The CIA is "the ghost at the banquet,"

CIA Role a Mystery at Court-Martial

By Jon Sarche and Dan Elliott
The Associated Press
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Fort Carson, Colo. - The initials were spoken aloud only once all week, and then apparently by mistake.

After this past week's testimony, any role the CIA had - or didn't have - in the interrogation of an Iraqi general who died in U.S. custody remains a tantalizing and mysterious backdrop to the court-martial of Army Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr.

The CIA is "the ghost at the banquet," said Eugene R. Fidell, an expert in military law who has been following the court-martial but doesn't know if the CIA was involved in the case.

"We're playing 'Hamlet' without Hamlet here," said Fidell, an attorney in private practice who teaches military law at American University in Washington. He also represented news organizations in their attempts to open pretrial hearings in Welshofer's prosecution.

Welshofer is charged with murder in the 2003 death of Republican Guard Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush at a detention camp in western Iraq.

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--This soldier has now been found guilty in this murder.--