CIA Admits It Destroyed Tapes Of Interrogations

CIA admits it destroyed tapes of interrogations

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/06/america/06cia.php

By Mark Mazzetti
Published: December 6, 2007

WASHINGTON: 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 CIA's secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.

The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in CIA 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 CIA said today that the decision to destroy the tapes had been made "within the CIA 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, Goss declined this afternoon to comment on the destruction of the tapes.

The existence and subsequent destruction of the tapes are likely to reignite the debate over the use of severe interrogation techniques on terror suspects, and their destruction raises questions about whether CIA officials withheld information from the courts and from the presidentially appointed Sept. 11 commission about aspects of the program. It was not clear who within the CIA authorized the destruction of the tapes, but current and former government officials said it had been approved at the highest levels of the agency.

The Times informed the CIA on Wednesday evening that it planned to publish in Friday's newspaper an article about the destruction of the tapes.. Today, the CIA director, General Michael V. Hayden, wrote a letter to the agency workforce explaining the matter.

The recordings were not provided to a federal court hearing the case of the terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui or to the Sept. 11 commission, which had made formal requests to the CIA for transcripts and any other documentary evidence taken from interrogations of agency prisoners.

CIA lawyers told federal prosecutors in 2003 and 2005, who relayed the information to a federal court in the Moussaoui case, that the CIA did not possess recordings of interrogations sought by the judge in the case. It was unclear whether the judge had explicitly sought the videotape depicting the interrogation of Zubaydah.

Moussaoui's lawyers had hoped that records of the interrogations might provide exculpatory evidence for Moussaoui — showing that the Al Qaeda detainees did not know Moussaoui and clearing him of involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, plot.

General Hayden's statement said that the tapes posed a "serious security risk," and that if they were to become public they would have exposed CIA officials "and their families to retaliation from Al Qaeda and its sympathizers."

"What matters here is that it was done in line with the law," he said. He said in his statement that he was informing agency employees because "the press has learned" about the destruction of the tapes.

General Hayden said in a statement that leaders of Congressional oversight committees were fully briefed on the matter, but some Congressional officials said notification to Congress had not been adequate.

"This is a matter that should have been briefed to the full Intelligence Committee at the time," an official with the House Intelligence Committee said. "This does not appear to have been done. There may be a very logical reason for destroying records that are no longer needed; however, this requires a more complete explanation. "

Staff members of the Sept. 11 commission, which completed its work in 2004, expressed surprise when they were told that interrogation videotapes existed until 2005.

"The commission did formally request material of this kind from all relevant agencies, and the commission was assured that we had received all the material responsive to our request," said Philip D. Zelikow, who served as executive director of the Sept. 11 commission and later as a senior counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"No tapes were acknowledged or turned over, nor was the commission provided with any transcript prepared from recordings," he said.

Daniel Marcus, a law professor at American University who served as general counsel for the Sept. 11 commission and was involved in the discussions about interviews with Al Qaeda leaders, said he had heard nothing about any tapes being destroyed.

If tapes were destroyed, he said, "it's a big deal, it's a very big deal," because it could amount to obstruction of justice to withhold evidence being sought in criminal or fact-finding investigations.

General Hayden said the tapes were originally made to ensure that agency employees acted in accordance with "established legal and policy guidelines." General Hayden said the agency stopped videotaping interrogations in 2002.

"The tapes were meant chiefly as an additional, internal check on the program in its early stages," his statement read

In October, federal prosecutors in the Moussaoui case were forced to write a letter to the court amending those CIA declarations. The letter stated that in September, the CIA notified the United States attorney's office in Alexandria, Va., that it had discovered a videotape documenting the interrogation of a detainee. After a more thorough search, the letter stated, CIA officials discovered a second videotape and one audio tape.

The letter is heavily redacted and sentences stating which detainees' interrogations the recordings document are blacked out. Signed by the United States attorney, Chuck Rosenberg, the letter states that the CIA's search for interrogation tapes "appears to be complete."

There is no mention in the letter of the tapes that CIA officials destroyed last year. Moussaoui was convicted last year and sentenced to life in prison.

John Radsan, who worked as a CIA lawyer from 2002 to 2004 and is now a professor at William Mitchell College of Law, said the destruction of the tapes could carry serious legal penalties.

"If anybody at the CIA hid anything important from the Justice Department, he or she should be prosecuted under the false statement statute," he said.

A former intelligence official who was briefed on the issue said the videotaping was ordered as a way of assuring "quality control" at remote sites following reports of unauthorized interrogation techniques. He said the tapes, along with still photographs of interrogations, were destroyed after photographs of abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib became public in May 2004 and CIA officers became concerned about a possible leak of the videos and photos.

He said the worries about the impact a leak of the tapes might have in the Muslim world were real.

It has been widely reported that Zubaydah was subjected to several tough physical tactics, including waterboarding, which involves near-suffocation. But CIA officers judged that the release of photos or videos would nonetheless provoke a strong reaction.

"People know what happened, but to see it in living color would have far greater power," the official said.

Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, has been pushing legislation in Congress to have all detainee interrogations videotaped so officials can refer to the tapes multiple times to glean better information.

Holt said he had been told many times that the CIA does not record the interrogation of detainees. "When I would ask them whether they had reviewed the tapes to better understand the intelligence, they said 'What tapes?'," he said.

Eric Lichtblau and Scott Shane contributed reporting.

Ah! You beat me to it by a few minutes! I just posted this under New News....

Can you fucking believe this shit?

Add another case of obstruction of justice to the 9/11 Commission fiasco.

I'm somewhat suspicious of Zelikow making that statement. Almost as if they were trying to make the CIA the scapegoat.

Gold9472 said:

I'm somewhat suspicious of Zelikow making that statement. Almost as if they were trying to make the CIA the scapegoat.

Click to expand...

If I were to speculate madly, I would say there never were any tapes.

Of course, your reading is saner. Like you say, it gets Zelikow off the hook, and makes it appear like yet another CIA cock-up (which, of course, is fully justified under the law).

Well... the CIA has always been the "scapegoat" of 9/11... The one organization that gets the most "heat."

It's amazing how the guilty seem to always dig their hole just a little deeper!

What's MORE amazing is that they get away with it!

But it's all over the news...

C.I.A. Was Urged to Keep Interrogation Videotapes

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/08/washington/08intel.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: December 8, 2007

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 — White House and Justice Department officials, along with senior members of Congress, advised the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003 against a plan to destroy hundreds of hours of videotapes showing the interrogations of two operatives of Al Qaeda, government officials said Friday.

The chief of the agency’s clandestine service nevertheless ordered their destruction in November 2005, taking the step without notifying even the C.I.A.’s own top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, who was angry at the decision, the officials said.

The disclosures provide new details about what Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, has said was a decision “made within C.I.A. itself” to destroy the videotapes. In interviews, members of Congress and former intelligence officials also questioned some aspects of the account General Hayden provided Thursday about when Congress was notified that the tapes had been destroyed.

Current and former intelligence officials say the videotapes showed severe interrogation techniques used on two Qaeda operatives, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who were among the first three terror suspects to be detained and interrogated by the C.I.A. in secret prisons after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Top C.I.A. officials had decided in 2003 to preserve the tapes in response to warnings from White House lawyers and lawmakers that destroying the tapes would be unwise, in part because it could carry legal risks, the government officials said.

But the government officials said that Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the chief of the agency’s clandestine service, the Directorate of Operations, had reversed that decision in November 2005, at a time when Congress and the courts were inquiring deeply into the C.I.A.’s interrogation and detention program. Mr. Rodriguez could not be reached Friday for comment.

As the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee in 2003, Porter J. Goss, then a Republican congressman from Florida, was among Congressional leaders who warned the C.I.A. against destroying the tapes, the former intelligence officials said. Mr. Goss became C.I.A. director in 2004 and was serving in the post when the tapes were destroyed, but was not informed in advance about Mr. Rodriguez’s decision, the former officials said.

It was not until at least a year after the destruction of the tapes that any members of Congress were informed about the action, the officials said. On Friday, Representative Peter Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican who was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee from 2004 to 2006, said he had never been told that the tapes were destroyed.

“I think the intelligence committee needs to get all over this,” said Mr. Hoekstra, who has been a strong supporter of the C.I.A. detention and interrogation program. “This raises a red flag that needs to be looked at.”

The first notification to Congress by the C.I.A. about the videotapes was delivered to a small group of senior lawmakers in February 2003 by Scott W. Muller, then the agency’s general counsel. Government officials said that Mr. Muller had told the lawmakers that the C.I.A. intended to destroy the interrogation tapes, arguing that they were no longer of any intelligence value and that the interrogations they showed put agency operatives who appeared in the tapes at risk.

At the time of the briefing in February 2003, the lawmakers who advised Mr. Muller not to destroy the tapes included both Mr. Goss and Representative Jane Harman of California, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Ms. Harman described her role on Friday. Mr. Goss’s role was described by former intelligence officials.

According to two government officials, Mr. Muller then raised the idea of destroying the tapes during discussions in 2003 with Justice Department lawyers and with Harriet E. Miers, who was then a deputy White House chief of staff. Ms. Miers became White House counsel in early 2005.

The officials said that Ms. Miers and the Justice Department lawyers had advised against destroying the tapes, but that it was not clear what the basis for their advice had been.

A message left at Mr. Muller’s law office on Friday was not returned, and White House officials would not comment about Ms. Miers’s role.

It was also not clear when the White House or Justice Department were told that the tapes had been destroyed, or whether anyone at either place was notified in advance that Mr. Rodriguez had ordered that the step be taken. Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman, said Friday that President Bush had “no recollection” of being made aware of the tapes’ destruction before Thursday, when General Hayden briefed him on the matter.

In his message to C.I.A. employees on Thursday, General Hayden said that the leaders of the intelligence committee had been informed of the agency’s “intention to dispose of the material,” but he did not say when that notification took place.

Several former intelligence officials also said there was great concern that the tapes, which recorded hours of grueling interrogations, could have set off controversies about the legality of the interrogations and generate a backlash in the Middle East.

According to one former intelligence official, the C.I.A. then decided to keep the tapes at the C.I.A. stations in the countries where Abu Zubaydah and Mr. Nashiri were interrogated.

Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan, and it has been reported that he was taken to Thailand for part of his interrogation. It is unclear where Mr. Nashiri was interrogated by C.I.A. operatives.

Mr. Nashiri, a Qaeda operations chief in the Arabian Peninsula until his capture in 2002, is thought to have planned the October 2000 bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen.

The current and former intelligence officials said that when Mr. Rodriguez ultimately decided in late 2005 to destroy the tapes, he did so without advising Mr. Rizzo, Mr. Muller’s successor as the agency’s top general counsel. Mr. Rizzo and Mr. Goss were among the C.I.A. officials who were angry when told that the tapes had been destroyed, the officials said.

Mr. Rodriguez retired from the agency this year.

The Senate Intelligence Committee announced Friday that it was starting an investigation into the destruction of the videotapes.

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is chairman of the committee, said, “Whatever the intent, we must get to the bottom of it.”

"scapegoat" anyone?

PhilosophyGenius said:

But it's all over the news...

Click to expand...

Since when does that matter? You could in all honesty converse more intelligently about scrubs or heros or one of those other mind numbing shows before you could about this. KNOWING something is ONE thing. The attitude to do something constructive with that information is much more rare of a trait. I am using you as an example, but it is true of most people these days.

Bush says: "Tapes? What's a tape?"

Bush: 'No recollection' of tapes

• Story Highlights
• NEW: Bush learned of CIA interrogation tapes on Thursday, White House says
• Sources: Former White House counsel knew of tapes
• Members of Congress call for investigations
• Michael Hayden discusses the videotapes in letter to CIA employees

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. President George W. Bush "has no recollection" of videotapes of CIA interrogations of some al Qaeda suspects or of plans to destroy the tapes, a White House spokeswoman said.

Bush and Vice President Cheney learned about videotaped interrogations of some al Qaeda suspects on Thursday, when CIA Director Michael Hayden briefed them about the existence of the tapes and their subsequent destruction, administration officials said Friday.

The interrogations -- using newly approved "alternative" interrogation techniques -- of two al Qaeda suspects were recorded in 2002, Hayden said Thursday in a letter to CIA employees. They were destroyed three years later when the agency determined they had no intelligence value and could pose a security risk, he said.

"I spoke to the president this morning about this," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. "He has no recollection of being made aware of the tapes or their destruction before yesterday. He was briefed by General Hayden yesterday morning."

The vice president learned about the tapes and their destruction at the same time, another administration official told CNN.

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, said that was "stretching credulity."

"There's something going on here," Dodd, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, said on CNN's "The Situation Room. "We're not getting the full story, hence the reason why there should be an investigation. It goes to the heart of our national security, our protection, our safety, our isolation in the world. That's why this is so important."

Later Friday, two senior administration officials told CNN that then-deputy White House counsel Harriet Miers was aware of the tapes and told the CIA not to destroy them.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of potential investigations on the matter, said they believe this is "exculpatory" for the White House because it shows a top official had told the CIA not to destroy the tapes. The officials also said the information about the tapes was not relayed to the president until this week.

Democrats reacted strongly to the news of the existence of the tapes and their subsequent destruction, particularly given the continuing controversy over use of harsh interrogation techniques -- believed to include waterboarding, a technique that involves restraining a suspect and pouring water on him to produce the sensation of drowning -- and whether they constitute torture.

"It is a startling disclosure," Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Illinois, said Friday on the Senate floor. "The United States of America -- a nation where the rule of law is venerated -- has now been in the business of destroying evidence. Evidence of a very sensitive nature -- evidence which clearly should have been protected for legal and historic purposes."

Durbin said he was sending a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey calling for an investigation into whether any laws were broken by "CIA officials who covered up the existence of these videotapes."

The Justice Department later said it had received Durbin's letter, but would not comment other than to say it had begun gathering facts. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, joined Durbin's call for an investigation.

Democrat disputes CIA chief's account

In his letter to CIA employees, Hayden wrote that the leaders of the CIA's congressional oversight committees were informed of the videos "years ago" along with the agency's intent to destroy them.

But Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, -- who was the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee when the tapes were made and when they were destroyed -- told CNN that was "not true."

Harman said she'd attended a classified briefing in 2003 that "raised some concerns in my mind," prompting her to send a classified letter to the CIA's general counsel.

"Obviously they both remain classified," she said, "but I have raised with the CIA my view that no videotape should be destroyed. Let me just leave it there. ...

"Segue to two years later, we have now learned that the tapes have been destroyed," she said. "I was still the ranking member of the committee, (and) no one ever informed me that tapes were being destroyed."

Former Rep. Porter Goss, R-Florida -- who was head of the CIA when the tapes were destroyed -- was told about the tapes when he served as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, a former intelligence official told CNN. The official said that Goss agreed with Harman that the tapes should not be destroyed and, when he became director of the agency in 2004, he let "the appropriate people" know his opinion.

The official said Goss was unhappy when he learned after the fact that the tapes were destroyed. Goss resigned in May 2006; Hayden was his successor.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, currently the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, was chairman of the committee after Goss joined the CIA until the Democrats won control of the House last year, covering the time when the tapes were destroyed. He told CNN he was never briefed about the tapes' existence or their destruction.

Other senators and representatives added their voices to the calls for investigations, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Michigan; Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan; and presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden, D-Delaware. And Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that panel "will be doing their own investigation."

Daniel Marcus, who was general counsel for the 9/11 commission investigating lapses in intelligence and security prior to the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, said the commission was not informed about the videotapes and that the decision to destroy them "reflected very bad judgment."

Tapes were 'an internal check,' chief says

Osama bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zubayda was one of two al Qaeda suspects whose interrogations were videotaped, according to a government official with knowledge of the tapes.

A government official with knowledge of the CIA's interrogation practices described the detention and interrogation program as "very tightly held." This was a "highly compartmentalized program," the official said. "Relatively few" people had "knowledge of or access to" the tapes even within the agency.

Hayden, who was not CIA director at the time of either the interrogations or their destruction, said in his letter to CIA employees that the tapes were made as "an internal check" on the CIA's use of harsh interrogation techniques, which, he said, became necessary after Zubayda's "defiant and evasive" response to "normal questioning."

John McLaughlin, who was deputy CIA director when the tapes were made, told CNN he and then-CIA Director George Tenet were told the interrogations were being taped after they had already begun. He said the reasons for the taping were consistent with what Hayden said in his letter. Neither McLaughlin, now a CNN analyst, nor Tenet were with the agency when the tapes were destroyed.

Hayden said the tapes were viewed in 2003 by the Office of the General Counsel and the Office of the Inspector General, both of which said the interrogation techniques used were lawful.

The agency made the decision to destroy the tapes "only after it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries," Hayden said.

"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 serious security risk," Hayden said. "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."

Levin called the security risk concern "a pathetic excuse."

"They'd have to burn every document at the CIA that has the identity of an agent on it under that theory," he said.

Hayden, in his letter, said he was providing the background information to CIA employees because he expected possible "misinterpretations of the facts in the days ahead."

Current and former government officials said that Jose Rodriguez, head of the CIA's clandestine service at the time, authorized the tapes' destruction. Rodriguez, who resigned from the agency earlier this year, was not immediately available for comment.

CNN's Pam Benson, Kathleen Koch and Terry Frieden contributed to this report.

"let's put some distance from ourselves and Bob .....he has a history rogue activities ...and he's currenty being investigated in..help me out here..."

CIA Director plyed by James Sheridan in Syrianna

9/11 Commission's Lee Hamilton '52 Reacts to CIA Destruction of Torture Tapes

http://www.depauw.edu/news/index.asp?id=20521

12/8/2007

9/11 Commission's Lee Hamilton '52 Reacts to CIA Destruction of Torture Tapes
Lee Hamilton CSPAN.jpgDecember 8, 2007, Greencastle, Ind. - "Did they obstruct our inquiry? The answer is clearly yes," says Lee Hamilton, who co-chaired the 9/11 Commission, in the wake of reports the CIA destroyed videotapes of interrogations of two al-Qaida suspects. "Whether that amounts to a crime, others will have to judge," adds Hamilton, a 1952 graduate of DePauw University, in today's Detroit Free Press.

The article details demands by congressional Democrats "that the Justice Lee Hamilton Students 2004-2.jpgDepartment investigate why the CIA destroyed" the tapes. It notes, "White House press secretary Dana Perino said President George W. Bush didn't recall being told about the tapes or their destruction. But she didn't rule out White House involvement, saying she hadn't asked others about it."

Meanwhile, the International Herald Tribune reports "the former chairmen of the Sept. 11 commission, who said the CIA assured them repeatedly during their inquiry that no original material existed from its interrogations of Qaeda figures, said they were furious to learn about the tapes ... Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton said they had made clear in hours of negotiations and discussions with the CIA, as well as in written requests, that they wanted all material connected to the interrogations of Qaeda operatives in the agency's custody in order to get a complete understanding of the events leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks for their 2004 report."

Access the complete articles at the Free Press and the Herald Tribune.

Lee Hamilton, who served 34 years in Congress and Hamilton Bush Baker.jpgwas also co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, was recently named one of "America's Best Leaders" for 2007 by U.S. News & World Report.

On October 25, Hamilton and James A. Baker III (seen in photo at left with President Bush) became the inaugural recipients of the Churchill Award for Statesmanship for their work in leading the Iraq Study Group.

"I had an undergraduate experience at DePauw University that certainly opened my eyes to a lot of possibilities," Hamilton said in an interview earlier this year. He is a frequent visitor to his alma mater, and in October 2006 discussed the Iraq war and other matters at DePauw Discourse 2006: Issues for America. Access a story -- including video and audio clips -- here.

Inquiry into why CIA tapes destroyed

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22895446-2703,00.html

Correspondents in Washington | December 10, 2007

THE US Justice Department and the CIA's internal watchdog have announced a joint inquiry into the spy agency's destruction of videotaped interrogations of two suspected terrorists, as the latest scandal to rock US intelligence gathered steam.

The review will determine whether a full investigation is warranted.

"I welcome this inquiry and the CIA will co-operate fully," CIA chief Michael Hayden said in a statement yesterday.

"I welcome it as an opportunity to address questions that have arisen over the destruction back in 2005 of videotapes."

The House Intelligence Committee is launching its own inquiry next week. Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes said it would investigate not only why the tapes were destroyed and Congress was not notified, but also the interrogation methods that "if released, had the potential to do such grave damage to the United States of America".

"This administration cannot be trusted to police itself," said Mr Reyes, a Democrat.

The Senate Intelligence Committee also is investigating.

General Hayden told agency employees last week that the recordings were destroyed out of fear the tapes would be leaked and reveal the identities of interrogators. He said the sessions were videotaped to provide an added layer of legal protection for interrogators who were using new, harsh methods authorised by President George W. Bush as a way to break down the defences of recalcitrant prisoners.

The CIA's acting general counsel, John Rizzo, is preserving all remaining records related to the videotapes and their destruction. Kenneth Wainstein, an assistant attorney-general, asked that they be handed over with any relevant internal reviews.

Justice Department officials, lawyers from the CIA general counsel's office and CIA inspector-general John Helgerson will meet early this coming week to begin the preliminary inquiry, Mr Wainstein said.

Mr Helgerson has been highly critical in classified reports of the agency's treatment of detainees. In October, the CIA confirmed that a close Hayden aide was reviewing his work, raising concern in Congress that the independence of the office was under attack. The White House had no immediate comment on the inquiry. Presidential spokeswoman Dana Perino said the White House would support Attorney-General Michael Mukasey if he decided to investigate.

Angry congressional Democrats had demanded the Justice Department investigate. Some accused the CIA of a cover-up.

The man now at the centre of the storm is Jose Rodriguez, who retired as head of the CIA's clandestine directorate of operations in August, but will leave the agency at the end of the year.

Mr Rodriguez decided the tapes should be destroyed, one former and one current intelligence official said.

A career spy, Mr Rodriguez was promoted to the job by then-CIA director Porter Goss.

Mr Goss had learned of the tapes' destruction "a couple of days" after it happened, a government official said. The official said Mr Goss did not order an investigation or inform Congress.

Mr Goss was upset by the tapes' destruction but did not take any action because the decision was within Mr Rodriguez's authority, a former intelligence official said.

The CIA's spy service has broad latitude to take actions to protect operational security.

The tapes were destroyed soon after The Washington Post inlate 2005 revealed the existence of secret overseas prisons, which angered the co-operating governments.

Another intelligence official said Mr Rodriguez was concerned the tapes would be leaked and that the interrogators seen in the tapes would be targeted by al-Qa'ida. "Rodriguez felt he had good reasons to deep-six the tapes. They had people's faces on them. It's not like a name getting out," the official said.

The Justice Department and CIA inspector-general inquiry is expected to focus on whether Mr Rodriguez had the inherent authority to destroy the tapes or had the endorsement of CIA legal advisers or any senior officials.

CIA's destruction of terror tapes probed

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world...or-tapes-probed/2007/12/09/1197135285851.html

Mark Mazzetti, Washington
December 10, 2007
Advertisement

THE US Justice Department and the CIA's internal watchdog have begun a preliminary inquiry into the spy agency's destruction of hundreds of hours of videotapes showing interrogations of top al-Qaeda operatives.

The announcement comes amid new questions about which officials inside the CIA were involved in the decision to destroy the videotapes, which showed severe interrogation methods used on two al-Qaeda suspects, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

The agency operative who ordered the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was Jose Rodriguez, then chief of the CIA's national clandestine service.

A government official who spoke recently with Mr Rodriguez said the spy chief told him he had received approval from lawyers inside the clandestine service to destroy the tapes.

This disclosure could broaden the scope of the inquiry into the tapes' destruction.

Several officials said top lawyers at the White House and the Justice Department advised the CIA in 2003 not to destroy the videos.

Current and former intelligence officials said the agency's senior lawyer, John Rizzo, had not been notified about the decision and was angered to learn about the destruction of the tapes, which could complicate the prosecution of Abu Zubaydah and others.

Investigators will gather facts to determine whether a full inquiry is warranted. If it is determined that any agency employee broke the law, the standard procedure would be for the inspector-general to issue a criminal referral to the Justice Department.

The investigation comes after the Senate and House intelligence committees started their own investigations into the destruction of the tapes.

Officials have acknowledged that the destruction of evidence such as the videotaped interrogations could raise questions about whether the CIA was seeking to hide vital evidence of coercion.

A review of records from military tribunals indicates that five lower-level detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were initially charged with offences based on information provided by or related to Abu Zubaydah.

Military defence lawyers said the fact that interrogation tapes were destroyed could provide a way to challenge other cases that may be based on information from Abu Zubaydah, though such challenges would face major legal obstacles under rules for military prosecutions.

The destruction of the tapes has intensified the focus on Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in March 2002.

As one of the first close associates of Osama bin Laden to be caught after the September 11 attacks, he became a test case on which the CIA built and then adjusted its program of aggressive interrogations and overseas secret jails.

US intelligence under fire for CIA tapes, Iran report

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gKoYN5aCFVYaDBAWfyhSoJUu1QNA

17 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US intelligence community came under fire over the weekend on two fronts, as conservatives criticized a recent CIA report on Iran's nuclear program and the Justice Department announced a probe into the agency's destruction of videotapes showing interrogations of terror suspects.

The intelligence services are still trying to restore their credibility following the debacle over alleged weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the main justification for the US-led 2003 invasion.

After months of increasingly bellicose rhetoric from President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney over the threat of Iran's nuclear program, the US intelligence agencies on Monday declared with "high confidence" that Iran halted a secret nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure.

The assessment of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) overturned long-held US policy assumptions that Iran is bent on obtaining nuclear weapons, regardless of international demands or sanctions.

Democrats in Congress, who said the Bush administration was overstating the Iranian threat, now took a back seat to conservative Republican critics, who said the report understated the Iranian threat.

Chief among them was former US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, who wrote in a commentary this week that "the NIE is internally contradictory and insufficiently supported."

Cheney, speaking in Kansas City Friday, said the United States and its allies "must keep the pressure on Iran to stop enriching uranium and to come clean about all its nuclear activities, past and present."

A top US intelligence official on Saturday issued an unusual statement responding to the critics.

"The task of the Intelligence Community is to produce objective, ground truth analysis," said Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence.

"We feel confident in our analytic tradecraft and resulting analysis in this estimate," Kerr said in a brief written statement.

Kerr said he issued the statement "in response to those questioning the analytic work and integrity of the United States Intelligence Community."

"National Intelligence Estimates contain the coordinated judgments of the Intelligence Community regarding the likely course of future events and the implications for US policy," he said.

Also Saturday, the Department of Justice announced it would launch an inquiry with the Central Intelligence Agency's internal watchdog office to determine whether a full-blown investigation was needed on the destroyed interrogation tapes, the DOJ announced.

"I welcome this inquiry," CIA Director Mike Hayden said in a statement, adding that his agency would fully cooperate with investigators.

"I welcome it as an opportunity to address questions that have arisen over the destruction back in 2005 of videotapes," Hayden said.

Hayden became CIA director in May 2006, replacing Porter Goss, who headed the CIA from September 2004.

The inquiry announcement came one day after Democrats in Congress demanded an immediate investigation after the spy agency admitted to disposing of the videotapes to protect the identities of CIA agents.

Democratic lawmakers charged the CIA's decision was a cover-up designed to hide proof of possible abuse and torture of detainees.

Senator Ted Kennedy and other Democrats said an inquiry should determine whether the CIA broke the law by destroying the tapes in 2005 -- a time when Congress was investigating allegations of torture.

But The Washington Post reported Sunday that a bipartisan group of members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was given given a detailed briefing about the CIA's interrogation techniques as early as 2002 and mainly approved of them.

The tapes reportedly showed harsh interrogation methods used on Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who were among the first suspects interrogated by the CIA in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The tapes were of possible interest to a former blue-ribbon panel examining the September 11 attacks.

Lee Hamilton, co-chair of the bi-partisan panel, said the CIA had clearly obstructed the commission's work and his colleague Thomas Kean accused the CIA of lying.

Preliminary inquiry into the destruction of videotapes by the CIA

http://www.euronews.net/index.php?page=info&article=458292&lng=1

12/9/2007

The Justice department in the US has confirmed it has opened a preliminary inquiry into the destruction of videotapes by the Central Intelligence Agency. The probe comes days after CIA director Michael Hayden admitted that that tapes documenting interrogations of terrorism suspects had been destroyed. He maintained it was done to protect the identities of the agents involved.

The opposition Democrats condemned the action and said crucial evidence may've been withheld from official proceedings. Critics have denounced some interrogation techniques used in the US as torture.

The facts behind the CIA tape inquiry
A preliminary investigation has begun into whether the agency acted illegally in destroying video of interrogations.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...ec09,1,3993528.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

By Times Staff Writers
December 9, 2007

The Justice Department and CIA have announced a preliminary investigation into whether CIA officials obstructed justice or engaged in an illegal coverup by destroying videotapes in 2005 that showed the interrogations of two terrorism suspects.

Question: What are the CIA tapes?

Answer: Beginning in 2002, the CIA held terrorism suspects in secret locations and interrogated them, using highly controversial techniques that critics say are tantamount to torture. The techniques included sleep deprivation, stressful physical positions and waterboarding, or simulated drowning. In at least two cases, the CIA videotaped the interrogations, compiling hundreds of hours of clear images of American agents sometimes engaging in harsh treatment of foreign prisoners. One prisoner was Abu Zubaydah, the CIA's first terrorism detainee; the other has not been identified.

Q: When were the tapes destroyed?

A: The CIA destroyed the tapes in late 2005. At that time, Congress was adopting new restrictions on the use of harsh detainee treatment and the Army was rewriting its field manual to emphasize the need for moderation. At the same time, domestic U.S. prosecutions of terrorism suspects -- including Zacarias Moussaoui and Jose Padilla -- were underway. An issue in those cases was what other suspected terrorists had said about the defendants while under interrogation. Also at that time, the Sept. 11 commission, which failed in its effort to obtain records of interrogations before issuing its 2004 report, was completing a year of follow-up reports that criticized U.S. anti-terrorism efforts.

Q: Why did the CIA destroy the tapes?

A: Director Michael V. Hayden told the CIA workforce last week that the tapes were destroyed because they were "not relevant to any internal, legislative or judicial inquiries" and, if made public, could identify CIA employees who would be vulnerable to retaliation by militants.

Q: Was that explanation accepted?

A: No. Members of Congress said the tapes had potential value to ongoing congressional proceedings, and critics said they could have had a high degree of relevance to the Sept. 11 commission and in terrorism trials. Critics also said the CIA could have obscured any images of Americans in the tapes, and noted that the agency possesses vast amounts of other material that could identify CIA employees which have not been destroyed. As important to many critics, the tapes could have settled years of debate about the nature of U.S. treatment of detainees, including questions about how they were interrogated and whether it constituted legal questioning, harsh treatment or torture.

Q: Did the CIA provide adequate notice that it was going to destroy the tapes?

A: Hayden said the CIA told Congress about the tapes and its plans to destroy them and that it consulted with appropriate agency officials, including the CIA general counsel and inspector general. However, lawmakers said the CIA provided only cursory information about the tapes and did not detail the plans to destroy them. Other top CIA officials may have disagreed with the decision, and it is not known what the CIA inspector general, an agency watchdog who has been critical of detention practices, had to say about the tapes.

Q: Did others agree with the decision to destroy the tapes?

A: Many did not. Members of Congress, including Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), then a ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, warned the CIA not to destroy the tapes. In addition, then-White House Counsel Harriet E. Miers was reported to have told agency officials to preserve them.

Q: Are the tapes germane to trials of suspected terrorists?

A: Possibly. Attorneys in the case of Moussaoui, who is serving a life sentence, want the judge to review the issue. Padilla faces sentencing in the near future. More important, the CIA initially told U.S. prosecutors that no such tapes existed, an assertion provided to judges in sworn legal documents that later had to be corrected when the tapes' existence was revealed.

Q: What happens next?

A: The Justice Department and CIA will determine whether a full investigation is warranted. In Congress, members of the intelligence and judiciary committees -- and possibly others -- will have to decide how deeply to investigate. In courts, judges may be asked to rule whether the CIA acted improperly in not revealing the existence of the tapes and whether they might have affected the outcomes of trials.