May 16, 2004 - She called them “disappearing ghosts” – the mysterious civilians who floated in and out of the “hard site” at Abu Ghraib prison supposedly under her command. General Karpinski did not know who they were or what they were doing. She wasn’t supposed to. Then there were what the MP’s from Cresaptown, Maryland called “ghost prisoners” – the detainees without records or prisoners delivered to Tier 1 by General Karpinski’s disappearing ghosts. According to an article in the current New Yorker by Seymour Hersh both the mysterious OGA ectoplasmic personnel and their equally evanescent charges were part of the super secret Special Access Program [SAP] designed by Under Secretary for Intelligence Stephen Cambone with the specific approval of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Knowledge of the SAP was closely held but, according to Hersh, those who were briefed included General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs; National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice; and the President himself. The SAP designed by Dr. Cambone went by several code names, according to Hersh, including Copper Green.

The inspiration for Copper Green apparently came from a study of Arab sociology and culture by the late Rafael Patai published in 1973 as “The Arab Mind.” The book was adopted by the neo-conservatives of the Project for a New American Century as the definitive description of Arabic cultures strengths and weaknesses. The Arab, they believed, understood only force and was especially vulnerable to blackmail about sexual matters and most vulnerable to threats of exposure as a homosexual. That was the rationale behind Cambone’s design of Copper Green. Its interrogation techniques were intended to break the so-called “high value targets” or to create an army of informants to be inserted back in to the population to operate under a constant threat of exposure as sexual deviants.

The Pentagon denies it, of course. Chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita told the New York Times, "We don't discuss covert programs, but nothing in any covert program would have led anyone to sanction activity like what was seen on those videos. No responsible official in this department, including Secretary Rumsfeld, would or could have been involved in sanctioning the physical coercion or sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners," The Pentagon points to the sworn testimony of Secretary Rumsfeld, Under-Secretary Cambone and General Myers as proof that Copper Green did not exist. As Hersh points out US secrecy laws would have prevented those witnesses from mentioning Copper Green, even obliquely, in a public session of the Senate Armed Service Committee.

Meanwhile the Pentagon is bringing the privates and the sergeants to trial for what went on as the ghosts drifted in and out of Tier 1. Were they simply the smallest cogs driving the grindstone of the ghostly intelligence mill of Copper Green? Has Hersh exposed yet another SAP operation that has crossed the line away from American values and tradition? The President says, as he so often does, that he wants to get to the bottom of it. If he does it is time to call for the Ghostbusters.