Why those torture tapes were really destroyed...

[babylonsister]

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/005082.php


We've heard CIA Director Michael Hayden's confusing and risible explanation for why the CIA's torture tapes were destroyed. And there have been a number of media accounts citing dozens of unanimous government officials that haven't managed to shed much light. But today's Washington Post provides about as clear of a narrative as we're likely to get on why the tapes were made, when they were made, and why they were destroyed.

Here's what they came up with: "the taping was conducted from August to December 2002 to demonstrate that interrogators were following the detailed rules set by lawyers and medical experts in Washington, and were not causing a detainee's death." CIA officials have also said that videotapes of the interrogations would have been very useful for reviewing what the detainees had said.

And here's why they were destroyed, according to the Post. The Post broke news of the CIA's black sites in November of 2005. That made CIA officials even more nervous that "the agency could be publicly shamed and that those involved in waterboarding and other extreme interrogation techniques would be hauled before a grand jury or a congressional inquiry." At the same time, the station chief in Bangkok, who'd had the tapes in a safe in the U.S. Embassy compound there for three years, was retiring and "wanted to resolve the matter before he left." So he sent a cable to CIA headquarters asking if he could destroy them.

The rest we know. Then-operations chief Jose Rodriguez checked with two CIA lawyers who said that the agency was not required to preserve them. Since no one in the administration had directly forbidden the destruction of the tapes, he went ahead and gave the station chief the go-ahead.

And no one seemed to be very upset after the deed was done: "Word of the resulting destruction, one former official said, was greeted by widespread relief among clandestine officers, and Rodriguez was neither penalized nor reprimanded, publicly or privately, by then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss, according to two officials briefed on exchanges between the two men."

more...

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/005082.php

[snappyturtle]

1. No offense, but I don't see this as being anything different than in

the previous excuses the government has put forth. Same old, same old. imho

[NightWatcher]

2. If I were a clandestine operator and/or supervisor, I would have done the same

IF the interrogations tapes showed the op's and there was a building storm against the practice of interrogation as they had been doing it, I would have wanted to keep my face off of the front pages as well. Once a clandestine op is 'faced' it is often a death sentance. I am not excusing what they did- far from it, but if they were following orders from DoD or chiefs elsewhere and it looked like they were the ones who were going to be left out in the rain, I would have wanted to remove my face from the record. The supervisors probably felt the same way and allowed this to happen.

We should go after those who gave the orders. Rummy, Goss, Dick, and Chimperor

[leveymg]

3. That's the original excuse given - protect the IDs of the interrogators.

But, the names of the principal CIA interrogators is already known and widely-published. Besides, they could digitally obliterate the faces, or reframe the shots to take out the interrogators, and have masked the voices. That excuse doesn't hold up.

It was the content of the tapes -- what was said by the particular tortured detainees, all of whom were involved with training or organizing the 9/11 hijackers -- that led to the decision to destroy the tapes. See, http://journals.democraticunderground.com/leveymg/332

Also, for a full recap of who was implicated at CIA and why the tapes were erased, see: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/12/21/11177/815/296/424820