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CIA destroyed interrogation tapes - who's to blame?
Bush.
Republican leaders.
And the Democratic leadership.
Interesting, ain't it?
I'll start with the initial breaking story a few days back on the CIA destroying the tapes:
| quote: | C.I.A. Destroyed Tapes of Interrogations
WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 — The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about the C.I.A’s secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.
he videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said.
The C.I.A. said today that the decision to destroy the tapes had been made “within the C.I.A. itself,” and they were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value. The agency was headed at the time by Porter J. Goss. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Goss declined this afternoon to comment on the destruction of the tapes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/w...=rssnyt&emc=rss |
Now before you choke on your lunch when reading in utter disbelief the rationale the CIA is supposedly giving us as to why they destroyed those tapes, I offer you another interesting read as to an alternative rationale:
| quote: | Yesterday we learned that in 2005, despite earlier warnings from Congress, the White House, and the Justice Department, the CIA destroyed two videotaped interrogations of al-Qaeda operatives who had been captured shortly after 9/11. Why? CIA director Michael Hayden says the tapes were destroyed because of fears that they might leak and give away the identity of CIA interrogators, but that's an excuse so thin that I hesitate to even call it laughable. In fact, the decision was made just as questions were starting to be raised about the torture of CIA prisoners, and the tapes were almost certainly destroyed for fear that they'd be subpoenaed and it would become clear just how harsh our "harsh interrogation" measures really were.
So what would investigators have seen if they'd had access to the tapes? One of the captured prisoners was an al-Qaeda operative named Abu Zubaydah, and it turns out we have a pretty good idea of what his tape would have shown. First, Spencer Ackerman gives us this from James Risen's State of War:
| quote: | | Risen charges that Tenet caved to Bush entirely on the torture of al-Qaeda detainees. After the 2002 capture of Abu Zubaydah, a bin Laden deputy, failed to yield much information due to his drowsiness from medical treatment, Bush allegedly told Tenet, "Who authorized putting him on pain medication?" Not only did Tenet get the message — brutality while questioning an enemy prisoner was no problem — but Tenet also never sought explicit White House approval for permissible interrogation techniques, contributing to what Risen speculates is an effort by senior officials "to insulate Bush and give him deniability" on torture. |
And here is Barton Gellman's gloss of Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine:
| quote: | Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be....Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics.
[Other unrelated bungling described, all of which is worth clicking the link to read.]
Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. "I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?"
Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety — against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each...target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered." |
So here's what the tapes would have shown: not just that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative, but that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative who was (a) unimportant and low-ranking, (b) mentally unstable, (c) had no useful information, and (d) eventually spewed out an endless series of worthless, fantastical "confessions" under duress. This was all prompted by the president of the United States, implemented by the director of the CIA, and the end result was thousands of wasted man hours by intelligence and and law enforcement personnel.
Nice trifecta there. And just think: there's an entire political party in this country that still thinks this is OK.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ar...7_12/012662.php |
Interesting thought, and I won't say I necessarily buy into all of it. But one thing is certain - it's not even laughable to buy into the lame ass excuse of "protecting" the CIA interrogators as to why they destroyed the tapes. If anyone believes that, I've got a lovely bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
And don't think this is the first time a branch of the Executive has seemingly had a bad case of "missing" evidence when it comes to interrogations. As an example, here's the case with the trial of Jose Padilla:
| quote: | A videotape showing Pentagon officials' final interrogation of al- Qaida suspect Jose Padilla is missing, raising questions about whether federal prosecutors have lost other recordings and evidence in the case.
The tape is classified, but Padilla's attorneys said they believe something happened during that interrogation that could explain why Padilla does not trust them and suspects they are government agents. . . . .
U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke was incredulous that anything connected to such a high-profile defendant could be lost.
"Do you understand how it might be difficult for me to understand that a tape related to this particular individual just got mislaid?" Cooke told prosecutors at a hearing last month. . . .
Miami criminal defense lawyer David O. Markus said the missing tape makes the government agents look like "Keystone cops."
"You can't help but be suspicious," Markus said. "It's the government's burden to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt. When it 'loses' evidence, defense lawyers are right to cry foul."
http://www.breitbart.com/article.ph...&show_article=1 |
So naturally, Bush supporters are thinking I'm going to pin the blame all on Bush and those who enabled him, right?
Guess again.
According to today's WaPost:
| quote: | Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002
In Meetings, Spy Panels' Chiefs Did Not Protest, Officials Say
By Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 9, 2007; Page A01
In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.
Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.
"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...7120801664.html |
That's right, kids - top Democratic leaders were complicit as hell with these tactics back then, such as Jay Rockefeller, Nancy Pelosi, and Jane Harman. Now since this story has broke and the Democratic leadership bullshit exposed, they've all come out either expressing denial or have attempted to demonstrate their efforts to supposedly stop the process. Needless to say, their attempts were, shall we say, lame as fuck?
For more on the complicit behaviors and failures of these Democratic leaders, I highly encourage you to read Greenwald's post here:
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/gr.../view/?show=all
More can be read here as well:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenw...ence/index.html
Unbelievable, and sad. Fingers are being pointed, but it's becoming obvious just how fucking hypocritical it is to see those Democrats point the fingers. To me it's a sign of the absolute necessity to clean house first before criticizing how dirty someone else's house is. Rockefeller is fucking inept as hell and should have NEVER been given the chair position of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Harman is just as bad. And Pelosi, well, it was nice and all, but as one blogger mentioned, she seemed like a wonderful housewife who was in a little over her head. She's not a bad Speaker, to be certain, but this type of complicit behavior should make her step down.
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Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...
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