Source: CIA Tapes Destroyed To Avoid Prosecution( tapes evidence US Gov illegally auth torture)

[maddezmom]

Source: CBS

WASHINGTON (CBS News) ― A well informed source tells CBS News the videotapes of U.S. interrogations of two high level al Qaeda operatives were destroyed to protect CIA officers from criminal prosecution, reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin.

A day after CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden told agency employees the tapes were destroyed in 2005, members of Congress, human rights groups and lawyers for accused terrorists said the tapes may have been key evidence that the U.S. government had illegally authorized torture.

~snip~

At least one White House official, then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers, knew about the CIA's planned destruction of videotapes in 2005 that documented the interrogation of two al Qaeda operatives, ABC news reported Friday. Three officials told ABC News that Miers urged the CIA not to destroy the tapes. White House officials declined to comment on the report.

The spy agency destroyed the tapes in November 2005, at a time when human rights groups and lawyers for detainees were clamoring for information about the agency's secret detention and interrogation program, and Congress and U.S. courts were debating where "enhanced interrogation" crossed the line into torture.

Also at that time, the Senate Intelligence Committee was asking whether the videotapes showed CIA interrogators were complying with interrogation guidelines. The CIA refused twice in 2005 to provide the committee with its general counsel's report on the tapes, according to the committee's Democratic chairman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller.



Read more: http://wcco.com/national/cia.videotapes.destroyed.2.606700.html

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and then this from kpete in GD:

It Was NOT The Fact That He Was Tortured That Needed Covering Up-IT WAS WHAT HE SAID!
Edited on Fri Dec-07-07 10:27 PM by kpete
It's Not Torture They're Covering Up, It's the Results
by The Baculum King
Fri Dec 07, 2007 at 03:41:17 PM PST

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:

more: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2428031&mesg_id=2428031