Ryder was commissioned into the United States Army in 1971. He was promoted to major general in 2001. He served as the most senior officer in the Criminal Investigation Division and was also the top Army Law Enforcement officer as the Army Provost Marshal General.
In 2003, Ryder conducted an inquiry into the abuse of prisoners in Iraq, cited in the Taguba Report. Some of the key recommendations of Ryder's report were directly contrary to the recommendations of Major General Geoffrey Miller, formerly the commander of Camp Delta.
Ryder recommended that the duties of the military police who guarded detainees be strictly separated from the duties of the Military Intelligence officers who interrogated them.
General Miller had urged closer cooperation between guards and interrogators. Miller had recommended that guards "set the conditions" for successful interrogation—a vague term that some critics believe was the trigger for some of the abuse some guards later committed. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's response to the public release of the news of the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse was to ignore Ryder and Taguba's recommendations and appoint General Miller to take over the direction of the prison facilities in Iraq. Ryder also oversaw the organization and operations of the DoD Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF), which conducted terrorism investigations. Ryder retired in 2007.
