Newsweek: TERROR WATCH-Who authorized the CIA to destroy interrogation videos?

[babylonsister]

TERROR WATCH
Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Who authorized the CIA to destroy interrogation videos?
Dec 11, 2007 | Updated: 4:11 p.m. ET Dec 11, 2007

The CIA repeatedly asked White House lawyer Harriet Miers over a two-year period for instructions regarding what to do with "very clinical" videotapes depicting the use of "enhanced" interrogation techniques on two top Al Qaeda captives, according to former and current intelligence officials familiar with the communications (who requested anonymity when discussing the controversial issue). The tapes are believed to have included evidence of waterboarding and other interrogation methods that Bush administration critics have described as torture.

Senior officials of the CIA's National Clandestine Service finally decided on their own authority in late 2005 to destroy the tapes—which were kept at a secret location overseas—after failing to elicit clear instructions from the White House or other senior officials on what to do with them, according to one of the former intelligence officials with direct knowledge of the events in question. An extensive paper—or e-mail—trail exists documenting the contacts between Clandestine Service officials and top agency managers and between the CIA and the White House regarding what to do about the tapes, according to two former intelligence officials.

Included in the paper trail is an opinion from a CIA lawyer assigned to the Clandestine Service that advises that there is no explicit legal reason why the Clandestine Service had to preserve the tapes, according to both former and current officials. The document does not, however, directly authorize the tapes' destruction or offer advice on the wisdom or folly of such a course of action, according to a source familiar with its contents, who declined to be identified discussing the controversial topic.

According to one of the former officials, one reason the CIA executives originally decided the interrogations of Al Qaeda captives Abu Zubaidah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri should be videotaped was in order to protect the officers conducting the interrogations by demonstrating that everything done during the interrogations complied with guidelines set down by the White House and Justice Department. Another reason the tapes were made was because at the time Abu Zubaidah was captured he had suffered severe gunshot wounds and CIA officials wanted to document the fact that he received adequate medical treatment.

Only small portions of what former and current officials described as "low hundreds" of hours of the destroyed tapes depicted the use of "enhanced" interrogation techniques, like waterboarding; many hours of tapes, said one of the sources, consisted simply of pictures of Zubaidah in his cell in a secret CIA detention facility overseas.

A detailed written transcript of the tapes' contents—apparently including references to interrogation techniques—was subsequently made by the CIA. But the tapes themselves were never brought onto U.S. territory; they were kept, and later destroyed, at a secret location overseas. At one point portions of the tapes were electronically transmitted to CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., so a small number of officials there could review them. A counterterrorism source, who also asked for anonymity when discussing this subject, said that there was no reason to believe that any recordings of such an electronic feed still exist.

more...

http://www.newsweek.com/id/76574

[thereismore]

1. An extensive paper—or e-mail—trail exists - let's hope so! nt

[maddezmom]

2. wonder what James Comey knows about all this?

an old post from my journal got me thinking about him:

Loyal to Bush but Big Thorn in G.O.P. Side (James Comey)
Posted by maddezmom in Editorials & Other Articles
Thu May 17th 2007, 02:17 AM
Loyal to Bush but Big Thorn in G.O.P. Side
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By SCOTT SHANE and DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: May 17, 2007

WASHINGTON, May 16 — For a loyal George W. Bush Republican, James B. Comey has made a remarkable amount of trouble for the White House.

As deputy attorney general in 2003, he appointed his old friend Patrick J. Fitzgerald as independent counsel in the C.I.A. leak case, leading to the perjury conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr.

In 2004, he backed Justice Department subordinates who withdrew a legal memorandum justifying harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists. This spring, more than a year after leaving the government, he publicly praised several United States attorneys who had been dismissed, undermining the administration’s claim that they were removed for poor performance.

~snip~

Former colleagues say strains with the White House began after the arrival in 2003 of Jack L. Goldsmith to head the department’s Office of Legal Counsel. With Mr. Comey’s backing, Mr. Goldsmith questioned what he considered shaky legal reasoning in several crucial opinions, including some drafted by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo.

Mr. Goldsmith’s review of legal memoranda on the N.S.A. program and interrogation practices became a source of friction between Mr. Comey and the White House.

“He had a strong sense of personal integrity and he felt that the legal judgments of the Justice Department were not being honored,” a former Justice Department colleague said, speaking on condition of anonymity about confidential discussions. Mr. Yoo had the strong support of Mr. Gonzales and David S. Addington, Mr. Cheney’s legal adviser. Mr. Comey testified that both Mr. Cheney and Mr. Addington opposed the N.S.A. program changes sought by the Justice Department.


more:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/17/washington/17comey.html?_r=2&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1197479321-Hwieqr8BbQaE3a4d6Bauqw

[maddezmom]

4. more: Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations

Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations
By SCOTT SHANE, DAVID JOHNSTON and JAMES RISEN
Correction Appended

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.

more:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/washington/04interrogate.html?ei=5065&en=e7795da103966f42&ex=1192075200&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print

[babylonsister]

5. You were right! So now we need to hear from Comey; was this the

info he predicted his colleagues would be 'ashamed' of?

[maddezmom]

6. another link I remembered

Jack Goldsmith was confirmed to be head of OLC in October 2003. He was a loyal Republican and supporter of the President. And yet almost as soon as he took office, he began reviewing much of John Yoo's handiwork, and found it lacking. Barely two months into his new job, for instance, Goldsmith called the Pentagon and told them that they must immediately cease relying on the critical Yoo Opinion that formed the basis for the Department of Defense's absuive interrogation policies in Iraq and elsewhere. (I've reviewed this fascinating story in detail here.)

According to Comey, "there were a number of issues that was looking at" as part of his "reevaluation" of past OLC advice, and the NSA program "was among those issues" under OLC review. "Demanding that the White House stop using what they saw as farfetched rationales for riding rough-shod over the law and the Constitution, Goldsmith and the others fought to bring government spying and interrogation methods within the law. They did so at their peril." (The quotation from the best account yet of this basic story -- the article in Newsweek in February 2006 by Daniel Klaidman, Stuart Taylor and Evan Thomas. That article obviously owes a great deal of debt to partial accounts published earlier by, e.g., the New York Times and this blog. Nevertheless, it is a taut, comprehensive and compelling account of what might be the most revealing aspect of the legal crisis within the Executive branch during the past six years. It is well worth reading.)

By early March 2004, OLC apparently concluded that the NSA electronic surveillance program could not be defended on the basis of OLC's prior legal opinions, and had convinced the Attorney General and DAG that DOJ had to refuse to sign off on the program -- i.e., they were compelled to inform the President that the program violated FISA and could not legally be continued in its present form. Ashcroft and Comey agreed -- or at the very least, they deferred to Goldsmith's legal judgment, which is what happens in 99% of all cases once OLC speaks.

It is extremely rare for OLC to reverse its own opinions within an Administration. And that unusual course would be especially disfavored in this case, because all the relevant DOJ officials -- e.g., Ashcroft, Comey, and Goldsmith -- undoubtedly understood that repudiation of this particular OLC advice would mean shutting down the very program that the President had described as the most important intelligence program in the war on terror. Moreover, the theory that OLC was repudiating appears to have been one to which the Vice President and his counsel were deeply committed, and one that appears to have formed the basis for the Administration's decision to disobey other important statutory constraints. Obviously, then, there were profound disincentives to such repudiation.

more:http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/05/can-you-even-imagine-how-bad-it-must.html

[L. Coyote]

3. My first question: Was the video made for live feed? #2 Was Bush watching/involved?

Why was a video made in the first place? The practice was something new. Was it destroyed because of why it was made, to cover up who participated, via live feed?

Were Bush or Cheney directly involved in the torture and/or torture decision making, in real time? Or Rumsfeld? Who in the chain of command, starting at the top?

[Sam Ervin jret]

7. What to bet there are transcripts too? Where are they?

[Doctor_J]

8. Newsweak, the employer of KKKarl Rove?

:boring: