CIA destroyed the interrogation tapes to hide the truth about 9/11

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CIA destroyed the interrogation tapes to hide the truth about 9/11

House Judiciary witness: Destroyed CIA tapes are 'ultimate cover-up'

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Witness_tells_House_Judiciary_destroyed_tapes_1220.html

David Edwards and Jason Rhyne
Published: Thursday December 20, 2007







DOJ representative is no-show at hearing

The CIA's official explanation for destroying at least two videotapes depicting severe interrogation techniques "fails the straight-face test," an expert witness told the House Judiciary Committee Thursday.

In a hearing focused on the Justice Department's role in the tapes' destruction and the legality of torture tactics, George Washington University Law School professor Stephen Saltzburg heavily rebuked CIA reasoning that the decision was made in part to protect the identify of interrogators.

"The rationale for destroying the tapes to protect the identity of the interrogators is almost as embarrassing as the destruction itself," said Saltzburg, who is also general counsel for the National Institute of Military Justice. He said that the tapes could easily have been modified to obscure the faces of those involved, and that regardless, the CIA keeps a written record of which officers interrogated detainees.

"And so the explanation for destruction fails the straight-face test," he said. "The only plausible explanation, I believe, is that the CIA wanted to assure that those tapes would never be seen by any judicial tribunal -- not even a military commission -- and they would never be seen by a committee of Congress."

Continued Saltzburg, "With [the CIA tapes] gone, we have the ultimate cover-up. The indisputable evidence no longer exists, and memories will undoubtedly differ about what happened."

He also chided Congress for not choosing to rein in CIA practices.

"It's vitally important for this Congress to recognize that it's part of the interrogation process," he said. "This Congress decided not to restrict the CIA, at least not explicitly. And it decided not to confine the CIA to interrogation techniques that are contained in the Army Field Manual."

A representative from the Justice Department was invited to testify before the committee, but was not present at the hearing.

Another hearing witness, former CIA general counsel and DOJ prosecutor John Radsan, was pressed by committee member Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) as to whether interrogators resorting to torture could be prosecuted criminally if a legal definition of the practice could be agreed upon.

"If the tapes clearly depict torture," said Scott,"let's kind of think who could be guilty of a criminal offense."

Responded Radsan, "If we agree that the conduct on those tapes [is torture], that person who did the conduct is guilty...that's for sure." He offered the same analysis for those authorizing torture.

In statements before witnesses were called, Democratic committee members also admonished the White House for its alleged role, as reported by the New York Times, in participating in discussions about the tapes with the CIA.

"It is important that we investigate these allegations carefully," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), "because if true, we may be facing the possibility of a dangerous and criminal abuse of powers at the highest levels of our government."

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) called on the US to take a moral stand on the issue of torture , and said the country should separate itself from other nations engaging in the practice.

"This government has to be based on truth and transparency, and it certainly must be based on security, the protection of America," she said. "But the United States does not make those practices of violating the law, violating the Constitution, violating the international convention on torture -- it must not make that the norm...therefore we must not draw to the practices of foreign dictators, but we must stand alone as a beacon of light shining around the world to ensure the principles of freedom and equality and justice reign strong in this nation."

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These interrogation tapes are not the only tapes the CIA has witheld from the 9/11 commission. And BTW, I think everyone involved knows it. They witheld the "laughing hijackers" tape from the commission too. Want some proof?
Well the laughing hijackers tape was revealed to the world on Sept 30, 2006 by Yosri Fouda(who worked previously for AL jeezra and received "AL qaida" tapes there)..who at the time described his source as "a previously tested channel"..he later even ADMITTED that it came from US Intelligence.......

U.S. intelligence sources tell CNN, they have aware of the tape for years, even unsuccessfully tried to have it lip-read. It's assumed U.S. authorities found it in Afghanistan in late 2001, but never released it.

YOSRI FOUDA, JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR: And I wonder why, because it would have been benefited everyone
Source: http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0610/01/cnr.04.html

Well, if the government had the so called suicide tape of M atta And Ziad Jarrah since 2001, why did they not turn it over to the 9/11 commission? The answer is very clear...so they could release it anonymously to the reporter who breaks the stories of Al Ciaduh tapes. That is after all exactly what happened. And frankly they didn't have these tapes since 2001. They always had them. They Made them. The other part of this tape is a bin laden speech on Jan 8 2000 that is very obviously a surveillance tape.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15082633/
I've watched the tape myself, and it focuses on the crowd and zooms in on individuals and frames them for a few seconds then pans for another..it's pretty obvious, and I doubt that the mujihaden in Afghanistan that they've labled Al Qaida were doing surveillance on themselves. And then there is the road to Guantanamo, a true story of 3 guys that were in Guantanamo, and gave their story..part of their story is the Government used this tape of a bin laden rally on Jan 8 2000 as the surveillance tape that it always was...you can see it at the 1:15 mark'
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-599098805530677622&q=road+to+guantanamo&total=136&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

So what does all this mean? It means the CIA witheld lots of tapes from the 9/11 commission and other departments, and everyone knows it and is OK with it. The rest is all an act.

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CIA misled 9/11 commission over tapes: report

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=6f829ab5-d0ed-4f94-bf79-6f667f6ea435&&Headline='CIA+misled+9%2f11+commission+over+tapes'
Agence France-Presse Washington, December 22, 2007   

The CIA obstructed the work of an official US commission investigating the September 11 attacks by withholding tapes of interrogations of Al-Qaeda operatives, according to former panel members quoted by the New York Times on Saturday. A review of documents by former members of the blue-ribbon 9/11 commission revealed the panel made repeated, detailed requests to the spy agency in 2003 and 2004 for information about the interrogation of Al-Qaeda operatives but were never notified of the tapes, the Times reported. The review of the commission's correspondence with the Central Intelligence Agency came after the agency earlier this month revealed it had destroyed videotapes in 2005 showing harsh interrogations of two Al-Qaeda members. The review, written up in a memo prepared by Philip Zelikow, the former executive director of the 9/11 commission, said that "further investigation is needed" to resolve whether the CIA's failure to hand over the tapes violated federal law. The memorandum does not assert that withholding the tapes was illegal but states that federal law penalizes anyone who "knowingly and willfully" withholds or "covers up" a "material fact" from a federal inquiry or makes "any materially false statement" to investigators, the Times said. The revelation will pile more pressure on President George W. Bush's administration, already under fire over the affair by human rights groups and lawmakers who allege it has tried to cover-up proof of torture. A spokesman for the CIA told the Times the agency had been prepared to give the 9/11 commission the tapes, but that panel staff members never specifically asked for interrogation videos. CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield was quoted as saying that the agency had gone to "great lengths" to satisfy the panel's requests, and that commission members had been provided with detailed information from interrogations of detainees.

The two chairs of the commission, former Democratic lawmaker Lee Hamilton and former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean, told the Times the review showed the CIA had actively tried to obstruct the panel's work. Kean said the panel would give the memorandum to federal officials and lawmakers in Congress who are investigating the destruction of the tapes. "I don't know whether that's illegal or not, but it's certainly wrong," Kean was quoted as saying. Hamilton said the CIA "clearly obstructed" the panel's probe. According to the memo obtained by the Times and posted on its website, the commission was interested in interrogations of Al-Qaeda members because it was trying to reconstruct the events leading up to the attacks of September 11, 2001, on New York and Washington. The commission made initial general requests for intelligence information from interrogations, including the two detainees on the videotapes, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rashim al-Nashiri, said the memorandum. It followed up with more requests for "very detailed information" about the context of the interrogations, the credibility of statements from detainees, the quality of language translation and other issues.  "The commission was dissatisfied with the answers it received to these questions," the memorandum said. None of the officials who communicated with the panel ever revealed the existence of the videotapes, it said.

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9/11 Commission Chairmen Believe CIA Impeded Inquiry by Withholding Interrogation Tapes
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317995,00.html
Saturday, December 22, 2007

The two chairmen of the Sept. 11 commission said they believe the CIA deliberately impeded the panel's inquiry by withholding interrogation tapes of Al Qaeda suspects, The New York Times reported Saturday. The Times reported that the commission made repeated requests in 2003 and 2004 for documents and information about Al Qaeda interrogations from the CIA and were told the agency had "produced or made available for review" everything the panel requested. But a review was conducted in early December after the disclosure that the CIA two years ago had destroyed videotapes of the interrogation of suspected terrorists, and chairmen Lee Hamilton and Thomas Kean told The Times it seemed the agency made a conscious decision to obstruct their inquiry. CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield on Saturday issued a statement saying that "the CIA went to great lengths to meet the requests of the 9/11 commission and provided the commission with a wealth of information. "Because it was thought the commission could ask about tapes at some point, they were not destroyed while the commission was active," Mansfield said. "As Director [Michael] Hayden pointed out in his December 6th statement, the tapes were destroyed only when it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries." A CIA official told the Times that the agency was prepared to hand over the videotapes, but that the commission never specifically asked for interrogation videos. The Times reported that the panel's former executive director Philip D. Zelikow concluded in a seven-page memorandum that "further investigation is needed" to determine if the CIA violated federal law by withholding the videos.
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9/11 Panel Joins Probe of Destroyed CIA Tapes
http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_911_Panel_Joins_Probe_of_Destroyed_CIA_Tapes_12112.html
By Diane Smith  10:24, December 22nd 2007



According to the U.S. panel investigating the 2001 terrorist attacks, the CIA had deliberately withheld tapes of supposed torture of terrorism suspects to obstruct the panel’s work, the New York Times wrote in its Saturday edition. Lee Hamilton and Thomas Kean, the leading chairmen of the panel, were the ones to comment on the issue for the New York Times. The two declared that the CIA had disposed of hundreds of hours of recordings of CIA investigators using "enhanced" investigation techniques such as waterboarding.  The latest revelation on the CIA disposal of the tapes has triggered investigations by the justice department, Congress and from within the CIA, and also provoked members of the September 11 commission to review the top secret documents and communications supplied by the CIA during their probe, the Times said.

Philip Zelikow, the panel's former executive director, said he prepared a memorandum on the review according to which the panel had sought complete documents, reports and information linked to the interrogation process. Zelikow had been assured by the CIA that it had "produced or made available for review" everything that had been requested.  Panel chairman Lee Hamilton declared to the Times that the CIA had "clearly obstructed" the commission's investigation. The other top chairman of the panel said he would submit Zelikow's review to federal prosecutors and congressional investigators responsible with the destruction of the tapes issue. The lawyers hired by the Guantanamo detainees said on Friday to federal judge Henry H Kennedy Jr. that this issue shows the Bush administration is ready to destroy evidence of possible torture or illegal interrogation methods.  "Until these inquiries are complete, until the oversights' finished, I will be rendering no opinion from the podium," Bush said. "Let's wait and see what the facts are," the president added. The destroyed tapes illustrated the 2002 interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and another top al-Qaeda member. At that point in time, Zubaydah was the most important capture of an al-Qaeda figure following the September 11, 2001 attacks.
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CIA: We Did Cooperate With 9/11 Commission
Agency Rebukes Suggestion It Was Not Forthcoming With Info About Interrogations

WASHINGTON, Dec. 22, 2007

Man Behind CIA Tape Disposal

There's a chill in Washington over the CIA tape case. David Martin reports the decision to destroy videotapes of the interrogations of two terror suspects apparently can be traced to one official at the agency. | Share

(AP) The CIA on Saturday rebutted suggestions the spy agency was uncooperative and hid from the Sept. 11 commission the videotaped interrogations of two suspected terrorists, saying it waited until the panel went out of business before destroying the material now in question.

The destruction in late 2005 of the videotapes of two al Qaeda suspects has upset a federal judge and riled the Democratic-controlled Congress, which has promised an investigation. The Justice Department also is trying to find out what happened and whether any laws were broken.

A recent memo by Philip Zelikow, the former executive director of the Sept. 11 commission, suggests the CIA was less than forthcoming when asked for documents and other information from the panel, which investigated the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The CIA disputed that characterization and suggested the panel should have requested interrogation videotapes specifically if it wanted them.

"The notion that the CIA wasn't cooperative or forthcoming with the 9/11 commission is just plain wrong. It is utterly without foundation," spokesman Mark Mansfield said Saturday. "The CIA's cooperation and assistance is what enabled the 9/11 commission to reconstruct the plot in their very comprehensive report."

In a statement e-mailed separately Saturday, Mansfield suggested the commission should have been specific about wanting videotapes.

Fast Fact

The CIA said the 9/11 commission could have specifically requested interrogation videotapes. But the commission's executive director said the existence of such tapes was never made known.
"Because it was thought the commission could ask about tapes at some point, they were not destroyed while the commission was active," he said. Mansfield, citing similar comments this month by CIA Director Michael Hayden, added that "the tapes were destroyed only when it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries."

Zelikow's seven-page memo, dated Dec. 13, reviews the commission's requests for information from the CIA.

It cites a Jan. 26, 2004, meeting of commission members and administration officials, including then-CIA Director George Tenet, at which the government offered to present written questions to the detainees and relay their answers back to the commission.

"None of the government officials in any of these 2004 meetings alluded to the existence of recordings of interrogations or any further information in the government's possession that was relevant to the commission's requests," Zelikow wrote.

Near the end of the commission's work, and in response to a request by the commission to all agencies, John McLaughlin, then the deputy CIA director, confirmed on June 29, 2004, that the CIA had "taken and completed all reasonable steps necessary to find the documents in its possession, custody or control responsive" to the commission's formal requests and "has produced or made available for review" all such documents, the memo said.

The existence of Zelikow's memo was first reported by The New York Times.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/12/22/national/main3642051.shtml

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 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030908-480226,00.html

<<<Zubaydah's capture and interrogation, told in a gripping narrative that reads like a techno-thriller, did not just take down one of al-Qaeda's most wanted operatives but also unexpectedly provided what one U.S. investigator told Posner was "the Rosetta stone of 9/11 ... the details of what (Zubaydah) claimed was his 'work' for senior Saudi and Pakistani officials." <<>>Posner elaborates in startling detail how U.S. interrogators used drugs—an unnamed "quick-on, quick-off" painkiller and Sodium Pentothal, the old movie truth serum—in a chemical version of reward and punishment to make Zubaydah talk,<<<>>>>he reeled off telephone numbers for a senior member of the royal family who would, said Zubaydah, "tell you what to do." The man at the other end would be Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, a Westernized nephew of King Fahd's<<<>>>When the fake inquisitors accused Zubaydah of lying, he responded with a 10-minute monologue laying out the Saudi-Pakistani-bin Laden triangle<<<>>>Zubaydah, writes Posner, said the Saudi connection ran through Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, the kingdom's longtime intelligence chief. Zubaydah said bin Laden "personally" told him of a 1991 meeting at which Turki agreed to let bin Laden leave Saudi Arabia and to provide him with secret funds<<<>>>Zubaydah told interrogators bin Laden said the arrangement was "blessed by the Saudis."<<<>>>Those three Saudi princes all perished within days of one another. On July 22, 2002, Prince Ahmed was felled by a heart attack at age 43. One day later Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud, 41, was killed in what was called a high-speed car accident. The last member of the trio, Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, officially "died of thirst" while traveling east of Riyadh one week later. And seven months after that, Mushaf Ali Mir, by then Pakistan's Air Marshal, perished in a plane crash in clear weather over the unruly North-West Frontier province, along with his wife and closest confidants.>>>>>
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Now let's take a closer look at the first Saudi official Zubadah claims is his boss and gives the phone number out as proof. It is Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, who BTW is the leader of the group of Saudi Arabians that President George W Bush let escape from the U.S. as the 9/11 terrorist attacks were over. Remember the flights of the Bin laden family and Saudi Arabians that flew out of the U.S. when the rest of us unwashed couldn't fly?..Abu Zubaydahs' boss was the leader of them and he said that on tape. BYE BYE TAPE. Here is the FBI report of the Saudi flights that Bin Laden himself may have chartered according to the report and there on page 11/224 is the man Zubadah fingered as his boss and who they describe as the leader of this group, Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz.
http://www.truthout.org/imgs.art_02/saudidocs_2.pdf
No..they don't want you to know this..and as further proof here is the memo Philip Zelikow sent just a few days(Dec 13 2007) and on page 6 states...

Late in its investigation, reacting to press allegations that Abu Zubaydah had
referred to a Saudi prince in his interrogations, the Commission asked “what
information does the CIA have” about whether such assertions were made in
Zubaydah’s interrogations. (CIA Question for the Record No. 3, dated May
20, 2004). We knew the CIA believed this was untrue but we asked the
question formally to get any relevant information for the record. We cannot
find a record of a CIA response.source:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/20071222-INTEL-MEMO.pdf

The reason the tapes were destroyed is not because it shows torture, it's because of what we've been saying all along. 9/11 was an inside job. Bin Laden is Saudi Intelligence. 9/11 was carried out by the intelligence agencies of the NWO. It's on tape! Of course it will be destroyed!

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The CIA's Destroyed Interrogation Tapes and the Saudi-Pakistani 911 Connection
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-posner/the-cias-destroyed-inter_b_75850.html

Zubaydah revealed connections to a number of prominent Saudi royals. His boss Prince Ahmed, was the leader of the Saudi party that was allowed to fly home during the general flight ban after 911 (as Jimd showed). All of the Saudi's that where named have since met a variety of unfortunate and untimely fates as the linked article chronicles.

It only required a press release from the CIA director to tell the press why the tapes where destroyed for the MSM to roll over and follow the bulls**t he was giving the public. Hence the unquestioning adherence to the establishment.