The CIA destroyed videotapes in 2005 showing the use of harsh interrogation methods on two terrorism suspects because the agency feared the tapes could be leaked to the public and reveal the identities of the questioners, the CIA director told employees today.
CIA Director Michael Hayden also said that leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees at the time were informed about the existence of the tapes and about the agency's plans to destroy them.
"The tapes posed a serious security risk," Hayden wrote in a message to CIA employees. "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-Qaida and its sympathizers." The tapes were destroyed in November 2005 on orders of Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., who was then the CIA's director of clandestine operations, according to senior intelligence officials. That was the same month that The Washington Post revealed the existence of CIA secret prisons overseas holding "high-value" terrorists.
For once, Hayden is right--the interrogation tapes did pose a serious security risk. Where Hayden is completely wrong is that the tapes did not pose a security risk to the country, but rather a security risk to the Bush administration's insistence on using torture on these prisoners. These tapes were destroyed the same month that the WaPost revealed the existence of these CIA secret prisons. You have to wonder what was going on in those secret prisons--torture? This was a CYA on the Bush administration's part in destroying evidence of this administration using torture on terror suspects.
Disgusting.
2 comments:
How convenient for them. I heard that Padilla is now a mental midget due to the dubious interrogation tactics employed at GitMo. Granted that he was a suspected homegrown terroist and a gangbanger but he is a US Citizen and there is a helluva lot of coverup with that. He was not even granted meetings with his own lawyer for 6 months. Scary!
This is a direct correlation to this country's cowboy administration!
Hello Jude:
I really don't know what else to say about this story. We have both seen this type of corruption within the Bush administration on so many issues--intelligence lies on WMDs in Iraq, the Valerie Plame scandal, the U.S. attorney's scandal, the torture scandals, it is endless. It is corruption, heaped on corruption, heaped on corruption. It is so much corruption that I can't even get angry anymore--just throw up my hands and wait for this nightmare to end.
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