The CIA told a judge the tapes didn't exist, as he tried one of the suspects actually shown on the video.
(SALEM, Ore.) - It's a spooky world out there. That is confirmed once again by the CIA as they admitted this week to destroying videotapes of highly controversial interrogation techniques used against terrorism suspects.
The tapes are said to include waterboarding and other controversial and internationally condemned techniques used as early as 2002. One of the suspects who was shown being tortured was Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in CIA custody.
Though they were requested by the defense, the recordings were not provided to a federal court hearing the case of the terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui or to the September 11 commission for that matter.
Both made formal requests to the CIA for transcripts and any other documentary evidence taken from interrogations of agency prisoners, agencies reported.
But the CIA's lawyers told federal prosecutors in 2003 and in 2005, that the CIA did not possess any videotapes of interrogations, even though they were sought by the judge in the case.
It all came to light when the CIA learned this week that the New York Times had the story and was going public with the information. The CIA had a sudden change of heart, admitting that the tapes were indeed destroyed.
CIA director Michael V. Hayden says the agency didn't want to compromise undercover agents' security, so the agency allowed the trial of a terror suspect to take place while denying that any tapes existed, when they would have corroborated the man's allegations against the U.S. government.
This is the same agency that Valerie Plame was associated with. Her secret identity as a government agent was outed by members of the Bush Administration over a political statement made by her husband against the war in Iraq. It seems our government has a vastly different regard for the agents captured on the videotapes that have been destroyed.
The revelation that the tapes were intentionally done away with raises many questions about whether the CIA specifically withheld information from Congress, the courts and the September 11 commission, over U.S. torture techniques that are and were employed.
Chalmers Johnson, a CIA operative from 1967 to 1973, says the term "Blowback" is what the CIA uses, "for the unintended consequences that are deliberately kept secret from the American public to keep the public from putting it in context."
Regarding its claim that the CIA destroyed the tapes to safeguard the identity of undercover employees, The Washington Post quoted CIA director Michael V. Hayden saying, "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."
"Were they ever to leak," he told the paper, "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."
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, called the destruction of the tapes "another troubling aspect of the interrogation program" which has been under fire in recent months.
Others knew also
Hayden says leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees were told of the existence of the tapes and the CIA's intention to destroy them, The Seattle Times reported.
One is California Representative Jane Harman who was the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee in 2003. That is when she and three other lawmakers who were told the tapes existed, and that the CIA planned to destroy them. She told reporters that she was against the idea of destroying the videotapes.
Another lawmaker, Representative Pete Hoekstra, R-Michigan, denied knowing about the tapes at all. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, claimed the panel didn't know of the tapes' destruction until an entire year had passed.
Unexpected Timing
This revelation about the CIA lied to judges and the 911 Commission and destroyed videotaped evidence of torture techniques they denied using comes on an interesting day.
House and Senate negotiators reached an agreement on legislation today that forbids the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics. Legislators say it is intended to bring United States intelligence agencies in line with rules followed by the U.S. military.
The battle for this measure isn't over; it still needs to be approved by the full House and Senate. But if it succeeds, these new laws will set a standard for legal interrogations that everyone involved in the U.S. government will have to follow. Specifically, the legislation will outlaw the use of simulated drowning, forced nudity, using hoods, military dogs and other harsh tactics against prisoners by any U.S. intelligence agency.
CIA Suffers 'Blowback' from Destroying Videotapes That Documented TortureSalem-News.com