CIA ignored warnings about interrogation videos

December 8, 2007

Yesterday we learned that the CIA had videos of its “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which it hid from lawmakers, federal investigators, a federal court, and the 9/11 Commission — and then intentionally destroyed to cover up its culpability.

The agency treated the elimination of incriminating evidence as a rather routine decision, but the NYT reports today that the CIA destroyed the videos over the objections of, well, practically everyone.

White House and Justice Department officials, along with senior members of Congress, advised the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003 against a plan to destroy hundreds of hours of videotapes showing the interrogations of two operatives of Al Qaeda, government officials said Friday.

The chief of the agency’s clandestine service nevertheless ordered their destruction in November 2005, taking the step without notifying even the C.I.A.’s own top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, who was angry at the decision, the officials said.

And what might have been on the destroyed evidence? Kevin Drum has a very good post on the subject, but summarizes:

So here’s what the tapes would have shown: not just that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative, but that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative who was (a) unimportant and low-ranking, (b) mentally unstable, (c) had no useful information, and (d) eventually spewed out an endless series of worthless, fantastical “confessions” under duress. This was all prompted by the president of the United States, implemented by the director of the CIA, and the end result was thousands of wasted man hours by intelligence and law enforcement personnel.

Nice trifecta there. And just think: there’s an entire political party in this country that still thinks this is OK.

To paraphrase Homer Simpson, “Republicans, I think he’s talking to you.”

As for those who were lied to, the 9/11 Commission’s members seem more than a little annoyed. Co-chairman Lee Hamilton said of the CIA, “Did they obstruct our inquiry? The answer is clearly yes. Whether that amounts to a crime, others will have to judge.”

Also, the WSJ added this interesting tidbit:

The tape destruction also likely will become problematic at future terrorism trials, because it will permit defense lawyers to raise the specter of a CIA coverup to cast doubt on government evidence. In the case of al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui, now serving a life sentence after pleading guilty, CIA lawyers told a federal-court hearing that interrogation videos did not exist.

Am I the only one who’s noticed that the Bush administration keeps making it easier for criminals not to be prosecuted? When the Bush gang politicized U.S. Attorneys’ offices and the criminal justice process, it made it easier for defense attorneys to help possible criminals. When the Bush gang started acquiring evidence through warrantless searches, it made it easier for defense attorneys to block damaging evidence from court.

When the White House isn’t torturing suspects and destroying evidence, they’re apparently taking steps to keep bad guys out of jail.

“…they’re apparently taking steps to keep bad guys out of jail.”

Including Scooter Libby. A lot of the “bad guys” work at the White House.

  • “… they’re apparently taking steps to keep bad guys out of jail.”

    And giving the really bad guys even higher paying government jobs, lucrative no-bid contracts or Presidential Medals of Freedom.

  • Whenever there are cascading disasters for Bush and his thugs, such as the past week, they manage to successfully change the subject. Controlling the news cycle has always been one of their strong suits. So one has to wonder, (a) if they can still do it, (b) and if so what new crisis requiring us to give more money to Cheney/Halliburton, destroy more of the constitution, or cower in fear under our beds, they will manage to conjure up.

    Alert the media to get their steno pads ready.

  • I don’t know if this country will ever be able to get rid of the stain this president has left upon the nation, or the odor that attends all that we do, at home and abroad. The magnitude of the loss of trust in the principles and foundation that have made this democracy what it was simply cannot be measured, and I fear that no matter what we do to rectify it, there will always be some measure of doubt that lingers in people’s minds and hearts. Every questionable action will make people wonder if the policies and practices have just been driven deeper instead of eliminated. Who will believe the CIA or the FBI or even the local police department when they say they have no evidence of this or no records of that?

    How do we still stand at the bully pulpit and argue for freedom and democracy, when we have allowed our own fears to push us to capture and kidnap anyone on some open-ended and free-form basis that has been decreed to be exempt from any law, and then rendition and imprison them for years without allowing them access to the legal system or even to their own families?

    The fear that started with 9/11 and was capitalized on by this administration has apparently permeated the conscience of the people elected to oversee the workings of government, to the point that no one stood up and exposed what was going on when something could possibly have been done about it.

    We learned that members of the intelligence community were willing to go to jail to make the conclusions of the NIE public if the Director of National Intelligence did not; where are the heroes of Congress, who take their oversight obligation, and their devotion to the democracy so seriously that they would have risked jail or criminal indictment to make public the actions of this administration?

    My anger and sadness about what has happened to my country is no longer directed just at the president and his administration or those who represent the Republican party in both houses of Congress. No. Now it is directed at those who knew, who could have spoken up and did not.

  • Frankly, I think there is a lot of ass-covering going on right now, particularly with respect to to the denials of Rizzo and Miers. In another post you recalled the Watergate maxim, it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.” Let recall the Watergate concept of “plausible deniability”. That is that the president should be insulated from the charge of fore knowledge of any crime. So the CIA runs the idea of destroying the tapes past Miers and she,”Oh no, not that. Don’t do that!”, nod-nod-wink-wink. Suddenly the White House has plausible deniablity.

  • Problem is no crime is revealed before the management team has massaged the facts and minimized the damage. The president pleads confusion, doesn’t recall being told, feigns surprise and yes, changes the subject “now let’s get some $ for more war!” The scapegoat is chosen and floated in the media, how convenient, an Hispanic is available. This man and this man alone, one bad apple, chose to go against all reason and destroy evidence of criminal activity. As always there is the amusing bone tossed in at the first press conference, “we had to destroy the evidence to prevent it falling into the wrong hands.” This is like the bank president saying, “what? we can’t be keeping cash down at the bank, it might get stolen!” And Harriet pops back in with, “I told those boys not to do that. They are sooooooo Baaaad!”

    Meekly, Sen’s Rockefeller and Harmon peep, “What do you mean you told us?” The CYA man smiles, “remember, we said we wanted to tape some movies but were out of tapes? You said i could recycle some of the old ones.”

    Let’s see, and what are we not talking about? Oh yeah, it’s off the table. Still a year in office…cya, pass it on…

  • If Rodriguez acted on his own initiative and against the advice of nearly everyone when he destroyed the tapes he should have been summarily fired. Yet he continued in his position until he retired in September of this year, nearly two years after his blatant act of obstruction of justice. That suggests strongly that his act wasn’t one of insubordination.

  • Back when Porter Goss took over the CIA much of the top management bailed.

    Within the past month, four former deputy directors of operations have tried to offer CIA Director Porter J. Goss advice about changing the clandestine service without setting off a rebellion, but Goss has declined to speak to any of them, said former CIA officials aware of the communications.

    The four senior officials represent nearly two decades of experience leading the Directorate of Operations under both Republican and Democratic presidents. The officials were dismayed by the reaction and were concerned that Goss has isolated himself from the agency’s senior staff, said former clandestine service officers aware of the offers.
    […]
    Last week, Deputy Director John E. McLaughlin retired after a series of confrontations between senior operations officials and Goss’s top aide, Patrick Murray. Days before, the chief of the clandestine service, Stephen R. Kappes, said he would resign rather than carry out Murray’s demand to fire Kappes’s deputy, Michael Sulick, for challenging Murray’s authority.

    Kappes did eventually resign and Goss appointed Rodrigeuz to his position. What was Rodrigeuz’s primary qualification?

    nside headquarters, Rodriguez is well regarded. “Everybody likes him,” one former CIA official said, “although he is not considered a strong case officer.”

    Rodriguez spent most of his career in Latin America, including Mexico. In the pecking order of the clandestine service, Latin America is viewed as something of a backwater; the big players work in other parts of the world. “He wasn’t in Europe, or Asia, the more important stations,” a CIA man explained.

    Even so, many rank-and-file colleagues were not displeased at his selection to head the clandestine service. … Rodriguez does have some, well, drawbacks. He has a checkered past.

    Ten years ago, Rodriguez was fired as chief of the CIA’s Latin America division after he sought to intervene to help a friend who had been arrested in the Dominican Republic for possession of cocaine and illegal weapons. The friend had also worked for the CIA in the Dominican Republic.

    Although Rodriguez didn’t ask that the charges against his friend be dropped, he contacted the CIA station chief on the island and asked him to speak to local authorities about the case. The CIA referred Rodriguez’s actions to the Justice Department to determine whether he had been committed a crime, but it found no grounds to prosecute. Rodriguez was removed as division chief, although allowed to remain in the CIA. At the time, the CIA inspector general criticized Rodriguez for “a remarkable lack of judgment.” The demotion caused considerable grumbling inside the agency because, as one former officer put it, “Jose was very popular.”

    I think that that willingness to bend the rules to help out a “friend” was exactly what Goss and the White House were looking for. When the time came to destroy those tapes, they counted on him to help out a friend.

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