Army to add 1,200 interrogators, outsource training

Since the Iraq war began, the U.S. Army has quadrupled the number of soldiers it trains each year to be detainee interrogators, according to Army officials involved in the program.

Next year, 1,200 interrogators are set to be trained at the Army Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., up from about 300 in 2003. "The number being trained is based on the current need of interrogators in theater," said Angela Moncur, deputy public affairs officer at the intelligence center.

The greatest one-year expansion of the Army's interrogation program, from 500 to 1,000 trainees, took place in 2005, the year after public disclosure of the scandals involving questioning of prisoners by Army intelligence personnel at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Today, with the Army introducing a new interrogation manual and Congress wrestling with legislation sought by the White House that would legalize the CIA's more aggressive questioning techniques, the number of people training to be interrogators is to rise again.

The Army is gearing up for the effort by hiring private companies to handle the training. Last month, the service awarded contracts that could grow to more than $50 million in the next five years to three private firms to provide additional instructors to the 18-week basic course in human-intelligence interrogation at Fort Huachuca.

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