As soon as we learned about the CIA hiding and destroying its torture tapes, the list of people who’d been misled about the videos’ existence was surprising long, and included a federal court, members of Congress, and the 9/11 Commission, which has been tasked with expansive investigate authority, including subpoena power.
Almost immediately, it was the 9/11 Commission’s members that publicly criticized the CIA’s deception. Co-chairman Lee Hamilton said of the agency, “Did they obstruct our inquiry? The answer is clearly yes. Whether that amounts to a crime, others will have to judge.”
The NYT moves the ball forward today, noting that the Commission requested information, repeatedly, about detainee interrogation, but were blatantly misled.
A review of classified documents by former members of the Sept. 11 commission shows that the panel made repeated and detailed requests to the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003 and 2004 for documents and other information about the interrogation of operatives of Al Qaeda, and were told by a top C.I.A. official that the agency had “produced or made available for review” everything that had been requested. […]
A seven-page memorandum prepared by Philip D. Zelikow, the panel’s former executive director, concluded that “further investigation is needed” to determine whether the C.I.A.’s withholding of the tapes from the commission violated federal law. […]
Mr. Kean said the panel would provide the memorandum to the federal prosecutors and congressional investigators who are trying to determine whether the destruction of the tapes or withholding them from the courts and the commission was improper.
The CIA for its part, concedes that it had the torture tapes, and would have been more than happy to share them, if only the 9/11 Commission had specifically asked for them.
In an interview on Friday, Mr. McLaughlin said that agency officials had always been candid with the commission, and that information from the C.I.A. proved central to their work.
“We weren’t playing games with them, and we weren’t holding anything back,” he said. The memorandum recounts a December 2003 meeting between Mr. Kean, Mr. Hamilton and George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence. At the meeting, it says, Mr. Hamilton told Mr. Tenet that the C.I.A. should provide all relevant documents “even if the commission had not specifically asked for them.” […]
Mark Mansfield, the C.I.A. spokesman, said that the agency had gone to “great lengths” to meet the commission’s requests, and that commission members had been provided with detailed information obtained from interrogations of agency detainees.
“Because it was thought the commission could ask about the tapes at some point, they were not destroyed while the commission was active,” Mr. Mansfield said.
Even by Bush administration standards, this is comically unpersuasive. Kevin Drum offers a tale of the tape:
* The 9/11 Commission was an official investigative body chartered by both Congress and the president.
* It specifically asked for “documents,” “reports” and “information” related to detainee interrogations.
* The CIA knew about the tapes, knew they were germane, and knew the commission was likely to ask for them at some point.
* But it never revealed their existence and never turned them over because no one ever specifically said the word, “videotape.”
Yep, it’s that bad. And given the Commission’s authority, it may very well be illegal.