CIA Destroyed Videotapes of Torture Sessions
December 7th, 2007Here’s one for your no-shit-Sherlock file folder.
But don’t expect the Associated Press to mention that these tapes would have been prima facie evidence of atrocities, for which the perpetrators might have faced trial under international law.
Via: AP:
The CIA videotaped its interrogations of two top terror suspects in 2002 and destroyed the tapes three years later out of fear they would leak to the public and compromise the identities of U.S. questioners, the director of the agency told employees Thursday.
The disclosure brought immediate condemnation from Capitol Hill and from a human rights group which charged the spy agency’s action amounted to criminal destruction of evidence.
The Senate Intelligence Committee promised a full review of the situation. [SIC: It pains me to even quote this gibberish. —Kevin]
CIA Director Michael Hayden said the CIA began taping the interrogations as an internal check on the program after President Bush authorized the use of harsh questioning methods. The methods included waterboarding, which simulates drowning, government officials said.
“The Agency was determined that it proceed in accord with established legal and policy guidelines. So, on its own, CIA began to videotape interrogations,” Hayden said in a written message to CIA employees, obtained by The Associated Press.
The CIA decided to destroy the tapes in “the absence of any legal or internal reason to keep them,” Hayden wrote. He said the tapes were destroyed only after it was determined “they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative or judicial inquiries.”
“The tapes posed a serious security risk,” Hayden wrote. “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.”
Hayden said House and Senate intelligence committee leaders were informed of the existence of the tapes and the CIA’s intention to destroy them. He also said the CIA’s internal watchdog watched the tapes in 2003 and verified that the interrogation practices were legal.
