CIA tapes were destroyed to ’save image

[cal04]

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/29/cia-tapes-were-destroyed-to-save-image/

The New York Times reports that the CIA’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.” The Times adds:

By late 2002, interrogators were recycling videotapes, preserving only two days of tapes before recording over them, one C.I.A. officer said. Finally, senior agency officials decided that written summaries of prisoners’ answers would suffice.

Still, that decision left hundreds of hours of videotape of the two Qaeda figures locked in an overseas safe.

Clandestine service officers who had overseen the interrogations began pushing hard to destroy the tapes. But George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, was wary, in part because the agency’s top lawyer, Scott W. Muller, advised against it, current and former officials said.

Yet agency officials decided to float the idea of eliminating the tapes on Capitol Hill, hoping for political cover. In February 2003, Mr. Muller told members of the House and Senate oversight committees about the C.I.A’s interest in destroying the tapes for security reasons.

The tapes recorded a program “so closely guarded that President Bush himself had agreed with intelligence officials’ advice that he not be told the locations of the secret C.I.A. prisons.”

Tapes by C.I.A. Lived and Died to Save Image
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/washington/30intel.html?ei=5088&en=5192c167aca48ff4&ex=1356670800&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

[madeline_con]

1. Wow, ya think?

:crazy:

[rateyes]

2. Too late.

You have to have face to save face.

[magellan]

3. They were worried about how their conduct might be perceived?

That was as far as their spate of conscience went?

I'm now convinced the vast majority of our government is staffed by selfish, vicious scum who've faithfully fashioned themselves after patriots like Capone and McCarthy. What a sick, sick country this is.

[EFerrari]

4. This article lets Bush off the hook and tries to confuse which lawyer

was for destroying the tapes, and in that way, tries to protect Cheney. Addington wanted to get rid of them, everyone else said keep them and they put that in writing.

And, for an extra bonus, this thing tries to spread the blame to Congress.

:wtf:

[Toots]

5. I'm pretty sure it was Valarie Plame's fault

Everyone knows bureaucrats screw everything up and she was "just a bureaucrat" It is the reason Karl Rove was so heroic in letting the world know how harmful she was to America...