Tapes by C.I.A. Lived and Died to Save Image

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: New York Times, Page One

By SCOTT SHANE and MARK MAZZETTI
Published: December 30, 2007

WASHINGTON — If Abu Zubaydah, a senior operative of Al Qaeda, died in American hands, Central Intelligence Agency officers pursuing the terrorist group knew that much of the world would believe they had killed him. So in the spring of 2002, even as the intelligence officers flew in a surgeon from Johns Hopkins Hospital to treat Abu Zubaydah, who had been shot three times during his capture in Pakistan, they set up video cameras to record his every moment: asleep in his cell, having his bandages changed, being interrogated.

In fact, current and former intelligence officials say, the agency’s every action in the prolonged drama of the interrogation videotapes was prompted in part by worry about how its conduct might be perceived — by Congress, by prosecutors, by the American public and by Muslims worldwide.

That worry drove the decision to begin taping interrogations — and to stop taping just months later, after the treatment of prisoners began to include waterboarding. And it fueled the nearly three-year campaign by the agency’s clandestine service for permission to destroy the tapes, culminating in a November 2005 destruction order from the service’s director, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr.

Now, the disclosure of the tapes and their destruction in 2005 have become just the public spectacle the agency had sought to avoid. To the already fierce controversy over whether the Bush administration authorized torture has been added the specter of a cover-up.

The Justice Department, the C.I.A.’s inspector general and Congress are investigating whether any official lied about the tapes or broke the law by destroying them. Still in dispute is whether any White House official encouraged their destruction and whether the C.I.A. deliberately hid them from the national Sept. 11 commission....

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/washington/30intel.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all

[begin_within]

1. I think the cover-up (destruction of the tapes) actually makes it worse for the CIA

Sometimes the cover-up is worse than the original crime... (i.e., Watergate...)

[heliarc]

6. Sure...

But I'm not sure this compares to a bunch of bungling idiots breaking and entering.

Who knows what happened to some of the people detained by the CIA? We can guess? I've had family friends who were electrocuted during torture, and raped. Probably on their genitalia as was the wont of the CIA trained DINA in Chile. Video footage of that would be pretty damning now wouldn't it? We already know of people dying in custody. Young men raped by Titan "contractors." (Contracting of this sort is just plausible deniability for the aims and goals of the Intelligence agencies) Dogs tormenting detainees.

We can imagine all of it... and that is bad, but I'm not so sure the pictures aren't worse than we could imagine them.

[rockybelt]

2. I am at complete ease now

knowing that Mukasey and the Justice Department are on the job. I'm sure that everything will be investigated to the fullest extent.

There is no further need for other investigations to continue or started on this matter. It is further suggested that since it is an ongoing investigation that no one speak a word about this case until its conclusion sometime in february 2008.:evilgrin:

[TrogL]

3. Whatever you're smoking - can I have some?

[thunder rising]

5. hmmm...rockybelt must be your real name ;-)

[magellan]

4. They stopped taping but not waterboarding

That's quite a hideous lack of conscience they've put on display with this admission, and they don't even appear to realize it.

And we know they did even worse to detainees.

[EFerrari]

7. What utter bs.

"One day in November 2005, Mr. Rodriguez sent a cable ordering the destruction of the recordings. Soon afterward, he notified both Mr. Goss and Mr. Rizzo, taking full responsibility for the decision."

Yhis POS reads like Dick Cheney wrote it.

[rockybelt]

8. He probably did

When the CIA destroyed these tapes, they convicted themselves of all the crimes committed on those tapes. If there were no crimes committed, there was no reason to destroy the tapes. Simple.

What really bothers me and probably bothered them is what the audio of those tapes would reveal. Would it reveal that 9/11 was an inside job? Would it reveal that there was a conspiracy with our government?

I'm not really a conspiracy buff, but things about 9/11, the aftermath and these destroyed tapes do just not add up to a logical conclusion. I believe something far more sinister than destroying tapes is at work here. I also believe that there at least digital copies of these tapes or at the very least there are transcripts. Somebody has tapes of the torturing. Somebody is holding those tapes either for self preservation, blackmail or waiting until the time is right to let them surface.

[EFerrari]

9. I agree. This material is somewhere. And, Rodriguez has already

been hung out to dry once by the White House over Iran Contra. There's no way he was going to trust another administration that far again by taking such an action.

We already know that four White House lawyers for various principals were involved in an extended debate about these tapes. No way was Rodriguez going to do this on his own in that context.

This is fiction, and this team of reporters has just been promoted to the Presstitutes Club.