CIA Videotaped, and destroyed tapes of their own interrogations

[Copperhead]

Hayden says CIA videotapes destroyed

By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 10 minutes ago
 


WASHINGTON - The CIA videotaped its interrogations of two top terror suspects in 2002 and destroyed the tapes three years later out of fear they would leak to the public and compromise the identities of U.S. questioners, the director of the agency told employees Thursday.

 
The disclosure brought immediate condemnation from Capitol Hill and from a human rights group which charged the spy agency's action amounted to criminal destruction of evidence.

The Senate Intelligence Committee promised a full review of the situation.

CIA Director Michael Hayden said the CIA began taping the interrogations as an internal check on the program after President Bush authorized the use of harsh questioning methods. The methods included waterboarding, which simulates drowning, government officials said.

"The Agency was determined that it proceed in accord with established legal and policy guidelines. So, on its own, CIA began to videotape interrogations," Hayden said in a written message to CIA employees, obtained by The Associated Press.

The CIA decided to destroy the tapes in "the absence of any legal or internal reason to keep them," Hayden wrote. He said the tapes were destroyed only after it was determined "they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative or judicial inquiries."

"The tapes posed a serious security risk," Hayden wrote. "Were they ever to leak, they would permit identification of your CIA colleagues who had served in the program, exposing them and their families to retaliation from al-Qaida and its sympathizers."

Hayden said House and Senate intelligence committee leaders were informed of the existence of the tapes and the CIA's intention to destroy them. He also said the CIA's internal watchdog watched the tapes in 2003 and verified that the interrogation practices were legal.

Rep. Jane Harman of California, then the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was one of only four members of Congress in 2003 informed of the tapes' existence and the CIA's intention to ultimately destroy them.

"I told the CIA that destroying videotapes of interrogations was a bad idea and urged them in writing not to do it," Harman said. While key lawmakers were briefed on the CIA's intention to destroy the tapes, they were not notified two years later when the spy agency went through with the plan. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the committee only learned of the tapes' destruction in November 2006.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., who was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee from August 2004 until the end of 2006, said through a spokesman that he doesn't remember being informed of the videotaping program.

"Congressman Hoekstra does not recall ever being told of the existence or destruction of these tapes," said Jamal D. Ware, senior adviser to the committee. "He believes that Director Hayden is being generous in his claim that the committee was informed. He believes the committee should have been fully briefed and consulted on how this was handled."

Jennifer Daskal, senior counsel with Human Rights Watch, said destroying the tapes was illegal. "Basically this is destruction of evidence," she said, calling Hayden's explanation that the tapes were destroyed to protect CIA identities "disingenuous."

The CIA only taped the interrogation of the first two terror suspects the agency held, one of whom was Abu Zubaydah. Zubaydah, under harsh questioning, told CIA interrogators about alleged 9/11 accomplice Ramzi Binalshibh, Bush said in 2006.

Binalshibh was captured and interrogated and, with Zubaydah's information, led to the capture in 2003 of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the purported mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

Hayden said a secondary reason for the taped interrogations was to have backup documentation of the information gathered.

"The Agency soon determined that its documentary reporting was full and exacting, removing any need for tapes. Indeed, videotaping stopped in 2002," Hayden said.

The CIA is known to have waterboarded three prisoners since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but not since 2003. Hayden banned the use of the procedure in 2006, according to knowledgeable officials.

The disclosure of the tapes' destruction came on the same day the House and Senate intelligence committees agreed to legislation prohibiting the CIA from using "enhanced interrogation techniques." The White House Thursday threatened to veto the bill.

Hayden's message was an attempt to get ahead of a New York Times story about the videotapes.

"What matters here is that it was done in line with the law," Hayden said. "Over the course of its life, the Agency's interrogation program has been of great value to our country. It has helped disrupt terrorist operations and save lives. It was built on a solid foundation of legal review. It has been conducted with careful supervision. If the story of these tapes is told fairly, it will underscore those facts."

The CIA says the tapes were destroyed late in 2005, a year marked by increasing pressure from defense attorneys to obtain videotapes of detainee interrogations. The scandal over harsh treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq had focused public attention on interrogation techniques.

Beginning in 2003, attorneys for al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui began seeking videotapes of interrogations they believed might help them show their client wasn't a part of the 9/11 attacks. These requests heated up in 2005 as the defense slowly learned the identities of more detainees in U.S. custody.

In May 2005, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ordered the government to disclose whether interrogations were recorded. The government objected to that order, and the judge modified it on Nov. 3, 2005, to ask for confirmation of whether the government "has video or audio tapes of these interrogations" and then named specific ones. Eleven days later, the government denied it had video or audio tapes of those specific interrogations.

Last month, the CIA admitted to Brinkema and a circuit judge that it had failed to hand over tapes of enemy combatant witnesses. Those interrogations were not part of the CIA's detention program and were not conducted or recorded by the agency, the agency said.

"The CIA did not say to the court in its original filing that it had no terrorist tapes at all. It would be wrong to assert that," CIA spokesman George Little said.

The 9/11 Commission referenced the 2002 interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Binalshibh multiple times throughout its report, but cited written documents and audiotapes only.

[Copperhead]

CIA Destroyed Videos Showing Interrogations
Harsh Techniques Seen in 2002 Tapes

By Dan Eggen and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 7, 2007; Page A01

The CIA made videotapes in 2002 of its officers administering harsh interrogation techniques to two al-Qaeda suspects but destroyed the tapes three years later, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.

Captured on tape were interrogations of Abu Zubaydah, a close associate of Osama bin Laden, and a second high-level al-Qaeda member who was not identified, according to two intelligence officials. Zubaydah has been identified by U.S. officials familiar with the interrogations as one of three al-Qaeda suspects who were subjected to "waterboarding," a technique that simulates drowning, while in CIA custody.

The tapes were made to document any confessions the two men might make and to serve as an internal check on how the interrogations were conducted, senior intelligence officials said.

All the tapes were destroyed in November 2005 on the order of Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the CIA's director of clandestine operations, officials said. The destruction came after the Justice Department had told a federal judge in the case of al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui that the CIA did not possess videotapes of a specific set of interrogations sought by his attorneys. A CIA spokesman said yesterday that the request would not have covered the destroyed tapes.

The tapes also were not provided to the Sept. 11 commission, the independent panel that investigated the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which demanded a wide array of material and relied heavily on classified interrogation transcripts in piecing together its narrative of events.

The startling disclosures came on the same day that House and Senate negotiators reached an agreement on legislation that would prohibit the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics by the CIA and bring intelligence agencies in line with rules followed by the U.S. military.

The measure, which needs approval from the full House and Senate, would effectively set a government-wide standard for legal interrogations by explicitly outlawing the use of simulated drowning, forced nudity, hooding, military dogs and other harsh tactics against prisoners by any U.S. intelligence agency.


The proposed ban sets the stage for a potential election-season standoff between congressional Democrats and the Bush administration, which has fought vigorously on Capitol Hill and in the courts to preserve intelligence agencies' ability to use aggressive interrogation techniques against terrorism suspects.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto warned that the administration had threatened to veto similar legislation proposed in the House.

In a note to agency employees yesterday, Hayden said that the decision to destroy the videotapes was made to protect the identities of CIA officers who were clearly identifiable on them.

"Beyond their lack of intelligence value -- as the interrogation sessions had already been exhaustively detailed in written channels -- and the absence of any legal or internal reason to keep them, the tapes posed a security risk," Hayden said. "Were they ever to leak, they would permit identification of your CIA colleagues who had served in the program, exposing them to and their families to retaliation from al-Qaeda and it sympathizers."

Hayden said he decided to discuss the tapes publicly because of news media interest and the possibility that "we may see misinterpretations of the facts in the days ahead." The New York Times said on its Web site that it had informed the CIA on Wednesday night that it was preparing a story about the destroyed tapes.

[Copperhead]

Agency officials declined to describe the contents of the tapes, but knowledgeable U.S. officials said they depicted hours of interrogations of the two men, both of whom were subjected to aggressive interrogation methods. Whether the tapes show waterboarding or any other specific techniques is not clear.

The existence of the tapes was revealed to congressional oversight committees, and Congress was also informed about the decision to destroy the tapes, two senior intelligence officials said. The CIA was headed by former GOP congressman Porter J. Goss at the time.

But Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said in a statement last night that lawmakers did not learn about the destruction of the tapes for another year.

"While we were provided with very limited information about the existence of the tapes, we were not consulted on their usage nor the decision to destroy the tapes," Rockefeller said.

Civil liberties advocates denounced the CIA's decision to destroy the tapes, saying the agency should have known by 2005 that the actions depicted on them were potentially the subject of litigation and congressional investigations.

Jameel Jaffer, a national security lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the tapes were destroyed at a time when a federal court had ordered the CIA to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU seeking records related to interrogations.

"The CIA appears to have deliberately destroyed evidence that would have allowed its agents to be held accountable for the torture of prisoners," Jaffer said. "They are tapes that should have been released to the courts and Congress, but the CIA apparently believes that its agents are above the law."

Whether the agency faces potential legal jeopardy depends on timing -- specifically, whether investigations into the interrogation practices had been launched when the tapes were destroyed, said A. John Radsan, a former federal prosecutor and CIA assistant general counsel.


"Once an investigation has begun -- whether it's an attorney general or an inspector general investigation -- it's much more problematic to have destroyed any kinds of documents or tapes that fall within the scope of the investigation," Radsan said.

U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of Alexandria ordered the CIA in 2003 to turn over tapes of terrorists whose testimony might be relevant to Moussaoui's defense. Moussaoui briefly trained to become one of the hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks but was taken into custody before they occurred.

The Justice Department revealed in a letter to Brinkema and an appeals court judge in October that the CIA's previous claims had been wrong and that it had found two videotapes and one audiotape of unidentified detainee interrogations. Those tapes still exist, prosecutors said in a court filing.

CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said the tapes acknowledged by Hayden "did not involve anyone judged relevant by the court in the Moussaoui proceedings."

[Copperhead]

Mansfield also said that the CIA did not withhold evidence from the Sept. 11 commission, contending that its members did not ask specifically for tapes. "The tapes were destroyed only when it was determined that they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative or judicial inquiries," he said.

Zubaydah was captured in March 2002, becoming the first of the "high-value" detainees in CIA custody and the first to be subjected to harsh interrogation methods, which included sleep deprivation as well as waterboarding. Zubaydah, who was shot and gravely wounded during his capture, later became "defiant and evasive," according to Hayden, leading to the decision to apply more aggressive measures.

Hayden said the methods shown on the videotapes were legal under guidelines approved by the Justice Department and the Bush administration, and he said the interrogation provided "crucial information."

Intelligence officials have acknowledged that the CIA used waterboarding on three prisoners after the 2001 attacks but say the agency stopped the practice in 2003. The technique was revived as a political issue in recent months during the confirmation process for Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, who refused to say whether waterboarding is considered torture under U.S. law. Most Senate Democrats voted against his nomination as a result, giving Mukasey the lowest level of Senate support of any attorney general in the past half-century.

The waterboarding ban was added to the 2008 intelligence authorization bill through an amendment offered by one of the few Democrats to support Mukasey, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). Under the amendment, no prisoner in U.S. custody "shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by the United States Army Field Manual."

The Army field manual on interrogations was amended last year to explicitly prohibit eight aggressive and controversial interrogation tactics, including some methods used on military prisoners at the Abu Ghraib detention facility in Iraq and the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The manual also singles out the use of waterboarding.


"The national debate over torture will end if this amendment to place the CIA under the Army Field Manual becomes law," Feinstein said in a statement.

But Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.) accused Democrats of trying "to kill an important tool in our efforts to fight terror."

Staff writer Walter Pincus and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

[Volitzer]

Well they're not going to leave bin-Laden boogie-man tapes just lying around to be incriminated by later.

This belongs in the DUH !!! topic.

[Copperhead]

Hardly, it's against the law to destroy evidence.  This time, they actually might not get away with it.

[Caana]

Remember that N.H. lad that had been abused, tortured, and his throat slit when he had gone missing. The one who was 18, but looked like he was fourteen. He died early in the war.

There come's a time when you must embrace your humanity, so that you will be cruel enough to do what you have to, so that it will stop.

All well and good for people to protest method's, that in my opinion, do embrace humanity, and the good part to, without staining your hands as the terrorist's do. You simulate the fear and torment, and moderate abuse, that they do to other's themselves, and then simulate the part of a grisley death, without really doing it, which is a high human standard of justice, and mercy for killer's. Who kill all their own victim's.

The pyscology of torture is an interesting one as well, not just the act. Anyone can face their death once, however they do it mentally, but to do it again, and again, with the last word's of your captor's being that you will die, eventually. Well, enough said. There is a difference between them, and us, the christen's have a long history of keeping the one's they hate alive, for continual torment's anyway. Though the muslims religion shares that as well, they can be subtle, but find as most do, direct method's are the best one's for intelligence when you already have a prisoner in a secure facility where you can take some time in the breaking.

The one's that are protected from the destruction of those tapes, it is their rightful due, in their service to this nation. People can think of me about my other writing as they will, but on this, they are the enemy, and we of the united states, it's citizen's, are more secure from the kind of harassment that kill's scores of innocent's at a wack, sometime's thousand's. Let's not let it be million's.

They can all **** and moan for awhile about it, but their action's won't continue for much longer. There is no evidence, and all those mealy mouthed "voice's of the people" who are degenerating a, in fact, very strong president, and setting up the condition's for a more confederated united state's through their "moral" stances, and whisper's of succeeding state's if they don't get their way's, will see them all in the pit of their own making, direct enemy's of both the goverment, and people of the federally constituted united states.

Whatever they think, and cloak of their own motivation's, they themselves are treading on very thin ice. We are at war, and in older time's many of them would have been in prison already themselve's, for obstructing the war, not only with the power of the purse, but through populace opinion, which they have stoked since the early part of the war. Trying to cripple their own nation's objective's. If we pull out, we will have wasted all those live's, not to mention the money, and equipment.

It is beyond mere belief, they are arrogent fool's who are going to pay a price, not the president, and his administration, nor the other's who serve their nation from it. There is no god, there is but me, i support what is going on because it is still in progress, our people over there, not the religious retoric in the goverment, wrapping it's filthy tendril's around everything. That is another fight, before the end of it all.

But with this one still in progress, and the one in afganistan, and russia/china really iffy, because of iran, we can't destablize what progress has been made. If those soldiers come home without winning, they will be what will fuel that other fight. Along with what's already here. If their is to be an American dictator till America can settle it's internal issue's, at the same time, accomplish what it has to in the world at large to secure our border's, then i think bush would fill that role nicely.

But i think he would really like to end it through cooperation, and end a spectactular career as president. When i heard that senator say bush was the worst president we ever had, i had a mental image i call mindflash's pop up in my mind, and i saw a bloody slash across the senator's face.

But, you see what i mean, it does'nt matter.

[American Eagle]

"Those who are wlling to trade their liberty for security deserve neither liberty nor security."

- Benjamin Franklin

The question is, what do you want America to stand for, a country that is founded on principles or one that resorts to torture?

Not my America. And not the America of these CIA agents or the deceitful, fascist Bush Administration either.  They destroyed those tapes because they knew they did wrong and didn't want to be incriminated for it later, simple as that.  Just as the Bush Administration has destroyed numerous paper trails in order to save themselves from being implicated in any number of scandals.

If you think they care about you or that they are trying to keep America safe, you are mistaken.  All they care about is power, first, the getting of it, then the holding onto it. 

The Islamic fascist threat has been hyped so the government gets better advantage.  Only by scaring the people, can the Bush Administration do what it wants.  Let them scare you all you want, I suppose, at this point in time, thankfully most now know better.

[Caana]

Those who are trading their liberty for security, are the one's who are against what was done, not those who did it. The terrorist trash got what he deserved, that he is religious, makes it doubly so, killing other's in the name of a delusional insanity they call their god, or manipulating them with it through belief's, even in so called peaceful fashion, is a crime, and will eventually be addressed as such.

What we are watching is part of the downfall of religious led country's, including this nation. Your America won't exist in the near future. Torture in defense of princables has been used by the American elite throughout it's history{all of them religious in background}

It has been dubbed wrong by those who share your fictional view's on what America should stand for. Religion has worked hand and hand with the beast since it was ever first thought of. I know they don't care about me, or my loved one's, yet they are the one's who are fighting not only against religious terrorist trash oversea's, but here as well.

I don't fear any of them, all they can do is torture or kill me, or make my life more miserable, which would be hard to do, as the religious who run the goverment, have already done so. It is through fear that those you support, are eroding whatever stability this nation had, not only within the nation, but without as well. Those you support are weak, and like a pack of dog's{religious} they will band together, and knip at their better's heel's. Destroying all of us, and all of us American's are not religious, nor are we weak.

I puke whenever i hear a religious scum speak of truth and honor, for they have never met them. Anyone will believe what they wish about the current world situation, and the actions which spring from them.

America lose's nothing from torturing it's enemy's, but gains everything because of the way it was done. But of course, the religious only see in the absolutes of their delirium, which is reflected in their law system's, including America's, as it was shaped by religious, and continuely changed to reflect their insanity, and to protect them, through those law's.

Back pasture rowdy's like the one's trying to malign a decent president, and his admin, will be a thing of yesterday. Have a good life if you can.