NationStates Jolt Archive

CIA destroyed interrogation tapes

According to the intelligence agency, the tapes were destroyed to protect the identity of CIA agents and because they no longer had intelligence value.

But civil liberties lawyers have refused to accept this, saying the CIA previously denied such tapes existed.

They say the move appears to be an attempt to destroy evidence that could have brought CIA agents to account.

The New York Times, which broke the story, quotes current and former government officials as saying the CIA destroyed the tapes in 2005 as it faced Congressional and legal scrutiny about its secret detention programme.

Officials feared the tapes could have raised doubts about the legality of the CIA's techniques, the newspaper says
Linkage (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7132000.stm)

This could not look more like a cover up attempt by the CIA. Seriously, if the tapes were all above board they could have made them public and dismissed some of the accusations of torture on their part. Troubling stuff.

ya but since when has anyone ever been able to find out what the cia does anyway? of course they destroyed the tapes. they dont have a mandate to tape every interrogation legal or not.

the cia makes nothing public.

I'm certainly not going to vote for the CIA in '08.

"the tapes were destroyed to protect the identity of CIA agents"

Now, if only there were some technological way to obscure or distort faces on images and video. A blur, pixelisation or "black-barring" if you will... imagine the cinematic revolution.

I'd snicker, but that's so gauche.

I'd snicker, but that's so gauche.

Why the latter would preclude you from the former remains a conundrum.

Why the latter would preclude you from the former remains a conundrum.

Don't worry, it didn't. I was simply putting on airs.

Don't worry, it didn't.

My figurative nerves were in a refractory state then as now.

I was simply putting on airs.

I did wager having felt my nose be piqued by a certain pungency.

No use crying over split milk, especially if said milk is quite old.

I did wager having felt my nose be piqued by a certain pungency.

Well garlic is good for curing yeast infections.

No use crying over split milk

But do entertain hesitations about the perilous sharpness of the utensils used to accomplish something as astonishing.

But do entertain hesitations about the perilous sharpness of the utensils used to accomplish something as astonishing.

You mock much better than I ever could.

Well garlic is good for curing yeast infections.

Your expert advice in this area of mycology is as always revealing, although personally superfluous.

But do entertain hesitations about the perilous sharpness of the utensils used to accomplish something as astonishing.
:eek:
Indeed

You mock much better than I ever could.

Do feel free of inhibition to furnish more maxims of which you appear to erroneously think I am unaware.

Do feel free of inhibition to furnish more maxims of which you appear to erroneously think I am unaware.

Smart ass.

I am unwilling to entertain such loquaciousness today.

Smart ass.

I'd've deemed it rather prurient.

I am unwilling to entertain such loquaciousness today.

As you are quotidianly, old bean.

You mock much better than I ever could.

It was a stupid error, but the way it was caught gave me something to laugh at. With a mistake like the one committed it deserves to be mocked.

:)

With a mistake like the one committed it deserves to be mocked. :)

And be it far from my person to fail to do so as garrulously as conceivable.

And be it far from my person to fail to do so as garrulously as conceivable.

I would expect nothing less.
:)

I'd've deemed it rather prurient.
As you are quotidianly, old bean.
I must take umbrage at the mere suggestion. While it is true that I rarely feel the need to promulgate my esoteric cogitations in a manner that highlights my ability to rely on platitudinous ponderosity, this simply indicates that I tend to eschew flatulent garrulity, unlike yourself who is simply awash in jejune affectations.

I sedulously avoid prurient jocosity on this forum in particular, for reasons best left unarticulated.

I must take umbrage at the mere suggestion.

And verily, how mendaciously you do it!

While it is true that I rarely feel the need to promulgate my esoterical cogitations

I'd've deemed your cogitations more fabricated than guilelessly "esoterical", even more so due the circumstance that the term of which you floundered in availing yourself is "esoteric".

in a manner that highlights my ability to rely on platitudinous ponderosity,

Indeed, as that ability's range has already demonstrably been exposed not to be as elephantine as the myriad of these airs of yours.

this simply indicates that I tend to eschew flatulent garrulity, unlike yourself who is simply awash in jejune affectations.

They're not as jejune as they are discretionarily insipid, but I do see they have proved of service to you as you've recycled them, regardless their visceral grandiloquence that you've seen to, shall we say, anillinctusly imbibe.

I sedulously avoid prurient jocosity on this forum in particular, for reasons best left unarticulated.

As they should have been allowed to remain, forsooth, I must avow postfactually.

Hiding evidence of torture is just one part...actually it is good ol' CIA protecting their bed buddies KSA and Pak...the uber allies in the war on terror.....terror funded and done by the same KSA and Pak.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-posner/the-cias-destroyed-inter_b_75850.html


The CIA's Destroyed Interrogation Tapes and the Saudi-Pakistani 9/11 Connection

On December 5, the CIA's director, General Michael V. Hayden, issued a statement disclosing that in 2005 at least two videotapes of interrogations with al Qaeda prisoners were destroyed. The tapes, which the CIA did not provide to either the 9/11 Commission, nor to a federal court in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, were destroyed, claimed Hayden, to protect the safety of undercover operatives.

Hayden did not disclose one of the al Qaeda suspects whose tapes were destroyed. But he did identify the other. It was Abu Zubaydah, the top ranking terror suspect when he was tracked and captured in Pakistan in 2003. In September 2006, at a press conference in which he defended American interrogation techniques, President Bush also mentioned Abu Zubaydah by name. Bush acknowledged that Zubaydah, who was wounded when captured, did not initially cooperate with his interrogators, but that eventually when he did talk, his information was, according to Bush, "quite important."

In my 2003 New York Times bestseller, Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11, I discussed Abu Zubaydah at length in Chapter 19, "The Interrogation." There I set forth how Zubaydah initially refused to help his American captors. Also, disclosed was how U.S. intelligence established a so-called "fake flag" operation, in which the wounded Zubaydah was transferred to Afghanistan under the ruse that he had actually been turned over to the Saudis. The Saudis had him on a wanted list, and the Americans believed that Zubaydah, fearful of torture and death at the hands of the Saudis, would start talking when confronted by U.S. agents playing the role of Saudi intelligence officers.

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

That man was Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, one of King Fahd's nephews, and the chairman of the largest Saudi publishing empire. Later, American investigators would determine that Prince Ahmed had been in the U.S. on 9/11.

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.

It would be nice to further investigate the men named by Zubaydah, but that is not possible. All four identified by Zubaydah are now dead. As for the three Saudi princes, the King's 43-year-old nephew, Prince Ahmed, died of either a heart attack or blood clot, depending on which report you believe, after having liposuction in Riyadh's top hospital; the second, 41-year-old Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud, died the following day in a one car accident, on his way to the funeral of Prince Ahmed; and one week later, the third Saudi prince named by Zubaydah, 25-year-old Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, died, according to the Saudi Royal Court, "of thirst." The head of Pakistan's Air Force, Mushaf Ali Mir, was the last to go. He died, together with his wife and fifteen of his top aides, when his plane blew up -- suspected as sabotage -- in February 2003. Pakistan's investigation of the explosion -- if one was even done -- has never been made public.

Zubaydah is the only top al Queda operative who has secretly linked two of America's closest allies in the war on terror -- Saudi Arabia and Pakistan -- to the 9/11 attacks. Why does Bush, and the CIA, continue to protect the Saudi Royal family and the Pakistani military, from the implications of Zubaydah's confessions? It is, or course, because the Bush administration desperately needs Pakistani and Saudi help, not only to keep Afghanistan from spinning completely out of control, but also as counterweights to the growing power of Iran. The Sunni governments in Riyadh and Islamabad have as much to fear from a resurgent Iran as does the Bush administration. But does this mean that leads about the origins of 9/11 should not be aggressively pursued? Of course not. But this is precisely what the Bush administration is doing. And now the cover-up is enhanced by the CIA's destruction of Zubaydah's interrogation tapes.

The American public deserves no less than the complete truth about 9/11. And those CIA officials now complicit in hiding the truth by destroying key evidence should be held responsible.c

"the tapes were destroyed to protect the identity of CIA agents"

Now, if only there were some technological way to obscure or distort faces on images and video. A blur, pixelisation or "black-barring" if you will... imagine the cinematic revolution.
Yes, yes. There's this technology they used recently to make absolutely impossible to know who Valerie Plame is...

Hiding evidence of torture is just one part...actually it is good ol' CIA protecting their bed buddies KSA and Pak...the uber allies in the war on terror.....terror funded and done by the same KSA and Pak.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-posner/the-cias-destroyed-inter_b_75850.html

Arar... ok.

And no, I wasn't just clearing my throat.

Linkage (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7132000.stm)

This could not look more like a cover up attempt by the CIA. Seriously, if the tapes were all above board they could have made them public and dismissed some of the accusations of torture on their part. Troubling stuff.

The CIA, despite being in the business of lying should have known better than to lie to a judge. Saying they didn't exist and then saying they were destroyed means that somebody lied. To a judge. Bad form. *nod*

I cannot understand why anyone would be surprised to learn that the CIA had done something illegal and then tried to cover it up.

But I also cannot understand why the CIA would destroy the tapes if they had useful information on them, or why they would ever make tapes in the first place if they felt it would be dangerous to them, or why they would bother torturing someone if the information they would get from him was so unimportant that they wouldn't even keep it.

And as for destroying the video to protect the identity of the interrogators doing the waterboarding -- THAT I'm not surprised by. I'm sure right now there are hundreds of prison inmates, convicted on video evidence of them committing their crimes right in front of a camera, who are slapping their foreheads and saying, "Why didn't I think to erase those tapes?"

If it's real, it's already in youtube.

Oh, how cynical.

I am not opposed to the CIA killing dangerous foreigners, but I am deeply disgusted and ashamed by torture, which is the lowest and most cowardly and despicable of all human behavior.

The CIA should have heads knocked together over this and careers ruined, the fear of god, congressional oversight and dismissal from the agency and government should dissuade further crimes of this nature.