The prospect of bombshells and damaging investigative reports coming out during the height of the political campaign or around the conventions is a concern for both the Bush administration and the Republicans who control both houses of Congress. But complicating it all is the contentious case of documents allegedly missing from an investigative report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba on abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
Relations have soured between the Pentagon and senators who insist that they have been denied key documents in the investigation promised since May.
Among the missing documents, according to a Senate source, are two of 12 enclosures attached to a transcript of an interview of Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade at Abu Ghraib. One of them, Enclosure 9, addresses how the unit handled reports by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The other, Enclosure 11, outlines at least three investigations for possible nonjudicial punishment after the alleged abuse of two girls, ages 13 and 14, taken to the prison in the middle of the night by CIA agents, the Senate source said.
However, Pentagon managers insist there are no missing documents. They said there was a perception that documents were missing because some items were not provided to the committee when they were publicly accessible — such as the Army's field manual, later provided on a computer disk at the committee's request, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.
References to some annexes in the main report were simply mislabeled, making it look as if they weren't there, he added.
Relations have soured between the Pentagon and senators who insist that they have been denied key documents in the investigation promised since May.
Among the missing documents, according to a Senate source, are two of 12 enclosures attached to a transcript of an interview of Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade at Abu Ghraib. One of them, Enclosure 9, addresses how the unit handled reports by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The other, Enclosure 11, outlines at least three investigations for possible nonjudicial punishment after the alleged abuse of two girls, ages 13 and 14, taken to the prison in the middle of the night by CIA agents, the Senate source said.
However, Pentagon managers insist there are no missing documents. They said there was a perception that documents were missing because some items were not provided to the committee when they were publicly accessible — such as the Army's field manual, later provided on a computer disk at the committee's request, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.
References to some annexes in the main report were simply mislabeled, making it look as if they weren't there, he added.
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