Pentagon: Iraqi held secretly at CIA request

[cal04]

An Iraqi prisoner was held at a secret prison near Baghdad for about nine months, the Pentagon said Wednesday. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last October ordered the high-value Iraqi prisoner held in secret at the request of CIA Director George Tenet, Pentagon officials disclosed.

But the officials insist their motivation was to protect U.S. troops, not hide the prisoner from the Red Cross, and that his so-called secret status was supposed to be temporary. Some soldiers dubbed the prisoner "Triple X."

Officials say the Pentagon was asked by the CIA to take custody of the prisoner and to hold him incognito because he had been involved in ongoing military operations against the United States and the disclosure of his capture would compromise his intelligence value.

The prisoner was not assigned a number, nor was his presence disclosed to the International Committee of the Red Cross, but officials say his secret status was supposed to be temporary and deny he was a "ghost detainee." A senior defense official admitted that both the CIA and the Pentagon "dropped the ball" by failing to review his status for more than eight months despite two requests by low-level military personnel to reclassify the prisoner, and integrate him into the general prison population

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/06/16/ghost.prisoner/index.html