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Thread: CIA Admits It Destroyed Tapes Of Interrogations

  1. #81
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    9/11 commission leaders blast CIA on interrogation tapes

    http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5...oRr7PDl6b9rDVQ

    3 hours ago

    WASHINGTON (AFP) — The leaders of a US commission that examined the September 11, 2001 terror attacks accused the CIA Wednesday of having obstructed their investigation by withholding information about videotaped interrogations of terror suspects.

    The goal of the blue ribbon 9/11 Commission, wrote chairman Thomas Kean and vice-chairman Lee Hamilton in The New York Times, was "to provide the American people with the fullest possible account" of what led to Al-Qaeda's attacks more than six years ago on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

    But Kean and Hamilton wrote that although US President George W. Bush had ordered all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the probe, "recent revelations that the CIA destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot."

    "Those who knew about those videotapes -- and did not tell us about them -- obstructed our investigation."

    They continued: "There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the CIA -- or the White House -- of the commission?s interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot.

    "Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations," Kean and Hamilton wrote.

    They said the panel made repeated, detailed requests to the spy agency in 2003 and 2004 for information about the interrogation of members of the Islamic extremist network but were never notified about the existence of the tapes.

    The CIA revealed last month that in 2005 it destroyed videotapes that showed harsh interrogations of two Al-Qaeda members.
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  2. #82
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    Stonewalled by the C.I.A.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/op...nt&oref=slogin

    By THOMAS H. KEAN and LEE H. HAMILTON
    1/2/2008

    MORE than five years ago, Congress and President Bush created the 9/11 commission. The goal was to provide the American people with the fullest possible account of the “facts and circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001” — and to offer recommendations to prevent future attacks. Soon after its creation, the president’s chief of staff directed all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the commission.

    The commission’s mandate was sweeping and it explicitly included the intelligence agencies. But the recent revelations that the C.I.A. destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.

    There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the C.I.A. — or the White House — of the commission’s interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot. Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations.

    When the press reported that, in 2002 and maybe at other times, the C.I.A. had recorded hundreds of hours of interrogations of at least two Qaeda detainees, we went back to check our records. We found that we did ask, repeatedly, for the kind of information that would have been contained in such videotapes.

    The commission did not have a mandate to investigate how detainees were treated; our role was to investigate the history and evolution of Al Qaeda and the 9/11 plot. Beginning in June 2003, we requested all reports of intelligence information on these broad topics that had been gleaned from the interrogations of 118 named individuals, including both Abu Zubaydah and Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, two senior Qaeda operatives, portions of whose interrogations were apparently recorded and then destroyed.

    The C.I.A. gave us many reports summarizing information gained in the interrogations. But the reports raised almost as many questions as they answered. Agency officials assured us that, if we posed specific questions, they would do all they could to answer them.

    So, in October 2003, we sent another wave of questions to the C.I.A.’s general counsel. One set posed dozens of specific questions about the reports, including those about Abu Zubaydah. A second set, even more important in our view, asked for details about the translation process in the interrogations; the background of the interrogators; the way the interrogators handled inconsistencies in the detainees’ stories; the particular questions that had been asked to elicit reported information; the way interrogators had followed up on certain lines of questioning; the context of the interrogations so we could assess the credibility and demeanor of the detainees when they made the reported statements; and the views or assessments of the interrogators themselves.

    The general counsel responded in writing with non-specific replies. The agency did not disclose that any interrogations had ever been recorded or that it had held any further relevant information, in any form. Not satisfied with this response, we decided that we needed to question the detainees directly, including Abu Zubaydah and a few other key captives.

    In a lunch meeting on Dec. 23, 2003, George Tenet, the C.I.A. director, told us point blank that we would have no such access. During the meeting, we emphasized to him that the C.I.A. should provide any documents responsive to our requests, even if the commission had not specifically asked for them. Mr. Tenet replied by alluding to several documents he thought would be helpful to us, but neither he, nor anyone else in the meeting, mentioned videotapes.

    A meeting on Jan. 21, 2004, with Mr. Tenet, the White House counsel, the secretary of defense and a representative from the Justice Department also resulted in the denial of commission access to the detainees. Once again, videotapes were not mentioned.

    As a result of this January meeting, the C.I.A. agreed to pose some of our questions to detainees and report back to us. The commission concluded this was all the administration could give us. But the commission never felt that its earlier questions had been satisfactorily answered. So the public would be aware of our concerns, we highlighted our caveats on page 146 in the commission report.

    As a legal matter, it is not up to us to examine the C.I.A.’s failure to disclose the existence of these tapes. That is for others. What we do know is that government officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the president, to investigate one the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction.

    Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton served as chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the 9/11 commission.
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  3. #83
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    "We found that we did ask, repeatedly, for the kind of information that would have been contained in such videotapes."

    It's spelled S-U-B-P-O-E-N-A you worthless pieces of crap. YOU DIDN'T USE IT.
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  4. #84
    dMole Guest
    "... our role was to investigate the history and evolution of Al Qaeda and the 9/11 plot."

    So does that mean (Al Qaeda) AQ and "the 9/11 plot" are mutually exclusive then? If the Kean-Hamilton Commission (KHC) had actually looked deeper they should have found a common thread in 9/11 and "the evolution of AQ--" it is spelled CIA. That is just one of many players in this macabre geopolitical drama however.

    Kean, Hamilton: please give up the act and be real.

  5. #85
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    Mukasey: Criminal probe begins into CIA tapes
    CIA said last month it had destroyed tapes of harsh interrogations

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22474868/

    1/2/2008

    WASHINGTON - The Justice Department said Wednesday it will launch a criminal investigation into the CIA's destruction of videotapes depicting the harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects.

    The CIA last month disclosed that in 2005 it destroyed hundreds of hours of tapes from the interrogations of two al-Qaida suspects, prompting an outcry from Democrats, human rights activists and some legal experts.

    The interrogations, which took place in 2002, were believed to have included a form of simulated drowning known as waterboarding, condemned internationally as torture.

    President Bush has said the United States does not torture but has declined to be specific about interrogation methods.

    The Justice Department launched an initial inquiry last month. The CIA said it had no immediate comment.
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  6. #86
    dMole Guest

    Business as usual, just at home...

    From:

    IC21: The Intelligence Community in the 21st Century

    Staff Study
    Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
    House of Representatives
    One Hundred Fourth Congress


    IX. Clandestine Service
    ...
    1) Most of the operations of the CS (Clandestine Service) are, by all accounts, the most tricky, politically sensitive, and troublesome of those in the IC (Intelligence Community) and frequently require the DCI's close personal attention. The CS is the only part of the IC, indeed of the government, where hundreds of employees on a daily basis are directed to break extremely serious laws in counties around the world in the face of frequently sophisticated efforts by foreign governments to catch them. A safe estimate is that several hundred times every day
    (easily 100,000 times a year) DO (Directorate of Operations) officers engage in highly illegal activities (according to foreign law) that not only risk political embarrassment to the US but also endanger the freedom if not lives of the participating foreign nationals and, more than occasionally, of the clandestine officer himself.
    In other words, a typical 28 year old, GS-11 case officer has numerous opportunities every week, by poor tradecraft or inattention, to embarrass his country and
    President and to get agents imprisoned or executed. Considering
    these facts and recent history, which has shown that the DCI,
    whether he wants to or not, is held accountable for overseeing the
    CS, the DCI must work closely with the Director of the CS and hold
    him fully and directly responsible to him.
    ...
    http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/h...1/ic21009.html

    Also interesting:
    "A final note on the use of the term "clandestine service."
    When referring specifically to an existing clandestine service,
    such as the CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO) or the
    clandestine element of the DoD's Defense HUMINT Service (DHS), this
    is done so by name. In discussing an ideal or future organization
    performing those missions
    , we have used the term "Clandestine
    Service" or CS as a proper noun."

  7. #87
    simuvac Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by Gold9472
    "We found that we did ask, repeatedly, for the kind of information that would have been contained in such videotapes."

    It's spelled S-U-B-P-O-E-N-A you worthless pieces of crap. YOU DIDN'T USE IT.
    Also, it kinda pisses me off that nobody gave much of a shit when Kean and Hamilton described in their book how the White House was the "chief obstacle" (p.17) to their investigation, but now that there's this flap over the CIA tapes everybody is full of righteous indignation.

    Glenn Greenwald at Salon is someone I usually respect, and he has a column on the tapes today. That's great, but where were these people three years ago? And why don't they talk about the multiple instances of obstruction of justice for the 9/11 Commission, instead of pretending like the CIA tapes are the only glitch in the entire affair?

    Who knows, though, maybe this is the start of something?

  8. #88
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    Statement By 9/11 Family Member Donna Marsh O'Connor On The CIA Tapes

    Kean and Hamilton issued a statement today, January 2, 2008 (only six-plus years since 9/11/2001) that was “just-inned” on CNN. They published an editorial in the New York Times today. Their position: Their work was blocked, the investigation tainted. They repeatedly asked for tapes from the CIA that were never provided. They came just short of calling for a real investigation. They (as they have done since the beginning) left that work to the victims’ families.

    Will you now cover 9/11 truth, not as a series of destructive conspiracy theories, but as a movement inhabited by sane citizens from all walks of life (scientists, CIA whistleblowers, theologians, professors, researchers, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and more) as well as family members of the victims who deserve as patriotic Americans the answers to the lingering questions of that day? Will you now take up the call first put together in mainstream media by the four heroic widows from New Jersey?

    My daughter, Vanessa Lang Langer was pregnant and pulled from the pile whole and intact on 9/24/2001. She was found ten feet from an alley. Five minutes after the first plane hit Tower I, she was on the phone to the uptown office of Regus Business International, telling a colleague that those in Tower II were told they were safe. That five minutes and the seventeen minutes between those planes (yes, I do believe there were planes) were two lifetimes in my own world. She must have been running for her life, fully conscious of how much she had to protect and how endangered she came to be. If you can’t hear the reasonable request of one family, one mother, you don’t care about family at all. You believe the beginning and end of your moral existence reaches only to what is easy for you to do. You don’t consider those acts necessary to good citizenship, those acts that you leave out, to have any significance.

    It is much easier to be a good person than it is to be a good people.

    America does not need an investigation. It can easily bury the truth about 9/11 the way it buries and encodes all of its evils. It can easily be like Germany pre Hitler. It can meander its way to more violence, to more war, to growing hate. Or individuals with some powerful means of communication can change this horrible script. For once, for once in our history, can we examine our evil tendencies before they flourish into full example.

    Good persons who craft of us a good people speak against established norms.

    I am begging you to be more.

    We need an investigation into the events of 9/11/2001 in order to be sure that culpability is assigned, that all subpoena powers are used, that all of those who helped to grow the events of that cataclysmic day, or those who were negligent or criminally negligent, or those who perpetrated crimes before during and after that day are prevented from using their powers in such a way ever again. Ever again.

    To those who perished on 9/11, justice here on earth is not necessary. You cannot help them.

    You can help the remaining citizens of this country and the world. When will you say its time?

    Donna Marsh O’Connor
    Mother of Vanessa Lang Langer, WTC Tower II, 93rd floor
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  9. #89
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    It's the start of something...
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  10. #90
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    Conyers Demands that DOJ Appoint Real Special Counsel

    http://judiciary.house.gov/newscenter.aspx?A=907

    For Immediate Release
    January 2, 2008

    (Washington, DC) - In response to the Attorney General’s announcement that he would be tasking the Assistant United States Attorney from the District of Connecticut to investigate matters involving the destruction of tapes of detainee interrogations, congressman John Conyers, Jr., Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, issued the following statement:

    While I certainly agree that these matters warrant an immediate criminal investigation, it is disappointing that the Attorney General has stepped outside the Justice Department’s own regulations and declined to appoint a more independent special counsel in this matter. Because of this action, the Congress and the American people will be denied – as they were in the Valerie Plame matter – any final report on the investigation.

    Equally disappointing is the limited scope of this investigation, which appears limited to the destruction of two tapes. The government needs to scrutinize what other evidence may have been destroyed beyond the two tapes, as well as the underlying allegations of misconduct associated with the interrogations.

    The Justice Department’s record over the past seven years of sweeping the administration’s misconduct under the rug has left the American public with little confidence in the administration’s ability to investigate itself. Nothing less than a special counsel with a full investigative mandate will meet the tests of independence, transparency and completeness. Appointment of a special counsel will allow our nation to begin to restore our credibility and moral standing on these issues.
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


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