CIA Admits It Destroyed Tapes Of Interrogations
CIA admits it destroyed tapes of interrogations
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/...rica/06cia.php
By Mark Mazzetti
Published: December 6, 2007
WASHINGTON: The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives in the agency's custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about the CIA's secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.
The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in CIA custody — to severe interrogation techniques. They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said. The CIA said today that the decision to destroy the tapes had been made "within the CIA itself," and they were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value. The agency was headed at the time by Porter J. Goss. Through a spokeswoman, Goss declined this afternoon to comment on the destruction of the tapes.
The existence and subsequent destruction of the tapes are likely to reignite the debate over the use of severe interrogation techniques on terror suspects, and their destruction raises questions about whether CIA officials withheld information from the courts and from the presidentially appointed Sept. 11 commission about aspects of the program. It was not clear who within the CIA authorized the destruction of the tapes, but current and former government officials said it had been approved at the highest levels of the agency.
The Times informed the CIA on Wednesday evening that it planned to publish in Friday's newspaper an article about the destruction of the tapes.. Today, the CIA director, General Michael V. Hayden, wrote a letter to the agency workforce explaining the matter.
The recordings were not provided to a federal court hearing the case of the terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui or to the Sept. 11 commission, which had made formal requests to the CIA for transcripts and any other documentary evidence taken from interrogations of agency prisoners.
CIA lawyers told federal prosecutors in 2003 and 2005, who relayed the information to a federal court in the Moussaoui case, that the CIA did not possess recordings of interrogations sought by the judge in the case. It was unclear whether the judge had explicitly sought the videotape depicting the interrogation of Zubaydah.
Moussaoui's lawyers had hoped that records of the interrogations might provide exculpatory evidence for Moussaoui — showing that the Al Qaeda detainees did not know Moussaoui and clearing him of involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, plot.
General Hayden's statement said that the tapes posed a "serious security risk," and that if they were to become public they would have exposed CIA officials "and their families to retaliation from Al Qaeda and its sympathizers."
"What matters here is that it was done in line with the law," he said. He said in his statement that he was informing agency employees because "the press has learned" about the destruction of the tapes.
General Hayden said in a statement that leaders of Congressional oversight committees were fully briefed on the matter, but some Congressional officials said notification to Congress had not been adequate.
"This is a matter that should have been briefed to the full Intelligence Committee at the time," an official with the House Intelligence Committee said. "This does not appear to have been done. There may be a very logical reason for destroying records that are no longer needed; however, this requires a more complete explanation. "
Staff members of the Sept. 11 commission, which completed its work in 2004, expressed surprise when they were told that interrogation videotapes existed until 2005.
"The commission did formally request material of this kind from all relevant agencies, and the commission was assured that we had received all the material responsive to our request," said Philip D. Zelikow, who served as executive director of the Sept. 11 commission and later as a senior counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
"No tapes were acknowledged or turned over, nor was the commission provided with any transcript prepared from recordings," he said.
Daniel Marcus, a law professor at American University who served as general counsel for the Sept. 11 commission and was involved in the discussions about interviews with Al Qaeda leaders, said he had heard nothing about any tapes being destroyed.
If tapes were destroyed, he said, "it's a big deal, it's a very big deal," because it could amount to obstruction of justice to withhold evidence being sought in criminal or fact-finding investigations.
General Hayden said the tapes were originally made to ensure that agency employees acted in accordance with "established legal and policy guidelines." General Hayden said the agency stopped videotaping interrogations in 2002.
"The tapes were meant chiefly as an additional, internal check on the program in its early stages," his statement read
In October, federal prosecutors in the Moussaoui case were forced to write a letter to the court amending those CIA declarations. The letter stated that in September, the CIA notified the United States attorney's office in Alexandria, Va., that it had discovered a videotape documenting the interrogation of a detainee. After a more thorough search, the letter stated, CIA officials discovered a second videotape and one audio tape.
The letter is heavily redacted and sentences stating which detainees' interrogations the recordings document are blacked out. Signed by the United States attorney, Chuck Rosenberg, the letter states that the CIA's search for interrogation tapes "appears to be complete."
There is no mention in the letter of the tapes that CIA officials destroyed last year. Moussaoui was convicted last year and sentenced to life in prison.
John Radsan, who worked as a CIA lawyer from 2002 to 2004 and is now a professor at William Mitchell College of Law, said the destruction of the tapes could carry serious legal penalties.
"If anybody at the CIA hid anything important from the Justice Department, he or she should be prosecuted under the false statement statute," he said.
A former intelligence official who was briefed on the issue said the videotaping was ordered as a way of assuring "quality control" at remote sites following reports of unauthorized interrogation techniques. He said the tapes, along with still photographs of interrogations, were destroyed after photographs of abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib became public in May 2004 and CIA officers became concerned about a possible leak of the videos and photos.
He said the worries about the impact a leak of the tapes might have in the Muslim world were real.
It has been widely reported that Zubaydah was subjected to several tough physical tactics, including waterboarding, which involves near-suffocation. But CIA officers judged that the release of photos or videos would nonetheless provoke a strong reaction.
"People know what happened, but to see it in living color would have far greater power," the official said.
Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, has been pushing legislation in Congress to have all detainee interrogations videotaped so officials can refer to the tapes multiple times to glean better information.
Holt said he had been told many times that the CIA does not record the interrogation of detainees. "When I would ask them whether they had reviewed the tapes to better understand the intelligence, they said 'What tapes?'," he said.
Eric Lichtblau and Scott Shane contributed reporting.
How many court orders has this administration ignored now?
CIA destroyed tapes despite court orders
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071212/...obL16LUWKs0NUE
By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer
12/12/2007
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration was under court order not to discard evidence of detainee torture and abuse months before the CIA destroyed videotapes that revealed some of its harshest interrogation tactics.
Normally, that would force the government to defend itself against obstruction allegations. But the CIA may have an out: its clandestine network of overseas prisons.
While judges focused on the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and tried to guarantee that any evidence of detainee abuse would be preserved, the CIA was performing its toughest questioning half a world away. And by the time President Bush publicly acknowledged the secret prison system, interrogation videotapes of two terrorism suspects had been destroyed.
The CIA destroyed the tapes in November 2005. That June, U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. had ordered the Bush administration to safeguard "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay."
U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler issued a nearly identical order that July.
At the time, that seemed to cover all detainees in U.S. custody. But Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the terrorism suspects whose interrogations were videotaped and then destroyed, weren't at Guantanamo Bay. They were prisoners that existed off the books — and apparently beyond the scope of the court's order.
Attorneys say that might not matter. David H. Remes, a lawyer for Yemeni citizen Mahmoad Abdah and others, asked Kennedy this week to schedule a hearing on the issue.
Though Remes acknowledged the tapes might not be covered by Kennedy's order, he said, "It is still unlawful for the government to destroy evidence, and it had every reason to believe that these interrogation records would be relevant to pending litigation concerning our client."
In legal documents filed in January 2005, Assistant Attorney General Peter D. Keisler assured Kennedy that government officials were "well aware of their obligation not to destroy evidence that may be relevant in pending litigation."
For just that reason, officials inside and outside of the CIA advised against destroying the interrogation tapes, according to a former senior intelligence official involved in the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because it is under investigation.
Exactly who signed off on the decision is unclear, but CIA director Michael Hayden told the agency in an e-mail this week that internal reviewers found the tapes were not relevant to any court case.
Remes said that decision raises questions about whether other evidence was destroyed. Abu Zubaydah's interrogation helped lead investigators to alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Remes said Abu Zubaydah may also have been questioned about other detainees. Such evidence might have been relevant in their court cases.
"It's logical to infer that the documents were destroyed in order to obstruct any inquiry into the means by which statements were obtained," Remes said.
He stopped short, however, of accusing the government of obstruction. That's just one of the legal issues that could come up in court. A judge could also raise questions about contempt of court or spoliation, a legal term for the destruction of evidence in "pending or reasonably foreseeable litigation."
Kennedy has not scheduled a hearing on the matter and the government has not filed a response to Remes' request.