WASHINGTON - New guidelines issued by the Defense Department on the treatment of prisoners in US military custody would bar holding "ghost" prisoners without properly registering them, the Pentagon's top intelligence official said Thursday.
Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, made the assurance to members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who questioned whether CIA prisoners could be still be held off the books at US military facilies as they were at the Abu Ghraib prison.
Cambone said the new interim guidelines made plain that the military command would set the rules at military-run facilities.
"So what you are suggesting is not to happen," he said.
Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, asked: "So that assumes there will be no more so-called ghost prisoners in our military prisons?"
"Sir, to the extent that we can assure you that, I'm here to do that for you," Cambone said.
Cambone said the new guidelines were separate from a new army interrogation manual that the New York Times reported Thursday will expressly bar harsh interrogation techniques that came to light in last year's Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.
The Times said the revised manual would specifically prohibit practices like stripping prisoners, keeping them in stressful positions for a long time, imposing dietary restrictions, using police dogs to intimidate prisoners and using sleep deprivation.
Cambone said he anticipated that the interrogation rules in the new army manual would be used by all the military services.
The new standards, however, would apply only to Defense Department civilian and military personnel on Defense Department missions, not to the CIA, he said.
The CIA has been conducting a separate inspector general investigation into the prisoner abuse but has not reported what it has found either publicly or to Congress.
McCain called for a single standard across the government for the treatment of prisoners.
04/28/2005 23:04 GMT