March 2004-General Taguba files the AbuGhraib Abuse Investigation Report. (Q)

April 28, 2004-First pictures from Abu Ghraib become public. (Q)

May 6, 2004-Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba was summoned to meet, for the first time, with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in his Pentagon conference room. Rumsfeld and his senior staff were to testify the next day, in televised hearings before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees, about abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq (attended by Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (J.C.S.); and General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, along with Craddock and other officials.) (Q)

May 7, 2004-Rumsfeld appears before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees. He “claimed to have had no idea of the extensive abuse… “As for the photographs, Rumsfeld told the senators, “I say no one in the Pentagon had seen them”; at the House hearing, he said, “I didn’t see them until last night at 7:30.” (Q)

May 11, 2004-Taguba appears “before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Under-Secretary Stephen Cambone sat beside him. (Cambone was Rumsfeld’s point man on interrogation policy.)” (Q)

June 2004- The Supreme Court, in Rasul v. Bush, ruled against the Administration’s argument that detainees had no right to challenge their imprisonment in American courts. That month, in a related case, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor declared that “a state of war is not a blank check for the President.” (O)

June 2004-“Jack Goldsmith, Mr. Bybee’s replacement as the head of the office [Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel], rescinds the 2002 [Yoo] memo-days after it becomes public-with the support of then Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey. Mr. Goldsmith submits his resignation on the same day.” (AA) “After a rebellion inside the Justice Department in 2004, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales moved to bring the elite Office of Legal Counsel back into the White House orbit on interrogation and other issues.” (AA)

July 7, 2004- Alberto J. Mora, the general counsel of the United States Navy, writes 22 page memo to Vice Admiral Albert Church, who led a Pentagon investigation into abuses at the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, showing that in 2003 Mora tried to halt what he saw as a disastrous and unlawful policy of authorizing cruelty toward terror suspects. It reveals that Mora’s criticisms of Administration policy were unequivocal, wide-ranging, and persistent…He argued that a refusal to outlaw cruelty toward U.S.-held terrorist suspects was an implicit invitation to abuse. Mora also challenged the legal framework that the Bush Administration has constructed to justify an expansion of executive power, in matters ranging from interrogations to wiretapping. He described as “unlawful,” “dangerous,” and “erroneous” novel legal theories granting the President the right to authorize abuse. Mora warned that these precepts could leave U.S. personnel open to criminal prosecution. (O)

September 29, 2004- “Major General James Soligan, JFCOM’s Chief of Staff, issued a memorandum referencing JPRA’s support to interrogation operations: ‘[…] These requests, which can be characterized as ‘offensive’ support, go beyond the chartered responsibilities of JPRA… The use of resistance to interrogation knowledge for ‘offensive’ purposes lies outside the roles and responsibilities of JPRA.” (DD)

December 2004-“Daniel Levin, the new acting head [of OLC], issues a new memo denouncing torture and broadening its definition. The memo is posted on the department’s Web site one week before the Senate holds confirmation hearings for Alberto R. Gonzales, then White House counsel and the nominee for Attorney General.” (AA)

March 2005- the Pentagon declared the working-group report based on Yoo’s opinion, a non-operational “historical” document. By that time, however, much of the most serious abuse at Guantánamo had already occurred. (O)

Spring to Late 2005-“Over the objections of Mr. Comey, Steven G. Bradbury-appointed acting head [of OLC] in February 2005-signs a secret opinion that justifies combining different interrogation techniques. Mr. Bradbury is formally nominated for the permanent job in June 2005, but Democrats block his confirmation. In a second secret opinion, Mr. Bradbury finds that even the CIA’s harshest tactics are not “cruel, inhuman or degrading,” the restriction soon to be imposed by Congress.” (AA) (W)

November 2005-“Any activity we conduct is within the law. We do not torture.”- Bush

Late 2005- Matthew Waxman, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, had proposed making it official Pentagon policy to treat detainees in accordance with Common Article Three of the Geneva conventions. This standard had been in effect for fifty years, and all members of the U.S. armed services were trained to follow it. One by one, the military officers at the meeting argued for returning the U.S. to what they called the high ground. But two people opposed it. One was Stephen Cambone, the under-secretary of defense for intelligence; the other was Haynes. They argued that the articulated standard would limit America’s “flexibility.” It also might expose Administration officials to charges of war crimes: if Common Article Three became the standard for treatment, then it might become a crime to violate it. Their opposition was enough to scuttle the proposal. [In December, Waxman left the Pentagon for the State Department.] (O)

Late 2005-after the existence of secret C.I.A. prisons in Europe was revealed, in the Washington Post, in late 2005, the Administration responded with a new detainee center in Mauritania. (Q)

December 2005-“Congress passes the Detainee Treatment Act which bans “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” of prisoners in American custody anywhere in the world. Members voting on the bill do not know the Justice Department has already effectively exempted the CIA techniques in the opinions signed by Mr. Bradbury.” (AA)

January of 2006-Taguba received a telephone call from General Richard Cody, the Army’s Vice-Chief of Staff. “This is your Vice,” he told Taguba. “I need you to retire by January of 2007.” (Q)