CIA destroyed tapes of al-Qaeda interrogations

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CIA destroyed tapes of al-Qaeda interrogations

Postby Jeff » Fri Dec 07, 2007 3:19 am

CIA destroyed tapes of al-Qaeda interrogations: director

December 7

The CIA videotaped its interrogations of two top al-Qaeda 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 George W. 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-Qaeda 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.
'A bad idea'

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 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."

...

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Postby LilyPatToo » Fri Dec 07, 2007 12:41 pm

When I read of this in the news, I was surprised to see any mention of it at all and glad that someone managed to get word out about the destruction of evidence of wrongdoing. Too many Americans are completely clueless about the intelligence agencies' habit of doing this with incriminating evidence of their misdeeds. When people brush off survivors of some of those behind-the-curtain programs/policies due to our inability to produce solid evidence that they ever existed, we need examples like this to cite.

But this item seems to be slipping from the news already and the Human Rights Campaign, of which I'm a supporter, has nothing about it on their website (that I was able to find) this morning. I worry that this will be just one more potentially explosive revelation that the mainstream news will be instructed to relegate to the "back pages" and then ignore completely.

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Postby Et in Arcadia ego » Fri Dec 07, 2007 12:54 pm

I've wondered for some time what a US Government-sanctioned water boarding device looks like.

Is it a sleek and body-sculpted stainless steel body tray with remote-activated military grade brass worm gears and teflon coated axis components or just a piece of plywood slapped over the top of a metal folding chair like the ones they use in the WWF TV shows..
"but I do know that you should remove my full name from your sig. Dig?" - Unnamed, Super Scary Persun, bbrrrrr....
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Postby Crow » Fri Dec 07, 2007 4:42 pm

et in Arcadia ego wrote:I've wondered for some time what a US Government-sanctioned water boarding device looks like.

Is it a sleek and body-sculpted stainless steel body tray with remote-activated military grade brass worm gears and teflon coated axis components or just a piece of plywood slapped over the top of a metal folding chair like the ones they use in the WWF TV shows..


I suspect the former, though the device likely has another, more "official" use as well. There's a lot of money floating around for this kind of project.
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Postby NeonLX » Fri Dec 07, 2007 4:46 pm

Crow wrote:
I suspect the former, though the device likely has another, more "official" use as well. There's a lot of money floating around for this kind of project.


I'll betcha one of the Halliburton subsidaries makes this little piece of hardware.
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Postby Seamus OBlimey » Fri Dec 07, 2007 7:08 pm

CIA destroyed tapes of al-Qaeda interrogations


Aren't they just telling us they've destroyed the evidence so they're off the hook?

Forget it.

Tapes? They still use tapes in this day and age?
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Postby Nordic » Sat Dec 08, 2007 1:28 am

There's a hell of a thread over at Dailykos right now regarding this.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/7 ... 707/419308

The title is "It's Not Torture They're Covering Up, It's the Results".

And it suggests the reason the tapes were destroyed is not because they showed extreme torture, but because they probably showed something similar to this:

The automatic assumption about the CIA's destruction of the interrogation tapes of Abu Zubaydah is that the tapes exposed methods everyone would agree amounted to torture, and they were destroyed to prevent that proof being exposed. It's quite likely that what was being covered up was the results of that torture.

Gerald Posner has a piece at HuffPo drawing from his 2003 book that is worth a read:

Instead, when confronted by his "Saudi" interrogators, Zubaydah showed no fear. Instead, according to the two U.S. intelligence sources that provided me the details, he seemed relieved. The man who had been reluctant to even confirm his identity to his U.S. captors, suddenly talked animatedly. He was happy to see them, he said, because he feared the Americans would kill him. He then asked his interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi royal family. And Zubaydah provided a private home number and a cell phone number from memory. "He will tell you what to do," Zubaydah assured them


The comments get very interesting ...
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Postby 8bitagent » Sat Dec 08, 2007 1:33 am

Nordic wrote:There's a hell of a thread over at Dailykos right now regarding this.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/7 ... 707/419308

The title is "It's Not Torture They're Covering Up, It's the Results".

And it suggests the reason the tapes were destroyed is not because they showed extreme torture, but because they probably showed something similar to this:

The automatic assumption about the CIA's destruction of the interrogation tapes of Abu Zubaydah is that the tapes exposed methods everyone would agree amounted to torture, and they were destroyed to prevent that proof being exposed. It's quite likely that what was being covered up was the results of that torture.

Gerald Posner has a piece at HuffPo drawing from his 2003 book that is worth a read:

Instead, when confronted by his "Saudi" interrogators, Zubaydah showed no fear. Instead, according to the two U.S. intelligence sources that provided me the details, he seemed relieved. The man who had been reluctant to even confirm his identity to his U.S. captors, suddenly talked animatedly. He was happy to see them, he said, because he feared the Americans would kill him. He then asked his interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi royal family. And Zubaydah provided a private home number and a cell phone number from memory. "He will tell you what to do," Zubaydah assured them


The comments get very interesting ...



American interrogators used painkillers to induce Zubaydah to talk -- they gave him the meds when he cooperated, and withdrew them when he was quiet. They also utilized a thiopental sodium drip (a so-called truth serum). Several hours after he first fingered Prince Ahmed, his captors challenged the information, and said that since he had disparaged the Saudi royal family, he would be executed. It was at that point that some of the secrets of 9/11 came pouring out. In a short monologue, that one investigator told me was the "Rosetta Stone" of 9/11, Zubaydah laid out details of how he and the al Qaeda hierarchy had been supported at high levels inside the Saudi and Pakistan governments.

He named two other Saudi princes, and also the chief of Pakistan's air force, as his major contacts. Moreover, he stunned his interrogators, by charging that two of the men, the King's nephew, and the Pakistani Air Force chief, knew a major terror operation was planned for America on 9/11.

Considering that "Zubaydah is the only top al Queda operative who has secretly linked two of America's closest allies in the war on terror," it would be pretty embarrassing for the CIA if they had these people killed solely based on something Zubaydah came up with to save his life.



Holy shit, some of the Daily Kos people there actually have balls and an intellect?

Usually all I see for years is endless, endless gatekeeping and the usual American liberal "shut up about 9/11 theories" spewage.

This is the REAL reason the torture tapes have been destroyed, by what they reveal
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Postby Nordic » Sat Dec 08, 2007 2:33 am

Yeah, it's a great thread and somehow avoided the idiotic FAQ nazis over there who normally disrupt any discussion about anything remotely resembling a "conspiracy theory".

The comments are pretty great. Unfortunately right at this moment, the damn site is shut down for maintenance or I'd throw some juicy stuff this way.

One of these days people are simply going to have to acknowledge that you can't talk about 9/11 or the bogus "war on terror" without discussing this stuff. The 9/11 commission report was a freaking joke, and as soon as anyone with half a brain starts looking into it, they realize it.

The trouble is, they all bought into the house of cards. The Dems, everybody. 99% of them helped construct this fiction. So if the truth comes out, they ALLLL go down. All of them, with the exception of a few "nutjobs" like Kucinich.
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Postby 8bitagent » Sat Dec 08, 2007 3:27 am

Nordic wrote:Yeah, it's a great thread and somehow avoided the idiotic FAQ nazis over there who normally disrupt any discussion about anything remotely resembling a "conspiracy theory".

The comments are pretty great. Unfortunately right at this moment, the damn site is shut down for maintenance or I'd throw some juicy stuff this way.

One of these days people are simply going to have to acknowledge that you can't talk about 9/11 or the bogus "war on terror" without discussing this stuff. The 9/11 commission report was a freaking joke, and as soon as anyone with half a brain starts looking into it, they realize it.

The trouble is, they all bought into the house of cards. The Dems, everybody. 99% of them helped construct this fiction. So if the truth comes out, they ALLLL go down. All of them, with the exception of a few "nutjobs" like Kucinich.


Is it too soon to say "the damn is breaking"?

Because I have so many mainstream articles to prove intelligence controlls al Qaeda in the Phillipines, Indonesia, 9/11's operatives, etc.

Assets, moles, provocatuers, liasons, informants, agents...hell the famous "Kuala Lampar" Malaysian january 2000 meeting for "9/11 plotting" was an intelligence operation.

So maybe theres hope for gatekeepers in DailyKos, Huffpo, counterpunch and crooks and liars.
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