said Korb, now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., a left-leaning think tank pushing to reform the military and other institutions.

David Hackworth, a retired Army colonel turned military columnist and commentator, said Fast's credibility is already so damaged he doubts the Army will allow her to assume her new job.

"My hunch is Fort Huachuca will never see Gen. Fast," Hackworth said in an e-mail.

One of Fast's supporters fears she could end up taking the fall for the White House's botched planning for the Iraq War.

"Barbara Fast is essentially cleaning up after (Defense Secretary) Donald Rumsfeld," said Robert David Steele, a former CIA agent, founder of the Marine Corps Intelligence Center and an author and commentator on intelligence issues.

Steele said senior officers like Fast were forced to contend with a host of problems in Iraq, such as poorly trained reservists and contract interrogators, because the Bush administration rushed to war without enough troops or proper postwar planning.

He said it's possible that people higher up the ladder may have pressured Fast and others to extract information by questionable means.

"I believe this military chain of command was browbeaten into violating established conventions and treaties," Steele said.

Korb said the outcome of the Abu Ghraib investigations will have critical consequences for the United States.

America's reputation, already battered by the prisoner abuse photos, will suffer even more if the nation fails to aggressively pursue all those responsible, he said.

"The global war on terrorism is really a war for the hearts and minds" of the people al-Qaida is trying to recruit, he said.

"Those pictures confirmed everything Osama bin Laden has been saying about us," Korb said.

"If we don't deal with it, he's going be saying, 'See? They're no better than Saddam Hussein.' "