CIA Admits It Destroyed Tapes Of Interrogations

No charges to be filed in destruction of CIA tapes

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/charges-destruction-cia-interrogation-tapes-report/

By David Edwards
Tuesday, November 9th, 2010 -- 1:04 pm

There will be no criminal charges over the destruction of CIA tapes showing interrogation of terrorism detainees, according to a new report.

Federal prosecutors have determined that there is not enough evidence to bring charges, two sources have told NPR.

The statue of limitations expired Monday so no future prosecutions will be possible.

A few of the tapes allegedly contained evidence showing the interrogation of two detainees, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Intelligence officials told NBC News that one of the tapes showed Zubaydah being waterboarded. Other tapes contained innocuous images of other detainees.

The CIA reportedly destroyed the tapes in November 2005. The Senate Intelligence Committee's Democratic chairman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, learned of their destruction in November 2006.

Then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey named Assistant US Attorney John Durham to lead an investigation in January 2008.

Attorney General Eric Holder expanded Durham's mandate last year and asked him to look into whether the CIA or contractors went beyond legal interrogation methods. That investigation is ongoing, according to NPR's sources.
 
Justice dept.: no charges in CIA tape case

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_cia_videotapes

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Pete Yost, Associated Press – 12 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The CIA's former top clandestine officer and others won't be charged in the destruction of CIA videotapes of interrogations of suspected terrorists, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.

Another part of the criminal investigation is continuing into whether CIA interrogators went beyond the legal guidance given them on treatment of the suspects during questioning, a Justice Department official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because that part of the probe is still under way.

The CIA destroyed its cache of 92 videos of two al-Qaida operatives, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri, being waterboarded in 2005.

Jose Rodriguez, formerly the agency's top clandestine officer, worried the 92 tapes would be devastating to the CIA if they ever surfaced. He approved the destruction of the tapes. Rodriguez's order was at odds with years of directives from CIA lawyers and the White House.

A lawyer for Rodriguez, Robert Bennett, said the Justice Department decision "is the right decision because of the facts and the law."

Bennett called Rodriguez "an American hero, a true patriot who only wanted to protect his people and his country."

Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham has been investigating the destruction of the videotapes since January 2008.

A team of prosecutors and FBI agents led by Durham has conducted an exhaustive investigation into the matter, said Matthew Miller, director of the Justice Department's office of public affairs.

"As a result of that investigation, Mr. Durham has concluded that he will not pursue criminal charges for the destruction of the interrogation videotapes," Miller said.
 
Hellerstein Vexed on Remedy for CIA Tape Destruction

http://www.law.com/jsp/nylj/PubArticleNY.jsp?id=1202478205888&slreturn=1&hbxlogin=1

Mark Hamblett
New York Law Journal
January 18, 2011

The destruction of videotapes in 2005 showing abusive treatment of high-level al-Qaida detainees by CIA agents flouted an order by Southern District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein to preserve the tapes. Five years later, the judge is still looking for a remedy.

On Friday, Judge Hellerstein said he wants some acceptance of responsibility for the incident by the Central Intelligence Agency as well as an indication that corrective action has been taken for violating his 2004 order to preserve the tapes. The 92 tapes cover the interrogation of two top al-Qaida figures through the use of waterboarding and other coercive measures.

"This kind of destruction never should have occurred," the judge said to lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and the government at a hearing on Friday. "It tells the court the CIA does not trust the judges to have proper regard for the security interests of the United States."

The case of American Civil Liberties Union v. Department of Defense, 04-cv-04151, was brought under the Freedom of Information Act, with the plaintiffs seeking details on the possible deaths and mistreatment of prisoners at the hands of U.S. personnel and the rendition or transfer of some prisoners to countries that practice torture during interrogations.

Judge Hellerstein issued his order for the tapes' preservation in September 2004, as the CIA inspector general was investigating the treatment of detainees. The 92 tapes, however, were destroyed on Nov. 9, 2005, at the direction of a high-level CIA official.

During a contempt hearing in 2008, Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Skinner argued before Judge Hellerstein that his order was not violated because it "required us to review what was collected by the office of the inspector general and [the tapes] were never collected by the office of the inspector general" (NYLJ, Jan. 18, 2008).

Judge Hellerstein did not buy it. He said it "boggles the mind" that there was a whole study completed on how the CIA treats prisoners for interrogation purposes and "now I'm asked to believe that actual moving pictures, videotapes, of the relationships between interrogators and prisoners are of so little value" that they were not retained.

Nonetheless, the judge said at the time that a contempt finding against a government agency would do no more than generate "a newspaper headline."

On Friday, Judge Hellerstein said he still saw little value in holding the government in contempt, in part because civil contempt against an agency is usually used to obtain compliance with an existing order and would therefore accomplish little.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tara M. LaMorte told the judge his rulings had already achieved remedial purposes, including his dual order for the government to assemble and produce documents reflecting or commenting on the contents of the videotapes and gather other documents relating to the destruction of the tapes.

"Then how come I don't feel a great sense of accomplishment?" Judge Hellerstein asked.

Ms. LaMorte told the judge the purpose of a contempt finding was to "make the plaintiffs whole" and she reminded Judge Hellerstein that he had said the purpose of civil contempt is not punishment.

Later, Ms. LaMorte added, "The CIA takes this very seriously" but "we can't go back in time and not destroy the videotapes."

She said the government was amenable to asking the CIA for a report for the judge on how it addressed the destruction and how such an action can be prevented in the future. She also said she was open to discussing another way to conclude the litigation with an award of attorney's fees to the plaintiffs.

Speaking for the plaintiffs, Lawrence Lustberg of Gibbons agreed that certain remedial measures had been taken, but he said that there was good reason for the court to explore the notion of contempt or sanctions.

"It gives courts the ability to express the necessity of agencies to obey a court order," Mr. Lustberg said. "There is a sense [of] community outrage [over] an agency not obeying a court order that has not been stated."

Although Judge Hellerstein had earlier expressed concern over the difficulty of holding individual CIA officials to account, particularly since some of their identities are confidential, Mr. Lustberg said there were "some individuals who we can identify, and we can identify publicly, who were instrumental in the destruction of the tapes."

Judge Hellerstein asked for briefs from both sides about the best way to proceed and bring the case to a conclusion.

Ms. LaMorte also volunteered to have the judge hear from John H. Durham, the federal prosecutor appointed in 2008 by then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey to supervise a criminal investigation into the destruction of the tapes.

In November, the Justice Department said Mr. Durham had concluded he would not bring criminal charges against CIA officers.

The judge said he would be happy to hear from Mr. Durham.
 
NYC judge refuses to cite CIA in 9/11 tape case

http://www.kansascity.com/2011/08/01/3050583/nyc-judge-refuses-to-cite-cia.html

The Associated Press
8/1/2011

A New York City federal judge says he won't hold the CIA in contempt for destroying videotapes of Sept. 11 detainee interrogations.

At a hearing Monday, Judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected the American Civil Liberties Union's arguments that the CIA should be held accountable for the destruction of 92 tapes. The ACLU alleges the tapes showed interrogators torturing key al-Qaida (al-KY'-ee-duh) operatives.

The judge says citing the CIA wouldn't accomplish anything. But he agrees the agency should pay the ACLU's legal costs for pursuing the disclosures.

The CIA claims the tapes were destroyed without top officials knowing and it's taken steps to make sure it couldn't happen again.

The judge cited national security concerns when he said he likely would've ruled against making the tapes public if they'd been preserved.
 
CIA not in contempt over interrogation tapes, judge says

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/01/us-cia-idUSTRE77068O20110801

By Basil Katz
NEW YORK | Mon Aug 1, 2011 7:18pm EDT

(Reuters) - A judge on Monday refused to find the CIA acted in contempt when it destroyed videotapes that showed harsh interrogations of two suspects.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein told a Manhattan federal court hearing that efforts by the CIA to improve how it preserves documents was enough restitution, and that it should pay legal fees to the plaintiffs, the American Civil Liberties Union.

"I don't think a citation of contempt will add to anything," Hellerstein said.

In December 2007, the CIA acknowledged destroying dozens of videotapes made under a detention program begun after the September 11 attacks. The interrogations, in 2002, were of alleged al Qaeda members Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

Until 2007, the CIA had publicly denied the tapes ever existed. They were destroyed in 2005.

A probe by a special federal prosecutor last year found that no CIA personnel should face criminal charges for destroying the videotapes.

Monday's decision came after years of legal battles between the CIA and the ACLU, which first sued the agency in 2004 to obtain documents on its treatment of prisoners.

When news of the tapes surfaced, the ACLU said the CIA and its chief spy at the time had acted in contempt of court by trashing tapes that should have been preserved under a court order following the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

By destroying the tapes, the CIA showed disrespect for the court, said Lawrence Lustberg, an attorney for the ACLU.

Although the CIA failed in not disclosing and preserving the tapes, Judge Hellerstein said: "The bottom line is we are in a dangerous world. We need our spies, we need surveillance, but we also need accountability."

As part of that accountability, the judge on Monday asked the CIA to detail the new policies it says it has implemented since the tapes were destroyed.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tara La Morte, arguing for the CIA, said the CIA's new policies were "above and beyond" what the court required and that the ACLU was "out to exact retribution on the CIA."

"I don't think that's correct," the judge interrupted.
 
Manhattan Judge Spares the CIA

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/10/06/manhattan-judge-spares-the-cia/?mod=WSJBlog

By Terin Tashi Miller
10/6/2011

The Central Intelligence Agency has avoided a potential showdown with a Manhattan federal judge.

Judge Alvin Hellerstein (pictured) yesterday declined to find the CIA in contempt for destroying videotapes of its interrogations of Sept. 11 detainees, concluding that it would serve no beneficial purpose to penalize the agency, according to this AP report.

Hellerstein also noted in his ruling that the CIA has put in place new procedures to prevent such destruction from happening again.

The decision came in a lawsuit filed in 2004 by the ACLU against the Defense Department, the CIA, and several other government entities engaged in the arrest, detention, interrogation and rendition to other countries of prisoners caught up in the events following the 9/11 attacks. Filed under the Freedom of Information Act, the suit seeks the release of a range of governmental records.

The government, AP reports, has acknowledged that in 2005 it destroyed 92 videotapes, including those containing interrogations of a high-level al-Qaeda lieutenant who claimed he suffered physical and mental torture at the hands of the CIA.

The ACLU had requested that Hellerstein hold the CIA in contempt for its destruction of tapes. “We moved for contempt, or in the alternative for sanctions, because the CIA destroyed these tapes at a time when there was in place a Court Order to process them as a result of this Freedom of Information Act case,” Lawrence S. Lustberg, an attorney for the ACLU, told the Law Blog earlier this week.

The judge concluded that the CIA’s new rules would have a “deterrent effect should a CIA official think to destroy documents,” AP reports. The new rules, Hellerstein wrote in his ruling, “should lead to greater accountability within the agency and prevent another episode like the videotapes’ destruction.”

To bolster its contempt request, the ACLU recently sent a letter to the judge, addressing the CIA’s new policies regarding document preservation.

“These new policies … are not responsive as to why and how the CIA destroyed hundreds of hours of videotape depicting hash interrogations, in violation of this court’s orders,” the ACLU letter said. “It is now even clearer that the tapes were destroyed not because of inadequate document preservation policies, but because high-level officials flouted agency policy to protect themselves and the agency from public scrutiny.”

Alexander Abdo, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, said in a statement that the ACLU was “profoundly disappointed by the court’s unwillingness to label as contempt what it describes as the CIA’s ‘dereliction.’”

“The truth is that the CIA destroyed evidence of torture, and the destruction of this evidence has made it harder to hold high-level officials accountable for the abuse that they authorized,” Abdo said.
 
NY judge declines to find CIA in contempt over destruction of detainee interrogation tapes

http://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...gation-tapes/2011/10/05/gIQAot1bOL_story.html

By Associated Press, Published: October 5

NEW YORK — A federal judge declined Wednesday to find the CIA in contempt for destroying videotapes of Sept. 11 detainee interrogations, saying to do so would serve no beneficial purpose and the CIA had put in place new procedures to prevent such destruction from happening again.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein said in a written ruling that the CIA has since remedied its failure to produce videotapes in response to requests by the American Civil Liberties Union. He wrote that the people processing the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act request may not have been aware of the videotapes’ existence before they were destroyed.

The government has acknowledged destroying 92 videotapes, including those containing interrogations of a high-level al-Qaida lieutenant who claimed he suffered physical and mental torture at the hands of the CIA. The tapes were destroyed in 2005.

In January, the judge said a contempt finding would be impractical and told the CIA to investigate itself and report how it will prevent employees from destroying information in the future. On Wednesday, he noted that the CIA adopted two new policies in August regarding document preservation to ensure that destruction of any documents outside of routine management of CIA materials will not occur without a review by lawyers to ensure they are preserved for legal proceedings or congressional oversight activity.

The judge said the CIA’s new protocols would have “a remedial and deterrent effect should a CIA official think to destroy documents.”

“The protocols should lead to better communication and more complete written records within the agency and across the government when an issue of document destruction or retention arises within the agency,” he said. “The CIA’s new protocols should lead to greater accountability within the agency and prevent another episode like the videotapes’ destruction.”

Alexander Abdo, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, wrote the ACLU was “profoundly disappointed by the court’s unwillingness to label as contempt what it describes as the CIA’s ‘dereliction.’”

“We also strongly disagree with the court’s finding that the CIA has ‘remedied’ the destruction,” Abdo wrote. “The truth is that the CIA destroyed evidence of torture, and the destruction of this evidence has made it harder to hold high-level officials accountable for the abuse that they authorized.”

Carly Sullivan, a spokeswoman for federal lawyers who argued the case, said the government had no comment on the ruling.

In his ruling, the judge noted that the ACLU had cited a recently published article by a former general counsel for the CIA that accused the CIA’s former deputy director of operations of defying orders and going behind the top CIA lawyer’s back to destroy the videotapes.

He said the argument premised on the belief that one high-ranking official defied orders and destroyed the tapes undermines the ACLU’s contention that the CIA as an agency should be held in contempt for the conduct.

Still, the judge wrote, “the lapses of individuals cannot excuse the failures of the agency.” He said the CIA had an obligation to identify or produce the videotapes and “cannot be excused in its dereliction because of particular individuals’ lapses.”

The administration of President George W. Bush had said some tapes were destroyed to protect the identities of the government questioners while the Department of Justice was debating whether the interrogation tactics were legal.

In September 2009, the judge cited national security concerns in ruling that the CIA did not have to release hundreds of documents related to the destruction of the videotapes. He has said he likely would have ruled against public disclosure of videotapes documenting new harsh questioning techniques if the CIA had not destroyed them.

An ACLU lawsuit already has forced the release of legal memos authorizing harsh interrogation methods, including waterboarding, a type of simulated drowning, and slamming suspects into walls, techniques described by critics as torture.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 
The CIA's impunity on 'torture tapes'
That the CIA could destroy its videotapes of 9/11 conspirator interrogations without penalty is a shocking abuse of democracy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis...t/07/cia-impunity-torture-tapes?newsfeed=true

10/8/2011

Lee Hamilton and Tom Kean – the co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission – are the prototypical Wise Old Men of Washington. These are the types chosen to head blue-ribbon panels whenever the US government needs a respectable, trans-partisan, serious face to show the public in the wake of a mammoth political failure. Wise Old Men of Washington are entrusted with this mission because, by definition, they are loyal, devoted members of the political establishment and will criticise political institutions and leaders only in the most respectful and restrained manner.

That is why it was so remarkable when Hamilton and Kean, on 2 January 2008, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times repeatedly accusing the CIA and the Bush White House of knowingly "obstructing" their commission's investigation into the 9/11 attack. As many imprisoned felons can attest, the word "obstruction" packs a powerful punch as a legal term of art signifying the crime of "obstruction of justice", and yet, here were these two mild-mannered, establishment-protecting civil servants accusing CIA and Bush officials of that crime in the most public and unambiguous manner possible.

What triggered this duo's uncharacteristic accusatory outburst was the revelation that the CIA had purposely destroyed numerous videos of interrogation sessions it had conducted with al-Qaida operatives (destroyed were 92 videos, showing hundreds of hours of interrogations). The 9/11 Commission had repeatedly demanded, with the force of law behind it, that all such interrogation materials be provided to it. Numerous courts presiding over lawsuits relating to torture allegations against the CIA had also ordered that any such videos be produced.

But with those orders pending, the CIA destroyed the very evidence it was legally compelled to preserve. With at least the knowledge, if not direction, of White House officials, they did so almost certainly with the intent of preventing the world from seeing how they treated detainees in their custody – with torture – but the effect was to prevent the 9/11 Commission and multiple courts from learning what al-Qaida operatives said (or did not say) about 9/11 and other matters under investigation.

That is why the CIA's actions were so clearly criminal: destroying evidence one knows is relevant to a lawful investigation or a judicial proceeding is the very essence of "obstruction of justice". Individuals are routinely prosecuted and imprisoned in the US for such acts in far less serious cases. So egregious and deliberate was the CIA's criminality – purposely destroying evidence relevant to the most significant terrorist attack in history on US soil – that not even Hamilton and Kean were willing to paper over it.

Despite all that, there have been no legal consequences whatsoever for the crimes of these CIA officials. Last November, the Obama justice department – following the administration's all-too-familiar pattern of shielding Bush-era crimes from acountability – announced it was closing its criminal investigation into the matter with no charges filed. And this week, a federal judge, whose own order to produce these videos had been violated by the CIA, decided that he would not even impose civil sanctions or issue a finding of contempt because, as he put it, new rules issued by the CIA "should lead to greater accountability within the agency and prevent another episode like the videotapes' destruction".

In other words, the CIA has promised not to do this again, so they shouldn't be punished for the crimes they committed. Aside from how difficult it is, given the agency's history, to make that claim without triggering a global laughing fit, it is also grounded in a principle of leniency rarely applied to ordinary citizens. After all, most criminal defendants caught up in the life-destroying hell of a federal prosecution are quite unlikely to repeat their crimes in the future, yet that fact is no bar to punishing them for the illegal acts they already committed.

What actually produced this astounding outcome is the two-tiered system of justice that is now fully entrenched in the US: one in which ordinary Americans are subjected to a brutally harsh and unforgiving system of punishment, while political and financial elites are vested with virtually full-scale immunity for even the most egregious of crimes. It is that warped "justice" system that has caused Americans to witness the construction of the world's largest penal state for ordinary citizens at the very same time that the most destructive elite crimes – a worldwide torture regime, Wall Street plundering on a massive scale, illegal domestic eavesdropping, an aggressive war in Iraq that killed at least tens of thousands of innocents – have gone completely unpunished.

As I spent the last 18 months writing my forthcoming book on this two-tiered justice system, I genuinely expected, as I recount there, that there would be indictments in the CIA video case, thus providing a counter-example to the book's argument that elites are now immune from the rule of law. "Even our political class," I wrote, "couldn't allow lawbreaking this brazen to go entirely unpunished." Alas, as Wednesday's court ruling (pdf) demonstrated, I was wrong: there is no elite criminality too egregious to enjoy this shield of immunity. Thus can the CIA purposely destroy evidence it has been ordered to produce both by a congressionally-created investigative commission and multiple courts – and do so with total impunity.
 
Top ex-CIA officer on waterboarding tape destruction: ‘Just getting rid of some ugly visuals’

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal_government/top-ex-cia-officer-on-waterboarding-tape-destruction-just-getting-rid-of-some-ugly-visuals/2012/04/24/gIQAZamEfT_story.html

By Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, April 24, 6:18 PM

WASHINGTON — The retired top CIA officer who ordered the destruction of videos showing waterboarding says in a new book that he was tired of waiting for Washington’s bureaucracy to make a decision that protected American lives.

Jose Rodriguez, who oversaw the CIA’s once-secret interrogation and detention program, also lashes out at President Barack Obama’s administration for calling waterboarding torture and criticizing its use.

“I cannot tell you how disgusted my former colleagues and I felt to hear ourselves labeled ‘torturers’ by the president of the United States,” Rodriguez writes in his book, “Hard Measures.”

The book is due out April 30. The Associated Press purchased a copy Tuesday.

The chapter about the interrogation videos adds few new details to a narrative that has been explored for years by journalists, investigators and civil rights groups. But the book represents Rodriguez’s first public comment on the matter since the tape destruction was revealed in 2007.

That revelation touched off a political debate and ignited a Justice Department investigation that ultimately produced no charges. Critics accused Rodriguez of covering up torture and preventing the public from ever seeing the brutality of the CIA’s interrogations. Supporters hailed him as a hero who acted in the best interest of the country in the face of years of bureaucratic hand-wringing.

The tapes, filmed in a secret CIA prison in Thailand, showed the waterboarding of terrorists Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri.

Especially after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, Rodriguez writes, if the CIA’s videos were to leak out, officers worldwide would be in danger.

“I wasn’t going to sit around another three years waiting for people to get up the courage,” to do what CIA lawyers said he had the authority to do himself, Rodriguez writes. He describes sending the order in November 2005 as “just getting rid of some ugly visuals.”

Rodriguez writes critically of Obama’s counterterrorism policies today. With no way to capture and interrogate terrorists, Rodriguez says, the CIA relies far too much on drones. Unmanned aerial attacks alienate America’s foreign partners and make it impossible to question people in the know, he says.

These points could foreshadow Republican attack lines in the presidential race because other former senior CIA officers are advising presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

The killing of Osama bin Laden is Obama’s signature national security accomplishment, but Rodriguez writes that valuable intelligence from the CIA’s “black sites” helped lead the U.S. to bin Laden.

The book is published by Threshold, a conservative imprint of Simon and Schuster that also published former Vice President Dick Cheney’s memoir.
 
Former CIA spy boss made an unhesitating call to destroy interrogation tapes

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifes...gation-tapes/2012/04/24/gIQAkdTXfT_story.html

By Dana Priest, Published: April 24

The first and only time I met Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., he was still undercover and in charge of the Central Intelligence Agency’s all-powerful operations directorate. The agency had summoned me to its Langley headquarters and his mission was to talk me out of running an article I had just finished reporting about CIA secret prisons — the “black sites” abroad where the agency put al-Qaeda terrorists so they could be interrogated in isolation, beyond the reach and protections of U.S. law.

The scene I walked into in November 2005 struck me as incongruous. The man sitting in the middle of the navy blue colonial-style sofa looked like a big-city police detective stuffed uncomfortably into a tailored suit. His face was pockmarked, his dark mustache too big to be stylish. He was not one of the polished career bureaucrats who populate the halls of power in Washington.

In fact, he fit perfectly the description given by my sources: hardworking but not smooth, loyal to the institution and now, probably, beyond his depth. He was as surprised as anyone that he had risen so quickly to the senior ranks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to the account of his decades-long spy career in “Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives.” The book is due out Monday, after an exclusive interview Sunday night on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” The Washington Post obtained a copy this week.

Shortly after the 2001 attacks, the CIA set up the secret prisons in Afghanistan, Thailand and several Eastern European countries for the explicit purpose of keeping detainees picked up on the battlefield or in other countries away from the U.S. justice system, which would grant them some protections against, among other things, torture or otherwise harsh treatment. In an effort to force these detainees to give their handlers information about terrorist plots, CIA interrogators subjected some of them to sleep and food deprivation, incessant loud noise and waterboarding.

By the time we met, those techniques were no longer in use. Rodriguez had not dealt with American reporters, he writes, but then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss had asked him to meet with me “to see if I could convince her that such a story would harm U.S. national security, put some of our allies around the world in a very difficult position, and potentially disrupt a program that was providing intelligence that was producing real results and helping to keep the country safe.”

What Rodriguez remembers from our conversation, according to his book, is that I brought him a copy of a book I had written about the U.S. military in an effort to butter him up. “That failed to soften my stance on the lack of wisdom of her proceeding with her article as planned,” he wrote, and “I could see I was not winning her over.” I remember bringing the book because I figured he didn’t know one reporter from the next, and I wanted him to know that I did in-depth work and didn’t want to just hear the talking points.

A blunt explanation
It became clear immediately that Rodriguez never even got the talking points, which was refreshing and surprising. Right away he began divulging awkward truths that other senior officers had tried to obfuscate in our conversations about the secret prisons: “In many cases they are violating their own laws by helping us,” he offered, according to notes I took at the time.

Why not bring the detainees to trial?

“Because they would get lawyered up, and our job, first and foremost, is to obtain information.”

(Shortly after our conversation, The Post’s senior editors were called to the White House to discuss the article with President George W. Bush and his national security team. Days later, the newspaper published the story, without naming the countries where the prisons were located.)

Rodriguez may have never felt the need to even reveal himself publicly or to write a book, complete with family photos, giving his version of many of the unconventional — and eventually repudiated — practices that the CIA engaged in after Sept. 11 had it not been for what happened shortly after our conversation.

Concerned that the location of one of the prisons was about to be revealed, Rodriguez writes that he ordered the facility closed immediately and the detainees moved to a new site. While dismantling the site, the base chief asked Rodriguez if she could throw a pile of old videotapes, made during the early days of terrorist Abu Zubaida’s interrogation and waterboarding, and now a couple of years old, onto a nearby bonfire that was set to destroy papers and other evidence of the agency’s presence.

Just at that moment, according to his account, a cable from headquarters came in saying: “Hold up on the tapes. We think they should be retained for a little while longer.”

“Had that message been delayed by even a few minutes,” Rodriguez writes, “my life in the years following would have been considerably easier.”

Those actions led to a lengthy and still ongoing investigation of the agency that produced no charges. Rodriguez retired in January 2008 and now works in the private sector.

A tough CIA veteran
Rodriguez was born in Puerto Rico, the son of two teachers. He was educated at the University of Florida, where he also received a law degree before being recruited by the CIA. He once gained the confidence of a dictator in a Latin American country because of his gutsy horseback riding skills. He worked as the chief of station in several countries he does not name, and was sent to El Salvador during its bloody civil war (which he glosses over completely) and to Panama, where he pitched the idea of recruiting Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega’s witch doctor and putting him on the CIA payroll to persuade the dictator to retire to Spain. The CIA director at the time wasn’t impressed and instead, in 1989, “the United States followed a more traditional path: a military invasion.”

On Sept. 11, 2001, he did what legions of CIA officers not at work that day did: He rushed into headquarters, even as people were being evacuated, and pitched in. Rodriguez ended up in the Counterterrorism Center, which quickly went from a backwater posting to the center of the universe at the agency.

As CIA operations officers and analysts scrambled to figure out more about al-Qaeda and to plan a counterattack, Rodriguez was in the eye of the storm. “Hard Measures” takes readers through a highly sanitized — censored by the CIA, actually — version of events.

Although many details are left out and most of the outlines of what Rodriguez writes will not come as news to close readers of newspapers, he does not shy away from addressing the most controversial parts of what became the largest covert action program in U.S. history: the secret decisions to capture suspected terrorists on the battlefield or on the streets and make them disappear from the face of the Earth. Using a fleet of airplanes, the CIA bundled its captives into a netherworld no one else had access to, flew them around the world, deposited them in secret underground prisons where it could control their every move and use especially harsh interrogation methods on some of the most senior prisoners.

Many CIA officers had misgivings about these practices and what they might mean for America’s reputation around the world. Not Rodriguez. He is unabashedly confident that he and the agency did the right thing and saved lives in the process.

“I am certain, beyond any doubt, that these techniques, approved at the highest levels of the U.S. government, certified by the Department of Justice, and briefed to and supported by bipartisan leadership of congressional intelligence oversight committees, shielded the people of the United States from harm and led to the capture of killing of Usama bin Ladin.”

Of course, it is impossible to know this for certain, and many people inside and outside government — some of them involved in interrogations — have argued that with better-trained interrogators and more patience, the same information could have been obtained without such harsh methods.

The most newsworthy part of the book is a chapter in which Rodriguez explains how he came to order the destruction of 92 videotapes of the interrogation of Abu Zubaida.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has nearly completed a four-year-long review of the CIA’s post-Sept. 11 detention and interrogation practices.

Shredding the tapes
Rodriguez writes that he ordered the tapes’ destruction because he got tired of waiting for his superiors to make a decision. They had at least twice given him the go-ahead, then backed off. In the meantime, a senior agency attorney cited “grave national security reasons” for destroying the material and said the tapes presented ‘“grave risk” to the personal safety of our officers” whose identities could be seen on the recordings.

In late April 2004, another event forced his hand, he writes. Photos of the abuse of prisoners by Army soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq ignited the Arab world and risked being confused with the CIA’s program, which was run very differently.

“We knew that if the photos of CIA officers conducting authorized EIT [enhanced interrogation techniques] ever got out, the difference between a legal, authorized, necessary, and safe program and the mindless actions of some MPs [military police] would be buried by the impact of the images.

“The propaganda damage to the image of America would be immense. But the main concern then, and always, was for the safety of my officers.”

Readers may disagree with much of what Rodriguez writes and with the importance of some of the facts he omits from his book, but the above sentence speaks volumes about why this book is important. In this case, a loyal civil servant — and the decision-makers above him who blessed these programs — were not thinking about the larger, longer-lasting damage to the core values of the United States that disclosure of these secrets might cause. They were thinking about the near term. About efficiency. About the safety of friends and colleagues. In their minds, they were thinking, too, about the safety of the country.

And after some back-and-forth with agency lawyers for what seemed to him the umpteenth time, he writes, Rodriguez scrutinized a cable to the field drafted by his chief of staff, ordering that the tapes be shredded in an industrial-strength machine. The tapes had already been reviewed, and copious written notes on their content had been taken.

“I was not depriving anyone of information about what was done or what was said,” he writes. “I was just getting rid of some ugly visuals that could put the lives of my people at risk.

“I took a deep breath of weary satisfaction and hit Send.”
 
Crime boasting for profit
Shielded from all forms of accountability, a CIA official is able to publish a book glorifying his illegal acts

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/25/crime_boasting_for_profit/singleton/

By Glenn Greenwald
4/25/2012

On December 7, 2007, The New York Times reported that the CIA “in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about its secret detention program.” Documents obtained when the ACLU asked a federal judge to hold the CIA in contempt of court — for destruction of evidence which that judge had ordered be produced — subsequently revealed that the agency had actually “destroyed 92 videotapes of terror-suspect interrogations.” The videotapes recorded interrogations of detainees who were waterboarded and otherwise tortured. The original NYT article, by Mark Mazzetti, reported that “the decision to destroy the tapes was made by Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., who was the head of the Directorate of Operations, the agency’s clandestine service” (the NYT later reported that some White House officials had participated in the deliberations and even advocated the tapes’ destruction).

Destruction of these tapes was so controversial because it seemed so obviously illegal. At the time the destruction order was issued, numerous federal courts — as well as the 9/11 Commission — had ordered the U.S. Government to preserve and disclose all evidence relating to interrogations of Al Qaeda and 9/11 suspects. Purposely destroying evidence relevant to legal proceedings is called “obstruction of justice.” Destroying evidence which courts and binding tribunals (such as the 9/11 Commission) have ordered to be preserved is called “contempt of court.” There are many people who have been harshly punished, including some sitting right now in prison, for committing those crimes in far less flagrant ways than was done here. In fact, so glaring was the lawbreaking that the co-Chairmen of the 9/11 Commission — the mild-mannered, consummate establishmentarians Lee Hamilton and Thomas Kean — wrote a New York Times Op-Ed pointedly accusing the CIA of “obstruction” (“Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation”).

In 2008, Attorney General Michael Mukasey appointed a Special Prosecutor to determine if criminal charges should be filed. When I was writing my last book about the legal immunity bestowed on political elites even for egregious crimes, I actually expected that Rodriguez would be indicted and that his indictment would be an exception to the rule of elite immunity which I was documenting. As I wrote in my book, “even our political class, I thought, couldn’t allow lawbreaking this brazen to go entirely unpunished.” But I was quite wrong about that.

In November, 2010, the Obama DOJ — consistent with its steadfast shielding of Bush-era criminals from all forms of accountability — announced that the investigation would be closed without any charges being filed. Needless to say — given how subservient federal judges are to the Executive Branch in the post-9/11 era — the federal judge who had ordered the CIA to preserve and produce any such videotapes, Alvin Hellerstein, refused even to hold the CIA in contempt for deliberately disregarding his own order. Instead, Hellerstein — who, like so many federal judges, spent his whole career before joining the bench as a partner for decades in a large corporate law firm serving institutional power — reasoned that punishment for the CIA was unnecessary because, as he put it, new rules issued by the CIA “should lead to greater accountability within the agency and prevent another episode like the videotapes’ destruction.”

In other words, as I put it in a Guardian Op-Ed about Hellerstein’s CIA-protecting decision: the CIA has promised not to do this again, so they shouldn’t be punished for the crimes they committed. Aside from how difficult it is, given the agency’s history, to make that claim without triggering a global laughing fit, it is also grounded in a principle of leniency rarely applied to ordinary citizens. After all, most criminal defendants caught up in the life-destroying hell of a federal prosecution are quite unlikely to repeat their crimes in the future, yet that fact is no bar to punishing them for the illegal acts they already committed. But the CIA, of course, operates under a different justice system: one in which they are free to deliberately break laws and violate court orders with impunity.

Protected by the DOJ and Judge Hellerstein from any and all accountability for what he did, the CIA official who ordered the videotapes’ destruction, Jose Rodriguez, is now enjoying the fruits of his crimes. He just published a new book in which he aggressively defends his decision to destroy those tapes (“The propaganda damage to the image of America would be immense. But the main concern then, and always, was for the safety of my officers . . .I was just getting rid of some ugly visuals that could put the lives of my people at risk”). He also categorically justifies the CIA’s use of torture (“I am certain, beyond any doubt, that these techniques … shielded the people of the United States from harm and led to the capture of killing of Usama bin Ladin”) as well as the agency’s network of black sites (“Why not bring the detainees to trial?,” asks The Washington Post‘s Dana Priest in a review today of the book; Rodriguez’ answer in the book: “because they would get lawyered up, and our job, first and foremost, is to obtain information”). The title of the book: “Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives.”

Rodriguez thus joins a long line of Bush officials — Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, et. al — who not only paid no price for the crimes they committed, but are free to run around boasting of those crimes for profit. That’s what happens when the most politically powerful officials are vested with immunity for their illegal acts. Both the criminals and their crimes become normalized. They feel free not only to admit their crimes openly but to justify and glorify them, because they know they will never be held accountable for them. Instead of having to explain himself as a criminal defendant, Rodriguez is instead permitted to wrap his conduct in the banner of heroism as a highly-paid Simon & Schuster author.

This will be one of the most enduring and consequential aspects of the Obama legacy: by working so hard, in so many ways, to shield Bush-era crimes from all forms of accountability, the Democratic President has ensured that they are not viewed as crimes at all, but at worst, run-of-the-mill political controversies. Given all this, why would any government officials tempted to commit these same crimes in the future possibly decide that they should not?

* * * * *

As I wrote about earlier this week, the Obama DOJ is attempting to resist the ACLU’s lawsuit to obtain basic information about the CIA’s drone program by insisting that it cannot even confirm or deny the existence of the program without damaging national security. It makes this claim even though top-level Obama officials routinely boast in the media about this program. Incredibly, Rodriguez’s book — which was reviewed and cleared for publication by the CIA — explicitly discusses the CIA’s use of drones. So here we have, yet again, the U.S. Government permitting public discussions of what it does when it benefits top officials, while simultaneously shielding its conduct from the rule of law by telling courts that what it does is so secret that it cannot even confirm or deny its existence.
 
Ex-CIA chief defends waterboarding of al Qaeda leader

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_1...ief-defends-waterboarding-of-al-qaeda-leader/

Jose Rodriguez has no regrets about using the "enhanced interrogation techniques" - methods that some consider torture -- on al Qaeda detainees questioned after 9/11 and denies charges they didn't work. The former head of the CIA's Clandestine Service talks to Lesley Stahl about those methods, including waterboarding, for the first time and defends their use - even comparing them to the current policy of killing al Qaeda leaders with drone strikes. The Rodriguez interview will be broadcast on 60 Minutes Sunday, April 29 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Rodriguez says everything his interrogators did to top-level terrorists like Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah was legal and effective. "We made some al Qaeda terrorists with American blood on their hands uncomfortable for a few days," he tells Stahl. "I am very secure in what we did and am very confident that what we did saved American lives," says Rodriguez, who has written a book on the subject called "Hard Measures."

Pressed by Stahl about charges that Zubaydah, who was waterboarded and sleep deprived, gave false information that wasted U.S. resources, Rodriguez replies, "Bull****!, He gave us a roadmap that allowed us to capture a bunch of al Qaeda senior leaders," says the ex-spy.

Rodriguez says the interrogation program, which also included stress positions, nudity and "insult slaps," was "about instilling a sense of hopelessness...despair...so that he [the detainee] would conclude on his own that he was better off cooperating with us." He says that even Khalid Sheik Mohammed, whom he termed "the toughest detainee we had," eventually gave up information.

KSM, as the mastermind of 9/11 was known, would not cooperate at first. "He eventually told us, 'I will talk once I get to New York and I get my lawyer,'" Rodriguez recalls. But KSM was subjected to the enhanced techniques, including waterboarding and sleep deprivation, and Rodriguez believes, "it was the cumulative effect of waterboarding and sleep deprivation and everything else that was done that eventually got to him."

Rodriguez maintains he got information from the interrogations of KSM and others that enabled the CIA to disrupt at least 10 large-scale terrorist plots. But when Stahl reminds him the CIA's own inspector general said that his enhanced interrogation program did not stop any imminent attack, Rodriguez says, "We don't know. ...if, for example, al Qaeda would have been able to continue on with their anthrax program or nuclear program...or sleeper agents ...working with Khalid Sheik Mohammed to take down the Brooklyn Bridge, for example."

Stahl then suggests that KSM was never really broken, because he never gave up Osama bin Laden. "There is a limit...to what they will tell us," replies Rodriguez.

Rodriguez regrets the cancellation of his enhanced interrogation program by the current administration, accusing the White House of tying America's hands in the war on terror. "We don't capture anyone anymore Lesley...the default option of this administration has been to kill all prisoners. Take no prisoners," he tells Stahl. "The drones. How could it be more ethical to kill people rather than capture them?"
 
US to show Guantanamo arraignment at 5 sites for families of 9/11 victims, 3 spots for public

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...-at-us-sites/2012/04/26/gIQA2EwdjT_story.html

By Associated Press, Updated: Thursday, April 26, 5:40 PM

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The arraignment for the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and four other Guantanamo Bay prisoners will be broadcast by closed-circuit television to eight sites in the eastern United States, a military judge ruled Thursday.

Army Col. James Pohl said in his ruling that remote viewing locations are necessary because of the significant public interest in the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-defendants.

Dozens of journalists as well as relatives of Sept. 11 victims are expected to attend the hearing at the U.S. base in Cuba on May 5 when Mohammed and the others are to be arraigned on charges that include murder and terrorism.

The government began showing closed-circuit TV coverage of Guantanamo proceedings in Fort Meade, Maryland, last year but has never before broadcast tribunal proceedings so widely from the base.

Pohl’s order sets aside five viewing sites for families of Sept. 11 victims, survivors and emergency personnel who responded to the attack. Those will be at Fort Meade; Fort Hamilton and another site to be announced in New York City; Joint Base McGuire Dix in Lakehurst, New Jersey; and Fort Devens, Massachusetts.

There will be three other viewing sites for the public, journalists and government officials, two at Fort Meade and one in Washington.

Lawyers for some defendants opposed the closed-circuit broadcast on the grounds that the proceedings should be open to anyone to see, not just broadcast by closed-circuit TV at certain locations.

“We want it more transparent and more open,” said Cheryl Bormann, a lawyer for defendant Waleed bin Attash. “We believe that the world needs to see what’s happening.”

This is the second time that the U.S. is attempting to prosecute the five prisoners at Guantanamo.

President Barack Obama’s administration withdrew the charges and sought to move the case to a civilian court in the U.S. as part of an effort to close the prison on the base in Cuba. But the administration was forced to reverse course because of opposition in Congress and by New York City officials who said the case posed too great of a security threat.

The five men could get the death penalty if convicted at the military trial.
 
9/11 Suspects' Arraignment to Be Broadcast for Victims' Families
The five plotters are set to be arraigned May 5 for the attacks more than 10 years ago

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/911-Suspects-Guantanamo-Broadcast-Arraignment-149114705.html

Thursday, Apr 26, 2012 | Updated 3:56 PM EDT

The upcoming Guantanamo Bay arraignment of five men charged in the Sept. 11 attacks will be broadcast to eight locations in the eastern United States so that families and others can view the proceedings.

A military judge has authorized the May 5 broadcast by closed-circuit television so that surviving victims of the attacks, family members, first-responders and others can watch without have to travel to the U.S. base in Cuba.

Army Col. James Pohl issued a ruling Thursday for what would be the most widespread broadcast of a Guantanamo military commission hearing.

The arraignment of the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and four other men will be shown in the Washington area as well as at military bases in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin 'Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi are charged with planning and executing the disaster that killed nearly 3,000 people.
 
'Vomiting and screaming' in destroyed waterboarding tapes

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17990955

By Peter Taylor BBC Newsnight

Secret CIA video tapes of the waterboarding of Osama Bin Laden's suspected jihadist travel arranger Abu Zubaydah show him vomiting and screaming, the BBC has learned.

The tapes were destroyed by the head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, Jose Rodriguez.

In an exclusive interview for Newsnight, Rodriguez has defended the destruction of the tapes and denied waterboarding and other interrogation techniques amount to torture.

The CIA tapes are likely to become central to the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, at Guantanamo Bay.

When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed appeared before a special military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay last Saturday, he refused to put on the headphones that would enable him to hear the translator.

His civilian attorney, David Nevin, said he could not wear them because of the torture he had suffered during his interrogation.
Demonstration of waterboarding Waterboarding, which simulates drowning, was used in the interrogation of three al-Qaeda suspects

His "torture" at the hands of his CIA interrogators at a secret "black site" to which he had been rendered, included being deprived of sleep for over a week, standing naked, wearing only a nappy, and being waterboarded 183 times.

The CIA and the US Department of Justice that authorised the secret interrogation programme in the wake of 9/11, euphemistically referred to its content as "enhanced interrogation techniques".

Most people would probably call them "torture", but Jose Rodriguez disputes this term.

He has written a book, "Hard Measures" in which he defends the use of such techniques, and he told me there is no doubt they were effective.

"Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was probably the toughest detainee that we ever had and he was going to resist to the end of his strengths," he told me.

Waterboarding is simulated drowning. The detainee is stripped naked and strapped onto a board in a horizontal position with feet higher than his head.

Water is then dripped onto a cloth covering the nose and mouth which makes the detainee choke and temporarily stop breathing.

"It's not a pretty sight when you are waterboarding anybody or using any of these techniques, let's be perfectly honest," Rodriguez admitted.

Only three of the CIA's "high value targets" were waterboarded.
Courtroom sketch of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is currently on trial at a military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged architect of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in which 17 sailors died, was waterboarded twice, and Abu Zubaydah, Osama Bin Laden's suspected travel agent for jihadis, 83 times.

And it is the waterboarding of Zubaydah that has now become the centre of fresh controversy triggered by Newsnight's investigation.

The CIA recorded Zubaydah's detention and interrogation - and that of other detainees - on 92 video tapes.

Twelve of them covered the application of the "enhanced interrogation techniques", including waterboarding.

On one or more of them, I understand Zubaydah is shown vomiting and screaming.

John Rizzo, the CIA's top legal counsel who oversaw the legalisation of the techniques in an exchange of memoranda with the Department of Justice, wanted to be certain that what was happening at the black site was in accordance with what had been legally agreed.

He had not anticipated that waterboarding would be used as often as it was. And he sent one of his most experienced colleagues to the black site, believed to be in Thailand, to find out.

Rizzo's colleague viewed all the 92 hours of video and concluded that the techniques were being legally applied, but he was uncomfortable about what he saw.

"He did say that portions of the tapes, particularly those of Zubaydah being waterboarded, were extraordinarily hard to watch," Rizzo told me.

"He [Zubaydah] was reacting visibly in a very disturbing way."

So was he being sick?

"He was experiencing some physical difficulties, I'll just leave it at that... 'tough to watch in places' was his term."

I asked Jose Rodriguez if he had seen the tapes. He said he had not. Was he aware that they showed Abu Zubaydah vomiting and screaming? He said he was not. He checked with his interrogators at the black site who said there was no vomiting or screaming.

"I don't know where you got that from", he said. "I don't know about screaming and vomiting but it's not a pretty sight."

Rodriguez knew the tapes were potentially a ticking time bomb and wanted to destroy them. He waited for three years with increasing exasperation at the apparent unwillingness of anybody on high to take responsibility for authorising their destruction.

Then when news of the CIA's secret black sites leaked, Rodriguez's patience ran out.

Believing he had the authority to do so, he ordered the 92 tapes to be minced in an industrial shredder.

"Our lawyers said it was legal," he said.

But Rizzo was not happy.

"I was stunned and angry and honestly a bit hurt. I made it clear to him, as did two CIA directors, that he did not have the authority to make a decision to destroy those tapes."

So I asked, "He disobeyed orders?"

"He did."

But Rodriguez is adamant that he acted legally and says his motive in ordering their destruction was to protect the identities of his CIA interrogators lest they suffer reprisals.

But there was more to it than that. Three days after the tapes had been shredded, a CIA memorandum, since released under America's Freedom of Information Act, reported comments by Jose Rodriguez:

"As Jose said, the heat from destroying [the tapes] is nothing compared to what it would be if the tapes got into the public domain - he said that out of context they would make us look terrible - it would be devastating to us. All in the room agreed."

I put this to Rodriguez and he was typically upfront about it.

"I said that, yes. If you're waterboarding somebody and they're naked, of course that was a concern of mine."

Despite all the controversies around the CIA's black sites and its interrogation programme, Jose Rodriguez stands by all that he did.

"I was honoured to serve my country after the 9/11 attacks. I am proud of the decisions that I took including the destruction of the tapes to protect the people who worked for me. I have no regrets."

No doubt defence lawyers at Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's trial will try and get access to the written records that exist of what was on the tapes and seek to question the CIA lawyer who viewed them.

But under the rules of the military tribunal that restrict any discussion of torture, they are unlikely to succeed.
 
Q. & A.: Ali Soufan

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2012/05/q-a-ali-soufan.html

Posted by Amy Davidson
5/17/2012

In the past couple of weeks, Ali Soufan, the former F.B.I. agent who led the investigation into the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole and into events surrounding 9/11—and was the subject of a 2006 New Yorker piece by Lawrence Wright and is the author of “The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al Qaeda”—has been drawn back into the debate about torture and the war on terror by the publication of “Hard Measures: How Aggressive C.I.A. Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives,” by Jose Rodriguez, Jr. Rodriguez, in his book and in a “60 Minutes” interview, argued that techniques like waterboarding are necessary tools; Soufan has a different view. Below, he answers questions about post-9/11 interrogations, the roles of the C.I.A. and F.B.I., and whether torture works.

Who is Jose Rodriguez? What does he know about the waterboarding of detainees after 9/11, and what we did or didn’t learn from it?

Jose was a C.I.A. officer whose area of expertise was in Latin America, but after September 11, 2001, he was put in charge of the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center, and now he’s claiming responsibility for introducing the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” (E.I.T.s). In 2005, he ordered the destruction of tapes that showed the harsh techniques being used, apparently contrary to orders. He was later reprimanded by the C.I.A.’s inspector general’s office.

The claims he’s recently been making about the success of the harsh techniques are the same false claims that have appeared in now declassified C.I.A. memos, and which have been thoroughly discredited by the likes of the Department of Justice, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the C.I.A.’s Inspector General.

The person making those claims isn’t the same Jose that I knew. I don’t know what he really knows, whether he was fed false information, or if he’s trying to defend his legacy, but what he says is at odds with the facts.


You were involved in the same sequence of events—the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. How does your memory of them differ from the story Rodriguez is telling?

In this area it’s not a question of memory but of factual record. There are now thousands of pages of declassified memos and reports that thoroughly rebut what Mr. Rodriguez and others are now claiming. For example, one of the successes of the E.I.T.s claimed in the now declassified memos is that after the program began in August, 2002, Abu Zubaydah provided intelligence that prevented José Padilla from detonating a dirty bomb on U.S. soil, and identified Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks. Mr. Rodriguez has been repeating this claims.

The reality is that both of those pieces of intelligence were gained by my partner and me, with C.I.A. colleagues, in early April, 2002—months before the August, 2002, start of the E.I.T. program. But in the memos they were able to promote false facts, even altering dates, to make their claims work. In the so-called C.I.A. Effectiveness Memo, for example, it states that Mr. Padilla was arrested in May, 2003. In reality, he was arrested in May, 2002. But saying 2003 fits with the waterboarding narrative. When the Department of Justice asked Steven Bradbury, acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and the author of the 2005 O.L.C. memo to reinstate E.I.T.s, why he didn’t check the facts, he replied, “It’s not my role, really, to do a factual investigation of that.”


What about the identification of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

The claim about waterboarding leading to unmasking of K.S.M. as the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks is similarly false. We got that information in April, 2002, before the contractors hired by the C.I.A. Counterterrorism Center even arrived at the site. One by one, the successes claimed by E.I.T. proponents have been shown to be false.

I went before the Senate Judiciary Committee and under oath recounted what happened. And, as I note in “The Black Banners,” I sent daily reports from the secret interrogation location, to Washington, recording what happened, which the U.S. Government has in its possession. After I left the location in 2002, I wondered if they got anything of value. Until 2005, I was still in the government, and I know that nothing of value from E.I.T.s reached us. I thought perhaps the information was only shared with others. But with the declassification of previously secret memos, it became clear that every example given of claimed successes was factually incorrect—and I know this from firsthand experience of how those pieces of intelligence were really gained. It’s because of all this that I spoke out in 2009 to correct the false claims the American people were being told.


“60 Minutes,” in a Web piece that accompanied its interview with Rodriguez called “Interrogations: The FBI’s side of the Story,” presented this as a he-said, he-said, or Agency-said, Bureau-said: “What really happened in the interrogation of high-level detainees like Abu Zubaydah? Depends on who you ask: the FBI or the CIA.” Is that what it comes down to?

It was a factual mistake for “60 Minutes” and others to present it as an F.B.I. versus C.I.A. issue. They had in their possession the C.I.A. Inspector General’s report, the Department of Justice report, and the Senate Intelligence Committee’s information, all of which make this clear.

The more accurate way to portray it is that it’s the professionals from the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. versus bureaucrats in Washington. The C.I.A. professionals in the field weren’t happy that outside contractors with no Al Qaeda or terrorism experience were put in charge and they were pushed out. One C.I.A. colleague even left the secret location where we questioning Abu Zubaydah before I did—in protest of what was happening. Mr. Rodriguez, too, was not an Al Qaeda or terrorism expert, as he himself writes.

Because these C.I.A. professionals were unhappy with what bureaucrats in Washington were doing, they complained to their inspector general, John Helgerson. He looked into the program and issued a damning report about its lack of verifiable successes, among other things. This is why, back in 2005, still under the Bush Administration, the program was shelved.

Today, those responsible for the program, who made a decision that was terrible for our national security—both in the short term and the long term—are doing their best to try to salvage their reputation. And part of their tactic is to portray this as F.B.I. versus C.I.A., but that’s dishonest.


You mentioned the videotapes Rodriguez says he destroyed—ninety-two of them. Why would he do that?

On “60 Minutes,” Jose said he destroyed the evidence of the interrogations “to protect the people” who worked for him, from Al Qaeda going “after them and their families.” But that’s not the reason Mr. Rodriguez gave at the time, and it’s a shame he wasn’t challenged on it.

One declassified C.I.A. e-mail, dated November 10, 2005, and written by the deputy to Kyle (Dusty) Foggo, then executive director of the C.I.A., notes that Rodriguez thought that “if the tapes ever got into [the] public domain… they would make us look terrible.” It was about their reputation, not safety.

The tapes also contained our interrogations, done with traditional techniques. The tapes would have shown under which circumstances Abu Zubaydah coöperated and when he stopped coöperating. But while the tapes were destroyed, our daily reports from the location are luckily safe and still in the government’s possession.

And while Rodriguez claims he had approval to destroy the tapes, a second declassified e-mail from Foggo’s deputy shows that someone either “lied” to Rodriguez about approval, or Rodriguez “misstated the facts.” The C.I.A.’s then general counsel, John Rizzo, is recorded in the same e-mail as being “clearly upset” about the destruction.


Is there a cultural difference between the F.B.I. and C.I.A. that played into decisions about torture and civil liberties? As Lawrence Wright wrote in The New Yorker, you also learned, after 9/11, that failures in intelligence—particularly in the investigation of the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole, which you led—may have cost us a chance to stop the attacks. Is the situation better?

As we discussed, there’s no difference between the views of the C.I.A. and F.B.I. professionals in the field, who know what works and what doesn’t. My colleagues and I in the F.B.I., however, were fortunate to have leadership that shared our views, with the Assistant Director of the F.B.I., Pat D’Amuro, saying to Director Robert Mueller, “We don’t do that,” and Mueller agreeing. Many of my colleagues in the C.I.A. turned to their C.I.A. Inspector General to complain about what was happening—which led to the eventual shelving of the program, in 2005.

Regarding 9/11, I outline that sequence of events in “The Black Banners,” and it’s tragic. The 9/11 Commission listed that investigation as one of the best chances to stop 9/11. I often wonder how different the last decade would have been if we had been given the information we requested.

I’m out of the government now, but I sincerely hope the situation is better today.


I have to ask you about a small revelation in the military-tribunal arraignment of K.S.M. and other 9/11 suspects last week: the judge said that he had recently read your book, “The Black Banners.” Were you surprised?

I was honored that Judge Pohl singled out “The Black Banners.” The book, as you know, covers the history of Al Qaeda, from its roots in 1979 through to the death of Osama bin Laden. (Harsh interrogation issues only make up a few pages.) The book, based on my personal experiences and information given to me and colleagues by Al Qaeda operatives, outlines how many of the people—who became the group’s leaders, and today are facing trial for the attacks of 9/11—like Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Khallad bin Attash were recruited to the group, how they rose through the ranks, and how they planned and carried out their operations. My aim with the book was to create a manual for anyone really wishing to understand Al Qaeda and our efforts against the group.

I only hope that Judge Pohl will soon have the opportunity to read it unredacted.


Your book was heavily redacted; why? And did Rodriguez’s book get the same treatment?

The F.B.I. sent my manuscript to various departments in the Bureau, and after a three-month review process there was not a single redaction. Of course I had been careful not to put in any information that compromised national security, or sources and methods, and the F.B.I. recognized this.

Right before publication certain people in the C.I.A. claimed authority over the entire manuscript—putting the book through “double jeopardy” of an unheard-of second full review. They issued redactions clearly aimed at controlling the narrative over key moments, like the events leading to 9/11 and what happened with the harsh techniques.

Their redactions are a violation of the classification guidelines, which are designed to protect the public from agencies illegally classifying information for non-national-security reasons, such as trying to censor embarrassment or cover up mistakes.

Some of the redactions are blatantly ridiculous even without knowing what’s underneath, such as censoring a portion of a public exchange between myself and U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham that was broadcast live on national television and that is still available on a government Web site. The redactions also expose double standards: while I’m prevented from talking about certain things, they allow others to talk about the same things, even to talk about me, as long as it fits their narrative.

I’m requesting that these abuses of authority be reviewed by the F.B.I. and the government, and that the redactions on my book be lifted.

The one piece of good news, through this effort to restrict the public from knowing that they deserve to know, is that while those trying to hide the truth may think they scored a success by redacting “The Black Banners,” ironically, in the long run, they’ve done a great service to the truth: Because you only redact what is true, when people eventually get to read the book unredacted, they’ll know it contains the truth. Also, despite the redactions, it’s pretty obvious what happened and what people are trying to cover up—so the thinking public can work it out.

Incidentally, books defending E.I.T.s, like Mr. Rodriguez’s, don’t appear to have such redactions. After all, you can only redact the truth, you cannot redact fiction.


What is your take on the military tribunals? How has the judicial handling of the 9/11 suspects been shaped, or warped, by their interrogation?

I’m a believer in both federal and military courts. I think the focus should be on which venue would be most effective in insuring that the terrorist is locked up for as long as possible. I’ve been a witness in terrorism trials in both venues, and I know that federal courts are more effective, but sometimes military commissions are better.

The use of E.I.T.s have made prosecutions more difficult, that’s one of the reasons why it’s taken so long to begin the trials—those behind the techniques never thought about the end game. Information from E.I.T.s is considered unreliable, it’s inadmissible in court, and is considered “fruit of the poisonous tree,” and so naturally it makes the process more difficult. Thankfully, in regard to those suspects, we have a considerable amount of evidence from pre-E.I.T.s to convict them.


What do you say to Jose Rodriguez’s basic message: that in order to protect our country, we have to be willing to use torture?

That’s not true. On the contrary, using torture only makes us less safe. Not only does it generate false leads and unreliable information, passing up chances to get actionable intelligence, it also helps terrorists recruit—as we saw with Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Under torture, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi gave the information they wanted to hear, which turned out to be false, and that information was used to justify the Iraq War—it even made it to Colin Powell’s speech at the U.N. When Ibn Shaykh was asked why he lied, to paraphrase, he said because you were torturing me and I wanted it to stop. How did that make us safe?

We’re at our best and most effective when our laws and strategies are in sync.


Does torture—our willingness to use it, our opposition to it—have an effect on things like the recruitment of sources, or the willingness of people in other countries to coöperate with us?

It makes it very difficult. The top intelligence and law-enforcement agencies around the world don’t use torture, because it’s unreliable and ineffective. Those who do use it are looked down upon, and the information they provide isn’t trusted and can’t be used in their courts. And allied countries won’t hand over suspects to a country that tortures people—and the U.S. won’t, either.

Do you think that we have put the darkest moments of the global war on terror—the black sites, the torture—behind us?

I hope so. Given the conclusive evidence that damns the use of E.I.T.s, one would think no leader in their right mind would ever authorize it again. However, many of those behind E.I.T.s are still in influential positions, or are given free passes to spout their falsehoods, so it does worry me.[/I]
 
Court blocks release of CIA interrogation methods

http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/21/us/scotus-cia-interrogations/index.html

By Bill Mears, CNN Supreme Court Producer
updated 4:50 PM EDT, Mon May 21, 2012

(CNN) -- CIA secret interrogation methods -- including detention and harsh questioning of suspected terrorists -- remain off limits to public release, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

The agency was sued eight years ago to provide details of certain communications describing the use of waterboarding and other direct intelligence-gathering methods of foreign terror suspects. A three-judge panel from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled "intelligence methods" are not subject to a Freedom of Information Act request from the lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.

"We give substantial weight to the government's declarations, which establish that disclosing the redacted portions of the (secret memos) would reveal the existence and scope of a highly classified, active intelligence activity," said the judges.

The CIA has admitted as part of the lawsuit it destroyed videotaped interrogations of "high-value" terror suspects Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The alleged members of the al Qaeda terror network are being held overseas, including most recently at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba.

The ACLU wanted transcripts of those tapes and a Zubaydah photograph, written summaries, or other information relating to the so-called "waterboarding" of suspected terrorists in U.S. custody. Some civil liberties groups have equated the methods to torture, and have argued that government and military officials should be held publicly accountable.

"Public disclosure of certain government records may not always be in the public interest," Judge Richard Wesley wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel. He said it was both "logical and plausible" for the CIA to control how it conducts intelligence operations, and how it works with foreign intelligence liaison partners.

The judges also dismissed a lower federal court order to release two classified memos from White House attorneys, which discuss the legality of "enhanced interrogation techniques." The issue was whether the material was classified since the memos reportedly dealt not with specific methods, only their legality. The court said it was not its job to conduct a "complex inquiry" into government discussions of its intelligence-gathering.

President Barack Obama has since disavowed the future use of waterboarding, where simulated drowning of immobile prisoners was conducted.

The ACLU, along with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights and Veterans for Peace -- among other groups suing -- now have the option of asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. The justices earlier Monday agreed to hear a case from the ACLU over whether a coalition of Americans can go to court and challenge a federal law allowing broad electronic surveillance of suspected foreign terrorists and spies.
 
US Senate panel to vote on CIA interrogations report

http://www.google.com/hostednews/af...ocId=CNG.0a73035c2b14ded04eb6227eff166a5f.441

(AFP) – 12 hours ago

WASHINGTON — A Senate intelligence panel votes this week on findings of a three-year review of CIA "enhanced interrogation techniques" used on terror suspects and condemned by some US politicians as torture.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said Tuesday the 6,000-page report looking into Bush-era counter-terrorism practices will not be released to the public this week, saying such a decision would be made at a later date.

"The committee is, however, scheduled to vote to approve the report," she said in a statement emailed to AFP before convening a closed-door hearing of the committee scheduled for later Tuesday.

"It is comprehensive, it is strictly factual, and it is the most definitive review of this CIA program to be conducted," she added.

"Any decision on declassification and release of any portion of the report will be decided by committee members at a later time."

It remains unclear whether the sensitive report will ever be made public, as several Republicans on the committee boycotted the investigation from the start, leaving it unclear whether the findings will be approved.

Investigators analyzed millions of pages of intelligence records detailing the treatment of detainees.

Top lawmakers said in April that the report will show that enhanced interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency were not effective in helping find terror suspects.

The senators also probed the effects of "waterboarding," the simulated drowning technique which President Barack Obama and other US politicians have deemed to be torture.

Earlier this year, an in-depth account of CIA interrogation operations in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks was published by Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA deputy director for operations, who defended waterboarding.

He argued that top terror suspect and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whom the CIA says was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003, spilled key information as a result of the methods.

But Feinstein and Senator Carl Levin said in April that statements by Rodriguez and others about the CIA interrogation program's role in locating Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, who was killed in a US military raid in Pakistan last year, were "inconsistent with CIA records."

The CIA used coercive interrogation methods on dozens of detainees at so-called black sites around the world.

Rodriguez and others have said that information obtained from those interrogations led to bin Laden's courier, which in turn led eventually to the Al-Qaeda leader himself.

Feinstein and Levin said the original information had no connection to CIA detainees, data which they said would be detailed in the report.
 
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