Death Of A General

Interrogation Technique Had Lethal Consequence For Iraqi General

(CBS) 
After about 30 minutes, Welshofer decided to give up trying to get the general to talk. He removed the bag.

"The general had a smile on his face. An honest-to-God grin on his face. So I’m thinking he’s messing with me. So, I grabbed a little bit of water and sprinkled it on the general’s face, because he was not responding to any questions, any type of conversation at all. I saw that the water pooled in his mouth, and it was at that point that I realized there was a problem here. The general’s dead," Welshofer recalls.

"I have to imagine that as the paramedics took the general out of the interrogation room you might have thought to yourself, 'I just killed that guy,'" Pelley said.

"No. I didn’t think I killed him," Welshofer replied.

"He was dead. You wrapped him up in a sleeping bag and electrical cord and kneeled over him … put your hand over his mouth and now he’s dead," Pelley continued.

"And each time I put my hand over his mouth for a period of, say, three to five seconds, after I removed my hand, he continued to talk. He continued to be responsive. He was responsive up until the very end," Welshofer explained.

The Army's official press release, said the general met his end through "natural causes." But later the autopsy found that he died of "asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression."

Welshofer was given a letter of reprimand and he thought that was the end of it. He went back to work and was even selected for promotion. But three months later, the notorious pictures from Abu Ghraib prison, far from Welshofer's base, changed everything. A month after that, the Army looked at Welshofer's case again — and this time, it charged him with murder.

"They’ve revisited each of these cases that were all known even before Abu Ghraib and now because of the outcry and the aftermath of Abu Ghraib they want to show that they’re cleaning house," says Frank Spinner, Welshofer's lawyer. "I think it’s more of a political decision-making process that’s taking place than what I would call a classic military justice decision-making process."

Asked if he though Welshofer was being made a scapegoat, Spinner said, "I think you can use that term."

Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez understands that point of view. She’s a member of the House Armed Services Committee who pressured the Pentagon for answers in the so-called torture death of Mowhoush. She felt the Pentagon’s top brass was evasive, and the Army declined 60 Minutes' request for an interview. Sanchez says responsibility for the death lies with the top leadership at the Department of Defense.

"At a time when we were telling our soldiers, our interrogators, 'We need information. And you need to get it out of these guys.' And yet, they floated all these memos and sort of made the line, the demarcation, what is torture and what is just, you know, uncomfortableness almost go away on purpose, one would say," says Rep. Sanchez.

She points to an e-mail Welshofer and other interrogators received from headquarters in Baghdad. "The gloves are coming off, gentlemen, regarding these detainees. Col. Boltz has made it clear we want these individuals broken. Casualties are mounting and we need to start gathering info to help protect our fellow soldiers from any further attacks," the e-mail read.

"'Take the gloves off,' you know, while it may not seem specific to you, from our point of view, the intent behind that is fairly clear. You know, we need to win. What do you need to do in order to win?" says Welshofer.

What did he need to do in order to win?

"Well, the techniques that we learned simply were not sufficient. You know, we need to take it up a notch or two," says Welshofer.